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Half-life Of Knowledge
The half-life of knowledge or half-life of facts is the amount of time that has to elapse before half of the knowledge or facts in a particular area is superseded or shown to be untrue. These coined terms belong to the field of quantitative analysis of science known as scientometrics. These ideas of half-life applied to different fields differ from the concept of half-life in physics in that there is no guarantee that the knowledge or facts in areas of study are declining exponentially. It is unclear that there is any way to establish what constitutes "knowledge" in a particular area, as opposed to mere opinion or theory. An engineering degree went from having a half life of 35 years in ca. 1930 to about 10 years in 1960.Charette, Robert N. "An Engineering Career: Only a Young Person’s Game?" Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers website https://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/computing/it/an-engineering-career-only-a-young-persons-game A Delphi Poll showed that the ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Knowledge
Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distinct from opinion or guesswork by virtue of justification. While there is wide agreement among philosophers that propositional knowledge is a form of true belief, many controversies in philosophy focus on justification: whether it is needed at all, how to understand it, and whether something else besides it is needed. These controversies intensified due to a series of thought experiments by Edmund Gettier and have provoked various alternative definitions. Some of them deny that justification is necessary and replace it, for example, with reliability or the manifestation of cognitive virtues. Others contend that justification is needed but formulate additional requirements, for example, that no defeaters of the belief are present or that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientometrics
Scientometrics is the field of study which concerns itself with measuring and analysing scholarly literature. Scientometrics is a sub-field of informetrics. Major research issues include the measurement of the impact of research papers and academic journals, the understanding of scientific citations, and the use of such measurements in policy and management contexts. Leydesdorff, L. and Milojevic, S., "ScientometricsarXiv:1208.4566(2013), forthcoming in: Lynch, M. (editor), ''International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences'' subsection 85030. (2015) In practice there is a significant overlap between scientometrics and other scientific fields such as information systems, information science, science of science policy, sociology of science, and metascience. Critics have argued that over-reliance on scientometrics has created a system of perverse incentives, producing a publish or perish environment that leads to low-quality research. Historical development Mode ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Half-life
Half-life (symbol ) is the time required for a quantity (of substance) to reduce to half of its initial value. The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive. The term is also used more generally to characterize any type of exponential (or, rarely, non-exponential) decay. For example, the medical sciences refer to the biological half-life of drugs and other chemicals in the human body. The converse of half-life (in exponential growth) is doubling time. The original term, ''half-life period'', dating to Ernest Rutherford's discovery of the principle in 1907, was shortened to ''half-life'' in the early 1950s. Rutherford applied the principle of a radioactive element's half-life in studies of age determination of rocks by measuring the decay period of radium to lead-206. Half-life is constant over the lifetime of an exponentially decaying quantity, and it is a characteristic u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which relates to the order of nature, or, in other words, to the regular succession of events." Physics is one of the most fundamental scientific disciplines, with its main goal being to understand how the universe behaves. "Physics is one of the most fundamental of the sciences. Scientists of all disciplines use the ideas of physics, including chemists who study the structure of molecules, paleontologists who try to reconstruct how dinosaurs walked, and climatologists who study how human activities affect the atmosphere and oceans. Physics is also the foundation of all engineering and technology. No engineer could design a flat-screen TV, an interplanetary spacecraft, or even a better mousetrap without first understanding the basic laws of physics ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Missiology
Missiology is the academic study of the Christian mission history and methodology, which began to be developed as an academic discipline in the 19th century. History Missiology as an academic discipline appeared only in the 19th century. It was the Scottish missionary Alexander Duff who first developed a systematic theory of mission and was appointed in 1867 to a new chair of Evangelistic Theology in Edinburgh. The chair was short-lived and closed after Duff's departure. Gustav Warneck is often recognized as the founder of Protestant missiology as a discipline. He founded the first scientific missionary periodical in 1874, ''Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift'', and was appointed the chair of missionary science at the University of Halle in Germany in 1897. His three-volume work on Protestant mission theory ''Evangelische Missionlehre'' and his survey of the history of Protestant missionary work were extremely important for the young discipline. Influenced by Warneck's work, Cat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fritz Machlup
