“Media Sampler” is a series of posts, where I make a selection of articles, videos and podcasts that I recently came across in the Internets and found interesting!

Articles

  • Powerful ‘Machine Scientists’ Distill the Laws of Physics From Raw Data by Charlie Wood

    I am currently reading a lot about AI and automation, and this article tackles on how these techniques can be used in large data sets to extract the physics laws. These ‘Machine Scientists’ are using symbolic regression, which is a tool which is able to identify relationships in complicated data sets. The article demonstrates a nice example, where a neural network and a symbolic regression algorithm are trying to model the orbits of the solar system planets. They both reproduce the true orbits, but as time progresses, the neural network, trained by decades of NASA data, fails to follow the behaviour, whereas the symbolic regression algorithm keeps predicting correctly the orbits. It is very interesting to see how these algorithms will be used in the near future to tackle the big questions in science.

    (Nathan) Kutz believes machine scientists are bringing the field to the cusp of what he calls “GoPro physics,” where researchers will simply point a camera at an event and get back an equation capturing the essence of what’s going on.

  • Picasso and Derrida: Deconstruction and Negative Theology by Samantha Curley

    This is an article I read at the MoMA in New York last month when I saw Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”. It draws some parallels between the artist and the philosopher Jacques Derrida.

    There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterwards you can remove all traces of reality. There’s no danger then, anyway, because the idea of the object will have left an indelible mark.

    -P. Picasso

  • Scientists for the people by Deborah R Coen

    This is a relatively long story regarding science communication in the 1930s, and how it relates to our century. The main argument of the article, which I definitely support, is that modern science is based on the interaction between scholars and craftspeople. The article discusses the cases of the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, the social scientist Otto Neurath, the philosopher and historian Edgar Zilsel, the bacteriologist Ludwik Fleck, and the literary scholar Walter Benjamin. I really enjoyed the last sentence: “The best hope for science lies in encouraging its practitioners to listen attentively and with humility to the public’s concerns – especially those voices that might be hardest to hear.”

    ‘There are two types of popularisers,’ Schrödinger wrote for a broad scientific audience in 1929. The first ‘feigns sympathy with the less educated’, but takes a condescending tone and ‘grows cranky’ without the ‘crutch’ of ‘jargon and ‘mathematical formulas’. The second takes ‘pleasure and pride’ in letting go of those crutches and succeeds in raising ‘the reader and himself into a more general sphere that lies above that of technical expertise’. If the first type of populariser was arrogant and paternalistic, the second displayed humility and respect for the non-scientist.

Video

Podcast