Arquivo para a ‘Método e Verdade Científica’ Categoria
The innocents and Epistasis
28
Dec
Much was said in an ironic tone about possible genetic variations
due to the pandemic, the phenomenon exists, although it rarely occurs when there is an interaction of genes to influence some characteristic of the species, the classic case was studied by Bateson and Punnett, who studied a type of crest that appears in chickens, and is determined by two independent genes (which is equivalent to two pairs of alleles), of course this is not the case with vaccines, just to clarify the scientific question.
The innocence lies in understanding the virus mutation as capable of inducing or influencing a human genetic mutation, of course our immune system is affected, as studies try to correlate HIV with the omicron variant, but this does not mean any human genetic mutation so far.
However, epistasis has been important to study the omicron variant, in this case the virus and not the vaccine, according to a BBC News report, Professor Ed Feill, professor of microbial evolution at the University of Bath, England: “If the variant has more mutations, this does not mean that it is more dangerous, more transmissible or more capable of evading the effect of vaccines”, and many premature conclusions about this variant do not have a solid scientific basis.
The confusion is that the virus undergoes variations, but it is unfounded to imagine that these mutations affect the human genetic code, says the professor: “as a virus evolves, it can accumulate a group of mutations that, in turn, can create a variant”, “… and to detect the new variants: “ scientists track the genomic sequence of the virus”, and in this case, epistasis studies are essential to detect variants.
American evolutionary biologist Jesse Bloom, in a recent article in The New York Times, called attention to the alpha variant that has a mutation called N501Y, which is associated with the capacity for infection.
It is important to understand that the omicron variant is not completely deciphered, precisely because of its number of mutations in its epistasis, which is more difficult to detect and understand: “this opens up more evolutionary space for this”, said Feil in the article, and so the research has to observe combinations that have not been seen before.
Neither innocence to claim that there is some human genetic mutation, nor innocence to claim that the omicron variable is controlled because it offers “less danger”.
WHO has a classification of variants into “concern” and “interest” as per the table above.
Christmas is the greatest Bible prophecy
17
Dec
These are difficult times, with a new pandemic wave, signs of
a serious global economic crisis, tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine and the rapprochement of Russia with China, which has interests in Taiwan, which is independent and western.
In difficult times, prophecies always reappear, but few are the oracles of God really authorized: diviners, speculators, false prophets and false mystics, they lack a clear authorization from God, and he has always been present through the humblest.
David, for example, was not even a contact between the children of Jesse, when Samuel went to his house to find someone who would be king of Israel he is only introduced at the end, so Jesse did not have 7 more eight children, says the Biblical account:
“So he made Jesse pass his SEVEN sons before Samuel. but Samuel told Jesse. The Lord did not choose these.” (1 Samuel 16:10).
Born in Bethlehem, around 1000 BC, Jesus would be born from the descendants of David, according to the Biblical account, there were 14 generations between David to the exile of Babylon were fourteen generations, from exile to Jesus fourteen more, , and also Joseph had to return to Bethlehem because that was his hometown (or his clan) , and this was prophecy.
Micah’s prophecy says (Mic 5,1): “Thus says the Lord: 1 Thou Bethlehem of Ephrathah, little one among the thousand villages of Judah, from thee shall come he who shall rule in Israel; its origin comes from remote times, from the days of eternity”.
This prophecy has historical importance, because it confirms the descent of David, a census was taken there, so there is “scientific” proof of this birth, but the great prophecy is not this one, but that of Isaiah 7:14: “Therefore the The Lord himself will give you a sign: a virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and he will call him “God with us”, and the previous passage calls attention to the house of David before the importunate of Ahaz who wanted by God the proof for cause of wars.
The conception of Mary confuses theologians and Christians in general, here that it should serve to unite is a cause of disunity due to an inconsiderate reading of the guide book for Christians, the Bible, soon after Mary knew that she would conceive and give the light to the Savior, probably still confused, runs to the house of her cousin Isabel, who also conceived a miracle in her old age (in the photo, a painting by Domenico Ghirlandaio, 1491).
When he arrives at his cousin’s house, he hears the greeting with a loud cry, the reading says (Lc1,42-43): “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb! 43How can I deserve my Lord’s mother to come and visit me?”, the theological question remains, what does it mean for Elizabeth, Jewish, the advent of Christ, Christmas, was still beginning in Mary’s womb.
There are discussions about dates, an ahistorical discussion of the birth of Jesus because there was a census, but this question “the mother of the Lord” is still open, although all Christians agree that the Savior was born there and lived among us for 33 years .
