Category: ideas

She’s at the intersection of race, gender, and social media. “Kim’s particular fame derives from a cherished place in the American racial imagination that, combined with wealth, prevents contact with the deathly effects (and melancholic affects) of brownness in this country while reaping the exoticism of not-quite whiteness.” – Slate

The idea of a monolithic Scientific Method is mythical but it is based on a genuine historical insight. From the early seventeenth century to the present, there are long chains of divergent development connecting the initially imprecise ideas of those we call the “founders of modern science” to the diversity of methods now used in various fields of research. – Boston Review

We learn more by trusting than by not trusting. Moreover, when we trust, we learn not only about specific individuals, we learn more generally about the type of situations in which we should or shouldn’t trust. We get better at trusting. – Aeon

“It’s not at all obvious how to go about thinking up some new twist on these things—the transformation from test-taker to theorem poser and then theorem prover is difficult to articulate. My ideas have always felt contingent and magical to me. I don’t think I’m alone, at least as far as the magic goes.” – The New Yorker

Effervescence is generated when humans come together to make music or perform rituals, an experience that lingers when the ceremonies are over. The suggestion, therefore, is that collective experiences that are religious or religious-like unify groups and create the energy to sustain them. – Aeon

Karl Ove Knausgaard: “I’m not thinking of how long it takes to read a book but of how long its effects can be felt, and of the strange phenomenon that even literature written in other times, on the basis of assumptions radically different to our own and, occasionally, hugely alien to us, can continue to speak to us—and, not only that, but can tell us something about who we are, something that we would not have seen otherwise, or would have seen differently.” – The New Yorker

Neighborhoods with higher street density not only have more patented innovations, but more citations of the patents they generate. This suggests that neighborhoods with denser streets help facilitate greater knowledge exchange and higher levels of interaction over the ideas they generate. – CityLab

A new study reports that it “turns out that your penchant for variability, such as when you toss a new ingredient into a recipe or follow a creative hunch into the unknown, is often driven by brain errors that are imperceptible to you. Your curiosity is a mistake.” – Fast Company

Without the blunt, binaristic borders between zones — humanities versus sciences, humanities versus social sciences — the disciplines could connect across the much more complex and multifarious surfaces and interfaces they have with each other. Scholars could interact with their counterparts in all fields without the burdensome assumption that they represent more — an entire community more — than their specific area of expertise. – Inside Higher Ed