Philosophers of science are not known for agreeing with each other--contrariness is part of the job description. But for thousands of years, from Aristotle to Thomas Kuhn, those who study what science is have roughly categorized themselves into two basic camps: "realists" and "anti-realists." In philosophical terms, "anti-realists" or "empiricists" understand science as investigating the properties of observable objects via experiments. Empirical theories are constrained by the experimental results. "Realists," on the other hand, speculate more freely about the possible shape of the unobservable world, often designing mathematical explanations that cannot (yet) be tested. Isaac Newton was a realist, as are string theorists. Most scientists do not lose sleep worrying about philosophical divides. But maybe they should; Albert Einstein certainly did, as did Niels Bohr, and Erwin Schrödinger.

A recent newcomer at one of the home-education groups my family attends explained that one of the frustrations that led her to take her son out of the school system was that he wasn't being allowed to write stories. It's something he loves to do, and it seems strange that a school should obstruct that enthusiasm. But the teachers declared he wasn't ready because he can't yet write in cursive. To me this symbolizes all that is wrong with the strange obsession shared in many countries about how children learn to write. Often we teach them how to form letters based on the ones they see in their earliest reading books. And then we tell them that they must learn this hard-won skill all over again, using "joined-up" script. Yet there is no evidence that cursive has any benefits over other handwriting styles, such as manuscript, where the letters aren't joined, for the majority of children with normal development.

It's every college student's dream – airborne drones that deliver burritos to campus. Alphabet's Project Wing and Chipotle have teamed up for a pilot program that flies these stuffed tortillas to the students at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. The hybrid drones will fly to the delivery location from a Chipotle food truck, hover over the customer and lower the order down using a wire cable. Chipotle and Alphabet Inc.'s Project Wing have teamed up for a pilot program that flies these stuffed tortillas to the students at Virginia Tech. The drones will fly to the delivery location from a Chipotle food truck, hover overhead and lower the order down to the customer using a wire cable.

Tesla Motors Inc. TSLA -2.16 % 's "Autopilot" feature wasn't in use during a deadly crash of one of its vehicles south of Amsterdam, the company said. "We can confirm from the car's logs that Autopilot was not engaged at any time during the drive cycle and that, consistent with the damage that was observed after the vehicle struck the tree, the vehicle was being driven at more than 155 km/h," Tesla said Thursday in a prepared statement. Tesla and Dutch authorities were investigating the incident Wednesday. Tesla crashes have come under scrutiny since the company revealed in June that a Model S ran into a truck in Florida while in its Autopilot feature was engaged. The driver died, marking the first death in which Tesla's Autopilot was active.

Reuters – The new Apple iPhone has something missing: the small socket millions of us have used for years to plug in headphones. While some fans opposed the widely anticipated move – one online petition urging Apple to keep the headphone jack drew more than 300,000 signatures – equipment suppliers and experts heralded a change in how users will interact with their devices. Axing the jack, they say, paves the way for discreet, bean-sized earbuds that can simultaneously translate, filter out unwanted noise or let us control other devices by voice – and drive up the value of the so-called'hearables' market to 16 billion within five years. It's the vision of the futuristic 2013 movie "Her", where a human has a love affair with a disembodied voice in his ear. But some who follow the industry say it's closer than many think, noting improvements in wireless technologies, materials, artificial intelligence and battery life.

Could robots be carrying out the most crimes by 2040? RoboCop, Chappie, the Terminator movies and i,Robot - there have been many films where we have been encouraged to respect, love but also fear robots – and I for one can say I will never be trusting them! And apparently I am right not to after researchers have found robots could be the offenders committing most crimes by 2040. Tracey Follows from The Future Laboratory, which helps businesses plan for the future through its research and consultancy experts, has been looking at the issues after more and more robots could be used in industries replacing humans on jobs. Ms Follows, chief strategy and innovation officer at, speaking to the Times Raconteur: 'Futurists have been forecasting a sharp rise in lone-wolf terror attacks for years.

Welcome to robot nursery school," Pieter Abbeel says as he opens the door to the Robot Learning Lab on the seventh floor of a sleek new building on the northern edge of the UC-Berkeley campus. The lab is chaotic: bikes leaning against the wall, a dozen or so grad students in disorganized cubicles, whiteboards covered with indecipherable equations. Abbeel, 38, is a thin, wiry guy, dressed in jeans and a stretched-out T-shirt. He moved to the U.S. from Belgium in 2000 to get a Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford and is now one of the world's foremost experts in understanding the challenge of teaching robots to think intelligently. But first, he has to teach them to "think" at all. "That's why we call this nursery school," he jokes. He introduces me to Brett, a six-foot-tall humanoid robot made by Willow Garage, a high-profile Silicon Valley robotics manufacturer that is now out of business. The lab acquired the robot several years ago to experiment with. Brett, which stands for ...

We get the science fiction we need at the time we need it. When "Star Trek" premiered on Sept. 8, 1966, the United States was escalating its involvement in the Vietnam War while also reckoning with the civil rights movement -- not to mention waging a cold war with the Soviet Union that seemed always on the verge of heating up. Right along with that tumult was the beacon of scientific hope that was NASA's space program, which in turn stoked the passion of an America obsessed with tomorrow. World's fairs were in the business of showing us the cars, kitchens and cities of tomorrow. Writer-producer Gene Roddenberry channeled those twin poles of the human condition -- strife and hope -- into "Star Trek," the show he pitched to NBC as " 'Wagon Train' to the stars."

Just the title of Tom Gauld's new book suggests action and adventure, lunar style: "Mooncop! But the reality is something altogether different. The graphic novel is actually far more subtle, amusing, and haunting than its title suggests. Inspired by old-school toys and Star Wars, it comes complete with both fun, pathos, and wonderful art. Here are five reasons this graphic novel will be your new favorite thing. Despite the jokes--and it is a very funny book--Mooncop has a particular melancholy to it, reflecting its creator's feeling about the way scientific exploration has fallen out of favor with the general public. "When I look back at the years of the Space Race it feels as though there was such an optimistic wonder about space, the moon, and generally about how technology would improve everyone's life," Gauld explains. "Amazing things are still happening in science, but I feel there isn't the same unreserved positivity about it." While the title suggests a police force on some Blade Runner-esque off-world outpost, the actual physical inspiration for Mooncop was far more quaint. "The idea of a cop on the moon came from a 1960s tin toy I saw, which was a car with'Space Patrol' on the side and a robot driver in a glass dome wielding a laser cannon," Gauld says. "The packaging showed the car on a deserted moon, with the Earth in the black sky above.

Artificial intelligence (AI) will not reduce the amount of hours you work as higher productivity will boost demand for the services you're offering, a senior UBS Wealth Management executive, told CNBC on Tuesday. Talking to CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe," Jamie Broderick, head of UBS Wealth Management U.K., said he wasn't convinced that AI would bring about the combination of higher productivity and fewer working hours. "The evidence is no, you don't actually get to that," Broderick told CNBC. "I think part of what's driving that is the fact that the consumer becomes more and more demanding about what it is we actually deliver to them…the consumer continually upgrades his demands and is requiring more specificity, more customization, and I think that's really what explains it." Broderick gave the example of financial regulators constantly upping their requirements from investment banks.