Before the trains of thought have been firmly laid down, we ask in this article about the very nature and histories of the speculative of the speculative-materialist turn. We do this from the intertwined interfaces of curious feminist materialisms, foregrounding sexual difference, post-positivist critique and posthumanist performativity such as is being done in various strands of feminist theory today. The question of speculation plays a constitutive role in feminist critique and in several new or neo-materialist traditions. In fact, many interesting (...) materialisms—Marxism, French feminism—can be named ‘speculative’. We argue that in spite of what the recent ‘speculative turn’ professes, speculative materialisms have a complex genealogy. Speculation functions transversally in a materialist genealogy -connecting the archive of feminist approaches in particular. In order to be able to imagine a different world we need to think through a stifled and sexually differentiated present from which a qualitative shift and political breakthrough can be formulated, and hopefully achieved. However, in what is currently called ‘speculative realism’ or ‘object-oriented ontologies’ neither speculation nor the speculative are reflected upon as a heritage from and alliance with feminist and politically materialist positions. What are the onto-epistemological stakes of this body of work? And what ethico-political horizons are drawn here? We stand speculative before such turn. (shrink)

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) may be situated within a cultural landscape produced, in part, by demographics and the marketing strategies of an aggressive biopharmaceutical industry. The simultaneously corporeal and visual domain of advertisements for anti-AD drugs generates dynamic images of gender and embodiment, and it also lends itself to feminist interventions engaging with the images and ideas circulating around aging, medicine and the body. In this article, we investigate advertisements targeting medical practitioners treating patients with AD. Working within a methodological framework (...) we identify as ‘feminist visual studies of technoscience’, we want to propel the discussion in the direction of a broader corpus of medical media. Through this limited exercise, we hope to make a scholarly contribution to the feminist community by critiquing some of the images emerging within popular/scientific media with regard to Alzheimer’s, a disease collectively imagined within an aging Western population. (shrink)

A consensus is building that our planet has entered the so-called age of the Anthropocene—a post-Holocene epoch defined by the significant impact of humans on geological, biotic and climatic planetary processes. On the one hand, there is good reason to exercise caution in relation to this concept of the “Age of Man.” At a time when immoderate anthropogenic impact poses a serious threat to ecological integrity and balance, calling an epoch after ourselves does not necessarily demonstrate the humility we may (...) need to espouse. Moreover, discourses of the Anthropocene risk overwriting important differences among human.. (shrink)

We take kelp as material entities immersed in a multitude of relations with other creatures (for whom kelp serves as both nourishment and shelter) and inorganic elements of the milieu it resides in, on the one hand, and as a figuration: a material-semiotic “map of contestable worlds” that encompasses entangled threads of “knowledge, practice and power” (Haraway 1997, 11) in its local and global sense, on the other. While drawing on our field notes from the congress and feminist posthumanities and (...) environmental humanities literatures (e.g. Alaimo 2016; Åsberg & Braidotti 2018; Sandilands & Erickson 2010; Iovino & Opperman 2014) – with a special focus on the so-called blue humanities/oceanic humanities (e.g. DeLoughrey 2019) – that unpack human/nonhuman relations in the context of the current environmental crisis and the accompanying “slow violence” (Nixon 2011), we mobilise a reflection on and make a proposal for “thinking with kelp” as a multi-faceted methodology of transversal and transdisciplinary knowledge production and practices: situated (Haraway 1988), enfleshed, transcorporeal (Alaimo 2010), collaborative, and committed to an ethics of multispecies response-ability (Haraway 2008). (shrink)

This is an interview with Professor Lynda Birke, one of the key figures of feminist science studies. She is a pioneer of feminist biology and of materialist feminist thought, as well as of the new and emerging field of hum-animal studies. This interview was conducted over email in two time periods, in the spring of 2008 and 2010. The format allowed for comments on previous writings and an engagement in an open-ended dialogue. Professor Birke talks about her key arguments and (...) outlooks on a changing field of research. The work of this English biologist is typical of a long and continuous feminist engagement with biology and ontological matters that reaches well beyond the more recently articulated ‘material turn’ of feminist theory. It touches upon feminist issues beyond the usual comfort zones of gender constructionism and human-centred research. Perhaps less recognized than for instance the names of Donna Haraway or Karen Barad, Lynda Birke’s oeuvre is part of the same long-standing and twofold critique from feminist scholars qua trained natural scientists. On the one hand, theirs is a powerful critique of biological determinism; on the other, an acutely observed contemporary critique of how merely cultural or socially reductionist approaches to the effervescently lively and biological might leave the corporeal, environmental or non-human animal critically undertheorized within feminist scholarship. In highlighting the work and arguments of Lynda Birke, it is hoped here to provide an accessible introduction to the critical questions and challenges that circumvent contemporary discussions within feminist technoscience as theory and political practice. (shrink)

