Prodelision or Inverse Elision takes place when a word ending in a long vowel or diphthong is immediately followed by another word beginning with a short vowel. Though it is very occasionally found in inscriptions and in the manuscripts of certain prose authors, particularly those of Plato—almost uniquely and its cases—it is to be considered as essentially a verse phenomenon, affecting as it does the metre of the line in which it occurs. Prodelision was unknown to Homer and Hesiod, (...) is rare in lyric, and seems only to come into real use with the dramatists of the fifth century. An examination of the practice of the three tragedians and of Aristophanes is not without interest in itself and may occasionally throw some light on points of textual criticism. (shrink)

SummaryOn its foundation in 1842, St Francis Xavier's College, Liverpool, was the first British manifestation of the renaissance of Jesuit day-schools throughout nineteenth-century Europe. Initially, the College developed along traditional Jesuit lines, imbibing the spirit of the Ratio Studiorum, the centuries-old educational code of the Society of Jesus.By 1875, a new era had hawned as the needs of one of the largest commercial and industrial centres in the British Empire forced the Jesuits to examine critically the type of education being (...) dispensed in their Liverpool college. The curriculum was rapidly extended away from its traditional roots in the Classics to embrace scientific and technical training. This paper seeks to show how the Jesuits in Liverpool adapted in the last quarter of the nineteenth century to changing demands both at home and from their Superior General in Rome. (shrink)

David N. Perkins has studied everyday reasoning by an experimental-critical approach involving taped interviews during which subjects reflect on controversial issues and articulate their reasoning on both sides. The present author has studied scientific reasoning in natural language by an historical-textual approach involving the reconstruction and evaluation of the arguments in Galileo's Two Chief World Systems. They have, independently, reached the strikingly similar substantive conclusion that the most common flaw of informal reasoning is the failure to consider lines of argument (...) supporting conclusions contrary to the one in fact reached. This article describes, compares, and contrasts their respective approaches, results, and theoretical frameworks. (shrink)

Several studies have revealed the presence in human DNA of thousands of endogenous retrovirus genomes, or HERVs. Many HERVs are related to extant retroviruses that infect other vertebrates and some have been present in the germ line of primates for millions of years. Although the HERVs that have been isolated are defective and thus do not encode infectious retroviruses, there may be HERVs that are capable of infection. In addition, because HERVs are so ancient in the human lineage, evolution (...) of the human genome may have included the acquisition of some HERV genes for strictly cellular functions. (shrink)

Although Hume’s critique of the design argument is a powerful non-inductive meta-argument, the main line of critical reasoning is not analogical but rather a complex meta-argument. It consists of two parts, one interpretive, the other evaluative. The critical meta-argument advances twelve criticisms: that the design argument is weak because two of its three premises are justified by inadequate subarguments; because its main inference embodies four flaws; and because the conclusion is in itself problematic for four reasons. Such complexity is (...) quite manageable in a meta-argumentation approach. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe relation between alchemy and early chemistry is still open to debate. How did what is now often dismissed as a pseudo-science contribute to the emerging science of chemistry, a subject that by the late eighteenth century, was often held up as a model for other sciences? Alchemy may have bequeathed to chemistry some processes and apparatus; more fundamental, however, was a transformation in mentality. It was in the seventeenth century that much of this transformation took place.A study that (...) was deeply anthropomorphic, making constant use of allegories and symbolism, and with a language rejoicing in mystery and concealment, gradually became depersonalized, much more objective, and more open. Poetic descriptions, a moral dimension, and a hierarchical view of matter all disappeared. Practical considerations required a concern for greater purity of materials, necessary for the successful replication of experiments. A study of the series of seventeenth-century French textbooks of chemistry from Beguin to Lemery reveals a growing desire for practical results and plain speaking. Robert Boyle was particularly influential in urging the necessity of plain language. The creation of a suitable language to denote and differentiate among different chemical species was a crucial step in the development of early chemistry, thus preparing the way for the systematic names introduced in the following century and the full organization of the science on rational lines. (shrink)

