In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.1 (2001) 139-141 [Access article in PDF] Helen S. Lang. The Order of Nature in Aristotle's Physics: Place and the Elements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xii + 324. £40. This is an unsuccessful book. Some of the reasons for its failure are complex, others are more simple. I cannot address all, but shall simply discuss the fundamental claims about four large (...) topical units—about nature, place, void and elemental motion—indicating why they are untenable.Discussing the celebrated definition of nature in Physics II.1, Lang contends that in it the verb kineisthai should be taken in the passive voice, that nature should be understood as a principle or cause of being moved and of being at rest, and not just blandly as a principle of motion and rest. Since Aristotle asserts in Book VIII of the Physics that the elements contain a passive principle of motion (255b30f), Lang's contention would mean that the elements in this respect do not differ from other natural entities. This is highly unlikely, given the systematic contrast of self-moving composite natural entities and simple, unarticulated elemental natures at 255a5-18. Lang goes so far as to assert [End Page 139] that "kineisthai is always passive, not middle (or reflexive), in both Plato and Aristotle" (42). Fortunately, we need not accept this on her word: although kineisthai can be both passive and middle, in some instances (notably in aorist and future), passive and middle forms are different. Accordingly, Lang's claim must be rejected on the basis of the very first passage she helpfully quotes as an "additional example" in n.24 on p.42: Physics VII.1 242a37f employs the middle voice future, kinesétai, and not the passive form, kinethésetai. The passage, teeming with different forms of the verb kineisthai, describes an entity which contains the principle of motion in itself, which moves naturally. This indisputably shows that Lang's contention is wrong.Lang, contrary to the well-entrenched scholarly consensus, claims that place is not the first (=innermost) extremity or first unmoved boundary of the containing body, but the extremity of the first body, i.e., of the celestial sphere. (The transposition of the qualification "first" happens in several, non-conclusive installments, see e.g. 99f, or 106f.) This transposition, however, runs counter to several of Aristotle's stipulations about place. Lang's all-encompassing extremity can only be the common (koinos) place of everything there is, whereas Aristotle is keen on finding the proper or particular (idios) place, a location which contains nothing but the entity itself (209a32-b1). The entirety of the discussion in Physics IV.4-5 attests that it is this latter place which Aristotle defines here: the first place is neither smaller, nor bigger than the thing in place (211a1f, a23-29, a31-33, etc.). Aristotle repeatedly stresses that the extremities of the contained body and its container are "in the same" (211a33f, b11f). This remark surely would be out of place about the remote extremity of the first containing body. It is also repeatedly set out that the direction of explanation is bottom-up, and not top-down, as Lang's all-encompassing universal place would require: it is by being in a particular locus that we can be said to be in (the sphere of) air, and by this in the heaven (209a33-b1, 211a23-26).Lang's proposal is not just theoretically unappealing. The traditional should not be rejected recklessly, without an attentive discussion. After all, it "apparently beg[a]n immediately with Theophrastus," as Lang rather uncannily admits (105), and it was Theophrastus, and not Lang, who studied and worked for decades with Aristotle.A key assertion of the chapter on void also rests on a grave philological blunder. Lang argues that interpreters switched from Aristotle's expression "that through which" (to di' hou) to "medium," thereby surrendering the original net of notions, in which the natural activity of the element impeded the progression of the... (shrink)

