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Russell's Teapot
Russell's teapot is an analogy, formulated by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making empirically unfalsifiable claims, as opposed to shifting the burden of ''disproof'' to others. Russell specifically applied his analogy in the context of religion. He wrote that if he were to assert, without offering proof, that a teapot, too small to be seen by telescopes, orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars, he could not expect anyone to believe him solely because his assertion could not be proven wrong. The analogy has been criticised by philosophers Brian Garvey, Peter van Inwagen and Alvin Plantinga as to its validity regarding religion. Russell's teapot has given rise to similar analogies as well as being used in parodies of religion. Description In an article titled "Is There a God?" which was commissioned in 1952 by ''Illustrated'' magazine, but never published, Russel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biology, evolutionary biologist, zoologist, science communicator and author. He is an Oxford fellow, emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, Professor for Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008, and is on the advisory board of the University of Austin. His book ''The Selfish Gene'' (1976) popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and coined the word ''meme''. Dawkins has won several academic and writing awards. A vocal Atheism, atheist, Dawkins is known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. He wrote ''The Blind Watchmaker'' (1986), in which he argues against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a creator deity based upon the Evolution of biological complexity, complexity of living organisms. Instead, he describes evolutionary processes as analogous to a ''blind'' watc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New Republic
''The New Republic'' (often abbreviated as ''TNR'') is an American magazine focused on domestic politics, news, culture, and the arts from a left-wing perspective. It publishes ten print magazines a year and a daily online platform. ''The New York Times'' described the magazine as partially founded in Teddy Roosevelt's living room and known for its "intellectual rigor and left-leaning political views." History 1914–1974: Early years Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in humanitarian and moral passion and one based in an ethos of scientific analysis". ''The New Republic'' was founded by Herbert Croly, Walter Lippmann, and Walter Weyl. They gained the financial backing of heiress Dorothy Payne Whitney and of her husband, Willard Straight, who eventually became the majority owner. The magazine's first issue was published on November 7, 1914. The magazine's politics were libe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reification (fallacy)
Reification (also known as concretism, hypostatization, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical wikt:construct, construct) is treated as if it were a concrete real event or physical entity. In other words, it is the error of treating something that is not concrete, such as an idea, as a concrete thing. A common case of reification is the confusion of a model with reality: "the map is not the territory". Reification is part of normal usage of natural language, as well as of literature, where a reified abstraction is intended as a figure of speech, and actually understood as such. But the use of reification in logical reasoning or rhetoric is misleading and usually regarded as a fallacy. A potential consequence of reification is exemplified by Goodhart's law, where changes in the measurement of a phenomenon are mistaken for changes to the phenomenon itself. Etymology The term "reification" originate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Wood (critic)
James Douglas Graham Wood (born 1 November 1965) is an English literary critic, essayist and novelist. Wood was ''The Guardian''s chief literary critic between 1992 and 1995. He was a senior editor at '' The New Republic'' between 1995 and 2007. , he is Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University and a staff writer at '' The New Yorker''. Early life and education James Wood was born in Durham, England, to Dennis William Wood (born 1928), a Dagenham-born minister and professor of zoology at Durham University, and Sheila Graham Wood, née Lillia, a schoolteacher from Scotland. Wood was raised in Durham in an evangelical wing of the Church of England, an environment he describes as austere and serious. He was educated at Durham Chorister School (on a music scholarship) and at Eton College (with the support of a bursary based on his parents' "demonstrated financial need"; his older brother attended Eton as a King's Scholar). He read English Litera ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of the longest-running newspapers in the United States, the ''Times'' serves as one of the country's Newspaper of record, newspapers of record. , ''The New York Times'' had 9.13 million total and 8.83 million online subscribers, both by significant margins the List of newspapers in the United States, highest numbers for any newspaper in the United States; the total also included 296,330 print subscribers, making the ''Times'' the second-largest newspaper by print circulation in the United States, following ''The Wall Street Journal'', also based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' is published by the New York Times Company; since 1896, the company has been chaired by the Ochs-Sulzberger family, whose current chairman and the paper's publ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ontos Verlag
