Development of the shapes of living organisms and their parts is a field of science in which there are no generally accepted theoretical principles. What form these principles are likely to take, when they emerge, is a subject in which there is a wide gulf of disagreement between physical scientists and experimental biologists. This book contains both an extensive philosophical commentary on this dichotomy in views and an exposition of the type of theory most favoured by physical scientists. In this (...) theory living form is a manifestation of the dynamics of chemical change and physical transport or other physics of spatial communication. The reaction-diffusion theory, as initiated by Turing in 1952 and since elaborated by Prigogine and by Gierer and Meinhardt among others, is discussed in detail at a level that requires a good knowledge of a first course in calculus, but no more than that. The great growth of molecular biology has tended to overshadow the increase in our understanding of the nature of these kinetic processes. This book seeks to reawaken interest in dynamics in the hope that a better balance between the importance of things and the importance of actions may emerge in the biology of the 21st century. (shrink)

Despite the popularity that the embodied cognition thesis has gained in recent years, explicit memories of events personally experienced are still conceived as disembodied mental representations. It seems that we can consciously remember our personal past through sensory imagery, through concepts, propositions and language, but not through the body. In this article, I defend the idea that the body constitutes a genuine means of representing past personal experiences. For this purpose, I focus on the analysis of bodily movements associated with (...) the retrieval of a personal memory, which have certain features that make them different from procedural memories, pragmatic actions and common gestures, as well as other forms of embodied memories found in recent literature. I refer to these as “kinetic memories” and analyse their representative nature as well as their adaptive functions. Kinetic memories are bodily movements in which some event or action that took place in the past can be seen, because they are an externalisation of the subject’s inner intention of representing a past personal experience. Kinetic memories represent a past experience sometimes by imitation of a past movement, and other times through embodied symbols and metaphors. Furthermore, although sometimes they present direct pragmatic benefits, such as communicative benefits, they seem to enhance the whole reexperience of the past event and memory recall, which I argue is one important adaptive value. (shrink)

To avoid preparing to wage battles against our opponents in future wars, we should proactively and continuously influence the narrative identity structures of our potential opponents by using Strategic Communications (StratCom). This book argues that nations and societies of tolerance and pluralism (the so-called wonderful societies) should utilize StratCom to seduce their enemies, opponents, and potential opponents not only to behave in more tolerant ways, but above all to internalize peace, tolerance, and pluralism as essential values and guiding mental institutions (...) of their identity structures. Winning Wars Before They Emerge will be of interest to students, lecturers and researchers of international relations and world politics, peace researchers, and information operations practitioners, as well as military personnel. War and the art of war are issue areas that have been widely dealt with in numerous books and widely taught in various universities and defense colleges/universities, but not from the perspective offered in this book. (shrink)

In conversation, individuals work together to achieve communicative goals, complementing and aligning language and body with each other. An important emerging question is whether interlocutors entrain with one another equally across linguistic levels (e.g., lexical, syntactic, and semantic) and modalities (i.e., speech and gesture), or whether there are complementary patterns of behaviors, with some levels or modalities diverging and others converging in coordinated fashions. This study assesses how kinematic and linguistic entrainment interact with one another across levels of measurement, and (...) according to communicative context. We analyzed data from two matched corpora of dyadic interaction between—respectively—Danish and Norwegian native speakers engaged in affiliative conversations and task‐oriented conversations. We assessed linguistic entrainment at the lexical, syntactic, and semantic level, and kinetic alignment of the head and hands using video‐based motion tracking and dynamic time warping. We tested whether—across the two languages—linguistic alignment correlates with kinetic alignment, and whether these kinetic‐linguistic associations are modulated either by the type of conversation or by the language spoken. We found that kinetic entrainment was positively associated with low‐level linguistic (i.e., lexical) entrainment, while negatively associated with high‐level linguistic (i.e., semantic) entrainment, in a cross‐linguistically robust way. Our findings suggest that conversation makes use of a dynamic coordination of similarity and complementarity both between individuals as well as between different communicative modalities, and provides evidence for a multimodal, interpersonal synergy account of interaction. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.1 (2005) 27-29 [Access article in PDF] Community, Consciousness, and Dynamic Self-Understanding Marya Schechtman Keywords consciousness, unconscious, self-understanding, embedded consciousness, personal identity I would like to thank both of my commentators for their generous and insightful comments. After an extremely clear and accurate summary of my position, Grant Gillett suggests that it should be supplemented with a recognition that the self-understanding I describe is (...) rooted in culture and social practice. I agree wholeheartedly with the need for such a supplement. In this paper, I try to switch from the emphasis on contents of consciousness found in traditional developments of the Lockean insight to an emphasis on the fact of reflective self-consciousness, which I think better captures what seems right in Locke's view. My suggestion is that we take up Locke's claim that the essential feature of personhood is awareness of oneself as a self, and understand this self-awareness in terms of an implicit demand for intelligibility in one's conscious experience. Considering oneself as a self requires that one view one's current state not as a free-standing moment that might or might not be related in appropriate ways to the states of a freestanding past or future self, but rather as part of an unfolding life story. This involves, among other things, an acknowledgment of our obligation to questions such as: "Why do I feel this way?" or "Why am I doing this?" Being a self involves holding oneself accountable for what one is doing and feeling. In this case the accountability is to oneself.The possibility of being accountable to oneself obviously depends, however, on a cultural context in which there is such a thing as accountability to others. It is only against a backdrop where others may call for an explanation of one's behavior or speech—and where not all explanations count as legitimate—that one can demand intelligibility from oneself. Children must be socialized into personhood by learning the right questions to ask about how their lives hang together, and what kinds of answers count as answers to those questions. Person, in Locke's sense, is a normative and forensic term, and is therefore inherently bound up with public standards. My point here is the somewhat limited claim that the attitude toward our own lives and experience, which is self-constituting, giving us a sense of ourselves as persisting beings, will involve this kind of accountability to oneself. I agree, however, that the tools for achieving this sort of attitude come in with mother's milk and early socialization. A fuller development of my claim thus [End Page 27] requires much more discussion of the role of culture and society in self-constitution. I begin such a discussion in my Constitution of Selves (1996), and hope to take it up in more detail in future work.Markus Heinimaa (2005) wonders if I have gone far enough in rejecting traditional approaches to the problem of personal identity. Although I say that the perceiver-self is not a homunculus, I do talk about it as if it is an entity, and about the unconscious as if it is a place inside this entity where psychological states can hide. Heinimaa's suggestion is that both the perceiver self and the unconscious are unnecessary complications, and that I can achieve my goal without them. Locke's insight can be better (or at least as well) captured, he suggests, with a kinetic view of the person as a process of self-understanding. These challenges are well taken. Although I cannot fully answer them here, perhaps I can clarify my position somewhat, and in so doing motivate some of my assumptions.I begin with my assumption of unconscious mental states and processes. My discussion starts from the idea that there are considerations pulling us toward the claim that the person must be identified with consciousness, and also considerations pulling us toward the view that the person must be more than conscious experience. The first set of considerations is laid out in some detail in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.1 (2005) 27-29 [Access article in PDF] Community, Consciousness, and Dynamic Self-Understanding Marya Schechtman Keywords consciousness, unconscious, self-understanding, embedded consciousness, personal identity I would like to thank both of my commentators for their generous and insightful comments. After an extremely clear and accurate summary of my position, Grant Gillett suggests that it should be supplemented with a recognition that the self-understanding I describe is (...) rooted in culture and social practice. I agree wholeheartedly with the need for such a supplement. In this paper, I try to switch from the emphasis on contents of consciousness found in traditional developments of the Lockean insight to an emphasis on the fact of reflective self-consciousness, which I think better captures what seems right in Locke's view. My suggestion is that we take up Locke's claim that the essential feature of personhood is awareness of oneself as a self, and understand this self-awareness in terms of an implicit demand for intelligibility in one's conscious experience. Considering oneself as a self requires that one view one's current state not as a free-standing moment that might or might not be related in appropriate ways to the states of a freestanding past or future self, but rather as part of an unfolding life story. This involves, among other things, an acknowledgment of our obligation to questions such as: "Why do I feel this way?" or "Why am I doing this?" Being a self involves holding oneself accountable for what one is doing and feeling. In this case the accountability is to oneself.The possibility of being accountable to oneself obviously depends, however, on a cultural context in which there is such a thing as accountability to others. It is only against a backdrop where others may call for an explanation of one's behavior or speech—and where not all explanations count as legitimate—that one can demand intelligibility from oneself. Children must be socialized into personhood by learning the right questions to ask about how their lives hang together, and what kinds of answers count as answers to those questions. Person, in Locke's sense, is a normative and forensic term, and is therefore inherently bound up with public standards. My point here is the somewhat limited claim that the attitude toward our own lives and experience, which is self-constituting, giving us a sense of ourselves as persisting beings, will involve this kind of accountability to oneself. I agree, however, that the tools for achieving this sort of attitude come in with mother's milk and early socialization. A fuller development of my claim thus [End Page 27] requires much more discussion of the role of culture and society in self-constitution. I begin such a discussion in my Constitution of Selves (1996), and hope to take it up in more detail in future work.Markus Heinimaa (2005) wonders if I have gone far enough in rejecting traditional approaches to the problem of personal identity. Although I say that the perceiver-self is not a homunculus, I do talk about it as if it is an entity, and about the unconscious as if it is a place inside this entity where psychological states can hide. Heinimaa's suggestion is that both the perceiver self and the unconscious are unnecessary complications, and that I can achieve my goal without them. Locke's insight can be better (or at least as well) captured, he suggests, with a kinetic view of the person as a process of self-understanding. These challenges are well taken. Although I cannot fully answer them here, perhaps I can clarify my position somewhat, and in so doing motivate some of my assumptions.I begin with my assumption of unconscious mental states and processes. My discussion starts from the idea that there are considerations pulling us toward the claim that the person must be identified with consciousness, and also considerations pulling us toward the view that the person must be more than conscious experience. The first set of considerations is laid out in some detail in... (shrink)

