# kb

id: social-heuristics-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_heuristics-0.md
category: reference
title: Social heuristics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_heuristics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:38.808102+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: social-heuristics-20260505-0
summary:
Social heuristics are simple decision making strategies that guide people's behavior and decisions in the social environment when time, information, or cognitive resources are scarce. Social environments tend to be characterised by complexity and uncertainty, and in order to simplify the decision-making process, people may use heuristics, which are decision making strategies that involve ignoring some information or relying on simple rules of thumb. The class of phenomena described by social heuristics overlap with those typically investigated by social psychology and game theory. At the intersection of these fields, social heuristics have been applied to explain cooperation in economic games used in experimental research. In the view of the field's academics, cooperation is typically advantageous in daily life, and therefore people develop a cooperation heuristic that gets applied even to one-shot anonymous interactions (the "social heuristics hypothesis" of human cooperation). == Overview == === Bounded rationality === In the decision-making process, optimisation is almost always intractable in any implementation, whether machine or neural. Because of this, defined parameters or boundaries must be implemented in the process in order to achieve an acceptable outcome. This method is known as applying bounded rationality, where an individual makes a collective and rational choice


id: social-heuristics-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_heuristics-1.md
category: reference
title: Social heuristics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_heuristics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:38.808102+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: social-heuristics-20260505-0
summary:
Imitate-the-majority heuristic, also referred to follow-the-majority heuristic. An agent (or decision maker) using the heuristic would imitate the behavior of the majority of others in his reference group. For instance, in deciding which restaurant to choose, people tend to choose the one with the longer waiting queue. Imitate-the-successful heuristic, also referred to follow-the-best heuristic. An agent using the heuristic would imitate the behavior of the most successful person in her reference group. Equity heuristic, also referred to 1/N heuristic. Using the heuristic means equally distributing resources among the available options. The heuristic was found to be successful in the stock market and also been found to describe parental resource allocation decisions: parents typically allocate their time and effort equally amongst their children. Social-circle heuristic. The heuristic is used to infer which of two alternatives has the higher value. An agent using the heuristic would search through her social circles in order of their proximity to the self (self, family, friends, and acquaintances), stopping the search as soon as the number of instances of one alternative within a circle exceeds that of the other, choosing the alternative with the higher tally. For example, a person might decide which of two sports


id: social-heuristics-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_heuristics-2.md
category: reference
title: Social heuristics
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_heuristics
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:38.808102+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: social-heuristics-20260505-0
summary:
Prisoner's dilemma game: two players each decide whether to cooperate or defect; a player who defects when the other cooperates maximizes his payout, if both cooperate the payout is higher than if both defect. Public goods game : multiple players each choose how much money to put towards a public project; the amount in the public pot is increased by a given factor and distributed equally to the players. Trust game: one player transfers money to another player and the money is increased by a given factor; the other then decides whether and how much to transfer back. Ultimatum game: one player makes an offer for how to split a resource with the other player; the other player can accept the offer (so that both players get the amount proposed by the split) or reject the offer (so that neither player gets anything). These economic games all share the condition that, when played in a single round, an individual's payout is maximized if he acts selfishly and chooses not to cooperate. However, over the course of repeated rounds, cooperation can be payout maximizing and thus be a self-interested strategy. Following a dual-process framework, the social heuristics hypothesis contends that cooperation,


id: sutton-s-law-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton's_law-0.md
category: reference
title: Sutton's law
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton's_law
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:39.965896+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: sutton-s-law-20260505-0
summary:
Sutton's law states that when diagnosing, one should first consider the obvious. It suggests that one should first conduct those tests which could confirm (or rule out) the most likely diagnosis. It is taught in medical schools to suggest to medical students that they might best order tests in that sequence which is most likely to result in a quick diagnosis, hence treatment, while minimizing unnecessary costs. It is also applied in pharmacology, when choosing a drug to treat a specific disease you want the drug to reach the disease. It is applicable to any process of diagnosis, e.g., debugging computer programs. Computer-aided diagnosis provides a statistical and quantitative approach. A more thorough analysis will consider the false positive rate of the test and the possibility that a less likely diagnosis might have more serious consequences. A competing principle is the idea of performing simple tests before more complex and expensive tests, moving from bedside tests to blood results and simple imaging such as ultrasound and then more complex such as MRI then specialty imaging. The law can also be applied in prioritizing tests when resources are limited, so a test for a treatable condition should be performed before an


id: symmetry-in-problem-solving-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetry_in_problem_solving-0.md
category: reference
title: Symmetry in problem solving
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetry_in_problem_solving
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:41.134584+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: symmetry-in-problem-solving-20260505-0
summary:
Symmetry in problem solving is one of the general methods used in mathematics and science to solve problems. Problem solving plays a large part in the teaching of mathematics, science and engineering. The use of symmetry as one of a number of problem solving strategies (heuristics) was first stated in 1945 by George Pólya in his book How to solve it. == Usage == Symmetry can be used in a variety of ways to assist in problem solving. Visualisation: by visualising the problem sometimes symmetry is revealed which simplifies finding a solution. Visualisation can be done by rearranging the problem expression into a more symmetric form, or by drawing a picture of the problem which reveals hidden symmetrical structure. Diagramming can be used to provide insight into the structure of a problem which may be obscured by its written formulation. Arguing "by symmetry": using a symmetry argument often clarifies a problem, leading to a quicker solution. For example, algebraic symmetry allows the permutation of the variables in an equation without changing it. Simplification: algebraic expressions and equations often benefit from simplification using symmetry. An example is the use of substitutions in expressions. Another example is switching from Cartesian coordinates to


id: take-the-best-heuristic-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take-the-best_heuristic-0.md
category: reference
title: Take-the-best heuristic
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take-the-best_heuristic
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:42.306420+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: take-the-best-heuristic-20260505-0
summary:
In psychology, the take-the-best heuristic is a heuristic (a simple strategy for decision-making) which decides between two alternatives by choosing based on the first cue that discriminates them, where cues are ordered by cue validity (highest to lowest). In the original formulation, the cues were assumed to have binary values (that is, either yes or no) or have an unknown value. The logic of the heuristic is that it bases its choice on the best cue (reason) only and ignores the rest. Psychologists Gerd Gigerenzer and Daniel Goldstein discovered that the heuristic did surprisingly well at making accurate inferences in real-world environments, such as inferring which of two cities is larger. The heuristic has since been modified and applied to domains from medicine, artificial intelligence, and political forecasting. The heuristic has been used to accurately model how experts, such as airport customs officers and professional burglars, make decisions; the model often makes better predictions of human behavior than more complex models that assume experts integrate all available cues. == One-reason decision-making == Theories of decision making typically assume that all relevant reasons (features or cues) are searched and integrated into a final decision. Yet under uncertainty (as opposed to risk),


id: take-the-best-heuristic-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take-the-best_heuristic-1.md
category: reference
title: Take-the-best heuristic
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take-the-best_heuristic
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:42.306420+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: take-the-best-heuristic-20260505-0
summary:
== Take-the-best for the comparison task == Consider the task to infer which object, A {\textstyle A} or B {\textstyle B} , has a higher value on a numerical criterion. As an example imagine someone having to judge whether the German city of Cologne has a larger population than the other German city of Stuttgart. This judgment or inference has to be based on information provided by binary cues, like "Is the city a state capital?". From a formal point of view, the task is a categorization: A pair ( A , B ) {\textstyle \left(A,B\right)} is to be categorized as X A > X B {\textstyle X_{A}>X_{B}} or X B > X A {\textstyle X_{B}>X_{A}} (where X {\textstyle X} denotes the criterion), based on cue information. Cues are binary; this means they assume two values and can be modeled, for instance, as having the values 0 and 1 (for 'yes' and 'no'). They are ranked according to their cue validity, defined as the proportion of correct comparisons among the pairs A {\textstyle A} and B {\textstyle B} , for which it has different values, i.e., for which it discriminates between A {\textstyle A} and B {\textstyle B} . Take-the-best


id: talking-past-each-other-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_past_each_other-0.md
category: reference
title: Talking past each other
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_past_each_other
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:43.488635+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: talking-past-each-other-20260505-0
summary:
"Talking past each other" is an English phrase sometimes used to describe the situation where two or more people talk about different subjects, while believing that they are talking about the same thing. David Horton wrote that when characters in fiction 'talk past each other,' the effect is to expose "an unbridgeable gulf between their respective perceptions and intentions. The result is an exchange, but never an interchange, of words in fragmented and cramped utterances whose subtext often reveals more than their surface meaning." His usage of single quotes around the phrase indicates the colloquial nature of it. The phrase might be used in widely varying contexts. For example, a book written in 1973, referred to certain dawn-to-dusk discussions of physics between Albert Einstein and David Hilbert in 1917, which they continued in writing, and Felix Klein notes that they "talked past each other, as happens not infrequently between simultaneously producing mathematicians." == See also == Essentially contested concept – Problem in philosophy Semantic change – Evolution of a word's meaning Contronym – Word that has two opposing meanings Irrelevant conclusion – Type of informal fallacy == Notes == == References == Anderson, Philip Warren. "Twenty years of talking past


id: teachable-moment-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teachable_moment-0.md
category: reference
title: Teachable moment
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teachable_moment
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:44.652442+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: teachable-moment-20260505-0
summary:
A teachable moment, in education, is the time at which learning a particular topic or idea becomes possible or easiest. == In education == The concept was popularized by Robert Havighurst in his 1952 book, Human Development and Education. In the context of education theory, Havighurst explained, "A developmental task is a task which is learned at a specific point and which makes achievement of succeeding tasks possible. When the timing is right, the ability to learn a particular task will be possible. This is referred to as a 'teachable moment.' It is important to keep in mind that unless the time is right, learning will not occur. Hence, it is important to repeat important points whenever possible so that when a student's teachable moment occurs, s/he can benefit from the knowledge." The concept pre-dates Havighurst's book, as does the use of the phrase, but he is credited with popularizing it. The phrase sometimes denotes not a developmental stage, but rather "that moment when a unique, high interest situation arises that lends itself to discussion of a particular topic." It implies "personal engagement" with issues and problems. These moments can (and often do) come when least expected. Teachers and parents


id: thinking-fast-and-slow-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow-0.md
category: reference
title: Thinking, Fast and Slow
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:45.841527+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: thinking-fast-and-slow-20260505-0
summary:
Thinking, Fast and Slow is a 2011 popular science book by the Israeli-American psychologist Daniel Kahneman. Its main thesis is a differentiation between two modes of thought: "System 1" is fast, instinctive and emotional; "System 2" is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The book delineates rational and non-rational motivations or triggers associated with each type of thinking process, and how they complement each other, starting with Kahneman's own research on loss aversion. From framing choices to people's tendency to replace a difficult question with one that is easy to answer, the book summarizes several decades of research to suggest that people have too much confidence in human judgement. Kahneman performed his own research, often in collaboration with the psychologist Amos Tversky, which enriched his experience to write the book. It covers different phases of his career: his early work concerning cognitive biases, his work on prospect theory and happiness, and with the Israel Defense Forces. Jason Zweig, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, helped write and research the book over two years. The book was a New York Times bestseller and was the 2012 winner of the American National Academies Communication Award for best creative work that helps


id: thinking-fast-and-slow-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow-1.md
category: reference
title: Thinking, Fast and Slow
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:45.841527+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: thinking-fast-and-slow-20260505-0
summary:
=== Conjunction fallacy === System 1 is prone to substituting a simpler question for a difficult one. In what Kahneman terms their "best-known and most controversial" experiment, "the Linda problem", subjects were told about an imaginary Linda, young, single, outspoken, and intelligent, who, as a student, was very concerned with discrimination and social justice. They asked whether it was more probable that Linda is a bank teller or that she is a bank teller and an active feminist. The overwhelming response was that "feminist bank teller" was more likely than "bank teller", violating the laws of probability. (All feminist bank tellers are bank tellers, so the former can't be more likely). In this case System 1 substituted the easier question, "Is Linda a feminist?", neglecting the occupation qualifier. An alternative interpretation is that the subjects added an unstated cultural implicature to the effect that the other answer implied an exclusive or, that Linda was not a feminist. === Optimism and loss aversion === Kahneman writes of a "pervasive optimistic bias", which "may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases." This bias generates the illusion of control: the illusion that we have substantial control of our lives. A natural


id: thinking-fast-and-slow-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow-2.md
category: reference
title: Thinking, Fast and Slow
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:45.841527+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: thinking-fast-and-slow-20260505-0
summary:
"Odd as it may seem," Kahneman writes, "I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me." === Experienced well-being === Kahneman first began the study of well-being in the 1990s. At the time most happiness research relied on polls about life satisfaction. Having previously studied unreliable memories, the author was doubtful that life satisfaction was a good indicator of happiness. He designed a question that emphasized instead the well-being of the experiencing self. The author proposed that "Helen was happy in the month of March" if she spent most of her time engaged in activities that she would rather continue than stop, little time in situations that she wished to escape, and not too much time in a neutral state that wouldn't prefer continuing or stopping the activity either way. === Thinking about life === Kahneman suggests that emphasizing a life event such as a marriage or a new car can provide a distorted illusion of its true value. This "focusing illusion" revisits earlier ideas of substituting difficult questions and WYSIATI. == Awards and honors == 2011 Los Angeles Times Book Prize (Current Interest) National Academy of Sciences Best Book


id: trial-and-error-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_and_error-0.md
category: reference
title: Trial and error
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_and_error
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:47.060591+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: trial-and-error-20260505-0
summary:
Trial and error is a fundamental method of problem-solving characterized by repeated, varied attempts which are continued until success, or until the practitioner stops trying. According to W.H. Thorpe, the term was devised by C. Lloyd Morgan (1852–1936) after trying out similar phrases "trial and failure" and "trial and practice". However, the phrase 'trial and error' was already in use in 1833, where it can be found in the book title "Practical Methods by Trial and Error for Finding the Latitude and Time at Sea". Under Morgan's Canon, animal behaviour should be explained in the simplest possible way. Where behavior seems to imply higher mental processes, it might be explained by trial-and-error learning. An example is the skillful way in which his terrier Tony opened the garden gate, easily misunderstood as an insightful act by someone seeing the final behavior. Lloyd Morgan, however, had watched and recorded the series of approximations by which the dog had gradually learned the response, and could demonstrate that no insight was required to explain it. Edward Lee Thorndike was the initiator of the theory of trial and error learning based on the findings he showed how to manage a trial-and-error experiment in the laboratory.


id: trial-and-error-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_and_error-1.md
category: reference
title: Trial and error
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_and_error
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:47.060591+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: trial-and-error-20260505-0
summary:
solution-oriented: trial and error does not attempt to discover why a solution works, merely that it is a solution. problem-specific: trial and error does not attempt to generalize a solution to other problems. non-optimal: trial and error is generally an attempt to find a solution, not all solutions, and not the best solution. needs little knowledge: trial and error can proceed where there is little or no knowledge of the subject. It is possible to use trial and error to find all solutions or the best solution when a testably finite number of possible solutions exists. To find all solutions, one simply makes a note and continues, rather than ending the process when a solution is found, until all solutions have been tried. To find the best solution, one finds all solutions by the method just described and then comparatively evaluates them based upon some predefined set of criteria, the existence of which is a condition for the possibility of finding a best solution. (Also, when only one solution can exist, as in assembling a jigsaw puzzle, then any solution found is the only solution and so is necessarily the best.) == Examples == Trial and error has traditionally been


id: win-stay-lose-switch-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win–stay,_lose–switch-0.md
category: reference
title: Win–stay, lose–switch
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win–stay,_lose–switch
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:48.259441+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: win-stay-lose-switch-20260505-0
summary:
In psychology, game theory, statistics, and machine learning, win–stay, lose–switch (also win–stay, lose–shift), or Pavlov, (named after Ivan Pavlov) is a heuristic learning strategy used to model learning in decision situations. It was first invented as an improvement over randomization in bandit problems. It was later applied to the prisoner's dilemma in order to model the evolution of altruism. In most versions, it starts either with a cooperate, then proceeds as always, or starts with a "probe" of cooperate-defect-cooperate to determine the other player's strategy. A mutual cooperation is regarded as a win. The learning rule bases its decision only on the outcome of the previous play. Outcomes are divided into successes (wins) and failures (losses). If the play on the previous round resulted in a success, then the agent plays the same strategy on the next round. Alternatively, if the play resulted in a failure the agent switches to another action. A large-scale empirical study of players of the game rock, paper, scissors shows that a variation of this strategy is adopted by real-world players of the game, instead of the Nash equilibrium strategy of choosing entirely at random between the three options. == References == == See also


id: zero-sum-thinking-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_thinking-0.md
category: reference
title: Zero-sum thinking
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_thinking
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:49.475318+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: zero-sum-thinking-20260505-0
summary:
Zero-sum thinking perceives situations as zero-sum games, where one person's gain would be another's loss. The term is derived from game theory. However, unlike the game theory concept, zero-sum thinking refers to a psychological construct—a person's subjective interpretation of a situation. Zero-sum thinking is captured by the saying "your gain is my loss" (or conversely, "your loss is my gain"). Rozycka-Tran et al. (2015) defined zero-sum thinking as: A general belief system about the antagonistic nature of social relations, shared by people in a society or culture and based on the implicit assumption that a finite amount of goods exists in the world, in which one person's winning makes others the losers, and vice versa ... a relatively permanent and general conviction that social relations are like a zero-sum game. People who share this conviction believe that success, especially economic success, is possible only at the expense of other people's failures. Zero-sum bias is a cognitive bias towards zero-sum thinking; it is people's tendency to intuitively judge that a situation is zero-sum, even when this is not the case. This bias promotes zero-sum fallacies — false beliefs that situations are zero-sum. Such fallacies can cause other false judgements and poor


id: zero-sum-thinking-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_thinking-1.md
category: reference
title: Zero-sum thinking
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_thinking
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:49.475318+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: zero-sum-thinking-20260505-0
summary:
==== Resource-scarce environments ==== One of the proximate causes of zero-sum thinking is the experiences that individuals have with scarce resources or zero-sum interactions in their developmental environment. In 1965, George M. Foster argued that members of "peasant" societies have an "Image of Limited Good," which he argued was learned through by experiences in a society that was essentially zero-sum."The model of cognitive orientation that seems to me best to account for peasant behavior is the "Image of Limited Good." By "Image of Limited Good" I mean that broad areas of peasant behavior are patterned in such fashion as to suggest that peasants view their social, economic, and natural universes—their total environment—as one in which all of the desired things in life such as land, wealth, health, friendship and love, manliness and honor, respect and status, power and influence, security and safety, exist in finite quantity and are always in short supply, as far as the peasant is concerned. Not only do these and all other "good things" exist in finite and limited quantities, but in addition there is no way directly within peasant power to increase the available quantities ... When the peasant views his economic world as one


id: hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:51.041584+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
A hypothesis (pl.: hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. A scientific hypothesis must be based on observations and make a testable and reproducible prediction about reality, in a process beginning with an educated guess. If a hypothesis is repeatedly independently demonstrated by experiment to be true, it becomes a scientific theory. In colloquial usage, the words hypothesis and theory are often used interchangeably, but this is incorrect in the context of science. A working hypothesis is a provisionally-accepted hypothesis used for the purpose of pursuing further progress in research. Working hypotheses are frequently discarded, and often proposed with knowledge (and warning) that they are incomplete and thus false, with the intent of moving research in at least somewhat the right direction, especially when scientists are stuck on an issue and brainstorming ideas. In formal logic, a hypothesis is the antecedent in a proposition. For example, in the proposition "If P, then Q", statement P denotes the hypothesis (or antecedent) of the consequent Q. Hypothesis P is the assumption in a (possibly counterfactual) "what if" question. The adjective "hypothetical" (having the nature of a hypothesis or being assumed to exist as an immediate consequence of a hypothesis), can refer


id: hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:51.041584+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
A working hypothesis is a hypothesis that is provisionally accepted as a basis for further research in the hope that a tenable theory will be produced, even if the hypothesis ultimately fails. Like all hypotheses, a working hypothesis is constructed as a statement of expectations, which can be linked to the exploratory research purpose in empirical investigation. Working hypotheses are often used as a conceptual framework in qualitative research. The provisional nature of working hypotheses makes them useful as an organizing device in applied research. Here they act like a useful guide to address problems that are still in a formative phase. In recent years, philosophers of science have tried to integrate the various approaches to evaluating hypotheses, and the scientific method in general, to form a more complete system that integrates the individual concerns of each approach. Notably, Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend, Karl Popper's colleague and student, respectively, have produced novel attempts at such a synthesis. == Hypotheses, concepts and measurement == Concepts in Hempel's deductive-nomological model play a key role in the development and testing of hypotheses. Most formal hypotheses connect concepts by specifying the expected relationships between propositions. When a set of hypotheses are grouped together,


id: absolute-income-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_income_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Absolute income hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_income_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:52.235761+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: absolute-income-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
In economics, the absolute income hypothesis concerns how a consumer divides their disposable income between consumption and saving. It is part of the theory of consumption attributed to John Maynard Keynes. The American economist James Tobin (1918–2002) researched and developed this idea more extensively in the 1960s and 70s. == Background == Keynes' General Theory in 1936 identified the relationship between income and consumption as a key macroeconomic relationship. Keynes asserted that real consumption (i.e. adjusted for inflation) is a function of real disposable income, which is total income net of taxes. As income rises, the theory asserts that consumption will also rise, but not necessarily at the same rate. When applied to a cross section of a population, rich people are expected to consume a lower proportion of their income than poor people. The marginal propensity to consume is present in Keynes' consumption theory and determines by what amount consumption will change in response to a change in income. While this theory has success modeling consumption in the short term, attempts to apply this model over a longer time frame have proven less successful. This has led to the absolute income hypothesis falling out of favor as the consumption


id: ad-hoc-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hoc_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Ad hoc hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hoc_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:53.374609+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ad-hoc-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
In science and philosophy, an ad hoc hypothesis is a hypothesis added to a theory in order to save it from being falsified. For example, a person that wants to believe in leprechauns can avoid ever being proven wrong by using ad hoc hypotheses (e.g., by adding "they are invisible", then "their motives are complex", and so on). Often, ad hoc hypothesizing is employed to compensate for anomalies not anticipated by the theory in its unmodified form. == In the scientific community == Scientists are often skeptical of theories that rely on frequent, unsupported adjustments to sustain them. This is because, if a theorist so chooses, there is no limit to the number of ad hoc hypotheses that they could add. Thus the theory becomes more and more complex, but is never falsified. This is often at a cost to the theory's predictive power, however. Ad hoc hypotheses are often characteristic of pseudoscientific subjects. Albert Einstein's addition of the cosmological constant to general relativity in order to allow a static universe was ad hoc. Although he later referred to it as his "greatest blunder", it may correspond to theories of dark energy. == See also == Ad hoc Fringe science


id: adipose-tissue-expandability-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipose_tissue_expandability_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Adipose tissue expandability hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipose_tissue_expandability_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:55.612615+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: adipose-tissue-expandability-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The adipose tissue expandability hypothesis posits that metabolic dysregulation that appears to be caused by excess weight, such as type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, are triggered when an individual's capacity for storing excess calories in the subcutaneous adipose tissue is exceeded. Each individual's capacity to store excess energy varies, so the threshold at which an individual begins to experience metabolic disease is not well captured by methods such as body mass index or body fat percentage. If a person has the ability to store a large amount of body fat without experiencing metabolic disturbance, this is known as metabolically healthy obesity. Although it was hypothesized that having a larger number of smaller adipocytes was correlated with the ability to store more fat, some evidence suggests the opposite—those with smaller adipocytes having a worse metabolic profile. The core factor, the inability to store excess fat in these cells, remains. == References ==


id: aestivation-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aestivation_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Aestivation hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aestivation_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:56.818197+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: aestivation-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The aestivation hypothesis is a hypothesized solution to the Fermi paradox conceived in 2017 by Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong and Milan M. Ćirković. The hypothesis, published on 27 April 2017, suggests advanced alien civilizations may be storing energy and aestivating (hibernating in times of heat instead of cold), until the universe cools to better make use of the stored energy to perform tasks. As the universe cools, the potential work producible by stored energy can increase by a multiplier of 1030 per Landauer's principle. If the goal of an advanced civilization is to maximize the number of calculations done, to generate information processing for tasks like mass-producing simulations, then aestivation would be purposeful to achieve this end. == Fermi paradox == There is no reliable or reproducible evidence that aliens have visited Earth. No transmissions or evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life have been detected or observed anywhere other than Earth in the Universe. This runs counter to the knowledge that the Universe is filled with a very large number of planets, some of which likely hold the conditions hospitable for life. Life typically expands until it fills all available niches. These contradictory facts form the basis for the Fermi paradox,


id: alvarez-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvarez_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Alvarez hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvarez_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:58.010084+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: alvarez-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The Alvarez hypothesis posits that the mass extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs and many other living things during the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event was caused by the impact of a large asteroid on the Earth. Prior to 2013, it was commonly cited as having happened about 65 million years ago, but Renne and colleagues (2013) gave an updated value of 66 million years. Evidence indicates that the asteroid fell in the Yucatán Peninsula, at Chicxulub, Mexico. The hypothesis is named after the father-and-son team of scientists Luis and Walter Alvarez, who first suggested it in 1980. Shortly afterwards, and independently, the same was suggested by Dutch paleontologist Jan Smit. In March 2010, an international panel of scientists endorsed the asteroid hypothesis, specifically the Chicxulub impact, as being the cause of the extinction. A team of 41 scientists reviewed 20 years of scientific literature and in so doing also ruled out other theories such as massive volcanism. They had determined that a space rock 10–15 km (6–9 mi) in diameter hurtled into earth at Chicxulub. For comparison, the Martian moon Phobos has a diameter of 22 km (14 mi), and Mount Everest is just under 9 km (5.6 mi). The collision would


id: alvarez-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvarez_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Alvarez hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvarez_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:58.010084+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: alvarez-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The location of the impact was unknown when the Alvarez team developed their hypothesis, but later scientists discovered the Chicxulub Crater in the Yucatán Peninsula, now considered the likely impact site. Paul Renne of the Berkeley Geochronology Center has reported that the date of the asteroid event is 66,038,000 years ago, plus or minus 11,000 years, based on Ar-Ar dating. He further posits that the mass extinction of dinosaurs occurred within 33,000 years of this date. In April 2019, a paper was published in PNAS which describes evidence from a fossil site in North Dakota that the authors say provides a "postimpact snapshot" of events after the asteroid collision "including ejecta accretion and faunal mass death". The team found that the tektites that had peppered the area were present in amber found on the site and were also embedded in the gills of about 50 percent of the fossil fish. They were also able to find traces of iridium. The authors – who include Walter Alvarez – postulate that shock of the impact, equivalent to an earthquake of magnitude 10 or 11, may have led to seiches, oscillating movements of water in lakes, bays, or gulfs, that would have reached


id: alvarez-hypothesis-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvarez_hypothesis-2.md
category: reference
title: Alvarez hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvarez_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:58.010084+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: alvarez-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Although a 2010 paper published in Science that declared that the extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by Chicxulub was co-authored by 41 scientists, dozens of other scientists challenged both the paper's methods and its conclusions. A leading critic of the Alvarez hypothesis is Gerta Keller, who has focused on Deccan Traps volcanism as a likely cause of a more gradual extinction. Despite the fact that the Alvarez hypothesis has overwhelming support from the scientific community, Keller has continued to advocate for research into alternate theories. The Deccan Traps theory was first proposed in 1978 by geologist Dewey McLean but quickly lost traction. The Deccan Traps are an area of volcanic flood basalts in Western India spanning ~1.3 million square kilometers that were created by massive volcanic activity during the same time period in which the Chicxulub impact occurred. Prior to Keller's research, the timeframe of the Deccan Traps' eruptions had a significantly large range of error, making it difficult to draw strong conclusions regarding their connection to the K-Pg extinction. In a 2014 report, Keller and her colleagues used uranium-lead zircon geochronology to more accurately identify the eruptions as occurring both within a span of one million years and


id: analysis-of-competing-hypotheses-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_of_competing_hypotheses-0.md
category: reference
title: Analysis of competing hypotheses
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_of_competing_hypotheses
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:59.135316+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: analysis-of-competing-hypotheses-20260505-0
summary:
The analysis of competing hypotheses (ACH) is a methodology for evaluating multiple competing hypotheses for observed data. It was developed by Richards (Dick) J. Heuer, Jr., a 45-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, in the 1970s for use by the Agency. ACH is used by analysts in various fields who make judgments that entail a high risk of error in reasoning. ACH aims to help an analyst overcome, or at least minimize, some of the cognitive limitations that make prescient intelligence analysis so difficult to achieve. ACH was a step forward in intelligence analysis methodology, but it was first described in relatively informal terms. Producing the best available information from uncertain data remains the goal of researchers, tool-builders, and analysts in industry, academia and government. Their domains include data mining, cognitive psychology and visualization, probability and statistics, etc. Abductive reasoning is an earlier concept with similarities to ACH. == Process == Heuer outlines the ACH process in considerable depth in his book, Psychology of Intelligence Analysis. It consists of the following steps: Hypothesis – The first step of the process is to identify all potential hypotheses, preferably using a group of analysts with different perspectives to brainstorm the possibilities.


id: analysis-of-competing-hypotheses-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_of_competing_hypotheses-1.md
category: reference
title: Analysis of competing hypotheses
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_of_competing_hypotheses
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:58:59.135316+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: analysis-of-competing-hypotheses-20260505-0
summary:
ACH demands that the analyst makes too many discrete judgments, a great many of which contribute little if anything to discerning the best hypothesis ACH misconceives the nature of the relationship between items of evidence and hypotheses by supposing that items of evidence are, on their own, consistent or inconsistent with hypotheses. ACH treats the hypothesis set as "flat", i.e. a mere list, and so is unable to relate evidence to hypotheses at the appropriate levels of abstraction ACH cannot represent subordinate argumentation, i.e. the argumentation bearing up on a piece of evidence. ACH activities at realistic scales leave analysts disoriented or confused. Van Gelder proposed hypothesis mapping (similar to argument mapping) as an alternative to ACH. === Structured analysis of competing hypotheses === The structured analysis of competing hypotheses offers analysts an improvement over the limitations of the original ACH. The SACH maximizes the possible hypotheses by allowing the analyst to split one hypothesis into two complex ones. For example, two tested hypotheses could be that Iraq has WMD or Iraq does not have WMD. If the evidence showed that it is more likely there are WMDs in Iraq then two new hypotheses could be formulated: WMD are in


id: anfinsen-s-dogma-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anfinsen's_dogma-0.md
category: reference
title: Anfinsen's dogma
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anfinsen's_dogma
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:00.330938+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: anfinsen-s-dogma-20260505-0
summary:
Anfinsen's dogma, also known as the thermodynamic hypothesis, is a postulate in molecular biology. It states that, at least for a small globular protein in its standard physiological environment, the native structure is determined only by the protein's amino acid sequence. The dogma was championed by the Nobel Prize Laureate Christian B. Anfinsen from his research on the folding of ribonuclease A. His research was based on previous studies by biochemist Lisa Steiner, whose superiors at the time did not recognize the significance. The postulate amounts to saying that, at the environmental conditions (temperature, solvent concentration and composition, etc.) at which folding occurs, the native structure is a unique, stable and kinetically accessible minimum of the free energy. In other words, there are three conditions for formation of a unique protein structure: Uniqueness – Requires that the sequence does not have any other configuration with a comparable free energy. Hence the free energy minimum must be unchallenged. Stability – Small changes in the surrounding environment cannot give rise to changes in the minimum configuration. This can be pictured as a free energy surface that looks more like a funnel (with the native state in the bottom of it) rather than


id: aramaic-new-testament-hypotheses-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_New_Testament_hypotheses-0.md
category: reference
title: Aramaic New Testament hypotheses
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_New_Testament_hypotheses
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:01.547733+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: aramaic-new-testament-hypotheses-20260505-0
summary:
Aramaic New Testament hypotheses are a number of hypotheses within Biblical scholarship which argue that the Christian New Testament derives in some form from an Aramaic original. A first version was initially advanced in the 17th and 18th centuries, arguing that all Gospels and Acts could derive from one Aramaic proto-Gospel. Subsequent current-day hypotheses trying to better establish this earlier hypothesis, usually argue some parts of the Gospels could derive from an Aramaic sayings-source. In current scholarship they enjoy no notable support compared to the consensus hypothesis that the New Testament was written in Koine Greek. They are related to and often overlap with the Hebrew Gospel hypothesis, which posits a similar idea but with Hebrew instead of Aramaic. == Greek original New Testament hypothesis == The current consensus view held by almost all scholars of the New Testament is that all of its contents were originally written in Koine Greek. An example of how mainstream scholars have dealt with Aramaic influences within an overall view of the Gospels' original Greek-language development may be found in Martin Hengel's synthesis of studies of the linguistic situation in Palestine during the time of Jesus and the Gospels:Since non-literary, simple Greek knowledge or


id: augustinian-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustinian_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Augustinian hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustinian_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:02.720328+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: augustinian-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The Augustinian hypothesis (sometimes referred to as the Augustinian Proposal) is a solution to the synoptic problem, which concerns the origin of the Gospels of the New Testament. The hypothesis holds that Matthew was written first, by Matthew the Evangelist (see the Gospel According to the Hebrews and the Jewish-Christian Gospels). Mark the Evangelist wrote the Gospel of Mark second and used Matthew and the preaching of Peter as sources. Luke the Evangelist wrote the Gospel of Luke and was aware of the two Gospels that preceded him. Unlike some competing hypotheses, this hypothesis does not rely on, nor does it argue for, the existence of any document that is not explicitly mentioned in historical testimony. Instead, the hypothesis draws primarily upon historical testimony, rather than textual criticism, as the central line of evidence. The foundation of evidence for the hypothesis is the writings of the Church Fathers: historical sources dating back to as early as the first half of the 2nd century, which have been held as authoritative by most Christians for nearly two millennia. Adherents to the Augustinian hypothesis view it as a simple, coherent solution to the synoptic problem. The Augustinian hypothesis addresses certain fundamental points of


id: augustinian-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustinian_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Augustinian hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustinian_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:02.720328+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: augustinian-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
=== Papias === According to Irenaeus, Papias was "a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp, a man of primitive times," who wrote a volume in "five books." The benefit of historical immediacy, as argued by D. H. Fischer is one of the key determinants of historicity, and the church father Papias is a very early source in regard to testimony that the Matthew wrote his gospel first. Papias wrote that: "Matthew compiled the sayings in the Hebrew language, and everyone translated them as well he could." (The 'Hebrew language' referred to by Papias has often been interpreted as Aramaic.) It has been argued, because Papias does not cite an authority for his assertions concerning Matthew but does concerning Mark, that Matthew was already fully accepted at the time of his writings. === Clement === Eusebius also recorded an important tradition from Clement of Alexandria (died c. 213): In the same volumes Clement has found room for a tradition of the primitive authorities of the Church regarding the order of the gospels. It is this. He used to say that the earliest gospels were those containing the genealogies [Matthew, Luke], while Mark's originated as follows: When, at Rome, Peter


