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Fuzzy logic

Fuzzy logic is a form of many-valued logic in which the truth value of variables may be any real number between 0 and 1. It is employed to handle the concept of partial truth, where the truth value may range between completely true and completely false. By contrast, in Boolean logic, the truth values of variables may only be the integer values 0 or 1.

The term fuzzy logic was introduced with the 1965 proposal of fuzzy set theory by mathematician Lotfi Zadeh. Fuzzy logic had, however, been studied since the 1920s, as infinite-valued logic—notably by Łukasiewicz and Tarski.

Fuzzy logic is based on the observation that people make decisions based on imprecise and non-numerical information. Fuzzy models or fuzzy sets are mathematical means of representing vagueness and imprecise information (hence the term fuzzy). These models have the capability of recognising, representing, manipulating, interpreting, and using data and information that are vague and lack certainty.

Fuzzy logic has been applied to many fields, from control theory to artificial intelligence.

Overview
Classical logic only permits conclusions that are either true or false. However, there are also propositions with variable answers, which one might find when asking a group of people to identify a color. In such instances, the truth appears as the result of reasoning from inexact or partial knowledge in which the sampled answers are mapped on a spectrum.

Both degrees of truth and probabilities range between 0 and 1 and hence may seem identical at first, but fuzzy logic uses degrees of truth as a mathematical model of vagueness, while probability is a mathematical model of ignorance.

Applying truth values
A basic application might characterize various sub-ranges of a continuous variable. For instance, a temperature measurement for anti-lock brakes might have several separate membership functions defining particular temperature ranges needed to control the brakes properly. Each function maps the same temperature value to a truth value in the 0 to 1 range. These truth values can then be used to determine how the brakes should be controlled. Fuzzy set theory provides a means for representing uncertainty.

Linguistic variables
In fuzzy logic applications, non-numeric values are often used to facilitate the expression of rules and facts.

A linguistic variable such as age may accept values such as young and its antonym old. Because natural languages do not always contain enough value terms to express a fuzzy value scale, it is common practice to modify linguistic values with adjectives or adverbs. For example, we can use the hedges rather and somewhat to construct the additional values rather old or somewhat young.

Mamdani
The most well-known system is the Mamdani rule-based one. It uses the following rules:
 * 1) Fuzzify all input values into fuzzy membership functions.
 * 2) Execute all applicable rules in the rulebase to compute the fuzzy output functions.
 * 3) De-fuzzify the fuzzy output functions to get "crisp" output values.

Fuzzification
Fuzzification is the process of assigning the numerical input of a system to fuzzy sets with some degree of membership. This degree of membership may be anywhere within the interval [0,1]. If it is 0 then the value does not belong to the given fuzzy set, and if it is 1 then the value completely belongs within the fuzzy set. Any value between 0 and 1 represents the degree of uncertainty that the value belongs in the set. These fuzzy sets are typically described by words, and so by assigning the system input to fuzzy sets, we can reason with it in a linguistically natural manner.

For example, in the image below, the meanings of the expressions cold, warm, and hot are represented by functions mapping a temperature scale. A point on that scale has three "truth values"—one for each of the three functions. The vertical line in the image represents a particular temperature that the three arrows (truth values) gauge. Since the red arrow points to zero, this temperature may be interpreted as "not hot"; i.e. this temperature has zero membership in the fuzzy set "hot". The orange arrow (pointing at 0.2) may describe it as "slightly warm" and the blue arrow (pointing at 0.8) "fairly cold". Therefore, this temperature has 0.2 membership in the fuzzy set "warm" and 0.8 membership in the fuzzy set "cold". The degree of membership assigned for each fuzzy set is the result of fuzzification.

Fuzzy sets are often defined as triangle or trapezoid-shaped curves, as each value will have a slope where the value is increasing, a peak where the value is equal to 1 (which can have a length of 0 or greater) and a slope where the value is decreasing. They can also be defined using a sigmoid function. One common case is the standard logistic function defined as

 * $$ S(x) = \frac{1}{1 + e^{-x}} $$,

which has the following symmetry property

 * $$ S(x) + S(-x) = 1.$$

From this it follows that

$$ (S(x) + S(-x)) \cdot (S(y) + S(-y)) \cdot (S(z) + S(-z)) = 1 $$

Fuzzy logic operators
Fuzzy logic works with membership values in a way that mimics Boolean logic. To this end, replacements for basic operators AND, OR, NOT must be available. There are several ways to this. A common replacement is called the Zadeh operators:

For TRUE/1 and FALSE/0, the fuzzy expressions produce the same result as the Boolean expressions.

There are also other operators, more linguistic in nature, called hedges that can be applied. These are generally adverbs such as very, or somewhat, which modify the meaning of a set using a mathematical formula.

However, an arbitrary choice table does not always define a fuzzy logic function. In the paper (Zaitsev, et al), a criterion has been formulated to recognize whether a given choice table defines a fuzzy logic function and a simple algorithm of fuzzy logic function synthesis has been proposed based on introduced concepts of constituents of minimum and maximum. A fuzzy logic function represents a disjunction of constituents of minimum, where a constituent of minimum is a conjunction of variables of the current area greater than or equal to the function value in this area (to the right of the function value in the inequality, including the function value).

Another set of AND/OR operators is based on multiplication, where

Given any two of AND/OR/NOT, it is possible to derive the third. The generalization of AND is an instance of a t-norm.

IF-THEN rules
IF-THEN rules map input or computed truth values to desired output truth values. Example:

Given a certain temperature, the fuzzy variable hot has a certain truth value, which is copied to the high variable.

Should an output variable occur in several THEN parts, then the values from the respective IF parts are combined using the OR operator.

Defuzzification
The goal is to get a continuous variable from fuzzy truth values.

This would be easy if the output truth values were exactly those obtained from fuzzification of a given number. Since, however, all output truth values are computed independently, in most cases they do not represent such a set of numbers. One has then to decide for a number that matches best the "intention" encoded in the truth value. For example, for several truth values of fan_speed, an actual speed must be found that best fits the computed truth values of the variables 'slow', 'moderate' and so on.

There is no single algorithm for this purpose.

A common algorithm is
 * 1) For each truth value, cut the membership function at this value
 * 2) Combine the resulting curves using the OR operator
 * 3) Find the center-of-weight of the area under the curve
 * 4) The x position of this center is then the final output.

Takagi–Sugeno–Kang (TSK)
The TSK system is similar to Mamdani, but the defuzzification process is included in the execution of the fuzzy rules. These are also adapted, so that instead the consequent of the rule is represented through a polynomial function (usually constant or linear). An example of a rule with a constant output would be: In this case, the output will be equal to the constant of the consequent (e.g. 2). In most scenarios we would have an entire rule base, with 2 or more rules. If this is the case, the output of the entire rule base will be the average of the consequent of each rule i (Yi), weighted according to the membership value of its antecedent (hi):

$$\frac{\sum_i (h_i \cdot Y_i)}{\sum_i h_i}$$

An example of a rule with a linear output would be instead: In this case, the output of the rule will be the result of function in the consequent. The variables within the function represent the membership values after fuzzification, not the crisp values. Same as before, in case we have an entire rule base with 2 or more rules, the total output will be the weighted average between the output of each rule.

The main advantage of using TSK over Mamdani is that it is computationally efficient and works well within other algorithms, such as PID control and with optimization algorithms. It can also guarantee the continuity of the output surface. However, Mamdani is more intuitive and easier to work with by people. Hence, TSK is usually used within other complex methods, such as in adaptive neuro fuzzy inference systems.

Forming a consensus of inputs and fuzzy rules
Since the fuzzy system output is a consensus of all of the inputs and all of the rules, fuzzy logic systems can be well behaved when input values are not available or are not trustworthy. Weightings can be optionally added to each rule in the rulebase and weightings can be used to regulate the degree to which a rule affects the output values. These rule weightings can be based upon the priority, reliability or consistency of each rule. These rule weightings may be static or can be changed dynamically, even based upon the output from other rules.

Applications
Fuzzy logic is used in control systems to allow experts to contribute vague rules such as "if you are close to the destination station and moving fast, increase the train's brake pressure"; these vague rules can then be numerically refined within the system.

Many of the early successful applications of fuzzy logic were implemented in Japan. A first notable application was on the Sendai Subway 1000 series, in which fuzzy logic was able to improve the economy, comfort, and precision of the ride. It has also been used for handwriting recognition in Sony pocket computers, helicopter flight aids, subway system controls, improving automobile fuel efficiency, single-button washing machine controls, automatic power controls in vacuum cleaners, and early recognition of earthquakes through the Institute of Seismology Bureau of Meteorology, Japan.

Artificial intelligence
Neural networks based artificial intelligence and fuzzy logic are, when analyzed, the same thing—the underlying logic of neural networks is fuzzy. A neural network will take a variety of valued inputs, give them different weights in relation to each other, combine intermediate values a certain number of times, and arrive at a decision with a certain value. Nowhere in that process is there anything like the sequences of either-or decisions which characterize non-fuzzy mathematics, computer programming, and digital electronics. In the 1980s, researchers were divided about the most effective approach to machine learning: decision tree learning or neural networks. The former approach uses binary logic, matching the hardware on which it runs, but despite great efforts it did not result in intelligent systems. Neural networks, by contrast, did result in accurate models of complex situations and soon found their way onto a multitude of electronic devices. They can also now be implemented directly on analog microchips, as opposed to the previous pseudo-analog implementations on digital chips. The greater efficiency of these compensates for the intrinsic lesser accuracy of analog in various use cases.

