(primitive nature)

rudeness ['ru:dnɪs]

noun

(a) (impoliteness) impolitesse f; (stronger) grossièreté f; (insolence) insolence f

(b) British (indecency) indécence f, obscénité f

(c) (suddenness) violence f, brutalité f

(d) (rudimentary nature) caractère m rudimentaire; (primitive nature) caractère m primitif

   1) Origin of the Term " Information Processing"

   The term "information processing" originated in the late fifties in the computer field as a general descriptive term that seemed somewhat less contingent and parochial than "computer science," which also came into use during the same period. Thus, it was the name of choice for two of the encompassing professional organizations formed at the time: the In ternational Federation of Information Processing Societies and the American Federation of Information Processing Societies. Although the transfer of the phrase from activities of computers to parallel activities of human beings undoubtedly occurred independently in a number of heads, the term was originally identified pretty closely with computer simulation of cognitive processes... ; that is, with the kind of effort from which arose the theory in this book. (Newell & Simon, 1972, p. 888)

    Assumptions of Information Processing Psychology

   It was because the activities of the computer itself seemed in some ways akin to cognitive processes. Computers accept information, manipulate symbols, store items in "memory" and retrieve them again, classify inputs, recognize patterns and so on.... Indeed the assumptions that underlie most contemporary work on information processing are surprisingly like those of nineteenth century introspective psychology, though without introspection itself. (Neisser, 1976, pp. 5, 7)

   2) The Processor and the Logical Nature of Problem- Solving Strategies

   The processor was assumed to be rational, and attention was directed to the logical nature of problem solving strategies. The "mature western mind" was presumed to be one that, in abstracting knowledge from the idosyncracies of particular everyday experience, employed Aristotelian laws of logic. When applied to categories, this meant that to know a category was to have an abstracted clear-cut, necessary, and sufficient criteria for category membership. If other thought processes, such as imagery, ostensive definition, reasoning by analogy to particular instances, or the use of metaphors were considered at all, they were usually relegated to lesser beings such as women, children, primitive people, or even to nonhumans. (Rosch & Lloyd, 1978, p. 2)

   1) To Exist Is to Be Perceived

   It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and, in a word, all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But, with how great an assurance and acquiescence soever this principle may be entertained in the world, yet whoever shall find in his heart to call it into question may, if I mistake not, perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction. For, what are the forementioned objects but things we perceive by sense? and what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? and is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived? (Berkeley, 1996, Pt. I, No. 4, p. 25)

   2) Abstract Science or Demonstration Is a More Perfect Species of Knowledge

   It seems to me that the only objects of the abstract sciences or of demonstration are quantity and number, and that all attempts to extend this more perfect species of knowledge beyond these bounds are mere sophistry and illusion. As the component parts of quantity and number are entirely similar, their relations become intricate and involved; and nothing can be more curious, as well as useful, than to trace, by a variety of mediums, their equality or inequality, through their different appearances.

   But as all other ideas are clearly distinct and different from each other, we can never advance farther, by our utmost scrutiny, than to observe this diversity, and, by an obvious reflection, pronounce one thing not to be another. Or if there be any difficulty in these decisions, it proceeds entirely from the undeterminate meaning of words, which is corrected by juster definitions. That the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the squares of the other two sides cannot be known, let the terms be ever so exactly defined, without a train of reasoning and enquiry. But to convince us of this proposition, that where there is no property, there can be no injustice, it is only necessary to define the terms, and explain injustice to be a violation of property. This proposition is, indeed, nothing but a more imperfect definition. It is the same case with all those pretended syllogistical reasonings, which may be found in every other branch of learning, except the sciences of quantity and number; and these may safely, I think, be pronounced the only proper objects of knowledge and demonstration. (Hume, 1975, Sec. 12, Pt. 3, pp. 163-165)

   3) Knowledge Derives from Two Fundamental Sources of the Mind

   Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of the mind; the first is the capacity of receiving representations (the ability to receive impressions), the second is the power to know an object through these representations (spontaneity in the production of concepts).