id: augustinian-hypothesis-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustinian_hypothesis-2.md
category: reference
title: Augustinian hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustinian_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:02.720328+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: augustinian-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The Augustinian position, and the similar Griesbach hypothesis, has drawn recent interest, especially from B. C. Butler, John Wenham, W.R. Farmer, and others as an alternative solution to the synoptic problem, and has been employed as a scholarly refutation of Marcan priority, the Q hypothesis, and the two-source hypothesis. Butler argued that accepting the priority of Matthew rendered it possible to dispense with the hypothetical Q document altogether, a position he supported by arguments concerning the inadmissibility of appealing to Q as a sound explanation of the cases where Matthew appears to be more original than Mark. Likewise it has been pointed out that differences between the Synoptic Gospels are as easily explained by differing purposes of the authors than by forced redactions or omissions due to ignorance. Furthermore, against certain arguments that the “primitiveness” of the ideas within the Gospels is the determining factor in their literary interdependence, it is observed that defining "primitiveness" carries obvious difficulties. Farmer argued that a modification of the Augustinian hypothesis, the so-called Two-gospel hypothesis, ordering Matthew-Luke-Mark, eliminated all reasons for the existence of Q, a position whose credibility was conceded by W.C. Allen and others. Bernard Orchard also developed the Two-gospel hypothesis and


id: augustinian-hypothesis-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustinian_hypothesis-3.md
category: reference
title: Augustinian hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustinian_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:02.720328+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: augustinian-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
A savage persecution of the Church, begun by Herod Agrippa I in AD 42, was the signal for the dispersion of the apostles now possessing in the Gospel of Matthew the necessary tool to support and confirm their preaching, while at the same time preserving their theological unity. The first phase was completed, and the second phase of the Church's expansion was about to begin with the mission of Paul. Central to Orchard's characterization of this new second phase is the distinction between a primarily Hebrew orientation and a primarily Greek orientation, focusing not only on the Jewish converts to Christianity, but to the gentile converts as well. This, he argues, resulted in three key events: the translation of the original Matthew into Greek, the production of the Gospel of Mark within the context of Peter's preaching to Greek speaking converts in Rome, and Luke's authorship of his Gospel under the instruction of Paul. Cited in support of this are the comments of Clement, Irenaeus, and others who state that the Gospel of Mark was written by Mark, a follower of the apostle Peter, based on his speeches. Orchard countered the claim that the Gospel of Mark must have been


id: babble-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babble_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Babble hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babble_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:03.879807+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: babble-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
In psycholinguistics and leadership studies, the babble hypothesis (demonstratively labelled the babble effect) is a conjecture that posits a strong correlation between the amount or quantity of speaking time an individual has in group settings and their likelihood of emerging as a leader, as commonly opposed to quality of speech. According to the hypothesis, individuals who contribute more verbal input during group interactions are perceived to have increased speaking time which in turn increases likelihood of them being perceived and recognized as leaders. Those individuals who speak more also receive higher ratings on leader, communication and contribution-related measures. == Past research == Research into the idea that emerging leaders talk a lot has been around for a long time, with Bales making this claim in 1950. One of the earliest studies that directly varied the quality and quantity of verbal interaction was by Regula and Julian (1973). They found that variations in the quantity but not in the quality of task contributions affected whether the power to influence others was attributed to an individual. There have since been many studies investigating the extent to which speaking time can predict the emergence of leaders in previously leaderless groups. However, many have


id: berserker-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Berserker hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:05.161026+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: berserker-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The Berserker hypothesis, also known as the deadly probes scenario, is the idea that humans have not yet detected intelligent alien life in the universe because it has been systematically destroyed by a series of lethal Von Neumann probes. The hypothesis is named after the Berserker series of novels (1963–2005) written by Fred Saberhagen. The hypothesis has no single known proposer, and instead is thought to have emerged over time in response to the Hart–Tipler conjecture, the idea that an absence of detectable Von Neumann probes is contrapositive evidence that no intelligent life exists outside of the Solar System. According to the Berserker hypothesis, an absence of such probes is not evidence of life's absence, since interstellar probes could "go berserk" and destroy other civilizations, before self-destructing. In his 1983 paper "The Great Silence", astronomer David Brin summarized the implications of the Berserker hypothesis: it is entirely compatible with all the facts and logic of the Fermi paradox, but would mean that there exists no intelligent life left to be discovered. In the worst case, humanity has already alerted others to its existence, and is next in line to be destroyed. There is no need to struggle to suppress the


id: biophilia-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biophilia_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Biophilia hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biophilia_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:06.376743+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: biophilia-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The biophilia hypothesis (also called BET) suggests that humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with nature and other forms of life. Edward O. Wilson introduced and popularized the hypothesis in his book, Biophilia (1984). He defines biophilia as the "innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes". He argued that "to explore and affiliate with life is a deep and complicated process in mental development. To an extent still undervalued in philosophy and religion, our existence depends on this propensity, our spirit is woven from it, hope rises on its currents". Wilson saw modern biology as converging with biophilia: "Modern biology has produced a genuinely new way of looking at the world that is incidentally congenial to the inner direction of biophilia. In other words, instinct is in this rare instance aligned with reason.... to the degree that we come to understand other organisms, we will place a greater value on them, and on ourselves". == Natural affinity for living systems == "Biophilia" is an innate affinity of life or living systems. The term was first used by Erich Fromm to describe a psychological orientation of being attracted to all that is alive and vital. Wilson uses


id: biophilia-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biophilia_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Biophilia hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biophilia_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:06.376743+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: biophilia-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Many Indigenous cultures do not draw a sharp distinction between humans and nature. In these traditions, humans may be understood as an integral part of the natural world rather than as separate from it. Human practices and ways of life may be seen to be based in relationships of reciprocity involving all living beings and the environment. At the heart of such belief systems is the concept of kinship, which extends beyond human relationships and includes elements of the natural world. Humans, other animals, plants and soil are seen as dependent on each other for survival and health. For example, the Haudenosaunee people express this idea through a "Thanksgiving Address", a ceremony intended to honor all aspects of nature. Some Indigenous cultures have developed what has been referred to as "traditional ecological knowledge". This may include ostensibly sustainable stewardship practices such as controlled burns of vegetation, as employed in some traditional Native American and Aboriginal Australian societies. In Hawaii, the idea of Aloha_ʻĀina aloha has served as a guide for responsible resource use. Indigenous and animist beliefs typically view nature as sacred. Specific sites, species, or phenomena holding deep significance. Emphasis is put on objectives such as reciprocity and balance.


id: black-sea-deluge-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Black Sea deluge hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:07.496507+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: black-sea-deluge-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The Black Sea deluge is the best known of three hypothetical flood scenarios for the Late Quaternary history of the Black Sea that have been proposed since 1997. One other flood scenario proposes a rapid, even catastrophic, rise in sea level of the Black Sea. The maximum depth of the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits is 110 meters (360 ft) and 103 meters (338 ft), respectively, which would put them above the ocean levels in the Last Glacial Maximum, some 125 meters (410 ft) lower than in present times. The hypothesis is controversial, with other authors arguing for a more gradual inundation of the Black Sea. == History == In 1997, William Ryan, Walter Pitman, Petko Dimitrov, and their colleagues first published the Black Sea deluge hypothesis. They proposed that a catastrophic inflow of Mediterranean seawater into the Black Sea freshwater lake occurred around 7,600 years ago, c. 5600 BCE. As proposed, the Early Holocene Black Sea flood scenario describes events that would have profoundly affected prehistoric settlement in Eastern Europe and adjacent parts of Asia and possibly was the basis of oral history concerning the myth of Noah's flood. Some archaeologists support this theory as an explanation for the lack


id: black-sea-deluge-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Black Sea deluge hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:07.496507+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: black-sea-deluge-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
== Counter-arguments == Criticisms of the deluge hypothesis hinge on two main lines of arguments. The first mainly focuses on the water level of the Black Sea: if the magnitude and pace of the rise of the Black Sea level was moderate enough, or if it even outpaced the rise in the Aegean basin (with water flowing, when they reconnected, from the former to the latter as it does now), or if the straits were already opened (at a lower level than now) and the two basins already connected at the time of the hypothesised flood, the catastrophe hypothesis is voided. The second is the lack of archaeological evidence one would expect of a flood, such as impact on geology, wildlife or humans. Since the end of the last glacial period, the global sea level has risen 120 m (390 ft). The flood hypothesis hinges on the geomorphology of the Bosporus since the end of the glacial age. The Black Sea area has been isolated and reconnected many times during the last 500,000 years. Opponents of the deluge hypothesis point to clues that water was flowing out of the Black Sea basin as late as 15,000 years ago. In this


id: black-sea-deluge-hypothesis-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis-2.md
category: reference
title: Black Sea deluge hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:07.496507+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: black-sea-deluge-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
== Further reading == Aksu, Ali E.; Hiscott, Richard N.; Mudie, Peta J.; Rochon, André; Kaminski, Michael A.; Abrajano, Teofilo; Yaşar, Doğan (2002). "Persistent Holocene Outflow from the Black Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean Contradicts Noah's Flood Hypothesis". GSA Today. 12 (5): 4. Bibcode:2002GSAT...12e...4A. doi:10.1130/1052-5173(2002)012<0004:PHOFTB>2.0.CO;2. Yanko-Hombach, Valentina; Gilbert, Allan S.; Panin, Nicolae; Dolukhanov, Pavel M., eds. (2007). The Black Sea Flood Question: Changes in Coastline, Climate, and Human Settlement. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-5302-3. ISBN 978-1-4020-4774-9. Dimitrov, Petko; Dimitrov, Dimitar (2004). The Black Sea, the Flood and the ancient myths. "Slavena", Varna. doi:10.13140/RG.2.2.18954.16327. Dimitrov, Dimitar Petkov (2010). Geology and Non-traditional resources of the Black Sea. LAP (Lambert Academic Publishing AG), Saarbrucken, Germany. doi:10.13140/RG.2.2.20631.88486. Eris, K.; Ryan, W. B. F.; Cagatay, N.; Sancar, Ü.; Lericolais, G.; Menot, G.; Bard, E. (2008). "The timing and evolution of the post-glacial transgression across the Sea of Marmara shelf south of İstanbul" (PDF). Marine Geology. 243 (1–4): 57–76. doi:10.1016/j.margeo.2007.04.010. Gökaşan, E.; Algan, O.; Tur, H.; Meriç, E.; Türker, A.; Şimşek, M. (2005). "Delta formation at the southern entrance of Istanbul Strait (Marmara sea, Turkey): a new interpretation based on high-resolution seismic stratigraphy". Geo-Marine Letters. 25 (6): 370–377. Bibcode:2005GML....25..370G. doi:10.1007/s00367-005-0215-4. S2CID 130792746. Keith, M.L.; Anderson, G.M. (1963). "Radiocarbon Dating: Fictitious


id: bold-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bold_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Bold hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bold_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:08.744356+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: bold-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Bold hypothesis (or bold conjecture, the terms are used interchangeably) is a concept originally created by the liberal philosopher Karl Popper when he tried to define the meaning of scientific thinking and scientific progress. It was first explained in his debut The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1935) and subsequently elaborated in writings such as Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963), Objective knowledge: an evolutionary approach (1972), and Replies to my critics (1974). In successive texts written in the course of four decades, Popper added some nuances to the definition of the concept. Broadly speaking, the idea of a bold hypothesis refers to a new, testable theoretical proposition (or theoretical claim) made within a subject area which, if it is true, would be able to explain and predict much more about the subject than was previously possible. It would significantly alter existing scientific understandings about the subject, in a positive way. The new idea would be very useful for scientific research about the subject. This contrasts with other types of scientific claims which, if they turn out to be true, make little difference to what scientists already know about the subject. The contrary of a bold hypothesis is


id: bold-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bold_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Bold hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bold_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:08.744356+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: bold-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
”There is a reality behind the world as it appears to us, possibly a many-layered reality, of which the appearances are the outermost layers. What the great scientist does is boldly to guess, daringly to conjecture, what these inner realities are like. (…) The boldness can be gauged by the distance between the world of appearance and the conjectured reality, the explanatory hypotheses. But there is another, a special kind of boldness – the boldness of predicting aspects of the world of appearance which so far have been overlooked but which it must possess if the conjectured reality is (more or less) right, if the explanatory hypotheses are (approximately) true. It is this more special kind of boldness which I have usually in mind when I speak of bold scientific conjectures. It is the boldness of a conjecture which takes a real risk – the risk of being tested and refuted; the risk of clashing with reality. Thus my proposal was, and is, that it is this second boldness, together with the readiness to look out for tests and refutations, which distinguishes “empirical” science from nonscience, and especially from prescientific myths and metaphysics.” This passage makes it very clear, that


id: bold-hypothesis-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bold_hypothesis-2.md
category: reference
title: Bold hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bold_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:08.744356+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: bold-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Is boldness always a good thing in scientific hypothesizing? How we assess the degree of boldness may just be a subjective matter (it may depends on how you care to look at it). Some new ideas, although they are rather modest in themselves, can make a very large difference to the advancement of scientific research. At a more concrete level, the degree of "boldness" could refer (i) to the content of the hypothesis (considered relative to other possible hypotheses), or (ii) to the manner or context in which the hypothesis is presented, (iii) to its expected importance for research, or (iv) to the attitude involved. The degree of boldness could be downplayed for the sake of credibility or compatibility with established ideas, or it could be exaggerated to create the image of a "big scientific breakthrough" (to obtain research funding). The timing of the evaluation of a hypothesis is also important: a hypothesis which does not seem "bold" right now, could be judged "very bold" later, when historians know much more about the full impact it turned out to have (and vice versa). Alan F. Chalmers comments that “What rates as a bold conjecture at one stage in the history


id: bold-hypothesis-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bold_hypothesis-3.md
category: reference
title: Bold hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bold_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:08.744356+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: bold-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
A falsified conjecture shows the scientist only "what he does not know" or what cannot be the case. However, in reality scientists are more interested in knowing what is the case, and what they can know. That is, scientists are interested mainly in gaining positive new knowledge, which can be used for practical purposes. Scientists are not primarily interested in “knowing that they don't know things”, or in "knowing what is not the case" (other than to rule out possibilities). Scientists want to know what really is the case. Scientific statements according to this Lakatosian perspective are not falsifiable statements, as Karl Popper claimed, but fallible statements. There is an important difference. Falsifiable ideas are testable ideas which can be definitely proved to be false. Fallible statements are testable statements that could be wrong. Fallible statements include both testable propositions and statements of which it is known that they could be wrong, although currently we do not know how to test them yet for their truth or falsity (or, the possible tests are technically not yet feasible). According to Lakatos, all scientific statements are in reality fallible hypotheses, which scientists at the very least intend or aim to test for


id: broad-spectrum-revolution-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_spectrum_revolution-0.md
category: reference
title: Broad spectrum revolution
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_spectrum_revolution
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:09.941400+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: broad-spectrum-revolution-20260505-0
summary:
The broad spectrum revolution (BSR) hypothesis, proposed by Kent Flannery in a 1968 paper presented to a London University symposium, suggested that the emergence of the Neolithic in southwest Asia was prefaced by increases in dietary breadth among foraging societies. The broad spectrum revolution followed the last glacial period around 15,000 BP in the Middle East and 12,000 BP in Europe. During this time, there was a transition from focusing on a few main food sources to gathering/hunting a "broad spectrum" of plants and animals. == Hypothesis details == Flannery's hypothesis was meant to help explain the adoption of agriculture in the Neolithic Revolution. Unpersuaded by "the facile explanation of prehistoric environmental change" Flannery suggested (following Lewis Binford's equilibrium model) that population growth in optimal habitats led to demographic pressure within nearby marginal habitats as daughter groups migrated. The search for more food within these marginal habitats forced foragers to diversify the types of food sources harvested, broadening the subsistence base outward to include more fish, small game, waterfowl, invertebrates (such as snails and shellfish), as well as previously ignored or marginal plant sources. Most importantly, Flannery argues that the need for more food in these marginal environments led to


id: carbohydrate-insulin-model-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate–insulin_model-0.md
category: reference
title: Carbohydrate–insulin model
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate–insulin_model
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:11.063944+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: carbohydrate-insulin-model-20260505-0
summary:
The carbohydrate-insulin model (CIM) posits that obesity is caused by excess consumption of carbohydrate, which then disrupts normal insulin metabolism leading to weight gain and weight-related illnesses. It is contrasted with the mainstream energy balance model (EBM), which holds that obesity is caused by an excess in calorie consumption compared to calorie expenditure. According to the carbohydrate–insulin model, low-carbohydrate diets would be the most effective in causing long-term weight loss. Notable proponents of the carbohydrate–insulin model include Gary Taubes and David Ludwig. The CIM has been tested in mice and humans. Although some experts consider that these studies falsified the CIM, proponents disagree. Available evidence does not support the existence of a long-term advantage in weight loss for low-carbohydrate diets. == See also == Adipose tissue Appetite Basal metabolic rate Energy homeostasis Glucagon Glycemic index Glycemic load Hyperinsulinemia Insulin sensitivity Insulin Ketogenic diet Leptin Lipogenesis Low-carbohydrate diet Low-glycemic index diet Metabolic Syndrome Obesity Refined carbohydrates Set point theory Sugar Ultra-processed food == References ==


id: coastal-migration-americas-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_migration_(Americas)-0.md
category: reference
title: Coastal migration (Americas)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_migration_(Americas)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:13.444822+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: coastal-migration-americas-20260505-0
summary:
The coastal migration hypothesis is one of two leading hypotheses about the settlement of the Americas at the time of the Last Glacial Maximum. It proposes one or more migration routes involving watercraft, via the Kurile island chain, along the coast of Beringia and the archipelagos off the Alaskan-British Columbian coast, continuing down the coast to Central and South America. The alternative is the hypothesis solely by interior routes, which assumes migration along an ice-free corridor between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum.The coastal migration hypothesis has been bolstered by findings such as the report that the sediments in the Port Eliza caves on Vancouver Island indicate the possibility of a survivable climate as far back 16 ka (16,000 years) in the area, while the continental ice sheets were nearing their maximum extent. Despite such research, the hypothesis is still subject to considerable debate. Carlson, Erlandson, and others have argued for a coastal migration from Alaska to the Pacific Northwest pre-11ka (before ≈13,000 calendar years ago) that predates the hypothesized migration of Clovis people moving south through an ice-free corridor located near the continental divide. The coastal migrants may have been followed by the Clovis


id: coastal-migration-americas-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_migration_(Americas)-1.md
category: reference
title: Coastal migration (Americas)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_migration_(Americas)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:13.444822+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: coastal-migration-americas-20260505-0
summary:
=== Three-wave model === The Three-wave model is an older model that attempts to explain the peopling of the Americas suggested by Greenberg et al. (1986). Using linguistic and genetic data as well as dental anthropology, Greenberg et al. subdivided Native Americans into three groups: Amerind, Na-Dene, and Aleut-Inuit. They explained the linguistic, anatomical, and genetic differences they found in each group as a result of separate migrations or waves out of Northeast Asia to the Americas. This model has been criticized by anthropologist Emőke J.E. Szathmáry who thought that Greenberg's study overstated biological difference. Szathmáry argued that the differences between each group could be better explained by isolation rather than the three migrations. In 1977, Bonatto and Szathámry (1997) concluded that the presence of glaciers isolated the populations from one another, causing them to settle in Beringia rather than use it as a bridge or corridor for migration to mid-latitude America. Bonatto and Szathmáry suggest that after the LGM, humans actually migrated out of Beringia rather than out of Asia. === Beringian "Standstill" hypothesis === The Beringian "Standstill" Hypothesis proposed by Tamm et al. (2007) builds on Bonatto and Szathmáry's idea of migration out of Beringia after the LGM.


id: coastal-migration-americas-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_migration_(Americas)-2.md
category: reference
title: Coastal migration (Americas)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_migration_(Americas)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:13.444822+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: coastal-migration-americas-20260505-0
summary:
=== Watercraft === Fedje and Christensen (1999:648) also argue that the coast was likely colonized before 13 ka, largely based on watercraft evidence from Japan before 13 ka. Dietary evidence from middens in Indonesia indicates the development of offshore fishing, requiring watercraft, between 35 and 40 ka. Sea-going cultures were mobile in the island-rich environment off the late Pleistocene coast of east Asia, facilitating the spread of marine technology and skills through the Philippines, up the Ryukyu chain, to Japan. Warming of the climate after about 16 ka (although glaciation would remain) could have provided an impetus for seaborne migration up the Kurile island chain towards North America, through some combination of a more hospitable climate and increased ocean productivity. Although no boats have been recovered from early Pacific Coast archaeological sites, this may be due to poor preservation of organic materials and the inundation of coastal areas mentioned above. We can still infer water travel based on the presence of artifacts made by humans found at island sites. Anecdotal evidence comes from the surviving Bella Bella oral tradition, as recorded by Franz Boas in 1898. "In the beginning there was nothing but water and ice and a narrow strip


id: compression-of-morbidity-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_of_morbidity-0.md
category: reference
title: Compression of morbidity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_of_morbidity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:14.618203+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: compression-of-morbidity-20260505-0
summary:
The compression of morbidity in public health is a hypothesis put forth by James Fries, professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. The hypothesis was supported by a 1998 study of 1700 University of Pennsylvania alumni over a period of 20 years. Fries' hypothesis is that the burden of lifetime illness may be compressed into a shorter period before the time of death, if the age of onset of the first chronic infirmity can be postponed. This hypothesis contrasts to the view that as the age of countries' populations tends to increase over time, they will become increasingly infirm and consume an ever-larger proportion of the national budget in healthcare costs. Fries posited that if the hypothesis is confirmed, healthcare costs and patient health overall will be improved. In order to confirm this hypothesis, the evidence must show that it is possible to delay the onset of infirmity, and that corresponding increases in longevity will at least be modest. The evidence is at best mixed. Vincent Mor's "The Compression of Morbidity Hypothesis: A Review of Research and Prospects for the Future" argues that "Cross-national evidence for the validity of the compression of morbidity hypothesis originally proposed by Fries


id: continuum-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Continuum hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:15.765779+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: continuum-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
In mathematics, specifically set theory, the continuum hypothesis (abbreviated CH) is a hypothesis about the possible sizes of infinite sets. It states: There is no set whose cardinality is strictly between that of the integers and the real numbers. The name of the hypothesis comes from the term continuum for the real numbers. In Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice (ZFC), this is equivalent to the following equation in aleph numbers: 2 ℵ 0 = ℵ 1 {\displaystyle 2^{\aleph _{0}}=\aleph _{1}} , or even shorter with beth numbers: ℶ 1 = ℵ 1 {\displaystyle \beth _{1}=\aleph _{1}} . The continuum hypothesis was advanced by Georg Cantor in 1878. It became one of the most studied problems in set theory, and establishing its truth or falsehood was the first of Hilbert's 23 problems presented in 1900. The answer to this problem is independent of ZFC. This means the axioms of ZFC can neither prove nor disprove the continuum hypothesis, meaning either the continuum hypothesis or its negation can be added as an axiom to ZFC set theory, with the resulting theory being consistent if and only if ZFC is consistent. This independence was proved in 1963 by Paul Cohen,


id: continuum-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Continuum hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:15.765779+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: continuum-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Two sets are said to have the same cardinality or cardinal number if there exists a bijection (a one-to-one correspondence) between them. Intuitively, for two sets S {\displaystyle S} and T {\displaystyle T} to have the same cardinality means that it is possible to "pair off" elements of S {\displaystyle S} with elements of T {\displaystyle T} in such a fashion that every element of S {\displaystyle S} is paired off with exactly one element of T {\displaystyle T} and vice versa. Hence, the set { banana , apple , pear } {\displaystyle \{{\text{banana}},{\text{apple}},{\text{pear}}\}} has the same cardinality as { yellow , red , green } {\displaystyle \{{\text{yellow}},{\text{red}},{\text{green}}\}} despite the sets themselves containing different elements. With infinite sets such as the set of integers or rational numbers, the existence of a bijection between two sets becomes more difficult to demonstrate. The rational numbers Q {\displaystyle \mathbb {Q} } seemingly form a counterexample to the continuum hypothesis: the integers form a proper subset of the rationals, which themselves form a proper subset of the reals, so intuitively, there are more rational numbers than integers and more real numbers than rational numbers. However, this intuitive analysis is flawed since it does not


id: continuum-hypothesis-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis-2.md
category: reference
title: Continuum hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:15.765779+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: continuum-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
== Independence from ZFC == The independence of the continuum hypothesis (CH) from Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory (ZF) follows from combined work of Kurt Gödel and Paul Cohen. Gödel showed that CH cannot be disproved from ZF, even if the axiom of choice (AC) is adopted, i.e. from ZFC. Gödel's proof shows that both CH and AC hold in the constructible universe L {\displaystyle L} , an inner model of ZF set theory, assuming only the axioms of ZF. The existence of an inner model of ZF in which additional axioms hold shows that the additional axioms are (relatively) consistent with ZF, provided ZF itself is consistent. The latter condition cannot be proved in ZF itself, due to Gödel's incompleteness theorems, but is widely believed to be true and can be proved in stronger set theories. Cohen showed that CH cannot be proven from the ZFC axioms, completing the overall independence proof. To prove his result, Cohen developed the method of forcing, which has become a standard tool in set theory. Essentially, this method begins with a model of ZF in which CH holds and constructs another model which contains more sets than the original in a way that CH does


id: continuum-hypothesis-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis-3.md
category: reference
title: Continuum hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:15.765779+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: continuum-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
== Arguments for and against the continuum hypothesis == Gödel believed that CH is false, and that his proof that CH is consistent with ZFC only shows that the Zermelo–Fraenkel axioms do not adequately characterize the universe of sets. Gödel was a Platonist and therefore had no problems with asserting the truth and falsehood of statements independent of their provability. Cohen, though a formalist, also tended towards rejecting CH. Historically, mathematicians who favored a "rich" and "large" universe of sets were against CH, while those favoring a "neat" and "controllable" universe favored CH. Parallel arguments were made for and against the axiom of constructibility, which implies CH. More recently, Matthew Foreman has pointed out that ontological maximalism can actually be used to argue in favor of CH, because among models that have the same reals, models with "more" sets of reals have a better chance of satisfying CH. Another viewpoint is that the conception of set is not specific enough to determine whether CH is true or false. This viewpoint was advanced as early as 1923 by Skolem, even before Gödel's first incompleteness theorem. Skolem argued on the basis of what is now known as Skolem's paradox, and it was


id: continuum-hypothesis-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis-4.md
category: reference
title: Continuum hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:15.765779+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: continuum-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
(occasionally called Cantor's aleph hypothesis). The beth numbers provide an alternative notation for this condition: ℵ α = ℶ α {\displaystyle \aleph _{\alpha }=\beth _{\alpha }} for every ordinal α {\displaystyle \alpha } . The continuum hypothesis is the special case for the ordinal α = 1 {\displaystyle \alpha =1} . GCH was first suggested by Philip Jourdain. For the early history of GCH, see Moore. Like CH, GCH is also independent of ZFC, but Sierpiński proved that ZF + GCH implies the axiom of choice (AC) (and therefore the negation of the axiom of determinacy, AD), so choice and GCH are not independent in ZF; there are no models of ZF in which GCH holds and AC fails. To prove this, Sierpiński showed GCH implies that every cardinality n is smaller than some aleph number, and thus can be ordered. This is done by showing that n is smaller than 2 ℵ 0 + n {\displaystyle 2^{\aleph _{0}+n}} which is smaller than its own Hartogs number—this uses the equality 2 ℵ 0 + n = 2 ⋅ 2 ℵ 0 + n {\displaystyle 2^{\aleph _{0}+n}\,=\,2\cdot \,2^{\aleph _{0}+n}} ; for the full proof, see Gillman. Kurt Gödel showed that GCH


id: cosmic-censorship-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_censorship_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Cosmic censorship hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_censorship_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:16.959067+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: cosmic-censorship-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The weak and the strong cosmic censorship hypotheses are two mathematical conjectures about the structure of gravitational singularities in the context of general relativity. Singularities that arise in the solutions of Einstein's equations are typically hidden within event horizons, and therefore cannot be observed from the rest of spacetime. Singularities that are not so hidden are called naked. The weak cosmic censorship hypothesis was conceived by Roger Penrose in 1969 and posits that no naked singularities is visible from infinity (namely, it is “dressed” by an event horizon) while the strong cosmic censorship hypothesis asserts that generically, general relativity must be a deterministic theory and, thus, our universe must be globally hyperbolic. == Basics == Since the physical behavior of singularities is unknown, if singularities can be observed from the rest of spacetime, causality may break down, and physics may lose its predictive power. The issue cannot be avoided, since according to the Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems, singularities are inevitable in physically reasonable situations. Still, in the absence of naked singularities, the universe, as described by the general theory of relativity, is deterministic: it is possible to predict the entire evolution of the universe (possibly excluding some finite regions of space


id: cosmic-censorship-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_censorship_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Cosmic censorship hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_censorship_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:16.959067+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: cosmic-censorship-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
There are technical difficulties with properly formalizing the notion of a singularity. It is not difficult to construct spacetimes which have naked singularities, but which are not "physically reasonable"; the canonical example of such a spacetime is perhaps the "superextremal" M < | Q | {\displaystyle M<|Q|} Reissner–Nordström solution, which contains a singularity at r = 0 {\displaystyle r=0} that is not surrounded by a horizon. A formal statement needs some set of hypotheses which exclude these situations. Caustics may occur in simple models of gravitational collapse, and can appear to lead to singularities. These have more to do with the simplified models of bulk matter used, and in any case have nothing to do with general relativity, and need to be excluded. Computer models of gravitational collapse have shown that naked singularities can arise, but these models rely on very special circumstances (such as spherical symmetry). These special circumstances need to be excluded by some hypotheses. In 1991, John Preskill and Kip Thorne bet against Stephen Hawking that the hypothesis was false. Hawking conceded the bet in 1997, due to the discovery of the special situations just mentioned, which he characterized as "technicalities". Hawking later reformulated the bet to


id: dark-forest-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Dark forest hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:18.155821+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: dark-forest-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The dark forest hypothesis is the idea that extraterrestrial civilizations may exist in abundance across the universe, but remain silent and hidden out of fear that revealing themselves would lead to destruction by a more technologically advanced and hostile civilization. It is one of several proposed explanations of the Fermi paradox, which contrasts the apparently high probability of extraterrestrial life with the lack of evidence for it. The hypothesis derives its name from Liu Cixin's 2008 novel The Dark Forest although similar concepts predate the work. == Relation to the Fermi paradox == There is currently no known reliable or reproducible evidence that extraterrestrial life forms have visited or attempted to contact Earth. Despite systematic searches, no transmission and no firm evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life has been detected. This runs counter to the general observations that: The universe is filled with a very large number of planets, some of which might possess conditions hospitable for life; Terrestrial life is observed to expand until it fills all niches suited to it. These contradictory facts form the basis for the Fermi paradox. == Concept == The "dark forest" hypothesis presumes that any space-faring civilization would view any other intelligent life such


id: documentary-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Documentary hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:19.356229+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: documentary-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The documentary hypothesis (DH) is one of the models used by biblical scholars to explain the origins and composition of the Torah (or Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). A version of the documentary hypothesis, frequently identified with the German scholar Julius Wellhausen, was almost universally accepted for most of the 20th century. It posited that the Pentateuch is a compilation of four originally independent documents: the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and Priestly sources, frequently referred to by their initials. The first of these, J, was dated to the Solomonic period (c. 950 BCE). E was dated somewhat later, in the 9th century BCE, and D was dated just before the reign of King Josiah, in the 7th or 8th century BCE. Finally, P was generally dated to the time of Ezra in the 5th century BCE. The sources would have been joined at various points in time by a series of editors or "redactors". The consensus around the classical documentary hypothesis has now faltered. This was triggered in large part by the influential publications of John Van Seters, Hans Heinrich Schmid, and Rolf Rendtorff in the mid-1970s, who argued that J was


id: documentary-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Documentary hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:19.356229+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: documentary-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
In 1878, Julius Wellhausen published Geschichte Israels, Bd 1 ('History of Israel, Vol 1'). The second edition was printed as Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels ("Prolegomena to the History of Israel") in 1883, and the work is better known under that name. (The second volume, a synthetic history titled Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte ['Israelite and Jewish History'], did not appear until 1894 and remains untranslated.) Crucially, this historical portrait was based upon two earlier works of his technical analysis: "Die Composition des Hexateuchs" ('The Composition of the Hexateuch') of 1876–77, and sections on the "historical books" (Judges–Kings) in his 1878 edition of Friedrich Bleek's Einleitung in das Alte Testament ('Introduction to the Old Testament'). Wellhausen's documentary hypothesis owed little to Wellhausen himself but was mainly the work of Hupfeld, Eduard Eugène Reuss, Graf, and others, who in turn had built on earlier scholarship. Wellhausen accepted Hupfeld's four sources and, in agreement with Graf, placed the Priestly work last. J was the earliest document, a product of the 10th century BCE and the court of Solomon; E was from the 9th century BCE in the northern Kingdom of Israel, and had been combined by a redactor (editor) with J to form a


id: drift-barrier-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drift-barrier_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Drift-barrier hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drift-barrier_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:20.493031+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: drift-barrier-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The drift-barrier hypothesis is an evolutionary hypothesis formulated by Michael Lynch in 2010. It suggests that the perfection of the performance of a trait, in a specific environment, by natural selection will hit a hypothetical barrier. The closer a trait comes to perfection, the smaller the fitness advantages become. Once this barrier is reached, the effects of further beneficial mutations are unlikely to be large enough to overcome the power of random genetic drift. Selection generally favors lower mutation rates due to the associated load of deleterious mutations that come with a high mutation rate. == Description == Every population contains a certain amount of genetic variation, coding for different functional traits. When the environment in which the population lives changes, some of these traits turn out to be more advantageous for this new situation than others. Through natural selection and random genetic drift, the traits with a negative effect on population fitness disappear from the gene pool. The balance between the influence of natural selection and genetic drift on the population mutation rate is mainly determined by the population size. Large populations are predicted to generally have lower mutation rates than smaller populations. Populations containing individuals with high mutation


id: duhem-quine-thesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duhem–Quine_thesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Duhem–Quine thesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duhem–Quine_thesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:21.675514+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: duhem-quine-thesis-20260505-0
summary:
In philosophy of science, the Duhem–Quine thesis, also called the Duhem–Quine problem, says that unambiguous falsifications of a scientific hypothesis are impossible, because an empirical test of the hypothesis requires one or more background assumptions. Rather than disproving the main hypothesis, the blame can be placed on one of the background beliefs or "auxiliary" hypotheses. It is named after French theoretical physicist Pierre Duhem and American logician Willard Van Orman Quine, who wrote about similar concepts. In recent decades, the set of associated assumptions supporting a thesis sometimes is called a bundle of hypotheses, i.e. a hypothesis and its background assumptions. Although a bundle of hypotheses as a whole can be tested against the empirical world and be falsified if it fails the test, the Duhem–Quine thesis says it is impossible to isolate a single hypothesis in the bundle, a viewpoint called confirmation holism. == Overview == The Duhem–Quine thesis argues that no scientific hypothesis is by itself capable of making predictions. Instead, deriving predictions from the hypothesis typically requires background assumptions that several other hypotheses are correct — that an experiment works as predicted, or that previous scientific theory is accurate. For instance, as evidence against the idea that


id: construction-of-the-egyptian-pyramids-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_Egyptian_pyramids-0.md
category: reference
title: Construction of the Egyptian pyramids
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_Egyptian_pyramids
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:22.840815+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: construction-of-the-egyptian-pyramids-20260505-0
summary:
The construction of the Egyptian pyramids can be explained with well-established scientific facts; however, there are some aspects that even today are considered controversial hypotheses. The construction techniques used seem to have developed over time; later pyramids were not constructed in the same way as earlier ones. It is believed that huge stones were carved from quarries with copper tools, and these blocks were then dragged and lifted into position. Disagreements chiefly concern the methods used to move and place the stones. In addition to the many unresolved arguments about the construction techniques, there have been many disagreements as to the kind of workforce used. The Greeks, many years after the event, believed that the pyramids were built by slave labour. Archaeologists now believe that the Great Pyramid of Giza (at least) was built by tens of thousands of skilled workers who camped near the pyramids and worked for a salary or as a form of tax payment (levy) until the construction was completed, pointing to workers' cemeteries discovered in 1990. For the Middle Kingdom pyramid of Amenemhat II, there is evidence from the annal stone of the king that foreigners from Canaan were employed. The pseudoscientific field of pyramidology


id: construction-of-the-egyptian-pyramids-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_Egyptian_pyramids-1.md
category: reference
title: Construction of the Egyptian pyramids
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_Egyptian_pyramids
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:22.840815+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: construction-of-the-egyptian-pyramids-20260505-0
summary:
=== Mortar === The stones forming the core of the pyramids were roughly cut, especially in the Great Pyramid. To fill the gaps, huge quantities of gypsum and rubble were needed. The filling has almost no binding properties, but it was necessary to stabilize the construction. To make the gypsum mortar, it had to be dehydrated by heating which requires large quantities of wood. According to Egyptologists, the findings of both the 1984 and 1995 David H. Koch Pyramids Radiocarbon Projects may suggest that Egypt had to strip its forest and scrap every bit of wood it had to build the pyramids of Giza and other even earlier 4th Dynasty pyramids. Carbon dating samples from core blocks and other materials revealed that dates from the 1984 study averaged 374 years earlier than currently accepted and the 1995 dating averaging 100–200 years. As suggested by team members, "We thought that it was unlikely that the pyramid builders consistently used centuries-old wood as fuel in preparing mortar. The 1984 results left us with too little data to conclude that the historical chronology of the Old Kingdom was wrong by nearly 400 years, but we considered this at least a possibility". Egyptologists propose


id: construction-of-the-egyptian-pyramids-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_Egyptian_pyramids-2.md
category: reference
title: Construction of the Egyptian pyramids
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_Egyptian_pyramids
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:22.840815+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: construction-of-the-egyptian-pyramids-20260505-0
summary:
Most Egyptologists acknowledge that ramps are the most tenable of the methods to raise the blocks, yet they acknowledge that it is an incomplete method that must be supplemented by another device. Archaeological evidence for the use of ramps has been found at the Great Pyramid of Giza and other pyramids. The method most accepted for assisting ramps is levering. The archaeological record gives evidence of only small ramps and inclined causeways, not something that could have been used to construct even a majority of the monument. To add to the uncertainty, there is considerable evidence demonstrating that non-standardized or ad hoc construction methods were used in pyramid construction. Therefore, there are many proposed ramps and there is a considerable amount of discrepancy regarding what type of ramp was used to build the pyramids. One of the widely discredited ramping methods is the large straight ramp, and it is routinely discredited on functional grounds for its massive size, lack of archaeological evidence, huge labor cost, and other problems. Other ramps serve to correct these problems of ramp size, yet run into critiques of either functionality or limited archaeological evidence. Zig-zagging ramps, straight ramps using the incomplete part of the superstructure


id: construction-of-the-egyptian-pyramids-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_Egyptian_pyramids-3.md
category: reference
title: Construction of the Egyptian pyramids
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_Egyptian_pyramids
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:22.840815+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: construction-of-the-egyptian-pyramids-20260505-0
summary:
=== Waterways === Egyptians used the now-disappeared branch of the Nile to transport the tons of construction materials. A 2012 study led by geographer Hader Sheisha at Aix-Marseille University proposed that the former waterscapes and higher river levels around 4,500 years ago facilitated the construction of the Giza Pyramid Complex. The Nile's present waterways have receded too far from the pyramid sites to be of use. A new study published in May 2024 mapped an extinct branch of the Nile, Ahramat Branch, which once flowed near Egypt's Great Pyramid and other Giza monuments. Using satellite imaging and sediment core analysis, researchers suggested that the 64 kilometres (40 mi) waterway was crucial for transporting materials and labor for pyramid construction. The branch, which was about 0.5 kilometres (0.31 mi) wide with a depth of at least 25 metres (82 ft), likely disappeared due to drought and desertification. It has been suggested that locks were used to elevate barges along waterways leading to pyramid construction sites, but there is a lack of evidence of any on-site use of hydraulic force. == Pyramid building experiments == === Yoshimura === In 1978, Nippon TV funded the pyramid building project conceived by archaeologist Sajuki Yoshimura.


