Teachers, as role models, are crucial in promoting inclusion in society through their actions. Being perceived as fair by their students is linked to students’ feelings of belonging in school. In addition, their decisions of resource allocations also affect students’ academic success. Both aspects underpin the importance of teachers’ views on justice. This article aims to investigate what teachers consider to be just and how teacher characteristics and situational factors affect justice ratings of hypothetical student-teacher-interactions. In an experimental design, we (...) randomly varied the description of the interacting student in text vignettes regarding his/her special educational need. We also collected data on teachers’ attitudes toward inclusion and experiences with persons with disabilities. A sample of in-service teachers in Germany rated randomized versions of two text vignettes. To also consider the effect of professional status, a sample of pre-service teachers did the same. Linear mixed effect models point to a negative effect of the SEN on justice ratings, meaning situations in which the interacting student is described with a SEN were rated less just compared to the control condition. As the interacting student in the situations was treated worse than the rest, this was indicative for the application of the need principle. Teachers with more positive attitudes toward inclusion rated the vignettes as significantly less just. Professional status also had a negative effect on justice ratings, with in-service teachers rating the interactions significantly lower than the pre-service teachers. Our results suggest that the teachers applied the principle of need in their ratings. Implications for inclusive teaching practices and future research are discussed further. (shrink)

“ S pace, K no w l edge and P o w e r ” , en tr ev i s t a r ea l i z a d a en 1982 y pub li cada en P aul R ab i no w , The Foucau l t R eade r , N ueva Y o r k, 1984. A quí se pub li ca de acue r do a l a ve r s i ón f r (...) ancesa, t r aduc i da por P ab l o Bli t s t e i n y Tadeo L im a. (shrink)

La question du phénomène précède de beaucoup la phénoménologie, elle s'ouvre avec la philosophie et l'accompagne tout au long de son histoire. Mais ce préalable incontournable - car être veut dire apparaître - est surdéterminé par une présupposition irréfléchie. De la Grèce à Heidegger, dans les problématiques classiques de la conscience et de la représentation, dans leurs critiques, dans la phénoménologie de l'intentionnalité et dans ses prolongements, "phénomène" désigne ce qui se montre à l'intérieur d'un horizon de visihilisation, l'Ek-stase d'un (...) Dehors. La mise en cause de ce monisme ontologique établit que l'Ekstase ne subsiste que sur le Fond de son anti-essence : immanence si radicale qu'elle ne se tient jamais à distance, incapable de se voix, âme sans Idée, vie dépourvue d'archétype mais liée à soi invinciblement, s'éprouvant dans le subir, le souffrir et le jouir de son propre pathos. Parce que, avant que ne se lève le monde, une Affectivité transcendantale accomplit en nous son Archi-Révélation en même temps qu'elle engendre notre ipséité, ce sont d'autres catégories, d'autres penseurs, une nouvelle phénoménologie qui sont requis si nous voulons parvenir, enfin, à l'intelligence de ce que nous sommes. (shrink)

In his book, Physical Relativity, Harvey Brown challenges the orthodox view that special relativity is preferable to those parts of Lorentz's classical ether theory it replaced because it revealed various phenomena that were given a dynamical explanation in Lorentz's theory to be purely kinematical. I want to defend this orthodoxy. The phenomena most commonly discussed in this context in the philosophical literature are length contraction and time dilation. I consider three other phenomena of this kind that played a role in (...) the early reception of special relativity in the physics literature: the Fresnel drag effect in the Fizeau experiment, the velocity dependence of electron mass in beta-ray deflection experiments by Kaufmann and others, and the delicately balanced torques on a moving charged capacitor in the Trouton-Noble experiment. I offer historical sketches of how Lorentz's dynamical explanations of these phenomena came to be replaced by their now standard kinematical explanations. I then take up the philosophical challenge posed by the work of Harvey Brown and Oliver Pooley and clarify how those kinematical explanations work. (shrink)

