The Well-Ordered Universe argues that Cavendish's natural philosophy, social and political philosophy, and medical theory share an underlying concern with order. This reveals interesting connections among Cavendish's natural philosophy and her views on gender, animals and the environment, and human health, and explains her commitment to monarchy and social hierarchy.

This guide leads readers systematically through the arguments of Mary Shepherd's two books. Chapters 1-4 cover the arguments in the Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect (1824), where Shepherd argues that causal principles can be known by reason to be necessary truths and that causal inferences can be rationally justified. Shepherd's primary target in this work is Hume, but she also addresses the views of Thomas Brown and William Lawrence. Shepherd considered her second book, Essays on the Perception (...) of an External Universe, and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation (1827), to be an extension of the earlier project on causation; here she appeals to the causal principles established in the first book to argue that we can know through reason that an external world of continually-existing objects must exist independently of us, as the causes of our sensations. Chapter 5 of this Guide addresses Shepherd's accounts of sensation and reasoning; Chapters 6-9 lead the reader through the arguments of the Essays, as well laying out Shepherd's views on skepticism and Berkeleyan idealism, her accounts of mind and body, her philosophy of religion, and the solutions she offers to two puzzles about vision. (shrink)

The concept of innateness is central to Descartes's epistemology; the Meditations display a new, non-Aristotelian method of acquiring knowledge by attending properly to our innate ideas. Yet understanding Descartes's conception of innate ideas is not an easy task, and some commentators have concluded that Descartes held several distinct and unrelated conceptions of innateness. In Descartes on Innate Ideas, Deborah Boyle argues that Descartes's remarks on innate ideas in fact form a unified account. Addressing the further question of how (...) Descartes thinks innate ideas are known, the author shows that, for Descartes, thinkers have implicit knowledge of their innate ideas. Thus she shows that the actual perception of these innate ideas is, for Descartes, a matter of making them explicit, turning the intellect away from sense-perceptions and toward pure thought. The author also provides a new interpretation of the Cartesian "natural light," an important mental faculty in Descartes's epistemology. (shrink)

Descartes is often accused of lacking a coherent conception of innate ideas. I argue that Descartes' remarks on innate ideas actually form a unified account. "Innate idea" is triply ambiguous, but its three meanings are interdependent. "Innate idea" can mean an act of perceiving; that which is perceived; or a faculty, capacity, or disposition to have certain ideas. An innate idea qua object of thought is some thing existing objectively , which we have a capacity to perceive, but which we (...) can only actually perceive through meditation. ;Descartes thinks that some innate ideas, such as the idea of thought itself, are implicit in the very process of thinking. Because they are relied on in thinking itself, we have implicit awareness of them. We also have implicit knowledge of other ideas contained in them. The actual perception of these innate ideas is, for Descartes, a matter of making them explicit, turning the intellect away from sense-perceptions and towards pure thought. ;Some innate truths, Descartes says, are perceived by the "natural light." I argue that such truths are made explicit through attending to how the concepts which those truths are about have been relied on in the process of thinking. I discuss the relationship between the natural light and the will, arguing that other accounts of Descartes' "natural light" in the secondary literature are unsatisfactory. I also explore how Descartes' use of the metaphor of light might have been informed by his scientific views about light. ;The innate ideas of corporeal nature and mathematics are also made explicit through attention and reflection, according to Descartes. Though many commentators read Descartes as holding that the innate idea of extension can be known without any use of the senses, I argue that it is discovered through reflection on our sense-perceptions. Once this idea is explicit, Descartes thinks, we can use it to generate explicit awareness of further innate ideas, such as ideas of shapes. Reflection on those further innate ideas, in turn, makes explicit various innate truths about those shapes. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of Margaret Cavendish's moral and political philosophy. In some respects Cavendish's theoury echoes Hobbes. However, although Cavendish agrees with Hobbes that morality is based on self-interest, she holds that morality derives from our natural desire for public recognition, not the desire for self-preservation. Via the desire for fame, self-love can motivate people to pursue virtue, which, for Cavendish, means establishing and maintaining a good government (in particular, absolute sovereignty). The paper explores how Cavendish thinks such (...) a government can be established and maintained. Cavendish's account of female virtue and its connection with honor and fame is also discussed. (shrink)

