Over the course of the last three decades, computer simulations have become a major tool of doing science and engaging with the world, not least in an effort to predict and intervene in a future to come. Born in the context of the Second World War and the discipline of physics, simulations have long spread into most diverse fields of enquiry and technological application. This paper introduces a topical collection focussing on simulations in the life sciences. Echoing the current state (...) of tinkering, fast developments, segmentation of knowledge and interdisciplinary collaboration, and in an effort to bridge the science-humanities divide, the contributors to this collection come from multiple disciplinary backgrounds, including information studies, cognitive sciences, philosophy and biology. The ambiguous character of simulations, their cutting across scientific disciplines, analysis and prediction, understanding and doing, gave rise to their success in contemporary life sciences and has been the object of much scientific debate. One of the main aims of this topical collection, by contrast, is to call into question the assumption of an obvious use and easy transfer of methods between fields of knowledge as diverse as, e.g. physics and biology. The collection presents historical case studies from various biological sub-fields. The articles study how simulations are used and the ways they contribute specifically to our understanding of life. Taking up Sergio Sismondo’s description of simulations as “compromises” and “glue”, they also critically engage with the question of what exactly the life sciences have been gluing together over the last two decades. (shrink)

This issue 23 of FICHTEANA is dedicated to Daniel Breazeale, who passed away on 30 December 2023. -/- "FICHTEANA Review of J.G. Fichte Research" is an annual online publication in English devoted to new scholarship on the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. It publishes information and reviews of the latest Fichte editions, books, publications, conferences, and Calls for Papers. Originally founded by Daniel Breazeale in 1993, since issue 22 (2022), FICHTEANA has appeared in an expanded form with book reviews. Editors: Daniel (...) Breazeale (†) and David W. Wood; with associate editors Kienhow Goh and Gesa Wellmann. -/- . (shrink)

This article discusses the text of the work On Simples attributed to Dioscorides. It argues that in fifteen places the transmitted text is faulty, and it proposes emendations. It also studies certain types of insertions made in the text by its most recent editor, Max Wellmann, and concludes that they are unnecessary. Finally, it discusses two points where On Simples sheds light on Dioscorides’ De materia medica.

Πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστι War is the father of all. New : Publication of my book : Histoire du libéralisme in Editions Ellipses, on Fnac or Amazon.1) HERACLITUS : 139 Fragments.a) Heraclitus (PDF) Original Greek text : Diels; English translation : John Burnet (1912), French translation of the English translation (1919), in PDFb) Heraclitus (unicode) : Parallel version or Interlinear version (Work in Progress) Original Greek text : Diels; English translation : John Burnet (1912), French translation of the English (...) translation (1919)c) Heraclitus : Original greek text : original pages of Hermann Diels edition (1912)2) The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910–1911) : HERACLITUS (Ἡράκλειτος; c. 540-475 B.C.), Greek philosopher, was born at Ephesus of distinguished parentage. Of his early life and education we know nothing; from the contempt with which he spoke of all his fellow-philosophers and of his fellow-citizens as a whole we may gather that he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom. So intensely aristocratic (hence his nickname ὀχλολοίδορος, "he who rails at the people") was his temperament that he declined to exercise the regal-hieratic office of βασιλεύς which was hereditary in his family, and presented it to his brother. It is probable, however, that he did occasionally intervene in the affairs of the city at the period when the rule of Persia had given place to autonomy; it is said that he compelled the usurper Melancomas to abdicate. From the lonely life he led, and still more from the extreme profundity of his philosophy and his contempt for mankind in general, he was called the "Dark Philosopher" (ὁ σκοτεινός), or the "Weeping Philosopher," in contrast to Democritus, the "Laughing Philosopher." κακοὶ μάρτυρες Heraclitus is in a real sense the founder of metaphysics. Starting from the physical standpoint of the Ionian physicists, he accepted their general idea of the unity of nature, but entirely denied their theory of being. The fundamental uniform fact in nature is constant change (πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει); everything both is and is not at the same time. He thus arrives at the principle of Relativity; harmony and unity consist in diversity and multiplicity. The senses are "bad witnesses" (κακοὶ μάρτυρες); only the wise man can obtain knowledge. To appreciate the significance of the doctrines of Heraclitus, it must be borne in mind that to Greek philosophy the sharp distinction between subject and object which pervades modern thought was foreign, a consideration which suggests the conclusion that, while it is a great mistake to reckon Heraclitus with the materialistic cosmologists of the Ionic schools, it is, on the other hand, going too far to treat his theory, with Hegel and Lassalle, as one of pure Panlogism. Accordingly, when he denies the reality of Being, and declares Becoming, or eternal flux and change, to be the sole actuality, Heraclitus must be understood to enunciate not only the unreality of the abstract notion of being, except as the correlative of that of not-being, but also the physical doctrine that all phenomena are in a state of continuous transition from non-existence to existence, and vice versa, without either distinguishing these propositions or qualifying them by any reference to the relation of thought to experience. " Every thing is and is not'"; all things are, and nothing remains. So far he is in general agreement with Anaximander (q.v.), but he differs from him in the solution of the problem, disliking, as a poet and a mystic, the primary matter which satisfied the patient researcher, and demanding a more vivid and picturesque element. Naturally he selects fire, according to him the most complete embodiment of the process of Becoming, as the principle of empirical existence, out of which all things, including even the soul, grow by way of a quasi condensation, and into which all things must in course of time be again resolved. But this primordial fire is in itself that divine rational process, the harmony of which constitutes the law of the universe (see LOGOS). Real knowledge consists in comprehending this all-pervading harmony as embodied in the manifold of perception, and the senses are "bad-witnesses," because they apprehend phenomena, not as its manifestation, but as "stiff and dead." In like manner real virtue consists in the subordination of the individual to the laws of this harmony as the universal reason wherein alone true freedom is to be found." The law of things is a law of Reason Universal (λόγος), but most men live as though they had a wisdom of their own." Ethics here stands to sociology in a close relation, similar, in many respects, to that which we find in Hegel and in Comte. For Heraclitus the soul approaches most nearly to perfection when it is most akin to the fiery vapour out of which it was originally created, and as this is most so in death, " while we live our souls are dead in us, but when we die our souls are restored to life." The doctrine of immortality comes prominently forward in his ethics, but whether this must not be reckoned with the figurative accommodation to the popular theology of Greece which pervades his ethical teaching, is very doubtful. The school of disciples founded by Heraclitus flourished for long after his death, the chief exponent of his teaching being Cratylus. A good deal of the information in regard to his doctrines has been gathered from the later Greek philosophy, which was deeply influenced by it. BIBLIOGRAPHY.—The only authentic extant work of Heraclitus is the περὶ φύσεως. The best edition (containing also the probably spurious Ἐπιστολαί) is that of I. Bywater, Heracliti Ephesii reliquiae (Oxford, 1877); of the epistles alone by A. Westermann (Leipzig, 1857). See also in A. H. Ritter and L. Preller's Historia philosophiae Graecae (8th ed. by E. Wellmann, 1898); F. W. A. Mullach, Fragm. philos. Graec. (Paris, 1860); A. Fairbanks, The First Philosophers of Greece (1898); H. Diels, Heraklit von Ephesus (2nd ed., 1909), Greek and German. English translation of By water's edition with introduction by G. T. W. Patrick (Baltimore, 1889). For criticism see, in addition to the histories of philosophy, F. Lassalle, Die Philosophie Herakleitos' des Dunklen (Berlin, 1858; 2nd ed., 1892), which, however, is too strongly dominated by modern Hegelianism; Paul Schuster, Heraklit von Ephesus (Leipzig, 1873); J. Bernays, Die heraklitischen Briefe (Berlin, 1869); T. Gomperz, Zu Heraclits Lehre und den Uberresten seines Werkes (Vienna, 1887), and in his Greek Thinkers (English translation, L. Magnus, vol. i. 1901); J. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (1892); A. Patin, Heraklits Einheitslehre (Leipzig, 1886); E. Pfleiderer, Die Philosophie des Heraklit us von Ephesus im Lichte der Mysterienidee (Berlin, 1886); G. T. Schäfer, Die Philosophie des Heraklit von Ephesus und die moderne Heraklilforschung (Leipzig, 1902); Wolfgang Schultz, Studien zur antiken Kultur, i.; Pythagoras und Heraklit (Leipzig, 1905); O. Spengler, Heraklit. Eine Studie ilber den energetischen Grundgedanken seiner Philosophie (Halle, 1904); A. Brieger, "Die Grundzüge der heraklitischen Physik " in Hermes, xxxix. (1904) 182-223, and "Heraklit der Dunkle" in Neue Jahrb. f. das klass. Altertum (1904), p. 687. For his place in the development of early philosophy see also articles IONIAN SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY and LOGOS. Ancient authorities: Diog. Laert. ix.; Sext. Empiric, Adv. mathem. vii. 126, 127, 133; Plato, Cratylus, 402 A and Theaetetus, 152 E; Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 45, 48; Arist. Nic. Eth. vii. 3, 4; Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, v. 599, 603 (ed. Paris). (J. M. M.) Copyright. (shrink)

: Medical research is widely thought to have a fundamentally therapeutic orientation, in spite of the fact that clinical research is thought to be ethically distinct from medical care. We need an entirely new conception of clinical research ethics—one that looks to science instead of the doctor-patient relationship.

Most Gentzen systems arising in logic contain few axiom schemata and many rule schemata. Hilbert systems, on the other hand, usually contain few proper inference rules and possibly many axioms. Because of this, the two notions tend to serve different purposes. It is common for a logic to be specified in the first instance by means of a Gentzen calculus, whereupon a Hilbert-style presentation ‘for’ the logic may be sought—or vice versa. Where this has occurred, the word ‘for’ has taken (...) on several different meanings, partly because the Gentzen separator ⇒ can be interpreted intuitively in a number of ways. Here ⇒ will be denoted less evocatively by ⊲.In this paper we aim to discuss some of the useful ways in which Gentzen and Hilbert systems may correspond to each other. Actually, we shall be concerned with thededucibility relationsof the formal systems, as it is these that are susceptible to transformation in useful ways. To avoid potential confusion, we shall speak of Hilbert and Gentzenrelations. By aHilbert relationwe mean any substitution-invariant consequence relation onformulas—this comes to the same thing as the deducibility relation of a set of Hilbert-style axioms and rules. By aGentzen relationwe mean the fully fledged generalization of this notion in whichsequentstake the place of single formulas. In the literature, Hilbert relations are often referred to assentential logics. Gentzen relations as defined here are their exactsequentialcounterparts. (shrink)

It is shown that for every nonzero r.e. degree c there is a linear ordering of degree c which is not isomorphic to any recursive linear ordering. It follows that there is a linear ordering of low degree which is not isomorphic to any recursive linear ordering. It is shown further that there is a linear ordering L such that L is not isomorphic to any recursive linear ordering, and L together with its ‘infinitely far apart’ relation is of low (...) degree. Finally, an analogue of the recursion theorem for recursive linear orderings is refuted. (shrink)

During 1995, there was a major shift in the United Kingdom in the debate of whether it is right for nurses to strike. The Royal College of Nursing, the former advocate of a non-industrial action policy, moved towards the UNISON position that industrial action is ethical in some circumstances, as well as the necessary thing to do. The authors, both nurses and UNISON officials, look at the reasons for this change and why UNISON’s historical position sees industrial action as an (...) effective weapon in defending services, as well as wages and jobs. It can be right to strike. (shrink)

The first topic of concern is anonymity, specifically the anonymity that is available in communications on the Internet. An earlier paper argues that anonymity in electronic communication is problematic because: it makes law enforcement difficult ; it frees individuals to behave in socially undesirable and harmful ways ; it diminishes the integrity of information since one can't be sure who information is coming from, whether it has been altered on the way, etc.; and all three of the above contribute to (...) an environment of diminished trust which is not conducive to certain uses of computer communication. Counterbalancing these problems are some important benefits. Anonymity can facilitate some socially desirable and beneficial behavior. For example, it can eliminate the fear of repercussions for behavior in contexts in which repercussions would diminish the availability or reliability of information, e.g., voting, personal relationships between consenting adults, and the like. Furthermore, anonymity can be used constructively to reduce the effect of prejudices on communications. Negative aspects of anonymity all seem to point to a tension between accountability and anonymity. They suggest that accountability and anonymity are not compatible, and they even seem to suggest that since accountability is a good thing, it would be good to eliminate anonymity. In other words, the problems with anonymity suggest that individuals are more likely to behave in socially desirable ways when they are held accountable for their behavior, and they are more likely to engage in socially undesirable behavior when they are not held accountable. I am not going to take issue with the correlation between accountability and anonymity, but rather with the claim that accountability is good. To examine this problem, let's look at a continuum that stretches from total anonymity at one end, and no anonymity at all at the other end. At the opposite extreme of anonymity is a panopticon society. The panopticon is the prison environment described by Foucault in which prison cells are arranged in a large circle with the side facing the inside of the circle open to view. The guard tower is placed in the middle of the circle so that guards can see everything that goes on in every cell. In a recent article on privacy, Jeffrey Reiman, reflecting on the new intelligent highway systems, suggests that we are moving closer and closer to a panopticon society. When we contemplate all the electronic data that is now gathered about each one of us as we move through our everyday lives- intelligent highway systems, consumer transactions, traffic patterns on the internet, medical records, financial records, and so on- we see the trend that Reiman identifies. Electronic behavior is recorded and the information is retained. While actions/transactions in separate domains are not necessarily combined, it seems obvious that the potential exists for combining data into a complete portfolio of an individual's day to day life. So it would seem that as more and more activities and domains are moved into a IT-based medium, the closer we will come to a panopticon society. A panopticon society gives us the ultimate in accountability. Everything an individual does is observable and therefore available to those to whom we are accountable. Of course, in doing this, it puts us, in effect, in prison. The prison parallel is appropriate here because what anonymity allows us is freedom; prison is the ultimate in lack of freedom. In this way the arguments for a free society become arguments for anonymity. Only when individuals are free will they experiment, try new ideas, take risks, and learn by doing so. Only in an environment that tolerates making mistakes will individuals develop the active habits that are so essential for democracy. In a world without information technology, individuals have levels or degrees and various kinds of anonymity and consequently different levels and kinds of freedom. Degrees and kinds of anonymity vary with the domain: small town social life versus urban social life, voting, commercial exchanges, banking, automobile travel, airplane travel, telephone communication, education, and so on. Drawing from our experience before IT-based institutions, we might believe that what we need is varying levels or degrees and kinds of anonymity. This seems a good starting place because it suggests an attempt to re-create the mixture that we have in the physical, non-IT-based world. Nevertheless, there is a danger. If we think in terms of levels and degrees of anonymity, we may not see the forest from the trees. We may not acknowledge that in an electronic medium, levels and kinds of anonymity mean, in an important sense, no anonymity. If there are domains in which we can be anonymous but those domains are part of a global communication infrastructure in which there is no anonymity at the entry point, then it will always be possible to trace someone's identity. We delude ourselves when we think we have anonymity on-line or off-line. Rather, what we have both places is situations in which it is more and less difficult to identify individuals. We have a continuum of situations in which it is easy and difficult to link behavior to other behavior and histories of behaviors. In the physical world, we can go places and do things where others don't know us by name and have no history with us, though they see our bodies, clothes, and behavior. If we do nothing unusual, we may be forgotten. On the other hand, if we do something illegal, authorities may attempt to track us down and figure out who we are. For example, law enforcement officials, collection agencies, those who want to sue us may take an active interest in removing our anonymity, ex post facto. Think of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols-the men who apparently bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City. Much of what they did, they did anonymously, but then law enforcement officials set out to find out who had done various things, e.g., rented a car, bought explosives, etc. The shrouds of anonymity under which McVeigh and Nichols had acted were slowly removed. Is this any different than behavior on the internet? Is there a significant difference in the kind or degree of anonymity we have in the physical world versus what we have in an IT-based world? The character of the trail we leave is different; in the one case, its an electronic trail; while in the other it involves human memories, photographs, and paper and ink. What law enforcement officials had to do to track down McVeigh is quite different from tracking down an electronic law breaker. Also, the cost of electronic information gathering, both in time and money, can be dramatically lower than the cost of talking to people, gathering physical evidence, and the other minutia required by traditional detective work. We should acknowledge that we do not and are never likely to have anonymity on the Internet. We would do better to think of different levels or kinds of identity. There are important moral and social issues arising as a result of these varying degrees and kinds of identity. Perhaps the most important matter is assuring that individuals are informed about the conditions in which they are interacting. Perhaps, even more important is that individuals have a choice about the conditions under which they are communicating. In the rest of this paper we explore a few examples of levels and kinds of identity that are practical on the Internet. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages that we see for these "styles" of identity for individuals, and we examine the costs and benefits of these styles for society as a whole. (shrink)

The practice of covertly administering medication is controversial. Although condemned by some as overly paternalistic, others have suggested that it may be acceptable if patients have permanent mental incapacity and refuse needed treatment. Ethical, legal, and clinical considerations become more complex when the mental incapacity is temporary and when the medication actually serves to restore autonomy. We discuss these issues in the context of a young man with schizophrenia. His mother had been giving him antipsychotic medication covertly in his soup. (...) Should the doctor continue to provide a prescription, thus allowing this to continue? We discuss this case based on the “four principles” ethical framework, addressing the conflict between autonomy and beneficence/non-maleficence, the role of antipsychotics as an autonomy restoring agent, truth telling and the balance between individual versus family autonomy. (shrink)

It is shown that for any computable field K and any r.e. degree a there is an r.e. set A of degree a and a field F ≅ K with underlying set A such that the field operations of F (including subtraction and division) are extendible to (total) recursive functions. Further, it is shown that if a and b are r.e. degrees with b ≤ a, there is a 1-1 recursive function $f: \mathbb{Q} \rightarrow \omega$ such that f(Q) ∈ a, (...) f(Z) ∈ b, and the images of the field operations of Q under f can be extended to recursive functions. (shrink)

During 1995, there was a major shift in the United Kingdom in the debate of whether it is right for nurses to strike. The Royal College of Nursing, the former advocate of a non-industrial action policy, moved towards the UNISON position that industrial action is ethical in some circumstances, as well as the necessary thing to do. The authors, both nurses and UNISON officials, look at the reasons for this change and why UNISON’s historical position sees industrial action as an (...) effective weapon in defending services, as well as wages and jobs. It can be right to strike. (shrink)

Most metazoan organisms have evolved a mildly acidified and calcium diminished sorting hub in the early secretory pathway commonly referred to as the Endoplasmic Reticulum‐Golgi intermediate compartment (ERGIC). These membranous vesicular‐tubular clusters are found tightly juxtaposed to ER subdomains that are competent for the production of COPII‐coated transport carriers. In contrast to many unicellular systems, metazoan COPII carriers largely transit just a few hundred nanometers to the ERGIC, prior to COPI‐dependent transport on to the cis‐Golgi. The mechanisms underlying formation and (...) maintenance of ERGIC membranes are poorly defined. However, recent evidence suggests an important role for Trk‐fused gene (TFG) in regulating the integrity of the ER/ERGIC interface. Moreover, in the absence of cytoskeletal elements to scaffold tracks on which COPII carriers might move, TFG appears to promote anterograde cargo transport by locally tethering COPII carriers adjacent to ERGIC membranes. This action, regulated in part by the intrinsically disordered domain of TFG, provides sufficient time for COPII coat disassembly prior to heterotypic membrane fusion and cargo delivery to the ERGIC. -/- . (shrink)

Person, reason, and value -- Moral value, intentionality, and community -- Suicide and the right to die -- Abortion, personhood, and community -- Euthanasia : a reinterpretation -- The death penalty and purposes of punishment -- Privacy, private property, and justice -- The personalist society, community, and justice -- The moral treatment of animals -- Affirmative action and justice -- Community and the environmental crisis.

The crying curve across early infancy may reflect the developing interaction between circadian and homeostatic processes of sleep-wake regulation. Excessive crying may be interpreted as a misalignment of the two processes. On the basis of the proposed mechanism, excessive crying may be an honest signal of need, namely, to elicit parental resources to modulate the behavioral state.

Objective: To develop an approach for seeking informed consent to examine tissues retained from a previous study of sudden infant death syndrome as part of a study on asthma, and to document responses and participation rate.Design: Pilot open-ended approach to 10 volunteer SIDS parents, followed by staged approach to seek consent from the target SIDS families for the asthma study.Participants: Parents of SIDS infants known to SIDS and Kids Victoria and parents of SIDS infants from the 1991–2 SIDS in Victoria (...) case–control study.Main outcomes: Qualitative responses of the piloted parents and study parents, and participation rates.Results: The pilot group responses were used to refine the written material to be provided. Of the 72 families for which contact details were available, 45 gave verbal consent for contact by the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine regarding the asthma study, three refused and 24 did not respond to two letters. Thirty-three completed consent forms, all positive for participation in the asthma study, giving a positive response rate of 73% .Conclusions: The use of postmortem tissue for research is acceptable to the next of kin when an approach is sensitive to their concerns and needs and is made by experienced counsellors from a familiar organisation. Despite the painful memories evoked by the approach of the research group, the acceptance rate among those who could be contacted was high. (shrink)

This collection of theoretical and empirical research on gender and politics assembles contributions from a group of international scholars providing varied accounts of the political interests of gender. It examines how to bridge the gap between discursive and socio-materialist accounts of gender relations and politics. Offering new models for theoretical and empirical research, the first five chapters provide a theoretical framework for the collection, while the following eight chapters shed light on key concepts through detailed case studies of such topics (...) as human rights, womens movements, gendered labor markets, international monetary policy, equality policy, and queer politics.--Publisher's description. (shrink)