Vietnam, with a geographical proximity and a high volume of trade with China, was the first country to record an outbreak of the new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2. While the country was expected to have a high risk of transmission, as of April 4, 2020—in comparison to attempts to contain the disease around the world—responses from Vietnam are being seen as prompt and effective in protecting the interests of its citizens, (...) with 239 confirmed cases and no fatalities. This study analyzes the situation in terms of Vietnam’s policy response, social media and science journalism. A self-made web crawl engine was used to scan and collect official media news related to COVID-19 between the beginning of January and April 4, yielding a comprehensive dataset of 14,952 news items. The findings shed light on how Vietnam—despite being under-resourced—has demonstrated political readiness to combat the emerging pandemic since the earliest days. Timely communication on any developments of the outbreak from the government and the media, combined with up-to-date research on the new virus by the Vietnamese science community, have altogether provided reliable sources of information. By emphasizing the need for immediate and genuine cooperation between government, civil society and private individuals, the case study offers valuable lessons for other nations concerning not only the concurrent fight against the COVID-19 pandemic but also the overall responses to a public health crisis. (shrink)

After employing the mindsponge mechanism and 3D information process of creativity to explain the serendipity process in previous chapters, we realize that it may be helpful to delve into the relations between serendipity and the formulation of new values and information connections through non-linear processes. Thus, this chapter summarizes some preliminary attempts to use non-linear information processes to explain serendipity. We also briefly mention the benefits of information exchange among members of social groups and explain this approach.

The exponential growth of social data both in volume and complexity has increasingly exposed many of the shortcomings of the conventional frequentist approach to statistics. The scientific community has called for careful usage of the approach and its inference. Meanwhile, the alternative method, Bayesian statistics, still faces considerable barriers toward a more widespread application. The bayesvl R package is an open program, designed for implementing Bayesian modeling and analysis using the Stan language’s no-U-turn (NUTS) sampler. The package combines the ability (...) to construct Bayesian network models using directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation technique, and the graphic capability of the ggplot2 package. As a result, it can improve the user experience and intuitive understanding when constructing and analyzing Bayesian network models. A case example is offered to illustrate the usefulness of the package for Big Data analytics and cognitive computing. (shrink)

Earth Hour is one of the most popular environmental events in Vietnam. However, looking at the rise in electricity consumption in the country, it is impossible to feel its impact.

This study explores entrepreneurship research in Vietnam, a lower-middle-income country in Southeast Asia that has witnessed rapid economic growth since the 1990s but has nonetheless been absent in the relevant Western-centric literature. Using an exclusively developed software, the study presents a structured dataset on entrepreneurship research in Vietnam from 2008 to 2018, highlighting: low research output, low creativity level, inattention to entrepreneurship theories, and instead, a focus on practical business matters. The scholarship remains limited due to the detachment between the (...) academic and entrepreneur communities. More important are the findings that Vietnamese research on entrepreneurship, still in its infancy, diverges significantly from those in developed and emerging economies in terms of their content and methods. These studies are contextualized to a large extent to reflect the concerns of a developing economy still burdened by the high financial and nonfinancial costs. (shrink)

This study presents a description of an open database on scientific output of Vietnamese researchers in social sciences and humanities, one that corrects for the shortcomings in current research publication databases such as data duplication, slow update, and a substantial cost of doing science. Here, using scientists’ self-reports, open online sources and cross-checking with Scopus database, we introduce a manual system and its semi-automated version of the database on the profiles of 657 Vietnamese researchers in social sciences and humanities who (...) have published in Scopus-indexed journals from 2008 to 2018. The final system also records 973 foreign co-authors, 1,289 papers, and 789 affiliations. The data collection method, highly applicable for other sources, could be replicated in other developing countries while its content be used in cross-section, multivariate, and network data analyses. The open database is expected to help Vietnam revamp its research capacity and meet the public demand for greater transparency in science management. (shrink)