Medical decision making
Fuzzy logic is an important concept in medical decision making. Since medical and healthcare data can be subjective or fuzzy, applications in this domain have a great potential to benefit a lot by using fuzzy-logic-based approaches.

Fuzzy logic can be used in many different aspects within the medical decision making framework. Such aspects include   in medical image analysis, biomedical signal analysis, segmentation of images or signals, and feature extraction / selection of images or signals.

The biggest question in this application area is how much useful information can be derived when using fuzzy logic. A major challenge is how to derive the required fuzzy data. This is even more challenging when one has to elicit such data from humans (usually, patients). As has been said "'The envelope of what can be achieved and what cannot be achieved in medical diagnosis, ironically, is itself a fuzzy one'" How to elicit fuzzy data, and how to validate the accuracy of the data is still an ongoing effort, strongly related to the application of fuzzy logic. The problem of assessing the quality of fuzzy data is a difficult one. This is why fuzzy logic is a highly promising possibility within the medical decision making application area but still requires more research to achieve its full potential. Although the concept of using fuzzy logic in medical decision making is exciting, there are still several challenges that fuzzy approaches face within the medical decision making framework.

Image-based computer-aided diagnosis
One of the common application areas of fuzzy logic is image-based computer-aided diagnosis in medicine. Computer-aided diagnosis is a computerized set of inter-related tools that can be used to aid physicians in their diagnostic decision-making. For example, when a physician finds a lesion that is abnormal but still at a very early stage of development he/she may use computer-aided diagnosis to characterize the lesion and diagnose its nature. Fuzzy logic can be highly appropriate to describe key characteristics of this lesion.

Fuzzy databases
Once fuzzy relations are defined, it is possible to develop fuzzy relational databases. The first fuzzy relational database, FRDB, appeared in Maria Zemankova's dissertation (1983). Later, some other models arose like the Buckles-Petry model, the Prade-Testemale Model, the Umano-Fukami model or the GEFRED model by J. M. Medina, M. A. Vila et al.

Fuzzy querying languages have been defined, such as the SQLf by P. Bosc et al. and the FSQL by J. Galindo et al. These languages define some structures in order to include fuzzy aspects in the SQL statements, like fuzzy conditions, fuzzy comparators, fuzzy constants, fuzzy constraints, fuzzy thresholds, linguistic labels etc.

Logical analysis
In mathematical logic, there are several formal systems of "fuzzy logic", most of which are in the family of t-norm fuzzy logics.

Propositional fuzzy logics
The most important propositional fuzzy logics are:
 * Monoidal t-norm-based propositional fuzzy logic MTL is an axiomatization of logic where conjunction is defined by a left continuous t-norm and implication is defined as the residuum of the t-norm. Its models correspond to MTL-algebras that are pre-linear commutative bounded integral residuated lattices.
 * Basic propositional fuzzy logic BL is an extension of MTL logic where conjunction is defined by a continuous t-norm, and implication is also defined as the residuum of the t-norm. Its models correspond to BL-algebras.
 * Łukasiewicz fuzzy logic is the extension of basic fuzzy logic BL where standard conjunction is the Łukasiewicz t-norm. It has the axioms of basic fuzzy logic plus an axiom of double negation, and its models correspond to MV-algebras.
 * Gödel fuzzy logic is the extension of basic fuzzy logic BL where conjunction is the Gödel t-norm (that is, minimum). It has the axioms of BL plus an axiom of idempotence of conjunction, and its models are called G-algebras.
 * Product fuzzy logic is the extension of basic fuzzy logic BL where conjunction is the product t-norm. It has the axioms of BL plus another axiom for cancellativity of conjunction, and its models are called product algebras.
 * Fuzzy logic with evaluated syntax (sometimes also called Pavelka's logic), denoted by EVŁ, is a further generalization of mathematical fuzzy logic. While the above kinds of fuzzy logic have traditional syntax and many-valued semantics, in EVŁ syntax is also evaluated. This means that each formula has an evaluation. Axiomatization of EVŁ stems from Łukasziewicz fuzzy logic. A generalization of the classical Gödel completeness theorem is provable in EVŁ.

Predicate fuzzy logics
Similar to the way predicate logic is created from propositional logic, predicate fuzzy logics extend fuzzy systems by universal and existential quantifiers. The semantics of the universal quantifier in t-norm fuzzy logics is the infimum of the truth degrees of the instances of the quantified subformula, while the semantics of the existential quantifier is the supremum of the same.

Decidability Issues
The notions of a "decidable subset" and "recursively enumerable subset" are basic ones for classical mathematics and classical logic. Thus the question of a suitable extension of them to fuzzy set theory is a crucial one. The first proposal in such a direction was made by E. S. Santos by the notions of fuzzy Turing machine, Markov normal fuzzy algorithm and fuzzy program (see Santos 1970). Successively, L. Biacino and G. Gerla argued that the proposed definitions are rather questionable. For example, in one shows that the fuzzy Turing machines are not adequate for fuzzy language theory since there are natural fuzzy languages intuitively computable that cannot be recognized by a fuzzy Turing Machine. Then they proposed the following definitions. Denote by Ü the set of rational numbers in [0,1]. Then a fuzzy subset s : S $$\rightarrow$$ [0,1] of a set S is recursively enumerable if a recursive map h : S×N $$\rightarrow$$Ü exists such that, for every x in S, the function h(x,n) is increasing with respect to n and s(x) = lim h(x,n). We say that s is decidable if both s and its complement –s are recursively enumerable. An extension of such a theory to the general case of the L-subsets is possible (see Gerla 2006). The proposed definitions are well related to fuzzy logic. Indeed, the following theorem holds true (provided that the deduction apparatus of the considered fuzzy logic satisfies some obvious effectiveness property).

Any "axiomatizable" fuzzy theory is recursively enumerable. In particular, the fuzzy set of logically true formulas is recursively enumerable in spite of the fact that the crisp set of valid formulas is not recursively enumerable, in general. Moreover, any axiomatizable and complete theory is decidable.

It is an open question to give support for a "Church thesis" for fuzzy mathematics, the proposed notion of recursive enumerability for fuzzy subsets is the adequate one. In order to solve this, an extension of the notions of fuzzy grammar and fuzzy Turing machine are necessary. Another open question is to start from this notion to find an extension of Gödel's theorems to fuzzy logic.

Probability
Fuzzy logic and probability address different forms of uncertainty. While both fuzzy logic and probability theory can represent degrees of certain kinds of subjective belief, fuzzy set theory uses the concept of fuzzy set membership, i.e., how much an observation is within a vaguely defined set, and probability theory uses the concept of subjective probability, i.e., frequency of occurrence or likelihood of some event or condition. The concept of fuzzy sets was developed in the mid-twentieth century at Berkeley as a response to the lack of a probability theory for jointly modelling uncertainty and vagueness.

Bart Kosko claims in Fuzziness vs. Probability that probability theory is a subtheory of fuzzy logic, as questions of degrees of belief in mutually-exclusive set membership in probability theory can be represented as certain cases of non-mutually-exclusive graded membership in fuzzy theory. In that context, he also derives Bayes' theorem from the concept of fuzzy subsethood. Lotfi A. Zadeh argues that fuzzy logic is different in character from probability, and is not a replacement for it. He fuzzified probability to fuzzy probability and also generalized it to possibility theory.

More generally, fuzzy logic is one of many different extensions to classical logic intended to deal with issues of uncertainty outside of the scope of classical logic, the inapplicability of probability theory in many domains, and the paradoxes of Dempster–Shafer theory.

Ecorithms
Computational theorist Leslie Valiant uses the term ecorithms to describe how many less exact systems and techniques like fuzzy logic (and "less robust" logic) can be applied to learning algorithms. Valiant essentially redefines machine learning as evolutionary. In general use, ecorithms are algorithms that learn from their more complex environments (hence eco-) to generalize, approximate and simplify solution logic. Like fuzzy logic, they are methods used to overcome continuous variables or systems too complex to completely enumerate or understand discretely or exactly. Ecorithms and fuzzy logic also have the common property of dealing with possibilities more than probabilities, although feedback and feed forward, basically stochastic weights, are a feature of both when dealing with, for example, dynamical systems.

Gödel G∞ logic
Another logical system where truth values are real numbers between 0 and 1 and where AND & OR operators are replaced with MIN and MAX is Gödel's G∞ logic. This logic has many similarities with fuzzy logic but defines negation differently and has an internal implication. Negation $$\neg_G$$ and implication $$\xrightarrow[G]{}$$ are defined as follows:

 * $$\begin{align}

\neg_G u &= \begin{cases} 1, & \text{if }u = 0 \\ 0, & \text{if }u > 0 \end{cases} \\[3pt] u \mathrel{\xrightarrow[G]{}} v &= \begin{cases} 1, & \text{if }u \leq v \\ v, & \text{if }u > v                          \end{cases} \end{align}$$

which turns the resulting logical system into a model for intuitionistic logic, making it particularly well-behaved among all possible choices of logical systems with real numbers between 0 and 1 as truth values. In this case, implication may be interpreted as "x is less true than y" and negation as "x is less true than 0" or "x is strictly false", and for any $$x$$ and $$y$$, we have that $$ AND(x, x \mathrel{\xrightarrow[G]{}} y) = AND(x,y) $$. In particular, in Gödel logic negation is no longer an involution and double negation maps any nonzero value to 1.

