Marzieh Ghiasi

Today is writer and scientist Carl Sagan’s 75^th birthday. Carl Sagan is remembered for his remarkable ability to take scientific knowledge and present it in an elegant and comprehensive way to the broader public. An ability that I’ve truly come to appreciate as I’ve become more involved with communicating science. But it’s not just limited to that. Carl Sagan’s approach, along with that a few of his contemporaries, was a vestige of the approach by the natural philosophers who pushed forward the scientific revolution. These communicators not only put science in comprehensible terms for the public, but by describing the fragments together, they provided an avenue for science itself to become consolidated. They were concerned with epistemology, They posed questions the nature of human and his place in the universe, and with every question they shifted our views about who we are. Finally, they were pioneers who scoped the skies with spectacles of imagination to see not just what is, but what may be.

From my post two years ago: I just wanted to share a quote from Carl Sagan that I found tremendously inspiring when I was younger. Pale Blue Dot, displayed below, is the infamous picture of Earth, 4 billion miles out in space, at the edge of the solar system, taken by Voyager 1 in 1990, followed by Carl Sagan’s remarks on what this picture represents. I would like to share this because I find what Sagan presents to be both unsettling and moving on a fundamental level. Sometimes I find the existentialist parts of me, parts that desire to set the human definition and experience as encompassing all that is real and all that matters at odds with his perspective. At the same time however, I find myself awed by the profound truth in Sagan’s description of the entirety of humanity’s experiences on this planet.

I read this magnificent piece a couple of weeks ago and it left me with a lot to digest, and so I wanted to share it. In a world where scientific theories like evolution still have not found widespread acceptance in the public, it seems that many are still unwilling to face, what Bacon calls in Sphynx or Science, questions on the nature of things and the nature of man. After reading this passage, I was left with a truly deep appreciation for the curiosity of every child, and for every woman and man who has ever dared approach the sphinxes that guard the incognito, and face the riddles of the universe and our humanity.

“Sphynx or Science”
Sir Francis Bacon’s The Wisdom of the Ancients (1619)

phinx, says the story, was a monster combining many shapes in one. She had the face and voice of a virgin, the wings of a bird, the claws of a griffin. She dwelt on the ridge of a mountain near Thebes and infested the roads, lying in ambush for travelers, whom she would suddenly attack and lay hold of; and when she had mastered them, she propounded to them certain dark and perplexing riddles, which she was thought to have obtained from the Muses. And if the wretched captives could not at once solve and interpret the same, as they stood hesitating and confused she cruelly tore them to pieces. Time bringing no abatement of the calamity, the Thebans offered to any man who should expound the Sphinx’s riddles ( for this was the only way to subdue her ) the sovereignty of Thebes as his reward.

*Image Source

The greatness of the prize induced Œdipus, a man of wisdom and penetration, but lame from wounds in his feet, to accept the condition and make the trial: who presenting himself full of confidence and alacrity before the Sphinx, and being asked what kind of animal it was which was born four-footed, afterwards became two-footed, then three-footed, and at last four-footed again, answered readily that it was man; who at his birth and during his infancy sprawls on all fours, hardly attempting to creep; in a little while walks upright on two feet; in later years leans on a walking stick and so goes as it were on three; and at last in extreme age and decrepitude, his sinews all failing, sinks into a quadruped again, and keeps his bed. This was the right answer and gave him victory; whereupon he slew the Sphinx; whose body was put on the back of an ass and carried about in triumph; while himself was made according to compact King of Thebes.

The fable is an elegant and a wise one, invented apparently in allusion to Science; especially in its application to practical life. Science, being the wonder of the ignorant and unskillful, may be not absurdly called a monster. In figure and aspect it is represented as many-shaped, in allusion to the immense variety of matter with which it deals. It is said to have the face and voice of a woman, in respect of its beauty and facility of utterance. Wings are added because the sciences and the discoveries of science spread and fly abroad in an instant; the communication of knowledge being like that of one candle with another, which lights up at once.
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http://www.mcgilldaily.com/article/18021

Darwin, DNA and, “many more details”
By Marzieh Ghiasi
Monday, Feb 16th, 2009

While evolution has formed the core foundation of biology, 150 years since Darwin’s theory of evolution, was published, it remains as controversial as ever. According to a 2007 poll released by Angus Reid Global Monitor, only 59 per cent of Canadians believe the theory of evolution, while 22 per cent believe species were created in their present form.

On February 12, millions across the world celebrated Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday. Darwin’s journey on the HMS Beagle and his explorations have formed what Dr. Andrew Hendry, professor of biology at McGill University, calls “the foundations of all modern biology.”

In his 1859 landmark work, On The Origin of Species, Darwin described evolutionary development and the transformation of species through the process of natural selection. Darwin’s unorthodox ideas proved controversial at the time of their publication.
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The improvement of the world must be highly contextualized.
-Hans Rosling

This is one of the best gems that I’ve stumbled upon in recent memory, thanks to /.. Recently it was reported that Google has snaped up Karolinska stats tool for an ‘undisclosed sum’ ;). This tool was developed by the Hans Rosling (a professor of international health at Swedens’ Karolinska institute) and his son under the wing of Gapminder. The objective of the tool, called the Trendalyzer software, is to gather and present a variety of data from public data-bases that are normally inaccessible to the public in the same place in a comprehensive yet elegant manner.

So what? Companies spend millions of dollars a year attempting to improve their statistical analysis tools to compete in the market– after all, you don’t want to sell to the individual, the individual varies too much, you want to sell to the masses, and to do that you must understand the mind of the population. Good statistical analysis tools are even more important in the public arena where the report quotes Rosling stating that “public organizations around the world invest 20 billion dollars a year producing different kinds of statistics.”

What is apparently fantastic about the Trendalyzer is its ability to present a multitude of data in a way that is simple and visually attractive, and really expresses the association between different parameters. You can view a sample “graph” at Google:

http://tools.google.com/gapminder/

The video below, however, really shows Rosling’s tool in action. Watch Rosling (and his dynamic personality) in a few slides essentially dispel the notion of a divided world and show the diversity that is present in regions that are often ‘lumped’ together… to those of us who would rather die than attempt to understand statistics. It’s fascinating!!

http://ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=hans_rosling

I thought maybe they know everything I am going to teach them about. So I did a pretest, when they came. And one of the questions from which I learnt a lot was this one: Which country has the highest child mortality of these five pairs. And I put them together so that one in each country has twice the rate of mortality as the other… so I got a confidence interval which was pretty narrow. And I got happy of course. At 1.8 out of 5 answers possible, that means that there was a place for a professor of international health and for my course. But one late night, when I was compiling my reprot I really realized my discovery. I have shown the Swedish top students know, statistically less significant about the world than the chimpanzees. Because the chimpanzees would score half right. If I gave them two bananas, with Sri Lanka and Turkey, they would be right half of the cases. But the students are not that. The problem for me was not ignorance, it was pre-conceived ideas. I did also an unethical study of the professors of the Karolinska Institute that have some of the noble prizes in medicine, and they are on par with the chimpanzees there. So this where I realized that there was a need to communicate…

-Hans Rosling

So much potential! First, I am very excited to see how Google will expand this project (I still can’t get over the awesomeness that is Google Earth ) and second, man, someone please give me a ticket to Sweden! I am very impressed with their international health program… and I need to take Dr. Rosling’s lectures.