True Description Research Articles

Psychology, philosophy, theology, epistemology: some reflections

This paper considers the implication of the researcher's own world-view for his research; the relationship between theory and empiri. General questions concerning the formation of knowledge, its epistemological propositions and social functions, so much dis-cussed in the humanities and social sciences, have had little impact upon the history of religion, where the theoretical debate seems to remain more specific, more bound to the discipline. In the polarization between "positivists" vindicating the notion that theories are abstracted from "reality" and "relativists" maintaining that "reality" is selected and formed according to theories, most historians of religion belong in practice to the first camp, and many belong so exclusively that they do not even acknowledge the problem itself. The historian of religion is not concerned with metaphysics, but with faith in its human and cultural manifestations. The researcher' own atheistic or religious commitment has no bearing on the result of the investigation, nota bene provided that he adheres to strictly empirical principles. Is this credo not only a necessary ideal, but also a true description of research? Is an uncomplicated belief in its possible realisation a strength or a hindrance in the pursuit of a relative objectivity that might be attainable outside the predictions of natural sciences? Does the historian of religion have no metaphysical involvement in the material under investigation? Is it without interest whether he is a materialist or a devout religious person, whether he is a believer or non-believer in the physical reality of the gods and spirits he describes, and in the actual efficacy of the sacrifices and other rituals in which he partakes? Statements about human and social reality are mostly true or false from a certain point of view. Objectivity in a deeper sense must be multi-dimensional and complex. Both the object beheld and the beholder must be taken into consideration. Too strong a belief in objectivity, actual or pretended, might produce subjectivity of either a naive or a hypocritical kind.

Edge effect in laminate composite materials

In other studies dealing with the edge effect in composite materials [1-5] each layer was regarded as an anisotropic homogeneous one, all layers rigidly joined together and the entire specimen in a state of generalized plane strain under tension or flexure. The equations of anisotropic elasticity were solved by the finite-difference method [i, 2], by the finite-element method [3, 4], or by expansion into a double series of Legendre polynomials [5]. In the way these methods have been used, however, they hardly yield a true description of the edge effect with respect to stresses, because they are efficacious only when a bounded function will be the solution and not when the stresses can have singularities, as in the case of composite materials. In the application of these methods, the edge stresses remain bounded, but their maximum increases with increasing accuracy of the method (e.g., with an increasing number of terms retained in the series of orthogonal polynomials [5]) and this indirectly confirms the existence of a singularity. Here it will be demonstrated that in composite materials with characteristics close to real, there may appear a stress singularity, then there will be given examples of calculating the degree of such a singularity as a function of the reinforcement factor and of the fiber lay angle in adjacent layers of the composite

Schr�dinger's variational method of quantization revisited

Schrodinger's original quantization procedure is revisited in the light of Nelson's stochastic framework of quantum mechanics. It is clarified why Schrodinger's proposal of a variational problem led us to a true description of quantum mechanics.

Nonstationary interaction of a shock wave with a blunt body in a supersonic flow

The results obtained by means of one-dimensional models of flow and by means of a finite-difference through-computation method for a two-dimensional non-stationary flow are compared. For the one-dimensional models, the limits of applicability of their results are indicated; within these limits they agree with the known experimental data and also with the results of the finite-difference calculation. However, a qualitative difference is observed in the behavior of the curves that characterize the maximal reflection pressure. The aim of the paper is to present the necessary minimum of results from the calculation of the two-dimensional flow, to demonstrate their essential correctness, and also to consider the one-dimensional models of the flow and compare the results with the data of the numerical calculation and experiments. Analysis of the obtained material indicates that the one-dimensional models do not give a qualitatively true description of the flow and that they cannot be recommended for use in a wider range of the determining parameters. Space does not permit an investigation into the flow as a whole, and the main analysis of the results is therefore based on information relating to the pressure on the surface of the body. In the last 15 years, many authors have considered the nonstationary interaction of a shock wave with a blunt body in a supersonic flow. The investigations have been made in three directions: 1) the collection of experimental data (for example, [1–3]); 2) the construction of approximate one-dimensional models [1, 4–7]; 3) the calculation of two-dimensional nonstationary flows by the method of finite differences [8–10].

