This chapter provides an overview of the opportunities and challenges that “big data” presents for the advancement of public health. It begins by defining core functions and concepts; moves on to examples to illustrate potentials of success and failure; explains unresolved conceptual issues; and concludes with presentation of resources and cautions.

10.00 THEODICY/THEOLOGY 10.01 Definition The accepted name for the entire subject comprising the problem of evil and its attempted resolution is theodicy, ...

Birnbaum feels not compulsion to obey the rules that his intellectual predecessors followed. Building on the foundation of ancient Jewish principles, particularly Kabbalistic ones, he is not afraid to draw on Eastern principles of temporal circularity, concepts from biology and physics that have yet to be applied to metaphysical issues, or insights from other scientific and humanistic disciplines that have been left untapped in philosophy.Asstering that the previous attempts to characterize the esence of the cosmos have fallen short for their (...) lack of an adequate conceptual arsenal, as exemplified by Maimonides' and Aristotle's impasse, he consolidates these eclectic influences into a defined set of metaphysical 'tools'. Birnbaum presents these tools at the outset of God and Good. He then uses them to build a model that is applicable to all the arenas from which its influences were initially derived.The implications of Birnbaum's original - markedly straightforward - doctrine therefore, range from the most general to the most specific. The doctrine is unified by the central thesis that unbounded potentiality pulls both the individual and the cosmos towards a Divine ideal. Potential is universal. Potential is the nexus.. (shrink)

Asserting that previous attempts to characterize the essence of the cosmos have fallen short for their lack of an adequate conceptual arsenal, as exemplified by Maimonides' and Aristotle's impasse, he consolidates these eclectic influences into a defined set of metaphysical "tools." Birnbaum presents these tools at the outset of God and Good. He then uses them to build a model that is applicable to all the arenas from which its influences were initially derived.