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From the United States, the degree spread to Canada in 1900, and then to the United Kingdom in 1917. This displaced the existing Doctor of Philosophy degree in some universities; for instance, the DPhil (higher doctorate in the faculty of philosophy) at the University of St Andrews was discontinued and replaced with the Ph.D., (research doctorate). Oxford retained the DPhil abbreviation for their research degrees. Some newer UK universities, for example Buckingham (est. 1976), Sussex (est. 1961), and, until a few years ago, York (est. 1963), chose to adopt the DPhil, as did some universities in New Zealand.
In countries requiring coursework, there is usually a prescribed minimum amount of study — typically two to three years full time, or a set number of credit hours — which must take place before submission of a thesis. This requirement is usually waived for those submitting a portfolio of peer-reviewed published work. The candidate may also be required to successfully complete a certain number of additional, advanced courses relevant to his or her area of specialization.
A candidate must submit a thesis or dissertation consisting of a suitable body of original academic research, which is in principle worthy of publication in a peer-refereed context. In many countries a candidate must defend this work before a panel of expert examiners appointed by the university; in other countries, the dissertation is examined by a panel of expert examiners who stipulate whether the dissertation is in principle passable and the issues that need to be addressed before the dissertation can be passed.
Universities in the non–English-speaking world have begun adopting similar standards to those of the Anglophone PhD degree for their research doctorates (see the Bologna process).
A PhD student or candidate (abbreviated to PhDc) is conventionally required to study on campus under close supervision. With the popularity of distance education and e-learning technologies, some universities now accept students enrolled into a distance education part-time mode.
Doctoral programs in Germany generally take one to four years – usually three, up to five in Engineering – to complete, strongly depending on the subject. There are usually no formal classes or lectures to attend, and the doctoral candidate (Doktorand/-in) mainly conducts independent research under the tutelage of a single professor or advisory committee. This is a considerable difference from the situation in many other countries (such as the U. S.), where doctoral candidates are often referred to as PhD "students" and have some formal curriculum. For German doctoral candidates, this rather inaccurate term should be avoided, because they do not take formal courses, but are often considered a full member of staff.
A good deal of doctoral candidates work as teaching or research assistants, and are paid a reasonably competitive salary. However, external funding by research organisations and foundations is also common. Furthermore, many universities have established research-intensive Graduiertenkollegs, which are graduate schools that provide funding for doctoral theses.
In the former Soviet Union, the Doctor of Sciences is the higher of two sequential post-graduate degrees, with Candidate of Sciences (Russian - кандидат наук) being universally accepted as the equivalent of the PhD, while the Doctorate is a (Full) Professors' or Academicians' separate and subsequent degree, indicating that the holder is a distinguished, honoured, and outstanding member of the scientific community. It is rarely awarded to those younger than late middle age or lacking in achievement and is a symbol of success in an academic career.
Doctorate courses are open, without age or citizenship limits, to all those who already hold a "laurea magistrale" (master degree) or similar academic title awarded abroad which has been recognised as equivalent to an Italian degree by the Committee responsible for the entrance examinations.
The number of places on offer each year and details of the entrance examinations are set out in the examination announcement.
All doctoral programs are of a research nature. A minimum of 5 years of study are required, divided into 2 stages:
# A 3-year-long period of studies, which concludes with a public dissertation presented to a panel of 3 Professors. If the projects receives approval from the university, he/she will receive a "Diploma de Estudios Avanzados" (part qualified doctor). # A 2-year (or longer) period of research. Extensions may be requested for up to 10 years. The student must write his thesis presenting a new discovery or original contribution to Science. If approved by his "thesis director", the study will be presented to a panel of 5 distinguished scholars. Any Doctor attending the public presentations is allowed to challenge the candidate with questions on his research. If approved, he will receive the doctorate. Four marks can be granted (Unsatisfactory, Pass, "Cum laude", and "Summa cum laude"). Those Doctors granted their degree "Summa Cum Laude" are allowed to apply for an "Extraordinary Award".
A Doctor Degree is required to apply to a teaching position at the University.
The social standing of Doctors in Spain is evidenced by the fact that only PhD holders, Grandees and Dukes can take seat and cover their heads in the presence of the King. All Doctor Degree holders are reciprocally recognized as equivalent in Germany and Spain ("Bonn Agreement of November 14, 1994").
In the case of the University of Oxford, for example, "The one essential condition of being accepted...is evidence of previous academic excellence, and of future potential." Commonly, students are first accepted on to an MPhil programme and may transfer to PhD regulations upon satisfactory progress and is referred to as APG (Advanced Postgraduate) status. This is typically done after one or two years, and the research work done can potentially count towards the PhD degree. If a student fails to make satisfactory progress, he or she may be offered the opportunity to write up and submit for an MPhil degree.
In addition, PhD students from countries outside the EU/EFTA area are required to comply with the Academic Technology Approval Scheme (ATAS), which involves undergoing a security clearance process with the Foreign Office for certain courses in medicine, mathematics and many natural, engineering and material sciences. This requirement was introduced in 2007 due to concerns about terrorism and weapons proliferation.
In UK an equivalent formation to doctorate is the NVQ 5 or QCF 8. http://www.ofqual.gov.uk/qualification-and-assessment-framework/89-articles/250-explaining-the-national-qualifications-framework
Since 2002, there has been a move by research councils to fund interdisciplinary doctoral training centres such as MOAC which concentrate on communication between traditional disciplines and an emphasis on transferable skills in addition to research training.
Many students who are not in receipt of external funding may choose to undertake the degree part time, thus reducing the tuition fees, as well as creating free time in which to earn money for subsistence.
Students may also take part in tutoring, work as research assistants, or (occasionally) deliver lectures, at a rate of typically £25–30 per hour, either to supplement existing low income or as a sole means of funding.
Recent years have seen the introduction of professional doctorates, which are the same level as PhDs but more specific in their field. These tend not to be solely academic, but combine academic research, a taught component and a professional qualification. These are most notably in the fields of engineering (Eng.D.), education (Ed.D.), occupational psychology (D.Occ Psych.) clinical psychology (D.Clin.Psych.), public administration (D.P.A.), business administration (D.B.A.), and music (D.M.A.). These typically have a more formal taught component consisting of smaller research projects, as well as a 40,000-60,000 word thesis component, which collectively is equivalent to that of a PhD degree.
American students typically undergo a series of three phases in the course of their work toward the PhD degree. The first phase consists of coursework in the student's field of study and requires one to three years to complete. This often is followed by a preliminary, a comprehensive examination, or a series of cumulative examinations where the emphasis is on breadth rather than depth of knowledge. The student is often later required to pass oral and written examinations in the field of specialization within the discipline, and here, depth is emphasized. Some PhD programs require the candidate to successfully complete requirements in pedagogy (taking courses on higher level teaching and teaching undergraduate courses) or applied science (e.g., clinical practica and predoctoral clinical internship in PhD programs in clinical or counseling psychology).
Another two to four years are usually required for the composition of a substantial and original contribution to human knowledge in the form of a written dissertation, which in the social sciences and humanities typically ranges from 50 to 450 pages in length. In many cases, depending on the discipline, a dissertation consists of (i) a comprehensive literature review, (ii) an outline of methodology, and (iii) several chapters of scientific, social, historical, philosophical, or literary analysis. Typically, upon completion, the candidate undergoes an oral examination, sometimes public, by his or her supervisory committee with expertise in the given discipline.
As the PhD degree is often a preliminary step toward a career as a professor, throughout the whole period of study and dissertation research the student, depending on the university and degree, may be required or offered the opportunity to teach undergraduate and occasionally graduate courses in relevant subjects.
Some programs also include a Master of Philosophy degree as part of the PhD program. The MPhil, in those universities that offer it, is usually awarded after the appropriate MA or MS (as above) is awarded, and the degree candidate has completed all further requirements for the PhD degree (which may include additional language requirements, course credits, teaching experiences, and comprehensive exams) aside from the writing and defense of the dissertation itself. This formalizes the "all but dissertation" (ABD) status used informally by some students, and represents that the student has achieved a higher level of scholarship than the MA/MS would indicate - as such, the MPhil is sometimes a helpful credential for those applying for teaching or research posts while completing their dissertation work for the PhD degree itself.
PhDc is not to be confused with Candidate of Sciences, an academic degree that has been used in certain countries in place of PhD.
Vietnam is trying to improve its PhD training quality as well as simplifying the procedures required to obtain the degree.
Wisker (2005) has noticed how research into this field has distinguished between two models of supervision: The technical-rationality model of supervision, emphasising technique; The negotiated order model, being less mechanistic and emphasising fluid and dynamic change in the PhD process. These two models were first distinguished by Acker, Hill and Black (1994; cited in Wisker, 2005). Considerable literature exists on the expectations that supervisors may have of their students (Phillips & Pugh, 1987) and the expectations that students may have of their supervisors (Phillips & Pugh, 1987; Wilkinson, 2005) in the course of PhD supervision. Similar expectations are implied by the Quality Assurance Agency's Code for Supervision (Quality Assurance Agency, 1999; cited in Wilkinson, 2005).
