Systems Theory (or Theorie) or General Systems Theory or Systemics is an interdisciplinary field which studies Systems as a whole. Systems Theory was founded by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, William Ross Ashby and others between the 1940s and the 1970s with focus on Physics, Biology, and Engineering, and it later grew with connections into Philosophy, Sociology, and Economics, as developed by Fritjof Capra and others, as...

Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 - 21 September 1860, and pronounced: “Showpenhower”) was a Dutch-German (Polish-born, German-raised) philosopher best known for his 1818 masterpiece, The World as Will and Representation (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, sometimes translated as The World as Will and Idea, and expanded in 1844), which incorporated...

African Philosophy is the study of the Human Experience, Reality, and Knowledge from the traditional cultures of Sub-Saharan Africa. Modern Northern Africa by contrast is too strongly influenced by the overlapping Middle-Eastern Religions to be included here as Philosophy. In traditional African Philosophy,...

Semiotics is a broad field closely related to Logic, Linguistics, and the Philosophy of Language which is the study of activity and processes involving Signs as Communications with Meanings. The term “Semiosis” was introduced by Charles Sanders Peirce in a Theory of Sign Relations which described a logical process of...

The Creative Commons (CC, at CreativeCommons.org) is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others legally to build upon and share. The organization has released a number of easy to understand Creative Commons Licenses using simple graphics and labels defining or...

Friedrich Nietzsche (15 October 1844 - 25 August 1900, and pronounced: “NeeShuh”) was a Prussian (German) philosopher whose work encompassed Poetry, cultural criticism, philosophical essays, and aphorisms. Including strong elements of Philology, irony and insult, pointed criticisms of Truth and religious pseudo-morality, and...

MariaDB is a community-developed, commercially supported fork of the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), intended to remain free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License. Development is led by some of the original developers of MySQL, who forked it due to concerns over its acquisition by Oracle Corporation in 2009. MariaDB is intended to maintain high compatibility with MySQL, with...

Dynamism is term of Philosophy and Science coined by Gottfried Leibniz and developed into a full system of Reality and Cosmology. Dynamism describes that what exists are simple Elements, or for Leibniz, “Monads”, groups of Essences which have are Forces. Interactions between...

The Philosophy of Language is a specialization of Epistemology, which is a major branch of Philosophy. The Philosophy of Language is about understanding how Language relates to the Mind and Society. How the source and structure of Language affects or influences our thinking, and how we use Language to control and interact...

PHP (PHP Hypertext Preprocessor) is a programming language originally designed for producing dynamic web pages. PHP is used mainly in server-side scripting, but can be used from a command line interface or in standalone GUI applications. The main implementation is produced by “The PHP Group” and released under the PHP License. It is considered to be free software and is available in most distributions. PHP is generally...

The Philosophy of History is an area of Philosophy concerning any significance of “Human History”, and is speculative about Teleological Ends to our historical development. We should not confuse the “Philosophy of History” with the storied but less confusing “History of Philosophy”, which is the study of the development of...

Baruch Benedict de Spinoza (24 Nov 1632 - 21 Feb 1677) was a Dutch philosopher from a Portuguese Jewish family, whose controversial metaphysical ideas led to cherem (or removal) against him from Jewish Society, and his works were banned by the Vatican. Despite his considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work...

The Philosophy of Logic is a branch of Philosophy which deals with the scope and nature of Logic, and investigates philosophical problems raised by Logic, such as presuppositions often implicitly at work in theories and applications. It involves questions about how Logic is defined and how different logical systems are connected to each other, as well as...

PseudoPhilosophy is any idea or system that masquerades itself as Philosophy while significantly failing to meet even basic intellectual standards. The term is frequently pejorative, and most applications of it are quite contentious. The term bears the same relationship to Philosophy that PseudoScience bears to Science, or Anti-Matter to Matter. PseudoPhilosophy is simply “Bullshit”, in the common vernacular. The...

Mark Ray Martin Parrott is an American philosopher, writer, musician, photographer, designer, and programmer, known for his early adoption of independent, small press publishing, and as developer and editor of GetWiki, a Wiki website focusing on Philosophy and other subjects. M.R.M. Parrott's books include the Timeless (M.R.M...

The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH) is a scientific proposal based on numerous findings that the onset of the “Younger Dryas” (YD) period at the end of the last glacial era around 12,800 years ago was the result of a complex set of cosmic and oceanic events. YDIH is an additional explanation for the hypothesis that YD was caused by “shutdown” of ocean currents, such as the “North Atlantic Conveyor”,...

GetWiki and the GNU FDL Content on GetWiki which has been imported, adapted, and corrected from Wikinfo or Pseudopedia is licensed under the GNU FDL and/or CCL as applicable. Note that Wikinfo also imported content from Pseudopedia, but is no longer the same site. All GetWiki content (imported or not) is licensed under the Creative Commons...

All Rights Reserved © 1998-1999, 2001-2004 M.R.M. Parrott'Against Time' is a condensed version of the refutation of Time/Spacetime/Space discussed in Dynamism: Volume I: Force, as well as The Pure Critique of Reason, by M.R.M. Parrott. Against Time -We all obviously experience what we feel is Time itself, the...

Eastern Philosophy is a diverse body of approaches to life and philosophizing, particularly centered on understanding the process of the Universe and its endless becoming. In Western Culture, the term “Eastern Philosophy” refers very broadly to the various philosophies of “the East”, namely Asia, including China, India, Japan, Korea, Tibet, and other nations. ...

Ontology is the most fundamental branch of Metaphysics, which is the most fundamental branch of Philosophy. The study of Being and Existence, as well as the basic Categories of Things in general, Ontology is really the study of Reality, and supports all of Science today. A Being...

A Matrix Philosophy All Rights Reserved © 2003, 2008, 2024 M.R.M. ParrottThe text of this article includes versions which appeared on rimric folio in 2003, and from multiple authors in public newsgroups in 1999, and has been protected on GetWiki on behalf of the authors, republished here with permission and/or fair use. All rights...

Cybernetics is the study of Communication and Control Theory, typically involving regulatory feedback in living Organisms, Machines, Organizations, and their combinations. For example, it includes the study of computer-controlled Machines such as Automata and Robots, along with the study of sociotechnical systems. The term Cybernetics stems from the Ancient Greek Κυβερνήτης (kybernetes, steersman, governor,...

Ethics (from the Ancient Greek ethikos, ἠθικός, or “Theory of Living”, ethos, ἦθος, or “Habit”, as well as arete, ἀρετή, “Excellence” and “Virtue”) is a major branch of Philosophy as well as Culture, and is the study of the value of Good and Morality in ourselves and society. The very concept of Ethics, sometimes specialized academically as...

Paul-Michel Foucault (15 October 1926 - 25 June 1984, and pronounced: “Fookoh”) was a French philosopher who was also a professor, literary critic, and political activist. Foucault's theories primarily addressed the relationships between social and political Power as contrasted with traditional studies of Knowledge, Existence, or Liberty,...

All Rights Reserved © 2004 & 2007 M.R.M. ParrottThis article is updated from a version which appeared on rimric folio in 2004, and has been protected on GetWiki on behalf of the author, republished here with permission. All rights reserved. “Participating in a Wiki brings many of the same feelings of freedom as having one's own website or participating in a discussion forum, but there...