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Paddling in the shallow end of knowledge

This post was prompted by two things. I, a social scientist of sorts, recently tried to read two books, Smashing Physics by Jon Butterworth and Synthetic Biology: A Primer by Paul Freemont and Richard Kitney. I also listened in to some conversations where people spoke about how problematic they find it to understand social science …

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3D printing: When science and technology take us by surprise

3D printing (or ‘additive’ or ‘digital manufacturing’) has been around for a while (and we’ll see for how long further on in this post); even 4D printing has been around for a while. However, 3D printing only really came into focus for me quite recently, when I came across the metaphors ‘3D printer of life’ …

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Handmaidens and plumbers: The role of the humanities and social sciences in modern academic life

A few days ago I attended a student-organised conference on interdisciplinarity, Enquire, held at the School of Sociology and Social Policy here in Nottingham. Professor Alison Pilnick, a specialist in doctor-patient interaction and conversation analysis, gave a keynote lecture in which she explored some of the pitfalls of working between disciplines. In her conclusions she …

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Metaphors in science and society

I recently had an interesting twitter conversation with Alex Brown (@alex_brovvn), Peter Broks (@peterbroks), Bev Gibbs (@bevgibbs), Angela Cassidy (@ange_cass) and Sophia Collins (@sophiacol) about metaphors for the spread of knowledge and for science communication. I also read two interesting blog posts related to that conversation, one by Peter Broks and one by Alex Brown. …

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When the limits of our knowledge collide with the limits of our language: Mixing metaphors around the Higgs Boson

I was sitting in the garden today (in the sunshine!) (Sunday, 22 July), reading the feedback page of New Scientist which featured some amusing metaphors and analogies for the Higgs Boson, which has recently been discovered at CERN. This made me think. Science and metaphors Metaphors and analogies are used extensively in science, both in …

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