Other Degrees:
PhD in popular culture:
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Name | John Hagelin |
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Birth date | June 09, 1954 |
Birth place | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
Death date | |
Resting place coordinates | |
Residence | Fairfield, Iowa, USA |
Known for | Three-time candidate for U.S. President, physicist, and administrator |
Education | Ph.D. Harvard University, 1981 |
Doctoral advisor | Howard Georgi |
Alma mater | Dartmouth College, Harvard University |
Employer | Maharishi University of Management, US Peace Government |
Occupation | Professor |
Title | Raja of Invincible America, President of the US Peace Government, and others |
Party | Natural Law Party |
Spouse | Margaret (1985–1993) divorced Kara Anastasio (2010) |
Awards | Kilby, Ig Nobel |
Website | http://www.hagelin.org |
John Hagelin (born June 9, 1954) is an American particle physicist, three-time candidate of the Natural Law Party for President of the United States (1992, 1996, and 2000), and the director of the Transcendental Meditation movement for the US.
Hagelin was a researcher at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), and is now Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy at Maharishi University of Management. He has conducted research into unified field theory and the Maharishi Effect.
Hagelin was appointed Raja of Invincible America by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and is also President of the US Peace Government. He is Executive Director of the International Center for Invincible Defense, Executive Director of the Global Financial Capital of New York, Executive Director of the Center for Leadership Performance, Director of the Board of Advisors for the David Lynch Foundation, Honorary Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Maharishi University of Management, and International Director of the Global Union of Scientists for Peace.
Hagelin later graduated from Taft and attended Dartmouth College on a scholarship. After his freshman year, a continued interest in Transcendental Meditation led him to Vittel, France, where he completed the studies necessary to become a qualified teacher of the Transcendental Meditation technique. While at Dartmouth, he earned an undergraduate degree in physics in three years with highest honors (summa cum laude). He also co-authored and published papers in physics research and won a fellowship to study physics at Harvard. While at Harvard, Hagelin worked under the noted physicists Howard Georgi and Sheldon Glashow, best known for their work in Grand Unification theory (GUT). He received a Master's degree from Harvard in 1976, and a Ph.D. in 1981.
Hagelin co-authored a 1983 paper entitled "Weak symmetry breaking by radiative corrections in broken supergravity", which is included in a list of the 103 articles in the physical sciences that were cited the most times during the years 1983 and 1984. A 1984 study titled "Supersymmetric relics from the big bang", had been cited over 500 times as of 2007.
Critics of Hagelin have included physicist Peter Woit and journalist Christopher Andersen. Peter Woit in his book, Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and The Search for Unity In Physical Law, precedes his critical remarks by acknowledging Hagelin as having published papers in prestigious journals that would eventually be cited in over a hundred other papers. Christopher Anderson wrote in a 1992 news article in Nature that Hagelin, co-developer of one of the "better-accepted" unified field theories known as the Flipped SU(5) model, "is by all accounts a gifted researcher well known and respected by his colleagues". These papers discuss the Vedic understanding of consciousness as a field and compares it with theories of the unified field derived by modern physics. Hagelin argues that these two fields have almost identical properties and quantitative structure, and he presents other theoretical and empirical arguments that the two fields are actually one and the same — specifically, that the experience of unity at the basis of the mind achieved during the meditative state is the subjective experience of the very same fundamental unity of existence revealed by unified field theories. In 1999, the study, which controlled for effects of temperature changes and showed a highly statistically significant drop in crime, was published in Social Indicators Research. During the eight weeks of the study, the overall level of violent crime (homicides, rapes, and assaults) decreased by 23%, with rapes declining by 58%. Homicides averaged 10 a week during the study—the same as in the weeks preceding and following the study. For most of the eight weeks of the study the homicide rate declined, but gang fighting resulted in ten murders in a 36 hour period. Robert L. Park, research professor and former chair of the Physics Department at the University of Maryland and well known skeptic of paranormal claims, dismissed the study as a "clinic in data manipulation" and accused Hagelin and his team of scientific misconduct. Maxwell Rainforth, Assistant Professor of Physiology and Health and Statistics at Maharishi University of Management and a coauthor of the Washington, D.C. study, characterized Park's criticisms of the study as "superficial, highly polemical" and "willfully misleading".
Hagelin's linkage of quantum mechanics and unified field theory with consciousness was critiqued by University of Iowa philosophy and sociology professors Evan Fales and Barry Markovsky in the journal Social Forces. They wrote that Hagelin's equating consciousness with the unified field relies on a similarity between quantum mechanical properties of fields and consciousness, and that his arguments rely on ambiguity and obscurity in characterizing these properties. They dismiss Hagelin's parallels between the Vedas and contemporary unified field theories as a reliance on ambiguity and vague analogy supported by constructing arbitrary similarities. David Orme-Johnson and Robert Oates, retired colleagues of Hagelin from MUM, replied to this critique in the Journal of Scientific Exploration and said, in part, that Fales' and Markovsky's accusation of "vagueness" and "ambiguity" on Hagelin's part are in themselves vague and ambiguous and that there is no standard against which they can be evaluated.
Hagelin ran for President again in the 2000 Presidential election, being nominated both by the NLP and by the Perot wing of the Reform Party, which disputed the nomination of Pat Buchanan. Hagelin's running mate in the 2000 election was Nat Goldhaber, an entrepreneur who, like Hagelin and Tompkins, was a practitioner of Transcendental Meditation. As part of the ruling, the Reform Party convention that nominated Hagelin was declared invalid. In spite of the ruling, Hagelin remained on several state ballots as the Reform Party nominee, due to the independent nature of various state affiliates. He also was the national nominee of the Natural Law Party, and in New York was the Independence Party nominee. and Politically Incorrect (2000), NBC's Meet the Press (2000), CNN's Larry King Live, PBS's News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Inside Politics, CNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, and C-SPAN's Washington Journal.
Hagelin's Presidential electoral results: 1992 - Ballot status in 32 states - 39,212 votes 1996 - Ballot status in 43 states - 113,659 votes
In the middle of the 2000 campaign, Hagelin said the party would have won if its principles reached the "marketplace of ideas" and are co-opted by the Democrats and Republicans.
In April 2004, the U.S. Natural Law Party officially disbanded its national organization, although a few state parties may still be active. In the 2004 primary elections, Hagelin and the Natural Law Party endorsed Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich.
In 2010, Hagelin married Kara Anastasio, the former vice-chair of the Natural Law Party of Ohio. According to their website, he has met with members of Congress and officials at the Department of State, and the Department of Defense on the issue of terrorism.
Hagelin helped to write a paragraph in Hillary Rodham Clinton's 10,000-page health proposal. He says that it was the only paragraph in the document that concerned health and preventive care.
In 1998, Hagelin gave testimony to the National Institutes of Health, DNA Advisory Committee on germ-line technologies, stating that recombinant DNA technology is inherently risky because of the high probability of unexpected side-effects.
Hagelin moderated a panel on stress at a June 3, 1999 Congressional Prevention Coalition caucus.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi appointed Hagelin as the "Raja of Invincible America" on November 19, 2007. Hagelin organized the Invincible America Assembly in Fairfield, Iowa which began in July 2006. The assembly consists of a group of individuals practicing the Transcendental Meditation and the TM-Sidhi techniques in a group, twice daily. Hagelin stated in a press release announcing the project that "for the United States, with a population of just over 300 million, the required number of peace-creating experts is 1,730". According to the Global Good News website "on 28 November 2006, the United States achieved invincibility and is stabilizing the number of Yogic Flyers—rising from 1,600 to 1,730—assembled at the Invincible America Assembly in Fairfield, Iowa". In addition, Hagelin's Institute for Science Technology and Public Policy web site says that the Invincible America Assembly in Iowa "is rising quickly toward its target of 2,500".
In July, 2007, Hagelin predicted that when the number of assembly participants reached 2,500, which he said would happen within a year, America would have a major drop in crime, and see the virtual elimination of all major social and political woes in the United States. Hagelin said that the Assembly was responsible for the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaching a record high of 14,022 earlier that month, and predicted that the Dow would top 17,000 within a year.
