Applied Social Science Quotes

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All over the world there are enormous numbers of smart, even gifted, people who harbor a passion for science. But that passion is unrequited. Surveys suggest that some 95 percent of Americans are “scientifically illiterate.” That’s just the same fraction as those African Americans, almost all of them slaves, who were illiterate just before the Civil War—when severe penalties were in force for anyone who taught a slave to read. Of course there’s a degree of arbitrariness about any determination of illiteracy, whether it applies to language or to science. But anything like 95 percent illiteracy is extremely serious.
Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)
Scientists do not simply read nature to find truths to apply in the social world. Instead, they use truths taken from our social relationships to structure, read, and interpret the natural
Anne Fausto-Sterling (Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality)
When I applied to graduate school many years ago, I wrote an essay expressing my puzzlement at how a country that could put a man on the moon could still have people sleeping on the streets. Part of that problem is political will; we could take a lot of people off the streets tomorrow if we made it a national priority. But I have also come to realize that NASA had it easy. Rockets conform to the unchanging laws of physics. We know where the moon will be at a given time; we know precisely how fast a spacecraft will enter or exist the earth's orbit. If we get the equations right, the rocket will land where it is supposed to--always. Human beings are more complex than that. A recovering drug addict does not behave as predictably as a rocket in orbit. We don't have a formula for persuading a sixteen-year-old not to drop out of school. But we do have a powerful tool: We know that people seek to make themselves better off, however they may define that. Our best hope for improving the human condition is to understand why we act the way we do and then plan accordingly. Programs, organizations, and systems work better when they get the incentives right. It is like rowing downstream.
Charles Wheelan (Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science)
There is a problem that begins in our universities, and it comes down to Social Justice. The most immediate aspect of the problem is that Social Justice scholarship gets passed down to students, who then go out into the world. This effect is strongest within Social Justice fields, which teach students to be skeptical of science, reason, and evidence; to regard knowledge as tied to identity; to read oppressive power dynamics into every interaction; to politicize every facet of life; and to apply ethical principles unevenly, in accordance with identity.
Helen Pluckrose (Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody)
The metaphysical mutation that gave rise to materialism and modern science in turn spawned two great trends: rationalism and individualism. Huxley’s mistake was in having poorly evaluated the balance of power between these two. Specifically, he underestimated the growth of individualism brought about by an increased consciousness of death. Individualism gives rise to freedom, the sense of self, the need to distinguish oneself and to be superior to others. A rational society like the one he describes in Brave New World can defuse the struggle. Economic rivalry—a metaphor for mastery over space—has no more reason to exist in a society of plenty, where the economy is strictly regulated. Sexual rivalry—a metaphor for mastery over time through reproduction—has no more reason to exist in a society where the connection between sex and procreation has been broken. But Huxley forgets about individualism. He doesn’t understand that sex, even stripped of its link with reproduction, still exists—not as a pleasure principle, but as a form of narcissistic differentiation. The same is true of the desire for wealth. Why has the Swedish model of social democracy never triumphed over liberalism? Why has it never been applied to sexual satisfaction? Because the metaphysical mutation brought about by modern science leads to individuation, vanity, malice and desire. Any philosopher, not just Buddhist or Christian, but any philosopher worthy of the name, knows that, in itself, desire—unlike pleasure—is a source of suffering, pain and hatred.
Michel Houellebecq (The Elementary Particles)
He [William Jennings Bryan] recognized that what Darwin proposed on the biological level, when applied on the societal level, might legitimize an ideology that supports the survival of the fittest, with all of its dire complications. Byran was able to envision the kind of society that Social Darwinism would create- the kind of exploitation that comes from unbridled capitalism, for instance- and chose to war against it.
Tony Campolo (Red Letter Christians: A Citizen's Guide to Faith and Politics)
The formulation of critical theory is not an option; theories and findings in the social sciences are likely to have practical (and political) consequences regardless of whether or not the sociological observer or policy-maker decides that they can be ‘applied’ to a given practical issue.
Anthony Giddens (The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration)
The Dunning-Kruger effect was proposed by David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999. They found that, if people have limited knowledge on a topic, they tend to be extremely confident in what they’re saying and grossly overestimate their competence to discuss it. Conversely, as people gain more knowledge, they become more shy about expressing it. If we apply this theory to social media conversations, the people who know the least will be commenting the most because they’re over-confident. The Dunning-Kruger effect, combined with empathy destruction, could create an environment where those with the least knowledge are the most vocal, yet are unable to comprehend opposing points of view. At the same time, those with the most knowledge are likely to stay silent. Hence we end up with a cesspool of over-confident ignoramuses yelling at each other. Social media in a nutshell, ladies and gentlemen.
Dagogo Altraide (New Thinking: From Einstein to Artificial Intelligence, the Science and Technology that Transformed Our World)
In accordance with the prevailing conceptions in the U.S., there is no infringement on democracy if a few corporations control the information system: in fact, that is the essence of democracy. In the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the leading figure of the public relations industry, Edward Bernays, explains that “the very essence of the democratic process” is “the freedom to persuade and suggest,” what he calls “the engineering of consent.” “A leader,” he continues, “frequently cannot wait for the people to arrive at even general understanding … Democratic leaders must play their part in … engineering … consent to socially constructive goals and values,” applying “scientific principles and tried practices to the task of getting people to support ideas and programs”; and although it remains unsaid, it is evident enough that those who control resources will be in a position to judge what is “socially constructive,” to engineer consent through the media, and to implement policy through the mechanisms of the state. If the freedom to persuade happens to be concentrated in a few hands, we must recognize that such is the nature of a free society.
Noam Chomsky (Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies)
science applied to social problems and backed by the whole force of the state,
C.S. Lewis (That Hideous Strength (The Space Trilogy #3))
Biologically, there is one human race. Race applied to human beings is a political division: it is a system of governing people that classifies them into a social hierarchy based on invented biological demarcations.
Dorothy Roberts (Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century)
At least part of Pakistan’s quality of education problem stems from its ideological orientation. The goal of education in Pakistan is not to enable critical thinking but to produce skilled professionals capable of applying transferred information instead of being able to think for themselves. To produce soldiers, engineers and doctors indoctrinated with a specifically defined Islamic ideology, the country has ignored liberal arts and social sciences.
Husain Haqqani (Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State)
Here is the short version of the Kool-Aid Fallacy: Cult … therefore Jim Jones … therefore mass suicide … therefore Kool-Aid. It’s astonishing how much of social media now revolves around simple word association sequences. Absolutely no thought goes into anything. No one ever delivers an actual argument. If they ever do attempt an argument, their punctuation, spelling, grammar, logic and general education are not up to the task, and soon dissolve into meaningless mush. But usually they just hurry on to the insults and ad hominem attacks, which is the part they love. Before long, the Kool-Aid fallacy is eagerly applied. Every argument should have a Dunning-Kruger quotient associated with it. Most people are 100% on the Dunning-Kruger scale. They imagine themselves geniuses, and geniuses dunces. As ever, they have inverted reality.
Thomas Stark (Extra Scientiam Nulla Salus: How Science Undermines Reason (The Truth Series Book 8))
I who am blind can give one hint to those who see-one admonition to those who would make full use of the gift of sight: Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. And the same method can be applied to the other senses. Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow. Touch each object you want to touch as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again." -Helen Keller
Karl Albrecht (Social Intelligence: The New Science of Success)
A disdain for the practical swept the ancient world. Plato urged astronomers to think about the heavens, but not to waste their time observing them. Aristotle believed that: “The lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master.… The slave shares in his master’s life; the artisan is less closely connected with him, and only attains excellence in proportion as he becomes a slave. The meaner sort of mechanic has a special and separate slavery.” Plutarch wrote: “It does not of necessity follow that, if the work delight you with its grace, the one who wrought it is worthy of esteem.” Xenophon’s opinion was: “What are called the mechanical arts carry a social stigma and are rightly dishonoured in our cities.” As a result of such attitudes, the brilliant and promising Ionian experimental method was largely abandoned for two thousand years. Without experiment, there is no way to choose among contending hypotheses, no way for science to advance. The anti-empirical taint of the Pythagoreans survives to this day. But why? Where did this distaste for experiment come from? An explanation for the decline of ancient science has been put forward by the historian of science, Benjamin Farrington: The mercantile tradition, which led to Ionian science, also led to a slave economy. The owning of slaves was the road to wealth and power. Polycrates’ fortifications were built by slaves. Athens in the time of Pericles, Plato and Aristotle had a vast slave population. All the brave Athenian talk about democracy applied only to a privileged few. What slaves characteristically perform is manual labor. But scientific experimentation is manual labor, from which the slaveholders are preferentially distanced; while it is only the slaveholders—politely called “gentle-men” in some societies—who have the leisure to do science. Accordingly, almost no one did science. The Ionians were perfectly able to make machines of some elegance. But the availability of slaves undermined the economic motive for the development of technology. Thus the mercantile tradition contributed to the great Ionian awakening around 600 B.C., and, through slavery, may have been the cause of its decline some two centuries later. There are great ironies here.
