1.
Evidence of absence
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Evidence of absence is evidence of any kind that suggests something is missing or that it does not exist. In this regard Irving Copi writes, In some circumstances it can be assumed that if a certain event had occurred. In such circumstances it is reasonable to take the absence of proof of its occurrence as positive proof of its non-occurrence. The difference between evidence that something is absent and an absence of evidence can be nuanced. Indeed, scientists will often debate whether a result should be considered evidence of absence. The debate is whether the experiment would have detected the phenomenon of interest if it was there, the argument from ignorance for absence of evidence isnt necessarily fallacious, for example, that a potentially life saving new drug poses no long term health risk unless proved otherwise. Carl Sagan criticized such impatience with ambiguity with cosmologist Martin Rees maxim, in carefully designed scientific experiments, even null results can be evidence of absence. For instance, a hypothesis may be falsified if a vital predicted observation is not found empirically, whether the scientific community will accept a null result as evidence of absence depends on many factors, including the detection power of the applied methods, and the confidence of the inference. If someone were to assert that there is an elephant on the quad, but if someone were to assert that there is a flea on the quad, then ones failure to observe it there would not constitute good evidence that there is no flea on the quad. The salient difference between two cases is that in the one, but not the other, we should expect to see some evidence of the entity if in fact it existed. If the ratio is small, then little justification is conferred on the belief that the entity does not exist, the Oxford English Dictionary defines “induction”, in the sense relevant here, as follows, process of inferring a general law or principle from the observation of particular instances. Of what contemporary epistemology, logic, and the philosophy of science count as induction infers neither from observation nor from particulars and does not lead to general laws or principles. Was understood to be what we now know as enumerative induction or universal inference, inference from particular instances, a1, a2, …, a weaker form of enumerative induction, singular predictive inference, leads not to a generalization but to a singular prediction,1. A1, a2, …, an are all Fs that are also G.2, an+1 is also G. Singular predictive inference also has a more general probabilistic form,1. The proportion p of observed Fs have also been Gs.2, a, not yet observed, is an F.3. The probability that a is G is p, in 1992 during a presentation at Caltech, skeptic James Randi said you cant prove a negative. He claims that it is impossible to prove a negative assertion and he contends that induction is often used as a mode of proving a thesis, but if an individual assumes that something is or is not, then the person must prove so. Further, he says, he not take an advocacy position
2.
Contraposition
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In logic, contraposition is an inference that says that a conditional statement is logically equivalent to its contrapositive. The contrapositive of the statement has its antecedent and consequent inverted and flipped, for instance, the proposition All bats are mammals can be restated as the conditional If something is a bat, then it is a mammal. Now, the law says that statement is identical to the contrapositive If something is not a mammal, then it is not a bat. The contrapositive can be compared with three other relationships between conditional statements, Inversion, ¬ P → ¬ Q If something is not a bat, then it is not a mammal. Unlike the contrapositive, the truth value is not at all dependent on whether or not the original proposition was true. The inverse here is not true. Conversion, Q → P If something is a mammal, then it is a bat, the converse is actually the contrapositive of the inverse and so always has the same truth value as the inverse, which is not necessarily the same as that of the original proposition. Negation, ¬ There exists a bat that is not a mammal, If the negation is true, the original proposition is false. Here, of course, the negation is false, note that if P → Q is true and we are given that Q is false, ¬ Q, it can logically be concluded that P must be false, ¬ P. This is often called the law of contrapositive, or the modus tollens rule of inference, according to this diagram, if something is in A, it must be in B as well. So we can all of A is in B as, A → B It is also clear that anything that is not within B cannot be within A. This statement, ¬ B → ¬ A is the contrapositive, therefore, we can say that →. Practically speaking, this may make much easier when trying to prove something. Alternatively, we can try to prove ¬ B → ¬ A by checking all girls without brown hair to see if they are all outside the US. This means that if we find at least one girl without brown hair within the US, we will have disproved ¬ B → ¬ A, to conclude, for any statement where A implies B, then not B always implies not A. Proving or disproving either one of these statements automatically proves or disproves the other. A proposition Q is implicated by a proposition P when the relationship holds, This states that, if P, then Q, or, if Socrates is a man. In a conditional such as this, P is the antecedent, one statement is the contrapositive of the other only when its antecedent is the negated consequent of the other, and vice versa
3.