Category:1954 births Category:Dartmouth College alumni Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Ig Nobel Prize winners Category:Living people Category:Particle physicists Category:Politicians from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Category:Quantum mysticism Category:Transcendental Meditation practitioners Category:Transcendental Meditation researchers Category:United States presidential candidates, 1992 Category:United States presidential candidates, 1996 Category:United States presidential candidates, 2000 Category:Natural Law Party (United States) politicians
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Color | #B0C4DE |
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Name | John Grinder |
Birth date | Jan.10, 1940 |
Birth place | United States |
Death date | |
School tradition | Linguistics |
Main interests | Transformational grammar, NLP modeling, Cybernetic epistemology |
Spouse | Carmen Bostic St Clair |
Influences | Noam Chomsky, Bertrand Russell, George A. Miller, Gregory Bateson, Milton H. Erickson, Virginia Satir, Fritz Perls, Frank Farrelly, Paul Watzlawick, Alfred Korzybski, Hans Vaihinger |
Influenced | Richard Bandler, Stephen Gilligan, Robert Dilts, Brief therapy, Ericksonian hypnosis, Kevin Hogan |
Notable ideas | Neuro-linguistic programming, New Code of NLP |
Website |
John Grinder Ph.D. ( ; born Jan. 10, 1940) is an American linguist, author, management consultant, trainer and speaker. Grinder is credited with the co-creation with Richard Bandler of the field of Neuro-linguistic programming. He is co-director of Quantum Leap Inc., a management consulting firm founded by his partner Carmen Bostic St. Clair in 1987 (Grinder joined in 1989). Grinder and Bostic St. Clair also run workshops and seminars on NLP internationally.
In the early 1970s, Grinder worked in George A. Miller's laboratory at Rockefeller University. After receiving his Ph.D., Grinder took a full-time position as an assistant professor in the linguistics faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). He engaged in undergraduate and graduate teaching, and research. His research focused on Noam Chomsky's theories of transformational grammar specializing in syntax and deletion phenomena. He published several research papers with Paul Postal on the syntactical structures relating to "missing antecedents" or missing parasitic gaps for the pronoun. They argued that the syntactic structure of a deleted verb phrase (VP) is complete. Postal and Grinder's doctoral adviser at UCSC, Edward Klima, was involved in the early development of generative semantics.
Grinder co-authored, with Suzette Elgin, a linguistics text book titled A Guide to Transformational Grammar: History, Theory, Practice. In 2005, Grinder published Steps to an Ecology of Emergence with Tom Malloy and Carmen Bostic St Clair in the journal Cybernetics and Human Knowing.
In 1972 (during Grinder's stint at UCSC) Richard Bandler, an undergraduate student of psychology, approached him for assistance in modeling Gestalt therapy. Bandler had spent much time recording and editing recordings of Fritz Perls (founder of Gestalt therapy) and had learned Gestalt therapy implicitly. Starting with Fritz Perls, followed by a leading figure in family therapy Virginia Satir, and later the leading figure in hypnosis in psychiatry Milton Erickson, Grinder and Bandler modeled the various cognitive behavioral patterns of these therapists, which they published in The Structure of Magic Volumes I & II (1975, 1976), Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, Volumes I & II (1975, 1977) and Changing With Families (1976). This work formed the basis of the methodology that became the foundation of neuro-linguistic programming.
Bandler and Grinder began hosting seminars and practice groups. These served as a place for Bandler and Grinder to practice and test their newly-discovered patterns while allowing them to transfer the skills to the participants. Several books were published based on transcripts of their seminars including Frogs into Princes (1979). During this period, a creative group of students and psychotherapists formed around Grinder and Bandler, who made valuable contributions to NLP, including Robert Dilts, Leslie Cameron-Bandler, Judith DeLozier, Stephen Gilligan and David Gordon.
In the 1980s, Bandler, Grinder and their group of associates split acrimoniously, and stopped working together. Following this, many members of their group went out on their own and took NLP in their own directions. Some of Bandler and Grinder's books went out of print for a while due to legal problems between the co-authors. Structure I & II, and Patterns I & II - considered the foundation of the field - were later republished. Bandler attempted to claim legal ownership of the term Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP); however, it was eventually deemed to be a generic term, and could therefore not be trademarked. Grinder and Bandler settled their claims around 2001, clearing a platform for the future development of NLP as a legitimate field of endeavor.
The seminars were transcribed and published in 1987 as Turtles All the Way Down; Prerequisites to Personal Genius.
John Grinder and Carmen Bostic St Clair have further developed The New Code of NLP. (Bostic St Clair founded Quantum Leap Inc., a cultural-change consultancy firm.) Grinder and Bostic St Clair continue to present some public seminars on NLP internationally. In 2001, Grinder (with Bostic St Clair) published Whispering in the Wind with "[a] set of recommendations as to how specifically NLP can improve its practice and take its rightful place as a scientifically based endeavor with its precise focus on modeling of the extremes of human behavior: excellence and the high performers who actually do it". Grinder has since strongly encouraged the field to make a recommitment to what he considers the core activity of NLP: modeling.
Category:1940 births Category:Living people Category:American linguists Category:American psychology writers Category:American self-help writers Category:American social sciences writers Category:Neuro-Linguistic Programming writers Category:Syntacticians Category:University of California, Santa Cruz alumni Category:United States Army officers Category:Recipients of the Special Forces tab
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Name | Timothy Leary |
---|---|
Birth name | Timothy Francis Leary |
Birth date | October 22, 1920 |
Birth place | Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S. |
Death date | May 31, 1996 |
Death place | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Psychologist Author |
Employer | UC Berkeley Kaiser Family Foundation Harvard |
Known | Psychedelic therapy |
Spouse |
In 1940, Leary enrolled as a cadet in the United States Military Academy at West Point. In his first months he acquired numerous demerits for rule infractions and then got into serious trouble for a bout of drinking and failing to be forthright about it. For violating the Academy’s honor code, the Honor Committee asked him to resign. When he refused, he was "silenced," that is, shunned and ignored by his co-cadets as a tactic to pressure him to resign. Though acquitted by a court-martial, the silencing continued as well as an onslaught of demerits for minuscule infractions of the rules. When the treatment continued in his second year, his mother appealed to a family friend, U.S. Senator David I. Walsh, head of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, who conducted a personal investigation. Behind the scenes, the Honor Committee revised its position. The Honor Committee announced that it would abide by the court-martial verdict and then Leary resigned and received an honorable discharge. Almost fifty years later, Leary said that it was "the only fair trial I've had in a court of law".
Leary spent two years at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, transferred to University of Alabama where he received a bachelor's degree in psychology in 1943. His obituary in the New York Times said he "finally earned his bachelor's degree in the U. S. Army during World War II," The title of Leary's Ph.D. dissertation was "The Social Dimensions of Personality: Group Structure and Process." He became an assistant professor at Berkeley (1950–1955), director of psychiatric research at the Kaiser Family Foundation (1955–1958), and a lecturer in psychology at Harvard University (1959–1963). He was fired from Harvard for failing to conduct his scheduled class lectures,
Leary's early work in psychology expanded on the research of Harry Stack Sullivan and Karen Horney regarding the importance of interpersonal forces in mental health. Leary focused on how the interpersonal process might be used to diagnose disorders and patterns found in human personalities. He developed a complex and respected interpersonal circumplex model, published in The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality, which offered a means by which psychologists could use MMPI scores to determine a respondent's characteristic interpersonal modes of reaction.
Leary married Marianne Busch in 1945, who gave birth in 1947 to their first child, Susan, while he was working on his PhD at the University of California at Berkeley. Susan was followed two years later by a son, Jack. In 1952 the Leary family spent a year in Spain, subsisting on a research grant awarded to Leary. A Berkeley colleague of Leary’s, Marv Freedman, later recounted that “…Something had been stirred in him in terms of breaking out of being another cog in society…”.
In 1955, Leary's wife committed suicide, leaving him to raise their son and daughter alone.
Leary argued that psychedelic substances, used at proper dosages, in a stable set and setting could, under the guidance of psychologists, alter behavior in beneficial ways not easily attainable through regular therapy. Leary's research focused on treating alcoholism and reforming criminals. Many of Leary's research participants reported profound mystical and spiritual experiences, which they claim permanently altered their lives in a very positive manner. According to Leary's autobiography, Flashbacks, LSD was given to 300 professors, graduate students, writers and philosophers and 75 percent of the test subjects reported the experience as one of the most educational and revealing experiences of their lives.
The Concord Prison Experiment was designed to evaluate how the effects of psilocybin combined with psychotherapy would rehabilitate prisoners upon being released. After being guided through the psychedelic experience ('trips') by Leary and his associates, 36 prisoners allegedly repented and swore to give up future criminal activity. For prisoners in USA, the average recidivism rate is 60 percent; the recidivism rate of the subjects involved in Leary's project dropped to 20 percent. The Concord Prison experiment demonstrated that long-term reduction in overall criminal recidivism rates could be achieved with a combination of psilocybin-assisted group psychotherapy (inside the prison) along with a comprehensive post-release follow-up support program modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous. The study concluded that psilocybin-assisted group psychotherapy and a post-release program would significantly reduce recidivism rates. No further study or experiment took place as psilocybin was declared to be a dangerous substance with no medical benefits by the Drug Enforcement Agency of USA.
Leary and Alpert founded the International Foundation for Internal Freedom in 1962 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This was run by Lisa Bieberman (now known as Licia Kuenning), a disciple of Leary and one of his many lovers. Their research attracted a great deal of public attention and, as a result, many people wanted to participate in the experiments, but were unable to do so because of the high demand. In order to satisfy the curiosity of those who were turned away, a black market for psychedelics developed near the Harvard University Campus.
