For over a century, Haeckel's Gastraea theory remained a dominant theory to explain the origin of multicellular animals. According to this theory, the animal ancestor was a blastula‐like colony of uniform cells that gradually evolved cell differentiation. Today, however, genes that typically control metazoan development, cell differentiation, cell‐to‐cell adhesion, and cell‐to‐matrix adhesion are found in various unicellular relatives of the Metazoa, which suggests the origin of the genetic programs of cell differentiation and adhesion in the root of (...) the Opisthokonta. Multicellular stages occurring in the complex life cycles of opisthokont protists (mesomycetozoeans and choanoflagellates) never resemble a blastula. Here, we discuss a more realistic scenario of transition to multicellularity through integration of pre‐existing transient cell types into the body of an early metazoon, which possessed a complex life cycle with a differentiated sedentary filter‐feeding trophic stage and a non‐feeding blastula‐like larva, the synzoospore. Choanoflagellates are considered as forms with secondarily simplified life cycles. (shrink)

We propose that the sudden emergence of metazoans during the Cambrian was due to the appearance of a complex genome architecture that was capable of computing. In turn, this made defining recursive functions possible. The underlying molecular changes that occurred in tandem were driven by the increased probability of maintaining duplicated DNA fragments in the metazoan genome. In our model, an increase in telomeric units, in conjunction with a telomerase-negative state and consequent telomere shortening, generated a reference point equivalent to (...) a non-reversible counting mechanism. (shrink)

With historical hindsight, it can be little questioned that the view of protozoa as unicellular organisms was important for the development of the discipline of protozoology. In the early years of this century, the assumption of unicellularity provided a sound justification for the study of protists: it linked them to the metazoa and supported the claim that the study of these “simple” unicellular organisms could shed light on the organization of the metazoan cell. This prospect was significant, given the (...) state of cytology circa 1910. In the wake of the major gains made in understanding nuclear division in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, cytology was suddenly confronted with many, seemingly less penetrable, problems. Several aspects of nuclear organization still remained unexplained, and recent research had revealed the presence in the cytoplasm of structures whose functions in cell life were unknown. Classical methods of cytology, relying on descriptive, morphological analysis, seemed ill equipped to resolve these questions.Hertwig's program for protozoology, grounded in the assumption of the fundamental unity of organization in protozoa and metazoa, offered a potential means for investigating these and other problems of cell theory. Linked to mainstream cytology, protozoology was advocated as a means of experimentally investigating key biolobical processes — reproduction, metabolism, and organelle morphology and physiology — less accessible in higher organisms. Protozoa were hailed as prime experimental organisms, in which cell structure and function could be more easily studied. Unlike the metazoan cell, they could be subjected to controlled experiments in which the external environment was modified and the effects monitored. Protozoa offered, in other words, a promising experimental means by which to investigate the cell — its structures and its processes.The success of this program within Germany was soon apparent. In contrast to the rather neglected state of the discipline in 1900, protozoology began to be recognized as more than a somewhat obscure area of study for specialists. In practical terms, this translated into greater numbers of students attracted to the field, increased institutional support for the discipline, and its elevation in status within the biological sciences as new developments, particularly in connection with medical applications, began to draw attention to the field.64The unicellular hypothesis also promoted the internal development of the science. It provided a rationale for introducing the various techniques used in cytology, embryology, physiology, and the new field of biochemistry as suitable research tools for protozoology as well. This vastly extended the research possibilities and facilitated the understanding of, among other things, protozoan organization, modes of reproduction, and evolutionary relationships. The new experimental grounding of the discipline in turn fitted in well with developments in biology at large: in contrast to the descriptive methodology that had predominated in the nineteenth century, this new experimental program placed protozoology at the forefront of the early twentieth-century movement to make biology an experimental science comparable to physics and chemistry.Yet the criticism of the unicellular hypothesis can also be seen as having served a valuable function within the development of the discipline. It focused attention on the study of protists as organisms in their own right, not simply as models for metazoan cells. More generally, it helped to remind biologists of the particular evolutionary assumptions that supported this conception. Dobell and other British critics pointed out, among other things, the association between the theory of recapitulation and the interpretation of protozoa as unicellular organisms. At the time when the recapitulation theory and the germ-layer doctrine were in decline, it was important to stress how these evolutionary ideas also entered into the contemporary concepts of subsidiary specialties. This was as true for protozoology as it was for cell theory itself. The chromidial theory, in its various guises, and the binuclearity hypothesis did in fact contain elements of recapitulationist reasoning, and they were open to criticism for the same kind of overly speculative theorizing that characterized this evolution theory. Dobell's critique forced protozoologists and cell theorists alike to review the theoretical postulates guiding their investigations.In the absence of further historical studies, it is hard to evaluate the consequences of this debate in later years. The issue was not whether protozoa were the precursors of metazoa — both sides accepted this. They disagreed over which particular protozoon had served as the ancestral form, and this, in turn, influenced their stance on the question of unicellularity. The situation is little changed today. Because the former question is still an open one, the latter remains so too. Both of the models for the origin of multicellular organisms — colonies of ciliates versus multinucleate protists — are still presented as possible mechanisms in modern textbooks of evolution. Unable to judge the dispute in terms of the ultimate validity of the competing conceptions, the historian requires other criteria. It perhaps becomes more important to evaluate the issues in the context of the internal and external stimulus they provided the discipline.65 In these terms, and from the present historical vantage point, Hertwig's research program for protozoology, based upon the unicellular hypothesis, appears to have been a successful one. (shrink)

