Maitani

Despite assumptions to the contrary, archaeological work of the new Troy project has not been performed for the purpose of understanding Homer's Iliad or the Trojan War. For the past 16 years, more than 350 scholars, scientists, and technicians from nearly 20 countries have been collaborating on the excavations at the site in northwestern Turkey that began as an Early Bronze Age citadel in the third millennium B.C. and ended as a Byzantine settlement before being abandoned in A.D. 1350. However, as current director of the excavations, I am continually asked if Homer's Trojan War really happened. - Maitani

We are apparently now in a situation where modern technology is changing the way people behave, people talk, people react, people think, and people remember. And you encounter this not only in a theoretical way, but when you meet people, when suddenly people start forgetting things, when suddenly people depend on their gadgets, and other stuff, to remember certain things. This is the beginning, its just an experience. But if you think about it and you think about your own behavior, you suddenly realize that something fundamental is going on. There is one comment on Edge which I love, which is in Daniel Dennett's response to the 2007 annual question, in which he said that we have a population explosion of ideas, but not enough brains to cover them. - Maitani

Ancient philosophical theories of soul are in many respects sensitive to ways of speaking and thinking about the soul [psuchê] that are not specifically philosophical or theoretical. We therefore begin with what the word ‘soul’ meant to speakers of Classical Greek, and what it would have been natural to think about and associate with the soul. We then turn to various Presocratic thinkers, and to the philosophical theories that are our primary concern, those of Plato (first in the Phaedo, then in the Republic), Aristotle (in the De Anima or On the Soul), Epicurus, and the Stoics. These are by far the most carefully worked out theories of soul in ancient philosophy. Later theoretical developments — for instance, in the writings of Plotinus and other Platonists, as well as the Church Fathers — are best studied against the background of the classical theories, from which, in large part, they derive. - Maitani

Practice makes perfect. But imaginary practice? Elisa Tartaglia of the Laboratory of Psychophysics at Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) and team show that perceptual learning -- learning by repeated exposure to a stimulus -- can occur by mental imagery as much as by the real thing. The results, published in Current Biology, suggest that thinking about something over and over again could actually be as good as doing it. - Maitani

New research shows that memories are constantly being re-written by our minds. Neuroscientists have long viewed memory as a kind of neural architecture, a literal physical reshaping of the microstructure of the brain. In the 19th century, the pioneering neuroanatomist Santiago Ramón y Cajal theorized that information was processed in our heads each time an electrical impulse traveled across a synapse, the gap between one nerve cell and the next. Memories were made or altered, he proposed, when structures near the synapse changed. - Maitani

Literature.org - The Online Literature Library - Free ebooks: www.literature.org The full and unabridged texts of classic works of English literature - Maitani

Unless you’re enrolled at a top university or are an elite member of the science and engineering inner circle, you’re probably left out of most of the exciting research explored by the world’s greatest scientists. But thanks to the Internet, and our list of 100 incredible lectures, you’ve now got access to the cutting edge theories and projects that are changing the world. - Maitani

A few years ago, New Scientist listed reading On The Origin of Species as one of the 100 things to do before you die. To do so is to experience the extraordinary sensation of having a scientific genius enter your mind to guide you through his most important theory. Now we have asked the geneticist, evolutionary thinker and author Steve Jones to summarise and update the book for the 21st century - and, we hope, to inspire readers to experience Darwin's astounding, world-changing writing first-hand. - Maitani

We like the feeling of certainty. It gives us confidence and a sense of safety. Mathematics, geometry and logic give us a taste of certainty. We get another taste from the well tested results of scientific investigation. However, the world as we experience it is full of probability, chance, uncertainty and mystery. We are surrounded by what is doubtful, and this makes us anxious. - Maitani

“Languages of the World,” provides language-by-language information. This section steps back from the detail to offer a summary view of the world language situation. Specifically, it offers numerical tabulations of languages and number of speakers - Maitani

Perhaps no aspect of mind is more familiar or more puzzling than consciousness and our conscious experience of self and world. The problem of consciousness is arguably the central issue in current theorizing about the mind. Despite the lack of any agreed upon theory of consciousness, there is a widespread, if less than universal, consensus that an adequate account of mind requires a clear understanding of it and its place in nature. We need to understand both what consciousness is and how it relates to other, nonconscious, aspects of reality.Perhaps no aspect of mind is more familiar or more puzzling than consciousness and our conscious experience of self and world. The problem of consciousness is arguably the central issue in current theorizing about the mind. ... We need to understand both what consciousness is and how it relates to other, nonconscious, aspects of reality. - Maitani