Medical science had an irrefutable argument against it: sterilization of surgical cutlery would have no beneficial effect at all because, if it had, the practice would have been introduced a long time ago. After all, boiling water was already available at the time of Hippocrates.
.. Medical research was a little bit more tolerant in the sense that they admitted that, yes, perhaps some of such hygienic practices could be allowed in the case of novice surgeons, whose work was anyhow confined to toy operations. Research, however, would not pursue it since it was ridiculous to believe that the sterilization of their cutlery would enable surgeons to cure all diseases.
.. imposing such artificial disciplines in the operating rooms would stifle the surgical creativity of its members, and, secondly, that, if sterilization of the knife really helped, everybody would be able to operate and that would be totally intolerable. Furthermore, what was then known as operational research had shown that the proposed sterilization procedures would be much too complicated for the average nurse.
.. Emotional protest came from the nurses themselves, who loved to take care of the very sick and whose devotion rose in those days to unfathomed heights each time a young patient died in their arms. The spectre of routine operations was a threat to their job satisfaction, greater than they could endure.
.. Eventually, emotions ran so high that the Church could not remain silent any longer. It settled the matter on moral grounds: since it is Man’s predicament to die, it would be immoral even to try to reduce the natural mortality rate of the surgical wards by such unnatural and counterintuitive acts as boiling a pair of scissors: the sole purposes for which God had created hot water were
- the cooking of food and
- the boiling of heretics
such as the practitioners of greater hygiene, be it surgical or otherwise.
Comments: Hacker News
Europe unveils world’s most powerful X-ray laser
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.. The European beam is more powerful, but most significantly has a far higher pulse rate than either of its predecessors.“They can send 100 pulses out per second, we can send 27,000,” said Robert Feidenhan’l, chairman of the European XFEL management board.This matters because to study chemical reactions or biological processes, the X-ray strobe is used to capture flickering snapshots of the same system at different time-points that can be stitched together into a film sequence.
At XFEL, scientists will be able to collect data at a far quicker rate and miss less of the action between shots.
.. Previously, scientists have been able to measure the crystal structure of the beginning and end-products. But, according to Orville, this is like trying to understand an Olympic high-jump contest based on pictures of the athlete on the bench before the jump and lying on the mat afterwards.
.. Another planned experiment will aim to reveal the process by which molecules capture light and turn it into energy during photosynthesis. “You might use that as an input to make an artificial device to do the same,” said Feidenhan’l. “That’s my dream.”
.. “The pressures you can produce are enormous; 10 million atmospheres and above, which is more than three times the pressure at the centre of the Earth.”
Why most evangelicals don’t condemn Trump
For such critics, the only possible explanation for evangelicals’ continuing faith in Trump is some combination of ignorance and hypocrisy.
.. These voters — and almost all of them voted — see Trump’s flaws but perceive him as a fellow sinner willing to fight the forces of the establishment on their behalf... The barrage of negative press hardly rattled him or most of his colleagues, who see the mainstream media as anything but friendly to their opinions and their faith... “He has to fight all of them,” said the preacher, referring to the Democrats and the media.Another minister told me he appreciates that Trump has no hesitation taking on “the reprobate left” that considers the president “an enemy of their established power system.”.. Part of the decision by many evangelicals to support Trump for president was attributable to long-standing differences with liberal candidates over social issues. Evangelicals tend to share conservative positions on abortion, gun rights, border security and the fight against “radical Islamic terrorism,” as they usually make sure to phrase it. But more than anything, Trump’s specific pledges to the religious right got their attention.
.. So far, they think Trump has kept those promises. He has followed up with invitations to the White House, sought input on court appointments, stood firmly with Israel and signed an executive order expanding religious freedom in regard to political speech.
.. when Trump refuses to fully adopt the conclusion that climate change is due to man-made influences, he demonstrates an affinity with evangelical Christians who do not blindly accept every scientific theory... They also know they are considered by many to be superstitious or ignorant for adhering to their beliefs... Probably half the people in churches across the country defined as “evangelicals” were converted from lives that were even more unprincipled than the life Trump has led. Some experienced divorces, others used foul language, and many were addicted to drugs or alcohol... In most cases, no immediate miracle happened with regard to their behavior at the moment of their confessions of faith or their emergence from the baptismal waters. The only miracle they were promised was the application of the grace of Jesus Christ, which, under New Testament doctrine, washed away their sins.
Are electrons conscious?
.. nobody has provided even the beginnings of a satisfying solution to what David Chalmers called “the hard problem” of consciousness. More recently a quiet revolution has been occurring in philosophy of mind which aims to turn the brain-first approach on its head
.. It is the nature of consciousness that we really understand–through being conscious–and hence the philosophical task is to build our picture of the brain around our understanding of consciousness. We might call this a “consciousness-first” approach to the mind-body problem.
.. . How on earth can quality-rich experience be accommodated within soggy grey brain matter? The Russellian monist solution, inspired by certain writings of Bertrand Russell from the 1920s
.. There must be some intrinsic nature to the cerebellum, some way it is in and of itself independently of what it does. About this intrinsic nature physical science remains silent. Accepting this casts the problem of consciousness in a completely different light, and points the way to a solution.
.. Our discussion has led to another question, “What is the intrinsic nature of physical brain processes?” The Russellian monist proposes answering both question at once, by identifying phenomenal properties with the intrinsic nature of (at least some) physical brain processes. Whilst neuroscience characterises brain processes extrinsically, in terms of what they do, in their intrinsic nature they are forms of quality-rich consciousness.
.. Russellian monism is a general framework for unifying matter and mind and thereby avoiding dualism: the view of Descartes that mind and body are radically different kinds of thing.
.. panpsychism, the view that all matter involves experience of some form
.. The idea is that it is only by supposing that there is consciousness “all the way down” to electrons and quarks that we can render the emergence of human and animal consciousness intelligible. Experience can’t possibly emerge from the utterly non-experiential
.. How do the interactions of trillions of tiny minds produce a big mind? This is the so-called ‘combination problem’ for panpsychism
.. many significant developments in science have arisen not from experimental findings in the lab but from a radical reconceptualization of our picture of the universe formulated from the comfort of an armchair.
.. My hunch is that progress on consciousness, as well of course as involving neuroscience, will involve this kind of radical reconceptualization of the mind, the brain, and the relationship between them. Russellian monism looks to be a promising framework in which to do this.