Examine how community college faculty in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics partnered with K–12 teachers to mentor community college science and math students and open their minds to pursuing a career in K–12 teaching. This report outlines the lessons learned by the community colleges that participated in AACC’s Teaching Scholar Partnerships, an initiative supported by the National Science Foundation.

Background Genetic research can yield information that is unrelated to the study’s objectives but may be of clinical or personal interest to study participants. There is an emerging but controversial responsibility to return some genetic research results, however there is little evidence available about the views of genomic researchers and others on the African continent. Methods We conducted a continental survey to solicit perspectives of researchers, science policy makers and research ethics committee members on the feedback of individual genetic (...) research findings in African genomics research. Results A total of 110 persons participated in the survey with 51 complete and 59 incomplete surveys received. Data was summarised using descriptive analysis. Overall, our respondents believed that individual genetic research results that are clinically actionable should be returned to study participants apparently because participants have a right to know things about their health, and it might also be a means for research participation to be recognized. Nonetheless, there is a need for development of precise guidance on how to return individual genetic research findings in African genomics research. Discussion Participants should receive information that could promote a healthier lifestyle; only clinically actionable findings should be returned, and participants should receive all important information that is directly relevant to their health. Nevertheless, detailed guidelines should inform what ought to be returned. H3Africa guidelines stipulate that it is generally considered good practice for researchers to feedback general study results, but there is no consensus about whether individual genomic study results should also be fed back. The decision on what individual results to feedback, if any, is very challenging and the specific context is important to make an appropriate determination. (shrink)

Decisions concerning use of gene therapy will probably not be made within the privacy of what was once a dyadic doctor–patient relationship. More likely, some overarching guidelines will emerge directing or limiting the practice. Debate and position-taking over the myriad scientific, social, ethical, legal, and political implications of research into and manipulation of the human genome has intensified since the U.S. government officially launched the Human Genome Project in 1988 by appropriating funds to the Department of Energy and the National (...) Institutes of Health for genome research. The discourse this costly research endeavor has generated in the scientific and bioethics literature and even in the popular press outlines a host of issues likely to evoke attempts at line drawing and policymaking. Many of these issues lend themselves easily to the shorthand of dualistic opposition: somatic cell therapy versus germ line therapy or engineering ; correction of defects and disease only versus enhancement of conditions not considered defects or diseases; intervening on the basis of phenotype only versus intervening on the basis of genotype also. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 314-334 [Access article in PDF] The Epistemology of Cognitive Literary Studies F. Elizabeth Hart I Literary scholars have begun incorporating the insights of cognitive science into literary studies, bringing to bear on questions of literary experience the results of explorations within a wide range of fields that define today's cognitive science. The investigation of the human mind and its reasoning processes encompasses (...) a rich variety of empirical and speculative disciplines, including cognitive psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, evolutionary psychology, developmental psychology, computer science, philosophy, and anthropology. These disciplines are all related to one another by the questions they ask about the brain and mind and the ground they cover in staking out their research agendas; but each also contributes uniquely in terms of individual scope and focus. Literary critics, eavesdropping on this maturing coalition, are now producing critical works that apply cognitive research to a similarly impressive range of literary concerns, with results so far that seem to span the gap between traditional and more contemporary literary critical approaches.All such criticism is dependent on scientific studies of the brain and mind and so accepts axiomatically some degree of epistemological efficacy in scientific empiricism. But this acceptance has not been naive or uncritical and has, in fact, been at times carefully qualified by critics' sensitivity to debate--to the lack of consensus among cognitive scientists, and to the fact that cognitive science is itself in its infancy stage, with its own practitioners often openly tentative about their results and descriptive capabilities. As it happens, such debate, in recent years, has even proven beneficial for literary scholarship since an important [End Page 314] paradigm shift has taken place that now makes some aspects of cognitive science more compatible than ever with the interests of literary studies. This is because, whereas an earlier phase of cognitive science focused its energies on Artificial Intelligence and on theories of language and psychology that supported AI, grounding its theories implicitly in a metaphor of the mind as a computer, today's cognitive scientists tend to concentrate instead on the more organic metaphor of the "embodiment" of mind, that is, of the mind's substantive indebtedness to its bodily, social, and cultural contexts, and on the figurative phenomena of metaphor, metonymy, image schemata, "fields," "frames," other "integrative mental spaces" (as they are called), and the gradient structures and prototypical bases of semantic categories, all of which contribute to recasting human reason into a set of highly imaginative--not logical but figural--processes. 1 For literary theory and criticism, this shift in cognitive science toward "the body in the mind" 2 --tantamount to a wholesale rejection of philosophical rationalism--has given rise to a new kind of interdisciplinary practice, to the potential for a sincere engagement between diverse sciences and even between literature and science that stretches all the bounds of what literary scholars generally mean when they speak of being interdisciplinary (e.g., exchanges with history, art history, anthropology, film studies, sociology).In the discussion that follows, I would like to explore this new interdisciplinarity in literary studies by examining its epistemological implications. I begin with a description of the kinds of criticism now being produced under the rubric of cognitive literary criticism or--to reflect the field's scope more accurately--cognitive and cognitive-evolutionary criticism. This description is not intended as a comprehensive or evaluative survey, since in-depth review articles of extant works are available elsewhere. 3 Rather, I hope to familiarize my readers with the basic orientations of this theory and criticism so that they can grasp the epistemological relations that will become the essay's focus. To lay a further groundwork for this focus, I will review various uses of the term "cognitive" (or "cognitivism") in the scholarship and offer an analysis of its meanings, first in cognitive science and then in literary theory. Building, then, on what "cognitive" might signify for literary studies, I show how a literary approach based on today's cognitive science is uniquely situated among other approaches because of its underlying theory of human... (shrink)