As the planet’s largest ecosystem, oceans stabilise climate, produce oxygen, store CO2 and host unfathomable biodiversity at a deep time-scale. In recent decades, scientific assessments have indicated that the oceans are seriously degraded to the detriment of most near-future societies. Human-induced impacts range from climate change, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, eutrophication and marine pollution to local degradation of marine and coastal environments. Such environmental violence takes form of both ‘spectacular’ events, like oil spills and ‘slow violence’, occurring gradually and (...) out of sight. The purpose of this paper is to show four cases of coastal and marine forms of slow violence and to provide counter-accounts of how to reinvent our consumer imaginary at such locations, as well as to develop what is here referred to as ‘low-trophic theory,’ a situated ethical stance that attends to entanglements of consumption, food, violence, environmental adaptability and more-than-human care from the co-existential perspective of multispecies ethics. We combine field-philosophical case studies with insights from marine science, environmental art and cultural practices in the Baltic and North Sea region and feminist posthumanities. The paper shows that the oceanic imaginary is not a unified place, but rather, a set of forces, which requires renewed ethical approaches, conceptual inventiveness and practical creativity. Based on the case studies and examples presented, the authors conclude that the consideration of more-than-human ethical perspectives, provided by environmental arts and humanities is crucial for both research on nature and space, and for the flourishing of local multispecies communities. This paper thus inaugurates thinking and practice along the proposed here ethical stance of low-trophic theory, developed it along the methodological lines of feminist environmental posthumanities. (shrink)

Environmental violence takes form of both ‘spectacular’ events, like ecological disasters usually recognised by the general public, and ‘slow violence’, a type of violence that occurs gradually, out of sight and on a long-term scale. Planetary seas and oceans, loaded with cultural meanings of that which ‘hides’ and ‘allows to forget’, are the spaces where such attritional violence unfolds unseen and ‘out of mind’. Simultaneously, conventional concepts of nature and culture, as dichotomous entities, become obsolete. We all inhabit and embody (...) the world differently, as variously situated people, divided by national, sexual, bodily and economic status, and as very variously situated nonhumans in an increasingly anthropogenic world. This chapter focuses on subtle ‘slow violence’ unfolding through the instances of submerged chemical weapons, so-called dead zones, invasive species and high- and low-trophic mariculture in the Baltic and North Sea regions. It zooms in on the select cases of such ‘environed bodies’, their stories of excruciating slow violence and yet also on unexpected encounters with care and hospitality. The aim is to unfold a low-trophic theory for the naturecultural research on violence and care within environmental humanities, and to engage a coexistential ethics of environmental adaptability informed by feminist posthumanities. (shrink)

In this commentary, the microscopic animals of the genus Rotifera, or “rotifers,” emerge as a theory-provoking nonhuman animal. Rotifers embody otherness in ways that may intrigue scholars within both Human-Animal Studies and feminist science studies. In their encounter with rotifers, such fields of research might also engage each other in new, unexpected, and fruitful ways, as is here argued.

In this chapter we argue for biophilosophy as a queerfeminist and posthumanities methodology that attends to the question of life by focusing on multiple differences and transformations, materiality and processuality, as well as relations, intra-actions, and disconnections. By combining both the ontological and ethical concerns that go beyond what is conventionally seen as “life”, biophilosophy offers a critical and innovative approach to the issues of death, extinction, (un) liveability, terminality, and toxicity, among others, which all form the backbone of the (...) environmental crises and changing conditions of life on Earth, often framed as the Anthropocene. In what follows, we first discuss select theorisations and implications of the “life/death” coupling as an ethico-political question; subsequently we elaborate the concept of biophilosophy as a methodology; and finally, we propose two examples where we test biophilosophy as a framework that allows us: (1) to engage with the enmeshment of life and death through the concept of the non/living, and (2) to explore the concept of toxic embodiment as an onto-ethical condition we all (human and non-human) are differentially immersed in. (shrink)

Elämä tavataan nähdä kuoleman vastakohtana. Tällaisen kahtiajaon ulkopuolelle mahtuu kuitenkin paljon ontologisia ja eettisiä kysymyksiä, joita on lähdettävä purkamaan toisesta suunnasta. Marietta Radomska ja Cecilia Åsberg ehdottavat suunnaksi biofilosofiaa, jossa elämistä ja kuolemista tarkastellaan yhteen kietoutuneina ja yhdessä muuttuvina.

