Lumilla Haanpää, 5
I know and there are many differences between opinions.
Knowledge is about facts: if the keys are not actually in the nail, you can only think they are there, you don’t know it. The information also requires that you have good reason to believe that the keys are in the nail, for example, that you just saw them there.
So knowledge requires true belief, which is formed in a reliable way.
What about opinions? When we talk about opinions, we usually mean people’s perceptions of things that can’t be seen or touched or measured or counted.
In my opinion, raspberry white chocolate is the best ice cream flavor. Maybe you like chocolate more. We can taste these ice creams, but even if we looked at them under a microscope, it wouldn’t tell us which one is really better.
Many of our opinions are about such matters of taste or “questions of opinion”.
However, the difference between knowledge and opinion is not quite simple. After all, some opinions can be information.
We probably both agree that you shouldn’t bully the smaller ones. Not being allowed to do so is also something that cannot be seen or measured.
However, it is not just a matter of taste, because it may be true and we may have good reason to believe so. We wouldn’t like it ourselves if the older ones bullied us.
Opinions on many other issues can be better or worse justified.
For example, your parents may, for good reason, think that it is better to go to the beach in the summer than to watch TV. So it’s worth listening to the weighed opinions of others, even if you disagree!
Antti Kauppinen
professor of ethics and social philosophy
university of Helsinki
The Egyprtinmau is an old cat breed, even the oldest known.
What is the world’s first cat breed?
Veera Kurki, 9
Cats history goes back thousands of years to the Middle East. With the development of agriculture, mice and the first cats also arrived in the grain warehouses. However, those cats were still timid wild animals.
From the Middle East, cats spread to the Mediterranean region and Egypt, where they got a new task. In addition to being mousers, they also became pets.
Egyptian tame cats were transported with ships everywhere, both to Asia, America and possibly also to Finland with the Vikings. In those different areas, land raiding breeds flourished and their special characteristics developed.
All Cat breeds originate from those country cats or crossbreeds of different breeds. The current country cats of different regions are therefore directly descended from ancient country cats.
Many consider the Egyptian to be the oldest breed in the world, as it too originally developed directly from Egyptian domestic cats. However, it was not recognized as an official breed until the 1970s.
Some cat breeds started to be bred by people already at the end of the 19th century. These breeds include, for example, Persian, Manx, British Shorthair and Siamese.
However, today’s breeds look quite different than they did 150 years ago, because they are the result of long and deliberate breeding.
Milla Salonen
research doctor
university of Helsinki
The teeth grow in the front first, because that’s where they initially fit.
Why do front teeth grow first and change first?
From Alisa Maas, 7
In mammals tooth development usually starts at the front and continues towards the lower jaw.
In humans, the first front teeth erupt in the mouth already at the age of less than a year, and then the wisdom teeth at the tail end sometimes at the end of the teenage years.
The reason that the teeth erupt in stages is that they do not fit in the mouth right away, because the jaw is still growing even in adolescence.
Humans, like many mammals, have two sets of teeth for front, canine and middle teeth.
The first to develop are the milk front teeth, which fit better in the baby’s mouth when they are small. From here, the eruption of milk teeth continues backwards, although the larger canines erupt slightly behind.
There is only one set of molars, and they erupt behind the baby teeth when the jaw has grown enough.
In nature, there are predators, such as the woodpecker, whose milk front teeth are so small that they don’t even erupt all of them.
In many beasts, the permanent incisors do not erupt until the end of breastfeeding. It has been suggested that the absence of sharp milk incisors in predators makes breastfeeding easier.
Jukka Jernvall
academy professor
university of Helsinki
Tears are often a sign that something is upsetting or hurting.
If you fall or otherwise hurt yourself, why do your eyes shed tears, even though your eyes don’t hurt?
Aida Alapuranen, 10
Tears coming from the eyes can be related to eye irritation or debris in the eye. Teary crying, however, is usually not related to the eyes at all.
It is not entirely certain why we cry, but tearful crying has been thought to have several benefits.
When crying, for example, the body releases substances, hormones, that relieve pain. Crying may also relieve unpleasant emotional states. Sometimes crying is also associated with positive emotional states.
Tearful crying serves as a social signal to others that the person crying needs care and consideration.
Tearful crying is also a reaction that is hard to fake: when someone is crying, others can be pretty sure that something is crazy.
Teary crying is especially common in children. In adult men, tearful crying may be less and appear, for example, as a mere “drop in the eye” caused by some emotional state, without other signs of crying.
Ilmari Määttänen
University researcher
university of Helsinki
Send the question, the questioner’s full name and age to [email protected]. The column is edited by Touko Kauppinen and Juha Merimaa.
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