Synonymy and Equivocation in Ockham's Mental Language

Synonymy and Equivocation in Ockham's Mental Language PAUL VINCENT SPADE IN I957 PETER GEACH ARGUEDTHAT Ockham's theory of mental language was too facile, that it made the grammar of mental language look too suspiciously like that of Latin: "He merely transfers features of Latin grammar to Mental, and then regards this as explaining why such features occur in Latin they are needed there if what we say inwardly in Mental is to be outwardly got across to others in Latin. But clearly nothing is explained at all.''1 In 1970 John Trentman responded to this charge in a short article that has since become very influential. 2 In that article Trentman makes three claims among others: 1. Ockham thought of mental language as a kind of stripped-down, "ideal" language , containing just those grammatical features that affect the truth conditions of mental sentences.3 2. There can be no synonymy in mental language. 4 3. There can be no equivocation in mental language. 5 It is the purpose of this paper to examine each of these claims in turn. 6In so doing we Mental Acts: Their Content and Their Objects (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957), p. 102. See also the whole of sec. 23, pp. 101-6. 2 "Ockham on Mental," Mind 79 (1970): 586--90. 3 Ibid., p. 588: "I think Ockham's Mental can in many ways be compared to the now, I suppose, slightly old-fashioned ideal languages of twentieth-century philosophers. In distinguishing Mental from Latin or any spoken language, Ocldaam asks us to consider what would have to be the grammatical slructure of a language that was ideal for one purpose--for giving a true description of things." See also ibid., p. 589: "Ockham's real criterion, then, for admitting grammatical distinctions into Mental amounts to asking whether the distinctions in question would be necessary in an ideal language---ideal for a complete, true description of the world." 4 Ibid., p. 588: "The existence of synonyms seems not to mark any distinction of the requisite kind so that in principle synonymous expressions can be regarded as reducible to a common mental equivalent." See also n. 5, below. 5 Ibid.: "But just as verbal ornament gives rise to synonymy it also gives rise to equivocation, and neither can be usefully purged from a language suitable for conversation. Neither, however, serves any purpose in an ideal language of the sort envisaged. Indeed, the distinction between equivocal and univocal expressions has no point in Mental by the very nature of the case." 6 The second and third claims are of special interest to me personally. For in my "Ockham's Distinctions between Absolute and Connotative Terms," Vivarium 13 (1975):55-76, I have given an account of Ockham's notion of connotative terms that relies in important respects on the claim that there is no synonymy in mental language. Again, on the basis of the third of the above claims, I have argued in my "Ockham's Rule of Supposition: Two Conflicts in His Theory," Vivarium 12 (1974):63-73, that there is a tension or "conflict" [91 10 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY shall discover that Ockham's theory of mental language is not so neat and tidy as might have been hoped. I shall argue that each of Trentman's three claims is "correct" in the sense that Ockham either explicitly holds it or else seems committed to holding it on the basis of other features of his thought. Nevertheless, I shall maintain, each of these claims also leads to difficulties for Ockham, either (with respect to the first claim) because there are certain empirical, linguistic reasons of a sort Ockham would accept for rejecting the claim as it stands, or else (with respect to the second and third claims) because it conflicts with things Ockham says elsewhere. All this suggests that Ockham had not completely thought out all the implications of what he wanted to say about mental language. And that in turn suggests that, whatever is true for other authors, the theory of mental language was perhaps not as central to Ockham's own thinking as we have come to believe. 7 L Perhaps Ockham...

Surrealist landscape with figures (a survey of recent results in set theory)

This is the text of the hitherto unpublished article written at Stanford University and circulated in typescript in 1968 with the title page given below. “Recent” being no longer a true description of its contents, I publish it now under a timeless title by which it has been cited by other writers. In doing so, I have corrected the typographical errors in the original text but not the mathematical ones, to which attention is drawn instead in the notes on subsequent developments which will be found together with a supplementary bibliography at the end. The sign + in the text marks points on which those notes comment. I record here my gratitude toDana Scott, then Professor of Logic at Stanford, who enabled me to spend eight stimulating months in California and whose brainchild the survey was.

