Call number: LD2668 .P7 1975 B76

D.Litt.et Phil. (Sociology) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

A critical examination of Popper’s falsificationism as a methodological criterion of demarcation led to the development o f a supplementary means of distinguishing science from pseudo- science The discipline is made the unit of appraisal and its pattern o f historical development b used as the indicator of demarcation. Results of a test of this indicator against astrology and physical optics accord with our basic judgm ents of these disciplines. The indicator effectively reveals that scientific creationism is pseudo-science, and that evolutionary biology is genuine science. Three fundam ental approaches to scientific investigation, viz. v erificationism , falsificationism and m ulti-cornered testing (M CT) are contrasted. MCT is distinguished by competition between hypotheses, which makes it more informative than at least the naive versions of the other two approaches. While competition does not produce immediate victors, it does make demands on theories, which can be augmented by prescribing a series of independent tests. The comparative method implies the existence of two types of evidence. Common evidence is that which io predicted or explained by two or more rival hypotheses. Discriminatory evidence favours one rival over the others. It is argued that in both the fields of species biology and speciation there have been instances o f over-relying on common evidence, o f indistinctly defining alternative hypotheses, of ro t following their logical consequences and of not using exisiing discriminatory evidence to adjudicate between these hypotheses. Species concepts and definitions of modes o f speciation are evaluated. Normative principles are suggested for defining species and other important terms in evolutionary biology, and for testing species concepts and modes of speciation. The advantages and limitations o f a historical indicator of demarcation and the merits and principles of the comparative approach to method are discussed and illustrated using the analoev of a mathematical game. Scientific crcanomsni is shown to have a coating of scientific method, but to have systematically violated fundamental methodological principles. D arn in ’* method in contrast, had a comparative structure, and distinguished between common *nd discriminatory evidence. While there are methodological problems sn evolutionary biology, these are shown to be minor in comparison to that four*! in to c n o fk ciratxxiiun.

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Science, School of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Johannesburg, October, 2017. / The purpose of this study was to examine how subsistence farmers in the Delta State of Nigeria employed their asset portfolios i.e. human, financial, social, natural and physical capitals to build their adaptive capacity and resilience to climate variability and change. The study was also interested in understanding the extent to which climate change risk communication facilitated the protection and adaptation of subsistence farmer’s assets in the face of extreme weather warnings. Primary data were obtained using the Participatory Climate Change Adaptation Appraisal (PCCAA), which comprises both the asset vulnerability analytical and the asset-based adaptation operational frameworks. The systems thinking approach, together with the asset vulnerability analytical framework were also used as an operational vulnerability framework to highlight the myriad factors undermining the rural poor from maximising their asset portfolios during food production. Focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews facilitated the use of the PCCAA tools. Meteorological data reinforced subsistence farmer’s perception (62%) that there has been an increase in temperature within the last decade, which have adversely affected on groundnut production. The farmers (92%) also listed heavy rainfall event and flooding as a climatic variable that impede their ability to produce cassava throughout the year. This is because their farmlands, which are generally low-lying, are always inundated for approximately four months every year. Nonetheless, the farmers still engaged in cassava production annually by adopting a strategy indigenously referred to as elelame (follow-water-go). It is important to mention that in spite of the rapidly changing climate, the subsistence farmers did not rely on Seasonal Climate Forecast (SCF) in order to determine the appropriate time to grow their food. Instead, they relied on their Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) not limited to cloud observations, croaking of frogs and peculiar sounds made by the swamp chickens. However, the farmers acknowledged that their IKS have not been as reliable as it has always been in the past decades. Nonetheless, the farmers underlined being misled by an inaccurate scientific forecast in 2013 and, a lack of trust in the source of the forecast are some of the reasons they continue to rely primarily on IKS. With climate change expected to continue occurring at unprecedented levels in Nigeria, it is crucial to build subsistence farmers trust in SCF while simultaneously not undermining the value of their IKS. This is because there is growing consensus that if subsistence farmers continue to rely on IKS alone, the key assets that play a huge role in food production will likely be eroded. This will adversely hamper households’ ability to continue obtaining the livelihood they aggressively pursue. Thus, a useful starting point will be to generate a “unified” forecast whereby SCF compensates for the limitations of farmer’s IKS. However, for the unified forecast to make meaningful contributions to the ways in which farmers produce their food and protect their assets in anticipation of an extreme weather forecast, it must be communicated through the various mediums that the farmers rely upon to receive vital pieces of information. Keywords: Indigenous knowledge systems, seasonal climate forecast, climate change risk communication, Delta State, Nigeria. / LG2018

