141–150 of 171 posts
Either philosophy is a dead end, then, or it is the base of all knowledge. Depends on whether knowledge is a tree or a graph, which is... a philosophical question! My brain exploded.
If there is some characteristic Q that is true of all knowledge, then Q must be true of Q. A cycle!
From a mathematical perspective, this is actually not that surprising. Think of the act of clicking the first link in the Wikipedia article as a function that takes in the page you're on and outputs another page. If you call this function on itself over and over again (ie use the output of one step as in the input of the next step), you will eventually enter a loop. The proof of this is simple: there are only a finit…
From a mathematical perspective, this is actually not that surprising. Think of the act of clicking the first link in the Wikipedia article as a function that takes in the page you're on and outputs another page. If you call this function on itself over and over again (ie use the output of one step as in the input of the next step), you will eventually enter a loop. The proof of this is simple: there are only a finit…
Agreed. I'd love to know how many different cycles the wikipedia article graph contains. If most articles lead to 1 out of 20 possible cycles, it's much less interesting than if it's 1 out of 5,000,000.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Traditionally, a university had four faculties, the lower or artists faculty, and the three higher faculties of theology, law and medicine. Students would start in the artists faculty learning the seven liberal arts (grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy (including astrology)) to become a magister artium (M.A.) and then go to one of the higher faculties to get their doctorate (Th.D, LL.…
Really cool comment, I love finding interesting trivia in forums.
In the above - grammar, rhetoric, logic - formed the "trivium" and - arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy - formed the "quadrivium".
Also "trivium" represented the place where three roads would intersect. People would meet here and exchange pleasantries and gossip. That is how you get the current meaning of the word "trivia".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
ah so thats why the degree is called Doctor of Philosophy?! Thanks for the enlightenment! I've wondered quite a lot of times why I'm a Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science, and not Doctor of Computer Science.
Traditionally, a university had four faculties, the lower or artists faculty, and the three higher faculties of theology, law and medicine. Students would start in the artists faculty learning the seven liberal arts (grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy (including astrology)) to become a magister artium (M.A.) and then go to one of the higher faculties to get their doctorate (Th.D, LL.…