The origin of metazoa implies the passage from an eukarote protozoan to a protozygote ancestor of a metazoan zygote. The most probable hypothesis is that of a symbiotic origin of the first zygote by association of two protists one signifying a spherical oocell and the other a flagellated spermatozoan; this could be the first step of the metazoan ontogenesis and therefore also of the phylogenesis. The genesis can also be explained by two haploid genomes NX NY, three (...) gametes (two spermatozoa and one ovule), NX apparently being able to create both forms, and two zygotes. A double symbiosis, a chromosomic crossing-over and a selective expulsion can prove it. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In the last few years, an understanding has emerged of the developmental mechanism for the consistent internal left–right structure, termed situs, that characterises vertebrate anatomy. This involves largely vertebrate‐conserved (i.e. ‘phylotypic’) gene expression cascades that encode ‘leftness’ and ‘rightness’ in appropriate tissues either side of the embryo's midline soon after gastrulation. Recent evidence indicates that the initial, directional symmetry breaking that initiates these cascades utilises mechanisms that are conserved or at least closely related in different vertebrate types. I describe a (...) scenario whereby the capacity for directional modification of an otherwise bilateral body plan can be viewed as an adaptive innovation rather closely connected with vertebrate origins, enabling optimal ‘design’ for very active lifestyles. But an alternative scenario, while retaining the view that situs and indeed other vertebrate functional lateralisations are deeply adaptive, proposes that they originated in the co‐optation of left–right developmental information inherited from a very early stage in metazoan diversification. It is proposed that a remote chordate ancestor lost its original or ‘ur‐bilaterian’ symmetry to pass through an altogether non‐symmetrical stage, and that the vertebrate dorsoventral midline plane is not descended from that original one. I review the considerable evidence in favour of this scenario, and discuss its wider implications for directional asymmetries across the Metazoa. BioEssays 26:413–421, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

An examination of the rise in prestige of the Bible as a literary and aesthetic model during the late eighteenth century.

In the period 1875-1920, a debate about the generality and applicability of evolutionary theory to all organisms was motivated by work on unicellular ciliates like Paramecium because of their peculiar nuclear dualism and life cycles. The French cytologist Emile Maupas and the German zoologist August Weismann argued in the 1880s about the evolutionary origins and functions of sex (which in the ciliates is not linked to reproduction), and death (which appeared to be the inevitable fate of lineages denied sexual conjugation), (...) an argument rooted in the question of whether the ciliates and their processes where homologous to other cellular organisms. In the beginning of the twentieth century, this question of homology came to be less important as the ciliates were used by the British protozoologist Clifford Dobell and the American zoologist Herbert Spencer Jennings to study evolutionary processes in general rather than problems of development and cytology. For them, homology mattered less than analogy. This story illustrates two partially distinct problems in evolutionary biology: first, the question of whether all living things have common features and origins; and second, whether their history and current nature can be described by identical mechanisms. Where Maupas (contra Weismann) made the ciliates qualitatively the same as all other organisms in order to create a cohesive evolutionary theory for biology, Jennings and Dobell made them qualitatively different in order to achieve the same end. (shrink)

Excerpt from Opera Omnia The Works of J ohn of Salisbury have never before been collected together, nor have they ever until now, either wholly or in part, been printed in this country. Yet the writer was without doubt superior to all his contempo raries, and his Works are by far the most valuable compositions which have come down to us, from the twelfth and thirteenth cen tuties. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic (...) books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

