Philosophy of Science

**AWS Cloud Carnival: Cloud Computing + Hands-on Workshop** ☁️🎡🚀 Welcome to **AWS Cloud Carnival**, a power-packed and exciting cloud event where learning meets real-world technology! If you’ve ever been curious about **AWS, Cloud Computing, or DevOps**, this is the perfect chance to start your journey with a fun and interactive experience. Get ready for an engaging session filled with **live demos, hands-on learning, real cloud concepts, and career guidance** — all designed specially for students and beginners. **Mandatory Registration for In Person:** [https://forms.gle/VYmiJbY3SbCFJahC7](https://forms.gle/VYmiJbY3SbCFJahC7) **What’s inside the Carnival?** ✨ Introduction to Cloud Computing & AWS ⚡ Explore AWS Core Services (EC2, S3, IAM, VPC) 🛠️ Hands-on demo sessions and practical learning 🚀 Cloud + DevOps basics (deployment & real use cases) 🎓 Career roadmap + certifications guidance 🤝 Networking with cloud enthusiasts & community members **Featured Speakers:** ***Sagar Khangan*** Principal Software Engineer \| Senior Engineering Manager Stealth Startup (India · Remote) Session: "Starting Your Cloud Journey with AWS" ***Dr. Purshottam A*** Enterprise Architect ( ex-Amazon ) Session: Enterprise Cloud Architecture & Career Roadmap **Who should attend?** ✅ Students (Beginner to Intermediate) ✅ Developers & Tech Enthusiasts ✅ Anyone interested in building a career in Cloud & DevOps **Event Details:** 📅 Date: 14 March 2026 (Saturday) ⏰ Time: 12:00 PM – 04:00 PM IST 📍 Venue: Seminar Hall, Ratan Tata Maharashtra State Skills University 🎟️ **Limited seats available!** Don’t miss this chance to learn, build, and experience the cloud world with AWS. 🚀 Register now and be a part of the **AWS Cloud Carnival!**

Join an exclusive hands-on portrait photography workshop at **Sarosh Photography & Studios** where creativity meets professional guidance. This immersive studio session will give photographers the opportunity to learn lighting techniques, posing direction, composition, and creative storytelling while working with **International model Cordelia**. Participants will gain real-world experience capturing elegant portraits in a controlled studio environment, while also learning practical tips on working with professional models, styling, and creating portfolio-worthy images. This workshop is designed to help photographers refine their artistic vision, improve technical skills, and elevate their portrait photography through guided demonstrations and live shooting sessions.

[Profs and Pints Northern Virginia](https://www.profsandpints.com/washingtondc) presents: **“The Secrets of Runes,”** on the origins, development, and interpretation of the runic script, with Lilla Kopár, runologist and a professor of medieval literature and culture at Catholic University. [Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at [https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nv-rune-secrets](https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nv-rune-secrets) .] The fame of runes outshines that of any other ancient script. They can be found not just on Viking Age rune stones, but on Bilbo’s door and as the Bluetooth logo on your cell phone. Runic script is commonly associated with magic, used by modern practitioners of neopaganism, and in recent decades has captured the imagination of filmmakers and video game designers. Yet most of us know little about the historical origins of runes and have no clue how to read or use them. Come to Crooked Run Fermentation in Sterling, Va., to get schooled on runic script with the help of Lilla Kopár, a veteran scholar of runes who has earned a following among Profs and Pints fans by giving fantastic talks on medieval monsters and Norse mythology. As someone who has carried out extensive field research on runes, published several articles on runic objects, and even appeared on the History Channel commenting on runes in America, she’s exceptionally qualified to introduce you to runology and the fascinating things that runes tell us. Dr Kopár will discuss the development of runic script from its humble origins on the borders of the Roman Empire in the first or second century CE, through its popularity in the Viking world, to its use and misuse in modern times. She’ll discuss how runes are a set of related alphabets that underwent changes over time and she’ll describe what inspired changes in this writing system and where and how runes were used in the medieval period. Her richly illustrated talk will highlight some of the most intriguing objects with runic inscriptions, from humble bone fragments to impressive rune stones, and offer insight into the scholarly methods of deciphering and interpreting runic inscriptions. We’ll also look at the function of the runic script from simple practical notes and memorial inscriptions to cipher-runes and magic. The most fun might be the in-class assignment, which will involve reading a few runic inscriptions and writing your name and other words in runes. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.) Image: Part of Codex runicus, a rune manuscript written on animal skin and dating to about 1300 (University of Copenhagen / Wikimedia Commons).

**Agenda :** * 4.45 to 5.00 PM ET: Food and Networking * 5.00 to 5.50 PM ET: "Data Science & Machine Learning with Microsoft Fabric" Hello Everyone! Please join us for our March 12th edition of the AI-ML MeetUp. **Please note this is an in-person meeting and light refreshments/food will be provided. You will need a government-issued ID to enter the facility.** **Title:** Data Science & Machine Learning with Microsoft Fabric **Description:** Explore Microsoft Fabric’s integrated Data Science experience across ideation, preprocessing, modeling, & deployment. Learn how to ingest and prepare data via OneLake and Lakehouse, leverage Notebooks, Data Wrangler, Spark, SynapseML, MLflow for experimentation, & operationalize predictions with batch scoring and Power BI direct integration. Also, learn to build generative AI Q&A systems using Fabric Data Agents. **Location:** The meeting will be hosted in the Applied Information Sciences ( AIS ) office in Reston, at 11440 Commerce Park Dr # 600 · Reston, VA. The location is also right off the Silver Line metro's Wiehle-Reston Metro Station. **Parking:** Parking is paid and can be validated at the AIS office reception. We will meet in Room Lake Anne. We hope to see you all there!!!!