Carl Sagan
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Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and other natural sciences. He is best known for his work as a science popularizer and his best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan argued the now accepted hypothesis that the surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to. Sagan published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books. He wrote many science books, such as The Dragons of Eden, Brocas Brain and Pale Blue Dot. The most widely watched series in the history of American public television, the book Cosmos was published to accompany the series. He also wrote the science fiction novel Contact, the basis for a 1997 film of the same name and his papers, containing 595,000 items, are archived at The Library of Congress. Sagan always advocated scientific skeptical inquiry and the method, pioneered exobiology. He spent most of his career as a professor of astronomy at Cornell University and he married three times and had five children. After suffering from myelodysplasia, Sagan died of pneumonia at the age of 62, Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Samuel Sagan, was an immigrant garment worker from Kamianets-Podilskyi, then Russian Empire and his mother, Rachel Molly Gruber, was a housewife from New York. Carl was named in honor of Rachels biological mother, Chaiya Clara, in Sagans words and he had a sister, Carol, and the family lived in a modest apartment near the Atlantic Ocean, in Bensonhurst, a Brooklyn neighborhood. According to Sagan, they were Reform Jews, the most liberal of North American Judaisms four main groups, both Sagan and his sister agreed that their father was not especially religious, but that their mother definitely believed in God, and was active in the temple. During the depths of the Depression, his father worked as a theater usher, according to biographer Keay Davidson, Sagans inner war was a result of his close relationship with both of his parents, who were in many ways opposites. Sagan traced his later analytical urges to his mother, a woman who had extremely poor as a child in New York City during World War I. As a young woman she had held her own ambitions, but they were frustrated by social restrictions, her poverty, her status as a woman and a wife. Davidson notes that she therefore worshipped her only son, Carl and he would fulfill her unfulfilled dreams. However, he claimed that his sense of wonder came from his father, in his free time he gave apples to the poor or helped soothe labor-management tensions within New Yorks garment industry
4.
The Demon-Haunted World
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He explains methods to help distinguish between ideas that are considered valid science and those that can be considered pseudoscience. Sagan states that new ideas are offered for consideration, they should be tested by means of skeptical thinking. Science to Sagan is not just a body of knowledge but a way of thinking, Sagan claims that the scientific way of thinking is both imaginative and disciplined, bringing humans to an understanding of how the universe is, rather than how they wish to perceive it. He says that works much better than any other system because it has a built-in error-correcting machine. Superstition and pseudoscience get in the way of many laypersons ability to appreciate the beauty, skeptical thinking allows people to construct, understand, reason, and recognize valid and invalid arguments. Wherever possible, there must be independent validation of the concepts whose truth should be proved and he states that reason and logic would succeed once the truth were known. Conclusions emerge from premises, and the acceptability of the premises should not be discounted or accepted because of bias, as an example of skeptical thinking, Sagan offers a story concerning a fire-breathing dragon that lives in his garage. When he persuades a rational, open-minded visitor to meet the dragon, Sagan replies that he neglected to mention that shes an invisible dragon. The visitor suggests spreading flour on the floor so that the footprints might be seen, which Sagan says is a good idea. When the visitor considers using a camera to view the creatures invisible fire. He continues to counter every proposed physical test with a reason why the test will not work, Sagan concludes by asking, Now whats the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all. If theres no way to disprove my contention, no experiment that would count against it. Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true, Sagan presents a set of tools for skeptical thinking which he calls the baloney detection kit. Skeptical thinking consists both of constructing an argument and recognizing a fallacious or fraudulent one. Sagans baloney detection kit also provides tools for detecting the most common fallacies of logic and rhetoric, such as argument from authority, through these tools, Sagan argues the benefits of a critical mind and the self-correcting nature of science can take place. Sagan provides an analysis of several examples of what he refers to as superstition, fraud, and pseudoscience such as witches, UFOs, ESP. He is critical of organized religion, Sagan indicates that science can be misused. The book was a NY Times bestseller and is considered to be an important book by the contemporary skeptical movement
5.
