" Because characters and the conception of characters are central to all studies of evolution, and because evolution is the central organizing principle of biology, this book will appeal to a wide cross-section of biologists.

In this study, we examine the influence of senior leadership on firms’ corporate social responsibility. We integrate upper echelons research that has investigated either the influence of the CEO or the top management team on CSR. We contend that functional experience complementarity between CEOs and TMTs in formulating and implementing CSR strategy may underlie differentiated strategies in CSR. We find that when CEOs who have predominant experience in output functions are complemented by TMTs with a lower proportion of members who (...) have experience in output functions, there is a pronounced effect on the community, product, and diversity dimensions of CSR. In turn, when output-oriented CEOs are complemented by output-oriented TMTs, we observe an effect on the employee relations dimension of CSR. Interestingly, we find no influence of CEO-TMT complementarity on the environment dimension of CSR. In general, our empirical results support the relevance of the interaction between CEOs and their TMTs in defining their firms’ CSR profile. (shrink)

Understanding the evolutionary role of environmentally induced phenotypic variation (i.e., plasticity) is an important issue in developmental evolution. A major physiological response to environmental change is cellular stress, which is counteracted by generic stress reactions detoxifying the cell. A model, stress‐induced evolutionary innovation (SIEI), whereby ancestral stress reactions and their corresponding pathways can be transformed into novel structural components of body plans, such as new cell types, is described. Previous findings suggest that the cell differentiation cascade of a cell type (...) critical to pregnancy in humans, the decidual stromal cell, evolved from a cellular stress reaction. It is hypothesized that the stress reaction in these cells was elicited ancestrally via inflammation caused by embryo attachment. The present study proposes that SIEI is a distinct form of plasticity‐based evolutionary change leading to the origin of novel structures rather than adaptive transformation of pre‐existing characters. (shrink)

Research on the effectiveness of case studies in teaching engineering ethics in higher education is underdeveloped. To add to our knowledge, we have systematically compared the outcomes of two case approaches to an undergraduate course on the ethics of technology: a detached approach using real-life cases and a challenge-based learning approach with students and stakeholders acting as co-creators. We first developed a practical typology of case-study approaches and subsequently tested an evaluation method to assess the students’ learning experiences and outcomes (...) and staff interpretations and operationalizations, seeking to answer three questions: Do students in the CBL approach report higher basic needs, motivation and competence development compared to their peers in the detached approach? What is the relationship between student-perceived co-creation and their basic needs, motivation and competence development? And what are the implications of CBL/CC for engineering-ethics teaching and learning? Our mixed methods analysis favored CBL as it best supported teaching and research goals while satisfying the students’ basic needs and promoting intrinsic motivation and communication competences. Competence progress in other areas did not differ between approaches, and motivation in terms of identified regulation was lower for CBL, with staff perceiving a higher workload. We propose that our case typology model is useful and that as a method to engage students as co-creators, CBL certainly merits further development and evaluation, as does our effectiveness analysis for engineering ethics instruction in general and for case-study approaches in particular. (shrink)

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. We must find new and innovative ways of conceptualizing transboundary energy issues, of embedding concerns of ethics or justice into energy policy, and of operationalizing response to them. This book stems from the emergent gap; the need for comparative approaches to energy justice, and for those that consider ethical traditions that go beyond the classical Western approach. This edited volume unites the fields of energy justice and comparative philosophy to (...) provide an overarching global perspective and approach to applying energy ethics. We contribute to this purpose in four sections: setting the scene, practice, applying theory to practice, and theoretical approaches. Through the chapters featured in the volume, we position the book as one that contributes to energy justice scholarship across borders of nations, borders of ways of thinking and borders of disciplines. The outcome will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students studying energy justice, ethics and environment, as well as energy scholars, policy makers, and energy analysts. (shrink)

Both the capability and the recognition approach are influential and substantial theories in social philosophy. In this contribution, we outline their main assumptions in their assessment of poverty. The two approaches are set in relation to each other, focusing mainly on (a) their moral evaluation of poverty, (b) issues of justification of their central normative claims, and (c) the role that is attributed to subjective experiences, feelings and emotions in these theories. This comparison reveals that in spite of significant differences, (...) both lead to the claim that poverty can never be adequately assessed without putting it into the context of a comprehensive ethical theory about the nature and function of societies. Drawing on this result, we conclude that the critical function of social philosophy plays an irreducible role in the study and understanding of poverty. (shrink)