When he formulated the program of neurophenomenology, Francisco Varela suggested a balanced methodological dissolution of the hard problem of consciousness. I show that his dissolution is a paradigm which imposes itself onto seemingly opposite views, including materialist approaches. I also point out that Varela's revolutionary epistemological ideas are gaining wider acceptance as a side effect of a recent controversy between hermeneutists and eliminativists. Finally, I emphasize a structural parallel between the science of consciousness and the distinctive features of quantum mechanics. (...) This parallel, together with the former convergences, point towards the common origin of the main puzzles of both quantum mechanics and the philosophy of mind: neglect of the constitutive blindspot of objective knowledge. (shrink)

Annoncé à grand fracas, le décryptage do génome humain devait nous révéler le secret ultime de la vie et ouvrir la voie à de nouvelles thérapies miracles. Espoirs déçus : à l'ère de la post-génomique, les secrets du vivant sont maintenant recherchés dans les théories de la complexité, dans la convergence des efforts des biologistes, des physiciens et des mathématiciens. Comment comprendre la signification de cette succession rapide d'objectifs apparemment différents, de cette alternance d'espoirs et de désillusions? Dans ce livre (...) novateur, Michel Morange propose une clé pour rendre compte de ces difficultés, et de beaucoup d'autres analogues touchant toutes les branches de la biologie. Les annonces sensationnelles reflètent l'espoir toujours déçu qu'une explication unique pourrait suffire. Or les faits biologiques - comme ceux relevant de bien d'autres disciplines scientifiques -ne peuvent être expliqués par un principe d'intelligibilité unique. Exemples à l'appui et de façon très pédagogique, Michel Morange montre pourquoi des explications différentes doivent être articulées pour décrire le fonctionnement des macromolécules aussi bien que l'évolution humaine ou le développement des cancers. Admettre une idée aussi simple n'est pas évident, car tout scientifique a été formé à privilégier un principe d'intelligibilité particulier. L'articulation entre explications différentes est pourtant indispensable pour le progrès des connaissances ; elle est aussi une exigence éthique ; elle est requise pour que la science conserve sa place dans nos sociétés. (shrink)

Because of their range, brilliance, and singularity, the ideas of the philosopher-critic-historian Michel Foucault have gained extraordinary currency throughout the Western intellectual community. This book offers a selection of seven of Foucault's most important published essays, translated from the French, with an introductory essay and notes by Donald F. Bouchard. Also included are a summary of a course given by Foucault at College de France; the transcript of a conversation between Foucault and Gilles Deleuze; and an interview with Foucault (...) that appeared in the journal Actuel. Professor Bouchard has divided the book into three closely related sections. The four essays in Part One examine language as a "perilous limit" of what we know and what we are. The essays in the second part suggest the methodological guidelines to which Foucault subscribes, and they record, in the editor's words, "the penetration of the language of literature into the domain of discursive thought." The material in the last section is more obviously political than the essays. It treats language in use, language attempting to impart knowledge and power. Translated by the editor and Sherry Simon into fluent and lucid English, these essays will appeal primarily to students of literature, especially those interested in contemporary continental structuralist criticism. But because of the breadth of Foucault's interests, they should also prove valuable to anthropologists, linguists, sociologists, and psychologists. (shrink)

“Special relativity killed the classical dream of using the energy-momentumvelocity relations as a means of probing the dynamical origins of [the mass of the electron]. The relations are purely kinematical” (Pais, 1982, 159). This perceptive comment comes from a section on the pre-relativistic notion of electromagnetic mass in ‘Subtle is the Lord . . . ’, Abraham Pais’ highly acclaimed biography of Albert Einstein. ‘Kinematical’ in this context means ‘independent of the details of the dynamics’. In this paper we examine (...) the classical dream referred to by Pais from the vantage point of relativistic continuum mechanics. (shrink)

In this critical notice we argue against William Craig’s recent attempt to reconcile presentism (roughly, the view that only the present is real) with relativity theory. Craig’s defense of his position boils down to endorsing a ‘neo-Lorentzian interpretation’ of special relativity. We contend that his reconstruction of Lorentz’s theory and its historical development is fatally flawed and that his arguments for reviving this theory fail on many counts.

. This paper takes as its point of departure two striking incongruities between scientific practice and trends in modern history and philosophy of science. Many modern historians of science are so preoccupied with local scientific practices that they fail to recognize important non-local elements. Many modern philosophers of science make a sharp distinction between explanation and evidence, whereas in scientific practice explanatory power is routinely used as evidence for scientific claims. I draw attention to one specific way in.

