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- any commodity of intermediate quality or size (especially when coarse particles of ground wheat are mixed with bran)
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- (大きさ・質・程度などが)中位の,普通の / 中ぐらいに,かなり
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出典(authority):フリー百科事典『ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』「2013/01/08 12:06:36」(JST)
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This article relies largely or entirely upon a single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources. (December 2012) |
For other uses of "mediocrity", see mediocrity (disambiguation).
The mediocrity principle is the philosophical notion that "if an item is drawn at random from one of several sets or categories, it's likelier to come from the most numerous category than from any one of the less numerous categories" (Kukla 2009).[1] The principle has been taken to suggest that there is nothing very unusual about the evolution of our solar system, the Earth, humans, or any one nation. It is a heuristic in the vein of the Copernican principle, and is sometimes used as a philosophical statement about the place of humanity. The idea is to assume mediocrity, rather than starting with the assumption that a phenomenon is special, privileged or exceptional.[2][3]
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Contents
- 1 Extraterrestrial life
- 2 Other uses of the heuristic
- 3 See also
- 4 Notes
- 5 References
- 6 External links
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The Hubble Ultra Deep Field contains thousands of other galaxies.
The mediocrity principle suggests, given the existence of life on Earth, that life typically exists on Earth-like planets throughout the universe.[4] André Kukla criticizes the argument from mediocrity on two counts:
The first is that whatever prima facie plausibility the principle of mediocrity may have is entirely dependent on the single case having been drawn at random. But the earth is not a randomly selected planet... The problem of randomness aside, the principle of mediocrity... is amenable to two drastically different readings, one of which is a probabilistic truism, the other a fallacy. The principle that's needed to underwrite [extraterrestrial intelligence] is the fallacious version. But the fallacy is obscured by virtue of its being confused with the truism. On one reading, the principle states that the single randomly drawn object is more likely to have come from the category that we know to be more numerous. This is the truism. If category A contains 3 elements and category B contains 1 element, then a random draw from the total population of 4 elements has a 3/4 probability of having come from A, and only a 1/4 probability of having come from B. This inference presupposes that we have antecedent knowledge of the relative numerosities of the classes A and B. In its [extraterrestrial intelligence] application, however, our antecedent knowledge and the inference we draw from it are reversed. We know that the random choice has come from A, and we infer from this that A is probably more numerous than B. For example, the classes A and B are "inhabitable planets that contain life" and "inhabitable planets that do not contain life," respectively, and the fact that our single examined case belongs to A is alleged to license the inference that A is probably more numerous than B (more vaguely, that the proportion of A's is not inconsiderable). This is an altogether more speculative inference than the first.[1]
—André Kukla, Extraterrestrials: A Philosophical Perspective
Other uses of the heuristic
David Deutsch argues that the mediocrity principle is not actually correct from a physical point of view, either in reference to our part of the universe or to our species. Deutsch refers to Stephen Hawking's quote that "The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies.", noting that our neighborhood in the universe is not typical (80% of the universe's mass is dark matter) and that a concentration of mass such as our solar system is an "isolated, uncommon phenomenon". He also argues with Richard Dawkins' opinion that humans, as result of natural evolution, are limited to the capabilities of our species — Deutsch responds that even though evolution did not give humans the ability to detect neutrinos, scientists can currently detect them, significantly expanding their capabilities beyond what is available as result of evolution.[5]
See also
- Copernican principle
- Cosmic pluralism
- Cosmological principle
- Deep ecology
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- Drake equation
- Neocatastrophism
- Plenitude principle
- Rare Earth hypothesis
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- Uniformitarianism
- Cosmicism
- Exceptionalism
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Notes
- ^ a b Kukla, A. (2009). Extraterrestrials: A Philosophical Perspective. Lexington Books. p. 20. ISBN 9780739142455. LCCN 2009032272. http://books.google.com/books?id=ZkdqTFVNwmgC&pg=PA20.
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica
- ^ PZ Myers explains the Mediocrity principle at edge.org
- ^ Chaisson, Eric, and Steve McMillan. Astronomy: A Beginner’s Guide to the Universe [1]. Ed. Nancy Whilton. San Francisco: Pearson, 2010.[page needed]
- ^ <David Deutsch (2011). The Beginning of Infinity. ISBN 978-0-14-196969-5.
References
- Gonzalez, Richards, The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery, Regnery Publishing, 2004, ISBN 0-89526-065-4
- Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe, Copernicus Books, January 2000, ISBN 0-387-98701-0
External links
- Goodwin, Gribbin, and Hendry's 1997 Hubble Parameter measurement relying on the mediocrity principle The authors call this the 'Principle of Terrestrial Mediocrity' even though the assumption they make is that the Milky Way Galaxy is typical (rather than Earth). This term was coined by Alexander Vilenkin (1995).