Ontos, officially the Rifle, Multiple 106 mm, Self-propelled, M50, was an American light armored tracked anti-tank vehicle developed in the 1950s. It mounted six 106 mm manually loaded M40 recoilless rifles as its main armament, which could be fired in rapid succession against single targets to increase the probability of a kill. Although the actual caliber of the main guns was 105 mm, it was designated 106 mm to prevent confusion with the ammunition for the 105 mm M27 recoilless rifle, which the M50 replaced. It was produced in limited numbers for the United States Marine Corps after the United States Army cancelled the project. The Marines consistently reported excellent results when they used the Ontos for direct fire support against infantry in numerous battles and operations during the Vietnam War. The American stock of Ontos was largely expended towards the end of the conflict and the Ontos was removed from service in 1969. Development The ''Ontos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Random House
Random House is an imprint and publishing group of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1927 by businessmen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer as an imprint of Modern Library, it quickly overtook Modern Library as the parent imprint. Over the following decades, a series of acquisitions made it into one of the largest publishers in the United States. In 2013, it was merged with Penguin Group to form Penguin Random House, which is owned by the Germany-based media conglomerate Bertelsmann. Penguin Random House uses its brand for Random House Publishing Group and Random House Children's Books, as well as several imprints. Company history 20th century Random House was founded in 1927 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, two years after they acquired the Modern Library imprint from publisher Horace Liveright, which reprints classic works of literature. Cerf is quoted as saying, "We just said we were going to publish a few books on the side at random", which suggested the name Random ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reductio Ad Absurdum
In logic, (Latin for "reduction to absurdity"), also known as (Latin for "argument to absurdity") or ''apagogical argument'', is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absurdity or contradiction. This argument form traces back to Ancient Greek philosophy and has been used throughout history in both formal mathematical and philosophical reasoning, as well as in debate. In mathematics, the technique is called ''proof by contradiction''. In formal logic, this technique is captured by an axiom for "Reductio ad Absurdum", normally given the abbreviation RAA, which is expressible in propositional logic. This axiom is the introduction rule for negation (see ''negation introduction''). Examples The "absurd" conclusion of a ''reductio ad absurdum'' argument can take a range of forms, as these examples show: * The Earth cannot be flat; otherwise, since the Earth is assumed to be finite in extent, we would find peo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Houghton Mifflin
The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often vocalize it as star (as, for example, in ''the A* search algorithm'' or '' C*-algebra''). An asterisk is usually five- or six-pointed in print and six- or eight-pointed when handwritten, though more complex forms exist. Its most common use is to call out a footnote. It is also often used to censor offensive words. In computer science, the asterisk is commonly used as a wildcard character, or to denote pointers, repetition, or multiplication. History The asterisk was already in use as a symbol in ice age cave paintings. There is also a two-thousand-year-old character used by Aristarchus of Samothrace called the , , which he used when proofreading Homeric poetry to mark lines that were duplicated. Origen is known to have also used the asteris ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The God Delusion
''The God Delusion'' is a 2006 book by British evolutionary biologist and ethologist Richard Dawkins. In ''The God Delusion'', Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator, God, almost certainly does not exist, and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. He is sympathetic to Robert Pirsig's statement in '' Lila'' (1991) that "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."; In the book, Dawkins explores the relationship between religion and morality, providing examples that discuss the possibility of morality existing independently of religion and suggesting alternative explanations for the origins of both religion and morality. In early December 2006, it reached number four in the ''New York Times'' Hardcover Non-Fiction Best Seller list after nine weeks on the list. More than three ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Devil's Chaplain
''A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love'' is a 2003 book of selected essays and other writings by Richard Dawkins. Published five years after Dawkins's previous book '' Unweaving the Rainbow'', it contains essays covering subjects including pseudoscience, genetic determinism, memetics, terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war aga ..., religion and creationism. A section of the book is devoted to Dawkins' late adversary Stephen Jay Gould. The book's title is a reference to a quotation of Charles Darwin, in a letter to Joseph Dalton Hooker, J.D. Hooker dated 13 July 1856, made in reference to Darwin's lack of belief in how "a perfect world" was teleological argument, designed by God (and a reference to Reverend Robert Taylor (Radical), Rober ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