id: construction-of-the-egyptian-pyramids-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_Egyptian_pyramids-4.md
category: reference
title: Construction of the Egyptian pyramids
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_Egyptian_pyramids
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:22.840815+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: construction-of-the-egyptian-pyramids-20260505-0
summary:
The logistics of construction at the Giza site are staggering when you think that the ancient Egyptians had no pulleys, no wheels, and no iron tools. Yet, the dimensions of the pyramid are extremely accurate and the site was leveled within a fraction of an inch over the entire 13.1-acre base. This is comparable to the accuracy possible with modern construction methods and laser leveling. That's astounding. With their 'rudimentary tools', the pyramid builders of ancient Egypt were about as accurate as we are today with 20th-century technology. The entire Giza Plateau is believed to have been constructed over the reign of five pharaohs in less than a hundred years, which generally includes: the Great Pyramid, Khafre and Menkaure's pyramids, the Great Sphinx, the Sphinx, and Valley Temples, 35 boat pits cut out of solid bedrock, and several causeways, as well as paving nearly the entire plateau with large stones. This does not include Khafre's brother Djedefre's northern pyramid at Abu Rawash, which would have also been built during this time frame of 100 years. In the hundred years prior to Giza—beginning with Djoser, who ruled from 2687 to 2667 BC, and amongst dozens of other temples, smaller pyramids, and


id: eigenstate-thermalization-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenstate_thermalization_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Eigenstate thermalization hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenstate_thermalization_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:23.990681+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: eigenstate-thermalization-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) is a set of ideas which purports to explain when and why an isolated quantum mechanical system can be accurately described using equilibrium statistical mechanics. In particular, it is devoted to understanding how systems which are initially prepared in far-from-equilibrium states can evolve in time to a state which appears to be in thermal equilibrium. The phrase "eigenstate thermalization" was first coined by Mark Srednicki in 1994, after similar ideas had been introduced by Josh Deutsch in 1991. The principal philosophy underlying the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis is that instead of explaining the ergodicity of a thermodynamic system through the mechanism of dynamical chaos, as is done in classical mechanics, one should instead examine the properties of matrix elements of observable quantities in individual energy eigenstates of the system. == Motivation == In statistical mechanics, the microcanonical ensemble is a particular statistical ensemble which is used to make predictions about the outcomes of experiments performed on isolated systems that are believed to be in equilibrium with an exactly known energy. The microcanonical ensemble is based upon the assumption that, when such an equilibrated system is probed, the probability for it to be found in any of


id: eigenstate-thermalization-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenstate_thermalization_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Eigenstate thermalization hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenstate_thermalization_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:23.990681+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: eigenstate-thermalization-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
A α β ≡ ⟨ E α | A ^ | E β ⟩ . {\displaystyle A_{\alpha \beta }\equiv \langle E_{\alpha }|{\hat {A}}|E_{\beta }\rangle .} We now imagine that we prepare our system in an initial state for which the expectation value of A ^ {\displaystyle {\hat {A}}} is far from its value predicted in a microcanonical ensemble appropriate to the energy scale in question (we assume that our initial state is some superposition of energy eigenstates which are all sufficiently "close" in energy). The eigenstate thermalization hypothesis says that for an arbitrary initial state, the expectation value of A ^ {\displaystyle {\hat {A}}} will ultimately evolve in time to its value predicted by a microcanonical ensemble, and thereafter will exhibit only small fluctuations around that value, provided that the following two conditions are met: The diagonal matrix elements A α α {\displaystyle A_{\alpha \alpha }} vary smoothly as a function of energy, with the difference between neighboring values, A α + 1 , α + 1 − A α , α {\displaystyle A_{\alpha +1,\alpha +1}-A_{\alpha ,\alpha }} , becoming exponentially small in the system size. The off-diagonal matrix elements A α β {\displaystyle A_{\alpha \beta }} , with α


id: eigenstate-thermalization-hypothesis-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenstate_thermalization_hypothesis-2.md
category: reference
title: Eigenstate thermalization hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenstate_thermalization_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:23.990681+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: eigenstate-thermalization-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
A ¯ = ∑ α = 1 D | c α | 2 A α α ≈ A ∑ α = 1 D | c α | 2 = A , {\displaystyle {\overline {A}}=\sum _{\alpha =1}^{D}|c_{\alpha }|^{2}A_{\alpha \alpha }\approx A\sum _{\alpha =1}^{D}|c_{\alpha }|^{2}=A,} where we have assumed that the initial state is normalized appropriately. Likewise, the prediction of the microcanonical ensemble becomes ⟨ A ⟩ mc = 1 N ∑ α ′ = 1 N A α ′ α ′ ≈ 1 N ∑ α ′ = 1 N A = A . {\displaystyle \langle A\rangle _{\text{mc}}={\frac {1}{\mathcal {N}}}\sum _{\alpha '=1}^{\mathcal {N}}A_{\alpha '\alpha '}\approx {\frac {1}{\mathcal {N}}}\sum _{\alpha '=1}^{\mathcal {N}}A=A.} The two ensembles are therefore in agreement. This constancy of the values of A α α {\displaystyle A_{\alpha \alpha }} over small energy windows is the primary idea underlying the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. Notice that in particular, it states that the expectation value of A ^ {\displaystyle {\hat {A}}} in a single energy eigenstate is equal to the value predicted by a microcanonical ensemble constructed at that energy scale. This constitutes a foundation for quantum statistical mechanics which is radically different from the one built upon the notions of dynamical


id: eigenstate-thermalization-hypothesis-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenstate_thermalization_hypothesis-3.md
category: reference
title: Eigenstate thermalization hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenstate_thermalization_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:23.990681+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: eigenstate-thermalization-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
For initial states of physical interest, the coefficients c α {\displaystyle c_{\alpha }} exhibit large fluctuations from eigenstate to eigenstate, in a fashion which is completely uncorrelated with the fluctuations of A α α {\displaystyle A_{\alpha \alpha }} from eigenstate to eigenstate. Because the coefficients and matrix elements are uncorrelated, the summation in the diagonal ensemble is effectively performing an unbiased sampling of the values of A α α {\displaystyle A_{\alpha \alpha }} over the appropriate energy window. For a sufficiently large system, this unbiased sampling should result in a value which is close to the true mean of the values of A α α {\displaystyle A_{\alpha \alpha }} over this window, and will effectively reproduce the prediction of the microcanonical ensemble. However, this mechanism may be disfavored for the following heuristic reason. Typically, one is interested in physical situations in which the initial expectation value of A ^ {\displaystyle {\hat {A}}} is far from its equilibrium value. For this to be true, the initial state must contain some sort of specific information about A ^ {\displaystyle {\hat {A}}} , and so it becomes suspect whether or not the initial state truly represents an unbiased sampling of the values of


id: eigenstate-thermalization-hypothesis-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenstate_thermalization_hypothesis-4.md
category: reference
title: Eigenstate thermalization hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenstate_thermalization_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:23.990681+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: eigenstate-thermalization-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
== General validity == Currently, there is no known analytical derivation of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis for general interacting systems. However, it has been verified to be true for a wide variety of interacting systems using numerical exact diagonalization techniques, to within the uncertainty of these methods. It has also been proven to be true in certain special cases in the semi-classical limit, where the validity of the ETH rests on the validity of Shnirelman's theorem, which states that in a system which is classically chaotic, the expectation value of an operator A ^ {\displaystyle {\hat {A}}} in an energy eigenstate is equal to its classical, microcanonical average at the appropriate energy. Whether or not it can be shown to be true more generally in interacting quantum systems remains an open question. It is also known to explicitly fail in certain integrable systems, in which the presence of a large number of constants of motion prevent thermalization. It is also important to note that the ETH makes statements about specific observables on a case-by-case basis - it does not make any claims about whether every observable in a system will obey ETH. In fact, this certainly cannot be true. Given


id: endurance-running-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Endurance running hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:25.180693+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: endurance-running-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The endurance running hypothesis is a series of conjectures which presume humans evolved anatomical and physiological adaptations to run long distances and, more strongly, that "running is the only known behavior that would account for the different body plans in Homo as opposed to apes or australopithecines". The hypothesis posits a significant role of endurance running in facilitating early hominins' ability to obtain meat. Proponents of this hypothesis assert that endurance running served as a means for hominins to effectively engage in persistence hunting and carcass poaching, thus enhancing their competitive edge in acquiring prey. Consequently, these evolutionary pressures have led to the prominence of endurance running as a primary factor shaping many biomechanical characteristics of modern humans. == Evolutionary evidence == No primates other than humans are capable of endurance running, and in fact, Australopithecus did not have structural adaptations for running. Instead, forensic anthropology suggests that anatomical features that directly contributed to endurance running capabilities were heavily selected for within the genus Homo dating back to 1.9Ma. Consequently, selecting anatomical features that made endurance running possible radically transformed the hominid body. The general form of human locomotion is markedly distinct from all other animals observed in nature. The


id: endurance-running-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Endurance running hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:25.180693+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: endurance-running-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
== Academic discourse == The derived longer hindlimb was already present in Australopithecus along with evidence for foot bones with a stiff arch. Walking and running in Australopithecus may have been the same as early Homo. Research on the former has shown running to be slower and less efficient than in modern humans. Small changes in joint morphology may indicate neutral evolutionary processes rather than selection. The methodology by which the proposed derived traits were chosen and evaluated does not seem to have been stated, and there were immediate, highly technical arguments "dismissing their validity and terming them either trivial or incorrect." Most of those proposed traits have not been tested for their effect on walking and running efficiency. The new trunk shape counter-rotations, which help control rotations induced by hip-joint motion, seem active during walking. Elastic energy storage does occur in the plantar soft tissue of the foot during walking. Relative lower-limb length has a slightly larger effect on the economy of walking than running. The heel-down foot posture makes walking economical but does not benefit running. Model-based analysis showing that scavengers would reach a carcass within 30 minutes of detection suggests that "endurance running" would not have given


id: entourage-effect-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entourage_effect-0.md
category: reference
title: Entourage effect
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entourage_effect
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:26.462866+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: entourage-effect-20260505-0
summary:
The entourage effect is a hypothesis that cannabis compounds, other than the cannabinoids tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD), act synergistically with cannabinoids to modulate the overall psychoactive effects of the plant. The effect has also been applied in the case of psilocybin mushrooms, with other compounds besides psilocybin having been hypothesized to also contribute to the effects of the mushrooms. == Compounds == === Terpenes === There are numerous terpenes present in the cannabis plant and variation in their contents between strains. Some terpenes are under preliminary research for their possible effects in vivo. Various terpenes have been found to independently influence behavioral outcomes in mice, with simultaneous administration of CBD and terpene blends having a significantly greater impact than either substance administered independently. == Hypothetical differences between C. indica and C. sativa == Cannabinoid ratios: On average, Cannabis indica has higher levels of THC compared to CBD, whereas Cannabis sativa has lower levels of THC to CBD. However, huge variability exists within either species. A 2015 study shows the average THC content of the most popular herbal cannabis products in the Netherlands has decreased slightly since 2005. Terpene ratios: Sativa ancestry is associated with farnesene and bergamotene, while Indica


id: eocyte-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocyte_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Eocyte hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocyte_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:27.678670+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: eocyte-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The eocyte hypothesis in evolutionary biology proposes that the eukaryotes originated from a group of prokaryotes called eocytes (later classified as Thermoproteota, a group of archaea). After his team at the University of California, Los Angeles discovered eocytes in 1984, James A. Lake formulated the hypothesis as "eocyte tree" that proposed eukaryotes as part of archaea. Lake hypothesised the tree of life as having only two primary branches: prokaryotes, which include Bacteria and Archaea, and karyotes, that comprise Eukaryotes and eocytes. Parts of this early hypothesis were revived in a newer two-domain system of biological classification which named the primary domains as Archaea and Bacteria. Lake's hypothesis was based on an analysis of the structural components of ribosomes. It was largely ignored, being overshadowed by the three-domain system which relied on more precise genetic analysis. In 1990, Carl Woese and his colleagues proposed that cellular life consists of three domains—Eucarya, Bacteria, and Archaea – based on the ribosomal RNA sequences. The three-domain concept was widely accepted in genetics, and became the presumptive classification system for high-level taxonomy, and was promulgated in many textbooks. Resurgence of archaea research after the 2000s, using advanced genetic techniques, and later discoveries of new groups


id: eocyte-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocyte_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Eocyte hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocyte_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:27.678670+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: eocyte-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
== Root of the eocyte tree == The eocyte tree root may be located in the RNA world; that is, the root organism may have been a ribocyte (also known as a ribocell). For cellular DNA and DNA handling, an "out of virus" scenario has been proposed: storing genetic information in DNA may have been an innovation performed by viruses and later handed over to ribocytes twice, once transforming them into bacteria and once transforming them into archaea. Although archaeal viruses are not as well-studied as bacterial phages, it is thought that dsDNA viruses led to the incorporation of the viral genome into archaeal genomes. The transduction of genetic material through a viral vector led to an increase in complexity in the pre-eukaryotic cells. All these findings do not change the eocyte tree as given here in principle, but examine a higher resolution of it. == Arguments against == Due to the similarities found between eukaryotes and both archaea and bacteria, it is thought that a major source of the genetic variation is through horizontal gene transfer. Horizontal gene transfer explains why archaeal sequences are found in bacteria and bacterial sequences are found in archaea. This could explain why elongation


id: ergodic-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergodic_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Ergodic hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergodic_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:28.827738+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ergodic-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
In physics and thermodynamics, the ergodic hypothesis says that, for long, the time spent by a system in some region of the phase space of microstates with the same energy is proportional to the volume of this region; i.e., that all accessible microstates are equiprobable for long. Liouville's theorem states that, for a Hamiltonian system, the local density of microstates following a particle path through phase space is constant as viewed by an observer moving with the ensemble—i.e., the convective time derivative is zero. Thus, if the microstates are uniformly distributed in phase space initially, they shall remain so at all times. But Liouville's theorem does not imply that the ergodic hypothesis holds for all Hamiltonian systems. The ergodic hypothesis is often assumed in the statistical analysis of computational physics. The analyst would assume that the average of a process parameter over time and the average over the statistical ensemble are the same. This assumption—that it is as good to simulate a system for long as it is to make many independent realizations of the same system—is not always correct. (See, for example, the Fermi–Pasta–Ulam–Tsingou experiment of 1953.) Assumption of the ergodic hypothesis allows proof that certain types of perpetual


id: ex-cubs-factor-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-Cubs_Factor-0.md
category: reference
title: Ex-Cubs Factor
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-Cubs_Factor
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:30.051451+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ex-cubs-factor-20260505-0
summary:
The Ex-Cub Factor is a seemingly spurious correlation that was seen as essentially a corollary to the Curse of the Billy Goat. Widely published in the 1990s, the hypothesis asserted that since the appearance by the Chicago Cubs in the 1945 World Series, any baseball team headed into the World Series with three or more former Cubs on its roster has "a critical mass of Cubness" and a strong likelihood of failure. == Ex-Cubs Factor hypothesis == The theory was developed in October 15, 1981 by Ron Berler, a freelance journalist and Cubs fan. Berler posited in an article that "it is utterly impossible for a team with three or more ex-Cubs to win the series." Berler based this on a pattern that he observed in the post-1945 era; 1945 being the last time the Chicago Cubs made it to a World Series until 2016. Berler cited many examples of teams with three or more ex-Cubs on their teams that reached the World Series and lost: including the 1958 Milwaukee Braves, the 1966 Los Angeles Dodgers, and the 1978 Los Angeles Dodgers. The 1978 Dodgers, according to Berler, had lost the 1977 World Series with three ex-Cubs on their roster


id: ex-cubs-factor-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-Cubs_Factor-1.md
category: reference
title: Ex-Cubs Factor
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-Cubs_Factor
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:30.051451+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ex-cubs-factor-20260505-0
summary:
Since 1945, of the 25 teams to reach the World Series with three or more Cubs players, only 4 have won the World Series (the 1960 Pirates, the 2001 Diamondbacks, the 2008 Phillies, and the 2012 Giants). Since its articulation in 1981, the Ex-Cubs Factor has been used to predict and explain post-season and World Series defeats for many different baseball teams. During the 1980s, the ex-Cubs factor was used to explain a number of losses by teams. It was used, in a letter to the editor, as a reason for the loss by the 1984 San Diego Padres (who ironically beat the Cubs to get to the Series) in the 1984 World Series (with three ex-Cubs) and by the collapse of the 1985 Toronto Blue Jays who had added ex-Cub Cliff Johnson on August 28 and went on to blow a 3–1 lead over the Royals in the 1985 American League Championship Series. While not falling under the curse in the traditional sense, Bill Buckner's infamous gaffe in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series can be interpreted to fit the Ex-Cubs Factor. Buckner, a former Cub, booted a ground ball hit by New York Mets batter Mookie Wilson,


id: ex-cubs-factor-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-Cubs_Factor-2.md
category: reference
title: Ex-Cubs Factor
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-Cubs_Factor
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:30.051451+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: ex-cubs-factor-20260505-0
summary:
== Cases against the Ex-Cubs Factor hypothesis == Berler's study of the ex-Cub factor since 1945 revealed only one exception since 1945: the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates, who won the World Series with three ex-Cubs on their roster. Berler contends that one of those ex-Cubs, Don Hoak, spent so little time in Chicago (121 games in one season), that he did not fully develop what Berler called his "Cubness". Berler quoted pitcher Jim Brosnan, a teammate of Hoak's on the 1956 Cubs, as saying that "Hoak is quite possibly the only man who ever conquered his Cubness". The Society for American Baseball Research researched the rosters of each World Series roster from 1946 to 2013 through records and noted each Series that had at least one former Cub while noting the distinct conjectures between Berler's and Royko's theories. Perhaps predictably, the Berler rate was found to be more effective (17/22 as compared to 32/56), although there are a few evident cases against each conjecture. Most notably, the 1973 Oakland A's had three ex-Cubs in Pat Bourque, Ken Holtzman, and Bill North all on the roster during their run to the World Series, although North did not play in the Series due


id: expensive-tissue-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expensive_tissue_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Expensive tissue hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expensive_tissue_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:31.235653+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: expensive-tissue-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The expensive tissue hypothesis (ETH) relates brain and gut size in evolution (specifically in human evolution). It suggests that in order for an organism to evolve a large brain without a significant increase in basal metabolic rate (as seen in humans), the organism must use less energy on other expensive tissues; the paper introducing the ETH suggests that in humans, this was achieved by eating an easy-to-digest diet and evolving a smaller, less energy-intensive gut. The ETH has inspired many research projects to test its validity in primates and other organisms. The human brain stands out among the mammals because of its relative size compared to the rest of the body. The brain of Homo sapiens is about three times larger than that of its closest living relative, the chimpanzee. For a primate of its body size, the relative size of the brain and that of the digestive tract is rather unexpected; the digestive tract is smaller than expected for a primate of a human body size. In 1995, two scientists proposed an attempt to solve this phenomenon of human evolution using the Expensive Tissue Hypothesis. == Original paper == The original paper introducing the ETH was written by Leslie


id: expensive-tissue-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expensive_tissue_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Expensive tissue hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expensive_tissue_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:31.235653+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: expensive-tissue-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
== Further research == Anthropologists have been able to observe a dramatic contrast in relative brain size between humans and our great ape ancestors. Studies have shown that brain size differences underlie major differences in cognitive performance. Brain tissue is energetically expensive, requiring a great amount of energy compared to several other somatic tissues during rest. To understand how the body is able to provide the brain with the right amount of energy to function properly, scientists consider the cost side of the equation and focus on how brain and other expensive tissues such as the gut or the testes may trade off. Another possibility is that there may not be any trading off, rather there are other ways that humans are keeping the brain nourished. The academic debate around the ETH is still active, and has inspired a number of similar tests, all attempting to verify or disprove the hypothesis in another species or group of species by looking at encephalization (a ratio between brain size and body size), gut size, and/or diet quality. Primates, being the closest living relatives to humans, are a natural starting point for testing the hypothesis, and as such are examined by many of


id: farrer-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farrer_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Farrer hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farrer_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:32.347575+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: farrer-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The Farrer hypothesis (also called the L/M hypothesis, the Farrer–Goulder hypothesis and the Farrer–Goulder–Goodacre hypothesis) is a possible solution to the synoptic problem. The theory is that the Gospel of Mark was written first, followed by the Gospel of Matthew and then by the Gospel of Luke, with Matthew and Luke using the earlier gospel(s) as sources. It has mainly been advocated by English biblical scholars, and is growing in support within scholarship. It is named for Austin Farrer, who wrote On Dispensing With Q in 1955, but it has been picked up by other scholars including Michael Goulder and Mark Goodacre. == Overview == The Farrer theory has the advantage of simplicity, as there is no need for hypothetical sources. Instead, advocates of the Farrer theory argue the Gospel of Mark was used as source material by the author of Matthew. Lastly, Luke used both of the previous gospels as sources for his Gospel. The hypothesis is enjoying growing popularity in scholarship. Farrer set out his argument in an essay "On dispensing with Q". He says that the two-source hypothesis, as set out by B. H. Streeter thirty years earlier, "wholly depends on the incredibility [i.e., unbelievability] of St


id: farrer-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farrer_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Farrer hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farrer_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:32.347575+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: farrer-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The first is that he would not have omitted some of the Matthean texts that he did because they are so striking. Farrer replies that they were omitted because they do not conform to the 'edifice' that Luke is building. The second is that Luke sometimes preserves a more primitive version of a text that is also in Matthew. Farrer replies that this depends on being able to identify the more primitive text; for example, "Blessed are the poor in spirit" suits Matthew's theology, but it would be natural for Luke to drop the "in spirit" to fit his concern with the poor. The third is that Luke follows Mark's order but does not do the same with Matthew. Farrer asks, in reply, why he should: "Is it surprising that he should lay his plan on Marcan foundations, and quarry St. Matthew for materials to build up his house?" The fourth is that Luke uses the material less well than Matthew. Farrer replies that this may be so, but he would not be the first adapter to have produced a less skilful result, the only issue was whether it would suit Luke's message better to have the material arranged in


id: frequency-format-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_format_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Frequency format hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_format_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:33.511693+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: frequency-format-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The frequency format hypothesis is the idea that the brain understands and processes information better when presented in frequency formats rather than a numerical or probability format. Thus according to the hypothesis, presenting information as 1 in 5 people rather than 20% leads to better comprehension. The idea was proposed by German scientist Gerd Gigerenzer, after compilation and comparison of data collected between 1976 and 1997. == Origin == === Automatic encoding === Certain information about one's experience is often stored in the memory using an implicit encoding process. Where did you sit last time in class? Do you say the word hello or charisma more? People are very good at answering such questions without actively thinking about it or not knowing how they got that information in the first place. This was the observation that lead to Hasher and Zacks' 1979 study on frequency. Through their research work, Hasher and Zacks found out that information about frequency is stored without the intention of the person. Also, training and feedback does not increase ability to encode frequency. Frequency information was also found to be continually registered in the memory, regardless of age, ability or motivation. The ability to encode frequency


id: frequency-format-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_format_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Frequency format hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_format_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:33.511693+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: frequency-format-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
=== Evolutionary perspective === Gigerenzer argued that from an evolutionary point of view, a frequency method was easier and more communicable compared to conveying information in probability format. He argues that probability and percentages are rather recent forms of representation as opposed to frequency. The first known existence of a representative form of percentages is in the seventeenth century. He also argues that more information is given in the case of frequency representation. For instance, conveying data as 50 out of 100, using the frequency form, as opposed to saying 50%, using the probability format, gives the users more information about the sample size. This can in turn make the data and results more reliable and more appealing. === Elaborate encoding === An explanation given as to why people choose encounter frequency is that in the case of frequencies, the subjects are given vivid descriptions, while with probabilities only a dry number is given to the subject. Therefore, in the case of frequency, subjects are given more recall cues. This could in turn mean that the frequency encounters are remembered by the brain more often than in the case of probability numbers. Thus this might be a reason why people


id: frequency-format-hypothesis-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_format_hypothesis-2.md
category: reference
title: Frequency format hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_format_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:33.511693+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: frequency-format-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
=== Nested-sets hypothesis === Frequency-format studies tend to share a confound -- namely that when presenting frequency information, the researchers also make clear the reference class they are referring to. For example, consider these three different ways to formulate the same problem: Probability Format "Consider a test to detect a disease that a given American has a 1/1000 chance of getting. An individual that does not have the disease has a 50/1000 chance of testing positive. An individual that does have the disease will definitely test positive. What is the chance that a person found to have a positive result actually has the disease, assuming that you nothing about the person’s symptoms or signs? _____%" Frequency Format "One out of every 1000 Americans has disease X. A test has been developed to detect when a person has disease X. Every time the test is given to a person who has the disease, the test comes out positive. But sometimes the test also comes out positive when it is given to a person who is completely healthy. Specifically, out of every 1000 people who are perfectly healthy, 50 of them test positive for the disease. Imagine we have assembled a random


id: freud-s-seduction-theory-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud's_seduction_theory-0.md
category: reference
title: Freud's seduction theory
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud's_seduction_theory
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:34.697405+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: freud-s-seduction-theory-20260505-0
summary:
Freud's seduction theory (German: Verführungstheorie) was a hypothesis posited in the mid-1890s by Sigmund Freud that he believed provided the solution to the problem of the origins of hysteria and obsessional neurosis. According to the theory, a repressed memory of child sexual abuse in early childhood or a molestation experience was the essential precondition for hysterical or obsessional symptoms, with the addition of an active sexual experience up to the age of eight for the latter. In the traditional account of development of seduction theory, Freud initially thought that his patients were relating more or less factual stories of sexual mistreatment, and that only sexual abuse could be responsible for his patients' neuroses and other mental health problems. Within a few years Freud abandoned his theory, concluding that some of his patients' stories of sexual abuse were not literal and were instead fantasies. He never ruled out that sexual abuse could be the cause of illness, simply that it was not the only possible cause. An alternative account that has come to the fore in recent Freudian scholarship emphasizes that the theory, as posited by Freud, was that hysteria and obsessional neurosis result from unconscious memories of sexual abuse in


id: freud-s-seduction-theory-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud's_seduction_theory-1.md
category: reference
title: Freud's seduction theory
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud's_seduction_theory
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:34.697405+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: freud-s-seduction-theory-20260505-0
summary:
== Reported evidence == Freud had a lot of data as evidence for the seduction theory, but rather than presenting the actual data on which he based his conclusions (his clinical cases and what he had learned from them) or the methods he used to acquire the data (his psychoanalytic technique), he instead addressed only the evidence that the data he reportedly acquired were accurate (that he had discovered genuine abuse). He thought that the community could not yet handle the clinical case stories about sexual abuse. He did not want to present these stories before the seduction theory had become more accepted. Freud made several arguments to support the position that the memories he had uncovered were genuine. One of them was, according to Freud, that the patients were not simply remembering the events as they would normally forgotten material; rather they were essentially reliving the events, with all the accompanying painful sensory experiences. On two occasions Freud wrote that he would be presenting the clinical evidence for his claims, but he never did so, which some critics have contended means that they have had to be taken largely on trust. Freud's clinical methodology at the time, involving the


id: freud-s-seduction-theory-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud's_seduction_theory-2.md
category: reference
title: Freud's seduction theory
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud's_seduction_theory
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:34.697405+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: freud-s-seduction-theory-20260505-0
summary:
== Further reading == Cioffi, Frank (1998 [1973]. "Was Freud a Liar?" Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience. Chicago: Open Court, pp. 199–204. Kurt R. Eissler, Freud and the Seduction Theory: A Brief Love Affair, New York: International Universities Press, 2001 Robert Fliess, Symbol, Dream and Psychosis: Volume III Psychoanalytic Series, 1973 Esterson, Allen (1998). Jeffrey Masson and Freud's Seduction Theory: a new fable based on old myths. History of the Human Sciences, 11 (1), pp. 1–21. http://human-nature.com/esterson/ Esterson, Allen (2001). The Mythologizing of Psychoanalytic History: deception and self-deception in Freud's accounts of the seduction theory episode. History of Psychiatry, Vol. 12 (3), pp. 329-352. Esterson, Allen (2002). "The myth of Freud's ostracism by the medical community in 1896-1905: Jeffrey Masson's assault on truth". History of Psychology. 5 (2): 115–134. doi:10.1037/1093-4510.5.2.115. PMID 12096757. Freud, S. (1896a). Heredity and the aetiology of the neuroses. Standard Edition Vol. 3, 143–156. Freud, S. (1896b). Further remarks on the neuro-psychoses of defence. Standard Edition Vol. 3, 162–185. Freud, S. (1896c). The aetiology of hysteria. Standard Edition, Vol. 3, 191–221. Israëls, Han and Schatzman, Morton (1993). "The Seduction Theory" History of Psychiatry, iv: 23–59. Lothane, Z. (1987). Love, seduction, and trauma. The Psychoanalytic Review, 74(1):83-105.