This volume contains the first critical edition of the Scriptum super III-VIII libros Politicorum by Peter of Auvergne as well as a pragmatical edition of Books III-VIII of the medieval Latin translation of Aristotle's Politics. Intended as the continuation of Aquinas' unfinished commentary on the first three books of the Politics, the Scriptum became-together with Aquinas' commentary-the commentary on the Politics. From its appearance in the late thirteenth century to the end of the sixteenth century, the Scriptum represented the most (...) authoritative and influential interpretation of Books III-VIII of the Politics.The introduction to the volume provides both an overview of Peter's political thought and a case study of the production and dissemination of a university text. An examination of the manuscripts traces the preparation of the text from its first transcription and revision by a scribe close to the author-if not the author himself-to the preparation of the finished exemplar and its diffusion through the system of peciae. The introduction also explains how the text was adapted to fit the standards of humanistic Latin when it was first printed in the fifteenth century: its language was adjusted to humanistic standards, many formulations were reshaped, and passages were suppressed. These changes were subsequently preserved in all later editions of the text. Freed from this humanistic patina with which it has been transmitted since the early age of printing age, the Scriptum is now restored to its original version. (shrink)

Objective Apeiron was founded in 1966 and has developed into one of the oldest and most distinguished journals dedicated to the study of ancient philosophy, ancient science, and, in particular, of problems that concern both fields. Apeiron is committed to publishing high-quality research papers in these areas of ancient Greco-Roman intellectual history; it also welcomes submission of articles dealing with the reception of ancient philosophical and scientific ideas in the later western tradition. The journal appears quarterly. Articles are peer-reviewed on (...) a double-blind basis. Topics ancient philosophy ancient science reception of ancient philosophical and scientific ideas in the later western tradition Article formats Original Articles. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Martin Heidegger and OntologyEmmanuel Levinas (bio)The prestige of Martin Heidegger 1 and the influence of his thought on German philosophy marks both a new phase and one of the high points of the phenomenological movement. Caught unawares, the traditional establishment is obliged to clarify its position on this new teaching which casts a spell over youth and which, overstepping the bounds of permissibility, is already in vogue. For once, (...) Fame has picked one who deserves it and, for that matter, one who is still living. Anyone who has studied philosophy cannot, when confronted by Heidegger’s work, fail to recognize how the originality and force of his achievements, stemming from genius, are combined with an attentive, painstaking, and close working-out of the argument—with that craftsmanship of the patient artisan in which phenomenologists take such pride. In this study, it is important for us to understand, above all, the true intentions of our author, to illuminate what he thinks really needs to be said, and to surmise what is most critical for him.To get to the heart of Heidegger’s system, it seems fitting to begin with a problem that is generally familiar. We choose the problem of knowledge, a deeper understanding of which takes us to the very threshold of Heidegger’s thought. For this problem, central to modern philosophy, is one of the main obstacles of modern philosophy that Heidegger wishes to surmount. Neo-Kantianism, which takes knowledge as the philosophical problem of the first rank, is the movement against which Heidegger rebels with all his strength. We have, thus, every chance of gaining access to his thought by the main door, so to speak. Once inside the system we will try to trace its outlines, 2 reserving, for a second part of our work, the determination of Heidegger’s place in the history of ideas, especially in the phenomenological movement, as well as of his relations with the philosopher to whom he owes so much—Edmund Husserl. 31In its most general form, the problem of the theory of knowledge has a critical significance. It consists in delineating a domain where knowledge can be certain and in determining the criteria for the legitimate scope of knowledge. But this problem, as normal and as simple as it may appear, has deeper roots. That knowledge should need a criterion at all presupposes that truth is not identical to all that is known and that the course [End Page 11] of things can fail to correspond with the course of thought. “How does knowledge correspond to being?” is a more profound formulation of the problem of knowledge.But we are not going to touch anymore on the primordial phenomenon that generates the problem. The problem of correspondence between thing and thought presupposes a free activity of thought and its isolation in relation to the object. It is precisely this presupposition which renders their harmony and even their contact problematic. “How does the subject take leave of itself to attain the object?” is what the problem of knowledge, in the last analysis, boils down to. Its true source is thus the concept of “subject” as elaborated by modern philosophy. The cogito presided over the subject’s birth. The cogito was the affirmation of the privileged nature of the subject’s immanent sphere, of its unique place in existence; hence, the cogito was the specificity of the subject’s connection to the rest of reality, the sui generis nature which opens up the passage from immanence to transcendence, the passage from ideas contained in the thinking substance to 4 their “formal existence.”The concept of the subject, understood as a substance having a specific position in the entire domain of being, presents us with difficulties of two kinds. First, how do we understand this leave-taking from the self which the thinking substance brings about and which displays an entirely original aspect? Indeed, we could say that thought, in reaching out toward objects, does not actually take leave of itself, since its objects—considered as ideas and contents of thought—are, in a certain sense, already within it. In order to make sense of this paradox, Descartes... (shrink)

