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Precautionary Principle
The precautionary principle (or precautionary approach) is a broad epistemological, philosophical and legal approach to innovations with potential for causing harm when extensive scientific knowledge on the matter is lacking. It emphasizes caution, pausing and review before leaping into new innovations that may prove disastrous. Critics argue that it is vague, self-cancelling, unscientific and an obstacle to progress. In an engineering context, the precautionary principle manifests itself as the factor of safety. It was apparently suggested, in civil engineering, by Belidorde Bélidor, Bernard Forest, La science des ingénieurs, dans la conduite des travaux de fortification et d'architecture civile, Paris: Chez Claude Jombert 1729 in 1729. Interrelation between safety factor and reliability is extensively studied by engineers and philosophers. The principle is often used by policy makers in situations where there is the possibility of harm from making a certain decision (e.g. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epistemology
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowledge in the form of skills, and knowledge by acquaintance as a familiarity through experience. Epistemologists study the concepts of belief, truth, and justification to understand the nature of knowledge. To discover how knowledge arises, they investigate sources of justification, such as perception, introspection, memory, reason, and testimony. The school of skepticism questions the human ability to attain knowledge while fallibilism says that knowledge is never certain. Empiricists hold that all knowledge comes from sense experience, whereas rationalists believe that some knowledge does not depend on it. Coherentists argue that a belief is justified if it coheres with other beliefs. Foundationalists, by contrast, maintain th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles, Prince Of Wales
Charles III (Charles Philip Arthur George; born 14 November 1948) is King of the United Kingdom and the 14 other Commonwealth realms. Charles was born at Buckingham Palace during the reign of his maternal grandfather, King George VI, and became heir apparent when his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, acceded to the throne in 1952. He was created Prince of Wales in 1958 and his investiture was held in 1969. He was educated at Cheam School and Gordonstoun, and later spent six months at the Timbertop campus of Geelong Grammar School in Victoria, Australia. After completing a history degree from the University of Cambridge, Charles served in the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy from 1971 to 1976. In 1981, he married Lady Diana Spencer. They had two sons, William and Harry. After years of estrangement, Charles and Diana divorced in 1996, after they had each engaged in well-publicised extramarital affairs. Diana died as a result of injuries sustained in a car crash t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Encyclical Letter
An encyclical was originally a circular letter sent to all the churches of a particular area in the ancient Roman Church. At that time, the word could be used for a letter sent out by any bishop. The word comes from the Late Latin (originally from the Latin , a Latinization of Greek (), meaning "circular", "in a circle", or "all-round", also part of the origin of the word encyclopedia). The term is now primarily associated with papal encyclicals. The term has been used by Catholics, Anglicans and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Catholic usage Although the term "encyclical" originally simply meant a circulating letter, it acquired a more specific meaning within the context of the Catholic Church. In 1740, Pope Benedict XIV wrote a letter titled ''Ubi primum'', which is generally regarded as the first encyclical. The term is now used almost exclusively for a kind of letter sent out by the pope. For the modern Catholic Church, a papal encyclical is a specific category of papal docu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pope Francis
Pope Francis (born Jorge Mario Bergoglio; 17 December 1936 – 21 April 2025) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 13 March 2013 until Death and funeral of Pope Francis, his death in 2025. He was the first Jesuit pope, the first Latin American, and the first born or raised outside Europe since the 8th-century Syrian pope Pope Gregory III, Gregory III. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to a family of Italian Argentines, Italian origin, Bergoglio was inspired to join the Jesuits in 1958 after recovering from a severe illness. He was Ordination#Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran and Anglican churches, ordained a Catholic priest in 1969, and from 1973 to 1979 he was the Jesuit provincial superior in Argentina. He became the archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998 and was created a Cardinal (Catholic Church), cardinal in 2001 by Pope John Paul II. Following resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, the 2013 pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cartagena Protocol On Biosafety
The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity is an international agreement on biosafety as a supplement to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) effective since 2003. The Biosafety Protocol seeks to protect biological diversity from the potential risks posed by genetically modified organisms resulting from modern biotechnology. The Biosafety Protocol makes clear that products from new technologies must be based on the precautionary principle and allow developing nations to balance public health against economic benefits. It will for example let countries ban imports of genetically modified organisms if they feel there is not enough scientific evidence that the product is safe and requires exporters to label shipments containing genetically altered commodities such as corn or cotton. The required number of 50 instruments of ratification/accession/approval/acceptance by countries was reached in May 2003. In accordance with the provisions o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Treaties Of The European Union