Carl Sagan (Cosmos)
in contrast to the Hegelians of the right-wing, Marx made an honest attempt to apply rational methods to the most urgent problems of social life. The value of this attempt is unimpaired by the fact that it was, as I shall try to show, largely unsuccessful. Science progresses through trial and error. Marx tried, and although he erred in his main doctrines, he did not try in vain. He opened and sharpened our eyes in many ways.
Karl Popper (The Open Society and Its Enemies)
I want economists to quit concerning themselves with allocation problems, per se, with the problem, as it has been traditionally defined. The vocabulary of science is important here, and as T. D. Weldon once suggested, the very word "problem" in and of itself implies the presence of "solution." Once the format has been established in allocation terms, some solution is more or less automatically suggested. Our whole study becomes one of applied maximization of a relatively simple computational sort. Once the ends to be maximized are provided by the social welfare function, everything becomes computational, as my colleague, Rutledge Vining, has properly noted. If there is really nothing more to economics than this, we had as well turn it all over to the applied mathematicians. This does, in fact, seem to be the direction in which we are moving, professionally, and developments of note, or notoriety, during the past two decades consist largely in improvements in what are essentially computing techniques, in the mathematics of social engineering. What I am saying is that we should keep these contributions in perspective; I am urging that they be recognized for what they are, contributions to applied mathematics, to managerial science if you will, but not to our chosen subject field which we, for better or for worse, call "economics.
James M. Buchanan
Dogmatic theology is, by its very nature, unchangeable. The same can be said in regard to the spirit of the law. Law was and is to protect the past and present status of society and, by its very essence, must be very conservative, if not reactionary. Theology and law are both of them static by their nature. Philosophy, law and ethics, to be effective in a dynamic world must be dynamic; they must be made vital enough to keep pace with the progress of life and science. In recent civilization ethics, because controlled by theology and law, which are static, could not duly influence the dynamic, revolutionary progress of technic and the steadily changing conditions of life; and so we witness a tremendous downfall of morals in politics and business. Life progresses faster than our ideas, and so medieval ideas, methods and judgments are constantly applied to the conditions and problems of modern life. This discrepancy between facts and ideas is greatly responsible for the dividing of modern society into different warring classes, which do not understand each other. Medieval legalism and medieval morals- the basis of the old social structure-being by their nature conservative, reactionary, opposed to change, and thus becoming more and more unable to support the mighty social burden of the modern world, must be adjudged responsible in a large measure for the circumstances which made the World War inevitable.
Alfred Korzybski (Manhood of Humanity: The Science and Art of Human Engineering (Classic Reprint))
Flynn conducted a study in which he compared the grade point averages of seniors at one of America’s top state universities, from neuroscience to English majors, to their performance on a test of critical thinking. The test gauged students’ ability to apply fundamental abstract concepts from economics, social and physical sciences, and logic to common, real-world scenarios. Flynn was bemused to find that the correlation between the test of broad conceptual thinking and GPA was about zero. In Flynn’s words, “the traits that earn good grades at [the university] do not include critical ability of any broad significance.”*
David Epstein (Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World)
So, whether the aliens explore with chemistry or with radio waves, they might come to the same conclusion: a planet where there’s advanced technology must be populated with intelligent life-forms, who may occupy themselves discovering how the universe works and how to apply its laws for personal or public gain. Looking more closely at Earth’s atmospheric fingerprints, human biomarkers will also include sulfuric, carbonic, and nitric acids, and other components of smog from the burning of fossil fuels. If the curious aliens happen to be socially, culturally, and technologically more advanced than we are, then they will surely interpret these biomarkers as convincing evidence for the absence of intelligent life on Earth.
Neil deGrasse Tyson (Astrophysics for People in a Hurry)
Dewey insisted that the present attachment to the principles and values of the American founding must be repudiated and replaced with the new scientific approach, which he argued addresses the modern social conditions of the collective. “The scientific attitude is experimental as well as intrinsically communicative. If it were generally applied, it would liberate us from the heavy burden imposed by dogmas and external standards. Experimental method is something other than the use of blow-pipes, retorts and reagents. It is the foe of every belief that permits habit and wont to dominate invention and discovery, and ready-made system to override verifiable fact. Constant revision is the work of experimental inquiry. By revision of knowledge and ideas, power to effect transformation is given us. This attitude, once incarnated in the individual mind, would find an operative outlet. If dogmas and institutions tremble when a new idea appears, this shiver is nothing to what would happen if the idea were armed with the means for the continuous discovery of new truth and the criticism of old belief. To ‘acquiesce’ in science is dangerous only for those who would maintain affairs in the existing social order unchanged because of lazy habit or self-interest. For the scientific attitude demands faithfulness to whatever is discovered and steadfastness in adhering to new truth.
Mark R. Levin (Rediscovering Americanism: And the Tyranny of Progressivism)
The nudge movement spawned by Thaler and Sunstein has been spectacularly successful around the globe. A 2017 review in the Economist described how policy makers were beginning to embrace insights from behavioral science: In 2009 Barack Obama appointed Mr Sunstein as head of the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The following year Mr Thaler advised Britain’s government when it established BIT, which quickly became known as the “nudge unit”. If BIT did not save the government at least ten times its running cost (£500,000 a year), it was to be shut down after two years. Not only did BIT stay open, saving about 20 times its running cost, but it marked the start of a global trend. Now many governments are turning to nudges to save money and do better. In 2014 the White House opened the Social and Behavioural Sciences Team. A report that year by Mark Whitehead of Aberystwyth University counted 51 countries in which “centrally directed policy initiatives” were influenced by behavioural sciences. Nonprofit organisations such as Ideas42, set up in 2008 at Harvard University, help run dozens of nudge-style trials and programmes around the world. In 2015 the World Bank set up a group that is now applying behavioural sciences in 52 poor countries. The UN is turning to nudging to help hit the “sustainable development goals”, a list of targets it has set for 2030.32
Robert H. Frank (Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work)
The language of mathematics differs from that of everyday life, because it is essentially a rationally planned language. The languages of size have no place for private sentiment, either of the individual or of the nation. They are international languages like the binomial nomenclature of natural history. In dealing with the immense complexity of his social life man has not yet begun to apply inventiveness to the rational planning of ordinary language when describing different kinds of institutions and human behavior. The language of everyday life is clogged with sentiment, and the science of human nature has not advanced so far that we can describe individual sentiment in a clear way. So constructive thought about human society is hampered by the same conservatism as embarrassed the earlier naturalists. Nowadays people do not differ about what sort of animal is meant by Cimex or Pediculus, because these words are used only by people who use them in one way. They still can and often do mean a lot of different things when they say that a mattress is infested with bugs or lice. The study of a man's social life has not yet brought forth a Linnaeus. So an argument about the 'withering away of the State' may disclose a difference about the use of the dictionary when no real difference about the use of the policeman is involved. Curiously enough, people who are most sensible about the need for planning other social amenities in a reasonable way are often slow to see the need for creating a rational and international language.