id: geschwind-galaburda-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschwind–Galaburda_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Geschwind–Galaburda hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschwind–Galaburda_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:35.886367+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: geschwind-galaburda-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The Geschwind–Galaburda hypothesis is a neurological theory proposed by Norman Geschwind and Albert Galaburda in 1987. The hypothesis posits there are sex differences in cognitive abilities by relating them to lateralisation of brain function. The maturation rates of cerebral hemispheres differ and are mediated by circuiting testosterone levels, which are substantially influenced during the foetal and post-puberty development stages. According to the hypothesis, testosterone delays the maturation of the brain, particularly the left hemisphere, resulting in corresponding regions of the right hemisphere and unaffected areas of the left hemisphere developing more rapidly. This leads to reduced verbal skills and an increased risk of developing language disorders, e.g dyslexia, while a rapid development of the right hemisphere and the skills corresponding to it, such as attention and problem-solving. Focusing on foetal testosterone, the rise in levels hinders the development of the individual’s neurology and immunity, potentially explaining how cerebral lateralisation links to learning disorders, giftedness, and immune deficits. In cases of an underdeveloped or functionally impaired left hemisphere, the neuroanatomical asymmetries may lead to compensatory activity in other areas of the brain. The field of “neuropsychology of individual differences” is concerned with the understanding the relationship between brain lateralisation and behaviour


id: gillies-conjecture-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillies'_conjecture-0.md
category: reference
title: Gillies' conjecture
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillies'_conjecture
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:37.037748+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: gillies-conjecture-20260505-0
summary:
In number theory, Gillies' conjecture is a conjecture about the distribution of prime divisors of Mersenne numbers and was made by Donald B. Gillies in a 1964 paper in which he also announced the discovery of three new Mersenne primes. The conjecture is a specialization of the prime number theorem and is a refinement of conjectures due to I. J. Good and Daniel Shanks. The conjecture remains an open problem: several papers give empirical support, but it disagrees with the widely accepted (but also open) Lenstra–Pomerance–Wagstaff conjecture. == The conjecture == If {\displaystyle {\text{If }}} A < B < M p , as B / A and M p → ∞ , the number of prime divisors of M {\displaystyle A<B<{\sqrt {M_{p}}}{\text{, as }}B/A{\text{ and }}M_{p}\rightarrow \infty {\text{, the number of prime divisors of }}M} in the interval [ A , B ] is Poisson-distributed with {\displaystyle {\text{ in the interval }}[A,B]{\text{ is Poisson-distributed with}}} mean ∼ { log ⁡ ( log ⁡ B / log ⁡ A ) if A ≥ 2 p log ⁡ ( log ⁡ B / log ⁡ 2 p ) if A < 2 p {\displaystyle {\text{mean }}\sim {\begin{cases}\log(\log B/\log A)&{\text{ if }}A\geq 2p\\\log(\log


id: glacial-buzzsaw-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_buzzsaw-0.md
category: reference
title: Glacial buzzsaw
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_buzzsaw
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:38.252917+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: glacial-buzzsaw-20260505-0
summary:
The glacial buzzsaw is a hypothesis claiming erosion by warm-based glaciers is key to limit the height of mountains above certain threshold altitude. To this the hypothesis adds that great mountain massifs are leveled towards the equilibrium line altitude (ELA), which would act as a “climatic base level”. Starting from the hypothesis it has been predicted that local climate restricts the maximum height that mountain massifs can attain by effect of uplifting tectonic forces. It follows that as local climate is cooler at higher latitudes the highest mountains are lower there compared to the tropics where glaciation is and has been more limited. The mechanism behind the glacial buzzsaw effect would be the erosion of small glaciers that are mostly unable to erode much below the equilibrium line altitude since they do not reach these altitudes because of increased ablation. Instead, large valley glaciers may easily surpass the equilibrium line altitude and do therefore not contribute to a glacial buzzsaw effect. This is said to be the case of the Patagonian ice fields where lack of buzzsaw effect results in rapid tectonic uplift rates. Mountains massifs proposed to be subject to a glacial buzzsaw effect include the mountains of southeast


id: glacial-survival-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_survival_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Glacial survival hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_survival_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:39.470253+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: glacial-survival-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
According to the northern cryptic glacial refugial hypothesis (or glacial survival hypothesis), during the last ice age cold tolerant plant and animal species (e.g. Norway spruce and Norwegian lemmings) persisted in ice-free microrefugia north of the Alps in Europe. The alternative hypothesis of no persistence and postglacial immigration of plants and animals from southern refugia in Europe (southern refugia paradigm) is sometimes also called the tabula rasa hypothesis. Over the past plants and animals have persisted through long periods of climate change including several glacial and interglacial periods. There is a long-standing debate on what happened to the species that were inhabiting high-latitude regions during the Pleistocene ice age. Two main scenarios are usually considered. The first scenario proposes a total extinction of species within glaciated areas with survival events in peripheral refugia in the south and successive massive postglacial migration into empty areas (tabula rasa hypothesis). The second scenario proposes long-term in situ survival within glaciated regions (glacial survival hypothesis), either in isolated northern ice-free micro-refugia at the edge of the ice sheet, or on exposed mountains not covered with ice within the ice sheet (nunatak hypothesis). For boreal and cold-tolerant species the glacial survival hypothesis is credible, though


id: glasgow-chronology-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Chronology-0.md
category: reference
title: Glasgow Chronology
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Chronology
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:40.601406+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: glasgow-chronology-20260505-0
summary:
The Glasgow Chronology is a proposed revision of the Egyptian chronology of ancient Egypt. It was first formulated between the years 1978 and 1982 by a working group following the Glasgow Conference of Society for Interdisciplinary Studies (SIS, a non-profit organization advocating serious academic analysis of the pseudoscientific writings of Immanuel Velikovsky and other catastrophists). This chronology placed the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt some five hundred years later than the conventional chronology of Egypt. == Formation == The Glasgow Chronology was initially presented at an SIS conference that was held in 1978 in Glasgow and entitled "Ages in Chaos?" Flaws were pointed out in it almost immediately, and by the 1980s, all of its original proponents had abandoned it in favour of other chronologies. The Glasgow Chronology accepted all the character identifications proposed by Velikovsky in Ages in Chaos (1952). Thus Hatshepsut, who visited the Divine Land, was equated with the Queen of Sheba, who visited Solomon in Jerusalem, whilst Thutmose III, who followed Hatshepsut, was equated with Shishak, who plundered the Jerusalem temple after the death of Solomon. Velikovsky therefore reduced the age of the Eighteenth Dynasty by five centuries. However, in his subsequently published Ramses II and his


id: grand-tack-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_tack_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Grand tack hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_tack_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:41.837070+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: grand-tack-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
In planetary astronomy, the grand tack hypothesis proposes that Jupiter formed at a distance of 3.5 AU from the Sun, then migrated inward to 1.5 AU, before reversing course due to capturing Saturn in an orbital resonance, eventually halting near its current orbit at 5.2 AU. The reversal of Jupiter's planetary migration is likened to the path of a sailboat changing directions (tacking) as it travels against the wind. The planetesimal disk is truncated at 1.0 AU by Jupiter's migration, limiting the material available to form Mars. Jupiter twice crosses the asteroid belt, scattering asteroids outward then inward. The resulting asteroid belt has a small mass, a wide range of inclinations and eccentricities, and a population originating from both inside and outside Jupiter's original orbit. Debris produced by collisions among planetesimals swept ahead of Jupiter may have driven an early generation of planets into the Sun. == Description == In the grand tack hypothesis, Jupiter underwent a two-phase migration after its formation, migrating inward to 1.5 AU before reversing course and migrating outward. Jupiter's formation took place near the ice line, at roughly 3.5 AU. After clearing a gap in the gas disk Jupiter underwent type II migration, moving slowly


id: grand-tack-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_tack_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Grand tack hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_tack_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:41.837070+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: grand-tack-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
=== Absent super-Earths === The absence of close orbiting super-Earths in the Solar System may also be the result of Jupiter's inward migration. As Jupiter migrates inward, planetesimals are captured in its mean-motion resonances, causing their orbits to shrink and their eccentricities to grow. A collisional cascade follows as the planetesimals' relative velocities became large enough to produce catastrophic impacts. The resulting debris then spirals inward toward the Sun due to drag from the gas disk. If there were super-Earths in the early Solar System, they would have caught much of this debris in resonances and could have been driven into the Sun as the debris spiraled inward. The current terrestrial planets would then form from planetesimals left behind when Jupiter reversed course. However, the migration of close orbiting super-Earths into the Sun could be avoided if the debris coalesced into larger objects, reducing gas drag; and if the protoplanetary disk had an inner cavity, their inward migration could be halted near its edge. If no planets had yet formed in the inner Solar System, the destruction of the larger bodies during the collisional cascade could have left the remaining debris small enough to be pushed outward by the solar


id: grand-tack-hypothesis-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_tack_hypothesis-2.md
category: reference
title: Grand tack hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_tack_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:41.837070+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: grand-tack-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
== Potential problems == Most of the accretion of Mars must have taken place outside the narrow annulus of material formed by the grand tack if Mars has a different composition than Earth and Venus. The planets that grow in the annulus created by the grand tack end with similar compositions. If the grand tack occurred early, while the embryo that became Mars was relatively small, a Mars with a differing composition could form if it was instead scattered outward then inward like the asteroids. The chance of this occurring is roughly 2%. Later studies have shown that the convergent orbital migration of Jupiter and Saturn in the fading solar nebula is unlikely to establish a 3:2 mean-motion resonance. Instead of supporting a faster runaway migration, nebula conditions lead to a slower migration of Saturn and its capture in a 2:1 mean-motion resonance. Capture of Jupiter and Saturn in the 2:1 mean-motion resonance does not typically reverse the direction of migration, but particular nebula configurations have been identified that may drive outward migration. These configurations, however, tend to excite Jupiter's and Saturn's orbital eccentricity to values between two and three times as large as their actual values. Also, if the


id: grand-tack-hypothesis-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_tack_hypothesis-3.md
category: reference
title: Grand tack hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_tack_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:41.837070+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: grand-tack-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
== Alternatives == Multiple hypotheses have been offered to explain the small mass of Mars. A small Mars may have been a low probability event as it occurs in a small, but non-zero, fraction of simulations that begin with planetesimals distributed across the entire inner Solar System. A small Mars could be the result of its region having been largely empty due to solid material drifting farther inward before the planetesimals formed. Most of the mass could also have been removed from the Mars region before it formed if the giant planet instability described in the Nice model occurred early. If most of the growth of planetesimals and embryos into terrestrial planets was due to pebble accretion, a small Mars could be the result this process having been less efficient with increasing distances from the Sun. Convergent migration of planetary embryos in the gas disk toward 1 AU would result in the formation of terrestrial planets only near this distance leaving Mars as a stranded embryo. Sweeping secular resonances during the clearing of the gas disk could also excite inclinations and eccentricities, increasing relative velocities so that collisions resulted in fragmentation instead of accretion. A number of these hypotheses could


id: gunslinger-effect-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunslinger_effect-0.md
category: reference
title: Gunslinger effect
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunslinger_effect
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:43.038631+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: gunslinger-effect-20260505-0
summary:
The gunslinger effect, also sometimes called Bohr's law or the gunfighter's dilemma, is a psychophysical theory which says that an intentional or willed movement is slower than an automatic or reaction movement. The concept is named after physicist Niels Bohr, who first deduced that the person who draws second in a gunfight will actually win the shoot-out. == Bohr's experiment == Danish physicist Niels Henrik David Bohr came up with the hypothesis after watching Western films, which frequently depicted the protagonist drawing after his opponent in a gunfight and winning. He hypothesized that a person reacting might move faster than their opponent, who moved deliberately. Bohr and his students staged mock gunfights using toy guns to test this hypothesis, with apparently uncertain results. Bohr suggested that, to the extent the hypothesis is true, the logical alternative to a gunfight would be a peaceful settlement, since neither gunslinger would want to draw first knowing that they would lose. == Experimental evidence == Later research confirmed the basic hypothesis, showing that intentional movements and reaction movements were controlled by two separate systems, and that it was not confined merely to hand or arm movements. The gunslinger effect applies to the initial reaction,


id: hart-tipler-conjecture-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart–Tipler_conjecture-0.md
category: reference
title: Hart–Tipler conjecture
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart–Tipler_conjecture
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:44.243522+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: hart-tipler-conjecture-20260505-0
summary:
The Hart–Tipler conjecture is the idea that an absence of detectable Von Neumann probes is contrapositive evidence that no intelligent life exists outside of the Solar System. This idea was first proposed in opposition to the Drake equation in a 1975 paper by Michael H. Hart titled "Explanation for the Absence of Extraterrestrials on Earth". Assuming that the probes traveled at 1/10 the speed of light and that no time was lost in building new ships upon arriving at the destination, Hart surmised that a wave of Von Neumann probes could cross the galaxy in approximately 650,000 years, a comparatively minimal span of time relative to the estimated age of the universe at 13.7 billion years. Hart’s argument was extended by cosmologist Frank Tipler in his 1981 paper entitled "Extraterrestrial intelligent beings do not exist". Tipler's article prompted a response from Drake, as well as peers like Gregory Benford and John Daugman. The conjecture is the first of many proposed solutions to the Fermi paradox (the conflict between the lack of obvious evidence for alien life and various high probability estimates for its existence). In this case, the solution is that there is no other intelligent life because such estimates


id: high-income-trap-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-income_trap-0.md
category: reference
title: High-income trap
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-income_trap
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:45.352478+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: high-income-trap-20260505-0
summary:
The high-income trap refers to the phenomenon of slower growth in most high-income, developed countries compared to lower-income countries. Some economists argue that there is more evidence for a high-income trap than the middle-income trap. Among the countries said to experience this trap are Taiwan and Japan. == References ==


id: homotopy-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homotopy_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Homotopy hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homotopy_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:46.567648+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: homotopy-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
In category theory, a branch of mathematics, Grothendieck's homotopy hypothesis states, homotopy-theoretically speaking, that the ∞-groupoids are spaces. One version of the hypothesis was claimed to be proved in the 1991 paper by Kapranov and Voevodsky. Their proof turned out to be flawed and their result in the form interpreted by Carlos Simpson is now known as the Simpson conjecture. In higher category theory, one considers a space-valued presheaf instead of a set-valued presheaf in ordinary category theory. In view of homotopy hypothesis, a space here can be taken to an ∞-groupoid. == Formulations == A precise formulation of the hypothesis very strongly depends on the definition of an ∞-groupoid. One definition is that, mimicking the ordinary category case, an ∞-groupoid is an ∞-category in which each morphism is invertible or equivalently its homotopy category is a groupoid. Now, if an ∞-category is defined as a simplicial set satisfying the weak Kan condition, as done commonly today, then ∞-groupoids amounts exactly to Kan complexes (= simplicial sets with the Kan condition) by the following argument. If X {\displaystyle X} is a Kan complex (viewed as an ∞-category) and f {\displaystyle f} a morphism in it, consider σ : Λ 0


id: heavy-isotope-diet-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_isotope_diet-0.md
category: reference
title: Heavy isotope diet
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_isotope_diet
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:47.708877+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: heavy-isotope-diet-20260505-0
summary:
Heavy isotope diet is the consumption of nutrients in which some atoms are replaced with their heavier non-radioactive isotopes, such as deuterium (2H) or heavy carbon (13C). Biomolecules that incorporate heavier isotopes give rise to more stable molecular structures under certain circumstances, which is hypothesized to increase resistance to damage associated with ageing or diseases. Medicines with some hydrogen atoms substituted with deuterium are called deuterated drugs, while substances that are essential nutrients can be used as food constituents, making this food "isotopic". Consumed with food, these nutrients become building material for the body. The examples are deuterated polyunsaturated fatty acids, essential aminoacids, DNA bases such as cytosine, or heavy water and glucose. == Suggested mechanism == One of the most pernicious and irreparable types of oxidative damage inflicted by reactive oxygen species (ROS) upon biomolecules involves the carbon-hydrogen bond cleavage (hydrogen abstraction). Intriguingly, the biomolecules most damageable by this type of damage belong to the group of essential nutrients (10 out of 20 amino acids; nucleosides at certain conditions (conditionally essential); all polyunsaturated fatty acids). In theory, replacing hydrogen with deuterium "reinforces" the bond due to the kinetic isotope effect, and such reinforced biomolecules taken up by the body


id: independence-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Independence hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:48.900629+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: independence-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The Independence hypothesis is a proposed solution to the synoptic problem. It holds that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are each original compositions formed independently of each other, with no documentary relationship. Scholars have long noted that the three synoptic gospels have a great deal in common, not just in content but also in order and precise Greek wording. Most scholars have asserted that this must be due to some sort of literary interrelationship among the gospels, with fragments of text copied from one source to another, but have struggled to find a satisfactory theory of who copied from whom. The independence theory rejects this consensus of documentary dependence; rather, each evangelist has independently drawn from eyewitness accounts and perhaps liturgy and other oral tradition. The similarities among the synoptic gospels, the whole basis for the synoptic problem, are held to be, first of all, vastly overstated, and secondly, explainable as artifacts of relying on the same witnesses or of different witnesses to the same events. The witnesses to the gospel content, especially apostles such as Peter, would have preached their testimony countless times before contributing to the gospels, and such numerous rehearsals tend to make a story settle into a


id: janzen-connell-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janzen–Connell_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Janzen–Connell hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janzen–Connell_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:50.084252+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: janzen-connell-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The Janzen–Connell hypothesis is a well-known hypothesis for the maintenance of high species biodiversity in the tropics. It was published independently in the early 1970s by Daniel Janzen, who focused on tropical trees, and Joseph Connell who discussed trees and marine invertebrates. According to their hypothesis, host-specific herbivores, pathogens, or other natural enemies (sometimes also referred to as predators) make the areas near a parent tree (the seed-producing tree) inhospitable for the survival of seeds or seedlings. These natural enemies are referred to as 'distance-responsive predators' if they kill seeds or seedlings near the parent tree, or 'density-dependent predators' if they kill seeds or seedlings where they are most abundant (which is typically near the parent tree). Such predators can prevent any one species from dominating the landscape, because if that species is too common, there will be few safe places for its seedlings to survive. Both Janzen and Connell originally proposed that for natural enemies to increase local diversity, they must be host-specific (also called specialists) and relatively immobile, such that they disproportionately reduce the density of the more locally common tree species. This prevents any one species from becoming dominant and excluding other species through competition, allowing more


id: janzen-connell-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janzen–Connell_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Janzen–Connell hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janzen–Connell_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:50.084252+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: janzen-connell-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
=== Herbivory and tree density === Specialist herbivores who consume plant matter can also be thought of as having a "transmission rate" between individuals similarly to a disease. Tree predators (especially herbivorous insects) are limited by the ease of movement. When individuals are closer together at high density, movement between trees is easier and the predators quickly spread out. However, at low tree density, predators can not find the next individual with as much ease and thus often have low transmission rates leading to less specialist predation. == Problematic aspects == Many studies examining the Janzen–Connell hypothesis have shown supporting patterns with a number of tree species, but despite this there are also problematic aspects of the hypothesis. The Janzen–Connell hypothesis explains diversity at a community-wide scale, but most studies have only looked at a single species or a localized region. Most studies do not test the diversity prediction and did not determine the causes for patterns consistent with Janzen–Connell effects. As Wright (2002) pointed out, "field measurements only demonstrate that niche differences, Janzen–Connell effects, and negative density dependence occur. Implications for species coexistence and plant diversity remain conjectural." While these host-specific predators may play keystone species roles as they


id: janzen-connell-hypothesis-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janzen–Connell_hypothesis-2.md
category: reference
title: Janzen–Connell hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janzen–Connell_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:50.084252+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: janzen-connell-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
== Current conclusions and further research == It is tricky to form conclusions regarding the accuracy of the Janzen–Connell hypothesis as it is difficult to falsify. This is because: Heavy predation may keep some species rare and widely spaced, and these species may also be the best competitors (although it is unclear why this would be the case). If so, these species are most likely to form dense aggregations that would reduce diversity in local areas. But due to their rarity or a belief that rare species are not regulated by density-dependence, these species may be the ones least likely to be studied. This means that the failure to find Janzen–Connell effects for what could be hundreds of tree species does not reject the hypothesis, as ecologists are missing the few key species where it does apply. However, dissenting findings do reduce the importance of the hypothesis for explaining overall coexistence of a number species. For example, Hyatt et al. (2003) found that there were "individual cases of conformity to the hypothesis," which is all that is needed for the hypothesis to work if the specific cases represent tree species that are excellent competitors, highly shade tolerant, habitat generalists, or


id: joint-hypothesis-problem-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_hypothesis_problem-0.md
category: reference
title: Joint hypothesis problem
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_hypothesis_problem
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:51.300595+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: joint-hypothesis-problem-20260505-0
summary:
The joint hypothesis problem is the problem that testing for market efficiency is difficult, or even impossible. Any attempts to test for market (in)efficiency must involve asset pricing models so that there are expected returns to compare to real returns. It is not possible to measure 'abnormal' returns without expected returns predicted by pricing models. Therefore, anomalous market returns may reflect market inefficiency, an inaccurate asset pricing model or both. This problem is discussed in Fama's (1970) influential review of the theory and evidence on efficient markets, and was often used to argue against interpreting early stock market anomalies as mispricing. Other arguments used by efficient market advocates include the Roll critique, which points at that testing a specific asset pricing model, the capital asset pricing model, is impossible. Roll's critique centers on the fact that the market portfolio includes all human wealth, and is not observable. Refinements of the capital asset pricing model imply that the information set of observers is important, and since this information set is not observable, one cannot test the capital asset pricing model even if the market portfolio is observed. == References == == Further reading == Cochrane, John H. (2005). "Asset Pricing," Chapter


id: keitai-kinmei-civil-war-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keitai–Kinmei_Civil_War-0.md
category: reference
title: Keitai–Kinmei Civil War
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keitai–Kinmei_Civil_War
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:52.489735+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: keitai-kinmei-civil-war-20260505-0
summary:
The Keitai–Kinmei Civil War (継体・欽明朝の内乱, Keitai–Kinmeichō no Nairan) is a hypothetical civil war in Japanese history. It is based on the assumption that the death of Emperor Keitai in the first half of the 6th century precipitated a struggle over the succession to the throne, but remains speculative because the documents recording the period contain inconsistencies. The assumed year is sometimes set as 531, the year of Emperor Keitai's death according to the Nihon Shoki. 531 in the sexagenary cycle of dating is Heavenly Stem Metal (辛), Earthly Branch Pig (亥), so it is also known as the "Perverse event of Metal Pig" (辛亥の変, Shingai no Hen). == Outline == According to the Nihon Shoki, the year Keitai died was the Metal Pig year, based on the fragments of the history of Baekche about Waekoku (Japan) called the Kudara Honki (百済本記) in Japanese. Another theory places his death in the year of the Tiger (534). This is considered the year of the accession of the next emperor, Ankan, which is usually interpreted as a two-year vacancy following the death of Emperor Keitai. However, several questions emerge here. The article on the year of the Metal Pig in the Kudara Honki


id: knowledge-gap-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_gap_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Knowledge gap hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_gap_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:53.646189+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: knowledge-gap-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The knowledge gap hypothesis is a mass communication theory created by Philip J. Tichenor, George A. Donohue, and Clarice. N Olien in 1970. The theory is based on how a member of society processes information from mass media differently based on education level and socioeconomic status (SES). Since there is already a pre-existing gap in knowledge between groups in a population, mass media amplifies this gap to another level. The Knowledge Gap Hypothesis overviews and covers theoretical concepts that the hypothesis builds upon, historical background, operationalization and the means by which the hypothesis is measured, narrative review, meta-analytic support that draws data from multiple studies, new communication technologies that have affected the hypothesis, as well as the idea of Digital Divide, and the existing critiques and scholarly debates surrounding the hypothesis. == Historical background == The knowledge gap hypothesis has been implicit throughout the mass communication literature. Research published as early as the 1920s had already begun to examine the influence of individual characteristics on people's media content preferences. 1929 William S. Gray and Ruth Munroe authors of The Reading Interests and Habits of Adults examined the education advantages of adults which influenced their reading habits. The well educated reader


id: knowledge-gap-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_gap_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Knowledge gap hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_gap_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:53.646189+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: knowledge-gap-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
== Hypothesis operationalization == According to the authors, Jack Rosenberry and Lauren A.Vicker, " A hypothesis is basically a research question: the researcher needs to ask questions and answer them in order to formulate theory. The term "hypothesis" also can be used to describe a theory that is still in the development stage or that has not been fully researched and verified. Because of the somewhat contradictory nature of the research findings, the knowledge gap has not yet achieved theory status and is still known as a hypothesis." Since the 1970s, many policy makers and social scientists have been concerned with how community members acquire information via mass media. Throughout the years, extensive research has been conducted and taken different approaches to researching the Knowledge Gap Hypothesis. The hypothesis operationalization consists of the following: For cross-sectional research, the knowledge gap hypothesis expects that "at any given time, there should be a higher correlation between acquisition of knowledge and education for topics highly publicized in the media than for topics less highly publicized. Tichenor, Donohue, and Olien (1970) tested this hypothesis using an experiment in which participants were asked to read and discuss two news stories of varying publicity. The results


id: knowledge-gap-hypothesis-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_gap_hypothesis-2.md
category: reference
title: Knowledge gap hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_gap_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:53.646189+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: knowledge-gap-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
== New communication technologies == The internet has changed how people engage media. The internet-based media has to be accessed with digital devices and accessed to the internet. In the United States, there is a concern about the digital divide because not all Americans have access to the internet and devices. With the hope that Internet would close the knowledge gap, it has exposed the following inequities: access, motivation and cognitive ability. The following research displays the link between access to internet and socioeconomic status, SES. According to a Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults conducted Jan. 25-Feb. 8, 2021, Emily Vogels, a research associate focusing on internet and technology, wrote, "More than 30 years after the debut of the World Wide Web, internet use, broadband adoption and smartphone ownership have grown rapidly for all Americans – including those who are less well-off financially. However, the digital lives of Americans with lower and higher incomes remain markedly different." "Americans with higher household incomes are also more likely to have multiple devices that enable them to go online. Roughly six-in-ten adults living in households earning $100,000 or more a year (63%) report having home broadband services, a smartphone, a desktop


id: landscape-zodiac-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landscape_zodiac-0.md
category: reference
title: Landscape zodiac
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landscape_zodiac
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:54.828123+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: landscape-zodiac-20260505-0
summary:
A landscape zodiac (or terrestrial zodiac) is a purported map of the stars on a gigantic scale, formed by features in the landscape, such as roads, streams and field boundaries. Perhaps the best known alleged example is the Glastonbury Temple of the Stars, situated around Glastonbury in Somerset, England. The temple is thought by some to depict a colossal zodiac. == Theory == The theory was first put forward in 1935 by Katherine Maltwood, an artist who "discovered" the zodiac in a vision, and held that the "temple" was created by Sumerians about 2700 BC. Interest was re-ignited in 1969 by Mary Caine in an article in the magazine Gandalf's Garden. The landscape zodiac plays an important role in many occult theories. It has been associated with the Celtic Saints, Grail legend and King Arthur (according to some legends buried in Glastonbury). == Criticism == The idea was examined by two independent studies, one by Ian Burrow in 1975 and the other in 1983 by Tom Williamson and Liz Bellamy, using the standard methods of landscape historical research. Both studies concluded that the evidence contradicted the idea. The eye of Capricorn identified by Maltwood was a haystack. The western wing


id: law-of-crime-concentration-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Crime_Concentration-0.md
category: reference
title: Law of Crime Concentration
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Crime_Concentration
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:56.013628+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: law-of-crime-concentration-20260505-0
summary:
The law of crime concentration states that "for a defined measure of crime at a specific micro-geographic unit, the concentration of crime will fall within a narrow bandwidth of percentages for a defined cumulative proportion of crime." This law builds on the well-established empirical observation in the criminology of place that crime concentrates on very small units of geography. Criminologist, David Weisburd, first proposed a formal "law of crime concentration" in 2015 after having observed the phenomenon across many cities. In their longitudinal study of street segments in Seattle, WA, Weisburd and colleagues (2012) observed not only that crime was concentrated, but across a 16-year observation period the level of concentration was remarkedly consistent: 50% of crime incidents were found at between 4.7% and 6.1% of street segments in the city each year, despite a decline of more than 20% in overall crime during that period. To test whether the law of crime concentration existed in other cities, Weisburd examined 8 additional cities in 2015. While noting variability between the five larger and three smaller cities, the overall range or bandwidth of crime concentrations observed was between 2.1% and 6.0% of streets producing 50% of city crime, and between 0.4%


id: liberation-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Liberation hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:57.172817+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: liberation-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
In criminal justice, the liberation hypothesis proposes that extra-legal factors (such as race of offender and pretrial publicity) affect sentencing outcomes more in regards to less serious offenses compared to more serious ones, ostensibly because juries and judges will feel less able to follow their personal sentiments with regard to more serious crimes. The hypothesis also proposes that the extent to which extra-legal factors sentencing outcomes is dependent on the strength of the evidence in the case. The hypothesis was first proposed by Harry Kalven and Hans Zeisel in their 1966 book "The American Jury". Since then, multiple studies have found support for it. == References ==


id: life-cycle-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Life-cycle hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:58.356118+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: life-cycle-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
In economics, the life-cycle hypothesis (LCH) is a model that strives to explain the consumption patterns of individuals. == Theory and evidence == Elderly dissaving is also influenced by the present factors that materially prevent them from the possibility of spending their previous savings. One of them is the loss of the driving license. An extended survey held in 1998, 2000, and 2002 among the U.S. retired citizens highlighted that "about 90% of the trips among people older than age 65 are in a private vehicle" and that driving cessation was highly correlated (46% to 63%, Tobit regression) to a reduction in spending on non basic needs such as trips, tickets, and dinings out. It is also relevant to distinguish elderly poor people in two basic tipologies: people who are poor on income, or those who are poor in terms of both income and consumption. While the life cycle hypothesis predicts the income and the consumption patterns of the elderly population, a series of research papers published in the 2000s highlighted the role of other factors in making the elderly class of people among the income-poor alone, and not people who are both income and consumption-poor. It is the latter


id: linguistic-relativity-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity-0.md
category: reference
title: Linguistic relativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:59.583130+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: linguistic-relativity-20260505-0
summary:
Linguistic relativity asserts that language influences worldview or cognition. One form of linguistic relativity, linguistic determinism, regards peoples' languages as determining and influencing the scope of cultural perceptions of their surrounding world. Various colloquialisms refer to linguistic relativism: the Whorf hypothesis; the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis ( sə-PEER WHORF); the Whorf–Sapir hypothesis; and Whorfianism. The hypothesis is disputed, with many different variations throughout its history. The strong hypothesis of linguistic relativity, now referred to as linguistic determinism, is that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and restrict cognitive categories. This was a claim by some earlier linguists pre-World War II; since then it has fallen out of acceptance by contemporary linguists. Nevertheless, research has produced positive empirical evidence supporting a weaker version of linguistic relativity: that a language's structures influence a speaker's perceptions, without strictly limiting or obstructing them. Although common, the term Sapir–Whorf hypothesis is sometimes considered a misnomer for several reasons. Edward Sapir (1884–1939) and Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941) never stated their ideas in terms of a hypothesis. The distinction between a weak and a strong version of this hypothesis is also a later development; Sapir and Whorf never used such a dichotomy, although often their writings and


id: linguistic-relativity-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity-1.md
category: reference
title: Linguistic relativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:59.583130+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: linguistic-relativity-20260505-0
summary:
==== Wilhelm von Humboldt ==== In 1820, Wilhelm von Humboldt associated the study of language with the national romanticist program by proposing that language is the fabric of thought. Thoughts are produced as a kind of internal dialog using the same grammar as the thinker's native language. This opinion was part of a greater idea in which the assumptions of an ethnic nation, their "Weltanschauung", was considered as being represented by the grammar of their language. Von Humboldt argued that languages with an inflectional morphological type, such as German, English and the other Indo-European languages, were the most perfect languages and that accordingly this explained the dominance of their speakers with respect to the speakers of less perfect languages. Wilhelm von Humboldt declared in 1820: The diversity of languages is not a diversity of signs and sounds but a diversity of views of the world.In Humboldt's humanistic understanding of linguistics, each language creates the individual's worldview in its particular way through its lexical and grammatical categories, conceptual organization, and syntactic models. === Boas and Sapir === The idea that some languages are superior to others and that lesser languages maintained their speakers in intellectual poverty was widespread during the early


id: linguistic-relativity-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity-2.md
category: reference
title: Linguistic relativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:59.583130+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: linguistic-relativity-20260505-0
summary:
More than any linguist, Benjamin Lee Whorf has become associated with what he termed the "linguistic relativity principle". Studying Native American languages, he attempted to account for the ways in which grammatical systems and language-use differences affected perception. Whorf's opinions regarding the nature of the relation between language and thought remain under contention. However, a version of theory holds some "merit", for example, "different words mean different things in different languages; not every word in every language has a one-to-one exact translation in a different language" Critics such as Lenneberg, Black, and Pinker attribute to Whorf a strong linguistic determinism, while Lucy, Silverstein and Levinson point to Whorf's explicit rejections of determinism, and where he contends that translation and commensuration are possible. Detractors such as Lenneberg, Chomsky and Pinker criticized him for insufficient clarity of his description of how language influences thought, and for not proving his conjectures. Most of his arguments were in the form of anecdotes and speculations that served as attempts to show how "exotic" grammatical traits were associated with what were apparently equally exotic worlds of thought. In Whorf's words: We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. The categories and types that


id: linguistic-relativity-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity-3.md
category: reference
title: Linguistic relativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:59.583130+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: linguistic-relativity-20260505-0
summary:
=== Structure-centered approach === Whorf's argument about Hopi speakers' conceptualization of time is an example of the structure-centered method of research into linguistic relativity, which Lucy identified as one of three main types of research of the topic. The "structure-centered" method starts with a language's structural peculiarity and examines its possible ramifications for thought and behavior. The defining example is Whorf's observation of discrepancies between the grammar of time expressions in Hopi and English. More recent research in this vein is Lucy's research describing how usage of the categories of grammatical number and of numeral classifiers in the Mayan language Yucatec result in Mayan speakers classifying objects according to material rather than to shape as preferred by English speakers. However, philosophers including Donald Davidson and Jason Josephson Storm have argued that Whorf's Hopi examples are self-refuting, as Whorf had to translate Hopi terms into English in order to explain how they are untranslatable. === Whorf dies === Whorf died in 1941 at age 44, leaving multiple unpublished papers. His ideas were continued by linguists and anthropologists such as Hoijer and Lee, who both continued investigating the effect of language on habitual thought, and Trager, who prepared a number of Whorf's


id: linguistic-relativity-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity-4.md
category: reference
title: Linguistic relativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:59.583130+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: linguistic-relativity-20260505-0
summary:
=== Rethinking Linguistic Relativity === The publication of the 1996 anthology Rethinking Linguistic Relativity edited by Gumperz and Levinson began a new period of linguistic relativity studies that emphasized cognitive and social aspects. The book included studies on linguistic relativity and universalist traditions. Levinson documented significant linguistic relativity effects in the different linguistic conceptualization of spatial categories in different languages. For example, men speaking the Guugu Yimithirr language in Queensland gave accurate navigation instructions using a compass-like system of north, south, east and west, along with a hand gesture pointing to the starting direction. Lucy defines this method as "domain-centered" because researchers select a semantic domain and compare it across linguistic and cultural groups. Space is another semantic domain that has proven fruitful for linguistic relativity studies. Spatial categories vary greatly across languages. Speakers rely on the linguistic conceptualization of space in performing many ordinary tasks. Levinson and others reported three basic spatial categorizations. While many languages use combinations of them, some languages exhibit only one type and related behaviors. For example, Yimithirr only uses absolute directions when describing spatial relations—the position of everything is described by using the cardinal directions. Speakers define a location as "north of the house",


id: linguistic-relativity-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity-5.md
category: reference
title: Linguistic relativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:59.583130+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: linguistic-relativity-20260505-0
summary:
=== Berlin and Kay === Studies by Berlin and Kay continued Lenneberg's color research. They studied color terminology formation and showed clear universal trends in color naming. For example, they found that even though languages have different color terminologies, they generally recognize certain hues as more focal than others. They showed that in languages with few color terms, it is predictable from the number of terms which hues are chosen as focal colors: For example, languages with only three color terms always have the focal colors black, white, and red. The fact that what had been believed to be random differences between color naming in different languages could be shown to follow universal patterns was seen as a powerful argument against linguistic relativity. Berlin and Kay's research has since been criticized by relativists such as Lucy, who argued that Berlin and Kay's conclusions were skewed by their insistence that color terms encode only color information. This, Lucy argues, made them unaware of the instances in which color terms provided other information that might be considered examples of linguistic relativity. == Universalism == Universalist scholars began a period of dissent from ideas about linguistic relativity. Lenneberg was one of the first