God lived among us and came from a virgin, there is no greater prophecy and will always be with us.
Between science and believe
07
Dec
Whenever the weather changes: rains, floods, storms, hurricanes
and now volcanoes and earthquakes something worries us, it is necessary to separate what is in fact supernatural from the natural that exists, even if catastrophic, science helps, but it doesn’t always have answers ready.
It was like a Covid-19 problem and the La Palma volcano is now drawing attention for its unpredictability, but it has helped science that has collected a much larger number than in other eruptions and its variation also helps to study different influences, the shape of the soil, the earthquakes and temperatures close to the volcano, the type of soil (in this case there are several deep cracks) and the type of lava effusion.
A recent opinion article, volcanology is not a science that can make predictions, in fact, in the opinion of physicists such as Werner Heisenberg and philosophers such as Edgar Morin their predictions, even though possible, are hypotheses, but in the case of volcanology the Cumbre Vieja, volcano of La Palma, has helped.
An article published in the journal Science and which was the subject of an article in the journal El Pais, by researcher Marc-Antoine Longpré elaborated a series of opinions, including that: “The course-term forecast is based on technology and on the recognition of patterns of behavior of volcanoes, as well as constant improvement, as volcanologists gather more data”, as is the case with this eruption of Cumbre Vieja, in La Palma, in the Canary Islands.
The article published in the prestigious journal Science, begins by explaining that it had 50 years of rest and is historically the most active of the Canary Islands, it erupted on September 19, 2021, and will complete one of the longest eruption periods of the day. December 19, when it will reach 3 months of eruption and the article informs that the longest on record was 3 months and 3 weeks.
But the seismic patterns started on the date of September 11th, I wrote the article: “the number of detected earthquakes quickly increased to several hundred per day, of which only a subset was located”, and grouped in much smaller depths (<12 km ) and of lower seismicity than the previous one (around 3 to 4 degrees on the Richter scale), and with a displacement to the area of =the volcano that erupted on the 19th, this already marks a pattern for eruptions (see graphics of author) Another fact observed was the appearance of two fissures, in addition to the elevation of the ground and the formation of the volcanic cone, each fissure measuring about 200 m in length, 1 km above sea level and 2 km from the village of El Paraèso which was rapidly evacuated without reaching the residents.
The author informs that the eruption shows no signs of abating, and speaks of the social drama for the local population and compares saying that it is similar to Kilauea, and asks if interested parties, of course, are including financial and political interests, if in the long term will it be possible to permanently reduce the risk associated with urban development on the flanks of the Cumbre Vieja?
This is the important social fact, preventing deaths as happened recently with the eruption of the Semeru Volcano in Indonesia where 14 deaths initials (today it rose to 34), the article was prophetic in this regard, since it was published days before this eruption, yes extraordinary things are possible and even even supernatural, but who has the authority to assert them? it is necessary to avoid fake news and a climate of terror that contributes nothing, but caution, as is the case with the Pandemic, is necessary and prudent.
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New Pandemic and Community
06
Dec
Even in the case of the same virus, it is a new pandemic, the new 
variant called omega by the WHO has to circumvent vaccines, we knew this already from other infectious diseases, if not eradicated the disease can return and in this case the variants manifest increasingly complex a new of infection spreads.
Many activists, scientists and also the WHO defended that a more equitable distribution of vaccines around the world would help combat covid 19, so the third dose (necessary, but in another step) was taken from vaccines that could be donated to poorer countries , like most African countries, the sociologist Mbembe’s Necropolitics from Cameroon reminds us of this, choosing who should die, but in this case it implies a global Necropolitics, as without a coimmunity the Pandemic returns.
The word coimmunity coined by Sloterdijk was thought in a broader sense, long before the pandemic, it makes sense now that we look at a global problem.
The good news is that even though it can infect people who have already been vaccinated, the infection is less serious if already vaccinated, according to Brazilian geneticist Salmo Raskin, director of the Genetika Laboratory in Paraná, it was already clear that the variant was not subject to initial infection, both infected. as vaccinated they are not immune to this omega strain.
The number of infections grows in Europe, according to data from Reuters, every three days there is a million new cases being registered, which in total since the beginning of the pandemic has surpassed 75 million infected, the number of deaths is also growing: Italy registered 43 deaths, the numerous countries that continue to fall are Russia and Ukraine, but it is noteworthy that they were the first to grow in infections and the numbers are still high.
Even so, there are protests against new restrictions measures due to the new wave, Germany had a demonstration this weekend.