   Through the first, an object is given to us; through the second, the object is thought in relation to that representation.... Intuition and concepts constitute, therefore, the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge. Both may be either pure or empirical.... Pure intuitions or pure concepts are possible only a priori; empirical intuitions and empirical concepts only a posteriori. If the receptivity of our mind, its power of receiving representations in so far as it is in any way affected, is to be called "sensibility," then the mind's power of producing representations from itself, the spontaneity of knowledge, should be called "understanding." Our nature is so constituted that our intuitions can never be other than sensible; that is, it contains only the mode in which we are affected by objects. The faculty, on the other hand, which enables us to think the object of sensible intuition is the understanding.... Without sensibility, no object would be given to us; without understanding, no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind. It is therefore just as necessary to make our concepts sensible, that is, to add the object to them in intuition, as to make our intuitions intelligible, that is to bring them under concepts. These two powers or capacities cannot exchange their functions. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their union can knowledge arise. (Kant, 1933, Sec. 1, Pt. 2, B74-75 [p. 92])

   4) The Means by Which Metaphysics Can Be Perfected as a Science

   Metaphysics, as a natural disposition of Reason is real, but it is also, in itself, dialectical and deceptive.... Hence to attempt to draw our principles from it, and in their employment to follow this natural but none the less fallacious illusion can never produce science, but only an empty dialectical art, in which one school may indeed outdo the other, but none can ever attain a justifiable and lasting success. In order that, as a science, it may lay claim not merely to deceptive persuasion, but to insight and conviction, a Critique of Reason must exhibit in a complete system the whole stock of conceptions a priori, arranged according to their different sources-the Sensibility, the understanding, and the Reason; it must present a complete table of these conceptions, together with their analysis and all that can be deduced from them, but more especially the possibility of synthetic knowledge a priori by means of their deduction, the principles of its use, and finally, its boundaries....

   This much is certain: he who has once tried criticism will be sickened for ever of all the dogmatic trash he was compelled to content himself with before, because his Reason, requiring something, could find nothing better for its occupation. Criticism stands to the ordinary school metaphysics exactly in the same relation as chemistry to alchemy, or as astron omy to fortune-telling astrology. I guarantee that no one who has comprehended and thought out the conclusions of criticism, even in these Prolegomena, will ever return to the old sophistical pseudo-science. He will rather look forward with a kind of pleasure to a metaphysics, certainly now within his power, which requires no more preparatory discoveries, and which alone can procure for reason permanent satisfaction. (Kant, 1891, pp. 115-116)

   5) Knowledge Is Only Real in the Form of System

   Knowledge is only real and can only be set forth fully in the form of science, in the form of system. Further, a so-called fundamental proposition or first principle of philosophy, even if it is true, it is yet none the less false, just because and in so far as it is merely a fundamental proposition, merely a first principle. It is for that reason easily refuted. The refutation consists in bringing out its defective character; and it is defective because it is merely the universal, merely a principle, the beginning. If the refutation is complete and thorough, it is derived and developed from the nature of the principle itself, and not accomplished by bringing in from elsewhere other counter-assurances and chance fancies. It would be strictly the development of the principle, and thus the completion of its deficiency, were it not that it misunderstands its own purport by taking account solely of the negative aspect of what it seeks to do, and is not conscious of the positive character of its process and result. The really positive working out of the beginning is at the same time just as much the very reverse: it is a negative attitude towards the principle we start from. Negative, that is to say, in its one-sided form, which consists in being primarily immediate, a mere purpose. It may therefore be regarded as a refutation of what constitutes the basis of the system; but more correctly it should be looked at as a demonstration that the basis or principle of the system is in point of fact merely its beginning. (Hegel, 1910, pp. 21-22)

   6) Knowledge, Action, and Evaluation Are Interconnected

   Knowledge, action, and evaluation are essentially connected. The primary and pervasive significance of knowledge lies in its guidance of action: knowing is for the sake of doing. And action, obviously, is rooted in evaluation. For a being which did not assign comparative values, deliberate action would be pointless; and for one which did not know, it would be impossible. Conversely, only an active being could have knowledge, and only such a being could assign values to anything beyond his own feelings. A creature which did not enter into the process of reality to alter in some part the future content of it, could apprehend a world only in the sense of intuitive or esthetic contemplation; and such contemplation would not possess the significance of knowledge but only that of enjoying and suffering. (Lewis, 1946, p. 1)

   7) The Evolution of Knowledge

   "Evolutionary epistemology" is a branch of scholarship that applies the evolutionary perspective to an understanding of how knowledge develops. Knowledge always involves getting information. The most primitive way of acquiring it is through the sense of touch: amoebas and other simple organisms know what happens around them only if they can feel it with their "skins." The knowledge such an organism can have is strictly about what is in its immediate vicinity. After a huge jump in evolution, organisms learned to find out what was going on at a distance from them, without having to actually feel the environment. This jump involved the development of sense organs for processing information that was farther away. For a long time, the most important sources of knowledge were the nose, the eyes, and the ears. The next big advance occurred when organisms developed memory. Now information no longer needed to be present at all, and the animal could recall events and outcomes that happened in the past. Each one of these steps in the evolution of knowledge added important survival advantages to the species that was equipped to use it.