Probability
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Probability is the measure of the likelihood that an event will occur. Probability is quantified as a number between 0 and 1, the higher the probability of an event, the more certain that the event will occur. A simple example is the tossing of a fair coin, since the coin is unbiased, the two outcomes are both equally probable, the probability of head equals the probability of tail. Since no other outcomes are possible, the probability is 1/2 and this type of probability is also called a priori probability. Probability theory is used to describe the underlying mechanics and regularities of complex systems. For example, tossing a coin twice will yield head-head, head-tail, tail-head. The probability of getting an outcome of head-head is 1 out of 4 outcomes or 1/4 or 0.25 and this interpretation considers probability to be the relative frequency in the long run of outcomes. A modification of this is propensity probability, which interprets probability as the tendency of some experiment to yield a certain outcome, subjectivists assign numbers per subjective probability, i. e. as a degree of belief. The degree of belief has been interpreted as, the price at which you would buy or sell a bet that pays 1 unit of utility if E,0 if not E. The most popular version of subjective probability is Bayesian probability, which includes expert knowledge as well as data to produce probabilities. The expert knowledge is represented by some prior probability distribution and these data are incorporated in a likelihood function. The product of the prior and the likelihood, normalized, results in a probability distribution that incorporates all the information known to date. The scientific study of probability is a development of mathematics. Gambling shows that there has been an interest in quantifying the ideas of probability for millennia, there are reasons of course, for the slow development of the mathematics of probability. Whereas games of chance provided the impetus for the study of probability. According to Richard Jeffrey, Before the middle of the century, the term probable meant approvable. A probable action or opinion was one such as people would undertake or hold. However, in legal contexts especially, probable could also apply to propositions for which there was good evidence, the sixteenth century Italian polymath Gerolamo Cardano demonstrated the efficacy of defining odds as the ratio of favourable to unfavourable outcomes
6.
Empiricism
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Empiricism is a theory that states that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. Empiricism, often used by scientists, says that knowledge is based on experience. One of the epistemological tenets is that sensory experience creates knowledge, empirical research, including experiments and validated measurement tools, guides the scientific method. The term was used by the Empiric school of ancient Greek medical practitioners, a central concept in science and the scientific method is that it must be empirically based on the evidence of the senses. Both natural and social sciences use working hypotheses that are testable by observation, philosophical empiricists hold no knowledge to be properly inferred or deduced unless it is derived from ones sense-based experience. This view is contrasted with rationalism, which states that knowledge may be derived from reason independently of the senses. For example, John Locke held that knowledge could be arrived at through intuition. Similarly Robert Boyle, a prominent advocate of the experimental method, the main continental rationalists were also advocates of the empirical scientific method. Vaisheshika darshana, founded by the ancient Indian philosopher Kanada, accepted perception and this is enumerated in his work Vaiśeṣika Sūtra. The notion of tabula rasa connotes a view of mind as a blank or empty recorder on which experience leaves marks. This denies that humans have innate ideas, the image dates back to Aristotle, What the mind thinks must be in it in the same sense as letters are on a tablet which bears no actual writing, this is just what happens in the case of the mind. These notions contrasted with Platonic notions of the mind as an entity that pre-existed somewhere in the heavens. This idea was developed in ancient philosophy by the Stoic school. Stoic epistemology generally emphasized that the mind starts blank, but acquires knowledge as the world is impressed upon it. The doxographer Aetius summarizes this view as When a man is born, later stoics, such as Sextus of Chaeronea, would continue this idea of empiricism in later Stoic writings as well. As Sextus contends For every thought comes from sense-perception or not without sense-perception, so the immaterial active intellect, separate from any individual person, is still essential for understanding to occur. A similar Islamic theological novel, Theologus Autodidactus, was written by the Arab theologian and physician Ibn al-Nafis in the 13th century, during the 13th century Thomas Aquinas adopted the Aristotelian position that the senses are essential to mind into scholasticism
7.
