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Thursday, April 5, 2012

Leap Day of Faith

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:48 am

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Monday, April 2, 2012—

"I think there is in this country a war on religion.
I think there is a desire to establish a religion
in America known as secularism."

Nancy Haught of The Oregonian on Leap Day, Feb. 29, 2012—

IMAGE- Theologian William Hamilton at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, February 10, 1950

William Hamilton, the retired theologian who declared in the 1960s that God was dead, died Tuesday [Feb. 28, 2012] in his downtown Portland apartment at 87. Hamilton said he'd been haunted by questions about God since he was a teenager. Years later, when his conclusion was published in the April 8, 1966, edition of Time Magazine, he found himself in a hornet's nest.

Time christened the new movement "radical theology" and Hamilton, one of its key figures, received death threats and inspired angry letters to the editor in newspapers that carried the story. He encountered hostility at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, where he had been teaching theology, and lost his endowed chair in 1967.

Hamilton moved on to teach religion at New College in Sarasota, Fla.

(See also this journal on Leap Day.)

From New College: The Honors College of Florida—

History Highlights

Oct. 11, 1960: New College is founded as a private college

1961: Trustees obtain options to purchase the former Charles Ringling estate on Sarasota Bay and 12 acres of airport land facing U.S. 41 held by private interests. The two pieces form the heart of the campus

Nov. 18, 1962: the campus is dedicated. Earth from Harvard is mixed with soil from New College as a symbol of the shared lofty ideals of the two institutions.

See also, in this journal, "Greatest Show on Earth" and The Harvard Crimson—

The Harvard Crimson,
Online Edition

Sunday,
Oct. 8, 2006

POMP AND
CIRCUS-STANCE

CRIMSON/ MEGHAN T. PURDY

Friday, Oct. 6:

The Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus has come to town, and yesterday the animals were disembarked near MIT and paraded to their temporary home at the Banknorth Garden.

OPINION

At Last, a
Guiding Philosophy
The General Education report is a strong cornerstone, though further scrutiny is required.

By THE CRIMSON STAFF
After four long years, the Curricular Review has finally found its heart.

The Trouble
With the Germans
The College is a little under-educated these days.

By SAHIL K. MAHTANI
Harvard College– in the best formulation I’ve heard– promulgates a Japanese-style education, where the professoriate pretend to teach, the students pretend to learn, and everyone is happy.

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Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Theorum

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: Cube Quaternions, Cube School, Eightfold Cube — m759 @ 7:48 am

In memory of artist Ronald Searle—

Searle reportedly died at 91 on December 30th.

From Log24 on that date—

Click the above image for some context.

Update of 9:29 PM EST Jan. 3, 2012—

Theorum

From RationalWiki

Theorum (rhymes with decorum, apparently) is a neologism proposed by Richard Dawkins in The Greatest Show on Earth to distinguish the scientific meaning of theory from the colloquial meaning. In most of the opening introduction to the show, he substitutes "theorum" for "theory" when referring to the major scientific theories such as evolution.

Problems with "theory"

Dawkins notes two general meanings for theory; the scientific one and the general sense that means a wild conjecture made up by someone as an explanation. The point of Dawkins inventing a new word is to get around the fact that the lay audience may not thoroughly understand what scientists mean when they say "theory of evolution". As many people see the phrase "I have a theory" as practically synonymous with "I have a wild guess I pulled out of my backside", there is often confusion about how thoroughly understood certain scientific ideas are. Hence the well known creationist argument that evolution is "just a theory" – and the often cited response of "but gravity is also just a theory".

To convey the special sense of thoroughness implied by the word theory in science, Dawkins borrowed the mathematical word "theorem". This is used to describe a well understood mathematical concept, for instance Pythagoras' Theorem regarding right angled triangles. However, Dawkins also wanted to avoid the absolute meaning of proof associated with that word, as used and understood by mathematicians. So he came up with something that looks like a spelling error. This would remove any person's emotional attachment or preconceptions of what the word "theory" means if it cropped up in the text of The Greatest Show on Earth , and so people would (in "theory ") have no other choice but to associate it with only the definition Dawkins gives.

This phrase has completely failed to catch on, that is, if Dawkins intended it to catch on rather than just be a device for use in The Greatest Show on Earth . When googled, Google will automatically correct the spelling to theorem instead, depriving this very page its rightful spot at the top of the results.