Compensatory fuzzy logic
Compensatory fuzzy logic (CFL) is a branch of fuzzy logic with modified rules for conjunction and disjunction. When the truth value of one component of a conjunction or disjunction is increased or decreased, the other component is decreased or increased to compensate. This increase or decrease in truth value may be offset by the increase or decrease in another component. An offset may be blocked when certain thresholds are met. Proponents claim that CFL allows for better computational semantic behaviors and mimic natural language.

According to Jesús Cejas Montero (2011) The Compensatory fuzzy logic consists of four continuous operators: conjunction (c); disjunction (d); fuzzy strict order (or); and negation (n). The conjunction is the geometric mean and its dual as conjunctive and disjunctive operators.

Markup language standardization
The IEEE 1855, the IEEE STANDARD 1855–2016, is about a specification language named Fuzzy Markup Language (FML) developed by the IEEE Standards Association. FML allows modelling a fuzzy logic system in a human-readable and hardware independent way. FML is based on eXtensible Markup Language (XML). The designers of fuzzy systems with FML have a unified and high-level methodology for describing interoperable fuzzy systems. IEEE STANDARD 1855–2016 uses the W3C XML Schema definition language to define the syntax and semantics of the FML programs.

Prior to the introduction of FML, fuzzy logic practitioners could exchange information about their fuzzy algorithms by adding to their software functions the ability to read, correctly parse, and store the result of their work in a form compatible with the Fuzzy Control Language (FCL) described and specified by Part 7 of IEC 61131.

title: Fuzzy logic


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588 Achilles

Achilles (minor planet designation: 588 Achilles) is a large Jupiter trojan asteroid of the Greek camp. Achilles was the first Jupiter trojan to be discovered, and was discovered by Max Wolf at the Heidelberg Observatory in 1906. Wolf named the minor planet after the legendary hero Achilles from Greek mythology. The dark D-type asteroid measures approximately 133 km in diameter which makes it one of the 10 largest Jupiter trojans. It has a rotation period of 7.3 hours and possibly a spherical shape.

Discovery
Achilles was discovered on 22 February 1906, by the German astronomer Max Wolf at the Heidelberg-Königstuhl State Observatory in southern Germany. It was the first discovery of a Jupiter trojan, although had been observed as  two years previously. This body, however, remained unconfirmed as the observation period was not long enough to calculate an orbit. August Kopff, a colleague of Wolf at Heidelberg, then discovered 617 Patroclus eight months after Achilles, and, in early 1907, he discovered the largest of all Jupiter trojans, 624 Hektor.

Orbit and classification
Achilles orbits the Sun at a distance of 4.4–6.0 AU in the Lagrangian point of the Sun–Jupiter System once every 11 years and 11 months (4,343 days; semi-major axis of 5.21 AU). Its orbit shows an eccentricity of 0.15 and an inclination of 10 degrees from the plane of the ecliptic.

Achilles is the first known example of the stable solution of the three-body problem worked out by French mathematician Joseph Lagrange in 1772, after whom the minor planet 1006 Lagrangea is named. After the discovery of other asteroids with similar orbital characteristics, which were also named after heroes from the Trojan War (see below), the term "Trojan asteroids" or "Jupiter trojans" became commonly used. In addition, a rule was established that the point was the "Greek camp", whereas the  point was the "Trojan camp", though not before each camp had acquired a "spy" (Hektor in the Greek camp and Patroclus in the Trojan camp).

Spectral type
In the Tholen taxonomic scheme, Achilles is classified as a D-type asteroid with an unusual spectrum (DU). Its V–I color index of 0.94 is typical for most larger Jupiter trojans (see table below).

Photometry
Achilles's rotation period of 7.3 hours is somewhat shorter than that of most other large Jupiter trojans but close to that of 911 Agamemnon, 3451 Mentor and 3317 Paris, which are similar in size (see table below). Its low brightness amplitude is indicative of a rather spherical shape. From July 2007 until September 2008, coordinated photometric observations were carried out by astronomers at Simeiz (Crimea), Rozhen (Bulgaria), Maidanak (Uzbekistan) and Kharkiv (Ukraine) observatories. Analysis of the obtained lightcurves determined a period of $130.1 km$ hours with a brightness amplitude of 0.02–0.11 magnitude (U=3/3/3/3). Alternative period determinations by Cláudia Angeli (7.0 h), Robert Stephens (7.312 h), Stefano Mottola (7.32 h) and Vincenzo Zappalà (12 h) are mostly in good agreement (U=1/3-/3/1).

Diameter and albedo
According to the surveys carried out by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, IRAS, the Japanese Akari satellite, and the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, the body's surface has a very low albedo in the range of 0.0328 to 0.043, making its absolute magnitude of approximately 8.57 correspond to a diameter of 130.1 to 135.5 kilometers.

Achilles is the 6th largest Jupiter trojan according to IRAS and Akari, and the 4th largest based on NEOWISE data:

Naming
This minor planet's name was suggested by Austrian astronomer Johann Palisa. It was named after Achilles, the legendary hero from Greek mythology and central figure in Homer's Iliad which tells the accounts of the Trojan War (also see 5700 Homerus and 6604 Ilias). As an infant, Achilles was plunged in the River Styx by his mother Thetis (also see 17 Thetis), thus rendering his body invulnerable excepting the heel by which he was held. He slew Hector (see also 624 Hektor), the greatest Trojan warrior. He was eventually killed by an arrow in the heel by Paris (see 3317 Paris).

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: 588 Achilles


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How the Self Controls Its Brain

How the Self Controls Its Brain is a book by Sir John Eccles, proposing a theory of philosophical dualism, and offering a justification of how there can be mind-brain action without violating the principle of the conservation of energy. The model was developed jointly with the nuclear physicist Friedrich Beck in the period 1991–1992.

Eccles called the fundamental neural units of the cerebral cortex "dendrons", which are cylindrical bundles of neurons arranged vertically in the six outer layers or laminae of the cortex, each cylinder being about 60 micrometres in diameter. Eccles proposed that each of the 40 million dendrons is linked with a mental unit, or "psychon", representing a unitary conscious experience. In willed actions and thought, psychons act on dendrons and, for a moment, increase the probability of the firing of selected neurons through quantum tunneling effect in synaptic exocytosis, while in perception the reverse process takes place.

Previous mention of the "psychon"

The earliest prior use of the word "psychon" with a similar meaning of an "element of consciousness" is in the book "Concerning Fluctuating and Inaudible Sounds" by K. Dunlap in 1908. The most popular prior use is in Robert Heinlein's short story Gulf, wherein a character refers to the fastest speed of thought possible as "one psychon per chronon".

title: How the Self Controls Its Brain


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Trofim Lysenko

Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (Трофи́м Дени́сович Лысе́нко; Трохи́м Дени́сович Лисе́нко, ; 29 September 1898 – 20 November 1976) was a Soviet agronomist and scientist. He was a strong proponent of Lamarckism, and rejected Mendelian genetics in favour of his own idiosyncratic, pseudoscientific ideas later termed Lysenkoism.

In 1940, Lysenko became director of the Institute of Genetics of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and he used his political influence and power to suppress dissenting opinions and discredit, marginalize, and imprison his critics, elevating his anti-Mendelian theories to state-sanctioned doctrine.

Soviet scientists who refused to renounce genetics were dismissed from their posts and left destitute. Hundreds if not thousands of others were imprisoned. Several were sentenced to death as enemies of the state, including the botanist Nikolai Vavilov. Lysenko's ideas and practices contributed to the famines that killed millions of Soviet people; the adoption of his methods from 1958 in the People's Republic of China had similarly calamitous results, culminating in the Great Chinese Famine of 1959 to 1961.

Early life and study
The son of Denis Nikanorovich and Oksana Fominichna Lysenko, Trofim Lysenko was born into a peasant family of Ukrainian ethnicity in the village of Karlovka, Poltava Governorate (present-day Poltava Oblast, Ukraine) on 29 September 1898. The family later welcomed two sons and a daughter.

Lysenko learned to read and write only at the age of 13. In 1913, after graduating from a two-year rural school, he entered the lower school of horticulture in Poltava. In 1917, he entered and in 1921 he graduated from the secondary school of horticulture in Uman (now the Uman National University of Horticulture).

Lysenko's period of study in Uman coincided with the First World War and the Russian Civil War: the city was captured by Austro-Hungarian troops, then by the Central Ukrainian Rada. In February 1918, soviet power was proclaimed in Uman, after which until 1920 the city periodically passed into the hands of the red and white armies.

In 1922, Lysenko entered the Kiev Agricultural Institute (now the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine). During his studies, he worked at the Belotserkovsk experimental station as a garden plant breeder. In 1923, he published his first scientific works: "Techniques and methods of tomato selection at the Belotserkovskaya selection station" and "Grafting of sugar beets." Lysenko graduated from the institute with a degree in agronomy in 1925.

