Materialism Today

Materialism is a family of ontofogies, or exfreme/y general doctrines about the world. What all the members of that family have in common is the thesis that everything that exists really is material — or, stated negatively, that immaterial objects such as ideas have no existence independent of material things such as brains. Aside from this common core, materialist ontologies may differ widely. It is only by adding further requirements that a definite materialist ontology will be individuated or built. We choose two: exactness and consistency with contemporary science. Let us peek at these conditions

Criticism. Destructive and Constructive

In the scientific communities most criticisms are constructive, while they are destructive in the humanistic circles. Indeed, scientists circulate their drafts among colleagues and students, hoping to elicit their comments and suggestions before submitting their work to publication. In contrast, philosophers and political thinkers attack their rivals, without sparing arguments ad hominem or even insults. The reason for this difference is that scientists are after the truth, whereas most humanists fight for more or less noble causes, from swelling their own curricula to joining crusades for or against rationality, realism, justice, or what have you

The Diamond Laplace for polygonal and polyhedral meshes

We introduce a construction for discrete gradient operators that can be directly applied to arbitrary polygonal surface as well as polyhedral volume meshes. The main idea is to associate the gradient of functions defined at vertices of the mesh with diamonds: the region spanned by a dual edge together with its corresponding primal element — an edge for surface meshes and a face for volumetric meshes. We call the operator resulting from taking the divergence of the gradient Diamond Laplacian. Additional vertices used for the construction are represented as affine combinations of the original vertices, so that the Laplacian operator maps from values at vertices to values at vertices, as is common in geometry processing applications. The construction is local, exactly the same for all types of meshes, and results in a symmetric negative definite operator with linear precision. We show that the accuracy of the Diamond Laplacian is similar or better compared to other discretizations. The greater versatility and generally good behavior come at the expense of an increase in the number of non-zero coefficients that depends on the degree of the mesh elements

El efecto San Mateo

El autor recoge el versículo 13 del capítulo 19 del Evangelio atribuido a San Mateo reza así : "porque a cualquiera que tiene, le será dado, y tendrá más; pero al que no tiene, aún lo que tiene le será quitado", y lo vincula a la sociología de la ciencia, para a través del "efecto San Mateo" -los investigadores científicos eminentes cosechan aplausos mucho más nutridos, que otros investigadores, menos conocidos, por contribuciones equivalentes- exponer la estratificación social de las comunidades científicas.L’auteur reprend le verset 13 du chapitre 19 de l’Evangile attribué à Saint Mathieu dont voici la prière: “car à celui qui possède, il lui sera donné, et il possèdera davantage; mais à celui qui ne possède rien, même ce qu’il possède lui sera confisqué”, et l’associe à la sociologie de la science, pour, à travers de l’ “effet Saint Mathieu” – les chercheurs scientifiques éminents récoltes des ovations beaucoup plus considérables que d’autres chercheurs, moins reconnus, pour des contributions équivalentes – exposer la stratification sociale des communautés scientifiques.The author refers to the verse 13 of chapter 19 of the Gospel attributed to Matthew, which reads: "because whoever has, more will be given to him, and he shall have abundance: but whosoever hath not, even what he has will be taken", and links this to the sociology of science, stating the "Matthew effect"-eminent scientific researchers reap much more nourished applause, than other researchers, less known, for equivalent contributions- for exposing the social stratification of scientific communities

El socialismo como democracia integral

Conferencia impartida el 28 de abril de 2014 en el Salón de Grados de la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad de Alcalá, con motivo de la visita del autor invitado por el Programa Regional de Apoyo a las Defensorías del Pueblo de Iberoamérica (PRADPI

Critique. Destructive et constructive

Chez les scientifiques, la plupart des critiques sont constructives, alors qu’elles sont destructrices chez les humanistes. En effet, les scientifiques font circuler leurs brouillons entre collègues et étudiants, dans l’espoir de recueillir leurs commentaires et suggestions avant de soumettre leurs travaux à la publication. En revanche, les philosophes et les penseurs politiques attaquent leurs rivaux à coup d’arguments ad hominem et d’insultes. La raison de cette différence est que les scientifiques recherchent la vérité, alors que la plupart des humanistes se battent pour des causes plus ou moins nobles, allant de la promotion de leur propre programme à la participation à des croisades pour ou contre la rationalité, le réalisme, la justice ou autre