In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The English Polydaedali:How Gabriel Harvey Read Late Tudor LondonNicholas PopperHarvey and GauricoIn 1590 Gabriel Harvey read his copy of Luca Gaurico's 1552 Tractatus Astrologicus, a collection of genitures and commentaries for cities and individuals.1 Harvey had spent the previous twenty-five years at Oxford and Cambridge, mastering Greek and Latin, earning renown as a rhetorician, and promoting English letters. He was a well-known partisan of the French (...) Calvinist Peter Ramus, whose works on curriculum reform had sparked vicious [End Page 351] controversies in the English universities. But Harvey read Gaurico far removed from the schools where he had acquired fame and notoriety as an orator and poet. He had recently relocated to London, where he daily faced a dense, active city unlike his native Saffron Walden and the university towns. Nevertheless he read as he always had, carefully recording his reactions in the margins of the printed text, filling blank spaces with his own commentaries on the subjects presented by Gaurico. The notes disclose an experience of reading that intervened in contemporary debates regarding technology, astrology and utility.2 They also place Harvey among a group of scholars in London in the 1590s, such as Francis Bacon and Hugh Plat, who were examining the benefits local artisans might offer the commonwealth and reconsidering the intellectual status of craft knowledge.Harvey read and annotated Gaurico on several occasions, but the particular strain of notes that I will follow, united by a common ink and hand, engages the learning and erudition of Gaurico's subjects.3 Concentrated almost [End Page 352] exclusively in Book Four, which discussed learned men, these annotations evaluate the poets, philosophers, philologists, and others whom Gaurico had canonized as especially learned.There are only spare annotations prior to Book Four. On the title page of Book Two, devoted to churchmen, Harvey observes the quality of the individuals Gaurico presented and details his own method of evaluation:The most excellent Exemplars of this century [are] in Gaurico, and Cardano: Giovio, and Guiccardini. There are as many of the wisest men as of the greatest actors. Still others live, whether inferior, equal, or superior. And it is of interest to every skillful artificer, to know those most outstanding in their class, and the most celebrated professors of all. Certainly it is very profitable to observe exquisitely the most perfect artificers either of the world or of neighboring nations, or at least of your own people, and to consider with most cunning reason what it is, where it comes from, and what is most excellent. But seriously, and solidly, and always to the point, seeing that singular things are efficacious and are useful to polytechnoscopy. It is judicious to avoid all trivial detail, and to consider only the most pregnant theorists and practitioners of operating.4The notion of a sophisticated form of active knowledge labeled "polytechnoscopy" is the most striking element of this passage. This term seems to have been Harvey's own invention, with no direct precedents; nor was it adopted or used by others after him.Harvey repeatedly referred to polytechnoscopy in his notes. A carefully designed triptych annotation on the title page of Book Four clarifies it as a category uniting practice and knowledge. To the left Harvey wrote, "it is my task to observe the most excellent examples of this age which are useful for polytechnoscopy." On the right, "a polytechnic, polymechanic, polydaedalic, and almost panepistemic book; and likewise sufficiently polychristian. For philologists should be skimmed through; while polytechnics should be examined closely; as I did not only in the Lives of Giovio, but also in those of [End Page 353] Laertius, Eunapius, Philostratus, and others."5 The related Greek descriptors "polymechanic" and "polydaedalic" shed further light on polytechnoscopy. This constellation of terms refers to a method of garnering information by deploying technical knowledge. While not a systematic discipline, its practices—active applicability, craft expertise, observation of experience—constitute a significant realm of learning.In the central panel of the triptych, Harvey notes:[I] compared [this] to Giovio's Elegies of Learned Men. Give me the best man outdoors, and his image at home. For even true life is... (shrink)