Scholarly interest in Margaret Cavendish's philosophical views has steadily increased over the past decade, but her epistemology has received little attention, and no consensus has emerged; Cavendish has been characterized as a skeptic, as a rationalist, as presenting an alternative epistemology to both rationalism and empiricism, and even as presenting no clear theory of knowledge at all. This paper concludes that Cavendish was only a modest skeptic, for she believed that humans can achieve knowledge through sensitive and rational perception as (...) well as through self-knowledge and can form probable opinions through reasoning. (shrink)

Elizabeth Hamilton (1758–1816) has not so far been considered a philosopher, probably because she wrote novels and tracts on education rather than philosophical treatises. This paper argues that Hamilton’s novel Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800) should be read as a philosophical text, both for its close engagement with William Godwin’s moral theory and for what it suggests about Hamilton’s own moral theory and moral psychology. Studies of Memoirs have so far either characterized it as merely satire of Godwin, or, if (...) they have read it as containing arguments against Godwin’s views, have described those arguments in very broad strokes, without looking closely at the text to see if the descriptions are warranted. A careful examination of Memoirs shows that Hamilton objected primarily to one key aspect of Godwin’s moral theory, namely, his insistence that actions affecting others must be based on an impartial, disinterested assessment of a person’s contribution to general utility rather than on their particular relationship to the agent. Memoirs also points towards Hamilton’s own moral theory, as exemplified in her Series of Popular Essays (1813), with its emphasis on ‘benevolent affections’ that are directed towards family members and people in the agent’s social circle. (shrink)

In both the _Treatise and the first _Enquiry, Hume offers an argument from analogy comparing how humans and animals make causal inferences. Yet in these and other texts, he suggests that there are certain differences between human and animal reasoning. This paper discusses Hume's argument from analogy, and examines how Hume can argue for differences in human and animal reasoning without having to attribute to either a special capacity that the other lacks. Hume's empiricism and his claims about sympathy also (...) give him good reason to hold that in animals just as in humans, reason is a virtue. (shrink)

Lady Mary Shepherd argued for distinctive accounts of causation, perception, and knowledge of an external world and God. However, her work, engaging with Berkeley and Hume but written after Kant, does not fit the standard periodisation of early modern philosophy presupposed by many philosophy courses, textbooks, and conferences. This paper argues that Shepherd should be added to the canon as a Scottish philosopher. The practical reason for doing so is that it would give Shepherd a disciplinary home, opening up additional (...) possibilities for research and teaching. The philosophical reason is that her views share certain features characteristic of canonical Scottish philosophers. (shrink)

In addition to the 1824 and 1827 books known to have been written by Lady Mary Shepherd, another philosophical treatise, published in 1819, has sometimes been attributed to her. While evidence for this attribution has so far been inconclusive, this paper provides reasons for thinking that Shepherd was not, in fact, the author of this book. New external evidence is provided to show that the author was James Milne, an Edinburgh architect and engineer.

One method Margaret Cavendish uses is something like inference to the best explanation, and so this may be what she mean by “regular sense and reason.” As Hobbes wrote in Leviathan: the cause of Sense, is the Externall Body, or object, which presseth the organ proper to each Sense, either immediatly, as in the Tast and Touch; or mediately, as in Seeing, Hearing, and Smelling. Before examining how Cavendish appeals to ordinary perceptual phenomena to argue that pressure model of perception (...) (PMP) is unacceptable, it will be helpful to sketch Cavendish’s own alternative theory of sense perception and how it fits into her broader natural-philosophical system. Cavendish’s texts thus support ascribing a third distinction to her, between two senses of “rational perception.” Cavendish’s alternative account of perception does agree with PMP in one respect, which is that sense perceptions are constituted by motions. The very existence of sense perceptions indicates that Hobbes’s PMP is an unacceptable theory, Cavendish argues. (shrink)

In A Series of Popular Essays, Scottish philosopher Elizabeth Hamilton identifies two ‘principles’ in the human mind: sympathy and the selfish principle. While sharing Adam Smith's understanding of sympathy as a capacity for fellow-feeling, Hamilton also criticizes Smith's account of sympathy as involving the imagination. Even more important for Hamilton is the selfish principle, a ‘propensity to expand or enlarge the idea of self’ that she distinguishes from both selfishness and self-love. Counteracting the selfish principle requires cultivating sympathy and benevolent (...) affections from birth. Since no one can do this alone, Hamilton's prescription appeals ineliminably to the caregivers of the very young; and Hamilton was ahead of her time in claiming that these caregivers need not be female. (shrink)

