There is increasing concern about “surveillance capitalism,” whereby for-profit companies generate value from data, while individuals are unable to resist (Zuboff 2019). Non-profits using data-enabled surveillance receive less attention. Higher education institutions (HEIs) have embraced data analytics, but the wide latitude that private, profit-oriented enterprises have to collect data is inappropriate. HEIs have a fiduciary relationship to students, not a narrowly transactional one (see Jones et al, forthcoming). They are responsible for facets of student life beyond education. In addition to (...) classrooms, learning management systems, and libraries, HEIs manage dormitories, gyms, dining halls, health facilities, career advising, police departments, and student employment. HEIs collect and use student data in all of these domains, ostensibly to understand learner behaviors and contexts, improve learning outcomes, and increase institutional efficiency through “learning analytics” (LA). ID card swipes and Wi-Fi log-ins can track student location, class attendance, use of campus facilities, eating habits, and friend groups. Course management systems capture how students interact with readings, video lectures, and discussion boards. Application materials provide demographic information. These data are used to identify students needing support, predict enrollment demands, and target recruiting efforts. These are laudable aims. However, current LA practices may be inconsistent with HEIs’ fiduciary responsibilities. HEIs often justify LA as advancing student interests, but some projects advance primarily organizational welfare and institutional interests. Moreover, LA advances a narrow conception of student interests while discounting privacy and autonomy. Students are generally unaware of the information collected, do not provide meaningful consent, and express discomfort and resigned acceptance about HEI data practices, especially for non-academic data (see Jones et al. forthcoming). The breadth and depth of student information available, combined with their fiduciary responsibility, create a duty that HEIs exercise substantial restraint and rigorous evaluation in data collection and use. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with explaining some of the principal theoretical developments in elementary particle physics and discussing the associated methodological problems both in respect of heuristics and appraisal. Particular reference is made to relativistic quantum field theory, renormalization, Feynman diagram techniques, the analytic S-matrix and the Chew — Frautschi bootstrap.

Oxford Scholarly Classics is a new series that makes available again great academic works from the archives of Oxford University Press. Reissued in uniform series design, the reissues will enable libraries, scholars, and students to gain fresh access to some of the finest scholarship of the last century.

The discussion on mandatory turnout, which controversially introduces coercion at the heart of the electoral process, illustrates a dilemma between increasing voter turnout on the one hand and avoiding coercion on the other. If successful, a recent proposal by Elliott solves this dilemma as it removes the compulsory element of mandatory turnout. Specifically, Elliot reinterprets the policy’s purpose as (a) a pre-commitment device for those who believe that they have a duty to vote and (b) a nudge to the surveillance (...) of politics for those who do not believe this. We critically evaluate Elliott’s novel intervention in the debate and argue that it is ultimately unsuccessful. Mandatory turnout can be interpreted as neither a pre-commitment device nor a nudge. Moreover, we present a more promising and novel solution to the dilemma: a genuine state-administered pre-commitment device with respect to voting that also nudges citizens to vote and seems _prima facie_ attractive. (shrink)

A Papyrus commentary on Alcman published in 19571 brings us news of a poem in which Alcman “physiologized”. The lemmata and commentary together witness to a semi-philosophical cosmogony unlike any other hitherto known from Greece. The evidence is meagre, but it seems worth while to see what can be made of it; for it is perhaps possible to go a little farther than has so far been done.

A Papyrus commentary on Alcman published in 19571 brings us news of a poem in which Alcman “physiologized”. The lemmata and commentary together witness to a semi-philosophical cosmogony unlike any other hitherto known from Greece. The evidence is meagre, but it seems worth while to see what can be made of it; for it is perhaps possible to go a little farther than has so far been done.

In the long section of anapaests with which they make their entry, the old men of Argos methodically deliver three essential messages to the audience: 40–71. It is the tenth year of the Trojan War. 72–82. We are men who were too old to go and fight in it. 83–103. Some new situation seems to be indicated by the fact that Clytemnestra is organizing sacrifices throughout the town.