In this article I will relate the kinetic sculpture Hylozoic Ground by architect Phillip Beesley and a collaborative group to theoretical and philosophical studies concerning the human subject. I will ask the deep philosophical question what is life? with the expectancy of a close relationship between ‘life’ and ‘consciousness’. Under inspiration from Yair Neuman and Søren Brier, I operate with the idea that ‘life’ and ‘consciousness’ would be directly related to communication processes in the body of both physically measurable (...) and physically immeasurable kinds. And that such communication processes are best described by modelling a hierarchy of qualitatively different, but co-dependent kinds of communication. (shrink)

Today, the earth is an interconnected globe humming with electronic transmissions-a chattering planet nestled in the provident silence of space. The ethical question is whether this is contributing to authentic human development and helping individuals and peoples to be true to their transcendent destiny. The new media are powerful tools for education, cultural enrichment, commercial activity, political participation, intercultural dialogue and understanding. They also can serve the cause of religion. Yet the new information technology needs to be informed and guided (...) by solidarity in the service of the common good bridging the digital divide within and among nations. The value-laden message of Western secular culture to people and traditional societies in many cases ill-prepared to evaluate it leads to widespread crisis, for example, in regard to marriage and family life. This technology can be a means for solving human problems, promoting the integral development of persons, creating a world governed by justice, peace, and love. It also can help men and women in their age-old search for self-understanding. Like today's world itself, the world of media, including the Internet, has been brought by Christ, inchoately yet truly, within the boundaries of the kingdom of God and placed in service to the word of salvation. (shrink)

This volume provides a comprehensive account of Wilhelm Röpke as a liberal political economist and social philosopher. Wilhelm Röpke was a key protagonist of transatlantic neoliberalism, a prominent public intellectual and a gifted international networker. As an original thinker, he always positioned himself at the interface between political economy and social philosophy, as well as between liberalism and conservatism. Röpke’s endeavors to combine these elements into a coherent whole, as well as his embeddedness in European and American intellectual networks of (...) liberal and conservative thinkers, are a central theme throughout the book. The volume includes papers by international experts from a conference in Geneva on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Röpke’s passing. The first part focuses on new biographical insights into his exile years in Istanbul and Geneva, while the second part discusses his business cycle theory in the context of the Great Depression, and the third part elaborates on his multifaceted social philosophy. Wilhelm Röpke was among the most important thinkers within the classical liberal revival post-WWII, with intriguing tensions between liberalism and conservatism. A highly recommended volume. –– Peter J. Boettke, 2016-2018 President of the Mont Pèlerin Society and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, George Mason University This important collection of papers provides an in-depth assessment of Wilhelm Röpke’s contributions, placing him in the context of his time. A fine contribution. –– Bruce J. Caldwell, Director of the Center for the History of Political Economy and Research Professor of Economics, Duke University. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Books ReceivedThe Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China. By G.E.R. Lloyd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 175. Price not given.The Art of the Han Essay: Wang Fu's Ch'ien-Fu Lun. By Anne Behnke Kinney. Tempe: Center for Asian Studies, Arizona State University, 1990. Pp. xi + 154. Paper $10.00.The Autobiography of Jamgön Kongtrul: A Gem of Many Colors. By Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrön (...) Thayé and translated by Richard Barron (Chökyi Nyima). Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion Publications, 2003. Pp. xxii + 549. Price not given.Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Times, and Poetry of Saigyō. By William R. LaFleur. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. xiii + 173. Paper $14.95.Becoming the Compassion Buddha: Tantric Mahamudra for Everyday Life. By Lama Thubten Yeshe, edited by Robina Courtin, and foreword by Geshe Lhundub Sopa. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. xi + 194. Paper $14.95.Between Two Worlds East and West: An Autobiography. By J. N. Mohanty. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. ix + 134. Hardcover RS 525.00.The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ. Edited by Roman Malek, S.V.D. Sankt Augustin, Germany: Institut Monumenta Serica and China-Zentrum; and Nettetal, Germany: Steyler Verlag, 2002. Pp. 391. EUR 40.00.Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China: Plurality and Synthesis. By Volker Scheid. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002. Pp. xiv + 407. Hardcover $69.95. Paper $23.95.Confucian Feminist: Memoirs of Zeng Baosun (1893-1978). Translated and adapted by Thomas L. Kennedy. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002. Pp. xxi + 170. Price not given.Consciousness Studies: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. By K. Ramakrishna Rao. Jefferson (North Carolina) and London: McFarland and Company, 2002. Pp. 367. Hardcover $65.00.Constituting Communities: Theravāda Buddhism and the Religious Cultures of South and Southeast Asia. Edited by John Clifford Holt, Jacob N. Kinnard, and Jonathan S. Walters. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Pp. viii + 224. Hardcover $65.50. Paper $21.95.Developments in Indian Philosophy from Eighteenth Century Onwards: Classical and Western. By Daya Krishna. Volume X Part 1 of History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, edited by D. P. Chattopadhyaya. New [End Page 110] Delhi: Centre for Studies in Civilizations, 2001. Pp. xxiii + 417. Hardcover RS 1200.East and West: Identità e dialogo interculturale. By Giangiorgio Pasqualotto. Venezia: Marsilo Editori, 2003. Pp. 210. EUR 16.00.Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China. By Edward Slingerland. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 352. Price not given.Encountering Kā lī: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West. Edited by Rachel Fell McDermott and Jeffrey J. Kripal. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xviii + 321. Hardcover $55.00, £37.95. Paper $21.95, £15.95.Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy. Edited by Antonio S. Cua. New York and London: Routledge, 2003. Pp. xx + 1020. Hardcover $150.00.Essays on Indian Philosophy. By J. N. Mohanty and edited by Purushottama Bilimoria. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xxxvii + 347. Paper RS 525.00.Faith, Humor, and Paradox. By Ignacio L. Götz. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2002. Pp. 136. Hardcover $61.95.Four Illusions: Candrakīrti's Advice for Travelers on the Bodhisattva Path. Translated by Karen C. Lang. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xv + 240. Price not given.The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory. By David R. Loy. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. 223. Paper $16.95.The Hidden History of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. By Bryan J. Cuevas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 328. Price not given.Huang Di nei jing su wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Medical Text. By Paul U. Unschuld. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 520. Hardcover $75.00, £52.00.In Dewey's Wake: Unfinished Work of Pragmatic Reconstruction. Edited by William J. Gavin. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Pp. vi + 249. Hardcover $71.50. Paper $23.95.Knowledge and Freedom in Indian Philosophy. By Tara Chatterjea. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2002. Pp. xvi + 159. Hardcover... (shrink)