The problem in Europe is not yet the omega variant, but the low rate of vaccination, called vaccine hesitation, and they still say it is a global phenomenon, however in many countries vaccination is progressing, in Brazil we are already close to 80% vaccinated although it does not give immunity to the omega variant, it reduces its lethality.
In Brazil, several year-end festivities have been canceled, and protective measures must be taken urgently.
History, the great clearing and parousia
03
Dec
Christmas is near and the birth of Jesus is a historical fact because
the Census ordered by the emperor of Rome Caesar Augustus, regarding the date there is controversy for it would be between 4-5 BC, when Quininus was Governor of Syria as described in the Bible (Lc 2.2), but it is certain that the census was carried out and this was precisely the reason why Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem, where the prophecy said that from there the savior would be born, and thus he “was numbered among men”.
History is also punctuated by divine interventions, in the decadence of Rome the monasteries were born, where the culinary culture, the first guilds and offices and also an earlier stage of printed writing is carried out, through the copyists, the first schools and later the first universities, with a strong theological influence as it could not be otherwise, but this is all history, also in the renaissance art and culture had a strong influence (theological).
We enter modernity, the work that we read punctually in this week’s posts “all in the same boat” by Sloterdijk, mentions an important fact, in addition to citing the classic work of the Decamerão by Boccaccio as “small community in the midst of the big disaster” ( Sloterdijk, 1999, p. 75), makes an analysis of the Black Death (which happened in the 130’s) and which devastated Europe with more than 100 million people dead when the population was much smaller than today, and its political influence.
In a footnote he cites the work of Henrik Siewierki (translated by Estação Liberdade in 2001) “A mass for the city of Arras” where he analyzes the psychological and political consequences of the plague, also the psychologist Franz Renggli, in his book Self-destruction by abandonment , developed the hypothesis of the influence on modernity of the plague, and also of the degradation of the mother-child relationship that would have caused a kind of immunological, collective and psychosomatic weakness that favored the virus of that plague.
All this analysis is interesting in the midst of the Pandemic’s return to Europe, while it is undoubtedly a scourge, it can fuel a new clearing on our community, that is, the idea of a mutual and solidary defense in view of a catastrophe even greater than the one we’ve already encountered.
All this analysis is interesting in the midst of the Pandemic’s return to Europe, while it is undoubtedly a scourge, it can fuel a new clearing on our coimmunity (category of Sloterdijk), that is, the idea of a mutual and solidary defense in view of a catastrophe even greater than we have already encountered.
It serves to “make the paths smooth”, as the biblical reading says when John, the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, announced in the desert using the words of the prophet Isaiah: “this is the voice of the one who cries out in the desert: ‘prepare the way of the Lord , make your paths straight’” (Lk 3,4) and it seems favorable to our time of scourge and desert.
It is important to remember that the first two weeks of Christmas celebrate not the coming of Jesus in Bethlehem, but the Parusia, that is, the preparation for his second coming.
Cultural diversity and hopes
02
Dec
In his book “In the same boat: essays on hyperpolitics” Peter Sloterdijk
points out that: “historical appearance teaches every observer that human groups in pioneer regions, during the last three or four thousand years, must have been able to sail on their old rafts of such that groupings of rafts could emerge in great style” (Sloterdijk, 1999, p. 73), which means that old cultural habits resist time, even though I consider “mentally poor and yet significant the term ‘culture’” . (idem).
It emphasizes that the decay of superstructures “reveals that they have almost nothing to give to individuals in their efforts to continue life” (Sloterdijk, 1999, p. 74), and more than that, it can be recognized that “as soon as the opus decays commune, people can only regenerate as smaller units” (idem).
Thus, it is in these smaller units that a new opus commune can be regenerated and elaborated, taking up the Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio where there is the survival of the small community in the face of the “large disaster”, recalling the period of the plague that can be a parallel with the In the current pandemic, there the Fiorentinos “no longer know whether to fear contamination or looting or hunger any longer, they fall into a disorientation equivalent to paralysis” (Sloterdijk, 1999, p. 75), the first version of “in the same boat ” is from 1993.
In a period that followed the Babylonian, Egyptian, Syrian and Persian empires, it was in the small Greek communities that the idea of city-state polis was born and that reached the modern republic, it was the Fiorentine Renaissance that an artistic-cultural revolution was born that led the human spirit the first great navigations and the expansion of mercantilism, and it was from Franco-German rationalism that the bourgeois liberal revolution was born and today where are these small groups capable of rescuing civilization?