Lancelot Hogben (Mathematics for the Million: How to Master the Magic of Numbers)
One way to distinguish philosophy from other disciplines is to see that the problems posed by philosophy are distinct from those of other disciplines. 카톡【AKR331】텔레【RDH705】위커【SPR705】라인【98K33】 Even until the 18th century, mathematics and physics were perceived as natural philosophy rather than philosophy and independent science. 수면제,무조건 피하지 마라… 복용법 지키면 먹는데 도움이 되는 수면제 졸피뎀 스틸녹스 복용방법 제품정보 소개해드리겠습니다 정품수면제 추천해드릴테니 위 카톡 텔레 라인등으로 추가해서 구입문의주세요 The inherent problems of philosophy can be summed up by the four questions of Manuel Kant as an 18th century philosopher. What do I know ?: The main problem of epistemology. How is the external object recognized? Is the external thing real? Is there a real existence that exists independently of human perception ability? How can human perception respond to reality in "out there"? How is awareness formed? What are the criteria by which one consciousness can be true? And how can we acquire knowledge from true awareness? On the other hand, the problem posed by metaphysics can not be solved by most human recognition methods. Does God exist? Does the beginning and end of the universe exist? Is time and space continuous? 수면제는 불면증 초기에 일주일에 3일 이상 잠을 제대로 못자 피로와 스트레스가 심하다면 불면증이라고 생각하고 수면제를 복용을 고려해봐야한다 What should I do?: Ethics major problems. Is there a difference between right and wrong? If so, how can we prove it? In real situations, how do we apply theoretical ideas to right and wrong? What do I want?: The main problem of art philosophy (aesthetics). What kind of pleasure does art give to humans? What is beauty? Where is the value of a work of art? What is human ?: The main problem of social philosophy. How does man make society? How is the state established and how does it operate?
One way to distinguish philosophy from other disciplines is to see that the problems posed by philos
Principles That Great Teachers Follow Great teachers know that each brain is unique and uniquely organized. Great teachers know that all brains are not equally good at everything. Great teachers know that the brain is a complex, dynamic system and is changed daily by experiences. Great teachers know that learning is a constructivist process, and that the ability to learn continues through developmental stages as an individual matures. Great teachers know that the search for meaning is innate in human nature. Great teachers know that brains have a high degree of plasticity and develop throughout the lifespan. Great teachers know that MBE science principles apply to all ages. Great teachers know that learning is based in part on the brain’s ability to self-correct. Great teachers know that the search for meaning occurs through pattern recognition. Great teachers know that brains seek novelty. Great teachers know that emotions are critical to detecting patterns, to decision-making, and to learning. Great teachers know that learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited by threat. Great teachers know that human learning involves both focused attention and peripheral perception. Great teachers know that the brain conceptually processes parts and wholes simultaneously. Great teachers know that the brain depends on interactions with other people to make sense of social situations. Great teachers know that feedback is important to learning. Great teachers know that learning relies on memory and attention. Great teachers know that memory systems differ in input and recall. Great teachers know that the brain remembers best when facts and skills are embedded in natural contexts. Great teachers know that learning involves conscious and unconscious processes. Great teachers know that learning engages the entire physiology (the body influences the brain, and the brain controls the body).
Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa (Mind, Brain, and Education Science: A Comprehensive Guide to the New Brain-Based Teaching)
we were disposed, when starting out, to use them as the basis for our practice in this new context. In our early work with professors, however, we were not in a position to impose rules. We soon discovered the folly of making any pronouncements about the amount of writing, for instance, which might distinguish a writing-intensive approach, and took it as our goal to find professors willing to experiment and to take some steps toward engaging more with writing. We were consultants with expertise in how to use and teach writing, and we suggested strategies and provided materials. The fact that those strategies were grounded in research and theory, and could be signaled as criteria emerged in our process of discussion with faculty about the rationale for adopting particular teaching strategies. The emphasis was on alternative pedagogies, not on a list of rules requiring compliance. Just as one does not need to know that a particular word in a sentence is functioning as an adjective in order to use adjectives, faculty also neither needed, nor were necessarily concerned, to associate a practice like revision with criteria for an as yet non-existent W-course. What eventually became official criteria were initially the elements that we encouraged according to what an individual faculty member was able and willing to accommodate. The early pilot courses overall represented all the elements that we would identify as foundational to effective practice in teaching writing, but in very few courses were all of the criteria present. Faculty members positioned themselves across a spectrum of starting points in their views of writing and its role in their courses. For many professors in the Arts and social sciences, the “writing-intensive” label simply acknowledged that their courses included substantial amounts of writing. For many in the Physical Sciences, the concept as applied to their courses could, at first glance,
Wendy Strachan (Writing-Intensive: Becoming W-Faculty in a New Writing Curriculum)
If the theory of the balance of power has any applicability at all, it is to the politics of the first period, that pre-industrial, `dynastic` period when nations were kings and politics a sport, when there were many nations of roughly equivalent power, and when nations could and did increase their power largely through clever diplomacy, alliance and military adventures. The theories of this book, and the theory of the power transition in particular, apply to the second period, when the major determinant of national power are population size, political organization, and industrial strength, and when shifts in power through internal development are consequently of great importance. Differential industrialization is the key to understanding the shifts in power in the 19th and 20th centuries, but it was not the key in the years before 1750 or so and it will not always be the key in the future. Period 3 will require new theories. We cannot predict yet what they will be, for we cannon predict what the world will be like after all the nations are industrialized. Indeed, we may not have nations at all. By projecting current trends we can make guessed about the near future, but we cannon see very far ahead. What will the world be like when China and India are two major powers, as it seems likely they will be? (1958 n.n.)... We are all bound by our own culture and our own experience, social scientists no less than other men... Social theories may be adequate for their day, but as time passes, they require revision. One of the most serious criticisms that can be made of the balance of power theory is that it has not been revised. Concepts and hypotheses applicable to the 16th century and to the politics of such units as the Italian city states have been taken and applied, without major revision, to the international politics of the twentieth-century nations such as the United States, England, and the Soviet Union. (p. 307)
A.F.K. Organski (World Politics)
Socially. There’s no doubt that relationships at work—be they with managers, colleagues, employees, or clients—are essential to success. Positive emotions strengthen existing relationships. For example, shared laughter—the expression of positive emotion—makes people more open and willing to cooperate.10 A number of studies show that happy employees make for a more congenial workplace. In particular, happy, friendly, and supportive co-workers tend to         •  build higher-quality relationships with others at work11         •  boost co-workers’ productivity levels12         •  increase co-workers’ feeling of social connection13         •  improve commitment to the workplace14         •  increase levels of engagement with their job15         •  provide superior customer service even if they don’t stand to benefit16
Emma Seppälä (The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success)
The traditional illustration of the direct rule-based approach is the “three laws of robotics” concept, formulated by science fiction author Isaac Asimov in a short story published in 1942.22 The three laws were: (1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; (2) A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; (3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. Embarrassingly for our species, Asimov’s laws remained state-of-the-art for over half a century: this despite obvious problems with the approach, some of which are explored in Asimov’s own writings (Asimov probably having formulated the laws in the first place precisely so that they would fail in interesting ways, providing fertile plot complications for his stories).23 Bertrand Russell, who spent many years working on the foundations of mathematics, once remarked that “everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.”24 Russell’s dictum applies in spades to the direct specification approach. Consider, for example, how one might explicate Asimov’s first law. Does it mean that the robot should minimize the probability of any human being coming to harm? In that case the other laws become otiose since it is always possible for the AI to take some action that would have at least some microscopic effect on the probability of a human being coming to harm. How is the robot to balance a large risk of a few humans coming to harm versus a small risk of many humans being harmed? How do we define “harm” anyway? How should the harm of physical pain be weighed against the harm of architectural ugliness or social injustice? Is a sadist harmed if he is prevented from tormenting his victim? How do we define “human being”? Why is no consideration given to other morally considerable beings, such as sentient nonhuman animals and digital minds? The more one ponders, the more the questions proliferate. Perhaps
Nick Bostrom (Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies)
Although the social science construction of reality tends to emphasize how families differ from one another, I began to see that knowledge of what they have in common could be more important, as a basis both for promoting change and for enabling leaders and consultants to recognize the universal elements of emotional processes found in all institutions as well as in all families. Rather than assuming that a family’s cultural background determined its emotional processes, I found it far more useful to see culture as the medium through which a family’s own unique multi-generational emotional process worked its art. I began to see that stripping families of their cultural camouflage forced family members to be more accountable for their actions and their responses to one another. I also saw that once one focused on how families were similar rather than on how they differed, it was possible to see universal “laws” of emotional process that were obscured by becoming absorbed in the myriad data on family differences. And later I found that this principle applied to other kinds of institutions as well. For
Edwin H. Friedman (A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix)
Happiness and relationships One of the strongest predictors (and not only correlates!) of happiness is social relationships. In fact, to be happy we need to spend six to seven hours a day in social settings, and up to nine if our jobs are stressful (Rath & Harter, 2010). This applies regardless of whether we are extraverted or introverted (Froh et al., 2007). In their study of exceptionally happy people (10 per cent of 222 college students), Diener and Seligman (2002) found only one main difference between the happiest and the rest of the students. The very happy people had a rich and fulfilling social life. They spent the least time alone, had good relationships with friends and had a current romantic partner. They did not have fewer negative and more positive events, nor differed on amount of sleep, TV watching, exercise, smoking, drinking, etc. Perhaps not surprisingly, frequency of sexual intercourse is strongly associated with happiness. Marriage usually leads to a rapid increase in SWB, which, unfortunately, comes down after a while. However, it does not return to the starting point, but stays at a higher level than before marriage. So marriage changes the set point of SWB, although this change is not large. However, if your relationship is on the rocks, you are likely to be less happy than people who are unmarried or divorced.