The paper provides an analysis of Martin Buber’s intellectual conversion and shows how it facilitates a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of nationalism. Buber, who is today known mainly as a key representative of dialogical philosophy, was in the 1910s part of the double wave of German and Jewish nationalism which strongly affected the German-speaking Jewish public. Buber provided intellectual support for this wave of nationalism and interpreted World War I as a unique chance for the spiritual unification of European (...) Jewry. Consequent to his conflict with Gustav Landauer Buber underwent a complex intellectual and existential transformation. He abandoned key concepts of his pre-dialogical thought and laid the foundations of his dialogical thought. He rejected his endorsement of Geman nationalism and substantially reevaluated his political positions. The analysis of Buber’s intellectual development sheds light on some important aspects of the dynamics of nationalism. (shrink)

This communication presents a discussion of some extensions of the formalism of Verhulst's simple logistics, which may constitute an autonomous growth model of a more general scope.For that purpose, the basis concept of growth diagram or trajectory is called upon, as it affords the graphic representation of the change in the growth variable y, using two relevant kinetic parameters: the instantaneous rate and the instantaneous acceleration. The two possible kinds of trajectories are in relation to the use of absolute (...) (V = dyldt; = dV/dt) or relative (or specific) values (R = (1/y)(dy/dt); R = dR/dt). (shrink)

The idea of verisimilitude is implicit in the writings of Albert Einstein ever since 1905, when he declared the distribution of field energy according to Maxwell's theory an approximation to that according to quantum-radiation theory, and Newtonian kinetic energy an approximation to his relativistic mass-energy. All his life Einstein presented new ideas as yielding older established ones as special cases and first approximations. The news has reached the philosophical community via the writings of Sir Karl Popper half-a-century after (...) Einstein's trailblazing conception — first in his epoch-making "Note on Berkeley as a Precursor to Mach" and then in his classic "Three Views Concerning Human Knowledge". (shrink)

In the history of science, the birth of classical chemistry and thermodynamics produced an anomaly within Newtonian mechanical paradigm: force and acceleration were no longer citizens of new cited sciences. Scholars tried to reintroduce them within mechanistic approaches, as the case of the kinetic gas theory. Nevertheless, Thermodynamics, in general, and its Second Law, in particular, gradually affirmed their role of dominant not-reducible cognitive paradigms for various scientific disciplines: more than twenty formulations of Second Law—a sort of indisputable intellectual (...) wealth—are conceived after 1824 Sadi Carnot’s original statement and a multitude of entropy functions are proposed after 1865 Clausius’ former definition. Furthermore, at the end of nineteenth century, thermodynamics extended its cognitive domain to chemistry. Mainly thanks to Gibbs, a brand new discipline—chemical thermodynamics or physical chemistry—gradually affirmed its role inside the scientific community. This paper reports the former results of collaborative research program in the History and Epistemology of Science as well as Nature of Science Teaching aimed at retracing the foundations of the physical chemistry. Specifically, the research is structured in three parts: historical-epistemic reflections on fundamental thermodynamic concepts and principles—such as reversible process, heat, temperature, thermal equilibrium and Clausius’ Second Law—that play a structural role inside modern physical chemistry; panoramic overview on the entropy, whose polysemy makes it one of the most demanding concepts for scholars, teachers and students while approaching thermodynamics; conceptualization of chemical equilibrium as complex entity according to the dual epistemological approach offered by Gibbs’ thermodynamic model and the kinetic standpoint by Guldberg and Waage. In particular, the present work details an original reading of thermodynamic principles with the aim of setting forth a rationalized multidisciplinary substrate whereon the foundational concepts of reversible process and thermal equilibrium can be set. (shrink)

Several recent attempts to develop models of moral reasoning have attempted to use some form of casuistry as a way to resolve the moral controversies of clinical ethics. One of the best known models of casuistry is that of Jonsen and Toulmin who attempt to transpose a particular model of casuistry, that of Roman Catholic confessional practice, to contemporary moral disputes. This attempt is flawed in that it fails to understand both the history of the model it seeks to transpose (...) and the morally pluralistic context of secular, postmodern society. The practice of casuistry which Jonsen and Toulmin wish to revive is a practice set in the context of a community with a shared set of moral values and structures of moral authority. Without a set of common moral values and rankings, and a moral authority to interpret cases the casuistry of the postmodern age will be pluralistic; that is, there will be many casuistries not just one. Keywords: casuistry, common morality, kinetics, moral authority, moral pluralism, morphology, paradigm cases, taxonomy CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In the history of science, the birth of classical chemistry and thermodynamics produced an anomaly within Newtonian mechanical paradigm: force and acceleration were no longer citizens of new cited sciences. Scholars tried to reintroduce them within mechanistic approaches, as the case of the kinetic gas theory. Nevertheless, Thermodynamics, in general, and its Second Law, in particular, gradually affirmed their role of dominant not-reducible cognitive paradigms for various scientific disciplines: more than twenty formulations of Second Law—a sort of indisputable intellectual (...) wealth—are conceived after 1824 Sadi Carnot’s original statement and a multitude of entropy functions are proposed after 1865 Clausius’ former definition. Furthermore, at the end of nineteenth century, thermodynamics extended its cognitive domain to chemistry. Mainly thanks to Gibbs, a brand new discipline—chemical thermodynamics or physical chemistry—gradually affirmed its role inside the scientific community. This paper reports the former results of collaborative research program in the History and Epistemology of Science as well as Nature of Science Teaching aimed at retracing the foundations of the physical chemistry. Specifically, the research is structured in three parts: historical-epistemic reflections on fundamental thermodynamic concepts and principles—such as reversible process, heat, temperature, thermal equilibrium and Clausius’ Second Law—that play a structural role inside modern physical chemistry; panoramic overview on the entropy, whose polysemy makes it one of the most demanding concepts for scholars, teachers and students while approaching thermodynamics; conceptualization of chemical equilibrium as complex entity according to the dual epistemological approach offered by Gibbs’ thermodynamic model and the kinetic standpoint by Guldberg and Waage. In particular, the present work details an original reading of thermodynamic principles with the aim of setting forth a rationalized multidisciplinary substrate whereon the foundational concepts of reversible process and thermal equilibrium can be set. (shrink)