In Hume’s own day, and for nearly two hundred years after that, readers interested in his account of causal reasoning tended to focus on the skeptical implications of that account. For example, in his 1757 View of the Principal Deistical Writers of the Last and Present Century, John Leland characterized Hume as “endeavouring to destroy all reasoning, from causes to effects, or from effects to causes.”1 According to this sort of reading, as Louis Loeb describes it, “there is equal justification (...) for every belief about the unobserved—none whatsoever.”2 However, a consensus has now emerged in the secondary literature that while Hume is clearly skeptical about whether beliefs formed through causal inference are .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Descartes’ Natural Light ReconsideredDeborah Boyle1. INTRODUCTIONThe “natural light” occupies an important position in Descartes’ Third Meditation, where the meditator invokes it to provide the premises needed for his proof for the existence of a non-deceiving God. Descartes also refers to the natural light throughout his Replies to the Objections to the Meditations and in the Principles of Philosophy. Yet he says almost nothing about what the natural light is (...) supposed to be, apparently assuming that his readers already know what he means. English-speaking commentators on Descartes have said little about the natural light,1 and although French commentators have paid slightly more attention to this topic, they have nonetheless provided no detailed analysis of the concept of the natural light and the role it plays in Descartes’ Meditations.2In 1973, however, John Morris published an article entitled “Descartes’ Natural Light” in the Journal of the History of Philosophy, later reprinted in Eternal Truths and the Cartesian Circle.3 Morris argues that “the understanding can be regarded in an active and a passive sense, ”4 and that the natural light should [End Page 601] be equated with the passive function of the intellect. The natural light, he asserts, isa power of cognition, which contrasts with the “active” power of conceiving. Unlike this power, it does not form ideas, or bring them to consciousness. Instead, it simply gives a click of recognition when a true idea is brought before it.5However, the textual evidence for Morris’ interpretation of the natural light is slender, and in fact the texts support a quite different reading. I shall point out some problems with Morris’ reading, and offer the beginnings of an alternative account.2. ACTIVITY, PASSIVITY, AND THE MINDIn the Fourth Meditation, Descartes draws a distinction between two faculties of mind: intellect and will. Intellect, he says, allows him “to perceive the ideas which are subjects for possible judgements” (CSM II 39/AT VII 5),6 while the will “simply consists in our ability to do or not do something (that is, to affirm or deny, to pursue or avoid)” (CSM II 40/AT VII 57). Although he does not say so in the Fourth Meditation, Descartes suggests in two 1641 letters to Regius that the intellect is passive and the will is active; strictly speaking, he says, “understanding [intellectio] is the passivity of the mind and willing [volitio] is its activity” (CSMK III 182/AT III 372). A few months later, he writes that “we should use the term ‘action’ for what plays the role of a moving force, like volition in the mind, while we apply the term ‘passion’ to what plays the role of something moved, like intellection [intellectio] and vision in the same mind” (CSMK III 199/AT III 454–5). And in the Passions of the Soul Descartes states that while volitions are actions, “the various perceptions or modes of knowledge present in us may be called its passions, in a general sense” (CSM I 335/AT XI 342).In his early work, the Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Descartes does refer to “actions of the intellect.”7 If we do not allow for changes in Descartes’ thinking, we might assume that at the time of the Meditations, too, he would be willing to speak of “actions of the intellect.” But Descartes provides no account of the [End Page 602] will in the Rules; thus any activity he might have attributed to the mind would have to be included in the role of the intellect. In the Meditations, Descartes’ philosophy of mind has expanded to provide a place for the will, which can take over the active functions previously assigned to the intellect.John Morris’ reading of the role of the natural light in the Meditations takes as its starting point a passage in the Rules where Descartes claims that the intellect itself, the cognitive power or vis cognoscens, has both active and passive functions; it is, he says, sometimes like a seal, sometimes like wax.8 After describing the various functions of the cognitive power, Descartes concludes that “according to its different functions, then, the same power is... (shrink)

