George Miller’s famous 1957 paper, ‘The Magic Number 7 Plus and Minus Two’ has been proven to be overly optimistic. Jeff Rouder and Nelson Cowan’s study, published in the April Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the average person struggles to keep just three or four things in their “working memory†or conscious mind at one time.
Put a Little Science in Your Life
Brain Greene explains why science matters:
Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable — a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional. To be able to think through and grasp explanations — for everything from why the sky is blue to how life formed on earth — not because they are declared dogma but rather because they reveal patterns confirmed by experiment and observation, is one of the most precious of human experiences.
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Perceived Moral Blame Can Change the Memory of a Crime
The interesting outcome of Pizarro’s study shows that people’s memory of facts can be distorted by changing details about an individual’s character. If the subjects thought Frank was a good guy, they remembered the bill at being $55; if they thought he is a bad guy, they remember the bill was $65.
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Curriculum Designed to Unite Art and Science
David Sloan Wilson on designing the Humanities Initiative, a course conceived to cross the cultural chasm between the sciences and the humanities, bringing together the strengths of both mindsets to issues in evolutionary biology, and to avoid romanticizing science or presenting it as the ultimate arbiter of meaning:
You can study music, dance, narrative storytelling and artmaking scientifically, and you can conclude that yes, they’re deeply biologically driven, they’re essential to our species, but there would still be something missing, and that thing is an appreciation for the work itself, a true understanding of its meaning in its culture and context.
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Blogging – It’s Good for You
The neurological underpinnings surrounding the therapeutic benefits of expressive writing are not clear. What is clear is that people coping with cancer diagnoses and other serious conditions are increasingly seeking – and finding – solace in the blogosphere.
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Older Brain Really May Be a Wiser Brain
Some brains do deteriorate with age. But for most aging adults, much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus of attention and sifting through a clutter of information that makes it more difficult to latch onto just one fact like a name or a phone number. This is a good thing.; it may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind.
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Reconsiderations: Richard Dawkins and His Selfish Meme
Pat Shipman explores the ironic legacy of Richard Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene (1976): “The benefit to science of ‘The Selfish Gene’ in triggering a new understanding of the magnificent complexity of evolutionary processes must be weighed against the harm the book has done in provoking a backlash against science.
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The Cognitive Age
The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information’s journey is the last few inches of the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived?
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John Houtz, Julia Cameron and Robert Epstein, all experts on creativity, and each with different backgrounds and perspectives offer practical tactics to unleash your creative self. Their advice intersects at four different skills sets essential for creative expression: capture new ideas they occur to you, challenge yourself with tough problems, broaden your interests in new things, and surround yourself with interesting people and things.