The term ‘locality’ is used in different contexts with different meanings. There have been claims that relational quantum mechanics is local, but it is not clear then how it accounts for the effects that go under the usual name of quantum non-locality. The present article shows that the failure of ‘locality’ in the sense of Bell, once interpreted in the relational framework, reduces to the existence of a common cause in an indeterministic context. In particular, there is no need to (...) appeal to a mysterious space-like influence to understand it. (shrink)

Achieving space situational awareness requires, at a minimum, the identification, characterization, and tracking of space objects. Leveraging the resultant space object data for purposes such as hostile threat assessment, object identification, and conjunction assessment presents major challenges. This is in part because in characterizing space objects we reference a variety of identifiers, components, subsystems, capabilities, vulnerabilities, origins, missions, orbital elements, patterns of life, operational processes, operational statuses, and so forth, which tend to be defined in highly heterogeneous and sometimes inconsistent (...) ways. The Space Domain Ontologies are designed to provide a consensus-based realist framework for formulating such characterizations in a way that is both consistent and computable. Space object data are aligned with classes and relations in a suite of ontologies built around the existing Space Object Ontology. They are stored in a dynamically updated Resource Description Framework triple store, which can be queried to support space situational awareness and the needs of spacecraft operators and analysts. This paper provides an overview of the Space Domain Ontologies and their development and use. It presents the motivation for and advantages of the Space Domain Ontologies, including the benefits they provide for enhancing and maintaining long-term space situational awareness. (shrink)

This paper discusses abductive reasoning---that is, reasoning in which explanatory hypotheses are formed and evaluated. First, it criticizes two recent formal logical models of abduction. An adequate formalization would have to take into account the following aspects of abduction: explanation is not deduction; hypotheses are layered; abduction is sometimes creative; hypotheses may be revolutionary; completeness is elusive; simplicity is complex; and abductive reasoning may be visual and non-sentential. Second, in order to illustrate visual aspects of hypothesis formation, the paper describes (...) recent work on visual inference in archaeology. Third, in connection with the evaluation of explanatory hypotheses, the paper describes recent results on the computation of coherence. (shrink)

: The purpose of this paper and its sister paper (Farrell and Hooker, b) is to present, evaluate and elaborate a proposed new model for the process of scientific development: self-directed anticipative learning (SDAL). The vehicle for its evaluation is a new analysis of a well-known historical episode: the development of ape-language research. In this first paper we outline five prominent features of SDAL that will need to be realized in applying SDAL to science: 1) interactive exploration of possibility space; (...) 2) self-directedness; 3) localization of success and error; 4) Synergistic increase in learning capacity; and 5) continuity of SDAL process across scientific change. In this paper we examine the first three features of SDAL in relation to the early history of ape-language research. We show that this history is readily explicated as a self-directed, ever-finer, delineation of possibility space that enables the localization of both success and error. Paper II examines the last two features against this history. (shrink)

One of the gains to be reckoned from the study of nomenclature in the sepulchral inscriptions of the early empire is the gradual abandonment of attempts to distinguish between slave and freeborn on the basis of personal name or cognomen alone, especially when this is of Latin derivation. Nevertheless, one still finds personal cognomina in undated inscriptions adduced as sole evidence for the origin or status of individuals below senatorial rank. Thus in a standard work on freedmen in the early (...) empire, recently reprinted, names such as Agilis, Amandus, Auctus, Communis, Donatus, Faustus, Felix, etc., are said to be commonly servile, but others such as Aquila, Bassus, Capito, Cams, Celer, Crescens, etc., are taken as ingenuous. The criteria used in making such a distinction are subjective and arbitrary and the statistics based on them are largely valueless. It is the purpose of this note to consider briefly on this question the evidence of the personal nomenclature of the Imperial slaves and freedmen. In this group, the Familia Caesaris, no problem of status arises, and the fact that the majority of their inscriptions can be dated, at least approximately, makes it possible to trace the chronological development of the use of cognomina ingenua by one important group of servile origin from the first to the early third century A.D. Moreover, such a development is useful evidence for change in the social structure of the early empire. (shrink)