Scholars working on recovering forgotten historical women philosophers have noted the importance of looking beyond traditional philosophical genres. This strategy is particularly important for finding Scottish women philosophers. By considering non-canonical genres, we can see the philosophical interest of the works of Scottish poet and playwright Joanna Baillie (1762–1851), who presents an account of “sympathetic curiosity” as one of the basic principles of the human mind. Baillie's work is also interesting for being a rare case of a woman's philosophical work (...) that was discussed in print by another woman philosopher – in this case, by Elizabeth Hamilton (1758–1816), who argues for the importance of a feature of human nature that she calls the “selfish principle.” The article suggests that focusing on critical engagements between historical women philosophers can help integrate their texts into the history of philosophy without presenting them as “handmaidens” to male philosophers. (shrink)

"Margaret Cavendish is a fascinating figure who is getting increasing attention by historians of philosophy these days, and for good reason.... She’s an interesting advocate of a vitalist tradition emphasizing the inherent activity of matter, as well as its inherent perceptive faculties. She’s also the perfect character to open students up to a different seventeenth century, and a different cast of philosophical characters. This is an ideal book to use in the classroom. The _Philosophical Letters_ gives us Cavendish’s view of (...) what was interesting and important in the philosophical world at that moment, a view of philosophy as it was at the time by an engaged participant. There are few documents like it in the history of philosophy. Deborah Boyle’s Introduction provides a very accessible summary of Cavendish’s natural philosophy, as well as good introductions to the other figures that Cavendish discusses in the book. Boyle’s annotations are not extensive, but they are a great help in guiding the student toward an informed reading of the texts." —Daniel Garber, Princeton University. (shrink)

Several recent papers and books have argued that Cavendish's work in natural philosophy foreshadows some twentieth-century feminist philosophers' critiques of epistemology and science. These readings fall into three groups: arguments that Cavendish's early atomistic poems present an alternative, female way of knowing; arguments that such an alternative epistemology occurs in Cavendish's _Blazing World_; and arguments that her ontology was driven by feminist concerns for the implications of atomism and mechanism. Such interpretations, however, are in need of reassessment. This paper argues (...) that there is in fact very little evidence for attributing such protofeminism to Cavendish. The paper begins with a chronological overview of Cavendish's natural philosophy, and then returns to the three groups of interpretations to discuss why they fail. Finally, the paper considers (and rejects) the possibility that Cavendish saw the fact that she was a woman writing philosophy as having feminist implications. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Scottish Philosophy after the Enlightenment by Gordon GrahamDeborah BoyleGRAHAM, Gordon. Scottish Philosophy after the Enlightenment. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022. xvii + 254 pp. Cloth, $110.00Histories of Scottish philosophy typically focus on the school of "common sense" from the eighteenth century, beginning with Francis Hutcheson and ending with Dugald Stewart. As Gordon Graham notes in the preface to this volume, nineteenth-century Scottish philosophy is "an area of the (...) history of philosophy that has generally gone almost entirely unexplored." His collection of eleven standalone essays (only one of which has been previously published) argues that something recognizable as "Scottish philosophy" continued into the nineteenth century—although Graham thinks it ended, then, too—and suggests conceptions of Scottish philosophy that go beyond the old trope of "common sense."Unusually for a work in the history of philosophy, the first chapter is autobiographical. Graham recalls that as an undergraduate studying moral philosophy at St. Andrews in 1968, the only Scottish philosopher he was assigned to read was Hume, whose work was taught in the ahistorical manner that dominated philosophy at that time, and that upon his appointment to the Regius Chair of Moral Philosophy at Aberdeen in 1995 he found little appreciation for the university's most famous former professor, Thomas Reid. Thus began Graham's establishment of the Reid Project at the University of Aberdeen (later the Centre for the Study of Scottish Philosophy and now the Institute for the Study of Scottish Philosophy), the founding of the Journal of Scottish Philosophy, and his editorship of several book series on Scottish philosophy. The story of Graham's scholarship over the years is really the story of the recovery of the history of Scottish philosophy after its near-total neglect in the twentieth century.Graham seems wary of the contextualist turn that historians of philosophy have embraced since around the 1980s, which he likens to "antiquarianism," but at the same time he notes that our current philosophical interests are "not an infallible or even an especially reliable guide to what is intellectually significant" from the past. His solution is to look for intellectual "trajectories" in the history of philosophy—although not with the Whiggish view that these culminate in the present—and to locate particular figures within those trajectories. Thus he is especially interested in identifying the various themes—not just "common sense"— [End Page 551] that can unite the work of different philosophers born and working in Scotland in order to provide a more expansive account of Scottish philosophy.Scottish Philosophy after the Enlightenment provides a close look at the lives and work of major figures of this period, with a chapter devoted to each: William Hamilton (chapter 2), James Frederick Ferrier (chapter 3), Alexander Bain (chapter 4), Thomas Carlyle (chapter 5), Alexander Campbell Fraser (chapter 9), and Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison (chapter 10). Although Graham argues that Pringle-Pattison's work marks the culmination and end of distinctively Scottish philosophy, he devotes the final chapter to the work of twentieth-century philosopher John McMurray on the grounds that McMurray's conception of human agency is rooted in Scottish debates from the previous two centuries over realism and idealism (chapter 11). Along the way, the book helpfully introduces other thinkers currently much less well known, such as Edward Caird, Henry Calderwood, Henry Jones, James Hutchison Stirling, John Tulloch, and John Veitch.Instead of thinking of Scottish philosophy as simply equivalent to common sense philosophy, Graham offers various alternative conceptions of Scottish philosophy, characterized as various "trajectories" that can be seen as originating in the eighteenth century and developing through the nineteenth: as a concern with realism and idealism that developed in the nineteenth century into responses (whether critical or favorable) to Hegelianism (chapter 6); as a prolonged conversation about the relationship between science and philosophy and the possibility of progress in the scientific study of the mind (chapter 7); and as the continuation of eighteenth-century post-Humean Scottish philosophers' aim of defending theism, even in the face of Darwin's findings (chapters 8 and 9). Presenting Scottish philosophy through these different lenses is highly illuminating and makes a persuasive case for the need for further... (shrink)

