Science & Mathematics - 13 October 2007

what is the reciprocal for

(81/16)^-3/4

2007-10-13 04:04:29 · 4 answers · asked by Cool_Q 4 in Mathematics

2007-10-13 04:02:32 · 3 answers · asked by Hjkl H 1 in Earth Sciences & Geology

does that mean i should have two the same or what? thank you in advance .

2007-10-13 03:54:41 · 1 answers · asked by Anonymous in Botany

What is 40,000 of 60 million? Percentage please

2007-10-13 03:54:31 · 21 answers · asked by rachel c 2 in Mathematics

I Want To Know How The Drug Test Are. Hair Samples? Piss Test? How Is It Conducted

2007-10-13 03:54:08 · 1 answers · asked by Anonymous in Medicine

It means powers doesn't it? As in 2 to the power of four. Like 2^4, yea?

The answer's 16 of course. but is that what it is? is it powers? Yea?

2007-10-13 03:51:40 · 5 answers · asked by Anonymous in Mathematics

2007-10-13 03:31:09 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Physics

The Inadequacies of Science


I feel compelled to show the inadequacies of science, I will render it into a belief system as well.
I take this position because all of science is inductive. Conversely, if you think of a deductive argument you’ll see that the argument is valid because the conclusions are contained implicitly in the premises. Such as the argument;

Premise 1: Socrates is a man,
Premise 2: All men are mortal,
Conclusion: Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