A parametrization of the properties of quark jets

A model is analyzed that provides a parametrization of the properties of the jet of mesons generated by a fast outgoing quark. It is assumed that the meson that contains the original quark leaves momentum and flavor to a remaining jet in which the particles are distributed (except for scaling of the energy and possible changes of flavor) like those of the original jet. One function, the probability f( η) that the remaining jet has a fraction η of the momentum of the original jet, is chosen (as a parabola) so the final distribution of charged hadrons agrees with data from lepton experiments. All the properties of quark jets are determined from f( η) and three parameters; the degree that SU(3) is broken in the formation of new quark-antiquark pairs ( ss is taken as half as likely as u u), the spin nature of the primary mesons (assumed to be vector and pseudoscalar with equal probability), and the mean transverse momentum given to these primary mesons. Monte Carlo methods are used to generate typical jets. Analytic approximations are also given. Many features of quark jets are examined. The distribution of momentum of various hadrons D q h( z), the properties of the hadrons of largest momentum in the jet, correlations, rapidity-gap distribution of charge and of transverse momentum are some of the subjects discussed. The appearance of the jets to an instrument sensitive only to particles above some minimum momentum is also described. Although the model is probably not a true description of the physical mechanism responsible for quark jets, many predictions of the model seem quite reasonable, possibly much like real quark jets (except that the possibility of the emission of baryons is disregarded). The purpose of this work is to provide a model useful in the design of experiments in which quark jets may be observed, and further to provide a standard to facilitate the comparison of lepton-generated jets with the high- p ⊥ jets found in hadron collisions.

Vibrational spectra of bis-pyridine complexes of mercury(II) halides. A literature correction and structural implications

Far-infrared (50–400 cm−1) and Raman spectra of complexes HgX2py2 (X = Cl, Br or I) have been studied. Previous infrared bands attributed to the chloride have been shown to arise from HgCl2py as impurity. The correct spectral data show that the true description of the structure of HgCl2py2 is one involving infinite planar chains [HgCl2py2]n and not the previously described alternative of HgCl2 molecules with loosely-held pyridine of crystallization. Contrary to previous reports, HgBr2py2 contains tetrahedrally coordinated mercury atoms, as does HgI2py2.

A natural philosophy of quantum mechanics based on induction

A systematic effort is here made to express some of the general results of quantum mechanics in a conceptual form closer to ordinary language than is the case with most modern physics. Many of the implications of the theory appear much more clearly thereby, in particular the fact that the laws of quantum mechanics are only statistical propositions about classes, not referring to individual objects. Conversely, the microscopic structure of an object cannot be precisely defined in quantum mechanical terms. To say that an object has a definite microscopic structure is an operationally meaningless statement; it is on the same level as saying in relativity that a selected coordinate system is “at rest.” This raises the need for a “theory of matching”: What is the best statement about the structure of an object, given that the tools of description are only statistical? A technique is known for this: the theory of inductive probabilities. There is no longer one true description but a manifold of statistical descriptions, some of which have a greater likelihood of being satisfactory than others. The main concrete application of this type of conceptual reasoning lies in its power to clean out the speculative underbrush which so far has prevented the transition from theoretical physics to theoretical biology.

Identification of linear systems through a Grammian technique†

A new technique of identification of linear stationary multi-variable systems is presented in this paper. The natural modes are determined accurately by a Gram matrix formulation of the output functions and the weightings of these modes are calculated by the schemes described. The state equations developed from the decomposed outputs provide, up to a linear equivalence upon the state space, a true description of the system. Among the advantages of the method are its relative insensitivity to noise in the data, and the explicit determination of the system order.

On Writing Descriptions

Inadequacies in property descriptions are illustrated by analyzing a specific case. Two forms are given—one a protraction and the other a true description. Both appear to define a single parcel of land. Each form is tested to determine whether it can be located on the ground, where its boundaries will lie, and how much uncertainty exists. Also, the importance of certainty of location over certainty of dimensions is pointed out. Actually, each of the two forms leads to quite different interpretations. One encourages uncertainty, expense, and confusion while the other has built-in safeguards.

The Phenomenological Analysis and Description of Musical Experience

Without a prior analysis of the music itself there could be no true description of musical experience. In fact, the key to the comprehension of this experience is provided by the simultaneous consideration and intimate connection of the concrete aspect of music (i.e., its tonal events and relationships) with the delineation of its perceived affective meaning. Phenomenally objective tonal events include individual tones, intervals, motives, melodies, chords and their progressions, metrical and rhythmic schemes, and syntactical relationships. Phenomenally subjective factors consist of states of consciousness evoked by the tonal events as they give rise to affective meaning. Phenomenological description consequently shifts the emphasis from the experiential to the linguistic level. This description of musical experience is given in phenomenological rather than musical terms.

‘Can an action have many descriptions?'?

Dr. Cody (Inquiry, Vol. 10, No. 2) argues that since we cannot say how a person could learn that different descriptions are of the same action, therefore each action has only one true description. But precisely the same reasoning could lead to the conclusion that each material object has only one true description. The falsity of this conclusion indicates the unsoundness of the argument, which probably goes wrong where Cody requires us to see actions ‘stripped of their descriptive rags altogether’.

