Episode 221: Dr. Alexander Boxer: Data Science and "A Scheme of Heaven"/Storytelling Possibilities in Data/Ptolemy/Carl Sagan
End of the Road Podcast (Immanence = Transcendence) · Michael Kokal
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Show Notes
Alexander Boxer is a data scientist with a PhD in Physics (M.I.T.) and degrees in the history of science (Oxford) and classics (Yale). His research has appeared in Nature Physics and he was a field agent for Atlas Obscura in Washington D.C..
In this podcast, we discuss his book A Scheme of Heaven which describes humans as pattern-matching creatures, and astrology as the ancient world's grandest pattern-matching game. In this work of history and analysis, Dr. Boxer examines classical texts on astrology to expose its underlying scientific and mathematical framework. Astrology, he argues was an ambitious applied mathematics problem, a monumental data analysis enterprise sustained by some of history's most brilliant minds, from Ptolemy to al-Kindi to Kepler. In short, astrologers became the first to stumble upon the powerful storytelling possibilities inherent in numerical data.
For more information of Dr. Boxer, please see his website:
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Have a blessed weekend and may your stars align:-).