There are new cosmovisions that are reborn (they seek their first cultural forms) in Africa such as the philosopher Achiles Mbembé and his necropolitics, a reaction to the power to dictate who can live and who can die, in Latin America the Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano, the philosopher, psychiatrist and essayist Frantz Fanon, born in the French Antilles.
The central problem of these thoughts is decoloniality, that is, the idea that modernity and its political project made use of colonization and there will be no significant changes in the superstructures of power if this way of thinking is not subjected to criticism and the unmasking of its objectives .
That’s where hopes can be born, a reconfiguration of the globe where peoples have the right to their freedom, their cultural and social expression, with a dignified life.
New variant and concern in Europe
29
Nov
The new variant of the covid-19 virus, called omicron by the
WHO, is already present on three continents and the trend is to reach everyone in Brazil, both the director-president of the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa, Brazil), Antonio Barra Torres, and the director of the Butantan Institute state that it is inevitable that it will arrive in the country.
The variant is the B.1.1.529 strain and was identified for the first time in South Africa on November 9, according to WHO information, where 100 cases of the variant were identified, especially in the populous province of Gauteng, but it has already spread. by Botswana, eSwatini (former Swaziland), Lesotho, Namibia and Zimbabwe, countries that Brazil closed the border.
In Brazil, a passenger on a flight that passed through South Africa tested positive last Saturday 11/27 and disembarked in Guarulhos (SP), the other passengers are also being monitored, it is still not possible to identify whether the contagion was due to the new strain.
What is known for now is that the variant can affect contagion and lethality rates, but the genetic sequencing may still take a few more days to complete, director Tulio de Oliveira of the Center for Epidemic Responses and Innovations at the University of KwaZulu -Natal, stated that this variant is “an unusual constellation of mutations”, while the delta variant had only two mutations, for example, in relation to the original coronavirus strain.
Meanwhile, the number of deaths is growing again in Europe (see graph), the average of deaths reached the highest level since February 2021, when the continent started to recover, for every million inhabitants the rate is 5.2 daily deaths on average from the new coronavirus in the last 7 days.
With the new strain and variants it is necessary to resume care, wait for studies on the strain and the effectiveness of vaccines, Pfizer has already announced that it must have changes to ensure immunity.
We reached 70% of the complete vaccination in Brazil, but with the new strain it is not possible to assert total immunity.
Note: Today (29/11) Australia has suspended the reopening and Japan has closed its borders.
The Civilization Crisis
23
Nov
It is not just an idea of the apocalyptic, the pessimistic and the tragedies, dark spirits who do not really reflect on reality, it is those who think humanism, who look to a polarized, fragile and powerless life in the face of a pandemic (see Europa in the previous post) is the crisis of fragility that does not see itself as fragile.
Arrogants, pseudo-sages, and pseudo-prophets are on call, but even an optimist like Edgar Morin bends over when he sees a system that cannot deal with its fundamental problems, it disintegrates, thus began his recent lecture on the metamorphosis of humanity, he told the event : “he becomes even more barbaric”, but remember that this is not the first and probably not the last metamorphosis of humanity, we were at the origin (he said for over 100,000 years) hunters and gatherers.
There was no army, no state or classes, but little by little some groups wanted to dominate others, this happened in India, China and the Middle East, in the Andes where an Inca Empire was organized and in Mexico (where he gave the lecture).
These societies have metamorphosed for better or worse, he has not made a statement about this, but he thinks that a metamorphosis over our nation-states is possible.
It states that it is necessary to have hope, but hope is not certainty, the hope that in the past was a belief now, but if hope exists it is the necessary leaven for great transformations, and it is understood that this is the moment we are living this reality, in a postmodern or post-postmodern world, there is a transformation.
It remains for us to know which one leads us to destruction, and which one is truly the bearer of hope, it doesn’t give great tips, but let’s do an exercise.
The first great destruction is war, with the arsenal of ultra powerful weapons, even interplanetary, there are several objects around the planet, it is necessary to defend peace with the same force that we defend justice, a war would now be a catastrophe.
The second major destruction is social imbalance, insecurity and the lack of a sustainable plan for the use of natural resources, the large meetings only discuss the issue of pollution and deforestation in some regions of the planet, when they should discuss the planet as a All in all, nature shows signs of exhaustion and a greater imbalance in natural forces, of planetary proportions, is expected.
As Edgar Morin says, it is necessary to have hope, we have already gone through other stages of the civilizing process through similar situations, of course the proportion is now planetary.
Edgar Morin – Do esgotamento à metamorfose dos sistemas – YouTube
The truth among men
19
Nov
Gadamer establishes the need for co-reference for the construction 
of truth among men, the philosopher Socrates also said that the truth is not with men, but among men, so every self-referential discourse, even that appropriated by a group no longer has a truth growing and becomes just rhetoric.