O presente estudo teve como objetivo analisar artigos científicos na área de saúde pública, que envolviam direta e indiretamente seres humanos, publicados anteriormente à Resolução 196/96. Analisamos artigos científicos da Revista de Saúde Pública e Cadernos de Saúde Pública de 1990 a 1996. Baseamos nossa análise em categorias retiradas da Resolução 196/96 previamente estabelecidas: consentimento do sujeito de Pesquisa, sujeitos com autonomia reduzida, proteção de sujeitos e grupos vulneráveis e legalmente incapazes, confidencialidade, privacidade, proteção da imagem, estigmatização, benefícios do retorno da pesquisa. A análise dos dados foi efetuada em dois momentos: caracterização das revistas analisadas e análise de conteúdo. Os resultados encontrados foram: 568 artigos levantados, 384 (67,6%) da Revista da Saúde Pública e 184 (32,4%) dos Cadernos de Saúde Pública. Destes, 296 (52,1%) envolviam direta ou indiretamente sujeitos humanos que foram objeto de nossa análise. Instituições mais utilizadas para o desenvolvimento de pesquisas: serviços de saúde 134 (23,6%), empresas, indústrias, escritórios e instituições públicas 52 (9,2%), residências 42 (7,4), lazer e assistência social somam 6 (10%). Tipos de pesquisa: epidemiológica 121 (21,3%), biológica 59 (10,4%), psicológica 10 (1,8%), nutricional 42 (7,4%), ambiental 9 (1,6%). Analisamos qualitativamente trechos de artigos baseando nossa análise na Resolução 196/96. Consideramos que antes da elaboração da resolução 196/95, talvez não existisse um interesse / The present study objective is analyse the scientific articles in the public health area, involving human beings directly and indirectly, published prior to the enforcement of Resolution 196/96. [It was researched all the published articles in the Revista de Saúde Pública and Cadernos de Saúde Pública Journals from 1990 to 1996]. The articles were analysed based on categories previously established by Resolution 196/96: subjects consent, subjects with little autonomy, protection of vulnerable and legally incapable groups, confidentiality, privacy, protection of the image, stigma, benefits, social return of the research. The analysis were divided in two moments: 1st moment: caractherization of the two periodicals and 2nd moment, qualitative analysis of the articles content analysis. The results were as follows: 568 scientific articles, 384 (67,6%) from Revista de Saúde Pública and 184 (32,4%) from Cadernos de Saúde Pública. Of these, 296 (52,1%) involved human beings direct or indirectly and that was the objective of the analysis. The institutions used for research: The health system 134 (23,6%); industries, offices and state institutions 52 (9,2%); residences 42 (7,4%), places of leisure and social services added 6 (10%). Type of research: Epidemiological 121 (21,3%), biological 59 (10,4%), psichological 10 (1,8%), nutritional 42 (7,4%), ambiental 21 (3,7%), social 20 (3,5%), services and programs evaluation 9 (1,6%). Extracts from articles were analysed qualitatively based on the Resolution 196/96. Bearing in mind that at the time of such publication 1990/1996 the concept of giving explanatory approach to the subject of research were not common practice, but with the enforcement of the Resolution this culture is being gradually changed.

