Science and Uncertainty

How does science connect to what is already known to us? How does it extend our knowledge? How does it challenge our knowledge?

For centuries science have taken a major part of our life, helping us to evolve with everything that is around us. The introduction, of science to our life was one of the greatest changes to the human race,we are trying to use what is already known to us to try and predict futuristic occasions and events.

Science and technology, going hand in hand, are evolving extremely fast. For everything we question, it has became normal and regular that we try to use science and technology to answer it. For example, How evolution came into place? how life started and more... For most of these questions we do not have certain and specific answer, that science would be able to prove, however using science we might try to be able to understand it to an extent.

Science to a particular extent obviously provided me with many answers and did help me understand, all the things I do not have an answer for. I believe that science is much more than only a subject but much more like a lifestyle that people choose to live according to, believe and follow. Science plays an important role in answering questions just like religion does, trying to explain what is hard for us to accept in a way.

I tend to think that the more answers we know using science for a particular question, the more questions that risen up with the answer. The more we know, the more science challenges our knowledge and my knowledge in person. Making me ask questions that again science, successfully or not will try to answer.

Indigenous knowledge systems in China

Trying to find an indigenous knowledge of which differs from my culture' i have decided to explore a Chinese Tradition knowledge.
Sharing common concepts which have been developed in China and are based on a tradition of more than 2,000 years, including various forms of herbal medicine and many more.
Chinese medicine are rooted in books such as the "Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon" and the "Treatise on Cold Damage" . In traditional Chinese herbal medicine, plant elements are by far the most commonly,  such as the assorted dried plant and animal parts used in these traditional medicines. The indigenous Chinese have roughly 13,000 medicinal used in China and over 100,000 medicinal recipes recorded in the ancient literature.

Although today, herbal medicines have gained a lot of power and scientific support, the chinese believed in this medicinal treatment long before it was as wide known. The believe the enerfy in plants support our body systems, and they tend to mix it mostly in drinks such as Tea, or mix the herbs in the needles and spread them all over the body.

Is History a science?

Personally I have never compared a subject such as History and Science in general, I have always lived with a certain prospective of which both have no relation at all, however by reading an extract The Nature of History by Arthur Marwick, in which simply explains that History and Science share similar ways of analysis however only to a certain degree.

 In terms of futuristic predictions both Science and History rely on  previous events, accidents or situations that will support the final prediction, but taking into considerations the differences of both subject we can conclude that History does not necessarily predict what will happen like science and it does predict more of what would be the chances of a situation to occur again considering the current situation.

In my opinion although History and Science do share a lot of similarities (to a certain degree again), I believe that History in most of our way of thinking I believe that there is a difference between the two, using our common sense.

A famous quote translated from Hebrew states that 'A person with no past, his present is shallow and his future is veil in mist'. I tend to agree with that quote, and my justification would be that in any case of our cultural history, it has an effect of who we are and what we would like to be and how we would like to improve.

Moral Dilemma pros and cons

"My friend and I are stranded on an island. Unfortunately, you are both fatally ill. It just so happens that you have an antibiotic that can cure your illness. Sadly enough, there is just enough antibiotic to save only one person. How could you and your friend choose which one of you will take the antibiotic? "

Pros:
- If I take the cure, I will stay alive and keep going with my life..
- If my colleague takes the cure he stays alive.
- I give my colleague the cure while he/she are asleep, therefore I have no conscious.

Cons:
-If we both don't take the cure we both die.
-One of us must have to die.
- We both want each other to take the cure.

What I would do:
- I would have divide the cure into two, giving each on of us a half so we both don't get cured but we are capable of postponing death and try to search for help, if we cant we both die we did our best job.

Reflection Greg Craven's logic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zORv8wwiadQ - His video

In my opinion Greg's logic simplifies and adjusts people's ways of thinking. All of a sudden one of the most complicated issue have been divided on two 4 possible out comes.  He deeply believes that  not choosing the 'B' column would be the most realistic decision to eventually achieve to minimize Economical, Social, Political, Environmental and Health futuristic catastrophes, whereas  choosing column 'A' would cause only 'cost global depression', if global warming does really exist of course.

