Belief

To Live at All is Miracle Enough I read Richard Dawkins book ‘Unweaving the Rainbow’ a little while ago and there was a part that really brought me up short with one of those ‘WOW’ moments. It really brings home the sheer unliklihood and odds against any of us actually being born and being able to experience and enjoy this only too brief sojourn on earth. I have been thinking about it quite a bit lately and really wanted to reread it again. Microsoft Speech API The Speech Application Programming Interface or SAPI is an API developed by Microsoft to allow the use of speech recognition and speech synthesis within Windows applications. To date, a number of versions of the API have been released, which have shipped either as part of a Speech SDK, or as part of the Windows OS itself. Applications that use SAPI include Microsoft Office, Microsoft Agent and Microsoft Speech Server. In general all versions of the API have been designed such that a software developer can write an application to perform speech recognition and synthesis by using a standard set of interfaces, accessible from a variety of programming languages. In addition, it is possible for a 3rd-party company to produce their own Speech Recognition and Text-To-Speech engines or adapt existing engines to work with SAPI. In principle, as long as these engines conform to the defined interfaces they can be used instead of the Microsoft-supplied engines.

Top 100 Western Philosophers: from Ancient to Contemporary Philosophers This article shows the top 100 most important philosophers in the Western civilization from the ancient Greek classics such As Socrates, Plato and Aristotle’s to contemporary philosophers such as Levi-Strauss and Foucault, passing by great masters such as Descartes or Spinoza. What is Philosophy? The word "philosophy" comes from the Greek philosophia, which literally means "love of wisdom". Punctuated equilibrium Punctuated equilibrium (also called punctuated equilibria) is a theory in evolutionary biology which proposes that most species will exhibit little net evolutionary change for most of their geological history, remaining in an extended state called stasis. When significant evolutionary change occurs, the theory proposes that it is generally restricted to rare and rapid (on a geologic time scale) events of branching speciation called cladogenesis. Cladogenesis is the process by which a species splits into two distinct species, rather than one species gradually transforming into another.[1] Punctuated equilibrium is commonly contrasted against the theory of phyletic gradualism, which states that evolution generally occurs uniformly and by the steady and gradual transformation of whole lineages (called anagenesis). In this view, evolution is seen as generally smooth and continuous. History[edit]

Reason Psychologists and cognitive scientists have attempted to study and explain how people reason, e.g. which cognitive and neural processes are engaged, and how cultural factors affect the inferences that people draw. The field of automated reasoning studies how reasoning may or may not be modeled computationally. Animal psychology considers the question of whether animals other than humans can reason. Etymology and related words[edit] In the English language and other modern European languages, "reason", and related words, represent words which have always been used to translate Latin and classical Greek terms in the sense of their philosophical usage. The original Greek term was "λόγος" logos, the root of the modern English word "logic" but also a word which could mean for example "speech" or "explanation" or an "account" (of money handled).[7]As a philosophical term logos was translated in its non-linguistic senses in Latin as ratio.

Baruch Spinoza 1. Biography Bento (in Hebrew, Baruch; in Latin, Benedictus: all three names mean "blessed") Spinoza was born in 1632 in Amsterdam. He was the middle son in a prominent family of moderate means in Amsterdam's Portuguese-Jewish community. As a boy he had undoubtedly been one of the star pupils in the congregation's Talmud Torah school. Complexity, causality, sense making and strategy How does our conception of the complexity of the world influence how we should approach it? Under development. Commonsense theories of action, such as seeking to maximise utility while taking account of risk, presuppose a lot about the real world and our ability to make the appropriate assessments. Such notions seem questionable, both in theory and in practice. It has been noted that the world and our knowledge of it are complex, and that our activity in the world needs to reflect this complexity. But there seems little agreement on what complexity is, much less how to act effectively in complex situations.

Perennial philosophy The Perennial philosophy (Latin: philosophia perennis), [note 1] also referred to as Perennialism, is a perspective in the philosophy of religion which views each of the world’s religious traditions as sharing a single, universal truth on which the foundation of all religious knowledge and doctrine has grown. Agostino Steuco (1497–1548) coined the term philosophia perennis,[1] drawing on the neo-Platonic philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94). In the early 19th century this idea was popularised by the Transcendentalists. Towards the end of the 19th century the Theosophical Society further popularized the concept under the name of "Wisdom-Religion" or "Ancient Wisdom".[2] In the 20th century it was popularized in the English-speaking world through Aldous Huxley's book The Perennial Philosophy as well as by the strands of thought which culminated in the New Age movement. Definition[edit] Origins[edit]

Philosophy of religion Philosophy of religion is a branch of philosophy concerned with questions regarding religion, including the nature and existence of God, the examination of religious experience, analysis of religious vocabulary and texts, and the relationship of religion and science.[1] It is an ancient discipline, being found in the earliest known manuscripts concerning philosophy, and relates to many other branches of philosophy and general thought, including metaphysics, logic, and history.[2] Philosophy of religion is frequently discussed outside of academia through popular books and debates, mostly regarding the existence of God and problem of evil. The philosophy of religion differs from religious philosophy in that it seeks to discuss questions regarding the nature of religion as a whole, rather than examining the problems brought forth by a particular belief system. It is designed such that it can be carried out dispassionately by those who identify as believers or non-believers.[3] [edit] Aquinas

How to Live: Lessons from Montaigne, Godfather of Blogging by Maria Popova Don’t worry about death, pay attention, read a lot, give up control, embrace imperfection. “Living has yet to be generally recognized as one of the arts,” Karl De Schweinitz wrote in his 1924 guide to the art of living. But this is an art best understood not as a set of prescriptive techniques but, per Susan Sontag’s definition of art, a form of consciousness — which means an understanding that is constantly evolving. This idea — writing about oneself to create a mirror in which other people recognize their own humanity — has not existed forever. It had to be invented. The Shortness of Life: Seneca on Busyness and the Art of Living Wide Rather Than Living Long “How we spend our days,” Annie Dillard memorably wrote in her soul-stretching meditation on the life of presence, “is, of course, how we spend our lives.” And yet most of us spend our days in what Kierkegaard believed to be our greatest source of unhappiness — a refusal to recognize that “busy is a decision” and that presence is infinitely more rewarding than productivity. I frequently worry that being productive is the surest way to lull ourselves into a trance of passivity and busyness the greatest distraction from living, as we coast through our lives day after day, showing up for our obligations but being absent from our selves, mistaking the doing for the being. Despite a steadily swelling human life expectancy, these concerns seem more urgent than ever — and yet they are hardly unique to our age.