Aristotle's own solution is treated as a series of responses to his predecessors. His dialectical character and his subtle understanding of the complexity of human condition enable him to reach a dialectical and dynamic mean between these two extremes solutions. Aristotle objects Plato's attack of rhetoric, acknowledges its value, and secures its legitimate status in political life. But he also realizes the innate limitations of rhetoric. His theoretical solution to the tension lies in his theory of virtue and happiness. According to his ethics, virtue bridges these two series of goods, and in a virtuous person the tension does not exist. But this theory also has the same limitation of rhetoric in general, i.e., the lack of compulsory power. Therefore Aristotle, like Plato, tries to establish an ideal city, habituating the people to be truly virtuous through a series of legislative efforts. Good as it is, legislation cannot solve the tension permanently either, due to the universality of law. Therefore, when facing new situations or in critical moments, the system of law needs the supplement of decent and prudent politicians and through rhetoric. Thus, Aristotle establishes a virtuous circle between rhetoric and legislation, and such a dynamic system will give enough flexibility to deal with the complexity of human political life, and enables him to solve this tension successfully. / The first part presents two solutions given by Aristotle's predecessors. On the one hand, Gorgias, the representative rhetorician of that time began to reflect and champion the power of rhetoric. Such a theoretical reflection brought huge impact on Athenian political life. I treat Pericles and Alcibiades under Thucydides' depiction as spiritual heirs of Gorgias. They both try to solve the tension through rhetoric. On the other hand, Plato, fully realizing the limitation of rhetoric, attacks it in his Gorgias, and further in his Republic tries to solve this tension through legislation. / The tension between private and cornmon good is a problem for any human political society, and a central question for any political philosophy. This thesis tries to examine some attempts of solving this tension in ancient Greek context, and focuses on Aristotle's practical philosophy. / Liu, Wei. / Adviser: Qingjie Wang. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-03, Section: A, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 254-266). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

Ma thèse a pour objet la réflexion menée par Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz, dans ses œuvres imprimées et manuscrites, sur la philosophie de René Descartes. Notre objectif consiste à reconstruire la critique, l’interprétation et l’utilisation de la philosophie de Descartes par Caramuel à travers une étude complète, à ce jour jamais réalisée, de tous les manuscrits cartésiens de Caramuel. Cette reconstruction sera complétée par une brève recherche effectuée sur les œuvres imprimées successives aux Animadversiones. Les Animadversiones constituent une série d’objections contre les Meditationes de prima philosophia à travers lesquelles Caramuel se propose de démontrer l’échec de l’entreprise cartésienne. L’étude des Animadversiones (ch. II) a exigé d’aborder plus profondément la conception de Caramuel relative à l’existence et à la nature des entia rationis (avec lesquelles il identifie les idées matériellement fausses de la Meditatio III) dans l’ouvrage métaphysique le plus important de Caramuel, la Rationalis et Realis philosophia (ch. I) et d’analyser les lettres manuscrites sur les Animadversiones et Meditationes, dont l’étude jette une lumière plus vive sur le projet sous-jacent aux Animadversiones, leur rédaction et leur circulation manuscrite, tout en approfondissant l’analyse de certaines critiques ébauchées dans les Animadversiones. Enfin, l’analyse des autres manuscrits cartésiens de Vigevano, dans lesquels la discussion concernant la métaphysique cartésienne se développe ultérieurement et où apparaît un nouveau contexte de discussion et de remise en question des thèses cartésiennes par rapport à la physique, permet de compléter le cadre (Ch. IV). / My dissertation focuses on Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz’s reflection on René Descartes’ Philosophy as it is developed in his printed and handwritten works. My aim is to reconstruct Caramuel’s criticism, interpretation and use of Descartes’ Philosophy through a comprehensive study of all of Caramuel’s Cartesian manuscripts, including the famous Animadversiones in Meditationes Cartesianas (1644). My reconstruction is introduced by a study of Caramuel’s main metaphysical work, Rationalis et Realis Philosophia (1642), and is complemented by a brief research conducted on his printed works published after the composition of the Animadversiones. The Animadversiones is a group of objections written against the Meditationes de prima philosophia in which Caramuel aims to demonstrate the failure of Descartes’ metaphysical project. The study of the Animadversiones (ch. II) has required, on the one hand, a preliminary enquiry on Caramuel’s metaphysical doctrine on the existence and the nature of the entia rationis, that he will later identify with the materially false ideas of Meditatio III (ch. I), and on the other hand, a detailed examination of his handwritten letters on the Animadversiones and the Meditationes. This examination is helpful in order to clarify the underlying project of the Animadversiones, as concerns both their composition and their private circulation, as well as to enlight the criticism addressed against Descartes in the Animadversiones. Finally, ch. IV completes my study by analyzing the other Cartesian manuscripts in Vigevano, that develop Caramuel’s discussion on Descartes’s Metaphysics and, at the same time, open a new discussion on Descartes’ Physics.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1980. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING. / Bibliography: leaves 263-276. / by Roger William Wicke. / Ph.D.

