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Topic Review
Pre–Indo-European Languages
Pre-Indo-European languages are any of several ancient languages, not necessarily related to one another, that existed in prehistoric Europe and South Asia before the arrival of speakers of Indo-European languages. The oldest Indo-European language texts date from the 19th century BC in Kültepe in modern-day Turkey, and while estimates vary widely, spoken Indo-European languages are believed to have developed at the latest by the third millennium BC (see Proto-Indo-European Urheimat hypotheses). Thus the Pre-Indo-European languages must have developed earlier than, or in some cases alongside, the Indo-European languages that ultimately displaced them. A handful of these languages still survive; in Europe, Basque retains a localized strength with fewer than a million native speakers, while the Dravidian languages of South Asia remain very widespread there, with over 200 million native speakers. Some of the pre-Indo-European languages are attested only as linguistic substrates in Indo-European languages. A few others (such as Etruscan, Minoan, Iberian, etc.) are also attested from inscriptions.
  • 2.8K
  • 02 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Predication
Predication in philosophy refers to an act of judgement where one term is subsumed under another. A comprehensive conceptualization describes it as the understanding of the relation expressed by a predicative structure primordially (i.e. both originally and primarily) through the opposition between particular and general or the one and the many. Predication is also associated or used interchangeably with the concept of attribution where both terms pertain to the way judgment and ideas acquire a new property in the second operation of the mind (or the mental operation of judging).
  • 975
  • 09 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Preservation of Hawaii Indigenous Culture
Vernacular architecture represents the traditional architecture that developed over time within a particular culture or region that embodied indigenous knowledge. These buildings provide an invaluable cultural heritage, and learning from them is an important way to preserve indigenous culture. 
  • 382
  • 17 May 2023
Topic Review
Preterism
Preterism, a Christian eschatological view, interprets some (partial preterism) or all (full preterism) prophecies of the Bible as events which have already happened. This school of thought interprets the Book of Daniel as referring to events that happened from the 7th century BC until the first century AD, while seeing the prophecies of the Book of Revelation as events that happened in the first century AD. Preterism holds that Ancient Israel finds its continuation or fulfillment in the Christian church at the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. The term preterism comes from the Latin praeter, which is a prefix denoting that something is "past" or "beyond". Adherents of preterism are known as preterists. Preterism teaches that either all (full preterism) or a majority (partial preterism) of the Olivet discourse had come to pass by AD 70. Historically, preterists and non-preterists have generally agreed that the Jesuit Luis de Alcasar (1554–1613) wrote the first systematic preterist exposition of prophecy Vestigatio arcani sensus in Apocalypsi (published in 1614) during the Counter-Reformation.
  • 5.8K
  • 11 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Pride
Pride is an emotional state deriving positive affect from the perceived value of a person or thing with which the subject has an intimate connection. It may be inwardly or outwardly directed. With a negative connotation pride refers to a foolishly and irrationally corrupt sense of one's personal value, status or accomplishments, used synonymously with hubris. With a positive connotation, pride refers to a content sense of attachment toward one's own or another's choices and actions, or toward a whole group of people, and is a product of praise, independent self-reflection, and a fulfilled feeling of belonging. Philosophers and social psychologists have noted that pride is a complex secondary emotion which requires the development of a sense of self and the mastery of relevant conceptual distinctions (e.g. that pride is distinct from happiness and joy) through language-based interaction with others. Some social psychologists identify the nonverbal expression of pride as a means of sending a functional, automatically perceived signal of high social status. In contrast, pride could also be defined as a lowly disagreement with the truth. One definition of pride comes from St. Augustine: "the love of one's own excellence". A similar definition comes from Meher Baba: "Pride is the specific feeling through which egoism manifests." Pride is sometimes viewed as corrupt or as a vice, sometimes as proper or as a virtue. While some philosophers such as Aristotle (and George Bernard Shaw) consider pride (but not hubris) a profound virtue, some world religions consider pride's fraudulent form a sin, such as is expressed in Proverbs 11:2 of the Hebrew Bible. In Judaism, pride is called the root of all evil. When viewed as a virtue, pride in one's abilities is known as virtuous pride, greatness of soul or magnanimity, but when viewed as a vice it is often known to be self-idolatry, sadistic contempt, vanity or vainglory. Pride can also manifest itself as a high opinion of one's nation (national pride), ethnicity (ethnic pride) and sexual identity.
  • 2.8K
  • 02 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Principle of Least Action
The principle of least action – or, more accurately, the principle of stationary action – is a variational principle that, when applied to the action of a mechanical system, can be used to obtain the equations of motion for that system. It was historically called "least" because its solution requires finding the path of motion in space that has the least value. The principle can be used to derive Newtonian, Lagrangian and Hamiltonian equations of motion, and even general relativity (see Einstein–Hilbert action). In relativity, a different action must be minimized or maximized. The classical mechanics and electromagnetic expressions are a consequence of quantum mechanics. The stationary action method helped in the development of quantum mechanics. In 1933, the physicist Paul Dirac demonstrated how this principle can be used in quantum calculations by discerning the quantum mechanical underpinning of the principle in the quantum interference of amplitudes. Subsequently Julian Schwinger and Richard Feynman independently applied this principle in quantum electrodynamics. The principle remains central in modern physics and mathematics, being applied in thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, particle physics, and string theory and is a focus of modern mathematical investigation in Morse theory. Maupertuis' principle and Hamilton's principle exemplify the principle of stationary action. The action principle is preceded by earlier ideas in optics. In Ancient Greece , Euclid wrote in his Catoptrica that, for the path of light reflecting from a mirror, the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. Hero of Alexandria later showed that this path was the shortest length and least time. Scholars often credit Pierre Louis Maupertuis for formulating the principle of least action because he wrote about it in 1744 and 1746. However, Leonhard Euler discussed the principle in 1744,[ and evidence shows that Gottfried Leibniz preceded both by 39 years.
