Educational researchers are increasingly striving on the edge of possibility to re-imagine and realise the future. Activist scholarship requires appropriate philosophical and theoretical bases, what Stetsenko refers to as ‘dangerous’ – useful in the struggle for a better world. How might praxis, agency and learning be charged with transgressive spirit? This paper considers the Theory of Practice Architectures and Transformative Activist Stance, established frameworks that dangerously address praxis, agency and learning. Adopting a postabyssal approach, contributions from the Global South and (...) East are drawn on to develop an epistemologically plural basis for thinking differently about praxis, agency and learning. Recent Latin American scholarship reinvigorates Freirean ideas through connections with Fals Borda and contemporary feminist pedagogues, centred on a notion of feeling-thinking. Luitel’s interpretations of Vedic philosophy provide radically different ideas of negative dialectics, chaos, responsibility and liberation. An open-minded, open-hearted, open-ended approach is crucial to making these ideas more useful in the struggle over alternative, more equitable and just futures. (shrink)

Icons of knowledge -- Two small embryos in spirits of wine -- Like flies on the Parlon ceiling -- Drawing and Darwinism -- Illustrating the magic word -- Professors and progress -- Visual strategies -- Schematics, forgery, and the so-called educated -- Imperial grids -- Setting standards -- Forbidden fruit -- Creative copying -- Trials and tributes -- Scandal for the people -- A hundred Haeckels -- The textbook illustration -- Iconoclasm -- The shock of the copy.

Reinvestigating the work of the anatomist Wilhelm His (1831-1904) shows how engaging with models in three dimensions can revise our accounts of scientific change. His is known to historians of biology for articulating a mechanical approach to embryology and for inventing a section cutter, or microtome. Focusing on the wax models that he also made in the late 1860s shows how the other two innovations were linked; reconstructing embryos from the sections, His claimed, provided compelling evidence for mechanical views. The (...) next generation of embryologists appropriated His's work selectively. In the 1880s anatomists took up "plastic reconstruction" to visualize the complex forms of higher vertebrate, especially human, embryos. An increasingly dominant experimental embryology, by contrast, drew on His's mechanical approach but had little use for the waxes and effaced them from the history of his work. Recovering these models offers a fresh perspective on the transformation of a central science of animal life and enriches our understanding of the relations between representation in two dimensions and three. (shrink)

Researchers need the concept of agency to address diverse and urgent social problems of our time. Cultural-historical activity theory, originally started with Vygotsky, is widely used in education, psychology, sociology, and transdisciplinary contexts. Scholars and students in diverse disciplines will benefit from this volume.

Biologists having rediscovered amphioxus, also known as the lancelet or Branchiostoma, it is time to reassess its place in early Darwinist debates over vertebrate origins. While the advent of the ascidian–amphioxus theory and challenges from various competitors have been documented, this article offers a richer account of the public appeal of amphioxus as a primitive ancestor. The focus is on how the ‘German Darwin’ Ernst Haeckel persuaded general magazine and newspaper readers to revere this “flesh of our flesh and blood (...) of our blood”, and especially on Das neue Laienbrevier des Haeckelismus (The new lay breviary of Haeckelism) by Moritz Reymond with cartoons by Fritz Steub. From the late 1870s these successful little books of verse introduced the Neapolitan discoveries that made the animal’s name and satirized Haeckel’s rise as high priest of its cult. One song is reproduced and translated here, with a contemporary “imitation” by the Canadian palaeontologist Edward John Chapman, and extracts from others. Predating the American “It’s a long way from amphioxus” by decades, these rhymes dramatize neglected ‘species politics’ of Darwinism and highlight the roles of humour in negotiating evolution. (shrink)

Nick Hopwood, Simon Schaffer and Jim Secord , “Seriality and scientific objects in the nineteenth century”, History of Science, xlviii . Series represent much that was new and significant in the sciences between the French Revolution and the First World War. From periodical publication to the cinema, tabulation to industrialized screening, series feature in major innovations in scientific communication and the organization of laboratories, clinics, libraries, museums and field - XIXe siècle – Nouvel article.

Nick Hopwood, Simon Schaffer and Jim Secord, “Seriality and scientific objects in the nineteenth century”, History of Science, xlviii. Series represent much that was new and significant in the sciences between the French Revolution and the First World War. From periodical publication to the cinema, tabulation to industrialized screening, series feature in major innovations in scientific communication and the organization of laboratories, clinics, libraries, museums and field - XIXe siècle – Nouvel article.

