21 APR 2014 by ideonexus
Lies Propagate
Lies propagate, that's what I'm saying. You've got to tell more lies to cover them up, lie about every fact that's connected to the first lie. And if you kept on lying, and you kept on trying to cover it up, sooner or later you'd even have to start lying about the general laws of thought. Like, someone is selling you some kind of alternative medicine that doesn't work, and any double-blind experimental study will confirm that it doesn't work. So if someone wants to go on defending the lie, th... 1 
notes
notesThey require more lies to support them and the questioning of science.
23 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Life Emerges from the Second Law of Thermodynamics
Every species of living thing can make a copy of itself by exchanging energy and matter with its surroundings. One feature common to all such examples of spontaneous “self-replication” is their statistical irreversibility: clearly, it is much more likely that one bacterium should turn into two than that two should somehow spontaneously revert back into one. From the standpoint of physics, this observation contains an intriguing hint of how the properties of self-replicators must be constr...Folksonomies: life thermodynamics
Folksonomies: life thermodynamics
1 Hypothesis that life is the result of needing to dissipate energy that builds up.
19 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Death is Not Assured
The organic perfectibility or deterioration of the classes of the vegetable, or species of the animal kingdom, may be regarded as one of the general laws of nature.
This law extends itself to the human race; and it cannot be doubted that the progress of the sanative art, that the use of more wholesome food and more comfortable habitations, that a mode of life which shall develope the physical powers by exercise, without at the same time impairing them by excess; in fine, that the destruction...
1 Through perpetual improvement through the sciences, humans may not ever attain immortality, but we may extend our lives indefinitely.
19 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Outline of the Natural Sciences Pt. I
The heavens are enriched for the man of science with new stars, and he applies his knowledge to determine and foretel with accuracy their positions and movements. Natural philosophy, gradually delivered from the vague explanations of Descartes, in the same manner as it before was disembarrassed from the absurdities of the schools, is now nothing more than the art of interrogating nature by experiment, for the parpose of afterwards deducing more general facts by computation.
The weight of the... 1 notes
notesFrom Condorcet's Ninth Epoch. A survey of the world of science and a call for the need for the different sciences to find points where they touch in order to strengthen.
19 APR 2013 by ideonexus
The Rise and Fall of Greek Science
This fortunate circumstance, still more than political freedom, wrought in the human mind, among the Greeks, an independance, the surest pledge of the rapidity and greatness of its future progress.
In the mean time their learned men, their sages, as they were called, but who soon took the more modest appellation of philosophers, or friends of science and wisdom, wandered in the immensity of the two vast and comprehensive plan which they had embraced. They were desirous of penetrating both th... 1 notes
notesCondorcet chronicles the Greek sciences, with their propensity for for philosophizing and fantasy, ending with Socrates, who demanded empiricism.
19 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Prejudice is an Enemy of Reason
We shall expose the origin and trace the history of general errors, which have more or
less contributed to retard or suspend the advance of reason, and sometimes even, as
much as political events, have been the cause of man’s taking a retrograde course
towards ignorance.
Those operations of the mind that lead to or retain us in error, from the subtle
paralogism, by which the most penetrating mind may be deceived, to the mad reveries
of enthusiasts, belong equally, with that just mode of re... 1 notes
notesIt is a cognitive bias, and it prevents the acquisition of new truths.
29 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
The Problem with the Term "Music Theory"
Music Theory. You will forgive me for turning, as I always do in moments of intellectual want, to my Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, which defines the word "theory" as, and we quote, "The analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another." My friends, few words offer as much rational solace as does the word "theory." Examining the plausibility of a theory demands that we analyze facts, reason logically, think objectively, and examine comprehensively. Having done so, we will assumab..."Theory" implies facts and scientific understanding through observation and testing. Music is an art, filled with idiosyncrasies, and no hard rules.
23 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Darwin Believes Part of his Brain has Atrophied
My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain that alone on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organised or better constituted than mine would not, I suppose, have thus suffered, and if I had to live my life over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for... 1 notes
notesThe part concerned with taste and the humanities, due to his focus on fact and hypothesis.
11 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Newton's Discovery of Gravity as an Example of Induction ...
All the knowledge we possess of external objects is founded upon experience, which furnishes facts; and the comparison of these facts establishes relations, from which induction, the intuitive belief that like causes will produce like effects, leads to general laws. Thus, experience teaches that bodies fall at the surface of the earth with an accelerated velocity, and with a force proportional to their masses. By comparison, Newton proved that the force which occasions the fall of bodies at t... 1 notes
notesHe extended the force pulling everything down to the Earth out to the Moon, then to the Sun, and then the planets to see how our solar system really works.
19 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Two Meanings of the Word "Theory"
Theory, Sense 1: A scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation or
account of a group of facts or phenomena; a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by
observation or experiment, and is propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts; a
statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or causes of something known or
observed.
Theory, Sense 2: A hypothesis proposed as an explanation; hence, a mere hypothesis,
speculation, conjecture; an ide... 1 notes
notesHow scientists use it versus it's use in everyday life.