This essay analyzes one of Germany's former premier research institutions for biomedical research, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics (KWIA) as a test case for the way in which politics and human heredity served as resources for each other during the Third Reich. Examining the KWIA from this perspective brings us a step closer to answering the questions at the heart of most recent scholarship concerning the biomedical community under the swastika: (1) How do we explain (...) why the vast majority of German human geneticists and eugenicists were willing to work for the National Socialist state and, at the very least, legitimized its exterminationist racial policy; and (2) what accounts for at least some of Germany's most renowned medically trained professionals' involvement in forms of morally compromised science that wholly transcend the bounds of normal scientific practice? Although a complete answer to this question must await an examination of other German biological research centers, the present study suggests that during the Nazi period the symbiotic relationship between human genetics and politics served to radicalize both. The dynamic between the science of human heredity and Nazi politics changed the research practice of some of the biomedical sciences housed at the KWIA. It also simultaneously made it easier for the Nazi state to carry out its barbaric racial program leading, finally, to the extermination of millions of so-called racial undesirables. (shrink)

This paper gives an overview of the placebo effect in popular culture, especially as it pertains to the work of authors Patrick O’Brian and Sinclair Lewis. The beloved physician as placebo, and the clinician scientist as villain are themes that respectively inform the novels, The Hundred Days and Arrowsmith. Excerpts from the novels, and from film show how the placebo effect, and the randomized clinical trial, have emerged into popular culture, and evolved over time.

Background Planning for the next pandemic influenza outbreak is underway in hospitals across the world. The global SARS experience has taught us that ethical frameworks to guide decision-making may help to reduce collateral damage and increase trust and solidarity within and between health care organisations. Good pandemic planning requires reflection on values because science alone cannot tell us how to prepare for a public health crisis. Discussion In this paper, we present an ethical framework for pandemic influenza planning. The (...) ethical framework was developed with expertise from clinical, organisational and public health ethics and validated through a stakeholder engagement process. The ethical framework includes both substantive and procedural elements for ethical pandemic influenza planning. The incorporation of ethics into pandemic planning can be helped by senior hospital administrators sponsoring its use, by having stakeholders vet the framework, and by designing or identifying decision review processes. We discuss the merits and limits of an applied ethical framework for hospital decision-making, as well as the robustness of the framework. Summary The need for reflection on the ethical issues raised by the spectre of a pandemic influenza outbreak is great. Our efforts to address the normative aspects of pandemic planning in hospitals have generated interest from other hospitals and from the governmental sector. The framework will require re-evaluation and refinement and we hope that this paper will generate feedback on how to make it even more robust. (shrink)

