04 APR 2015 by ideonexus
Teaching as Gardening
If a teacher is a gardener, than a student is the seed. The classroom serves as the greenhouse creating a warm, safe environment for growth. An administrator is the soil, serving as a strong nutrient base for the seed to root. The parents are the water, providing live and maintaining it. When the water/parent is not plentiful, the seed will suffer. The curriculum is the sun. It shines knowledge to ensure growth. The aspects of the curriculum that some students do not make sense of can be cons... 1 
notes
notes22 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
With the Seed We May Deduce the Animal
If we possessed a thorough knowledge of all the parts of the seed of any animal (e.g. man), we could from that alone, by reasons entirely mathematical and certain, deduce the whole conformation and figure of each of its members, and, conversely if we knew several peculiarities of this conformation, we would from those deduce the nature of its seed. 1 notes
notesInteresting idea, if wrong for not understanding how environment affects growth, but the idea that we could one day take a seed and predict the full-grown organism that will result from it is intriguing.
04 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Metaphor for the Spread of Disease
To choose a rough example, think of a thorn which has stuck in a finger and produces an inflammation and suppuration. Should the thorn be discharged with the pus, then the finger of another individual may be pricked with it, and the disease may be produced a second time. In this case it would not be the disease, not even its product, that would be transmitted by the thorn, but rather the stimulus which engendered it. Now supposing that the thorn is capable of multiplying in the sick body, or ...Folksonomies: metaphor
Folksonomies: metaphor
1 Like spreading thorns.
16 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Darwin Considers the Question of a Creator
How have all those exquisite adaptations of one part of the organization
to another part, and to the conditions of life, and of one
distinct organic being, been perfected? We see these beautiful coadaptations
most plainly in the woodpecker and missletoe; and only
a little less plainly in the humblest parasite which clings to the hairs of
a quadruped or feathers of a bird; in the structure of the beetle which
dives though the water; in the plumed seed which is wafted by the
gentlest breeze; in...
1 He sees adaptations as giving the appearance of a designer.
27 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
It Takes Nature and Nurture
A third-grade boy comes home and hands his father his report card. His father looks at it and says, “How do you explain these D’s and F’s? The boy looks up at him and says, “You tell me: Is it nature or nurture?”
I was once at a lively, noisy science fair with my own third-grade son, and we were touring some of his classmates efforts. Several experiments involved seeds, soil, and growth curves. One memorable little girl took great pains to explain to us that her seeds had started ...Folksonomies: nature vs nurture
Folksonomies: nature vs nurture
1 notes
notesRaising children is like raising a plant, it takes a seed (nature) and soil (nurture).
17 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
An 11th Century View of Science
The chief aids to philosophical inquiry and the practice of virtue are reading, learning, meditation, and assiduous application. Reading scrutinizes the written subject matter immediately before it. Learning likewise generally studies what is written, but also sometimes moves on to what is preserved in the archives of the memory and is not in the writing, or to those things that become evident when one understands the given subject. Meditation, however, reaches out farther to what is unknown,... 1 notes
notesScience is a prerequisite to virtue, requiring study, application, and meditation dependent on grammar.
01 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Aristotle on Chance in Nature
There are some who make chance responsible for this cosmos and all worlds. For they say that by chance there came about a vortex and a motion of separating out and settling into this arrangement of the whole. And this itself is in fact mightily worth 30 wondering at. For they are saying that animals and plants neither are nor come to be by fortune, but that either nature or Intellect or some other such thing is the cause (for what comes into being from each seed is not whatever falls out, but... 1 notes
notesAn ancient perspective on the question of naturalism and creationism.
29 MAR 2011 by ideonexus
Creating a "Seed" of Civilization's Knowledge
I’ve been thinking of civilization (the technium) as a life form, as a self-replicating structure. I began to wonder what is the smallest seed into which you could reduce the "genes" of civilization, and have it unfold again, sufficient that it could also make another seed again. That is, what is the smallest seed of the technium that is viable? It must be a seed able to grow to reproduction age and express itself as a full-fledge civilization and have offspring itself -- another replicatin...Folksonomies: knowledge civilization
Folksonomies: knowledge civilization
Is there a way to compress a balanced essence of civilization's knowledge into a package that would allow it to reproduce?