Each year the JHP awards an Article Prize to an article published in the previous year's volume, and a Book Prize to a book published in the previous year that deserves special recognition for its contribution to the history of Western philosophy. For the Book Prize, publishers may nominate books by submitting a hard copy to the Book Review Editor for consideration. The nomination and book must be received by January 1 following the year for which the prize is to (...) be awarded.The JHP Board of Directors awards an annual prize of $5,000 for the best book in the history of philosophy published in the previous year. On the Board's behalf, I am pleased to announce that the... (shrink)

This rich and interesting book tells the story of the development and ultimate disappearance over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of a central theme in Scottish philosophy: common sense realism. Taking Thomas Reid's version of common sense realism as the paradigmatic form, McDermid shows how Reid's views had their roots in Lord Kames's account of perceptual realism, how Dugald Stewart and Sir William Hamilton defended and modified Reid's view, and how James Ferrier systematically repudiated both Reid's appeal (...) to common sense and his realism. McDermid succeeds in providing a clear overview of the trajectory, while not losing sight of the details of the individual philosophers' views. (shrink)

The study of perception and the role of the senses have recently risen to prominence in philosophy and are now a major area of study and research. However, the philosophical history of the senses remains a relatively neglected subject. Moving beyond the current philosophical canon, this outstanding collection offers a wide-ranging and diverse philosophical exploration of the senses, from the classical period to the present day. Written by a team of international contributors, it is divided into six parts: -/- Perception (...) from Non-Western Perspectives Perception in the Ancient Period Perception in the Medieval Latin/Arabic Period Perception in the Early Modern Period Perception in the Post-Kantian Period Perception in the Contemporary Period. The volume challenges conventional philosophical study of perception by covering a wide range of significant, as well as hitherto overlooked, topics, such as perceptual judgment, temporal and motion illusions, mirror and picture perception, animal senses and cross-modal integration. By investigating the history of the senses in thinkers such as Plotinus, Auriol, Berkeley and Cavendish; and considering the history of the senses in diverse philosophical traditions, including Chinese, Indian, Byzantine, Greek and Latin it brings a fresh approach to studying the history of philosophy itself. -/- Including a thorough introduction as well as introductions to each section by the editors, The Senses and the History of Philosophy is essential reading for students and researchers in the history of philosophy, perception, philosophy of mind, philosophical psychology, aesthetics and eastern and non-western philosophy. It will also be extremely useful for those in related disciplines such as psychology, religion, sociology, intellectual history and cognitive sciences. (shrink)