In this article, I build on my recent conceptions of law as poetry and of justice as dance by articulating three new conceptions of the relationship between law and justice. In the first, “poetry-based justice”, justice consists of a rigid choreography to a kind of musical recitation of the law’s poetry. In the second, “dancing-based law”, justice consists of spontaneous, freely improvised movement patterns that the poetry of the law tries to capture in a kind of musical notation. And in (...) the third, “reciprocal-legal justice”, justice and law consist of a reciprocally determining artistic collaboration between the democratic dancing masses and the aristocratic poetising elites. Given that each of these predominates in one of three types of community, I then present a reclassification of right-leaning, centrist and leftist societies as dominated by “literalist”, “kinetic” and “mutualist” communities (respectively), and offer suggestions for legislators and activists working in each type. In conclusion, law and justice, qua poetry and dance, become more flexible, inclusive and open to creative improvising and collaboration, a new form that I name, after Astraea, Greek goddess of divine justice, “astral legal justice”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 8.4 (2001) 323-326 [Access article in PDF] The Tacit Dimension Thomas Fuchs Thirty years after its appearance, Blankenburg's "Psychopathology of common sense" has not lost its relevance. In my commentary I will try to illustrate the fruitfulness of his approach by pointing to some connections with the phenomenology of the body as well as with recent memory and infant research.As Blankenburg himself indicates, the notion (...) of common sense developed by a shift of meaning from the classical sensus communis and thus has its original basis in the sensual-bodily experience. By the koinè aísthesis, Aristoteles meant a central sense organ integrating all single modalities of sensation (which he localized in the heart). In German physiology and psychiatry of the nineteenth century, the sensus communis was still translated as "Gemeingefühl" ("common feeling") or "cenesthesia" (Fuchs 1995). This term denoted the inner, proprioceptive bodily sensations, but also an original unity of the senses, which has been rediscovered by recent infant research as intermodal sensory perception. The affection of the body was thus regarded as the common basis of all sensation.Looking on this track for a bodily basis of the common sense, we find it in the habitual structure of the lived-body as analysed by Merleau-Ponty (1945). The body is the primary "matter-of-course," namely, the tacitly functioning medium of our everyday being-in-the-world prior to any subject-object split. The body schema, in Merleau-Ponty's view, is not only a system of familiar units of movement or "kinetic melodies," it also incorporates the surrounding things, tools, and spaces that are familiar to us and that we "inhabit." Thus, the musician "does not only manipulate the instrument like a separate object, but lives in it like a limb and inhabits the expressive musical space it opens" (Behnke 1997). But for Merleau-Ponty, the body schema is also the basis of "intercorporeity," i.e., a prepersonal sphere of reciprocal comportment and understanding prior to any explicit consensus and symbolic communication. In this sphere of elementary contact, the "atmospheric" senses play a major role: The sense of smell (as shown, e.g., by the expression "to scent treason" or in German, "jemand nicht riechen können" [not be able to "smell" or stand someone]) as well as the sense of taste whose ambiguous meaning, mentioned by Blankenburg, points to the bodily basis of the feeling for what is suitable, decent, or aesthetically pleasing. Even the designation of homo sapiens that we give to ourselves is derived from the latin sapere (to taste/to know), and thus shows that the knowledge characteristic for man is not an explicit one, but an intuitive, implicit knowing or "feel" for his surroundings, or as Kant says, an "aesthetic rather than intellectual judgment" (cited by Blankenburg).Polanyi (1967) has analysed this knowledge at the roots of common sense as "tacit knowledge." It is based on processes of Gestalt formation that enable us to grasp unified wholes through their constituting elements without still being aware of the latter. Thus, we understand the facial expression of others immediately but cannot tell from which details. Or we know how [End Page 323] to waltz without knowing the single movements or being able to explain it. Tacit knowledge implies all the taken-for-granted that we have forgotten once it has become our second nature and part of our bodily habits. It is mainly based on the neuronal coupling of single sensori-motor units by repeated perception or action. This unconscious knowing has only recently come to be explored by psychology under the heading of "implicit" or "procedural memory" (Schacter 1987, 1996). It contains familiar styles or "melodies" of moving, perceiving, and being-with-others in which our whole bodily and emotional experience is engaged. There is an atmospheric, "felt" quality about them that cannot be analysed into single elements. Implicit knowledge may, therefore, never be wholly expressed by words—it is only realized in the concrete situation. It may only be circumscribed by expressions such as "how it feels...," "how it is...," e.g., how it is... (shrink)

Video game spaces have vastly expanded the built environment, offering new worlds to explore and inhabit. Like buildings, cities, and gardens before them, these virtual environments express meaning and communicate ideas and affects through the spatial experiences they afford. Drawing on the emerging field of embodied cognition, this book explores the dynamic interplay between mind, body, and environment that sits at the heart of spatial communication. To capture the wide diversity of forms that spatial expression can take, the book builds (...) a comparative analysis of twelve video games across four types of space, spanning ones designed for exploration and inhabitation, kinetic enjoyment, enacting a situated role, and enhancing perception. Together, these diverse virtual environments suggest the many ways that video games enhance and extend our embodied lives."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

Enacting the World of Cinema offers a substantial reconfiguration of the textual roots of modern film narratology. By giving sustained attention to cinema's material-affective modes of communicating its stories and embedding its audience in atmospheric, kinetic, and multisensorial worlds, this book maintains that film narratives are less representations than they are enactments; brought forth through the interactions of the felt body and the film material. The book defends this enactive and media-anthropological thesis by reworking a series of established film (...) narratological key concepts including the diegesis, mood/atmosphere, and the distinction between diegetic and non-diegetic sound. In the process, this book draws on a wide range of contemporary theoretical resources such as affective neuroscience, media-philosophy, philosophy of mind, atmosphere research, multisensory perception theory, as well as a broad selection of films including Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (Ruttman, 1927), The Cranes are Flying (Kalatozov, 1957), and Happy as Lazzaro (Rohrwacher, 2018)"--Dust jacket flap. (shrink)

Cyber warfare is becoming a new reality with new battles fought everyday on virtual battlefields. For a century and a half, International Humanitarian Law has been a sentry for victims of wars guaranteeing their legal protection from the calamities of war, trying hard to respond to Clausewitz’s “chameleon of war”. Cyber conflict marks new chameleon’s colour together with the unmanned aerial vehicles, autonomic battle systems and other technologies deployed on battlefields. However, it would be greatly erroneous to claim that the (...) International Humanitarian Law may not apply to the new phenomena just because it is caused by the advanced technology. Even if the Geneva Conventions of 1949 are already sixty years old, the International Humanitarian Law in itself has at minimum customary response mechanism, granting, in a spirit of Marten’s clause, protection and authority of the principles of international law derived from established custom, from the principles of humanity and from dictates of public conscience (Protocol I). Notwithstanding, some more complicated fundamental issues also have to be addressed: how the use of cybernetic weapons and means may affect the classic notion of armed conflict? How it can be interpreted in the light of new technologies, i.e. can we still rely on a classic understanding of weapon’s kinetic effect as the main element, or shall we embrace effectsbased “Schmitt’s criteria”. If it so happens, will it make an act without apparent damage to a person/property equal to military hostilities, required by the armed conflict notion and justify the real-life response to it. The effective or overall control tests were used for the attribution of non-state actor’s activity to the state party of an armed conflict but these tests might not meet its purpose in the virtual battlefield of loose networks and open-source communities. If the concept of armed conflict is treated more flexibly, other changes (including issues of attribution) may follow, as well. Perhaps this is the way how the combatant institute will evolve. With classic combatant’s criteria impossible to apply on virtual battlefields, one of the options would be to elaborate concepts of “constant combat function” and “direct participation in hostilities” more precisely, as well as to reconsider state’s affiliation requirements. (shrink)

