Science
My subjective take on issues in and around science. Profiles of interesting scientists, etc. Also, juicy videos of nature, physics, and chemistry, etc.
July 1st is 161 years since Darwin’s “Natural Selection” theory was accepted by the Linnean society of scientists as the correct explanation and Evolution became Darwinian Evolution.
I find most people think Darwin was a lovely and rather enlightened man, and that his theory rose to prominence on merit alone.
Those people can’t complete a dichotomous key test between asses and elbows, scientifically speaking. If you’ve never read my stuff before, you might worry I’m a closet creationist. Nope.
Part 1.
The Descent of Darwin: Part 1 – Survival of the Best Connected
Part 2.
The descent of Darwin: Part 2 The fall of Wallace, Lamarck and complexity
Part 3.
Part 4.
The math that drives at least some emergence:
For heaven’s sake…watch one fucking minute of the video below or so help me…you’ll miss something amazing.
Reductionism is a cultural behavior required of scientists. If you wander too far from reductionism you will be ostracized. Reductionism denies that anything is greater than the sum of its parts. Things may appear to be complex but when looked at correctly they are “Merely” so much of this and that. It doesn’t account for what is happening with these “merely bits” that generated complexity.
Religion pushed science into this reflexive position. Religion is like rising floodwaters always seeking the weak point in Science’s levee of empiricism. Religion generated this dogmatic defense within science that would have been unnecessary without the influence. One can sympathize with the need to keep theology out, but the results are like a peaceful culture becoming militaristic in its own defense and losing something important.
Reductionism in religion is the name of the game, it is the machine operating as intended. “It is God’s will.” Religion takes a world of complexity and mystery and sorts these according to its filing system, placing each in an “orthodox box”. If this boiling down mechanism wasn’t present in church doctrine the religion would be saying, in effect: “Here is the eternal, unchanging truth unless someone has a better idea, one that seems to fit the facts better”. In other words, science. When the Pope weighs in on something heavy in his official capacity, clarifying it in extra-bold red underlined words for all time he is speaking “Ex Cathedra“, or infallibly. Use of the Ex Cathedra voice in science is plainly antithetical to the mission.* In war, the difference in weaponry evens out into a common approach. Both settle for example on bows and arrows or spears and clubs, otherwise it isn’t a battle, but a rout for one side. Science fought religion’s reductionism by developing its own parallel. The parallel had to be hard, cold and unflinching. It used the serious daddy voice. It defined and circumscribed scientific culture to the world at large with unambiguous borders. It is understandable and regrettable.
But reductionism in science is the mirror of doctrinal certainty. It is a bulwark against invasion but it makes us dumber.
Reductionism confidently declares our current level of partial understanding as the end zone of reality. Since its origin, every scientific discipline has crawled painfully over lots and lots of wrong to find little bits of right. At every point down this ever changing track the current state of knowledge determined where “Nonsense” began. It’s reminiscent of “Aren’t you lucky you were born a member of the one true church?”. Science history is full of people who found treasure where the experts said there was only nonsense. It doesn’t mean nonsense is where to look, just that it shouldn’t be overlooked.
Things that are “Unscientific” are things science doesn’t want to talk about. Often but not always, for legitimate reasons. Some exiled things will likely become accepted scientific facts someday. It would be much more true to scientific principles to refuse to answer questions from outside the data or at least give an unambiguous disclaimer that reporting the facts of scientific research is like reporting what you see looking out the window of a train, there is the truth and there is the truth a mile further along the track, both are true to their moment: Neither describes with certainty what we will see ahead. The facts of science have transformed the world. But to the long view they are like the rocks dug out of the tunnel as we pass through, and the real riches of scientific research are the emerging questions that power our forward journey.
It is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explains not, then it says there is nothing to explain.
– Bram Stoker, Dracula
Reductionism is like a kid who argues that whatever does not fit into his toy box is not a toy.
– Nancy Pearcey
>* except for “flat-earthers” and their ilk, fuck them and the stupid horse they rode in on.