Science and Faith explores the phenomenon of religious revelation in the light of the originary hypothesis, which postulates the origin of human language and culture in a unique event. It is the third in a series of works by the author, including The Origin of Language (1981) and The End of Culture (1985), that develop a generative anthropology founded on this hypothesis. After an introductory presentation of the hypothesis and its cultural consequences, the book discusses the two most (...) significant instances of revelation in the Judeo-Christian tradition: Moses' discovery of God's name on Mount Sinai, the inauguration of Hebrew monotheism, and Paul's vision on the road to Damascus, the founding event of Pauline Christianity. Moses' experience marks the inception, and Paul's the end, of revelation as the central Judeo-Christian discovery-procedure. The analysis of Christianity concludes with a discussion of the anthropological content of the doctrine of the Trinity. (shrink)

This MA thesis engages in an interpretative debate over Kant’s general aims in the first Critique. I argue that a defense of the rational legitimacy of religious faith is at the very center of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Moreover, I argue that Kant’s defense of faith is inextricably bound up with his views on the legitimacy of science. On my account, Kant’s Critique not only demonstrates that science is fully consistent with religious faith, but (...) also that science, when properly understood, actually favors religious belief over non-belief. (shrink)

The first two parts of the book are lectures given by Dr. Cuénot at the first annual conference in October 1966 of the Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Association of Great Britain and Ireland. Then follows a comment made by Professor Garaudy at the conference. The text concludes with an original essay by Dr. Cuénot which examines Teilhard's influence on contemporary thinkers.

The question about the faith and the science in the Middle Ages is very broad. For this reason, this paper reflects the thoughts of the author which are very significant for the comprehension of transition from the generation who faced the challenges of the Aristotelism in the 13th century and the Syllabus from 1277, to the generation which discussesed several questions related to the anthropological and metaphysical issue. In this respect Gonsalvus Hispanus, Duns Escoto’s teacher, helps us to (...) understand the reception of the idea of science in the post-condemnation context. We specially pay our attention to the 9th Question in order to consider the relationship between science and faith, knowledge of authority and scientific knowledge, science and wisdom. (shrink)

Resumen La cuestión de la relación entre ciencia y fe ha adquirido nuevo vigor en los comienzos del siglo, cuando, tras años de especialización y separación fragmentaria de los saberes, que conducían a la esquizofrenia cultural del cognoscente, se empieza a percibir de manera cada vez más nítida la necesidad de su integración para dar cuenta de la multidimensionalidad de lo real. Tras poner de manifiesto la aparente tensión entre cultura y trascendencia como realidades que conviven en el ser humano, (...) se rastrea la posibilidad que Panikkar propone de una ciencia que, sin eliminarse a sí misma, sin cancelar la mediación que ella misma constituye ni despojarse de sus maneras y métodos propios, sin siquiera abandonar el plano de la pura inmanencia, reconoce en él lo divino: la infinita trascendencia del cuerpo -su carácter siempre abierto al misterio- y su infinita inmanencia -su profundidad insondable-. Esto tiene lugar en la forma concreta que el autor propone de una teofisica, de modo que con ella no ocurre algo semejante a lo que Wittgenstein indica respecto a la escalera de la que, una vez arriba -lograda la significación de lo Absoluto- puedo desprenderme, sino que, en ella, la escalera -la dimensión física- se conserva y se supera.The issue of the relationship between science and faith has acquired greater relevance since the beginning of the century, time in which, after years of specialization and fragmentation of human knowledge, which have led to a cultural schizophrenia of the knower, there is a growing awareness of the need to integrate both to account for a multidimensional reality. After noticing the apparent tension between culture and the divine as realities that coexist in human beings, it is examined Panikkar’s proposal of a science that, without eliminating itself, without cancelling the mediation that it constitutes, nor divesting itself from its own methods, not even without abandoning immanence, recognizes in itself the divine: the infinite transcendence of the body -its character always open to mystery- and its infinite immanence -its unfathomable depth-. This corresponds to the author’s theophysics, so that, in it, it does not happen something similar to what Wittgenstein indicates about the ladder of which one can get rid once up -when the significance of the divine has been attained-, but in it the ladder -the physical dimension- is preserved and surpassed. (shrink)

