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Some words have relatively new meanings in the powerful language of science and mathematics. Sometimes those words have other meanings in more familiar language. And sometimes the users of those words don’t know there’s a meaning other than the familiar one. The science meanings get their great power from human abilities to see deeper and deeper into the realm of abstraction, to see not just the patterns in the world, but also the patterns of the patterns ...and the patterns of the patterns of the patterns of… Seeing those deeper patterns is the insight that has given us our computers, our television, our telephones, our high-tech autos, our electrical power grids, our sophisticated pharmaceuticals, our medical imaging wonders, our digital cameras, our exploration of outer space, our weapons of mass destruction, our powerful encryption techniques for keeping security within our massively proliferated information networks. Those are the insights which have rocketed us out of the stone age. Education has not kept up with technology. Here are nine words that have meanings in the colloquial world and meanings in the deeper world of science and mathematics. The science and the colloquial are vastly different. The science meanings could have great influence for more effective human actions if only education could show their science meanings to everyone. |
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colloquial can lead to dumb disaster perception - imagination - metaphor |
broadly useful usually leads to new vistas mathematical - logical - "fourth-level" |
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| Energy: Something in food and fuel that keeps us and our engines going. | Energy: A very abstract something about which we know only how to calculate its value and that it's conserved. | We have no knowledge of what energy is," says Richard Feynman. Feynman's wisdom is deep, important, and rarely recognized. |
| Free Energy: Energy we get at no cost. | Free
Energy: Energy
that, statistically, can be transferred as work.
(Free from incoherence.) |
Thermodynamics grew out of Aristotle's word "energy" By 1865 it had matured into something almost magical. |
| Heat: A feelling from some sensors in our skin; elevated temperature. | Heat: Energy transferred solely because of temperature difference. | More heat than light"? In the Fourth Level, light is seen to be a form of heat: radiation. |
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From biology and other of |
the more complex sciences |
Advance... |
| Intelligence: Information. | Intelligence: Information processing skills--richly multidimensional, tensor-like. |
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| Parameter: Perimeter. | Parameter: A mathematically defined variable or constant. |
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| Rank: Position in a line. | Rank: Position in a multidimensional space. |
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| Justice: Retribution and revenge. | Justice: Mutually reciprocal fairness. |
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| Human rights: My rights. | Human rights: Everybody's rights. |
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| Terrorism: Lethal attacks on America | Terrorism: Lethal attacks on humanity |
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tensors |
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