The aim of this dissertation is to situate our reading of the Platonic dialogue Alcibiades Major among both ancient and modern readings of the dialogue. Since the nineteenth century the issue of authenticity has preoccupied most modern commentators of the dialogue, but from all reasonable evidence, commentators from the ancient world had no such qualms about attributing the authorship of Alcibiades Major to Plato. Our reading of Alcibiades Major is in line with modern commentators who take both the dialogue's (...) dramatic features and educative value seriously, while not ignoring that in some quarters Alcibiades Major's authorship is still in dispute. ;Our treatment of Alcibiades Major differs from the attention given to it by past and present commentators, because it is our desire to see the ideas---expressed in the dialogue with such enthusiasm by Socrates and Alcibiades---entertained in a number of different contexts. For this reason we have titled the dissertation Socratic Encounters: Plato's Alcibiades, with each chapter designed to facilitate a kind of cross-fertilization of ideas from a variety of intellectual perspectives. Looking at the dialogue from various perspectives has allowed us to cast some new light on the dialogue from which other commentators may benefit. ;The objective of the dissertation to highlight Alcibiades Major's timeless insights and enduring relevance to contemporary issues, has led us on a course that revolves around pedagogy. The Platonic dialogues are gold-mines of insight, but knowing this to be the case does not answer the fundamental question: 'What did Plato intend to teach us by writing Alcibiades Major?' The dissertation goes to great lengths to provide answers to the question, and the answers it provides take unusual approaches. For example, Plato invites us to consider five issues in Alcibiades Major: appropriate listening, priorities, tradition, hypothetical questions, and women's role in male achievement. The dialogue is not limited to these five issues, but the dialogue cannot be seriously dealt with without considering them. (shrink)

Against the background of the current European competitive media landscape, the media are more and more compelled to legitimize their activities in their own national context as well as at a European level. Meanwhile, the nature of the media diversity in The Netherlands has changed tremendously; from a society divided along political and religious lines, it has evolved towards a multi-ethnic society. Hence, both the conceptualizing and operationalizing of media diversity from an academic as well as a media practical perspective (...) prove to be hot topics. An expert meeting was held at the Department of Communication at Radboud University Nijmegen in December 2004 in which the contours of media diversity in general and in The Netherlands in particular were explored. Institutional performance as well as program-related aspects linked to the notion of media diversity were discussed. Media diversity was explored from the angle of media economics as well as from the perspective of the program/format level. In addition, the audience reception perspective as well as methodologically problematic aspects one encounters when measuring media diversity were assessed. What follows here is a selection of several most pertinent views on this complex topic. We welcome each critical insight from other geographical contexts which might stimulate the debate on measures of open and reflective diversity in the media. (shrink)

The paper investigates Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of body and space and Gilles Deleuze’s reading of Francis Bacon’s work, in order to derive a renegotiated interrelation between habitual body, phenomenal space, preferential plane and constructive line. The resulting system is ap- plied as a filter to understand the sartorial fashion of Rei Kawakubo and Hussein Chalayan and their potential as a spatial prosthesis: the operative third skin. If the evolutionary nature of culture demands a constant change, how does the (...) surface of a third skin, which embodies the generative of stable/ unstable, respond to changes of context? The fleeting, shifting conditions of contemporary culture/ lifestyle rely upon, result in, and reflect one constant, change: change of working conditions, family structures, modes of inhabitation, relation networks, of userprofile and identity, of social and territorial boundaries. We occupy the shift- ing spatial parameters of a transitional supermodern environment. Culture, as enacted or embodied through each of these fields, is regulated by a number of abstract and factual variables that interplay constantly: time, space, movement, surface, individual, and data. Elizabeth Grosz argues that culture is an evolutionary effect: it regenerates itself in order to ensure the survival of the species. Each “prosthetic” expression of culture – language, fashion, architecture, etc. – changes repeatedly. Here change is not an end in itself, but a means. And the most successful prosthesis may not be the one that is able to answer the largest number of challenges, but one which itself undergoes a process of learning, self-modification, and differentiation – in short, a process of evolution. Any prosthesis is by nature an extension of the body. In the case of architecture and fashion the prosthesis addressing change is most often external to the body – a “cultural fur” or a surface phenomenon, that is, a highly profiled supplementary skin. As with all prostheses, their respective life-span depends on their ability to reflect a change in context and value systems. They are adapted or updated, if not, they vanish. Any situation of change is processed as a differentiation between the actual and the virtual of a given context. Grosz identifies distinctions between the actual and virtual, the real and the possible: the possible is a preformed real that has not yet received its final materiality, and thus delineates a range of options of becoming. The real is the blueprint of the possible, negotiated by factual limitations, and it is conjoint with the actual through a process of differentiation and divergence. The virtual comprises alternate variations of the actual, it defines a realm of deviation from the blueprint. In order to be responsive to change, the balance between the actual and virtual thus must be rendered unstable: “The virtual requires the actual to diverge, to differentiate itself, to proceed by way of division and disruption, forging modes of actualisation that will transform this virtual into others unforeseen or uncontained within it.” 4 The integration of the virtual allows a re-ordering of the blueprint, a return to the crossroad of possibilities, unlimiting and processing an alternative real, and establishing a state of continual change. A repeated change – not as a choice between a number of options but as a gradual process – marks the moment of evolution, and requires a dynamic system. Such a dynamic can be rendered as an adaptable, flexible, modular, mobile, or morphing system of change. The key lies with the fluency and ability of adaptation for the proposed differentiation between actual and virtual – thus it is an elastic change that is required. The nature of this elasticity is encoded in a repeated repositioning of the variables: a constant fine-tuning of a maximum number of parameters that engineer, alter and define the blueprint. When looking for a dynamic system that incorporates a transformation of skin or space, we are in search of dynamics through an operative surface, controlled by means of the constructive line. Both operative surface and constructive line are generative methods for the formation and form finding of the second and third skin of sartorial fashion and architecture respectively, as they both produce inhabitable or wearable envelopes with a specific responsiveness. Both professions share communication, coding and signage, form information programs, pattern charts, volume outlines, texture fields, surface operations, and implement electronic or digital extensions. In both, the constructive line shapes the surface twice: before production and in operation. The surface demarcates space, spatial envelope, enclosing garment, field of action. In which way can an operative system of the surface with stable/ unstable conditioning generate a phenomenological or evolutionary change in the reconstruction of body and context? How do time, space, movement, surface, individual and data interact in this framework? What is the impact of surface strategies and constructive line on that system? (shrink)