According to Andrew Weil, Leary was fired for not showing up to his lecture classes, while Alpert was fired for allegedly giving psilocybin to an undergraduate in an off-campus apartment. This version is supported by the words of Harvard President Nathan M. Pusey, who, regarding Leary's termination, released the following statement on May 27, 1963:
"On May 6, 1963, the Harvard Corporation voted, because Timothy F. Leary, lecturer on clinical psychology, has failed to keep his classroom appointments and has absented himself from Cambridge without permission, to relieve him from further teaching duty and to terminate his salary as of April 30, 1963."
Leary's activities interested siblings Peggy, Billy and Tommy Hitchcock, heirs to the Mellon fortune, who in 1963 helped Leary and his associates acquire the use of a rambling mansion on an estate in the town of Millbrook (near Poughkeepsie, New York), where they continued their experiments. Leary later wrote:
"We saw ourselves as anthropologists from the twenty-first century inhabiting a time module set somewhere in the dark ages of the 1960s. On this space colony we were attempting to create a new paganism and a new dedication to life as art."
Later, the Millbrook estate was described by Luc Sante of The New York Times as:
"the headquarters of Leary and gang for the better part of five years, a period filled with endless parties, epiphanies and breakdowns, emotional dramas of all sizes, and numerous raids and arrests, many of them on flimsy charges concocted by the local assistant district attorney, G. Gordon Liddy."Others contest this characterization of the Millbrook estate; for instance, in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe portrays Leary as only interested in research, and not using psychedelics merely for recreational purposes. According to "The Crypt Trip" chapter of Wolfe's book, when Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters visited the residence, the Pranksters did not even see Leary, who was engaged in a three-day trip. According to Wolfe, Leary's group even refused to give the Pranksters acid.
In 1964, Leary co-authored a book with Alpert and Ralph Metzner called The Psychedelic Experience, based upon the Tibetan Book of the Dead. In it, they wrote:
"A psychedelic experience is a journey to new realms of consciousness. The scope and content of the experience is limitless, but its characteristic features are the transcendence of verbal concepts, of spacetime dimensions, and of the ego or identity. Such experiences of enlarged consciousness can occur in a variety of ways: sensory deprivation, yoga exercises, disciplined meditation, religious or aesthetic ecstasies, or spontaneously. Most recently they have become available to anyone through the ingestion of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, etc. Of course, the drug does not produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key—it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures."
Repeated FBI raids ended the Millbrook era. Regarding a 1966 raid by G. Gordon Liddy, Leary told author and Prankster Paul Krassner: "He was a government agent entering our bedroom at midnight. We had every right to shoot him. But I've never owned a weapon in my life. I have never had and never will have a gun around."
On September 19, 1966, Leary founded the League for Spiritual Discovery, a religion declaring LSD as its holy sacrament, in part as an unsuccessful attempt to maintain legal status for the use of LSD and other psychedelics for the religion's adherents, based on a "freedom of religion" argument. (Although The Brotherhood of Eternal Love would subsequently consider Leary their spiritual leader, The Brotherhood did not evolve out of IFIF International Foundation for Internal Freedom.) On October 6, 1966, LSD was made illegal in the United States and controlled so strictly that not only were possession and recreational use criminalized, but all legal scientific research programs on the drug in the US were shut down as well.
In 1966, Folkways Records recorded Leary reading from his book The Psychedelic Experience, and released the album, The Psychedelic Experience: Readings from the Book "The Psychedelic Experience. A Manual Based on the Tibetan...".
During late 1966 and early 1967, Leary toured college campuses presenting a multi-media performance "The Death of the Mind", which attempted to artistically replicate the LSD experience. Leary said the League for Spiritual Discovery was limited to 360 members and was already at its membership limit, but he encouraged others to form their own psychedelic religions. He published a pamphlet in 1967 called Start Your Own Religion, to encourage people to do so (see below under "writings").
Leary was invited to attend the January 14, 1967 Human Be-In by Michael Bowen the primary organizer of the event. Leary spoke at the Human Be-In, a gathering of 30,000 hippies in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and uttered the famous phrase, "Turn on, tune in, drop out". In a 1988 interview with Neil Strauss, Leary stated that slogan was "given to him" by Marshall McLuhan during a lunch in New York City. Leary added that Marshall, "was very much interested in ideas and marketing, and he started singing something like, 'Psychedelics hit the spot / Five hundred micrograms, that’s a lot,' to the tune of a Pepsi commercial. Then he started going, 'Tune in, turn on, and drop out.'"
At some point in the late 1960s, Leary moved to California. He made a number of friends in Hollywood. "When he married his third wife, Rosemary Woodruff in 1967, the event was directed by Ted Markland of Bonanza. All the guests were on acid." After taking responsibility for the controlled substance, Leary was convicted of possession under the Marihuana Tax Act on March 11, 1966, and sentenced to 30 years in jail, given a $30,000 fine and ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment. Soon after, however, he appealed the case, claiming the Marihuana Tax Act was, in fact, unconstitutional, as it required a degree of self-incrimination. Leary claimed this was in stark violation of the Fifth Amendment. On December 26, 1968, Leary was arrested again, in Laguna Beach, California, this time for the possession of two roaches of marijuana, which Leary claimed were planted by the arresting officer. He was later convicted of this offense. On May 19, 1969, The Supreme Court concurred with Leary in Leary v. United States. The Marihuana Tax Act was declared unconstitutional, and his 1965 conviction was quashed. On the day his conviction was overturned, Leary announced his candidacy for Governor of California, running against Ronald Reagan. His campaign slogan was "Come together, join the party." On June 1, 1969, Leary joined John Lennon and Yoko Ono at their Montreal Bed-In and Lennon subsequently wrote Leary a campaign song called "Come Together".
On January 21, 1970, Leary received a ten-year sentence for his 1968 offense, with a further ten added later while in custody, for a previous arrest in 1965, twenty years in total to be served consecutively. When Leary arrived in prison, he was given psychological tests that were used to assign inmates to appropriate work details. Having designed some of the tests himself (including the "Leary Interpersonal Behavior Test"), Leary answered them in such a way that he seemed to be a very conforming, conventional person with a great interest in forestry and gardening. As a result, Leary was assigned to work as a gardener in a lower security prison, and in September 1970 he escaped. Leary claimed his non-violent escape was a humorous prank, and left a challenging note for the authorities to find after he was gone. For a fee, paid by The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the Weathermen smuggled Leary and his wife, Rosemary Woodruff Leary, out of the United States and into Algeria. He sought the patronage of Eldridge Cleaver and the remnants of the separatist USA Black Panther party’s "government in exile." After staying with them for a short time, Leary claimed that Cleaver attempted to hold him and his wife hostage.
In 1971, the couple fled to Switzerland, "where they were sheltered and effectively imprisoned by a large-living arms dealer, Michel Hauchard, who claimed he had an 'obligation as a gentleman to protect philosophers,' but mostly had a film deal in mind." Facing a total of 95 years in prison, Leary hired criminal defense attorney Bruce Margolin and was put into solitary confinement in Folsom Prison, California.
Leary made somewhat of a pretense of cooperating with the FBI's investigation of the Weathermen and radical attorneys, by giving them information that they already had or that was of little consequence; in response, the FBI gave him the code name "Charlie Thrush".
Leary would later claim, and members of the Weathermen would later support, that no one was ever prosecuted based on any information he gave to the FBI.
"The Weather Underground, the radical left organization responsible for his escape, was not impacted by his testimony. Histories written about the Weather Underground usually mention the Leary chapter in terms of the escape for which they proudly took credit. Leary sent information to the Weather Underground through a sympathetic prisoner that he was considering making a deal with the FBI and waited for their approval. The return message was 'we understand.'"
While imprisoned Leary remained a productive writer, sowing the seeds for his incarnation as a futurist lecturer with the StarSeed Series. In Starseed (1973), neurologic (1973), & Terra II: A Way Out (1974), Leary transitioned from Eastern philosophy and Aleister Crowley to a belief that outer space was a medium for spiritual transcendence as his principal frame of reference. Neurologic also added the idea of "time dilation/contraction" available to the activated brain through the cellular, DNA, or atomic level of reality. Terra II is his first detailed proposal for space colonization. Leary’s muse peaked with Exo—Psychology, Neuropolitics, and Intelligence Agents.
Leary cultivated a friendship with former foe G. Gordon Liddy, the notorious Watergate burglar and conservative radio talk-show host. They toured the lecture circuit in 1982 as ex-cons (Liddy having been imprisoned after high-level involvement in the Watergate scandal) debating about the soul of America. The tour generated massive publicity and considerable funds for both figures. Along with the personal appearances, a successful documentary called Return Engagement that chronicled the tour, and the concurrent release of the autobiography Flashbacks, helped to return Leary to the spotlight.
