Science is not some purely rationalist endeavor that exists in an isolated realm of objective observations and hard data that can deliver absolute truths. It is built on and intertwined with the modes of analysis, intellectual history, and ways of knowing in the humanities. 0:00 Intro 2:19 Part 1 –– Metaphors We Live By 5:52 Part 2 –– Metaphors in Science, an Ancient Paradox 10:32 Part 3 –– Embryology 23:10 Part 4 –– The Clockwork Universe 32:04 Part 5 –– The History of a Dead Metaphor: Cell 44:00 Part 6 –– Black Holes 51:10 Part 7 –– The Body 57:50 Part 8 –– Pain, in 78 Adjectives 1:05:29 Part 9 –– Natural Selection 1:09:47 Part 10 –– A New Metaphor for Science 1:20:22 Part 11 –– The Solar System Model of the Atom 1:24:35 Part 12 –– Uniformitarianism 1:31:35 Part 13 –– Glia, the Gendering of a Cell 1:39:15 Part 14 –– Light Bulbs and Seeds 1:46:04 Part 15 –– War and Disease, the Domination of a Metaphor 1:51:26 Part 16 –– Social Darwinism 1:55:05 Part 17 –– The Universe 2:02:08 Part 18 –– Anthropomorphism An Inexact Science is a production of The World According to Sound. It’s part of our series, “Ways of Knowing,” audio works dedicated to humanities research and thought. It was made in collaboration with the University of Chicago’s Institute on the Formation of Knowledge. Special thanks to Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer, who spearheaded the project at the University of Chicago. Editorial support from Hans Buetow. Academic advising by Andrew Hicks. Voicing work by Tina Antolini. Mathematical consultant, Steven Strogatz. Intro music by our friends, Matmos. And to see a complete list of musicians used in this show, visit our website: www.theworldaccordingtosound.org

The first in a 9-part series dedicated to deep, intentional listening. Episodes of "The Listening Experience" will be released about every four months.

There's a lot to hear in outer space if you change the way you listen.

The story of how gravitational waves were finally discovered and how we are making sense of them.

Some of the most iconic images we have of the universe closely resemble 19th-century landscape paintings of the American West. A big part of the reason has to do with how scientists interpreted visual data from telescopes like Hubble.

With the telescopes of the 20th century, astronomers began to see a universe that just so happened to resemble the cosmos as described by a 13th century Italian poet…Dante Alighieri.

An observational error in the 19th century leads to a belief that there is an advanced alien civilization on Mars...which leads to a boom in astronomy investment, research, and actual discoveries, including the first sighting of Pluto.

"Somnium" is considered one of the first pieces of science fiction. The short story, written in 1608, recounts a trip up to the moon. There are magical beings, aliens, drugs, and a perspective of the stars that would fundamentally change how people understood the solar system.

Near the end of the 11th century CE, there was a crisis in China’s Song Dynasty. The imperial calendars were filled with errors. To fix them, the imperial court would have to reform one of the most essential institutions in the empire: The Bureau of Astronomy.

In the 9th century CE, Mayan astronomers were able to calculate the period of Venus down to the minute. They were only able to achieve this unrivaled accuracy because they had developed one of the most important mathematical concepts in human history, the zero.

In the 6th Century BCE, Ancient Greeks began thinking about the cosmos in a fundamentally new way. Their novel approach led them to believe the things they saw in the night sky were not ethereal, but solid bodies—balls of fire or rock that may even have inhabitants of their own.

Some four thousand years ago, Babylonians began collecting celestial data for what is arguably the longest-running project in the history of science.

Episode 1: Storytelling was one of the earliest ways humans tried to make sense of the heavens. The first object of major study was the moon, and that's because of an uncanny ability it has to keep time.

A new podcast about the history of astronomy

Episode 1 of Ways of Knowing, an audio series about the humanities. Made by The World According to Sound and The University of Washington. This episode features the work of Jesse Oak Taylor.

Episode 2 of Ways of Knowing, an audio series about the humanities. Made by The World According to Sound and The University of Washington. This episode features the work of Charles LaPorte.