   Then, with the appearance in evolution of humans, an entirely new way of acquiring information developed. Up to this point, the processing of information was entirely intrasomatic.... But when speech appeared (and even more powerfully with the invention of writing), information processing became extrasomatic. After that point knowledge did not have to be stored in the genes, or in the memory traces of the brain; it could be passed on from one person to another through words, or it could be written down and stored on a permanent substance like stone, paper, or silicon chips-in any case, outside the fragile and impermanent nervous system. (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993, pp. 56-57)

bo

folk

man

subst. \/ˈpiːpl\/

1) folk, nasjon, folkeslag

• the English people drinks a lot of tea

• primitive peoples are still discovered from time to time

2) folk

• the broad mass of the people

• a man of the people

• the people of the parish are all here today

3) ( hverdagslig) familie, nærmeste, slektninger

4) mennesker, personer, folk

• Chinese people in the USA vote no

• city people may still enjoy nature

• fifty people came

5) folk, man, de

• what will people say?

6) menn, følge, folk

• the king and his people were welcomed

7) (amer., jus) påtalemyndighetene

• the people versus Brown

my people ( i bedrift e.l.) mine ansatte, folkene mine

of all people av alle mennesker

• he of all people

small people små(kårs)folk

unprofessional people legfolk

young people ungdommen, ungdommer, de unge, unge mennesker

verb \/ˈpiːpl\/

1) befolke, bebo

2) ( overført) fylle

1) общество

- civilized society

2) общество, компания, круг, свет, светское общество

- snobbish society

3) общество, кружок, объединение, организация

- sports society

   Portugal did not produce an artist of sufficient ability to gain recognition outside the country until the 19th century. Domingos Antônio Segueira (1768-1837) became well known in Europe for his allegorical religious and historical paintings in a neoclassical style. Portuguese painting during the 19th century emphasized naturalism and did not keep abreast of artistic innovations being made in other European countries. Portugal's best painters lived abroad especially in France. The most successful was Amadeo Souza- Cardoso who, while living in Paris, worked with the modernists Modigliani, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris. Souza-Cardoso introduced modernism into Portuguese painting in the early 20th century. A sustained modernist movement did not develop in Portugal, however. Naturalism remained the dominant school, and Portugal remained isolated from international artistic trends, owing to Portugal's conservative artistic climate, which prevented new forms of art from taking root, and the lack of support from an artistically sophisticated, art-buying elite supported by a system of galleries and foundations.

   Interestingly, it was during the conservative Estado Novo that modernism began to take root in Portugal. As Prime Minister Antônio de Oliveira Salazar's secretary for national propaganda, Antônio Ferro, a writer, journalist, and cultural leader who admired Mussolini, encouraged the government to allow modern artists to create the heroic imagery of the Estado Novo following the Italian model that linked fascism with futurism. The most important Portuguese artist of this period was Almada Negreiros, who did the murals on the walls of the legendary café A Brasileira in the Chiado district of Lisbon, the paintings at the Exposition of the Portuguese World (1940), and murals at the Lisbon docks. Other artists of note during this period included Mário Eloy (1900-51), who was trained in Germany and influenced by George Grosz and Otto Dix; Domingos Alvarez (1906-42); and Antônio Pedro (1909-66).

   During the 1950s, the Estado Novo ceased to encourage artists to collaborate, as Portuguese artists became more critical of the regime. The return to Portugal of Antônio Pedro in 1947 led to the emergence of a school of geometric abstract painting in Oporto and the reawakening of surrealism. The art deco styles of the 1930s gave way to surrealism and abstract expression.

   In the 1960s, links between Portugal's artistic community and the international art world strengthened. Conscription for the wars against the nationalist insurgencies in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea- Bissau (1961-75) resulted in a massive exodus of Portugal's avante-garde artists to Europe to avoid military service. While abroad, artists such as Joaquin Rodrigo (1912-93), Paula Rego (1935-), João Cutileiro (1947-), and others forged links with British, French, Italian, and Spanish artistic communities.