While his stated ambition was eventually to cross over as a mainstream Hollywood personality, reluctant studios and sponsors made certain that it would never occur. Nonetheless, constant touring ensured that he was able to maintain a very comfortable lifestyle by the mid-1980s, while his colorful past made him a desirable guest at A-list parties throughout the decade. He also attracted a more intellectual crowd, which included John Frusciante (Leary appeared in Johnny Depp's and Gibby Haynes' 1994 film Stuff which showed the squalid conditions that Frusciante was living in at the time), Robert Anton Wilson, David Byrne, science fiction wunderkind William Gibson, and Norman Spinrad amongst its ranks.
While he continued to use drugs frequently on a private basis, rather than evangelizing and proselytizing the use of psychedelics as he had in the 1960s, the latter day Leary emphasized the importance of space colonization and an ensuring extension of the human lifespan while also providing a detailed explanation of the eight-circuit model of consciousness in books such as Info-Psychology, among several others. He adopted the acronym "SMI²LE" as a succinct summary of his pre-transhumanist agenda: SM (Space Migration) + I² (intelligence increase) + LE (Life extension). Leary credited L5 co-founder Keith Henson with helping develop his interest in space migration.
Leary's colonization plan varied greatly throughout the years. Because he believed that he would soon migrate into space, Leary was opposed to the ecology movement. He dismissed many of Earth’s problems and labeled the entire field of ecology “a seductive dinosaur science.” Leary stated that only the “larval,” intellectually and philosophically backward humans, would choose to remain in “the fouled nest.” According to his initial plan to leave the planet, 5,000 of Earth's most virile and intelligent individuals would be launched on a vessel (Starseed 1) equipped with luxurious amenities. This idea was inspired by the plotline of Paul Kantner's concept album Blows Against The Empire, which in turn was derived from Robert A. Heinlein's Lazarus Long series. In the 1980s, he came to embrace NASA scientist Gerard O'Neill's more realistic and egalitarian plans to construct giant Eden-like High Orbital Mini-Earths (documented in the Robert Anton Wilson lecture H.O.M.E.s on LaGrange) using existing technology and raw materials from the Moon, orbital rock and obsolete satellites.
By the mid 1980s, Leary had begun to incorporate computers, the Internet, and virtual reality into his aegis of thought. Leary established one of the earliest sites on the World Wide Web, and was often quoted describing the Internet as "the LSD of the 1990s." He became a promoter of virtual reality systems, and sometimes demonstrated a prototype of the Mattel Power Glove as part of his lectures (as in From Psychedelics to Cybernetics). Around this time he cultivated friendships with a number of notable people in the field, including Brenda Laurel, a pioneering researcher in virtual environments and human–computer interaction. With the rise of cyberdelic counter-culture, Leary became a consultant to Billy Idol in the production of the latter's 1993 album, Cyberpunk.
In 1990, Leary's daughter, Susan, committed suicide after years of mental instability. After separating from Barbara Leary in 1992, Leary began to associate with a much younger, artistic and tech-savvy crowd that included people as diverse as actors Johnny Depp, Susan Sarandon and Dan Aykroyd, and his granddaughters, Dieadra Martino and Sara Brown; grandson, Ashley Martino; son, Zach Leary; author Douglas Rushkoff, publisher Bob Guccione, Jr., and goddaughters: actress Winona Ryder and artist/music-photographer Hilary Hulteen. In spite of his declining health, Leary maintained a regular schedule of public appearances through 1994.
From 1989 on, Leary had begun to reestablish his connection to non-mainstream religious movements with an interest in altered states of consciousness. In 1989 he appeared with friend and book collaborator Robert Anton Wilson in a dialog entitled The Inner Frontier for the Association for Consciousness Exploration, a Cleveland-based group that had been responsible for his first Cleveland, Ohio appearance in 1979. After that, he appeared at the Starwood Festival, a major Neo-Pagan event run by ACE, in 1992 and 1993 (though his planned 1994 WinterStar Symposium appearance was cancelled due to his declining health). In front of hundreds of neo-pagans in 1992, he declared, "I have always considered myself, when I learned what the word meant, I've always considered myself a Pagan." He also collaborated with Eric Gullichsen on Load and Run High-tech Paganism: Digital Polytheism. Prior to his passing on May 31, 1996, Dr. Timothy Leary recorded the "Right to Fly" album with Simon Stokes. It was released on July, 1996.
Leary authored an outline for a book called Design for Dying, which attempted to show people a new perspective of death and dying. Leary's de facto "family"—his staff of technophilic Gen Xers—updated his website on a daily basis as a sort of proto-blog, noting his daily intake of various illicit and legal chemical substances, with a predilection for nitrous oxide, cigarettes, his trademark "Leary Biscuits" (a snack cracker with cheese and a small marijuana bud, briefly microwaved), and eventually heroin and morphine. His sterile house was completely redecorated by the staff, who had more or less moved in, with an array of surreal ornamentation. In his final months, thousands of visitors, well wishers and old friends visited him in his California home. Until the final weeks of his illness, Leary gave many interviews discussing his new philosophy of embracing death.
For a number of years, Leary was reported to have been excited by the possibility of freezing his body in cryonic suspension, and Leary publicly announced in September 1988 that he had signed up with Alcor. Leary had appeared at Alcor's grand opening a year previously. in Cleveland, Ohio hosted by the Association for Consciousness Exploration, (the same group that had hosted Leary's first Cleveland appearance in 1979). Wilson and Leary conversed a great deal on philosophical, political and futurist matters and became close friends who remained in contact through Leary's time in prison and up until his death. Wilson regarded Leary as a brilliant man and often is quoted as saying (paraphrase) "Leary had a great deal of 'hilaritas', the type of cheer and good humour by which it was said you could recognise a deity".
Owsley Stanley, one of the pioneers of the era, would later write of him:
"Leary was a fool. Drunk with 'celebrity-hood' and his own ego, he became a media clown—and was arguably the single most damaging actor involved in the destruction of the evanescent social movement of the '60s. Tim, with his very public exhortations to the kids to 'tune in, turn on and drop out,' is the inspiration for all the current draconian US drug laws against psychedelics. He would not listen to any of us when we asked him to please cool it, he loved the limelight and relished his notoriety... I was not a fan of his."
Author and Merry Prankster Ken Kesey remained a supporter and admirer of Leary throughout his career,
"Leary can get a part of my mind that's kind of rusted shut grinding again, just by being around him and talking."
World religion scholar Huston Smith was turned on by Leary after the two were introduced to one another by Aldous Huxley in the early 1960s. The experience was interpreted as deeply religious by Smith, and is captured in detailed religious terms in Smith's later work Cleansing of the Doors of Perception. This was Smith's one and only entheogenic experience, at the end of which he asked Leary, to paraphrase, if Leary knew the power and danger of that with which he was conducting research. In Mother Jones Magazine, 1997, Smith commented:
"First, I have to say that during the three years I was involved with that Harvard study, LSD was not only legal but respectable. Before Tim went on his unfortunate careening course, it was a legitimate research project. Though I did find evidence that, when recounted, the experiences of the Harvard group and those of mystics were impossible to tell apart—descriptively indistinguishable—that's not the last word. There is still a question about the truth of the disclosure."
The slogan, "Turn on, tune in, drop out", signified a conceptual way of thinking wherein a person would turn on to their own way of thinking, tune in to themselves, and drop out of society. This constituted a concept of inward self reliance.
Leary was the explicit subject of the Ray Thomas-written The Moody Blues song "Legend of a Mind", which memorialized him with the words, "Timothy Leary's dead. No, no, no, no he's outside looking in" (a lyric later incorporated into the Bongwater's cover version of the Moody Blues song "Ride My See-Saw"). At first, Leary detested the line, but later found the sense of humor to adopt "Legend of a Mind" as his theme song when he hit the lecture circuit. Another Moody Blues song "When You're a Free Man" was written by Mike Pinder, and it detailed Leary's imprisonment, while also showing concern for his family ("How are the children, and Rosemary?). ".]]
Timothy Leary also worked with new wave band Devo, appearing as Dr. Byrthfood in a segment of their 1985 home video We're All Devo!. This segment would appear on The Complete Truth About De-Evolution as "Kindred Spirit". Leary and Devo also worked together on a planned video game adaptation of Neuromancer, though plans fell through.
A number of other musical groups have admired and been influenced by Leary, including:
In the movie The Ruling Class, the character Jack Gurney (played by Peter O'Toole), who thinks he is Jesus, claims that the voice of "Timothy O'Leary" told him he was God. Leary also appeared in Cheech and Chong's Nice Dreams (1981) as a benevolent psychiatrist administering LSD to mental patients.
Leary had a brief voice-over appearance on the American sitcom Frasier in the episode "The Show where Lilith Comes Back" as Hank, a man with an overeating disorder who called into The Dr. Frasier Crane Show.