This chapter provides an introduction to higher-order metaphysics as well as to the contributions to this volume. We discuss five topics, corresponding to the five parts of this volume, and summarize the contributions to each part. First, we motivate the usefulness of higher-order quantification in metaphysics using a number of examples, and discuss the question of how such quantifiers should be interpreted. We provide a brief introduction to the most common forms of higher-order logics used in metaphysics, and indicate a (...) number of questions which can be raised in such systems using logical vocabulary alone. Using a further example, we return to applications of higher-order logics in metaphysics. We also mention key developments in the history of higher-order logic as it pertains to metaphysics. Finally, we mention certain arguments which have been raised against the use of higher-order logic, and some ways of responding to them. (shrink)

Vigorous debate over the moral propriety of cognitive enhancement exists, but the views of the public have been largely absent from the discussion. To address this gap in our knowledge, four experiments were carried out with contrastive vignettes in order to obtain quantitative data on public attitudes towards cognitive enhancement. The data collected suggest that the public is sensitive to and capable of understanding the four cardinal concerns identified by neuroethicists, and tend to cautiously accept cognitive enhancement even as they (...) recognize its potential perils. The public is biopolitically moderate, endorses both meritocratic principles and the intrinsic value of hard work, and appears to be sensitive to the salient moral issues raised in the debate. Taken together, these data suggest that public attitudes toward enhancement are sufficiently sophisticated to merit inclusion in policy deliberations, especially if we seek to align public sentiment and policy. (shrink)

This volume explores the use of higher-order logics in metaphysics. Seventeen original essays trace the development of higher-order metaphysics, discuss different ways in which higher-order languages and logics may be used, and consider their application to various central topics of metaphysics.

According to the structured theory of propositions, if two sentences express the same proposition, then they have the same syntactic structure, with corresponding syntactic constituents expressing the same entities. A number of philosophers have recently focused attention on a powerful argument against this theory, based on a result by Bertrand Russell, which shows that the theory of structured propositions is inconsistent in higher order-logic. This paper explores a response to this argument, which involves restricting the scope of the claim that (...) propositions are structured, so that it does not hold for all propositions whatsoever, but only for those which are expressible using closed sentences of a given formal language. We call this restricted principle Closed Structure, and show that it is consistent in classical higher-order logic. As a schematic principle, the strength of Closed Structure is dependent on the chosen language. For its consistency to be philosophically significant, it also needs to be consistent in every extension of the language which the theorist of structured propositions is apt to accept. But, we go on to show, Closed Structure is in fact inconsistent in a very natural extension of the standard language of higher-order logic, which adds resources for plural talk of propositions. We conclude that this particular strategy of restricting the scope of the claim that propositions are structured is not a compelling response to the argument based on Russell’s result, though we note that for some applications, for instance to propositional attitudes, a restricted thesis in the vicinity may hold some promise. (shrink)

The authors explore the history of experiments in economics, provide examples of different types of experiments and show that the growing use of experimental methods is transforming economics into an empirical science.

It is no accident that the book Benjamin wrote as a reader of himself, A Berlin Childhood, also begins with the description of a park, that of the Tiergarten zoo. However great the difference may seem between this collection of short prose pieces and Proust's three-thousand-page novel when viewed from the outside, Benjamin's book illustrates [his] fascination... A sentence in his book points to the central experience of Proust's work: that almost everything childhood was can be withheld from a person (...) for years, suddenly to be offered him anew as if by chance. "Like a mother who holds the new-born infant to her breast without waking it, life proceeds for a long time with the still tender memory of childhood" . Also reminiscent of Proust is the description of the mother who, on evenings when guests are in the house, comes in to see her child only fleetingly to say good night; so, too, is that of the boy attentively listening to the noises which penetrate into his room from the courtyard below and thus from a foreign world. The studied elevation of the newly invented telephone to the level of a mythical object is anticipated in Proust as well. And the relationship to and influence of the earlier work can be demonstrated even in the use of metaphor. But little is gained by this approach, and it would not be easy to refute the objection that such similarities lie in the authors' common raw material: childhood, the fin de siècle epoch, and the attempt to bring them both into the present. Peter Szondi was professor of comparative literature at the Free University of Berlin at the time of his death in 1971. His many influential works include Theorie des modernen Dramas , Versuch über das Tragische , and a five-volume collection of his lectures. Harvey Mendelsohn is the principle translator of the fourteen-volume Dictionary of Scientific Biography; he is currently working on translations of a French commentary on Heraclitus and a selection of Szondi's essays to be published by Yale University Press. (shrink)