S'étonnant qu'un simple physicien sache traiter des rapports de la physique et de la métaphysique, Edmond Domet de Vorges s'était demandé si Pierre Duhem n'avait pas bénéficié de l'aide de quelque théologien dans l'élaboration de son articulation de ces deux disci­plines. Faisant suite à cette question très perti­nente, cet article liste d'abord les intellectuels catholiques qui étaient en relation avec Duhem avant la publication, en 1893, de son article Physique et métaphysique et qui auraient effec­tivement pu l'aider à concevoir une (...) telle articulation. Se con­sacrant ensuite spécifiquement à l'un d'entre eux, à savoir Maurice Blondel, il étudie les similitudes et divergences existant entre les pensées du physicien bordelais et du philosophe d'Aix pour conclure que Blondel ne peut pas être celui qui aurait inspiré Duhem. À l'appui de cette conclusion, il fait notamment état d'une lettre inédite adressée par Duhem à Ambroise Gar­deil et dans laquelle celui-ci porte un jugement sévère à l'en­droit de son «pauvre ami» Blondel. ––– One might be surprised to find that a simple physician could be able explain with clarity the subtle relationship between physics and metaphysics. It is with this question in mind that Edmond Domet de Vorges asked himself if it might not have been with the aid of theologians that Pierre Duhem was able to find and express his subtle articulation between the two disciplines. Following in the footsteps of this pertinent question, this article begins by listing the catholic intellectuals who were acquain­tances of Pierre Duhem before the publication in 1893 of “Physique et métaphysique”, who may have been able to help him arrive at the relationship between the two sciences expressed in his publication. This line of questioning is followed by a specific study of one of these men, namely Maurice Blondel. The similarities and differences in the opinions of the physician from Bordeaux and the philosopher from Aix are explored with the resulting conclusion that Blondel could not have been he who inspired Duhem. This conclusion can be confirmed by a previously unpublished letter from Duhem to Ambroise Gardeil which contains a very severe judgement with regards to his “poor friend” Blondel. (shrink)

Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue , the first study in any language to provide a complete overview of Buber's thought, remains the definitive guide to the full range of his work and the starting point for all modern Buber scholarship. As well as summarizing Buber's early intellectual development and attitudes - his mysticism, his youthful existentialism, his philosophy of Judaism and religious socialism - it focuses on the two crucial issues of his mature thought: his dialogic or I-Thou philosophy, (...) and his probing of the nature and redemption of evil. As a sensitive, intuitive and perennially fascinating account of one of the twentieth century's great spiritual teachers, and as an influential classic in its own right, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue reveals the implications of Buber's thought for theory of knowledge, education, philosophy, myth, history and Judaic and Christian belief. This fully revised and expanded 4th edition includes a new preface from the author, an expanded bibliography incorporating new Buber scholarship, and two new appendices in the form of essays on Buber's influence on Emmanuel Levinas and Mikhail Bakhtin. (shrink)

Challenging and rewarding in equal measure, _Phenomenology of Perception_ is Merleau-Ponty's most famous work. Impressive in both scope and imagination, it uses the example of perception to return the _body_ to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato. Drawing on case studies such as brain-damaged patients from the First World War, Merleau-Ponty brilliantly shows how the body plays a crucial role not only in perception but in speech, sexuality and our relation to others. Perhaps above all, Merleau-Ponty's (...) insights about the embodied mind are a bold and refreshing challenge to the new era of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, as scientists and psychologists discover the centrality of the body to mind and intelligence. (shrink)

