And other pearls of wisdom.

This is a great Radiolab (WYNC’s Jad & Robert) podcast on insight and computers and limits of knowledge. It is only ten minutes.

Consider the motion of a pendulum–a ball at the end of a string. Swinging. Left to right. Then the double pendulum. Suspend a second ball on a string tied to the first. The motion is chaotic.

Dr. Steve Strogatz wonders if we’ve reached the limits of human scientific understanding, and should soon turn the reins of research over to robots. Cold, calculating robots. Then, Dr. Hod Lipson and Michael Schmidt walk us through the workings of a revolutionary computer program that they developed–a program that can deduce mathematical relationships in nature, through simple observation. The catch? As Dr. Gurol Suel explains, the program gives answers to complex biological questions that we humans have yet to ask, or even to understand

You can listen to the whole hour is you’d like at: //blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2010/04/05/limits