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

There is a common tradition in European education going back to the Middle Ages which long played a part in providing the curriculum of schools which catered both for the wealthy and for able sons of less well-to-do families. Originally published in 1974, this volume examines the relationship between education and society in the different countries of Europe from which differences in tradition and practice emerge. The countries discussed include: France, Germany, the former Soviet Union, Poland and Sweden.

Originally published in 1972, this book is concerned with education as part of a larger social history. Chapters include: The roots of Anglican supremacy in English education The Board schools of London The use of ecclesiastical records for the history of education Topographical resources: private and secondary education from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.

What makes Book Lambda the most important book of Metaphysics is to mention the fundamental substance of being. Therefore, Book Lambda is a book that has been regarded as valuable and has been studied extensively. Arabic translations of this book were in high demand in the Islamic world. We have also considered Arabic metaphysical translations, especially the translation of Book Lambda. The translation you will read is a commentary of the ninth chapter of Book Lambda by Themistius. The Greek original (...) commentary of Lambda was lost, and after the Arabic translation, it was transferred to Latin and Hebrew. However, later parts of the Arabic text were also lost. In this chapter, Themistius comments on the part in which Aristotle discusses the difficulties on the nature of divine intellect and tries to prove that the object of reason, the act of thinking and the object of thinking are the same things. (shrink)

"An important contribution to contemporary jurisprudential debate and to legal thought more generally, Just Interpretations is far ahead of currently available work."--Peter Goodrich, author of Oedipus Lex "I was struck repeatedly by the clarity of expression throughout the book. Rosenfeld's description and criticism of the recent work of leading thinkers distinguishes his work within the legal theory genre. Furthermore, his own theory is quite original and provocative."--Aviam Soifer, author of Law and the Company We Keep.

Part of the educational system in England has been geared towards the preparation of particular professions, while the identity and status of members of some professions have depended significantly on the general education they have received. Originally published in 1973, this volume explores the interaction between education and the professions. It also looks at the education of the main professions in sixteenth century England and at how twentieth century university teaching is a key profession for the training of new recruits (...) to other professions. (shrink)

Originally published in 1971, this volume examines the relationship between the history and sociology of education. History does not stand in isolation, but has much to draw from and contribute to, other disciplines. The methods and concepts of sociology, in particular, are exerting increasing influence on historical studies, especially the history of education. Since education is considered to be part of the social system, historians and sociologists have come to survey similar fields; yet each discipline appears to have its own (...) aims and methodology. (shrink)

Irish literature after Yeats and Joyce, from the 1920s onwards, includes texts which have been the subject of much contention. For a start how should Irish literature be defined: as works which have been written in Irish or as works written in Englsih by the Irish? It is a period in whichideas of Ireland--of people, community, and nation--have been both created and reflected, and in which conceptions of a distinct Irish identity have been articulated, defended, and challenged; a period which (...) has its origins in a time of intense political turmoil. `after Yeats and Joyce' alsosuggests the immense influence of these two writers on the style, stances, and preoccupations of twentieth-century Irish literature. Neil Corcoran focuses his chapter on various themes such as `the Big House', the rural and provincial, with reference to authors from Kinsella and Beckett to WilliamTrevor, Seamus Heaney, and Mary Lavin, providing a lucid and far-reaching introduction to modern Irish writing. (shrink)