As a generation of ‘digital natives,’ secondary students who were born from 2002 to 2010 have various approaches to acquiring digital knowledge. Digital literacy and resilience are crucial for them to navigate the digital world as much as the real world; however, these remain under-researched subjects, especially in developing countries. In Vietnam, the education system has put considerable effort into teaching students these skills to promote quality education as part of the United Nations-defined Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). This issue (...) has proven especially salient amid the COVID−19 pandemic lockdowns, which had obliged most schools to switch to online forms of teaching. This study, which utilizes a dataset of 1061 Vietnamese students taken from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s “Digital Kids Asia Pacific (DKAP)” project, employs Bayesian statistics to explore the relationship between the students’ background and their digital abilities. Results show that economic status and parents’ level of education are positively correlated with digital literacy. Students from urban schools have only a slightly higher level of digital literacy than their rural counterparts, suggesting that school location may not be a defining explanatory element in the variation of digital literacy and resilience among Vietnamese students. Students’ digital literacy and, especially resilience, also have associations with their gender. Moreover, as students are digitally literate, they are more likely to be digitally resilient. Following SDG4, i.e., Quality Education, it is advisable for schools, and especially parents, to seriously invest in creating a safe, educational environment to enhance digital literacy among students. (shrink)

The study of cultural evolution has taken on an increasingly interdisciplinary and diverse approach in explicating phenomena of cultural transmission and adoptions. Inspired by this computational movement, this study uses Bayesian networks analysis, combining both the frequentist and the Hamiltonian Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach, to investigate the highly representative elements in the cultural evolution of a Vietnamese city’s architecture in the early 20th century. With a focus on the façade design of 68 old houses in Hanoi’s Old Quarter (...) (based on 78 data lines extracted from 248 photos), the study argues that it is plausible to look at the aesthetics, architecture, and designs of the house façade to find traces of cultural evolution in Vietnam, which went through more than six decades of French colonization and centuries of sociocultural influence from China. The in-depth technical analysis, though refuting the presumed model on the probabilistic dependency among the variables, yields several results, the most notable of which is the strong influence of Buddhism over the decorations of the house façade. Particularly, in the top 5 networks with the best Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) scores and p<0.05, the variable for decorations (DC) always has a direct probabilistic dependency on the variable B for Buddhism. The paper then checks the robustness of these models using Hamiltonian MCMC method and find the posterior distributions of the models’ coefficients all satisfy the technical requirement. Finally, this study suggests integrating Bayesian statistics in the social sciences in general and for the study of cultural evolution and architectural transformation in particular. (shrink)

Folklore has a critical role as a cultural transmitter, all the while being a socially accepted medium for the expressions of culturally contradicting wishes and conducts. In this study of Vietnamese folktales, through the use of Bayesian multilevel modeling and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, we offer empirical evidence for how the interplay between religious teachings (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism) and deviant behaviors (lying and violence) could affect a folktale’s outcome. The findings indicate that characters who lie and/or commit (...) violent acts tend to have bad endings, as intuition would dictate, but when they are associated with any of the above Three Teachings, the final endings may vary. Positive outcomes are seen in cases where characters associated with Confucianism lie and characters associated with Buddhism act violently. The results supplement the worldwide literature on discrepancies between folklore and real-life conduct, as well as on the contradictory human behaviors vis-à-vis religious teachings. Overall, the study highlights the complexity of human decision-making, especially beyond the folklore realm. (shrink)

This research employs the Bayesian network modeling approach, and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, to learn about the role of lies and violence in teachings of major religions, using a unique dataset extracted from long-standing Vietnamese folktales. The results indicate that, although lying and violent acts augur negative consequences for those who commit them, their associations with core religious values diverge in the final outcome for the folktale characters. Lying that serves a religious mission of either Confucianism or Taoism (...) (but not Buddhism) brings a positive outcome to a character (βT_and_Lie_O= 2.23; βC_and_Lie_O= 1.47; βT_and_Lie_O= 2.23). A violent act committed to serving Buddhist missions results in a happy ending for the committer (βB_and_Viol_O= 2.55). What is highlighted here is a glaring double standard in the interpretation and practice of the three teachings: the very virtuous outcomes being preached, whether that be compassion and meditation in Buddhism, societal order in Confucianism, or natural harmony in Taoism, appear to accommodate two universal vices—violence in Buddhism and lying in the latter two. These findings contribute to a host of studies aimed at making sense of contradictory human behaviors, adding the role of religious teachings in addition to cognition in belief maintenance and motivated reasoning in discounting counterargument. (shrink)

