Basic Concepts

PRESS CENTER | PRINTABLE BRACKETS It's time for a quick run down of the teams from the Chemistry Conference who made it to the tournament this Spring -- some who we fully expected to see here, and a few surprises. But it's also time for you, the fans, to make some noise in support of your favorite teams! If we follow your observations on these competitors down to the quantum level, they're bound to effect the outcome (albeit in a probabilistic way). Here are the first round match ups: Acid vs. Base: It's not a surprise to find these teams here, as they're standbys in the Chemistry…
This is a repost of a piece I wrote for The Panda's Thumb in March 2004. I add it here to put it in the Basics series. It is, wrote the Roman poet Horace, fit and proper to die for one's homeland. The word he used for homeland was "patria" (dulce et decorum est pro patria mori), and the word has entered into biology as the suffix for exactly that. Unlike Horace's slogan, though, it applies more to living than dying. It would be nice if we humans could attempt to live for our homelands rather than die for them, but that's another rant for another time. There are a cluster of terms used by…
As promised at the end of my post on polar and non-polar molecules, here's a basic concepts post on intermolecular forces. Intermolecular forces are the forces between molecules, whereas intramolecular forces are those within molecules. (The bonds that hold the atoms in a molecule together are intramolecular forces.) A quick note before we jump in: When chemical educators are explaining intermolecular forces, they almost always use examples of intermolecular attractions. You could just as easily talk about intermolecular repulsions (which are forces too, after all), but it's the…
What list of basic concepts would be complete without a primer on polar and non-polar molecules? You'll recall that chemists live in a world made up of atoms and various assemblies and modifications thereof, which are, in turn, made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons (which have positive charge and some mass) and neutrons (which are just a squosh more massive than protons) hang out together in the nucleus of your atom, while electrons can be thought of as zipping around the nucleus. When multiple atoms are part of an assembly in which they are bonded to each other, you have a…
The href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders">DSM refers to anhedonia as one of the two core symptoms of depression; the other core symptom is depressed mood itself. What is anhedonia, and why is it so important?   First, let's consider what it is not.  Those of you who tend to derive the meaning of a word from the Greek roots will recognize the similarity to the word, hedonism ( href="http://www.answers.com/hedonism&r=67">1 href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hedonism/">2), which is commonly understood to be a focus,…
This is a repost of a piece I wrote for The Panda's Thumb in April 2004. I add it here to put it in the Basics series. One of the more difficult conceptual problems the layperson has with biology lies in the simple word "primitive". It has many antonyms - "modern", "evolved" and "derived", and like many biological uses of ordinary words, everybody thinks they understand it, and doesn't. It is a word from the Latin, of course, for "first fruits" or "first things of their kind", but in modern use it means "simple" or "undeveloped". And this is not - quite - what it means in biology. It…
When one is starting in a field for the first time, the choice of textbook is crucial, as it will often set the tone for the rest of one's study. Last year and the year before I helped teach Philosophy of the Life Sciences here, and we used, respectively, one textbook and no textbook. Right now I'm reading a rather marvellous book, that would have set me up years in advance of where I am now, so this got me thinking (it's the job description, you know): what are the textbooks on Philosophy of Biology, and what are their respective merits? I'm going to ignore the various present and…
A recent report noted that studies that rely on evolutionary processesto explain, say, antibiotic resistance among pathogens, tend not to use the "E-word" in medical journals, instead using terms like "emerging", "spreading" and "increasing". The reason appears to be the bad connotations "evolution" has in American contexts. There is much misunderstanding of this term, and people often pack a lot of differing concepts under it. Consider this rant by a creationist in The American Spectator: there are "six types of evolution" according to him. They are cosmic evolution, chemical evolution,…
Theory: A word that gets used a lot in discussing science, or attacking it. Theories are only verified hypotheses, verified by more or less numerous facts. Those verified by the most facts are the best, but even then they are never final, never to be absolutely believed. [Claude Bernard, 1865, Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine.] The term comes from the Greek for "viewing" or "contemplation". It used to be used to mean something along the lines of "laws of nature" + "methods" for a particular domain, or subject. The term was used extensively from the beginnings of the…
I figured it was time I weighed in on a basic concept from chemistry, so let's talk about what defines an element. As far as chemists are concerned, the world is made up of atoms and various assemblies and modifications thereof. Those atoms and modifications of atoms are, in turn, made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons have a +1 charge and a mass of 1.0073 amu [1]. Neutrons have zero charge and a mass of 1.0087 amu. And electrons have a -1 charge and a mass of 5.49 x 10-4 amu. Various combinations of these three will give you atoms, radicals, and ions. Protons and neutrons…