Work in Azerbaijan
In October 1925, Lysenko was sent to Azerbaijan, to a breeding station in the city of Ganja. The Ganja breeding station was part of the staff of the All-Union Institute of Applied Botany and New Crops (now the Institute of Plant Industry), created in 1925, which was headed by Nikolai Vavilov. The director of the station at that time was Nikolai Derevitsky, a specialist in mathematical statistics in agronomy. Derevitsky set Lysenko the task of introducing legume crops (lupine, clover, peavine, vetch) into Azerbaijan, which could solve the problem of starvation of livestock in early spring, as well as increasing soil fertility when plowing these crops in the spring. Vavilov had done experiments on converting winter wheat into spring wheat. It was Vavilov who initially supported Lysenko and encouraged him in his work. In the article, Pravda correspondent Vitaly Fedorovich described his first impression of the meeting with Lysenko: "If you judge a person by first impression, then this Lysenko will leave you with a feeling of toothache - God bless him, he is a sad-looking person. And he is stingy with his words, and insignificant in face - all I remember is his gloomy eye, crawling along the ground with such an air as if, at least, he was going to kill someone."

Lysenko had a difficult time trying to grow various crops (such as peas and wheat) through the harsh winters. However, when he announced success, he was praised in the Soviet newspaper Pravda for his claims to have discovered a method to fertilize fields without using fertilizers or minerals, and to have shown that a winter crop of peas could be grown in Azerbaijan, "turning the barren fields of the Transcaucasus green in winter, so that cattle will not perish from poor feeding, and the peasant Turk will live through the winter without trembling for tomorrow."

Soon, Lysenko married one of the interns who trained under him, Alexandra Baskova. During the same period, breeder Donat Dolgushin, a future academic and supporter of Lysenko, began working with Lysenko.

Lysenko worked with different wheat crops to try to convert them to grow in different seasons. Another area Lysenko found himself interested in was the effect of heat on plant growth. He believed that every plant needed a determinate amount of heat throughout its lifetime. He attempted to correlate the time and the amount of heat required by a particular plant to go through various phases of development. To get his data he looked at the amount of growth, how many days went by, and the temperature on those days, instead of measuring any actual heat. In trying to determine the effects, he was making mistakes in statistical analysis of data. He was confronted by Nikolai Maximov, who was an expert on thermal plant development. Lysenko did not take well to this or any criticism. After this encounter, Lysenko boldly claimed that mathematics had no place in biology.

His experimental research in improved crop yields earned him the support of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, especially following the famine and loss of productivity resulting from crop failures and forced collectivization in several regions of the Soviet Union in the early 1930s.

Lysenko considered how he might use his work to convert winter wheat into spring wheat. In 1927, Lysenko embarked on the research that would lead to his 1928 paper on vernalization, which drew wide attention because of its potential practical implications for Soviet agriculture. Severe cold and lack of winter snow had destroyed many early winter-wheat seedlings. By treating wheat seeds with moisture as well as cold, Lysenko induced them to bear a crop when planted in spring. Lysenko coined the term "Jarovization" (яровизация) to describe this chilling process, which he used to make the seeds of winter cereals behave like spring cereals. (Because spring cereals are called Jarovoe in Russian – from jarovój, an archaic adjective meaning spring, especially in relation to crops). However, this method had already been known by farmers since the 1800s, and had been discussed in detail by Gustav Gassner in 1918. Lysenko himself translated Jarovization as "vernalization" (from the Latin vernum meaning Spring). Lysenko's claims for increased yields were based on plantings over a few hectares, and he believed that the vernalized transformation could be inherited, that the offspring of a vernalized plant would themselves possess the capabilities of the generation that preceded it – that it too would be able to withstand harsh winters or imperfect weather conditions.

Work in Odessa
In October 1929, Lysenko was invited by the People's Commissariat of Ukraine to Odessa, to the newly formed Breeding and Genetics Institute (later the All-Union Breeding and Genetics Institute, or VSGI) where he headed the laboratory for vernalization of plants. People's Commissar of Agriculture of the Ukrainian SSR Alexander Schlichter reacted to Lysenko's ideas with enthusiasm and actively supported him. On 17 April 1936, he was appointed director of the VSGI.

In September 1931, the All-Ukrainian Breeding Conference adopted a resolution on a report by Lysenko, in which he noted the theoretical and practical significance of his work on vernalization. In October of the same year, a similar resolution was adopted by the All-Union Conference on Combating Drought. In 1933, he began experiments on summer planting potatoes in the south. In 1934, he was elected a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. In the same year, Ivan Michurin, speaking about the results of his scientific activities in his book Results of Sixty Years of Work, mentioned Lysenko’s activities in studying the photoperiodism of field cereals. On 30 December 1935, Lysenko was awarded the Order of Lenin and elected a full member of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

After Odessa and first confrontation with geneticists
In August 1936, at a visiting session of the grain section of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Omsk, Lysenko made a report "On intravarietal crossing of self-pollinating plants," in which he entered into a discussion with Vavilov and other geneticists. In this discussion, Lysenko denied both the general theoretical views of his opponents and their practical implementation in breeding work. In particular, Lysenko denied the method of inbreeding field crops.

The discussion continued on 23 December 1936 at the 4th session of the All-Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, where Lysenko made a report "On two directions in genetics" (published in the collection Agrobiology by Lysenko). Lysenko, together with Isaak Prezent, referred to the opinion of Charles Darwin and Kliment Timiryazev on the issue of degeneration of self-pollinating plants and the usefulness of intra-varietal cross-pollination of plants.

In the spring of 1937, the journal Yarovizatsiya, founded and edited by Lysenko, published a speech by the head of the agricultural department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Yakov Yakovlev (No. 2), where Vavilov's theory of homological series of plant variability and the chromosomal theory of heredity were sharply criticized. The scientific discussion on genetics in the Soviet Union was transformed into a political struggle against "the enemies of the people." Issue 3 of Yarovizatsiya published an article by Prezent, in which he accused geneticists of the classical school of supporting the Trotskyist-Bukharinist opposition, and an article by Alexander Kohl that accused Vavilov of being a reactionary saboteur. The 7th International Genetic Congress in Moscow in 1937 was canceled and instead took place in 1939 in Edinburgh.

On 11 January 1938, the newspaper Sotszemledeliye published an article titled “Improve the Academy of Agricultural Sciences: Ruthlessly uproot enemies and their rumps from scientific institutions,” where Vavilov, Mikhail Zavadovsky, and Pyotr Konstantinov were indicated as accomplices of the enemies of the people.

In 1938, Lysenko became president of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences. At the beginning of 1939, Yarovizatsiya published an article by Prezent "On pseudoscientific theories and genetics", in which Prezent compared the works of Vavilov with those of the anti-Marxist philosopher Eugen Dühring. In the same year, the journal Pod znamenem marksizma held a discussion on genetics. At the conclusion of this discussion, its organizer, philosopher Mark Mitin, sharply criticized the activities of Vavilov.

In 1939, According to official data, by changing the agricultural technology of millet, Lysenko increased the yield of millet from 2-3 to 15 centners per hectare. On 13 December 1942, at a session of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Lysenko argued that "in 1940, millet on millions of hectares had already become the highest-yielding grain crop" and called for "a turn towards millet." Lysenko proposed a system of spring cultivation for grain, which made it possible to clear the soil of weeds before sowing, and then sow with vernalized seeds.

In mid-1940, by Lysenko's order, NKVD employee S. N. Shundenko was appointed deputy director of the All-Union Research Institute of Plant Industry, despite the categorical protest of Vavilov, who wrote denunciations of the institute's workers. In August 1940, Vavilov was arrested; following this, Vavilov's employees and friends, Georgii Karpechenko, Grigory Levitsky, Leonid Govorov (scientist), and Konstantin Flaksberger, were arrested and died in custody.

World War II
During World War II, Lysenko, along with many biologists, was evacuated to Omsk, where he continued to work on agricultural technology for grain crops and potatoes. From 1942, Lysenko was a member of the Extraordinary State Commission for the Establishment and Investigation of the Atrocities of the German Fascist Invaders.

On 22 March 1943, Lysenko received the Stalin Prize of the first degree "for the scientific development and introduction into agriculture of a method of planting potatoes with the tops of food tubers." On 3 June 1943, at a ceremonial meeting of the Soviet Academy of Sciences dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kliment Timiryazev, Lysenko made a report: "K. A. Timiryazev and the tasks of our agrobiology." In 1943, the first edition of Lysenko's collection was published, titled Agrobiology: Work on genetics, breeding and seed production.

On 10 June 1945, Lysenko was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor with the Order of Lenin, "for outstanding services in the development of agricultural science and increasing the productivity of agricultural crops, especially potatoes and millet." On 10 September 1945, Lysenko was awarded the Order of Lenin "for the successful completion of the government's task in difficult war conditions to provide the front and the country’s population with food, and industry with agricultural raw materials."

Post-war
In 1946, Lysenko wrote an article titled "Genetics" for the 3rd edition of the Agricultural Encyclopedia. The article extensive quoted and criticized Thomas Hunt Morgan's article "Heredity," published in the United States in 1945 in the American Encyclopedia, and describes features of "Michurinist genetics." The article was included in the Agrobiology collection. A similar article was published in the second edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.

August 1948 session of VASKhNIL
On 10 April 1948, Yuri Zhdanov, who considered the complaints of scientists against Lysenko, made a report at the Polytechnic Museum at a seminar of regional party committee lecturers on the topic "Controversial issues of modern Darwinism." Lysenko himself listened to the Zhdanov's critical speech over a loudspeaker in another room, since he was denied a ticket to the report.

From 31 July to 7 August 1948, a Session of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VASKhNIL) took place, at which most of the speakers supported Lysenko’s biological views and pointed to the "practical successes" of specialists of the "Michurinist movement."

