geordief

If wolves came to human habitation areas they would "scrap" with each other over available leftovers. The humans would try to repel them. Some of them may have been individually (or as a group) recognized by the humans and relatively** tolerated (rewarded?) if they kept other (more "vicious") ones at bay . Eventually they were given a job? **less actively confronted by the humans as the lesser of two evils. PS did humans ever hunt wolves?

Thanks,all. I have bitten off more than I can chew and so need to bow out/extricate myself but perhaps I have learned that it is not necessary to pin down this subject in a scientific way to understand a valuable amount. (I think my own aim in trying to find the "evolutionary " origin of this aspect of our lives may have been ,perhaps disingenuously as much to understand the process as its emergence) @Gee: maybe emotions are also connected to memory? Isn't that indicated in the opening line of Proust's famous work ?-the smell of the biscuit that brought him back in time. And also book reading is supposedly more efficient than digital reading on account of its tactile nature.

It is a hopeless task (in my eyes) to attempt any rigorous definition of what "art" is. Perhaps ,to digress it could almost be defined in that way -as something "undefinable" But is it a hopeless task to speculate as to what may have given rise originally to what we might now recognize as an artistic action? This is ,perhaps necessarily a thought experiment but if we go back ,in our mind's eye to the dawn of life to the period where organisms and later our closer evolutionary relatives were starting to communicate with each other can we imagine what these primal communications might have been like? I suggest as far fetched as this might seem ,it could be worthwhile owing to the extremely important place "art" holds in our present society. So this is my attempt to flesh out this speculation a bit. Let us imagine the leader in a human tribe has validated his "might is right" prerogative and had his way with one of the desirable females and further suppose that this female had previously been having relations with another less important male member of the tribe . This male member has been "robbed" of a "possession" (and perhaps a comfort) and there is a new situation in which his self image has perhaps been degraded. Now this male member must share this new situation with his associates in the tribe(all relationships in the tribe are connected) and I am postulating that he may use "art" as a way to express this. He can ,for example make gestures (ie communicate to associates) that extol the leader or he can make gestures that refer to his now cast down state. These gestures are separate from the simple acceptance of reality which he must follow one way or another. Suppose he extols the leader. He can , I imagine kiss his feet (or maybe elsewhere) symbolically and the way he does this can be done in a very free way. If he does this summarily,perfunctorily this is (perhaps ) less effective than doing it with a flourish. Can I speculate that this hypothetical "flourish" would count as genuinely "artistic" and so have I "unearthed" a realistic (if fictional" example of early art? If ,we go the other way and our male member wishes to gain allies in his perceived struggle against his unjust leader he can communicate with his associates in a way so as to express his discomfort with the situation (moaning , keening sounds that might be the beginnings of the blues ) Is there anything at all in this idea of mine? Perhaps it has been already thought of ,I don't know.

A bit unclear myself too. Suppose we have two distinct areas in the universe that cause gravitation disturbances ,such as two separate binary pulsars in separate parts of our galaxy perhaps. As I understand it both of these systems would produce disturbances in space-time that propagate at the speed of light .(as a wave , would that be right?) So the waves from each of these separate systems will come into contact with one another at some point and interfere with each other . Would that be a reasonable assumption ? Could that interference be detected ? (not the laser interference hopefully produced in a measuring apparatus)

This is way above my level of understanding but is it possible ,in theory that gravitation waves (caused I understand by changes in the gravitational field ) might actually have their own interference pattern if two gravitation "wavefronts" from 2 distinct areas combined? I understand that laser interferometry is being deployed in the aim of detecting gravitational waves but that is not what I am thinking of (well I don't think it is). I hope I am not too far off topic.

So is a photon a term restricted to quantum mechanics and a field a term that only has applicability in classical physics? Is a photon what you get when you examine a wave of light at high resolution?

Is it possible for a photon to find a path through ,for example a pane of glass that did not entail any interaction with any of the atoms making up the glass? I realise that this might be vanishingly improbable but if it did happen would the proton traverse the region at if it was traveling in a vacuum? Have I misunderstood the whole process? I was under the impression that light traveled at c "between collisions" and that it was the collisions that apparently caused the speed to go down whereas ,in actuality light had 2 speeds only -c or zero.

I don't suppose you could expand slightly on that ...... What is "causal structure" ? Is something "causing" something else ?

Sorry I need to think about that post (which I have deleted) again

There were lots of good posts at the beginning of the thread-it serves to show how bad it got at the end. Until I read them now I didn't realise it was respectable to be sceptical about Global Warming. To my "shame" I was almost pleased when the evidence became clear that fossil fuels were warming the planet as it forced our hand to go down a road I already wanted to go down. I felt a similar shameful emotion with the Twin Towers: "now the Americans know what terrorism is they will stop supporting the IRA " (and they did, didn't they?)

I have heard it say that c is the conversion factor between space and time. Does this mean that space can be expressed in terms of time? If so, are the space dimensions orthogonal to the time dimension (and vice versa obviously) ? Hope the question makes sense.

