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Scientocracy
Scientocracy is the practice of basing public policies on science. Discourse Peter A. Ubel, an American physician, is a proponent of scientocracy. In an article titled "Scientocracy: Policy making that reflects human nature", he writes, "When I talk about Scientocracy, then, I'm not talking about a world ruled by behavioral scientists, or any other kind of scientists. Instead, I am imagining a government of the people, but informed by scientists. A world where people don't argue endlessly about whether educational vouchers will improve schools, whether gun control will reduce crime, or whether health savings accounts can lower health care expenditures,... but one instead where science has a chance to show us whether vouchers, gun control laws, and health savings accounts work and, if so, under what conditions." Deepak Kumar, a historian, has written about the "Emergence of 'Scientocracy'" in India. Earlier use Florence Caddy (1837–1923) wrote a book titled ''Through the fie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evidence-based Policy
Evidence-based policy is an idea in public policy proposing that policy decisions should be based on, or informed by, rigorously established objective evidence. The implied contrast is with policymaking based on ideology, 'common sense,' anecdotes, and intuitions. It is the government equivalent of the effective altruism movement. Evidence-based policy uses a thorough research method, such as randomized controlled trials (RCT). Good data, analytical skills, and political support to the use of scientific information are typically seen as the crucial elements of an evidence-based approach. Some have promoted particular types of evidence as 'best' for policymakers to consider, including scientifically rigorous evaluation studies such as randomized controlled trials to identify programs and practices capable of improving policy-relevant outcomes. However, some areas of policy-relevant knowledge may not be well served by quantitative research. This has led to a debate about the ty ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Technocracy
Technocracy is a form of government in which the decision-maker or makers are selected based on their expertise in a given area of responsibility, particularly with regard to scientific or technical knowledge. This system explicitly contrasts with representative democracy, the notion that elected representatives should be the primary decision-makers in government, though it does not necessarily imply eliminating elected representatives. Decision-makers are selected based on specialized knowledge and performance rather than political affiliations, parliamentary skills, or popularity. p.35 (p.44 of PDF), p.35 The term ''technocracy'' was initially used to signify the application of the scientific method to solving social problems. In its most extreme form, technocracy is an entire government running as a technical or engineering problem and is mostly hypothetical. In more practical use, technocracy is any portion of a bureaucracy run by technologists. A government in which elected ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for scientific reasoning is tens of thousands of years old. The earliest written records in the history of science come from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of the Middle Ages, but was preserved in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age and later by the efforts of Byzantine Greek scholars who brought Greek ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chris Mooney (journalist)
Christopher Cole Mooney (born September 20, 1977) is an American journalist and author of four books including ''The Republican War on Science'' (2005). Mooney's writing focuses on subjects such as climate change denialism and creationism in public schools, and he has been described as "one of the few journalists in the country who specialize in the now dangerous intersection of science and politics." In 2020 he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles on global warming published in The Washington Post. Early life and education Mooney was born in Mesa, Arizona, and grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. Both of his parents were college English professors. He attended Isidore Newman School before entering Yale University, where he graduated with a B.A. in English in 1999. His interest in the natural sciences was strongly influenced by his grandfather Gerald A. Cole, a professor at Arizona State University and author of ''Textbook of Limnology'', a noted book in the field. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientific Socialism
Scientific socialism is a term coined in 1840 by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in his book ''What is Property?'' to mean a society ruled by a scientific government, i.e., one whose sovereignty rests upon reason, rather than sheer will: Thus, in a given society, the authority of man over man is inversely proportional to the stage of intellectual development which that society has reached; and the probable duration of that authority can be calculated from the more or less general desire for a true government, — that is, for a scientific government. And just as the right of force and the right of artifice retreat before the steady advance of justice, and must finally be extinguished in equality, so the sovereignty of the will yields to the sovereignty of the reason, and must at last be lost in scientific socialism. In the 1844 book '' The Holy Family'', Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels described the writings of the socialist, communist writers Théodore Dézamy and Jules Gay as truly "scie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientism
Scientism is the opinion that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality. While the term was defined originally to mean "methods and attitudes typical of or attributed to natural scientists", some scholars (and subsequently many others) also adopted it as a pejorative term with the meaning "an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities)". Overview With respect to the philosophy of science, the term ''scientism'' frequently implies a critique of the more extreme expressions of logical positivism and has been used by social scientists such as Friedrich Hayek, philosophers of science such as Karl Popper, and philosophers such as Mary Midgley, the later Hilary Putnam, and Tzvetan Todorov to describe (for example) the dogmatic endorsement of scientific methods and the reduction of all knowledge to only that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientific Management