   The Revolution of 25 April 1974 created a crisis for Portugal's artists. The market for works of art collapsed as left-wing governments, claiming that they had more important things to do (eliminate poverty, improve education), withdrew support for the arts. Artists declared their talents to be at the "service of the people," and a brief period of socialist realism prevailed. With the return of political stability and moderate governments during the 1980s, Portugal's commercial art scene revived, and a new period of creativity began. Disenchantment with the socialist realism (utopianism) of the Revolution and a deepening of individualism began to be expressed by Portuguese artists. Investment in the arts became a means of demonstrating one's wealth and social status, and an unprecedented number of art galleries opened, art auctions were held, and a new generation of artists became internationally recognized. In 1984, a museum of modern art was built by the Gulbenkian Foundation adjacent to its offices on the Avenida de Berna in Lisbon. A national museum of modern art was finally built in Oporto in 1988.

   In the 1980s, Portugal's new generation of painters blended post-conceptualism and subjectivism, as well as a tendency toward decon-structionism/reconstructionism, in their work. Artists such as Cabrita Reis (1956-), Pedro Calapez (1953-), José Pedro Croft (1957-), Rui Sanches (1955-), and José de Guimarães (1949-) gained international recognition during this period. Guimarães crosses African art themes with Western art; Sarmento invokes images of film, culture, photography, American erotica, and pulp fiction toward sex, violence, and pleasure; Reis evolved from a painter to a maker of installation artist using chipboard, plaster, cloth, glass, and electrical and plumbing materials.

   From the end of the 20th century and during the early years of the 21st century, Portugal's art scene has been in a state of crisis brought on by a declining art trade and a withdrawal of financial support by conservative governments. Although not as serious as the collapse of the 1970s, the current situation has divided the Portuguese artistic community between those, such as Cerveira Pito and Leonel Moura, who advocate a return to using primitive, strongly textured techniques and others such as João Paulo Feliciano (1963-), who paint constructivist works that poke fun at the relationship between art, money, society, and the creative process. Thus, at the beginning of the 21st century, the factors that have prevented Portuguese art from achieving and sustaining international recognition (the absence of a strong art market, depending too much on official state support, and the individualistic nature of Portuguese art production) are still to be overcome.

SUBJECT AREA: Broadcasting, Electronics and information technology, Photography, film and optics, Recording, Telecommunications

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De Forest was born into the family of a Congregational minister that moved to Alabama in 1879 when the father became President of a college for African-Americans; this was a position that led to the family's social ostracism by the white community. By the time he was 13 years old, De Forest was already a keen mechanical inventor, and in 1893, rejecting his father's plan for him to become a clergyman, he entered the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University. Following his first degree, he went on to study the propagation of electromagnetic waves, gaining a PhD in physics in 1899 for his thesis on the "Reflection of Hertzian Waves from the Ends of Parallel Wires", probably the first US thesis in the field of radio.

He then joined the Western Electric Company in Chicago where he helped develop the infant technology of wireless, working his way up from a modest post in the production area to a position in the experimental laboratory. There, working alone after normal working hours, he developed a detector of electromagnetic waves based on an electrolytic device similar to that already invented by Fleming in England. Recognizing his talents, a number of financial backers enabled him to set up his own business in 1902 under the name of De Forest Wireless Telegraphy Company; he was soon demonstrating wireless telegraphy to interested parties and entering into competition with the American Marconi Company.

Despite the failure of this company because of fraud by his partners, he continued his experiments; in 1907, by adding a third electrode, a wire mesh, between the anode and cathode of the thermionic diode invented by Fleming in 1904, he was able to produce the amplifying device now known as the triode valve and achieve a sensitivity of radio-signal reception much greater than possible with the passive carborundum and electrolytic detectors hitherto available. Patented under the name Audion, this new vacuum device was soon successfully used for experimental broadcasts of music and speech in New York and Paris. The invention of the Audion has been described as the beginning of the electronic era. Although much development work was required before its full potential was realized, the Audion opened the way to progress in all areas of sound transmission, recording and reproduction. The patent was challenged by Fleming and it was not until 1943 that De Forest's claim was finally recognized.

