Merging Science with other disciplines

Science provides us with significant and important tools for observing and understanding the world but scientific thinking is not the only way in which we, as humans, are capable and/or choose to look at the world.  Often times I feel that as people we are quick to define separations of differing disciplines, as seeing incompatibility.  How could scientific thinking and experimenting have anything to do with literary criticism?  Why would we want to lump things like physics and chemistry in with the arts and humanities?  having minored in philosophy, and thus having a self proclaimed love of the pursuit of wisdom and knowledge, I think that it is of vital importance that we take what we may at first hand see as differing disciplines and find ways to incorporate them with each other.  Two recently encountered articles delve into this kind of thinking and I greatly enjoy them and the goals of the people behind them.  The first was brought to my attention by Evan and is from The Boston Globe.  The second appeared today in the New York Times.  Both are excellent and spark some great thinking.  I feel that the merger of science and arts needs to also go further with mergers in science and religion or at least concepts of faith (and note this is coming from a self described non-theist).

Yay for More Humpback Whales!

In a day and age where it seems we are constantly hearing distressing news regarding the decline of various species it is a bit of a breath of fresh air to hear that humpback whale populations have made dramatic increase over the past forty plus years or so.  This AP article appearing in Discovery News gives the details.  Considering that these whales were once on the brink of extinction due to whaling this is some really exciting news.  Now lets see if we can help save some other creatures like honey bees and polar bears.

Images from Mars

NASA’s Phoenix Lander touched down on the red planet this past Sunday beginning a mission to study Mar’s polar region, including permafrost analysis in hopes of finding evidence of life.  Discovery News provides us with a good slide show of some of the first images the probe beamed back to Earth.  Very cool stuff.