Scientific management is a theory of management that analyzes and synthesizes workflows. Its main objective is improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes to management. Scientific management is sometimes known as Taylorism after its pioneer, Frederick Winslow Taylor. Mitcham, Carl and Adam, Briggle ''Management'' in Mitcham (2005) p. 1153 Taylor began the theory's development in the United States during the 1880s and 1890s within manufacturing industries, especially steel. Its peak of influence came in the 1910s. Although Taylor died in 1915, by the 1920s scientific management was still influential but had entered into competition and syncretism with opposing or complementary ideas. Although scientific management as a distinct theory or school of thought was obsolete by the 1930s, most of its themes are still important parts of industrial engineering and management today. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientific Consensus
Scientific consensus is the generally held judgment, position, and opinion of the majority or the supermajority of scientists in a particular field of study at any particular time. Consensus is achieved through scholarly communication at conferences, the publication process, replication of reproducible results by others, scholarly debate, and peer review. A conference meant to create a consensus is termed as a consensus conference. Such measures lead to a situation in which those within the discipline can often recognize such a consensus where it exists; however, communicating to outsiders that consensus has been reached can be difficult, because the "normal" debates through which science progresses may appear to outsiders as contestation. On occasion, scientific institutes issue position statements intended to communicate a summary of the science from the "inside" to the "outside" of the scientific community, or consensus review articles or surveys may be published. In cases wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oligarchy
Oligarchy (; ) is a conceptual form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. These people may or may not be distinguished by one or several characteristics, such as nobility, fame, wealth, education, or corporate, religious, political, or military control. Throughout history, power structures considered to be oligarchies have often been viewed as tyrannical, relying on public obedience or oppression to exist. Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as meaning rule by the rich, for which another term commonly used today is plutocracy. In the early 20th century Robert Michels developed the theory that democracies, like all large organizations, tend to turn into oligarchies. In his "Iron law of oligarchy" he suggests that the necessary division of labor in large organizations leads to the establishment of a ruling class mostly concerned with protecting their own power. Minority rule The exclusive consolidation of power by a dominant religious or et ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
McFarland & Company
McFarland & Company, Inc., is an American independent book publisher based in Jefferson, North Carolina, that specializes in academic and reference works, as well as general-interest adult nonfiction. Its president is Rhonda Herman. Its former president and current editor-in-chief is Robert Franklin, who founded the company in 1979. McFarland employs a staff of about 50, and had published 7,800 titles. McFarland's initial print runs average 600 copies per book. Subject matter McFarland & Company focuses mainly on selling to libraries. It also utilizes direct mailing to connect with enthusiasts in niche categories. The company is known for its sports literature, especially baseball history, as well as books about chess, military history, and film. In 2007, the ''Mountain Times'' wrote that McFarland publishes about 275 scholarly monographs and reference book titles a year; Robert Lee Brewer reported in 2015 that the number is about 350. List of scholarly journals The following ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gun Control
Gun control, or firearms regulation, is the set of laws or policies that regulate the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification, or use of firearms by civilians. Most countries have a restrictive firearm guiding policy, with only a few legislations being categorized as permissive. Jurisdictions that regulate access to firearms typically restrict access to only certain categories of firearms and then to restrict the categories of persons who will be granted a license to have access to a firearm. In some countries, such as the United States, gun control may be legislated at either a federal level or a local state level. Terminology and context Gun control refers to domestic regulation of firearm manufacture, trade, possession, use, and transport, specifically with regard to the class of weapons referred to as small arms ( revolvers and self-loading pistols, rifles, and carbines, assault rifles, submachine guns, and light machine guns). Usage of the term '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gary Westfahl
Gary Wesley Westfahl (born May 7, 1951) is an American scholar of science fiction. He has written reviews for the ''Los Angeles Times'', ''The Internet Review of Science Fiction'' and Locus Online. He worked at the University of California, Riverside until 2011 and is now an adjunct professor at the University of La Verne. Personal life Westfahl was born in Washington, DC, in 1951. In 1986 he graduated from Claremont University with a PhD in English. He currently resides in Claremont, California, with his wife Lynne and cats Darwin and Skippy. His daughter, Allison, is a U.S. Attorney, his son-in-law, Steven Kong, is a doctor, and his son, Jeremy Anson, teaches mathematics at UC Irvine and has retired as a professional '' Super Smash Bros. Melee'' player known as Fly Amanita. Work Westfahl coordinates English programs at the university's Learning Center and "has written or edited 24 books of scholarship on science fiction". He teaches science fiction, but has not written any ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