id: linguistic-relativity-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity-6.md
category: reference
title: Linguistic relativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:59.583130+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: linguistic-relativity-20260505-0
summary:
=== Parameters === In his 1987 book Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind, Lakoff reappraised linguistic relativity and especially Whorf's ideas about how linguistic categorization represents and/or influences mental categories. He concluded that the debate had been confused. He identified four parameters on which researchers differed in their opinions about what constitutes linguistic relativity: The degree and intensity of linguistic relativity. Perhaps a few examples of superficial differences in language and associated behavior are enough to demonstrate the existence of linguistic relativity. Alternatively, perhaps only great differences that permeate the linguistic and cultural system suffice. Whether conceptual systems are absolute or whether they can evolve. Whether the similarity criterion is translatability or the use of linguistic expressions. Whether the emphasis of linguistic relativity is language or the brain. Lakoff concluded that many of Whorf's critics had criticized him using novel definitions of linguistic relativity, rendering their criticisms moot. == Refinements == Researchers such as Boroditsky, Choi, Majid, Lucy and Levinson believe that language influences thought in more limited ways than the broadest early claims. Researchers examine the interface between thought (or cognition), language and culture and describe the relevant influences. They use experimental data to


id: linguistic-relativity-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity-7.md
category: reference
title: Linguistic relativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:59.583130+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: linguistic-relativity-20260505-0
summary:
=== Psycholinguistic research === Psycholinguistic studies explored motion perception, emotion perception, object representation and memory. The gold standard of psycholinguistic studies on linguistic relativity is now finding non-linguistic cognitive differences in speakers of different languages (thus rendering inapplicable Pinker's criticism that linguistic relativity is "circular"). Recent work with bilingual speakers attempts to distinguish the effects of language from those of culture on bilingual cognition including perceptions of time, space, motion, colors, and emotion. Researchers described differences between bilinguals and monolinguals in perception of color, representations of time and other elements of cognition. == Other domains == Linguistic relativity inspired others to consider whether thought and emotion could be influenced by manipulating language. === Science and philosophy === A major question is whether human psychological faculties are mostly innate or whether they are mostly a result of learning, and hence subject to cultural and social processes such as language. The innate opinion is that humans share the same set of basic faculties, variability due to cultural differences is less important, and the human mind is a mostly biological construction, so all humans who share the same neurological configuration can be expected to have similar cognitive patterns. Multiple alternatives have advocates. The


id: linguistic-relativity-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity-8.md
category: reference
title: Linguistic relativity
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
date_saved: 2026-05-05T09:59:59.583130+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: linguistic-relativity-20260505-0
summary:
=== Programming languages === APL programming language originator Kenneth E. Iverson believed that the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis applied to computer languages (without actually mentioning it by name). His Turing Award lecture, "Notation as a Tool of Thought", was devoted to this theme, arguing that more powerful notations aided thinking about computer algorithms. The essays of Paul Graham explore similar themes, such as a conceptual hierarchy of computer languages, with more expressive and succinct languages at the top. Thus, the so-called blub paradox (after a hypothetical programming language of average complexity called Blub) says that anyone preferentially using some particular programming language will know that it is more powerful than some, but not that it is less powerful than others. The reason is that writing in some language means thinking in that language. Hence the paradox, because typically programmers are "satisfied with whatever language they happen to use, because it dictates the way they think about programs". In a 2003 presentation at an open source convention, Yukihiro Matsumoto, creator of the programming language Ruby, said that one of his inspirations for developing the language was the science fiction novel Babel-17, based on the Whorf Hypothesis. === Science fiction === Numerous examples of


id: lottery-ticket-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottery_ticket_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Lottery ticket hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottery_ticket_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:00.797214+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: lottery-ticket-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
In machine learning, the lottery ticket hypothesis is that artificial neural networks with random weights can contain a subnetwork which (entirely by chance) can be tuned to a similar performance as tuning the whole network. The original statement of the hypothesis is:A randomly-initialized, dense neural network contains a subnetwork that is initialized such that—when trained in isolation—it can match the test accuracy of the original network after training for at most the same number of iterations.The original algorithm is: Randomily initialize dense network: weights θ 0 {\displaystyle \theta _{0}} . Train for j {\displaystyle j} iterations → weights θ j {\displaystyle \theta _{j}} . Magnitude pruning: build a bitmask m {\displaystyle m} by setting to 0 the lowest-magnitude weights in each layer (one-shot), or repeat train → prune across rounds to reach higher sparsity (iterative). Reset surviving weights to initialization: use m ⊙ θ 0 {\displaystyle m\odot \theta _{0}} as the starting point. Here ⊙ {\displaystyle \odot } is elementwise multiplication. Train the masked network f ( x ; m ⊙ θ 0 ) {\displaystyle f\!\left(x;m\odot \theta _{0}\right)} with the same optimizer, schedule, and data. Declare "winning ticket" if it achieves comparable test accuracy in ≤ j {\displaystyle \leq j}


id: marcan-priority-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcan_priority-0.md
category: reference
title: Marcan priority
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcan_priority
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:02.051601+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: marcan-priority-20260505-0
summary:
Marcan priority (or Markan priority) is the hypothesis that the Gospel of Mark was the first of the three synoptic gospels to be written, and was used as a source by the other two (Matthew and Luke). It is a central element in discussion of the synoptic problem—the question of the documentary relationship among these three gospels. Most scholars since the late 19th century have accepted the concept of Marcan priority, although a number of scholars support different forms of Marcan priority or reject it altogether. It forms the foundation for the widely accepted two-source theory. == History == The tradition handed down by the Church Fathers regarded Matthew as the first Gospel written in Hebrew, which was later used as a source by Mark and Luke. It is seen as early as in Irenaeus's book Against Heresies. Augustine of Hippo wrote in the 5th century: "Now, those four evangelists whose names have gained the most remarkable circulation over the whole world, and whose number has been fixed as four, ...are believed to have written in the order which follows: first Matthew, then Mark, thirdly Luke, lastly John." And: "Of these four, it is true, only Matthew is reckoned to


id: marcan-priority-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcan_priority-1.md
category: reference
title: Marcan priority
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcan_priority
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:02.051601+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: marcan-priority-20260505-0
summary:
Marcan posteriority states that Mark's correspondence with other synoptics was due to Mark taking from them. The view of the Church Fathers such as Augustine was that the order in the New Testament was also the order of publication and inspiration – Matthew, then Mark, then Luke, then John. This is usually called the Augustinian hypothesis. A modern tweak of this view that maintains Matthaean priority is the two-gospel (Griesbach) hypothesis which holds that Mark used both Matthew and Luke as a source (thus, in order, Matthew—Luke—Mark). This view envisions a Mark who mostly collected the common material shared between Matthew and Luke. Lucan priority has been revived in recent decades in the complex form of the Jerusalem school hypothesis, which also places Mark in the middle. Here, Mark uses Luke, then Matthew uses Mark but not Luke, while all three Synoptics draw from a hypothetical Greek translation of an earlier Hebrew work. Some theories deny literary priority to any one of the Synoptic Gospels, asserting that, whatever their chronological order of composition, none of them draws from any of the others. The multi-source hypothesis has each synoptic gospel combining a distinct mix of earlier documents, while the independence hypothesis


id: marcan-priority-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcan_priority-2.md
category: reference
title: Marcan priority
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcan_priority
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:02.051601+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: marcan-priority-20260505-0
summary:
=== Content not present in Mark === Mark's gospel is by far the shortest, just over half the length of Luke, and omits much found in Matthew and Luke. In fact, while the majority of Mark is included in the other two Synoptics, the additional material shared between Matthew and Luke only is quite extensive. While Marcan priority easily sees Matthew and Luke building upon Mark by adding new material, Marcan posteriority must explain some surprising omissions. Mark has no infancy narrative nor any version of the Lord's Prayer, for example. Nor does Mark have more than a handful of unique pericopes. This is expected under Marcan priority, where Matthew has reused nearly everything he found in Mark, but if Mark was written last, it is harder to explain why so little new material was added. However, Mark's selection of material must be explained in either case, unless it is to be believed that the author of Mark knew nothing more about Jesus than what was written in Mark. Bauckham argues that Mark's content is limited to what Peter himself had witnessed, or at least learned from trusted associates. Powers argues that Mark's purpose is fundamentally kerygmatic, needing to hold


id: marcan-priority-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcan_priority-3.md
category: reference
title: Marcan priority
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcan_priority
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:02.051601+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: marcan-priority-20260505-0
summary:
=== Order === Comparing the sequential order of parallel pericopes among the three Synoptics, the arrangement often varies, but some general patterns emerge. Mark nearly always follows Matthew and Luke where they agree in order and one or the other when they disagree. On the other hand, the double tradition pericopae shared between Matthew and Luke show little agreement in order. Such observations have been studied in detail for centuries, but the difficulty has been in how to interpret them. Marcan priority views this order as support for Matthew and Luke each building upon Mark; Marcan posteriority, however, sees this order as proof that Mark drew alternately from Matthew and Luke. Even the Augustinian hypothesis can see Mark adapting Matthew's order, then Luke adapting Mark's order. === Dualisms === Mark displays a special fondness for "dualisms" of various kinds, one of which is repeating essentially the same thing in two adjacent phrases. In a majority of cases, the parallel passages in Matthew and Luke, if any, echo only one of the two, and it often happens that Matthew chooses one and Luke chooses the other. Some prominent examples: "When it was evening, after sunset" vs "When it was evening" +


id: marcan-priority-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcan_priority-4.md
category: reference
title: Marcan priority
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcan_priority
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:02.051601+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: marcan-priority-20260505-0
summary:
The early patristic evidence records a few traditions on the origins of the Synoptic Gospels. It never indicates that one gospel used another as a source and shows little concern even for their chronological order; the focus was rather on who composed them and on their apostolic authority. What evidence there is as to the order of composition or publication is seen as virtually unanimous agreement on placing Matthew first. The earliest relevant source is Papias (c. 105), whose surviving fragments report two notable facts, echoed by most later sources. The evangelist Mark, he says, was Peter's interpreter and compiled his Gospel from the preaching of Peter in Rome, which Peter then sanctioned for use in the churches. Matthew the Apostle, on the other hand, wrote his account himself in the "Hebrew dialect". This account of the origin of Mark is seen as likely genuine by many scholars, though hardly all. If so, Mark's source is not the other two Synoptics but Peter—unless Peter himself drew from them, as some propose. The curious statement that Matthew's logia (as Papias calls it) was written in the "Hebrew dialect"—the ordinary way of referring to either the Hebrew or the Aramaic language—has been


id: matthean-posteriority-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthean_Posteriority_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Matthean Posteriority hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthean_Posteriority_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:03.216755+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: matthean-posteriority-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The Matthean Posteriority hypothesis, also known as the Wilke hypothesis after Christian Gottlob Wilke, is a proposed solution to the synoptic problem, holding that the Gospel of Mark was used as a source by the Gospel of Luke, then both of these were used as sources by the Gospel of Matthew. Thus, it posits Marcan priority and Matthaean posteriority. Wilke's hypothesis received little attention until recent decades, but a resurgence of support for Matthean Posteriority has been one of the defining trends of Synoptic studies during the 2010s, and the theory has entered the mainstream of scholarship. == History == Gottlob Christian Storr, in his 1786 argument for Marcan priority, asked, if Mark was a source for Matthew and Luke, how the latter two were then related. Storr proposed, among other possibilities, that the canonical Matthew (written in Greek) was translated from the original, which was written in either Hebrew or Aramaic (the logia spoken of by Papias) by following Mark primarily but also drawing from Luke, although he later went on to oppose this. These ideas were little noticed until 1838, when Christian Gottlob Wilke revived the hypothesis of Marcan priority and extensively developed the argument for Matthaean posteriority.


id: medea-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medea_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Medea hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medea_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:04.440813+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: medea-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The Medea hypothesis is a term coined by paleontologist Peter Ward for a hypothesis that contests the Gaian hypothesis and proposes that multicellular life, understood as a superorganism, may be self-destructive or suicidal. The metaphor refers to the mythological Medea (representing the Earth), who kills her own children (multicellular life). In this view, microbial-triggered mass extinctions result in returns to the microbial-dominated state Earth has been in for most of its history. == Examples == Possible examples of extinction events induced entirely or partially by biotic activities include: The Great Oxidation Event, 2.45 billion years ago, believed to be responsible for the mass poisoning of anaerobic microbes to which oxygen was toxic, and for the Huronian glaciation that resulted from the reaction of methane with oxygen to form carbon dioxide (a less potent greenhouse gas than methane) and subsequent depletion of atmospheric carbon dioxide by aerobic photosynthesisers The Sturtian and Marinoan Snowball Earth glaciations, 715 to 680 and 650 to 632.3 million years ago, respectively, resulting from the sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide during the Neoproterozoic Oxygenation Event The Late Ordovician Mass Extinction (LOME), 445.2 million years ago to 443.8 million years ago, suggested by some studies to have been


id: metasystem-transition-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasystem_transition-0.md
category: reference
title: Metasystem transition
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasystem_transition
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:05.572411+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: metasystem-transition-20260505-0
summary:
A metasystem transition is the emergence, through evolution, of a higher level of organization or control. A metasystem is formed by the integration of a number of initially independent components, such as molecules (as theorized for instance by hypercycles), cells, or individuals, and the emergence of a system steering or controlling their interactions. As such, the collective of components becomes a new, goal-directed individual, capable of acting in a coordinated way. This metasystem is more complex, more intelligent, and more flexible in its actions than the initial component systems. Prime examples are the origin of life, the transition from unicellular to multicellular organisms, the emergence of eusociality or symbolic thought. The concept of metasystem transition was introduced by the cybernetician Valentin Turchin in his 1970 book The Phenomenon of Science, and developed among others by Francis Heylighen in the Principia Cybernetica Project. Another related idea, that systems ("operators") evolve to become more complex by successive closures encapsulating components in a larger whole, is proposed in "the operator theory", developed by Gerard Jagers op Akkerhuis. Turchin has applied the concept of metasystem transition in the domain of computing, via the notion of metacompilation or supercompilation. A supercompiler is a compiler program


id: multi-source-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-source_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Multi-source hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-source_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:06.727631+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: multi-source-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The Multi-source hypothesis is a proposed solution to the synoptic problem, holding that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are not directly interdependent but have each drawn from a distinct combination of earlier documents. It encompasses a family of theories differing in the particulars of the nature and relationships of these earlier documents. An early form of the theory was proposed by Herbert Marsh over two centuries ago. More recently, Marie-Émile Boismard proposed a structurally similar theory, which was further developed by Philippe Rolland and Delbert Burkett. Alan Kirk and Christopher Skinner have critiqued Burkett’s model for the Synoptic Problem. According to these theories, the common material among the three synoptic gospels ultimately derives from a proto-gospel somewhat like Mark. This proto-gospel underwent two independent revisions, A and B. Mark was formed by recombining these two revisions. Matthew built upon A and Luke upon B. Both Matthew and Luke also drew from a common source Q, as well as other sources for their unique material. == See also == Two-source hypothesis Source criticism == References == === Sources === Boismard, Marie-Émile (1979). "The Two-Source Theory at an Impasse". New Testament Studies. 26: 1–17. doi:10.1017/s002868850000864x. S2CID 144085583. (translated by Lorraine Caza, Robert Beck


id: nominative-determinism-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism-0.md
category: reference
title: Nominative determinism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:07.910812+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: nominative-determinism-20260505-0
summary:
Nominative determinism is the hypothesis that people tend to gravitate toward areas of work or interest that fit their names. The term was first used in the magazine New Scientist in 1994, after the magazine's humorous "Feedback" column noted several scientific studies carried out by researchers with remarkably fitting surnames. These included a book on polar explorations by Daniel Snowman and an article on urology by researchers named Splatt and Weedon. These and other examples led to lighthearted speculation that some sort of psychological effect was at work. Since the term appeared, nominative determinism has been an irregularly recurring topic in New Scientist, as readers continue to submit examples. Nominative determinism differs from the related concept of the aptronym, and the Latin idea of nomen est omen ("the name is a sign"), in that it focuses on causality. An aptronym merely means the name is fitting, without saying anything about why it has come to fit. The idea that people are drawn to professions that fit their name was suggested by the psychologist Carl Jung, citing as an example Sigmund Freud who studied pleasure and whose surname means 'joy'. A few recent empirical studies have indicated that certain professions are


id: nominative-determinism-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism-1.md
category: reference
title: Nominative determinism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:07.910812+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: nominative-determinism-20260505-0
summary:
Though most examples of aptronyms consist of people's surnames, there are also cases of full names which correlate with their holders' careers. A humorous example is Robin Mahfood, who was CEO and president of nonprofit organization Food For The Poor until 2020. His name has a very similar pronunciation with the phrase "robbing my food", and its correlation with his charity work in donating food has made him the subject of internet memes. == Definition == Nominative determinism, literally "name-driven outcome", is the hypothesis that people tend to gravitate toward areas of work that reflect their names. The name fits because people, possibly subconsciously, made themselves fit. Nominative determinism differs from the concept of aptronyms in that it focuses on causality. The term has its origin in the "Feedback" column of the magazine New Scientist in 1994. A series of events raised the suspicion of its editor, John Hoyland, who wrote in the November 5 issue: We recently came across a new book, Pole Positions—The Polar Regions and the Future of the Planet, by Daniel Snowman. Then, a couple of weeks later, we received a copy of London Under London—A Subterranean Guide, one of the authors of which is Richard


id: nominative-determinism-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism-2.md
category: reference
title: Nominative determinism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:07.910812+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: nominative-determinism-20260505-0
summary:
We find ourselves in something of a quandary when it comes to making up our minds about the phenomenon which Stekel calls the "compulsion of the name". What he means by this is the sometimes quite gross coincidence between a man's name and his peculiarities or profession. For instance ... Herr Feist (Mr Stout) is the food minister, Herr Rosstäuscher (Mr Horsetrader) is a lawyer, Herr Kalberer (Mr Calver) is an obstetrician ... Are these the whimsicalities of chance, or the suggestive effects of the name, as Stekel seems to suggest, or are they "meaningful coincidences"? Jung listed striking instances among psychologists—including himself: "Herr Freud (Joy) champions the pleasure principle, Herr Adler (Eagle) the will to power, Herr Jung (Young) the idea of rebirth ..." In 1975, the psychologist Lawrence Casler called for empirical research into the relative frequencies of career-appropriate names to establish if there is an effect at work or whether we are being "seduced by Lady Luck". He proposed three possible explanations for nominative determinism: one's self-image and self-expectation being internally influenced by one's name; the name acting as a social stimulus, creating expectations in others that are then communicated to the individual; and genetics – attributes


id: nominative-determinism-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism-3.md
category: reference
title: Nominative determinism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:07.910812+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: nominative-determinism-20260505-0
summary:
While reports by owners of fitting names are of interest, some scientists, including Michalos and Smeets, have questioned their value in deciding whether nominative determinism is a real effect. Instead, they argue that the claim that a name affects life decisions is an extraordinary one that requires extraordinary evidence. To select only those cases that seem to give evidence for nominative determinism is to ignore those that do not. Analysis of large numbers of names is therefore needed. In 2002, Pelham, Mirenberg, and Jones analysed various databases containing first names, surnames, occupations, cities and states. In one study, they concluded that people named Dennis gravitate toward dentistry. They did this by retrieving the number of dentists called Dennis (482) from a database of US dentists. They then used the 1990 Census to find out which male first name was the next most popular after Dennis: Walter. The likelihood of a US male being called Dennis was 0.415% and the likelihood of a US male being called Walter was 0.416%. The researchers then retrieved the number of dentists called Walter (257). Comparing the relative frequencies of Dennis and Walter led them to their conclusion that the name Dennis is overrepresented in


id: nominative-determinism-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism-4.md
category: reference
title: Nominative determinism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:07.910812+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: nominative-determinism-20260505-0
summary:
=== Websites === Colls, Tom (20 December 2011). "When the name fits the job". BBC Radio 4. Archived from the original on 28 August 2016. Retrieved 12 September 2016. Highfield, Roger (24 March 2011). "The name game - the weird science of nominative determinism". The Evening Standard. Archived from the original on 26 August 2016. Retrieved 12 September 2016. Hoekstra, Hans (16 April 2011). "Nomen est omen" (PDF). Het Parool (in Dutch). Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 August 2016. Retrieved 12 September 2016. Levey, Bob (20 November 1985). "Bob Levey's Washington". The Washington Post. Retrieved 12 September 2016. Levey, Bob (29 August 2000). "Bob Levey's Washington". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 25 June 2016. Retrieved 12 September 2016. Nelson, Graham. "Meet ordinary humans whose names shaped their destiny". The Huffington Post. Archived from the original on 16 February 2016. Retrieved 12 September 2016. Nunn, Gary (31 October 2014). "Reckless by name, reckless by nature?". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 25 August 2016. Retrieved 12 September 2016. Silverman, Rachel Emma; Light, Joe (21 June 2011). "Dr. Chopp, Meet Congressman Weiner". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 27 September 2016. Retrieved 24


id: obesity-paradox-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_paradox-0.md
category: reference
title: Obesity paradox
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_paradox
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:09.182908+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: obesity-paradox-20260505-0
summary:
The obesity paradox is the finding in some studies of a lower mortality rate for overweight or obese people within certain subpopulations. The paradox has been observed in people with cardiovascular disease and cancer. Explanations for the paradox range from excess weight being protective to the statistical association being caused by methodological flaws such as confounding, detection bias, reverse causality, or selection bias. == Description == The terminology "reverse epidemiology" was first proposed by Kamyar Kalantar-Zadeh in the journal Kidney International in 2003 and in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology in 2004. It is a contradiction to prevailing medical concepts of prevention of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease; however, active prophylactic treatment of heart disease in otherwise healthy, asymptomatic people has been and is controversial in the medical community for several years. The mechanism responsible for this reversed association is unknown, but it has been theorized that, in chronic kidney disease patients, "The common occurrence of persistent inflammation and protein energy wasting in advanced CKD [chronic kidney disease] seems to a large extent to account for this paradoxical association between traditional risk factors and CV [cardiovascular] outcomes in this patient population." Other research has proposed that the paradox


id: obesity-paradox-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_paradox-1.md
category: reference
title: Obesity paradox
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_paradox
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:09.182908+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: obesity-paradox-20260505-0
summary:
=== Methodology === The obesity paradox has been criticized on the grounds of being an artifact arising from biases in observational studies. Strong confounding by smoking has been noted by several researchers, although others have suggested that smoking does not account for the observed patterns. Since smokers, who are subject to higher mortality rates, also tend to be leaner, inadequate adjustment for smoking would lead to underestimations of the risk ratios associated with the overweight and obese categories of BMI among non-smokers. In an analysis of 1.46 million individuals, restriction to never-smoking participants greatly reduced the mortality estimates in the underweight group, as well as strengthening the estimates in the overweight and obese groups. This study concluded that, for non-Hispanic white adults who have never smoked, the BMI range of 20.0 to 24.9 was associated with the lowest mortality rates. A similar 2016 study found that, of the BMI ranges studied (which ranged from 18.5 to >30), the "normal" 18.5–22.4 BMI range combined with healthy eating, high levels of physical activity, not smoking, and no more than moderate alcohol consumption was associated with the lowest risk of premature death. Another concern is reverse causation due to illness-induced weight loss. That


id: odysseus-unbound-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odysseus_Unbound-0.md
category: reference
title: Odysseus Unbound
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odysseus_Unbound
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:10.299236+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: odysseus-unbound-20260505-0
summary:
Odysseus Unbound: The Search for Homer's Ithaca is a 2005 book by Robert Bittlestone, with appendices by the philologist James Diggle and the geologist John Underhill. The book investigates the location of Homer's Ithaca, arguing that Paliki, a peninsula of Kefalonia, was an island at the time of the Trojan War, and that it was the island referred to as Ithaca in the Odyssey. The accuracy of Homer's geography has been disputed since antiquity, and Bittlestone's book is one of several published by non-academic authors in the 1990s and 2000s that attempts to identify Homer's Ithaca based on the geographical evidence given in the Odyssey. Bittlestone's argument that Paliki should be identified with Homer's Ithaca has received favourable reviews, with Mary Beard considering that there is "a very fair chance indeed" that he is correct, and Peter Green calling it "almost certainly correct".However, reviewers criticised the hyperbolic claims made for the book. G. L. Huxley and Christina Haywood both criticised Odysseus Unbound for not taking the argument that Homer's Ithaca was the same island as modern Ithaca seriously enough, and Huxley argues that even if Bittlestone's case that Paliki was once a separate island from Kefalonia is accepted, the book


id: origin-of-dna-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_DNA-0.md
category: reference
title: Origin of DNA
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_DNA
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:11.447085+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: origin-of-dna-20260505-0
summary:
The Origin of DNA encompasses the scientific theories and discoveries surrounding the emergence of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) as the primary genetic material for all known forms of life. DNA contains the genetic information that allows organisms to function, grow, and reproduce. However, the exact timeline and mechanisms by which DNA assumed this role during the 4-billion-year history of life remain active areas of scientific inquiry. While the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) is thought to have possessed DNA, it is currently widely proposed that the earliest forms of life may have relied on RNA as their genetic material, with DNA evolving later as a more chemically stable repository for genetic information. == History == Research into the origins of DNA is fundamentally constrained by the lack of direct physical evidence of ancient genetic systems. Investigating the early evolution of nucleic acids is notoriously difficult because DNA survives in the natural environment for less than one million years. Once an organism dies, its DNA slowly degrades into short fragments in solution, making the recovery of DNA from most ancient fossils impossible. While claims for older DNA have been made in the literature, they are met with significant skepticism within the scientific


id: permanent-income-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_income_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Permanent income hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_income_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:12.694267+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: permanent-income-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The permanent income hypothesis (PIH) is a model in the field of economics to explain the formation of consumption patterns. It suggests consumption patterns are formed from future expectations and consumption smoothing. The theory was developed by Milton Friedman and published in his A Theory of the Consumption Function, published in 1957 and subsequently formalized by Robert Hall in a rational expectations model. Originally applied to consumption and income, the process of future expectations is thought to influence other phenomena. In its simplest form, the hypothesis states changes in permanent income (human capital, property, assets), rather than changes in temporary income (unexpected income), are what drive changes in consumption. The formation of consumption patterns opposite to predictions was an outstanding problem faced by the Keynesian orthodoxy. Friedman's predictions of consumption smoothing, where people spread out transitory changes in income over time, departed from the traditional Keynesian emphasis on a higher marginal propensity to consume out of current income. Income consists of a permanent (anticipated and planned) component and a transitory (unexpected and surprising) component. In the permanent income hypothesis model, the key determinant of consumption is an individual's lifetime income, not their current income. Unlike permanent income, transitory incomes are


id: permanent-income-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_income_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Permanent income hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_income_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:12.694267+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: permanent-income-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The permanent income hypothesis questions this ability of governments. However, it is also true that permanent income theory is concentrated mainly on long run dynamics and relations, while Keynes focused primarily on short run considerations. Friedman's argument, which challenged the use of fiscal policy in smoothing out business cycles, was challenged by stressing the relation between consumption and disposable income still follows (more or less) the mechanism supposed by Keynes. Friedman starts elaborating his theory under the assumption of complete certainty. Under such circumstances, for Friedman, two motives exist for a consumer unit to spend more or less on consumption than its income: The first is to smooth its consumption expenditures through appropriate timing of borrowing and lending; and the second is either to realize interest earnings on deposits if the relevant rate of interest is positive, or to benefit from borrowing if the interest rate is negative. According to the PIH, the distribution of consumption across consecutive periods is the result of an optimizing method by which each consumer tries to maximize his utility. At the same time, whatever ratio of income one devotes to consumption in each period, all these consumption expenditures are allocated in the course of


id: permanent-income-hypothesis-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_income_hypothesis-2.md
category: reference
title: Permanent income hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_income_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:12.694267+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: permanent-income-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
== Empirical evidence == Observations, recorded from 1888 to 1941, of stagnant average propensity to consume in the face of rising real incomes provide strong evidence for the existence of the permanent income hypothesis. An early test of the permanent income hypothesis was reported by Robert Hall in 1978, and, assuming rational expectations, finds consumption follows a martingale sequence. Hall & Mishkin (1982) analyze data from 2,000 households and find consumption responds much more strongly to permanent than to transitory movements of income, and reinforce the compatibility of the PIH with 80% of households in the sample. Bernanke (1984) finds 'no evidence against the permanent income hypothesis' when looking at data on automobile consumption. In contrast, Flavin (1981) finds consumption is very sensitive to transitory income shocks ('excess sensitivity'), while Mankiw & Shapiro (1985) dispute these findings, arguing that Flavin's test specification (which assumes income is stationary) is biased towards finding excess sensitivity. Souleles (1999) uses income tax refunds to test the PIH. Since a refund depends on income in the previous year, it is predictable income and should thus not alter consumption in the year of its receipt. The evidence finds that consumption is sensitive to the income refund,


id: planetarium-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetarium_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Planetarium hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetarium_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:13.935407+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: planetarium-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The planetarium hypothesis, conceived in 2001 by Stephen Baxter, attempts to provide a solution to the Fermi paradox by holding that our astronomical observations represent an illusion, created by a Type III civilization capable of manipulating matter and energy on galactic scales. He postulates that we do not see evidence of extraterrestrial life because the universe has been engineered so that it appears empty of other life. == Background == There is no reliable or reproducible evidence that aliens have visited Earth. No transmissions or evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life have been detected or observed anywhere other than Earth in the Universe. This runs counter to the knowledge that the Universe is filled with a very large number of planets, some of which likely hold the conditions hospitable for life. Life on Earth has shown the tendency to typically expand until it fills all available niches. These contradictory facts form the basis for the Fermi paradox, of which the planetarium hypothesis is one proposed solution. == Criticism == The hypothesis has been considered by some authors as speculative and even next to useless in any practical scientific sense and more related to the theological mode of thinking along with the


id: priority-of-the-gospel-of-marcion-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priority_of_the_Gospel_of_Marcion-0.md
category: reference
title: Priority of the Gospel of Marcion
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priority_of_the_Gospel_of_Marcion
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:15.126494+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: priority-of-the-gospel-of-marcion-20260505-0
summary:
Marcion priority is the hypothesis that the Gospel of Marcion preceded the other gospels and is an attempted solution to the synoptic problem. This hypothesis claims that the first produced or compiled gospel was that of Marcion and that this gospel was used as inspiration for some, or all, of the canonical gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matthias Klinghardt is a modern proponent of this hypothesis. The majority of scholars agree that this gospel was a later revised version of the Gospel of Luke rather than with Marcionite Priority. == Context == Marcion of Sinope (c. 85 – c. 160) is considered to be the founder of an early Christian movement called Marcionism. He is regarded by numerous scholars as having produced the first New Testament canon which included a gospel, called the Evangelion (or Euangelion), which he either acquired or significantly developed, or even fully wrote. Some have called it or even still call it the Gospel of Marcion. Some Church Fathers said that the Marcionite Evangelion was a revision of the gospel of Luke with some passages expunged from it to fit Marcion's theology; this hypothesis on the relationship between the gospels of Marcion and of Luke


id: priority-of-the-gospel-of-marcion-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priority_of_the_Gospel_of_Marcion-1.md
category: reference
title: Priority of the Gospel of Marcion
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priority_of_the_Gospel_of_Marcion
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:15.126494+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: priority-of-the-gospel-of-marcion-20260505-0
summary:
In his 2013 book, The First New Testament: Marcion's Scriptural Canon, Jason BeDuhn said he considers that the gospel of Marcion was not produced or adapted by Marcion, but instead that the Gospel of Marcion was a preexisting gospel adopted by Marcion and his movement. He believes that: "On the whole, the differences between Luke and the Evangelion [i.e. the Gospel of Marcion] resist explanation on ideological grounds, and point instead toward Semler's original suggestion 250 years ago: the two gospels could be alternative versions adapted for primarily Jewish and primarily Gentile readers, respectively. In other words, the differences served practical, mission-related purposes rather than ideological, sectarian ones. Under such a scenario, the Evangelion would be transmitted within exactly the wing of emerging Christianity in which we can best situate Marcion’s own religious background". Semler's hypothesis being that "the Evangelion and Luke are both pre-Marcionite versions going back to a common original". In his 2014 book Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels, Markus Vinzent proposed, based on his interpretation of aspects of Tertullian's Against Marcion (and other works of Tertullian), that the Marcionite Evangelion was first written as a document "for his classroom (without Antitheses and perhaps without


id: protein-leverage-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_leverage_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Protein leverage hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_leverage_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:16.332370+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: protein-leverage-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The protein leverage hypothesis states that human beings will prioritize the consumption of protein in food over other dietary components, and will eat until protein needs have been met, regardless of energy content, thus leading to over-consumption of foodstuffs when their protein content is low. This hypothesis has been put forward as a potential explanation of the obesity epidemic. Empirical tests have provided some evidence to confirm the hypothesis with one study suggesting that this could be a link between ultra-processed foods and the prevalence of obesity in the developed world. In the 1980s, David Raubenheimer and Stephen Simpson, researchers now at the University of Sydney, began to study appetite and food intake in locusts. By studying responses to artificial diets with differing compositions of protein and carbohydrate, they developed the protein leverage hypothesis. Their experiments showed that those who aren't getting enough protein in their diet will continue to be hungry, even when their overall caloric intake is high. "Protein decoys", such as ultraprocessed savory foods that contain little protein (e.g., barbecue chips), are likely to be attractive and to result in overeating. The hormone FGF21, which is released from the liver, can drive savory-seeking behavior under conditions of


id: proto-ionians-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Ionians-0.md
category: reference
title: Proto-Ionians
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Ionians
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:17.537507+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: proto-ionians-20260505-0
summary:
The Proto-Ionians are the hypothetical earliest speakers of the Ionic dialects of Ancient Greek, chiefly in the works of Jean Faucounau. The relation of Ionic to the other Greek dialects has been subject to some debate. It is mostly grouped with Arcadocypriot as opposed to Doric, reflecting two waves of migration into Greece following the Proto-Greek period, but sometimes also as separate from Arcadocypriot on equal footing with Doric, suggesting three distinct waves of migration. == Position of Ionic Greek == Mainstream Greek linguistics separates the Greek dialects into two large genetic groups, one including Doric Greek and the other including both Arcadocypriot and Ionic Greek. But alternative approaches proposing three groups are not uncommon; Thumb and Kieckers (1932) propose three groups, classifying Ionic as genetically just as separate from Arcadocypriot as from Doric. Like a few other linguists (Vladimir Georgiev, C. J. Rhuijgh, Pierre Lévêque, etc.), the bipartite classification is known as the "Risch–Chadwick theory", named after its two famous proponents, Ernst Risch and John Chadwick.[1] The "Proto-Ionians" first appear in the work of Ernst Curtius (1887), who believed that the Attic-Ionic dialect group was due to an "Ionicization" of Attica by immigration from Ionia in historical times. Curtius


id: proto-ionians-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Ionians-1.md
category: reference
title: Proto-Ionians
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Ionians
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:17.537507+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: proto-ionians-20260505-0
summary:
== Faucounau == The tripartite theory was revived by amateur linguist Jean Faucounau. In his view, the first Greek settlers in their historical territory were the (Pelasgic) "proto-Ionians", who were separated around 3000 BC from both the proto-Dorians and the proto-Mycenaeans. Faucounau traces this three-wave model to similar views put forward by Paul Kretschmer in the 1890s and the 1900s (i.e., before the decipherment of Linear B), with a modification: the (proto-Ionic) First wave came by sea, the "Proto-Ionians" settling first in the Cycladic Islands, then in Euboea and Attica. The last two waves are the generally accepted arrival of the Mycenaean Greeks (the linguistic predecessors of the Arcadocypriot speakers) in around 1700 BC and the Dorian invasion around 1100 BC. Following Georgiev,[4][5] Faucounau makes three arguments for the proto-Ionic language.[6] The first is the explanation of certain Mycenaean forms as loan-words from the proto-Ionians already present in Greece: he asserts that digamma is unexpectedly absent from some Mycenaean words,[7] the occasional resolution of Indo-European vocalic r to -or/ro- instead of -ar/ra-; to-pe-za for τράπεζα,[8] and the explanation of Mycenaean pa-da-yeu as Greek παδάω/πηδάω,[9] "spring leap, bound", which he interprets as both cognate with, and having the same meaning as,


