Delving Deeper into the Roots of Organic

Posted on February 24, 2015 by Thoughtscapism

Part three – response to the criticism on my piece about organic farming, here: Natural Assumptions. I will continue with what may in fact be the biggest problem I see with the organic paradigm in practice: yield. We only have limited land for farming. The solutions aren’t easy. Continue reading →

Posted in agriculture, environment, history | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Am I Biased? Are You?

Posted on February 23, 2015 by Thoughtscapism

Not long ago I was publicly accused of cherry-picking. But I don’t even like cherries. They taste a little bit poisonous to me. So what is cherry picking in the scientific sense, and did I do it? Do you do it? Continue reading →

Posted in agriculture, biology, health, nutrition, organic | Tagged , | 9 Comments

Injecting Kindness into the Debate

Posted on February 19, 2015 by Thoughtscapism

Vaccines are a topic that stir up a lot of emotions. How should we talk about them? Will anything we do make a difference? I think a useful perspective on the topic comes from framing the question somewhat differently: can we make a difference by the way behave in our interactions with other people? Continue reading →

Posted in epistemology, existentialism, health, medicine, psychology, science, science communication, society, vaccines | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Why Science?

Posted on February 13, 2015 by Thoughtscapism

IMG_20140729_171039Where should we turn to if we want to know something? What are good sources of information? What do they look like?

These questions apply to most areas of life. I originally wrote about them in the context of vaccine-related information, so I will use that as my example below.

It all really boils down to: why science? Aren’t there other just as important sources? What makes science so infallible? I’ve often heard the counter-argument that science doesn’t know everything. So why should we listen to it? Continue reading →

Posted in consensus, epistemology, health, medicine, methods, science, science communication, vaccines | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments

Shamelessly Serendipitous

Posted on February 12, 2015 by Thoughtscapism

My journey as a writer from one language to another – from Finnish to English. It was originally published in The Woolf, a literary online publication in Switzerland, in their summer 2014 issue themed Exploitation. It’s about using my mother tongue to my advantage as a non-native writer. Continue reading →

Posted in linguistics, literature | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Natural Assumptions

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Thoughtscapism

IMG_1929Iida writes of her attempt to defend organic, of the risks of repeating slogans, and of how pieces of worldview are built and change, sometimes as easily as with a comment or two.

I published this piece originally in the Skepti Forum blog: Iida Ruishalme’s 500 words – Natural Assumptions and later also at The Genetic Literacy Project. Continue reading →

Posted in agriculture, biology, environment, health, science | Tagged , , , , | 28 Comments

Why Thoughtscapism?

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Thoughtscapism

I do a lot of thinking on this blog. Conversely, I also make a painstaking effort to regularly escape from those thoughts and connect them to the vital pieces of observation. It is dangerous to operate with the concept that immersing in thoughts alone could yield us knowledge – whether they be one’s own thoughts, or the shared thoughts and ideas of one’s peers and subculture. Our thoughts about how this world works should be aligned with reality.

The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man. No one who did not have some inkling of this through observations could ever have imagined such a marvel as nature is.

– Richard Feynman, The meaning of it all.

Reality is much too fascinating to ignore. Continue reading →

Posted in epistemology, meta | 1 Comment