No. The laws of thermodynamics were not developed until well after the concept of the heliocentric model of the Solar System was well established, and a few thousand years after the Earth was proven to be spherical.
"We" redrew the model of the Solar System based on observations that did not match the predictions of the current model. This is what tempted Copernicus to abandon the old Ptolemaic model and adopt a heliocentric model. His version was better, but still not right.
But you are correct: laws are hypotheses that have been thoroughly tested and have never been found to be wrong. Since we have never found an exception to the laws of thermodynamics, it is a safe bet that this device, if it works, is converting one form of energy into another, even if its is not obvious to the observer(s) what is transpiring.
The seminal work on Multiple Intelligences, Frames of Mind by Howard Gardner, identifies intelligences by what a culture deems to be important or significant, not an abstract "how-much-do-you-know" or "how-well-can-you-think" sort of thing.
In societies and cultures where musicians are or were valued, the Musical Intelligence would be highly prized.
The upshot of the Multiple Intelligences model is this:
Intelligences are never deployed individually, but rather as sets.
Individuals tend to use their strong intelligences to augment their weak intelligences.
The more you use an intelligence, the more comfortable you are with it, and the better you are at it.
IANAL, but I am a teacher with a Master's Degree in Education!
Because they have a profession, not just a job. Part of the requirements for employment is that the come as an expert in their field. This is called a doctorate, which allows them to be called doctor.
As part of the contract that they have with their university, they are required to continue to produce materials that enhances their chosen field of study, and they are expected to publish these results in refereed journals, edited and criticized by their peers.
On top of this, they teach, sometimes many different classes ranging from introductory level courses to graduate seminars. Each has different requirements and different preparation.
Professors have paid dues in their professions, too. They have been winnowed out from all of the people with bachelor degrees who wanted to go to grad school; these people actually made it through an academically rigorous program, as well as dealing with some of the most cut-throat politics that you can imagine.
They are also different because they are the intellectual elite; you may not like it, but most professors really are smarter than you, and many of them are geniuses.
Often, professors make less money than they do in the private sector, particularly those in the technical fields. They can earn $50,000 less per year than those in industry, but choose to do so because they like what they do.
And finally, no one would begrudge this professor from writing a book based on his lectures and selling that book for a profit. What is so different about his edited lectures? I can tell you that editing a lecture to something that is clear and concise is an onerous and time-consuming task. Somewhere along the way this professor should be recompensed for his time and effort to do something that no one asked him to do.
I hate to point this out to everyone, but Mr. Mayer is not a professor. He is listed at Stanford as an "affiliate", whatever that means. He is not faculty, he is not staff, and quick check of Google Scholar doesn't turn up any relevant publications by "A F Mayer".
He's a guy at Stanford that has a homepage on their system.
There is a difference between "observing" and "perceiving". We perceive in the macroscopic world; we "see" three dimensions and "sense" the fourth dimension of time -- surely you will admit that there is a sense that allows you to perceive the passage of time, and to split it into past, present, and future.
Much of the universe is obeying rules that simply do not have significant effects in the macroscopic world, except be secondary effects such as light escaping from excited atoms in flourescent tubes, etc.
What we traditionally call "dimensions", physicists call "degrees of freedom": it is these parameters that are being investigated. This would be similar to having another "dimension" that matter and energy can exist and interact in, yet would have such short-range effects that we would not see with our unaided senses, and would be difficult to see with even sophisticated experiments except by seeing the secondary effects produced.
I don't think that they are different diamond states; they are differing arrangements of carbon atoms to form a structure.
If we define "diamond" as the tetrahedrally shaped crystalline form of carbon, then this is a different form of carbon.
This would be analogous to the twelve forms of solid water, only one of which we know as "ice".
This is what the psychologist Csikszentmihalyi (1993) refers to as "the state of flow"; when this happens, you find a number of clear characteristics of the experience:
Clear goals: an objective is distinctly defined; immediate feedback: one knows instantly how well one is doing.
The opportunities for acting decisively are relatively high, and they are matched by one's perceived ability to act. In other words, personal skills are well suited to given challenges.
Action and awareness merge; one-pointedness of mind.
Concentration on the task at hand; irrelevant stimuli disappear from consciousness, worries and concerns are temporarily suspended.
A sense of potential control.
Loss of self-consciousness, transcendence of ego boundaries, a sense of growth and of being part of some greater entity.
Altered sense of time, which usually seems to pass faster.
Experience becomes autotelic: If several of the previous conditions are present, what one does becomes autotelic, or worth doing for its own sake. (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993, p.178-9)
The fact that you still retain many of the details in your memory marks this as a significant event, which validates both the article and Csikszentmihalyi's hypothesis.