Ilona Boniwell (Positive Psychology in a Nutshell: the Science of Happiness (UK Higher Education OUP Psychology Psychology))
To apply the results of this analysis in the making of a decision, however, is not a task which science can undertake. It is rather the task of the acting, willing person. He weighs and chooses from among the values involved according to his own conscience and Ius personal view of the world. Science can make him 'realize' that all action and naturally, according to the circumstances, inaction imply in their consequences the espousal of certain values - and herewith - what is today so willingly overlooked - the rejection of certain others. The act of choice Itself is his own responsibility.
Max Weber (The Theory of Social and Economic Organization)
Narrative: telling stories about the topic and the people involved with it (e.g., the story of Charles Darwin for evolution or of Anne Frank for the Holocaust) 2.  Quantitative: using examples connected to the topic (e.g., the puzzle of different numbers and varieties of finches spread across a dozen islands in the Galapagos) 3.  Logic: identifying the key elements or units and exploring their logical connections (e.g., how Malthus’s argument about human survival in the face of insufficient resources can be applied to competition among biological species) 4.  Existential: addressing big questions, such as the nature of truth or beauty, life and death 5.  Aesthetic: examining instances in terms of their artistic properties or capturing the examples themselves in works of art (e.g., observing the diverse shapes of the beaks of finches; analyzing the expressive elements in the trio) 6.  Hands-on: working directly with tangible examples (e.g., performing the Figaro trio, breeding fruit flies to observe how traits change over the generations) 7.  Cooperative or social: engaging in projects with others where each makes a distinctive contribution to successful execution
Howard Gardner (Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other Peoples Minds (Leadership for the Common Good))
I have the greatest respect for conservation biologists. I care very much about conserving the rain forest and the wildlife in Indonesia, but I also found it disheartening. It often feels like you are fighting a losing battle, especially in areas where people depend so heavily on these natural resources for their own survival. After graduation, I decided to return to the original behavioral questions that motivated me. Although monogamy—both social and genetic—is rare in mammals, social monogamy is the norm in birds. Plus, birds are everywhere. I figured that if I turned my attention to studying our feathered friends, I wouldn’t have to spend months on end trying to secure research permits and travel visas from foreign governments. I wouldn’t even have to risk getting bitten by leeches (a constant problem in the Mentawais*). Birds seemed like the perfect choice for my next act. But I didn’t know anyone who studied birds. My PhD was in an anthropology department, without many links to researchers in biology departments. Serendipitously, while applying for dozens of academic jobs, I stumbled across an advertisement for a position managing Dr. Ellen Ketterson’s laboratory at Indiana University. The ad described Ketterson’s long-term project on dark-eyed juncos. Eureka! Birds! At the time, her lab primarily focused on endocrinology methods like hormone assays (a method to measure how much of a hormone is present in blood or other types of biological samples), because they were interested in how testosterone levels influenced behavior. I had no experience with either birds or hormone assays. But I had spent the last several years developing DNA sequencing and genotyping skills, which the Ketterson lab was just starting to use. I hoped that my expertise with fieldwork and genetic work would be seen as beneficial enough to excuse my lack of experience in ornithology and endocrinology. I submitted my application but heard nothing back. After a while, I did something that was a bit terrifying at the time. Of the dozens of academic positions I had applied to, this felt like the right one, so I tried harder. I wrote to Dr. Ketterson again to clarify why I was so interested in the job and why I would be a good fit, even though on paper I seemed completely wrong for it. I described why I wanted to work with birds instead of primates. I explained that I had years of fieldwork experience in challenging environments and could easily learn ornithological methods. I listed my laboratory expertise and elaborated on how beneficial it could be to her research group, and how easily I could learn to do hormone assays and why they were important for my research too. She wrote me back. I got the job.
Danielle J. Whittaker (The Secret Perfume of Birds: Uncovering the Science of Avian Scent)
Atoms, elements and molecules are three important knowledge in Physics, chemistry and Biology. mathematics comes where counting starts, when counting and measurement started, integers were required. Stephen hawking says integers were created by god and everything else is work of man. Man sees pattern in everything and they are searched and applied to other sciences for engineering, management and application problems. Physics, it is required understand the physical nature or meaning of why it happens, chemistry is for chemical nature, Biology is for that why it happened. Biology touch medicine, plants and animals. In medicine how these atoms, elements and molecules interplay with each other by bondage is being explained. Human emotions and responses are because of biochemistry, hormones i e anatomy and physiology. This physiology deals with each and every organs and their functions. When this atom in elements are disturbed whatever they made i e macromolecules DNA, RNA and Protein and other micro and macro nutrients and which affects the physiology of different organs on different scales and then diseases are born because of this imbalance/ disturb in homeostasis. There many technical words are there which are hard to explain in single para. But let me get into short, these atoms in elements and molecules made interplay because of ecological stimulus i e so called god. and when opposite sex meets it triggers various responses on body of each. It is also harmone and they are acting because of atoms inside elements and continuous generation or degenerations of cell cycle. There is a god cell called totipotent stem cell, less gods are pluripotent, multi potent and noni potent stem cells. So finally each and every organ system including brain cells are affected because of interplay of atoms inside elements and their bondages in making complex molecules, which are ruled by ecological stimulus i e god. So everything is basically biology and medicine even for animals, plants and microbes and other life forms. process differs in each living organisms. The biggest mystery is Brain and DNA. Brain has lots of unexplained phenomenon and even dreams are not completely understood by science that is where spiritualism/ soul touches. DNA is long molecule which has many applications as genetic engineering. genomics, personal medicine, DNA as tool for data storage, DNA in panspermia theory and many more. So everything happens to women and men and other sexes are because of Biology, Medicine and ecology. In ecology every organisms are inter connected and inter dependent. Now physics - it touch all technical aspects but it needs mathematics and statistics to lay foundation for why and how it happened and later chemistry, biology also included inside physics. Mathematics gave raise to computers and which is for fast calculation on any applications in any sciences. As physiological imbalances lead to diseases and disorders, genetic mutations, again old concept evolution was retaken to understand how new biology evolves. For evolution and disease mechanisms, epidemiology and statistics was required and statistics was as a data tool considered in all sciences now a days. Ultimate science is to break the atoms to see what is inside- CERN, but it creates lots of mysterious unanswerable questions. laws in physics were discovered and invented with mathematics to understand the universe from atoms. Theory of everything is a long search and have no answers. While searching inside atoms, so many hypothesis like worm holes and time travel born but not yet invented as far as my knowledge. atom is universe, and humans are universe they have everything that universe has. ecology is god that affects humans and climate. In business these computerized AI applications are trying to figure out human emotions by their mechanism of writing, reading, texting, posting on social media and bla bla. Arts is trying to figure out human emotions in art way.