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a simple means of brain stimulation, possesses a trifecta of appealing features: it is relatively safe, relatively inexpensive and relatively effective. It is also relatively easy to obtain a device and the do-it-yourself (DIY) community has become galvanised by reports that tDCS can be used as an all-purpose cognitive enhancer. We provide practical recommendations designed to guide balanced discourse, propagate norms of safe use and stimulate dialogue between the DIY community and regulatory authorities. We call (...) on all stakeholders—regulators, scientists and the DIY community—to share in crafting policy proposals that ensure public safety while supporting DIY innovation. (shrink)

Our understanding of communication and its evolution has advanced significantly through the study of simple models involving interacting senders and receivers of signals. Many theorists have thought that the resources of mathematical information theory are all that are needed to capture the meaning or content that is being communicated in these systems. However, the way theorists routinely talk about the models implicitly draws on a conception of content that is richer than bare informational content, especially in contexts where false content (...) is important. This article shows that this concept can be made precise by defining a notion of functional content that captures the degree to which different states of the world are involved in stabilizing senders’ and receivers’ use of a signal at equilibrium. A series of case studies is used to contrast functional content with informational content, and to illustrate the explanatory role and limitations of this definition of functional content. _1_ Introduction _2_ Modelling Framework _3_ Two Kinds of Content _3.1_ Informational content _3.2_ Functional content _4_ Cases _4.1_ Case 1: Simplest case _4.2_ Case 2: Partial pooling _4.3_ Case 3: Bottleneck _4.4_ Case 4: Partial common interest _4.5_ Case 5: Deception _4.6_ Case 6: A further problem arising from divergent interests _5_ Discussion Appendix. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to illustrate four properties of the non-relativistic limits of relativistic theories: that a massless relativistic field may have a meaningful non-relativistic limt, that a relativistic field may have more than one non-relativistic limit, that coupled relativistic systems may be "more relativistic" than their uncoupled counterparts, and that the properties of the non-relativistic limit of a dynamical equation may differ from those obtained when the limiting equation is based directly on exact Galilean kinematics. These properties (...) are demonstrated through an examination of the non-relativistic limit of the familiar equations of first-quantized QED, i.e., the Dirac and Maxwell equations. The conditions under which each set of equations admits non-relativistic limits are given, particular attention being given to a gauge-invariant formulation of the limiting process especially as it applied to the electromagnetic potentials. The difference between the properties of a limiting theory and an exactly Galilean covariant theory based on the same dynamical equation is demonstrated by examination of the Pauli equation. (shrink)

It is argued that awareness of the distinction between dynamical and variational symmetries is crucial to understanding the significance of Noether's 1918 work. Specific attention is paid, by way of a number of striking examples, to Noether's first theorem, which establishes a correlation between dynamical symmetries and conservation principles.

The impossibility theorem of Dekel, Lipman and Rustichini has been thought to demonstrate that standard state-space models cannot be used to represent unawareness. We first show that Dekel, Lipman and Rustichini do not establish this claim. We then distinguish three notions of awareness, and argue that although one of them may not be adequately modeled using standard state spaces, there is no reason to think that standard state spaces cannot provide models of the other two notions. In fact, standard space (...) models of these forms of awareness are attractively simple. They allow us to prove completeness and decidability results with ease, to carry over standard techniques from decision theory, and to add propositional quantifiers straightforwardly. (shrink)

This systematic introduction to Buddhist ethics is aimed at anyone interested in Buddhism, including students, scholars and general readers. Peter Harvey is the author of the acclaimed Introduction to Buddhism, and his new book is written in a clear style, assuming no prior knowledge. At the same time it develops a careful, probing analysis of the nature and practical dynamics of Buddhist ethics in both its unifying themes and in the particularities of different Buddhist traditions. The book applies (...) Buddhist ethics to a range of issues of contemporary concern: humanity's relationship with the rest of nature; economics; war and peace; euthanasia; abortion; the status of women; and homosexuality. Professor Harvey draws on texts of the main Buddhist traditions, and on historical and contemporary accounts of the behaviour of Buddhists, to describe existing Buddhist ethics, to assess different views within it, and to extend its application into new areas. (shrink)

Nicholas Jacobs’s introduction to and translation of Johann Peter Hebel’s story, The Glass Jew, a humorous example of inclusiveness and communicative conflict-resolution.

For nearly a decade we have taught the history and philosophy of science as part of courses aimed at the professional development of physics teachers. The focus of the history of science instruction is on the stages in the development of the concepts and theories of physics. For this instruction, we designed activities to help the teachers organize their understanding of this historical development. The activities include scientific modeling using archaic theories. We conducted surveys to gauge the impact on the (...) teachers of including the conceptual history of physics in the professional development courses. The teachers report greater confidence in their knowledge of the history of physics, that they reflect on this history for their teaching, and that they use of the history of physics for their classroom instruction. In this paper, we provide examples of our activities, the rationale for their design, and discuss the outcomes for the teachers of the instruction. (shrink)

We should eventually understand how exactly first person phenomenal consciousness is generated. When we do, we should be able to enginner one for robots. This is the engineering thesis in machine consciousness.

Internal global symmetries exist for the free non-relativistic Schrodinger particle, whose associated Noether charges---the space integrals of the wavefunction and the wavefunction multiplied by the spatial coordinate---are exhibited. Analogous symmetries in classical electromagnetism are also demonstrated.

We consider formal theories synonymous with various free categories . Their Lindenbaum algebras may be described as the lattices of subobjects of a terminator. These theories have intuitionistic logic. We show that the Lindenbaum algebras of second order and higher order arithmetic , and set theory are not isomorphic to the Lindenbaum algebras of first order theories such as arithmetic . We also show that there are only five kernels of representations of the free Heyting algebra on one generator in (...) these Lindenbaum algebras. (shrink)

The central theme of this book is the relationship between the reflections about and the realization of a musical composition. In his essay "Words about Music, or Analysis versus Performance," Nicholas Cook states that words and music can never be aligned exactly with one another. He embarks on a quest for models of the relationship between analytical conception and performance that are more challenging than those in general currency. Peter Johnson's essay, "Performance and the Listening Experience: Bach's 'Erbarme (...) dich'" shows that a performance is an element within the intentionality of the work itself. He looks for scientific methods capable of proving the artisticity of a performance. And the composer Hans Zender, in his "A Road Map for Orpheus?," states that a composer must be capable of questioning obvious basic principles (such as equal temperament) and finding creative solutions. (shrink)

Michael A. PetersBeijing Normal UniversityMy deepest condolences to Pepe, Dom and Marcus and to Jim’s grandchildren. Tina and I spent a lot of time at the Marshall family home, often attending dinn...

Should psychology of religion undergo a disciplinary renaissance and, if so, what might it look like? In this paper we explore that question by discussing the benefits of a better grounding of the field within mid-level theories from general psychology that provide it with greater conceptual depth. Such discussion will focus on three already existing and variously productive lines of research as case studies: attribution processes, attachment styles, and religious coping. These case studies represent lines of research at three developmental (...) stages: 1) infancy, with little visible return but with signs of promise , 2) adolescence, with dividends already yielded but also with promise not yet fully realized , and 3) maturity, where a fruitful harvest has already been experienced but yet without decline . Regardless of developmental position, it is argued that research in psychology of religion will be enhanced to the extent that it achieves conceptual depth by being framed in terms of mid-level theories. (shrink)