It is gratifying to read, in a recent issue of this periodical, Mr. A. A. Barrett's informed exposition of the syntax of this passage, even though he balks at the need to extract a grammatical subject for the verb deducit in 157 from the relative pronoun qua in the previous line. However his persuasive presentation of what he relies on as evidence in support of his suggested interpretation from the mosaics from Zliten in Tripolitania, which portray scenes in an amphitheatre, (...) may seduce the unwary into an over-ready acquiescence in his proposal to read raeda in 157 for taeda of the manuscript tradition. Juvenal's words were correctly understood by T. Maguire as long ago as 1881, and the solution was restated with clarity in a note by W. V. Clausen recently. (shrink)

Agathon's mannered yet striking encomium on Eros in Plato's Symposium has attracted critical attention in ample measure, yet at least one dark corner remains unilluminated. As the speaker approaches his climax in the words quoted above, he slips into nautical imagery: κυβερντης πιβτης … , but then disconcerts readers and commentators alike by immediately lapsing into the down-to-earth language of παρασττης τε σωτρ … words which seem to lack maritime connotations. The standard editions offer no help: Hug–Schöner devote several lines (...) to the metaphors as they conceive them and suggest various groupings, but conclude somewhat despairingly: ‘dass es im ubrigen hier nicht auf Schärfe der Begriffe ankommt, leuchtet ein’. Dover, elsewhere a supportive editor, here only offers observations on πιβτης and the ‘predominantly nautical sense’ of κυβερντης ; he translates παρασττης as ‘comrade-in-arms, – strictly the hoplite posted beside one’. Bury has some desultory statements which lead nowhere, while lecture-notes of pupils betray perplexity; some consider the four nouns here to be an ‘odd assortment’, and say that ‘many emendations have been suggested’. It has even been suggested that it was perhaps Plato's intention to show Agathon talking ‘near-nonsense’. (shrink)

The distribution of parts between the available actors in ancient comedy has frequently engaged critical attention, but it has only recently become possible to test the principles believed to be at work against a play of Menander which is for practical purposes preserved complete. The present inquiry will suggest that either four principal actors are needed or, alternatively, that three actors can carry the major roles between them, provided that the part of Getas is split between two of them and (...) that a supernumerary actor is available for two small parts, together with parachoregemata in a few places and a kophon prosopon twice. It is not easy to choose between these two possibilities, but there may be sufficient hints in the dramatic economy of the play to warrant preference for the three-actor alternative. (shrink)

The present paper examines the arguments and data presented by Nisbett and Wilson relevant to their thesis that subjects do not have access to their own cognitive processes. It is concluded that their review of previous research is selective and incomplete and that the data they present in behalf of their thesis does not withstand a demand characteristics analysis. Furthermore, their use of observer-subject similarity as evidence of subjects' inability to access cognitive processes makes tests of their hypothesis confounded and, (...) at the same time, reveals limitations in the application of the pre-inquiry quasi-control to research on social behavior. Problems with postexperiment questionnaires, such as the demand characteristics of the inquiry procedure are also considered. Although there are difficulties in assessing subjects' cognitive processes, many of these may be overcome through the application of novel techniques and research conducted on more traditional methods. In contrast to the view that subjects have limited access to cognitive processes and that their verbal reports are not valid, it is concluded that subjects' verbalizations are a rich source of psychological data which must be pursued if we are to tap their cognitive processes and are to gain an adequate understanding of human behavior. (shrink)

Ever since Darwin people have worried about the sceptical implications of evolution. If our minds are products of evolution like those of other animals, why suppose that the beliefs they produce are true, rather than merely useful? We consider this problem for beliefs in three different domains: religion, morality, and commonsense and scientific claims about matters of empirical fact. We identify replies to evolutionary scepticism that work in some domains but not in others. One reply is that evolution can be (...) expected to design systems that produce true beliefs in some domain. This reply works for commonsense beliefs and can be extended to scientific beliefs. But it does not work for moral or religious beliefs. An alternative reply which has been used defend moral beliefs is that their truth does not consist in their tracking some external state of affairs. Whether or not it is successful in the case of moral beliefs, this reply is less plausible for religious beliefs. So religious beliefs emerge as particularly vulnerable to evolutionary debunking. (shrink)

Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics deals with these problems is reviewed. A new interpretation of the formalism of quantum mechanics, the transactional interpretation, is presented. The basic element of this interpretation is the transaction describing a quantum event as an exchange of advanced and retarded waves, as implied by the work of Wheeler and Feynman, Dirac, and others. The transactional interpretation is explicitly nonlocal and thereby consistent with recent tests of the Bell inequality, yet is relativistically invariant and fully causal. (...) A detailed comparison of the transactional and Copenhagen interpretations is made in the context of well-known quantum-mechanical Gedankenexperimenre and "paradoxes." The transactional interpretation permits quantum-mechanical wave functions to be interpreted as real waves physically present in space rather than as "mathematical representations of knowledge" as in the Copenhagen interpretation. The transactional interpretation is shown to provide insight into the complex character of the quantum-mechanical state vector and the mechanism associated with its "collapse." It also leads in a natural way to justification of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the Born probability law (P = ii iij*), basic elements of the Copenhagen interpretation. (shrink)

This book shines bright light into the dim recesses of quantum theory, where the mysteries of entanglement, nonlocality, and wave collapse have motivated some to conjure up multiple universes, and others to adopt a "shut up and calculate" mentality. After an extensive and accessible introduction to quantum mechanics and its history, the author turns attention to his transactional model. Using a quantum handshake between normal and time-reversed waves, this model provides a clear visual picture explaining the baffling experimental results that (...) flow daily from the quantum physics laboratories of the world. To demonstrate its powerful simplicity, the transactional model is applied to a collection of counter-intuitive experiments and conceptual problems. (shrink)

We wish to give a precise formulation of the intuitive concept: The degree to which the known facts support a given hypothesis.

Schnorr randomness is a notion of algorithmic randomness for real numbers closely related to Martin-Löf randomness. After its initial development in the 1970s the notion received considerably less attention than Martin-Löf randomness, but recently interest has increased in a range of randomness concepts. In this article, we explore the properties of Schnorr random reals, and in particular the c.e. Schnorr random reals. We show that there are c.e. reals that are Schnorr random but not Martin-Löf random, and provide a new (...) characterization of Schnorr random real numbers in terms of prefix-free machines. We prove that unlike Martin-Löf random c.e. reals, not all Schnorr random c.e. reals are Turing complete, though all are in high Turing degrees. We use the machine characterization to define a notion of "Schnorr reducibility" which allows us to calibrate the Schnorr complexity of reals. We define the class of "Schnorr trivial" reals, which are ones whose initial segment complexity is identical with the computable reals, and demonstrate that this class has non-computable members. (shrink)

Talks collected from lectures given by Bennett with Gurdjieff's approval, to help people understand All and Everything: Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. Bennett regarded Gurdjieff's All and Everything as a work of superhuman genius.

The works of Paul K. Feyerabend, Norwood Russell Hanson and Thomas S. Kuhn have come to occupy a central place in the annals of contemporary philosophy of science. Some of their contemporaries,, tend to regard them as the vanguard of a new “revolutionary” intellectual movement. Reacting against the views of their positivist predecessors, they embrace and propagate the idea that “pervasive presuppositions” are fundamental to scientific investigations. Thus, Feyerabend thinks that, “... scientific theories are ways of looking at the world; (...) and their adoption affects our general beliefs and expectations, and thereby also our experiences and our conception of reality”. This is in stark contrast to the positivist view that the aim of science is the systematization of experience that exists independently of any scientific theories. This new view of scientific theories also involves a “radical” conception of the nature of theoretical change. Rejecting the positivist notion of any constant element through such change, Kuhn regards a basic theoretical change as a conceptual revolution and “wants to say that after a revolution scientists are responding to a different world”. Hanson uses the phrase ‘theory-loaded’ to give expression to a view of the semantic content of observation statements that follows from this general position. (shrink)

Includes chapters on scientific language, mathematics, probability, credibility and induction, scientific explanations, life, and science and values.

The appearance of Priestley's electrical work as a brief and irrelevant prelude to his more substantial chemical enquiries may explain why it has been strangely overlooked by historians of science. It was only fairly recently that Sir Philip Hartog sought to rectify this situation with the affirmation that ‘Priestley's electrical work offers the key to Priestley's scientific mind’. Attacking traditional chemical historiography for tracing Priestley's opposition to Lavoisier's theory to a deficiency in his scientific sensibilities, Hartog insisted that Priestley's natural (...) philosophy can properly be understood only in relation to his ‘profound convictions on scientific method’ as fully expressed in the History of electricity. Only thus would Priestley's scientific thought be related correctly to his ‘work as a whole’. (shrink)