Abstract. In Science and Spirituality, Michael Ruse attempts to reconcile traditional Christianity and modern science by arguing that Christianity addresses questions that lie beyond the domain of science. I argue that Ruse's solution raises a number of problems that render it unsatisfactory for both the scientist and believer. First, despite his objections to “God of the gaps” arguments, his own strategy for identifying those questions that are beyond the limits of science seems to raise the problem (...) in a new form. Second, what Ruse offers as evidence for the limits of science is better construed as evidence for deep disagreements among scientists and as such does not support his claims about the limits of science. Third, in aiming to establish their independence, Ruse subordinates religion to science. Finally, his support of traditional theology as a mode of religious understanding might cause concern for those who believe that certain kinds of theological reflection are at odds with scientific thinking. (shrink)

This article considers the justification of laws to religious citizens. It does via a consideration of the debate surround the teaching of Intelligent Design. It argues that one widely held view of political morality, public reason liberalism, requires that schools should allow teaching ID. This is contrary to the views of many defenders of this theory. I show that this argument reveals a deep problem with public reason liberalism, and that it undermines the judgement of the court in the high (...) profile case of Kitzmiller vs Dover. (shrink)

Historians have convincingly shown the extent to which Protestantism played a role in the founding of the Third Republic, undermining the once canonical claim that republicanism and religion were implacably hostile opponents in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Catholics, however, continue to be viewed as nearly universally antirepublican. Analyzing the writings of philosopher Emile Boutroux and his students, this article shows how the specifically Catholic concern with the relationship between free will and scientific concepts of determinism both influenced (...) the direction of French philosophy of science into the twentieth century and provided a framework for defending the Republic at the height of the Dreyfus affair. (shrink)

Michael Ruse offers a new analysis of the often troubled relationship between science and religion. Arguing against both extremes - in one corner, the New Atheists; in the other, the Creationists and their offspring the Intelligent Designers - he asserts that science is the highest source of human inquiry. Yet, by its very nature and its deep reliance on metaphor, science restricts itself and is unable to answer basic, significant questions about the meaning of the universe and (...) humankind's place within it: why is there something rather than nothing? What is the meaning of it all? Ruse shows that one can legitimately be a skeptic about these questions, and yet why it is open for a Christian, or member of any faith, to offer answers. Scientists, he concludes, should be proud of their achievements but modest about their scope. Christians should be confident of their mission but respectful of the successes of science. (shrink)

This work deals with Ratzinger's contribution to the debate on the relationship between science and faith. We do not analyze it from the usual schemes that classify this relationship in models such as “conflict”, “non overlapping magisterial”, “integration”, etc. Ratzinger's position fits better in a scheme that classifies the different attitudes adopted before the thesis of the conflict. We propose a classification of these attitudes. We show how Ratzinger recognizes the existence of a real conflict in the relationship (...) between science and faith. We expose the epistemic roots that, according to Ratzinger, give rise to said conflict and we call “harmonization” his attitude towards it. The task of harmonization proposed by Ratzinger is possible to maintain only from faith. But it is a faith understood differently from the way it appears in the relationship models mentioned above. They are usually presented as alternative models. Ratzinger's proposal serves to give unity to these models. He does not approach the conflict from the illustrated budgets but revealing the keys that determine its nature. They are discovered in a historical process of which our author draws a global picture. In Ratzinger, the conflict is better understood as an insurmountable tension that invites us to undertake a continuous task of purification. The subject of this purification are the images with which faith has been expressed throughout history and the worldviews in which said faith has been embraced, those that have lent it the images. (shrink)