Overcoming the near failure of his new company, the De Forest Radio Telephone Company, as well as unsuccessful charges of fraudulent promotion of the Audion, he continued to exploit the potential of his invention. By 1912 he had used transformer-coupling of several Audion stages to achieve high gain at radio frequencies, making long-distance communication a practical proposition, and had applied positive feedback from the Audion output anode to its input grid to realize a stable transmitter oscillator and modulator. These successes led to prolonged patent litigation with Edwin Armstrong and others, and he eventually sold the manufacturing rights, in retrospect often for a pittance.

During the early 1920s De Forest began a fruitful association with T.W.Case, who for around ten years had been working to perfect a moving-picture sound system. De Forest claimed to have had an interest in sound films as early as 1900, and Case now began to supply him with photoelectric cells and primitive sound cameras. He eventually devised a variable-density sound-on-film system utilizing a glow-discharge modulator, the Photion. By 1926 De Forest's Phonofilm had been successfully demonstrated in over fifty theatres and this system became the basis of Movietone. Though his ideas were on the right lines, the technology was insufficiently developed and it was left to others to produce a system acceptable to the film industry. However, De Forest had played a key role in transforming the nature of the film industry; within a space of five years the production of silent films had all but ceased.

In the following decade De Forest applied the Audion to the development of medical diathermy. Finally, after spending most of his working life as an independent inventor and entrepreneur, he worked for a time during the Second World War at the Bell Telephone Laboratories on military applications of electronics.

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KF / JW

SUBJECT AREA: Weapons and armour

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Like his father and grandfather, Simeon North began his working life as a farmer. In 1795 he started a business making scythes in an old mill adjoining his farm. He had apparently already been making some pistols for sale, and in March 1799 he secured his first government contract, for 500 horse-pistols to be delivered within one year. This was followed by further contracts for 1,500 in 1800, 2,000 in 1802, and others; by 1813 he had supplied at least 10,000 pistols and was employing forty or fifty men. In a contract for 20,000 pistols in 1813 there was a provision, which North himself recommended, that parts should be interchangeable. It is probable that he had employed the concept of interchangeability at least as early as his more famous contemporary Eli Whitney. To meet this contract he established a new factory at Middletown, Connecticut, but his original works at Berlin continued to be used until 1843. His last government order for pistols was in 1828, but from 1823 he obtained a series of contracts for rifles and carbines, with the last (1850) being completed in 1853, after his death. In developing machine tools to carry out these contracts, North was responsible for what was probably the earliest milling machine, albeit in a relatively primitive form, c. 1816 or even as early as 1808. In 1811 he was elected Lieutenant-Colonel of the 6th Connecticut Regiment; although he resigned after only two years, he was generally known thereafter as Colonel North.

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[ˈelɪmənt]

element элемент; составная часть; небольшая часть, след; an element of truth доля правды array element вчт. элемент массива element амер. ав. звено (самолетов); to be in one's element быть в своей стихии; чувствовать себя, как рыба в воде binary element вчт. двоичный элемент central processing element вчт. прцессорный элемент character element вчт. знаковый элемент clocked element вчт. синхронный элемент column element вчт. элемент столбца computer element вчт. узел вычислительной машины computing element вчт. вычислительный элемент cost element составляющая стоимости data element вчт. элемент данных detectable element вчт. обнаруживаемый элемент detector element вчт. индикаторный элемент element стихия; war of the elements борьба стихий; the four elements земля, воздух, огонь, вода; the devouring element огонь diagonal element диагональный элемент display element вчт. элемент изображения doping element примесной элемент element амер. ав. звено (самолетов); to be in one's element быть в своей стихии; чувствовать себя, как рыба в воде element компонент element компонента element небольшое количество element pl основы (науки и т. п.); азы element воен. подразделение element тех. секция (котла и т. п.) element составная часть element стихия; war of the elements борьба стихий; the four elements земля, воздух, огонь, вода; the devouring element огонь element хим. элемент element элемент; составная часть; небольшая часть, след; an element of truth доля правды element элемент element of law правовой акт element of profitability фактор рентабельности element of risk элемент риска element стихия; war of the elements борьба стихий; the four elements земля, воздух, огонь, вода; the devouring element огонь game element элемент игры he is out of his element он занимается не своим делом; он чувствует себя как рыба, вынутая из воды image element элемент изображения lagging element звено запаздывания library element вчт. библиотечный элемент list element вчт. элемент списка network element элемент схемы nonnegative element неотрицательный элемент null element нулевой элемент off-diagonal element недиагональный элемент partion queue element вчт. элемент очереди разделов primitive element первичный элемент processing element вчт. элементарный процессор processor element вчт. процессорный элемент program element вчт. элемент программы queue element вчт. элемент очереди regular element регулярно повторяющийся элемент row element вчт. элемент строки servo element вчт. элемент следящей системы stochastic element вчт. случайный элемент surface element элемент поверхности unrestricted element нерегламентированный элемент variable time element элемент переменной продолжительности voltage-output element вчт. элемент с потенциальным выходом vote-talking element вчт. мажоритарный элемент element стихия; war of the elements борьба стихий; the four elements земля, воздух, огонь, вода; the devouring element огонь war: war борьба; war of the elements борьба стихий; war between man and nature борьба человека с природой