Objective—To explore the opinions of unpaid healthy volunteers on the payment of research subjects.Design—Prospective cohort.Setting—Southern Alberta, Canada.Participants—Medically eligible persons responding to recruiting advertisements for a randomised vaccine trial were invited to take part in a study of informed consent at the point at which they formally consented or refused trial participation. Of 72 invited, 67 returned questionnaires at baseline and 54 at follow-up.Outcome measures—Proportions of persons who agreed or disagreed with three close-ended statements on the payment of research subjects; themes (...) and categories identified by content analysis of responses to an open-ended question.Results—A minority agreed with paying either patient or healthy volunteer participants. Opinions did not change over time. Participants' comments addressed: benefits and drawbacks to research participation; benefits and drawbacks to paying research participants; conditions under which payment of research subjects would be acceptable, and the nature of acceptable recognition. Acceptable conditions were to improve problematic recruitment, to reimburse costs, and to recognise participants, particularly for their time investment. Both non-monetary and monetary recognition of volunteers were thought to be appropriate.Conclusions—Most unpaid volunteers disagreed with paying research participants. The themes arising from their comments are similar to those that have been raised by ethicists and suggest that recognising the time and effort of participants should receive greater emphasis than presently occurs. (shrink)

It is generally accepted that the Homeric Hymn to Apollo was not conceived as a single poem but is a combination of two: a Delian hymn, D, performed at Delos and concerned with the god's birth there, and a Pythian hymn, P, concerned with his arrival and establishment at Delphi. What above all compels us to make a dichotomy is not the change of scene in itself, but the way D ends. The poet returns from the past to the present, (...) and takes leave of his audience; farewell, he says, and remember me ever after. He is quite clearly finishing. Whereupon there is an abrupt and unsatisfactory transition to P. (shrink)

Histories of literature tend to treat Stesichorus as just one of the lyric poets, like Alcman or Anacreon. But the vast scale of his compositions puts him in a category of his own. It has always been known that his Oresteia was divided into more than one book; P. Oxy, 2360 gave us fragments of a narrative about Telemachus of a nearly Homeric amplitude; and from P. Oxy. 2617 it was learned that the Geryoneis contained at least 1,300 verses, the (...) total being perhaps closer to two thousand. Even allowing for the shorter lines, this was as long as many an epic poem. Indeed, these were epic poems, in subject and style as well as in length: epics to be sung instead of recited. What was behind them ? Who was this Stesichorus, and how did he come to be, in Quintilian's phrase, ‘sustaining on the lyre the weight of epic song’ ? The biographical problem must be tackled first. The question of Stesichorus’ historical setting and date is confused by legendary elements as well as by contradiction in the sources. On the whole scholars remain spellbound by the specious precision of the Suda's dates , although it has long been realized that they are founded on nothing but the assumption that Stesichorus was younger than Alcman and older than Simonides. There have been excellent discussions by Wilamowitz and Maas, but they seem to have had little influence. (shrink)

The work of many scholars in the last hundred years has helped us to understand the nature and origins of the treatise which we know for short as the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. The present state of knowledge may be summed up as follows. The work in its extant form dates from the Antonine period, but much of it was taken over bodily from an earlier source, thought to be the Movaelov of Alcidamas. Some of the verses exchanged in (...) the contest were current even earlier, and some scholars have supposed that the story of a contest went back to the fifth, sixth, or even eighth century; but this is now much doubted. (shrink)

Recent discussions of experimental tests of the Sum Rule have been carried out in the context of the special circumstances attending the Cross-Ramsey experiment. A more general analysis of possible tests is presented. A technical mistake of Fine and Glymour concerned with a misunderstanding of the physics of the Cross-Ramsey experiment is explained and a detailed analysis of a thought experiment based on the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen wave function is given. It is concluded, in agreement with Fine, that scattering experiments do not (...) test the Sum Rule as a principle which supplements standard quantum mechanics. (shrink)

City archives, mined by Aristotle for his Didaskaliai, preserved a reasonably complete record of dramatic productions in the fifth century. But how far back did these archives go? The so-called Fasti, an inscription set up c. 346 and listing dithyrambic, comic and tragic victors year by year, must have been based on the same archives, but went back, it is thought, only as far as 502/1. Its heading πρ]τον κμοι ἦσαν τ[ι διονσ]ωι τραγωιδο δ[, however supplemented, implies an intention of (...) going back to the beginning of things, in other words to the beginning of the archival record. This raises serious doubt as to whether that record went back to the alleged date of Thespis' première, or indeed to those given for Choerilus' and Phrynichus'. (shrink)

I shall argue for two complementary theses: firstly that ‘Homer’ was not the name of a historical poet, but a fictitious or constructed name, and secondly that for a century or more after the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey there was little interest in the identity or the person of their author or authors. This interest only arose in the last decades of the sixth century; but once it did, ‘Homer’ very quickly became an object of admiration, criticism, and (...) biographical construction. (shrink)

