Artemisia

I’m not really a car person now but my first car was a burgundy mk3 Ford Capri I found on a database I was helping put together for my friend’s dad, who was a second hand car dealer. Turns out it was right at the back of the lot. I went back there to see and instantly feel in love. My friend’s dad sold me it for £400 the lovely man. Stupendous machine.

Oh yes definitely do what makes you happy and heals you!

The law of the sea was an early attempt to codify and organise the customs and rules of conduct that applied in international waters. We kind of take it for granted that there is a thing called “International law” but its actually a relatively recent development and not as obvious as we might think. I mean historically most legal jurisdiction springs from some claim of right that one family has because they were once powerful enough to assert that they were destined to rule by God, for some definition of God. But no such claim exists for international waters. The national territorial claims just kind of fizzle out and become less believable the farther away from land you get. Er that was a bit of a tangent I know.

Yes Karl Popper says that science must limit itself to working on ideas that are falsifiable.

But that doesn’t mean that we can just go about making life-changing decisions for ourselves or for others based on any beliefs we want and claim science has no say because those beliefs are unfalsifiable. Its the other way around: public policy must be constrained by fact and evidence even if our individual beliefs are influenced by more than that.

When Hugo Grotius was working on the law of the sea, which became one of the bases of modern international law, he imagined laws that would hold fast even in the absence of God. If we cannot do the same then we are doing no better than throwing rocks at each other for our individual betterment.

Hmm. On the one hand very much no, in the sense that I am a scientist, and I believe in the scientific method, and I think society should deal with facts and evidence when agreeing how to manage itself.

But on the other hand, individually, I am a creature of emotion and I feel connected to the universe, and I believe everything ebbs and flows in connection with everything else.

I don’t feel the need for my scientist brain to hold that emotional part of myself to account or ransom, though. I don’t need to know how it works or why it might be because it just is what it is.