[Profs and Pints Northern Virginia](https://www.profsandpints.com/washingtondc) presents: **“A Practical Guide to Social Change,”** a research-based look at how communities bring about reform and progress, with Marissa Robinson, founder of Real Health Impact LLC and an adjunct professor at George Washington University who teaches courses focused on public health leadership and social change. [Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at [https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nv-social-change](https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nv-social-change) .] Systems built on inequality rarely transform without deliberate pressure from the people most committed to justice, because progress takes coordination, conviction and willingness to change what has always been accepted. Real change starts when people choose to move together. Learn what research and experience say about how to make real social progress with Dr. Marissa Robinson, a public health practitioner who previously worked in federal agencies coordinating global and national public health initiatives focused on infectious diseases, HIV, and health equity. Among the key questions she’ll tackle: How do communities overcome barriers to create real change? When should evidence guide decisions and when does context matter more? She’ll discuss established frameworks for moving from intention to measurable progress and talk about the importance of building coalitions that actually work and of making decisions grounded in real data. You’ll learn about the importance of testing ideas on a small scale before going big, as well as how to use rapid feedback loops and continuous improvement cycles to refine approaches and scale what truly works. Dr. Robinson will share stories of ordinary people and communities who refused to accept the status quo and pushed through real barriers to achieve breakthrough results. She’ll talk about practical strategies, usable frameworks, and evidence-based examples that people can apply immediately in their own communities and organizations to support change that lasts. If you have dreamed about bringing about progress in your world, this talk will give you the clarity, direction, and confidence it takes to turn such dreams into reality. ( Door: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.) Image by Canva.

Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) stands as one of the great dissenters from the Cartesian worldview that dominated eighteenth-century Europe, and as one of the first sociologists and philosophers of history and class struggle. While Descartes and his followers sought to extend the geometric method to all domains of knowledge, Vico insisted that human affairs require a fundamentally different approach. He grounded this approach not in mathematical certainty but in rhetoric, imagination, and historical understanding. Vico spent most of his life in Naples, working as a professor of rhetoric. From this position, he watched Cartesian science sweep the academies, displacing the ancient humanistic traditions he cherished. His early works defended the value of rhetoric and imagination against those who saw clarity and distinctness as the sole criteria of knowledge. Vico was developing the idea that cultivated imagination is its own, independently valid way of knowing. But his mature philosophy went further, expanding his concept of imaginative or poetic knowing into a comprehensive science of history that has been seen as fundamentally at odds with the Enlightenment project. At the heart of Vico's thought lies the *verum-factum* principle: we can truly know only what we ourselves have made. Since God made the natural world, only God can fully comprehend it. But the civil world—the world of laws, customs, languages, and institutions—is a human creation, and therefore deeply knowable by human minds. This insight reverses the effect of the mathematical philosophy, which had seemed to make physics knowable and human affairs unaccountable. In his great work, the *New Science*, Vico develops his insight into a comprehensive philosophy of history. He argues that all nations pass through an ideal eternal history—a cycle of three ages (gods, heroes, and humans) driven not by rational deliberation but by providence working through human passions and necessities. The earliest humans, Vico claims, did not think in concepts but in what he calls "imaginative universals"—mythic figures like Jove and Juno that organized experience through poetry and ritual rather than analysis. Understanding this "poetic wisdom" requires overcoming what Vico calls the "conceit of scholars": our tendency to assume that ancient peoples thought as we do or did not think at all. **Readings** *[The New Science](https://www.amazon.com/Science-Penguin-Classics-Giambattista-Vico/dp/0140435697?tag=ustxtaddt-20&asin=0140435697&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1)*, Third Edition (1744) * Book 1, parts 2-4 * Book 2, Introduction, parts 1-4, Part 5 paragraphs 582-661 * Book 4 * Book 5 * Conclusion **Further Readings** *[The New Science](https://www.amazon.com/Science-Penguin-Classics-Giambattista-Vico/dp/0140435697?tag=ustxtaddt-20&asin=0140435697&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1)*, Third Edition (1744) * Idea of the work (for an idiosyncratic precis of Vico's project in the form of an image * Book 3 (for an application of Vico's critical method to the Homeric corpus) [Vico, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy](https://iep.utm.edu/vico/) [Vico, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vico/)

Sven Sinclair will discuss the recent arms race in partisan gerrymandering that has been in the news a lot, but it is just a symptom of more fundamental flaws in our electoral system. This talk, based on his recent essay "[A SWEET Cure for Gerrymandering](https://svenosaurus.substack.com/p/a-sweet-cure-for-gerrymandering?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true)," will discuss those flaws, obstacles to fixing them, and a new proposal for a workable solution. Sven Sinclair is a member of NOVES for over two decades, is an economist and actuary who has been interested in electoral math and design of electoral systems since the last century. Children and young children welcome! When: Sunday, March 15, 2026 Coffee available at 10:45 AM, Speaker begins at 11:00 AM Where: Green Hedges School 415 Windover Ave NW, Vienna, VA

Come join us for in-depth discussions on topics relating to moral and political philosophy. This is a group for members who are comfortable discussing topics that are often anxiety producing and controversial. *"Aristotle was a realist who believed that reality and knowledge are found in the physical world, accessible through sensory experience and logic. This led to contrasting views on ethics, politics, and the nature of reality itself. Plato emphasized abstract, ideal concepts, while Aristotle prioritized empirical observation and the study of the natural world."* \- Google Gemini Following Aristotle's lead, this group will lean heavily on empirical data to make arguments. The Socratic method is still the preferred way to engage in conversation, and Platonic Idealism is still relevant to the conversation as points of reference.