A Special Place for Blog Lovers with a Touch of Science!

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Theodor W. Adorno

1. Not only is the self entwined in society; it owes society its existence in the most literal sense.

2. Love is the power to see similarity in the dissimilar.

3. Work while you work, play while you play - this is a basic rule of repressive self-discipline.

4. Today self-consciousness no longer means anything but reflection on the ego as embarrassment, as realization of impotence: knowing that one is nothing.

5. He who stands aloof runs the risk of believing himself better than others and misusing his critique of society as an ideology for his private interest.

6. Happiness is obsolete: uneconomic.

7. Estrangement shows itself precisely in the elimination of distance between people.

8. Thinking no longer means anymore than checking at each moment whether one can indeed think.

9. Quality is decided by the depth at which the work incorporates the alternatives within itself, and so masters them.

10. Insane sects grow with the same rhythm as big organizations. It is the rhythm of total destruction.

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Women still face inequality in the research arena despite decades spent in efforts to improve their circumstances.

Several decades ago, women scientists and engineers were a novelty – an exception. In 2022 the science and tech industries are still asking the same question: where are the women? There are many challenges to advancing a career in science or driving technological breakthroughs – for both men and women. But for many women, it is a real obstacle course.

This month, we hear from gender and science policymakers and researchers in Europe about the important achievements leading towards progress on gender equality. From leaky pipelines and sticky floors to broken ladders and glass ceilings – these are just some of the hurdles women scientists face when it comes to their career progression. Entrenched gender stereotypes and gender bias are a big part of the problem, according to experts on EU policies on gender in research.

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What does symbol mean?

We use a lot of words daily, we know what they mean in a particular case, however, once we go deeper into their meaning, we begin to lose ground under our feet. Here comes the help from Etymology. Some of the most abstract words we use today derive from natural or everyday life objects. For example, the word matter comes from the Latinmateria, which among other things, means "hard inner wood of a tree." Another one is the word electricitythat comes from the Greek ēlektron, which means "amber", or the word energy, which originates from the ancient Greek enérgon -"being active, into activity, working". The world of words is full of surprises, and the best aspect of that is that each one reveals an entirely new perspective towards what is known. Today, we will search for the elucidating history behind another one of these words –symbol.

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From Adler's book What Life Could Mean To You

1. "A fight with a child is always a losing fight: he can never be beaten or won to cooperation by fighting. In these struggles the weakest always carries the day. Something is demanded of him which he refuses to give; something which can never be gained by such means. An incalculable amount of tension and useless effort would be spared in this world if we realized that cooperation and love can never be won by force."

2. "These three ties, therefore, set three problems: how to find an. occupation which will enable us to survive under the limitations set by the nature of the earth; how to find a position among our fellows, so that we may cooperate and share the benefits of cooperation; how to accommodate ourselves to the fact that we live in two sexes and that the continuance and furtherance of mankind depends upon our love-life. Individual"

3. "It was only because men learned to cooperate that we could make the great discovery of the division of labor; a discovery which is the chief security for the welfare of mankind. To preserve human life would not be possible if each individual attempted to wrest a living from the earth by himself with no cooperation and no results of cooperation in the past. Through the division of labor we can use the results of many different kinds of training and organize many different abilities so that all of them contribute to the common welfare and guarantee relief from insecurity and increased opportunity for all the members of society."

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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

1. "You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven."

2. "How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined."

3. "Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behaviour, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist, so it would need no prohibition."

4. "We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us."

5. "The romantic contrast between modern industry that "destroys nature" and our ancestors who "lived in harmony with nature" is groundless. Long before the Industrial Revolution, Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinctions. We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of life."

6. "This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions."

7. "How many young college graduates have taken demanding jobs in high-powered firms, vowing that they will work hard to earn money that will enable them to retire and pursue their real interests when they are thirty-five? But by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children to school, houses in the suburbs that necessitate at least two cars per family, and a sense that life is not worth living without really good wine and expensive holidays abroad. What are they supposed to do, go back to digging up roots? No, they double their efforts and keep slaving away."