In Across the Universe (film), Bono (playing the character of "Dr. Robert") refers to Dr. Frank Geary, who is apparently an allusion to Dr. Timothy Leary.
In Warehouse 13 Timothy Leary's glasses are an artifact in the Warehouse which cause hallucinogenic visions when worn; the longer they are worn, the less the user wants to take them off. While wearing them, Agent Pete Lattimer sees his superior with a walrus head surrounded by bubbles. A knock-off pair were made by rogue agent James MacPherson to reveal the entrance to his underground hideout.
Had a cameo appearance in Abbe Wool's Roadside Prophets (1992), where he played the character "Salvadore," helping the two main characters fix a motorcycle and offering some insight into self-enlightenment.
Was interviewed on Cartoon Network's Space Ghost Coast to Coast in 1994 (episode 3, "Elevator").
Leary made a cameo in the 1989 film Rude Awakening.
In the 2009 film The Men Who Stare at Goats (film) Bill (Jeff Bridges) awakes from a dream, or possible telepathic vision, and claims that he saw Timothy Leary, to which Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) replies "Timothy Leary's dead."
Leary is mentioned in the book "Packing for Mars" by Mary Roach in reference to his ashes in space.
Appeared as 'Dr. Milo' a former (probably not coincidentally) Harvard Biology professor on 'Stagecoach', episode 22 of "The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr.", where he delivers (remember this series occurs in the 1890's) the following eulogy - Dr. Milo: "When I find myself in times of trouble, I say, boy you gotta carry that weight. I am he - you are he - you are me - we are all together, speaking words of wisdom come together right now. Amen..."
Category:1920 births Category:1996 deaths Category:People from Springfield, Massachusetts Category:American neopagans Category:American occultists Category:American psychologists Category:American people of Irish descent Category:Cancer deaths in California Category:Chicago Seven Category:College of the Holy Cross alumni Category:Consciousness researchers and theorists Category:Converts to Hinduism Category:Deaths from prostate cancer Category:Drug policy reform activists Category:Harvard University faculty Category:American writers of Irish descent Category:LSD Category:People associated with the Human Potential Movement Category:Philosophers of mind Category:Psychedelic drug advocates Category:Psychedelic researchers Category:Space burials Category:University of Alabama alumni Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:University of California, Berkeley faculty Category:Washington State University alumni
References in Richard Alperts book, "Be Here Now!" which is his transformation into Baba Ram Dass and his life in India with Baba's Guru and LSD experience.
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Name | Richard Dawkins |
---|---|
Caption | Dawkins in 2010 at Cooper Union in New York City |
Birth name | Clinton Richard Dawkins |
Birth date | March 26, 1941 |
Birth place | Nairobi, Kenya Colony |
Residence | Oxford, England |
Nationality | British |
Ethnicity | White British |
Religion | None |
Education | MA, DPhil (Oxon) |
Alma mater | Balliol College, Oxford |
Occupation | Ethologist |
Years active | 1967-present |
Employer | University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of Oxford |
Organization | Fellow of the Royal SocietyFellow of the Royal Society of Literature |
Known for | Gene-centered view of evolution, concept of the meme, advocacy of atheism and rationalism |
Notable works | The Selfish Gene (1976)The Extended Phenotype (1982)The Blind Watchmaker (1986) |
Influences | Charles Darwin, Ronald Fisher, George C. Williams, W. D. Hamilton, Daniel Dennett, Nikolaas Tinbergen (doctoral adviser) |
Spouse | Marian Stamp Dawkins (m. 1967-1984)Eve Barham (m. 1984-?)Lalla Ward (m. 1992-present) |
Children | Juliet Emma Dawkins (born 1984) |
Parents | Clinton John DawkinsJean Mary Vyvyan (née Ladner) |
Awards | Faraday Award (1990)Kistler Prize (2001) |
Website | The Richard Dawkins Foundation |
Dawkins came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term meme. In 1982, he introduced into evolutionary biology an influential concept, presented in his book The Extended Phenotype, that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment, including the bodies of other organisms.
Dawkins is an atheist and humanist, a Vice President of the British Humanist Association and supporter of the Brights movement. He is well-known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, he argued against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he described evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker. He has since written several popular science books, and makes regular television and radio appearances, predominantly discussing these topics. He has been referred to in the media as "Darwin's Rottweiler," a reference to English biologist T. H. Huxley, who was known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's evolutionary ideas. In his 2006 book The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion—a fixed false belief. As of January 2010, the English-language version had sold more than two million copies and had been translated into 31 languages, making it his most popular book to date.
Dawkins describes his childhood as "a normal Anglican upbringing." Though he began having doubts about the existence of God when he was about nine years old, he was persuaded by the argument from design, an argument for the existence of God or a creator based on perceived evidence of order, purpose, or design in nature, and embraced Christianity.
He attended Oundle, a Church of England school, Dawkins' research in this period concerned models of animal decision-making.
From 1967 to 1969, he was an assistant professor of zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. During this period, the students and faculty at UC Berkeley were largely opposed to the ongoing Vietnam War, and Dawkins became heavily involved in the anti-war demonstrations and activities. He returned to the University of Oxford in 1970 taking a position as a lecturer, and in 1990, as a reader in zoology. In 1995, he was appointed Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position that had been endowed by Charles Simonyi with the express intention that the holder "be expected to make important contributions to the public understanding of some scientific field", and that its first holder should be Richard Dawkins.
Since 1970, he has been a fellow of New College. He has delivered a number of inaugural and other lectures, including the Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture (1989), first Erasmus Darwin Memorial Lecture (1990), Michael Faraday Lecture (1991), T.H. Huxley Memorial Lecture (1992), Irvine Memorial Lecture (1997), Sheldon Doyle Lecture (1999), Tinbergen Lecture (2004) and Tanner Lectures (2003).
He has sat on judging panels for awards as diverse as the Royal Society's Faraday Award and the British Academy Television Awards, and has been president of the Biological Sciences section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2004, Balliol College, Oxford instituted the Dawkins Prize, awarded for "outstanding research into the ecology and behaviour of animals whose welfare and survival may be endangered by human activities". In September 2008, he retired from his professorship, announcing plans to "write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in 'anti-scientific' fairytales."
Dawkins' parents were married from 1939 until his father's death in December 2010, aged 95.–28 February 1999) in Oxford. They had a daughter, Juliet Emma Dawkins (born 1984, Oxford). In 1992, he married actress Lalla Ward in Kensington and Chelsea, London. who had worked with her on the BBC's Doctor Who.
Dawkins has consistently been sceptical about non-adaptive processes in evolution (such as spandrels, described by Gould and Lewontin) and about selection at levels "above" that of the gene. He is particularly sceptical about the practical possibility or importance of group selection as a basis for understanding altruism. This behaviour appears at first to be an evolutionary paradox, since helping others costs precious resources and decreases one's own fitness. Previously, many had interpreted this as an aspect of group selection: individuals were doing what was best for the survival of the population or species as a whole, and not specifically for themselves. British evolutionary biologist W. D. Hamilton had used the gene-centred view to explain altruism in terms of inclusive fitness and kin selection − that individuals behave altruistically toward their close relatives, who share many of their own genes. Similarly, Robert Trivers, thinking in terms of the gene-centred model, developed the theory of reciprocal altruism, whereby one organism provides a benefit to another in the expectation of future reciprocation. Dawkins popularised these ideas in The Selfish Gene, and developed them in his own work.
Critics of Dawkins' approach suggest that taking the gene as the unit of selection − of a single event in which an individual either succeeds or fails to reproduce − is misleading, but that the gene could be better described as a unit of evolution − of the long-term changes in allele frequencies in a population. In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins explains that he is using George C. Williams' definition of the gene as "that which segregates and recombines with appreciable frequency." Another common objection is that genes cannot survive alone, but must cooperate to build an individual, and therefore cannot be an independent "unit". In The Extended Phenotype, Dawkins suggests that because of genetic recombination and sexual reproduction, from an individual gene's viewpoint all other genes are part of the environment to which it is adapted.
Advocates for higher levels of selection such as Richard Lewontin, David Sloan Wilson, and Elliot Sober suggest that there are many phenomena (including altruism) that gene-based selection cannot satisfactorily explain. The philosopher Mary Midgley, with whom Dawkins clashed in print concerning The Selfish Gene, has criticised gene selection, memetics and sociobiology as being excessively reductionist.
In a set of controversies over the mechanisms and interpretation of evolution (the so-called 'Darwin Wars'), one faction was often named after Dawkins and its rival after the American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, reflecting the pre-eminence of each as a populariser of pertinent ideas. In particular, Dawkins and Gould have been prominent commentators in the controversy over sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, with Dawkins generally approving and Gould generally being critical. A typical example of Dawkins' position was his scathing review of Not in Our Genes by Steven Rose, Leon J. Kamin and Richard C. Lewontin. Two other thinkers on the subject often considered to be allied to Dawkins are Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett; Dennett has promoted a gene-centred view of evolution and defended reductionism in biology. Despite their academic disagreements, Dawkins and Gould did not have a hostile personal relationship, and Dawkins dedicated a large portion of his 2003 book A Devil's Chaplain posthumously to Gould, who had died the previous year.