Ortega y gAsset and the Theory of the Masses

A MONG those anti-democratic theories that have claimed the attention of the Western world, the theory of the Elite must be given special attention. For it is the main contention of this school of thought that democracy as such is an impossibility, that all rule is rule by a minority or an elite. By asserting this proposition the Elitists seek to do away with one of the fundamental premises upon which democracy is founded, namely, that the ultimate power of decision always rests with the people, and that they exercise this power either directly or through their elected representatives. Theorists like Mosca, Pareto, and Michels denied that the latter statement was a true description of social reality. Pareto, for example, believed that every society is ruled by a minority that possesses the qualities necessary for the accession to full social and political power. Those who get on top are always the best: they are the and there occurs a process of circulation of the elites in terms of which new segments of the population are gradually absorbed by the ruling elite in order to survive.

BRONCHOGENIC CARCINOMA COMPLICATING PULMONARY TUBERCULOSIS: A REPORT OF EIGHT CASES AND A REVIEW OF 140 CASES SINCE 1932

Excerpt Within the last three years we have encountered eight cases of coexistent active pulmonary tuberculosis and bronchogenic carcinoma. This seemed a high coincidence of the two conditions and ...

The Anamneses and Institution Narrative in the Liturgy of Apostolic Constitutions Book VIII

More than one comprehensive theory of liturgical history has made much of the difference between the eucharistic prayer in the Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus and that described in the Catecheses of St. Cyril of Jerusalem. The former consists of a thanksgiving for creation and redemption through Christ, leading to an institution narrative, and followed by an anamnesis and an epiclesis, in which, however, the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the oblation is asked for, not to convert it, but to join the Church in one. The latter consists of a ‘preface’ (which is not a thanksgiving, although the opening dialogue suggests that it will be) and sanctus, followed at once by a fully consecratory epiclesis, and intercessions. It is true that scholars of former generations thought that the prayer described by St. Cyril was, in fact, a fully developed prayer of the Syro-Byzantine type, and that St. Cyril only commented on certain paragraphs of it. It was natural to think so when it was believed that the liturgy of Apostolic Constitutions VIII, which contains the oldest known prayer of this type, was the work of St. Clement of Rome and a true description of apostolic practice; but it will hardly do to-day, when we know that Apostolic Constitutions was written several years later than St. Cyril's Catecheses. Besides, St. Cyril describes the prayer in considerable verbal detail, a procedure which is not easy to reconcile with the omission of whole paragraphs. Nor will it do to say that he comments upon the institution narrative elsewhere; he could scarcely explain the Eucharist to catechumens without doing so, but that hardly explains how, after mentioning and explaining the various choirs of angels who sing the sanctus, he could pass over the thanksgiving for creation and redemption, institution narrative, and anamnesis without a word, and expect an audience of people who were new to Christian worship to be able to follow the prayer as a result. And it would be a strange coincidence if the parts omitted by St. Cyril were just those which are in the Apostolic Tradition.

Preliminary studies on the natural history of lung cancer.

It is, of course, not possible in a literal sense to discuss the unadorned, unmodified evolution of cancer in man, or what has been called its natural history. Many factors operative in the host and related to the anatomical location of the primary disease may act to vary or direct its course. A variety of complications may occur which, as far as the host is concerned, can overshadow the presence of cancer or prove fatal before it is well advanced. Treatment, even if not curative, can delay growth of the neoplasm in certain sites, or alleviate or prevent complications so that the disease can more fully realize its preordained course. Furthermore, our methods of observation are so limited, our clinical data so contaminated with errors of fact, omissions, and faulty interpretations, that what we believe genuinely to be true may only be misleading. At the outset we must emphasize that it is difficult even to approximate the ideal of a true and accurate description of the behavior of a cancer in anyone. Despi...

The Judgment of God

That the Judgment of God is a Biblical notion of profound significance cannot be denied. But it has never been popular with man, and in some ages of the Church's history—apart from the Liturgy—it has been entirely dormant. In a recent article in The Congregational Quarterly Dr Lovell Cocks describes the Edwardian Nonconformist minister as one “who endeared himself to his congregation as a big, brotherly fellow by having ‘no use for theology’”—a very true description of more than Nonconformist ministers in that age of prosperity—and then says that the same man to-day would “merely write himself down as a charlatan or an ass”. I wonder how true this is! Have we really so completely left behind that Edwardian optimism? I doubt it. The heritage of the second half of the nineteenth century, the age of progress and expansion, is perhaps not so easily got rid of as that. Whilst it is true that amongst theologians in the past thirty years there has been a revival of the notions of the Holiness of God, the Judgment of God, and of eschatological matters in general; and whilst Barth and Brunner and Niebuhr are names to conjure with, I am inclined to think that the general run of men and women, including many preachers, are still prone to cling to the comfortable and somewhat sentimental doctrines of the Love of God which were fashionable amongst theologians a generation ago.