Ganapathy K
Movies are mixture of three things, 1) Real History or science or subject happened , 2) Imagination and Domination - To show that I am the king or I am the queen - So imagination along with showcasing or dominating attitude, 3) Mixture of lies and mysteries - Because no one knows the actual truth, All movies in all languages are under these 3 factors, And objectives for Movie/ Arts/ Entertainment Industries 1) Business i e Money, 2) Winning attitude - That my story or my written script should dominate the world and peoples mind for generations to come i e sublime message or sustainability goals through arts or in non sense / pseudo scientific manner - New world order, So if you are idiot consider movies as reality and live in fantasy, if you are moderate then comment or give opinion about movies such that it is a sustainability goal or new world order - So that you can make fun of the movie and producers will make fun of you by box office collections, If you are smart watch any movies or arts you like but do not comment much, but keep it in your mind - Use it as a tool to understand the producer, director, screenplay writer, casts mind and understand the situation why that movie or art was created or for what reason, what was the motive and all, so that definetley you can do a lot of research not only about art but also about business mind set, And finally if you are Intelligent, watch anything you like, comment anything as you wise and go and take a nap and wake up next morning as if nothing happened - Simply do not even care, But If you have mercy heart, use all of your intelligence and apply wherever you wish (For me Science), for you might be art, sport, politics, etc, so wherever you wish, apply there and reap the benefits - so that you will be example for millions and also have social dimension where your application also somehow benefits the common or society
Ganapathy K Siddharth Vijayaraghavan
I can demonstrate very easily that the term “genetic,” which today is the exclusive term for biological evolution, was actually coined in Germany in the eighteenth century by a man like Herder, Wieland, and Schiller, and was used in the quite modern term by Wilhelm von Humboldt long time before Darwin. The Humboldt passages are so interesting that I will even quote some. Humboldt spoke in 1836 about the fact that the definition of language can only be a genetic one, “nur eine genetische seyn,” and goes on to argue that the formation of language successively through many stages, like the origin of natural phenomena, is clearly a phenomena of evolution. All that was ready in the theory of languages thirty years before Darwin applied it to the natural sciences. Yet it had been forgotten, or at least ignored, outside the two classical instances of language, law, and I may now add economics including the market and money. And when it was reintroduced by the social Darwinists, all the parts of the explanation of the mechanism were also taken over
Friedrich A. Hayek
As a group which believed in civic responsibility and the salutary effect of applied social science, it was natural that the WASP elite would take an interest in housing. In cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, and Boston, the panels of experts in the housing field invariably had a definite ethnic cast. They became certified as experts either by going to the already mentioned Ivy League universities or by getting appointed to boards of the various cities’ planning commissions, which were often descendants of local ruling class initiatives that began with the city-beautiful movement or the settlement house movement around the time of World War I. The Philadelphia Housing Association was one such group. It started off as a blueblood organization complaining about backyard privies and piggeries in South Philadelphia and recommending common-sense measures for local improvement of the housing situation, things like liens against absentee landlords to pay for repairs. All of that changed in 1937 with the New Deal housing act of that year, which established local housing authorities across the country with federal money and government authority. The various housing authorities were charged with creating master plans by staffs of “experts” of a certain ethnic (i.c., WASP) cast which was invariably not the ethnic cast of the neighborhoods which were targeted for destruction. Urban renewal as practiced in the case of Berman v. Parker meant that certain people were empowered to come up with a master plan for the cities, one that would now have the power of law, specifically eminent domain, behind it along with enormous amounts of federal money, which was made available to tear down neighborhoods where people from other ethnic groups lived. The experts could do this according to their own purportedly scientific but ultimately ethnocentric criteria of things like blight, hygiene, decay, etc. Taken together the WASP penchant for meddling in housing along with residual WASP anti-Catholicism meant bad news for places like Bridesburg and Poletown, especially when this group was empowered to act on its ethnic prejudices by federal money and a Supreme Court that was willing to abridge property rights in the interest of increased social engineering.
E. Michael Jones (The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing)
The extent to which the distinction between “social” and “intellectual” is accepted as unproblematic by observers of science may have significant consequences for the reports about science which they produce. The Social and the Scientific: The Observer’s Dilemma At one extreme, we can envisage the wholesale adoption by an observer of the distinction mentioned above. In this case, the observer holds an assumption that scientific phenomena occupy a realm largely distinct from that of social phenomena, and that it is only to the latter that the concepts, procedures, and expertise of sociology can be applied. As a result, the procedures and achievements central to scientists’ work become largely immune from sociological explanation. Approaches which implicitly adopt this standpoint have been roundly criticised on several grounds. Rather than repeat these criticisms in detail, we shall merely outline some of the main critical themes. Firstly, the decision to concentrate only on “social” rather than “technical” aspects of science severely limits the range of phenomena that can be selected as appropriate for study. Put simply, this means that there is no point in doing sociology of science unless one can clearly identify the presence of some politician breathing down the necks of working scientists. Where there is no such obvious interference by external agencies, it is argued, science can proceed without the need for sociological analysis. This argument hinges on a particularly limited notion of the occasional influence of sociopolitical factors; the substance of science proceeds unaffected if such factors are absent. Secondly, emphasis on “social” in contradistinction to “technical” can lead to the disproportionate selection of events for analysis which appear to exemplify “mistaken” or “wrong” science. As we shall show, an important feature of fact construction is the process whereby “social” factors disappear once a fact is established. Since scientists themselves preferentially retain (or resurrect) the existence of “social” factors where things scientific are thought to have gone wrong, the adoption of the same viewpoint by an observer will necessarily lead him to the analysis of the way social factors affect, or have given rise to, “wrong” beliefs.
Bruno Latour (Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts (Princeton Paperbacks))
Years later, Mises would take on the historicists in his book, Theory and History, countering their view that economic theorems are void because they rely on a priori reasoning and that only historical experience is valid. As he wrote: “Such historical experience does not give the observer facts in the sense in which the natural sciences apply this term to the results obtained in laboratory experiments.” He further criticized those “who call their offices, studies, and libraries ‘laboratories’ for research in economics, statistics, or the social sciences” as being “hopelessly muddleheaded.” Mises stated, “Historical facts need to be interpreted on the ground of previously available theorems.
Spitznagel, Mark (The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World)
An awareness of the structure of academic concerns and structure at that time is important because later the term "historical" has been interpreted by current views as diachronic. Equation of nineteenth-century "historical" with terms such as "social" or "behavioral" and "human" would be more accurate if these are taken to apply to all the areas not dealt with in the "physical" and "biological" sciences, which themselves cannot be equated directly with the early classification "natural sciences.
Winfred P. Lehmann (Theoretical Bases Of Indo European Linguistics)
Western thinking evolved from a mode that took the form of a tension between immersing in experience and abstracting from that experience through categorizing it (first order abstracting) to a mode that focused increasingly on second order abstracting in which the first order categories of experience were used to map and model not just the natural world but also the social world. This increasingly drew even further away from the local interaction of immersing in experience itself. Thought came to focus so heavily on second order abstractions of systems and models, understood as science, that when it was applied to human organizations, the ordinary reality of the experience of local interaction between actual human bodies disappeared from view as attention was focused on objectively operating on abstractions as if they were reality. I suggested that it was this movement in thought to second order abstraction, split off from immersion in local interaction, that led to the belief that organizations could be designed and manipulated by objective observers. The result is an inadequate way of thinking about organization and management that covers over the simple organizational reality of local interacting and leaves us without satisfying ways of understanding what is currently happening to organizations. In
Ralph D. Stacey (Complexity and Organizational Reality)
What distinguishes us above all from Muslim-born or converted individuals—“psychologically”, one could say—is that our mind is a priori centered on universal metaphysics (Advaita Vedānta, Shahādah, Risālat al-Ahadiyah) and the universal path of the divine Name (japa-yoga, nembutsu, dhikr, prayer of the heart); it is because of these two factors that we are in a traditional form, which in fact—though not in principle—is Islam. The universal orthodoxy emanating from these two sources of authority determines our interpretation of the sharī'ah and Islam in general, somewhat as the moon influences the oceans without being located on the terrestrial globe; in the absence of the moon, the motions of the sea would be inconceivable and “illegitimate”, so to speak. What universal metaphysics says has decisive authority for us, as does the “onomatological” science connected to it, a fact that once earned us the reproach of “de-Islamicizing Islam”; it is not so much a matter of the conscious application of principles formulated outside of Islamism by metaphysical traditions from Asia as of inspirations in conformity with these principles; in a situation such as ours, the spiritual authority—or the soul that is its vehicle—becomes like a point of intersection for all the rays of truth, whatever their origin. One must always take account of the following: in principle the universal authority of the metaphysical and initiatic traditions of Asia, whose point of view reflects the nature of things more or less directly, takes precedence—when such an alternative exists—over the generally more “theological” authority of the monotheistic religions; I say “when such an alternative exists”, for obviously it sometimes happens, in esoterism as in essential symbolism, that there is no such alternative; no one can deny, however, that in Semitic doctrines the formulations and rules are usually determined by considerations of dogmatic, moral, and social opportuneness. But this cannot apply to pure Islam, that is, to the authority of its essential doctrine and fundamental symbolism; the Shahādah cannot but mean that “the world is false and Brahma is true” and that “you are That” (tat tvam asi), or that “I am Brahma” (aham Brahmāsmi); it is a pure expression of both the unreality of the world and the supreme identity; in the same way, the other “pillars of Islam” (arqān al-Dīn), as well as such fundamental rules as dietary and artistic prohibitions, obviously constitute supports of intellection and realization, which universal metaphysics—or the “Unanimous Tradition”—can illuminate but not abolish, as far as we are concerned. When universal wisdom states that the invocation contains and replaces all other rites, this is of decisive authority against those who would make the sharī'ah or sunnah into a kind of exclusive karma-yoga, and it even allows us to draw conclusions by analogy (qiyās, ijtihād) that most Shariites would find illicit; or again, should a given Muslim master require us to introduce every dhikr with an ablution and two raka'āt, the universal—and “antiformalist”—authority of japa-yoga would take precedence over the authority of this master, at least in our case. On the other hand, should a Hindu or Buddhist master give the order to practice japa before an image, it goes without saying that it is the authority of Islamic symbolism that would take precedence for us quite apart from any question of universality, because forms are forms, and some of them are essential and thereby rejoin the universality of the spirit. (28 January 1956)
Frithjof Schuon
Technology/science,” “pure/applied,” “internal/external,” and “technical/ social” are some of the dichotomies that were foreign to the integrating inventors, engineers, and managers of the system- and network-building era. To
Wiebe E. Bijker (The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology)
Research19 by social scientists James Fowler of University of California, San Diego, and Nicolas Christakis of Harvard University suggests that happiness tends to spread up to three degrees of separation from you—to those close to you, your colleagues and acquaintances, and even strangers you will never know. This is how you create a culture of happiness in your workplace, home, or community.