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Extraterrestrial life
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| Events and objects |
- ALH84001
- Cells in the stratosphere
- CI1 fossils
- Murchison meteorite
- Nakhla meteorite
- Radio source SHGb02+14a
- Red rain in Kerala
- Shergotty meteorite
- Viking spacecraft biological experiments
- Yamato 593 meteorite
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| Misidentified signals |
- CTA-102 (misidentified quasar)
- PSR B1919+21/LGM-1 (misidentified pulsar)
- Wow! signal (inconclusive)
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| Extraterrestrial bodies |
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Solar System
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- Enceladus
- Europa
- Mars
- Titan
- Venus
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Extrasolar
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- List of potential habitable exoplanets
- Gliese 163 c
- Gliese 581 d
- Gliese 581 g
- Gliese 667 Cc
- HD 40307 g
- HD 85512 b
- Kepler-22b
- Tau Ceti e
- Tau Ceti f
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| Planetary habitability |
- Earth analog
- Earth Similarity Index
- Extraterrestrial liquid water
- Catalog of Nearby Habitable Systems
- Habitability of red dwarf systems
- Habitable zone
- Natural satellite habitability
- Planetary habitability
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| Missions |
- Darwin space mission
- ExoMars
- Foton-M3
- Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment
- Mars sample return mission
- Mars Science Laboratory
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| Communication |
- Active SETI
- Allen Telescope Array
- Arecibo message
- Arecibo Observatory
- Bracewell probe
- Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence
- Gauss' Pythagorean right triangle proposal
- Interstellar communication
- Lincos (language)
- Pioneer plaque
- Project Cyclops
- Project Ozma
- Project Phoenix
- SERENDIP
- SETI
- SETI@home
- setiQuest
- Voyager Golden Record
- Waterhole
- Xenolinguistics
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| Exhibitions |
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| Hypotheses |
- Ancient astronauts
- Aurelia and Blue Moon
- Back-contamination
- Cosmic pluralism
- Directed panspermia
- Drake equation
- Extraterrestrial hypothesis
- Fermi paradox
- Forward-contamination
- Great Filter
- Interplanetary contamination
- Kardashev scale
- Mediocrity principle
- Neocatastrophism
- Panspermia
- Planetarium hypothesis
- Rare Earth hypothesis
- Sentience quotient
- Zoo hypothesis
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| Related topics |
- Astrobiology
- Astroecology
- Biosignature
- Brookings Report
- Cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact
- Exotheology
- Extraterrestrials in fiction
- Extremophile
- Hypothetical types of biochemistry
- Noogenesis
- Planetary protection
- San Marino Scale
- Shermer's Last Law
- Xenoarchaeology
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English Journal
- Medicare oversight of hospital compounding gets middling marks from inspector general: accreditors look closely at some practices but not at others.
- Barlas S.
- P & T : a peer-reviewed journal for formulary management.P T.2015 Apr;40(4):234.
- Medicare oversight of hospital compounding is questioned.
- PMID 25859116
- Primary care performance in Dominica.
- Macinko J1, Jimenez G2, Cruz-Peñate M3.
- Revista panamericana de salud pública = Pan American journal of public health.Rev Panam Salud Publica.2015 Feb;37(2):104-12.
- OBJECTIVE: To document the structure and functions of primary care (PC) in the country of Dominica using the Primary Care Assessment Tools (PCAT), a set of questionnaires that evaluate PC functions.METHODS: This cross-sectional study combined data from two surveys. The systems PCAT (S-PCAT) survey g
- PMID 25915015
- Visual information about past, current and future properties of irregular target paths in isometric force tracking.
- Mazich MM1, Studenka BE, Newell KM.
- Attention, perception & psychophysics.Atten Percept Psychophys.2015 Jan;77(1):329-39. doi: 10.3758/s13414-014-0766-4.
- In visual-motor tracking, information about past, current, and future properties of a target path can be available but, because they are typically manipulated independently, the relative contribution of these information categories to tracking performance is not well understood. The aim of the curre
- PMID 25214307
Japanese Journal
- 23036 高性能コンクリートおよび鉄筋からなる中拘束柱・はりの耐力に関する研究(RC柱(1),構造IV,学術講演会・建築デザイン発表会)
- 国産軟質小麦に含まれるフザリウム毒素・ゼアラレノンとデオキシニバレノールの製粉での残存率
- ミドリング・ソートと「救貧」意識 : ブリストル救貧社に見る意識の変化
Related Links
- Middling definition, medium, moderate, oraverage in size, quantity, or quality: The returns on such a large investment may be only middling. See more. ... Old English middel, from West Germanic *middila (cf. Old Frisian middel, Old ...
- The priest had a writing teacher at Rome make three alphabets -- one large, one middling, and one small; and pointed out to him that by the help of a sharp instrument he could trace the letters on a slate, and thus learn to write.
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