Google’s Ngram Viewer gives the frequencies of words and phrases in books since about 1800. It is an interesting way of looking at history in the last two centuries. What follows are some observations about the usage of words associated with religion and Christianity: Usage of the word religion has gradually decreased since 1810, steeply until 1860. […]
Wikipedia notes: The initial usage of the term capitalism in its modern sense has been attributed to Louis Blanc [a socialist] in 1850 and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon [an anarchist] in 1861. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels referred to the capitalistic system (kapitalistisches System) and to the capitalist mode of production (kapitalistische Produktionsform) in Das Kapital (1867).
Google’s Ngram Viewer is a fascinating look at word usage since about 1800. For example, the story of how the term natural history declined and the terms biology and geology increased is told in a simple chart. Let’s look at the etymologies first, via the Online Etymology Dictionary: biology (n.) 1819, from Greek bios “life” (see bio-)
Michael Crichton, a well-known scientist and author, delivered the Caltech Michelin Lecture on January 17, 2003. He entitled it “Aliens Cause Global Warming” which criticized what is called “consensus science” starting with SETI. A few excerpts: I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called
Petteri Nieminen et al. have written two similar papers analyzing creationist writings: Argumentation and fallacies in creationist writings against evolutionary theory (Evolution: Education and Outreach, 2014, 7:11) and Experiential Thinking in Creationism–A Textual Analysis (PLOS ONE, March 3, 2015). These are welcome additions to the literature that try to shed some light and reduce the heat of debate. They
Remodernism is a growing movement of artists and filmmakers who oppose post-modernism and its cynical and ironic attitudes and seek to renew the vision of early modernism, emphasizing the spiritual and expressive dimensions of art. See their manifesto here. What is interesting is the rejection of late modernism and its denouement in post-modernism. Something similar
The problems with the two extremes of government are well known. Monarchy, oligarchy, aristocracy, plutocracy, and the like are all forms of government in which one person or a small group of people have almost all the authority, land, power, wealth, etc. The problem is that either they are not necessarily wise or competent or
It is not well known that there are two kinds of evolutionary theories, characterized by whether law or chance are the dominant means. For Darwinism chance is the dominant means, that is, stochastic elements are more significant than the processes of physical law. A different kind of evolution asserts that physical law is the dominant means
William Paley’s Natural Theology makes some important points: Whatever is done, God could have done, without the intervention of instruments or means: but it is in the construction of instruments, in the choice and adaptation of means, that a creative intelligence is seen. It is this which constitutes the order and beauty of the universe.
Parsimony is considered a desirable or even necessary characteristic of a scientific theory but what this means is not clear. There are many types of parsimony (see the article on Simplicity in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy for a list). The most common kind of parsimony is qualitative parsimony, often called Ockham’s Razor, which says that