Since Circular 34 from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Vietnam required the head of the national project to have project results published in ISI/Scopus journals in 2014, the field of economics has been dominating the number of nationally-funded projects in social sciences and humanities. However, there has been no scientometric study that focuses on the difference in productivity among fields in Vietnam. Thus, harnessing the power of the SSHPA database, a comprehensive dataset of 1,564 Vietnamese authors (854 males, (...) 705 females) with 2,410 publications in the 2008 – 2018 period was extracted and analyzed. Various factors were considered including age, gender, new authors, leading authors, co-authorship, and Impact Factor. The findings suggest a high level of contribution from authors at the age of 40 – 44 in economics (858 publications) in a 12-years period, which is equivalent to the social medicine total output, and two times more than the total output of the education. Moreover, the presence and reinforcement of male researchers are still dominating in Economics and other fields, with the only exception of education. Despite the rapid rise in the number of Vietnamese lead authors, gender disparity among disciplines is an issue. Contrary to the strong international collaboration-oriented tendency in social medicine, economics, and other fields, educational authors are not open to international collaborating. Finally, most of the publications in economics belong to the group with JIF from 0 to 2, in contrast with the high number of social medicine publications with JIF from 2 to 5, which suggesting the field of economics is fulfilling the quantity, but still, need more quality publications. (shrink)

This research employs the Bayesian network modeling approach, and the Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, to learn about the role of lies and violence in teachings of major religions, using a unique dataset extracted from long-standing Vietnamese folktales. The results indicate that, although lying and violent acts augur negative consequences for those who commit them, their associations with core religious values diverge in the outcome for the folktale characters. Lying that serves a religious mission of either Confucianism or Taoism (but (...) not Buddhism) brings a positive outcome to a character. A violent act committed to serving Buddhist mission results in a happy ending for the committer. (shrink)

Motivation: • Breaking barriers in publishing demands a proactive attitude • Open data, open review and open dialogue in making social sciences plausible .

Every year, the Vietnamese people reportedly burned about 50,000 tons of joss papers, which took the form of not only bank notes, but iPhones, cars, clothes, even housekeepers, in hope of pleasing the dead. The practice was mistakenly attributed to traditional Buddhist teachings but originated in fact from China, which most Vietnamese were not aware of. In other aspects of life, there were many similar examples of Vietnamese so ready and comfortable with adding new norms, values, and beliefs, even contradictory (...) ones, to their culture. This phenomenon, dubbed “cultural additivity”, prompted us to study the co-existence, interaction, and influences among core values and norms of the Three Teachings –Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism–as shown through Vietnamese folktales. By applying Bayesian logistic regression, we evaluated the possibility of whether the key message of a story was dominated by a religion (dependent variables), as affected by the appearance of values and anti-values pertaining to the Three Teachings in the story (independent variables). Our main findings included the existence of the cultural additivity of Confucian and Taoist values. More specifically, empirical results showed that the interaction or addition of the values of Taoism and Confucianism in folktales together helped predict whether the key message of a story was about Confucianism, β{VT ⋅ VC} = 0.86. Meanwhile, there was no such statistical tendency for Buddhism. The results lead to a number of important implications. First, this showed the dominance of Confucianism because the fact that Confucian and Taoist values appeared together in a story led to the story’s key message dominated by Confucianism. Thus, it presented the evidence of Confucian dominance and against liberal interpretations of the concept of the Common Roots of Three Religions (“tam giáo đồng nguyên”) as religious unification or unicity. Second, the concept of “cultural additivity” could help explain many interesting socio-cultural phenomena, namely the absence of religious intolerance and extremism in the Vietnamese society, outrageous cases of sophistry in education, the low productivity in creative endeavors like science and technology, the misleading branding strategy in business. We are aware that our results are only preliminary and more studies, both theoretical and empirical, must be carried out to give a full account of the explanatory reach of “cultural additivity”. (shrink)

