Great Wikis for Intellectuals

Piero Ferrucci is a psychotherapist and a philosopher. He graduated from the University of Torino in 1970. He was trained by Roberto Assagioli, the founder of psychosynthesis, and has written several books:

What We May Be: The Vision and Techniques of Psychosynthesis (1982, ISBN 978-0-87477-192-3)^[1] is a comprehensive description of this approach, with exercises and practical tips.

Inevitable Grace (1990, ISBN 978-0-87477-550-1) is the result of a nine year research in the lives of hundreds of creative and enlightened people of all times and cultures. It describes their peak experiences and highest moments, as well as how they achieved their breakthroughs.

Psychology is an academic and applied discipline that involves the scientific study of mental functions andbehaviors.^[1][2] Psychology has the immediate goal of understanding individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases,^[3][4] and by many accounts it ultimately aims to benefit society.^[5][6] In this field, a professional practitioner or researcher is called a psychologist and can be classified as a social, behavioral, or cognitive scientist. Psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior, while also exploring the physiological and neurobiologicalprocesses that underlie certain cognitive functions and behaviors.

Psychologists explore concepts such as perception, cognition, attention, emotion, phenomenology, motivation,brain functioning, personality, behavior, and interpersonal relationships. Psychologists of diverse stripes also consider the unconscious mind.^[7] Psychologists employ empirical methods to infer causal and correlationalrelationships between psychosocial variables. In addition, or in opposition, to employing empirical anddeductive methods, some—especially clinical and counseling psychologists—at times rely upon symbolic interpretation and other inductive techniques. Psychology has been described as a "hub science",^[8] with psychological findings linking to research and perspectives from the social sciences, natural sciences,medicine, and the humanities, such as philosophy.

While psychological knowledge is often applied to the assessment and treatment of mental health problems, it is also directed towards understanding and solving problems in many different spheres of human activity. The majority of psychologists are involved in some kind of therapeutic role, practicing in clinical, counseling, orschool settings. Many do scientific research on a wide range of topics related to mental processes and behavior, and typically work in university psychology departments or teach in other academic settings (e.g., medical schools, hospitals). Some are employed in industrial and organizational settings, or in other areas^[9]such as human development and aging, sports, health, and the media, as well as in forensic investigation and other aspects of law.

Balance Theory is a motivational theory of attitude change, proposed by Fritz Heider.^[1] It conceptualizes the cognitive consistency motive as a drive toward psychological balance. The consistency motive is the urge to maintain one's values and beliefs over time. Heider proposed that "sentiment" or liking relationships are balanced if the affect valence in a system multiplies out to a positive result.

Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience.^[1] One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along withrationalism, idealism, and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory experience, in the formation of ideas, over the notion of innate ideas or traditions;^[2]empiricists may argue however that traditions (or customs) arise due to relations of previous sense experiences.^[3]

Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested againstobservations of the natural world rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation.

Philosophers associated with empiricism include Aristotle, Alhazen, Avicenna, Ibn Tufail, Robert Grosseteste, William of Ockham, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, Robert Boyle, John Locke, George Berkeley, Hermann von Helmholtz, David Hume, Leopold von Ranke, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Popper.

Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative tostate socialism, which uses Confederations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions. It is a form ofsocialist economic corporatism that advocates interest aggregation of multiple non-competitive categorised units to negotiate and manage an economy.^[1]

For adherents, labour unions are the potential means of both overcoming economic aristocracy and runningsociety fairly in the interest of the majority, through union democracy. Industry in a syndicalist system would be run through co-operative confederations and mutual aid. Local syndicates would communicate with other syndicates through the Bourse du Travail (labor exchange) which would manage and transfer commodities.

Syndicalism is also used to refer to the tactic of bringing about this social arrangement, typically expounded byanarcho-syndicalism and De Leonism, in which a general strike begins and workers seize their means of production and organise in a federation of trade unionism, such as the CNT.^[2] Throughout its history, the reformist section of syndicalism has been overshadowed by its revolutionary section, typified by the IWW or the Federación Anarquista Ibérica section of the CNT.^[3]

Neo-fascism is a post–World War II ideology that includes significant elements of fascism. The term neo-fascist may apply to groups that express a specific admiration for Benito Mussolini and Italian Fascism or any other fascist leader/state. Neo-fascism usually includes palingenetic ultranationalism, populism, anti-immigrationpolicies or, where relevant, nativism, anti-communism, and opposition to the parliamentary system and liberal democracy. Allegations that a group is neo-fascist may be hotly contested, especially if the term is used as apolitical epithet. Some post–World War II regimes have been described as neo-fascist due to their authoritariannature, and sometimes due to their fascination with fascist ideology and rituals.

