Test and Evaluation: The Changing Nature of our Scientific Knowledge

2000 ◽  
Vol 44 (37) ◽  
pp. 565-568 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joyce A. Cameron
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Newtonian Physics ◽  
Test And Evaluation ◽  
Conceptual Foundations

Traditionally, human factors/ergonomics professionals, especially in the United States, use concepts and methods derived from engineering and experimental psychology, both of which are rooted in the conceptual framework of classical, seventeenth-century, Newtonian physics. As a result, our conceptual foundations emphasize reductionism and determinism. However, we need to update these conceptual foundations to reflect the reality of the science of today. Concepts such as holism demand re-thinking the structure of scientific knowledge; principles such as uncertainty have profound implications concerning observation and measurement; and principles such as complementarity require re-examination of the nature of scientific explanation. Many variables of interest to Test and Evaluation (T&E) professionals can be investigated using concepts and methods derived from the physical sciences, the life sciences, and/or the human sciences. However, the science used will profoundly influence the available explanatory concepts and the resulting explanations. Thus, in addition to defining the questions to be asked, T&E professionals need also to consider the kind of science to be used in each investigation.

Astrobiology (Overview)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean McMahon
Keyword(s):  
Extrasolar Planets ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Planetary Science ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Extraterrestrial Life ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Robotic Exploration ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
The Universe

Astrobiology seeks to understand the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe and thus to integrate biology with planetary science, astronomy, cosmology, and the other physical sciences. The discipline emerged in the late 20th century, partly in response to the development of space exploration programs in the United States, Russia, and elsewhere. Many astrobiologists are now involved in the search for life on Mars, Europa, Enceladus, and beyond. However, research in astrobiology does not presume the existence of extraterrestrial life, for which there is no compelling evidence; indeed, it includes the study of life on Earth in its astronomical and cosmic context. Moreover, the absence of observed life from all other planetary bodies requires a scientific explanation, and suggests several hypotheses amenable to further observational, theoretical, and experimental investigation under the aegis of astrobiology. Despite the apparent uniqueness of Earth’s biosphere— the “n = 1 problem”—astrobiology is increasingly driven by large quantities of data. Such data have been provided by the robotic exploration of the Solar System, the first observations of extrasolar planets, laboratory experiments into prebiotic chemistry, spectroscopic measurements of organic molecules in extraterrestrial environments, analytical advances in the biogeochemistry and paleobiology of very ancient rocks, surveys of Earth’s microbial diversity and ecology, and experiments to delimit the capacity of organisms to survive and thrive in extreme conditions.

“Christians Love the Jews!” The Development of American Philo-Semitism, 1790-1860

1996 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert K. Whalen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Literature ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
Early National Period ◽  
Early National ◽  
Social Views ◽  
British Research

Philo-Semitism is America's enduring contribution to the long, troubled, often murderous dealings of Christians with Jews. Its origins are English, and it drew continuously on two centuries of British research into biblical prophecy from the seventeenth Century onward. Philo-Semitism was, however, soon “domesticated” and adapted to the political and theological climate of America after independence. As a result, it changed as America changed. In the early national period, religious literature abounded that foresaw the conversion of the Jews and the restoration of Israel as the ordained task of the millennial nation—the United States. This scenario was, allowing for exceptions, socially and theologically optimistic and politically liberal, as befit the ethos of a revolutionary era. By the eve of Civil War, however, countless evangelicals cleaved to a darker vision of Christ's return in blood and upheaval. They disparaged liberal social views and remained loyal to an Augustinian theology that others modified or abandoned.

Divine Machines

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin E. H. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Theoretical Interest ◽  
Living World ◽  
Mechanical Philosophy ◽  
Organic Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Generation Theory

Though it did not yet exist as a discrete field of scientific inquiry, biology was at the heart of many of the most important debates in seventeenth-century philosophy. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the work of G. W. Leibniz. This book offers the first in-depth examination of Leibniz's deep and complex engagement with the empirical life sciences of his day, in areas as diverse as medicine, physiology, taxonomy, generation theory, and paleontology. The book shows how these wide-ranging pursuits were not only central to Leibniz's philosophical interests, but often provided the insights that led to some of his best-known philosophical doctrines. Presenting the clearest picture yet of the scope of Leibniz's theoretical interest in the life sciences, the book takes seriously the philosopher's own repeated claims that the world must be understood in fundamentally biological terms. Here it reveals a thinker who was immersed in the sciences of life, and looked to the living world for answers to vexing metaphysical problems. The book casts Leibniz's philosophy in an entirely new light, demonstrating how it radically departed from the prevailing models of mechanical philosophy and had an enduring influence on the history and development of the life sciences. Along the way, the book provides a fascinating glimpse into early modern debates about the nature and origins of organic life, and into how philosophers such as Leibniz engaged with the scientific dilemmas of their era.

