Dara Ó Briain's Science Club: The Story of Inheritance
"This first episode in a new six-part science series presented by Dara Ó Briain takes a look at the weird and wonderful world of reproduction and inheritance.
Dara chats to leading biologist Professor Steve Jones and finds out how the bicycle did more to improve the human immune system than any other invention, comedian Ed Byrne discovers just how closely related he is to a Neanderthal and materials scientist and engineer Mark Miodownik creates a DNA cocktail with the help of some strong Polish vodka.
Dara is also joined by neuroscientist Tali Sharot, who explores the cutting-edge science of epigenetics and reveals how exercise can change your DNA. Science journalist Alok Jha asks if the human genome project was oversold and the studio audience are put to the test in the elusive search for attraction.
Combining lively and in-depth studio discussion with exploratory films and on-the-spot reports, Dara Ó Briain's Science Club takes a single subject each week and examines it from lots of different and unexpected angles, from sex to extinction, Einstein to space exploration and brain chemistry to music. It brings some of the world's foremost thinkers together to share their ideas on everything, from how to avoid asteroid impact to whether or not we are still evolving."
(BBC Two, UK)
Fig.1 this animation is from Episode 1 or 6 of Dara Ó Briain's Science Club, Tuesday 6 November at 9pm on BBC Two, animated by 12Foot6, Published on YouTube on 5 Nov 2012 by BBC.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Aristotle: a whole composed of causal relationships
"Now, according to our definition Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is complete, and whole, and of a certain magnitude; for there may be a whole that is wanting in magnitude. A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it. A well constructed plot, therefore, must neither begin nor end at haphazard, but conform to these principles."
(Aristotle, The Poetics, Part VII, The Internet Classics Archive)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
An interactive system defines a virtual space
"An interactive system defines a virtual space, whether the system’s interface provides access to the inhospitable planet of Stroggos or the Microsoft Windows desktop. Users of both these systems interact with a place, one created by a computer and in which users and computational agents carry out their individual and collective activities. The intuitive and often-discussed benefit of a well-designed interface metaphor is that it allows users to carry over conventions from their 'real' experience when performing tasks within the interface world.
Another key and often unarticulated value of an interface arises from the interface’s mimetic quality. While mimesis is often discussed by narrative theorists as a contrast to diegesis, distinguishing the concepts of showing versus telling (Aristotle), my emphasis here is to distinguish between an artifact that is intended to be an imitation of something, but is not really that thing and an artifact that is intended to be mistaken as that thing. An example of the former case would be a film of a fictional account of the D-Day landing on the beaches of Normandy. An example of the later might be a virtual reality system displaying photo-realistic graphical images of a physical space. D-Days stories like The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan are, in some ways, imitations, and so are more mimetic than VR systems whose design is intended to '...produce synthetic images visually and measurably indistinguishable from real world images.' (Greenberg 1999)(pg. 45)."
(R. Michael Young, 1999)
Greenberg, D. P. 1999. 'A framework for realistic image synthesis'. Communications of the ACM 42(8):45-53.
1). R. Michael Young (1999). 'Notes on the Use of Plan Structures in the Creation of Interactive Plot', Papers from the 1999 Fall Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Symposium
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
New Directions in Interdisciplinarity: Broad, Deep, and Critical
"Before interdisciplinarity in either the disciplinary producing or disciplinary-circumscribing senses could manifest itself, disciplinarity itself had to take on its peculiarly modern form. Any assessment of interdisciplinarity - multi - and trans-, noncritical and critical- will benefit from an appreciation of this background.
Prior to the modern period, learning exhibited a kind of unity that might be called predisciplinary. Aristotle, it is true, introduced distinctions between logic, physics, and ethics, but these were never of a kind to raise the possibility of cross-disciplinary formations such as 'physical ethics.' During the Middle Ages, the division of the artes liberales into grammar, rhetoric, dialectic (the trivium), arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (the quadrivium) ensured that the education of 'free men' included all the knowledge and skills needed to exercise their social roles. Insofar as it existed, disciplinary specialization was present more in the 'servile arts' of artisans and tradesmen. Not even teachers of the liberal arts became specialists in their different branches, because the idea of, for example, possessing arithmetic without grammar would have been considered a deformation of the mind. In the monastery schools, the unfettered pursuit of knowledge was viewed skeptically, criticized as curiositas, and therefore subject to disciplinization in a premodern behavioral sense. Only at the end of the Middle Ages, as the infinite pursuit of disciplinary knowledge took on the character of a spiritual activity, would Renaissance men become necessary to cross boundaries and synthesize diverse areas of learning."
(Robert Frodeman and Carl Mitcham, 2007, p.508)
[1][2] Frodeman, R. and C. Mitcham (2007). "New Directions in Interdisciplinarity: Broad, Deep, and Critical." Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 27(6).
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
There was relatively little divide between spectator and performer in the archaic theatre
"In the archaic theatre there was relatively little divide between spectator and performer, seeing and doing; people danced and spoke, then retired to a stone seat to watch others dance and declaim. By the time of Aristotle, actors and dancers had become a caste with special skills of costuming, speaking, and moving. Audiences stayed offstage, and so developed their own skills of interpretation as spectators. As critics, the audience sought to speculate then about what the stage-characters did not understand about themselves (though the chorus on stage sometimes also took on this clarifying role)."
(Richard Sennett, 2008, p.125)
Fig.1 Lysistrata Summer 2006 University of Florida
2). Sennett, R. (2008). "The Craftsman". New Haven & London, Yale University Press.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
