07 NOV 2014 by ideonexus
Objects of Primary Education
To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business;
To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts, in writing;
To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties;
To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either;
To know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains; to choose with discretion the f...Folksonomies: education public education
Folksonomies: education public education
1 
notes
notes12 OCT 2014 by ideonexus
The Absurd Visions from a Post-Hypnotic Suggestion
I hardly heard him for trying to keep track of what was going on in my skull. I knew it was just post-hypnotic suggestion, even remembered the session in Missouri when they'd implanted it, but that didn't make it any less compelling. My mind reeled under the strong pseudo-memories: shaggy hulks that were Taurans (not at all what we now knew they looked like) boarding a colonists' vessel, eating babies while mothers watched in screaming terror (the colonists never took babies; they wouldn't st... 1 notes
notesA character debunks all the crazy things running through his head with rationality.
08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Morals are Natural
It would appear... that moral phenomena, when observed on a great scale, are found to resemble physical phenomena; and we thus arrive, in inquiries of this kind, at the fundamental principle, that the greater the number of individuals observed, the more do individual peculiarities, whether physical or moral, become effaced, and leave in a prominent point of view the general facts, by virtue of which society exists and is preserved.Folksonomies: civilization
Folksonomies: civilization
1 notes
notesThat's what I take from this quote, which talks about the normative nature of habits that appear when our sample size is large enough and those habits make civilization possible.
17 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
Benjamin Franklin's Forsight
I always rejoice to hear of your being still employed in experimental researches into nature, and of the success you meet with. The rapid progress true science now makes, occasions my regretting sometimes that I was born so soon: it is impossible to imagine the height to which may be carried, in a thousand years, the power of man over matter; we may perhaps learn to deprive large masses of their gravity, and give them absolute levity for the sake of easy transport. Agriculture may diminish it...
1 He sees the future of science and the possibilities, but laments that it will not change the morals of man.
23 APR 2012 by ideonexus
Statistics of a Country
Statistics are far from being the barren array of figures ingeniously and laboriously combined into columns and tables, which many persons are apt to suppose them. They constitute rather the ledger of a nation, in which, like the merchant in his books, the citizen can read, at one view, all of the results of a year or of a period of years, as compared with other periods, and deduce the profit or the loss which has been made, in morals, education, wealth or power. Folksonomies: statistics
Folksonomies: statistics
1 notes
notesAre a means to see its progress "in morals, education, wealth or power."
02 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Byron's Don Juan and Controversy
However, on receiving an early copy of the first canto of Byron’s Don Juan in 1819, Banks was outraged. ‘I never read so Lascivious a performance. No woman here will Confess that she has read it. We hitherto considered his Lordship only as an Atheist without morals. We now must add to his respectable Qualifications that of being a Profligate.’16 Yet had Banks lived to read the tenth canto (1821), he might well have been amused by His Lordship’s nimble mockery of Newton and the story o... 1 notes
notesThe poem pokes fun at Adam in the Garden of Eden, and predicts a hopeful future through science.
19 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
How Science Changes Society
Change is one of mankind’s most mysterious
creations. The factors that operate to cause it came
into play when man produced his first tool. With it he
changed the world forever, and bound himself to the
artifacts he would create in order, always, to make
tomorrow better than today. But how does change
operate? What triggers a new invention, a different
philosophy, an altered society? The interactive
network of man’s activities links the strangest,
most disparate elements, bringing togethe... 1 notes
notesScience brings change upon society, forcing society to adapt to technological change and forcing more technological change.
24 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
Jefferson's Intention with “The Philosophy of Jesus of ...
In extracting the pure principles which he taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves. We must dismiss the Platonists and Plotinists, the Stagyrites and Gamalielites, the Eclectics, the Gnostics and Scholastics, their essences and emanations, their logos and demiurges, aeons and daemons, male and female, with a long train of … or, shall ...Folksonomies: founding fathers separation of church and state
Folksonomies: founding fathers separation of church and state
1 A description of the problems Jefferson had with the gospels in their existing form, which were easily twisted for greedy purposes.