I could happily sit on the floor playing with magnets for a couple of hours. I have never outgrown the delight of feeling invisible forces at work, all the more because magnets almost seem to possess some agency and a playful nature. Like baby monkeys, they snatch things that get too close and the next minute freak out and run away. If you look back a couple of posts at the one called ‘magnets sorting themselves out’ they move like highly trained but bumbling soldiers racing to stand at attention, and in formation. They show what feels like certainty about their destination and they seem to clamber over each other to get there.
The thing about invisible forces is how difficult it is to properly imagine what is taking place. If we never saw air moving through smoke or mist, the wind would be a similar mystery to our imagination. 
The only way to see the shape and force of a magnetic field is similar to seeing the wind act on smoke. We can’t see the force in a pure, abstract way… we need to see it acting upon something. We need a material the magnet will engage with, but not a large, lumpy object like another magnet. We need something like a cloud, made of tiny, reactive particles. To the right is a familiar image of light iron filings scattered like sand on paper lying atop a horseshoe magnet. A little gentle tapping on the paper and they line up cleanly along the magnetic field lines. If you want a better look, it’s linked to a full-size version.
This is a rather static vision of the effect though. Below is a slightly more dynamic way to see it. Rather than paper, it’s a clear acrylic box with a liquid suspension of iron filings.
It’s better, we can even get a little taste of the three dimensionalities of the effect. Remember though, we never see a magnetic field acting in a vacuum. Iron filings don’t show the truth of magnetic fields, they show that truth as applied to iron filings.
Ferrofluid
Ferrofluid shows that truth acting on a rather dense liquid. There’s an earlier post on the composition and history of Ferrofluid. Take a look if you need a touch more foundation. Basically, it’s a colloidal suspension of magnetic nanoparticles. Ferrofluid breaks the “fourth wall” of being demurely flat and passive. It’s often in a bowl or other container, open and available to us. The very different physics of a liquid and a powder are instantly apparent. Ferrofluid makes one think of an alien life form or some stylish evil entity. It undulates, it climbs up and down surfaces like sentient oil. It even leaps. It appears to have moods, and rather peculiar ones.
While this view of magnetic fields is not truer than the behavior of iron filings, it’s more dynamic and thrilling. It’s truer perhaps in that way. From the point of view of magnetic energy, peaks and valleys are energetically favorable. In the corrugated configuration, the magnetic field is concentrated in the peaks; since the fluid is more easily magnetized than the air, this lowers the magnetic energy. In consequence, the spikes of fluid ride the field lines out into space until there is a balance of the forces involved.
At the same time, the formation of peaks and valleys is resisted by gravity and surface tension. It requires energy both to move fluid out of the valleys and up into the spikes and to increase the surface area of the fluid. In summary, the formation of the corrugations increases the surface free energy and the gravitational energy of the liquid but reduces the magnetic energy.
Just for fun, ferrofluid mixed with glow-stick liquid:
And finally, with some awesome coloration in the mix.
“‘Jailer, I’ll tell you an interesting fact. Everything we study, we modify by our study of it. Hence truth eternally eludes us.’
“He did not look convinced, just held out his hands for the plates.
“‘Take crabs, for example, I said ‘We poke them with a stick to see how they behave, and they behave as if poked by a stick.’
He folded his arms, the plates dangling from his fingertips.
“This is, of course, a very simple example,’ I said. Take a subtler example, such as atoms of light. Light, as you know, is one of the four great elements-in common parlance, fire. We study it by bouncing it off polished stones, or bending it in water, or squeezing it through holes. And how does it behave? It behaves as if bounced or squeezed or bent. We learn nothing, we merely cause events.’ I bent closer to him, waving my finger to keep his attention. ‘Has it occurred to you that sundials do not measure time, but create it?’ It had not, I saw. Time,’ I said,’is actually a thing, like porridge.’ I folded my arms and beamed at him, triumphant. The left side of his mouth twitched very slightly. He withdrew.”
From The Wreckage of Agathon, John Gardner – 1970
Getting microscopic with some little green friends. Co-starring Tardigrades (water bears)