In Bernard Stiegler’s Automatic Society Volume 1: The Future of Work, ‘the impossible’ and ‘the improbable’ appear as explicit parts of his political project. In his philosophy of technology, the impossible highlights the structural incompleteness that technics imparts to human existence. This article will trace how Stiegler draws on the work of Maurice Blanchot to produce this conjunction between technics and indetermination, and explore its political ramifications. This will show that rather than being a recent aspect of Stiegler’s work, (...) the political use of the impossible brings Blanchot’s subterranean influence to the fore. After briefly reconstructing Blanchot’s understanding of language, impersonality, and writing, it will be shown that Stiegler shifts Blanchot’s emphasis from the impossible to technical practices of the improbable. Stiegler follows an anthropological line where the experience of the impossible becomes a more general understanding of the experience of improbability through technical structures. Stiegler’s reading of Blanchot is central in his break with the place of the impossible in the politics of resistance advocated by post-structuralism, allowing him to support a politics of invention which makes space for the improbable within a large-scale politics of technicity, rather than privileging indeterminacy itself. (shrink)

Allocution, par M. Bouchard.--La signification historique de l'œuvre de Maurice Blondel, par H. Gouhler.--Leibniz et Blondel, par J. Brun.--L'apologétique blondélienne, par G. Maire.--Centenaire de la naissance de Maurice Blondel. Exposition de livres et de documents à la Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines de l'Université de Dijon, 12 mal 1962.

Ce livre ne vise pas à donner un aperçu de ce que devrait être une religion. Il ne vise pas davantage à mettre en valeur l'argumentaire de l'athéisme. Il entend plutôt montrer qu'une personne qui se dit parfaitement agnostique et adepte d'une philosophie qui valorise la rationalité avant tout peut parfaitement être croyante, voire même pratiquante, sans qu'il y ait là la moindre contradiction. Dans une telle démarche, l'armature cognitive à laquelle de nombreux croyants ont jugé approprié d'arrimer leur foi (...) risque de se voir quelque peu déboulonnée. Et nombre d'arguments qui ont fortement contribué à miner les croyances religieuses pourraient s'en trouver passablement affaiblis. Dans les deux cas, tout découlerait de la simple reconnaissance du fait que la foi n'est en rien un savoir. Croire, expose Maurice Lagueux, en un Dieu transcendant ne veut pas dire connaître quoi que ce soit à propos d'un monde transcendant qui, par définition, échappe à nos capacités cognitives et est conçu comme le lieu de mystères insondables. Croire veut dire avoir sincèrement confiance en ce qui pourrait nous réserver l'existence de ce Dieu qui, toutefois, demeure inconnaissable. On peut se reconnaître résolument croyant sans s'estimer moins agnostique pour autant. (shrink)

pt. 1. The interrelation of values. -- pt. 2. Windelband's theory of norms.

Des deux fonctions du médecin, soigner le corps et panser l'âme, la seconde est restée jusqu'au XVIIIe siècle prédominante : on pouvait seulement donner au malade le sentiment qu'il n'était pas abandonné, qu'on luttait avec lui pour obtenir sa guérison. Au début du XIXe siècle, la science, en apportant à la fois des connaissances et une méthode, a permis la naissance de la médecine moderne. Débarrassé des idées reçues et des creuses spéculations, le médecin s'est mis à confronter les signes (...) cliniques avec les lésions anatomiques puis avec les données biologiques, pour définir et classer les affections une à une. Démarche d'une prodigieuse efficacité : en deux siècles, l'espérance de vie est passée de vingt-sept à soixante-dix-sept ans. Mais ces progrès ont fait négliger l'aspect psychologique de la santé. Drogues licites et illicites, maladies sexuellement transmissibles, accidents, suicides : la mortalité des jeunes augmente aujourd'hui. Alors que la victoire semblait à portée de main, le médecin découvre qu'un corps ne petit être sain si l'esprit est malade. Devant le mal-être contemporain, en conservant la rigueur intellectuelle et méthodologique qui lui a valu ses succès, la médecine individuelle et curative doit aussi devenir collective et préventive, tenir compte d'une nouvelle donne économique et sociologique. (shrink)

En este texto se presenta una propuesta sobre cómo comprender la cognición off-line o no situada a partir de la noción de esquema corporal. Se expone qué es un esquema corporal y cómo, a partir de Jean Piaget, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Shaun Gallagher e Immanuel Kant, se puede ofrecer una noción de esquema corporal o esquema sensoriomotriz desde la cual marcar una ruta de investigación que permita responder a una crítica al enfoque enactivo de la mente, a saber, si (...) este enfoque sostiene que la cognición es situada, ¿cómo puede el enactivismo dar cuenta de los casos de la cognición que no es situada? (shrink)