The Talmudist Enlightenment: Talmudic Judaism’s Confrontational Rational Theology

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Menachem Fisch
Keyword(s):  
Religious Commitment ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
American Pragmatism ◽  
Rational Theology

Robert Brandom's "The Pragmatist Enlightenment" describes the advent of American pragmatism as signaling a sea-change in our understanding of human reason away from the top-down Euclidian models of reasoning, warrant and knowledge inspired by the physical sciences, toward the far more bottom-up, narrative, inherently fallible and dialogical forms of reasoning of the life and human sciences. It is against this backdrop that Talmudic Judaism emerges not only as an early anticipation of the pragmatist enlightenment, but as going a substantial and radical step beyond it, that in the context of religious commitment and reasoning, is unprecedented. 

Cooperation and Competition

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Peach
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Particle Physics ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Research Groups ◽  
Experimental Science ◽  
Multidisciplinary Research ◽  
Common Goal ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Research Sector

This chapter discusses the need for cooperation (or collaboration) to be balanced with competition, including between research groups, within a university or laboratory and between the academic research sector and industry. Healthy competition is a great motivator but unhealthy competition can be disastrous. While it is still possible for an individual scientist working alone or with a couple of graduate students or postdocs to make ground-breaking discoveries, today much experimental science requires large teams working collaboratively on a common goal or set of goals. While this trend is most evident in particle physics and astronomy, it is also present in the other physical sciences and the life sciences. Collaboration brings together more resources–physical, financial and intellectual–to address major challenges that would otherwise be beyond the scope of any individual or group. Multidisciplinary research and interdisciplinary research are examples of cooperation between different disciplines.

Invisible Architectures

2000 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Jörg Rheinberger
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Basic Problem ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Strategy I ◽  
The Invisible

The ArgumentIn this essay I will sketch a few instances of how, and a few forms in which, the “invisible” became an epistemic category in the development of the life sciences from the seventeenth century through the end of the nineteenth century. In contrast to most of the other papers in this issue, I do not so much focus on the visualization of various little entities, and the tools and contexts in which a visual representation of these things was realized. I will be more concerned with the basic problem of introducing entities or structures that cannot be seen, as elements of an explanatory strategy. I will try to review the ways in which the invisibility of such entities moved from the unproblematic status of just being too small to be accessible to the naked or even the armed eye, to the problematic status of being invisible in principle and yet being indispensable within a given explanatory framework. The epistemological concern of the paper is thus to sketch the historical process of how the “unseen” became a problem in the modern life sciences. The coming into being of the invisible as a space full of paradoxes is itself the product of a historical development that still awaits proper reconstruction.

scholarly journals LEXICAL BUNDLES IN JOURNAL ARTICLES ACROSS ACADEMIC DISCIPLINES

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 131
Author(s):  
Deny Arnos Kwary ◽  
Dewantoro Ratri ◽  
Almira F. Artha
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
Health Sciences ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Lexical Bundles ◽  
Referential Expressions

This study focuses on the use of lexical bundles (LBs), their structural forms, and their functional classifications in journal articles of four academic disciplines: Health sciences, Life sciences, Physical sciences, and Social sciences. The corpus comprises 2,937,431 words derived from 400 journal articles which were equally distributed in the four disciplines. The results show that Physical sciences feature the most number of lexical bundles, while Health sciences comprise the least. When we pair-up the disciplines, we found that Physical sciences and Social sciences shared the most number of LBs. We also found that there were no LBs shared between Health sciences and Physical sciences, and neither between Health sciences and Social sciences. For the distribution of the structural forms, we found that the prepositional-based and the verb-based bundles were the most frequent forms (each of them accounts for 37.1% of the LBs, making a total of 74.2%). Within the verb-based bundles, the passive form can be found in 12 out of 23 LB types. Finally, for the functional classifications, the number of referential expressions (40 LBs) is a lot higher than those of discourse organizers (12 LBs) and stance expressions (10 LBs). The high frequency of LBs in the referential expressions can be related to the needs to refer to theories, concepts, data and findings of the study.

scholarly journals ATONEMENT THEORY REVISITED: CALVIN, BEZA, AND AMYRAUT ON THE EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT

Perichoresis ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-75
Author(s):  
Matthew S. Harding
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theological Method ◽  
Reformed Tradition ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Insight Into

ABSTRACT Throughout the bulk of the Reformed Tradition’s history within both Europe and the United States, most scholars have dismissed pastor and theologian Moïse Amyraut as a seventeenth century French heretic whose actions and theology led to the demise of the Huguenots in France. However, upon further introspection into Amyraut’s claims as being closer to Calvin (soteriologically) than his Genevan successors, one finds uncanny parallels in the scriptural commentaries and biblical insight into the expiation of Christ between Calvin and Amyraut. By comparing key scriptural passages concerning the atonement, this article demonstrates that Reformed theologian Moïse Amyraut in fact propagated a universal atonement theory which parallels Calvin’s, both men ascribing to biblical faithfulness, a (humanistic) theological method, and similar hermeneutic. As such, both Calvin and Amyraut scripturally contend that God desires and provided the means for the salvation of the whole world. Further, the article demonstrates that Calvin’s successor, Theodore de Beza, could not in fact make the same claims as Amyraut, this article demonstrating that Beza went beyond Calvin’s scriptural approach to Christ’s expiation. Therefore, this article supports a more centrist approach from within and outside the Reformed tradition by demonstrating that Calvin and Amyraut concentrically held to God’s gracious provision in Christ for the saving of the whole world, for those who would believe in Christ for salvation.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document