The articles, the opinions, the stories, the poems, the thoughts, the reviews, the photos, the paintings and the cartoons Ovi magazine covers for Wednesday May 24th, 2023
The future of science by Joseph Gatt
I have the feeling that theoretical science seems to be dead and needs a rebirth. Data science is in; where you have people studying patterns and trends in data, and a lot of what scientists are asked to do is fix the data or come up with new ways to study data.
Observation and logical inference are out. Data collection and analysis are in. The things is so many tools have been invented to study data, including infrared cameras and huge data centers that study gazillions of data points which make data collection and analysis a lot easier. So participant observation or data observation are kind of outdated methods of science, or of little interest to those who think any scientific claim should be backed up by data.
The problem with data is that it’s hard to study the cause and effect relationship in any data set that is what caused a phenomenon to be produced, unless there’s other data to help study the cause and effect relationship. But with observation you can infer the cause and effect relationship.
But data science misunderstands the true nature of science. Science is supposed to help individuals take decisions in the concrete world, be they new policies or new ways of building physical objects.
Continue reading HERE!
Some form of purity #poem by David Barger
“The brink of winter is upon me
Moving up my leg like a cold hand;
Each chilling fingertip up my spine.”
Continue reading HERE!
Jan Christian Smuts: What Rises Converges by Rene Wadlow
Jan
Christian Smuts, whose birth anniversary we mark on 24 May, was the
Prime Minister of South Africa from 1919 to 1924 and again from 1939 to
1948 as well as having served in the South African government in other
posts, having started at the young age of 28 as the Minister of Justice
of Transvaal. There would be much to analyze in the South African
political career of Smuts, representative of an Afrikaner mentality but
educated at Cambridge University and so a link to the English-speaking
community in South Africa and to politics in England.
However, it is Smuts as an original thinker, author of Holism and Evolution and a major contributer to the structure of the League of Nations and to the Preamble of the UN Charter that I would like to highlight.
Smuts was by nature timid and reserved. He was a poor public speaker and did not like the sort of social occasions at which political figures need to be seen. As a poor speaker, although a UK-trained lawyer, he gave up quickly working in court cases to take up writing on serious topics in newspapers. He had fought on the Boer side in the 1899 Second Boers War and was given the title of “General”. He was widely respected in South Africa if not particularly liked as a political figure.
Continue reading HERE!
Nuttley, Mass Shootings #cartoon by Patrick McWade
For more Nuttley HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!
Ovi magazine
We cover every issue!
No comments:
Post a Comment