Emma Seppälä (The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success)
Unlike sociology, a pariah science that is always under suspicion for its supposed political leanings, and from which the powerful expect nothing but a minor, generally somewhat ancillary knowledge of techniques of manipulation or legitimation, and which, as a result, is less exposed than other disciplines to demands likely to threaten its independence, economics is always more of a state science and is, as a result, haunted by state thinking: being constantly preoccupied with the normative concerns of an applied science, it is dependent on responding politically to political demands, while at the same time defending itself against any charge of political involvement by the ostentatiously lofty character of its formal, and preferably mathematical, constructions. It
Pierre Bourdieu (The Social Structures of the Economy)
If twentieth-century history - with its widespread belief in social Darwinism and the many terrible effects of trying to apply eugenics that resulted from it - has anything to teach us, it is that we humans have a dangerous tendency to turn the visions we construct of ourselves into self-fulfilling prophecies. The idea of the "survival of the fittest" has been misused to condone, and in some cases to justify, excesses of human greed and individualism and ignore ethical models for relating to our fellow human beings in a more compassionate spirit. Thus, irrespective of our conceptions of science, given that science today occupies such an important seat of authority in human society, it is extremely important for those in the profession to be aware of their power and to appreciate their responsibility. Science must act as its own corrective to popular misconceptions and misappropriations of ideas that could have disastrous implications for the world and humanity at large.
Dalai Lama XIV (The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality)
research university that primarily awards master’s degrees and PhDs, JNU saw the number of seats offered to students wishing to enroll in a master’s or a doctoral program plummet by 84 percent, from 1,234 to 194 in one year.101 Furthermore, admissions committees were made up solely of experts appointed by the JNU vice-chancellor, flouting university statutes and guidelines followed by the University Grants Commission (UGC), which stipulate that academics should be involved.102 This made it possible to hire teachers from Hindu nationalist circles,103 with few qualifications,104 and some facing charges of plagiarism.105 In particular, several former ABVP student activists from JNU have been appointed as assistant professors even after being disqualified by the committee in charge of short-listing applicants.106 The vice-chancellor replaced deans in the School of Social Sciences without following appointment procedures, cutting the number of researchers by 80 percent and ceasing to apply rules JNU had set to ensure diversity through a mechanism taking into account the social background and geographic origin of its applicants.107 The new recruitment procedure strongly disadvantaged Dalits, Adivasis, and OBCs, who used to make up nearly 50 percent of the student intake and who now accounted for a mere 7 percent. The vice-chancellor also issued ad hoc promotions, nominating recently appointed faculty members to the post of full professor. Conversely, the freeze on promotions for “antigovernment” teachers who should have been promoted on the basis of seniority prompted some of the diktat’s victims to take the matter to court.108 However, even after the court—taking note of the illegality of the rejection procedure—ordered a reexamination of the claimants’ promotions, the latter were once again denied.109
Christophe Jaffrelot (Modi's India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy)
Bernays explained his principles in 1947, in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. He informed the world of science that leaders, with the aid of technicians in the field who have specialized in utilizing the channels of communication, have been able to accomplish purposefully and scientifically what we have termed ‘the engineering of consent.’ This phrase quite simply means the use of an engineering approach—that is, action based on thorough knowledge of the situation and on the application of scientific principles and tried practices to the task of getting people to support ideas and programs…. The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest…. A leader frequently cannot wait for the people to arrive at even general understanding … democratic leaders must play their part in … engineering consent to socially constructive goals and values…. The responsible leader, to accomplish social objectives, must therefore be constantly aware of the possibilities of subversion. He must apply his energies to mastering the operational know-how of consent engineering, and to out-maneuvering his opponents in the public interest (Bernays, 1947).
Noam Chomsky (Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance)
During its applied turn, Theory underwent a moral mutation: it adopted a number of beliefs about the rights and wrongs of power and privilege. The original Theorists were content to observe, bemoan, and play with such phenomena; the new ones wanted to reorder society. If social injustice can be achieved by delegitimising them and replacing them with better ones. Those social sciences and humanities scholars who took Theoretical approaches began to form a left-wing moral community, rather than a purely academic one: an intellectual organ more interested in advocating a particular ought than attempting a detached assessment of is - an attitude we usually associate with churches, rather than universities.
Helen Pluckrose (Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody)
THE HORROR OF THE UNPROFESSIONAL I was surprised to learn that when Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter wanted to scold Russia for its campaign of airstrikes in Syria in the fall of 2015, the word he chose to apply was “unprofessional.” Given the magnitude of the provocation, it seemed a little strange—as though he thought there were an International Association of Smartbomb Deployment Executives that might, once alerted by American officials, hold an inquiry into Russia’s behavior and hand down a stern reprimand. On reflection, slighting foes for their lack of professionalism was something of a theme of the Obama years. An Iowa Democrat became notorious in 2014, for example, when he tried to insult an Iowa Republican by calling him “a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school.” Similarly, it was “unprofessionalism” (in the description of Thomas Friedman) that embarrassed the insubordinate Afghan-war General Stanley McChrystal, who made ill-considered remarks about the president to Rolling Stone magazine. And in the summer of 2013, when National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden exposed his employer’s mass surveillance of email and phone calls, the aspect of his past that his detractors chose to emphasize was … his failure to graduate from high school.14 How could such a no-account person challenge this intensely social-science-oriented administration? But it was public school teachers who made the most obvious target for professional reprimand by the administration. They are, after all, pointedly different from other highly educated professions: Teachers are represented by trade unions, not proper professional associations, and their values of seniority and solidarity conflict with the cult of merit embraced by other professions. For years, the school reform movement has worked to replace or weaken teachers’ unions with remedies like standardized testing, charter schools, and tactical deployment of the cadres of Teach for America, a corps of enthusiastic graduates from highly ranked colleges who take on teaching duties in classrooms across the country after only minimal training.
Thomas Frank (Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?)
In political economy the meagreness of our understanding is especially remarkable; we have not yet grasped the obvious fact—a fact of immeasurable import for all of the social sciences—that with little exception the wealth and capital possessed by a given generation are not produced by its own toil but are the inherited fruit of dead men's toil—a free gift of the past. We have yet to learn and apply the lesson that not only our material wealth and capital but our science and art and learning and wisdom—all that goes to constitute our civilization—were produced, not by our own labor, but by the time-binding energies of past generations.