Episode 3 of Ways of Knowing, an audio series about the humanities. Made by The World According to Sound and The University of Washington. This episode features the work of Habiba Ibrahim.

Episode 4 of Ways of Knowing, an audio series about the humanities. Made by The World According to Sound and The University of Washington. This episode features the work of Louisa Mackenzie.

Episode 5 of Ways of Knowing, an audio series about the humanities. Made by The World According to Sound and The University of Washington. This episode features the work of Jose Alaniz.

Episode 6 of Ways of Knowing, an audio series about the humanities. Made by The World According to Sound and The University of Washington. This episode features the work of Diana Ruíz.

Episode 7 of Ways of Knowing, an audio series about the humanities. Made by The World According to Sound and The University of Washington. This episode features the work of Chad Allen.

Episode 8 of Ways of Knowing, an audio series about the humanities. Made by The World According to Sound and The University of Washington. This episode features the work of Maya Smith.

Episode 9 of Ways of Knowing, an audio series about the humanities. Made by The World According to Sound and The University of Washington.

We're launching a virtual audio salon June 2! Details here: https://www.theworldaccordingtosound.org/listening-club

A preview of our Outside In show this Thursday! Get tickets at www.theworldaccordingtosound.org

Tickets to this listening event at https://www.theworldaccordingtosound.org/tickets/centennial-sounds

These sounds are all part of our Solitude show on March 10th. Get tickets at https://www.theworldaccordingtosound.org/tickets/solitude

These sounds are all part of our Time show on January 20th. Get tickets at https://www.theworldaccordingtosound.org/tickets/time

These sounds are all part of our Bodies show on February 17th. Get tickets at https://www.theworldaccordingtosound.org/tickets/bodies

These sounds are all part of our Transposition show on January 27th. Get tickets at www.theworldaccordingtosound.org

Come listen with us, starting January 6, 2022! https://www.theworldaccordingtosound.org/tickets

Part 9 in a three-hour radio documentary about why workers in America are so disempowered and precarious.

Part 8 in a three-hour radio documentary about why workers in America are so disempowered and precarious.

Part 7 of a three-hour documentary about why workers in America are so disempowered and precarious.

Part 6 in a three-hour documentary about why workers in America are so isolated and disempowered.

Part 5 in a three-hour documentary about the disempowerment of American workers.

Part 4 in a three-hour radio documentary about how executives and shareholders have undermined workers in America.

How We Got Here Part 3

Part 2 of a three-hour documentary about the way shareholders and managers have undermined and isolated workers over the last 50 years.

Part 1 of a three-hour radio documentary about how shareholders and managers have undermined and isolated workers over the last 50 years.

Join us every Thursday night starting 12/3/20 for over an hour of immersive, intentional listening. Go to theworldaccordingtosound.org for tickets!

Proto musique concrète.

Listening to animals that no longer exist.

Reaching the heights of hearing, yoked to the glorious streams of insect song.

An ornithic call and response.

If you would please just not sing so fast!

Designing products not with your eyes, but with your ears.

Rebuilding white noise one wavelength at a time

The sound of emptiness.

Historical reconstruction through sound.

116 – Sound Break: Sand by Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett

Utterly stupefying and unexpected.

Recreating extinct environments.

A director's cut of our very first episode.

Parry, parry, thrust!

It's good to get exercise even when you're confined indoors.

Winged words!

The keyboard from 1750ish to the present.

Sweet nectar of the gods!

Unleash the metronomes.

Singing underwater.

The eeriness of numbers.

And to every thing that creepeth upon the earth...

Modern-day note-taking.

An artifice of ambient nature.

From the forge of Hephaestus himself. Or something like that.

A very particular piece of the soundscape of sports.

The mother of all synths.

Dissecting the organ, pipe-box by pipe-box.

Motion rendered as sound.

Sports must go on!

Some time out to listen.

When you're given the opportunity to stick your hands holding two microphones (ORTF stereo) through a mesh net into a cage swarming with mosquitos, you do it.

