Ideas and statistics

1953 ◽  
Vol 11 (04) ◽  
pp. 189-208
Author(s):  
F. M. Redington

I have long wanted to give vent to the thoughts in this talk and therefore I should start by saying ‘Thank you’ for providing me with an audience. Although the broad ideas have been in my mind for a long time, when it came to the point I had considerable difficulty in deciding just what to say and particularly in choosing a suitable title. I am far from satisfied with the somewhat pretentious name with which I have christened the infant, but it does I hope convey the thought that although I shall be talking about statistics—a fact which may or may not be an attraction and was therefore better not concealed—it will not be in a detailed technical sense. Indeed one of my first duties must be to disavow, not only any desire but any considerable ability to expound on statistics in detail.I have reached the age in life when I begin to gain much comfort from the thought that what matters is not the facts you know but the way you think. It is a comforting thought when you have forgotten most of the facts.

2003 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRIAN ZAMULINSKI

This is a new argument to the effect that religions are not truth-oriented. In other words, it is not a fundamental function of religion to represent the world accurately. I compare two hypotheses with respect to their likelihood (in A. W. F. Edwards's technical sense). The one which entails that religion is not truth-oriented is a better explanation than its competitor for a number of empirical observations about religion. It is also at least as probable. I point out that, once one has established that religions are not truth-oriented, it is possible to argue that religions are false and it is possible to run a sound ad hominem argument against religious believers who advance religious claims. I suggest that the results are early ones and that what matters is evaluating religion in the way I illustrate in this paper. The ad hominem argument shows that the question of whether religion is truth-oriented is particularly important.


2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 400-416
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Kienzler

The way Frege presented the Square of Opposition in a reduced form in 1879 and 1910 can be used to develop two distinct versions of the square: The traditional square that displays inferences and a “Table of Oppositions” displaying variations of negation. This Table of Oppositions can be further simplified and thus be made more symmetrical. A brief survey of versions of the square from Aristotle to the present shows how both aspects of the square have coexisted for a very long time without ever being properly distinguished.


Author(s):  
Derek Parfit

This third volume of this series develops further previous treatment of reasons, normativity, the meaning of moral discourse, and the status of morality. It engages with critics, and shows the way to resolution of their differences. This volume is partly about what it is for things to matter, in the sense that we all have reasons to care about these things. Much of the book discusses three of the main kinds of meta-ethical theory: normative naturalism, quasi-realist expressivism, and non-metaphysical non-naturalism, which this book refers to as non-realist cognitivism. This third theory claims that, if we use the word ‘reality’ in an ontologically weighty sense, irreducibly normative truths have no mysterious or incredible ontological implications. If instead we use ‘reality’ in a wide sense, according to which all truths are truths about reality, this theory claims that some non-empirically discoverable truths — such as logical, mathematical, modal, and some normative truths — raise no difficult ontological questions. This book discusses these theories partly by commenting on the views of some of the contributors to Peter Singer's collection Does Anything Really Matter? Parfit on Objectivity.


Author(s):  
Robert Wiśniewski

Christians always admired and venerated martyrs who died for their faith, but for a long time thought that the bodies of martyrs should remain undisturbed in their graves. Initially, the Christian attitude toward the bones of the dead, whether a saint’s or not, was that of respectful distance. This book tells how, in the mid-fourth century, this attitude started to change, swiftly and dramatically. The first chapters show the rise of new beliefs. They study how, when, and why Christians began to believe in the power of relics, first, over demons, then over physical diseases and enemies; how they sought to reveal hidden knowledge at the tombs of saints and why they buried the dead close to them. An essential element of this new belief was a strong conviction that the power of relics was transferred in a physical way and so subsequent chapters study relics as material objects. The book seeks to show what the contact with relics looked like and how close it was. Did people touch, kiss, or look at the very bones, or just at reliquaries which contained them? When did the custom of dividing relics appear? Finally, the book deals with discussions and polemics concerning relics and tries to find out how strong was the opposition which this new phenomenon had to face, both within and outside Christianity on the way to relics becoming an essential element of medieval religiosity.


