L. Marcus Posted October 16, 2009 Report Share Posted October 16, 2009 Re: The Last Word ... Darn it, I think I'll have a Friday Pizza! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 16, 2009 Report Share Posted October 16, 2009 Re: The Last Word Hmm ... 0748. No, coffee time, not pizza time here. Yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted October 16, 2009 Report Share Posted October 16, 2009 Re: The Last Word Calzone has been devoured, poor thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 16, 2009 Report Share Posted October 16, 2009 Re: The Last Word The donuts were in fear for their lives, but I spared them this morning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted October 16, 2009 Report Share Posted October 16, 2009 Re: The Last Word How magnanimous! Did anything take their place? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 16, 2009 Report Share Posted October 16, 2009 Re: The Last Word Not yet. Mind you, my students are similarly quaking in fear, since I'm giving an exam in 20 minutes.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted October 16, 2009 Report Share Posted October 16, 2009 Re: The Last Word Mohaha! What's up this time? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 16, 2009 Report Share Posted October 16, 2009 Re: The Last Word History of science, basic astronomical phenomena, mechanics, radiation. The usual 1st mid-term stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted October 16, 2009 Report Share Posted October 16, 2009 Re: The Last Word ... And there's boot-quaking at this? Man alive ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 16, 2009 Report Share Posted October 16, 2009 Re: The Last Word Most of these students are business majors, and a fair slug of liberal arts types. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted October 16, 2009 Report Share Posted October 16, 2009 Re: The Last Word Ahah. That would explain it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 16, 2009 Report Share Posted October 16, 2009 Re: The Last Word That's the bread and butter in the 101 class. People who don't like math & science looking for the least painful way to fulfill the science requirement. If we didn't have them, I wouldn't have a job. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted October 16, 2009 Report Share Posted October 16, 2009 Re: The Last Word ... Why do they have a science requirement? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocMan Posted October 16, 2009 Report Share Posted October 16, 2009 Re: The Last Word Um, do you really want business majors making policy decisions that engineers have to fulfill without the slightest knowledge of the scientific basics? Oh, wait, we have that now. Nevermind. Doc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted October 16, 2009 Report Share Posted October 16, 2009 Re: The Last Word ... For management to make informed desicions on engineering, they have to be engineers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted October 16, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 16, 2009 Re: The Last Word Yeah' date=' you probably have to go the "Personal communications" citation route. I've PM'ed you definitive contact info for the citation.[/quote'] I had to submit it before I got your PM. And now the tutor tells me he is marking it a week from today? (almost feel like working on it and resubmitting it this-coming Friday. you know v.2.) And thanks for the cite, I still have one more unit to go with my double degree, so it still could prove handy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted October 16, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 16, 2009 Re: The Last Word History of science' date=' ...The usual 1st mid-term stuff.[/quote'] Mmm, history of science... Most of these students are business majors' date=' and a fair slug of liberal arts types.[/quote'] I would think (and hope) that liberal arts students would do well on the history of science section. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted October 16, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 16, 2009 Re: The Last Word ... For management to make informed desicions on engineering' date=' they have to be engineers.[/quote'] For the most part, I agree. for the difference refer to two CEOs: Mr Jobs vs Mr Ballmer. Both are not engineers, one gets it (Jobs), the other is clueless (Ballmer). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 17, 2009 Report Share Posted October 17, 2009 Re: The Last Word Mmm, history of science... I would think (and hope) that liberal arts students would do well on the history of science section. They do, though it's a very small portion of the course. Mostly it's there to remind people that a number of things were discovered empirically, patterns observed in the data itself, before any theoretical understanding existed. Science is so often presented as if the great theories came first and the experiments or observations filled into afterward, and that is almost invariably the wrong order. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted October 17, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 17, 2009 Re: The Last Word They do' date=' though it's a very small portion of the course. Mostly it's there to remind people that a number of things were discovered empirically, patterns observed in the data itself, before any theoretical understanding existed. Science is so often presented as if the great theories came first and the experiments or observations filled into afterward, and that is almost invariably the wrong order.[/quote'] I would have thought the theories for the most part came first, then the hypothesizes then the experiments etc. But now that you mention it, the notion of red-shift regarding the expansion of the universe is one example I can think off where as you say "discovered empirically, patterns observed in the data itself". And it is a pretty big one at that (doh, I just remembered his name Hubble -- like you can forget that big well-known satellite in the sky ). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted October 17, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 17, 2009 Re: The Last Word And the more I look at philosophy, the more it seems that it gave birth to many disciplines that are now for the most part divorced from it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted October 17, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 17, 2009 Re: The Last Word eg, from wikipedia: Positivism is a philosophy that holds that the only authentic knowledge is that which is based on actual sense experience. Metaphysical speculation is avoided. Though the positivist approach has been a 'recurrent theme in the history of western thought from the Ancient Greeks to the present day' [1] and appears in Ibn al-Haytham's 11th Century text Book of Optics,[2] the concept was first coined by Auguste Comte, widely considered the first modern sociologist,[3] in the middle of the 19th century bolded parts relevant to my point. And again... Sociology is the scientific or systematic study of human societies. It is a branch of social science (with which it is informally synonymous) that uses various methods of empirical investigation[1][2] and critical analysis[3] to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social structure and activity, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 17, 2009 Report Share Posted October 17, 2009 Re: The Last Word Comte (who was unaware of Frauenhofer's work) put the composition of the stars on his of things "forever unknowable to the mind of man". As a stellar spectroscopist, my prime scientific activity has been determining chemical compositions of stars. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazza Posted October 17, 2009 Author Report Share Posted October 17, 2009 Re: The Last Word So you have perpetual employment? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted October 17, 2009 Report Share Posted October 17, 2009 Re: The Last Word I would have thought the theories for the most part came first' date=' then the hypothesizes then the experiments etc. [/quote'] "If simple perfect laws uniquely rule the universe, should not pure thought be capable of uncovering this perfect set of laws without having to lean on the crutches of tediously assembled observations? True, the laws to be discovered may be perfect, but the human brain is not. Left on its own, it is prone to stray, as many past examples sadly prove. In fact, we have missed few chances to err until new data freshly gleaned from nature set us right again for the next steps. Thus pillars rather than crutches are the observations on which we base our theories; ..." Martin Schwarzschild, An introduction to the theory of stellar structure and evolution, 1958. Pariah 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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