The science and faith debate is dominated by Western voices. In order to enrich this debate, the authors study the discourses of different groups of Christian academics and master's students in francophone Africa. This article describes the process of reconstructing and analyzing the discourse of a group of master's students from Abidjan with the help of group model building and focus groups. Three characteristic features that emerge from this discourse include the foundational position of faith, the central (...) role of truth, and the ambiguous connotations of the term “science” in this context. The reconstructed discourse is then brought into conversation with the North Atlantic debate, with a special focus on the concept of scientism. (shrink)

The science and faith debate is dominated by Western voices. In order to enrich this debate, the authors study the discourses of different groups of Christian academics and master's students in francophone Africa. This article describes the process of reconstructing and analyzing the discourse of a group of master's students from Abidjan (Ivory Coast) with the help of group model building and focus groups. Three characteristic features that emerge from this discourse include the foundational position of faith, (...) the central role of truth, and the ambiguous connotations of the term “science” in this context. The reconstructed discourse is then brought into conversation with the North Atlantic debate, with a special focus on the concept of scientism. (shrink)

Resetting the agenda -- The conflict motif in historical perspective -- From conflict to concordism -- Integration under the microscope : historical perspective -- Integration : contemporary views -- Insights from n neuropsychology : an overview -- Insights from neuropsychology about spirituality -- Insights about conversion, morality, wisdom, and memory -- Insights from evolutionary psychology -- Insights about human needs and motivation -- Social psychology and faith : stories of conflict, concordism, and authentic congruence (by David G. Myers) -- (...) The way ahead for psychological science and Christian faith. (shrink)

In this study I critically discuss the religious philosophy of Nikolai F. Fyodorov. Beforehand I will offer a synoptic overview of its key components. The thought of Fyodorov may serve as a model for case study work in regard to two crucial questions: (1) What is the relation between the past and the future? and (2) What is the relation between faith and science? These questions receive their spiritual, theological and philosophical answers through Fyodorov’s reflection on the (3) (...) overcoming of death. In offering his answers Fyodorov taps into the innermost depths of Christian spirituality which is interpreted in ways which are not always ‘Orthodox’ in the conventional sense. On one hand he offers a vision which prophetically yet idiosyncratically anticipates the “resurrection of all by all” (viz. Philosophy of the Common Task): this in itself calls for a radical revision of humanity’s guiding ethical, political and cultural principles (viz. Supramoralism). On the other hand, he expounds visionary proposals for the role science has to play precisely within the project of resurrecting the deceased and restoring free conscious life to all being (viz. Regulation). Fyodorov is acclaimed as one of the pioneering anticipators of climatology, rocket and space astronautics, cryonics, genetic engineering, cloning and body re-design; also, he is endorsed as the forerunner of Russian cosmism and influencer of transhumanism. His thought is radical, maximalist and limital. As well, it is informed by the purity of a moral saintliness. Inasmuch his philosophical vision may help us re-examine our own understanding of the relation of the past to the future, as well as the relation of faith to science, and, to re-address the predicament of dying. For the same reason it allows us to metacritically examine the neuralgic points of Fyodorov’s proposals. Lastly, I strive to reflect the mentioned problematic within a historical perspective, hermeneutically, hoping to provide orientation points for further discussion. (shrink)

The faith and science dialogue has received scholarly attention in the recent past. Within the African landscape at large, the underlying assumption has been that Africans are religious. However, there has been a rising cohort of Africans who are increasingly identified as nonreligious or atheist or agnostic. This research presents a qualitative analysis of the sociocultural factors that affect or influence these minority identities within a pluralistic African context, exploring their emergence and diversities within the African context, with (...) a specific focus on 20 male Kenyan youth who are identified as nonreligious. This research utilized purposive sampling within nonreligious groups and networks. Second, this research aims at exploring how nonreligious identities are constructed, particularly given the concomitant issues surrounding emerging adulthood and new media. This builds up on the theories around youth and identity formation, while foregrounding science and belief as a central theme of study. (shrink)