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Is There a Temptation of the Void Space in Opus Postumum?

Author(s): Rodica Croitoru / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2022

Keywords: space; matter; ether; gravitational attraction; driving forces; experience;

The Kantian Opus postumum can be seen, in general, as a metaphysical extension of some critical topics such as space, time, matter, substance, God, which in the Critique of Pure Reason have been treated in order to satisfy the requirements of a phenomenological knowledge. The present text deals with the rethinking of space in relationship with matter and in its absence, as a void space. In the form of sensible intuition defining space, the objects of the external senses are given to us, primarily in intuition, which the intellect relates through synthetic unity to the unity of the diversity of these a priori intuitions, a unity which is thought in their composition; it is not a form of our thinking, but an intuition of that which is nothing outside of our thinking and representation, and must be filled with matter, to repel the void space, which is in conflict with the original gravitational attraction. Its role is to understand, with the help of the ether, the phenomenon of the driving forces of aggregation, through the system of the connection of the diverse of these forces; so that, finally, to achieve the unity of the possible experience, after giving up the metaphysical temptation of the void space.

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Concepts Regarding the Agricultural Use of the Danube Meadow

Author(s): Aurel Lup / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2022

Keywords: Danube Floodplain; Romania; Grigore Antipa; Anghel Saligny; agriculture; irrigations; ecology;

This paper synthesizes the ecological view of biologist Grigore Antipa and that of the noted engineer Anghel Saligny on the agricultural use of the Danube Floodplain. History gave satisfaction to Anghel Saligny’s constructive conception. However, this conception proved to be ecologically unviable. The paper describes the key moments of this dispute, the evolution of the irrigated agricultural system in the Danube Floodplain, the effects on the environment, the financial aspects of Saligny’s engineering concept. We have also assessed (in financial terms) the consequences of this concept, a damaging agricultural system for both the state and farmers. It is considered erroneous to continue the policy of rehabilitating old, expensive, energy-intensive and non-environmentally friendly irrigation systems. The author are concerned about the future of large-scale agriculture that concentrates economic power in the most favorable agricultural agrozone while the country’s disinherited peasantry earns their living in an increasingly hostile external environment.

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Remote Sensing - Short History (II)

Author(s): Manuel Vais / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2022

Keywords: Remote-sensing; LANDSAT program; Landsat mission;

Some important steps from preparing the Landsat program are presented and also the Roumanian contribution to the program.

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Tele-detection and Tele-presence: Approaching the Reality of Material Objects

Author(s): Ana Bazac / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2022

Keywords: directly unseen material objects; Aristotle; possibility; actuality; space; presence; teledetection; measurements; ubiquity; tele-presence;

Starting from Aristotle’s reflections, the paper discusses the possibility and the actuality of directly unseen material objects: not from the standpoint of ontology of objects, focusing on their persistence as such in time and space, but from an epistemological perspective, indebted to phenomenology, about the process of knowing those objects. This process begins with their seeing, but seeing as such involves two steps: detection and full visualisation. How to see distant, thus invisible objects, which may simply be inexistent? First, we discover them (on the basis of some effects and correlations of appropriable physical parameters). The core concept here is presence, however not in relation with past and future but with actuality or reality for the subject. After pointing the meaning of full visualisation, the last chapter suggests that no matter how precise is the measurement giving the tele-detection of distant material objects, they are not fully present if they are not directly felt by the sense organs, the gate to the human meanings of objects, i.e. if they are not given meanings, including practically, without being again tele-detected. However, we are used with their sketched presence, necessary step to their as many sided analysis, thus image, as it is possible; but we are not used with the tele-presence of members of the human species.

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Isaac Asimov and the human space

Author(s): Ana Bazac / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2022

Keywords: Isaac Asimov; human space; IT; technology;

The reason of science-fiction literature was and is to promote both the spread of scientific knowledge and interest, and the hope that the technological marvels will solve the problems of the human society. And in order to attract people’s attention and to generate their enthusiasm towards science and its results, everything happened in the human space.

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Can IT Support a Structural-Phenomenology Based on Category Theory?

Author(s): Gheorghe M. Ștefan / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2022

Keywords: structural-phenomenology; category theory; deep neural networks; nonlinearity; nonformal;

In 2000 Mihai Draganescu published the work Categories and Functors for the StructuralPhenomenologial Modeling in which the idea of using category theory to address the limit problems of knowledge is developed in the form of an envelope theory. Thus is defined a mathematical structural-phenomenological theory of categories. In this paper we try to take the first steps towards a detailed theory. A first step involves considering categories defined as artificial neural networks, and a second step is based on a hybrid approach that brings circuits and living entities to the same silicon die.

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Scientifically and Philosophically About the Category of Pleasure(s)

Author(s): Ana Bazac / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2022

Keywords: pleasure(s); feelings; affects; rhythm; consciousness; sentience; aura; non-living and living systems; individual and society;

Challenged by the concept of pleasure(s), considered by Evanghelos Moutsopoulos as expressing one of the most important criteria and values of the human life, the paper deploys an analysis of pleasures as conditions of the (human) Being and also as “more-than-being”. Since the pleasures are feelings, these ones are caught as relationships of the consciousness with its internal and external environment. Therefore, the levels and dimensions of the consciousness light how and why the human consciousness creates meanings, articulated and transmissible, and how only accompanied by pleasures these meanings are produced in a solid way, the only one that assures the existence and development of the human being.