Dawkins' book expounds the evidence for biological evolution. It was released on 3 September 2009, published in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth nations by Transworld. In the United States it was released on 22 September 2009, where it was published by Free Press. All of his previous works dealing with evolution had assumed its truth, and not explicitly provided the evidence to this effect. Dawkins felt that this represented a gap in his oeuvre, and decided to write the book to coincide with Darwin's bicentennial year.
Although Dawkins invented the specific term meme independently, he has not claimed that the idea itself was entirely novel, and there have been other expressions for similar ideas in the past. For instance, John Laurent has suggested that the term may have derived from the work of the little-known German biologist Richard Semon. In 1904, Semon published Die Mneme (which appeared in English in 1924 as The Mneme). This book discussed the cultural transmission of experiences, with insights parallel to those of Dawkins. Laurent also found the term mneme used in Maurice Maeterlinck's The Life of the White Ant (1926), and has highlighted the similarities to Dawkins' concept. without recourse to evolution). He has described the Young Earth creationist view that the Earth is only a few thousand years old as "a preposterous, mind-shrinking falsehood," and his 1986 book, The Blind Watchmaker, contains a sustained critique of the argument from design, an important creationist argument. In the book, Dawkins argued against the watchmaker analogy made famous by the 18th-century English theologian William Paley in his book Natural Theology. Paley argued that, just as a watch is too complicated and too functional to have sprung into existence merely by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Dawkins shares the view generally held by scientists that natural selection is sufficient to explain the apparent functionality and non-random complexity of the biological world, and can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, albeit as an automatic, nonintelligent, blind watchmaker.
, 2008.]]In 1986, Dawkins participated in a Oxford Union debate, in which he and English biologist John Maynard Smith debated Young Earth creationist A. E. Wilder-Smith and Edgar Andrews, president of the Biblical Creation Society. In general, however, Dawkins has followed the advice of his late colleague Stephen Jay Gould and refused to participate in formal debates with creationists because "what they seek is the oxygen of respectability", and doing so would "give them this oxygen by the mere act of engaging with them at all." He suggests that creationists "don't mind being beaten in an argument. What matters is that we give them recognition by bothering to argue with them in public."
In a December 2004 interview with American journalist Bill Moyers, Dawkins said that "among the things that science does know, evolution is about as certain as anything we know". When Moyers questioned him on the use of the word theory, Dawkins stated that "evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening." He added that "it is rather like a detective coming on a murder after the scene... the detective hasn't actually seen the murder take place, of course. But what you do see is a massive clue... Huge quantities of circumstantial evidence. It might as well be spelled out in words of English."
Dawkins has ardently opposed the inclusion of intelligent design in science education, describing it as "not a scientific argument at all, but a religious one". He has been a strong critic of the British organisation Truth in Science, which promotes the teaching of creationism in state schools, and he plans—through the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science—to subsidise the delivering of books, DVDs and pamphlets to schools, in order to counteract what he has described as an "educational scandal".
Dawkins believes that his own atheism is the logical extension of his understanding of evolution and that religion is incompatible with science. In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins wrote:
In his 1991 essay "Viruses of the Mind" (from which the term faith-sufferer originated), he suggested that memetic theory might analyse and explain the phenomenon of religious belief and some of the common characteristics of religions, such as the belief that punishment awaits non-believers. According to Dawkins, faith − belief that is not based on evidence − is one of the world's great evils. He claims it to be analogous to the smallpox virus, though more difficult to eradicate. Dawkins is well-known for his contempt for religious extremism, from Islamist terrorism to Christian fundamentalism; but he has also argued with liberal believers and religious scientists, from biologists Kenneth Miller and Francis Collins to theologians Alister McGrath and Richard Harries. Dawkins has stated that his opposition to religion is twofold, claiming it to be both a source of conflict and a justification for belief without evidence. However, he describes himself as a "cultural Christian", and proposed the slogan "Atheists for Jesus".
Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, when asked how the world might have changed, Dawkins responded:
Dawkins has especially risen to prominence in contemporary public debates relating rationalism, science and religion since the publication of his 2006 book The God Delusion, which has achieved greater sales figures worldwide than any of his other works to date. Its success has been seen by many as indicative of a change in the contemporary cultural zeitgeist, central to a recent rise in the popularity of atheistic literature. The God Delusion was praised by among others the Nobel laureate chemist Sir Harold Kroto, psychologist Steven Pinker and the Nobel laureate biologist James D. Watson. In the book, Dawkins argued that atheists should be proud, not apologetic, because atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind. He sees education and consciousness-raising as the primary tools in opposing what he considers to be religious dogma and indoctrination. These tools include the fight against certain stereotypes, and he has adopted the term Bright as a way of associating positive public connotations with those who possess a naturalistic worldview. Critics have said that the programme gave too much time to marginal figures and extremists, and that Dawkins' confrontational style did not help his cause; Dawkins rejected these claims, citing the number of moderate religious broadcasts in everyday media as providing a suitable balance to the extremists in the programmes. He further remarked that someone who is deemed an "extremist" in a religiously moderate country may well be considered "mainstream" in a religiously conservative one. The unedited recordings of Dawkins' conversations with Alister McGrath and Richard Harries, including material unused in the broadcast version, have been made available online by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.
Oxford theologian Alister McGrath (author of The Dawkins Delusion and ) maintains that Dawkins is ignorant of Christian theology, and therefore unable to engage religion and faith intelligently. In reply, Dawkins asks "do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in leprechauns?", and − in the paperback edition of The God Delusion − he refers to the American biologist PZ Myers, who has satirised this line of argument as "The Courtier's Reply". Dawkins had an extended debate with McGrath at the 2007 Sunday Times Literary Festival.
Another Christian philosopher Keith Ward explores similar themes in his 2006 book Is Religion Dangerous?, arguing against the view of Dawkins and others that religion is socially dangerous. Criticism of The God Delusion has come from philosophers such as Professor John Cottingham of the University of Reading. Other commentators, including ethicist Margaret Somerville, have suggested that Dawkins "overstates the case against religion", particularly its role in human conflict. Many of Dawkins' defenders claim that critics generally misunderstand his real point. During a debate on Radio 3 Hong Kong, David Nicholls, writer and president of the Atheist Foundation of Australia, reiterated Dawkins' sentiments that religion is an "unnecessary" aspect of global problems.
Dawkins argues that "the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other". He disagrees with Stephen Jay Gould's principle of nonoverlapping magisteria (NOMA). In an interview with Time magazine, Dawkins said:
I think that Gould's separate compartments was a purely political ploy to win middle-of-the-road religious people to the science camp. But it's a very empty idea. There are plenty of places where religion does not keep off the scientific turf. Any belief in miracles is flat contradictory not just to the facts of science but to the spirit of science.
Astrophysicist Martin Rees has suggested that Dawkins' attack on mainstream religion is unhelpful. Regarding Rees' claim in his book Our Cosmic Habitat that "such questions lie beyond science", Dawkins asks "what expertise can theologians bring to deep cosmological questions that scientists cannot?" Elsewhere, Dawkins has written that "there's all the difference in the world between a belief that one is prepared to defend by quoting evidence and logic, and a belief that is supported by nothing more than tradition, authority or revelation." He has said that the publication of The God Delusion is "probably the culmination" of his campaign against religion.
In 2007, Dawkins founded the Out Campaign to encourage atheists worldwide to declare their stance publicly and proudly. Inspired by the gay rights movement, Dawkins hopes that atheists' identifying of themselves as such, and thereby increasing public awareness of how many people hold these views, will reduce the negative opinion of atheism among the religious majority.
In September 2008, following a complaint by Islamic creationist Adnan Oktar, a court in Turkey blocked access to Dawkins' website richarddawkins.net. The court decision was made due to "insult to personality". During the 2010 Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne, Australia Dawkins was criticised for his use of the phrase "Pope Nazi" in reference to wartime Pope Pius XII, whose actions during the Holocaust have been a matter of controversy.
at the Atheist Bus Campaign launch]] In October 2008, Dawkins officially supported the UK's first atheist advertising initiative, the Atheist Bus Campaign. Created by Guardian journalist Ariane Sherine and administered by the British Humanist Association the campaign aimed to raise funds to place atheist adverts on buses in the London area, and Dawkins pledged to match the amount raised by atheists, up to a maximum of £5,500. However, the campaign was an unprecedented success, raising over £100,000 in its first four days, and generating global press coverage. The campaign, started in January 2009, features adverts across the UK with the slogan: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." Dawkins said that "this campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think — and thinking is anathema to religion."