Universities and funders in many countries have been using Journal Impact Factor (JIF) as an indicator for research and grant assessment despite its controversial nature as a statistical representation of scientific quality. This study investigates how the changes of JIF over the years can affect its role in research evaluation and science management by using JIF data from annual Journal Citation Reports (JCR) to illustrate the changes. The descriptive statistics find out an increase in the median JIF for the top (...) 50 journals in the JCR, from 29.300 in 2017 to 33.162 in 2019. Moreover, on average, elite journal families have up to 27 journals in the top 50. In the group of journals with a JIF of lower than 1, the proportion has shrunk by 14.53% in the 2015–2019 period. The findings suggest a potential ‘JIF bubble period’ that science policymaker, university, public fund managers, and other stakeholders should pay more attention to JIF as a criterion for quality assessment to ensure more efficient science management. (shrink)

United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals 4 Quality Education has highlighted major challenges for all nations to ensure inclusive and equitable quality access to education, facilities for children, and young adults. The SDG4 is even more important for developing nations as receiving proper education or vocational training, especially in science and technology, means a foundational step in improving other aspects of their citizens’ lives. However, the extant scientific literature about STEM education still lacks focus on developing countries, even more so in (...) the rural area. Using a dataset of 4967 observations of junior high school students from a rural area in a transition economy, the article employs the Bayesian approach to identify the interaction between gender, socioeconomic status, and students’ STEM academic achievements. The results report gender has little association with STEM academic achievements; however, female students (αa_Sex[2] = 2.83) appear to have achieved better results than their male counterparts (αa_Sex[1] = 2.68). Families with better economic status, parents with a high level of education (βb(EduMot) = 0.07), or non-manual jobs (αa_SexPJ[4] = 3.25) are found to be correlated with better study results. On the contrary, students with zero (βb(OnlyChi) = -0.14) or more than two siblings (βb(NumberofChi) = -0.01) are correlated with lower study results compared to those with only one sibling. These results imply the importance of providing women with opportunities for better education. Policymakers should also consider maintaining family size so the parents can provide their resources to each child equally. (shrink)

Nguyễn Khoa Diệu Biên, née en 1924, conserve un « livre de dédicaces » depuis plus d’un demi-siècle. Dans ce cahier de collégiennes, on peut lire le plaisir de « revivre le bonheur révolu » des années de jeunesse dans l’un des trois collèges de jeunes filles du Việt Nam sous la colonisation française. Témoignage privilégié confronté à des récits autobiographiques ou à des entretiens directs, il révèle des effets encore insuffisamment évoqués de la scolarisation : l’ouverture à la culture (...) occidentale, l’acquisition et l’affirmation d’une autre personnalité et, en même temps, les liens que ces collégiennes gardaient avec l’environnement social et culturel vietnamien ainsi que les soucis patriotes, l’engagement politique anticolonialiste qu’elles partageaient avec la majorité de l’élite intellectuelle. (shrink)

Giải quyết biến đổi khí hậu và ô nhiễm môi trường đang và sẽ là thách thức lớn của nhân loại trong thế kỷ 21. Con người không còn nhiều thời gian để sửa chữa, phục hồi đưa hệ sinh thái môi trường (tự nhiên) trở về trạng thái an toàn. Trong khi các nỗ lực trong thời gian qua chưa thực sự hiệu quả thì COP26 mở ra cơ hội lớn để nhân loại tiến gần đến mục tiêu kiềm (...) chế nhiệt độ của trái đất không vượt quá 1.5 độ C. Mặc dù Việt Nam cùng với 146 quốc gia trên thế giới đã có cam kết mạnh mẽ nhất trong việc giảm phát thải vào năm 2050, tuy nhiên việc cụ thể hóa cam kết thông qua các giải pháp sáng tạo là rất quan trọng. Sử dụng (áp dụng, vận dụng) hệ sáng tạo 3D và nguyên lý bán dẫn giá trị, tác giả đề xuất hệ sinh thái “giải pháp trụ cột” cần thực hiện gồm có tăng cường thông tin, truyền thông, nghiên cứu khoa học về môi trường (biến đổi khí hậu, ô nhiễm môi trường...); xây dựng, chuyển đổi và nâng cao văn hóa và môi trường; đẩy mạnh phát triển kinh tế gia tăng phúc lợi; xây dựng (chuyển đổi) lớp doanh nhân có văn hóa, trách nhiệm môi trường; tăng cường mở rộng sự hợp tác quốc tế về mọi mặt đặc biệt là trong lĩnh vực kinh tế, truyền thông và khoa học; và thực thi các giải pháp nêu trên một cách kỷ luật. (shrink)

