The major tenets of the recent hypothesis of punctuated equilibrium are explicit in Darwin's writing. His notes from 1837–1838 contain references to stasis and rapid change. In the first edition of the Origin (1859), Darwin described the importance of isolation of local varieties in the process of speciation. His views on the tempo of speciation were influenced by Hugh Falconer and also, perhaps, by Edward Suess (1831–1914). It is paradoxical that, although both topics were recorded in his unpublished notes of (...) 1837–1838, the second was not explicitly and fully discussed until the fourth edition of the Origin (1866). While no wholly satisfactory explanation of this paradox suggests itself, it seems probable that Falconer's work on the persistence of fossil species of elephant helped Darwin to see the wider significance of the tempo of evolution for his general theory. (shrink)

This commentary focuses on the importance of auditory object processing for producing and comprehending human language, the relative lack of development of this capability in nonhuman primates, and the consequent need for hominid neurobiological evolution to enhance this capability in making the transition from protosign to protospeech to language.

A major shift has taken place since the 1960s concerning disclosure to patients that they have a diagnosis of cancer and that their disease is considered terminal. Full disclosure is now considered the patient's right in the United States. However, there remain many countries in which nondisclosure is still the norm. When patients from those countries are diagnosed with cancer in America, differences in attitudes and expectations can cause conflict and misunderstanding.

This chapter describes the potential far‐reaching consequences of contemplative higher education for the fields of science and medicine.

