Philosophy & Ethics
For the sake of argument
Argument - a discussion for the purpose of making something clear.
Sake - benefit.
To introduce an idea 'for the sake of argument' does not mean bringing up an idea to provoke a flaming row. It means introducing an idea into a discussion for the betterment of the process of making something clear.
Is that clear now?
Right! I don't want to hear any more arguments about it.
Credit:
Tip of the hat to the letter Aitch
Bad habits of ineffective science: Trends in Biochemical Sciences has a piece on Mental inertia in the biological sciences. I'm not quite sure what to make of it, but the piece does contain some interesting thoughts on hot topics vs. important topics:
Almost any scientist wants to work on solving an important problem, but at any given moment, it can be difficult to distinguish the topics that are ‘important’ from those that are ‘hot’. Often the scientific community does not immediately recognize the true significance of the work, and it can remain obscure for many years...
A scientist…
Lapham's Quarterly has published a long essay, Secular Revival by Warren Breckman, editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas. The article starts by looking at the dream of the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment; that of a brand new world high in secularism and low in religious delusions. As we know, it hasn't materialised. Indeed, apart from Europe (or at least among native Europeans) religion seems to be as much a part of the landscape as it ever was. Unable to land that mortal blow to religions, is secularism itself withering away?
Without answering that particular question,…
camdic |
Avalon, "Isle of the Blessed", is a legendary island famous for its beautiful apples, featured in the Arthurian legend described by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain).
Geoffrey of Monmouth (1100-1135) wrote several works in latin being this the used language of learning and literature in Europe during the medieval period.
He wrote before 1135 the Prophetiae Merlini (Prophecies of Merlin), a series of obscure prophetic declarations attributed to Merlin translated from an unspecified language.
Avalon has equivalent in Indo-European…
This is an authorized English translation of the paper by an outstandingRussian economist Mikhail Gennadievich Delyagin, as appeared in theRussian-speaking Internet on 19.03.2009 under the following URL address:
http://www.ej.ru/?a=note&id=8902
The translation has been carried out by Evgeni B. Starikov, ex-Soviet biophysicist working since about 20 years in Germany and a number of other countries, who added to the original paper a number of congenial thoughts based upon the own everyday experience. This paper deals with the critical and ambiguous situation in the modern official science,…
Babylonian astronomy sounds a lot like some areas of omics/computational biology today:
Looking back at Babylonian astronomy from the twentieth century, one is struck by two things: the care with which the records were kept, and the mathematical brilliance of the predictive techniques. Eventually, science was to owe a great debt to the Babylonian astronomers, for speculative theories about the Heavens could, in the long run, be tested only by seeing how far they explained the observed motions of the heavenly bodies. The Babylonian material was to be fundamentalfor Hipparchos and Ptolemy. One…
Recently, I came across a review paper that shows a considerable amount, of progress in the last decade or so, in the understanding of the structure of liquids. That paper “The Structure of Liquid Water; Novel Insights from Materials Research; Potential Relevance to Homeopathy” constitutes a comprehensive review of work in the field. The authors, Rustum Roy, W.A. Tiller, Iris Bell and M.R. Hoover, are not lightweights in the science field, though many mainstreamers are likely to find fault, not least because the thrust of the paper and the evidence…
ayad |
QUESTIONS SCIENCECAN NEVER ANSWER
Ayad Gharbawi
February 20,2010 – Damascus, Syria
Thereare far too many aspects of ‘Reality’ that atheistic scientists/philosopherssimply cannot and will never be able to ‘explain’.
Why?
Notbecause, as they repeatedly say, our technology has not reached an answer yet,but simply because, our minds are not capable of understanding.
Forexample, we can never define or describe what any colour ‘means’ to ahuman who has never seen that particular colour.
Thesame goes for sound – music, for example. We can never express orexplain…
A Personal Belief Tester : Batteries Not Included
We all have our personal beliefs; it's a part of being human. Mostly, we can believe just about anything we want at a purely philosophical level. But when we interact with others and with our environment, our beliefs may well cause harm to us, to others or to our environment.
It is possible to hold beliefs that cause harm without being held liable for that harm, or more likely: without ever becoming aware of that harm. Our entire global economy is founded on the division of labor. Producers, at first individuals, then…
(Note: Please excuse my lack of a symbolic logic font. LaTeX doesn’t suit my preferences.)(If you haven’t read the first three parts of this series, you’re just asking for a spanking. Go here.)
Firstly, I must point out that we are, at this time, dismissing defining the final term in the generator: U, save to say that it, through a complexity requiring its own chapter , for now will be put as “that which is good, right or true” and specifically not the opposite. If you prefer you may think of U, for now, as being generally positive and ~U as being generally negative. U stands for eudaemonia.…