BackgroundThe areas of Research Ethics (RE) and Research Integrity (RI) are rapidly evolving. Cases of research misconduct, other transgressions related to RE and RI, and forms of ethically questionable behaviors have been frequently published. The objective of this scoping review was to collect RE and RI cases, analyze their main characteristics, and discuss how these cases are represented in the scientific literature.MethodsThe search included cases involving a violation of, or misbehavior, poor judgment, or detrimental research practice in relation to a (...) normative framework. A search was conducted in PubMed, Web of Science, SCOPUS, JSTOR, Ovid, and Science Direct in March 2018, without language or date restriction. Data relating to the articles and the cases were extracted from case descriptions.ResultsA total of 14,719 records were identified, and 388 items were included in the qualitative synthesis. The papers contained 500 case descriptions. After applying the eligibility criteria, 238 cases were included in the analysis. In the case analysis, fabrication and falsification were the most frequently tagged violations (44.9%). The non-adherence to pertinent laws and regulations, such as lack of informed consent and REC approval, was the second most frequently tagged violation (15.7%), followed by patient safety issues (11.1%) and plagiarism (6.9%). 80.8% of cases were from the Medical and Health Sciences, 11.5% from the Natural Sciences, 4.3% from Social Sciences, 2.1% from Engineering and Technology, and 1.3% from Humanities. Paper retraction was the most prevalent sanction (45.4%), followed by exclusion from funding applications (35.5%).ConclusionsCase descriptions found in academic journals are dominated by discussions regarding prominent cases and are mainly published in the news section of journals. Our results show that there is an overrepresentation of biomedical research cases over other scientific fields compared to its proportion in scientific publications. The cases mostly involve fabrication, falsification, and patient safety issues. This finding could have a significant impact on the academic representation of misbehaviors. The predominance of fabrication and falsification cases might diverge the attention of the academic community from relevant but less visible violations, and from recently emerging forms of misbehaviors. (shrink)

Aristotelian natures – internal principles of motion and rest – provide a rich account of the goal-directed behaviour of natural entities. What such natures cannot account for, on their own, are cases of teleology across natures, where an entity, due to its nature, furthers the goals of another entity. Nevertheless, Aristotle admits such teleological configurations among natures: most notably Politics I.8 1256b15-20 claims that plants are for the sake of animals and animals are for the sake of humans. The paper (...) first scrutinizes two recent attempts– by Mohan Matthen and David Sedley – at an explanation of such teleology across natures. The fundamental move these proposals make is that they claim that the universe has a nature of its own. Accordingly, teleology across natures could be explained as the operation of this single cosmic nature. But the introduction of a cosmic nature contravenes fundamental strictures of Aristotelian natural philosophy. Hence the third section of the paper formulates an alternative proposal, that the teleological interaction across different natures is underpinned by the self-benefittingactivityofindividualnaturalentities,whichareable to use the natural processes of their environment to their own advantage. (shrink)

Aristotle asserts at 1073b10-13 that he intends to give in Metaphysics XII.8 a definite conception about the multitude of the divine transcendent entities, which function as the movers of the celestial spheres. In order to do so, he describes several celestial theories. First Eudoxus’s, then the modifications of this theory propounded by Callippus, and finally his own suggestion, the introduction of yet further spheres which integrate the celestial spheres into a single overarching scheme. For this, after explaining the spheres providing (...) the component motions of each planet, Aristotle introduces so-called rewinding spheres (anelittousai), which perform contrary revolutions to the ones performed by the spheres carrying the planet. (shrink)

Anaximander is the first philosopher whose theory of the heavens is preserved in broad outlines. According to the sources the celestial bodies are huge rings of compressed air around the earth, each visible only where it is perforated by a tubular vent through which the fire contained in it can shine. Greatest and farthest of them is the sun, next comes the moon and under them there is the ring of the stars. It is a common practice to put and (...) answer the following questions: ‘…why he should have placed the stellar circles or rings closer to the earth than are the sun and the moon.’ ‘…why these lower rings of stellar ρ do not obscure the brighter but more distant bodies.’. (shrink)