Der Übergang vom Verhältnisbewußtsein zum Selbstbewußtsein kann unmöglich nur vom Verhältnisbewußtsein aus gedacht werden, weil wir uns eine Welt, in der das Bewubtsein unserer selbst verteilt ist auf die Dimensionen der Handlung vor deren Zentrierung in uns, gar nicht vorstellen können. Jedes Tableau der Handlungsmöglichkeiten, so abstrakt es auch abgefaßt sein mag, ist gebunden an Vorstellungen möglicher Handlungssubjekte, denen wir Handlungsmöglichkeiten zuschreiben. Handlungstheorie ist daher notwendig Reflexion unserer Praxis, in der wir uns selbst als Selbstbewußtsein erfahren, das seinem Verhältnisbewubtsein enthoben (...) ist, ohne dieses dadurch selbst schon aufzuheben zu können. Daß uns Freiheit im Handeln unaufhebbar prekär und problematisch bleiben mub, ist die Grundvoraussetzung dafür, dab wir Handlungstheorien historisch und bereichsbezogen ständig neu entwerfen müssen. Das Verhältnis von Handlungsphilosophie zu Handlungstheorien kann daher so gefaßt werden, daß Handlungsphilosophie die Grundbegrifflichkeit in kritischer Absicht bereitstellt, die den bereichsorientierten, mehr oder weniger deskriptiven Handlungstheorien abgehen muß. Dazu muß die ontologische Differenz von Handlung und Interpretation methodologisch ernst genommen werden. Die radikale Andersheit der hier zu begründenden Konzeption liegt vor allem in der Ansicht, daß Handlungen nicht als isolierbare Ereignis-Entitäten aufgefaßt werden können, die gegenüber der »Welt der Tatsachen des Bewußtseins« eine kausale, d.h. von der Welt des Bewußtseins abgetrennte Rolle übernehmen. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Book Reviews Catherine Osborne. Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy: Hippolytus of Rome and the Presocratics. London: Duckworth, 1987. Pp. viii + 383. NP. A quick look at Kirk, Raven, and Schofield's standard The PresocraticPhilosophers(Cambridge University Press, 1983) or Barnes's recent Early GreekPhilosophy (Penguin, 1987) reveals a clear distinction between (a) direct quotations (ipsissima verba) of the Presocratics and (b) testimonia (doxographic or otherwise) about their thought. This bifurcation into original (...) fragments and testimonia is called into question by Osborne in her book. For Osborne, the standard procedure of identifying fragments within a larger context and then interpreting the fragments without reference to that context is to be put aside "in favour of reading the text of the Presocratics as embedded texts within the context of the interpretations they were selected to illustrate" (183). This new methodology is not offered by Osborne as applicable across the board, for all the Presocratics. It is a nonstarter for, say, Parmenides, for whom we have (obvious) verbatim quotation in Simplicius (and consequently no need to take into account the Simplician context). But in the case of some other Presocratics we are not on such secure grounds. Or so Osborne thinks, and the book illustrates her hermeneutical principles with reference to Heraclitus and Empedocles as their thought is embedded in the text of Hippolytus of Rome's Refutation of All Heresies. Osborne's strategy proceeds in two distinct stages: (1) She first offers us a couple of examples of Hippolytus's interpretive skills, both of which, in different ways, reveal him as a pretty reliable (if biased) and interesting philosophical and textual exegete. In this regard she presents Hippolytus's discussion of Aristotle's doctrine of substance in the Categoriesand Metaphysics Z (in the context of Hippolytus's refutation of the heretic Basileides) and, secondly, his reworking of Irenaeus's life of Simon Magus, the reputed founder of gnosticism. Aristotle is a particularly good test case because we can, of course, check Hippolytus's report against the original. Having done so, Osborne is led to conclude that "little of interest can be derived from the limited amount of material that is quoted directly from Aristotle" (183; cf. also 66). Nonetheless, for Osborne comparison with Aristotle's text reveals Hippolytus as not bereft of philosophical acumen, even though his interpretation is colored by the particular polemics in which he is engaged. In sum, then, Osborne understands Hippolytus as an intelligent (if biased) interpreter of Aristotle and not a particularly good source for ipsissimaverba. (2) On the basis of these conclusions about Hippolytus as a source for Aristotle's metaphysical theory and for the life of Simon Magus, Osborne turns to Hippolytus's discussion of Heraclitus and Empedocles (in the context of his refutations of the [ll9] 120 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28"1 JANUARY ~99 o heretics Noetus and Marcion). Her goal is to urge a new nonfragment-based methodology for the study of the Presocratics, grounded in the conclusions she has just reached about Hippolytus as an interpreter of Aristotle and Irenaeus. The major obstacle which she faces in validating such a methodology is that in the cases of Heraclitus and Empedocles we have no original text by which to judge Hippolytus's reliability or interpretive skills. In lieu of such original texts all that Osborne has at her disposal is her own conclusion just reached about Hippolytus as a generally reliable (if biased) interpreter of Aristotle and Irenaeus. But just here is the major problem with Osborne 's proposed methodology: granting for the sake of argument that Hippolytus is a pretty good interpreter of Aristotle and Irenaeus, this does not entail that he is a reliable exegete of anyone else. He might be, he might not. We don't know and, more importantly, we have no way of finding out. Osborne assumes that Hippolytus had a greater knowledge of the relevant texts than we do (67, 185), and thus interpreted the Presocratics on this basis. He might have, he might not. In any event, Osborne's assumption is a case of special pleading. Equally plausible is that Hippolytus possessed no more of Heraclitus or Empedocles than we do and, consequendy, had... (shrink)

Introduction, Thomas McLaughlinI Literature as Writing1 Representation, W. J. T. Mitchell2 Structure, John Carlos Rowe3 Writing, Barbara Johnson4 Discourse, Paul A. Bove5 Narrative, J. Hillis Miller6 Figurative Language, Thomas McLaughlin7 Performance, Henry Sayre8 Author, Donald E. PeaseII Interpretation9 Interpretation, Steven Mailloux10 Intention, Annabel Patterson11 Unconscious, Franoise Meltzer12 Determinacy/Indeterminacy, Gerald Graff13 Value/Evaluation, Barbara Herrnstein Smith14 Influence, Louis A. Renza15 Rhetoric, Stanley FishIII Literature, Culture, Politics16 Culture, Stephen Greenblatt17 Canon, John Guillory18 Literary History, Lee Patterson19 Gender, Myra Jehlen20 Race, Kwane Anthony Appiah21 (...) Ethnicity, Werner Sollors22 Ideology, James H. KavanaghIn Place of an Afterword--Someone Reading, Frank LentricchiaReferencesList of ContributorsIndex. (shrink)

Role of the entrepreneur in a distinct role of profit.

Die Frage, welche Wissensform Aristoteles mit seiner Topik im Unterschied zur strengen Wissenschaftslehre der "Zweiten Analytik" im Blick hatte, ist im vergangenen halben Jahrhundert ins Zentrum der geisteswissenschaftlichen Forschung gerückt. An den intensiven Diskussionen zur Topikforschung hat sich die Theologie bislang nur sporadisch beteiligt. Dabei war die Theologie neben der Jurisprudenz der bevorzugte wissenschaftliche Ort, an dem die Topik ihre Bedeutung erweisen sollte. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht diese Bedeutung in den frühen theologischen Wissensformen und ihre Rolle als Epistemologie, d.h. einer (...) wissenschaftlichen Theologie, wie sie seit dem 12. Jahrhundert von den Gelehrten diskutiert wurde. In diesen wurde immer das Eigentümliche von Theologie als einer Glaubenswissenschaft mit berücksichtigt, die also eine Wissensform darstellt, die sich der menschlichen Vernunft nicht aus sich erschließt, sondern die aus der Offenbarung gegeben ist und die deshalb dieser beglaubwürdigender Instanzen bedarf. In den Dogmatiken des konfessionellen Zeitalters wird die breite Semantik der Topik zwischen Analytik, Enzyklopädik und Argumentations-Heuristik für die Neuzeit entfaltet. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Search for Unity in Diversity: The "Permanent Hegelian Deposit" in the Philosophy of John DeweyFrank X. RyanJames A. Good A Search for Unity in Diversity: The "Permanent Hegelian Deposit" in the Philosophy of John Dewey Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006. xxx + 288 pp.Among the revelations of Dewey's rare moments of autobiographical reflection, none has generated more curiosity and investigative zeal than his 1930 claim to have (...) "drifted" from Hegel in the decade following his move from Michigan to Chicago in 1894. Beginning with Morton White's Origin of Dewey's Instrumentalism (1943), biographers have divided on the question of whether Dewey's later philosophy was more strongly influenced by William James's experimental psychology or F. J. E. Woodbridge's Aristotelian naturalism. Despite their differences, both approaches are essentially empirical and realistic, and thus the majority of sympathetic commentators have agreed that Dewey was a realist, albeit of a decidedly unorthodox stripe. For them the notion that Dewey retained any significant commitment to idealism, given its virtual eradication at the beginning of the twentieth century, would damage his influence and legacy.It has been something of a puzzle, accordingly, that in the same autobiographical essay Dewey alludes to a "permanent Hegelian deposit." For years Richard Rorty has claimed this differentiates a "good" Dewey committed to "social flourishing" from a "bad" Dewey prone to metaphysical dalliance. But the first systematic inquiry into Dewey's enduring Hegelianism is John R. Shook's Dewey's Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality (2000). Shook argues convincingly that Dewey never abandoned idealism, but rather transformed it into an experimental naturalism by doing away with both "mind-stuff" and equally noxious "things-in-themselves." In many ways James Good's A Search for Unity in Diversity is a bookend to Shook's project, though Good further differentiates Anglo-American Neo-Hegelianism from Hegel himself. According to Good, Dewey endorsed a Humanistic/Historicist interpretation of Hegel rooted in the reciprocal engagement of individuals and societies, rather than the supernatural and architectonic absolute championed by Neo-Hegelians such as T. H. Green, and F. H. Bradley. With [End Page 216] top-notch scholarship and scrupulous attention to detail, A Search for Unity in Diversity is both an excellent intellectual biography and a penetrating plea for a radical reinterpretation of Dewey's contribution to philosophy. I'll briefly sketch the historical account before addressing the more controversial claims about the "permanent Hegelian deposit."Even readers familiar with the half-dozen book-length treatments of Dewey's development will find this account refreshing and informative. Good's professional credentials as a historian shine as he recreates the rough and bustling Burlington of Dewey's youth. In the 1870s, German idealism was considered the epitome of political liberalism and progressive education, and Dewey's journey toward the "inclusive philosophical idea" of the social began in an environment swirling with the crosscurrents of Kant, Hegel, and Schelling. At the White Street Congregational Church, Lewis Barstow preached a liberal orthodoxy that was essentially "man-building" (102), and Good presents a convincing case for the likelihood that even in boyhood Dewey never viewed God as an aloof law-giver or cosmic architect, but as a process unifying the individual and the social within a natural world of unlimited potential. At the University of Vermont Dewey encountered a struggling rural college transformed into the first bastion of American transcendentalism by James Marsh, who inspired a "Burlington philosophy" that rejected atomistic empiricism for a holistic integrity of knowing and doing, facts and values, and pure and practical reasons (57–59).In noting the influence of the "St. Louis Hegelians" upon Dewey, most biographers have focused on W. T. Harris, the prominent founder of The Journal of Speculative Philosophy who published Dewey's earliest submissions and offered encouragement that led to his pursuit of graduate work at Johns Hopkins. Good augments this familiar tale with fascinating depictions of equally influential yet lesser-known Hegelians such as H. C. Brokmeyer, Denton Snider, and Thomas Davidson. At a time when European Hegelianism was polarized between, on the one hand, reactionary apologists for traditional Christianity and Prussian militarism and, on the other, radical... (shrink)

The temporal granularity of consciousness may be far less fine than the real-time information processing mechanisms that underlie our sensitivity to small temporal differences. It is suggested that conscious time perception, like space perception, is subject to errors that belie a unitary underlying representation. E. R. Clay's concept of the “specious present,” an extended moment represented in consciousness, is suggested as an alternative to the more common notion of instantaneous experience that underlies much reasoning based on the “time of arrival” (...) in consciousness. (shrink)

A new motion illusion is discussed in relation to the idea of vision as a Grand Illusion. An experiment shows that this 'Tinkerbell effect' is a good example of a visual illusion supported by low-level stimulus information, but resulting from integration principles probably necessary for normal perception.

Although Pessoa et al. imply that many aspects of the filling-in debate may be displaced by a regard for active vision, they remain loyal to naive neural reductionist explanations of certain pieces of psychophysical evidence. Alternative interpretations are provided for two specific examples and a new category of filling-in (of visual detail) is proposed.

Cambridge Journals Online (CJO) is the online journals publishing service of Cambridge University Press. CJO hosts leading journals across multiple disciplines.

Increasing complexities facing physicians negotiating the bedside decision continue to fuel the debate over who is the appropriate party to offer ethics consults, should one be needed, during the decision-making process. Some very good arguments have been put forth on behalf of clinical ethicists as being the proper and best party to engage in ethics consultations. However, serious questions remain about the role of the clinical ethicist and his ability to provide the necessary level of objectivity called for in an (...) ethics consult.I argue that the clinician's professional psyche, or mode of thinking as a professional, leaves him little room to maneuver as an objective and detached third party ethics consultant. Several factors are cited and discussed that greatly influence the analyses applied to a case problem by physicians. The most formidable of these factors are habits and the practice of defensive medicine. I conclude that clinical ethicists are less suited for the overall tasks required of an objective consultant in medical cases that appear to involve insurmountable ethical issues. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:702 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33:4 OCTOBER t99 5 appears more as an anomalous figure in the spirit of Kierkegaard than a thinker of the mainstream. For Jaspers, philosophy is a vehicle to provoke a spiritual sense of the wonder of existence rather than an autonomous vocation which strives to recast its questions in increasingly radical ways. Most typically, Jaspers's emphasis on darker aspects of the human (...) predicament--guilt, anxiety, and death as the seminal existential motifs--does not exclude a more positive vision of Existenz as revealed through transcendence. The limits do not provoke a discourse of radical finitude which skirts the edges of presence, but instead indirectly point toward a transcendent mystery, or the "encompassing" (19-2o). If there is an aspect of Jaspers's philosophy that remains inadequately addressed in either volume, it is his preoccupation with the role of tragedy in the post-war era? In light of the premier importance that Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger all grant to tragedy, Jaspers's passionate treatment of this topic in the context of the catastrophe of Western Europe merits far closer attention. Does not the issue of tragedy provide indispensable dues to chart the landscape of twentieth-century thought, and to amplify the differences which prevail in the portrait of politics as displayed by such diverse philosophers as Jaspers and Heidegger, Derrida and Levinas? FRANK SCHALOW DiUard University Norman Malcolm. Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View? Edited with a response by Peter Winch. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, a994. Pp. xi + 14o. Norman Malcolm at the outset of this, his posthumously published last book, focuses on the question: What did Wittgenstein mean when he said to his friend M. O'C. Drury, "I am not a religious man, but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view"? It was the right question. But Malcolm then--again on the first page of his book-proceeded to place restrictions on it, which were quite foreign to the spirit of Wittgenstein 's remark and which virtually crippled it. (1) He took Wittgenstein to be speaking of not social, psychological, or presumably even personal problems, but only of philosophical ones. (2) He chose to say that in Wittgenstein's later philosophy "there is not strictly a religious point of view, but something analogous to a religious point of view" (1, Malcolm's emphases). There is no reason to think that Wittgenstein would have accepted either of these restrictions on his remark. Nor does Peter Winch accept them in his forty-page discussion, which follows Malcolm's text in this book. In the upshot Malcolm finds "four analogies between Wittgenstein's conception of the grammar of language and his view of what is paramount in a religious life" (92). In both, he says, Wittgenstein emphasizes "an end to explanation," a sense of an "illness" pervading the human situation, "an inclination to be amazed at the existence of some ' Karl Jaspers, TragedyIs Not Enough, trans. Harald A. T. Reiche, Harry T. Moore, and Karl W. Deutsch (Boston: Beacon Press, 1952), 31-4O,93- io5_ BOOK REVIEWS 703 thing," and "doing, acting [having.] priority over intellectual understanding and reasoning " (92). But are such "analogies" really the crux of the "religious point of view" in terms of which Wittgenstein said that he could "not help seeing every problem"? When we recall that Wittgenstein's later philosophy was a proibund attack upon what he regarded as the idolatry of science, logic, and mathematics (an idolatry of which he himself, in the Tractatt~,, was partly guilty), and that he was also bent on undermining the accompanying subjectivized and privatized view of the human mind, as well as the scientistic reading of religious beliefs and primitive religions, we may be inclined to see his philosophy as clearing the way for the simple noninstitutionalized Tolstoian faith which he himself accepted. Philosophy and religion were on the same track in his mind (and not merely related by "analogies") when he wrote: "All that philosophy can do is to destroy idols. And that means not creating a new one--for instance, as in the 'absence of an idol' " (MS 213, 89). Peter Winch... (shrink)

This thesis maintains that Friedrich Holderlin's poetic thought is a key element not only in the development of Martin Heidegger's philosophical thought from 1929/30 to 1933 but also in his decision to become politically involved with National Socialism. Although Heidegger was familiar with Holderlin's poetry prior to 1929, he did not perceive the significance of the poet's thought and language until he was able to overcome the position of transcendental subjectivity which haunts Being and Time. Heidegger did so in 1929/30 (...) by shattering the unity of Dasein's temporal horizon--a unity which still preserved the assumption of being as permanent presence. This enabled Heidegger to think through the turn or Kehre to the occurrence of being as difference as the originary event which gave rise not only to Greek philosophy but the Western tradition as a whole. ;It is precisely at this juncture that Holderlin's poetic thought and language became significant for Heidegger. The turn from the unity of Dasein's temporality to the occurrence of being as time implies not only a revolution in thinking but also a revolution in language. Heidegger's attempt to set this revolution in motion by setting the originary sense of the Greek logos to work linguistically in his own work is the philosophical counterpart of what Norbert von Hellingrath first described as Holderlin's harte Fugung or hard style. ;The pre-logical grammar and syntax Heidegger employed, I have called the language of revolution. Its purpose is to dislocate thinking out of metaphysics toward a hidden Greek origin in the past which shows itself in the future as what is left unthought of the Greek beginning and what still remains to be thought. This back-and-forth movement of questioning is the philosophical counterpart to Holderlin's poetic andenken. In dislocating political and ideological thought from its metaphysical foundations, Heidegger intended to shift the political revolution, especially in the universities, toward a second, deeper revolution which would confront the hidden origin of the Western tradition itself. (shrink)

Medicine and Money explores the role of beneficence and cost control in health-care systems. The book's primary concern of morally improving medicine is achieved by dividing the argument into two parts. The first defines the crisis in health-care and justifies beneficence. The second part offers practical suggestions on implementing beneficence into the system. Medicine and Money is one of the few books to provide concrete suggestions on improving the health-care system from the micro level for addressing cost concerns in a (...) morally acceptable manner. (shrink)