Alfred Korzybski (Manhood of Humanity: Unlocking Human Potential: A Journey Through Language, Symbolism, and Time-Binding)
[R]ecent emphasis in the social sciences on wealth and control of scarce, strategic material resources in the political evolution of Homo sapiens applies only to the most recent era of human history, perhaps only the last eight thousand or so years. Indeed, the whole purpose and design of the social structures of tribesmen seems to have revolved around effectively controlling sexual access by males to nubile, reproductive-age females: the purpose or function of 'social organization' among tribesmen (and many nonhuman animals) seems to have been the efficient regulation of sexual access to females by males and the role that male coalitions play in this process.
Napoleon A. Chagnon (Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes - the Yanomamo and the Anthropologists)
Appoint an accountability partner—someone whom you report to regarding your chosen goals and keep updated with your progress in achieving them. An accountability partner sees to it that you are on track to fulfill your commitments. This offers you the hugely effective combo of positive support and praise when you retain self-discipline, along with social pressure and the risk of disappointing someone important to you when you don’t keep your commitments. The Hawthorne effect is a phenomenon in which people change their behavior to be more pleasing and positive when they know they are being observed. You can take advantage of this tendency to improve your own self-discipline by making your behavior more observable to others, thus giving you that extra push to do what you promised you would so that you impress others or at least don’t let them down. Seek out a role model or mentor whose qualities and behaviors you can emulate. As you get to know your role model better and observe their methods more closely, you become more inspired and informed as to how you can apply their strategies in building your own habits of self-discipline.
Peter Hollins (The Science of Self-Discipline: The Willpower, Mental Toughness, and Self-Control to Resist Temptation and Achieve Your Goals (Live a Disciplined Life Book 1))
functional logic can be applied to other moral emotions. Anger toward cheaters likely evolved to punish those who violate social contracts. Anger toward cheaters motivates revenge, which in turn deters others from cheating in the future. And revenge might be an emotion that is sweetly savored. In an interesting series of studies, participants rated a variety of different endings to Hollywood film clips that portrayed a serious injustice (Haidt & Sabini, 2000). Participants were displeased by endings in which the victim of an injustice accepted the loss, forgave the transgressor, and found growth and fulfillment. They were most satisfied by endings in which the perpetrator of the injustice suffered greatly, knew that the suffering was retribution for the transgression, and experienced public humiliation in the process. In short, the moral outrage that people experience at cheating and violations of social contracts evolved to serve a policing function, holding others to their commitments and obligations.
David M. Buss (Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind)
There were continual, background regrets, which repeated on multiple pages. ‘I regret not staying in The Labyrinths, because I let down my brother.’ ‘I regret not staying in The Labyrinths, because I let down myself.’ ‘I regret not doing more for the environment.’ ‘I regret the time I spent on social media.’ ‘I regret not going to Australia with Izzy.’ ‘I regret not having more fun when I was younger.’ ‘I regret all those arguments with Dad.’ ‘I regret not working with animals.’ ‘I regret not doing Geology at University instead of Philosophy.’ ‘I regret not learning how to be a happier person.’ ‘I regret feeling so much guilt.’ ‘I regret not sticking at Spanish.’ ‘I regret not choosing science subjects in my A-levels.’ ‘I regret not becoming a glaciologist.’ ‘I regret not getting married.’ ‘I regret not applying to do a Master’s degree in Philosophy at Cambridge.’ ‘I regret not keeping healthy.’ ‘I regret moving to London.’ ‘I regret not going to Paris to teach English.’ ‘I regret not finishing the novel I started at university.’ ‘I regret moving out of London.’ ‘I regret having a job with no prospects.’ ‘I regret not being a better sister.’ ‘I regret not having a gap year after university.’ ‘I regret disappointing my father.’ ‘I regret that I teach piano more than I play it.’ ‘I regret my financial mismanagement.’ ‘I regret not living in the countryside.
Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
McMahon made use of Veblen’s conception of emulation in consumption, whereas Kyrk adopted Mitchell’s view that notions of rationality derived from business calculation of profit cannot be applied to households controlled by other standards (1923, p. 144).
Malcolm Rutherford (The Institutionalist Movement in American Economics, 1918–1947: Science and Social Control (Historical Perspectives on Modern Economics))
Veblen’s theory of institutional evolution emphasized the role of new technology bringing about institutional change via a causal process of habituation to new “disciplines” of life. Here rational appraisal of consequences plays no significant role, the process being one whereby new ways of thinking are somehow induced by new patterns of life. In the early years of the twentieth century, both Mitchell and Hoxie attempted to apply Veblen’s theory, but each ran into difficulty. Mitchell’s work on the development of the “money economy” found many more factors at work in institutional evolution than Veblen suggested, and Hoxie came to reject Veblen’s hypothesis, expressed in Business Enterprise (Veblen 1904, pp. 306–360), that the discipline of machine industry would tend to turn the habits of thought of unionized workers in a socialistic direction (Rutherford 1998; see Chapter 5 in this book).
Malcolm Rutherford (The Institutionalist Movement in American Economics, 1918–1947: Science and Social Control (Historical Perspectives on Modern Economics))
As mentioned, this conceptual knowledge, generated through the Scientific Tradition, has come to be used in the creation of designs in practical fields, such as mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, medicine, clinical psychology, social work, and education. It is easiest to measure the impact of scientific research on the economy. A study looked at the impact of research on economic growth in 65 countries over the period 1980–2016.19 They found that the amount of research output in a country increased economic growth, primarily through structural changes favoring the industrial sector. They found that academic knowledge was applied in a broad set of industries and that social and physical sciences impact economic growth the most. The impact of the research output of clinical and health sciences, and arts and humanities was characterized by low levels of applications, although they also led to positive economic growth.
Robert Kozma (Make the World a Better Place: Design with Passion, Purpose, and Values)
From the moment when the bourgeois demand for the abolition of class privileges was put forward, alongside it appeared the proletarian demand for the abolition of the classes themselves. [...] The proletarians took the bourgeoisie at its word: equality must not be merely apparent, must not apply merely to the sphere of the state, but must also be real, must also be extended to the social, economic sphere. [...] Any demand for equality which goes beyond that, of necessity passes into absurdity.
Friedrich Engels (Anti-Dühring: Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science)
In his recent critique of fashionable ecological philosophies, Andreas Malm pointedly remarks: 'When Latour writes that, in a warming world, 'humans are no longer submitted to the diktats of objective nature, since what comes to them is also an intensively subjective form of action,' he gets it all wrong: there is nothing intensively subjective but a lot of objectivity in ice melting. Or, as one placard at a demonstration held by scientists at the American Geophysical Union in December 2016: 'Ice has no agenda - it just melts.'' The reverse claim is that human interventions have only had such a menacing and even fatal consequences for our living conditions within the Earth system because human agency has not yet sufficiently freed itself from its dependence on natural history. This seems to be the conviction behind the 'Ecomodernist Manifesto,' for instance, which claims that 'knowledge and technology, applied with wisdom, might allow for a good, even great, Anthropocene,' and that a good Anthropocene 'demands that humans use their growing social, economic, and technological powers to make life better for people, stabilize the climate, and protect the natural world.' In this confrontation, an age-old dualism has assumed a new guise: the attempt to establish a complicity with the forces of destiny - if necessary at the price of surrendering human subjectivity or perhaps involving other forms of self-sacrifice - is juxtaposed with the attempt to achieve human autonomy by subordinating the planet under the superior power of human ingenuity. These two positions, a modernist stance and a position critical of it, are usually considered to represent mutually exclusive alternatives. Actually, however, the two positions have more in common than first meets the eye. At the beginning of chapter 3, I referred to Greek philosophers who suggested that the best way to protect oneself against the vicissitudes of fate was to learn how to submit oneself to it willingly, sacrificing one's drives and ambitions while expecting, at the same time, that this complicity with destiny would empower one to master worldly challenges. What unites the seemingly opposite positions, more generally speaking, is a shared move away from engagement with the concrete and individual human agency (i.e., with empirical human subjects and with the unequal power distribution in human societies) toward some powerful form of abstraction, be it 'to distribute agency' or to use the 'growing social, economic, and technological powers' of humanity for a better Anthropocene. I suggest that we take a more systemic look at the role of humanity in the Earth system, taking into account both its material interventions and the knowledge that enabled them.