Some Aspects of Theoretical Biology

A theory in natural science is a comprehensive formula or doctrine which describes and correlates in a unified abstract form of statement the general determining factors of some special group of natural facts. It is at once inclusive, realistic and understandable. If a theoretical statement holds good, the existence and characteristics of many individual events can be inferred deductively from it. It thus gives a logical basis for empirical fact. But it is based on experience of nature, and must conform to the facts of nature; these are primary, and a valid theory, no matter how broad it may be, is to be considered as itself a statement of fact, i.e., a true description of some condition which has a real and stable existence in the natural world. In its scientific usage, the term “fact” refers primarily to some datum of experience having the special character of permanence or regular recurrence; this is why scientific facts are verifiable; in this respect they differ from the passing individual events of history. Any scientific theory presupposes the stability and unequivocality of the natural facts. Hence if a theory is sound, it furnishes a reliable basis for prediction, discovery and invention. Scientific or technological creation then becomes possible; modern engineering and medicine could never have become what they are without a background of theoretical physics and biology. Obviously any natural science must always have at its disposal an ample body of observational and experimental data, but in most cases the work of collecting and verifying these is carried out under the guidance of theory.

Some Greek Views of Democracy and Totalitarianism

GREEK philosophy in general, and Plato in particular, are like the Scriptures: the Devil can, and often does, quote them for his own purpose. So it is that modern totalitarianism-communism as well as fascism-has adopted Plato as its spiritual ancestor. Many modern proponents of with that sheepish awe of totalitarian propaganda which has been so characteristic of them, have accepted the totalitarian premises and regarded Plato as their arch-enemy. In fact, there is some justification for both attitudes. But they are due in part, also, to a simple confusion of the modern with the ancient concept of democracy and in part to a simple ignorance of what the Greek philosophers said. Because Plato and the Greek philosophers, in general, show a considerable distaste for 3'qgQKpaTna it is assumed that their contempt applies exactly to democracy; and because a good half of what they had to say is blandly ignored, it is assumed that their apparently totalitarian doctrines are the whole of it. Consequently, in this essay we shall approach the question fromboth ends. We shall suggest, on theonehand, that the democracy condemned by the Greek theorists is by no means the exact equivalent of modern On the other hand, we shall suggest that, in many of the most important features which distinguish modern democracy from modern totalitarianism, the Greek tradition, including Plato, is emphatically on the side of First, then, what are some of the features which distinguish ancient democracies from modern? Or, rather, since both these terms are meaningless in their broadness, what features distinguish Athenian democracy of the late fifth and the fourth centurieswhat Aristotle calls Extreme or Pure Democracy-from our own democracy? The fundamental difference, perhaps, is this: pure fourth-century Athenian at any rate as characterized by its opponents, would appear to us as not democracy at all, but as a dictatorship of the proletariat. Democracy, in Greek, means, quite literally, the rule of the demos; and by the fourth century the demos is only incidentally, as Aristotle puts it, the majority; the essential point is that it is the poor. Consequently, democracy is, in Plato's phrase, a class state, just as oligarchy is. Only it is organized in the interest of a different class, the poor instead of the rich and the urban population instead of the rural. This conception of democracy should not surprise us: it is precisely what modern Communists seem to mean when they refer to Russia as the great democracy. Still, it is not what we understand by the term democracy, as the harried semanticists in our State Department continue to insist; and, to the extent that it is a true description of Athenian Athenian democracy differed from ours-of today at any rate. It may well be, of course, that ours will one day reach the same goal. It may be that the evolution of democracy toward a class state, organized primarily in the interest of the poor, is inevitable; that, in ancient or modern democracies, the sole, finally effective, brake on this progress is the selfimposed discipline of the majority and its foresightedness in the selection of its leaders. It may be, indeed, that every form of political organization is merely a veneer over a latent class struggle-a veneer thin enough to reveal the sovereign power of the state (whether the poor, the rich, the noble, the wise, the strong, or what not) organizing the laws and institutions to its own advantage. This view, at any rate, is strongly maintained with reference to Athenian democracy by an anonymous fifth-century