The career of the father of Claudius Etruscus is of special importance in the history of the Imperial administration in the first century A.D. In the course of a long life he rose from slave status under Tiberius to be head of the Imperial financial administration and to equestrian status under Vespasian. He was one of the most important, wealthy, and influential of the Imperial freedmen in the first century when their influence was at its peak; he is one of (...) the best documented of their number outside the pages of Tacitus; yet we do not know his personal name—he has to remain simply ‘the father of Claudius Etruscus’ —and even his nomen gentilicium and the date of his appointment to be the secretary a rationibus are subject to disput. (shrink)

A new model for the aether is suggested according to which it is a superfluid state of fermion and antifermion pairs, describable by a macroscopic wave function. The vacuum state of this superfluid pervades the entire universe and may account for the missing matter. The visible matter in the universe appears as excitations from the underlying superfluid vacuum.

Error is protean, ubiquitous and crucial in scientific process. In this paper it is argued that understanding scientific process requires what is currently absent: an adaptable, context-sensitive functional role for error in science that naturally harnesses error identification and avoidance to positive, success-driven, science. This paper develops a new account of scientific process of this sort, error and success driving Self-Directed Anticipative Learning (SDAL) cycling, using a recent re-analysis of ape-language research as test example. The example shows the limitations of (...) other accounts of error, in particular Mayo’s (Error and the growth of experimental knowledge, 1996) error-statistical approach, and SDAL cycling shows how they can be fruitfully contextualised. (shrink)

‘Epaphroditus’ is perhaps the commonest of Roman slave names apart from ‘Felix’, which it sometimes renders as a Greek equivalent. It is also used very extensively under the early empire by those with tria nomina, whether freedmen or freeborn, whether descendants of freedmen or not, whether citizens or Junian Latins. It is also found among decurions and even equestrians, but not senators. It thus has a non-elite resonance in the western half of the empire, but, like almost all personal cognomina, (...) not exclusively so. (shrink)

In conjunction with the Imperial status-indication, the Imperial nomina gentilicia provide the basic dating criterion for the Augusti liberti. Especially useful is the terminus ad quem, which is, in general, approximately 40 years after the death of the last possible manumitting emperor. Thus, the inscription of a Ti. Claudius Aug. lib. is not likely to be later than A.D. 100 and certainly not later than A.D. IIO.

The author holds that the enduring achievement of the modern mind is the recognition of a sharp distinction between fact and value; this work is a history of that distinction. In separate sections devoted to the history of scientific method and the history of value theory, Hall covers the ground from the medieval period to the present. His conclusion strikes a pessimistic note; modernity, after distinguishing fact and value, has had marvelous success with the former but is in danger of (...) losing the latter altogether. Towards resolution of this difficulty, he suggests, with tantalizing brevity and obscurity, that though value statements may be emotive, we may perhaps regard emotion as a genuinely cognitive state somehow putting us in touch with real features of the world. While he writes with a pleasant down-to-earth directness, Hall never makes clear precisely what this basic cleavage between fact and value amounts to. And his history, though illuminating, is not always well-balanced; Kant as a value theorist, gets less space than either Locke or Machiavelli and only a third as much as Hobbes. Yet the book as a whole is stimulating, lively, and important.--A. C. P. (shrink)

: The purpose of this paper and its sister paper I (Farrell and Hooker, a) is to present, evaluate and elaborate a proposed new model for the process of scientific development: self-directed anticipative learning. The vehicle for its evaluation is a new analysis of a well-known historical episode: the development of ape language research. Paper I examined the basic features of SDAL in relation to the early history of ape-language research. In this second paper we examine the reconceptualization of ape-language (...) research following what many conceived to be Terrace's refutation of ape-language. We show that the apparent 'revolution' in our understanding of ape linguistic capacities was not based upon 'revolutionary' research different in kind from 'normal' research. The same processes of self-directed interactive exploration of possibility space, that enables a homing-in upon both error and success, is present in all phases of productive science. Moreover, conceiving science as an SDAL process explains how scientists learn how to learn about their research domain. (shrink)