On va tenter ici de déterminer le tournant de l’esprit mathématique dans le dernier tiers du xvie siècle et le premier tiers du xvie. Ces deux noms marquent du reste la conscience la plus précise de ce qui va être ajouté à la pensée hellénique dont on a désormais le plein héritage et la transformer. Et ce qui va être ajouté se peut le plus commodément définir en le réintégrant au coeur de l’histoire de la pensée mathématique. Nous ne pouvons, (...) dans la place restreinte dont nous disposons, qu’indiquer les thèmes principaux, en une sorte de procès-verbal. (shrink)

Cách mạng 4.0 đã và đang mang đến sự thay đổi lớn trong đời sống của người dân Việt Nam. Sự tiện dụng của Grab, khả năng cập nhật 24/24 của Facebook, hay sự đa dạng về nội dung của YouTube thúc đẩy xã hội tiến tới thời đại mới của khởi nghiệp điện toán (Vuong, 2019). Ở đó, mỗi cá nhân đều có cơ hội để khởi nghiệp thông qua sự kết nối đến khắp mọi nơi trên thế giới (...) của Internet và sức mạnh tính toán nằm gọn trong long bàn tay. Hiện nay, sản xuất video trên YouTube, cho thuê nhà qua AirBnb, hay chạy xe cho Grab tạo ra công việc có khả năng tạo lợi nhuận cho người tham gia thị trường, dù là người lao động, hay tổ chức cung ứng dịch vụ. (shrink)

Le corps entier des sciences peut estre consideré comme l’ocean, qui est continué partout, et sans interruption ou partage, bien que les hommes y conçoivent des parties, et leur donnent des noms selon leur commodité. Et comme il y a des mers inconnues, ou qui n’ont esté navigeés que par quelques vaisseaux que le hazard y avoir jettés: on peut dire,[10] de même qu’il y a des sciences dont on a connu quelque chose par rencontre seulement et sans dessein. L’art (...) des combinaisons est de ce nombre; elle signifie chez moy, autant que la science des formes ou formules ou bien des variations en general. En un mot, c’est la Specieuse universelle ou la Characteristique. De sorte qu’elle traite de eodem et diverso; de simili et dissimili; de absoluto et relato; comme la Mathematique ordinaire traite de [15] uno et multis, de magno et parvo, de toto et parte. On peut même dire que la Logistique ou bien l’Algebre luy est sousordonnée en un certain sens. Car lorsqu’on se sert de plusieurs notes indifferentes, ou qui au commencement du calcul pouvoient estre echangées et substituées mutuellement sans faire tort au raisonnement, en quoy les lettres d’Alphabet sont fort propres; et lors que ces lettres ou notes signifient des grandeurs, ou [20] des nombres generaux, il en vient l’Algebre ou plus tost la Specieuse de Viete. Et c’est justement en cela que consiste l’avantage de l’Algebre de Viete et de Descartes sur celle des anciens, qu’en se servant des lettres au lieu des nombres tant connus, qu’inconnus, on vient a des formules, ou il y a quelque liaison et ordre, qui donne moyen à nostre esprit de. (shrink)