Two welcome extensions of evolutionary thinking have come to prominence over the last thirty years: the so-called ’extended evolutionary synthesis’ (EES) and debate about biological kinds and individuals. These two agendas have, however, remained orthogonal to one another. The EES has mostly restricted itself to widening the explanations of adaptation offered by the preceding ’modern evolutionary synthesis’ by including additional mechanisms of inheritance and variation; while discussion of biological kinds has turned toward philosophical questions of essential vs. contingent properties of (...) life forms and realist vs. epistemological approaches to categorization and classification. Here we attempt to broaden the explanatory scope of evolutionary theory by linking these two agendas. We expand on the mechanistic orientation of the EES, using new understandings of networked systems of components in order to engage the distinct intellectual challenge of the origination of “historical kinds”. With this phrase we designate a subset of natural kinds that acquires, through evolutionary processes, a quasi-independent lineage-history. Such kinds emerge in both biology and culture, and we enlarge the limited number of historical kinds that have thus far been recognized in evolutionary biology in a series of paradigmatic exemplars, from genes and cell types to rituals and music. For each exemplar we discern specific mechanisms by which it arose and persists; comparing these, we suggest a general unity in the ways in which diverse historical kinds originate. (shrink)

The significance and development of Mannheim's sociology Ancient data such as the Code of Hammurabi, the Old Testament, the Confucian Classics, ...

Our energy systems are truly international, and yet even now, our energy policies tend to be grounded at the national level and in many instances, remain ill-equipped to tackle transboundary energy issues. Our energy policy systems are also largely detached from the concerns of ethics or justice. It follows that we must find new and innovative ways of not conceptualising these normative issues, but of operationalising response to them. This book stems from the emergent gap: the need for comparative approaches (...) to energy justice, and for those that consider non-Western ethical traditions. Opening the edited volume, this chapter begins by giving context to the concept of “energy justice” itself and outlines our comparative philosophical approach to it, focusing specifically on “global philosophy” for its role in dialectically engaging with philosophies from around the world. We then show how the different chapters of the volume contribute to this purpose in four parts: setting the scene, practice, applying theory to practice and theoretical approaches. The final section of this chapter concludes with reflections on the contribution of global philosophy approaches to energy justice as with a set of future research recommendations. Through these recommendations, and all of those within, we position the book as one that contributes to energy justice scholarship across borders of nations, borders of ways of thinking and borders of disciplines. (shrink)

There has been a proliferation of self-construction groups in Germany today in response to the political abandonment of public housing. But these self-contained groups made up of the middle classes are operating within the framework of this politics. These groups aim for individual ownership of housing. They have no interest in the urban integration of their enclave. By contrast there is another type of situational urbanism, not well tolerated by the authorities, that is developing on the margins, in remote places. (...) The particpative urbanism movements were very different, whether these were the Advocacy Planning of the 1970s which developed alternatives to urban projects, or Community Design Centres which worked with ethnic minorities. But this form of organisation tends also to be reclaimed by projects of homogenisation. So what, should be the conditions of intervention for a situated urbanism that is genuinely pluralist and non-hegemonic? (shrink)

Résumé Des groupes d’auto-construction se multiplient aujourd’hui en Allemagne, en réponse à l’abandon d’une politique publique du logement. Mais ces groupes réservés de fait aux classes moyennes sont fonctionnels par rapport à cette politique. Ces groupes visent la propriété individuelle du logement. Ils n’ont aucun égard pour l’insertion urbaine de leur îlot. Il y a par contre un autre urbanisme situationnel, mal toléré des autorités, qui se développe à la marge, dans les lieux écartés. Les mouvements pour l’urbanisme participatif obéissaient (...) à d’autres logiques, depuis l’ advocacy planning des années 1970, qui développait des alternatives aux projets urbains, jusqu’aux Community Design Centers qui travaillent avec les minorités ethniques. Mais cette forme d’organisation tend aussi à être récupérée dans des projets d’homogénéisation. Quelles seraient alors les conditions d’intervention d’un urbanisme situationnel réellement pluraliste et non hégémonique? (shrink)

The “attention economy” refers to the tech industry’s business model that treats human attention as a commodifiable resource. The libertarian critique of this model, dominant within tech and philosophical communities, claims that the persuasive technologies of the attention economy infringe on the individual user’s autonomy and therefore the proposed solutions focus on safeguarding personal freedom through expanding individual control. While this push back is important, current societal debates on the ethics of persuasive technologies are informed by a particular understanding of (...) attention, rarely posited explicitly yet assumed as the default. They share the same concept of attention, namely an individualistic and descriptive concept of attention that is a cognitive process, an expendable resource, something that one should control individually. We step away from a negative analysis in terms of external distractions and aim for positive answers, turning to Buddhist ethics to formulate a critique of persuasive technology from a genuinely ethical perspective. Buddhist ethics points at our attention’s inescapable ethical and ontological embeddedness. Attention as practice requires “the right effort” to distinguish desirable and undesirable states, the “right concentration” to stop the flow we are caught in, and the “right mindfulness” to fortify the ability to attend to the present situation and keep in mind a general sense of life’s direction. We offer input for further philosophical inquiry on attention as practice and attention ecology. We put forward comfort/effort and individualism/collectivism as two remaining central tensions in need of further research. (shrink)

