The Use and Abuse of Lotteries as a Revenue Source.
word "lot," from which the name lottery is derived, originated from the Teutonic word "hleut," and was used to designate an object such as a disk, pebble, or bean that was drawn or cast to decide disputes, divide property, settle uncertain matters, or determine winners in games of chance.1 Accordingly, lottery gambling is a distribution scheme by lot or chance, a game of hazard in which consideration is ventured for the chance at obtaining a prize.2 Lots have been in use from time immemorial. Archaeologists in Egypt found artifacts used in gaming from as early as 3500 B.C. Also, the use of lots for determining the distribution of property is traceable to biblical times as first appears in the book of Numbers of the Old Testament where it is written that Moses apportioned the land west of the Jordan to the twelve tribes of Israel on the basis of lots.3 In Acts of the New Testament, the casting of lots was used to determine who should replace Judas Iscariot as an apostle.4 Also, lotteries were used extensively by the Romans, including Emperors Nero and Augustus, to give away slaves and gifts during Saturnalias feasts and other banquets.5 Furthermore, Italian merchants used the lottery to distribute prizes and dispose of unsold merchandise during the Middle Ages. Some historians propose that the first public lottery was held in the French town of L'Ecluse in 1420 to raise funds for fortifications;6
Enrollment Levels in Institutions of Higher Education: Are State Lotteries Making a Difference in Dixie?.
RODNEY E. STANLEY is an assistant professor of public administration in the Institute of Government at Tennessee State University (TN). His research interests include education policy, public budgeting and research methods for public administration. P. EDWARD FRENCH is an instructor in the Department of Political Science at The University of Tennessee in Knoxville. His research interests include public budgeting, and state and local government administration. Enrollment Levels in Institutions of Higher Education:
Reid on Hypotheses and the Ether; A Reassessment
In recent years historians of science have come to see that Thomas Reid’s Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man had a profound impact on the development of British methodological thought in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Larry Laudan has argued that Reid was “the first major British philosopher to take Newton’s opinions on induction, causality, and hypotheses seriously”; and that Reid was thereby instrumental in changing the character of British methodological discourse in the Enlightenment.(1) Geoffrey Cantor has examined in detail the influence of Reid’s critique of ether theories and hypotheses in the Essays on leading protagonists in the nineteenth-century debates surrounding the wave theory of light,(2) and Richard Olson has traced the origins of the scientific style of British physics in the Victorian period to the writings of Reid and other Common Sense philosophers. (3) As well as delineating Reid’s influence, Laudan, Cantor, and Olson have attempted to identify the problems to which he addressed himself in articulating his methodology, and they have analysed with some care the internal structure of his methodological views. Thanks to the work of these historians, therefore, we have a fairly comprehensive picture of Reid’s methodology and its fortunes in the nineteenth century.