Le corps entier des sciences peut estre consideré comme l’ocean, qui est continué partout, et sans interruption ou partage, bien que les hommes y conçoivent des parties, et leur donnent des noms selon leur commodité. Et comme il y a des mers inconnues, ou qui n’ont esté navigeés que par quelques vaisseaux que le hazard y avoir jettés: on peut dire,[10] de même qu’il y a des sciences dont on a connu quelque chose par rencontre seulement et sans dessein. L’art (...) des combinaisons est de ce nombre; elle signifie chez moy, autant que la science des formes ou formules ou bien des variations en general. En un mot, c’est la Specieuse universelle ou la Characteristique. De sorte qu’elle traite de eodem et diverso; de simili et dissimili; de absoluto et relato; comme la Mathematique ordinaire traite de [15] uno et multis, de magno et parvo, de toto et parte. On peut même dire que la Logistique ou bien l’Algebre luy est sousordonnée en un certain sens. Car lorsqu’on se sert de plusieurs notes indifferentes, ou qui au commencement du calcul pouvoient estre echangées et substituées mutuellement sans faire tort au raisonnement, en quoy les lettres d’Alphabet sont fort propres; et lors que ces lettres ou notes signifient des grandeurs, ou [20] des nombres generaux, il en vient l’Algebre ou plus tost la Specieuse de Viete. Et c’est justement en cela que consiste l’avantage de l’Algebre de Viete et de Descartes sur celle des anciens, qu’en se servant des lettres au lieu des nombres tant connus, qu’inconnus, on vient a des formules, ou il y a quelque liaison et ordre, qui donne moyen à nostre esprit de. (shrink)

Le corps entier des sciences peut estre consideré comme l’ocean, qui est continué partout, et sans interruption ou partage, bien que les hommes y conçoivent des parties, et leur donnent des noms selon leur commodité. Et comme il y a des mers inconnues, ou qui n’ont esté navigeés que par quelques vaisseaux que le hazard y avoir jettés: on peut dire,[10] de même qu’il y a des sciences dont on a connu quelque chose par rencontre seulement et sans dessein. L’art (...) des combinaisons est de ce nombre; elle signifie chez moy, autant que la science des formes ou formules ou bien des variations en general. En un mot, c’est la Specieuse universelle ou la Characteristique. De sorte qu’elle traite de eodem et diverso; de simili et dissimili; de absoluto et relato; comme la Mathematique ordinaire traite de [15] uno et multis, de magno et parvo, de toto et parte. On peut même dire que la Logistique ou bien l’Algebre luy est sousordonnée en un certain sens. Car lorsqu’on se sert de plusieurs notes indifferentes, ou qui au commencement du calcul pouvoient estre echangées et substituées mutuellement sans faire tort au raisonnement, en quoy les lettres d’Alphabet sont fort propres; et lors que ces lettres ou notes signifient des grandeurs, ou [20] des nombres generaux, il en vient l’Algebre ou plus tost la Specieuse de Viete. Et c’est justement en cela que consiste l’avantage de l’Algebre de Viete et de Descartes sur celle des anciens, qu’en se servant des lettres au lieu des nombres tant connus, qu’inconnus, on vient a des formules, ou il y a quelque liaison et ordre, qui donne moyen à nostre esprit de. (shrink)

It is difficult to imagine mathematics without its symbolic language. It is especially difficult to imagine doing mathematics without using mathematical notation. Nevertheless, that is how mathematics was done for most of human history. It was only at the end of the sixteenth century that mathematicians began to develop systems of mathematical symbols . It is startling to consider how rapidly mathematical notation evolved. Viète is usually taken to have initiated this development with his Isagoge of 1591, and a recognisably (...) modern symbol system was available by the 1630s . In little more than a generation, mathematicians went from writing mathematics in natural language to manipulating symbols much as we do today. The manipulation of symbols became both a source of new mathematics and a mode of mathematical argument. This required profound conceptual changes in both mathematics and philosophy; antique conceptions of number, proof, language, and mathematics had to be replaced or at least suspended. Thus, the development of mathematical symbolism was sufficiently rapid and profound to justify the word ‘revolution’.Moreover, what began as a technical innovation in mathematics soon took on a wider philosophical significance. The last line of Viète's introduction reads ‘To solve every problem’. Viète presumably meant that his algebra would solve every mathematical problem . However, two generations after Descartes, the teenage Leibniz articulated the characteristically modern dream of a general algebra of thought . In this ‘universal characteristic’, conceptual errors would …. (shrink)

La fin des années 1960, en Amérique du Nord, demeure, dans l’imaginaire d’un bon nombre, une ère dominée par la contre-culture où s’affichent une sexualité affranchie et un certain anarchisme à prétention de gauche. C’est l’époque de la contestation étudiante qu’alimente l’implication grandissante des Américains au Viêt-nam. Or, comme en contrepoint, presque en opposition,..