  • 1.9K
  • 29 Sep 2022
Topic Review
Profession (Religious)
The term religious profession is used in many western-rite Christian denominations (including those of Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, and other traditions) to refer to the solemn admission of men or women into a religious order by means of public vows. The term is defined in the 1983 Code of Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church in relation to members of religious institutes as follows: Canon Law also recognizes public profession of the three evangelical counsels on the part of Christians who live the "eremitic or anchoritic life" without being members of a religious institute: The three evangelical counsels, which are considered in greater depth in the article about them, are those of chastity, poverty and obedience. The Benedictine religious profession of "stability, conversion of manners and obedience", though historically preceding the profession of the evangelical counsels by several centuries, includes the three evangelical counsels implicitly. Some orders add to the three evangelical counsels special vows inspired by the purpose of their own founder (see in particular the fourth vow unique to the Society of Jesus). Religious profession is often associated with the granting of a religious habit, which the newly professed receives, with or without ceremony, from the superior of the institute or from the bishop. Acceptance of the habit implies acceptance of the obligation of membership of the religious institute, including the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. Religious profession can be temporary or perpetual: "Temporary profession is to be made for the period defined by the institute's own law. This period may not be less than three years nor longer than six years." "When the period of time for which the profession was made has been completed, a religious who freely asks, and is judged suitable, is to be admitted to a renewal of profession or to perpetual profession; otherwise, the religious is to leave." Conditions for making a temporary religious profession are a minimum age of 18 years, completion of a regular novitiate, freedom of choice on the part of the person making the profession, and acceptance by the superior after a vote by the superior's council. Additional conditions for making perpetual profession are a minimum age of 21 years and the completion of at least three years of temporary profession. The traditional distinction between simple and solemn vows is no longer taken into account for canonical effects.
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  • 25 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Profiling (Non-)Nascent Entrepreneurs
System-level feature sets with four machine learning modeling algorithms: multivariate adaptive regression spline (MARS), support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), and AdaBoost.
  • 344
  • 01 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Project Alpha
Project Alpha was an effort by magician James Randi to test the quality of scientific rigor of a well-known test of paranormal phenomena. In the late 1970s, Randi contacted the newly established McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research ("MacLab") with suggestions on how to conduct tests for paranormal phenomena. At the same time, two teenage boys (Steve Shaw, later known as Banachek, and Mike Edwards) independently contacted the McDonnell Laboratory and volenteered as subjects for such tests from 1979 to 1982. They quickly proved to exhibit a range of paranormal abilities far and away better than the other subjects of the experiment. The lab began leaking reports of the pair's capabilities, which were in fact simple magic tricks. When rumors of the test subjects' connection to Randi reached Peter Phillips, head of the MacLab, he instituted tighter protocols for the experiments; the two subjects' results declined sharply. In 1983, Randi held a press conference to expose the deception In the wake of Project Alpha, there were a number of controversies about the ethics of interference in scientific research and the validity of paranormal research as it then existed. It remains a watershed event in the field of parapsychology.
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  • 28 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Proper Name
In the philosophy of language, a proper name – examples include a name of a specific person or place – is a name which ordinarily is taken to uniquely identify its referent in the world. As such it presents particular challenges for theories of meaning, and it has become a central problem in analytic philosophy. The common-sense view was originally formulated by John Stuart Mill in A System of Logic (1843), where he defines it as "a word that answers the purpose of showing what thing it is that we are talking about but not of telling anything about it". This view was criticized when philosophers applied principles of formal logic to linguistic propositions. Gottlob Frege pointed out that proper names may apply to imaginary and nonexistent entities, without becoming meaningless, and he showed that sometimes more than one proper name may identify the same entity without having the same sense, so that the phrase "Homer believed the morning star was the evening star" could be meaningful and not tautological in spite of the fact that the morning star and the evening star identifies the same referent. This example became known as Frege's puzzle and is a central issue in the theory of proper names. Bertrand Russell was the first to propose a descriptivist theory of names, which held that a proper name refers not to a referent, but to a set of true propositions that uniquely describe a referent – for example, "Aristotle" refers to "the teacher of Alexander the Great". Rejecting descriptivism, Saul Kripke and Keith Donnellan instead advanced causal-historical theories of reference, which hold that names come to be associated with individual referents because social groups who link the name to its reference in a naming event (e.g. a baptism), which henceforth fixes the value of the name to the specific referent within that community. Today a direct reference theory is common, which holds that proper names refer to their referents without attributing any additional information, connotative or of sense, about them.
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  • 21 Oct 2022
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