I am (or should be, I have been ill) participating in the Edinburgh International Science Festival as part of the  Enlightenment Exchange on forecasting the future.  This is an outline of what I plan to talk about. Needham’s Question is why did the development technology in western European accelerate much faster than in China after 1600. The issue that Needham wanted to tackle was that China had the physical   and intellectual resources, mathematics, alchemy, astrology and...

 My undergraduate degree was in physics, then sixteen years working in oil exploration led me to doubt the certainties that I was taught at Imperial and I became a mathematician interested in uncertainty. The domain for mathematicians interested in uncertainty are the social sciences and I have the fervour of a convert in condemning my old faith and promoting my new faith. While you might not think my beliefs are particularly relevant, I do think a contributory factor in the credit crisis...

It seems, from the cheap seats at least, that the Eurozone crisis has abated, so now the media is filled with a food crisis. For anyone not following the story, despite food being an important issue of public discourse, following the emergence of BSE twenty years ago and the GMO debate, it turns out things are not as transparent as one would hope and when Europeans have been paying for processed beef they have ended up eating dead horses.  This is no great surprise to someone who...

In January 2011 the most prestigious British science journal, Nature, published a paper, Systemic risk in banking ecosystems, co-authored by Lord May, past President of the even more prestigious Royal Society, an eminent Professor of biology at (one time or another)  the Universities of Oxford, London (Imperial) and  Princeton and past Chief Scientific advisor to the UK Government, and Dr Andy Haldane, an economist who is the Bank of England's Executive Director of Financial...

There is a well developed theory that a key impetus for the development of European science in the seventeenth century  was magical thinking, developed and promoted through the sixteenth century by the likes of Paracelsus, John Dee and Emperor Rudolph II.  While there is little doubt that Hermeticism and Alchemy had a significant influence on the development of natural philosophy, magical thinking cannot explain the uniqueness of the scientific developments in Europe in the 1600s,...

I went "offline" over the Christmas break and so missed the fallout of Brian Cox and Robin Ince's article in the New Statesman Politicians must not elevate mere opinion over science.  The essence of C&I's piece is that science exists as an "adjudicator above opinion", but C&I's "science" is narrowly defined, "science is a process, a series of structures that allow us, in as unbiased a way as possible, to test our assertions against Nature", essentially science is the set of...

It turns out that Paul Wilmott shares my views on the BIS Foresight  Future of Computer  Trading in the Financial Markets.  I have made the point that the Report is running the risk of appearing as what Roger Pielke Jr describes as "stealth advocacy", scientific research presenting itself as neutral technical analysis while it is in fact advocating a specific course of action. My main issue with the Report is captured in its observation that (p 140, ss8.2)In financial...

The UK Government has published its Foresight Report on the Future of Computer  Trading in the Financial Markets .  "Foresight" is a bit of a mis-nomer here, given that Computer Based Trading (CBT) has already had a profound effect on the markets across the globe. What first struck me about this Foresight report is that is presents particular solutions that have undergone a cost-benefit analysis. BIS Foresight reports typically highlight problems and the recommendations can...

Between 2006-2011 I was the "RCUK Academic Fellow"  in Financial Mathematics.  In this role I was obliged to discuss my field with public and policy makers.  Usually this "public engagement" aspect of the Fellowship was ignored, but the role of mathematics in finance became one aspect of the Financial Crises, the dominant theme of public discussion since the summer of 2007 and I was catapulted out of my comfort zone in mathematics. The issue I really...

Philip Pilkington has written a piece about the problem with individualism and myths, a topic I have written on also.  While I agree with the bulk of what he has to say, and I offer some of my own comments (these are taken from a paper in review, a copy is available on request) in what follows, I feel he misses the true culprits in criticising Adam Smith. Central to Pilkington's argument is this text from Smith Society may subsist among different men, as among different...