The object of this thesis is to study a selected number of demographic characteristics in a South African Metropolitan Situation by means of an analytical system. The demographic material will be coordinated and classified according to the system, for the purpose of assessing its utility and merit as a planning tool. In this assessment the Metropolitan Area of Cape Town will be used as an example. As a supplement to the main theme, a projection of the future population will be introduced.

In a dynamically changing world with unprecedented uncertainty, complexity and turbulence, continual learning and adapting is vital for one’s living and well-being. According to dual-systems accounts of cognition, learning has two major forms, implicit learning (System 1) that is fast and frugal but sometimes error-prone, and explicit learning (System 2) that is reliable but slow and effortful. These two systems are separate but must interact with each other. We gain implicit knowledge from experiencing trials and making errors (e. g., making financial investments repeatedly), receive vicarious knowledge transmitted to us in summarized forms (e.g. a quarterly report of investment options and past returns), and derive our own explicit knowledge (e.g. investment strategies) from experience to inform our future practices or to use in advising others. The present project explores the interaction between these forms of learning in the context of repeated decisions. Is it merely implicit behavioral tendencies that are learned from experience? If so, would articulating or summarizing what is implicitly learned change subsequent choice behaviors? To address these questions, three experimental studies are conducted with online participants to investigate whether asking individuals to explicitly summarize what they have learned in a Decision from Experience (DfE) paradigm will create an explicit-implicit learning interaction that will affect their subsequent choice patterns. Decisions from explicit descriptions (DfD) refers to situations where quantitative information regarding the outcome values and probabilities of decision options is provided to the decision maker. Behavior in such situations has been found to exhibit irrational choice patterns characterized by cumulative prospect theory (CPT), overweighting the rare events while underweighting the more likely events (Tversky & Kahneman, 1992). In comparison, DfE is characterized by a different pattern of initial irrationality (underweighting the rare events while overweighting the more likely events) but moving gradually over time towards rationality as defined by Expected Value (EV)-maximization (Chen & Corter, 2014; Hertwig et al., 2004). The different choice biases between DfE and DfD is known as the Description-Experience Gap (“D-E gap”, Hertwig & Erev, 2009). The present project investigates if explicit summarization of knowledge gained from experience can affect subsequent choice patterns in DfE. Two main hypotheses are examined. Firstly, explicit summarization might accelerate a shift to EV-maximization because summarization might promote the externalization of the implicitly learned behavior tendency in the pure DfE paradigm. A second possibility is that explicit summarization might lead to a choice pattern consistent with that in DfD characterized by a CPT-like pattern, because the summarized information of option payoffs resembles that in the DfD paradigm. In the described studies, three summarization conditions are compared including: summarizing knowledge and estimating payoff probabilities for themselves (Self condition), summarizing for another hypothetical player (Other condition), and not summarizing such information (Control condition). The results across the three studies found a consistent summarization effect, particularly for low probability gain (Gain-Low) and high probability loss (Loss-High) problems. Those who summarized to another person (Other condition) made decisions more consistent with CPT predictions, choosing significantly more choices associated with higher CPT values. In contrast, participants in the pure DfE (Control) condition exhibited a similar DfE choice pattern, which is in the opposite direction compared to those in the Other condition. Participants in the Other condition gave more accurate probability estimates (closer to the true objective probabilities) for the risky outcomes for low-probability gains and high-probability losses. In contrast, participants in the Self condition tend to show underestimation for both high- and low-probability gains but overestimation for both high- and low-probability losses. Also, a majority of participants in the Other condition recommended to choose the EV-maximization choices in their summarizations, yet showed CPT-approximating choices in their own subsequent choices. In general, the overall findings suggest that “a probabilistic mindset” induced by the social messages in the Other condition seems to attenuate the D-E gap. Implications for learning and decision making are also discussed in the end.