Emmanuel Lévinas (1906-1995) developed the aspect of human finitude, as that which gives a provisional totality, in his book Totalidade e Infinito where he discusses the theme of alterity, with a central issue that is not being able to objectify the Other , and it is not about subjectivity, but the possibility of thinking of the Other in its absolute Otherness, in other words, as a totally other.
His book cannot be understood without an analysis focused on Husserl and Heidegger because of its phenomenological option in which it is affiliated, thus developing in this first chapter the category of alternation, while the second will deal with interiority, there appear notions of categories such as: jouissance , economy, home, ownership, work and the feminine is a topic that is so current in the question of gender and reflects the relationship of the Self with the real, enabling the building of a being at the same time separate and open to the outside.
Thus, the third chapter relates to the exteriority that underlies an ethics proposed by Lévinas, how an opening is given or built in Being, through the analysis of the categories of Infinity, Face and Exteriority, they are fundamental for the understanding of the Levinasian universe. .
The problem of human finitude in the aspect of truth can refer to a transcendence different from the idealist proposal, where the imperative category is linked to the concept of subjectivity: “acts in such a way that it is a model for others”, thus it is possible to develop in a personal universe an ethics, while for Lévinas, as it is for Gadamer and it was for Socrates, truth can only exist in a process of dialog with the Other and with the outside, every closure is self-referential.
Thus the “Other remains infinitely transcendent, infinitely strange, but his face, where his epiphany takes place and which appeals to me, breaks with the world that may be common to us and whose potentialities are inscribed in our nature and which we also develop in our existence” (Lévinas, 2008), here an epiphany that is only human.
We approach the Christmas feasts, in the Christian liturgy it is the feast of the divine epiphany, the divine manifestation to the peoples, for many only the feast of the wise men or the baptism of Jesus, but for those who think that the truth is “among men”, the presence of God with Us (Emmanuel) happens from the birth of the God-child.
In the biblical text (Jn 18: 37), when asked by Pilate if Jesus was the king of the Jews, he replied: “You say: I am king. I was born and came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice”, thus this truth among men is also established for Christian culture as the incarnate word.
Truth and finities´s humans
18
Nov
Not only did Hans Georg Gadamer write about the truth regarding
Human finitude, Emmanuel Lévinas also developed the theme.
In Gadamer, the conclusion about the truth of human experience is the awareness of its finitude, that is, it is knowing your own limits, knowing that you are not lord of time and the future, nowadays that you are not lord of nature and its behavior , the great Enlightenment ideal, and so it has its limits and its plans are insecure.
Thus, in Gadamer, the issue of rhetoric and discourse is not exactly an issue and the question is not really called into question, to be able to question it is necessary to really want to know the truth and it may be outside the limits of the questioner, says in your text:
“To ask, you have to want to know, that is, to know that you don’t know. And in the exchange of questions and answers, of knowing and not knowing, described by Plato as a comedy, one ends up recognizing that for all knowledge and discourse in which one wants to know the content of things, the question takes precedence. A conversation that wants to explain something needs to break these things through with a question” (GADAMER, 2008, p. 474).
Thus, it will be inscribed beyond prejudice, and in the constitution of new horizons, thus understanding the text or a fragment of the past, for Gadamer is to understand it from the issue that should be seen as a process of continuous fusion or broadening of horizons through which the interpreter participates with others in the long and arduous path of meaning, he goes beyond the romantic and historical Enlightenment point of view, which is unacceptable: the symbolic and plural language, characteristic of the narrativity of things.
But what does this mean? what this means for the philosophical hermeneutics that recognizes human finitude, there is no immediate possibility of a coincidence with the real, as every human understanding is linguistically mediated as every language is, in the Aristotelian view, a hermenia (interpreter) originating from the real and this it can be extended to cultures, to peoples, and especially to native peoples, primary sources of discourse and their own language.
As man is finite, only in language can his fundamental dialogical power reach what Western philosophy calls objectivity (proper ideality), but it must go beyond the point of view of the anonymous transcendental subject (idealist subjectivity) to reach the dimension of co. -reference of concrete men, of others.
Concreteness is thus the word that decenters and challenges, places what is said in otherness, and its perspective of tracing a fusion of new horizons does not end.
GADAMER, H.G. Truth and Method I. Fundamental features of a philosophical hermeneutics. 10th ed. Petrópolis, Brazil: Vozes, 2008