This article is in three parts. Part I gives an account of Erwin Schrödinger's growing up and studies in Vienna, his scientific work—first in Vienna from 1911 to 1920, then in Zurich from 1920 to 1925—on the dielectric properties of matter, atmospheric electricity and radioactivity, general relativity, color theory and physiological optics, and on kinetic theory and statistical mechanics. Part II deals with the creation of the theory of wave mechanics by Schrödinger in Zurich during the early months of (...) 1926; he laid the foundations of this theory in his first two communications toAnnalen der Physik. Part III deals with the early applications of wave mechanics to atomic problems—including the demonstration of equivalence of wave mechanics with the quantum mechanics of Born, Heisenberg, and Jordan, and that of Dirac—by Schrödinger himself and others. The new theory was immediately accepted by the scientific community. (shrink)

Energy contributes significantly in almost all aspects of human life as well as economic activities and plays a crucial role in the infrastructural development of a county to alleviate poverty. Generating energy from a renewable source such as small hydropower through the application of pump operating as a turbine mode called Pump as Turbine is one of the best alternatives to provide clean and inexpensive energy. Using Pump as Turbine helps in generating reasonably priced hydroelectric power for communities in underdeveloped (...) counties. This study investigates the effects of internal flow behaviour and performance of Pump as Turbine under different rotational speed and flow rate. The rotational speed is an essential physical parameter as it affects the Pump as Turbine operation. A model-specific speed centrifugal pump model with head 32, flow rate of 12.5 and the rotational speed of 2900 rpm, has been selected for the study. Numerical simulations have been conducted using the k-ω turbulence model to solve three-dimensional equations. The pump mode experimental data were used to confirm the results for better analysis. The results predicted that vortex and turbulent kinetic energy increase per rotational speed increase. Also, at the higher rotational speed, very high recirculation of flow is detected at the blade suction chamber, although the pressure side has a smooth flow. This study provides beneficial information which will serve as a reference to help improve PAT performance along with selecting PAT for a small hydropower site. Future works will consider the impact of blade thickness and cavitation in Pump as Turbine. (shrink)