id: proto-ionians-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Ionians-2.md
category: reference
title: Proto-Ionians
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Ionians
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:17.537507+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: proto-ionians-20260505-0
summary:
== References == Jean Faucounau, Le déchiffrement du Disque de Phaistos, Paris 1999. ^Jean Faucounau, Les Proto-Ioniens : histoire d'un peuple oublié, Paris 2001. Esp. pp. ^33ff, ^35ff, ^37f, ^p. 57, ^p. 61, ^p. 63 ^124. Review: Paul Faure, Revue des études grecques Vol. 15 (2002), p. 424f. Jean Faucounau, Les Peuples de la Mer et leur Histoire, Paris 2003. Jean Faucounau, Les Origines Grecques à l'Age de Bronze, Paris 2005. ^Vladimir Georgiev, "Mycénien et homérique: Le problème du digamma" in Proceedings of the Cambridge Colloquium on Mycenaean Studies, Cambridge 1966, p. 104-124. ^Vladimir Georgiev, "Le traitement des sonantes voyelles indo-européennes et le problème du caractère de la langue mycénienne" in Acta Mycenaea, Salamanca 1972, p. 361-379. ^Jonathan M. Hallm, Hellenicity: between ethnicity and culture. University of Chicago Press, 2002, ISBN 978-0-226-31329-0, p. 39. ^George Hempl, Prehistoric Wanderings of the Hittite Greeks, in Mediterranean Studies, Vol III. Stanford University Press (1931), ISBN 978-0-8047-0838-8 Paul Kretschmer, Einleitung in die Geschichte der griechischen Sprache (1896). Pierre Lévêque, L'aventure grecque, p. 16-29. ^Michael W. Ovenden, The Origin of the Constellations in The Philosophical Journal 3 (1966), p. 1-18. ^A. C. D. Crommelin "The ancient Constellation Figures" in Hutchinson's Splendour of the Heavens London,


id: racial-invariance-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_invariance-0.md
category: reference
title: Racial invariance
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_invariance
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:18.678549+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: racial-invariance-20260505-0
summary:
In criminology, racial invariance refers to a hypothesis that the effects of structural disadvantage on rates of violent crime are the same for all racial groups. This hypothesis is a major component of structural perspectives on the causes of crime, such as social disorganization theory and anomie. It can be traced back to William Julius Wilson's 1987 book The Truly Disadvantaged, which argued that racial differences in crime rates are due to differences in the communities in which American whites and blacks live. Since then, it has become a major component of the general theory of crime. == References ==


id: rare-earth-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Rare Earth hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:19.880934+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: rare-earth-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
In planetary astronomy and astrobiology, the Rare Earth hypothesis argues that the origin of life and the evolution of biological complexity, such as sexually reproducing, multicellular organisms on Earth, and subsequently human intelligence, required an improbable combination of astrophysical and geological events and circumstances. According to the hypothesis, complex extraterrestrial life is an improbable phenomenon and likely to be rare throughout the universe as a whole. The term "Rare Earth" originates from Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe (2000), a book by Peter Ward, a geologist and paleontologist, and Donald E. Brownlee, an astronomer and astrobiologist, both faculty members at the University of Washington. The hypothesis has been argued to be a possible solution to the Fermi paradox. In the 1970s and 1980s, Carl Sagan and Frank Drake, among others, argued that Earth is a typical rocky planet in a typical planetary system, located in a non-exceptional region of a common galaxy, now known to be a barred spiral galaxy. From the principle of mediocrity (extended from the Copernican principle), they argued that the evolution of life on Earth, including human beings, was also typical, and therefore that the universe teems with complex life. In contrast,


id: rare-earth-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Rare Earth hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:19.880934+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: rare-earth-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Item #1 rules out the outermost reaches of a galaxy; #2 and #3 rule out galactic inner regions. Hence a galaxy's habitable zone may be a relatively narrow ring of adequate conditions sandwiched between its uninhabitable center and outer reaches. Also, a habitable planetary system must maintain its favorable location long enough for complex life to evolve. A star with an eccentric (elliptical or hyperbolic) galactic orbit will pass through some spiral arms, unfavorable regions of high star density; thus a life-bearing star must have a galactic orbit that is nearly circular, with a close synchronization between the orbital velocity of the star and of the spiral arms. This further restricts the galactic habitable zone within a fairly narrow range of distances from the Galactic Center. Lineweaver et al. calculate this zone to be a ring 7 to 9 kiloparsecs in radius, including no more than 10% of the stars in the Milky Way, about 20 to 40 billion stars. Gonzalez et al. would halve these numbers; they estimate that at most 5% of stars in the Milky Way fall within the galactic habitable zone. Approximately 77% of observed galaxies are spiral, two-thirds of all spiral galaxies are barred, and


id: rare-earth-hypothesis-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis-2.md
category: reference
title: Rare Earth hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:19.880934+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: rare-earth-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Rare Earth proponents argue that a planetary system capable of sustaining complex life must be structured more or less like the Solar System, with small, rocky inner planets and massive outer gas giants. Without the protection of such "celestial vacuum cleaner" planets, such as Jupiter, with strong gravitational pulls, other planets would be subject to more frequent catastrophic asteroid collisions. An asteroid only twice the size of the one which caused the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction might have wiped out all complex life. Observations of exoplanets have shown that arrangements of planets similar to the Solar System are rare. Most planetary systems have super-Earths, several times larger than Earth, close to their star, whereas the Solar System's inner region has only a few small rocky planets and none inside Mercury's orbit. Only 10% of stars have giant planets similar to Jupiter and Saturn, and those few rarely have stable, nearly circular orbits distant from their star. Konstantin Batygin and colleagues argue that these features can be explained if, early in the history of the Solar System, Jupiter and Saturn drifted towards the Sun, sending showers of planetesimals towards the super-Earths which sent them spiralling into the Sun, and ferrying icy building blocks


id: rare-earth-hypothesis-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis-3.md
category: reference
title: Rare Earth hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:19.880934+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: rare-earth-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The Moon is unusual because the other rocky planets in the Solar System either have no satellites (Mercury and Venus), or only relatively tiny satellites which are most likely captured asteroids (Mars). After Charon, the Moon is also the largest natural satellite in the Solar System relative to the size of its parent body, being 27% the size of Earth. The giant-impact theory hypothesizes that the Moon resulted from the impact of a roughly Mars-sized body, dubbed Theia, with the young Earth. This giant impact also gave the Earth its axial tilt (inclination) and velocity of rotation. Rapid rotation reduces the daily variation in temperature and makes photosynthesis viable. The Rare Earth hypothesis further argues that the axial tilt cannot be too large or too small (relative to the orbital plane). A planet with a large tilt will experience extreme seasonal variations in climate. A planet with little or no tilt will lack the stimulus to evolution that climate variation provides. In this view, the Earth's tilt is "just right". The gravity of a large satellite also stabilizes the planet's tilt; without this effect, the variation in tilt would be chaotic, probably making complex life forms on land impossible. If


id: rare-earth-hypothesis-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis-4.md
category: reference
title: Rare Earth hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:19.880934+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: rare-earth-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
== Rare Earth equation == The following discussion is adapted from Cramer. The Rare Earth equation is Ward and Brownlee's riposte to the Drake equation. It calculates N {\displaystyle N} , the number of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way having complex life forms, as: N = N ∗ ⋅ n e ⋅ f g ⋅ f p ⋅ f p m ⋅ f i ⋅ f c ⋅ f l ⋅ f m ⋅ f j ⋅ f m e {\displaystyle N=N^{*}\cdot n_{e}\cdot f_{g}\cdot f_{p}\cdot f_{pm}\cdot f_{i}\cdot f_{c}\cdot f_{l}\cdot f_{m}\cdot f_{j}\cdot f_{me}} where: N* is the number of stars in the Milky Way. This number is not well-estimated, because the Milky Way's mass is not well estimated, with little information about the number of small stars. N* is at least 100 billion, and may be as high as 500 billion, if there are many low visibility stars. n e {\displaystyle n_{e}} is the average number of planets in a star's habitable zone. This zone is fairly narrow, being constrained by the requirement that the average planetary temperature be consistent with water remaining liquid throughout the time required for complex life to evolve. Thus, n e {\displaystyle n_{e}} =1 is


id: rare-earth-hypothesis-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis-5.md
category: reference
title: Rare Earth hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:19.880934+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: rare-earth-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Stuart Ross Taylor, a specialist on the Solar System, firmly believed in the hypothesis. Taylor concluded that the Solar System is probably unusual, because it resulted from so many chance factors and events. Stephen Webb, a physicist, mainly presents and rejects candidate solutions for the Fermi paradox. The Rare Earth hypothesis emerges as one of the few solutions left standing by the end of his book Where is Everybody? Simon Conway Morris, a paleontologist, endorses the Rare Earth hypothesis in chapter 5 of his Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe, and cites Ward and Brownlee's book with approval. John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, cosmologists, vigorously defend the hypothesis that humans are likely to be the only intelligent life in the Milky Way, and perhaps the entire universe. But this hypothesis is not central to their book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, a thorough study of the anthropic principle and of how the laws of physics are peculiarly suited to enable the emergence of complexity in nature. Ray Kurzweil, a computer pioneer and self-proclaimed Singularitarian, argues in his 2005 book The Singularity Is Near that the coming Singularity requires that Earth be the first planet on which sapient,


id: rare-earth-hypothesis-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis-6.md
category: reference
title: Rare Earth hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:19.880934+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: rare-earth-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Some argue that Rare Earth's estimates of rocky planets in habitable zones ( n e {\displaystyle n_{e}} in the Rare Earth equation) are too restrictive. James Kasting cites the Titius–Bode law to contend that it is a misnomer to describe habitable zones as narrow when there is a 50% chance of at least one planet orbiting within one. In 2013, astronomers using the Kepler space telescope's data estimated that about one-fifth of G-type and K-type stars (sun-like stars and orange dwarfs) are expected to have an Earth-sized or super-Earth-sized planet (1–2 Earths wide) close to an Earth-like orbit (0.25–4 F🜨), yielding about 8.8 billion of them for the entire Milky Way Galaxy. === Uncertainty over Jupiter's role === The requirement for a system to have a Jovian planet as protector (Rare Earth equation factor f j {\displaystyle f_{j}} ) has been challenged, affecting the number of proposed extinction events (Rare Earth equation factor f m e {\displaystyle f_{me}} ). Kasting's 2001 review of Rare Earth questions whether a Jupiter protector has any bearing on the incidence of complex life. Computer modelling including the 2005 Nice model and 2007 Nice 2 model yield inconclusive results in relation to Jupiter's gravitational influence


id: rare-earth-hypothesis-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis-7.md
category: reference
title: Rare Earth hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:19.880934+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: rare-earth-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The hypothesis that molecular oxygen, necessary for animal life, is rare and that a Great Oxygenation Event (Rare Earth equation factor f c {\displaystyle f_{c}} ) could only have been triggered and sustained by tectonics, appears to have been invalidated by more recent discoveries. Ward and Brownlee ask "whether oxygenation, and hence the rise of animals, would ever have occurred on a world where there were no continents to erode". Extraterrestrial free oxygen has recently been detected around other solid objects, including Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter's four Galilean moons, Saturn's moons Enceladus, Dione and Rhea and even the atmosphere of a comet. This has led scientists to speculate whether processes other than photosynthesis could be capable of generating an environment rich in free oxygen. Wordsworth (2014) concludes that oxygen generated other than through photodissociation may be likely on Earth-like exoplanets, and could actually lead to false positive detections of life. Narita (2015) suggests photocatalysis by titanium dioxide as a geochemical mechanism for producing oxygen atmospheres. Since Ward & Brownlee's assertion that "there is irrefutable evidence that oxygen is a necessary ingredient for animal life", anaerobic metazoa have been found that indeed do metabolise without oxygen. Spinoloricus cinziae, for example, a


id: rare-earth-hypothesis-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis-8.md
category: reference
title: Rare Earth hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:19.880934+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: rare-earth-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The assertion that the Moon's stabilization of Earth's obliquity and spin is a requirement for complex life has been questioned. Kasting argues that a moonless Earth would still possess habitats with climates suitable for complex life and questions whether the spin rate of a moonless Earth can be predicted. Although the giant impact theory posits that the impact forming the Moon increased Earth's rotational speed to make a day about 5 hours long, the Moon has slowly "stolen" much of this speed to reduce Earth's solar day since then to about 24 hours and continues to do so: in 100 million years Earth's solar day will be roughly 24 hours 38 minutes (the same as Mars's solar day); in 1 billion years, 30 hours 23 minutes. Larger secondary bodies would exert proportionally larger tidal forces that would in turn decelerate their primaries faster and potentially increase the solar day of a planet in all other respects like Earth to over 120 hours within a few billion years. This long solar day would make effective heat dissipation for organisms in the tropics and subtropics extremely difficult in a similar manner to tidal locking to a red dwarf star. Short days (high


id: relative-income-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_income_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Relative income hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_income_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:21.052401+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: relative-income-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The relative income hypothesis was developed by James Duesenberry in 1949. It consists of two separate consumption hypothesis. The first hypothesis states that an individual's attitude to consumption is dictated more by their income in relation to others than by an abstract standard of living. The percentage of income consumed by an individual depends on their percentile position within the income distribution. The second hypothesis states that the present consumption is influenced not merely by present levels of absolute and relative income but also by levels of consumption attained in a previous period. In Duesenberry's opinion, it is difficult for a family to reduce a level of consumption once it is attained. The aggregate ratio of consumption to income is assumed to depend on the level of present income relative to past peak income. == Sources == Duesenberry, J. S. Income, Saving and the Theory of Consumer Behaviour. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949.[1] Frank, Robert H., 2005. “The Mysterious Disappearance of James Duesenberry,” The New York Times, June 9, 2005. Hollander, Heinz, 2001. “On the validity of utility statements: standard theory versus Duesenberry’s,” Journal of economic Behavior & Organization 45, 3: 227–249. McCormick, Ken (2018). "James Duesenberry as a practitioner


id: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Riemann hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:22.283607+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
In mathematics, the Riemann hypothesis is the conjecture that the Riemann zeta function has its zeros only at the negative even integers and complex numbers with real part ⁠1/2⁠. Many consider it to be the most important unsolved problem in pure mathematics. It is of great interest in number theory because it implies results about the distribution of prime numbers. It was proposed by Bernhard Riemann, after whom it is named. According to a 2026 survey, there is overwhelming numerical evidence for the hypothesis, but no proof is known. The Riemann hypothesis and some of its generalizations, along with Goldbach's conjecture and the twin prime conjecture, make up Hilbert's eighth problem in David Hilbert's list of twenty-three unsolved problems; it is also one of the Millennium Prize Problems of the Clay Mathematics Institute, which offers US$1 million for a solution to any of them. The name is also used for some closely related analogues, some of which have been proved, such as the Riemann hypothesis for curves over finite fields, which was proved by André Weil. The Riemann zeta function ζ {\displaystyle \zeta } is a function whose argument may be any complex number other than 1, and whose values


id: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Riemann hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:22.283607+00:00
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parent: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
One may then define ζ ( s ) {\displaystyle \zeta (s)} for all remaining nonzero complex numbers s {\displaystyle s} ( Re ⁡ ( s ) ≤ 0 {\displaystyle \operatorname {Re} (s)\leq 0} and s ≠ 0 {\displaystyle s\neq 0} ) by applying this equation outside the strip, and letting ζ ( s ) {\displaystyle \zeta (s)} equal the right side of the equation whenever s {\displaystyle s} has non-positive real part (and s ≠ 0 {\displaystyle s\neq 0} ). If s {\displaystyle s} is a negative even integer, then ζ ( s ) = 0 {\displaystyle \zeta (s)=0} , because the factor sin ⁡ ( π s / 2 ) {\displaystyle \sin(\pi s/2)} vanishes; these are the zeta function's trivial zeros. (If s {\displaystyle s} is a positive even integer this argument does not apply because the zeros of the sine function are canceled by the poles of the gamma function as it takes negative integer arguments.) The value ζ(0) = −1/2 is not determined by the functional equation, but is the limiting value of ζ ( s ) {\displaystyle \zeta (s)} as s {\displaystyle s} approaches zero. The functional equation also implies that the zeta function has no


id: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis-2.md
category: reference
title: Riemann hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:22.283607+00:00
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parent: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-0
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The terms li ⁡ ( x ρ ) {\displaystyle \operatorname {li} (x^{\rho })} involving the zeros of the zeta function need some care in their definition as li {\displaystyle \operatorname {li} } has branch points at 0 and 1, and are defined (for x > 1 {\displaystyle x>1} ) by analytic continuation in the complex variable ρ {\displaystyle \rho } in the region Re ⁡ ( ρ ) > 0 {\displaystyle \operatorname {Re} (\rho )>0} ; i.e., they should be considered as Ei(ρ log x). The other terms also correspond to zeros: the dominant term li ⁡ ( x ) {\displaystyle \operatorname {li} (x)} comes from the pole at s = 1 {\displaystyle s=1} , considered as a zero of multiplicity − 1 {\displaystyle -1} , and the remaining small terms come from the trivial zeros. For some graphs of the sums of the first few terms of this series see Riesel & Göhl (1970) or Zagier (1977). This formula says that the zeros of the Riemann zeta function control the oscillations of primes around their "expected" positions. Riemann knew that the non-trivial zeros of the zeta function were symmetrically distributed about the line s = 1 / 2 +


id: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis-3.md
category: reference
title: Riemann hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:22.283607+00:00
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parent: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The Riemann hypothesis puts a rather tight bound on the growth of M, since Odlyzko & te Riele (1985) disproved the slightly stronger Mertens conjecture | M ( x ) | ≤ x . {\displaystyle |M(x)|\leq {\sqrt {x}}.} Another closely related result is due to Björner (2011), that the Riemann hypothesis is equivalent to the statement that the Euler characteristic of the simplicial complex determined by the lattice of integers under divisibility is o ( n 1 / 2 + ϵ ) {\displaystyle o(n^{1/2+\epsilon })} for all ϵ > 0 {\displaystyle \epsilon >0} (see incidence algebra). The Riemann hypothesis is equivalent to many other conjectures about the rate of growth of other arithmetic functions aside from μ(n). A typical example is Robin's theorem, which states that if σ(n) is the sigma function, given by σ ( n ) = ∑ d ∣ n d {\displaystyle \sigma (n)=\sum _{d\mid n}d} then σ ( n ) < e γ n log ⁡ log ⁡ n {\displaystyle \sigma (n)<e^{\gamma }n\log \log n} for all n > 5040 if and only if the Riemann hypothesis is true, where γ is the Euler–Mascheroni constant. A related bound was given by Jeffrey Lagarias in 2002, who


id: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis-4.md
category: reference
title: Riemann hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:22.283607+00:00
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parent: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-0
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f ( x ) = ∑ ν = 1 n c ν ρ ( θ ν x ) {\displaystyle f(x)=\sum _{\nu =1}^{n}c_{\nu }\rho \left({\frac {\theta _{\nu }}{x}}\right)} where ρ(z) is the fractional part of z, 0 ≤ θν ≤ 1, and ∑ ν = 1 n c ν θ ν = 0 , {\displaystyle \sum _{\nu =1}^{n}c_{\nu }\theta _{\nu }=0,} is dense in the Hilbert space L2(0,1) of square-integrable functions on the unit interval. Beurling (1955) extended this by showing that the zeta function has no zeros with real part greater than 1/p if and only if this function space is dense in Lp(0,1). This Nyman-Beurling criterion was strengthened by Baez-Duarte to the case where θ ν ∈ { 1 / k } k ≥ 1 {\displaystyle \theta _{\nu }\in \{1/k\}_{k\geq 1}} . Salem (1953) showed that the Riemann hypothesis is true if and only if the integral equation ∫ 0 ∞ z − σ − 1 φ ( z ) e x / z + 1 d z = 0 {\displaystyle \int _{0}^{\infty }{\frac {z^{-\sigma -1}\varphi (z)}{{e^{x/z}}+1}}\,dz=0} has no non-trivial bounded solutions φ {\displaystyle \varphi } for 1 / 2 < σ < 1 {\displaystyle 1/2<\sigma <1} . Weil's


id: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis-5.md
category: reference
title: Riemann hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:22.283607+00:00
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parent: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-0
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In 1913, Grönwall showed that the generalized Riemann hypothesis implies that Gauss's list of imaginary quadratic fields with class number 1 is complete, though Baker, Stark and Heegner later gave unconditional proofs of this without using the generalized Riemann hypothesis. In 1917, Hardy and Littlewood showed that the generalized Riemann hypothesis implies a conjecture of Chebyshev that lim x → 1 − ∑ p > 2 ( − 1 ) ( p + 1 ) / 2 x p = + ∞ , {\displaystyle \lim _{x\to 1^{-}}\sum _{p>2}(-1)^{(p+1)/2}x^{p}=+\infty ,} which says that primes 3 mod 4 are more common than primes 1 mod 4 in some sense. (For related results, see Prime number theorem § Prime number race.) In 1923, Hardy and Littlewood showed that the generalized Riemann hypothesis implies a weak form of the Goldbach conjecture for odd numbers: that every sufficiently large odd number is the sum of three primes, though in 1937 Vinogradov gave an unconditional proof. In 1997 Deshouillers, Effinger, te Riele, and Zinoviev showed that the generalized Riemann hypothesis implies that every odd number greater than 5 is the sum of three primes. In 2013 Harald Helfgott proved the ternary Goldbach conjecture without the GRH


id: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis-6.md
category: reference
title: Riemann hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:22.283607+00:00
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parent: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-0
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for infinitely many n, where φ(n) is Euler's totient function and γ is Euler's constant. Ribenboim remarks that: "The method of proof is interesting, in that the inequality is shown first under the assumption that the Riemann hypothesis is true, secondly under the contrary assumption." == Generalizations and analogs == === Dirichlet L-series and other number fields === The Riemann hypothesis can be generalized by replacing the Riemann zeta function by the formally similar, but much more general, global L-functions. In this broader setting, one expects the non-trivial zeros of the global L-functions to have real part 1/2. It is these conjectures, rather than the classical Riemann hypothesis only for the single Riemann zeta function, which account for the true importance of the Riemann hypothesis in mathematics. The most common generalized Riemann hypothesis extends the Riemann hypothesis to all Dirichlet L-functions. In particular it implies the conjecture that Siegel zeros (zeros of L-functions between 1/2 and 1) do not exist. The extended Riemann hypothesis extends the Riemann hypothesis to all Dedekind zeta functions of algebraic number fields. Since Dedekind zeta function for abelian extension of the rationals can be expressed as product of Dirichlet L-functions and only possible pole is


id: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis-7.md
category: reference
title: Riemann hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:22.283607+00:00
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parent: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-0
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=== Montgomery's pair correlation conjecture === Montgomery (1973) suggested the pair correlation conjecture that the correlation functions of the (suitably normalized) zeros of the zeta function should be the same as those of the eigenvalues of a random hermitian matrix. Odlyzko (1987) showed that this is supported by large-scale numerical calculations of these correlation functions. Montgomery showed that (assuming the Riemann hypothesis) at least 2/3 of all zeros are simple, and a related conjecture is that all zeros of the zeta function are simple (or more generally have no non-trivial integer linear relations between their imaginary parts). Dedekind zeta functions of algebraic number fields, which generalize the Riemann zeta function, often do have multiple complex zeros. This is because the Dedekind zeta functions factorize as a product of powers of Artin L-functions, so zeros of Artin L-functions sometimes give rise to multiple zeros of Dedekind zeta functions. Other examples of zeta functions with multiple zeros are the L-functions of some elliptic curves: these can have multiple zeros at the real point of their critical line; the Birch-Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture predicts that the multiplicity of this zero is the rank of the elliptic curve. === Other zeta functions === There are many


id: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis-8.md
category: reference
title: Riemann hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:22.283607+00:00
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parent: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-0
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=== Lee–Yang theorem === The Lee–Yang theorem states that the zeros of certain partition functions in statistical mechanics all lie on a "critical line" with their real part equal to 0, and this has led to some speculation about a relationship with the Riemann hypothesis. === Turán's result === Pál Turán showed that if the functions ∑ n = 1 N n − s {\displaystyle \sum _{n=1}^{N}n^{-s}} have no zeros when the real part of s is greater than one then T ( x ) = ∑ n ≤ x λ ( n ) n ≥ 0 for x > 0 , {\displaystyle T(x)=\sum _{n\leq x}{\frac {\lambda (n)}{n}}\geq 0{\text{ for }}x>0,} where λ(n) is the Liouville function given by (−1)r if n has r prime factors. He showed that this in turn would imply that the Riemann hypothesis is true. But Haselgrove (1958) proved that T(x) is negative for infinitely many x (and also disproved the closely related Pólya conjecture), and Borwein, Ferguson & Mossinghoff (2008) showed that the smallest such x is 72185376951205. Spira (1968) showed by numerical calculation that the finite Dirichlet series above for N = 19 has a zero with real part greater than 1. Turán


id: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis-9.md
category: reference
title: Riemann hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:22.283607+00:00
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parent: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
S ( T ) = 1 π A r g ⁡ ( ζ ( 1 / 2 + i T ) ) = O ( log ⁡ T ) . {\displaystyle S(T)={\frac {1}{\pi }}\mathop {\mathrm {Arg} } (\zeta (1/2+iT))=O(\log T).} So the density of zeros with imaginary part near T is about log(T)/(2π), and the function S describes the small deviations from this. The function S(t) jumps by 1 at each zero of the zeta function, and for t ≥ 8 it decreases monotonically between zeros with derivative close to −log t. Trudgian (2014) proved that, if T > e, then | N ( T ) − T 2 π log ⁡ T 2 π e | ≤ 0.112 log ⁡ T + 0.278 log ⁡ log ⁡ T + 3.385 + 0.2 T {\displaystyle |N(T)-{\frac {T}{2\pi }}\log {\frac {T}{2\pi e}}|\leq 0.112\log T+0.278\log \log T+3.385+{\frac {0.2}{T}}} . Karatsuba (1996) proved that every interval (T, T + H] for H ≥ T 27 82 + ε {\displaystyle H\geq T^{{\frac {27}{82}}+\varepsilon }} contains at least H ( log ⁡ T ) 1 3 e − c log ⁡ log ⁡ T {\displaystyle H(\log T)^{\frac {1}{3}}e^{-c{\sqrt {\log \log T}}}} points where the function


id: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis-10.md
category: reference
title: Riemann hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:22.283607+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
=== Zero-free regions === The most extensive computer search by Platt and Trudgian for counterexamples of the Riemann hypothesis has verified it for |t| ≤ 3.0001753328×1012. Beyond that zero-free regions are known as inequalities concerning σ + i t, which can be zeroes. The oldest version is from De la Vallée-Poussin (1899–1900), who proved there is a region without zeroes that satisfies 1 − σ ≥ ⁠C/log(t)⁠ for some positive constant C. In other words, zeros cannot be too close to the line σ = 1: there is a zero-free region close to this line. This has been enlarged by several authors using methods such as Vinogradov's mean-value theorem. The most recent paper by Mossinghoff, Trudgian and Yang is from December 2022 and provides four zero-free regions that improved the previous results of Kevin Ford from 2002, Mossinghoff and Trudgian themselves from 2015 and Pace Nielsen's slight improvement of Ford from October 2022: σ ≥ 1 − 1 5.558691 log ⁡ | t | {\displaystyle \sigma \geq 1-{\frac {1}{5.558691\log |t|}}} whenever | t | ≥ 2 {\displaystyle |t|\geq 2} , σ ≥ 1 − 1 55.241 ( log ⁡ | t | ) 2 / 3 ( log ⁡ log


id: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis-11.md
category: reference
title: Riemann hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:22.283607+00:00
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parent: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
For any ε > 0 {\displaystyle \varepsilon >0} there exists a lower bound T 0 = T 0 ( ε ) > 0 {\displaystyle T_{0}=T_{0}(\varepsilon )>0} such that for T ≥ T 0 {\displaystyle T\geq T_{0}} and H = T 1 4 + ε {\displaystyle H=T^{{\tfrac {1}{4}}+\varepsilon }} the interval ( T , T + H ] {\displaystyle (T,T+H]} contains a zero of odd order of the function ζ ( 1 2 + i t ) {\displaystyle \zeta {\bigl (}{\tfrac {1}{2}}+it{\bigr )}} . Let N ( T ) {\displaystyle N(T)} be the total number of real zeros, and N 0 ( T ) {\displaystyle N_{0}(T)} be the total number of zeros of odd order of the function ζ ( 1 2 + i t ) {\displaystyle ~\zeta \left({\tfrac {1}{2}}+it\right)~} lying on the interval ( 0 , T ] {\displaystyle (0,T]~} . For any ε > 0 {\displaystyle \varepsilon >0} there exists T 0 = T 0 ( ε ) > 0 {\displaystyle T_{0}=T_{0}(\varepsilon )>0} and some c = c ( ε ) > 0 {\displaystyle c=c(\varepsilon )>0} , such that for T ≥ T 0 {\displaystyle T\geq T_{0}} and H = T 1 2 + ε {\displaystyle H=T^{{\tfrac {1}{2}}+\varepsilon }}


id: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis-12.md
category: reference
title: Riemann hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:22.283607+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
where T {\displaystyle T} is the largest known value such that the Riemann hypothesis is true for all zeros ρ {\displaystyle \rho } with ℑ ( ρ ) ∈ ( 0 , T ] {\displaystyle \Im {\left(\rho \right)}\in \left(0,T\right]} . Some calculations of zeros of the zeta function are listed below, where the "height" of a zero is the magnitude of its imaginary part, and the height of the nth zero is denoted by γn. So far all zeros that have been checked are on the critical line and are simple. (A multiple zero would cause problems for the zero finding algorithms, which depend on finding sign changes between zeros.) For tables of the zeros, see Haselgrove & Miller (1960) or Odlyzko. === Gram points === A Gram point is a point on the critical line 1/2 + it where the zeta function is real and non-zero. Using the expression for the zeta function on the critical line, ζ(1/2 + it) = Z(t)e−iθ(t), where Hardy's function, Z, is real for real t, and θ is the Riemann–Siegel theta function, we see that zeta is real when sin(θ(t)) = 0. This implies that θ(t) is an integer multiple of π, which


id: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis-13.md
category: reference
title: Riemann hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:22.283607+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
=== Random matrix theory and quantum chaos === Assuming the Riemann hypothesis one can ask what further regularities might govern the distribution of the zeros of the zeta function on the critical line. One conjectural picture is that the critical zeros of the zeta function behave statistically like the eigenvalues of large random Hermitian matrices. The idea began with Hugh Montgomery's work on the pair correlation conjecture for the zeros of the zeta function. After a suitable rescaling to account for the increasing density of zeros with height, the conjectured pair correlation function agrees with that of eigenvalues in the Gaussian unitary ensemble (GUE) in random matrix theory. The connection was tested numerically by Andrew Odlyzko, who found that the spacing statistics of zeros high on the critical line agree closely with the predictions of GUE random matrix theory. The agreement extends beyond nearest-neighbor spacings to higher correlation functions, and is widely regarded as strong evidence that the zeros are modeled by the same local statistics as random matrices. The random matrix analogy is also related to the Hilbert–Pólya conjecture, and to ideas from quantum chaos. In quantum chaotic systems, eigenvalues often obey random matrix statistics, so the appearance of


id: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-14
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis-14.md
category: reference
title: Riemann hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:22.283607+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Several analogues of the Riemann hypothesis have already been proved. The proof of the Riemann hypothesis for varieties over finite fields by Deligne (1974) is possibly the single strongest theoretical reason in favor of the Riemann hypothesis. This provides some evidence for the more general conjecture that all zeta functions associated with automorphic forms satisfy a Riemann hypothesis, which includes the classical Riemann hypothesis as a special case. Similarly Selberg zeta functions satisfy the analogue of the Riemann hypothesis, and are in some ways similar to the Riemann zeta function, having a functional equation and an infinite product expansion analogous to the Euler product expansion. But there are also some major differences; for example, they are not given by Dirichlet series. The Riemann hypothesis for the Goss zeta function was proved by Sheats (1998). In contrast to these positive examples, some Epstein zeta functions do not satisfy the Riemann hypothesis even though they have an infinite number of zeros on the critical line. These functions are quite similar to the Riemann zeta function, and have a Dirichlet series expansion and a functional equation, but the ones known to fail the Riemann hypothesis do not have an Euler product and are


id: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-15
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis-15.md
category: reference
title: Riemann hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:22.283607+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: riemann-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
American Institute of Mathematics, Riemann hypothesis Zeroes database, 103 800 788 359 zeroes Apostol, Tom, Where are the zeros of zeta of s? Poem about the Riemann hypothesis, sung by John Derbyshire. Borwein, Peter, The Riemann Hypothesis (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-03-27 (Slides for a lecture) Conrad, K. (2010), Consequences of the Riemann hypothesis Conrey, J. Brian; Farmer, David W, Equivalences to the Riemann hypothesis, archived from the original on 2010-03-16 Gourdon, Xavier; Sebah, Pascal (2004), Computation of zeros of the Zeta function (Reviews the GUE hypothesis, provides an extensive bibliography as well). Odlyzko, Andrew, Home page including papers on the zeros of the zeta function and tables of the zeros of the zeta function Odlyzko, Andrew (2002), Zeros of the Riemann zeta function: Conjectures and computations (PDF) Slides of a talk Pegg, Ed (2004), Ten Trillion Zeta Zeros, Math Games website, archived from the original on 2004-11-02, retrieved 2004-10-20. A discussion of Xavier Gourdon's calculation of the first ten trillion non-trivial zeros Rubinstein, Michael, algorithm for generating the zeros, archived from the original on 2007-04-27. du Sautoy, Marcus (2006), Prime Numbers Get Hitched, Seed Magazine, archived from the original on 2017-09-22, retrieved 2006-03-27 Watkins, Matthew R.