Porcupine
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Porcupines are rodentian mammals with a coat of sharp spines, or quills, that protect against predators. The term covers two families of animals, the Old World porcupines of family Hystricidae, and the New World porcupines of family Erethizontidae, the Old World porcupines live in southern Europe, Asia, and most of Africa. They are large, terrestrial, and strictly nocturnal, in taxonomic terms, they form the family Hystricidae. The New World porcupines are indigenous to North America and northern South America and they live in wooded areas and can climb trees, where some species spend their entire lives. They are less strictly nocturnal than their Old World relatives, in taxonomic terms, they form the family Erethizontidae. Porcupines are the third-largest of the rodents, behind the capybara, most porcupines are about 60–90 cm long, with an 20–25 cm long tail. Weighing 5–16 kg, they are rounded, large, and slow, Porcupines occur in various shades of brown, gray, and white. Porcupines spiny protection resembles that of the unrelated erinaceomorph hedgehogs and Australian spiny anteaters or monotreme echidnas, the name porcupine comes from Latin porcus pig + spina spine, quill, via Old Italian—Middle French—Middle English. A regional American name for the animal is quill pig, similarly, the German name, Stachelschwein, means thorn-swine and the Afrikaans name, ystervark, means iron pig. Fossils belonging to the Hystrix genus date back to the late Miocene of Africa, a porcupine is any of 29 species of rodents belonging to the families Erethizontidae or Hystricidae. The two families of porcupines are quite different, and although both belong to the Hystricognathi branch of the vast order Rodentia, they are not closely related, the 11 Old World porcupines tend to be fairly large, and have spikes grouped in clusters. The two subfamilies of New World porcupines are mostly smaller, have their quills attached singly rather than grouped in clusters, the New World porcupines evolved their spines independently and are more closely related to several other families of rodents than they are to the Old World porcupines. The North American porcupine is a herbivore, it leaves, herbs, twigs. In the winter, it may eat bark and it often climbs trees to find food. The African porcupine is not a climber and forages on the ground and it is mostly nocturnal, but will sometimes forage for food in the day. Porcupines have become a pest in Kenya and are eaten as a delicacy, Porcupines quills, or spines, take on various forms, depending on the species, but all are modified hairs coated with thick plates of keratin, and embedded in the skin musculature. Old World porcupines have quills embedded in clusters, whereas in New World porcupines, single quills are interspersed with bristles, underfur, quills are released by contact or may drop out when the porcupine shakes its body. New quills grow to replace lost ones, Porcupines were long believed to have the ability to project their quills to a considerable distance at an enemy, but this has since been proven to be untrue
8.
Fifth column
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A fifth column is any group of people who undermine a larger group from within, usually in favor of an enemy group or nation. The activities of a column can be overt or clandestine. Forces gathered in secret can mobilize openly to assist an external attack and this term is also extended to organized actions by military personnel. Clandestine fifth column activities can involve acts of sabotage, disinformation, the term was then widely used in Spain. The rapid fall of France in 1940 led many to blame a fifth rather than German military superiority. Political factions in France blamed one another for the defeat and military officials blamed the civilian leadership. In June 1940, Life magazine ran a series of photos under the heading Signs of Nazi Fifth Column Everywhere, in July 1940, Time magazine called fifth column talk a national phenomenon. In August 1940 the New York Times mentioned the first spasm of fear engendered by the success of fifth columns in less fortunate countries, one report identified participants in Nazi fifth columns as partisans of authoritarian government everywhere, citing Poland, Czechoslovakia, Norway, and the Netherlands. John Langdon-Davies, a British journalist who covered the Spanish Civil War, the New York Times published three editorial cartoons that used the term on August 11,1940. In the US an Australian radio play, The Enemy Within, proved to be very popular, in December 1940 the Australian censors had the series banned. British reviewers of Agatha Christies novel N or M. in 1941 used the term to describe the struggle of two British partisans of the Nazi regime working on its behalf in England during World War II. Connell says to John, Listen, pal, this stuff is pretty rotten. Identifying the businessman with interests in the United States. When Doe agrees, he adds, And youd feel like an awful sucker if you found yourself marching right in the middle of it, the term was soon so widely known that it very quickly appeared in popular U. S. entertainment. Introducing a 1941 newsreel, Meet John Doughboy, the animated character Porky Pig asked any fifth columnists in the audience to leave the theater immediately, in Alfred Hitchcocks Saboteur, Robert Cummings asks for help against fifth columnists who are conspiring to sabotage the American war effort. The next year in Looney Tunes Foney Fables, the narrator of a fairy tale described a wolf in sheeps clothing as a fifth columnist. In 1943, a cartoon in the Merrie Melodies series was called The Fifth-Column Mouse. Both before and after Pearl Harbor, comic books contained references to the Fifth column, an example of this is the June 1942 Green Lantern
9.
