Author: Atheena Johnson, Docteure en linguistique appliquée, Université Paris Nanterre Over the decades, technological devices have been gradually integrated into language learning, as is recently the case with generative artificial intelligence (AI). Does the sophistication of these tools eventually render pencils and pens obsolete? Or can digital uses be combined with handwriting? How does writing […]
Author: Jordi Diaz Marcos, CCiTUB , Universitat de Barcelona As good citizens, we diligently fill the recycling bins provided by our local authorities with all manner of plastic trays, boxes, bottles and bags. But as these bins fill up quicker and quicker each week, an awkward question arises: is all this effort actually doing any […]
We finish this series with the most influential author of our trio (together with Bacon and Descartes) in shaping the scientific method: the Italian Galileo Galilei, who was also, not coincidentally, the most brilliant and prolific scientist of the three. He shared with Descartes the ambition of reducing the phenomena to be investigated to a […]
Authors: Florian Bonnet, Démographe et économiste, spécialiste des inégalités territoriales, Ined (Institut national d’études démographiques); Carlo Giovanni Camarda, Docteur, spécialiste des méthodes de prévision (mortalité, longévité, etc.), Ined (Institut national d’études démographiques); France Meslé, Démographe, Ined (Institut national d’études démographiques), and Josselin Thuilliez, Economiste, Directeur de recherche au CNRS, Centre national de la recherche scientifique […]
In my last entry we had a glimpse on the ideas of one of the three main ‘fathers’ of ‘the’ scientific method, Francis Bacon. As I told then, inverted commas are justified because there is nothing like ‘the’ scientific method, only a family of different, and at times mutually inconsistent, sets of procedures, rules and […]
Although science was not born in the seventeenth century (since the need for reliable information about the environment is intrinsic to any human society, and disciplines such as mathematics, astronomy, or biology had already flourished splendidly in Classical Antiquity), we cannot deny that around the year 1600 the history of humanity crossed a decisive threshold […]
Authors: Peter Jacobson, Senior Lecturer in Condensed Matter Physics, The University of Queensland and Beck Wise, Lecturer in Professional Writing, The University of Queensland In 1977, an American physicist named John H. Van Vleck won the Nobel prize for his work on magnetism. In his Nobel lecture, amid a discussion of rare earth elements, one […]
Authors: Julie Posetti, Director of the Information Integrity Initiative, a project of TheNerve/Professor of Journalism, Chair of the Centre for Journalism and Democracy, City St George’s, University of London; Kaylee Williams, PhD Candidate, Journalism and Online Harm, Columbia University, and Lea Hellmueller, Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Research, City St George’s, University of London […]
As we saw in our last entry, we must grant Gabriel that he does not conceive of the spirit and spiritual as an “immortal soul” or any similar ghostlike entity, but rather as something grounded in human thought—more specifically, in what relates to norms, values, laws, institutions, and rules of various kinds (I Am Not […]
The expansion of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) such as that offered by ChatGPT has multiplied the amount of content available very easily and quickly. In this scenario, two skills become decisive for safe and effective use: critical thinking—the ability to analyze and evaluate information—and media literacy—knowing how to locate, evaluate, and produce information responsibly. A […]