This article presents a sociomaterial account of simulation in higher education. Sociomaterial approaches change the ontological and epistemological bases for understanding learning and offer valuable tools for addressing important questions about relationships between university education and professional practices. Simulation has grown in many disciplines as a means to bring the two closer together. However, the theoretical underpinnings of simulation pedagogy are limited. This paper extends the wider work of applying sociomaterial approaches to educational phenomena, taking up Schatzki’s practice theory as (...) a distinctive basis for doing so. The question ‘What is being simulated?’ is posed, prompting discussion of multiple bodies, performances and experiences. The potential of adopting such a framework for understanding simulation as a pedagogic practice that brings the classroom and workplace together is illustrated with reference to clinical education in nursing. (shrink)

Although it has not been much noticed, reproduction is the central theme of François Jacob’s important history of biology, La logique du vivant (The Logic of Life). In a book ostensibly devoted to heredity, this molecular biologist had reproduction integrate levels of organization from organisms to molecules and play a major role in each historical transition between them, not just in the influential argument for a shift “from generation to reproduction.” Moreover, I claim, La logique was the first general history (...) of (research on) reproduction. Earlier histories had tackled only aspects of generation and reproduction; none historicized the latter. Jacob’s innovation came out of the rising prominence of reproduction in neo-Darwinist studies of populations and in his own field, the cellular genetics of bacteria and their viruses, and engagement with history and philosophy of science. The discovery of bacterial “sex” enabled microbial genetics but, ironically, led Jacob to a sexless concept of reproduction. This approach molded a history that reached across the living world but slighted sex and the complexities of reproduction in multicellular organisms. Readers can learn from its strength and limitations. (shrink)

Nursing work increasingly demands forms of expertise that complement specialist knowledge. In child and family nursing, this need arises when nurses work in partnership with parents of young children at risk. Partnership means working with parents in respectful, negotiated and empowering ways. Existing partnership literature emphasises communicative and relational skills, but this paper focuses on nurses’ capacities to facilitate parents’ learning. Referring to data from home visiting, day‐stay and specialist toddler clinic services in Sydney, a pedagogical framework is presented. Analysis (...) shows how nurses notice aspects of children, parents and parent–child interactions as a catalyst for building on parents’ strengths, enhancing guided chance or challenging unhelpful constructs. Prior research shows the latter can be a sticking point in partnership, but this paper reveals diverse ways in which challenges are folded into learning process that position parents as agents of positive change. Noticing is dependent on embodied and communicative expertise, conceptualised in terms of sensory and reported channels. The framework offers a new view of partnership as mind‐expanding for the parent and specifies the nurse's role in facilitating this process. (shrink)

This history of a statement attributed to the developmental biologist Lewis Wolpert exemplifies the making and uses of quotations in recent science. Wolpert's dictum, ‘It is not birth, marriage or death, but gastrulation which is truly the most important time in your life’, was produced in a series of international shifts of medium and scale. It originated in his vivid declaration in conversation with a non-specialist at a workshop dinner, gained its canonical form in a colleague's monograph, and was amplified (...) as a quotation on a poster derived from an undergraduate project. Although it drew on Wolpert's authority and he accepted his authorship, it thus represents a collective sifting of earlier claims for the significance of prenatal existence through the values of 1980s developmental biology. Juxtaposing a technical term with major life events has let teachers engage students, and researchers entice journalists, while sharing an in-joke that came to mark community identity. Serious applications include arguing for an extension of the fourteen-day limit on human-embryo research. On this evidence, quotations have been kept busy addressing every audience of specialized knowledge. (shrink)

A significant international development agenda in the practice of nurses supporting families with young children focuses on establishing partnerships between professionals and service users. Qualitative data were generated through interviews and focus groups with 22 nurses from three child and family health service organisations, two in Australia and one in New Zealand. The aim was to explore what is needed in order to sustain partnership in practice, and to investigate how the concept of practice architectures can help understand attempts to (...) enhance partnerships between nurses and families. Implementation of the Family Partnership Model (FPM) is taken as a specific point of reference. Analysis highlights a number of tensions between the goals of FPM and practice architectures relating to opportunities for ongoing learning; the role of individual nurses in shaping the practice; relationships with peers and managers; organisational features; and extra‐organisational factors. The concept of practice architectures shows how changing practice requires more than developing individual knowledge and skills, and avoids treating individuals and context separately. The value of this framework for understanding change with reference to context rather than just individual’s knowledge and skills is demonstrated, particularly with respect to approaches to practice development focused on providing additional training to nurses. (shrink)