A vanguard party is a political party at the fore of a mass-action political movement and of a revolution. In the praxis of political science, the concept of the vanguard party, composed of professional revolutionaries, was first effected by the Bolshevik Party in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov), the first leader of the Bolsheviks, coined the term vanguard party, and argued that such a party was necessary in order to provide the practical and political leadership that would impel the proletariat (urban workers and peasants) to achieve a communist revolution. Hence, as a political-science concept and term,vanguard party most often is associated with Leninism; however, similar concepts (under different names) also are present in other revolutionary ideologies.

Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx presented the concept of the vanguard party as solely qualified to politically lead the proletariat in revolution; in Chapter II: "Proletarians and Communists" of The Communist Manifesto(1848), they said:

The Communists, therefore, are, on the one hand, practically the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement. The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

According to Vladimir Lenin, the purpose of the vanguard party is to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat; supported by the working class. The change of ruling class, from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat, makes possible the full development of socialism. In early 20th century Russia, Lenin argued that the vanguard party would lead the revolution to depose the incumbent Tsarist government, and transfer government power to the working class.^[1] In the pamphlet What is to be Done? (1902), Lenin said that a revolutionary vanguard party, mostly recruited from the working class, should lead the political campaign, because it was the only way that the proletariat could successfully achieve a revolution; unlike the economist campaign of trade union struggle advocated by other socialist political parties and later by the anarcho-syndicalists. Like Karl Marx, Lenin distinguished between the two aspects of a revolution, the economic campaign (labour strikes for increased wages and work concessions), which featured diffused plural leadership; and the political campaign (socialist changes to society), which featured the decisive revolutionary leadership of the Bolshevik vanguard party.

Ethnocentrism is judging another culture solely by the values and standards of one's own culture.^{[1][page needed]} The ethnocentric individual will judge other groups relative to his or her own particular ethnic group or culture, especially with concern to language, behavior, customs, and religion. These ethnic distinctions and subdivisions serve to define each ethnicity's unique cultural identity.^[2]Ethnocentrism may be overt or subtle, and while it is considered a natural proclivity of human psychology, it has developed a generally negative connotation. ^[3]

Graziella Magherini is most well known for her 1989 book La sindrome di Stendhal ^[1] (The Stendhal syndrome), which introduced this term to indicate a psychosomatic illness affecting individuals when exposed to art. After nearly 20 years of experience with patients at Santa Maria Nuova Hospital in Florence, Italy, Dr. Magherini began to note certain pathological abnormalities in a select group of her patients. Foreign visitors who had arrived in droves to indulge in the sumptuous beauty and art of the city were stricken by sudden and mysterious psychosomatic episodes that were induced by their identification with select and "personalized" art. "The Stendhal Syndrome occurs most frequently in Florence, because we have the greatest concentration of Renaissance art in the world." ^[2] Her groundbreaking study The Stendhal Syndrome (La Sindrome di Stendhal), published in 1989, is a description of her statistical methodology and, most importantly, a detailed description of some of her most interesting cases. Many of the case histories describe a foreigner who arrives in Florence, Italy and is overwhelmed by unrelenting attacks of Renaissance art and culture. In the 'Inge Case,' Inge arrives from a Scandinavian country where she teaches Italian to children. Her marriage is unsatisfactory and she is also filled with the guilt of leaving her failing father, for whom she is a caregiver. Her Florence trip is the first she has taken in many years. Upon arrival she immediately feels 'out of sorts' and when she attends an Italian class for a second day, she notices someone has taken her seat from the day before. Inge takes this as a sign that no one wants her in Florence. Suddenly, she is afflicted with an overwhelming sense of paranoia. Later, she visits one of Florence's famous cathedrals. She is drawn to one version of The Last Supper. Inge has palpitations and sees flashes of lights. In between flashes she sees herself in the painting, as one of the women carrying a fruit basket to the table of Jesus. After steady decline in her mental condition she is admitted to the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital for observation.

From these cases, Dr. Magherini has some startling conclusions about the effects of artwork on the psyche. During the mirroring between art and subject, a sublime, aesthetic, and uncanny event occurs. The art experience hooks a repressed trauma beneath the conscious sea of the subject rapidly pulling the trauma to the surface. The subject acts much like a distressed fish out of water. Dr. Magherini's job was to unhook the patient from this episode while under observation and gently place the patient back into the society. A related syndrome is the Jerusalem syndrome.

