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Early Essays

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Now showing 1 - 12 of 12
  • ItemOpen Access
    On the Possible Existence of Closed Disentropic Systems
    (1968) Cameron, Evan Wm.
    I construe the question "Is the existence of a closed physical system whose entropy is decreasing possible?" as equivalent to the question "Is it possible for an entropically increasing physical system to be coupled, as measurer to measured, with an entropically decreasing physical system such that the entropy of the resulting system decreases?". Norbert Wiener's suggestion that the answer is negative, implying that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is inviolable, is then shown to be incorrect by the construction of a counter-example achieved thru a slight modification of a machine first proposed and rejected by Leo Szilard. I then show, however, through a proof from n-dimensional geometry, that physical analogies to the counter-example are only possible on the microscopic level (that is, with systems involving few molecules). Though one can never envisage a macroscopic system having decreasing entropy, therefore, the possible existence of such systems on the microscopic level is mathematically affirmed.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Kant and the Ontological Argument
    (1965) Cameron, Evan Wm.
    An essay reaffirming Kant's criticism of the ontological argument for the existence of God – a conjecture conceived in the 11th century by Anselm of Canterbury and defended in the mid-20th century by Charles Hartshorne and Norman Malcolm.
  • ItemOpen Access
    God, Kant and the Transcendental Object: an Investigation into the Kantian Critique of the Ontological Argument
    (1965) Cameron, Evan Wm.
    An address to the 4th International Kant Congress, Mainz, Germany, 8 April 1974 on the nature and consequences of Kant's remarks within his Critique of Pure Reason on the notions of 'God' and the 'Transcendental Object', a text of which was published later the same year within the proceedings of the Congress as pages 347-355 of the Akten des 4 International Kant Kongresses, Mainz 6 10 April 1974, Teil II.1 (Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter, 1974).
  • ItemOpen Access
    A Prescriptive Criterion for Distinguishing Analytic from Synthetic Judgments
    (1964) Cameron, Evan Wm.
    An essay confirming, in defiance of an opinion shared by many philosophers after Quine, that we may indeed, as Kant suggested, distinguish analytic from synthetic judgments but only by attending to how students could be taught how to use them (and the words and phrases of which they consist), and therewith how to use them differently, rather than by attempting to describe how differently they appear.
  • ItemOpen Access
    On the Inductive Structure of Works of Art (Summary)
    (1970) Cameron, Evan Wm.
    A summary of the discussion and conclusions of the author's dissertation 'On the Inductive Structure of Works of Art', submitted and defended in May of 1970, comprising a revision of Chapter II amended at beginning and end to encompass material from the Introduction and Conclusion of the thesis, designed to enable readers to grasp the nature and consequences of its core conjecture – that works of art must be structured to be playable as inductive games if they are to be experienced powerfully – without attending to the logical and mathematical enquiries of Chapter I.
  • ItemOpen Access
    On the Inductive Structure of Works of Art (Part II)
    (1970) Cameron, Evan Wm.
    Part II (of the two parts) of the dissertation of May 1970 within which author unpacks and defends the conjecture that works of art must be structured to be playable as inductive games if they are to be experienced powerfully – the core construal upon which his subsequent discussions of the nature, scope and limits of screenwriting were to rest. [Part II encompasses Chapter II of the thesis wherein the root structures of the narrative and non-narrative arts are examined, confirming the suggestion, followed by its Conclusion and Bibliography.]
  • ItemOpen Access
    On the Inductive Structure of Works of Art (Part I)
    (1970) Cameron, Evan Wm.
    Part I (of two parts) of the dissertation of May 1970 within which author unpacks and defends the conjecture that works of art must be structured to be playable as inductive games if they are to be experienced powerfully – the core construal upon which his subsequent discussions of the nature, scope and limits of screenwriting were to rest. [Part I encompasses the Abstract and Preface of the thesis, and Chapter I with appendices – a formal excursion into pertinent aspects of probability theory and inductive logic.]
  • ItemOpen Access
    On the Inductive Structure of Works of Art (Oral Examination Abstract)
    (1970) Cameron, Evan Wm.
    Extended abstract of the author's dissertation 'On the Inductive Structure of Works of Art', summarising its logical and artistic enquiries, as used by the members of the examining committee of the Graduate School of Boston University before whom it was defended in May of 1970.
  • ItemOpen Access
    IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT and STAGECOACH
    (1965) Cameron, Evan Wm.
    A survey and assessment of the reception and influence of IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934) and STAGECOACH (1939).
  • ItemOpen Access
    Francis Bacon and the Pragmatic Theory of Forms
    (1964) Cameron, Evan Wm.
    A summary of Francis Bacon's ontology of nature followed by a pragmatic reading of his theory of 'Forms', concluding that Bacon construed the mark of a true form to be its usefulness (or, as he put it when insisting upon the necessity of usefulness to the very being of a form, 'These two directions, the one active and the other contemplative, are one and the same thing; and what in operation is most useful, that in knowledge is most true.').
  • ItemOpen Access
    On Mathematics, Music and Film
    (1968) Cameron, Evan Wm.
    An early attempt by the author to comprehend the nature, scope and limits of the constraints on the possibilities of 'colour music'. (Thesis submitted in the Spring of 1968 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of M.S. in Film, Graduate Programme in Film, Boston University.)
  • ItemOpen Access
    Randomness and Mr. Goodman's Paradox
    (1967) Cameron, Evan Wm.
    Viable inductions can only be drawn from unbiased samples. A predicate like Nelson Goodman's 'Grue', therefore, cannot be used within inductions, for the temporal nature of its definition ensures that any sampling of objects that we could encounter would be biased with respect to it. The supposed 'grue paradox' is therefore neither paradoxical nor relevant to how we make viable inductions.