-------
Csikszentmihalyi, M.(1993) The evolving self. New York: HarperCollins
Whether they did it for the good of the school or not, what they did was wrong, wrong, wrong. Is this what novice journalists are being taught, that the ends justify the means?
If they did it to help the school, they should have known that there were risks involved and taken these risks into account before publishing.
In looking over the newspaper website, I see that this is published by the Oxford Student Union; I have no knowledge to the contrary, so I will assume that the publication is done without editorial overview from a faculty member who would (it is to be hoped) point out such dangers to these nascent Woodsteins.
Slashdot Mirror
No. The laws of thermodynamics were not developed until well after the concept of the heliocentric model of the Solar System was well established, and a few thousand years after the Earth was proven to be spherical.
"We" redrew the model of the Solar System based on observations that did not match the predictions of the current model. This is what tempted Copernicus to abandon the old Ptolemaic model and adopt a heliocentric model. His version was better, but still not right.
But you are correct: laws are hypotheses that have been thoroughly tested and have never been found to be wrong. Since we have never found an exception to the laws of thermodynamics, it is a safe bet that this device, if it works, is converting one form of energy into another, even if its is not obvious to the observer(s) what is transpiring.
The seminal work on Multiple Intelligences, Frames of Mind by Howard Gardner, identifies intelligences by what a culture deems to be important or significant, not an abstract "how-much-do-you-know" or "how-well-can-you-think" sort of thing.
In societies and cultures where musicians are or were valued, the Musical Intelligence would be highly prized.
The upshot of the Multiple Intelligences model is this:
IANAL, but I am a teacher with a Master's Degree in Education!
No, he is probably a descendent of the great 19th century inventor Dr. Miguelito Loveless...
Why are professors different?
Because they have a profession, not just a job. Part of the requirements for employment is that the come as an expert in their field. This is called a doctorate, which allows them to be called doctor.
As part of the contract that they have with their university, they are required to continue to produce materials that enhances their chosen field of study, and they are expected to publish these results in refereed journals, edited and criticized by their peers.
On top of this, they teach, sometimes many different classes ranging from introductory level courses to graduate seminars. Each has different requirements and different preparation.
Professors have paid dues in their professions, too. They have been winnowed out from all of the people with bachelor degrees who wanted to go to grad school; these people actually made it through an academically rigorous program, as well as dealing with some of the most cut-throat politics that you can imagine.
They are also different because they are the intellectual elite; you may not like it, but most professors really are smarter than you, and many of them are geniuses.
Often, professors make less money than they do in the private sector, particularly those in the technical fields. They can earn $50,000 less per year than those in industry, but choose to do so because they like what they do.
And finally, no one would begrudge this professor from writing a book based on his lectures and selling that book for a profit. What is so different about his edited lectures? I can tell you that editing a lecture to something that is clear and concise is an onerous and time-consuming task. Somewhere along the way this professor should be recompensed for his time and effort to do something that no one asked him to do.
I hate to point this out to everyone, but Mr. Mayer is not a professor. He is listed at Stanford as an "affiliate", whatever that means. He is not faculty, he is not staff, and quick check of Google Scholar doesn't turn up any relevant publications by "A F Mayer". He's a guy at Stanford that has a homepage on their system.
There is a difference between "observing" and "perceiving". We perceive in the macroscopic world; we "see" three dimensions and "sense" the fourth dimension of time -- surely you will admit that there is a sense that allows you to perceive the passage of time, and to split it into past, present, and future.
Much of the universe is obeying rules that simply do not have significant effects in the macroscopic world, except be secondary effects such as light escaping from excited atoms in flourescent tubes, etc. What we traditionally call "dimensions", physicists call "degrees of freedom": it is these parameters that are being investigated. This would be similar to having another "dimension" that matter and energy can exist and interact in, yet would have such short-range effects that we would not see with our unaided senses, and would be difficult to see with even sophisticated experiments except by seeing the secondary effects produced.
I don't think that they are different diamond states; they are differing arrangements of carbon atoms to form a structure. If we define "diamond" as the tetrahedrally shaped crystalline form of carbon, then this is a different form of carbon. This would be analogous to the twelve forms of solid water, only one of which we know as "ice".
The fact that you still retain many of the details in your memory marks this as a significant event, which validates both the article and Csikszentmihalyi's hypothesis.
-------
Csikszentmihalyi, M.(1993) The evolving self. New York: HarperCollins
Whether they did it for the good of the school or not, what they did was wrong, wrong, wrong. Is this what novice journalists are being taught, that the ends justify the means?
If they did it to help the school, they should have known that there were risks involved and taken these risks into account before publishing.
In looking over the newspaper website, I see that this is published by the Oxford Student Union; I have no knowledge to the contrary, so I will assume that the publication is done without editorial overview from a faculty member who would (it is to be hoped) point out such dangers to these nascent Woodsteins.