   1) Biological and Social Brain Development

   Among the higher mammals the great development of neocortex occurs.

   In each group of mammals there is a steady increase in the area of the association cortex from the most primitive to the evolutionarily most recent type; there is an increase in the number of neurons and their connections. The degree of consciousness of an organism is some function of neuronal cell number and connectivity, perhaps of neurons of a particular type in association cortex regions. This function is of a threshold type such that there is a significant quantitative break with the emergence of humans. Although the importance of language and the argument that it is genetically specified and unique to humans must be reconsidered in the light of the recent evidence as to the possibility of teaching chimpanzees, if not to speak, then to manipulate symbolic words and phrases, there are a number of unique human features which combine to make the transition not merely quantitative, but also qualitative. In particular these include the social, productive nature of human existence, and the range and extent of the human capacity to communicate. These features have made human history not so much one of biological but of social evolution, of continuous cultural transformation. (Rose, 1976, pp. 180-181)

   2) Distinctive Evolutionary Properties of the Brain

   [S]ome particular property of higher primate and cetacean brains did not evolve until recently. But what was that property? I can suggest at least four possibilities...: (1) Never before was there a brain so massive; (2) Never before was there a brain with so large a ratio of brain to body mass; (3) Never before was there a brain with certain functional units (large frontal and temporal lobes, for example); (4) Never before was there a brain with so many neural connections or synapses.... Explanations 1, 2 and 4 argue that a quantitative change produced a qualitative change. It does not seem to me that a crisp choice among these four alternatives can be made at the present time, and I suspect that the truth will actually embrace most or all of these possibilities. (Sagan, 1978, pp. 107-109)

   3) The Evolutionary Increase in the Size of the Main Areas of the Brain

   The crucial change in the human brain in this million years or so has not been so much the increase in size by a factor of three, but the concentration of that increase in three or four main areas. The visual area has increased considerably, and, compared with the chimpanzee, the actual density of human brain cells is at least 50 percent greater. A second increase has taken place in the area of manipulation of the hand, which is natural since we are much more hand-driven animals than monkeys and apes. Another main increase has taken place in the temporal lobe, in which visual memory, integration, and speech all lie fairly close together. And the fourth great increase has taken place in the frontal lobes. Their function is extremely difficult to understand... ; but it is clear that they're largely responsible for the ability to initiate a task, to be attentive while it is being done, and to persevere with it. (Bronowski, 1978, pp. 23-24)

   4) The Human Brain and Ethical Principles

   The human brain works however it works. Wishing for it to work in some way as a shortcut to justifying some ethical principle undermines both the science and the ethics (for what happens to the principle if the scientific facts turn out to go the other way?). (Pinker, 1994, p. 427)

   1) Thoughts, Feelings, and Actions of Sentient Beings Are Not a Subject of Science

   It is a common notion, or at least it is implied in many common modes of speech, that the thoughts, feelings, and actions of sentient beings are not a subject of science.... This notion seems to involve some confusion of ideas, which it is necessary to begin by clearing up. Any facts are fitted, in themselves, to be a subject of science, which follow one another according to constant laws; although those laws may not have been discovered, nor even to be discoverable by our existing resources. (Mill, 1900, B. VI, Chap. 3, Sec. 1)

   2) Two Contending But Complementary Philosophies of Science

   One class of natural philosophers has always a tendency to combine the phenomena and to discover their analogies; another class, on the contrary, employs all its efforts in showing the disparities of things. Both tendencies are necessary for the perfection of science, the one for its progress, the other for its correctness. The philosophers of the first of these classes are guided by the sense of unity throughout nature; the philosophers of the second have their minds more directed towards the certainty of our knowledge. The one are absorbed in search of principles, and neglect often the peculiarities, and not seldom the strictness of demonstration; the other consider the science only as the investigation of facts, but in their laudable zeal they often lose sight of the harmony of the whole, which is the character of truth. Those who look for the stamp of divinity on every thing around them, consider the opposite pursuits as ignoble and even as irreligious; while those who are engaged in the search after truth, look upon the other as unphilosophical enthusiasts, and perhaps as phantastical contemners of truth.... This conflict of opinions keeps science alive, and promotes it by an oscillatory progress. (Oersted, 1920, p. 352)