"You're nothing but skin and bones!" cried Gregor Samsa.

A drawback of being sighted: your brain can't keep up with winged words.

Machinery and processes...team WATS is into them right now. This week: milk, curds, bacteria, and mold.

I'd like my vegetables with a side of plastic wrap, please.

Listening to that rarest of grapes: a factory in the U.S.

Write me some music!

An original audio storyteller.

Oh the things you hear in the middle of the night on AM radio.

The modern generation of audio makers lies in the shadow of this show.

NPR used to be willing to experiment with the format of the radio it made.

Bringing the war into your living room.

The reverberation is awesome.

It's so good it will put you to sleep and you'll be happy about it.

Radio reporting live on scene pretty much started with the Hindenburg.

Things change fast.

Beef sandwich beef sandwich beef sandwich beef sandwich beef sandwich beef sandwich beef sandwich beef sandwich beef sandwich beef sandwich beef sandwich beef sandwich beef sandwich beef sandwich crumpets crumpets crumpets crumpets crumpets crumpets crumpets crumpets crumpets crumpets crumpets crumpets crumpets crumpets crumpets crumpets crumpets crumpets crumpets crumpets... Thanks to Elliot Smoke for this wonderful piece of audio.

Everybody's talking at the same time.

We know Penelope could use one. Unclear whether anybody today can.

He is the only one who has ever been recorded singing this way.

So many winning numbers, so so many hours of singing.

If I had eight legs and pedipalps, I'd probably do this too.

European cows grazing.

Gas imploding under water isn't relegated just to your bathtub.

Laughter from beyond the grave.

A day in the life of nature at Yellowstone National Park.

A fire rages in Yellowstone National Park.

The first in a series of recordings from Yellowstone National Park.

We've been gone a while, but new episodes are coming! Here's a taste.

The World According to Sound rolls into Manheim, PA, to drop off its inimitable Claire Brothers loudspeakers and effectively bring their tour to an end.

A few minutes before showtime in Boston.

Ambulations along a beach on Cape Cod.

At a gas station in Lee, Massachusetts.

A soundcheck from the balcony of an empty opera house.

An hour and a half before our show at Skidmore, we got an inside tip about a reverberant paradise.

The morning after the first live show in Burlington, VT, WATS needed to do a little cleaning.

On the eve of The World According to Sound's East Coast tour, inclement weather in Vermont gave our tour van some problems.

The soothing sounds of blood pumping through your brain.

Achtung! I guess if I had to secretly communicate with foreign agents, I'd just say a bunch of random numbers too.

33 percent of America's electricity comes from coal. You're probably using energy generated from that black rock right now. It's extracted from the ground by guys like Mackie Branham.

Not all of America takes kindly to Trump's ban of immigrants.

Making plum wine in your kitchen is unexpectedly melodious.

The confederate war cry resembled "a foxhunt yip mixed up with sort of a banshee squall."

The mellifluous tones of a Japanese electronics store.

The sound of Donald Trump getting elected in San Francisco.

This song shows that Western music is almost a 1,000 years older than we used to believe.

About a hundred years ago, Berlin sounded like this.

The Pacific Ocean's uncanny undulations.

Language as anti-content.

Sometimes you need to make do with the greenery at hand.

Come sit in the dark with us and take in some aural delights!

The first long episode of The World According to Sound. Whoa.

It could be a grim future for music.

This auditory illusion is almost enough to make you go mad.

Mariah Carey made this famous, but its been a part of pop for a long time.

This acoustic instrument can kick the ass of any electric one.

A cat organ fit for a king. Or, at least a prince.

Gotta do a little spelunking to play these pipes.

A classic, but not classy way to keep the poor away from your place of business.

Just because you like Beethoven doesn't mean your cat does.

Convulsing for a minute with sticks in your hands.

Many American pop hits have been used for a dark purpose.

Sell! Sell! Sell!

During the Holocaust, prisoners in concentration camps wrote songs like this.