Economists and other social scientists in this century have often supported economic arguments by referring to positions taken by philosophers of science. This important new book looks at the reliability of this practice and, in the process, provides economists, social scientists, and historians with the necessary background to discuss methodological matters with authority. Redman first presents an accurate, critical, yet neutral survey of the modern philosophy of science from the Vienna Circle to the present, focusing particularly on logical positivism, sociological (...) explanations of science (Polanyi, Fleck, Kuhn), the Popper family, and the history of science. She then deals with economic methodology in the twentieth century, looking at a wide range of methodological positions, especially those supported by positions from the philosophy of science. She considers the myth of the feasibility of falsification in economics and, within the context of its significance for economics, discusses the interpretation of Kuhn's philosophy of science as consensus and the danger such a view represents to science. Appendices review the history of the is-ought dispute and list economists whose first works deal with methodological topics. Comprehensive, readable, and accessible to those with little background knowledge, Redman's book will appeal to a wide range of social scientists and philosophers of science. (shrink)

Germund Hesslow has argued recently [2] that a probabilistic theory of causality as advocated by Patrick Suppes [4] has two problems that a deterministic theory avoids. In this paper, I argue that Suppes' probabilistic causal calculus is free of each of these problems and, moreover, that several broader issues raised by Hesslow's discussion tend to support a probabilistic conception of causes.

A comprehensive bibliography of economic methodological works since 1860, this volume includes 2,244 entries divided into two primary sections. The first section covers works on economic methodology while Part Two deals with works on the philosophy of science. Many of the entries are annotated, including the classics in economic methodology, almost all of the books, and general works in the philosophy of science section. All other sections include an introduction to the topic and the articles collected under that heading.

During the past decade there has been a very effective campaign against any explanation of remembering whose basic concept is that of a causally mediating trace. This paper attempts to provide such an explanation by presenting an explicit deductive argument for the existence of the memory trace. The conclusion is shown to follow from reasonable, empirical assumptions of which the most interesting is a spatiotemporal contiguity thesis. Set-theoretic techniques are used to provide a framework of analysis and probabilistic definitions of (...) some causal notions, as that of a causal chain, are presented. (shrink)

This article explores the meanings of nature, and examines how understandings of this term inform the field of psychology. In this period of high, late, or post-modernity, many of the "givens" become contested, and perhaps nothing has become more contested than nature itself. There is a threefold purpose to this paper. This first goal is to unravel two types of nature in psychology, to be distinguished as nature and Nature. The second aim is to discuss how these types of nature/Nature (...) have been distinguished epistemologically, ontologically and methodologically within the field. The final purpose is to suggest points of unity within nature and Nature in psychology. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

This essay explores the relationships between labour and community formation in order to think through how, where, and when diasporic solidarities are imagined or refused. I draw on ethnographic research among Jamaican women contracted for seasonal work in US hotels to situate diasporic calls and responses in relation to specific contexts and a changing global political economy. I show how global geopolitical shifts not only shape the processes of identity formation and social reproduction, but also condition the perpetuation of notions (...) of nationalized racial hierarchies and ideologies of progress. I also show that hotel workers’ notions of ‘America’ and their commitment to the ‘American Dream’ shapes their subjectivities as migrant workers/consumers and, in their assessment, differentiates them from African-Americans, particularly those most immediately affected by Hurricane Katrina. In doing so, I demonstrate that one of the ideological hegemonies of diaspora is the idea that an individual's capacity to affect their own social mobility and that of their social network always outstrips the ‘locals’ in diasporic elsewheres. (shrink)

The Zhuangzi is one of the richest early Chinese sources for exploring conceptualizations of the visceral human form. Zhuangzi presents the human frame as a corpus of flesh, organs, limbs, and bone; he dissects it before the reader's eyes, turning it inside out and joyfully displaying its fragmented joints, sundered limbs, and beautifully monstrous mutations. This body is a site of immolation and fragmentation that ultimately evokes a larger wholeness and completeness. Drawing and quartering the body, Zhuangzi paradoxically frees it (...) from ordinary mortality. -/- Sommer explores the fields of meaning of different terms for the human body found in the Zhuangzi: the body might appear there as a gong body 躬, a sanctimonious ritualized body; as a shen body 身, a site of familial and social personhood; or as a ti body 體, a complex, multilayered corpus of multiple parts, each of which is consubstantial with the whole. Most commonly, however, the body in the Zhuangzi is the xing 形, an elemental or structural form. Zhuangzi enlivens and develops the xing form in ways that are not seen in other early Chinese texts. He mutilates and mutates it such that boundaries between form and formlessness disappear, and the physical frame becomes incorporated into a larger common body that includes all of life and death. (shrink)

