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How effective is protesting? According to historians and political scientists: very
From emancipation to women’s suffrage, civil rights and BLM, mass movement has shaped the arc of US history
Best sports photos of 2025: The stories behind the images
From the bottom of the swimming pool to the top of the pole vault bar, photographers reveal the stories behind these amazing shots. And a bonus point if you can spot the photographer in their own image.
The video games you may have missed in 2025
Date a vending machine, watch intergalactic television and make the most out of your short existence as a fly. Here are the best games you weren’t playing this year
Did 2025 mark the end of British parliamentary democracy as we know it?
The conventions and rituals that define the way we do politics rapidly eroded this year – setting the UK on a course into the unknown, says Guardian columnist Andy Beckett
T.J. Watt returns to practice with Steelers weeks after surgery to fix partially collapsed lung
ACA Subsidy Expiration Leaves Millions Facing Higher Health Insurance Costs
John Harbaugh rejects claim that Lamar Jackson has slept in Ravens meetings, says relationship with QB is A+
How Will Chiefs Approach Quarterback Situation In Offseason?
Saints-Titans Receives Prediction Ahead of Rookie QB Showdown
Businesses in Colorado's Idaho Springs say warm weather is impacting sales
Pennsylvanians dropping health insurance
Why local communities may hold the answers to national political divisions
How author David Baldacci and his wife are working to counter toxic political discourse
Steve Kerr, Draymond Green apologized for mid-game blowup, Warriors coach says; Kerr appreciates beauty in the struggle of 'fading dynasty'
Pennsylvanians dropping health insurance with premiums set to double
Week 17 Preview: Bears vs. 49ers headline race for NFC’s No. 1 seed
Bills list Josh Allen as limited in Wednesday's practice
Fan involved in sideline incident with Steelers' DK Metcalf 'remains under review' by NFL
High school sports announcer celebrated for 40 years of calling games
CBS News poll finds spending time with family is what Americans like most about the holidays
Man accused of robbing 7 people at gunpoint inside Eastpointe business
What’s new on Prime Video in January, including ‘Beast Games,’ ‘The Night Manager,’ and more
A long road to care: One Georgia mom's story highlights gaps in prenatal health care
BP agrees deal to sell £7.4bn stake in Castrol to US investment firm
Stonepeak will acquire 65% of lubricants business as part of wider plans for the oil company to pay down its debt
Two British anti-hate speech campaigners sanctioned by US state department
Imran Ahmed and Clare Melford among five Europeans hit with visa bans over claims they wish to ‘suppress American viewpoints they oppose’
Cracker jokes and custard chemistry: ways to smuggle science into Christmas
Researchers share the easy ways to uncover moments of festive discovery, proving you don’t need a lab coat to experiment this Christmas
The big sports quiz of the year 2025
Have you followed the football, rugby, basketball, NFL, cycling, F1, tennis, horse racing, sumo, athletics and golf?
Gold, silver and platinum hit record highs as investors look for Santa rally; BP to sell stake in Castrol for $6bn
Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news
‘A gamechanger’: 200,000 UK small businesses sign up to TikTok Shop
Big brands such as Sainsbury’s and M&S also selling directly in app through links in videos and livestreams
Departure of two prominent Old Town shops highlights ongoing struggles for the area's businesses
DK Metcalf's 2-game suspension upheld after Steelers WR swung at Lions fan, reportedly voiding $45 million in guaranteed money
Immigrant business owners ask for community support amid ICE activity
Pro-Palestine prisoners pause hunger strike as their health deteriorates
Qesser Zuhrah and Amu Gib, on remand at HMP Bronzefield in Surrey, had refused food for almost 50 days in protest at the ban on Palestine Action
Scientists from UChicago, other institutions discover bizarre lemon-shaped planet orbiting neutron star
Deshaun Watson will not be activated from PUP list by Browns; Shedeur Sanders remains QB1
Fantasy Football Championship-Round Tips: Advice to help you secure the trophy in Week 17
Minnesota's biggest sports stories of 2025: Walter Cup win, "Nine" and more
Mike Tomlin on D.K. Metcalf taking swing at Lions fan: 'Don’t condone the behavior, but I support D.K.'