At the session, Lysenko presented erroneous views on genetics (denial of Mendel's law of segregation, denial of immutable "genes"), as well as politicized statements addressed to opponents (for example, Morgan's genetics was credited with justifying racism, eugenics, and serving the interests of the militaristic bourgeois class).

Politics
During the early and mid twentieth century the Soviet Union went through war and revolution. Political oppression caused tension within the state but also promoted the flourishing of science: this was possible due to the flow of resources and demand for results. Lysenko aimed to manipulate various plants such as wheat and peas to increase their production, quality, and quantity, while impressing political officials with his success in motivating peasants to return to farming.

The Soviet Union's collectivist reforms forced the confiscation of agricultural landholdings from peasant farmers and heavily damaged the country's overall food production, and the dispossessed peasant farmers posed new problems for the regime. Many had abandoned the farms altogether; many more waged resistance to collectivization by poor work quality and pilfering. The dislocated and disenchanted peasant farmers were a major political concern to the USSR's leadership. Lysenko became prominent during this period by advocating radical but unproven agricultural methods, and also promising that the new methods provided wider opportunities for year-round work in agriculture. He proved himself very useful to the Soviet leadership by reengaging peasants to return to work, helping to secure from them a personal stake in the overall success of the Soviet revolutionary experiment.

Lysenko's success at encouraging farmers to return to working their lands impressed Stalin, who also approved of Lysenko's peasant background, as Stalin claimed to stand with the proletariat. By the late 1920s, the USSR's leaders had given their support to Lysenko. This support was a consequence, in part, of policies put in place by the Communist Party to rapidly promote members of the proletariat into leadership positions in agriculture, science and industry. Party officials were looking for promising candidates with backgrounds similar to Lysenko's: born of a peasant family, lacking formal academic training or affiliations to the academic community. Due to his close partnership with Stalin, Lysenko acquired an influence over genetics in the Soviet Union during the early and mid-20th century. Lysenko eventually became the director of Genetics for the Academy of Sciences in 1940, which gave him even more control over genetics. He remained in the position for more than two decades, throughout the reigns of Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev, until he was relieved of his duties in 1965.

Outside the Soviet Union, scientists spoke critically: British biologist S. C. Harland lamented that Lysenko was "completely ignorant of the elementary principles of genetics and plant physiology" (Bertram Wolfe, 2017). Criticism from foreigners did not sit well with Lysenko, who loathed Western "bourgeois" scientists and denounced them as tools of imperialist oppressors. He especially detested the American-born practice of studying fruit flies, the workhorse of modern genetics. He called such geneticists "fly lovers and people haters".

Repression of biologists
In the spring of 1937, shortly after Stalin's report at the March plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks "On the shortcomings of party work and measures to eliminate Trotskyists and other double-dealers," Lysenko and his supporters, including Isaak Prezent and Alexander Kohl, began their campaign against geneticists, accusing them of colluding with the anti-Stalinist opposition and reactionary sabotage.

During the 1930s and '40s, the V.I. Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VASKhNIL) served as a floor for debate between Lysenkoists and geneticists. On 7 August 1948, at the end of a week-long session organized by Lysenko and approved by Stalin, the VASKhNIL announced that from that point on Lysenkoism would be taught as "the only correct theory." Soviet scientists were forced to denounce any work that contradicted Lysenko. Prezent accused the geneticists, whom Lysenko and supporters termed "Weismannists-Mendelists-Morganists", of ideological unreliability. At the 1948 VASKhNIL session, Prezent said: "We are encouraged to debate here. We will not discuss with the Morganists, we will continue to expose them as representatives of a harmful and ideologically alien movement, brought to us from foreign countries, pseudoscientific in its essence."

Several geneticists who refused to denounce the theory were executed (including Izrail Agol, Solomon Levit, Grigorii Levitskii, Georgii Karpechenko and Georgii Nadson) or sent to labor camps. One prominent critic of Lysenko, the famous Soviet geneticist and president of the Agriculture Academy, Nikolai Vavilov, was arrested in 1940 and died in prison in 1943. Before the 1930s, the Soviet Union had arguably the best genetics community. According to The Atlantic writer Sam Kean, "Lysenko gutted it, and by some accounts, set Russian biology and agronomy back a half-century". Lysenko's work was eventually recognized as fraudulent by some, "but not before he had wrecked the lives of many and destroyed the reputation of Russian biology" according to scientist Peter Gluckman.

Consequences of Lysenko's views
Lysenko forced farmers to plant seeds very close together since, according to his "law of the life of species", plants from the same "class" never compete with one another. Lysenko played an active role in the famines that killed millions of Soviet people and his practices prolonged and exacerbated the food shortages. The People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong adopted his methods starting in 1958, with calamitous results, contributing to the Great Chinese Famine of 1959 to 1962, in which some 15–55 million people died.

After Stalin
In 1955, an attempt was made to disempower Lysenko, with a letter signed by more than three hundred scientists, the so-called "Letter of three hundred", which was sent to Nikita Khrushchev. It led to Lysenko resigning temporarily but he returned to power through Khruschev's efforts. Though Lysenko remained at his post in the Institute of Genetics until 1965, his influence on Soviet agricultural practice had declined after the death of Stalin in 1953. Lysenko retained his position, with the support of the new leader Nikita Khrushchev. However, mainstream scientists re-emerged and found new willingness within Soviet government leadership to tolerate criticism of Lysenko, the first opportunity since the late 1920s. In 1962, three of the most prominent Soviet physicists, Yakov Zeldovich, Vitaly Ginzburg, and Pyotr Kapitsa, presented a case against Lysenko, proclaiming his work as pseudoscience. They also denounced Lysenko's application of political power to silence opposition and eliminate his opponents within the scientific community. These denunciations occurred during a period of structural upheaval in Soviet government, during which the major institutions were purged of the strictly ideological and political machinations which had controlled the work of the Soviet Union's scientific community for several decades under Stalin.

In 1964, physicist Andrei Sakharov spoke out against Lysenko in the General Assembly of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR:

"He is responsible for the shameful backwardness of Soviet biology and of genetics in particular, for the dissemination of pseudo-scientific views, for adventurism, for the degradation of learning, and for the defamation, firing, arrest, even death, of many genuine scientists."

The Soviet press was soon filled with anti-Lysenkoite articles and appeals for the restoration of scientific methods to all fields of biology and agricultural science. In 1965, Lysenko was removed from his post as director of the Institute of Genetics at the Academy of Sciences and restricted to an experimental farm in Moscow's Lenin Hills (the Institute itself was soon dissolved). After Khrushchev's dismissal in 1964, the president of the Academy of Sciences declared that Lysenko's immunity to criticism had officially ended. An expert commission was sent to investigate records kept at Lysenko's experimental farm. His secretive methods and ideas were revealed. A few months later, a devastating critique of Lysenko was made public. Consequently, Lysenko was immediately disgraced in the Soviet Union.

After Lysenko's monopoly on biology and agronomy had ended, it took many years for these sciences to recover in Russia. Lysenko died in Moscow in 1976, and was ultimately interred in the Kuntsevo Cemetery, although the Soviet government refused to announce Lysenko's death for two days after the event and gave his passing only a small note in Izvestia.

Lysenko's theories

Lysenko rejected Mendelian genetic inheritance theory in favour of his own logic, which he termed "Michurinist genetics". He believed Gregor Mendel's theory to be too reactionary or idealist. Lysenko's ideas were a mixture of his own, those of Russian agronomist Ivan Michurin, and of other Soviet scientists. Through this mixture of ideas, Lysenko founded the "Michurinist doctrine". The core ideas are that body cells (the soma) determine the quality of an organism's offspring; every part of the body contributes to the germ cells, in the manner of Darwin's theory of pangenesis, though Lysenko denied any such connection.

These ideas were not directly derived from established biological theories such as Mendelian genetics, Lamarckism or Darwinism. He shaped his genetic concepts to support the simple practical purpose of breeding and improving crops. His ideas were also shaped to disprove other claims made by his fellow geneticists. His ideas and genetic claims later began to be termed "Lysenkoism". He claimed that his ideas were not associated with Lamarckism, but there are similarities between the two ideas, such as a belief in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Some of Lysenko's ideas can also seem to be vitalistic. He claimed that plants are self-sacrificing—they do not die due to a lack of sunlight or moisture but so that healthy ones may live and when they die they deposit themselves over the growing roots to help the new generation survive.

Lysenko believed that in one generation of a hybridized crop, the desired individual could be selected, mated again and continue to produce the same desired product, not worrying about separation/segregation in future breeds. For that to work, he had to assume that after a lifetime of developing (acquiring) the best set of traits to survive, those were passed down to the next generation. That assumption disregarded the potential for variation or mutation.

Lysenko did not believe in genes and only spoke about them to say that they did not exist. He instead believed that any body, once alive, obtained heredity. That meant that the entirety of the body was able to pass on the hereditary information of that organism, and was not entirely dependent on a special element such as DNA or genes. That puzzled biologists at that time because it went against established notions of heredity and inheritance. It also contradicted the Mendelian principles that most biologists had been using to base their ideas on. Most scientists believed that Lysenko's ideas were not credible, because they did not truly explain the mechanisms of inheritance. Biologists now consider that his beliefs are pseudo-scientific, with little relationship to genetics.

Lysenko argued that there is not only competition, but also mutual assistance among individuals within a species, and that mutual assistance also exists between different species.