Many years ago, when Michael was lecturing in Oxford on the Philosophy of Physics and was trying to explain the logic of Aspect's experiments in Paris, he turned to me to expound the correct doctrine of counter-factual truth. I was flummoxed. It had been much discussed in late- and postmediaeval times, especially in the Iberian peninsula, and had recently enjoyed a revival in the Eastern United States. But Middle Knowledge, as the Schoolmen called it, was beyond my comprehension, and I (...) could only exemplify once again the truism that philosophers were better at raising problems than resolving them. (shrink)

In his paper, “Grand Unified Gauge Theories and the Number of Elementary Particles,“ Robert Weingard suggests what he calls the Extended Redhead's Principle for elementary particles: “Two particles for which there are conceivable circumstances in which one can be ‘rotated’ or reoriented into the other are the same particles”. The philosophical soundness of such a principle is questionable.

Modern microscopic theory is employed to construct a powerful analytical algorithm that permits a clear description of characteristic features of strongly correlated quantum fluids in thermodynamic equilibrium. Using recently developed formal results we uncover an intricate relationship between strongly correlated systems and free quantum gases of appropriately defined constituents. The latter entities are precisely defined renormalized bosons or fermions. They carry all the information contained in the statistical correlations of the strongly interacting many-particle system by virtue of their effective masses. (...) The mass of such a renormalized boson or fermion depends in a specific form on temperature, bulk particle number density of the many-body system, and eventually on momentum. Due to these properties the renormalized bosons and fermions determine in particular the location and nature of the transition to non-normal phases. (shrink)

We outline the principal features of Bose and Fermi fluids that are revealed in particle scattering experiments at high momentum transfer. In this regime, the dynamic structure function is determined by the dominant influence of correlations which are embodied in the static one- and two-body density matrices characterizing a strongly correlated system. We analyze the general structure of these fundamental quantities and of the associated momentum distributions that enter as input quantities for determining the dynamical response. We discuss their physical (...) interpretation and their interrelationships. We further describe the main features of advanced many-body methods, which begin on a nonperturbative basis. They permit a formal and numerical evaluation of various quantities that characterize the structure of the density matrices and therewith of quantum fluids and solids. (shrink)

By the colours and decoration of a vase fragment one determines the period and style to which the original belonged; while its physical contours show from what part of the original it comes. The material may be insufficient for a reconstruction of the whole design. But it is often legitimate to go beyond what is actually contained in the preserved pieces.

They used to believe that mankind began in 4004 B.C. and the Greeks in 776. We now know that these last five thousand years during which man has left written record of himself are but a minute fraction of the time he has spent developing his culture. We now understand that the evolution of human society, its laws and customs, its economics, its religious practices, its games, its languages, is a very slow process, to be measured in millennia. In the (...) case of Greek religious usage it is now appreciated that it has its roots not in Mycenaean but in Palaeolithic times. As for Greek poetry, comparative studies have shown that it goes back by a continuous tradition to Indo-European poetry. (shrink)

Several of the treatises and lectures that make up the Hippocratic corpus begin with more or less extended statements about the physical composition and operation of the world at large, and approach the study of human physiology from this angle. We see this, for example, in De Natwra Hominis, De Flatibus, De Carnibus, De Victu; it was the approach of Alcmaeon of Croton, Diogenes of Apollonia, and according to Plato of Hippocrates himself. The work known as De Hebdomadibus would appear (...) to be a prime example of the type. The first twelve chapters are cosmological. They are dominated by two ideas: that everything in nature is arranged in groups of seven, and that the human body is constructed on the same pattern as the whole world. In the later part of the book we pass to the subject of fevers, their causation and treatment. But as Roscher observed, the cosmology and the pathology do not belong together. (shrink)

Tragedy is superior to comedy. This is the received view in much philosophical aesthetics, literary criticism and amongst many ordinary literary appreciators. The paper outlines three standard types of reasons given to underwrite the conceptual nature of the superiority claim, focusing on narrative structure, audience response and moral or human significance respectively. It sketches some possible inter-relations amongst the types of reasons given and raises various methodological worries about how the argument for tragedy’s superiority typically proceeds. The paper then outlines (...) a new normative account of a type of literary or dramatic comedy – ‘high comedy’ – which proves to be tragedy’s equal. High comedies, it will be argued, have complex narrative structures shaping audience responses underwriting the moral significance of the comic mode. The received view is unjustified and appreciating why this is so casts light on the nature and value of comedy. (shrink)