id: roe-effect-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_effect-0.md
category: reference
title: Roe effect
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_effect
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:23.501870+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: roe-effect-20260505-0
summary:
The Roe effect is a hypothesis about the long-term effect of abortion on the political balance of the United States, which suggests that since supporters of the legalization of abortion cause the erosion of their own political base, the practice of abortion will eventually lead to the restriction or illegalization of abortion. It is named after Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court case that effectively legalized abortion nationwide in the U.S. Its best-known proponent is James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal who coined the phrase "Roe effect" in Best of the Web Today, his OpinionJournal.com column. Put simply, this hypothesis holds that: Those who favor legal abortion are much more likely to have the procedure than those who oppose it. Children usually follow their parents' political leanings. Therefore, pro-abortion rights parents will have more abortions and, hence, fewer children. Therefore, the pro-abortion rights population gradually shrinks in proportion to the anti-abortion population. Therefore, support for legal abortions will decline over time. A similar argument suggests that political groups that oppose abortion will tend to have more supporters in the long run than those who support it. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal published a detailed explanation and statistical


id: saxe-goldstein-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxe–Goldstein_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Saxe–Goldstein hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxe–Goldstein_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:24.686477+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: saxe-goldstein-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
In archaeology, the Saxe–Goldstein hypothesis is a prediction about the relationship between a society's funerary practices and its social organization. It predicts a correlation between two phenomena: the use of specific areas to dispose of the dead, and the legitimation of control over restricted resources through claims of descent from dead ancestors. The hypothesis was first formulated by the American anthropologist Arthur Saxe in 1970, as the last in a series of eight, and was refined by Lynne Goldstein later in the 1970s. In reference to its origin, it is sometimes known as Hypothesis Eight. Saxe's work drew on the ethnographic work of Mervyn Meggitt and the role theory developed by Ward Goodenough. He predicted that, if a society contained groups of people with a shared identity (known as "corporate groups") that legitimized their claims to important, restricted resources by claiming ties to ancestors, that society would be more likely to use formal areas, such as cemeteries, for the disposal of the dead. Conversely, societies using such areas would be more likely to contain such corporate groups. His work coincided with that of Lewis Binford, who argued that funerary practices provided useful evidence for social organization and for the status


id: saxe-goldstein-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxe–Goldstein_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Saxe–Goldstein hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxe–Goldstein_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:24.686477+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: saxe-goldstein-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
To the degree that corporate group rights to use and/or control crucial but restricted resources are attained and/or legitimized by means of lineal descent from the dead (i.e. lineal ties to ancestors), such groups will maintain formal disposal areas for the exclusive disposal of their dead, and conversely. Saxe considered the hypothesis supported by the cases he studied – the Kapauku, Asante, and Bontoc peoples, respectively of Central Papua, Ghana, and Luzon – but to require further testing on a larger sample. As applied to past societies, the hypothesis is an example of middle-range theory, in that it attempts to draw general conclusions about the relationship between the archaeological record and the people who produced it. It is within the tradition of processual archaeology, a movement begun in the 1960s which aimed to model archaeology on the scientific method of the natural sciences. Processual archaeology emphasized the development and testing of hypotheses about general laws of human behavior. In this respect, it was part of the larger positivist school of thought, in which knowledge is considered to be based upon observable ("empirical") facts, which can themselves be predicted from consistent rules, laws and patterns. The belief that an individual's treatment


id: saxe-goldstein-hypothesis-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxe–Goldstein_hypothesis-2.md
category: reference
title: Saxe–Goldstein hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxe–Goldstein_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:24.686477+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: saxe-goldstein-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
In collaboration with L. P. Gall, Saxe studied itinerant swidden farmers in Malaysia who had been forced to move into permanent villages. In a 1977 publication of this study, Saxe and Gall noted that these farmers subsequently shifted toward burying their dead in formal cemeteries, and took this as evidence for Hypothesis Eight. Robert Chapman, in 1981, argued that the Saxe–Goldstein hypothesis could be used to explain the distribution of megalithic tombs in prehistoric Europe. In 1982, Maurice Bloch made a study of the Merina people of Madagascar, for whom he concluded that "the notion of ancestral land, that is land belonging to the deme [community], is totally merged with the notion of ancestors. The ancestors had lived and were buried in the ancestral land; the land, in the form of terraces, had been made by the ancestors". The anthropologist James A. Brown considers this reinforcing evidence for the Saxe–Goldstein hypothesis. In 1981, Brown described the methods of Saxe and Binford as a means of applying to material culture the social theories of Morton Fried and Elman Service, who studied the development and evolution of socio-political organization. In 1984, Jack Glazier made a study of the Mbeere people of Kenya,


id: saxe-goldstein-hypothesis-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxe–Goldstein_hypothesis-3.md
category: reference
title: Saxe–Goldstein hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxe–Goldstein_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:24.686477+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: saxe-goldstein-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The Saxe–Goldstein hypothesis was criticized by post-processual archaeologists of the 1980s, who argued that it did not leave sufficient room for the beliefs and intentions of those who lived in the past and created the archaeological record. Ian Hodder, in 1982, used the example of the Mesakin people of Sudan to argue that the burial record may only represent an idealized fraction of the social relations within a society, drawing attention to what he called "the disjunction between burial pattern and social pattern". In the same year, Hodder's students Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley criticized the functionalist position adopted by Saxe and other processualists, by which social phenomena are analyzed primarily in terms of their observable outcomes. Shanks and Tilley wrote that such arguments were inadequate to explain the specific content and context of funerary ritual, and that mortuary practices may be used to invert and misrepresent the social order as much as they may reflect it. Mike Parker Pearson, another of Hodder's students, later wrote that "to reduce the significance of ancestors and tombs to a means of subsistence management is to relegate human aspiration and motivation to wondering where the next meal is coming from". Attempts to use


id: saxe-goldstein-hypothesis-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxe–Goldstein_hypothesis-4.md
category: reference
title: Saxe–Goldstein hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxe–Goldstein_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:24.686477+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: saxe-goldstein-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
=== Legacy === Some post-processual archaeologists returned to using funerary evidence to infer social hierarchies in the 1990s. However, during this period, funerary archaeology played a comparatively small role in archaeology, particularly in the United States, due both to cultural changes among archaeologists and to methodological difficulties with its study. The Saxe–Goldstein hypothesis remained fairly rarely used, particularly among British archaeologists. Parker Pearson wrote in 1999 that the hypothesis could partially explain why cemeteries may be constructed, but did not explain why a society would choose to adopt cemeteries rather than other means of highlighting individuals' descent from certain ancestors. He also argued that the hypothesis did not encompass the full significance of relationships between the living and the ancestors. In 2010, Emma Elder wrote that it was "in the graveyard of disused theoretical tools", though she considered that it could still be useful if applied with proper qualification. In 2013, David Edwards wrote that the Saxe–Goldstein hypothesis could be applied to certain African burial rites, such as the below-house burial practiced in West Africa, though these rituals also contained other meanings and alternative methods could be used alongside them to assert territorial claims. Hypothesis Eight was described by Chapman


id: scientific-wild-ass-guess-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_wild-ass_guess-0.md
category: reference
title: Scientific wild-ass guess
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_wild-ass_guess
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:25.888993+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: scientific-wild-ass-guess-20260505-0
summary:
Scientific wild-ass guess (SWAG) is an American English slang term meaning a rough estimate made by an expert in the field, based on experience and intuition. It is similar to the slang word guesstimate, a portmanteau of guess and estimate. == History == The slang term "SWAG" is generally thought to have originated in the US military, either the Army or the Air Force. Journalist Melvin J. Lasky wrote that it was first used casually by US Army General William Westmoreland during the Vietnam War. Westmoreland would sometimes reply "SWAG" to reporters' questions about American failure to neutralize the enemy. Westmoreland's use of the term was affirmed in court by Colonel John Frank Stewart in November 1984 during witness testimony for the lawsuit initiated by Westmoreland against CBS for their TV documentary The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception. On the witness stand, Stewart explained that in Vietnam, the military intelligence branch that he commanded would deliver numbers of enemy strength to Westmoreland, the numbers derived from "the SWAG principle". There was laughter in the court when Stewart explained what was meant by the acronym SWAG. An earlier use of term is mentioned by linguist J. Robert Dumouchel who wrote the


id: second-continuum-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_continuum_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Second continuum hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_continuum_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:27.020733+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: second-continuum-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The second continuum hypothesis, also called Luzin's hypothesis or Luzin's second continuum hypothesis, is the hypothesis that 2 ℵ 0 = 2 ℵ 1 {\displaystyle 2^{\aleph _{0}}=2^{\aleph _{1}}} . It is the negation of a weakened form, 2 ℵ 0 < 2 ℵ 1 {\displaystyle 2^{\aleph _{0}}<2^{\aleph _{1}}} , of the Continuum Hypothesis (CH). It was discussed by Nikolai Luzin in 1935, although he did not claim to be the first to postulate it. The statement 2 ℵ 0 < 2 ℵ 1 {\displaystyle 2^{\aleph _{0}}<2^{\aleph _{1}}} may also be called Luzin's hypothesis. The second continuum hypothesis is independent of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory with the Axiom of Choice (ZFC): its truth is consistent with ZFC since it is true in Cohen's model of ZFC with the negation of the Continuum Hypothesis; its falsity is also consistent since it is contradicted by the Continuum Hypothesis, which follows from V=L. It is implied by Martin's Axiom together with the negation of the CH. == Notes == == References ==


id: silurian-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silurian_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Silurian hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silurian_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:28.226332+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: silurian-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The Silurian hypothesis is a thought experiment which assesses modern science's ability to detect evidence of a prior advanced civilization, perhaps several million years ago. The most probable clues for such a civilization could be carbon, radioactive elements or temperature variation. The name "Silurian" derives from the eponymous sapient species from the BBC science fiction series Doctor Who, who in the series established an advanced civilization prior to humanity. Astrophysicist Adam Frank and climate scientist Gavin Schmidt proposed the "Silurian Hypothesis" in a 2018 paper exploring the possibility of detecting an advanced civilization before humans in the geological record. They argued that there has been sufficient fossil carbon to fuel an industrial civilization since the Carboniferous Period (~350 million years ago); however, finding direct evidence, such as technological artifacts, is unlikely due to the rarity of fossilization and Earth's exposed surface. Instead, researchers might find indirect evidence, such as climate changes, anomalies in sediment, or traces of nuclear waste. The hypothesis also speculates that artifacts from past civilizations could be found on the Moon and Mars, where erosion and tectonic activity are less likely to erase evidence. The concept of pre-human civilizations has been explored in popular culture, including novels,


id: simulation-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Simulation hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:29.485787+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: simulation-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The simulation hypothesis proposes that what one experiences as the real world is actually a simulated reality, such as a computer simulation in which humans are constructs. There has been much debate over this topic in the philosophical discourse. Precursors include Zhuangzi's "Butterfly Dream" and René Descartes's "evil demon". In 2003, philosopher Nick Bostrom proposed the simulation argument suggesting that if a civilization becomes capable of creating conscious simulations, it could generate so many simulated beings that a randomly chosen conscious entity would almost certainly be in a simulation. This argument presents a trilemma: either such simulations are not created because of technological limitations or self-destruction; advanced civilizations choose not to create them; if advanced civilizations do create them, the number of simulations would far exceed base reality and we would therefore almost certainly be living in one. This assumes that consciousness is not uniquely tied to biological brains but can arise from any system that implements the right computational structures and processes. Variations on the idea have also been featured in science fiction, appearing as a central plot device in many stories and films, such as Simulacron-3 (1964) and The Matrix (1999). == Origins == Human history is full


id: simulation-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Simulation hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:29.485787+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: simulation-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
"The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage (that is, one capable of running high-fidelity ancestor simulations) is very close to zero", or "The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running simulations of their evolutionary history, or variations thereof, is very close to zero", or "The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one". The trilemma points out that a technologically mature "posthuman" civilization would have enormous computing power. If even a tiny percentage of "ancestor simulations" were run (that is, "high-fidelity" simulations of ancestral life that would be indistinguishable from reality to the simulated ancestor), the total number of simulated ancestors, or "Sims", in the universe (or multiverse, if it exists) would greatly exceed the total number of actual ancestors. Bostrom uses a type of anthropic reasoning to claim that, if the third proposition is the one of those three that is true, and almost all people live in simulations, then humans are almost certainly living in a simulation. Bostrom's argument rests on the premise that given sufficiently advanced technology, it would be possible to represent the populated surface of the Earth without


id: simulation-hypothesis-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis-2.md
category: reference
title: Simulation hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:29.485787+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: simulation-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Bostrom argues that if "the fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one", then it follows that humans probably live in a simulation. Some philosophers disagree, proposing that perhaps "Sims" do not have conscious experiences the same way that unsimulated humans do, or that it can otherwise be self-evident to a human that they are a human rather than a Sim. Philosopher Barry Dainton modifies Bostrom's trilemma by substituting "neural ancestor simulations" (ranging from literal brains in a vat, to far-future humans with induced high-fidelity hallucinations that they are their own distant ancestors) for Bostrom's "ancestor simulations", on the grounds that every philosophical school of thought can agree that sufficiently high-tech neural ancestor simulation experiences would be indistinguishable from non-simulated experiences. Even if high-fidelity computer Sims are never conscious, Dainton's reasoning leads to the following conclusion: either the fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage and are able and willing to run large numbers of neural ancestor simulations is close to zero, or some kind of (possibly neural) ancestor simulation exists. The hypothesis has received criticism from some physicists, such as Sabine Hossenfelder, who considers that


id: simulation-hypothesis-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis-3.md
category: reference
title: Simulation hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:29.485787+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: simulation-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Some scholars accept the trilemma, and argue that the first or second of the propositions are true, and that the third proposition (the proposition that humans live in a simulation) is false. Physicist Paul Davies uses Bostrom's trilemma as part of one possible argument against a near-infinite multiverse. This argument runs as follows: if there were a near-infinite multiverse, there would be posthuman civilizations running ancestor simulations, which would lead to the untenable and scientifically self-defeating conclusion that humans live in a simulation; therefore, by reductio ad absurdum, existing multiverse theories are likely false. (Unlike Bostrom and Chalmers, Davies (among others) considers the simulation hypothesis to be self-defeating.) Some point out that there is currently no proof of technology that would facilitate the existence of sufficiently high-fidelity ancestor simulation. Additionally, there is no proof that it is physically possible or feasible for a posthuman civilization to create such a simulation, and therefore for the present, the first proposition must be taken to be true. Additionally there are limits of computation. Physicist Marcelo Gleiser objects to the notion that posthumans would have a reason to run simulated universes: "...being so advanced they would have collected enough knowledge about their past to


id: simulation-hypothesis-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis-4.md
category: reference
title: Simulation hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:29.485787+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: simulation-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
In many respects this point of view may be nothing more than a result of the fact that the notion of computation is the disease of our age—everywhere we look today we see examples of computers, computation, and information theory and thus we extrapolate this to our laws of physics. Indeed, thinking about computing as arising from faulty components, it seems as if the abstraction that uses perfectly operating computers is unlikely to exist as anything but a platonic ideal. Another critique of such a point of view is that there is no evidence for the kind of digitization that characterizes computers nor are there any predictions made by those who advocate such a view that have been experimentally confirmed. === Testing the hypothesis physically === A method to test one type of simulation hypothesis was proposed in 2012 by physicists Silas R. Beane, Zohreh Davoudi, and Martin J. Savage. Under the assumption of finite computational resources, the simulation of the universe would be performed by dividing the space-time continuum into a discrete set of points, which may result in observable effects. In analogy with the mini-simulations that lattice-gauge theorists run today to build up nuclei from the underlying theory


id: simulation-hypothesis-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis-5.md
category: reference
title: Simulation hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:29.485787+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: simulation-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
== In popular culture == The simulation hypothesis and related themes like simulated reality have been explored in literature, film and theatre. Simulacron-3 (1964) by Daniel F. Galouye is an early exploration of a computer-simulated city and inspired screen adaptations including World on a Wire (1973) and, later, The Thirteenth Floor (1999). The Matrix (1999) popularized the idea of humanity unknowingly living inside a machine-generated virtual reality. In Overdrawn at the Memory Bank (1983/1984), the protagonist undergoes compulsory “doppling” therapy that transfers his consciousness, and—after a mishap—his mind is kept inside the corporation's central computer. Theatre has also treated the topic. Jay Scheib’s 2012 play World of Wires was explicitly inspired by Bostrom’s simulation argument and by Fassbinder’s World on a Wire. Philip K. Dick’s short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” (1966)—about implanted memories and unstable realities—formed the basis for Total Recall (1990) and its 2012 remake. In 2025, Italian creative director and producer Giorgio Fazio released the two-track project Nothing But Simulation, thematically tied to the simulation hypothesis and paired with a generative web experience. == See also == Artificial life Artificial society Boltzmann brain Brain in a vat Digital physics Interface theory Fine-tuned universe Holographic


id: slavery-hypertension-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_hypertension_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Slavery hypertension hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_hypertension_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:30.683380+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: slavery-hypertension-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The slavery hypertension hypothesis proposes that disproportionately high rates of hypertension among black people in the New World are due to selective pressure preferring individuals who retain more sodium among black slaves during the Middle Passage. == History == It was originally proposed in 1983 by Clarence Grim and Thomas W. Wilson, who subsequently promoted it heavily during the remainder of the 1980s. It gained considerable media attention when Grim presented it at a conference in 1988. In 1990, the first medical textbook mentioning the hypothesis was published. The first peer-reviewed paper advancing the hypothesis was published by Wilson and Grim in 1991. This study also received considerable media attention. In December 2004, a paper titled CYP3A Variation and the Evolution of Salt-Sensitivity Variants was published which drew attention to the importance of the CPY3A5*1 and CPY3A5*3 alleles of cytochrome P450 CYP3A5 in hypertensive disease. The paper showed a substantial correlation between geographical latitude and the CPY3A5 allele distribution, with African Americans descended from the slave trade having retained the equatorial haplotype. In 2005 the thesis that black Americans who trace their immigration to the slave era experience lower life expectancy due to hypertensive disease associated with the slave trade


id: snowball-earth-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth-0.md
category: reference
title: Snowball Earth
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:31.903477+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: snowball-earth-20260505-0
summary:
The Snowball Earth is a geohistorical hypothesis proposing that during one or more of Earth's icehouse climates, the planet's surface was nearly entirely frozen, with little or no liquid water exposed. This global glaciation hypothesis is most commonly associated with the Cryogenian Period, which included two major glacial episodes: the Sturtian (c. 717–660 Ma) and Marinoan (c. 650–635 Ma). Proponents of the hypothesis argue that it best explains sedimentary deposits that are generally believed to be of glacial origin at tropical palaeolatitudes and other enigmatic features in the geological record. Opponents of the hypothesis contest the geological evidence for global glaciation and the geophysical feasibility of an ice- or slush-covered ocean, and they emphasize the difficulty of escaping an all-frozen condition. Several unanswered questions remain, including whether Earth was a full "snowball" or a "slushball" with a thin equatorial band of open (or seasonally open) water. The Snowball Earth episodes are proposed to have occurred before the sudden radiations of multicellular bioforms known as the Avalon and Cambrian explosions; the most recent Snowball episode may have triggered the evolution of multicellularity. == History == === First evidence for ancient glaciation === Long before the idea of a global glaciation was


id: snowball-earth-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth-1.md
category: reference
title: Snowball Earth
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:31.903477+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: snowball-earth-20260505-0
summary:
That a bed contains sedimentary structures that could have been formed only by glacial activity; That the bed lay within the tropics when it was deposited. That glaciers were active at different global locations at the same time, and that no other deposits of the same age are in existence. This last point is very difficult to prove. Before the Ediacaran, the biostratigraphic markers usually used to correlate rocks are absent; therefore there is no way to prove that rocks in different places across the globe were deposited at the same time. The best that can be done is to estimate the age of the rocks using radiometric dating, which are rarely accurate to better than a million years or so. The first two points are often the source of contention on a case-to-case basis. Many glacial features can also be formed by non-glacial means, and estimating the approximate latitudes of landmasses even as recently as 200 Ma can be riddled with difficulties. === Palaeomagnetism === The snowball Earth hypothesis was first posited to explain what were then considered to be glacial deposits near the equator. Since tectonic plates move slowly over time, ascertaining their position at a given point


id: snowball-earth-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth-2.md
category: reference
title: Snowball Earth
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:31.903477+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: snowball-earth-20260505-0
summary:
=== Open-water deposits === It appears that some deposits formed during the snowball period could only have formed in the presence of an active hydrological cycle. Bands of glacial deposits up to 5,500 meters thick, separated by small (meters) bands of non-glacial sediments, demonstrate that glaciers melted and re-formed repeatedly for tens of millions of years; solid oceans would not permit this scale of deposition. It is considered possible that ice streams such as seen in Antarctica today could have caused these sequences. Further, sedimentary features that could only form in open water (for example: wave-formed ripples, far-traveled ice-rafted debris and indicators of photosynthetic activity) can be found throughout sediments dating from the snowball-Earth periods. While these may represent "oases" of meltwater on a completely frozen Earth, computer modelling suggests that large areas of the ocean must have remained ice-free, arguing that a "hard" snowball is not plausible in terms of energy balance and general circulation models. === Carbon isotope ratios === There are two stable isotopes of carbon in sea water: carbon-12 (12C) and the rare carbon-13 (13C), which makes up about 1.109 percent of carbon atoms. Biochemical processes, of which photosynthesis is one, tend to preferentially incorporate the


id: snowball-earth-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth-3.md
category: reference
title: Snowball Earth
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:31.903477+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: snowball-earth-20260505-0
summary:
These cap carbonates have unusual chemical composition as well as strange sedimentary structures that are often interpreted as large ripples. The formation of such sedimentary rocks could be caused by a large influx of positively charged ions, as would be produced by rapid weathering during the extreme greenhouse following a snowball Earth event. The δ13C isotopic signature of the cap carbonates is near −5‰, consistent with the value of the mantle—such a low value could be taken to signify an absence of life, since photosynthesis usually acts to raise the value; alternatively the release of methane deposits could have lowered it from a higher value and counterbalance the effects of photosynthesis. The mechanism involved in the formation of cap carbonates is not clear, but the most cited explanation suggests that at the melting of a snowball Earth, water would dissolve the abundant CO2 from the atmosphere to form carbonic acid, which would fall as acid rain. This would weather exposed silicate and carbonate rock (including readily attacked glacial debris), releasing large amounts of calcium, which when washed into the ocean would form distinctively textured layers of carbonate sedimentary rock. Such an abiotic "cap carbonate" sediment can be found on top


id: snowball-earth-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth-4.md
category: reference
title: Snowball Earth
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:31.903477+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: snowball-earth-20260505-0
summary:
=== Initiation of glaciation === A tropical distribution of the continents is, perhaps counter-intuitively, necessary to allow the initiation of a snowball Earth. Tropical continents are more reflective than open ocean and so absorb less of the Sun's heat: most absorption of solar energy on Earth today occurs in tropical oceans. Further, tropical continents are subject to more rainfall, which leads to increased river discharge and erosion. When exposed to air, silicate rocks undergo weathering reactions which remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. These reactions proceed in the general form An example of such a reaction is the weathering of wollastonite: The released calcium cations react with the dissolved bicarbonate in the ocean to form calcium carbonate as a chemically precipitated sedimentary rock. This transfers carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from the air into the geosphere, and, in steady-state on geologic time scales, offsets the carbon dioxide emitted from volcanoes into the atmosphere. As of 2003, a precise continental distribution during the Neoproterozoic was difficult to establish because there were too few suitable sediments for analysis. Some reconstructions point towards polar continents—which have been a feature of all other major glaciations, providing a point upon which ice can nucleate. Changes


id: snowball-earth-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth-5.md
category: reference
title: Snowball Earth
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:31.903477+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: snowball-earth-20260505-0
summary:
=== Breaking out of global glaciation === The carbon dioxide levels necessary to thaw Earth have been estimated as being 350 times what they are today, about 13% of the atmosphere. Since Earth was almost completely covered with ice, carbon dioxide could not be withdrawn from the atmosphere by release of alkaline metal ions weathering out of siliceous rocks. Over 4 to 30 million years, enough CO2 and methane, mainly emitted by volcanoes but also produced by microbes converting organic carbon trapped under the ice into the gas, would accumulate to finally cause enough greenhouse effect to make surface ice melt in the tropics until a band of permanently ice-free land and water developed; this would be darker than the ice and thus absorb more energy from the Sun—initiating a "positive feedback". The first areas to become free of permanent ice cover may have been in the mid-latitudes rather than in the tropics, because a rapid hydrological cycle would have inhibited the melting of ice at low latitudes. As these mid-latitude regions became ice free, dust from them blew over onto ice sheets elsewhere, decreasing their albedo and accelerating the process of deglaciation. Destabilization of substantial deposits of methane hydrates


id: snowball-earth-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth-6.md
category: reference
title: Snowball Earth
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:31.903477+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: snowball-earth-20260505-0
summary:
== Scientific dispute == The argument against the hypothesis is evidence of fluctuation in ice cover and melting during "snowball Earth" deposits. Evidence for such melting comes from evidence of glacial dropstones, geochemical evidence of climate cyclicity, and interbedded glacial and shallow marine sediments. A longer record from Oman, constrained to 13°N, covers the period from 712 to 545 million years ago—a time span containing the Sturtian and Marinoan glaciations—and shows both glacial and ice-free deposition. The snowball Earth hypothesis does not explain the alternation of glacial and interglacial events, nor the oscillation of glacial sheet margins. There have been difficulties in recreating a snowball Earth with global climate models. Simple GCMs with mixed-layer oceans can be made to freeze to the equator; a more sophisticated model with a full dynamic ocean (though only a primitive sea ice model) failed to form sea ice to the equator. In addition, the levels of CO2 necessary to melt a global ice cover have been calculated to be 130,000 ppm, which is considered by some to be unreasonably large. Strontium isotopic data have been found to be at odds with proposed snowball Earth models of silicate weathering shutdown during glaciation and rapid rates


id: snowball-earth-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth-7.md
category: reference
title: Snowball Earth
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:31.903477+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: snowball-earth-20260505-0
summary:
In reservoirs of anaerobic and low-oxygen life powered by chemicals in deep oceanic hydrothermal vents surviving in Earth's deep oceans and crust; but photosynthesis would not have been possible there. Under the ice layer, in chemolithotrophic (mineral-metabolizing) ecosystems theoretically resembling those in existence in modern glacier beds, high-alpine and Arctic talus permafrost, and basal glacial ice. This is especially plausible in areas of volcanism or geothermal activity. In pockets of liquid water within and under the ice caps, similar to Lake Vostok in Antarctica. In theory, this system may resemble microbial communities living in the perennially frozen lakes of the Antarctic dry valleys. Photosynthesis can occur under ice up to 20 m thick, and at the temperatures predicted by models, equatorial sublimation would prevent equatorial ice thickness from exceeding 10 m. As eggs and dormant cells and spores deep-frozen into ice during the most severe phases of the frozen period. In small regions of open sea water: polynya. These natural ice holes can occur from the action of winds, currents or a local heat source (e.g. geothermal), even if the surrounding sea is completely frozen over. They could preserve enclaves of photosynthesizers with access to light and CO2 to generate


id: snowball-earth-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth-8.md
category: reference
title: Snowball Earth
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:31.903477+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: snowball-earth-20260505-0
summary:
The Neoproterozoic was a time of remarkable diversification of multicellular organisms, including animals. Organism size and complexity increased considerably after the end of the snowball glaciations. This rapid development of multicellular organisms may have been the result of increased evolutionary pressures resulting from multiple icehouse-hothouse cycles; in this sense, snowball Earth episodes may have "pumped" evolution, much as glaciations during the Pleistocene are known to have acted as a diversity pump in Antarctica. Alternatively, fluctuating copper levels and rising oxygen may have played a part. Many Sturtian diamictites unconformably overlie copper-mineralised strata in Greenland, North America, Australia, and Africa; the glacial breakup and erosion of rocks heavily enriched in copper during the Sturtian glaciation, combined with the chemical weathering of the Franklin Large Igneous Province, greatly elevated copper concentrations in the ocean. Because copper is an essential component of many proteins involved in mitigating oxygen toxicity, synthesising adenosine triphosphate, and producing elastin and collagen, among other biological functions, this spike in copper concentrations was essential to the explosive evolution of multicellular life throughout the latter portion of the Neoproterozoic. Elevated copper concentrations persisted into the Cambrian explosion at the beginning of the Phanerozoic and likely influenced its course too. One


id: snowball-earth-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth-9.md
category: reference
title: Snowball Earth
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:31.903477+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: snowball-earth-20260505-0
summary:
The Snowball Earth 1999 overview by Paul F. Hoffman and Daniel P. Schrag, 8 August 1999 Snowball Earth web site Exhaustive on-line resource for snowball Earth by pro-snowball scientists Hoffman and Schrag. New Evidence Puts 'Snowball Earth' Theory Out In The Cold sciencedaily.com. 2007. Analyses in Oman produce evidence of hot-cold cycles in the Cryogenian period, roughly 850–544 million years ago. The UK-Swiss team claims that this evidence undermines hypotheses of an ice age so severe that Earth's oceans completely froze over. Channel 4 (UK) documentary, Catastrophe: Snowball Earth Archived 29 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine episode 2 of 5, first screened Dec 2008, documentary narrated by Tony Robinson, advocates snowball Earth and contains interviews with proponents. First breath: Earth's billion-year struggle for oxygen New Scientist, #2746, 5 February 2010 by Nick Lane. Posits an earlier much longer snowball period, c. 2.4 – c. 2.0 Gya, triggered by the Great Oxygenation Event. 'Snowball Earth' theory melted BBC News online (2002-03-06) report on findings by geoscientists at the University of St Andrews, Scotland that casts doubt on the snowball Earth hypothesis due to evidence of sedimentary material, which could only have been derived from floating ice on open oceanic waters.


id: somatic-marker-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_marker_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Somatic marker hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_marker_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:33.152759+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: somatic-marker-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The somatic marker hypothesis, formulated by Antonio Damasio and associated researchers, proposes that emotional processes guide (or bias) behavior, particularly decision-making. "Somatic markers" are feelings in the body that are associated with emotions, such as the association of rapid heartbeat with anxiety or of nausea with disgust. According to the hypothesis, somatic markers strongly influence subsequent decision-making. Within the brain, somatic markers are thought to be processed in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and the amygdala. The hypothesis has been tested in experiments using the Iowa gambling task. == Background == In economic theory, human decision-making is often modeled as being devoid of emotions, involving only logical reasoning based on cost-benefit calculations. In contrast, the somatic marker hypothesis proposes that emotions play a critical role in the ability to make fast, rational decisions in complex and uncertain situations. Patients with frontal lobe damage, such as Phineas Gage, provided the first evidence that the frontal lobes were associated with decision-making. Frontal lobe damage, particularly to the vmPFC, results in impaired abilities to organize and plan behavior and learn from previous mistakes, without affecting intellect in terms of working memory, attention, and language comprehension and expression. vmPFC patients also have difficulty expressing


id: somatic-marker-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_marker_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Somatic marker hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_marker_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:33.152759+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: somatic-marker-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
In an effort to produce a simple neuropsychological tool that would assess deficits in emotional processing, decision-making, and social skills of OMPFC-lesioned individuals, Bechara and collaborators created the Iowa gambling task. The task measures a form of emotion-based learning. Studies using the gambling task have found deficits in various neurological (such as amygdala and OMPFC lesions) and psychiatric populations (such as schizophrenia, mania, and drug abusers). The Iowa gambling task is a computerized test in which participants are presented with four decks of cards from which they repeatedly choose. Each deck contains various amounts of rewards of either $50 or $100, and occasional losses that are greater in the decks with higher rewards. The participants do not know where the penalty cards are located, and are told to pick cards that will maximize their winnings. The most profitable strategy turns out to be to choose cards only from the small reward/small penalty decks, because although the reward is smaller, the penalty is proportionally much smaller than in the high reward/high penalty decks. Over the course of a session, most healthy participants come to adopt the profitable low-penalty deck strategy. Participants with brain damage, however, are unable to determine the better


id: somatic-marker-hypothesis-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_marker_hypothesis-2.md
category: reference
title: Somatic marker hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_marker_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:33.152759+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: somatic-marker-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Some researchers believe that the use of somatic markers (i.e., afferent feedback) would be a very inefficient method of influencing behavior. Damasio's notion of the as-if experience dependent feedback route, whereby bodily responses are re-represented utilizing the somatosensory cortex (postcentral gyrus), also proposes an inefficient method of affecting explicit behavior. Edmund Rolls (1999) stated that; "it would be very inefficient and noisy to place in the execution route a peripheral response, and transducers to attempt to measure that peripheral response, itself a notoriously difficult procedure" (p. 73). Reinforcement association located in the orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala, where the incentive value of stimuli is decoded, is sufficient to elicit emotion-based learning and to affect behavior via, for example, the orbitofrontal-striatal pathway. This process can occur via implicit or explicit processes. The somatic marker hypothesis represents a model of how feedback from the body may contribute to both advantageous and disadvantageous decision-making in situations of complexity and uncertainty. Much of its supporting data comes from data taken from the Iowa gambling task. While the Iowa gambling task has proven to be an ecologically valid measure of decision-making impairment, there exist three assumptions that need to hold true. First, the claim that it


id: space-animal-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_animal_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Space animal hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_animal_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:34.416085+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: space-animal-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The space animal hypothesis proposes that reports of flying saucers or UFOs might be caused not by technological alien spacecraft or mass hysteria, but rather by animal lifeforms ("space critters") that are indigenous to Earth's atmosphere or interplanetary space. == Proponents == Multiple authors independently suggested the space animal hypothesis. In 1923, paranormal author Charles Fort mused, "It seems no more incredible that up in the seemingly unoccupied sky there should be hosts of living things than that the seeming blank of the ocean should swarm with life." During the 1947 flying disc craze, a fan of Fort's writings named John Philip Bessor became the first modern proponent of the hypothesis when he authored a letter to the Air Force suggesting that discs might be "animals bearing very little likeness to human beings". In 1949, he wrote to the Saturday Evening Post to suggest that the discs might be "more like octopuses, in mentality, than humans". In 1957, a saucer group's newsletter credited Bessor with the "space animal" idea, and in 1978 he was called the "grand-daddy" of the "space critter" hypothesis. In 1948, the Saturday Evening Post quoted Luis Walter Alvarez's opinion that the "gizmos" appeared to be "alive".


id: trivers-willard-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivers–Willard_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Trivers–Willard hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivers–Willard_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:35.561406+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: trivers-willard-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
In evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, the Trivers–Willard hypothesis, formally proposed by Robert Trivers and Dan Willard in 1973, suggests that female mammals adjust the sex ratio of offspring in response to maternal condition, so as to maximize their reproductive success (fitness). For example, it may predict greater parental investment in males by parents in "good conditions" and greater investment in females by parents in "poor conditions" (relative to parents in good conditions). The reasoning for this prediction is as follows: Assume that parents have information on the sex of their offspring and can influence their survival differentially. While selection pressures exist to maintain a 1:1 sex ratio, evolution will favor local deviations from this if one sex has a likely greater reproductive payoff than is usual. Trivers and Willard also identified a circumstance in which reproducing individuals might experience deviations from expected offspring reproductive value—namely, varying maternal condition. In polygynous species, males may mate with multiple females, and low-condition males will achieve fewer or no matings. Parents in relatively good condition would then be under selection for mutations causing production and investment in sons (rather than daughters), because of the increased chance of mating experienced by these good-condition sons.