In my basic concepts post on theory testing, I set out what I take to be a fairly standard understanding of "theory" in philosophy of science discussions: ... a theory is a group of hypotheses that make claims about what kind of entities there are and how those entities change over time and interact with each other. If you like, the theory contains claims about ontology and laws. If you prefer, the theory tells you what kind of stuff there is and how that stuff behaves. In a comment, Lab Lemming opined: That's a really odd way to think of theories. I reckon a theory is something that is…
Many ScienceBloggers, and some science bloggers, are writing posts about basic concepts.  I thought that was a good idea, but could not think of one that would be interesting and that I felt like writing about and that I was particularly well-suited to write. Psychiatry is not a basic science.  It is a medical practice that is derived from several basic sciences: psychology, pharmacology, physiology, anatomy, epidemiology, and so forth.  So this is not really a basic concept, in the sense of explaining something fundamental about nature.  Rather, it explains something that is fundamental in…
What is diversity? People talk about it all the time. We say we want to increase diversity. We want to have more diversity on our faculty or in our workforce. We want to manage diversity for success. We have diversity programs and diversity training and diversity workshops. So we must know what diversity is, right? Isn't diversity what those Other people have? You know, sort of like a disease. Everybody but white males has Diversity, and if we get more of those Others, we can catch some Diversity. (Though we may have to Lower Our Standards to get the Diversity.) I have never been…
John Wilkins at Evolving Thoughts is keeping a list of all the Basic Concepts posts that my Science Blogger pals have been doing. You can find his list here. He is keeping it pretty up to date. There are several entries worth taking a look at as a nice preliminary for the start of "class" next week. Of course, they are worth reading all on their own, but they fit in nicely with a course on feminist theory of science. One is David Ng's lovely musings over at the World's Fair on how it is we know a flower, or, what is epistemology? Another is Janet Stemwedel's (aka Dr. Free-Ride)…
I'm a little cautious about adding this to the basic concepts list, given that my main point here is going to be that things are not as simple as you might guess. You've been warned. We've already taken a look at what it means for a claim to be falsifiable. Often (but not always), when scientists talk about testability, they have something like falsifiability in mind. But testing a theory against the world turns out to be more complicated than testing a single, isolated hypothesis. First, we need to set out what counts as a theory. For the purposes of this discussion, a theory is a group…
The Biohumanities Project of Paul Griffiths, of which I am a minor part, has a page up of talks and discussions at conferences and workshops, recorded for podcasting. We have just revamped and shifted our podcast page to here. If you want to stay abreast of these, subscribe to our RSS feed. Some of the crispy goodness: A conference on mechanism and reduction, a conference on the philosophy of ecology, and a conference on evidence based medicine, plus talks on emotion, essentialism and biological hierarchies.
Here's another basic concept for the list: what does it mean for a claim to be falsifiable, and why does falsifiability matter so much to scientists and philosophers of science? Actually, it's not just falsifiable claims that the science crowd cares about, but also falsifiable theories. Let's start with claims because they're easier. Claims make assertions about how things are (or were, or will be, or could be under different circumstances). Here's a claim from my post on arguments: Britney Spears is from Mars. A falsifiable claim is one for which there is some observation (or set of…
Mollishka writes to ask plaintively: "Feminist theory of science"?! Other than a nice set of buzzwords, what does that even mean?? So I thought, why not go ahead and launch the Basic Concepts idea now? On the super-secret Scienceblogs back channel, we have been discussing the idea of each doing a series of "Basic Concepts" posts on our blogs; some of my SciBlings are already doing them. You know, choose a few fundamental concepts or terms in your field, write a post describing/defining/delineating their use, label it Basic Concepts, and voila! A series is born. We thought that in…
As my first contribution to the growing list of basic terms and concepts, I'm going to explain a few things no one asked about when I opened the request line. But, these are ideas that are crucial building blocks for things people actually did ask about, like falsifiability and critical thinking, so there will be a payoff here. Philosophers talk a lot about arguments. What do they mean? An argument is a set of claims. One of those claims is the conclusion which the other claims are supposed to support. While logicians, geometers, and that crowd customarily give you the conclusion as the…
If you've been perusing ScienceBlogs.com over the last week or two, you'll note that some bloggers are trying to make their sites even more accessible to the casual reader by introducing a description of basic concepts within their respective fields. I used to teach a 60-90 min lecture to the public in one of the "Mini-Med School" public education programs that have sprung up at medical schools around the world, condensing key concepts in pharmacology and drug action into bite-sized morsels. Topics included: What is a drug? Where do drugs come from? Why does a drug work for some people and…