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First Oil Congress in the World

Author(s): Mir-Yusif Mir-Babayev / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2022

Keywords: oil congresses; Council of the Oil Congress; Baku oilmen (industrialists); Baku Branch of Imperial Russian Technical Society; Baku-Batum pipeline; Nobels and Rothschild companies;

A lot of companies, large and small, sprung up during Baku’s first oil boom in the 19th century. Though rivalry was often fierce, the oil industrialists soon realized that they could advance many of their interests better through co-operation than competition. Thus, the first Congress of Baku Oil Industrialists was held from 26 October to 8 November 1884. The congresses continued to function more or less every year up to the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. At that time Baku was part of imperial Russia and the biggest names in the empire’s oil industry – the Nobels and Rothschilds – took part in the Baku congresses, a sign of the meetings’ importance.

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The Copernican Revolution in Transylvania

Author(s): Gyula Miholcsa / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2022

Keywords: solar system; Copernicus; geocentric; heliocentric; Transylvania;

The evolution of our thinking is a very interesting and instructive story. The standard bearers are founders of religions, philosophers, sometimes scientists too. The pioneering work of the latter was little understood by most of people. Our aim in this paper is to present a concrete situation, in which we could fallow the previous ideas: the acceptance of the heliocentric theory of Copernicus in Transylvania. We will do it through two paintings on wood of the Solar system, in two Transylvanian churches: one in a Greek-Catholic church in S, urdes, ti (Maramures, county), and the other in a Unitarian church in Ocland (Harghita county). Although they were made in the same period, these two paintings represent two opposite systems: the geocentric one and the heliocentric one. How was that possible?

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Newton Lee (Ed.): The Transhumanism Handbook

Author(s): Ştefan Trăuşan-Matu / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2022

Keywords: The Transhumanism Handbook; Newton Lee; review; transhumanism ideas;

Review of: Newton Lee (Ed.): The Transhumanism Handbook Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2019

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Architectural Approach and the Intro-Opening-Based Structural-Phenomenology

Author(s): Gheorghe M. Ştefan / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2022

Keywords: architectural vision; Mihai Draganescu;

We comment in this text on the implications that Mihai Draganescu’s extended architectural vision of intro-open systems can provide an effective conceptual framework for the structural-phenomenological approach imposed by limits increasingly touched by the process of contemporary knowledge.

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Engineer Varadi Ernest, a Resercher, Inventor and Polyhistor in Bihor County

Author(s): Zoltan Makai / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2022

Keywords: bituminous shale; bituminous sand; Polar Oil; Ernest Varadi; chemistry and mining interdisciplinary research; psychological reactions to absolute tragedies marking the personal life;

In this paper the professional career of engineer Ernest Varadi (1910-1997) is presented. Engineer Ernest Varadi was employed almost all of his life at the Voivozi Mining Company, Derna sector, the local bituminous shale exploitation in Bihor County, Romania. He discovered a special oil named Polar Oil. He was a genuine researcher and inventor.

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Mihail C. Roco, William S. Bainbridge, Bruce Ton, George Whitesides (Eds.): Convergence of Knowledge, Technology and Society: Beyond Convergence of Nano-Bio-Info-Cognitive Technologies

Author(s): Ştefan Trăuşan-Matu / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2022

Keywords: Convergence of Knowledge; Technology; Society; Nano-Bio-Info-Cognitive Technologies;

Review of: Mihail C. Roco, William S. Bainbridge, Bruce Ton), George Whitesides (Eds.): Convergence of Knowledge, Technology and Society: Beyond Convergence of Nano-Bio-Info-Cognitive Technologies, Springer, 2013

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Newton Lee (ed.): The Transhumanism Handbook

Author(s): Ana Bazac / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2022

Keywords: Newton Lee; The Transhumanism Handbook;

The word “transhuman” first appeared in Dante’s Divine Comedy (Paradise, Canto I). It escribes the fate of the human body from the eschatological perspective. In the contemporary acceptance of the term, from the fact that we have no say in our births, we cannot ignore the fact that due to the evolution of science and technology, we can now aspire to live longer, healthier and more capable. The fundamental question that arises is what is the price and, depending on it, what are the limits that this process must accept.

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The Secret of Geniality

Author(s): Robert Djidjian / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2022

Keywords: The Secret of Geniality; philosophy of science and technology; book; philosophy; epistemology;

This is the last part of the book THE SECRET OF GENIALITY (Yerevan, Armenia, Noyan Tapan Printing House, 2002) written by our colleague Robert Djidjian. We published this book not only because we all must know the philosophical research and creation (in our domain of epistemology and philosophy of science and technology) from a wider geographic area than that provided by the established fashion in virtue of both extra–scientific reasons and a yet obsolete manner to communicate and value the research; but also because the book as such is living, challenging and very instructive. The title of the book is suggestive enough to make us to focus on an old problem: the dialectic of the insight, of the discovery – its psychology moving between flashes of intuitions and knowledge stored in memory – and its logic of composition of knowledge from hypotheses to their demonstration and verification. The realm of science is most conducive to the understanding of this dialectic and the constitution of the ideas which are the proofs of what is the most certain for humans: the “world 3”, as Popper called the kingdom of human results of their intellection, and though transient and perishable in both their uniqueness and cosmic fate, the only certain proof of the reason to be of homo sapiens in the frame of multiversal existence. Therefore, the power to create is the secret of the human geniality, and how to create science is a main part of this secret. This last part of the book is that of the Appendix the author added especially in order to highlight the methodology of the scientific discovery and the dialectical principles of both knowledge and the world. Highlighting the big problems or theories as ”mysteries” and elucidating them by revealing the contradictions that lead to new theories and prefigures not only a new basis of understanding but also new problems makes the philosophy of science to appear here exciting as in the research of a detective. The clear explanation of concepts, the unexpected links between domains and between theories of different domains, the impeccable logic of inferences, the sense of humour and the integrative approach where the history of ideas formation is crossed by the red thread of the methodological goal make the reading of – not only this part but – the entire book a useful and enjoyable event for anyone. The book is a tool in the intellectual development so necessary nowadays.

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