What Atheist Scientists Think about Science

2021 ◽  
pp. 94-119
Author(s):  
Elaine Howard Ecklund ◽  
David R. Johnson

Many scientists have an intuitive understanding of the word science but find defining it a challenge. Definitions of science provide insight into how atheist scientists demarcate science from religion and whether they believe there are limits to what science can explain. Narratives of atheist scientists emphasize science as a methodology, as a changing body of knowledge, and as the opposite of (religious) belief. A majority of atheist scientists reject the idea that science provides the only way to understand the world, but a sizeable minority assert that science can explain everything, including morals, consciousness, and nonscientific disciplines of knowledge.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivera Savic ◽  
Layla Unger ◽  
Vladimir Sloutsky

With development, we acquire a rich body of knowledge about the world. This knowledge is represented by concepts, denoted by words (e.g., juicy, apple, and pear), which are connected by meaningful, semantic links (e.g., apples and pears are similar, and can both be juicy). One potentially powerful driver of this development is sensitivity to regularities with which words co-occur in language. Specifically, language is rich in regularities that can support: (1) Associative semantic links, between words that directly co-occur (e.g., juicy - apple), and (2) Taxonomic semantic links, between words that share patterns of direct co-occurrence (e.g., apple and pear both co-occur with juicy). Here, we investigated the development of learning abilities to form semantic links from these regularities. Results revealed that both four-year-olds and adults formed semantic links based on direct co-occurrence, whereas formation of links based on shared patterns of co-occurrence was robust only in adults. Our findings further suggest that even abilities to form links based on direct co-occurrence (i.e. associative links) may improve with development, which may, in part, account for the protracted development of links based on shared co-occurrence (i.e. taxonomic links). We discuss how these results may provide key insight into how semantic organization develops.


2020 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
Kate McQueen

Journalism research broadly has begun to acknowledge a fact long accepted in the field of literary journalism: that emotional engagement can be an advantageous trait of a reported story. But there is still much to learn about how journalistic texts facilitate emotional involvement in readers. This article adds to this body of knowledge in two ways. It explores the history and theory of emotional appeals in literary journalism, and it offers an analysis of the stylistic strategies of emotive Swiss literary journalist Erwin Koch. Koch succeeds in eliciting both strong emotion and critical acclaim by using a condensed yet distanced narrative style, which is particularly effective at mirroring his subjects’ experience of being in the world. Through analysis of Koch’s work and its reception, this article offers insight into the nature of immersive reading experiences and points to opportunities for future research on the topic of affect in literary journalism.


Author(s):  
W. L. Steffens ◽  
Nancy B. Roberts ◽  
J. M. Bowen

The canine heartworm is a common and serious nematode parasite of domestic dogs in many parts of the world. Although nematode neuroanatomy is fairly well documented, the emphasis has been on sensory anatomy and primarily in free-living soil species and ascarids. Lee and Miller reported on the muscular anatomy in the heartworm, but provided little insight into the peripheral nervous system or myoneural relationships. The classical fine-structural description of nematode muscle innervation is Rosenbluth's earlier work in Ascaris. Since the pharmacological effects of some nematacides currently being developed are neuromuscular in nature, a better understanding of heartworm myoneural anatomy, particularly in reference to the synaptic region is warranted.


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.


Author(s):  
Manju Dhariwal ◽  

Written almost half a century apart, Rajmohan’s Wife (1864) and The Home and the World (1916) can be read as women centric texts written in colonial India. The plot of both the texts is set in Bengal, the cultural and political centre of colonial India. Rajmohan’s Wife, arguably the first Indian English novel, is one of the first novels to realistically represent ‘Woman’ in the nineteenth century. Set in a newly emerging society of India, it provides an insight into the status of women, their susceptibility and dependence on men. The Home and the World, written at the height of Swadeshi movement in Bengal, presents its woman protagonist in a much progressive space. The paper closely examines these two texts and argues that women enact their agency in relational spaces which leads to the process of their ‘becoming’. The paper analyses this journey of the progress of the self, which starts with Matangini and culminates in Bimala. The paper concludes that women’s journey to emancipation is symbolic of the journey of the nation to independence.


Coronaviruses ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-56
Author(s):  
Gaurav M. Doshi ◽  
Hemen S. Ved ◽  
Ami P. Thakkar

The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently announced the spread of novel coronavirus (nCoV) globally and has declared it a pandemic. The probable source of transmission of the virus, which is from animal to human and human to human contact, has been established. As per the statistics reported by the WHO on 11th April 2020, data has shown that more than sixteen lakh confirmed cases have been identified globally. The reported cases related to nCoV in India have been rising substantially. The review article discusses the characteristics of nCoV in detail with the probability of potentially effective old drugs that may inhibit the virus. The research may further emphasize and draw the attention of the world towards the development of an effective vaccine as well as alternative therapies. Moreover, the article will help to bridge the gap between the new researchers since it’s the current thrust area of research.


Author(s):  
Kenneth Bertrams ◽  
Julien Del Marmol ◽  
Sander Geerts ◽  
Eline Poelmans

AB InBev is today’s uncontested world leader of the beer market. It represents over 20 per cent of global beer sales, with more than 450 million hectolitres a year flowing all around the world. Its Belgian predecessor, Interbrew, was a success story stemming from the 1971 secret merger of the country’s two leading brewers: Artois and Piedboeuf. Based on first-hand material originating from company and private archives as well as interviews with managers and key family actors, this is the first study to explore the history of the company through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.The story starts in the mid-nineteenth century with the scientific breakthroughs that revolutionized the beer industry and allowed both Artois and Piedboeuf to prosper in a local environment. Instrumental in this respect were the respective families and their successive heirs in stabilizing and developing their firms. Despite the intense difficulties of two world wars in the decades to follow, they emerged stronger than ever and through the 1960s became undisputed leaders in the national market. Then, in an unprecedented move, Artois and Piedboeuf secretly merged their shareholding in 1971, though keeping their operations separate until 1987 when they openly and operationally merged to become Interbrew. Throughout their histories Artois, Piedboeuf, and their successor companies have kept a controlling family ownership. This book provides a unique insight into both the complex history of these three family breweries and their path to becoming a prominent global company, and the growth and consolidation of the beer market through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.


Author(s):  
T. M. Rudavsky

Of the many philosophical perplexities facing medieval Jewish thinkers, perhaps none has challenged religious belief as much as God’s creation of the world. No Jewish philosopher denied the importance of creation, that the world had a beginning (bereshit). But like their Christian and Muslim counterparts, Jewish thinkers did not always agree upon what qualifies as an acceptable model of creation. Chapter 6 is devoted to attempts of Jewish philosophers to reconcile the biblical view of creation with Greek and Islamic philosophy. By understanding the notion of creation and how an eternal, timeless creator created a temporal universe, we may begin to understand how the notions of eternity, emanation, and the infinite divisibility of time function within the context of Jewish philosophical theories of creation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-14
Author(s):  
Robert Gnuse

Psalm 104 is a majestic hymn to creation, a dynamic corollary to the more formal presentation of the creation of the world in Genesis 1. Reflection upon some of the passages provides us with insight into the biblical author’s appreciation for nature, an attitude that needs to inspire us in this age of ecological crisis. Though the biblical text is unaware of such an ecological crisis; nonetheless, passages shine forth that can speak to us in our modern age of global warming and environmental collapse.


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