This landmark study examines the role played by the rediscovery of the writings of the ancient atomists, Epicurus and Lucretius, in the articulation of the major philosophical systems of the seventeenth century, and, more broadly, their influence on the evolution of natural science and moral and political philosophy. The target of sustained and trenchant philosophical criticism by Cicero, and of opprobrium by the Christian Fathers of the early Church, for its unflinching commitment to the absence of divine supervision and the (...) finitude of life, the Epicurean philosophy surfaced again in the period of the Scientific Revolution, when it displaced scholastic Aristotelianism. Both modern social contract theory and utilitarianism in ethics were grounded in its tenets. Catherine Wilson shows how the distinctive Epicurean image of the natural and social worlds took hold in philosophy, and how it is an acknowledged, and often unacknowledged presence in the writings of Descartes, Gassendi, Hobbes, Boyle, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley. With chapters devoted to Epicurean physics and cosmology, the corpuscularian or "mechanical" philosophy, the question of the mortality of the soul, the grounds of political authority, the contested nature of the experimental philosophy, sensuality, curiosity, and the role of pleasure and utility in ethics, the author makes a persuasive case for the significance of materialism in seventeenth-century philosophy without underestimating the depth and significance of the opposition to it, and for its continued importance in the contemporary world. Lucretius's great poem, On the Nature of Things, supplies the frame of reference for this deeply-researched inquiry into the origins of modern philosophy. (shrink)

This volume describes features of biological autonomy and integrates them into the recent discussion of factors in evolution. In recent years ideas about major transitions in evolution are undergoing a revolutionary change. They include questions about the origin of evolutionary innovation, their genetic and epigenetic background, the role of the phenotype, and of changes in ontogenetic pathways. In the present book, it is argued that it is likewise necessary to question the properties of these innovations and what was qualitatively (...) generated during the macroevolutionary transitions. The author states that a recurring central aspect of macroevolutionary innovations is an increase in individual organismal autonomy whereby it is emancipated from the environment with changes in its capacity for flexibility, self-regulation and self-control of behavior. The first chapters define the concept of autonomy and examine its history and its epistemological context. Later chapters demonstrate how changes in autonomy took place during the major evolutionary transitions and investigate the generation of organs and physiological systems. They synthesize material from various disciplines including zoology, comparative physiology, morphology, molecular biology, neurobiology and ethology. It is argued that the concept is also relevant for understanding the relation of the biological evolution of man to his cultural abilities. Finally the relation of autonomy to adaptation, niche construction, phenotypic plasticity and other factors and patterns in evolution is discussed. The text has a clear perspective from the context of systems biology, arguing that the generation of biological autonomy must be interpreted within an integrative systems approach. (shrink)

The thirteenth-century logician Lambert of Auxerre was well known for his Summa Lamberti, or simply Logica, written in the mid-1250s, which became an authoritative textbook on logic in the Western tradition. Our knowledge of medieval logic comes in great part from Lambert's Logica and three other texts: William of Sherwood's Introductiones in logicam, Peter of Spain's Tractatus, and Roger Bacon's Summulae dialectics. Of the four, Lambert's work is the best example of question-summas that proceed principally by asking and answering questions (...) on the subject matter. Thomas S. Maloney's translation of Logica, the only complete translation of this work in any language, is a milestone in the study of medieval logic. More than simply a translation, Maloney's project is a critical, comprehensive study of Lambert's logic situated in the context of his contemporaries and predecessors. As such, it offers a wealth of annotation and commentary. The lengthy introduction and extensive notes to the text explain the origin, theoretical context, and intricacies of the text and its doctrines. Maloney also addresses the disputed issues of authorship, date, and place of publication of the Summa Lamberti and makes available to the English-only audience the French, German, and Italian secondary sources--all translated--that are needed to enter the discussion. "Thomas S. Maloney fully commands the primary and secondary sources necessary to elucidate Lambert's Logica. An expert on Roger Bacon's philosophy, he demonstrates a rare proficiency in medieval Latin and scholastic logic. His references to sources from the ancient (Aristotle and Boethius) and medieval worlds are apposite, perspicuous, and useful. The volume's presentation with an appropriate introduction and commentary in the endnotes will no doubt establish it as an indispensable resource for scholars in the twenty-first century." --Alan Perreiah, University of Kentucky. (shrink)

This volume contains selections of Ockham's philosophical writings which give a balanced introductory view of his work in logic, metaphysics, and ethics. This edition includes textual markings referring readers to appendices containing changes in the Latin text and alterations found in the English translation that have been made necessary by the critical edition of Ockham’s work published after Boehner prepared the original text. The updated bibliography includes the most important scholarship produced since publication of the original edition.