Earl Warren
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Earl Warren was an American jurist and politician, who served as the 30th Governor of California and later the 14th Chief Justice of the United States. Warren is the person elected to three consecutive terms as Governor of California, and with those three elected terms he is second only to Jerry Brown for total gubernatorial wins in California. Before holding these positions, he was the District Attorney for Alameda County, California, Warren was the nominee of the Republican Party for Vice President in 1948, as the running mate of Thomas E. Dewey. He was appointed to chair what became known as the Warren Commission, which was formed to investigate the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Earl Warren was born in Los Angeles, on March 19,1891, to Mathias H. Warren, a Norwegian immigrant whose family name was Varren, and his wife, Crystal. Mathias Warren was an employee of the Southern Pacific Railroad. After he was blacklisted for joining in a strike, the moved to Bakersfield, California. Matthias worked in a repair yard, and Earl had summer jobs in railroading. Earl Warren grew up in Bakersfield, where he attended Washington Junior High and his father was murdered there by an unknown person during a robbery. In 1912 Warren graduated with a B. A. in political science from the University of California, in 1914 he earned his J. D. at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. He was a member of The Gun Club secret society, and the Sigma Phi Society, as an undergraduate, Warren also played clarinet in the Cal Band. Warren maintained a friendship with fellow Cal student Robert Gordon Sproul. In 1948, at the Republican National Convention, Sproul would nominate Warren for Vice President, Warren was admitted to the California bar in 1914. Warren worked a year for Associated Oil Company in San Francisco, then joined Robinson & Robinson, in August 1917, Warren enlisted in the U. S. Army for World War I service. Assigned to the 91st Division at Camp Lewis, Washington, 1st Lieutenant Earl Warren was discharged in 1918. After the war, he served as a clerk of the Judicial Committee for the 1919 Session of the California State Assembly, then as the Deputy City Attorney in Oakland, Warren came to the attention of powerful Republican Joseph R. Knowland, publisher of The Oakland Tribune. He was strongly influenced by California Governor Hiram Johnson and other leaders of the Progressive Era to oppose corruption, in 1925, Warren was appointed as the District Attorney of Alameda County. Warren was re-elected to three four-year terms, Warren vigorously investigated allegations that a deputy sheriff was taking bribes in connection with street-paving arrangements
10.
John Locke
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John Locke FRS was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the Father of Liberalism. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Sir Francis Bacon and his work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers and his contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence. Locke was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness and he postulated that, at birth, the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa. This is now known as empiricism, an example of Lockes belief in Empiricism can be seen in his quote, whatever I write, as soon as I discover it not to be true, my hand shall be the forwardest to throw it into the fire. This shows the ideology of science in his observations in that something must be capable of being tested repeatedly, challenging the work of others, Locke is said to have established the method of introspection, or observing the emotions and behaviours of one’s self. Locke was born on 29 August 1632, in a thatched cottage by the church in Wrington, Somerset. He was baptised the same day, soon after Lockes birth, the family moved to the market town of Pensford, about seven miles south of Bristol, where Locke grew up in a rural Tudor house in Belluton. In 1647, Locke was sent to the prestigious Westminster School in London under the sponsorship of Alexander Popham, after completing studies there, he was admitted to Christ Church, Oxford, in the autumn of 1652 at the age of twenty. The dean of the college at the time was John Owen, although a capable student, Locke was irritated by the undergraduate curriculum of the time. He found the works of philosophers, such as René Descartes. Locke was awarded a degree in February 1656 and a masters degree in June 1658. In 1666, he met Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, Cooper was impressed with Locke and persuaded him to become part of his retinue. Locke had been looking for a career and in 1667 moved into Shaftesburys home at Exeter House in London, in London, Locke resumed his medical studies under the tutelage of Thomas Sydenham. Sydenham had an effect on Lockes natural philosophical thinking – an effect that would become evident in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Lockes medical knowledge was put to the test when Shaftesburys liver infection became life-threatening, Locke coordinated the advice of several physicians and was probably instrumental in persuading Shaftesbury to undergo surgery to remove the cyst. Shaftesbury survived and prospered, crediting Locke with saving his life, Shaftesbury, as a founder of the Whig movement, exerted great influence on Lockes political ideas. Locke became involved in politics when Shaftesbury became Lord Chancellor in 1672, following Shaftesburys fall from favour in 1675, Locke spent some time travelling across France as tutor and medical attendant to Caleb Banks
11.
Russell's teapot
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Russell specifically applied his analogy in the context of religion. Russells teapot is still invoked in discussions concerning the existence of God, in an article titled Is There a God. This is, of course, a mistake, but if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. In 1958, Russell elaborated on the analogy I ought to call myself an agnostic, I do not think the existence of the Christian God any more probable than the existence of the Gods of Olympus or Valhalla. I think the Christian God just as unlikely, other thinkers have posited similar analogies. Bury notes the following in his 1913 book, History of Freedom of Thought, but the burden of proof does not lie upon the rejecter. Some minds would be prepared to accept it, if it were reiterated often enough, through the potent force of suggestion, chemist Peter Atkins said that the point of Russells teapot is that there is no burden on anyone to disprove assertions. Occams razor suggests that the theory with fewer assertions should be the starting point in the discussion rather than the more complex theory. Science has no way of establishing the existence or non-existence of a god, therefore, according to the agnostic conciliator, because it is a matter of individual taste, belief and disbelief in a supreme being are deserving of equal respect and attention. In 2014, philosopher Alvin Plantinga was quoted in The New York Times as challenging the validity of the Russells Teapot argument, no country with such capabilities is sufficiently frivolous to waste its resources by trying to send a teapot into orbit. Furthermore, if some country had done so, it would have all over the news. There is plenty of evidence against teapotism, the concept of Russells teapot has been extrapolated into more explicitly religion-parodying forms such as the Invisible Pink Unicorn and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Ad hoc hypothesis Argument from ignorance Parody religion
12.
