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Bonini's Paradox
Bonini's paradox, named after Stanford business professor Charles Bonini, explains the difficulty in constructing models or simulations that fully capture the workings of complex systems (such as the human brain). Statements In modern discourse, the paradox was articulated by John M. Dutton and William H. Starbuck: "As a model of a complex system becomes more complete, it becomes less understandable. Alternatively, as a model grows more realistic, it also becomes just as difficult to understand as the real-world processes it represents." This paradox may be used by researchers to explain why complete models of the human brain and thinking processes have not been created and will undoubtedly remain difficult for years to come. This same paradox was observed earlier from a quote by philosopher-poet Paul Valéry (1871–1945): "Ce qui est simple est toujours faux. Ce qui ne l’est pas est inutilisable". ("If it's simple, it's always false. If it's not, it's unusable.") Also, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considered among the most prestigious universities in the world. Stanford was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., who had died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Leland Stanford was a U.S. senator and former governor of California who made his fortune as a railroad tycoon. The school admitted its first students on October 1, 1891, as a coeducational and non-denominational institution. Stanford University struggled financially after the death of Leland Stanford in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, provost of Stanford Frederick Terman inspired and supported faculty and graduates' entrepreneu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Levins
Richard "Dick" Levins (June 1, 1930 – January 19, 2016) was an ex-tropical farmer turned ecologist, a population geneticist, biomathematician, mathematical ecologist, and philosopher of science who researched diversity in human populations. Until his death, Levins was a university professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a long-time political activist. He was best known for his work on evolution and complexity in changing environments and on metapopulations. Levins also had written on philosophical issues in biology and modelling. One of his influential articles is "The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology". He has influenced a number of contemporary philosophers of biology. Levins often boasted publicly that he was a 'fourth generation Marxist' and often had said that the methodology in his ''Evolution in Changing Environments'' was based upon the introduction to Marx's ''Grundrisse'', the author's notes (not published until 1939) for ''Da ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foundation Series
The ''Foundation'' series is a science fiction book series written by American author Isaac Asimov. First published as a series of short stories in 1942–50, and subsequently in three collections in 1951–53, for thirty years the series was a trilogy: ''Foundation''; ''Foundation and Empire''; and ''Second Foundation''. It won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. Asimov began adding new volumes in 1981, with two sequels: ''Foundation's Edge'' and ''Foundation and Earth'', and two prequels: ''Prelude to Foundation'' and ''Forward the Foundation''. The premise of the stories is that, in the waning days of a future Galactic Empire, the mathematician Hari Seldon spends his life developing a theory of psychohistory, a new and effective mathematics of sociology. Using statistical laws of mass action, it can predict the future of large populations. Seldon foresees the imminent fall of the Empire, which encompasses the entire Milky Way, and a Dark Age lasting ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Psychohistory (fictional)
Psychohistory is a fictional science in Isaac Asimov's ''Foundation'' universe which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people, such as the Galactic Empire. It was first introduced in the four short stories (1942–1944) which would later be collected as the 1951 novel ''Foundation''. In-universe Axioms Psychohistory depends on the idea that, while one cannot foresee the actions of a particular individual, the laws of statistics as applied to large groups of people could predict the general flow of future events. Asimov used the analogy of a gas: An observer has great difficulty in predicting the motion of a single molecule in a gas, but with the kinetic theory can predict the mass action of the gas to a high level of accuracy. Asimov applied this concept to the population of his fictional Galactic Empire, which numbered one quintillion. The character responsible for the science ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isaac Asimov
yi, יצחק אזימאװ , birth_date = , birth_place = Petrovichi, Russian SFSR , spouse = , relatives = , children = 2 , death_date = , death_place = Manhattan, New York City, U.S. , nationality = Russian (1920–1922)Soviet (1922–1928)American (1928–1992) , occupation = Writer, professor of biochemistry , years_active = 1939–1992 , genre = Science fiction (hard SF, social SF), mystery, popular science , subject = Popular science, science textbooks, essays, history, literary criticism , education = Columbia University ( BA, MA, PhD) , movement = Golden Age of Science Fiction , module = , signature = Isaac Asimov signature.svg Isaac Asimov ( ; 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
On Exactitude In Science
"On Exactitude in Science" or "On Rigor in Science" (the original Spanish-language title is "Del rigor en la ciencia") is a one-paragraph short story written in 1946 by Jorge Luis Borges, about the map–territory relation, written in the form of a literary forgery. Plot The Borges story, credited fictionally as a quotation from "Suárez Miranda, ''Viajes de varones prudentes'', Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lérida, 1658", imagines an empire where the science of cartography becomes so exact that only a map on the same scale as the empire itself will suffice. " cceeding Generations... came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome... In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar..." Publication history The story was first published in the March 1946 edition of ''Los Anales de Buenos Aires'', ''año 1, no. 3'' as part of a piece called "Museo" under the name B. Lynch Davis, a joint pseudonym of Borges and Adolfo Bioy Ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sylvie And Bruno Concluded