This paper argues that the contemporary treatment within moral, political and legal philosophy of the issue of the effective and proper constraint (and, ultimately, also, direction) of power suffers from an absence of engagement with the following question: what picture of behavior - of those in power - should we adopt in order to consider how it might be constrained and directed? It is argued that the absence of engagement with this question can be explained by the dominance of the (...) rationalization of behavior, and the concomitant methodology of scrutinizing the role of rules in excerpts of short-term reasoning. The paper offers an overview of sources that can assist in providing an alternative picture of behavior. The paper is organized into three parts: the first considers the long-term development of perceptual and kinetic know-how; the second examines the social, institutional and community-based location of that know-how; and the third considers how the sources of the first two parts can help us in the necessary transition from an over-emphasis on legal language, to an emphasis on legal work. Combining all the elements together, legal work is defined as the institutional emergence of perceptual and kinetic know-how that necessarily accompanies the constraint - amassing and guidance - giving use of legal language. The emphasis on this picture of legal work can provide us with the tools that will not only allow us to design institutions and the resources used by legal officials to constrain the power exercised by them more effectively, but it will also allow us to consider what moral capacities we would like legal work to be informed by, and, equally, what kind moral institutional ways of life we might strive for. Those moral capacities and moral institutional ways of life, in turn, will have to be supplemented by a theory of social justice, the appropriate beginning of which is an understanding of how we can learn to see the great variety and pervasiveness of suffering and vulnerability. Only once we understand how we come to see suffering and vulnerability, can we consider how it will be appropriate to respond to it, i.e. to respond by considering what moral capacities are required to be exercised by officials, and how we might design our institutions so that they enhance moral institutional ways of life. (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 155–158 Michel Serres. Biogea . Trans. Randolph Burks. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing. 2012. 200 pp. | ISBN 9781937561086 | $22.95 Conveying to potential readers the significance of a book puts me at risk of glad handing. It’s not in my interest to laud the undeserving, especially on the pages of this journal. This is not a sales pitch, but rather an affirmation of a necessary work on very troubled terms: human, earth, nature, and the problematic world we made. (...) It is this world that aspirates the silence (so to speak), and therefore the subject which, along with the development of the “made world” exports the excess augmentation of the cosmically missing, this silence of the natural, et cetera. Had we learned from Locke that lesson of “labor,” to consume what we need… but perhaps we need more than what matters? Serres’ Biogea has several functions on this manner, if it is indeed a book to be consumed. First, readers searching for novelistic entertainment have a place to dwell. Biogea deserves a place in your back pocket; biographical generosity and poetic fluidity should satisfy most textual fetishes. For lay philosophers who want to refresh their acumen, Biogea deserves a place on the book shelf, one already reads a sorely needed postmodern tune-up here. Serres’ style is clearly French; he leaves few cheese crumbs on his words, rather preciseness and breathing in the work give way to a sweeping manner that breaks the narrative line of sight. A circular narrative and anachronistic fragmentation of terms allows an abyssal atmosphere to swell, if only to pump into the book the externality of its broader text. Biogea aspires to a higher standard and the book, at times, is thinking this negentropic problem too. Univocal, the publisher, has crafted a book appropriate for the hands to hold and the translations are an achievement of an otherwise difficult writer to translate. Terms are the conditions of a broader text. It is important to note that Serres’ content is as much a thinking of terminal ports. There is a regard for the transportation technology of the written word. For me, this is the mark of genius, a craftiness that tells of a book device that I may trust. Serres is an accomplished thinker and a necessary voice to check the putative trendiness of anti-postmodernist and market-driven theory of endless cultural liquidation. Offering interventions on subjectivity as an open system we are given a chance to affirm the human, not merely to discard it, but to engage its poetic image emotion, the calibratory silent sense of the analogic world; the terms on which we base our efforts. 1 The human is the center of its own negation, constantly mediating it. Something deeper at stake appears in the work then, and it is quite obvious from the onset. Certainly, a book is an intensification of possible text and those who brought this actual book into existence have captured a rarity in regards to the subject matter and artistic accomplishment. I mentioned terms as conditions, so let us understand Biogea as bio-yea, a yes to bios . An affirmation of living and accepting presence for all of its defiance of images, words, and things temporal. Therefore Serres’ existence and its existants plays parts; out of linearity and still like a porous bone pumping blood it manufactures into the fleshy life it becomes. Starting from a man named silence chaos emerges, or the man “Old Taciturn” takes up a journey anticipating a great flood. In other words, a development akin to the one in Genesis. In dealing with this ancestral occupation, fusing Genesis with contemporary philosophical terms, Serres initiates this anachronistic fragmentation under the forming subjectivity of his own autobiography. This mutation in the open system is precisely one of Serres’ terms. There an abyss is at work, stated, but also measured by heels on the ground—the abyss dispatching earthen tensions, that which plays our tunes, that which we abide by and recognize in volcanoes, rivers, oceans, earthquakes and weaponry in the battles of the world. Set in later stages of the book, such tensions are harnessed through scientific principles in an attempt to unify the terms of natural force if only to terminate the world. Thus the elevation of the earth into the world is clearly set forth. Here already, and few pages in, a resonance is set forth under appellations such as the river Garonne, a subjectivity as much as it is inhuman, the river is the inhuman that makes us human. I get the sense that Serres is taking up a challenge issued by Wallace Stevens; namely, that the great poems of heaven and hell have been written, but that only the poem of the earth has resisted composition. 2 On this level we cannot avoid the killing factor of silence, given that our cognition blocks its pure, radical obliteration. Thus a silence of attunement to the earth is in a novel dialectic of the rithmic and rhythm. A technological world, a triumph of termination is set forth. If a text imposes its will given the reader who authorizes it, it is made to convey or convect a presupposition to a reader or its inhabitant(s). Text is therefore both, in-content, contenting, contentedness, and in reading it, a way to navigate self-destruction (dis-content). Here then would one note that the “inhuman” reveals itself, “an aperiodic rhythm of lovers and beloved…the sea as our friend…but as our enemy…maternal vivifying sea.” The sea is an open book, or vaginal birth canal, where the engagement of text comes forth: “…woman sea, open vulva.” One sees like the sea, but only after it, when the uninhabitable truth of inhabiting it switches the polarity of the sailors soul: “I was seeing like the sea” (9-11). In other words, we are invited to embrace the nonsense of the visible. At this point I am taken to Jean-François Lyotard’s work The Inhuman , specifically the first entry on negentropy that would be congruent with Serres’ thematic. 3 The human being exports, deports, or transplants its relation through text, through the system— and this is its sense or relation to silence, to music. Unaware of Serres’ proximity to this work, the concept of gender interrelation as regards a solar catastrophe runs clear. It would be, on this basis, that Serres references his peers, the other texts that, as mentioned above, are discarded in philosophy today. For students of philosophy what we have here is perhaps a gift, a needed project. If silence and death are at work, there is a political valence to deal with, and here, much like the domain of the text and the dominion of the reader, we confront the world of natural, fluid violence. The anti-postmodernist critique is in part based on a weak idea that the loss of ideology, of a world vision, motivates the “correlationist” project. 4 Serres seems to offer another way to view this when he notes that whereas persons “sometimes kill,” it is clearly “the collective” that “always kills” (17). What is the collective today, if not an organizing function we never see yet acts in its favor in the name of truth? One feels a sense of enigma here, if only to link to what Stevens remarked of communism as a “grubby faith,” providing this applies for capitalism as well, namely any ideology of progress overly interested in absolutes. Here we get the sense that the inhuman, silence, this type of killing, always killing, could not be matched by human-made, political dynamos. Or that if it comes to an equilibrium, a catastrophe is never too far from us to read with our heels. We are left to note that the forces of nature presuppose and permeate political systems, the more these systems obtain force, the more the system takes upon itself the proper name of nature that motivates its dissemination, albeit falsely. This note, that in an age of ecocide and technological captivity (sustainability and transparency) political regimes won’t grow our soul-learning ears any larger than our tongues, stands clear to us. The promise of technological desubjectification is here pushed aside. Regarding politics, Serres illustrates this fact: Where did this corpse come from? Who was it? Who killed it? I don’t know. I won’t try to find out. I refuse to get vengeance for it. And I only see Garonne. For our victims, today, are the rivers, too. Their waters have irrigated my life, enchanted my thought, invigorated my body; I’ve known them to be threatening, untamable, as dangerous as the sea when it rages. Yes, murderous. They decided to control their courses; dams, sometimes senseless, destroying sites and valleys, reduced entire populations to servile displacements; programs for the irrigation of thirsty farmland, often beneficial of course, completed their drying up.(22) Serres enters into his idea concerning the captivity of language from the natural into a world system: For thousands of years, we have been licking things with our tongues, covering and daubing them so as to appropriate things for ourselves. If language boils down to a convention, this convention took place between the speakers without consulting the thing named, become as a result the property of those who covered it in this way with their drawn or voiced productions. Malfeasance analyzes these acts of appropriation. Thus every inert object, every living thing as well, sleeps under the covers of signs, a little in the way that, today, a thousand posters shouting messages and ugly riots of color drown, with their filthy flood, the landscapes, or better, exclude them from perception because the meaning, almost nil, of this false language and these base images forms an irresistible source of attraction to our neurons and eyes. This appropriation covers the world’s beauty with ugliness. (38-39) Technological concealment coming to bear, we begin to get a sense of another commentary on the condition of sensing, driving home the necessity of a text dealing with such subject matter to be what its terms insist. Thus toward new openings: The new opening. As low beneath our feet as you like, the Biogea opens us to another space, high enough for us to be able to acquire a wisdom there, that of redeveloping this same place differently from our fathers, this place that’s still politically cut up by old hatreds, beneath the flood of tears and blood that we call history. Without this soft place, spiritually very old, but newly conceived in this way, without the juridical construction of a common good, opposed to our filthy ownership, I don’t see how our planet, hard, will survive. Hardness that depends on a softness, material belonging that depends on this temporary rented location (51). Serres enters into a summit on the content and the structure of his work. Archimedes is brought in with the concept of three volcanoes. Meaning fire, but as well earth, water, air. For it was Archimedes’ war machines that sought to lift the earth, thus bringing in the question of principles of science: “can a principle be invented while controlling its consequences?” (66-7). May the earth be put in a sentence, terminated by terminology, appellations, gone wild? By means of these element-dominating laws, this old physicist began to tear nature away from the ancient myths; by a strange return, today we’re plunging our successes back into the anxieties and terrors from which that ancient physics was born. Yes, our new history of science and technology is plunging, today, as though in a loop, into the fundamental human myths from which Empedocles’ first laws came. A major progression and a regression on the nether side of the origins. Consequently, the contemporary time requires that we try to return to that unity in which the principles of hate and love are at the same time human, living, inert and global. We will never attain a deontology of our knowledge and actions without thinking the subjective, the objective, the collective, and the cognitive all together simultaneously. Here, hate and love are the result of these four components.(71) Working then on the concept of fire-starting mirrors to the atomic annihilation of the Second War, Serres works into the subjectivity in question on the matter of rhythm—say rithmic— precisely at that point: Knowledge is changing today. The all-political is dying; the monarchy of the sciences said to be hard is coming to a close. The science of the things of the world will have to communicate just as much as the things of the world do, which do it much better than humans do, who don’t always want to do it. Let’s celebrate two changes this morning. The first one strikes a new blow to our narcissism. No, knowledge and the world don’t resemble our analytical enjoyments of refined cutting up, of endless debates and of exclusions full of hate. They, on the contrary, form a bloc and a sum, alliance and alloys. Uniting the fields of knowledge among themselves the way the things are connected among themselves, the second newness puts into place sets united by interlacing, webs and simplexes that combine with the things of the world, themselves combined, the combined knowledge that understands them.(130-1) Biogea closes on its opening flood thematic, approaching the initial telos of Genesis. Here the trees are brought into a position with atmosphere, the opaque abyssal reservoir, the tomb of the sun, sea in the polarity of the earthen heaven and hell. The poem of the earth then is silent but deadly, indeed, as funny as that phrase is, mainly a tomb gas. The meaning of the living and the non-meaning of things converge in the muteness of the world; this meaning and non-meaning plunge there and come out, the ultimate eddy. Mundus patet: through a fissure, through an opening, a fault, a cleft come noises, calls as small as these apertures. I’m listening, attentive, I’m translating, I’m advancing in the scaled-down meaning and science. Mundus patet: should the world open greatly, it will launch me into its silence. The totality remains silent. Knowledge expanded in elation. White origin of meaning, fountain of joy. (198) Final Remarks One test of a review is the long term trajectory the referee thinks the book will have. I see Serres’ text lending greatly into the vision of Biogea . In fact, in the vision of the novel inquiries of Stephen Jay Gould’s work there is something to be thought on the level of the individual and the species; namely, that humanity and its uniqueness is in its deferral, its thinking and naming, a thinking surrounded by silence that filters into everything, that pulls us through the world, the kinetic pulse we recognize, and all of that we cleave away in the base philosophical maxim of difference itself. Unique individuals are spatial creatures: we dwell, and we ought to get good at it. Yet this is an imaginative space that, if you are crazy enough to believe it, de-term-ine the conditions of its own terms. That is why we are not merely creating spaces on the acceleration of time, or so this ignoramus thinks, to accidentally transcend. Imagination already has this insatiable silence that we drink up and fail to manifest. Space is timeless. The imagination itself, shared by humans for themselves, their objects, and the species as a whole, is a non-defined space of relation; a whole human trajectory as part of nature, and part of worlds that are the other side of thinking nature, the consequence of it, at least our attempt to do so. Our survival is based on our deliberation, our caution, our natural deconstructive sense toward this silence that is already part of the song, sung, singing of this century without end. Good books will let us inhabit this space and recognize a form of life. Serres’ text moves toward dwelling, as noted, in masterful and accessible ways. The pitched battles are the falling replays of anemic and dead politics. As soon as we realize there is humanity, we may be able to enjoy the end of it, our inhuman capability of listening to silence. NOTES 1. See Michel Serres. The Parasite . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2007. 2. Wallace Stevens, “Imagination as Value” [ca. 1945], in Collected Poetry and Prose . New York: The Library of America. 1997. 724-39. 3. Jean-François Lyotard. The Inhuman: Reflections on Time . Trans. Geoffrey Bennington & Rachel Bowlby. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1992. 4. See the introduction: Quentin Melliassoux. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency . Trans. Ray Brassier. New York: Continuum. 2008. EDITOR'S NOTE: This review was updated on August 8, 2012. Substantial edits include block quotes from the book under review as well as the inclusion of comments from the author. (shrink)