According to Lysenko, "The organism and the conditions required for its life are an inseparable unity. Different living bodies require different environmental conditions for their development. By studying these requirements we come to know the qualitative features of the nature of organisms, the qualitative features of heredity. Heredity is the property of a living body to require definite conditions for its life and development and to respond in a definite way to various conditions."

Another of Lysenko's theories was that obtaining more milk from cows did not depend on their genetics but on how they were treated. The better they were handled and taken care of, the more milk would be obtained; Lysenko and his followers were well known for taking very good care of their livestock. Lysenko claimed that the cuckoo was born when young birds such as warblers were fed hairy caterpillars by the parent (rather than host) birds; this claim failed to recognise that the cuckoos he described were brood parasites. Lysenkoites believed that fertilization was not random, but that there was specific selection of the best mate. For reasons like these, Lysenkoism can be viewed as pseudo-scientific.

After World War II ended, Lysenko took an interest in the works of Olga Lepeshinskaya, an older feldsher and biologist, who claimed to be able to create cells from egg yolk and non-cellular matter. Lepeshinskaya recognized common ground between her ideas and Lysenko's. By combining both of their ideas it was possible to proclaim that cells could grow from non-cellular material and that the predicted ratios of Mendelian genetics and meiosis were incorrect, thus undermining the basis of modern cytology, as well as genetics.

"The influence of the thermal factor on the duration of plant development phases"
In Ganja, Lysenko began work on studying the growing season of agricultural plants (cotton, wheat, rye, oats, and barley). For two years, Lysenko experimented with the timing of sowing grain, cotton and other plants, sowing plants at intervals of 10 days. Based on the results of these studies, in 1928, he published a large work, "The influence of the thermal factor on the duration of plant development phases." Of the 169 pages of the work, 110 contained tables with primary data. The mathematical processing of the data was carried out by Nikolai Derevitsky and I. Yu. Staroselsky.

In this work, Lysenko came to the conclusion that each phase of plants ("the following phases were recorded: sowing-watering, germination, tillering, booting, heading, flowering, wax ripeness and harvesting time") begins its development "at a strictly defined intensity of thermal energy, that is, at a certain, always constant degree Celsius, and requires a certain amount of degree days." Carrying out mathematical processing of the initial data using the least squares method, Lysenko determined the values of the constants A and B - "the starting point at which processes begin" and "the sum of degrees required to complete the phase."

In 1927, the main provisions of this work were reported by Lysenko at the "congress convened by the People's Commissariat for Agriculture of the Azerbaijan SSR at the Ganja station," and then, in December 1928, at the All-Union Meeting of Sugar Trust in Kiev. In this book, Lysenko thrice cited the work of Gavriil Zaitsev, dedicated to the same issues.

Vernalization
The issue of the effect of low temperatures on plant development was touched upon by such famous physiologists as Georg Klebs and Gustav Gassner. For example, Gassner, based on his experiments, established that if sprouted seeds of winter crops are exposed to low temperatures, then the plants grown from them during spring sowing will split.

Working at the Ganja breeding station, Lysenko was also able to accelerate the development of plants. Based on his experiments, he developed a technique for germinating seeds before sowing at low positive temperatures, which he termed vernalization.

This technique was supported by a number of prominent scientists in the early 1930s. For example, Nikolai Vavilov saw the main advantage of vernalization in the possible simplification of breeding work, as well as in the ability to control the length of the growing season of plants. In addition, he believed that vernalization could help preserve winter crops from freezing during harsh winters. Vavilov wrote: "It can definitely be argued that vernalization is the greatest achievement in breeding, because it has made available for use the entire world variety of varieties, which were still inaccessible for practical use due to the usual inconsistency of the growing season and the low winter hardiness of southern winter forms."

The main reason Vavilov initially supported Lysenko's work on vernalization was his interest in the potential use of vernalization as a means of synchronizing the flowering of various plant species in the Institute of Plant Industry collection, since Vavilov's team had encountered problems in cross-species experiments that required such synchronization. Vavilov, however, eventually stopped supporting the use of vernalization because the method did not produce the expected results.

Crops with vernalized seeds increased on USSR farms every year. In particular, in 1935, experimental vernalized crops of spring grain were carried out by more than 40,000 collective and state farms on an area of 2.1 million hectares; in 1937, 8.9 million hectares.

However, the mass introduction of vernalization into USSR agriculture ended in failure. Critics of vernalization explained this failure, among other things, by the lack of experimental data on varieties and regions of the Soviet Union. To collect data, questionnaires were sent to collective and state farms. The questionnaire method made it possible to fabricate data, suppress negative results, and was convenient for promoting vernalization. The data obtained by Lysenko and his supporters was published mainly in the journal Byulleten yarovizatsii, published under the editorship of Lysenko, or in the Soviet press. However, these publications were not published in any independent scientific journals.

The agricultural method of vernalization has been criticized by experts for reasons such as the possibility of damage to seeds during the process of soaking, germination and sowing, the labor intensity of this operation, and the greater vulnerability of vernalized plants to smut. Critics of vernalization in the 1930s included Pyotr Konstantinov, S. Levitsky (Poland), Pyotr Lisitsyn, and Doncho Kostov.

Vernalization of grain crops during World War II (spring of 1942-1945) and the post-war period did not receive widespread industrial use. Pravda, in an editorial dated 14 December 1958, argued that after the massive introduction of technology on Soviet farms, which made it possible to sow in a shorter time, vernalization of seeds "was not always necessary." However, vernalization, according to the newspaper, continued to produce "remarkable results" in the cultivation of millet and potatoes.

Theory of stage development of plants
To substantiate his developments in the field of plant growing, Lysenko put forward a theory of staged development of plants. The essence of the theory was that higher plants must go through several stages during their lives before producing seeds. To move to the next stage, certain specific conditions are required.

In 1935, Lysenko wrote: "This theory proceeds from the fact that everything in a plant, each of its properties, characteristics, etc., is the result of the development of a hereditary basis in specific environmental conditions. The hereditary basis is the result of the entire previous phylogenetic history. The result of this biological history, which was created through the selection of adaptations to certain conditions of existence, are the demands that a plant organism throughout its individual history, starting from the zygote, makes for certain conditions of its development. These requirements are the reverse side of the adaptations developed in the historical process."

Based on this theory, Lysenko proposed vernalization of winter and spring grains, potatoes and other crops.

The provisions of Lysenko's theory on the staged development of plants, according to critics, were to some extent consistent with the level of knowledge of the 1930s, but not all of them were confirmed experimentally. The shortcomings of the theory of stage development were pointed out by Mikhail Chailakhyan among others. In particular, critics argued that even without preliminary vernalization, various plant varieties have a photoperiodic reaction and are delayed in development when the length of daylight hours is reduced.

Summer potato planting
In the southern regions of the Soviet Union, vegetatively propagated potatoes gradually produced increasingly smaller tubers, which, in addition, were subject to severe rotting. To combat this, Lysenko proposed summer planting of potatoes, arguing that the "deterioration of the breed" of potatoes can be stopped by planting them not in warm, but in cool soil, at the end of summer.

On 11 January 1941, in a lecture given at the Polytechnic Museum, Lysenko stated: "Previously, it was common knowledge that if, under comparable conditions, planting material of at least the Early Rose variety, obtained from the harvest of the Moscow region, and planting material of the same variety, but obtained from the harvest of the Odessa region, are planted, then almost without exception, the yield of planting material from the Moscow region will always be significantly greater than the yield of planting material from the Odessa region. Now we can cite a lot of experimental data of the opposite order. And in the past, 1940, in the experiments of Ivan Glushchenko (research associate at the Institute of Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences) on a site near Moscow, a crop of potatoes of the Early Rose variety was obtained from tubers of summer southern reproduction (Breeding and Genetics Institute, Odessa) 480.5 centners per hectare, and under the same conditions the same variety of local origin (Moscow region, Institute of Potato Farming) yielded a yield of 219.5 centners per hectare. All this suggests that summer planting potatoes in the south is not a way to stop the degeneration of the potato breed, but a way to improve the potato breed."

However, as with vernalization, data was collected using questionnaires, making the results easy to falsify, and any scientific data obtained was never published. When summer planting did not produce any positive results, Lysenko suggested burying the harvested potatoes in trenches, spreading a layer of soil over a layer of potatoes, arguing that this would reduce losses from rotting tubers. However, burying tubers in trenches led to huge crop losses, as the rotting of the tubers only intensified.

Lysenko ignored the real reason for the degeneration of potato plantings - potato viruses (a particularly large role in the degeneration is played by the potato leafroll virus - PLRV, potato virus X - PVX, and potato virus Y - PVY), replacing it with abstract ideas about the "deterioration of the potato breed". Ignoring the role of viruses in the degeneration of potato plantings and the subsequent ban on research into plant viruses led to a significant delay in the development of methods for detecting plant viruses in the Soviet Union, the spread of viruses not only in the south, but also in other regions of the Soviet Union, and, as a result, to a sharp drop in potato yields.

Sowing over stover
Soviet literature of the 1940s-50s and Lysenko's supporters credit him with a number of achievements, including the idea of sowing over stover to protect winter crops from frost.

In 1943, Lysenko stated: "Stover 25-30 cm in height protects the above-ground parts of plants from the destructive mechanical action of the wind. The stubble retains snow, which also protects plants not only from frost, but also from the action of winds. Unplowed, unloosened soil has almost no large voids. Therefore, on stover crops, large ice crystals are not observed in the soil, which have a detrimental effect, damaging the roots and tillering nodes of winter plants."