With a deep, deep look, a sincere, sparkling smile, funny, in love with life and science, extremely vulnerable, but at the same time fundamental and indestructible, with its multifaceted and rich inner world, a bright and kind man, a talented young scientist-religious scholar - Natalia Gavrilova, a native of Kozova, a graduate of the historical faculty of the Ternopil National Pedagogical University, a candidate of philosophical sciences, a researcher at the Department of Religious Studies at the Institute of Philosophy named (...) after Natalia Gavrilova, will be remembered. GS Pans of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Die Vorsokratiker: Ein philosophisches Portrȧt by Thomas BuchheimIstván BodnárThomas Buchheim. Die Vorsokratiker: Ein philosophisches Portrȧt. München: C.H. Beck, 1994. Pp. 262. Paper, DM 48.00.This book is a continuous narrative of highlights of presocratic philosophy. The vista offered by Buchheim is revisionary. The presocratics are behind a curve of the road of the philosophical enterprise. What we usually perceive is a mirage created by the doxographic tradition, emanating ultimately (...) from Aristotle. This much might be uncontroversial: the history of presocratic philosophy has been for the last two centuríes a continuous effort to liberate the remains of those early philosophers from the imputations of later authors. But Buchheim’s project is more ambitious than our ordinary occupation with the presocratics. He postulates a specific, markedly presocratic type of appropriation of the world, and then uses this as a yardstick to elicit a new understanding of the mutilated body of the early texts. Presocratic thought is not theoretical, but rather reactive; it cannot extricate itself from the situation in which it is directed at its object.While some of his discussion is perceptive, the chapters abound in idiosyncratic interpretations. It will suffice to mention only a few of Buchheim’s central claims by way of illustration. Although it has been widely held that Anaximander’s apeiron is not only boundless, but also indefinite, Buchheim’s contention that it should be seen as a disorienting and chaotic matrix which provides no foothold for the discerning and distinguishing mind overshoots the mark. This claim does not mesh well with the allowance in Anaximander that there can be a plurality of simultaneous worlds. There can be a disorienting extension beyond the single cosmos, but several (and as some testimonies would claim, evenly distanced) worlds cannot possibly be separated by a medium which defies the notion of extension altogether.Few will be convinced by Buchheim’s claim that Heraclitus did not formulate a doctrine of opposites because he, coming before Parmenides, could have had only a conception of “counteractive parties in an originally unifying contention” (82), since Heraclitus’ provocative pronouncements would thereby be diluted into mere platitudes. Since Empedocles never calls his rhizömata elements, Buchheim impugns the Empedoclean origin of the four element doctrine. For this he needs to explain away much of the evidence of the fragments. Some of the images Empedocles deploys would suggest a mere juxtaposition of the ingredients, some might indicate some more intimate bond arising between these. As Buchheim aptly notes, the choice in this matter is not obvious. Nevertheless there are places where Buchheim’s interpretation is at a serious disadvantage. Empedocles B8, on the standard reading would rule out the [End Page 521] notion of a phusis (growth, generation) or teleutë- (end, perishing) of any mortal thing, and would allow for the mixιs (mixing) and diallaxιs (separation) of what is mixed together. Immortal things, devoid of generation and perishing by default, are understandably not taken into account here. On Buchheim’s reading, however, Empedoclean rhizömata would be allowed to grow, and hence, by a similar reasoning, to perish.In Chapter 5, Buchheim accuses Aristotle of systematically replacing the dynamically loaded expressions of the ancient atomists, characterizing the ultimate building blocks of nature, with static, geometric idioms. The sole exception where Aristotle does not rob the atomists of this dynamic conception of atomic nature, Buchheim claims, is Physics 8.9 265b23ff. But the uniqueness of the passage rests on Buchheim’s idiosyncratic translation. On the standard interpretation (going back at least to Simplicius) Aristotle asserts only that, according to the atomists, nature performs local motion, and not—as Buchheim would have it—that the nature of the atoms is the very performing of local motion.Contrary to Buchheim’s general characterization of presocratic thought as imbued or integrated with the circumstances of cognition, Anaxagoras’ nous is pure and distinct, not mixed with any other ingredient of the universe. For this reason, Buchheim in his final chapter presents Anaxagoras as a transitional figure between presocratic thought and later, classical metaphysics. The details of this claim, just like the overall characterization of the presocratics, are bound... (shrink)

Aristoteles verweist bei verschiedenen Gelegenheiten für die weitere Diskussion von Fragen auf ›die Probleme‹. Gleichwohl können diese Verweise – mit vielleicht nur einer einzigen Ausnahme – nicht auf die im Corpus Aristotelicum unter dem Titel Problemata physica enthaltene Textsammlung referieren. Offenbar handelt es sich dabei um eine peripatetische Zusammenstellung, die häufig von theophrastischem oder sogar noch jüngerem Material abhängt.

