The Observer Effect: The Artistic Image as a Metaphor for Scientific Interpretations of the Natural World

Leonardo ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-78
Author(s):  
Elena Gubanova
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
Observer Effect ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Artistic Images ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
Artistic Image ◽  
The Universe

In this article, the author presents some of her artworks in which she created artistic images and interpretations of time, space and light that define human life on Earth. In her multimedia installations of the last 10 years, her interest in the scientific study of the universe has been interwoven with her experience as the daughter of an astronomer. The author and her husband collaborate to express their thoughts on science and philosophy through a combination of art and engineering solutions and technologies.

PHILOSOPHY AND THE MEANING OF LIFE

Think ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (60) ◽  
pp. 33-49
Author(s):  
William Lyons
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Meaning Of Life ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Eternal Life ◽  
Evolution Of The Universe ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
The Universe

The author sets out to respond to the student complaint that ‘Philosophy did not answer “the big questions”’, in particular the question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ The response first outlines and evaluates the most common religious answer, that human life is given a meaning by God who created us and informs us that this life is just the pilgrim way to the next eternal life in heaven. He then discusses the response that, from the point of view of post-Darwinian science and the evolution of the universe and all that is in it, human life on Earth must be afforded no more meaning than the meaning we would give to a microscopic planaria or to some creature on another planet in a distant universe. All things including human creatures on Planet Earth just exist for a time and that is that. There is no plan or purpose. In the last sections the author outlines the view that it is we humans ourselves who give meaning to our lives by our choices of values or things that are worth pursuing and through our resulting sense of achievement or the opposite. Nevertheless the question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ can mean quite different things in different contexts, and so merit different if related answers. From one point of view one answer may lie in terms of the love of one human for another.

INTERPRETATION OF SPACE AND TIME IN ONTOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY NAVOI

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 80-87
Author(s):  
Toji Omonovich Norov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Human Intelligence ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Holy Book

The universe, the space that make up their basis planets in it, their creation, the main essence of their creation, form, composition, meaning, movements, interactions, their influence on human life and activities, the role of man in the universe and in life on Earth, life, the criteria of activity and processes occurring in time and space have long been of interest to humanity. One of the main problems in the history of philosophy is the question of space and time. This problem was defined in different ways in the great schools of thought by thinkers of different periods. One of these great thinkers is Alisher Navoi. Navoi's works, along with other socio-philosophical themes, uniquely express and analyze the problems of the firmament and time. Its main feature is that it is based on the divine (pantheistic) religion, Islam, its holy book, the Koran and other theological sources, as well as on the secrets of nature and the Universe, the main miracle of Allah - human intelligence, the power of enlightenment, they are the key revealing all these secrets.

Review of the Current State and Future Development in Standardizing Natural Lighting in Interiors

2018 ◽  
pp. 5-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanislav Darula
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Natural Light ◽  
Artificial Lighting ◽  
Computer Tools ◽  
Natural Lighting ◽  
Current State ◽  
Minimum Requirements ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
Window Design

Three elements mainly wind, water and sun seemed to determine in ancient ages the basic phenomena of life on Earth. Architectural history documented the importance of sun influence on urban and building construction already in layouts of Mesopotamian and Greek houses. Not only sun radiation but especially daylight played a significant role in the creation of indoor environment. Later, in the 20th century, a search of interaction between human life in buildings and natural conditions were studied considering well­being and energy conscious design recently using computer tools in complex research and more detail interdisciplinary solutions. At the same time the restricted daytime availability of natural light was supplemented by more efficient and continually cheaper artificial lighting of interiors. There are two main approaches to standardize the design and evaluation of indoor visual environment. The first is based on the determination of the minimum requirements respecting human health and visibility needs in all activities while the second emphasizes the behaviour and comfort of occupants in buildings considering year­around natural changes of physical quantities like light, temperature, noise and energy consumption. The new current standardization basis for daylight evaluation and window design criteria stimulate the study of methodology principles that historically were based on the overcast type of sky luminance pattern avoiding yearly availability of sky illuminance levels. New trends to base the daylight standardization on yearly or long­term availability of daylight are using the averages or median sky illuminance levels to characterise local climatological conditions. This paper offers the review and discussion about the principles of the natural light standardization with a short introduction to the history and current state, with a trial to focus on the possible development of lighting engineering and its standards in future.