Sowing over stover, despite the advantages of the method (snow retention and better temperature conditions for wintering plant seeds in Siberian conditions), was criticized for clogging fields with weeds, since this excludes conventional agricultural technology - surface plowing, which provokes the germination of weeds, and subsequent spring plowing. In the absence of herbicides at that time, this led to clogging of fields.

Nikolai Tsitsin, in a letter to Stalin dated 2 February 1948, noted the low grain yield in stubble crops: "In 1944, in seven registered districts of the Novosibirsk region, the average yield of winter rye stubble was 3.6 c/ha. In the same year in the Chelyabinsk region, the average rye yield was equal to very poor fallows - 4.3 c/ha; for fresh September plowing - 2.6 c/ha; for stover - 1.8 c/ha. In the same year, for all state farms of the Omsk Grain Trust of the Ministry of State Farms, the stover yield was also very low; — it was equal to 11.1 c/ha for fallows and 5.1 c/ha for stover. ... In 1945, in one of the best state farms in the Omsk region, “Lesnoy”, from an area of winter wheat crops of 91 hectares, sown according to all the rules recommended by Academician Lysenko, only 6 centners of grain were collected, that is, an average of 7 kg per hectare, as well as several huge stacks of weeds, which, by the way, had become seeded in their mass by the time of harvesting. In the same year, on the neighboring state farm “Boevoy”, all 67 hectares of stover crops of winter wheat were completely destroyed. Finally, last year, 1946, at the same Siberian Research Institute, headed by Academician Lysenko, out of 150 [ha] of stover crops, 112 hectares were plowed, since only one weed was born on them."

Citing negative examples of stover crops, Tsitsin explained positive examples by the fact that "in the harsh conditions of Siberia, there are occasionally exceptionally favorable years." In general, he considered work on stover unpromising, considering instead that work to increase the winter hardiness of grains with wheatgrass-wheat hybrids, distant hybridization with wild plants, and the use of fallows and semi-cultivated fallows were more justified.

Inheritance of acquired traits
Fundamental disagreements between Mendelian geneticists and Lysenko concerned the possibility of inheritance of traits that arise during the individual development of organisms, for example, under the influence of environmental factors or during grafting (vegetative hybridization). The idea that such characteristics cannot be inherited is associated with a distorted understanding of the principle formulated by August Weismann, according to which somatic cells cannot transmit information to germ cells. In fact, Weisman admitted the possibility of environmental influence on the substance of heredity.

Lysenko himself, at the August 1948 VASKhNIL session, argued the following regarding the inheritance of acquired characteristics: "Thus, the position about the possibility of inheritance of acquired deviations - this is the largest acquisition in the history of biological science, the foundation of which was laid by Lamarck and organically mastered later in the teachings of Darwin - was thrown overboard by the Mendelian-Morganists."

Works

 * Heredity and its Variability (1945)
 * The Science of Biology Today (1948)
 * Agrobiology: Essays on Problems of Genetics, Plant Breeding and Seed Growing (1954)

Honours and awards

 * Hero of Socialist Labor (1945)
 * Order of Lenin, eight times (1935, 1945, 1945, 1948, 1949, 1953, 1958, 1961)
 * Medal "For Labour Valour" (1959)
 * Jubilee Medal "In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" (1969)
 * Medal "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" (1945)
 * Medal "In Commemoration of the 800th Anniversary of Moscow" (1947)
 * Stalin Prize, three times (1941, 1943, 1949)
 * Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the Ukrainian SSR (1931)
 * Gold Medal named after I.I. Mechnikov (1950)

Legacy
In the Soviet Union, streets named after Lysenko existed in several cities, such as Krasnoturyinsk.

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky cited Lysenko as the inspiration for the character of Professor Ambrosy Ambruazovich Vybegallo from their 1965 satirical science fantasy novel Monday Begins on Saturday: "Professor Vibegallo is based on the once-famous academician Lysenko, who put all of Russian biology on all fours, spent more than thirty years doing nonsense and at the same time not only destroyed our entire biological science, but also trampled everything around, destroying (physically, with the help of the NKVD) all the best geneticists of the USSR, starting with Vavilov. Our Vibegallo is exactly the same demagogue, ignorant and boorish, but he is far from his prototype!"

title: Trofim Lysenko


text:
Pope Anacletus

Pope Anacletus (died c. AD 92), also known as Cletus, was the bishop of Rome, following Peter, and Linus. Anacletus served between c. AD 79 and his death, c. AD 92. Cletus was a Roman who, during his tenure as pope, ordained a number of priests and is traditionally credited with setting up about twenty-five parishes in Rome. Although the precise dates of his pontificate are uncertain, he "...died a martyr, perhaps about 91". Cletus is mentioned in the Roman Canon of the mass; his feast day is April 26.

Name and etymology
The name "Cletus" (Κλητος) means "one who has been called", and "Anacletus" (Ἀνάκλητος) means "one who has been called back". Also "Anencletus" (Ἀνάγκλητος) means "unimpeachable" or "blameless".

The Roman Martyrology mentions the pope as "Cletus". The Annuario Pontificio gives both forms as alternatives. Eusebius, Irenaeus, Augustine of Hippo and Optatus all suggest that both names refer to the same individual.

Papacy
As with much of the earlier papacy, little is known of Anacletus' pontificate. Earlier historical records are inconsistent in their usage of the names Cletus, Anacletus, and Anencletus and in the placement of these names in the order of succession. Generally, the order used by Irenaeus is used today, wherein Cletus and Anencletus refer to the same person, who succeeded Linus and preceded Clement. Traditionally, it was accepted that he reigned for twelve years, though the dates of that reign are questionable. The Annuario Pontificio states, "For the first two centuries, the dates of the start and the end of the pontificate are uncertain", before placing Anacletus' pontificate from AD 80 to AD 92. However, AD 76 to AD 88 are also frequently cited.

According to tradition, Pope Anacletus divided Rome into twenty-five parishes. One of the few surviving records concerning his papacy mentions him as having ordained an uncertain number of priests.

Pope Anacletus was martyred, ending his pontificate. A tomb ascribed to Anacletus is located near St Peter's tomb in the Vatican Necropolis field P, underneath St Peters Basilica. This tomb is located with tombs ascribed to Linus, Evaristus, Telesphorus, Hyginus, Pius I, Anicetus, and Victor I. Little epigraphic evidence exists to support the ascription of these tombs to the early popes. His name (as Cletus) is included in the Roman Canon of the Mass.

Veneration
The Tridentine calendar reserved 26 April as the feast day of Saint Cletus, who the church honoured jointly with Pope Marcellinus, and 13 July for solely Saint Anacletus. In 1960, Pope John XXIII, while keeping the 26 April feast, which mentions the saint under the name given to him in the Canon of the Mass, removed 13 July as a feast day for Saint Anacletus. The 14 February 1961 Instruction of the Congregation for Rites on the application to local calendars of Pope John XXIII's motu proprio Rubricarum instructum of 25 July 1960, decreed that "the feast of 'Saint Anacletus', on whatever ground and in whatever grade it is celebrated, is transferred to 26 April, under its right name, 'Saint Cletus'". Priests who celebrate Mass according to the General Roman Calendar of 1954 keep the July 13th feastday; but the feast has been removed from the General Roman Calendar since 1960, and as such is not kept even in the 1962 Missal. Although the day of his death is unknown, Saint Cletus continues to be listed in the Roman Martyrology among the saints of 26 April.

Literature
In the Divine Comedy, Dante mentions him as being placed in the "Heaven of the Fixed Stars" (Paradiso 27.41).

title: Pope Anacletus


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Frauenburg

Frauenburg may refer to the following places:

 * Frauenburg (castle), in Styria, Austria
 * the German name of Frombork, Poland
 * the German exonym for the city of Saldus, Latvia
 * Unzmarkt-Frauenburg, a municipality in Austria
 * several castles and abbeys in Germany and Austria

title: Frauenburg


text:
Talk:Queen Elizabeth II

I don't understand the motive for changing "Queen Elizabeth II" - which is the name of the liner - to "Queen Elizabeth 2" - which isn't. Deb
 * I think the ship is in fact called "Queen Elizabeth 2". That's what the Cunard website (www.cunardline.com) seems to say as well.  Calling it "Queen Elizabeth II" is quite common, but I think it's incorrect. Enchanter

Thanks for putting me right - though I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't checked the web site. I remember the ship being launched and I'm certain it was launched as Queen Elizabeth "the Second", but I suppose that wouldn't necessarily mean Roman numerals!Deb

Should we redirect this page to the queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom? Or is it likely that readers looking for the ship RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 will get confused without a disambiguating page?