Chữ nghiên cứu đọc lên hẳn nhiên đã có cảm nhận là âm Hán-Việt. Ngoài ra, do nhận thấy đa phần các ý niệm học thuật cũng như ngôn từ của học giới từ xa xưa đã hay sử dụng những từ có nguồn gốc chữ Hán, nên tôi tò mò tìm hiểu về chữ “nghiên cứu”, để xem nó có hình dạng cấu tạo và chứa đựng ý nghĩa gì.

An increasing number of arguments for causal pluralism invoke empirical psychological data. Different aspects of causal cognition—specifically, causal perception and causal inference—are thought to involve distinct cognitive processes and representations, and they thereby distinctively support transference and dependency theories of causation, respectively. We argue that this dualistic picture of causal concepts arises from methodological differences, rather than from an actual plurality of concepts. Hence, philosophical causal pluralism is not particularly supported by the empirical data. Serious engagement with cognitive science reveals (...) that the connection between psychological concepts of causation and philosophical notions is substantially more complicated than is traditionally presumed. (shrink)

François Viète is often regarded as the first modern mathematician on the grounds that he was the first to develop the literal notation, that is, the use of two sorts of letters, one for the unknown and the other for the known parameters of a problem. The fact that he achieved neither a modern conception of quantity nor a modern understanding of curves, both of which are explicit in Descartes’ Geometry, is to be explained on this view “by an incomplete (...) symbolization rather than by any obstacle intrinsic in the system.” Descartes’ Geometry provides only a “clearer expression” of themes already sounded in Viète’s work, one that perfects Viète’s literal calculus and gives it “its modern form”; it merely continues the “‘new’ and ‘pure’ algebra which Viète first established as the ‘general analytic art’.” It can seem, furthermore, that this must be right, that had there been some obstacle intrinsic to Viète’s system that barred the way to a modern conception of quantity and a modern understanding of curves, then Descartes’ Geometry would have had to have taken a very different form than it did. As it was, Descartes had only to improve Viète’s symbolism, free himself of the last vestiges of the ancient view of geometrical and arithmetical objects, and apply the new symbolism to the study of curves in order to achieve what Viète did not but could have. But what, really, is the status of this “could have”; what would it actually have taken for Viète to achieve Descartes’ results in the Geometry? The interest of the question lies in its potential to better our understanding of the nature of modern mathematics. (shrink)

Adriaan van Roomen published an outline of what he called a Mathesis Universalis in 1597. This earned him a well-deserved place in the history of early modern ideas about a universal mathematics which was intended to encompass both geometry and arithmetic and to provide general rules valid for operations involving numbers, geometrical magnitudes, and all other quantities amenable to measurement and calculation. ‘Mathesis Universalis’ became the most common term for mathematical theories developed with that aim. At some time around 1600 (...) van Roomen composed a new version of his MU, considerably different from the earlier one. This second version was never effectively published and it has not been discussed in detail in the secondary literature before. The text has, however, survived and the two versions are presented and compared in the present article. Sections 1–6 are about the first version of van Roomen’s MU the occasion of its publication, its conceptual context, its structure and its dependence on Clavius’ use of numbers in dealing with both rational and irrational ratios, the geometrical interpretation of arithmetical operations multiplication and division, and an analysis of its content in modern terms. In his second version of a MU van Roomen took algebra into account, inspired by Viète’s early treatises; he planned to publish it as part of a new edition of Al-Khwarizmi’s treatise on algebra. Section 8 describes the conceptual background and the difficulties involved in the merging of algebra and geometry; Sect. 9 summarizes and analyzes the definitions, axioms and theorems of the second version, noting the differences with the first version and tracing the influence of Viète. Section 10 deals with the influence of van Roomen on later discussions of MU, and briefly sketches Descartes’ ideas about MU as expressed in the latter’s Regulae. (shrink)