Should governments accept the principle of devoting a proportion of their resources to funding basic research? From the standpoint of economics, science should be considered as a public good and for that reason it should be protected from market forces. This article tries to show that this result can only be maintained at the price of abandoning arguments traditionally deployed by economists themselves. It entails a complete reversal of our habitual ways of thinking about public goods. In order to bring (...) this reversal about, this article draws on the central results obtained by the anthropology and sociology of science and technology over the past several years. Science is a public good, not because of its intrinsic properties but because it is a source of diversity and flexibility. (shrink)

Si l’on connaît aujourd’hui le dialogue fructueux que Paul Ricœur a noué avec les penseurs structuralistes, on ignore largement son positionnement face à la mouvance poststructuraliste. Faut-il opposer la philosophie de Ricœur au poststructuralisme à la française ou au contraire doit-on montrer qu’elle en est une variante singulière? C’est la seconde option qui est ici défendue. Certes, le poststructuralisme ne doit pas être considéré comme une école de pensée mais comme une reconstruction qui relève de l’histoire de la philosophie. Dans (...) la mesure où les horizons de dépassement du structuralisme ont été posés de manière chaque fois particulière, il est préférable de parler de poststructuralismes au pluriel. C’est la raison pour laquelle J. Michel propose des confrontations dyadiques entre Ricœur et certains de ses contemporains que l’on regroupe habituellement dans cette mouvance. (shrink)

On a pu croire ou espérer, un temps, que les monstruosités de la Seconde Guerre mondiale étaient derrière nous. Définitivement. Or partout, à nouveau, on massacre, on torture, on extermine. Comment comprendre cette facilité des hommes entrer dans le mal? La réponse à cette question devient chaque jour plus urgente. Michel Terestchenko rouvre ici le débat. D'abord, en complétant la démonstration de Hannah Arendt : de même que ce ne sont pas seulement des monstres qui basculent dans l'horreur mais (...) des hommes ordinaires, trop ordinaires, de même, montre-t-il, il n'est pas besoin d'être un saint pour accomplir le juste et secourir des victimes au risque de sa vie. Héros ou salaud? C'est toujours une petite décision initiale, à peine perceptible, qui décide du côté dans lequel, une fois engagé, on se retrouvera in fine. Mais qu'est-ce qui explique cette décision? C'est là où l'enquête de M. Terestchenko prend toute son ampleur. En procédant à une reconstitution critique du débat central de la philosophie morale depuis le XVIIe siècle, aujourd'hui relayé par la majorité des sociologues et des économistes, elle montre combien est stérile l'opposition entre tenants de la thèse de l'égoïsme psychologique et défenseurs de l'hypothèse d'un altruisme sacrificiel. Ce n'est pas par " intérêt " qu'on tue ou qu'on torture. Ni par pur altruisme qu'on se refuse à l'abjection. Les travaux qui analysent les phénomènes de soumission à l'autorité, de conformisme de groupe ou de passivité face à des situations de détresse, invitent à comprendre tout autrement les conduites de destructivité. Tirant les conclusions philosophiques de recherches récentes entreprises en psychologie sociale et s'appuyant sur certains exemples historiques particulièrement éclairants - tel le cas de Franz Stangl, le commandant de Treblinka, ou, à l'opposé, les actions héroïques du pasteur André Trocmé et de sa femme Magda au Chambon-sur-Lignon -, l'auteur propose de penser les conduites humaines face au mal selon un nouveau paradigme celui de l'absence ou de la présence à soi. (shrink)

In October 1924, The Physical Review, a relatively minor journal at the time, published a remarkable two-part paper by John H. Van Vleck, working in virtual isolation at the University of Minnesota. Using Bohr’s correspondence principle and Einstein’s quantum theory of radiation along with advanced techniques from classical mechanics, Van Vleck showed that quantum formulae for emission, absorption, and dispersion of radiation merge with their classical counterparts in the limit of high quantum numbers. For modern readers Van Vleck’s paper is (...) much easier to follow than the famous paper by Kramers and Heisenberg on dispersion theory, which covers similar terrain and is widely credited to have led directly to Heisenberg’s Umdeutung paper. This makes Van Vleck’s paper extremely valuable for the reconstruction of the genesis of matrix mechanics. It also makes it tempting to ask why Van Vleck did not take the next step and develop matrix mechanics himself. (shrink)

