Arts, Sciences, and Economics: A Historical Safari (2nd Edition)
Tõnu Puu
Language: English
Pages: 210
ISBN: 3662500965
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This book deals with the economic aspects of changing attitudes in arts and sciences. The effects of the public good character of culture, along with the very long production period and lifetime for its products, are emphasized, since both contribute to the failure of normal market solutions. Embodiment of ideas, and the consequences of modern reproduction technology for protection of property rights are closely examined.
The evolution within arts and sciences, which often seems to return to previously scrapped ideals, is illustrated by detailed case studies, in which the importance of changing tastes, rather than progress proper, is emphasized.
The author attempts an understanding for this using Darwinian evolution in combination with modern mathematical complexity theory, expressed in terms accessible to the general reader.
The second edition is extended and updated especially as regards the illustration material.
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The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
The God Effect: Quantum Entanglement, Science's Strangest Phenomenon
In the Light of Science: Our Ancient Quest for Knowledge and the Measure of Modern Physics
At the Edge of Uncertainty: 11 Discoveries Taking Science by Surprise
Harmonious Universe” by Keith Laidler. 5.5 Principia Mathematica and Hilbert’s Programme Above we referred to the reductionist view of a hierarchy of sciences, with the higher levels related to the lower levels through deductive logical reasoning. The structure of mathematical logic itself therefore becomes an interesting issue even for empirical science. In order to answer such questions as whether the set of all sets was included in itself or not, Russell and Whitehead in 1910–1913 published
for a young lady, but finally yielded to her obsession. At the age of 18, after having studied calculus on her own during the Terror, she wanted to enter the newly founded École Polytechnique to study for the famous professor Lagrange. However, in this egalitarian age, women were not admitted to the school (Fig. 5.11). Fig. 5.11Drawing of mathematician Sophie Germain (1776–1831), who was denied study at the École Polytechnique, and appeared under a male disguise. She also published her work
under the pseudonym Monsieur LeBlanc. Note the ribbon around her neck, which was fashion by the time to commemorate all innocent people who during the terror had their necks chopped just there by Dr. Guillotine’s machine So, she dressed up as a man and took the identity of a former male student, M. LeBlanc, who had interrupted his education. After a while, seeing the test results, the professor, however, got curious of how the former most mediocre student could have turned so brilliant, so he
when combined with pure thirds. The big problem with mean tone temperament is that not all the thirds can be made pure, only 8 out of the 12, the remaining 4 being left as they could be. This implied that compositions were restricted to a limited number of keys, and that modulations through the keys had to be restricted as well. To remedy this several ingenious temperaments were invented in the Baroque. Bach’s own pupil Kirnberger describes a sophisticated compromise between equal and mean tone
(organizing the contents of the work), “decoratio” (elaboration of the idea), and “pronuntio” (performance), in complete accordance with classical oratory. A piece of music should also contain: statement of facts, proposition, proof, refutation, and conclusion, just like any dialectic discourse. The relation to emotions or “passions”, was proposed in Descartes’s “Traité des passions de l’âme” dating from 1649. So, there was not only trivial imitation of natural sounds: birds, bells, barking
