Topic Review
The Copernican Question
The Copernican Question: Prognostication, Skepticism, and Celestial Order is a 704-page book written by Robert S. Westman and published by University of California Press (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London) in 2011 and in 2020 (paperback). The book is a broad historical overview of Europe's astronomical and astrological culture leading to Copernicus’s De revolutionibus and follows the scholarly debates that took place roughly over three generations after Copernicus.
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  • 14 Nov 2022
Topic Review
The Consolation of Philosophy
The Consolation of Philosophy (Latin: De consolatione philosophiae) is a philosophical work by the Roman statesman Boethius, written in 523 AD. It has been described as the single most important and influential work in the West on Medieval and early Renaissance Christianity, as well as the last great Western work of the Classical Period.
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  • 30 Nov 2022
Topic Review
The Colors in Medieval Illuminations of Alfonso X
The intellectual action associated with Alfonso X, king of the Crown of Castile (r. 1252-84), known as the Learned, is one of the most brilliant cultural enterprises of the medieval West. 
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  • 17 Jan 2024
Topic Review
The Clouds
The Clouds (Ancient Greek: Nephelai) is a Greek comedy play written by the playwright Aristophanes. A lampooning of intellectual fashions in classical Athens, it was originally produced at the City Dionysia in 423 BC and was not as well received as the author had hoped, coming last of the three plays competing at the festival that year. It was revised between 420 and 417 BC and was thereafter circulated in manuscript form. No copy of the original production survives, and scholarly analysis indicates that the revised version is an incomplete form of Old Comedy. This incompleteness, however, is not obvious in translations and modern performances. Retrospectively, The Clouds can be considered the world's first extant "comedy of ideas" and is considered by literary critics to be among the finest examples of the genre. The play also, however, remains notorious for its caricature of Socrates and is mentioned in Plato's Apology as a contributor to the philosopher's trial and execution.
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  • 28 Oct 2022
Topic Review
The Amazing Meeting
The Amazing Meeting (TAM), stylized as The Amaz!ng Meeting, was an annual conference that focused on science, skepticism, and critical thinking. The conference started in 2003 and was sponsored by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). Perennial speakers included Penn & Teller, Phil Plait, Michael Shermer and James "The Amazing" Randi. Speakers at the four-day conference were selected from a variety of disciplines including scientific educators, magicians, and community activists. Outside the plenary sessions the conference included workshops, additional panel discussions, music and magic performances and live taping of podcasts including The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. The final Amazing Meeting was held in July 2015.
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  • 09 Nov 2022
Topic Review
The Amazing Bulk
The Amazing Bulk is a 2012 American direct-to-video superhero film directed by Lewis Schoenbrun. Considered to be a mockbuster of the Marvel Studios film The Incredible Hulk, as well as other media featuring the Hulk character, the film's settings and visuals are almost entirely all reused stock imagery, graphics, and video purchased from various websites.
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  • 25 Nov 2022
Topic Review
The All
The All (also called The One, The Absolute, The Great One, The Creator, The Supreme Mind, The Supreme Good, The Father, and The All Mother) is the Hermetic, pantheistic, pandeistic or panentheistic (and thus also panpsychism/monopsychism/unus mundus/anima mundi) view of God, which is that everything that is, or at least that can be experienced, collectively makes up The All. One Hermetic maxim states, "While All is in The All, it is equally true that The All is in All." The All can also be seen to be androgynous, possessing both masculine and feminine qualities in equal part.
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  • 18 Oct 2022
Topic Review
The Age of Reason
The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology is a work by English and American political activist Thomas Paine, arguing for the philosophical position of deism. It follows in the tradition of 18th-century British deism, and challenges institutionalized religion and the legitimacy of the Bible. It was published in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807. It was a best-seller in the United States, where it caused a short-lived deistic revival. British audiences, fearing increased political radicalism as a result of the French Revolution , received it with more hostility. The Age of Reason presents common deistic arguments; for example, it highlights what Paine saw as corruption of the Christian Church and criticizes its efforts to acquire political power. Paine advocates reason in the place of revelation, leading him to reject miracles and to view the Bible as an ordinary piece of literature, rather than a divinely-inspired text. It promotes natural religion and argues for the existence of a creator-god. Most of Paine's arguments had long been available to the educated elite, but by presenting them in an engaging and irreverent style, he made deism appealing and accessible to the masses. Originally distributed as unbound pamphlets, the book was also cheap, putting it within the reach of a large number of buyers. Fearing the spread of what it viewed as potentially-revolutionary ideas, the British government prosecuted printers and booksellers who tried to publish and distribute it. Nevertheless, Paine's work inspired and guided many free thinkers.
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  • 27 Sep 2022
Topic Review
The Acquisition of Negation
Although negation in natural languages is a complex and heterogeneous phenomenon, the first instances of linguistic negation appear in children’s speech quite early, by 18 and 24 months of life. Nevertheless, its acquisition is a gradual and challenging process, as it takes time for children to fully grasp the semantic meanings of the different negative words to be able to use them correctly across different sentential contexts. Moreover, in order to understand how to negate a sentence, children must also learn how negation can have scope over different parts of the sentences, leaving the others unaffected. The picture becomes even more complicated for children when multiple negative structures come into play, in which the negative meaning is conveyed by the combination of two (or more) negative elements. The interpretation of these complex syntactic constructions is indeed not always straightforward since a different arrangement of the same negative elements may yield different semantic interpretations of the same sentence.
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  • 16 Jun 2022
Topic Review
Terma (Religion)
Terma (Tibetan: གཏེར་མ་, Wylie: gter ma; "hidden treasure") are various forms of hidden teachings that are key to Vajrayana or Tibetan Buddhist and Bon religious traditions. The belief is that these teachings were originally esoterically hidden by various adepts such as Padmasambhava and dakini such as Yeshe Tsogyal (consorts) during the 8th century, for future discovery at auspicious times by other adepts, who are known as tertöns. As such, terma represent a tradition of continuous revelation in Vajrayana or Tibetan Buddhism. Termas are a part of tantric literature.
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  • 26 Oct 2022
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