1952 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. K. C. Guthrie

I recently became aware that I had for a long time entertained certain preconceptions about the way in which Presocratic thinkers saw the world, without ever having seriously considered the evidence on which my belief was based. This I have now tried to do, with the results which are set forth in this paper. Since in any case it will deal, in a fairly general way, with problems concerning the interaction of philosophical and religious thought in early Greece, I hope it will have a certain interest, whether or not its readers agree with the thesis put forward. The perennial fascination of that topic has been enhanced in recent years by the discussion provoked by Werner Jaeger's book on The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers, from which I take this sentence as a kind of text for my own reflections: “Though philosophy means death to the old gods, it is itself religion.”


1982 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. H. Morris-Jones

Those who kindly invited me to give this lecture showed some resistance to its sub-title. I insisted on ‘a view from the sidelines’ because I wished to emphasize that my remarks would be based on my own presence at the events of 1947 and confined to those matters with which I had direct acquaintance. This is still largely true: mine is in part an undisguisedly personal tale. But the matter is rather more complicated. For one thing, while I was certainly a spectator I was also able for a couple of months in 1947 to scamper on to a segment of New Delhi's field of fateful play, even to get a touch or two of the ball, before returning to my place on the terraces. But for the purpose of this lecture I could not content myself with recollections; I have, as it were, examined the slow re-plays of the television cameras. In trying to match my memories, diaries and letters from 1947 with the files at India Office Records, there have, I confess, been phases of bewilderment on the way to such modest and provisional enlightenment as I can offer. It is not simply that in the 34 years the world has moved on, the perspective has changed; that is a problem which the historian's whole skill is devoted to overcome. The difficulty is aggravated when the spectator cum minor actor in the drama of yesteryear puts on the historian's robe; for not only the world but he with it has changed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-94
Author(s):  
Eka Puspita Sari ◽  
Asri Wahyuni ◽  
Narti Narti

Abstract: A system of data input and the grade of students who still use manual way namely by filling form of data on student and the grades of students in the form of paper sheet done by administration and teacher. Besides needed a place the immense storage, to find files need a require a long time, because that is the way are considered less effective. Websites is information in word wide web stored in different file as a page web. Academic information system web-based can manage academic information with more effective. The software used for develop information system web is PHP and MySQL for databases. Keywords : Php, MySQL, System, Information, Education


2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (02) ◽  
pp. C04
Author(s):  
Fabio Fornasari

Man, by his very nature, puts things between himself and the environment, turning the latter into a place, a space. He arranges the environment around him on multiple levels, by projecting parts of himself and shaping the frontiers and the horizons that surround, define and represent him. This was learnt a long time ago, but a trace and a memory remain in the way man acts: when mapping reality (both physical reality and the reality explored through digital means), we observe it and find a way through it by adopting behaviours that have always been similar. What has changed in this mapping is the ability to recognise, especially the ability to interpret maps and creatively work them.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 84 (4) ◽  
pp. A64-A64
Author(s):  
J. F. L.

Prof. David Baltimore of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is under attack by Representative John Dingell of Michigan. Why should anyone outside of the Government or basic biomedical research care? Dr. Baltimore's reputation is at stake, but the rest of us will be affected by the outcome of these investigations as well. What has come under a legislative cloud for the first time in a very long time, perhaps ever in this country, is the legitimacy of the scientific method itself. This is an immediate and serious threat to science and medicine. The N.I.H. will have the last word on Dr. Baltimore's published research. But as I understand the Congressman's case, it is that published science must be free of error, and that error itself indicates bad faith and fraudulent intent. This is wrong. Published error is at the heart of any real science. We scientists love to do experiments that show our colleagues to be wrong and, if they are any good, they love to show us to be wrong in turn. By this adversarial process, science reveals the way nature actually works. If we as a country make science a field for only those who enjoy a good lawsuit, we will have shut the door on our future as a technologically serious nation. Clearly Congress cannot wish to do this. I would welcome a Congressional initiative to deal with fraud as such, but I fear that the way Dr. Baltimore is being treated means that witch-hunts are in the offing.


Author(s):  
Kátia da Costa Bezerra

The chapter focuses on the way museums, historical areas, and iconic architecture become a key asset in the promotion of an urban identity and branding. The chapter examines the various facets of the Wonder Port project and its consequence for local residents. It studies more specifically the key role played by art in the production of conflicting and sometimes contradictory spatial imaginaries. The chapter shows the tensions between Rio Art Museum’s architecture and exhibits and community-based social and cultural projects such as Morrinho (Little Hill) and the Inside Out Morro da Providência project. It illustrates how top-down market-oriented social policies of displacement of long-time residents are put into question by favela-based cultural producers.


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