Variegated phenotypes often result from chromosomal rearrangements that place euchromatic genes next to heterochromatin. In such rearrangements, the condensed structure of heterochromatin can spread into euchromatic regions, which then assume the morphology of heterochromatin and become transcriptionally inactive. In position‐effect variegation (PEV) therefore, gene inactivation results from a change in chromatin structure. PEV has been intensively investigated in the fruitfly Drosophila, where the phenomenon allows a genetic dissection of chromatin components. Consequently, many genes have been identified which, when mutated, act (...) as dominant modifiers (suppressors or enhancers) of PEV. Data available already demonstrate that genetic, molecular and developmental analysis of these genes provides an avenue to the identification of regulatory and structural chromatin components, and hence to fundamental aspects of chromosome structure and function. (shrink)

A macroscopic realization of the peculiar virtual particles is presented. The classical Helmholtz and the Schrödinger equations are differential equations of the same mathematical structure. The solutions with an imaginary wave number are called evanescent modes in the case of elastic and electromagnetic fields. In the case of non-relativistic quantum mechanical fields they are called tunneling solutions. The imaginary wave numbers point to strange consequences: The waves are non-local, they are not observable, and they are described as virtual particles. During (...) the last two decades QED calculations of the solutions with an imaginary wave number have been experimentally confirmed for phonons, photons, and electrons. The experimental proofs of the predictions of non-relativistic quantum mechanics and the Wigner phase time approach for the elastic, electromagnetic and Schrödinger fields will be presented in this article. The results are zero time in the barrier and an interaction time (i.e. a phase shift) at the barrier interfaces. The measured tunneling time scales approximately inversely with the particle energy. Actually, the tunneling time is given only by the barrier boundary interaction time, as zero time is spent inside a barrier. (shrink)

The book focuses on the modern understanding of human life-forms as constructs that followed an evolutionary history. The author thus finds science confronted with two questions: firstly, how the transgression of the virtual threshold between natural and cultural history was possible, secondly, how the socio-cultural constructs were able to develop in the course of history the way they did. The discussion concentrates on the problem of determining a processual logic in the development of societal structures as well as in the (...) development of cognition. The focus of attention is the historico-genetic reconstruction of cognition. The book was originally published in German as Historisch-genetische Theorie der Kultur (Weilerswist 2000: Velbrück). (shrink)

mit Beitr. v. Günter C. Behrmann. hrsg. v. Günter Saße. ; Volltext // Exemplar mit der Signatur: München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek -- Z 65.262-1447.

Our society is in the middle of the AI revolution. We discuss several applications of AI, in particular medical causality, where deep-learning neural networks screen through big data bases, extracting associations between a patient’s condition and possible causes. While beneficial in medicine, several questionable AI trading strategies have emerged in finance. Though advantages in many aspects of our lives, serious threats of AI exist. We suggest several regulatory measures to reduce these threats. We further discuss whether ‘full AI robots’ should (...) be programmed with a virtual consciousness and conscience. While this would reduce AI threats via motivational control, other threats such as the desire for AI—human socioeconomic equality could prove detrimental. (shrink)

Las depresiones y los estados depresivos varían de una persona a otra. Si se quiere trabajar para mejorar la situación de las víctimas de estos males, sería indicado saber en qué se distinguen los diferentes fenómenos y dónde se encuentra la causa. Pues las depresiones a menudo cumplen una función que suele aparecer camuflada./////Depression and depressive moods are varying from one person to another one. When working to alleviate the situation of the victims of these complaints it is advisable to (...) distinguish between different phenomena and to find the fundamental cause. Because depressions many times have a veiled function for the person in question. (shrink)

This paper responds to the essay reviews by David Haig, Alan Love and Rachel Brown of my recently published book “Homology, Genes and Evolutionary Innovation”. The issues addressed here relate to: the notion of classes and individuals, issues of explanatory value of adaptive and structuralist explanations in evolutionary biology, the role of homology in evolutionary theory, the limits of a pluralist stance vis a vis alternative explanations of homology, as well as the question whether and to what extend the perspective (...) laid out in HGEI can be or should be transferred to other branches of study, like comparative behavioral biology. (shrink)

Etude de la conception des grands penseurs, de Saint Simon à Mannheim en ce qui concerne la sociologie de la connaissance.