In 2010, Dawkins supported legal efforts to charge Pope Benedict XVI with crimes against humanity. Dawkins and fellow anti-religion campaigner Christopher Hitchens were believed to be exploring the option of having the Pope arrested under the same legal principle that saw Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet arrested during a visit to Britain in 1998. Dawkins has given support to the idea of an atheists' "free thinking" school, that would teach children to "ask for evidence, to be sceptical, critical, open-minded".
On 15 September 2010, Dawkins, along with 54 other public figures, signed an open letter published in The Guardian, stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI making a State visit to the United Kingdom.
In 2006, Dawkins founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (RDFRS), a non-profit organisation. The foundation is in developmental phase. It has been granted charitable status in the United Kingdom and the United States. RDFRS plans to finance research on the psychology of belief and religion, finance scientific education programs and materials, and publicise and support secular charitable organisations. The foundation also offers humanist, rationalist and scientific materials and information through its website.
Dawkins has expressed concern about the growth of the planet's human population, and about the matter of overpopulation. In The Selfish Gene, he briefly mentions population growth, giving the example of Latin America, whose population, at the time the book was written, was doubling every 40 years. He is critical of Roman Catholic attitudes to family planning and population control, stating that leaders who forbid contraception and "express a preference for 'natural' methods of population limitation" will get just such a method in the form of starvation.
As a supporter of the Great Ape Project – a movement to extend certain moral and legal rights to all great apes – Dawkins contributed the article "Gaps in the Mind" to the Great Ape Project book edited by Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer. In this essay, he criticises contemporary society's moral attitudes as being based on a "discontinuous, speciesist imperative".
Dawkins also regularly comments in newspapers and weblogs on contemporary political questions; his opinions include opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the British nuclear deterrent and the actions of U.S. President George W. Bush. Several such articles were included in A Devil's Chaplain, an anthology of writings about science, religion and politics. He is also a supporter of the Republic campaign to replace the British monarchy with a democratically elected president. Dawkins has described himself as a Labour voter in the 1970s and voter for the Liberal Democrats since the party's creation. In 2009, he spoke at the party's conference in opposition to blasphemy laws. In the UK general election of 2010, Dawkins officially endorsed the Liberal Democrats, in support of their campaign for electoral reform and for their "refusal to pander to 'faith'."
In the 2007 TV documentary The Enemies of Reason, Dawkins discusses what he sees as the dangers of abandoning critical thought and rationale based upon scientific evidence. He specifically cites astrology, spiritualism, dowsing, alternative faiths, alternative medicine and homeopathy. He also discusses how the Internet can be used to spread religious hatred and conspiracy theories with scant attention to evidence-based reasoning.
Continuing a long-standing partnership with Channel 4, Dawkins participated in a five-part television series The Genius of Britain, along with fellow scientists Stephen Hawking, James Dyson, Paul Nurse, and Jim Al-Khalili. The five-episode series was broadcast in June 2010. The series focussed on major British scientific achievements throughout history.
Dawkins presented a More4 documentary entitled 'Faith School Menace' in which he argued for "us to reconsider the consequences of faith education, which... bamboozles parents and indoctrinates and divides children."
Dawkins wrote a positive review on the book Intellectual Impostures, written by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont.
Dawkins topped Prospect magazine's 2004 list of the top 100 public British intellectuals, as decided by the readers, receiving twice as many votes as the runner-up. He has been short-listed as a candidate in their 2008 follow-up poll. In 2005, the Hamburg-based Alfred Toepfer Foundation awarded him its Shakespeare Prize in recognition of his "concise and accessible presentation of scientific knowledge". He won the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science for 2006 and the Galaxy British Book Awards Author of the Year Award for 2007. In the same year, he was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2007, and he was ranked 20th in The Daily Telegraph's 2007 list of 100 greatest living geniuses. He was awarded the Deschner Award, named after German anti-clerical author Karlheinz Deschner.
Since 2003, the Atheist Alliance International has awarded a prize during its annual conference, honouring an outstanding atheist whose work has done most to raise public awareness of atheism during that year. It is known as the Richard Dawkins Award, in honour of Dawkins' own work.
b. The debate ended with the motion "That the doctrine of creation is more valid than the theory of evolution" being defeated by 198 votes to 115.
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Caption | Pranav Mistry |
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Birth date | 1981 |
Birth place | Palanpur, Gujarat, India. |
Nationality | Indian |
Ethnicity | Indian |
Workplaces | Research assistant and PhD candidate at MIT Media Lab |
Alma mater | Gujarat UniversityIIT BombayMassachusetts Institute of Technology |
Doctoral advisor | Pattie Maes |
Known for | Inventor of SixthSense and Mouseless |
Awards | 2009 Invention Award By Popular ScienceTR35 2009 by Technology Review |
Signature | |
Site | http://www.pranavmistry.com/ |
Pranav Mistry (b. 1981 in Palanpur, India) is one of the inventors of SixthSense. He is a research assistant and a PhD candidate at MIT Media Lab. SixthSense has recently attracted global attention. Among some of his previous work, Pranav has invented Mouseless - an invisible computer mouse; intelligent sticky notes that can be searched, located and can send reminders and messages; a pen that can draw in 3D; and a public map that can act as Google of physical world. Pranav holds a Master in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT and Master of Design from Industrial Design Center, IIT Bombay besides his Bachelor degree in Computer Engineering from Nirma Institute Of Technology, Ahmedabad. Pranav’s research interests include Ubiquitous computing, Gestural and Tangible Interaction, AI, Augmented reality, Machine vision, Collective intelligence and Robotics.
Sixth Sense was awarded the 2009 Invention Award by Popular Science. In 2010, he was named to Creativity Magazine's Creativity 50. Mistry has been called "one of ten, best inventors in the world right now" by Chris Anderson.
Category:Indian computer scientists Category:Indian people Category:Human-computer interaction researchers Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Category:Indian Institute of Technology Bombay alumni Category:Gujarat University alumni Category:1981 births Category:Living people Category:Indian inventors
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Name | Neil Shubin |
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Image width | 250px |
Caption | Neil Shubin after speaking at the University of Tulsa |
Birth date | December 22, 1960 |
Fields | evolutionary biologist |
Workplaces | University of ChicagoField Museum of Natural History |
Alma mater | Columbia University Harvard University Ph.D. |
Known for | Discovery of Tiktaalik roseae |
Awards | Miller Research Fellowship (?)Guggenheim Fellowship (?) |
Neil Shubin, (born December 22, 1960) is an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science writer. He is the Robert R. Bensley Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, Associate Dean of Organismal Biology and Anatomy and Professor on the Committee of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago along with being the Provost of the Field Museum of Natural History. He is well known for his discovery of Tiktaalik roseae.
Shubin appeared on The Colbert Report on January 14, 2008.
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Zehr is the author of The Little Book of Restorative Justice, Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice and numerous other books. He received his B.A. from Morehouse College in 1965, M.A., from the University of Chicago and Ph.D. from Rutgers University. Zehr was awarded the 2003 International Prize for Restorative Justice by Prison Fellowship International’s Centre for Justice and Reconciliation. He is the recipient of the 2006 Community of Christ International Peace Award.
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Name | The Crystal Method |
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Background | group_or_band |
Origin | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
Genre | Chemical Breaks, Big beat, breakbeat, electronic dance music |
Years active | 1993–present |
Label | Outpost, Geffen, V2, Tiny E |
Url | TheCrystalMethod.com |
Current members | Scott Heisler KirklandKen B. Jordan |
The Crystal Method is an American electronic music duo that was created in Los Angeles, California by Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland in the early 1990s. The Crystal Method's music has appeared in numerous TV shows, films, video games, and advertisements. Their best-selling album, Vegas, was certified platinum in 2007.
After The Bomb Shelter was built, The Crystal Method began recording music. This early music made it onto tape not long after. A British DJ named Justin King eventually got a hold of this tape. King was interested in starting a record label that would showcase American electronic dance acts. King teamed up with Scottish transplant Stephen Melrose to form the record label City of Angels. The first official release from the City of Angels label was The Crystal Method's "Now is the Time". The Crystal Method were signed to Outpost Recordings in 1996.
On September 8, 1997, The Crystal Method released their best-selling album, Vegas. Vegas peaked at number 92 on the Billboard 200. It was certified gold by the RIAA in 1998, then platinum in 2007.
Five of the album's ten tracks were released as singles: "Trip Like I Do", "Busy Child", "High Roller", "Comin' Back", and "Keep Hope Alive".
It is also around this time that Jordan and Kirkland formed their own record label, called Tiny e Recordings.—was initially released digitally, in June 2006, with the physical release following a year later. Drive peaked at number 23 on the Top Electronic Albums chart. including "Drown in the Now" and "Now Is the Time".
Category:American electronic music groups Category:American techno music groups Category:1990s music groups Category:2000s music groups Category:Club DJs Category:Remixers Category:Musical groups from Los Angeles, California Category:Ableton Live users Category:Breakbeat musicians Category:Electronic music duos
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