As the last remnants of Christmas turkey fall to sandwich and soup, forget not Bertrand Russell’s musings on the fate of turkeys subscribing to Francis Bacon’s philosophy of inductivist scientific reasoning.
- They don’t see it coming (photo WikiCommons)
On his first day at the farm, the turkey noted he was fed at 9.00 am. After this procedure had been repeated for many weeks, the turkey relaxed a bit, safely drawing the conclusion ”I am always fed at 9 am”. Regrettably for the turkey, this conclusion was proved wrong on Christmas eve when, rather than being fed, he got his throat cut. Which just goes to show that any number of true observations can still lead to a false conclusion; the turkey’s argument was simply not logical.
Monkey Brand Comes Clean
Charles Dickens’s Mudfrog Homeopathy
Darwin’s Many Origins
Getting Cute at Disneyland
A Century of Southern California Aerospace
Charlie’s Rose
Richard Feynman’s Grave
Total Lunar Eclipse 10th December 2011
Steven Pinker in conversation with A.C.Grayling at the Wellcome Collection
David Attenborough – Darwin Lecture 2011, ‘Alfred Russel Wallace and the Birds of Paradise’
Matt Melis Shares 30 Years of the Space Shuttle at the London Science Festival
Lawrence Krauss Sprinkles Stardust at the School of Life
Since the mid 1980s, I've worked in university and industrial research, as a manager and editor in technology and environment for an international industry association, and held senior business development, strategy, and procurement posts in industry. I hold a PhD in chemical engineering from Birmingham University, an MBA from Warwick University Business School, and an MSc in Science Communication from Imperial College. In 2008, I left industry to focus full-time on my passion for science and technology, and to share that enthusiasm with others as a freelance science communicator. I live in London with my wife Erin.
Contact me at timjones(at)communicatescience.com or through the tab above.
