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Doubts And Difficulties
Doubt is a mental state in which the mind remains suspended between two or more contradictory propositions, unable to be certain of any of them. Doubt on an emotional level is indecision between belief and disbelief. It may involve uncertainty, distrust or lack of conviction on certain facts, actions, motives, or decisions. Doubt can result in delaying or rejecting relevant action out of concern for mistakes or missed opportunities. Psychology Partial or intermittent negative reinforcement can create an effective climate of fear and doubt. Philosophy Descartes employed Cartesian doubt as a pre-eminent methodological tool in his fundamental philosophical investigations. Branches of philosophy like logic devote much effort to distinguish the dubious, the probable and the certain. Much of illogic rests on dubious assumptions, dubious data or dubious conclusions, with rhetoric, whitewashing, and deception playing their accustomed roles. Theology Doubt as a path to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mental State
A mental state, or a mental property, is a state of mind of a person. Mental states comprise a diverse class, including perception, pain experience, belief, desire, intention, emotion, and memory. There is controversy concerning the exact definition of the term. According to '' epistemic approaches'', the essential mark of mental states is that their subject has privileged epistemic access while others can only infer their existence from outward signs. '' Consciousness-based approaches'' hold that all mental states are either conscious themselves or stand in the right relation to conscious states. '' Intentionality-based approaches'', on the other hand, see the power of minds to refer to objects and represent the world as the mark of the mental. According to '' functionalist approaches'', mental states are defined in terms of their role in the causal network independent of their intrinsic properties. Some philosophers deny all the aforementioned approaches by holding that the term " ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whitewash (censorship)
Whitewashing is the act of glossing over or covering up vices, crimes or scandals or exonerating by means of a perfunctory investigation or biased presentation of data."Whitewash", Encyclopædia Britannica, 2003 DVD Ultimate reference suite. Etymology The first known use of the term is from 1591 in England. Whitewash is a cheap white paint or coating of chalked lime that was used to quickly give a uniform clean appearance to a wide variety of surfaces, such as the interior of a barn. Usage In 1800, in the United States, the word was used in a political context, when a Philadelphia ''Aurora'' editorial said that "if you do not whitewash President Adams speedily, the Democrats, like swarms of flies, will bespatter him all over, and make you both as speckled as a dirty wall, and as black as the devil." In the 20th century, many dictatorships, authoritarian and totalitarian states used whitewashing in order to glorify the results of war. For instance, during the Soviet invasion of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Doubting Thomas
A doubting Thomas is a skeptic who refuses to believe without direct personal experience — a reference to the Gospel of John's depiction of the Apostle Thomas, who, in John's account, refused to believe the resurrected Jesus had appeared to the ten other apostles until he could see and feel Jesus' crucifixion wounds. In art, the episode (formally called the Incredulity of Thomas) has been frequently depicted since at least the 15th century, with its depiction reflecting a range of theological interpretations. Gospel account The episode is related in chapter 20 of the Gospel of John, but not in the three synoptic Gospels. The text of the King James Version is as follows: Commentators have noted that John avoids saying whether Thomas actually did "thrust" his hand in. Before the Protestant Reformation the usual belief, reflected in artistic depictions, was that he had done so, which most Catholic writers continued to believe, while Protestant writers often thought that he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fact And Fancy
''Fact and Fancy'' is a collection of seventeen scientific essays by American writer and scientist Isaac Asimov. It was the first in a series of books collecting his essays from ''The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction'', and Asimov's second book of science essays altogether (after ''Only a Trillion''). Doubleday & Company first published it in March 1962. It was also published in paperback by Pyramid Books as part of The Worlds of Science series. After he had written 200 essays for ''Fantasy and Science Fiction'' (out of 399 in the end), Asimov wrote of them "To this day I get more pleasure out of them than out of any other writing assignment I get."Asimov (1975), ''Buy Jupiter'' (VGSF 1988 edition) p. 125 The only essay that did not appear in ''Fantasy and Science Fiction'' was "Our Lonely Planet", which first appeared in ''Astounding Science Fiction ''Analog Science Fiction and Fact'' is an American science fiction magazine published under various titles since 193 ... [...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] |
Further Research Is Needed
The phrases "further research is needed" (FRIN), "more research is needed" and other variants are commonly used in research papers. The cliché is so common that it has attracted research, regulation and cultural commentary. Meaning Some research journals have banned the phrase "more research is needed" on the grounds that it is redundant; it is almost always true and fits almost any article, and so can be taken as understood. A 2004 metareview by the Cochrane collaboration of their own systematic medical reviews found that 93% of the reviews studied made indiscriminate FRIN-like statements, reducing their ability to guide future research. The presence of FRIN had no correlation with the strength of the evidence against the medical intervention. Authors who thought a treatment was useless were just as likely to recommend researching it further. Indeed, authors may recommend "further research" when, given the existing evidence, further research would be extremely unlikely to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientific Method
The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientific method for additional detail.) It involves careful observation, applying rigorous skepticism about what is observed, given that cognitive assumptions can distort how one interprets the observation. It involves formulating hypotheses, via induction, based on such observations; the testability of hypotheses, experimental and the measurement-based statistical testing of deductions drawn from the hypotheses; and refinement (or elimination) of the hypotheses based on the experimental findings. These are ''principles'' of the scientific method, as distinguished from a definitive series of steps applicable to all scientific enterprises. Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, the underlying process is frequently the sa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henri Poincaré
Jules Henri Poincaré ( S: stress final syllable ; 29 April 1854 – 17 July 1912) was a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and philosopher of science. He is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as "The Last Universalist", since he excelled in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime. As a mathematician and physicist, he made many original fundamental contributions to pure and applied mathematics, mathematical physics, and celestial mechanics. In his research on the three-body problem, Poincaré became the first person to discover a chaotic deterministic system which laid the foundations of modern chaos theory. He is also considered to be one of the founders of the field of topology. Poincaré made clear the importance of paying attention to the invariance of laws of physics under different transformations, and was the first to present the Lorentz transformations in their modern symmetrical form. Poincaré discove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard ( , , ; 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on organized religion, Christianity, morality, ethics, psychology, and the philosophy of religion, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony, and parables. Much of his philosophical work deals with the issues of how one lives as a "single individual", giving priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking and highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment. He was against literary critics who defined idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, and thought that Swedenborg, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schlegel, and Hans Christian Andersen were all "understood" far too quickly by "scholars". Kierkegaard's theological work focuses on Christian ethics, the institution of the Church, the differences between purely ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