An examination of the ways human movement can be represented as a formal language and how this language can be mediated technologically. In Motion and Representation, Nicolás Salazar Sutil considers the representation of human motion through languages of movement and technological mediation. He argues that technology transforms the representation of movement and that representation in turn transforms the way we move and what we understand to be movement. Humans communicate through movement, physically and mentally. To record and capture integrated movement (...) (both bodily and mental), by means of formal language and technological media, produces a material record and cultural expression of our evolving kinetic minds and identities. Salazar Sutil considers three forms of movement inscription: a written record (notation), a visual record (animation), and a computational record (motion capture). He focuses on what he calls kinetic formalism—formalized movement in such pursuits as dance, sports, live animation, and kinetic art, as well as abstract definitions of movement in mathematics and computer science. He explores the representation of kinetic space and spatiotemporality; the representation of mental plans of movement; movement notation, including stave notation (Labanotation) and such contemporary forms of notation as Choreographic Language Agent; and the impact of digital technology on contemporary representations of movement—in particular motion capture technology and Internet transfer protocols. Motion and Representation offers a unique cultural theory of movement and of the ever-changing ways of representing movement. (shrink)

Word usage and behavior show that most people think of music as a distinct category of valuable experience, yet music lovers are known to have widely different ideas of what music offers. Some love its power to express or arouse emotions; some love the immediate sensuous-kinetic pleasure of tone and beat; some find a compelling sense of individual or communal identity in it; some are caught by the puzzle-solving interest of its compositional designs. Most will agree, nonetheless, that music (...) is wonderful in a musical way—an expresser of emotions not interchangeable with other expressive means, a source of pleasure not interchangeable with other sources, and so on—which seems to indicate that an essential musicality.. (shrink)

The present study aims to explore the status of filled pauses as pragmatic markers by taking into account their accompanying visual and gestural behavior. This aspect has not yet been widely explored, and the current study breaks new ground by demonstrating that the analysis of gaze and gesture can shed substantial light on the pragmatic functions of filled pauses and other pausing phenomena. Filled pauses (FPs) serve several pragmatic functions in speech, mainly planning but also turn-holding and emphasis, and their (...) use is also highly determined by register and setting. This research explores the different pragmatic functions of FPs by analyzing their distribution in two different communication settings (conversation vs presentation setting), combining a quantitative and a qualitative methodology, following Kosmala & Crible’s (2021) study on the same data. Particular attention was paid to the co-occurring gestural activity of uh/ums and gaze behavior. Analyses show that the pragmatic functions of FPs are also embodied in kinetic activities which differ according to the setting: more pragmatic and referential ones were found during FPs in conversation than in the presentation setting, as well as more eye-contact, which reflects their potential communicative role during interactional sequences. (shrink)

In this paper, we view creativity through the lens of innovation, a concept familiar to archaeologists across a range of contexts and theoretical perspectives. Most attempts to understand ancient innovation thus far, we argue, have been limited by their lack of capacity to cope with the multiple scales of innovation: Those that track widespread changes, like the beginnings of metallurgy, fail to account for the changes experiences by individual craftspeople; those that do justice to the details of the micro-scale, with (...) ‘thick’ description, cannot well explain the regional adoption of new practices. Here we develop an intermediary position, at the meso-scale, which we hope can serve to integrate these different scales. It is based on the notions that all innovation entails learning and that learning is very often supported at this meso-scale, through ‘communities of practice’. Drawing on the ethno-archaeological literature in particular, we emphasise how learning is a process of embodied cognition. Our archaeological case study is then drawn from the Bronze Age east Mediterranean, where a striking innovation in pottery making — the use of rotative kinetic energy via the potter’s wheel — sees a very uneven uptake from region to region over the course of many centuries. We propose certain differences in community organization from one region to another that might account for such variation in the adoption of an innovation, with the island of Crete in particular seeing a much more stable trajectory of adoption than many of its neighbouring areas. (shrink)

Although Toffler has not written an in-depth philosophical analysis of social problems, he certainly has written a highly readable popular diagnosis of the phenomenon of cultural change which social philosophers should be considering, and has given a synoptic view of contemporary culture similar to Pitirim Sorokin's popular Crisis of Our Age in the forties. Toffler's thesis is "that there are discoverable limits to the amount of change that the human organism can absorb, and that by endlessly accelerating change without first (...) determining these limits, we may submit masses of men to demands they simply cannot tolerate." Future shock is, therefore, both the physical and psychological impairment caused by reluctance and inability to absorb the rapid changes that an age of discontinuity produces. Psychic distress is identified in Leon Festinger's arresting phrase, "cognitive dissonance," the rejection or denial of information that challenges preconceptions. Physical distress is analyzed by such interesting research tools as the Rahe Life-Change Units Scale which attempts to correlate change factors with physical health. The philosophic base of modern life is seen in a Heraclitean or Bergsonian flux which ontologizes change itself and sees social and political conflict inevitably provoked by rapid change confronting an older society whose substantialist structures reflect more the stable and enduring values of an older culture. It is from the vantage point of change theory that Toffler explains the contemporary turmoil in domestic, social, political, and religious realms; and although he does not employ the more formal idiom of a Vico or Spengler in the discussion of Zeitgeist, he recognizes thought and life style as even more significant than ever in a culture in which communication is so widespread and immediate. He uses the imagery of eight hundred 62-year lifetimes to illustrate man's history of the last 50,000 years, noting the comparative stability of the previous segments and the bewildering rapidity of change cycle of idea, application, and diffusion in the last sixty-year period. He analyzes progressively the accelerative thrust that creates conflict between cultures and generations; describes the typical attitudes of citizens in an Age of Transience towards time, things, places, people, organization, and ideas; and sees "modular" man as a being for whom permanence of marriage, career, educational values, and convictions yields to "temporariness." Organizations in such a climate are characterized by lateral rather than hierarchical power relationships in which "super-industrial man," committed more to his craft than to his company, assumes more decision-making responsibility in an "adhocracy" of transient values and relationships. Toffler interestingly sees bureaucracy on the decline, technology as contributing to plurality of choice rather than to standardization, and to a kinetic imagery of impermanence in aesthetics. For the most part, Toffler, the diagnostician, resists the temptation to be the pleader. His happily infrequent divagations produce less than satisfactory critiques of family life, education, and genetic engineering. It is inevitable that this book will be criticized by specialists as bewilderingly diffuse, and verging at times on science fiction; it is possible too that the strategy of "social futurism" suggested by the author will elicit less than undiluted enthusiasm, and that inexact references to Toynbee and Maritain may be questioned. But the essential purpose of this volume to give a unified vision of contemporary culture in terms of the adaptive reaction to change--all this has been admirably realized. And one feels that the author indeed possesses the vision and research tools for particularized study in the areas treated here quite generally.--R. P. M. (shrink)

Kinetic models using enzyme kinetics are developed for the three ways that Louie proved that Rosen’s minimal (M-R)-System can be closed to efficient cause; i.e., how the “replication” component can itself be entailed from within the system. The kinetic models are developed using the techniques of network thermodynamics. As a demonstration, each model is simulated using a SPICE circuit simulator using arbitrarily chosen rate constants. The models are built from SPICE sub-circuits representing the key terms in the chemical (...) rate equations. The models include the addition of an ad hoc semi-permeable membrane so the system can achieve steady state fluxes and also to illustrate the need for all the efficient cause agents to be continually replaced. Comments are made about exactly what is being simulated. (shrink)

Sport aesthetics is an important but often marginalized field in the philosophy of sport. Kinetic Beauty offers a comprehensive, principled, pluralist introduction to the philosophical aesthetics of sport. The book tackles a wide variety of issues in the philosophical aesthetics of sport, proposing a five-level analysis that coordinates extant scholarship on the same conceptual map, reveals gaps in the literature, and motivates a fresh perspective on stubborn debates and novel topics in the field. This is an excellent resource for (...) professors and students in the philosophy of sport, sport aesthetics, general aesthetics, and the philosophy of art. It is also a fascinating read for those working in kinesiology, sport studies, philosophy, art, and aesthetics. (shrink)

We show that in a dilute gas the wave function’s spreading is limited by scattering off other particles. This shows that quantum mechanics can be consistent with the kinetic theory of gases.

In this paper I shall offer new definitions for what seem to be the most dominant terms in Epicurus’ theory of pleasures - “kinetic” and “katastematic”. While most of the scholarly literature treats these terms as entirely concerned with states of motion and states of stability, I shall argue that the distinction concerns whether pain is or is not removed by this or that pleasure. As the removal of pain is a necessary condition for the Epicurean goal of ataraxia (...) and aponia, “katastematic” pleasure, having to do with the removal of pain, is the necessary pleasure pertaining both to the process of removing pain and to its result, namely the absence of pain, while “kinetic” pleasure is an unnecessary pleasure having nothing to do with the removal of pain, e.g. it starts after pain has been removed. If my analysis and interpretation prove correct, the two conventional classifications - “kinetic-katastematic” and “necessary-unnecessary” - turn out to be referring to the same phenomenon and are aspects of one classification. Moreover, this new interpretation resolves some of the main problems arising from our testimonia concerning “kinetic” and “katastematic” pleasures. (shrink)

TThis paper aims to evidence the inherently metonymic nature of co-speech gestures. Arguing that motivation in gesture involves iconicity (similarity), indexicality (contiguity), and habit (conventionality) to varying degrees, it demonstrates how a set of metonymic principles may lend a certain systematicity to experientially grounded processes of gestural abstraction and enaction. Introducing visuo-kinetic signs as an umbrella term for co-speech gestures and signed languages, the paper shows how a frame-based approach to gesture may integrate different cognitive/functional linguistic and semiotic accounts (...) of metonymy (e.g., experiential domains, frame metonymy, contiguity, and pragmatic inferencing). The guiding assumption is that gestures metonymically profile deeply embodied, routinized aspects of familiar scenes, that is, the motivating context of frames. The discussion shows how gestures may evoke frame structures exhibiting varying degrees of groundedness, complexity, and schematicity: basic physical action and object frames; more complex frames; and highly abstract, complex frame structures. It thereby provides gestural evidence for the idea that metonymy is more basic and more directly experientially grounded than metaphor and thus often feeds into correlated metaphoric processes. Furthermore, the paper offers some initial insights into how metonymy also seems to induce the emergence of schematic patterns in gesture which may result from action-based and discourse-driven processes of habituation and conventionalization. It exemplifies how these forces may engender grammaticalization of a basic physical action into a gestural marker that shows strong metonymic form reduction, decreased transitivity, and interacting pragmatic functions. Finally, addressing basic metonymic operations in signed lexemes elucidates certain similarities regarding sign constitution in gesture and sign. English and German multimodal discourse data as well as German Sign Language (DGS) are drawn upon to illustrate the theoretical points of the paper. Overall, this paper presents a unified account of metonymy’s role in underpinning forms, functions, and patterns in visuo-kinetic signs. (shrink)

This paper aims to examine the awesome, almost spiritual feeling I experience as an?extreme spectator? while watching Kelly Slater ride the monstrous waves of Pipeline. Drawing on the aesthetics of Kant and Schopenhauer, I examine the experience of the sublime and how it, in conjunction with the perceived kinetic melody of Slater's movements and his karmic connection to the environment in which he thrives, gives rise to the deeply felt awe of the extreme spectator. My intention is to use (...) Slater's case as a paradigm that can be applied to many other athletic performances which share the characteristics discussed in the paper. (shrink)

The filamentous and branched thallus of Antithamnion plumula is constitued of two different kinds of branches with apical growth: the cladomial axes with a continuous or indefinite growth, and the pleuridia with a limited growth. The size of the pleuridia depends on their position with respect to the lateral cladomial axes.The growth kinetics of 35 pleuridia were analysed using Nelder's generalized logistics. Each sigmoidal curve, which was divided into four growth stages from the instantaneous acceleration variations, was thus characterized by (...) ten kinetic parameters: lengths at the time of the changes in growth stage, durations of the growth stages and maximum growth rate. (shrink)