Human influence on the environment is becoming increasingly pervasive across the globe, and can drastically impact ecological patterns and processes. For many terrestrial wildlife species, human influence can fragment critical habitat, increase mortality, and threaten habitat connectivity and ultimately the persistence of wildlife populations. This dissertation aims to use multiple conservation ecology methods and tools to test the impact of human influence on the population dynamics of a large carnivore in a human-dominated landscape. To assess the impact of human activity on carnivore ecology, a series of empirical studies were conducted on a small population of American black bear (Ursus americanus) in the Western Great Basin, USA. A long-term dataset including geographic locations of animal habitat choices as well as mortality locations were used in multiple statistical models that tested the response of black bears to human activity. These analyses were conducted at multiple spatial and temporal resolutions to reveal nuances potentially overlooked if analyses were limited to a single resolution. Individual studies, presented as dissertation chapters, examine the relationships between human activity and carnivore ecology. Collectively, the results of these studies find black bear ecology to be highly sensitive to the magnitude and spatial composition of human activity in the Lake Tahoe Basin, observable at both coarse and fine spatial resolutions. The results presented in this study on the influence of human activity on large carnivore population dynamics allow for a more thorough understanding of the various ways common conservation ecology methods and tools can be used to evaluate human-wildlife relationships.

Predicting and understanding the dynamic of human motion has many applications such as motion synthesis, augmented reality, security, education, reinforcement learning, autonomous vehicles, and many others. In this thesis, we create a novel end-to-end pipeline that can predict multiple future poses from the same input, and, in addition, can classify the entire sequence. Our focus is on the following two aspects of human motion understanding: Probabilistic human action prediction: Given a sequence of human poses as input, we sample multiple possible future poses from the same input sequence using a new GAN-based network. Human motion understanding: Given a sequence of human poses as input, we classify the actual action performed in the sequence and improve the classification performance using the presentation learned from the prediction network. We also demonstrate how to improve model training from noisy labels, using facial expression recognition as an example. More specifically, we have 10 taggers to label each input image, and compare four different approaches: majority voting, multi-label learning, probabilistic label drawing, and cross-entropy loss. We show that the traditional majority voting scheme does not perform as well as the last two approaches that fully leverage the label distribution. We shared the enhanced FER+ data set with multiple labels for each face image with the research community (https://github.com/Microsoft/FERPlus). For predicting and understanding of human motion, we propose a novel sequence-to-sequence model trained with an improved version of generative adversarial networks (GAN). Our model, which we call HP-GAN2, learns a probability density function of future human poses conditioned on previous poses. It predicts multiple sequences of possible future human poses, each from the same input sequence but seeded with a different vector z drawn from a random distribution. Moreover, to quantify the quality of the non-deterministic predictions, we simultaneously train a motion-quality-assessment model that learns the probability that a given skeleton pose sequence is a real or fake human motion. In order to classify the action performed in a video clip, we took two approaches. In the first approach, we train on a sequence of skeleton poses from scratch using random parameters initialization with the same network architecture used in the discriminator of the HP-GAN2 model. For the second approach, we use the discriminator of the HP-GAN2 network, extend it with an action classification branch, and fine tune the end-to-end model on the classification tasks, since the discriminator in HP-GAN2 learned to differentiate between fake and real human motion. So, our hypothesis is that if the discriminator network can differentiate between synthetic and real skeleton poses, then it also has learned some of the dynamics of a real human motion, and that those dynamics are useful in classification as well. We will show through multiple experiments that that is indeed the case. Therefore, our model learns to predict multiple future sequences of human poses from the same input sequence. We also show that the discriminator learns a general representation of human motion by using the learned features in an action recognition task. And we train a motion-quality-assessment network that measure the probability of a given sequence of poses are valid human poses or not. We test our model on two of the largest human pose datasets: NTURGB-D, and Human3.6M. We train on both single and multiple action types. The predictive power of our model for motion estimation is demonstrated by generating multiple plausible futures from the same input and showing the effect of each of the several loss functions in the ablation study. We also show the advantage of switching to GAN from WGAN-GP, which we used in our previous work. Furthermore, we show that it takes less than half the number of epochs to train an activity recognition network by using the features learned from the discriminator.