I never heard of that brazen technique before. I am starting to feel though that this may be a version of the way politicians are coached to not answer the question but reply to an imaginary one. I don't blame them for doing that always as interviews are not always designed to get at the truth but to put the interviewee in a bad light or a tricky corner. It is a bit much (and quite pathetic) to encounter this kind of humourless and blatant filibustering on this kind of a discussion forum though. Maybe it is a sign of things to come.

To be fair , there have been scientists who have advocated climatic engineering as a method of combating global warming. (well the ideas have been researched and put forward whether or not they have been actually promoted as being sensible to do) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering - a few arguments against the concept are listed in that link. Without being versed in these ideas I have always been terrified at the thought that they could be used as a technical substitute for a sensible transition to a sustainable economy. I think that apprehension may be widespread (and probably also throughout the scientific community - to which I do not belong) . The reason I bring it up is because I think it would be reasonable to doubt the ability of our present technological ability to successfully undertake such an endeavour ( to simply try to provide a technological "fix" to the enormous problem we seem to have) That is not to say I don't have confidence is the climatologist's diagnosis of the problem -just that the actual solution is as much political as technological.(I also think action needs to be taken at a decentralised level rather than projects which seem a little megalomaniac) I was greatly encouraged by the recent Paris conference as it seemed to represent a step forward and gathered every country into the same tent for a while.

Is it permissible to simply post links and paste extracts from them?

I was being a little disingenuous .I was trying to show how easy it was to give an(y) answer to the ignored question.I don't know myself about how far chaos theory enters into the equations but the tipping points that are sometimes mentioned may have a superficial similarity to chaotic systems.

Since there is a question that has been asked repeatedly and has not been answered , I will attempt to provide one off the top of my head. There is uncertainty in many/all areas of science . The uncertainty in climate science is of a different order in that it is founded on the chaotic system that is inbuilt into climate forecasting. There is an additional factor in that the experiment we are conducting is on ourselves and our fellow passengers on the planet (a bit like cutting down the branch we are sitting on?). We do not seem to have a "reproducible experiment" here. We are talking about "tipping points" and the like so that we cannot go back to the start- we are going down a one way street. I do see uncertainty in the area as a whole but a terrifying uncertainty -not a comforting one. I may be wrong but I fail to see any downside to attempting to build a non carbon and sustainable economy. It should be done on its own merits and the push provided by the dangers of global warming is a "happy" coincidence. To actually answer the OP, I would like to think I would be sceptical in all things scientific but only in proportion to my own knowledge and input and in the area of Global Warming I would not afford myself the luxury of scepticism (there is no time for it).

Does that lack of an "anchor" (the lack of any simultaneity) in our view of the world lead to a feeling (a psychological feeling only perhaps) that time itself does not exist ? The Minkowski diagrams seem to have time and space measurements using the same units but time and space are different aren't they? Are they 2 sides of a more fundamental coin? Apologies ,mod . I went off topic I see.

Fair to say "simultaneous time" does not exist?

I understand that we can appreciate(and measure) the curvedness of space-time by finding a group of 3 objects in space (stars ,perhaps or galaxies) and measuring their light distance from each other and noting that the triangle formed does not have angles that add up to 180 degrees . If I am right here ,can I ask if this triangle can be said to represent** a "surface in space time" ? If so what kind ? Are there different categories of such surfaces depending on whether (in the model) space is held constant or time is held constant? If I am not right, where am I going wrong for the most part -or at the outset? "enclose " rather than "represent" I think I should have written.

There was also an anomaly in the measurements of the orbit of the planet Mercury which was not predicted by Newtonian mechanics. Einstein's Relativity Theory was able to predict it accurately. http://physics.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node98.html

It made sense to me. Sometimes you have to fill in the gaps yourself. It reminds me of what a friend said to me. He said that he had met lots of people who had no problems on the surface but were making their own problems under their own steam. I never met his friends but have always assumed since that that is what we all do. I don't want to dismiss those with genuine problems. I try to keep in mind the admonition to accept that which we cannot change but not to accept that which we can change.

If you don't understand some of my post then either I have badly explained it or it has no strong relevance to your life, I guess.

In the spirit of contribution (the question may be unanswerable) does the observation that we can have it too easy hold any water? Also is it possible that we can all adopt our own rigid way of viewing the world when very young and the needle can get stuck because it seems to work but only minimally well? I remember telling myself a long time ago that it was sufficient to do no harm. I realise that this is a dangerously deficient approach but it seems to "work" for me and obviously I just have it too easy - nothing forces me to change. I think that is the lesson that applies to me personally : you only get out of life in proportion to what you put in (but that may not apply to other people in other situations).

They are great videos. A shame about the picture quality.

When I was young we used to knock on neighbours' doors and run away as a low level form of anti social behaviour. On one occasion they followed us into our own garden where we cowered in the dark. We could see them but they could not see us. We got the message though and that was the last time we did it....