On the other side I tend to believe that just like trying to minimize the chance of a great loss, why not increase the chance of a great win? Since there is a chance of 50%, loads of money could be spent on education, support people who suffer from starvation, decrease taxes, increase awareness of health issues, support innovation and other beneficial ways to achieve a better world and again there is 50% chance! The problem is that it is mostly human nature to 'play it safe', human in their nature (not all of course) do not like to take risks, and by taking risks of crazy unbelievable ideas we have reached great technology,  and development of amazing concepts that did not seem possible because in order to actually benefit eventually risks got to be taken.

Another point I would like to point out is that the worse case scenario in column 'A' is not as better as we think than the one in column 'B'. Stating that if money is spent to prevent global morning but it does not actually exist, there would be a 'cost depression' but if we really think about it all these Economical, Social, Political, Environmental and Health subjects rely on MONEY. So if money would be lost it could affect the exact same topics that were mentioned in column 'B'. Running an hospital, a business, managing political issues around the world, living up in social places they all rely on money therefore there would be not a much of a great differences between the two losses where all the subjects I have just mentioned would be affected harshly which brings us back to the thought why not try to play it big and maybe benefit more for our future.

Using Greg Craven's logic:
Assuming there is an error alert in all public shopping places in Uganda, but there is nothing to eat in my house, what could be the possible outcomes?

Not going to shop	Going to Shop	Terror alert in Uganda
Saving your life, but staying hungry. :)	Great chance of getting captured to 'uncomfortable' situation. :(	Terrorism takes place
Staying at home and hungry :(	Finally eating a good burger! :)	Terrorism not taking place.

Is Seeing Believing?

Belief, a concept that varies from every individual's opinion. The world is covered with lots of different beliefs, from religion to personal beliefs. However what we believe in mostly relies on what we see or what we don't see. Religions such as, Christianity, Judaism and Islam believe in the 'God' we never see. Why is that? For example, if I will tell a random person that I have 10 million dollars in my bank account, as much as it is not realistic it does not differ from the concept of religion and believing in someone that creates miracles. Us, human mostly don't believe in things that are not in the range of our imagination, however we never stopped believing in god. Of course that there are people who do not believe in god however, many industries are relied and based on that amazing thing we have never seen. So in order to believe in something, we have to sort of jump from the conscious we have to a complete belief otherwise we would have stayed hanged up in the air, which in reality happens to most of us. On the other hand, optical illusions can make us believe in something that does not exit at all, which brings me to a conclusion the seeing and believing do not rely on each other. Therefore, in order to really believe in something all that is required is just to make up a decision on whether we believe in that thing or not even if we don't see, but if most people are like me it is really difficult to take that decision to decide.

identifying the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and its limits!

“Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.”

Around 7 billion people live on the planet currently and we all speak different languages. Whorf claims that the languages we speak differ by the way they clearly convey different concepts and not by our different interpretations of this concepts. He believes that by the way each language is structured affects our perception on the world and the environment and also the apprehension we have on various concepts. For example, if we let people who speak different languages, give voices to things such as 'bed' or 'fork' the tone we will give to the object will mostly depend on whether this object is masculine or feminine in our language.

Moreover he remarks that in some languages the use of specifying directions rely on north, south, east, west instead of left, right, in front of and behind. He believes that even though a person might not be able to know the means of right or left and so more, it does not necessarily require that they may not understand its concept.

In addition, Sapir-Whord hypothesis is divided into both the linguistic determinism and linguistic relatively. He states that the linguistic determinist basically determines our thoughts and how one is perceived his or her reality depending on their mother tongue and linguistic relatively obeys the idea of the variation of views we have on different perceptions on concepts due to our mother tongue language.

Another great example that made me really wonder on how different people experience the world affected by their mother tongue is the example of if a two different people that speak different concepts of maintaining directions would enter a hotel and both of their rooms would look exactly the same from left to right the only difference would be that they are placed in front of each other, the person who uses the concepts of left and right would not be able to think of any differences of the placement of the objects whereas on the other hand all the concept of directions and placement of north, south east and west would fully reverse a person's way of thinking.