This article explains how strong sustainability ethics has emerged and developed as a new field over the last two decades as a critical response to influential conceptions of weak sustainability. It investigates three competing, normative approaches to strong sustainability: the communitarian approach, the Rawlsian approach, and the capabilities approach. Although these approaches converge around the idea that there are critical, non-substitutable natural resources and services, they diverge on how to reconcile human development and environmental protection. The aim of the paper (...) is to provide a critical overview of these three perspectives, but also and mostly to show that when we put them into dialogue with each other, we can clarify the demands of sustainability. The paper concludes that the capabilities approach is the most suitable way to think about sustainability, but only if it goes beyond its dominantly anthropocentric view. (shrink)

This paper deals with the question whether Seneca’s dramas contain a concept of the tragic. Examining this question this contribution first discusses the studies that have supported the thesis that Seneca’s dramas are anti-tragic. Then it tries by means of the method of the interpretatio stoica to advance a hypothesis how a concept of tragic could be grasped at the background of Seneca’s philosophical thinking. Finally the paper examines this hypothesis at the example of the „Troades“.

In The Contemplation of the World, eminent French theorist Michel Maffesoli pursues and extends his project of decoding contemporary societies.

It is frequently said that biology is emerging from a long phase of reductionism. It would be certainly more correct to say that biologists are abandoning a certain form of reductionism. We describe this past form, and the experiments which challenged the previous vision. To face the difficulties which were met, biologists use a series of concepts and metaphors - pleiotropy, tinkering, epigenetics - the ambiguity of which masks the difficulties, instead of solving them. In a similar way, the word (...) “post-genomics” has different meanings, depending upon who uses it. Which of these meanings will become dominant in the future is an open question. (shrink)

This paper draws on the emerging field of innovation ethics to complement the more established field of responsible innovation by focusing on key ethical issues raised by technological innovations. One key limitation of influential frameworks of RI is that they tend to neglect some key ethical issues raised by innovation, as well as major normative dimensions of the notion of responsibility. We explain how IE could enrich RI by stressing the more important role that ethical analysis should play in RI. (...) We focus on two transversal issues of IE: the issue of redrawing conceptual boundaries, especially the topic of the artificialization of the world, and the issue of responsibility, especially the notion of total responsibility. We address these two issues from the thematic perspective of IE, thereby generating lessons learnt for RI. These two examples are taken as illustrations and blueprint of the dialogue that should take place between the two fields. (shrink)

Jan G. Michel argues that we need a philosophy of scientific discovery. Before turning to the question of what such a philosophy might look like, he addresses two questions: Don’t we have a philosophy of scientific discovery yet? And do we need one at all? To answer the first question, he takes a closer look at history and finds that we have not had a systematic philosophy of scientific discovery worthy of the name for over 150 years. To answer (...) the second question, Michel puts forward three arguments that show the importance of a philosophy of scientific discovery. Briefly, he arrives at the following answers: No, we don’t yet have a philosophy of scientific discovery, and yes, we definitely need one. To remedy this shortcoming, Michel analyzes the concept of discovery, leading him to the insight that scientific discoveries have an underlying structure with certain structural features. Some of these features may be important but not indispensable to scientific discovery processes; these include eureka moments, serendipities, joint discoveries, special science funding, and others. In addition, Michel identifies three indispensable structural features which he examines in detail and which he places in a picture with a certain dynamics according to which the process of making scientific discoveries can be seen as a path, leading us from finding and acceptance to knowledge. (shrink)

This is the second installment of a two-part paper on developments in quantum dispersion theory leading up to Heisenberg’s Umdeutung paper. In telling this story, we have taken a 1924 paper by John H. Van Vleck in The Physical Review as our main guide. In this second part we present the detailed derivations on which our narrative in the first part rests. The central result that we derive is the Kramers dispersion formula, which played a key role in the thinking (...) that led to Heisenberg’s Umdeutung paper. We derive classical formulae for the dispersion, emission, and absorption of radiation and use Bohr’s correspondence principle to construct their quantum counterparts both for the special case of a charged harmonic oscillator (Sect. 5) and for arbitrary non-degenerate multiply-periodic systems (Sect. 6). We then rederive these results in modern quantum mechanics (Sect. 7). (shrink)

Between 1975 and 1985 a series of experiments demonstrated that cancer, whatever its causative agent, is due to the activation, by modification or overexpression, of a family of genes highly conserved during evolution, called the cellular oncogenes. These genes participate in the control of cell division in every living cell. Their products belong to the regulatory network relaying external signals from the membranes towards the nucleus and allowing cells to adapt their division rate to the demand of the organism. These (...) discoveries constitute what may be called the 'oncogene paradigm'. Although the existence of cellular oncogenes, assumed in early models of oncogenesis, was demonstrated as early as 1976, we will show in this article that this discovery was not sufficient for the development of the new paradigm. We will describe its slow and complex formation between 1980 and 1985 followed by its rapid acceptance by the scientific community. (shrink)

This is the chapter on general relativity for the Cambridge Companion to Einstein which I am co-editing with Christoph Lehner.

There are two versions of the putative connection between consciousness and the measurement problem of quantum mechanics : consciousness as the cause of state vector reduction, and state vector reduction as the physical basis of consciousness. In this article, these controversial ideas are neither accepted uncritically, nor rejected from the outset in the name of some prejudice about objective knowledge. Instead, their origin is sought in our most cherished (but disputable) beliefs about the place of mind and consciousness in the (...) world. It is first pointed out that these common beliefs about mind and consciousness arise from reification of situated first-person experience. Then, situatedness is shown to be a constitutive part of any exhaustive treatment of quantum measurements. It turns out that the alleged connection between consciousness and the measurement problem is a symptom of (i) the ineliminability of our being situated from the end-product of science, and (ii) our difficulty to express correctly this being situated. (shrink)

Johnny Hallyday was France's first rock and roll star and was honored as a national hero at his funeral, which was attended by nearly a million people. The funeral of Pierre Boulez, on the other hand received little fanfare. This book attempts to resolve this discrepancy.

La figure de l’il y a dans Autrement qu’être témoigne d’une fragilité intrinsèque de la responsabilité chez Lévinas. La réponse du sujet convoqué à cette responsabilité ne peut s’autoriser d’aucune certitude, pas même celle d’être au service du Bien ou d’autrui, plutôt que d’être soumise au non-sens de l’il y a. Selon la lecture proposée ici, une incertitude aussi radicale est la condition même de toute action pratique et politique, qui ne condamne pas celle-ci à l’impuissance, mais l’ouvre au contraire (...) sur un renouvellement et une fécondité qui en font toute l’endurante exigence.In Otherwise than Being, Levinas’ notion of the there is points towards an inherent fragility of all human responsibility. The answer of the responsible subjectivity can’t rely on any certainty, not even that of being well inspired by the Good or by the other, instead of being submitted to the nonsense of the there is. Such a radical uncertainty is to me the condition of all practical and political action. This condition doesn’t condemn us to be powerless, but leads on the contrary to a constant renewal and fecundity of the action, which makes its requiring endurance. (shrink)

Some anthropologists advocate going back to Boas’s anthropology to retrieve his sense of the individual and agency, among other things. Such a "psycho-logical Boas" could only exist in his holistic works. Elsewhere, I argued in a very synthetic way that Boas’s ethnography was not holistic. Here, I move a step further; perusing the very texts that famous commentators have singled out to prove Boas’s holism, I discover no holism; I find history as mere movement in space, and no individual agents; (...) hence, no real psychology or agency. I only discern cultural fragments randomly assembling to form regional cultures. Key Words: neo-Boasian anthropology • Boas • holism • history of anthropology. (shrink)

It is presumed that the evolution of morphological diversity in animals and plants is driven by changes in the developmental processes that govern morphology, hence basically by changes in the function and/or expression of a defined set of genes that control these processes. A large body of evidence has suggested that changes in developmental gene regulation are the predominant mechanisms that sustain morphological evolution, being much more important than the evolution of the primary sequences and functions of proteins. Recent reports1, (...) 2 challenge this idea by highlighting functional evolution of Hox proteins during the evolutionary history of arthropods. BioEssays 24:775–779, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)