Blog Archives

February 3, 2025 | 11:30 AM – 2:30 PM ET

Presented by the Lyceum Society

Welcome and Introductions: 11:30 AM to 11:45 AM

Initial Presentation: 11:45 AM to 12:45 PM

Language, Mind and the Growth of Civilization

Henry Kaminer

Thinking out loud about language and its relation to the development of the mind and the growth of civilization—a very broad topic for a brief presentation. However, these things are connected like a knitted woolen sweater. If you pull one strand, everything unravels. He will present the current controversy about the origin of language and offer his own hypothesis. It is derived from the principles of evolution, evidence from anthropology, and observation of the development of language in children. This leads to the role of language in thinking, that much admired activity that supposedly separates us from the lower animals. His discussion includes a tour through the mind at work and the role of language in mental processes.

Main Presentation: 12:45 PM to 2:30 PM

Anticipating Disasters: Climate and Weather Forecasts to Enable Early Action

Zinta Zommers

From fires in L.A. to Hurricane Helen, every year, millions of people face increasingly intense and frequent climate-related disasters. According to World Weather Attribution, 26 weather events analyzed in 2024 contributed to the deaths of at least 3,700 people and the displacement of millions. Since 2000, the United Nations has seen an eightfold increase in funding requirements for humanitarian appeals linked to extreme weather. However, as needs are increasing, so is the ability to predict the occurrence and impact of shocks such as droughts, floods, storms and disease outbreaks. This talk will explore how policy makers are taking advantage of forecasts to design “forecast-based finance” or “anticipatory action” systems. Anticipatory action involves the use of forecasts to release finance in days to months in advance of shocks. Since 2019, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has been advancing anticipatory action in the humanitarian system. To date, OCHA has disbursed over 89 million dollars to seven countries to help people take action before floods, droughts and cholera outbreaks. The talk will explore how such anticipatory action frameworks are designed, the impact of such early action,  forecast challenges and research gaps.

Speakers

Zinta Zommers is Vice-Chair of Working Group II (Impacts and Adaptation) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). She is also the Climate Science Lead for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, where she works to help address humanitarian needs from climate shocks, strengthening early warning and anticipatory action systems. Zinta has held a variety of roles with the UN, including as part of the UN Secretary General’s Climate Change Team and as a member of the UN Chief Scientist’s Office. She has authored and edited two books on climate change adaptation and early warning systems and was a lead author of the IPCC’s 2019 Special Report on Land and the 2023 Synthesis Report. Zinta has a M.Phil. in Development Studies and a D.Phil. in Zoology from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and she was a Visiting Fellow at Perry World House, University of Pennsylvania, from 2021 -2023.

Henry Kaminer was born 90 years ago in a small village in the East Bronx in New York City. He is still trying to escape into the modern world. Dr. Kaminer was excited about science since childhood. His years at Bronx High School of Science opened an exciting world for him, and he learned as much from his fellow students as from the faculty. At City College of New York he tried to study molecular biology, but it had not yet been invented. He worked in pharmacological chemistry and then went to medical school. He narrowed down his interest to what was most confusing and least understood. Therefore, he has developed his professional career in psychiatry and its impact on other fields of study.

Pricing

All: Free

About the Series

The Lyceum Society is a collegial venue promoting fellowship, education, and discussion among retired members of The New York Academy of Sciences. Learn more and explore other events hosted by the Lyceum Society.

January 6, 2025 | 11:30 AM – 2:30 PM ET

Presented by the Lyceum Society

Welcome and Introductions: 11:30 AM to 11:45 AM

Initial Presentation: 11:45 AM to 12:45 PM

Modern Technoscience: Youth to Maturity?

Uldis Blukis

During technoscience’s 17th to 20th century youth it was strongly biased toward the benefits of technoscientific innovations. Their malefits were ignored. Only innovation-caused clearly maleficial events, some arriving quite late, forced dealings with them.

I hypothesize that in an ever more complex technoscience a maturing stage may be arriving. Some direct and implicit reasons that support the hypothesis: the bene- and malefits of a new innovation can be addressed immediately, technoscience growing ever more complex leads to less reliable knowledge, more team research, and increasing attention paid to reproducibility of knowledge.

Main Presentation: 12:45 PM to 2:30 PM

Illusions of Time

Stuart Kurtz

I will try a different presentation format that makes use of a YouTube video to introduce an interesting topic that should also generate ideas to discuss. The video is: Illusions of Time. The topic discusses the psychological feelings of how long things go on while engaged and how that changes in our memories of those times as we age.

It would be useful to review this video as preparation for the discussions. It is only a half an hour straight through. I found the video informative, but too rapid. Thus, I will play the video and interrupt it at times for discussion of the various observations made of our time perceptions. We will also discuss how this fits into our understanding of memory and age and time’s passage—that we know is true even if some physicists insist that all of time exists at once and that there is no factual passage of time.

Speakers

Stuart Kurtz was educated as a chemical engineer at MIT (SB) and Princeton (PhD) and taught at RPI and in Brazil. He has devoted much of his leisure time to studying philosophy and physics and trying to convince himself that the concept of time makes sense.