Fritz Machlup (; ; December 15, 1902 – January 30, 1983) was an Austrian- American economist who was president of the International Economic Association from 1971–1974. He was one of the first economists to examine knowledge as an economic resource, and is credited with popularizing the concept of the information society. Early life and career He was born to Jewish parents in Wiener-Neustadt, Austria, near Vienna; his father was a businessman who owned two factories that manufactured cardboard. Machlup earned his doctorate at the University of Vienna. In 1933, he received a Rockefeller scholarship for the USA and in 1935 became professor at the University of Buffalo. After the Nazi seizure of his homeland Austria in 1938, Machlup stayed in the United States and became a US citizen in 1940. Machlup's key work was ''The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States'' (1962), which is credited with popularizing the concept of the information society. Machlup w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Half-life
Half-life (symbol ) is the time required for a quantity (of substance) to reduce to half of its initial value. The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive. The term is also used more generally to characterize any type of exponential (or, rarely, non-exponential) decay. For example, the medical sciences refer to the biological half-life of drugs and other chemicals in the human body. The converse of half-life (in exponential growth) is doubling time. The original term, ''half-life period'', dating to Ernest Rutherford's discovery of the principle in 1907, was shortened to ''half-life'' in the early 1950s. Rutherford applied the principle of a radioactive element's half-life in studies of age determination of rocks by measuring the decay period of radium to lead-206. Half-life is constant over the lifetime of an exponentially decaying quantity, and it is a characteristic u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pessimistic Induction
In the philosophy of science, the pessimistic induction, also known as the pessimistic meta-induction, is an argument which seeks to rebut scientific realism, particularly the scientific realist's notion of epistemic optimism. The pessimistic meta-induction is the argument that if past successful and accepted scientific theories were found to be false, we have no reason to believe the scientific realist's claim that our currently successful theories are approximately true. Overview Scientific realists argue that we have good reasons to believe that our presently successful scientific theories are true or approximately true. The pessimistic meta-induction undermines the realist's warrant for their epistemic optimism (the view that science tends to succeed in revealing what the world is like and that there are good reasons to take theories to be true or truthlike) via historical counterexample. Using meta- induction, Larry Laudan argues that if past scientific theories which were suc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientometrics
Scientometrics is the field of study which concerns itself with measuring and analysing scholarly literature. Scientometrics is a sub-field of informetrics. Major research issues include the measurement of the impact of research papers and academic journals, the understanding of scientific citations, and the use of such measurements in policy and management contexts. Leydesdorff, L. and Milojevic, S., "ScientometricsarXiv:1208.4566(2013), forthcoming in: Lynch, M. (editor), ''International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences'' subsection 85030. (2015) In practice there is a significant overlap between scientometrics and other scientific fields such as information systems, information science, science of science policy, sociology of science, and metascience. Critics have argued that over-reliance on scientometrics has created a system of perverse incentives, producing a publish or perish environment that leads to low-quality research. Historical development Mode ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bibliometrics
Bibliometrics is the use of statistical methods to analyse books, articles and other publications, especially in regard with scientific contents. Bibliometric methods are frequently used in the field of library and information science. Bibliometrics is closely associated with scientometrics, that is the analysis of scientific metrics and indicators, to the point that both fields largely overlap. Bibliometrics studies first appeared in the late 19th century. They have known a significative development after the Second World War in a context of "periodical crisis" and new technical opportunities offered by computing tools. In the early 1960s, the Science Citation Index of Eugene Garfield and the citation network analysis of Derek John de Solla Price laid the fundamental basis of a structured research program on bibliometrics. Citation analysis is a commonly used bibliometric method which is based on constructing the citation graph, a network or graph representation of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press is an independent Academic publishing, publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial support of Charles Scribner II, Charles Scribner, as a printing press to serve the Princeton community in 1905. Its distinctive building was constructed in 1911 on William Street in Princeton. Its first book was a new 1912 edition of John Witherspoon's ''Lectures on Moral Philosophy.'' History Princeton University Press was founded in 1905 by a recent Princeton graduate, Whitney Darrow, with financial support from another Princetonian, Charles Scribner II. Darrow and Scribner purchased the equipment and assumed the operations of two already existing local publishers, that of the ''Princeton Alumni Weekly'' and the Princeton Press. The new press printed both local newspapers, university documents, ''The Daily Princetonian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
