Serpents for Salvation?

Salvation for Bricoleurs

In a previous presentation at this workshop (Ben-Ari, 1999), the second author described an experiment in which (even) science educators studying for advanced degrees displayed abysmal performance on non-routine tasks using a word processor. The performance was described as bricolage, a term first used by anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss to describe the primitive science of a ‘savage’, and ap...

.Social salvation

“ Students here are basically apat­ hetic," Dean o f Students James Roemer commented to a less than capacity crowd at last n igh t’s security seminar in LaFortune Stu­ dent Center. Eight students were in attendance. The seminar was jo in tly con­ ducted by Roemer, Assistant D irec­ to r o f Security Rex Rakow, and investigator Ann Schelllnger. It focused on the security needs o f women at the U...

The Case for Modularity: Sin or Salvation?

The central thesis of P ANKSEPP and P ANKSEPP (2001, henceforth, P&P) is that there are no specially evolved, higher-order domain-specific cognitive mechanisms to speak of. Apart from the basic D ARWINIAN emotions (fear, surprise, anger, sadness, joy, disgust), so-called cognitive ‘modules’ are more likely “the product of dubious human ambition rather than sound scientific reasoning”. What evol...

Salvation by registration.

SNAKES, ROTATORS, SERPENTS, AND THE OCTAHEDRAL GROUPt

Specific configurations of horizontal and vertical bending magnets are given that, when acting on the spin polarization vector of a particle beam, generate a group of 24 operators isomorphic to the group of rotational symmetries of a cube, known as the octahedral group. Some of these configurations have the feature of converting transversely polarized beams to longitudinally polarized beams (or...