A view of inequality as a relationship between the advantaged and the disadvantaged has gained considerable currency in psychological research. However, the implications of this view for theories and interventions designed to reduce inequality remain largely unexplored. Drawing on the literature on close relationships, we identify several key features that a relational theory of social change should include.

Extrait de la couverture : ""Here, for the first time, is a book that brings women's writings out of exile to rethink anthropology's purpose at the end of the century.... As a historical resource, the collection undertakes fresh readings of the work of well-known women anthropologists and also reclaims the writings of women of color for anthropology. As a critical account, it bravely interrogates the politics of authorship. As a creative endeavor, it embraces new Feminist voices of ethnography that challenge (...) prevailing definitions of theory and experimental writing.". (shrink)

Two mechanisms are available for the repair of DNA double‐strand breaks (DSBs) in eukaryotic cells: homology directed repair (HDR) and non‐homologous end‐joining (NHEJ). While NHEJ is not restricted to a particular phase of the cell cycle, it is incapable of accurately repairing DBSs that have suffered a loss or gain of nucleotide sequence information. In contrast, HDR achieves accurate repair of such DSBs by use of a sister chromatid as a DNA template, but is restricted to cell cycle phases (S/G2) (...) when such templates are available. In this scheme, G1 cells appear to lack a mechanism for the accurate repair of certain DSBs, and an ability to use alternative templates would be highly advantageous. Considered here, therefore, is the possibility that RNA transcripts are used as templates for HDR. Potential mechanisms for transcript‐templated HDR, and ways in which it might be detected, are presented. BioEssays 28:78–83, 2006. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In response to a bacterial infection, insects launch an array of countermeasures. Among these are the antibacterial proteins, which effectively lyse bacteria or are bacteriostatic. These proteins were generally assumed to be restricted to insects, yet recent information has shown some homologous counterparts in verte brates, including humans. Recent data have revealed that at least some of these proteins can also act against eukaryotic cells, including human infectious Parasites The latter activities have opened up new possibilities for disease control.

This paper attempts to set up a probabilistic framework for understanding the notion of causal necessity. What results is a relaxed and relativized probabilistic theory of epsilon-Causal necessity and an explicit attempt to avoid deterministic assumptions. The theory developed emphasizes the notions of partial cause, Causal contribution, And the degree of contribution. Implications for causal overdetermination, Causal preemption, And causal discourse are discussed.

This volume includes nineteen articles by scholars from Asia, North America, and Europe on Chinese thinkers from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries. Included here are intellectual biographies of literati such as Zhou Dunyi, the Cheng brothers, Zhu Xi, Zhang Shi, Hu Hong, Wang Yangming, and Dai Zhen. Essays are arranged chronologically, and most begin with a biographical sketch of their subject. They provide variety rather than uniformity of approach, but all in all these essays are remarkably rich and offer (...) much new material on both familiar and lesser-known thinkers. (shrink)

The ji 己self is a site, storehouse, or depot of individuated allotment associated with the possession of things and qualities: wholesome and unwholesome desires (yu 欲) and aversions, emotions such as anxiety, and positive values such as humaneness and reverence. Each person's allotment is unique, and its "contents" are collected, measured, reflected on, and then distributed to others. The Analects, Mencius, Xunzi, Daodejing, and Zhuangzi each have their own vision for negotiating the space between self and other. Works as seemingly (...) dissimilar as the Analects and Daodejing both agree that positive qualities located within the self should be shared with others, and that the self can be optimized rather than maximized through sharing, emptying, or clearing. Sommer compares the ji self with other terms for body and person current in classical times. This self is strongly individuated, but it exists primarily in relation to other human beings (ren 人 ). These "others" are almost never one's own kind and are usually people who fall outside one's ascribed familial and social relationships. Negotiations between self and other often reflect apprehension regarding degrees of distance, intimacy, worth, recognition, or understanding (zhi 知) between people. (shrink)