firecat

The professor of my Virology MOOC, Vincent Racaniello, spent the first couple of lectures drilling us on how viruses are completely inanimate, are not even alive (depending on how you define "alive"), and definitely can't think or strategize. This week's lectures have been about how viruses get inside cells and how they avoid attaching to the wrong things or being eaten by stuff inside the cell before they are where they need to be. Each time he describes one of the methods he says "It's really a brilliant strategy." (And he's right. I don't believe in a creator deity, so I think it's a strategy not developed on purpose by any consciousness, but it's a strategy, and it's brilliant.)

The professor of my MOOC "A Brief History of Humankind" theorized that Stone Age humans mostly practiced animism, a spiritual system in which everything in the environment is considered to be alive and to have personality, goals, to be able to communicate, etc.

It certainly does seem that animistic metaphors and ways of thinking are built into the language I speak.

The latest MOOC I've signed up for:

Dino 101: Dinosaur Paleobiology
https://www.coursera.org/course/dino101

The course description says that no specific science background is required; all are welcome.

In my experience so far with MOOCs, this sometimes means they really explain everything (e.g. "A Brief History of Humankind"), and other times it means "We don't really grok what background is needed to understand these lectures."

For example, I am taking a course on volcanoes which was advertised as no background needed, but I'm not getting as much out of it as I might, because it assumes a higher-than-I-have level of knowledge about statistics and, oh I don't even know, physics? minerology? I'm continuing it anyway because as a tech writer/editor I am supposed to be able to make sense out of material I don't have a strong background in, and I like the challenge of trying to do so.