Jürgen Renn (The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene)
The prototypes of professional expertise in this sense are the “learned professions” of medicine and law and, close behind these, business and engineering. These are, in Nathan Glazer’s terms, the “major” or “near-major” professions.6 They are distinct from such “minor” professions as social work, librarianship, education, divinity, and town planning. In the essay from which these terms are drawn, Glazer argues that the schools of the minor professions are hopelessly nonrigorous, dependent on representatives of academic disciplines, such as economics or political science, who are superior in status to the professions themselves. But what is of greatest interest from our point of view, Glazer’s distinction between major and minor professions rests on a particularly well-articulated version of the model of Technical Rationality. The major professions are “disciplined by an unambiguous end—health, success in litigation, profit—which settles men’s minds,”7 and they operate in stable institutional contexts. Hence they are grounded in systematic, fundamental knowledge, of which scientific knowledge is the prototype,8 or else they have “a high component of strictly technological knowledge based on science in the education which they provide.”9 In contrast, the minor professions suffer from shifting, ambiguous ends and from unstable institutional contexts of practice, and are therefore unable to develop a base of systematic, scientific professional knowledge. For Glazer, the development of a scientific knowledge base depends on fixed, unambiguous ends because professional practice is an instrumental activity. If applied science consists in cumulative, empirical knowledge about the means best suited to chosen ends, how can a profession ground itself in science when its ends are confused or unstable?
Donald A. Schön (The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action)
applies the Polyvagal theory developed by Stephen Porges to children, convincingly making the case that many children who can’t seem to behave themselves simply don’t have that developmental capacity yet, and giving us a social-emotional roadmap for how children learn to self-regulate.
Mona Delahooke (Beyond Behaviors: Using Brain Science and Compassion to Understand and Solve Children's Behavioral Challenges)
After the Marxist revolution failed to topple capitalism in the early twentieth century, many Marxists went back to the drawing board, modifying and adapting Marx’s ideas. Perhaps the most famous was a group associated with the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany, which applied Marxism to a radical interdisciplinary social theory. The group included Max Horkheimer, T.W. Adorno, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Georg Lukács, and Walter Benjamin and came to be known as the Frankfurt School. These men developed Critical Theory as an expansion of Conflict Theory and applied it more broadly, including other social sciences and philosophy. Their main goal was to address structural issues causing inequity. They worked from the assumption that current social reality was broken, and they needed to identify the people and institutions that could make changes and provide practical goals for social transformation.
Voddie T. Baucham Jr. (Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism's Looming Catastrophe)
Climate change acts as an accelerant to many of our social ills (inequality, wars, racism, sexual violence), but it can also be an accelerant for the opposite, for the forces working for economic and social justice and against militarism. Indeed, the climate crisis, by presenting our species with an existential threat and putting us on a firm and unyielding science-based deadline, might just be the catalyst we need to knit together a great many powerful movements bound together by a belief in the inherent worth and value of all people and united by a rejection of the sacrifice zone mentality, whether it applies to peoples or to places.
Naomi Klein
THE HORROR OF THE UNPROFESSIONAL I was surprised to learn that when Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter wanted to scold Russia for its campaign of airstrikes in Syria in the fall of 2015, the word he chose to apply was “unprofessional.” Given the magnitude of the provocation, it seemed a little strange—as though he thought there were an International Association of Smartbomb Deployment Executives that might, once alerted by American officials, hold an inquiry into Russia’s behavior and hand down a stern reprimand. On reflection, slighting foes for their lack of professionalism was something of a theme of the Obama years. An Iowa Democrat became notorious in 2014, for example, when he tried to insult an Iowa Republican by calling him “a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school.” Similarly, it was “unprofessionalism” (in the description of Thomas Friedman) that embarrassed the insubordinate Afghan-war General Stanley McChrystal, who made ill-considered remarks about the president to Rolling Stone magazine. And in the summer of 2013, when National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden exposed his employer’s mass surveillance of email and phone calls, the aspect of his past that his detractors chose to emphasize was … his failure to graduate from high school. How could such a no-account person challenge this intensely social-science-oriented administration?
Thomas Frank (Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People)
It`s a general hazard of social science that the objects of our study time and again tend to confuse the scholarly observer by making statements about themselves. When those statements are supported by monopolistic dominance over communication media on the part of a powerful dictatorial government, their persuasive power is further enhanced. Nevertheless, however often Soviet Russia may introduce itself to the world as a socialist country, the fact remains that the social scientist may find it more illuminating to consider… as an economy which by the will of a ruthless totalitarian government has been kept in the process of a very rapid industrialization. “Accumulate, accumulate! This is Moses and the Prophets!” Those are the words in which Karl Marx tried to describe the quintessence of capitalism. There is every reason to doubt that there has been any economy on modern historical record to which these words would apply with greater justification that to the economy of the Union of the so-called Socialist Soviet Republics
Alexander Gerschenkron (Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Belknap Press S))
Ganesh Chaturthi is one of the major festivals in India and is celebrated on a large scale in many states of India. This popular festival is approaching and these celebrations are done all over with a lot of enthusiasm. During the pandemic, the celebrations are set to be different as the mode of celebrations has become somehow reformed. The widespread celebrations across 11 days of the festival might turn out to be great for you. The good times might bring the best for your life. The government has insisted on various measures for safeguarding the general health and well-being of people and with this approach, the virtual world has become quite open to new ways of getting various services. There are some of the important tips to follow for finding your best match during this phase. Find your soulmate The people planning to get the best matches for their life can find this as the most auspicious phase to search for the prospective match and make proceeding to have them in their life. Lord Ganesha gets the prime worshipping place and this festival will allow growing your life’s scope with finding the most loving soulmate. TruelyMarry can make the occasion of Ganesh Pooja to accomplish the most important event in your life, i.e., your marriage. · Virtual Selection In this Covid struck phase, the virtual selection of your life partner could be done with the sophisticated website platform and application. There is no longer any worry and you can choose the best matches by shortlisting the different matches. It is no longer difficult to find your better half as the online platform can make it obtain with ease. · Following social norms TruelyMarry platform assures that there are only valid profiles available on their platform. They make sure that the social norms are followed and you get the most amazing matches for the distant relationships. You can choose your interests and the profiles with similar matches will be revealed to you. This Ganesh Chaturthi can bring a lot of happiness to your life. It is the motive of every person to find the perfect life partner and TrulyMarry.com will be your assistance in becoming your associate for the same. You can find every profile with details through the enhanced research and the membership assures being capable of knowing all the details in the most responsible way. The list of handpicked profiles will be presented to you to make the right selection. The initial registration is free of cost followed by an option to choose the membership plans. There are several ways for making the selection, by applying filters or making the selection based on community, religion, caste, and profession. TruelyMarry.com majorly focuses on the Indian community Matrimonial Services and is a unique portal for finding the perfect soulmate. May the blessings of the Lord on Ganesh Chaturthi make you successful in obtaining your best match through online or offline consultation. Our team is highly efficient and would assure you meeting your life partner at our matrimony platform. Bappa will be with you for every new beginning in life..!! Wishing you & your family a very Happy Ganesh Chaturthi.
Rajeev Singh (Distributed Denial of Service Attacks: Concepts, Mathematical and Cryptographic Solutions (De Gruyter Series on the Applications of Mathematics in Engineering and Information Sciences Book 6))
Society’s most influential algorithms—from Google search and Facebook’s News Feed to credit scoring and health risk assessment algorithms—are generally developed by highly trained scientists and engineers who are carefully applying well-understood design principles. The problems actually lie within those very principles, most specifically those of machine learning. It will serve us well later to discuss those principles a bit now.
Michael Kearns (The Ethical Algorithm: The Science of Socially Aware Algorithm Design)
QI’s research suggested that the quote emerged over time from a speech delivered by a Louisiana State University business professor, Leon C. Megginson, at the convention of the Southwestern Social Science Association in 1963. Megginson reportedly said: Yes, change is the basic law of nature. But the changes wrought by the passage of time affect individuals and institutions in different ways. According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself. Applying this theoretical concept to us as individuals, we can state that the civilization that is able to survive is the one that is able to adapt to the changing physical, social, political, moral, and spiritual environment in which it finds itself. Thank you, Professor Megginson! That
Thomas L. Friedman (Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations)