In der vorliegenden Arbeit widmet sich die Autorin dem in theodosianischer Zeit entstandenen Elfenbeinkästchen von Brescia („Lipsanothek von Brescia“), das wegen der Qualität seiner Reliefs und der Vielfalt seiner Darstellungen in keiner Darstellung frühchristlicher Kunst fehlt. Die oft großformatigen Abbildungen täuschen über die Maße von 0,22 × 0,24 × 0,32 m hinweg. Da das Kästchen sich seit unbestimmter Zeit im Besitz der 1798 aufgehobenen Kirche S. Giulia in Brescia befindet, nimmt man an, dass es auch in Norditalien hergestellt wurde (S. (...) 21f.). Als Funktion des Kästchens gilt in der Regel die eines Reliquiars (S. 18); das Elfenbeinkästchens von Brescia würde damit zusammen mit dem Silberkästchen von S. Nazaro in Mailand zu den ältesten erhaltenen Reliquiaren gehören. Allerdings kann auch eine profane Nutzung des Kästchens – etwa als Schmuckkästchen einer wohlhabenden Frau – nicht ausgeschlossen werden, da Alltagsgegenstände bekanntlich häufig mit christlichen Szenen geschmückt waren. Im einen wie im anderen Fall war die Öffentlichkeit der Bilder des Kästchens beschränkt: Sollte es Reliquien enthalten haben, muss das Kästchen nicht zuletzt wegen seines begehrten, diebstahlsgefährdeten Inhalts an einem sicheren Ort aufbewahrt worden und nur selten sichtbar gewesen sein; im Falle einer Verwendung als Schmuckkästchens hätte es sich in den Privatgemächern eines vornehmen Hauses befunden. (shrink)

Der Text des schmalen, reich illustrierten Bandes wurde bereits in dem Band „Venezia e Bisanzio. Atti del seminario di specializzazione in storia dell'arte promosso dall'Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arte in collaborazione con l'Ecole du Louvre. Venezia-Ravenna-Aquileia-Grado-Trieste-Parenzo, 12–21 settembre 2001“ veröffentlicht und liegt nun separat gedruckt vor.

Anders als die griechische und die römische Kunst hat die frühchristliche nur wenige Gesamtdarstellungen erhalten. Im deutschsprachigen Bereich ist hier die bereits 1958 erschienene „Frühchristliche Kunst“ von W.F. Volbach zu nennen oder den von B. Brenk herausgegebenen Band „Spätantike und frühes Christentum“, der 1977 veröffentlicht wurde und auch mehr als zwanzig Jahre nach seinem Erscheinen seinen Wert als Nachschlagewerk und einführende Literatur behalten hat. Von den Einführungen in die christliche Archäologie ist die Arbeit von P. Testini, Archeologia cristiana, 1980 in (...) zweiter Auflage erschienen und mit nur kleinen Abbildungen ausgestattet worden; das Werk von F.W. Deichmann, Archeologia cristiana, wurde erst in seiner italienischen Übersetzung, die 1993 in Rom publiziert wurde, mit Fotos und Plänen versehen. Der zu besprechende Band von Maria Antonietta Crippa und Mahmoud Zibawi ist in seiner Zielsetzung eher mit dem von Volbach zu vergleichen, der auf Anmerkungen verzichtet und mit großformatigen Fotos brilliert. Er richtet sich somit eher an ein breiteres, kulturell interessiertes und vorgebildetes Publikum, dem diese faszinierende Epoche in ihrer Breite und dem Glanz ihrer Denkmäler nahegebracht wird. Die Beschränkung auf wenige Anmerkungen ist bei dem Versuch einer Gesamtdarstellung legitim, denn der Fachkollege kann einschlägige und neuere Literatur leicht selbst auffinden. Eine Bibliographie findet sich auf den S. 481–486, wobei deutschsprachige Literatur eher schwach vertreten ist – ein Umstand, den man nicht den beiden Autoren anlasten wird, sondern der eine allgemein verbreitete Erscheinung ist und Stoff zum Nachdenken geben sollte. (shrink)

Der Text des schmalen, reich illustrierten Bandes wurde bereits in dem Band „Venezia e Bisanzio. Atti del seminario di specializzazione in storia dell'arte promosso dall'Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arte in collaborazione con l'Ecole du Louvre. Venezia-Ravenna-Aquileia-Grado-Trieste-Parenzo, 12–21 settembre 2001“ veröffentlicht und liegt nun separat gedruckt vor.

This open access book provides a historical treatment of scientific control in experimentation in the longue durée. The introduction distinguishes four related strands in the history of experimental control: the development of practices to stabilize experimental conditions; the career of the comparative design; the unfolding of methodological discussions about control practices and designs; and the history of the term “control”. Each chapter brings these distinctions to bear on specific historical episodes. The focus is on experiments with complex, elusive phenomena such (...) as perception and learning, irregular movements, and unobservable elements. Such experiments bring control issues to the fore because they are difficult to design and stabilize and often controversial. Together, the chapters show that the local context shapes what exactly is controlled, how control can be accomplished, and how controls are justified. They also show that control strategies and methodological ideas often remain stable for a long time and change only gradually. This book, as well as the volume on analysis and synthesis in experimentation by the same editors, contains contributions by an array of experts from multiple disciplines, making it suitable for historians and philosophers of science and students alike. (shrink)

Die Reihe "Studien interdisziplinäre Geschlechterforschung" präsentiert regelmäßig neuere Untersuchungen über Herausbildungen und Bedeutungen von Geschlecht. Verknüpft werden natur-, technik-, sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche Sichtweisen. Ebenfalls thematisiert werden hochschulpolitische Entwicklungen und Perspektiven von Geschlechterforschung in und außerhalb der Hochschule. Die Reihe wird herausgegeben vom Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung an der Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg (ZFG) und dem Zentrum für feministische Studien, Universität Bremen (ZFS). In diesem Band: In unserer heutigen Technowissenschaftskultur ist die Frage nach dem Verhältnis von Körper und (...) Maschine zentral. Während Körper denaturalisiert und durch die Life- und Cyberscience als turbulent und dynamisch reformuliert werden, wird Maschinen Sozialität zu- und eingeschrieben. An Beispielen aus der Robotik, Embodied Agents-Forschung und anderen Technowissenschaften, mit Bezug auf Philosophie, Wissenschaftsforschung und Literatur wird gezeigt, wie sich transklassische Maschinen und post-humane Körper herausbilden und geschlechtlich neu kodiert werden. (shrink)

Mueller et al. discuss the role of acoustic cues in detecting language structure more generally. Across languages, there are clear links between acoustic cues and syntactic structure. They show that AGL experiments implementing analogous links demonstrate that prosodic cues, as well as various auditory biases, facilitate the learning of structural rules. Some of these biases, e.g. for auditory grouping, are also present in other species.

The ability to process center‐embedded structures has been claimed to represent a core function of the language faculty. Recently, several studies have investigated the learning of center‐embedded dependencies in artificial grammar settings. Yet some of the results seem to question the learnability of these structures in artificial grammar tasks. Here, we tested under which exposure conditions learning of center‐embedded structures in an artificial grammar is possible. We used naturally spoken syllable sequences and varied the presence of prosodic cues. The results (...) suggest that mere distributional information does not suffice for successful learning. Prosodic cues marking the boundaries of the major relevant units, however, can lead to learning success. Thus, our data are consistent with the hypothesis that center‐embedded syntactic structures can be learned in artificial grammar tasks if language‐like acoustic cues are provided. (shrink)

Depression is a disorder of impaired emotion regulation. Consequently, examining individual differences in the habitual use of emotion-regulation strategies has considerable potential to inform models of this debilitating disorder. The aim of the current study was to identify cognitive processes that may be associated with the use of emotion-regulation strategies and to elucidate their relation to depression. Depression has been found to be associated with difficulties in cognitive control and, more specifically, with difficulties inhibiting the processing of negative material. We (...) used a negative affective priming task to assess the relations among inhibition and individual differences in the habitual use of rumination, reappraisal, and expressive suppression in clinically depressed, formerly depressed, and never-depressed participants. We found that depressed participants exhibited the predicted lack of inhibition when processing negative material. Moreover, within the group of depressed participants, reduced inhibition of negative material was associated with greater rumination. Across the entire sample, reduced inhibition of negative material was related to less use of reappraisal and more use of expressive suppression. Finally, within the formerly depressed group, less use of reappraisal, more use of rumination, and greater expressive suppression were related to higher levels of depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that individual differences in the use of emotion-regulation strategies play an important role in depression, and that deficits in cognitive control are related to the use of maladaptive emotion-regulation strategies in this disorder. (shrink)

This volume thus clears the ground for the productive and fruitful integration of these new developments into philosophy of science.

This essay offers some reflections on the recent history of the disputes about the relation between history and philosophy of science (HPS) and the merits and prospects of HPS as an intellectual endeavor. As everyone knows, the issue was hotly debated in the 1960s and 1970s. That was the hey-day of the slogan "history without philosophy of science is blind, philosophy without history of science is empty" as well as of the many variations on the theme of HPS as a (...) "marriage of convenience," "intimate relation," or "marriage for the sake of reason." There was a flurry of interest in the early 1990s, as evidenced by sections in the 1992 and 1994 issues of PSA, entitled: "Do the History of Science and the Philosophy of .. (shrink)

This article presents a new framework for the analysis of experimental control. The framework highlights different functions for experimental controls in the realization of an experiment: experimental controls that serve as tests and experimental controls that serve as probes. The approach to experimental control proposed here can illuminate the constitutive role of controls in knowledge production, and it sheds new light on the notion of exploratory experimentation. It also clarifies what can and what cannot be expected from reviewers of scientific (...) journal articles giving feedback on experimental controls. (shrink)

