This 1999 book demonstrates a method for reading the texts of Aristotle by revealing a continuous line of argument running from the Physics to De Caelo. The author analyses a group of arguments that are almost always treated in isolation from one another, and reveals their elegance and coherence. She concludes by asking why these arguments remain interesting even though we now believe they are absolutely wrong and have been replaced by better ones. The book establishes the case that we (...) must rethink our approach to Aristotle's physical science and Aristotelian texts, and as such will provoke debate and stimulate new thinking amongst philosophers, classicists, and historians of science. (shrink)

IN Physics VIII, 10, Aristotle seems to commit a serious mistake: just before concluding that the first mover required by all motion everywhere remains invariable and without parts or magnitude, Aristotle apparently locates this mover on the circumference of the cosmos.

ARISTOTLE IS UNIVERSALLY credited with inventing the concept of teleology: "nature is among the causes which act for the sake of something." "That for the sake of which" is a thing's purpose, its end, the goal at which it aims. Taking Aristotle's physics as a focal point for his philosophy of nature, I shall argue that teleology functions within his theory of nature not only substantively, but also procedurally. First, then, I shall explain what I mean by teleology as procedure (...) and then show how this procedure relates both to problems within physics and to Aristotle's conception of physics as a science. (shrink)

The choice of coping style of recruits under psychological stress in the process of military task execution has been an important topic in the promotion of military operations and cohesion of military forces. Taking a positive coping style under psychological stress can help recruits overcome the negative effects of stress and improve military morale and group combat effectiveness. Although soldiers' psychological stress in the process of military mission execution having an impact on coping style has been studied by a large (...) body of literature, very little literature has focused on the mechanism of self-efficacy and social support between recruits' psychological stress and coping style from the person-environment fit perspective. Therefore, this study was conducted to analyze the impact of recruits' psychological stress on coping style through a chain mediation model and to discuss the role of self-efficacy and social support in this relationship. Two waves of survey data were utilized to test the research hypotheses on a sample of 1028 Chinese recruits performing military tasks. The results indicated that recruits' psychological stress negatively impacted positive coping styles and positively correlated with negative ones. In addition, self-efficacy and social support mediated the relationship between psychological stress and positive coping style, and self-efficacy mediated the relationship between psychological stress and negative coping style. More importantly, self-efficacy and social support play the chain mediating effect between psychological stress and positive coping style. (shrink)

Der Vortrag zum Thema "Schmerzen", den der 100-jährige Hans-Georg Gadamer anläßlich des von der Orthopädischen Universitätsklinik Heidelberg am 11. November 2000 organisierten Symposions abhielt, war der letzte öffentliche Auftritt des großen Heidelberger Philosophen. In ihm formulierte Gadamer eine für das medizinische Kollegium ungeheure Provokation, indem er den Schmerz als eine lebenslange Aufgabe beschrieb, die, weit entfernt ein Makel oder gar Deformation des leidenden Individuums zu sein, sich vielmehr dem strukturell annähert, was Gadamer zeitlebens beschäftigt hat: der Hermeneutik. Der Akt des (...) Verstehens prägt auch das anschließende Gespräch zwischen Gadamer und dem Fachpublikum, in dem sich beide Seiten zögernd aufeinander zu bewegen. Das vorliegende Bändchen trägt dem in zweierlei Hinsicht Rechnung: Es gibt die freie, lebendige Rede Gadamers möglichst unverstellt wieder und flankiert die Anregungen Gadamers mit Überlegungen zum Phänomen "Schmerz" aus medizinischer und therapeutischer Sicht. (shrink)

Proclus composed 18 arguments for the eternity of the world and they survive only because Philoponus, intending to refute Proclus' arguments one by one, quotes each; one copy of Philoponus' work -- and so Proclus' arguments too -- survives. Because of their odd history, these arguments have received little attention either in themselves or in relation to Proclus' other works, even though they are intrinsically interesting and reflect his larger philosophical enterprise. I first examine Argument XVIII, in which Proclus calls (...) on "perpetuity", "eternity", and "time" to argue that the cosmos must be eternal. This argument leaves unanswered two important questions. The cosmos is caused by god and is itself a god; how can a cause and its effect both be gods? Proclus concludes that the cosmos is "a copy of the perpetuity of the eternal"; but what does this phrase -- and the conclusion that it expresses -- mean? To answer these questions, I turn to "The Elements of Theology," a systematic progression of 211 propositions disclosing the causal structure of all reality. "Eternity" and "time", along with "being perpetual", also appear here, particularly in propositions 40-55, to which I turn in the second part of this paper. They are conjoined with what Proclus calls "the Self-Constituted". I argue that by understanding the relation of the Self-Constituted as a cause to its effect, what depends upon another, we can also understand the causal relation between god and the cosmos. The cosmos can be called divine because, via the cause/effect relation between them, god and the cosmos are both eternal; the cosmos is "a copy of the perpetuity of the eternal" because via its relation to god, the cosmos becomes what its cause is, and in this precise sense an effect "imitates" its cause. (shrink)

