Politics and character

It is perhaps good that societies go through occasional paroxysms of outrage over abuses and vices among the high and mighty. That’s one way to reiterate the boundaries of acceptable conduct. It would be better if boundaries were in general supported on a daily basis, but societies have their ways. In a representative system of […]

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Motion vs. movement

The English words motion and movement are similar. They both have to do with “changing position or going from one place to another.” (Collins English Dictionary) Then what’s the difference? Here are a few ways of putting it: motion is used to describe physical properties, while movement is used to describe the qualities of motion. Ref.

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Bodies and motions

For kinematics and dynamics, one can begin with a body – something that takes space – and apply a motion to it. Or one can begin with a motion – something that takes time – and apply it to a body. In either case the result is a body and a motion – either a

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Custom-made disagreement

I’ve written a few times before about U.S. Supreme Court cases, without claiming legal expertise. This time it’s the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, with oral arguments presented yesterday. This case is important because of the culture war implications and interesting because of the need to draw a line between behavior the state can prohibit and behavior

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Political balance

Balance and centrism go hand and hand. One cannot have balance without a center of balance, and one cannot have a center without balancing opposites. Politically, the main balance needed is between liberty and equality. Economically, that means a balance between economic liberty and economic equality. And similarly for health, education, transportation, and so forth.

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Space-time duality

Space and time are dual concepts. They are complementary to one another as an inverse binary symmetry. They go together as space with time in classical physics or time with space or spacetime as in relativistic physics. Parallel terms: Space Time 3D space +reference time 3D time + reference length vector space + scalar time

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Temperament and explanations

The temperament of science exists within the typology of philosophy. Aristotle’s typology of causes (explanatory factors) provides a fourfold typology, which provides the basis for each twofold scientific temperament. The four causes/factors are the final, formal, efficient/mechanism, and material. Final Cause or Teleology Formal Cause Efficient Cause or Mechanism Material Cause The scientific temperaments are:

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Singular and regular

There is a basic distinction between what is singular, unique, non-repeating and what is regular, usual, natural. The latter is the domain of science, both natural and social science, whose premise is that if something repeats, it is characteristic of the way things are. What if something does not repeat? Then science cannot deal with

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Wasmann on biology and evolution

From Modern Biology and the Theory of Evolution by Erich Wasmann, S.J. Translated from the Third German Edition by A. M. Buchanan, M.A. London, 1910 Excerpts from Chapter IX, Thoughts on Evolution (with most footnotes omitted) Note: creatio e nihilo means ‘creation from nothing,’ a slight variation on creatio ex nihilo, ‘creation out of nothing’.

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