Uldis Blukis, PhD, is professor emeritus, Brooklyn College, CUNY, where from 1960 to 1991 he taught chemistry, integrated science, and history of the scien­ce of matter. From 1966 to 1991, as a board member of the NGO United Baltic Appeal, Inc. he lobbied UN Member State Missions to support the restoration of the independence of the three Baltic States. 1991-1998 he was in the diplomatic service of Latvia as a representative to the UN. 1994-2000 he was a member of the UN Com­­mit­­tee on Contributions. He is the co-author of a physical chemistry textbook, as well as of a series of short educational films, author and co-author of articles and re­views. His B.S. in chemistry is from the University of Illinois, Urbana. His PhD in physical chemistry is from the University of California, Berkeley. Lyceum Society member since 2010. His most frequent contributions, roughly yearly, to Lyceum Society: i) presentations (mostly initial ones) on knowledge and ignorance, six about Nobel prizes), ii) finding outside speakers.

Pricing

All: Free

About the Series

The Lyceum Society is a collegial venue promoting fellowship, education, and discussion among retired members of The New York Academy of Sciences. Learn more and explore other events hosted by the Lyceum Society.

December 2, 2024 | 11:30 AM – 2:30 PM ET

Presented by the Lyceum Society

Welcome and Introductions: 11:30 AM to 11:45 AM

Speakers

Dr. Peter Smith graduated in polymer chemist from Aberdeen University in Scotland a long time ago. He became a project and systems manager in the pharmaceutical industry before retirement. Along with this, he has been studying and teaching human evolution for many years. 

Philip W. Apruzzese (BE Chem. E., MS Technology Mgmt., CHMM) graduated from Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, N.J. He was employed in the pharmaceutical industry (Squibb, Beecham, Schering-Plough) for nearly 40 years, holding manufacturing operations, project, research pilot plant startup, and environmental compliance management positions. From 2010 to 2019 he was employed part-time as a Chem Eng/Environmental, health and safety consultant in addition to working seasonally as a Level C Official for USA Cycling racing events.

Since relocating to the Seattle area he has begun volunteer work with several non-profit community cycling/Recycling resources and advocacy organizations. Additionally he volunteers online with the Summit Old Guard an organization for retired business and professional men.

In April, 2015, he spoke on Tour de France cycling performance enhancements – Post Lance/Post Drugs and in 2019 he presented on The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of lithium ion batteries and in 2021 presented on The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis.

Pricing

All: Free

About the Series

The Lyceum Society is a collegial venue promoting fellowship, education, and discussion among retired members of The New York Academy of Sciences. Learn more and explore other events hosted by the Lyceum Society.

November 4, 2024 | 11:30 AM – 2:30 PM ET

Presented by the Lyceum Society

Welcome and Introductions: 11:30 AM to 11:45 AM

Main Presentation: 11:45 PM to 2:30 PM

A Simpler and Useful Way to View AI

Bill Rosser

We reveal Artificial Intelligence Large Language Models as a fabulous development that enables quantum leaps in pattern recognition, but not beyond this. This is a breakthrough advance in computer technology, but it is not “thinking” or what we think of as human intelligence. Humans are extraordinarily skilled at pattern recognition, so we understand this very well. The colossal change here is the amount of raw data that AI can explore in order to sense and identify patterns. But it is humans that figure out what these patterns may mean or how to use them. When viewed in this way, we can sense where this capability can be usefully applied, and not be overcome with fears of some kind of uncontrolled power. 

Examples of pattern recognition: 

1. To examine vast amounts of existing data on, for example medical diagnoses, protein structures, etc. to reveal previously unseen patterns, which can then be analyzed for new insights and understanding – leading to new discoveries and approaches to apply.
2. To scan the unimaginable amounts of existing digitized text from the Internet, etc. and capturing relationships among words. This enables creation of meaningful patterns of text responses to user input prompts – based upon the calculated probability of word sequences. The meaning of the selected words is immaterial to the process. AI does not know what it is saying.

We also plan to discuss the potential impact of these capabilities on jobs in the workforce. Most useful are performing duties which are largely repetitive – such as customer service, or even personal education, etc.

In addition, we can discuss what are the dangers to society of this pattern recognition capability? Note: the patterns have no goals in themselves. Yet algorithms employing AI-based patterns are potentially dangerous. But clearly more advances will be coming soon.

Speaker

Bill Rosser retired ten years ago from Gartner, Inc., Stamford, CT, the worldwide top-ranked advisory firm providing guidance to corporations regarding their use of information technology. As a Gartner VP and Distinguished Analyst, he spent 29 years writing, speaking and advising clients about effective use of IT.  He studied Basic Engineering at Princeton University, and after work in telecommunications in San Francisco, returned to the Harvard Business School and graduated with Distinction in 1962. In 1969 he formed his own start-up in data processing based on the new electronic cash registers, and after a merger, worked in strategic planning for Perkin-Elmer and Exxon Enterprises prior to Gartner. Today Bill is active as an architectural walking tour guide (Grand Central Terminal and the NoHo Historic District) and is a founding member of “Reform Elections Now” (with fellow Harvard Business School graduates) promoting vital improvements in the election processes such as Ranked Choice Voting.

Pricing

All: Free

About the Series

The Lyceum Society is a collegial venue promoting fellowship, education, and discussion among retired members of The New York Academy of Sciences. Learn more and explore other events hosted by the Lyceum Society.