Pretty bits from Edinburgh

My first podcast: Imperial Hackspace

For the most recent I, Science magazine on DIY Science, Josh Howgego and I went to London Hackspace for an evening of Biohacking. It was an eye opening experience, mainly because of diverse and interesting people who wanted to have a go at some molecular biology. We wrote about it for I, Science, see below.

I found out soon after that there were plans for a Hackspaces in my own institution, which in many ways is shocking. Part of the idea of a Hackspace is to get away from constraints of an academic institution with its politics and funding issues, so that people with great ideas can work on individual projects without having to continually justify it. We are talking about a worldwide movement that has been critiqued it as anti-capitalist. So with initial plans at Imperial College London to form a Hackspace that would be integral to the university, I asked could an environment where the student has so much creative free rein have a place at Imperial College? I spoke to Professor Peter Childs and IC Design Collective to find out. Podcast was made for I, Science magazine

Wimbledon 2013, the Philosophers Battle

At the beginning of January our masters class were given our most daunting task yet: make a 'science communication product' about what we have taught you so far. Being an ambitious group we chose to make a product that discussed competing philosophies of science, an idea that could either go amazingly well or epically fail. 

Science has often been described as a game, with many rivalries, influences and champion theories. This is certainly the case for philosophy of science, which talks about what science is, what is scientific truth, if that even exists or is man-made, and how science should progress.  We wanted to explore an idea where competing philosophers knock an idea back and forth in a debate, just as you would a ball in tennis, until one of them won the point. As we developed the idea, our metaphor then became more abstract. The method the philosopher used to play tennis was influenced by the way they thought you should do science, and their ideas and what we knew of their histories influenced their personalities. The question essentially became: how would these philosophers behave if they played tennis as if it were science? So Karl Popper who believed in trying to falsify your own theories, was portrayed as argumentative, trying to falsify the rules of the game and the umpire. In the case of Aristotle, we knew little about his personality, so instead defined him by Francis Bacon's idea of him being the “dogma of the time”, therefore making him slow, thoughtful and consistent.

‘The Philosophers Battle’ was the kind of abstract idea that if executed wrong could be very difficult for the listener to understand. In our case this meant the script needed to be clear and the analogy needed to be portrayed in the correct way. The words used give sound effects meaning and paint an image in the listeners mind. My colleagues Annie and Julie (who also wrote about the project) did an impressive job of bringing the commentary to life by connoting the emotion and drama of a live match. By playing off each others characters and often taking opposing points of view so they were able to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. 

Meeting with Prof Steve Fuller was a highlight of the project. He was very enthusiastic about our concept having made stage productions of a similar kind before. He proved a great asset to the piece appearing in our play as our Philosophy Analyst where he brought the events of the match back to the philosophy and history of the characters.

Another big highlight of the project was being shown around Wimbledon by their Deputy Director of Broadcasting (!) that gave the opportunity to take the photographs featured in this post and later to develop my photoshoping skills to get them ready for our class presentation. 

We made a “live” radio commentary of a philosophy tennis tournament, with commentary on Aristotle versus Francis Bacon in the first match, followed by the events of Thomas Kuhn verus Karl Popper in the second. This is complemented by an expert analysis of each match by Professor Steve Fuller, a social epistemologist from Warwick University.