The paper is about a chreia—a one-liner used as a grammatical exercise sentence—that presents Pythagoras as proscribing an expression from admissible linguistic usage. This injunction is funny, because it can be construed as Pythagoras railing against the use of a particular variant form of an adjective—and also as against the use of items denoted by that adjective. In the paper I add to this line of interpretation the further point that the chreia also claims that in this latter construal the (...) injunction was Pythagoras’s signature insight, making him the philosopher that he was. (shrink)

In this paper our aim is to examine whether research conducted on human participants with LSD-25 raises unique research ethical questions or demands particular concerns with regard to the design, conduct and follow-up of these studies, and should this be the case, explore and describe those issues. Our analysis is based on reviewing publications up to date which examine the clinical, research and other uses of LSD and those addressing ethical and methodological concerns of these applications, just as some historical (...) examinations of this subject. The first chapters of the paper give an overview regarding the history of LSD-research with human participants, healthy volunteers and patients alike. The remaining chapters have a focus on questions regarding the potential ethical issues of such human trials in the contemporary research ethics framework. We also consider briefly political and regulatory issues regarding this substance that possibly affect its clinical and research applications. (shrink)

The Database, Logic, and Suffering _Memento_ and Random-Access Information Aesthetic.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Principles of Physics The Science of Natural Beings Motion, Causal Interaction, and Causational Synonymy Aristotelian Kinematics Aristotle's Theory of the Continuum The Causes of Elemental Motions Unmoved Movers Bibliography.

Edition du commentaire de la Physique par Facinus de Ast, à partir du ms. Fribourg, Cordeliers 26. Seuls le l. I, trois questions du l. II et une de chaque l. III et V ont survécu. On y retrouve souvent les outils de l'analyse syntaxique du XIVe s. La solution de Facinus sur les futurs contingents suit d'assez près celle d’Ockham et quelques qq. du l. I semblent critiquer des thèses maîtresses de Jean de Ripa.

This edition of the Tractatus de maximo et minimo of Facinus de Ast from the sole surviving manuscript, Fribourg Cordeliers MS 26, is the first part of the edition of his philosophical works. Facinus read bk 1 of the Sentences in Paris in 1362/63, and his philosophical works most probably preceded his theological studies. The Tractatus palpably shows how widespread influence the Calculator enjoyed at this time in Italy and/or France.

Timaeus after assigning four regular solids – tetrahedra, octahedra, icosahedra and cubes – to fire, air, water and earth, respectively, submits at 57d–e that different kinds of gaseous, liquid or solid materials, and their interactions and intertransformations require that the four solids occur in different sizes. The paper discusses two different strategies for the generation of these differences in size: the traditional one, which allows that the triangles that are the fundamental building blocks of these solids do occur in different (...) sizes, and the one proposed by Cornford, which suggests that triangles of exactly the same size may form different structures, and these can give rise to solids of different sizes. Considerations are drawn from descriptions of some specific interactions , from the account of sight , and physiology . All in all, these considerations seem to favour the traditional account. After this, in a final section I suggest that the specific claims Timaeus makes about the status of his account about the elements – certainty for the assignment of tetrahedra to fire, octahedra to air, and icosahedra to water, whereas the half-equilateral triangle as the fundamental building block of these solids is introduced in a tentative manner, explicitely stressing that this detail is revisable – makes it unsurprising that he does not discuss in detail how solids – and triangles and squares – of different sizes are constructed. (shrink)