The Role of Imagination in Social Scientific Discovery: Why Machine Discoverers Will Need Imagination Algorithms

When philosophers discuss the possibility of machines making scientific discoveries, they typically focus on discoveries in physics, biology, chemistry and mathematics. Observing the rapid increase of computer-use in science, however, it becomes natural to ask whether there are any scientific domains out of reach for machine discovery. For example, could machines also make discoveries in qualitative social science? Is there something about humans that makes us uniquely suited to studying humans? Is there something about machines that would bar them from such activity? A close look at the methodology of interpretive social science reveals several abilities necessary to make a social scientific discovery, and one capacity necessary to possess any of them is imagination. For machines to make discoveries in social science, therefore, they must possess imagination algorithms

Pattern specificity of contrast adaptation.

Contrast adaptation is specific to precisely localised edges, so that adapting to a flickering photograph makes one less sensitive to that same photograph, but not to similar photographs. When two low-contrast photos, A and B, are transparently superimposed, then adapting to a flickering high-contrast B leaves no net afterimage, but it makes B disappear from the A+B picture, which now simply looks like A

You say you want a revolution? : Popular music and revolt in France, the United States, and Britain during the late 1960s

It is almost impossible to understand the youth protest movements of the 1960s without some appreciation of the importance of that decade's popular music. This music and ideas of personal and political liberation and self-expression were closely linked. This article analyses the role of popular music (rock music) in the 1960s' counterculture. It adopts an explicitly comparative historical approach to the phenomenon, utilising case studies of three contrasting societies – two in Western Europe, plus the United States. The argument here is that despite that this music challenged many social convention and helped to 'emancipate' its consumers, its uses and role in the USA, Britain, and France were frequently dissimilar. Often, these were determined by differing national circumstances and traditions. The piece disputes also the notion of a united and radical counterculture and attempts to illuminate the nature of youth rebellion in each of the countries that it examines. This paper seeks to suggest that the 1960s' youth-based movements for social change were frequently responding to local or parochial problems in their protests. 1968 is taken as the main focus here, partly because it permits an examination of the intense Parisian revolt that broke out in that year, but also because it is frequently conceptualised as the decade's hinge. 1968 is the year when the optimistic mind-set of the preceding five or so years started to give way to frustration and disillusionment

Impacts of nitrate on the water resources of Malta

High density of population (1250 persons/km2) and livestock (300 head/km2). • Heavy dependence on groundwater for public supply and agriculture. • Complex landuse with multiple cropping and small landholdings. • Semi-arid Mediterranean climate with low and variable infiltration (<200 mm/year). • Two aquifers, ‘perched’ and ‘mean sea level’ (MSL) separated by impermeable clay. • Water level in MSL aquifer depressed to 5 m above sea level by abstraction

De Rosis Nascentibus in English from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century: a collection of translations

No abstract available

String Model Building

In this talk I review some recent progress in heterotic and F theory model building. I then consider work in progress attempting to find the F theory dual to a class of heterotic orbifold models which come quite close to the MSSM.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, plenary talk submitted for the proceedings of SUSY 2009, June 5 - 10, Northeastern University, Boston, M