Johanna Knapstein,1 Daniel Grimm,1 Marcus A Wörns,1 Peter R Galle,1 Hauke Lang,2 Tim Zimmermann111st Department of Internal Medicine, Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany; 2Department of General, Visceral and Transplantation Surgery, Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz, GermanyIntroduction: Hepatitis C virus reinfection occurs universally after liver transplantation, with accelerated cirrhosis rates of up to 30% within 5 years after liver transplantation. Dual antiviral therapy with pegylated interferon-2a and ribavirin only reaches sustained virological response rates of ~30% after liver transplantation. With the approval of viral NS3/4A (...) protease inhibitors telaprevir, boceprevir, and simeprevir and the NS5B polymerase inhibitor sofosbuvir, combination therapy offers new therapeutic options for HCV-infected patients, resulting in considerably higher sustained virological response rates in the nontransplant setting. Case presentation: We report three cases of TVR-based triple antiviral therapy in HCV genotype 1 reinfected patients after liver transplantation, of whom a 57-year-old Caucasian female and a 43-year-old Caucasian male were therapy naïve, and a 49-year-old Caucasian male patient was pretreated ineffectively. After 4 weeks of therapy, viral load decreased one to three log10 and became negative in weeks 6 to 8 in the therapy naïve patients. The pretreated patient showed a negative viral load in week 4. TVR was administered over 12 weeks, 750 mg thrice daily. Doses of immunosuppression with cyclosporine were reduced four to six fold. Initial peg-IFN and RBV doses ranged from 135–180 µg/week and 800–1,200 mg/day, according to the patient's body weight. Doses of peg-IFN and RBV were adapted to 90–135 µg/week and 400–800 mg/day after 2 to 12 weeks of protease inhibitor therapy. Dual therapy was continued for 36 weeks with total treatment duration of 48 weeks in the therapy naïve patients leading to a sustained virological response 12 weeks after the end of therapy. In the pretreated patient a breakthrough was detected in week 24 and therapy was discontinued. Overall, antiviral therapy was well tolerated. Side effects included dysgeusia and anemia leading to erythropoietin application and blood transfusions. Conclusion: This case series emphasizes that triple therapy with TVR is an efficient treatment for therapy naïve HCV genotype 1 reinfected patients after liver transplantation. But therapeutic options for pretreated patients require improvement. Keyword: cyclosporine, interferon, ribavirin, hepatitis C, protease inhibitor. (shrink)

An unaltered reprint of the K. Paul, French and Co. edition of 1882, translated, introduced and annotated by W. Ogle.

This paper begins with the problem of natural substance and its identification by Aristotle as the combination of form and matter, as distinct from the substrate of the body. This is an investigation of the relation between the combination of form and matter on the one hand and body on the other. Looking at both natural science and metaphysics will give us a clear account of the partners involved in the relationship that defines living things. That is the first step (...) toward understanding how and why they enter into a relation and exactly what, for Aristotle, is entailed by that relation. Being clear on the relation of natural substance in the sense of the combination of form and matter, soul and body, will in turn allow us to ask if soul is in every regard attached to body or if there is “something proper” to soul alone. (shrink)

In the fifth century A.D., Proclus served as head of the Academy in Athens that had been founded 900 years earlier by Plato. Proclus was the last great systematizer of Greek philosophy, and his work exerted a powerful influence in late antiquity, in the Arab world, and in the Renaissance. His treatise_ On the Eternity of the World _formed the basis for virtually all later arguments for the eternity of the world and for the existence of God; consequently, it lies (...) at the heart of neoplatonic philosophy and the controversy between pagans and Christians at the end of antiquity. Proclus’s eighteen Arguments were quoted within John Philoponus’ polemic against him, written in the sixth century; but the opening pages of the sole extant manuscript, which contained the first Argument, have been lost. In this book, Helen Lang and A.D. Macro present the seventeen Arguments preserved by Philoponus and translate them as an independent work. The first Argument, which survives in Arabic, is also included and makes this the only complete edition of _On the Eternity of the World_ since antiquity. This bilingual edition comprises the seventeen Arguments in Greek and English, along with an introduction, synopses, and detailed notes which help readers with or without Greek to understand them philosophically and historically. Two appendices complete the volume: the Arabic text of the first Argument, also with English translation and notes, and the first modern edition of an important Latin translation from the Renaissance. In a valuable introduction, Lang and Macro examine the complex history of these Arguments. Together with its excellent annotations, and English and Greek texts en face, the publication of Proclus’s _On the Eternity of the World_makes available an influential work by a major figure in the history of late Greek philosophy. (shrink)

This article considers the definition of nature as given by Aristotle in "Physics" II and the commentaries on it by Philoponus and Thomas Aquinas. Through Aristotle's definition and its treatment in two commentaries, we can see how each philosopher defines philosophy as an enterprise and the problems encompassed by it. I conclude that the conception of philosophy, and consequently its problems, is quite distinct in each case and should be considered as such; as a further consequence, the whole notion of (...) "commentaries" should be rethought. (shrink)