Lander University
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Lander University is a public university located in Greenwood, South Carolina. It is the states second-smallest publicly funded baccalaureate institution, Lander University was founded by Methodist clergyman Samuel Lander in 1872 as Williamston Female College in Williamston, South Carolina. It remained an institution for 26 years. In 1898 the College gained the support of the South Carolina Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the college moved to Greenwood in 1904 and was renamed Lander College in honor of its founder who died in the same year. It remained a college until 1943 when men were first admitted. In 1951, the Greenwood County obtained the College name and property from the Methodist Conference, the South Carolina General Assembly created the Greenwood County Education Commission, known as the Lander Foundation, to serve as the board of control of the College. Lander thus became the only liberal arts college in the United States to be controlled and financed by a county government. In 1973, Lander College became a college and in 1992 its name was changed to Lander University. The institution is now completely co-educational, Lander is situated on a wooded site near the middle of the City of Greenwood, of approximately 123 acres. The Lander College Old Main Building consists of three distinct sections displaying an eclectic blending of elements of the Romanesque Revival and Georgian Revival styles, two of the sections—Greenwood Hall and Laura Lander Hall—were built in 1903-04, Willson Hall was added in 1911. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, Lander created a new 10-year Campus Master Plan in 2003. The first phase of the plan, the creation of an entrance, is complete. An expanded dining hall opened in January 2007, Lander has a student/faculty ratio of 19,1 with 123 full-time faculty members, the majority of whom hold terminal degrees in their areas. The average class size is 23, more than 60 areas of undergraduate study are offered, as well as a diverse selection of. Three programs are offered online, the R. N. to B. S. N. Completion option, the criminal justice management bachelor’s degree, and the health care management certificate, varsity athletic teams have reaped honors at district and national levels, including 12 national championships in men’s tennis. Lander also offers club sports include equestrian, ultimate disc, rugby, bass-fishing, lacrosse and soccer teams. Lander is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges, List of colleges and universities in South Carolina List of current and historical womens universities and colleges Lander University Lander University Athletics
13.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
14.
OCLC
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The Online Computer Library Center is a US-based nonprofit cooperative organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the worlds information and reducing information costs. It was founded in 1967 as the Ohio College Library Center, OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the largest online public access catalog in the world. OCLC is funded mainly by the fees that libraries have to pay for its services, the group first met on July 5,1967 on the campus of the Ohio State University to sign the articles of incorporation for the nonprofit organization. The group hired Frederick G. Kilgour, a former Yale University medical school librarian, Kilgour wished to merge the latest information storage and retrieval system of the time, the computer, with the oldest, the library. The goal of network and database was to bring libraries together to cooperatively keep track of the worlds information in order to best serve researchers and scholars. The first library to do online cataloging through OCLC was the Alden Library at Ohio University on August 26,1971 and this was the first occurrence of online cataloging by any library worldwide. Membership in OCLC is based on use of services and contribution of data, between 1967 and 1977, OCLC membership was limited to institutions in Ohio, but in 1978, a new governance structure was established that allowed institutions from other states to join. In 2002, the structure was again modified to accommodate participation from outside the United States. As OCLC expanded services in the United States outside of Ohio, it relied on establishing strategic partnerships with networks, organizations that provided training, support, by 2008, there were 15 independent United States regional service providers. OCLC networks played a key role in OCLC governance, with networks electing delegates to serve on OCLC Members Council, in early 2009, OCLC negotiated new contracts with the former networks and opened a centralized support center. OCLC provides bibliographic, abstract and full-text information to anyone, OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat—the OCLC Online Union Catalog, the largest online public access catalog in the world. WorldCat has holding records from public and private libraries worldwide. org, in October 2005, the OCLC technical staff began a wiki project, WikiD, allowing readers to add commentary and structured-field information associated with any WorldCat record. The Online Computer Library Center acquired the trademark and copyrights associated with the Dewey Decimal Classification System when it bought Forest Press in 1988, a browser for books with their Dewey Decimal Classifications was available until July 2013, it was replaced by the Classify Service. S. The reference management service QuestionPoint provides libraries with tools to communicate with users and this around-the-clock reference service is provided by a cooperative of participating global libraries. OCLC has produced cards for members since 1971 with its shared online catalog. OCLC commercially sells software, e. g. CONTENTdm for managing digital collections, OCLC has been conducting research for the library community for more than 30 years. In accordance with its mission, OCLC makes its research outcomes known through various publications and these publications, including journal articles, reports, newsletters, and presentations, are available through the organizations website. The most recent publications are displayed first, and all archived resources, membership Reports – A number of significant reports on topics ranging from virtual reference in libraries to perceptions about library funding
