Random Facts Flashcards
Who was Parmenides?
Greek philosopher. 500-600 BCE. Poem “On Nature”. Two views of reality - “What Is” and “The Way Of Opinion”. Plato wrote a book about him.
What is the Iron Law of Oligarchy?
“All complex organisations eventually develop into oligarchies.” German sociologist Robert Michaels. “Political Parties”, 1911.
What is the monad?
Pythagoreans. The One. Begat the Dyad. Borrowed by the Gnostics. Represented by a circle with a dot in the centre.
What are Fermi’s Paradox and the Drake Equation?
Enrico Fermi: If advanced intelligence aliens exist, why haven’t they made contact?
Drake: To determine how likely it is that we co-exist with other advanced intelligent life.
What is the simple form of Bayes Theorem?
P(A|B) = P(B|A) P(A) / P(B)
What is the Kirkpatrick Doctrine?
Jeane Kirkpatrick, 1979. “Dictatorships And Double Standards”. Advocated supporting autocratic governments if they supported American aims. The Alternative was to replace them with leftist governments that would not. Ended up U.S. Ambassador to the UN under Reagan.
Who was the Greek philosopher who invented the idea of atoms?
Democritus.
Died around 370 BCE.
Followers included Epicurus and Lucretius.
He wrote “The only existing things are atoms and empty space; all else is mere opinion.”
Parsec
The parsec (symbol: pc) is a unit of length used to measure large distances to astronomical objects outside the Solar System
Portmanteau from parallax of one arcsecond.
One parsec is equal to about 3.26 light-years (31 trillion km or 19 trillion miles) in length.
Who was the first atomic materialist?
Democritus of Abdera, who died sometime close to 370 B.C. Lucretius and Epicurus were followers. He wrote: “The only existing things are atoms and empty space; all else is mere opinion.”
What was Stoicism?
Stoicism laid great emphasis on goodness and peace of mind gained from living a life of Virtue in accordance with Nature. Founded by Zeno around 300 BCE in Athens. His teachings were based on the moral ideas of the Cynics. He taught that The Universe is God: where all the parts belong to the whole.
What was Epicureanism?
Founded by Epicurus in Athens around 306 BCE.
For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by ataraxia—peace and freedom from fear—and aponia—the absence of pain—and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends.
He taught that pleasure and pain are measures of what is good and evil; death is the end of both body and soul and therefore should not be feared; the gods neither reward nor punish humans; the universe is infinite and eternal; and events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space.
The best-known Roman proponent of Epicurean thinking was the poet Lucretius. He wrote “On The Nature Of Things.”
What is the correct name for the yin yang symbol?
Taijitu.
English translation: “diagram of supreme ultimate”
What is the speed of light?
This relates that the speed of light is by convention ~300 million m/s (approximately 1.079 billion kilometres per hour, or 671 million miles per hour).
What was the Permian–Triassic extinction event?
The largest mass extinction in Earth’s history/
Nearly 90% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial species died out.
Occurred about 252 Ma (million years) ago
Took 10 million years to recover.
Caused by: one or more large meteor impact events OR massive volcanism such as that of the Siberian Traps OR a runaway greenhouse effect triggered by sudden release of methane from the sea floor.
Third law of thermodynamics
The entropy at thermodynamic equilibrium approaches zero as the temperature approaches zero.