The road less travelled never sang to you, did it?

Speaking with our dappled, long-necked animal friends.

Inventing a language at the age of two. Sign up on our website to hear more episodes: http://bit.ly/1oGTcHz

If the sand should sing your praises, they would outnumber the stars in heaven. Sign up on our website to hear more episodes: http://bit.ly/1oGTcHz

Musique concrète takes a trip to the laundromat. Sign up on our website to hear more episodes: http://bit.ly/1oGTcHz

We wonder if piano teachers actually instruct their students to squeal, groan, and hum as they play. Read More: http://www.theworldaccordingtosound.org/2016/04/17/35-vocalization.html

God, ants are SO loud when they walk! Thanks to Stephen Frost for the recording. Check out his other projects here! http://www.earthvibes.com.au

Listening to sounds you can't actually hear. Read more: http://www.theworldaccordingtosound.org/2016/03/01/31-infrasound.html

I too would like to have an ornithological larynx.

This piece of music has been co-opted like no other. To hear more episodes, go to www.theworldaccordingtosound.org

The most powerful economy in the world at work. To hear more episodes, go to www.theworldaccordingtosound.org

The randomness of a hundred different rhythms. To hear more episodes, go to www.theworldaccordingtosound.org/

This song will finish in about another 600 years. To hear more episodes, go to www.theworldaccordingtosound.org/

Hearing the ripples in space-time. To hear more episodes, go to http://www.theworldaccordingtosound.org/

Being surrounded by invisible streams of data. To hear more episodes, go to http://www.theworldaccordingtosound.org/

By the time you hear this trumpet, it's probably too late.

According to some, you need more than musical talent to make charming music. The recording of The Hour of Charm in this episode was preserved by the Stanford Archive of Recorded Sound. library.stanford.edu/ars To hear more episodes, go to http://www.theworldaccordingtosound.org/

Let's take a listen to the rainbow. To hear more episodes, go to http://www.theworldaccordingtosound.org/

The world's largest encyclopedia as music. To hear more episodes, go to http://www.theworldaccordingtosound.org/

Be careful of which songs you cover. To hear more episodes, go to http://www.theworldaccordingtosound.org/

Sometimes the less you know about the artist the better. To hear more episodes, go to http://www.theworldaccordingtosound.org/

The sounds of people channeling the divine. To hear more episodes go to www.theworldaccordingtosound.org

A dead language brought back to life. To hear more episodes go to www.theworldaccordingtosound.org

The sound of your life on hold. To hear more episodes, go to http://www.theworldaccordingtosound.org/

Between 10 and 15 percent of us hear things like this constantly. To hear more episodes, go to www.theworldaccordingtosound.org

Dealing with digital death. To hear more episodes, go to www.theworldaccordingtosound.org.

Sometimes you just don't want to hear anything in a song. To hear more episodes, go to http://www.theworldaccordingtosound.org/

We still don't understand how CNN would know when to play this. To hear more episodes, go to www.theworldaccordingtosound.org.

Athletes deep in focus. To hear more episodes, go to www.theworldaccordingtosound.org.

These noises can be heard all around the earth. Constantly. To hear more episodes, go to www.theworldaccordingtosound.org.

A gibberish song with a secret message. To hear more episodes, go to www.theworldaccordingtosound.org.

Just a couple of guys having a little chat. The recordings come from the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Mexico. http://bit.ly/1LoofSW To hear more episodes, go to www.theworldaccordingtosound.org.

Odorless and harmonious toots.

Jarrad Wale made a recording that lets you into someone else's head. To hear more episodes, go to www.theworldaccordingtosound.org.

A masterpiece from IBM and HAL. To hear more episodes, go to www.theworldaccordingtosound.org.

Jodi Rose records the secret songs of bridges all over the world. To hear more episodes, go to www.theworldaccordingtosound.org.

Bird is definitely the word. To hear more episodes, go to www.theworldaccordingtosound.org.

Bloop. Bloop bloop. Sign up on our website to hear more episodes: http://bit.ly/1oGTcHz