   3) The Fundamental Ideas of Science Are Essentially Simple

   Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone. (Einstein & Infeld, 1938, p. 27)

   4) A New Scientific Truth Triumphs Because Its Opponents Eventually Die

   A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. (Planck, 1949, pp. 33-34)

   [Original quotation: "Eine neue wissenschaftliche Wahrheit pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, dass ihre Gegner ueberzeugt werden und sich as belehrt erklaeren, sondern vielmehr dadurch, dass die Gegner allmaehlich aussterben und dass die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Wahrheit vertraut gemacht ist." (Planck, 1990, p. 15)]

   5) The Search for the Absolute

   I had always looked upon the search for the absolute as the noblest and most worth while task of science. (Planck, 1949, p. 46)

   6) When Your Scientific Doing Is Worthless

   If you cannot-in the long run-tell everyone what you have been doing, your doing has been worthless. (SchroЁdinger, 1951, pp. 7-8)

   7) Description in Plain Language Is a Criterion of Understanding

   Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be a criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached. (Heisenberg, 1958, p. 168)

   8) The Tentativeness of Scientific Statements

   The old scientific ideal of episteґmeґ-of absolutely certain, demonstrable knowledge-has proved to be an idol. The demand for scientific objectivity makes it inevitable that every scientific statement must remain tentative forever. It may indeed be corroborated, but every corroboration is relative to other statements which, again, are tentative. Only in our subjective experiences of conviction, in our subjective faith, can we be "absolutely certain." (Popper, 1959, p. 280)

   9) Scientists Often Close Their Minds to New Scientific Evidence

   The layman, taught to revere scientists for their absolute respect for the observed facts, and for the judiciously detached and purely provisional manner in which they hold scientific theories (always ready to abandon a theory at the sight of any contradictory evidence) might well have thought that, at Miller's announcement of this overwhelming evidence of a "positive effect" [indicating that the speed of light is not independent from the motion of the observer, as Einstein's theory of relativity demands] in his presidential address to the American Physical Society on December 29th, 1925, his audience would have instantly abandoned the theory of relativity. Or, at the very least, that scientists-wont to look down from the pinnacle of their intellectual humility upon the rest of dogmatic mankind-might suspend judgment in this matter until Miller's results could be accounted for without impairing the theory of relativity. But no: by that time they had so well closed their minds to any suggestion which threatened the new rationality achieved by Einstein's world-picture, that it was almost impossible for them to think again in different terms. Little attention was paid to the experiments, the evidence being set aside in the hope that it would one day turn out to be wrong. (Polanyi, 1958, pp. 12-13)

    10) The Practice of Normal Science

   The practice of normal science depends on the ability, acquired from examplars, to group objects and situations into similarity sets which are primitive in the sense that the grouping is done without an answer to the question, "Similar with respect to what?" (Kuhn, 1970, p. 200)

    11) Of What Science Consists

   Science in general... does not consist in collecting what we already know and arranging it in this or that kind of pattern. It consists in fastening upon something we do not know, and trying to discover it. (Collingwood, 1972, p. 9)

    12) The Emergence of Scientific Fields

   Scientific fields emerge as the concerns of scientists congeal around various phenomena. Sciences are not defined, they are recognized. (Newell, 1973a, p. 1)

    13) We Do Not Take Our Theories Seriously Enough

   This is often the way it is in physics-our mistake is not that we take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough. I do not think it is possible really to understand the successes of science without understanding how hard it is-how easy it is to be led astray, how difficult it is to know at any time what is the next thing to be done. (Weinberg, 1977, p. 49)

    14) Science Takes away Philosophical Foundations

   Science is wonderful at destroying metaphysical answers, but incapable of providing substitute ones. Science takes away foundations without providing a replacement. Whether we want to be there or not, science has put us in a position of having to live without foundations. It was shocking when Nietzsche said this, but today it is commonplace; our historical position-and no end to it is in sight-is that of having to philosophize without "foundations." (Putnam, 1987, p. 29)