At first civil unions were allowed in several states for same-sex domestic partnerships. Then judges said they were equivalent to civil marriages. Now the U.S. Supreme Court has redefined civil marriage to include same-sex domestic partnerships. Essentially the Court has downgraded civil marriages to civil unions. States should respond by replacing civil marriages with civil unions. Why? That […]
Much discussion continues on the topic of “science and religion” but the concept of religion is vague or arbitrary so it is better to focus on “science and theology.” Christian theology in particular does have some relation to science. Historians have documented the role that Christianity played in the rise of modern science. For example,
The word evangelical means simply “of or according to the teaching of the gospel (the good news)”. Evangelical was used by Martin Luther to characterize the Reformation so that in Europe it is often a synonym for Protestant. In America the term (often capitalized) has come to have a particular meaning, characterized by historian David
When Isaac Newton published his Principia with its laws of motion, he asserted their universal application. Since he had unified motion on the surface of the earth with the motion of the solar system, it was a powerful argument. Nevertheless, to claim universal application excessively extrapolated and interpolated far beyond any data available at the time. But you
In constitutional republics the founding documents provide the positive basis for political authority. In the U.S. the Constitution delineates the authority of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. Thus the President could do only what he (so far only he) is authorized by the Constitution to do: act as Commander in Chief of
Science is knowledge (scientia) that is systematically gained and/or organized. That entails that the terminology of science be systematic, i.e, a nomenclature rather than a hodgepodge of terms. This can make discussions about science hard since people have to learn a body of nomenclature before understanding a science. This applies to all sciences, whether natural sciences,
Some people are born with alcoholism, that is, they are inclined toward alcohol dependence. Others acquire it over time or a combination of both is the cause. Alcoholism is a disease, also called alcohol dependence syndrome. It can cause people to behave in unhealthy ways such as engaging in risky behavior. Whether alcoholism can be
This is a follow-up to the introductory post on Laws of Form here. There are two kinds of negation: contraries and contradictories, and Laws of Form (LoF) represents both types. Furthermore both types apply to terms and propositions. Contraries are two complete opposites; the negation of one is the other. The poles of a magnet
The remarkable book Laws of Form by George Spencer-Brown was published in 1969 and is almost forgotten today. The best expositors have been William Bricken with his boundary mathematics, Louis Kauffman with his knot theory, and Francisco Varela with his work on self-reference. Otherwise it has become something of an underground classic but otherwise forgotten.
Scientific theories are in principle subject to underdetermination in that multiple theories could account for the data. In the natural sciences this possibility is strongly resisted. When Darwin proposed his theory in 1859, he could not show that a version of special creation would not account for the data. What he and Huxley did instead was