The Treaties of the European Union are a set of international treaties between the European Union (EU) member states which sets out the EU's constitutional basis. They establish the various EU institutions together with their remit, procedures and objectives. The EU can only act within the competences granted to it through these treaties and amendment to the treaties requires the agreement and ratification (according to their national procedures) of every single signatory. Two core functional treaties, the Treaty on European Union (originally signed in Maastricht in 1992, The Maastricht Treaty) and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (originally signed in Rome in 1957 as the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community i.e. The Treaty of Rome), lay out how the EU operates, and there are a number of satellite treaties which are interconnected with them. The treaties have been repeatedly amended by other treaties over the 65 years since they were first s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commission Of The European Communities
The European Communities (EC) were three international organizations that were governed by the same set of institutions. These were the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or Euratom), and the European Economic Community (EEC), the last of which was renamed the ''European Community'' (''EC'') in 1993 by the Maastricht Treaty establishing the European Union. The European Union was established at that time more as a concept rather than an entity, while the Communities remained the actual subjects of international law impersonating the rather abstract Union, becoming at the same time its first pillar. In popular language, however, the singular ''European Community'' was sometimes used interchangeably with the plural phrase, in the sense of referring to all three entities. The European Coal and Steel Community ceased to exist in 2002 when its founding treaty expired. The European Community was merged with the second and third EU p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand (born December 14, 1938) is an American project developer and writer, best known as the co-founder and editor of the ''Whole Earth Catalog''. He has founded a number of organizations, including the WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation. He is the author of several books, most recently '' Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto''. Life Brand was born in Rockford, Illinois, and attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. He studied biology at Stanford University under Paul R. Ehrlich, graduating in 1960. As a soldier in the U.S. Army, he was a parachutist and taught infantry skills; he later expressed the view that his experience in the military had fostered his competence in organizing. A civilian again in 1962, he studied design at San Francisco Art Institute, photography at San Francisco State College, and participated in a legitimate scientific study of then-legal LSD with Myron Stolaroff's International Foun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wingspread Conference On The Precautionary Principle
The Wingspread Conference on the Precautionary Principle was a three-day academic conference where the precautionary principle was defined. The January 1998 meeting took place at Wingspread, headquarters of the Johnson Foundation in Racine, Wisconsin, and involved 35 scientists, lawyers, policy makers and environmentalists from the United States, Canada and Europe. Background The formal concept evolved out of the German socio-legal tradition in the 1930s, centering on the concept of good household management. In German the concept is ''Vorsorgeprinzip'', which translates into English as ''precaution principle''. Many of the concepts underpinning the precautionary principle pre-date the term's inception. For example, the essence of the principle is captured in a number of cautionary aphorisms such as "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure", "better safe than sorry", and "look before you leap". The precautionary principle may also be interpreted as the evolution of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Environmental Degradation
Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, referring respectively to all living and non-living things occurring naturally and the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism or a group of organisms Other physical and cultural environments *Ecology, the branch of ethology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings *Environment (systems), the surroundings of a physical system that may interact with the system by exchanging mass, energy, or other properties. *Built environment, constructed surroundings that provide the settings for human activity, ranging from the large-scale civic surroundings to the personal places *Social environment, the culture that an individual lives in, and the people and institutions with whom they interact *Market environment, business term Arts, entertainment and publishing * Environment (magazine), ''Environment'' (magazine), a p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rio Declaration
The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, often shortened to Rio Declaration, was a short document produced at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), informally known as the Earth Summit. The Rio Declaration consisted of 27 principles intended to guide countries in future sustainable development. It was signed by over 175 countries. History The Rio Conference, which adopted the Declaration, took place from 3 to 14 June 1992. Subsequently, the international community has met twice to assess the progress made in implementing the principles of the document; first in New York City in 1997 during a General Assembly Session of the UN, and then in Johannesburg in 2002. While the document helped to raise environmental awareness, evidence from 2007 suggested that little of the document's environmental goals had at that time been achieved. Content Referring to the "integral and interdependent nature of the Earth, "our home", the Rio Declaration ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Earth Summit
The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio de Janeiro Conference or the Earth Summit (Portuguese: ECO92, Cúpula da Terra), was a major United Nations conference held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992. The 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) or the Stockholm Conference, was the first global conference to address environmental issues. It took place in Stockholm, Sweden from June 5–16, 1972. Earth Summit was created as a means for member states to cooperate together internationally on development issues after the Cold War. Due to issues relating to sustainability being too big for individual member states to handle, Earth Summit was held as a platform for other member states to collaborate. A key achievement of the 1992 conference was the establishment of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) established in part as an international environmental treaty to comba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