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Argument from silence
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To make an argument from silence is to express a conclusion that is based on the absence of statements in historical documents, rather than on presence. In the field of studies, it often refers to the assertion that an author is ignorant of a subject. Thus in historical analysis with an argument from silence, the absence of a reference to an event or a document is used to cast doubt on the event not mentioned. While most historical approaches rely on what an authors works contain and this approach thus uses what an author should have said rather than what is available in the authors extant writings. John Lange provided the structure for the analysis of arguments from silence based on three components, An extant document D in which no reference to an event E appears. The applicability of these three conditions is decided on a case by case basis, and there are no general rules for them. In Langes analysis, an argument from silence is only suggestive, professor of English Michael Duncan states that there are very few scholarly analyses of arguments from silence, but these typically view it as fallacious. Errietta Bissa, professor of Classics at University of Wales flatly states that arguments from silence are not valid, david Henige states that, although risky, such arguments can at times shed light on historical events. g. Here the argument from silence is very convincing and this is well as illustrated by the case of Changlu Zongzes Rules of purity which he wrote for the Chan monastery in 1103. One of his contemporaries wrote a preface to a collection of his writings neglected to mention his code, and none of his biographies nor the documents of the Transmission of the Lamp, nor the Pure Land documents refer to Zongzes collection of a monastic code. However a copy of the code in which the author identifies himself exists, frances Wood based her controversial book Did Marco Polo go to China. She argued that no outsider could spend 15 years in China and not observe, most historians disagree with Woods reasoning. Barrie J. Adverse inferences from silence Evidence of absence Negative proof Philosophic burden of proof
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Naturalistic fallacy
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In philosophical ethics, the term naturalistic fallacy was introduced by British philosopher G. E. Moore in his 1903 book Principia Ethica. Moore argues it would be fallacious to explain that which is good reductively in terms of properties such as pleasant or desirable. Moores naturalistic fallacy is closely related to the problem, which comes from David Humes A Treatise of Human Nature. However, unlike Humes view of the problem, Moore did not consider the naturalistic fallacy to be at odds with moral realism. The term naturalistic fallacy is used to describe the deduction of an ought from an is. In using his categorical imperative Kant deduced that experience was necessary for their application, but experience on its own or the imperative on its own could not possibly identify an act as being moral or immoral. We can have no knowledge of morality from them, being incapable of deducing how things ought to be from the fact that they happen to be arranged in a particular manner in experience. Bentham, in discussing the relations of law and morality, found that when people discuss problems and this can be seen in discussions of natural law and positive law. Bentham criticized natural law theory because in his view it was a naturalistic fallacy, according to G. E. Moores Principia Ethica, when philosophers try to define good reductively in terms of natural properties like pleasant or desirable, they are committing the naturalistic fallacy. The naturalistic fallacy is the assumption that because the good and, say, pleasant necessarily describe the same objects. In defense of ethical non-naturalism, Moores argument is concerned with the semantic, in general, opponents of ethical naturalism reject ethical conclusions drawn from natural facts. In §7, Moore argues that a property is either a complex of simple properties, complex properties can be defined in terms of their constituent parts but a simple property has no parts. In addition to good and pleasure, Moore suggests that colour qualia are undefined, if one wants to understand yellow, bernard Williams called Moores use of the term naturalistic fallacy a spectacular misnomer, the question being metaphysical, as opposed to rational. Such inferences are common in discussions of homosexuality, environmentalism, the naturalistic fallacy is the idea that what is found in nature is good. It was the basis for social Darwinism, the belief that helping the poor and sick would get in the way of evolution, today, biologists denounce the naturalistic fallacy because they want to describe the natural world honestly, without people deriving morals about how we ought to behave. Some philosophers reject the naturalistic fallacy and/or suggest solutions for the proposed is–ought problem, ralph McInerny suggests that ought is already bound up in is, in so far as the very nature of things have ends/goals within them. For example, a clock is a used to keep time. When one understands the function of a clock, then a standard of evaluation is implicit in the description of the clock, i. e. because it is a clock