id: two-gospel-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-gospel_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Two-gospel hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-gospel_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:36.789683+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: two-gospel-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The two-gospel hypothesis or Griesbach hypothesis is that the Gospel of Matthew was written before the Gospel of Luke, and that both were written earlier than the Gospel of Mark. It is a proposed solution to the synoptic problem, which concerns the pattern of similarities and differences between the three Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The hypothesis is generally first credited to Johann Jakob Griesbach writing in the 1780s; it was introduced in its current form by William R. Farmer in 1964 and given its current designation of two-gospel hypothesis in 1979. The two-gospel hypothesis contrasts with the two-source hypothesis, the most popular and accepted scholarly hypothesis. Supporters say that it does not require lost sources like the Q source and was supported by the early Church. Proponents of the two-gospel hypothesis generally also support the traditional claims of authorship as accurate to disciples and their direct associates, which implies the gospels were written comparatively soon after Jesus's death, rather than the later dates of authorship supported by other schools of thought. == Overview == Those who support the hypothesis often accept all the church tradition as reliable. Therefore, a common formulation of the hypothesis is the following: Matthew


id: two-gospel-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-gospel_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Two-gospel hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-gospel_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:36.789683+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: two-gospel-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
== Contrasted with the two-source hypothesis == Proponents generally separate arguments made from the text of the gospels themselves ("internal evidence") and evidence from preserved writings of the early church ("external evidence"). For example, early church documents claim that Mark's Gospel was created after Mark made fifty copies of a series of speeches that Peter had given in Rome. The two-gospel hypothesis leans heavily on this external evidence: it embraces the views of the early church, and claims that a strong reason needs to be provided to justify dismissing the traditions of the early Church maintained over the authorship of the gospels. It also claims that the internal evidence supports Mark being a redactor of Matthew and Luke, as Griesbach argued. The two-source hypothesis, in contrast, is based only on the perceived internal evidence for Marcan priority, such as the brevity and primitivity of Mark, and does not accept the tradition of the early church. Approximately 25% of Matthew and 25% of Luke are identical, but are not found in Mark. This has been explained in the two-source hypothesis as coming from the hypothetical Q document. By the two-gospel hypothesis, this material was copied by Luke from Matthew, but not


id: two-gospel-hypothesis-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-gospel_hypothesis-2.md
category: reference
title: Two-gospel hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-gospel_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:36.789683+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: two-gospel-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
If Luke had access to the final version of Matthew (as opposed to both drawing independently on other sources), why are there so many significant differences between Luke and Matthew on issues such as Jesus' genealogy, circumstances of birth, and events following resurrection? While Luke and Matthew do share a lot of text which is not present in Mark, almost all of it is confined to teachings and parables. Construction of the gospels in accordance with the two-gospel hypothesis would require Luke to rewrite major parts of Matthew's narrative – even though Matthew was presumably an eyewitness who lived in Jerusalem and was surrounded by other eyewitnesses, and Luke was neither. This hypothesis does not actually necessitate Luke relying on Matthew, only Mark relying on Luke and Matthew. Many proponents argue instead that both Luke and Matthew drew from a "proto-Matthew." "The argument from omission": why would Mark and Peter omit such remarkable and miraculous events as virgin birth of Jesus and particularly his appearance to apostles following resurrection? Both Matthew and Luke explicitly attest that Jesus appeared to the eleven disciples, including Peter, after his resurrection, and it seems incredible that Peter would not testify to that fact in


id: variable-speed-of-light-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_light-0.md
category: reference
title: Variable speed of light
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_light
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:38.002917+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: variable-speed-of-light-20260505-0
summary:
A variable speed of light (VSL) is a feature of a family of hypotheses stating that the speed of light may in some way not be constant, for example, that it varies with frequency, in space, or over time. Accepted classical theories of physics, and in particular general relativity, predict a constant speed of light in any local frame of reference and in some situations these predict apparent variations of the speed of light depending on frame of reference, but this article does not refer to this as a variable speed of light. Various alternative theories of gravitation and cosmology, many of them non-mainstream, incorporate variations in the local speed of light. Attempts to incorporate a variable speed of light into physics were made by Robert Dicke in 1957, and by several researchers starting from the late 1980s. VSL should not be confused with faster than light theories, which depends on a medium's refractive index or its measurement in a remote observer's frame of reference in a gravitational potential. In this context, the "speed of light" refers to the limiting speed c of the theory rather than to the velocity of propagation of photons. == Historical proposals == === Background


id: variable-speed-of-light-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_light-1.md
category: reference
title: Variable speed of light
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_light
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:38.002917+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: variable-speed-of-light-20260505-0
summary:
One group, studying distant quasars, has claimed to detect a variation of the fine-structure constant at the level in one part in 105. Other authors dispute these results. Other groups studying quasars claim no detectable variation at much higher sensitivities. The natural nuclear reactor of Oklo has been used to check whether the atomic fine-structure constant α might have changed over the past 2 billion years. That is because α influences the rate of various nuclear reactions. For example, 149Sm captures a neutron to become 150Sm, and since the rate of neutron capture depends on the value of α, the ratio of the two samarium isotopes in samples from Oklo can be used to calculate the value of α from 2 billion years ago. Several studies have analysed the relative concentrations of radioactive isotopes left behind at Oklo, and most have concluded that nuclear reactions then were much the same as they are today, which implies α was the same too. Paul Davies and collaborators have suggested that it is in principle possible to disentangle which of the dimensionful constants (the elementary charge, the Planck constant, and the speed of light) of which the fine-structure constant is composed is responsible


id: virus-world-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus_world_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Virus world hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus_world_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:39.173467+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: virus-world-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The virus world hypothesis (also called the co-evolution hypothesis or the virus-first hypothesis) proposes that self-replicating virus-like genetic elements existed before cellular life and contributed to its emergence. It is one of the main frameworks used to explain the origin of viruses. Modern viruses are obligate parasites that depend on their cellular hosts, thus it may seem more intuitive for viruses to have originated from cells, such as in the "escape hypothesis". Nevertheless, under a hypothesized virus world, viruses are theorized to be direct descendants of the very first replicons to arise. These primordial soup dwelling replicons could have evolved into archaic virus-like structures, which in turn became the precursors of cellular life forms, with the latter possibly emerging as factories and reservoirs for virus production and dissemination. The hypothesis is considered one of the three classical hypotheses of viral origin, although it is now thought these hypotheses may not be mutually exclusive, as different groups of viruses may have evolved through different routes, or a "chimeric scenario". == History == The idea that viruses represent primordial, pre-cellular forms of life has roots in the earliest decades of virology. Félix d'Hérelle, discoverer of bacteriophages, proposed that virus-like agents might be


id: virus-world-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus_world_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Virus world hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus_world_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:39.173467+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: virus-world-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
=== Chimeric scenario === More recent work has treated the classical hypotheses as complementary. Krupovic, Dolja, and Koonin have proposed a chimeric scenario in which viral replication modules descended from primordial pre-cellular replicators, consistent with the virus-first view, while genes encoding major capsid proteins were independently recruited from cellular hosts at multiple points during the diversification of the virosphere, consistent with the escape hypothesis. New viral lineages could then continue to emerge from cellular sources throughout evolutionary history, explaining the polyphyletic character of the modern viruses. == Criticism == The main issue with the virus world is that all known viruses require a host cell for replication, making a pre-cellular virus inconsistent with the standard definition of a virus as an obligate intracellular parasite. Therefore, the hypothesis has been challenged and the existence of an ancient and independent viral world critiqued. Moreira and López-García of Paris-Saclay University have said that they do not think viruses are older than LUCA and claimed that scientific evidence downright the dismisses the idea. The pair has contended that virus hallmark genes could derive from ancient cellular lineages now extinct, and that viruses lack the structural historical continuity required for inclusion on a tree of


id: weak-continuum-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_continuum_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Weak continuum hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_continuum_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:40.333929+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: weak-continuum-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The term weak continuum hypothesis can be used to refer to the hypothesis that 2 ℵ 0 < 2 ℵ 1 {\displaystyle 2^{\aleph _{0}}<2^{\aleph _{1}}} , which is the negation of the second continuum hypothesis. It is equivalent to a weak form of ◊ on ℵ 1 {\displaystyle \aleph _{1}} . F. Burton Jones proved that if it is true, then every separable normal Moore space is metrizable. Weak continuum hypothesis may also refer to the assertion that every uncountable set of real numbers can be placed in bijective correspondence with the set of all reals. This second assertion was Cantor's original form of the Continuum Hypothesis (CH). Given the Axiom of Choice, it is equivalent to the usual form of CH, that 2 ℵ 0 = ℵ 1 {\displaystyle 2^{\aleph _{0}}=\aleph _{1}} . == References ==


id: weathering-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weathering_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Weathering hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weathering_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:41.568680+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: weathering-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Arline Geronimus wrote about the weathering hypothesis the early 1990s to account for health disparities of newborn babies and birth mothers due to decades and generations of racism and social, economic, and political oppression. It is well documented that people of color and other marginalized communities have worse health outcomes than white people. This is due to multiple stressors including prejudice, social alienation, institutional bias, political oppression, economic exclusion, and racial discrimination. The weathering hypothesis proposes that the cumulative burden of these stressors as individuals age is "weathering", and the increased weathering experienced by minority groups compared to others can account for differences in health outcomes. In recent years, social scientists investigated the biological plausibility of the weathering hypothesis in studies evaluating the physiological effects of social, environmental and political stressors among marginalized communities. The weathering hypothesis is more widely accepted as a framework for explaining health disparities on the basis of differential exposure to racially based stressors. Researchers have also identified patterns connecting weathering to biological phenomena associated with stress and aging, such as allostatic load, epigenetics, telomere shortening, and accelerated brain aging. == Origins == The weathering hypothesis was initially formulated by Arline Geronimus to explain the dire


id: weathering-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weathering_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Weathering hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weathering_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:41.568680+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: weathering-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Maternal mortality is three to four times higher for Black mothers than white mothers in the United States. Infant mortality is also twice as high for infants born to non-Hispanic Black mothers compared to infants born to non-Hispanic white mothers. Additionally, there are racial disparities for negative birth outcomes like low birth weight, which has been found to influence risk of infant mortality and developmental outcomes after birth, and preterm birth. Across all women, older maternal age is associated with higher rates of these negative outcomes during pregnancy, but studies have consistently found that rates rise more rapidly for Black women than white women. The weathering hypothesis proposes that the accumulation of racial stress over Black women's lives contributes to this observed pattern of racial disparities in maternal health and birth outcomes that increase with maternal age. Research has consistently identified an association between preterm birth and low birth weight in Black women and maternal stress caused by experiences of racism, systemic bias, socioeconomic disadvantage, segregated neighborhoods, and high rates of violent crime. There is biological evidence of weathering, including the finding that Black women have shorter telomeres, a biological indicator of age, when compared with white women of the


id: widom-larsen-theory-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widom–Larsen_theory-0.md
category: reference
title: Widom–Larsen theory
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widom–Larsen_theory
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:42.763603+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: widom-larsen-theory-20260505-0
summary:
The Widom–Larsen theory is a proposed explanation for supposed Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) developed in 2005 by Allan Widom and Lewis Larsen. In the paper describing the idea, they claim that ultra low momentum neutrons are produced in the cold fusion apparatuses during weak interactions when protons capture "heavy" electrons from metallic hydride surfaces. One source has held that it is "unlikely the electron energy threshold for neutron production can be reached in a metal lattice system without a substantial energy input". The idea was expanded by Yogendra Srivastava together with Widom and Larsen in 2014, who went on to propose that it could be an explanation for neutrons observed in exploding wire experiments, solar corona and flares, and neutron production in thunderstorms. However, unrealistic concentrations of free electrons are needed for the neutron yield to be a significant component of thunderstorm neutrons, discounting the explanation. == References ==


id: wiseman-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiseman_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Wiseman hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiseman_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:43.966901+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: wiseman-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The Wiseman hypothesis, sometimes called the tablet theory, is a theory of the authorship and composition of the Book of Genesis which suggests that Moses compiled Genesis from tablets handed down through Abraham and the other patriarchs. Originally advocated by P. J. Wiseman (1888–1948) in his New discoveries in Babylonia about Genesis (1936). The book was republished by Wiseman's son, Donald Wiseman, as Ancient records and the structure of Genesis: A case for literary unity in 1985. The hypothesis received some support from R. K. Harrison (1969) but otherwise remained without acceptance in scholarly circles. == History == === P. J. Wiseman === Air Commodore P. J. Wiseman, a British officer who visited many active archaeological sites during his career in the Middle East, found that ancient narrative tablets usually ended in colophons which had a very specific format consisting of three parts: 1) "this has been the history/book/genealogy of..."; 2) the name of the person who wrote or owned the tablet; and 3) a date (such as "in the year of the great earthquake" or "the 3rd year of king so-and-so", etc.). Wiseman noted that there are 11 phrases in Genesis which have the same colophon format, which have


id: wiseman-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiseman_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Wiseman hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiseman_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:43.966901+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: wiseman-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
== See also == Mosaic authorship Documentary hypothesis Lower criticism Biblical criticism Dating the Bible == Footnotes == == References == Hamilton, Victor (1990). The Book of Genesis (New International Commentary on the Old Testament Series) 1-17. Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans. ISBN 0-8028-2521-4. Harrison, R.K. (1969). Introduction to the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ISBN 978-0-8028-3107-1. Hunger, H. (1968). Babylonische und Assyrische Kolophone (Volume 2 of Alter Orient und Altes Testament). Verlag Butzon & Bercker. Leichty, E. (June 7, 1964). "The Colophon". In Biggs, Robert D.; Brinkman, J A (eds.). Studies Presented to A. Leo Oppenheim: 1964. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 147–54. Walvoord, John; Zuck, R.B; Baker, Walter L.; Blaising, C. A. (1985). Bible Knowledge Commentary: Old Testament. Colorado Springs: Victor. ISBN 0-88207-813-5. Wiseman, P. J (1958). Creation Revealed in Six Days: The evidence of Scripture confirmed by Archaeology. London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott. Wolf, Herbert (2007). An Introduction to the Old Testament Pentateuch. Chicago: Moody Publishers. ISBN 978-0-8024-4156-0. == Further reading == Harrison, R.K. (June 1994). "From Adam To Noah: A Reconsideration Of The Antediluvian Patriarchs' Ages" (PDF). Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. 37 (2): 161–168. Hamilton, Donald L., Homiletical Handbook, p. 141, Broadman and Holmann


id: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Wood-pasture hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:45.187316+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The wood-pasture hypothesis (also known as the Vera hypothesis and the megaherbivore theory) is a scientific hypothesis positing that open and semi-open pastures and wood-pastures formed the predominant type of landscape in post-glacial temperate Europe, rather than the common belief of primeval forests. The hypothesis proposes that such a landscape would be formed and maintained by large wild herbivores. Although others, including landscape ecologist Oliver Rackham, had previously expressed similar ideas, it was the Dutch researcher Frans Vera, who, in his 2000 book Grazing Ecology and Forest History, first developed a comprehensive framework for such ideas and formulated them into a theory. Vera's proposals, although controversial, came at a time when the role grazers played in woodlands was increasingly being reconsidered, and are credited for ushering in a period of increased reassessment and interdisciplinary research in European conservation theory and practice. Although Vera largely focused his research on the European situation, his findings could also be applied to other temperate ecological regions worldwide, especially the broadleaved ones. Vera's ideas have met with both rejection and approval in the scientific community, and continue to lay an important foundation for the rewilding-movement. While his proposals for widespread semi-open savanna as the predominant


id: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Wood-pasture hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:45.187316+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
=== The reconstruction of vegetation history === Apart from theoretical considerations, this concept has relied and continues to rely heavily on both field observations and, more recently, on findings from pollen analysis, which allow inferences about the vegetation structure of past epochs. For example, vegetation trends can be reconstructed from the ratio of tree pollen to pollen associated with grassland. Pollen analysis is the most widely used means of generating historic vegetation data and the analysis of pollen data has provided a solid database from which a predominance of forest throughout the early stages of the Holocene of temperate Europe, especially the Atlantic, is generally inferred, although the possibility of regional differences remains open. On that basis, the history of vegetation in Europe is generally reconstructed as a history of forest. Pollen analysis, however, has been criticized for its inherent bias towards wind-pollinated plant species and, importantly, wind-pollinated trees, and has been shown to overestimate forest cover. To account for this bias, a corrective model (REVEALS) is used, whose application leads to results that differ substantially from those drawn from the traditional comparison of pollen percentages alone. Alternatively to or in combination with pollen, fossil indicator organisms – such as


id: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis-2.md
category: reference
title: Wood-pasture hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:45.187316+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
==== Background: grazers and browsers ==== The impact herbivores have on the landscape level depends on their way of feeding. Namely, browsers like roe deer, elk and the black rhino focus on woody vegetation, while the diet of grazers like horse, cattle and the white rhino is dominated by grasses and forbs. Intermediate feeders, like the wisent and the red deer, fall in between. Generally, grazers tend to be more social, less selective in their food choices and forage more intensively. Therefore, their impact on vegetation composition tends to be higher, as well as their ability to maintain open spaces. Since the extinction of the aurochs in 1627 and the wild horse around 1900, none of the remaining large wild herbivores in Europe is an obligate grazer. Similarly, domesticated descendants of aurochs and wild horse, cattle and horse, are now largely kept in stables, factory farms and close to settlements, making them effectively extinct in the landscape. What remains are browsers and mixed feeders – roe deer, red deer, elk, wild boar, wisent and beaver, often in low densities. Backbreeding-projects, such as the German Taurus project and the Dutch Tauros programme are addressing this issue by breeding domestic cattle that


id: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis-3.md
category: reference
title: Wood-pasture hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:45.187316+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Vera relies on several lines of argument based on experiments, ecology, evolutionary ecology, palynology, history and etymology. One of his main arguments is of an ecological nature; the widespread lack of successful regeneration of light-demanding tree species in modern forests. Especially the lack of regeneration of pedunculate oak, sessile oak (together hereafter addressed as "oak") and common hazel in Europe. He contrasts this reality with European pollen deposits from previous ages, where oak and hazel often form a dominant amount of pollen, making a dominance of these species in previous ages conceivable. Especially in regard to hazel, sufficient flowering is only achieved when enough sunlight is available, i.e. the plant grows outside of a closed canopy. He argues that the only explanation for the great abundance of oak and hazel pollen in previous ages is that the primeval landscape was open, and this contrast forms the principal theorem of his hypothesis. It has also been suggested that oak requires disturbances for successful establishment, disturbance large herbivores may provide. However, pollen records from islands that lacked many of the large grazers and browsers that, according to Vera, were essential for the maintenance of landscapes with an open character in temperate Europe


id: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis-4.md
category: reference
title: Wood-pasture hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:45.187316+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
==== Circular reasoning ==== Vera stressed that the prevailing high-forest theory was born out of observations of spontaneous regeneration in the absence of grazing animals. He argued that the presupposition that these animals do not exert a significant influence on natural regeneration, and thus on the vegetation structure as a whole, has been made without comparative confirmation, and is therefore a circular argument. Indeed, modern forestry and forest theory arose largely in the modern era and went hand in hand with the ongoing inclosure of common land throughout Europe. A consequence thereof was in many cases a ban of livestock from the forests, which had previously largely been open woodland pastures, often dominated by oaks. These were multifunctional and used for a range of purposes, from pannage and livestock grazing to the harvest of tree hay, coppice, timber and oak galls for the manufacture of ink, as well as for the production of charcoal, crops and fruit. This former usage of forests is often still revealed by a big age gap between tree generations, particularly if the oldest trees are mainly oaks, and many Central European forest reserves originated as common wood-pastures. ==== Shifted baselines ==== In nature conservation, a


id: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis-5.md
category: reference
title: Wood-pasture hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:45.187316+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Vera pointed out that words like wold and forest used to have different connotations than they do today. While today, a forest is a dense and reasonably large tract of trees, the medieval Latin forestis, from which it derives, assigned open stands of trees, and was a wild and uncultivated land home also to aurochs and wild horses. According to historical sources, these forestis included hawthorn, blackthorn, wild cherry, wild apple and wild pear, as well as oaks, all of which are light-demanding species that cannot regenerate successfully in closed-canopy forest. From this Vera concluded that original wildwoods still existed in Europe during the Medieval period. Thus, when scholars of the 19th and 20th century assumed that grazing animals had destroyed the original European closed-canopy wildwoods, they were misinterpreting these terms. Instead, these forests, he found, had been destroyed following the industrial revolution and the population growth it caused, which in turn caused overexploitation. He further argued that from this initial misinterpretation gave rise to another misinterpretation: that forest regeneration would naturally take place inside the forest. Thus, scholars of the 19th and 20th century such as Elias Landolt (forester) interpreted medieval grazing regulations to allow tree regeneration in coppiced


id: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis-6.md
category: reference
title: Wood-pasture hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:45.187316+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
==== Associational resistance ==== The term associational resistance describes facilitating relationships between plants that grow close to each other, against both biotic and abiotic stresses like browsing, drought, or salinity. In relation to grazed ecosystems, it can allow for the recruitment of trees and other palatable woody species, via thorny nurse bushes, in these environments. It has been proposed and demonstrated that associational resistance can be a key process in grazed environments, ensuring natural succession.In temperate Europe, succession on pastures commonly starts with so called "islets" ("Geilstellen"), patches of dung which are avoided by the herbivores for an amount of time after deposition, sufficient to allow the establishment of relatively unpalatable species such as rushes, nettles and hummocks of tall grasses like tussock grass. These swards, in turn, provide protection for thorny shrubs such as blackthorn, roses, hawthorn, juniper, bramble, holly and barberry during their early years, when they do not yet have protective thorns and are therefore vulnerable. Once the thorny saplings are fully established, they grow bigger over time and subsequently allow other, less resilient species to establish in their thorn protection, forming mantle and fringe vegetation together with species such as guelder rose, wild privet and dogwood.


id: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis-7.md
category: reference
title: Wood-pasture hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:45.187316+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Although Vera himself limited his argument to the Holocene and the fauna present into historical times, research better supports his claims in regard to earlier interglacials. Modern humans have likely exerted a strong influence in Europe since their first appearance here during the Weichselian glaciation, which has led some researchers to criticize Vera's choice of the early to mid Holocene as his benchmark for pristine nature. Instead, they argue that pristine nature only existed in Europe before the entering of Homo sapiens. They argue that the best model for what a truly natural landscape during a warm period in Europe would look like is the Eemian interglacial, which was the last warm period before the current Holocene, approximately 130,000 to 115,000 years ago, and the last warm period before Homo sapiens. While archaic humans existed in the form of neanderthals, their influence was probably only localised, due to their low population density. During this warm period, paleoecological data indeed suggest that semi-open landscapes, as postulated by Vera, were widespread and common, most likely maintained by large herbivores. Next to these semi-open landscapes, however, the researchers also found evidence for closed-canopy forest. Overall, the Eemian landscape appears to have been very


id: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis-8.md
category: reference
title: Wood-pasture hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:45.187316+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The effects of the global extinction of megafauna are likely to have been far-reaching and damaging to ecosystems, and continue to be. The late Quaternary extinction event is unprecedented in the Cenozoic (i.e. since the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs) in its selectivity for large animals. Accordingly, the modern European megafauna-extirpated ecosystems deviate strongly from the megafauna-rich evolutionary norm. Similar to how herds of herbivores like wildebeest, zebra, impala, buffalo, and elephants drive African savanna vegetation patterns, and not vice versa (i.e. the vegetation dictates the activities of these herbivores), it now seems likely that herbivore herds could have provided similar ecosystem functions in the temperate regions before the Quaternary extinctions. In Europe, where many species such as the straight-tusked elephant, two species of Stephanorhinus and the hippopotamus among many others were lost, this meant that their ecosystem functions – such as plant matter consumption and seed dispersal – were lost as well. Without the disturbance these animals provide, it is argued, forests could develop unhindered and landscapes became more uniform. As this is detrimental to species adapted to the presence of megafauna, some scholars advocate for the reintroduction of these animals where possible, or the introduction of modern proxy


id: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis-9.md
category: reference
title: Wood-pasture hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:45.187316+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The logical consequence of this was that species associated with grasslands, forest fringes and old, open-grown trees disappeared on large scale, since many ecosystems in Europe, including highly species-rich grasslands in Romania, strictly depend on some management and are negatively impacted if the areas are left fallow and overgrown by forest vegetation. Similarly, the displacement of aspen in boreal forests seems to be accelerated more because of increasing competition in the increasingly closed stands than via browsing. In Europe, grasslands were maintained by large herbivores over the last 1,8 million years, resulting in an exceptional diversity of species in many European grasslands. For example, on a wooded meadow in Estonia, 76 species of plant per 1 square metre (11 sq ft) were counted in 2000, making it one of the world's record sites. Similarly high numbers were counted at other locations in Eastern Europe, making the region one of the hotspots for plant species richness on small scale worldwide. However, grasslands in Europe and elsewhere are increasingly under threat, including from forest encroachment following abandonment, ill-conceived forest restoration schemes, overgrazing and agricultural intensification. Especially the notion that most grasslands derive from human management and as such are essentially degraded former


id: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis-10.md
category: reference
title: Wood-pasture hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:45.187316+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Grazed woodlands, wood-pastures and pastures in Europe harbour high biodiversity. Rare perennial plant species commonly or exclusively associated with these ecosystems in Europe include hellebores, peonies, asphodels, dittany, black false hellebore and bastard balm. The tree layer is often dominated by a number of oak species and many rare, local and threatened species such as Florentine wild apple, Lebanese wild apple, medlar, sorb tree, pears and wild plums are more often found in European silvopastoral systems than in commercial forest. Rare or declining bird species such as the European roller, hoopoe, several species of shrike, owls (scops owl, little owl) as well as wrynecks and middle spotted woodpeckers are attracted by wood-pastures in particular. In Iberia, the semi-natural oak-woodlands known as dehesa/montado are home to endemic species such as the Spanish imperial eagle and the Iberian lynx. Wood-pastures also provide important habitat for many species of invertebrates. Due to the abundance of large, old trees, wood-pastures are especially important for saproxylic beetles. This includes spectacular and rare species such as capricorn beetle, stag beetles (such as Lucanus cervus), variable chafer and click beetles. In the British Isles alone nearly 1800 species of invertebrates depend on decaying wood, including 700 species


id: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis-11.md
category: reference
title: Wood-pasture hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood-pasture_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:45.187316+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: wood-pasture-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
== Further reading == Bunzel-Drüke, Margret; Luick, Rainer (2024): "Master builders of biodiversity". Naturschutz und Landschaftsplanung. Jepson, Paul and Blythe, Cain (2020). Rewilding: The Radical New Science of Ecological Recovery, Icon Books Ltd. ISBN 978-1-78578-627-3 Hodder, K.H.; Bullock, J.M.; Buckland, P.C.; Kirby, K.J. (2005). Large Herbivores in the Wildwood and in modern naturalistic grazing systems (Report). English Nature. Kirby, K.J. (May 2004). "A model of a natural wooded landscape in Britain as influenced by large herbivore activity". Forestry. 77 (5): 405–420. doi:10.1093/forestry/77.5.405. Marris, Emma (2011). Rambunctious garden: saving nature in a post-wild world (1st U.S. ed.). New York: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-60819-032-4. OCLC 639161286. Reif, Albert; Gärtner, Stefanie (December 2007). "Die natürliche Verjüngung der laubabwerfenden Eichen-arten Stieleiche (Quercus robur L.) und Traubeneiche (Quercus petraea Liebl.) – eine Literaturstudie mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Waldweide" (PDF). Waldoekologie Online (in German). Rotherham, Ian D., ed. (2013). Trees, forested landscapes, and grazing animals: a European perspective on woodlands and grazed treescapes. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-62611-8. OCLC 829911159. Smith, David; Whitehouse, Nicki; Bunting, M. Jane; Chapman, Henry (March 2010). "Can we characterise 'openness' in the Holocene palaeoenvironmental record? Modern analogue studies of insect faunas and pollen spectra from Dunham Massey deer park and Epping Forest,


id: working-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Working hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:46.409821+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: working-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
A working hypothesis is a hypothesis that is provisionally accepted as a basis for further ongoing research in the hope that a tenable theory will be produced, even if the hypothesis ultimately fails. Like all hypotheses, a working hypothesis is constructed as a statement of expectations, which can be linked to deductive, exploratory research in empirical investigation and is often used as a conceptual framework in qualitative research. The term "working" indicates that the hypothesis is subject to change. == History == Use of the phrase "working hypothesis" goes back to at least the 1850s. Charles Sanders Peirce came to hold that an explanatory hypothesis is not only justifiable as a tentative conclusion by its plausibility (by which he meant its naturalness and economy of explanation), but also justifiable as a starting point by the broader promise that the hypothesis holds for research. This idea of justifying a hypothesis as potentially fruitful (at the level of research method), not merely as plausible (at the level of logical conclusions), is essential for the idea of a working hypothesis, as later elaborated by Peirce's fellow pragmatist John Dewey. In 1890, and again in 1897, Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin wrote "The method of multiple


id: working-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Working hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:46.409821+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: working-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
Given its success (the working hypothesis), he (the social scientist) may restate his world from this standpoint and get the basis for further investigation that again always takes the form of a problem. The solution of this problem is found over again in the possibility of fitting his hypothetical proposition into the whole within which it arises. And he must recognize that this statement is only a working hypothesis at the best, i.e., he knows that further investigation will show that the former statement of his world is only provisionally true, and must be false from the standpoint of a larger knowledge, as every partial truth is necessarily false over against the fuller knowledge which he will gain later (p. 370). For Putnam, the working hypothesis represents a practical starting point in the design of an empirical research exploration. A contrasting example of this conception of the working hypothesis is illustrated by the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment. This experiment involves confronting the global skeptic position that we, in fact, are all just brains in vats being stimulated by a mad scientist to believe that our reality is real. Putnam argued that this proposition, however, rests on a "magical theory of reference"


id: yamatai-honshu-theory-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamatai_Honshu_Theory-0.md
category: reference
title: Yamatai Honshu Theory
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamatai_Honshu_Theory
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:47.586257+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: yamatai-honshu-theory-20260505-0
summary:
The Yamatai Honshu Theory is the theory that the Yamatai-koku was located in Honshu, specifically Kinai (now Kinki region), where the capital was located in the Kofun period rather than in Kyushu as the Yamatai Kyushu Theory proposes. According to this theory, the Yamatai-koku was essentially continuous with the Yamato Kingship, with its capital in roughly the same region, and the Yamatai-koku transformed into the Yamato Kingship when the Kofun period began. == Overview == In the Edo period, Arai Hakuseki advocated the theory in which he insisted Yamatai-koku was located in the Yamato Province (大和国, Nara prefecture, Honshu). Later, he advocated the different theory, in which he insisted Yamatai-koku was located in the Yamato county (山門郡, Yamato-gun) in the Chikugo Province (Fukuoka prefecture, Kyushu) in his book Foreign Affairs Chronicle. Since then, from the Edo period to the present, the mainstream of the academic world has been largely divided between the "Yamatai Honshu (Kinai) Theory (邪馬台国畿内説)", which has been insisted and supported by Naito Konan et al. and the "Yamatai Kyushu Theory (邪馬台国九州説)", which has been insisted and supported by Shiratori Kurakichi et al. The Kyushu theory, however, is divided into two distinct theories: one that says the Yamataikoku


id: yamatai-kyushu-theory-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamatai_Kyushu_Theory-0.md
category: reference
title: Yamatai Kyushu Theory
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamatai_Kyushu_Theory
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:48.743589+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: yamatai-kyushu-theory-20260505-0
summary:
The Yamatai Kyushu Theory is the theory that the Yamatai kingdom was located in Kyushu rather than in Honshu as the Yamatai Honshu Theory proposes. The theory proposes that the original capital of Japan was located in Kyushu, and when the Kofun period began, the Yamato Kingship moved the capital east to the Kinai region, first in the Yamato Province (Nara prefecture), then Kyoto in the Yamashiro Province (Kyoto Prefecture). == Overview == In the Edo period, Arai Hakuseki adovocated the "Kinai Yamataikoku theory" which says Yamatai-koku was located in 大和 (Yamato Province, ie. Nara prefecture) in the Kinai, Honshu. Later, Arai advocated a different theory, the "Kyūshū Yamataikoku theory" which says Yamatai-koku was located in "Yamato county (山門-郡, Yamato-gun)" in Chikugo Province (Fukuoka prefecture, Northern Kyushu) in his "Foreign Affairs Record". Since then, the mainstream of academic circles has been divided into two major theories: the "Honshu theory" (by Naitō Torajirō et al.) holds that Yamatai-koku was located in Honshu. the "Kyushu theory" (by Shiratori Kurakichi et al.) holds that Yamatai-koku was located in Kyushu. The Kyūshū theory has itself been divided into two schools. One school insists the "Kyushu Yamatai-koku" moved to the East and became the Imperial


id: zoo-hypothesis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoo_hypothesis-0.md
category: reference
title: Zoo hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoo_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:49.963140+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: zoo-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
The zoo hypothesis speculates on the assumed behavior and existence of technologically advanced extraterrestrial life and the reasons they refrain from contacting Earth. It is one of many theoretical explanations for the Fermi paradox. The hypothesis states that extraterrestrial life intentionally avoids communication with Earth to allow for natural evolution and sociocultural development, and avoiding interplanetary contamination, similar to people observing animals at a zoo. The hypothesis seeks to explain the apparent absence of extraterrestrial life despite its generally accepted plausibility and hence the reasonable expectation of its existence. Extraterrestrial life forms might, for example, choose to allow contact once the human species has passed certain technological, political, and/or ethical standards. Alternatively, they may withhold contact until humans force contact upon them, possibly by sending a spacecraft to an extraterrestrial-inhabited planet. In this regard, reluctance to initiate contact could reflect a sensible desire to minimize risk. An extraterrestrial society with advanced remote-sensing technologies may conclude that direct contact with neighbors confers added risks to itself without an added benefit. A variant on the zoo hypothesis suggested by former MIT Haystack Observatory scientist John Allen Ball is the "laboratory" hypothesis, in which humanity is being subjected to experiments, with Earth serving


id: zoo-hypothesis-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoo_hypothesis-1.md
category: reference
title: Zoo hypothesis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoo_hypothesis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:49.963140+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: zoo-hypothesis-20260505-0
summary:
A modified zoo hypothesis is a possible solution to the Fermi paradox. The time between the emergence of the first civilization within the Milky Way and all subsequent civilizations could be enormous. Monte Carlo simulation shows the first few inter-arrival times between emergent civilizations would be similar in length to geologic epochs on Earth. The zoo hypothesis assumes a civilization may have a ten-million, one-hundred-million, or half-billion-year head start on humanity, i.e., it may have the capability to completely negate our best attempts to detect it. The zoo hypothesis relies in part on applying the concept of hegemonic power to the Fermi paradox. Even if a first hegemonic non-interventionist grand civilization (first civilization) is long gone, their initial legacy could persist in the form of a passed-down tradition, or perhaps in an artificial lifeform (artificial superintelligence) dedicated to a non-interventionist hegemonic goal without the risk of death. Thus, the hegemonic power does not even have to be the first civilization, but simply the first to spread its non-interventionist doctrine and control over a large volume of the galaxy. If just one civilization acquired hegemony in the distant past, it could form an unbroken chain of taboo against rapacious colonization in


id: scientific-modelling-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_modelling-0.md
category: reference
title: Scientific modelling
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_modelling
date_saved: 2026-05-05T10:00:52.576146+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: scientific-modelling-20260505-0
summary:
Scientific modelling is an activity that produces models representing empirical objects, phenomena, and physical processes, to make a particular part or feature of the world easier to understand, define, quantify, visualize, or simulate. It requires selecting and identifying relevant aspects of a situation in the real world and then developing a model to replicate a system with those features. Different types of models may be used for different purposes, such as conceptual models to better understand, operational models to operationalize, mathematical models to quantify, computational models to simulate, and graphical models to visualize the subject. Modelling is an essential and inseparable part of many scientific disciplines, each of which has its own ideas about specific types of modelling. The following was said by John von Neumann. ... the sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work—that is, correctly to describe phenomena from a reasonably wide area. There is also an increasing attention to scientific modelling in


