A conversation with theoretical physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson

with Freeman J. Dyson
in Science & Health
on Friday, August 14, 2009 * * * * *

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A conversation with theoretical physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson

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Keywords:
climate change
fossil fuels
global warming
green
enviornment

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  • Comments 3
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    1. rondeevous  08/20/2009 03:18 AM Report

      I thought this talk was one of the most genuine of this year. Once past the climate, it was nice. His pre-life theory on the origins or begining of life seem valid enough for the investment of our species. I also liked the positive out look on humanity for I am (well) less positive than he.

    2. robdverity  08/17/2009 07:49 PM Report

      Your swan-off: "Now it must be supposed that this has been evolution's objective, just as has been a stable climate."

      Hope your not ascribing a stable climate to evolution(?). Our species has evolved to the capability to self destruct. Climate destabilization will be a piece of cake for such specimen.

    3. REMant  08/17/2009 06:08 PM Report

      The issue in the global warming debate is whether the climate is equilibrating or not, and whether human activity is making this more difficult with the result that we have more violent swings in weather events with the consequence that it puts habitats under great stress. It has taken a long time to get the kind of climate that appears to most everyone to be relatively stable and richly diverse, but which seems threatened at the present time. Is it wrong for us to believe that THIS world is good and some future one a potentially dangerous fancy? Not all scientists are philosophers, indeed, these days, perhaps not many. Many are extreme enthusiasts, as religious as the most fanatical. Mr Dyson's understanding of this seems as faulty as his understanding of climate. Scientists seem more and more often to avoid conceptualization. Instead of theory, we have technology. But, surely, we paint and compose, as well as, do science in order to externalize our thoughts so that we can view them objectively. In the process we develop understanding, which would otherwise reflect our passions. Now it must be supposed that this has been evolution's objective, just as has been a stable climate.

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