Validity is assured because there is not anything in the conclusion that is not already contained in the premises. But when one considers scientific (inductive) arguments, such as an argument to prove our premise that “all men are mortal”, it seems we do not have this type of validity. For in the case of inductive arguments we go from evidence to hypothesis as opposed to going from premise to conclusion. This means that there is more information in the hypothesis than what the evidence can warrant, whereas, in deductive arguments the information in the conclusion is less than or equal to that of the premises. Therefore, the evidence of mortality of a few individuals misleadingly establishes or supports the hypothesis that all men are mortal. Another example may be for one to say that all Hispanics speak Spanish. For that to be true that someone will have to witness every Hispanic that has lived, does live and will live to verify that statement. Yet, many believe that all Hispanics speak Spanish on the basis of the millions that do speak Spanish. However, I do not speak Spanish. Similarly the mortality of men is assumed in this same way. However, there could be someone out there right now who was born 2,000 years ago and has not yet died. Or the next baby born in Japan may never die.
Of course it could be argued that scientists do not proceed from evidence to hypothesis in an arbitrary manner. They “of course, can justify the move from observation (which is the evidence) on the basis of rules, so as to form the hypothesis by generalizing the observations made. Therefore, the move from evidence to hypothesis is justified on the basis of some kind of principle rules, say the scientific method. However, what are the justifications for using these rules?
The rules that are used are justified by assuming a uniformity of nature. This uniformity of nature can be stated in multiple ways. Unobserved instances will resemble observed ones. The future will resemble the past. Every event has a cause and like causes yield like effects. Thus the uniformity of nature is guaranteed by assuming the principle of causality and causation as depicted by David Hume (where Hume claims that causality and causation are not provable, and are not analytic truths, but are instead synthetic empirical truths of which cannot be verified empirically because these principles of causality and causation is what it is meant by a uniformity of nature).
Now here’s the crucial point. There is no ground for the belief in the uniformity of nature, because any such belief would have to be grounded in induction, of which in turn is grounded in the uniformity of nature. Thus any attempt to ground the belief that there is a uniformity of nature is circular. Supposing that there is no uniformity of nature, then I doubt that there even can be rules to use any way.
However, there are some that will say that science is not necessarily inductive. For example, Karl Popper rejected induction when developing his methodology of science. Popper argued that as long as such hypotheses are falsifiable, in the sense that there are possible observations that would disprove them, then the objectivity of science is assured. However, Popper’s falsificationism offers no account of our entitlement to believe in the truth of scientific theories, rather, they only warrant us to believe in their falsity, and so fail to solve the problem of induction. Popper himself stated that it is impossible to verify or even to confirm a universal scientific theory with any positive degree of probability. What we can do though is to disprove a universal theory. That is why we do not believe in the truth of a scientific theory, but their falsity instead. Is it true that scientists always reject their theories when faced with counter-evidence, as Popper says they should? And if the most we can ever do in science is to disprove theories, how do we know which theories to believe and act on? Popper says that we ought to act on those theories that survive severe testing, yet testing involves observing nature of which is the problem in question. Therefore, he fails to solve the problem of induction, thus induction remains the problem.
Another response to the problem of induction is offered by Bayesian confirmation theory. Bayesians argue that our beliefs come in degrees, and that such degrees of belief, when “rational, conform to the probability calculus”. They then argue that Baye’s theorem implies a rational strategy for updating our degrees of belief in response to new evidence. SADLY, in relation to the problem of induction, this strategy implies that our degree of belief in a scientific theory should be increased by observations which are probable, given the theory, but probable nonetheless because it is based on induction. It also leaves one asking when updating these degrees of belief, to what are they conforming to? They say they are getting closer and closer to the truth, but how do they know that they are getting closer to the truth when the truth is not known? So what are they getting closer to?
I also want to wager that most scientist and people for that matter are not familiar with the concept of idealism. Philosophical idealism is not the same as an attitude to be observed in life. It is rather a metaphysical theory about nature of reality and thus presupposes a distinction between appearance and reality, drawn in an other than common sense way. In general, it maintains that what is real is in someway confined to or at least related to the contents of our own minds (of which in turn is loaded with assumptions). What are the reasons; therefore, for thinking that reality is confined to the contents of our minds/ideas? It is because where the perceptions of qualities of things, such as color, taste, warmth, light, is circumstance dependent (i.e. relative to the context in which perception takes place, e.g. the illumination for the eyes) those qualities cannot be real properties of things. It is argued that this is applied to all perception. Since perception is a matter of having sensations or ideas, and since to be is to be perceived, only sensations or ideas can properly be said to be or to be real. The theory of perception, therefore, remains a part of the apparatus of empiricist thought, and is implied in David Hume’s doctrine.
Immanuel Kant held, however, that a mere subjective, idealism would not do in that it did not make it possible to distinguish properly what is objective from what is subjective. Kant thought that idealism must be transcendental, which he tried to define by saying that appearances are to be regarded as being on and all, representations only, not things in themselves, and that time and space are therefore only sensible forms of our intuition, not determinations given as existing by themselves, nor conditions of objects viewed as things in themselves (Critique of Pure Reason).
At any rate, all these forms of idealism have in common the view that there is no access to reality apart from what the mind provides us with, and further that the mind can provide and reveal to us ONLY its own contents (implying that the contents of the mind may or may not represent an external reality). Therefore, science must assume that an external reality exists, and that this reality actually corresponds to what the contents of our minds reveal to us.
Do you know what the funny thing is? It’s funny how science makes theories based on observations, and generalizes these observations to come to a universal theory, like all men die. So it seems that we should infer from pessimistic meta-induction that since all scientific theories have been wrong from Ptolemy to Steve Hawkins, that all current and future scientific theories are ‘probably’ going to be false too. Now I understand that there are those scientific buffs who understand that science is not the end all say all, but for those of you that keep ramming science down

2007-10-13 03:29:10 · 8 answers · asked by l_tone 2 in Physics

2007-10-13 03:19:57 · 6 answers · asked by Wasym m 1 in Zoology

2007-10-13 03:19:39 · 3 answers · asked by Anonymous in Medicine

2007-10-13 03:18:45 · 4 answers · asked by Rock 2 in Other - Science

I know it might be easy but I sometimes have trouble in math and I needed a more creative way to get my answer other than a calculator!

2007-10-13 03:11:50 · 13 answers · asked by Angelica P 1 in Mathematics

x + y = 20
30x + 25y = 550

2007-10-13 03:04:39 · 6 answers · asked by geomon2gyromon 1 in Mathematics

2007-10-13 02:58:09 · 2 answers · asked by laura 2 in Physics

2007-10-13 02:44:34 · 3 answers · asked by boomerrangg 2 in Physics

anyone ever witnessed it?
or done it?

