Science geeks of the world, unite!
Welcome to my all-new science blog, "Daughter of Hypatia." You might know me best as the muscle growth erotic fiction author that runs Confessions of a Muscle Lovin' Femme.
Hypatia of Alexandria, as you probably already know, was the greatest scientist of her age, a mathematician and "natural philosopher." Among the great men of antiquity, Hypatia stood out as a great woman.
In the chapter of my Mathematics Honors Society, we were required to take a name from antiquity as our own. I wanted Hypatia, but that chapter already had a Hypatia, and I was, to put it mildly, miffed I couldn't have that name. Come to think of it, I remember looking at the slim, gooselike neck of that Asian girl and imagining how quick my fingers could squeeze around her throat.
Thankfully, Athena was available. (You wouldn't think so, but there weren't many women.)
The focus of this blog is on science, but also rationalism, arguably the greatest attribute of Western civilization and one of mankind's most wildly successful endeavors and means of understanding the universe. Part of being pro-reason means combating and debunking pseudoscience, too. After all, skepticism is a big part of science.
I rarely ever comment on blogs since I practically type for a living and typing during my free time seems too counter-intuitive. Despite that I feel I have to express a thought this time around.
ReplyDeleteI might not be truly involved in anything remotely considered scientific but I do have a soft spot for reason and method of thought which compels me to ask:
With common sense routinely being thrown out of the window in one's everyday life, don't you get all worked up when you actually have to defend the actual notion of reason?
Now, I know there is a chance I don't make any sense but then again, I'm not a native english speaker so a misunderstanding is only bound to happen sooner rather than later.
Either way...cheers!
Congratulations on being the first to comment!
ReplyDeleteI don't get worked up about having to defend the idea of reason because in many ways, reason is unusual and abnormal and non-rational thinking is the norm!
For example, the Ancient Greeks, who we often attribute the invention of modern science, didn't study the world through observation very often, because they really had no reason to think that extensive observation would lead to anything or go anywhere.
What's more, one of the problems with science is you have to correct a lot of misconceptions that people have, for instance, that the Moon orbits the Earth. (Actually, the two have a pivot-point, closer to the earth than the moon, where they orbit each other.)
I find that most people that don't "believe" in evolution don't understand a lot of it, and that's because popular conceptions are untrue. For instance, human beings didn't evolve from monkeys. (Humans and primates evolved from a common ancestor.)
And so on. But to answer your question, yeah, I sometimes do get frustrated. I had a friend's boyfriend once tell me at a party that he KNEW, dead sure KNEW, that he was a tiger in a past life.
I mean, what can you do with a guy like that? I threw my hands up. To quote Michael Shermer, "why is it people believe weird things?"