Systematic approaches in water management: Aquatic outlook and decision support systems combining monitoring, research, policy analysis and information technology

1996 ◽  
Vol 34 (12) ◽  
pp. 9-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. de Jong ◽  
J. T. van Buuren ◽  
J. P. A. Luiten
Keyword(s):  
Water Management ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Research Policy ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Management Policy ◽  
Ecological Aspects ◽  
Management Plans ◽  
Water Management Plans ◽  
Life On Earth

Sustained developments is the target of almost every modern water management policy. Sustainability is focused on human life and on the ecological quality of our environment. Both aspects are essential for life on earth. Within a river catchment area this means that well balanced relations have to be laid between human activities and ecological aspects in the involved areas. Policy analysis is especially looking for the most efficient way to analyse and to overcome bottlenecks. In The Netherlands project “The Aquatic Outlook” all these elements are worked out in a nationwide scale, providing the scientific base and policy analysis from which future water management plans can be derived.

Milesian Measures: Time, Space, and Matter

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen A. White
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Complementary Problems

Any attempt to trace the origin of Greek philosophy faces two complementary problems. One is the fact that evidence for the early philosophers is woefully meager. The other problem raises a question of what is to be counted as philosophy. Yet neither problem is insuperable. This article proposes to reorient the search for origins in two ways, corresponding to these two problems. First, rather than trying to reconstruct vanished work directly, this article focuses on a crucial stage in its ancient reception, in particular, the efforts by Aristotle and his colleagues in the latter half of the fourth century to collect, analyze, and assess the evidence then available for earlier attempts to understand the natural world. The other shift in focus this article makes is from philosophy to science; or rather, it focuses on evidence for the interplay between observation, measurement, and explanation in the work of three sixth-century Milesians.

A Digital Nexus

2020 ◽  
pp. 185-218
Author(s):  
Nicola Green ◽  
Rob Comber ◽  
Sharron Kuznesof
Keyword(s):  
Human Computer Interaction ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Human Consumption ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Household Resource ◽  
Computer Interaction

Humans beings in the 21st century face significant social and global change. Ever-evolving digital technologies are increasingly embedded in the material, economic, and socio-cultural milieu; while global crises in climate change present challenges to human and global security and resilience. Social science and human-computer interaction research has investigated how digital systems might help to understand current environmental changes and intervene in the problematic human relationships to scarce resources of the natural world. This chapter reviews research contributions of sustainable human-computer interaction (HCI) and the social sciences on human consumption of resources most crucial to human life: water, energy, and food (WEF). Briefly outlining the current and ongoing evolution of digital technologies particularly concerned with embedded urban digital infrastructures in “smart” and automated technologies and the Internet of Things, it then touches on the scope and scale of the simultaneous environmental challenges posed by population growth and urbanization. It introduces sustainable HCI as one approach that directly addresses both trends. The chapter then outlines the most significant approaches that have informed the development of “sustainable HCI,” and reviews important empirical contributions underpinning the developing interdisciplinary research in the field. It outlines the current understanding of household resource use and considers how developing digital technologies might support domestic resource conservation and mitigate intensive domestically based resource consumption. The chapter closes with observations on the shifting relationships (and sustainable HCI research into them) that might constitute future ways of being in a sustainable digital age.

scholarly journals Time and Life in the Relational Universe: Prolegomena to an Integral Paradigm of Natural Philosophy

Philosophies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abir Igamberdiev
Keyword(s):  
Probability Function ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Spatiotemporal Structure ◽  
Internal Logic ◽  
Decision Making System ◽  
Relational Domains ◽  
Relational Order ◽  
Infinite Set ◽  
The Universe