2007-10-13 02:42:16 · 11 answers · asked by tommm 1 in Paranormal Phenomena

Before any humans ever launched into space they sent up chimps in space capsules, now here is where my theory begins, when the chimps passed through the Van Allen radiation belt on there way into orbit, they mutated and developed human like intelligence and scavenged parts from orbit, satelites provided the parts needed for them to go to the moon and set up a colony, when the Apollo missions went to the moon thats when they discovered the chimp colony on the moon and never went back.

2007-10-13 02:41:17 · 10 answers · asked by Anonymous in Astronomy & Space

I found this exercise (see below) in one of my basic chemistry books at the end of the first chapter. It sounds correct to me.

"Twenty years ago an ancient artifact was determined to be 1900 years old. Today it is determined to be 1920 years old."

Where am I going wrong?! Twenty years ago it would have been 1987 so the artifact must date back to the year 87 a.D.
(I subtracted the 20 years from today's date, and I subtracted 1900 from 1987). So, then you add 87 a.D. to 1920 and you get back the current year. This is why it sound correct to me!

2007-10-13 02:31:46 · 5 answers · asked by sharon 3 in Mathematics

how to find Vcc value for operational amplifier?

2007-10-13 02:14:38 · 1 answers · asked by Anonymous in Physics

2007-10-13 02:08:59 · 16 answers · asked by Arlene D 1 in Astronomy & Space

A block is hung by a string from the inside roof of a van. When the van goes straight ahead at a speed of 29 m/s, the block hangs vertically down. But when the van maintains this same speed around an unbanked curve (radius = 170 m), the block swings toward the outside of the curve. Then the string makes an angle with the vertical. Find .
=___ °

2007-10-13 02:00:47 · 3 answers · asked by Santina E 1 in Physics

2007-10-13 01:48:48 · 3 answers · asked by Anonymous in Chemistry

i need some suggestions for a project.

2007-10-13 01:45:25 · 15 answers · asked by bianca♥ 2 in Astronomy & Space

2007-10-13 01:42:14 · 8 answers · asked by olivia s 1 in Mathematics

and everyone knows that when there's a nuclear explosion, zombies come out!

2007-10-13 01:38:05 · 5 answers · asked by sonofgreatbigfeet 1 in Physics

The glider is from the movie Spiderman 3. I need some basic information about it. Some basic specifications. That would be greatly appreciated.

2007-10-13 01:09:17 · 2 answers · asked by Azz 2 in Engineering

a) The length of a rectangle is 5m shorter than three times the width. If the perimeter is 54m, what are the dimensions of the rectangle?

b) Helen goes by bus or part of the way to school and runs the rest. If the time spent on running is 3 minutes longer than that on taking the bus and the total time spent is 15 minutes, how long does she spend on taking the bus?

c) $3000 is divided between two sons so that the elder son receives $200 more than two thirds the share of the younger son. How much does each receive?

d) May has 80 coins which of 10 cents coins, 20 cent coins and $1 coins. Among the coins, there are 4 more $1 coins than 10 cent coins and 6 more 20 cents coins than $1 coins. How much money does she have?

Please show working in equations and explain thanks.

2007-10-13 00:52:11 · 4 answers · asked by Hello 2 in Mathematics

What materials will we need how long will it take how much will it cost to start from scratch and it is just 1 for a school project so it does not need to be amazing

2007-10-13 00:50:45 · 3 answers · asked by debbie 1 in Engineering

earth quake is dangerous.but i know if it has any benefit/good effect.in society or nature.
i mean the good results after earth quake happens.
thanks and regards.

2007-10-13 00:42:08 · 6 answers · asked by Lusifer 1 in Earth Sciences & Geology

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2007-10-13 00:40:16 · 4 answers · asked by kicksinstyle23 1 in Chemistry