The Argonautica is the dramatic story of Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece and his relations with the dangerous Colchian princess, Medea. The only extant Greek epic poem to bridge the gap between Homer and late antiquity, it is a major product of the brilliant world of the Ptolemaic court at Alexandria, written by Apollonius of Rhodes in the 3rd century BC. Apollonius explores many of the fundamental aspects of life in a highly original way: love, deceit, heroism, human ignorance (...) of the diven, the limits of science. This volume offers the first scholarly translation into English prose for many years, combining readability with accuracy and an attention to detail that will appeal to readers both with and without Greek. `Based on a deep understanding of the text, this translation, with informative notes and an excellent introduction, will bring Apollonius to the audience he deserves....' ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

Democracy has been a flawed hegemony since the fall of communism. Its flexibility, its commitment to equality of representation, and its recognition of the legitimacy of opposition politics are all positive features for political institutions. But democracy has many deficiencies: it is all too easily held hostage by powerful interests; it often fails to advance social justice; and it does not cope well with a number of features of the political landscape, such as political identities, boundary disputes, and environmental crises. (...) Although democracy is valuable it fits uneasily with other political values and is in many respects less than equal to the demands it confronts. In this volume prominent political theorists and social scientists present original discussions of such central issues. Democracy's Values deals with the nature and value of democracy, particularly the tensions between it and such goods as justice, equality, efficiency, and freedom. (shrink)

This paper argues that modern virtue ethics provides a useful background against which to read the philosophical import of Christine de Pizan’s works. By recognizing the origins of much of her thought in the Medieval tradition of virtue ethics, the paper brings out the continuity between her writing and a rich stream of contemporary ethical debate. It shows how Christine’s strand of feminism was deeply indebted to Medieval virtue ethics; both as found in Boethius and in contemporary compilations on the (...) virtues, on which Christine drew. At the same time, this tradition was subtly transformed by Christine, in order to elevate the status of women, as well as the traditional practical and worldly activities of women. Indeed, Christine’s feminism can be read as a direct application of her meditation on virtue and the good life. The paper concludes with a brief sketch of the way in which, during the three centuries subsequent to Christine, the nature of virtue and the virtues continued to provide a central focus in women’s philosophical writings. (shrink)

The present edition provides a detailed and accessible discussion ofhis theories and adds an account of the immediate responses to the book on publication.

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), was a provocative and profoundly influential critique of the Victorian nuclear family. Engels argued that the traditional monogamous household was in fact a recent construct, closely bound up with capitalist societies. Under this patriarchal system, women were servants and, effectively, prostitutes. Only Communism would herald the dawn of communal living and a new sexual freedom and, in turn, the role of the state would become superfluous.

In The Origin of Species (1859) Darwin challenged many of the most deeply-held beliefs of the Western world. Arguing for a material, not divine, origin of species, he showed that new species are achieved by "natural selection." The Origin communicates the enthusiasm of original thinking in an open, descriptive style, and Darwin's emphasis on the value of diversity speaks more strongly now than ever. As well as a stimulating introduction and detailed notes, this edition offers a register (...) of the many writers referred to by Darwin in the text. (shrink)

Only human beings have a rich conceptual repertoire with concepts like tort, entropy, Abelian group, mannerism, icon and deconstruction. How have humans constructed these concepts? And once they have been constructed by adults, how do children acquire them? While primarily focusing on the second question, in The Origin of Concepts , Susan Carey shows that the answers to both overlap substantially. Carey begins by characterizing the innate starting point for conceptual development, namely systems of core cognition. Representations of core (...) cognition are the output of dedicated input analyzers, as with perceptual representations, but these core representations differ from perceptual representations in having more abstract contents and richer functional roles. Carey argues that the key to understanding cognitive development lies in recognizing conceptual discontinuities in which new representational systems emerge that have more expressive power than core cognition and are also incommensurate with core cognition and other earlier representational systems. Finally, Carey fleshes out Quinian bootstrapping, a learning mechanism that has been repeatedly sketched in the literature on the history and philosophy of science. She demonstrates that Quinian bootstrapping is a major mechanism in the construction of new representational resources over the course of childrens cognitive development. Carey shows how developmental cognitive science resolves aspects of long-standing philosophical debates about the existence, nature, content, and format of innate knowledge. She also shows that understanding the processes of conceptual development in children illuminates the historical process by which concepts are constructed, and transforms the way we think about philosophical problems about the nature of concepts and the relations between language and thought. (shrink)

ORIGIN OF SPECIES. INTRODUCTION. When on board HMS 'Beagle,' as naturalist, I was ranch struck with certain facts in the distribution of the organic beings ...