François Viète is considered the father both of modern algebra and of modern cryptanalysis. The paper outlines Viète’s major contributions in these two mathematical fields and argues that, despite an obvious parallel between them, there is an essential difference. Viète’s ‘new algebra’ relies on his reform of the classical method of analysis and synthesis, in particular on a new conception of analysis and the introduction of a new formalism. The procedures he suggests to decrypt coded messages are particular forms of (...) analysis based on the use of formal methods. However, Viète’s algebraic analysis is not an analysis in the same sense as his cryptanalysis is. In Aristotelian terms, the first is a form of 'analysis,' while the second is a form of 'diaresis.' While the first is a top-down argument from the point of view of the human subject, since it is an argument going from what is not actual to what is actual for such a subject, the second one is a bottom-up argument from this same point of view, since it starts from what is first for us and proceed towards what is first by nature.Keywords: Analysis; Cryptanalysis; Algebra; Aristotle; Viète. (shrink)

The abstract found at the beginning of most journal articles has increasingly become an essential part of the article. It tends to be the first part of the article to be read and, to some extent, it `sells' the article. Acquiring the skills of writing an abstract is therefore important to novice writers to enter the discourse community of their discipline. Based on 30 abstracts from three journals, the present study aims at exploring not only the rhetorical moves of abstracts (...) in the fields of applied linguistics and educational technology, but also the linguistic realizations of moves and authorial stance in different abstract moves. The results show that there are three obligatory moves in abstracts in these two disciplines — Presenting the research, Describing the methodology, and Summarizing the results. The results also indicate that a combination of certain linguistic features such as grammatical subjects, verb tense and voice can help distinguish moves in the abstract. The findings of the study have some pedagogical implications for academic writing courses for graduate students, especially students from non-English backgrounds. (shrink)

Some twenty years after the Gregorian calendar reform, towards the end of his life, François Viète published his own calendar proposal. This treatise contains a sharp attack against the Jesuit scholar Clavius, the mathematical mind behind the reform. Understandably enough, Clavius prepared a negative reply. Viète heard of it and exploded in a fit of rage, ``I demonstrated that you are a false mathematician [... ], and a false theologian.'' Sadly, Clavius' rejection, added as a chapter to his monumental apology (...) of the Gregorian reform, appeared when Viète had already passed away.Viète seriously believed that the true aim of the Gregorian reform has been betrayed and he was furious about some logical inconsistencies which he claimed to have found in Clavius' calendar. Clavius apparently confused solar day and epactal day, the thirtieth part of a lunar month. This is the very core of Viète's attack against Clavius whom he accused of having introduced a false lunar period. But his own work has some logical inconsistencies too. For instance, he reproaches Clavius for having introduced lunar months of 31 days which, indeed, are unrealistic. Grievously, his own rules can likewise give rise to lunations of unnatural lengths.In order to understand these subtle twists reader and author must work largely through both Clavius and Viète's methods of Easter reckoning. The fruit of all those efforts might be an insight into Viète's clear mathematical thinking. His calendar, however, was never considered. (shrink)

Françios Viète was a geometer in search of better techniques for astronomical calculation. Through his theorem on angular sections he found a use for higher-dimensional geometric magnitudes which allowed him to create an algebra for geometry. We show that unlike traditional numerical algebra, the knowns and unknowns in Viète’s logistice speciosa are the relative sizes of non-arithmetized magnitudes in which the “calculations” must respect dimension. Along with this foundational shift Viète adopted a radically new notation based in Greek geometric equalities. (...) His letters stand for values rather than types, and his given values are undetermined. Where previously algebra was founded in polynomials as aggregations, Viète became the first modern algebraist in working with polynomials built from operations, and the notations reflect these conceptions. Viète’s innovations are situated in the context of sixteenth-century practice, and we examine the interpretation of Jacob Klein, the only historian to have conducted a serious inquiry into the ontology of Viète’s “species”. (shrink)