We invite systematic consideration of the metaphors of cycles and circulation as a long-term theme in the history of the life and environmental sciences and medicine. Ubiquitous in ancient religious and philosophical traditions, especially in representing the seasons and the motions of celestial bodies, circles once symbolized perfection. Over the centuries cyclic images in western medicine, natural philosophy, natural history and eventually biology gained independence from cosmology and theology and came to depend less on strictly circular forms. As potent ‘canonical (...) icons’, cycles also interacted with representations of linear and irreversible change, including arrows, arcs, scales, series and trees, as in theories of the Earth and of evolution. In modern times life cycles and reproductive cycles have often been held to characterize life, in some cases especially female life, while human efforts selectively to foster and disrupt these cycles have harnessed their productivity in medicine and agriculture. But strong cyclic metaphors have continued to link physiology and climatology, medicine and economics, and biology and manufacturing, notably through the relations between land, food and population. From the grand nineteenth-century transformations of matter to systems ecology, the circulation of molecules through organic and inorganic compartments has posed the problem of maintaining identity in the face of flux and highlights the seductive ability of cyclic schemes to imply closure where no original state was in fact restored. More concerted attention to cycles and circulation will enrich analyses of the power of metaphors to naturalize understandings of life and their shaping by practical interests and political imaginations. (shrink)

Interprofessional collaboration involves some kind of knowledge sharing, which is essential and will be important in the future in regard to the opportunities and challenges in practices for delivering safe and effective health care. Nursing assistants are seldom mentioned as a group of health care workers that contribute to interprofessional collaboration in health care practice. The aim of this ethnographic study was to explore how the nursing assistants’ knowledge can be shared in a team on a spinal cord injury rehabilitation (...) ward. Using a sociomaterial perspective on practice, we captured different aspects of interprofessional collaboration in health care. The findings reveal how knowledge was shared between professionals, depending on different kinds of practice architecture. These specific cultural–discursive, material–economic, and social–political arrangements enabled possibilities through which nursing assistants’ knowledge informed other practices, and others’ knowledge informed the practice of nursing assistants. By studying what health care professionals actually do and say in practice, we found that the nursing assistants could make a valuable contribution of knowledge to the team. (shrink)

This is an opinionated guide to the literature on epistemic dilemmas. It discusses seven kinds of situations where epistemic dilemmas appear to arise; dilemmic, dilemmish, and non-dilemmic takes on them; and objections to dilemmic views along with dilemmist’s replies to them.

It is widely held that moral reasons are universalizable. On this view, when I give a moral reason for my action, I take this reason to apply with equal normative force to anyone placed in a relevantly similar situation. Here, I offer an interpretation and defense of Iris Murdoch's critique of the universalizability thesis, distinguishing her position from the contemporary versions of particularism with which she has often been mistakenly associated. Murdoch's argument relies upon the idea that moral concepts may (...) take on idiosyncratic meanings that are unique to a particular individual. Consequently, an agent may conceptualize her situation in such a way that it would not make sense to imagine anyone else facing it. For such an agent, it would be meaningless to say that she took her reasons to apply to anyone other than herself. I defend Murdoch’s argument through an extended analysis of a literary example, and consider and reject four possible lines of objection. Finally, I consider the consequences of the argument for our understanding of the nature of moral reasoning and what Murdoch describes as the ‘endless task’ of love. (shrink)

Daniel Greco (forthcoming) argues that there cannot be epistemic dilemmas. I argue that he is wrong. I then look in detail at a would-be epistemic dilemma and argue that no non-dilemmic approach to it can be made to work. Along the way, there is discussion of octopuses, lobsters, and other ‘inscrutable cognizers’; the relationship between evaluative and prescriptive norms; a failed attempt to steal a Brueghel; epistemic and moral blame and residue; an unbearable guy who thinks he’s God’s gift to (...) women; excuses; stupid games involving hats; radical permissivism; how I’ll never be able to afford to buy a house in Hampstead; and many other exciting topics. (shrink)