DOJ Document Dump - Inside Politics with Dana Bash and Manu Raju - Podcast on CNN Podcasts
With the ‘Trump Class,’ Navy battleships join a long list of government entities named for the President
Elon Musk, AI and the antichrist: the biggest tech stories of 2025
A look back at the biggest tech stories of the year, from the rise and fall of Musk’s Doge to lucrative investments into AI
Are the Rockets true contenders? Why their recent struggles are cause for concern
Scientists create replica human womb lining and implant early-stage embryos
Studying chemical chatter as tiny balls of cells embed could shine a light on early pregnancy and glitches that lead to miscarriage
Michigan Matters: An anniversary at The Henry Ford, and looking back at politics in 2025
Billy Porter gives health update after scary sepsis hospitalization:...
Alec Baldwin reveals intense health struggles after 'Rust' shooting:...
The disunity of science is a feature, not a bug
Mathematical models wield miraculous power, but mistaking them for reality has trapped science in a destructive quest for a “Theory of Everything.” Physicist and philosopher Ragner Fjelland argues that this leads to bloated, Frankenstein theories kept alive by clumsy, ad-hoc amendments, which reduce rather than boost science’s power. Fjelland calls for a radical shift in our attitude: we must reorientate towards creating entirely new theories, celebrating rather than lamenting disunity and diversity in science. Science, from the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century to the present day, has more or less developed in a “reductionist” way. The fundamental assumption is that all sciences may be ordered in a hierarchy that can be represented as an upside-down pyramid. At the top we find the human sciences, and at the bottom physics. Strong (or “ontological”) reductionism maintains that all theories at one level can be completely reduced to the lower level, all the way down to theories of atoms and elementary particles, or whatever is “at the bottom.” In the end, all diversity in the world can be unified in one fundamental theory. Hence it is called a final theory, or a Theory of Everything.One of the central figures in developing the idea of a Theory of Everything is the Dutch theoretical physicist Gerard 't Hooft, who received a Nobel Prize in physics in 1999 for his work. He emphasizes the non-empirical status of the theory:There exists no closely resembling alternative theory. This means that any slight change brought about in the rules would make the theory unlikely or inelegant. The theory will be a "package deal": take it, or leave it. This should hold both for the local laws and for the boundary conditions.This endeavor is not new. On the contrary, it goes all the way back to the birth of Western philosophy 2,500 years ago. The Babylonians made regular astronomical observations during a period of 600 years, from 747 BCE until 150 ACE. They developed mathematical techniques to predict astronomical phenomena, but they made no attempts at explaining them. However, the Greeks developed models, both material and theoretical, to explain the observed phenomena.The best example is Plato’s late dialogue Timaeus. Here he introduces a divine craftsman, the Demiurge, who has constructed the universe according to an original plan. Plato seems to have thought that the original plan is what is actually real, while the material world is merely an imperfect realization of it. He therefore does not, in the Timaeus, reconstruct the material universe, but the original plan, which can then be used to explain the material universe.Plato’s aim in producing a theoretical model is to reconstruct the original plan. That is what he carries out in Timaeus—and some modern physicists have embarked on the same project. For example, Einstein’s basic attitude is reflected in the title of Abraham Pais’ biography: “Subtle is the Lord...,” echoing Einstein’s comment, “Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.” In an interview Einstein compared our situation to a child who enters a huge library. The child knows that someone has written the books, but he does not know the languages in which they are written. He suspects that there is a mysterious order, but he does not know what it is.___“We have all been working in what Husserl called the Galilean style; that is, we have all been making abstract mathematical models of the universe to which at least the physicists give a higher degree of reality than they accord the ordinary world of sensation.”Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize in Physics (1979)___This Platonist view is contrary to a widespread impression of science, symbolized by the picture of the “father” of modern science, Galileo Galilei, with his telescope. According to this impression, Galileo liberated himself from the dominating metaphysics of his day—basically Aristotelian philosophy—and constructed a telescope that he directed towards the sky, showing that Jupiter has four moons. He also performed experiments with bronze balls rolling down inclined planes and found the law of freely falling bodies.However, in other cases Galileo emphasized the unreliability of our senses. It is easy to see why. He defended Copernicus’ heliocentric hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, we are not at rest at the center of the universe, but moving at a tremendous speed through space. Why don’t we observe this motion? Galileo praises Copernicus because “with reason as his guide he resolutely continued to affirm what sensible experience seemed to contradict.” In other places he directly refers to Plato. SUGGESTED VIEWING The quest for a final theory With Michio Kaku Galileo’s Platonism goes back to his early writings. In The Assayer, published as early as 1623, Galileo compared the universe to a grand book that is written in the language of mathematics, and “its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.” Therefore, things that cannot be described by mathematics—for example, colors, smells and odors—are not real. They are merely subjective.This division into subjective and objective, advocated by Galileo and his younger contemporary René Descartes, is normally associated with a mechanistic world view, which is regarded as the opposite of Platonism. When we reduce something to, for example, molecules and atoms, we move “downwards.” In contrast, the Platonist moves “upwards,” to abstract entities. However, it only shows that when we address fundamental questions, we should be careful in applying everyday spatial metaphors like “up” and “down.”___Nature is complex, and we cannot in general construct mathematical models that adequately describe the world.___The endeavor of finding a Theory of Everything has been heavily criticized. In 2006, the theoretical physicist Lee Smolin published “The Crisis in Fundamental Physics.” He argued that one of the most fundamental principles of science is that we should only regard theories as scientific if we have the possibility to show that they are false by experiments. Although he did not refer to Karl Popper, other critics have referred to Popper and argued that a theory is not scientific if it cannot be falsified (see for example Ellis & Silk 2014).These were not the first physicists to be anti-reductionists. In 1972, the journal Science published an article by the physicist Philip Anderson with the title “More Is Different.” This is the kind of article a scientist would normally write only after he has won a Nobel Prize. However, Anderson won the Nobel Prize for physics five years later, in 1977. The article is amazing, not primarily because it argues in favor of anti-reductionism in general, but because it argues for anti-reductionism within physics itself. Anderson’s conclusion was:At each stage entirely new laws, concepts, and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry.We may say that Plato started the “unity of science movement,” based on Euclidean geometry as the model of all knowledge. A distinguishing mark of geometry is that all possible constructions can be reduced to a few fundamental principles. We have to acknowledge that this approach has limitations. In general, we can easily model technological systems. In addition, we may construct simplified and idealized models that capture important aspects of systems, from various perspectives and for various purposes. But nature is complex, and we cannot in general construct mathematical models that adequately describe the world. In a complex system, each level has its distinct, emergent, properties that are characteristic of this level. Therefore, a complex system should be investigated at different levels and from different perspectives. Instead of exclusively pursuing a scientific ideal based on the unity of science, we should acknowledge the diversity—or even the disunity—of science.
New batch of Epstein files released featuring more Trump mentions
New set of files released overnight into Tuesday
Non-crime hate incident recording system for police ‘not fit for purpose’
Police chiefs to call for non-crime hate incidents to be scrapped and replaced with a ‘common sense’ checklist system
Live updates: Justice Department releases new set of Epstein documents
Tesla sales fall across Europe again as BYD surges
Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news
Revisited: why do we age in dramatic bursts, and what can we do about it?
In this episode from July, Prof Michael Snyder tells Ian Sample what the drivers of these bursts of ageing could be, and how they might be counteracted