Sylvie may refer to: * Sylvie (novel), ''Sylvie'' (novel), an 1853 novel by Gérard de Nerval * Sylvie (actress) (1883–1970), French actress * Sylvie (band), a Canadian rock band from Regina, active in the 2000s * Sylvie (album), ''Sylvie'' (album), a 1962 album by Sylvie Vartan * Sylvie (song), "Sylvie" (song), a 1998 song by Saint Etienne People with the given name * Sylvie Andrich-Duval (born 1958), Luxembourgish politician * Sylvie Andrieux (born 1961), French politician * Sylvie Bouchet Bellecourt (born 1957), French politician * Sylvie D'Amours (born 1960), Canadian politician from Quebec * Sylvie Fadlallah (born 1948), Lebanese diplomat * Sylvie Fortier (born 1958), Canadian former synchronized swimming * Sylvie Goulard (born 1964), French politician and civil servant * Sylvie Honigman (born 1965), lecturer in ancient history at Tel Aviv University * Sylvie Kauffmann (born 1955), French journalist * Sylvie Testud (born 1971), French actress * Sylvie Tolmont (born 1962), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Map–territory Relation
The map–territory relation is the relationship between an object and a representation of that object, as in the relation between a geographical territory and a map of it. Polish-American scientist and philosopher Alfred Korzybski remarked that "the map is not the territory" and that "the word is not the thing", encapsulating his view that an abstraction derived from something, or a reaction to it, is not the thing itself. Korzybski held that many people do confuse maps with territories, that is, confuse conceptual models of reality with reality itself. These ideas are crucial to general semantics, a system Korzybski originated. The relationship has also been expressed in other terms, such as "the model is not the data", "all models are wrong", and Alan Watts' "The menu is not the meal." The concept is thus quite relevant throughout ontology and applied ontology regardless of any connection to general semantics per se (or absence thereof). Its avatars are thus encountered in sema ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Scientist
__NOTOC__ ''American Scientist'' (informally abbreviated ''AmSci'') is an American bimonthly science and technology magazine published since 1913 by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. In the beginning of 2000s the headquarters was in New Haven, CT. Each issue includes feature articles written by prominent scientists and engineers who review research in fields from molecular biology to computer engineering. Each issue also includes the work of cartoonists, including those of Sidney Harris, Benita Epstein Benita L. Epstein is a prolific gag cartoonist for magazines, greeting cards, websites and newspapers. She was a regular contributor to the comic strip ''Six Chix'', distributed by King Features Syndicate. Before becoming a cartoonist, Epstein ea ..., and Mark Heath. Also included is the ''Scientists' Nightstand'' that reviews a vast range of science-related books and novels. ''American Scientist Online'' () was launched in May 2003. References External links * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stuart Gilbert
Arthur Stuart Ahluwalia Stronge Gilbert (25 October 1883 – 5 January 1969) was an English literary scholar and translator. Among his translations into English are works by Alexis de Tocqueville, Édouard Dujardin, André Malraux, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Georges Simenon, Jean Cocteau, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre. He also assisted in the translation of James Joyce's ''Ulysses'' into French. He was born at Kelvedon Hatch, Essex, on 25 October 1883, the only son of a retired army officer, Arthur Stronge Gilbert, and Melvina, daughter of Randhir Singh, the Raja of Kapurthala. He attended Cheltenham and Hertford College, Oxford, taking a first in Classical Moderations. He joined the Indian Civil Service in 1907 and, after military service in the First World War, served as a judge in Burma until 1925. He then retired, settling in France with his French-born wife Moune (née Marie Douin). He remained there for the rest of his life, except for some time spent in Wales du ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Bonini
Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was "free man". The Old English descendant of this word was '' Ċearl'' or ''Ċeorl'', as the name of King Cearl of Mercia, that disappeared after the Norman conquest of England. The name was notably borne by Charlemagne (Charles the Great), and was at the time Latinized as ''Karolus'' (as in '' Vita Karoli Magni''), later also as '' Carolus''. Some Germanic languages, for example Dutch and German, have retained the word in two separate senses. In the particular case of Dutch, ''Karel'' refers to the given name, whereas the noun ''kerel'' means "a bloke, fellow, man". Etymology The name's etymology is a Common Germanic noun ''*karilaz'' meaning "free man", which survives in English as churl (< Old English ''ċeorl''), which developed i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial support of Charles Scribner, as a printing press to serve the Princeton community in 1905. Its distinctive building was constructed in 1911 on William Street in Princeton. Its first book was a new 1912 edition of John Witherspoon's ''Lectures on Moral Philosophy.'' History Princeton University Press was founded in 1905 by a recent Princeton graduate, Whitney Darrow, with financial support from another Princetonian, Charles Scribner II. Darrow and Scribner purchased the equipment and assumed the operations of two already existing local publishers, that of the ''Princeton Alumni Weekly'' and the Princeton Press. The new press printed both local newspapers, university documents, ''The Daily Princetonian'', and later added book publishing to it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