In physics and philosophy, a relational theory is a framework to understand reality or a physical system in such a way that the positions and other properties of objects are only meaningful relative to other objects. In a relational spacetime theory, space does not exist unless there are objects in it; nor does time exist without events. The relational view proposes that space is contained in objects and that an object represents within itself relationships to other objects. Space can be defined through the relations among the objects that it contains considering their variations through time. The alternative spatial theory is an absolute theory in which the space exists independently of any objects that can be immersed in it. . Someone who has constructed a relational theory or promotes relational theorising is called a relationist.

The relational point of view was advocated by in physics by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Ernst Mach (in his Mach's principle), and it was rejected byIsaac Newton in his successful description of classical physics. Although Albert Einstein was impressed by Mach's principle, he did not fully incorporate it into his theory of general relativity. Several attempts have been made to formulate a full Machian theory, but most physicists think that none have so far succeeded. For example, see Brans-Dicke theory.

Relational quantum mechanics and a relational approach to quantum physics have been independently developed, in analogy with Einstein's special relativity of space and time. Relationist physicists such as John Baez and Carlo Rovelli have criticised the leading unified theory of gravity andquantum mechanics, string theory, as retaining absolute space. Some prefer a developing theory of gravity, loop quantum gravity for its 'backgroundlessness'.

A recent synthesis of relational theory, called R-theory,^[1] continuing the work of the mathematical biologist Robert Rosen [who developed "Relational Biology" and "Relational Complexity" as theories of life (^[2]] takes a position between the above views. Rosen's theory differed from other relational views in defining fundamental relations in nature (as opposed to merely epistemic relations we might discuss) as information transfers between natural systems and their organization (as expressed in models). R-theory extends the idea of organizational models to nature generally. As interpreted by R-theory, such "modeling relations" describe reality in terms of information relations (encoding and decoding) between measurable existence (expressed as material states and established by efficient behavior) and implicate organization or identity (expressed as formal potential and established by final exemplar), thus capturing all four of Aristotle's causalities within nature (Aristotle defined final cause as immanent from outside of nature). Applied to space-time physics, it claims that space-time is real but established only in relation to existing events, as a formal cause or model for the location of events relative to each other; and in reverse a system of space-time events establishes a template for space-time. R-theory is thus a form of model-dependent realism. It claims to more closely follow the views of Mach, Liebniz, Wheeler and Bohm, suggesting that natural law itself is system-dependent.

In theoretical physics, particularly in discussions of gravitation theories, Mach's principle (or Mach's conjecture^[1]) is the name given by Einstein to an imprecise hypothesis often credited to the physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach.

The idea is that the local motion of a rotating reference frame is determined by the large scale distribution of matter, as exemplified by this anecdote:

You are standing in a field looking at the stars. Your arms are resting freely at your side, and you see that the distant stars are not moving. Now start spinning. The stars are whirling around you and your arms are pulled away from your body. Why should your arms be pulled away when the stars are whirling? Why should they be dangling freely when the stars don't move?

Mach's principle says that this is not a coincidence—that there is a physical law that relates the motion of the distant stars to the local inertial frame. If you see all the stars whirling around you, Mach suggests that there is some physical law which would make it so you would feel a centrifugal force. There are a number of rival formulations of the principle. It is often stated in vague ways, like "mass out there influences inertia here". A very general statement of Mach's principle is "Local physical laws are determined by the large-scale structure of the universe."^[2]

This concept was a guiding factor in Einstein's development of the general theory of relativity. Einstein realized that the overall distribution of matter would determine the metric tensor, which tells you which frame is rotationally stationary. Frame dragging and conservation of gravitational angular momentum makes this into a true statement in the general theory in certain solutions. But because the principle is so vague, many distinct statements can be (and have been) made which would qualify as a Mach principle, and some of these are false. The Gödel rotating universe is a solution of the field equations which is designed to disobey Mach's principle in the worst possible way. In this example, the distant stars seem to be revolving faster and faster as one moves further away. This example doesn't completely settle the question, because it has closed timelike curves.

In theoretical physics, the Brans–Dicke theory of gravitation (sometimes called the Jordan–Brans–Dicke theory) is a theoretical framework to explain gravitation. It is a well-known competitor of Einstein's more popular theory of general relativity. It is an example of a scalar-tensor theory, a gravitational theory in which the gravitational interaction is mediated by a scalar field as well as the tensor field of general relativity. The gravitational constant G is not presumed to be constant but instead 1/G is replaced by a scalar field  which can vary from place to place and with time.

The theory was developed in 1961 by Robert H. Dicke and Carl H. Brans^[1] building upon, among others, the earlier 1959 work of Pascual Jordan.

At present, both Brans–Dicke theory and general relativity are generally held to be in agreement with observation. Brans–Dicke theory represents a minority viewpoint in physics.