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The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the application of psychoanalysis to historical reconstructions; to explore the similarities between psychoanalysis and history; to illustrate how these similarities make plausible the claim the psychoanalytic theory could a valuable tool for historians; and to present and analyze certain methodological problems which arise in the use of psychoanalysis in history and to suggest ways in which these problems may be resolved. History and psychoanalysis are analogous in some important and interesting respects. Both disciplines attempt to understand and explain human affairs by an investigation into the reasons and underlying motivations of human conduct. Both depend upon the reconstruction the human past as part of their method and theory. Thus, the history-taking of the psychoanalyst is relevant to the history-taking of the biographer; that is to say, the historian-as-biographer is to his subject as the psychoanalyst-as-history-taler is to his patient. It is therefore plausible to claim that since psychoanalytic theory is concerned with the emotional life of the individual, it could be a valuable tool for historical biography. Beyond reconstruction, both historian and psychoanalyst, in various degrees, attempt to cure men of the domination of the past. The psychoanalyst tries to cure his patient of the present domination of unconscious memories. The historian, at least in one of his functions, tries to cure his reader of similar kinds of tyranny the past seems to hod over human societies. In this respect, the therapeutic aims of psychoanalysis are related to what may be characterized as social therapist is to his reader as psychoanalyst-as-individual - therapist is to his patient. Since psychoanalysis is characterized as biographical in nature, biography can serve as the paradigm case for the use psychoanalysis in history. Biography, however, is not the strongest case for psychoanalytic history. Most historian do not write biographies, and the argument for psychoanalytic biography becomes a weak argument for psychoanalytic history. Nevertheless, historian often is biographical even if they do not write biographies. Psychoanalysis is thus applicable to history which is at the intersection between biography and the reconstruction of historical events; namely, events in which individuals, about whom we do not need or want a biography, play roles; but individuals about whose motivations we do need of want an explanation. The use of psychoanalysis in history does present certain methodological problems: (1) To what extent is the data needed to make psychoanalytic interpretations available in history?; (2) How can a theory and technique meant to be used in live confrontation be used to help reconstruct and understand the past of an historical person?; (3) How is validation of psychoanalytic hypotheses possible if the immediateness of the clinical encounter is missing?; (4) To what extent is the proffered psychoanalytic explanation more useful than ordinary historical explanation? The historian can derive hypotheses of a psychoanalytic sort from the kind and amount of data which is available: diaries, memoirs of his own and others, recordings, photographs, movies, etc. He may learn to develop ways of reading his data so that he can indicate and interpret psychoanalytically relevant statements and validate these interpretations in terms of the recurrence of similar patterns of behavior, as the therapist does in his observation of transference patterns. There is good reason to suspect that just as the therapist ‘reads ’between the lines of his patient’s utterances and behavior to construct his diagnoses and interpretations, the historian with psychoanalytic knowledge can also ‘read’ between the lines of his evidence to construct an appraisal about his subject. The concepts used in the appraisal of live patients are applicable in the appraisal of historical figures as indices of sets of tendencies which should be looked for in the historical evidence. The historian must be careful about claims made concerning the internal experiences of a subject because he is unable to ask questions of the subject directly. He must make guesses. However, these guesses are suggested by the evidence. The plausibility of conclusions or explanatory hypotheses arrived at must be weighed in terms of the configuration of evidence which can be amassed their favor. To validate interpretations suggested by the evidence in one context, the historian can appeal to new historical materials from another context. Just as the therapist gets independent check as the analysis proceeds, the historian gets independent checks as the analysis proceeds, the historian gets independent checks as his historical research broadens and intensifies. A study of Sir Henry Clinton by Frederick Wyatt and William Willcox serves to show how these methodological problems can be handled and how psychoanalytic theory can be helpful. They indicate that the psychoanalytic assumption of the existence of unconscious processes provides a more illuminating explanation of Clinton’s behavior than the usual assumption of historians which says that people behave on the basis their intentions with self-consciousness. As Charles Pierce said, “it is the beliefs men betray and not what they parade which has to be studied.”

Radioactive decay of U, Th and K contributes to noble gas radiogenic ingrowth in different geological reservoirs, which distinguish mass origin and reveal its transport pathway. Compared with minerals and fluid inclusions, porewater is more relevant in revealing the mobile mass origin and transport in the porous, deep subsurface environment. Hence, the approaches for porewater noble gas extraction and analysis are of great meaning to geochemistry and hydrogeology. However, all five stable noble gases in rock porewater are difficult to acquire because of possible air contamination during storage and difficulty of noble gas separation. This dissertation is dedicated to exploring novel noble gas extraction and analysis methods from rock porewater. Two porewater gas extraction methods were developed for crystalline and sedimentary rocks, respectively. Temperature-controlled heating was applied to crystalline rocks. Out-diffusion in Al-foil bags was used for Ordovician sedimentary rocks. Regarding noble gas methodology, a newly designed pneumatic processing line was built to explore an iterative polished stainless steel wool trapping method to separate Kr from Ar. The iterative trapping method yields > 95% trapping efficiency for Kr and > 99% trapping efficiency for Xe. Simultaneously, comparable and steady noble gas sensitivities and noble gas isotope ratios were attained from air standard aliquots. From heating experiments on crystalline rock porewater, the consistency of noble gas ratios between headspace gas and rock porewater illustrates that this extraction method is valid for crystalline rock. This work provides a benchmark for noble gas extraction from crystalline rock porewater. With room-temperature out-diffusion method in Al-bag, noble gas ratios and concentrations of Ordovician sedimentary rocks reveal crustal features. The measured noble gas ratios in Ordovician sedimentary cores agree with measurements previously made in the Ordovician brine samples from the western flank of the Michigan Basin. The Ordovician porewater residence time is quantitatively estimated with both He and Xe radiogenic ingrowth, yielding an average of 251 million years (m.y.), which is comparable with the previous He accumulation time estimate at the same study site that yielded 260 m.y.. The remarkable preservation of gases in Al-foil bags provides an economic and efficient possibility for noble gas out-diffusion sampling. In summary, the exploration of porewater noble gas extraction and all five noble gas analysis methodology gives satisfying noble gas results and geological information. These original developments are of great meaning to the future work of the noble gas laboratory at the University of Ottawa.