Philologus, founded in 1846, is one of the oldest and most respected periodicals in the field of Classics. It publishes articles on Greek and Latin literature, historiography, philosophy, history of religion, linguistics, reception, and the history of scholarship. The journal aims to contribute to our understanding of Greco-Roman culture and its lasting influence on European civilization. The journal Philologus, conceived as a forum for discussion among different methodological approaches to the study of ancient texts and their reception, publishes original scholarly (...) contributions with a strong international focus. Publications languages are: German, English, Italian, French. As of 2014 the publication of supplementary volumes will be resumed. The series Philologus. Supplemente / Philologus. Supplementary Volumes will publish monographs and edited volumes pertaining to all aspects of the study of ancient literature and its reception, with a special focus on topics concerning literary theory, philosophy and the history of scholarship from an interdisciplinary perspective. (shrink)

What are the historical origins of the argumentum ad consequentiam, the argument from consequences, sometimes featured as an informal fallacy in logic textbooks? As shown in this paper, knowledge of the argument can be traced back to Aristotle. And this type of argument shows a spotty history of recognition in logic texts and manuals over the centuries. But how it got into the modern logic textbooks as a fallacy remains somewhat obscure. Its modern genesis is traced to the logic text (...) of James McCosh. (shrink)

In this original and provocative account of the evolutionary origins of human communication, Michael Tomasello connects the fundamentally cooperative structure of human communication (initially discovered by Paul Grice) to the especially ...

In Culture, Genre, and Literary Vocation, Michael Davitt Bell charts the important and often overlooked connection between literary culture and authors' careers. Bell's influential essays on nineteenth-century American writers—originally written for such landmark projects as The Columbia Literary History of the United States and The Cambridge History of American Literature—are gathered here with a major new essay on Richard Wright. Throughout, Bell revisits issues of genre with an eye toward the unexpected details of authors' lives, and invites us to reconsider (...) the hidden functions that terms such as "romanticism" and "realism" served for authors and their critics. Whether tracing the demands of the market or the expectations of readers, Bell examines the intimate relationship between literary production and culture; each essay closely links the milieu in which American writers worked with the trajectory of their storied careers. (shrink)

Stuart Kauffman here presents a brilliant new paradigm for evolutionary biology, one that extends the basic concepts of Darwinian evolution to accommodate recent findings and perspectives from the fields of biology, physics, chemistry and mathematics. The book drives to the heart of the exciting debate on the origins of life and maintenance of order in complex biological systems. It focuses on the concept of self-organization: the spontaneous emergence of order widely observed throughout nature. Kauffman here argues that self-organization plays an (...) important role in the emergence of life itself and may play as fundamental a role in shaping life's subsequent evolution as does the Darwinian process of natural selection. Yet until now no systematic effort has been made to incorporate the concept of self-organization into evolutionary theory. The construction requirements which permit complex systems to adapt remain poorly understood, as is the extent to which selection itself can yield systems able to adapt more successfully. This book explores these themes. It shows how complex systems, contrary to expectations, can spontaneously exhibit stunning degrees of order, and how this order, in turn, is essential for understanding the emergence and development of life on Earth. Topics include the new biotechnology of applied molecular evolution, with its important implications for developing new drugs and vaccines; the balance between order and chaos observed in many naturally occurring systems; new insights concerning the predictive power of statistical mechanics in biology; and other major issues. Indeed, the approaches investigated here may prove to be the new center around which biologicalscience itself will evolve. The work is written for all those interested in the cutting edge of research in the life sciences. (shrink)

Tyler Burge presents an original study of the most primitive ways in which individuals represent the physical world. By reflecting on the science of perception and related psychological and biological sciences, he gives an account of constitutive conditions for perceiving the physical world, and thus aims to locate origins of representational mind.

The goal of this article is to break down the dimensions of consciousness, attempt to reverse engineer their evolutionary function, and make sense of the origins of consciousness by breaking off those dimensions that are more likely to have arisen later. A Darwinian approach will allow us to revise the philosopher’s concept of consciousness away from a single “thing,” an all-or-nothing quality, and towards a concept of phenomenological complexity that arose out of simple valenced states. Finally, I will offer support (...) for an evaluation-first view of consciousness by drawing on recent work in experimental philosophy of mind. (shrink)

A Letter to the Editor about the origin of "gender identity" and deficiencies in its current definition.