A new language for a new biology? Let’s talk about it!
June 14, 2024
Philip Ball has written a book that introduces lay readers to entirely new dimensions of biology and reveals the intricate complexity of living organism: How Life Works. In the process of detailing the biological complexities of life, Phil also does something else; he scrutinises old ways if talking about life and takes apart old metaphors …
From contamination to collapse: On the trail of a new AI metaphor
April 19, 2024
I wrote my first ever post about AI and ChatGPT on 6 January 2023. Amongst other things, I talked about the danger of ‘knowledge pollution’. I wanted to highlight the dangers of a gradual corruption of our knowledge base. Knowledge pollution ChatGPT and many other bots or AIs like it are based on large language …
Hunting for AI metaphors
April 12, 2024
Thousands of articles and blog posts have been written about generative AI, especially ChatGPT. Some or these, especially blog posts, are about metaphors. As a metaphor hunter (see image!) I feel a bit ashamed that I haven’t done much on metaphor and AI. A little bit yes; for example, on what metaphors ChatGPT uses about …
Genes, trains and eureka-moments
March 8, 2024
I was in the process of writing a blog post on metaphors in genetics and genomics which was getting longer and longer and I had some personal stuff to deal with. So, I stopped. I might come back to this another time. In the process of writing, I discovered that trains have been quite an …
Climate change, metaphors and me
December 29, 2023
We were sitting round the kitchen table chatting after Christmas, reminiscing about last Christmas. I nostalgically said that last year such conversations had sparked my interest in AI in the form of ChatGPT and given me ideas for blogging. I wondered what I should blog about now. We all agreed that there was always climate …
Making science public 2023: End-of-year round up of blog posts
December 15, 2023
The year 2023 began with a bang. Suddenly there was a new form of ‘artificial intelligence’, and by ‘new’ I mean a form of AI that even I could use and vaguely understand. There was, it seems, some monstrous machine (called LLM) gobbling up everything we have ever produced in science, literature and art and …
ChatGPT and its magical metaphors
October 27, 2023
Last week, a new issue of Technoscienza, an Italian journal of Science and Technology Studies, landed in my inbox. It had a very intriguing cover, co-created between Sergio Minniti and ChatGPT — a portrait drawn by ChatGPT using ASCII. But that was the least of it. After Sergio had prompted ChatGPT to create this stunning …
What are metaphors (for)?
October 13, 2023
I have been thinking about metaphor for a long time. But I have never brought my core thoughts together in one place. Here we go… and of, of course, they are not just my thoughts…they are inspired by a myriad of thinkers from the 19th century onwards, including, of course, George Lakoff and all those …
Evelyn Fox Keller (1936-2023)
September 25, 2023
On 22 September 2023 Evelyn Fox Keller sadly passed away at the age of 87. She had been a theoretical physicist, a mathematical biologist, a feminist philosopher, a historian of science, and an inspiration to many across these fields. She integrated insights from all these fields creatively and critically, and, most importantly, she added some …
Crumbling buildings: Metaphors we live in
September 8, 2023
Metaphors are ways to make something abstract concrete…. You know where this is going….. Metaphors make us see something as something else, for example life as a journey or institutions as buildings and failing institutions as crumbling buildings. In September 2023 this latter metaphor spread like wildfire. RAAC (and ruin) Our Department for Education here …
MSP bookmarks
- Twitter May 8, 2017
- Social innovations in Europe #RRI November 3, 2015
- Harvey Graff, the undisciplinarian September 20, 2015
- Replacing Pesticides With Genetics August 31, 2015
- Addressing hazardous chemicals in the circular economy August 25, 2015
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