While it seems to be evident that the vision of the eternal return of the same is the solution to the riddle mentioned in "On the vision and the riddle," exactly what constitutes the riddle is anything but clear. Li ke all good riddles the solution demands a paradigm shift. Nietzsche's riddle is solved by a radical rethinking of the concept of time, from a straight line to a circle. I give a detailed account of how Nietzsche's riddle is formulated (...) in such a way tha t the eternal return of the same is the only possible solution. (shrink)

How transcription factors achieve their in vivo specificities is a fundamental question in biology. For the Homeotic Complex (HOM/Hox) family of homeoproteins, specificity in vivo is likely to be in part determined by subtle differences in the DNA binding properties inherent in these proteins. Some of these differences in DNA binding are due to sequence differences in the N‐terminal arms of HOM/Hox homeodomains. Evidence also exists to suggest that cofactors can modify HOM/Hox function by cooperative DNA binding interactions. The Drosophila (...) homeoprotein extradenticle (exd) is likely to be one such cofactor. In HOM/Hox proteins, both the conserved ‘YPWM’ peptide motif and the homeodomain are important for interacting with exd. Although exd provides part of the answer as to how specificity is achieved, there may be additional cofactors and mechanisms that have yet to be identified. (shrink)

Taking Isaac Newton at his own word, historians have long agreed that the decade of the 1660s, when Newton was a young man in his twenties, was the critical period in his scientific career. In the years 1665 and 1666, he has told us, he hit on the ideas of cosmic gravitation, the composition of white light, and the fluxional calculus. The elaboration of these basic ideas constituted his scientific achievement. Nevertheless, the decade of the 1660s has remained a virtual (...) blank in our knowledge of Newton. It need not remain so always. His papers contain a wealth of manuscripts from his undergraduate years and the period immediately following. The first volume of his mathematical papers, which will soon be published, will demonstrate how extensive the information on his early mathematical development is. The development of his non-mathematical studies, especially of what I shall call his scientific studies to distinguish them from the mathematical, can be followed as well—in his reading notes, in his notebooks, above all in the passage in his philosophical notebook labelled Quaestiones quaedam Philosophicae. In this passage we see emerging into consciousness for the first time the questions on which Newton's philosophy of nature was built. (shrink)

Knowledge and expertise -- Knowledge and action -- The nature of professional action in urban planning.

In a recent article, Gross argues that physicians in decent societies have a civic duty to aid in the torturing of suspected terrorists during emergency conditions. The argument presupposes a communitarian society in which considerations of common good override questions of individual rights, but it is also utilitarian. In the event that there is a ticking bomb and no other alternative available for defusing it, torture must be used, and physicians must play their part. In an earlier article, Jones also (...) argues in favour of physician participation in torture, going so far as to enthusiastically endorse the allocation of research resources as well to ensure that the ability to meet emergency situations is as efficient as scientifically possible. I argue against both these views and defend the absolute prohibition against torture generally, and against any participation by physicians in particular. I show that these arguments are incompatible with liberal or decent societies, and that the institutional requirements for making torture effective would constitute an unacceptable degradation both of medical ethics and practice, as well as of political institutions in general. (shrink)

The evolutionarily conserved genomic organization of the Hox genes has been a puzzle ever since it was discovered that their order along the chromosome is similar to the order of their functional domains along the antero‐posterior axis. Why has this colinearity been maintained throughout evolution? A close look at regulatory sequences from the mouse Hox clusters(1,2) suggests that enhancer sharing between adjacent Hox genes may be one reason. Moreover, characterizing the activity of one of these mouse enhancers in Drosophila(2) illustrates (...) that despite many similarities, not all Hox clusters are built in the same way. (shrink)

Conflicts of interest have been reduced to financial conflicts. The National Institutes of Health’s new rules for managing conflicts of interest in medical research, the first major change to the regulations in over 15 years, address only financial ties. Although several commentators urged that the regulations also cover non-financial interests, the Department of Health and Human Services declined to do so. Similarly, the Institute of Medicine’s influential 2009 Conflict of Interest Report focuses almost exclusively on financial conflicts. Institutional policies at (...) academic medical centers and guidance from professional bodies and medical journals also primarily emphasize financial ties. Even broadly worded rules are applied more readily to financial ties than non-financial interests, such as the regulations that restrict institutional review board members with conflicting interests from participating in protocol reviews. (shrink)

The human science or qualitative approaches to research have always argued that methodology must be determined by the subject matter under study. Yet the same approaches to data collection (i.e., the qualitative interview) and data analysis have been utilized by these approaches since their inception. The most essential lesson of van den Berg's metabletics is that no phenomenon is static or absolute. If human phenomena are ever-changing then the methodologies we use to study them must also change and adapt, so (...) that we can more fully and authentically capture their meaning structures. This paper will develop this argument, and demonstrate the limitation of interviews for the study of the changing nature of human phenomena, utilizing psychotherapy research as an example. (shrink)

What does it mean to take the Bible seriously? This introductory book explores how Scripture itself gives us the resources to read it wisely. First, it looks at the basic questions of reading in context--historical, literary, and theological--and understanding the significance of the two-testament structure of the Christian Bible. Then it looks at how the Bible can itself contribute to shaping a wise doctrine of Scripture. Finally, it considers some of the many hermeneutical perspectives that contribute to reading the Bible (...) wisely. New to this revised edition are chapters addressing the significance of the Old Testament, the performative function of Scripture, and how reading Scripture actually helps form the reader. The aim throughout is to explore key questions critical to the task of reading the Bible generously, constructively, and in a comprehensible way, without oversimplifying core theological issues. (shrink)