In Extragalactic Reality: The Case of Gravitational Lensing Hacking resumes the discussion of scientific realism from the last chapter of Representing and Intervening. Since the criterion of manipulability cannot be applied to astronomical objects, experimental entity realism seems to be restricted to terrestrial entities. In fact, Hacking explicitly argues against astronomical realism. The case at issue is the existence of gravitational lenses. In this paper, I question Hacking 's chief witness for astronomical antirealism: the gravitational lens system “0957+ 561”. It (...) will be shown that Hacking 's argumentation is misleading. Discussing astronomical realism as theory realism, Hacking focuses on the question of how to infer the existence of gravitational lenses from the truth of gravitational lens theory. But neither the reconstruction of gravitational lensing in terms of inference to the best explanation nor the argument of underdetermination are tenable under closer inspection. My thesis is that a realist account of gravitational lensing can be given by relying on observation, causal capacities and home truths. (shrink)

This introduction to the special issue of the same title sets out the context for a critical examination of contemporary developments in sociotechnical systems deployed in the name of security. Our focus is on technologies of tracking, with their claims to enable the identification of those who comprise legitimate targets for the use of violent force. Taking these claims as deeply problematic, we join a growing body of scholarship on the technopolitical logics that underpin an increasingly violent landscape of institutions, (...) infrastructures, and actions, promising protection to some but arguably contributing to our collective insecurity. We examine the asymmetric distributions of sociotechnologies of security; their deadly and injurious effects; and the legal, ethical, and moral questions that haunt their operations. (shrink)

“Erotism and Censorship“ offers an introduction to the history of picture postcards and explores the German censorship until 1930. The specificity of the medium to react to the desires of the clients (mostly male) and to shape them simultaneously is explained in interpretations of examples. A documentary part presents a selection of texts about reproduction technologies. These texts were originally published in journals for collectors of postcards.

Marsilio Ficino, Protegé Cosimos, Pieros und Lorenzos von Medici, gilt als Zentralgestalt des italienischen Renaissance-Platonismus. Mit den Übersetzungen der Dialoge Platons, der Schriften Plotins und des Corpus Hermeticum sowie durch eine theoretische Verknüpfung von antiker Philosophie mit christlicher Religion übte er einen unübersehbar grossen Einfluss auf die europäische Wissenschafts- und Geistesgeschichte aus. Im Zentrum seines Theorie-Gebäudes steht ein komplexes Konzept von Magie, dessen Konstruktion bis heute erforscht wird. Es hat dem Band den Titel gegeben, dessen Themen sich Ficinos intellektuellem Horizont (...) entsprechend jedoch in eine Vielzahl weiterer Aspekte ausdifferenzieren. Diese literarisch-künstlerischen, literaturwissenschaftlichen, wissenschaftshistorischen und philosophisch-theologischen Implikationen von Ficinos Schriften werden paradigmatisch und vergleichend behandelt. (shrink)

This article sets out to provide a conceptual contribution to theoretical and empirical work on the level of media repertoires. We will first discuss theoretical approaches which allow for an explanation of media repertoires and relate them to the most prominent approaches to selective audience behavior. Secondly, in order to empirically analyze media repertoires we propose a combination of secondary analyses of existing surveys on media use and qualitative studies on the internal ‘architecture’ of these repertoires and their practical meaning (...) in the user's everyday life. These proposals for secondary analyses are illustrated by two examples based on different data sets and referring to different levels of analysis. (shrink)

Risk assessment is an evidence-based analytical framework used to evaluate research findings related to environmental and public health decision-making. Different routines have been adopted for assessing the potential risks posed by substances and products to human health. In general, the traditional paradigm is a hazard-driven approach, based on a monocausal toxicological perspective. Questions have been raised about the applicability of the general chemical risk assessment approach in the specific case of nanomaterials. Most scientists and stakeholders assume that the current standard (...) methods are in principle suitable, but point out that experimental aspects and practical guidelines need specific adaptations. Beyond this laboratory level, risk assessment of nanomaterials also faces a number of substantive and procedural limitations, which are intrinsically attributed to the general orthodoxy of the risk assessment concept. Moreover, the developed formalism used to organize scientific knowledge is closely interlinked with the underlying governance design and the mode of interaction between the two spheres of ‘science’ and ‘decisions’. This contribution will provide a closer look at the evolution of different institutional settings for risk assessment in the context of decision-making. Improved risk governance frameworks with different narratives, process designs and procedural elements will be compared. The question of a general principle of enhanced organization of risk assessment will be discussed taking account of the barriers of substantive and procedural limitations in the special case of nanomaterials. (shrink)

In recent developments in Artificial Intelligence and especially in robotics we can observe a tendency towards building intelligent artefacts that are meant to be social, to have ‘human social’ characteristics like emotions, the ability to conduct dialogue, to learn, to develop personality, character traits, and social competencies. Care, entertainment, pet and educational robots are conceptualised as friendly, understanding partners and credible assistants which communicate ‘naturally’ with users, show emotions and support them in everyday life. Social robots are often designed to (...) interact physically, affectively and socially with humans in order to learn from them. To achieve this goal, roboticists often model the human‐robot interaction on early caregiver‐infant interactions. In this paper I want to analyse prominent visions of these ‘socio‐emotional’ machines as well as early prototypes and commercial products with regard to the human‐machine interface. By means of this I will ask how feminist critiques of technology could be applied to the field of social robotics in which concepts like sociality or emotion are crucial elements while, at the same time, these concepts play an important role in feminist critiques of technology. (shrink)