User:Dematt



Welcome to Dematt's page.

I am an american chiropractor by trade, father of four, and husband to one. I am very active in my community; past president of the business association, ball coach, community festival director, blah, blah, blah, and have recently retired from my Scoutmaster position where I learned more about myself than I dare say. Nothing prepares you better for the world than trying to train 20 boys to "play" well together in the woods=). But, no doubt, being a Dad is my favorite job.  I thank my wife every day for giving me somebody to play with.

I, too, consider myself a skeptic, but not in the usual sense of the word. I question everything. The boys taught me that... If you don't have the answer to the "why" question, you better not say it.

I realized young that I feel most alive when I am learning something new. So show me something I don't know and I'll remember you forever!

Answers to Dr. Leng's final exam

 * 1) That would be Ernst Mayr about Vitalism!  That was an easy one:)
 * 2) I consider this a great source for WP. The credentials of the authors are apparent and reputable and it is published in a journal for which its subject is studied by the intended audience.  I don't know how to determine the impact of the journal or how to find out if the journal is peer reviewed.  I need to find this out!  Myonly concern is that I agree with it:)--Dematt 19:05, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
 * 3) Professor Tom Meade said that. He was obviously a sharp dude;)  That was definitely a harder one!
 * 4) Alpert JS. The relativity of alternative medicine. Arch Intern Med.   1995;155:2385.  It ended up in the AMA Report 12 of the Council on Scientific Affairs (A-97) concerning alternative medicine.
 * 5) The X is definitley spinal manipulation.  The X might be Manga I mean RAND (Shelkell:), but I'll have to check.(can't prove it, may not even be SM! - skip this one for now:)  Going to work on this one.  Okay. I have to go with acupuncture by the British Medical Journal (BMJ)
 * 6) Cell 28.38 2004Contemporary Sexuality (this can't even be rated is it? Nothing on PS page? nothing found on ISI site KV probably knows.), Nature (half of cell - 20? Vitalism page), The Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics .75 (VS page), The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine .65 (VS page)
 * 7) Sir Isaac Newton was called that by John Maynard Keynes (this should be in the vitalism page!) silly cult member:)
 * OMG, it's Newton again. He was a vitalist nut!
 * 1) It could be Newtons law of universal gravitiation being overthrown in 1915 by Einsteins Theory of Relativity because it did not explain the curves associated with orbiting planets and satellites?
 * 2) I'm going with fact. If it is simple enough to be consistent, it may not consider alternatives and therefore be incomplete, but if it is complete enough to consider alternatives, it would lose consistency in being correct each time. Wow, these are tough!
 * 3) John Stuart Mill, emergentism. Other; it depends on your definition of vitalism and if you consider KV part of scientific orthodoxy.  I still don't know if it's controversial or not:)
 * 4) Because he invoke the "vitalism!" If KV would just quit reverting this, I would have had it last night!
 * 5) This is Mesmerism. Benjamin Franklin, Guillotin and Lavoisier were commissioned by King Louis XVI to check out his wife, Marie Antoinette's doctor, Franz Mesmer.  The patient went into convulsions at the foot of the wrong tree and another patient did not convulse after drinking the mesmerized fluid.  The Commissioners concluded that Mesmer's universal fluid without imagination was nothing, and imagination without the fluid created the observed effect.  They tested Mesmers animal magnetism theory and falsified it.  (Antoinette, King Louis, and Lavoisier were all later decapitated by Guillotin's invention.  Run Ben, Run!)
 * 6) Karl Popper
 * 7) Gareth Leng Galileo Galilei

Extra Credit: P.S. Which is the odd one out? Alcmaeon of Croton, Aristotle, Berzelius, Driesch, Empodecles, David Icke, Lamarck, Pasteur, Reichenbach

Hint, only one of these is famous for a strictly molecular biological, reductionist explanation for complex phenomena.

OK. Too easy, all are known as vitalists except for Icke. But what else do the others have in common?


 * Do you mean other than the fact that they were all vitalists on the Top 1000 Scientists: From the Beginning of Time to 2000 AD? (except Icke:)!

My take On POV
As editors of an encyclopedia, it is not ours to determine the validity of any claim, or for that matter, any science. We should not be concerned whether the results of our conscientious good editing sounds any more or less POV either way. Research speaks for itself, and abstract theories either stand or fall on their own; though their respective values will be interpreted differently depending on the reader's POV. We can not allow ourselves to present facts in such a way that leads a reader to "our" conclusion. That will only make the intelligent and conscious reader discount the total wikipedia process as biased. They want us to provide them with all sides the best we can so they can decide from there. It has nothing to do with the volume of material. Most times, one sentence is all that it takes to make a good antagonistic POV statement. If we do our job, we just cover all the POV's as thoroughly and succinctly as possible.--Dematt 19:22, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

World View
100%    Materialist     69%     Modernist     56%     Postmodernist     50%    Existentialist     44%     Romanticist     25%     Idealist     13%     Fundamentalist     6%

What's you World View?