amandagefter

It's amazing!

Graphite rendition of Peter Putnam. First portrait I made in a little while. The likeness is not 100%, but the next one will be better

Just a first quick little graphite sketch of Peter Putnam (@nautil.us knows who I’m talking about 🤩)

#sketch #portrait #sketchbook #peterputnam #graphite #drawing #fanart #philosophy

YouTube video by Love & Philosophy How the Collective Shapes Individuality

📹 Philosopher Ezquiel Di Paolo discusses the idea that individuality is formed through, not against, the collective. #loveandphilosophy #philosophy #power
youtube.com/shorts/LViHD...

‘It’s a Mess’: A Brain-Bending Trip to Quantum Theory’s 100th Birthday Party | Quanta Magazine Hundreds of physicists (and a few journalists) journeyed to Helgoland, the birthplace of quantum mechanics, and grappled with what they have and haven’t learned about reality.

In the summer of 1925, Werner Heisenberg retreated to Helgoland in the North Sea and reemerged with the first full-fledged version of quantum mechanics. A century later, physicists returned to Helgoland to take stock. @walkingthedot.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/its-a-mess-a...

Finding Peter Putnam The forgotten janitor who discovered the logic of the mind

You can read about Putnam's story in @nautil.us here: nautil.us/finding-pete...

A historic marker that reads: Near this site lived Peter Putnam, a Princeton-trained physicist, who worked as a publisher, philosopher, philanthropist, and janitor. In 1979, he conceived, commissioned and funded the Gay Liberation Monument, which is now a centerpiece of The Stonewall Historic Site in NYC. He also donated his family's fortune to the Nature Conservancy leading to the preservation of Louisiana's Little Pecan Island.

The LGBTQ+ Archives Project of Louisiana has just placed a historic marker near Peter Putnam's former home on East Main St. in Houma. From dying anonymously on that stretch of road 4 decades ago to being publicly honored there for his radical life and brilliant work...what a beautiful thing.

YouTube video by The Blind Spot Podcast The Blind Spot Podcast - Episode 8: What is the World Made Of? A Brief History of Ontology

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEe5...

I've come to believe that, if we're lucky, we are tasked and entrusted with stories - stories that confound us, that elude us, that are bigger than us, that change us and then outlive us, that we have to fight to keep them alive by telling them, living them, and sharing them while we can.

Remembering Robert W. Fuller, physicist, president of Oberlin College, citizen diplomat, author, dignity advocate Fuller studied with John Wheeler. Then, age 33, became president of Oberlin. Then fought against hunger and the nuclear arms race.

This obituary gives a wonderful account of Bob's life and values. I hope you'll read it, and Putnam's story, as well, which Bob guarded and preserved and continues to keep alive today.

www.berkeleyside.org/2025/07/22/r...

When the article came out last month, I sent Fuller the link. He was elated. Overjoyed. Relieved. Shortly after, he suffered a stroke, and last week, he passed away.

I needed to get Putnam's ideas out there because otherwise they would simply be lost, and I needed to do it for people like Fuller who'd kept the flame alive. "This is the last second chance there will ever be," Fuller told me. It was a feeling that shook him (and me in turn) to the core.

Fuller was never able to convince the world to look at Putnam's work. And it haunted him. “My basic upset is, I feel somehow I failed to get his stuff out there,” Fuller said. As I wrote in the piece, his regret was my inheritance.

...I have never in my life met anyone who would feel out and give themselves to the power in other people’s ideas, with no egotistic block…They are extraordinary qualities that made you able to do that for me. I would have done nothing at all had it not been for you.” But despite his best efforts,

He championed Putnam's work when no one else could understand it, when Putnam himself could barely explain it. Putnam wrote to Fuller: “There is the very real miracle of yours being able to realize I was not just a mad crackpot and that this chatter had a core...

People like Robert Works Fuller, who was the first person to whom Putnam ever explained his theory. Fuller was a physicist who had worked out the mathematics of wormholes with John Wheeler. He immediately recognized the genius in Putnam and became Putnam's apprentice and sounding board.

Finding Peter Putnam The forgotten janitor who discovered the logic of the mind

I recently wrote a story about Peter Putnam, a forgotten physicist-turned-janitor with a groundbreaking theory of the mind, for @nautil.us. I was able to piece together Putnam's incredible story thanks to a few people who kept the ember of his work glowing for decades after his tragic death.

I think a lot these days about the ways in which we are the keepers of other people's stories - the weight of that, the privilege, the responsibility. Which is why I want to tell you about Bob Fuller. 🧵

Great book.

The Body Has a Head You have never read a science book like this

You have never read a science book like The Body Has a Head by Gustav Eckstein. His descriptions of biological mechanisms take flight on metaphoric reveries that compare what’s going on inside our bodies to the carnival of life outside them. 🧪

Thank you so much!

Look, speaking as a physicist, it is hard for me to put into words how batshit crazy this is.

A Borges story about a guy who gets AI to summarize all the world’s information for him, and then summarize the summary, until the AI has the whole world summarized into a single word. He sits alone at his desk, staring at the word, repeating it endlessly, certain he is experiencing everything

Wonderful interview with Ezequiel Di Paolo on the enactive approach to cognition, tracing the line from single cells all the way to language.

Yes! 😊

Finding Peter Putnam The forgotten janitor who discovered the logic of the mind

You might enjoy this piece I recently wrote about Wheeler's least known student (but one with whom he had a lifelong friendship and correspondence). nautil.us/finding-pete...

😂

Image shows the cover of Becker's book, "More Everything Forever."

Tech gurus talk about colonizing Mars, building space stations, eradicating aging and death, and uploading minds. Not so fast, says @adambecker.bsky.social. In Ep 39 of BookLab, @amandagefter.bsky.social and I dive into Adam's new book, "More Everything Forever":
booklabpodcast.com/booklab-039-...

Finding Peter Putnam The forgotten janitor who discovered the logic of the mind

For the unknown story behind Peter Putnam, a remarkable scientist who commissioned the Gay Liberation sculpture, check out nautil.us/finding-pete...

Importantly, he seems to have recognized very early on that, unlike Turing's model of computation that was meant to model deductive procedures, induction can only be implemented by an open system whose axioms, rules of inference, and rules of interpretation are revisable based on experience.

Not that I know of...