What are the sensory individuals of audition? What are the entities our auditory system attributes properties to? We examine various proposals about the nature of the sensory individuals of audition, and show that while each can account for some aspects of auditory perception, each also faces certain difficulties. We then put forward a new conception of sensory individuals according to which auditory sensory individuals are composite individuals. A feature shared by all existing accounts of sounds and sources is that they (...) postulate sensory individuals that are non-composite. They identify the sensory individual of sound hearing or source hearing with one type of entity in the environment, be they sound waves, vibrations, or interactions. We question this assumption and argue that our perceptual systems represent two or more aspects of the environment as a single sensory individual. Finally, we show that taking auditory individuals to be composite sensory individuals allows for an account of audition that is less problematic than its existing alternatives. (shrink)

Quantum gravity--the marriage of quantum physics with general relativity--is bound to contain deep and important lessons for the nature of physical time. Some of these lessons shall be canvassed here, particularly as they arise from quantum general relativity and string theory and related approaches. Of particular interest is the question of which of the intuitive aspects of time will turn out to be fundamental, and which 'emergent' in some sense.

Previously proposed strategies for tackling hermeneutical injustices take for granted the interests people have in certain things about them being intelligible to them and/or to others, and seek to enable them to satisfy these interests. Strategies of this sort I call interests-as-given strategies. I propose that some hermeneutical injustices can instead be tackled by doing away with certain of these interests, and so with the possibility of their unfair non-satisfaction. Strategies of this sort I call interests-in-question strategies. As a case (...) study in when such an interests-in-question strategy ought to be pursued, I look at how to tackle hermeneutical injustices arising in the context of gender-affirming healthcare as provided to adults by the National Health Service in the UK. I argue that considerations of trust, privacy, and respect all support pursuing such a strategy. One way to do so, I suggest, would be by replacing the existing gatekeeping model with an informed consent model for the provision of gender-affirming healthcare. Considerations of hermeneutical justice can hence be added to the already-impressive case for undertaking this shift. (shrink)

This chapter concentrates mainly on biomedical cognitive enhancements, but many of the remarks apply equally to enhancements that work on non‐cognitive capacities, and to non‐biomedical means of enhancement. Proponents of a positive right to enhancements could argue their case on grounds of fairness or equality, or on grounds of a public interest in the promotion of the capacities required for autonomous agency. The societal benefits of effective cognitive enhancement may turn out to be so large and unequivocal that it would (...) be economically efficient to subsidize enhancement for the poor, just as the state now subsidizes education. The example on iodine deficiency illustrates that cognitive enhancement policy need not center on preparing the ground for sophisticated, yet‐to‐be‐realized technologies. “Smart policy” should, rather, take as its starting point the recognition that effective cognition is not only subjectively valuable to individuals, but also delivers significant social, cultural, financial, and scientific benefits. (shrink)

A dizzying trip through the mind(s) of the provocative and influential thinker Nick Land. During the 1990s British philosopher Nick Land's unique work, variously described as “rabid nihilism,” “mad black deleuzianism,” and “cybergothic,” developed perhaps the only rigorous and culturally-engaged escape route out of the malaise of “continental philosophy” —a route that was implacably blocked by the academy. However, Land's work has continued to exert an influence, both through the British “speculative realist” philosophers who studied with him, and (...) through the many cultural producers—writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers—who have been invigorated by his uncompromising and abrasive philosophical vision. Beginning with Land's early radical rereadings of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kant and Bataille, the volume collects together the papers, talks and articles of the mid-90s—long the subject of rumour and vague legend (including some work which has never previously appeared in print)—in which Land developed his futuristic theory-fiction of cybercapitalism gone amok; and ends with his enigmatic later writings in which Ballardian fictions, poetics, cryptography, anthropology, grammatology and the occult are smeared into unrecognisable hybrids. Fanged Noumena gives a dizzying perspective on the entire trajectory of this provocative and influential thinker's work, and has introduced his unique voice to a new generation of readers. (shrink)

It is intuitively plausible that art and imagination are intimately connected. This chapter explores attempts to explain that connection. We focus on three areas in which art and imagination might be linked: production, ontology, and appreciation. We examine views which treat imagination as a fundamental human faculty, and aim for comprehensive accounts of art and artistic practice: for example, those of Kant and Collingwood. We also discuss philosophers who argue that a specific kind of imagining may explain some particular element (...) of the artistic domain: for example, Walton's ideas about representational art, and Kivy’s about reading. (shrink)