I think ladies are more important than ships, but I will go along with whatever JHK. Deb and others decide. Ed Poor, Thursday, April 18, 2002

 * The Globe and Mail Style Guide gives Queen Elizabeth 2 (arabic numeral) for the ship and Elizabeth II (roman numeral) for the monarch. (Actually, they just call her the Queen.) - Montréalais

I made this into a disambiguation page because I found it with a bit on both & links. The point is that this page name is non-canonical in either case: the woman needs the name of the country she is monarch of; the ship needs the prefix. If we make this intoa redirect, the page on Elizabeth could do with a mention of the ship (because many assume it is named after her, incorrectly), so all's happy there. All the links I fixed that came here were about the person, I think. -- Tarquin 18:03 Oct 6, 2002 (UTC)

All links pointing here refer to Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. Monarchs do not need countries listed after their names. Similarly titled pages all redirect to the monarch (King George VI, etc.) It only makes sense for this to redirect to Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, which also mentions the ship. --Jiang 06:34, 3 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Elizabeth II which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 20:29, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

title: Talk:Queen Elizabeth II


text:
Talk:Scientific reductionism

I removed this:

''Sir John Eccles wrote, I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity. This belief must be classed as a superstition. . . . we have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world. --Evolution of the Brain, Creation of the Self, p. 241 ''

Ed, please start your articles with a definition and aim for neutrality, like the rest of us. AxelBoldt, Monday, April 15, 2002

Thanks for the reminder, Axel. My next contribution will be on U.S. income taxes, and I assure you that it will be entirely neutral: it's on objective fact that EVERY American hates the IRS! Ed Poor

''The question of whether all phenonomena are explainable in terms of science is a much less heated controversial. Although one can find scientists who believe that everything is explainable in natural terms and those who do not, the consensus seems to be that one should *attempt* to explain everything in natural terms and whether or not this is successful remains for experiment to resolve. ''

I question the wording here, though I think I agree with the intent. Perhaps "all physical phenomena"? Science doesn't address subjective terms like "goodness," or human-created systems like poetry... -- April

There's also something wrong about the last "anthropic principle" paragraph. First of all, there are several quite different anthropic principles. Second, even if we buy that there is a large number of possible physical laws, and the existence of conciousness limits the number of possible physical laws to a very small number, it is still true that the currently observed set physical laws caused conciousness, not the other way around. AxelBoldt, Saturday, April 20, 2002

 * Some physicists argue that large structures undergo collective behaviors which are not most usefully described in terms of the behavior of their constituents (see for example emergence) and therefore there is no reason to label the lower level behaviors as more fundamental.

Can someone please name some physicists with these views, and give examples of phenomena they think are best explained at something besides the lowest level? The emergence page is not helpful on these counts. If nobody can, this sentence may need to be removed. --Ryguasu 00:45 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

 * You might look at some back issues of Physics Today. The question of reductionism comes up, and it's actually a hot political topic between solid-state physicists and particle physicists.  There aren't any specific names which I can associate with the beliefs, but the notion of emergence or hierarchical truth is very common among solid-state physicists - Roadrunner

 * Philip Anderson, for one, was an influential proponent of this view.

Rlowry, I'm worried your new skyhooks/cranes addition confuses more than it enlightens. I think we should either include a full-blown explanation of his contrast between skyhooks and cranes or remove the reference to them. I admit the distinction is interesting, although I'm on the fence about whether or not it merits discussion in this particular article. I guess you feel it merits inclusion? --Ryguasu 05:45 Mar 5, 2003 (UTC)

Ryguasu, I added the skyhooks / cranes sentence because I felt it gave a balance to the anti-reductionist quote from Eccles earlier in the article. I personally find Dennett's useage of the terms fairly straightforward and not requiring much in the way of explanation, but have added a few words to try to help clarify a little.

I'm not passionately attached to keeping it, though, if people feel that it gets in the way. --Rlowry

I removed the NPOV tag, since I don't think that Nectarflowed's claim that the "[a]rticle appears to be biased against mainstream scientific opinion" is accurate. The article balances a critique of scientific "reductionism" with a critique the "slippery" use of the word "reductionist", and offers useful clarification about "greedy reductionism" and "skyhooks vs cranes" by two noted science writers.

I have kept the cleanup tag, though - the article needs a somewhat "cleaner" format - first an NPOV definition of reductionism and its role in science, then philosophical critiques of reductionism in science and responses to those critiques. The section on "Alternatives to Reductionism" is barely a stub - it really needs work. --Peter G Werner 19:20, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

This article isn't very good.
"These ideas can often be conflicting." This is patently false.

The explaination is not good. Reductionism should be explained as should Holism.

This sentence "it is incorrect to regard the laws which govern the components of structures to be more fundamental than the laws which govern the structures" is very misleading. Those scientists still regard reductionism as true, just not as most important. You have to be careful because reductionism as a truth isn't incompatible with holism as an outlook. This is why a good definition of terms is needed and citations should be used.

"it has been argued that a traffic jam contains patterns of behavior which cannot be reduced to the behavior of an individual car" needs a citation. I find this claim hard to believe, because such a proof would be almost impossible. You would have to prove that no possible model of car behavior can explain certain traffic jams.

I don't think strong anthropic principle should even be mentioned here. If this is a scientific article, then nonscientific ideas shouldn't be introduced with equal weight as counter points. That would be like mentioning flatearther beliefs in the Earth wikipedia article. The strong anthropic principle has no support as a scientific idea, it is not on equal footing against reductionism.

The paragraph on Bennett and Dawkins is good. As is the paragraph on Pinker.

"In many cases (such as the kinetic theory of gases), given a good understanding of the components of the system, one can predict all the important properties of the system as a whole. In other cases, trying to do this leads to a fallacy of composition. In those systems, emergent properties of the system are almost impossible to predict from knowledge of the parts of the system. Complexity theory studies such systems."

Complexity is not the same as a composition fallacy. Complexity implies that reductionism becomes difficult (maybe even impossible), NOT false.

There should be some mention on the measurement problem in Quantum Mechanics and thoughts of how if the SE doesn't explain the classical world, it could be the failure of reductionism. This should be done with a citation from a physicist!

Lots of false and misleading statements in this article. It would be better for people to rely on citations. CHF 10:36, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I think the statement above, "Complexity is not the same as a composition fallacy. Complexity implies that reductionism becomes difficult (maybe even impossible), NOT false", is the most important way to look at rewriting this article. Reductionists don't say that it's not advantageous to look at higher systems for explanitory purposes.  But no matter how often you use chemestry to explain a reaction, at the end of the day it comes down to 4 fundamental forces and a handfull of fundamental particles.  Now this problem may not be soveable, given our understanding, our computing power, not to mention it's probably downright stupid to solve an oxidation reaction with string theory.  But that doesn't mean that said reation may not be reduced (epistemologically if not ontologically) to our fundamental laws and particles.

As for SE, I'm not sure what you mean. SE by itself may not explain the classical world, but that's not to say that the quantum mechanics (with the full Copenhagen interpreation) doesn't explain the classical world. All this talk about chaos, or sensitive dependence on initial conditions is moot. If you had a supercomputer or gods-eye view of the world, you could predict (probabilistically via quantum mechanics) anything classical. There are two things that you might be worried about, a chaotic nature, an unpredictability, of stochastic processes that you get classically, that is completely determined and reduceable in theory, but not in practice, and then there is the inherent unpredictability of quantum meachanics. But that doesn't mean that we couldn't predict everything classical using quantum mechanics given enough brain power, ingenuity, and time. --Jabin1979 14:58, 7 July 2006 (JST)

There is a growing consensus that reductionism has limited usefulness as a paradigm for approaching questions in certain areas of science. Whether or not reductionism is "true" is kind of an irrelevant question to ask from a scientific standpoint, although it has some interest for philosophers. Everything in science is a theory; it doesn't make sense to talk about whether or not it's "true" except in reference to other things. What makes sense in the scientific viewpoint is whether your theory is consistent with empirical data, consistent with other accepted theories, and useful for various practical purposes (including extrapolating beyond observed data). The statement made above "at the end of the day it comes down to 4 fundamental forces and a handful of fundamental particles" is a philosophical statement, not a scientific one. The big problem is a phrase like "comes down to". This is a claim about explanation or causality. This gets into metaphysics and ontology rather than science. Metaphysics and ontology influence science but they are certainly not themselves science! Does holism deny the microscopic-level laws of physics? Not at all...rather a holistic perspective claims that there is something at the higher levels of organization that cannot be explained in terms of the smaller ones. I think this article needs to clarify these points.

I also think there's another issue here (think about the sentence "given enough brain power..."), which is the treatment of information as an epiphenomenon rather than something fundamental. Not all scientists or philosophers would agree with this, and some would even go so far as to argue the exact opposite. Some interesting results in science provoke deep thought on this topic, such as the findings that the maximum information content that can be stored in a region of space is a function of the surface-area of that region, not its volume. Cazort (talk) 01:33, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Propose Merge with Reductionism
I propose to merge this article with reductionism. Much of what is on this page is already duplicated there. Why do I think we should merge the pages? I very rarely argue in favor of merges and this is one of those few cases: I think that there is simply too much interplay between science and philosophy to cleanly separate a "scientific" reductionism and "non-scientific" one. Also, as this page acknowledges, "scientific reductionism" is not a term which has an agreed upon definition...it is used to mean many different things by different authors--and perhaps more importantly, many people who talk about reductionism's role in science don't use the phrase "scientific reductionism" but simply refer to "reductionism". Thoughts? Cazort 23:19, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Also...I realized after the fact...perhaps as an alternative to merging we should entertain the possibility of renaming this article to "Reductionism in science". I am not quite sure there's enough material yet to warrant those two separate articles though. Cazort 23:30, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I say merge. This article is in pretty sorry shape, whereas the general reductionism article (as stated by Cazort) has this info, and is much more clearly written. Mash them up! CharacterZero |  Speak  13:38, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

title: Talk:Scientific reductionism