Relational ideas for our description of the natural world can be traced to the concept of Anaxagoras on the multiplicity of basic particles, later called “homoiomeroi” by Aristotle, that constitute the Universe and have the same nature as the whole world. Leibniz viewed the Universe as an infinite set of embodied logical essences called monads, which possess inner view, compute their own programs and perform mathematical transformations of their qualities, independently of all other monads. In this paradigm, space appears as a relational order of co-existences and time as a relational order of sequences. The relational paradigm was recognized in physics as a dependence of the spatiotemporal structure and its actualization on the observer. In the foundations of mathematics, the basic logical principles are united with the basic geometrical principles that are generic to the unfolding of internal logic. These principles appear as universal topological structures (“geometric atoms”) shaping the world. The decision-making system performs internal quantum reduction which is described by external observers via the probability function. In biology, individual systems operate as separate relational domains. The wave function superposition is restricted within a single domain and does not expand outside it, which corresponds to the statement of Leibniz that “monads have no windows”.

The Anthropic Principle

1997 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-90
Author(s):  
Karl W. Giberson ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Anthropic Principle ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Creation Story ◽  
Creation Myth ◽  
Biological Explanations ◽  
The Universe

The Anthropic Principle suggests that the universe may have been designed for human life. This anthropocentric, anti-Copernican, notion elicits a variety of responses from scientists, including some elaborate attempts to invalidate it by trying to show that there may be an infinity of alternative universes. These attempts may be challenged as unreasonably speculative and presumptive. What emerges is the suggestion that cosmology may at last be in possession of some raw material for a postmodern creation myth. If the Anthropic Principle can be integrated with biological explanations of human origins, and the result joined to the traditional Biblical Creation story, what emerges is a possible recovery of a religiously traditional, yet scientifically coherent, creation story for our generation.

The Dictatorship of Appearance or Simulation in Present-Day "Democracies" against the Background of the Market Ecocide of the Foundations of Human Life on Earth

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 82-93
Author(s):  
Aleksandr Subetto
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Environmental Disaster ◽  
Environmental Destruction ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Point Of No Return ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
Near Future

It is proved that the current era is characterized by many governments around the world as dictatorship of "appearance" or "simulation" of the most activities transforming politics, even the tragic events like local ecological catastrophes, local wars, "colour revolutions", the elections in a "theatre", "acting", on the background of market ecocide – really accelerating processes of the first phase of a Global Environmental Disaster, which, at the transition "point of no return" in the near future, may turn into a process of irreversible environmental destruction of all mankind. This dictatorship of "appearance" or simulation as a "curtain" market democracy, hiding the capitalism-led, process of dehumanization of man, is an indicator of the inadequacy of states and political "elites" imperative of survival of mankind, as the imperative out of the ecological impasse of history in market-capitalist format. There comes a reckoning for this departure into the " market-capitalist illusion of apparent prosperity. The societies of the world, including Rossiya, have faced a dilemma:either environmental destruction, or the Noosphere Breakthrough, which, in its essence, is a change in the social organization of social life and its reproduction – the transition from the dominance of capitalism and the market to the Noosphere Ecological Spiritual Socialism on the basis of scientific and educational society and the management of socionatural evolution.

Hippocrates and Early Greek Medicine

2018 ◽  
pp. 214-232
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Craik
Keyword(s):  
Vascular System ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Medical Writing ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Case Histories ◽  
Hippocratic Corpus ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Medical Writers

The chapter surveys early Greek medicine, primarily the works attributed to Hippocrates, but also evidence for other medical writing, such as that in the Anonymus Londinensis papyrus, and in the fragments of the pre-Socratics. It is noted that the fragments of Alcmaeon indicate experience in dissection of animals, that Diogenes of Apollonia gives a detailed account of the vascular system, and that Plato has an extensive biomedical section in Timaeus. In general, early medical writers show concern with the relation of microcosm to macrocosm and of human life to the universe; also, with opposing principles (hot and cold, wet and dry, thick and thin, rare and dense) such that health is commonly seen in terms of bodily balance and avoidance of excess. The seventy or so works of the Hippocratic corpus cover a wide range of subjects, notably prognostic signs, surgery, gynecology, case histories and aphoristics lore.

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