Free-thinker

Theology—Fanatics and free-thinkers—Astrology, alchemy, and magic —Science and philosophy.—History.—Politics and statesmanship —Satire —Poetry —Drama and romance — Booksellers and publishers —Some literary martyrs —Index. 

Dutch academic life had faded away. Israel has argued that in the first decades of the century the differences in religion became less important in the widespread campaign against the followers of Spinoza, who were regarded as equivalent to free-thinkers. Israel states ... 

Secondly, I would like to know what this assembly of priviledged free thinkers and experts thinks about the possibility of having government policies which evaluate and direct research projects for better health - which means better life, which means no drugs, which means no old looking and no death - as the main social objective. 

Maybe we ask post-9/11 -related questions because of who we are, what we are, and what we are not. That is, because we are Americans we are free, uninhibited thinkers who think what we say and say what we think—isn t America great Most Americans are soft-hearted and sympathetic to those in need—compassion is the very nature and soul of being American. Americans are not born terrorists they are not born into a terrorist regime they are not raised with fear in their hearts—they are not afraid every time they leave their homes and go about their daily business. Suicide bombers and other like terrorists are those that occupy some other faraway place, definitely not America, and they are definitely not American. Right ... 

While alchemy, going further underground than ever before, continued in its emphasis on subjective experience, the need for analysis free from subjective beliefs became the guiding principle of the first scientists. In England, there were groups meeting in Oxford and London, which comprised the prominent thinkers of the day, including such men as Ashmole, Robert... 

What was the origin of the armament unsheathed in Donora and Sacramento Under what conditions and for what purposes was it forged Was it employed as its creators intended, or did it escape their control like the broom conjured by the sorcerer s apprentice These are vital questions for understanding today s environmental dilemmas—and beyond that, they evoke some of the most fundamental problems in social thought. How does economic power influence government What is the basis of scientific authority Is science value-free, or is it shaped by social and economic conditions For more than a century, thinkers and scholars have debated such questions. 

The various schools where the doctrine and more particularly the principles and methods of an original thinker were perpetuated — though never to the point of regarding him with docile servility - served the further purpose of uniting in bonds of free brotherhood men engaged in... 

One sign of the influence of these core ideas is that they have profoundly influenced the shape of the modem social sciences, thanks especially to the work of Max Weber. Now, understandably eager to enjoy the power and prestige of the natural sciences, modem social sciences have sought to imitate them. One visible sign of this is the widespread use of modem mathematics in the study of society the flip side of this is the effort to exclude values from the subject matter. The modem social sciences are to be value free to the extent possible and to avoid the value laden questions that would keep them from claiming to be sciences properly understood. But perhaps the most eye- and ear-catching thinker to stress the resistance of values to philosophic justifications was Friedrich Nietzsche, who went so far as to say our preference for truth over falsehood is itself merely a value. As he put it, It is no more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than mere appearance it is even the worst proved assumption there is in the world. ... 

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