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Red herring
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A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important issue. It may be either a logical fallacy or a device that leads readers or audiences towards a false conclusion. A red herring might be used, such as in mystery fiction or as part of rhetorical strategies. The origin of the expression is unknown, the phrase was later borrowed to provide a formal name for the logical fallacy and literary device. As an informal fallacy, the red herring falls into a class of relevance fallacies. Unlike the straw man, which is premised on a distortion of the partys position. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a red herring may be intentional, or unintentional, the expression is mainly used to assert that an argument is not relevant to the issue being discussed. For example, I think we should make the academic requirements stricter for students, I recommend you support this because we are in a budget crisis, and we do not want our salaries affected. The second sentence, though used to support the first sentence, in fiction and non-fiction a red herring may be intentionally used by the writer to plant a false clue that leads readers or audiences towards a false conclusion. The characters name is a loose Italian translation of red herring, in a literal sense, there is no such fish as a red herring, it refers to a particularly strong kipper, a fish that has been strongly cured in brine and/or heavily smoked. This process makes the fish particularly pungent smelling and, with strong enough brine, turns its flesh reddish. In its literal sense as a strongly cured kipper, the term can be dated to the century, in the poem The Treatise by Walter of Bibbesworth. Prior to 2008, the sense of red herring was thought to originate from a supposed technique of training young scent hounds. There are variations of the story, but according to one version, later, when the dog was being trained to follow the faint odour of a fox or a badger, the trainer would drag a red herring perpendicular to the animals trail to confuse the dog. The dog eventually learned to follow the original scent rather than the stronger scent, another variation of the dog story is given by Robert Hendrickson who says escaping convicts used the pungent fish to throw off hounds in pursuit. Ross researched the origin of the story and found the earliest reference to using herrings for training animals was in a tract on horsemanship published in 1697 by Gerland Langbaine. Langbaine recommended a method of training horses by dragging the carcass of a cat or fox so that the horse would be accustomed to following the chaos of a hunting party and he says if a dead animal is not available, a red herring would do as a substitute. This recommendation was misunderstood by Nicholas Cox, published in the notes of another book around the same time, either way, the herring was not used to distract the hounds or horses from a trail, rather to guide them along it
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Straw man
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A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponents argument, while refuting an argument that was not advanced by that opponent. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be attacking a straw man, however, Hamblins classic text Fallacies neither mentions it as a distinct type, nor even as a historical term. The origins of the term are unclear, the usage of the term in rhetoric suggests a human figure made of straw which is easily knocked down or destroyed, such as a military training dummy, scarecrow, or effigy. The rhetorical technique is called an Aunt Sally in the UK. One common folk etymology is that it refers to men who stood outside courthouses with a straw in their shoe in order to indicate their willingness to be a false witness. This reasoning is a fallacy of relevance, it fails to address the proposition in question by misrepresenting the opposing position, for example, Quoting an opponents words out of context—i. e. Choosing quotations that misrepresent the opponents intentions, presenting someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, then denying that persons arguments—thus giving the appearance that every upholder of that position has been defeated. Oversimplifying an opponents argument, then attacking this oversimplified version, Straw man arguments often arise in public debates such as a prohibition debate, A, We should relax the laws on beer. B, No, any society with unrestricted access to intoxicants loses its work ethic, the original proposal was to relax laws on beer. Person B has misconstrued/misrepresented this proposal by responding to it as if it had something like unrestricted access to intoxicants. It is a fallacy because Person A never advocated allowing said unrestricted access to intoxicants. In a 1977 appeal of a U. S and this was a straw man designed to alarm the appeal judges, the idea that the precedent set by one case would literally make it impossible to convict any bank robbers is remote. An example often given of a man is US President Richard Nixons 1952 Checkers speech. When campaigning for president in 1952, Nixon was accused of having illegally appropriated $18,000 in campaign funds for his personal use. And, you know, the kids, like all kids, loved the dog, and I just want to say right now. This was a straw man response, his critics had never criticized the dog as a gift or suggested he return it and this argument was successful at distracting many people from the funds, and portraying his critics as nitpicking and heartless. Nixon received an outpouring of support and remained on the ticket. He and Eisenhower were elected by a landslide, tindale comments that the portrait painted of Darwinian ideology is a caricature, one not borne out by any objective survey of the works cited