Alzheimer’s disease is emerging into public view in unprecedented ways. Foremost among these is the embodied form of elderly men and women appearing in commercial imagery for patient advocacy groups or pharmaceutical advertisements, but scientific imagery also seeps into the visual media cultures that surround us. The recent reconfiguration of Alzheimer’s disease is due to expanding ageing populations, an aggressive biopharmaceutical industry becoming a fast-growing material-semiotic realm that is providing powerful images of both gendered and racialized embodiment. Such a visual, (...) and yet highly material, realm is in need of feminist interventions, engaging with the images and ideas that circulate around ageing, medicine, human and non-human embodiment. From a non-representationalist and posthumanist perspective identified as feminist visual studies of technoscience, the authors seek to further the discussion in the direction of understanding the ‘scattered ontologies’ of Alzheimer’s — in laboratory practice, the realm of medical media and in commercial appeals to coherent individuality and human cognition — as gendered domains of figural reality and performative matter. (shrink)

Using material from the Pfizer sponsored website providing health information on erectile dysfunction to potential Swedish Viagra customers (www.potenslinjen.se), this article explores the public image of masculinity in relation to sexual health and the cultural techniques for creating pharmaceutical appeal. We zoom in on the targeted ideal users of Viagra, and the nationalized, racialized and sexualized identities they are assigned. As part of Pfizer’s marketing strategy of adjustments to fit the local consumer base, the ways in which Viagra is promoted (...) for the Swedish setting is telling of what concepts of masculinity are so stable and unassailable that they can withstand the association with a drug that is, in essence, an acknowledgement of ‘failed’ masculinity and ‘dysfunctional’ sexuality. With comparative national examples, this study presents an interdisciplinary take on the ‘glocalized’ cultural imaginary of Viagra, and the masculine subject positions it engenders. (shrink)

BackgroundPrevious studies have indicated that failure to report ethical approval is common in health science articles. In social sciences, the occurrence is unknown. The Swedish Ethics Review Act requests that sensitive personal data, in accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), should undergo independent ethical review, irrespective of academic discipline. We have explored the adherence to this regulation. MethodsUsing the Web of Science databases, we reviewed 600 consecutive articles from three domains (health sciences with and without somatic focus (...) and social sciences) based on identifiable personal data published in 2020. ResultsInformation on ethical review was lacking in 12 of 200 health science articles with somatic focus (6%), 21 of 200 health science articles with non-somatic focus (11%), and in 54 of 200 social science articles (27%; p < 0.001 vs. both groups of health science articles). Failure to report on ethical approval was more common in (a) observational than in interventional studies (p < 0.01), (b) articles with only 1–2 authors (p < 0.001) and (c) health science articles from universities without a medical school (p < 0.001). There was no significant association between journal impact factor and failure to report ethical approval.ConclusionsWe conclude that reporting of research ethics approval is reasonably good, but not strict, in health science articles. Failure to report ethical approval is about three times more frequent in social sciences compared to health sciences. Improved adherence seems needed particularly in observational studies, in articles with few authors and in social science research. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that gender is a primary cultural frame for coordinating behavior and organizing social relations. I describe the implications for understanding how gender shapes social behavior and organizational structures. By my analysis, gender typically acts as a background identity that biases, in gendered directions, the performance of behaviors undertaken in the name of organizational roles and identities. I develop an account of how the background effects of the gender frame on behavior vary by the context that (...) different organizational and institutional structures set but can also infuse gendered meanings into organizational practices. Next, I apply this account to two empirical illustrations to demonstrate that we cannot understand the shape that the structure of gender inequality and gender difference takes in particular institutional or societal contexts without taking into account the background effects of the gender frame on behavior in these contexts. (shrink)

The procedures for structuring clinical ethics case reflections in a childhood cancer care setting are presented, including an eight-step model. Four notable characteristics of the procedures are: members of the inter-professional health care team, not external experts, taking a leading role in the reflections; patients or relatives not being directly involved; the model explicitly addressing values and moral principles instead of focussing exclusively on the interests of involved parties; using a case-based rather than principle-based method. By discusing the advantages and (...) disadvantages of the proposed procedures, our paper aims to contribute to the literature on models and procedures for ethical analysis that can be used in clinical settings. It is suggested that our proposed procedures have some advantageous features when it comes to promoting health care staff’s learning to structure their thinking about ethical issues. (shrink)

RESUMO Neste artigo, analiso um conjunto de seis cartões comerciais pertencentes a uma duradoura campanha de marketing da Liebig Extract of Meat Co. A análise crítica dos textos promocionais produzidos na virada do século XX oferece insights significativos sobre os mecanismos discursivos que contribuíram para a hegemonização do capitalismo burguês. Diferentemente de outras formas de publicidade, os cartões comerciais não são rapidamente descartados e esquecidos; pelo contrário, eles podem se distanciar dos produtos anunciados para se tornar parte dos discursos populares (...) de instrução em massa. Como produtos e produtores de ideologias capitalistas, os anúncios são um local privilegiado de inscrição do capitalismo e, portanto, se prestam a uma análise crítica. Minha análise mostra como os textos selecionados se baseiam e texturizam os discursos do progresso, impregnados como crenças colonialistas e desencadeando uma cadeia de ações pela qual, mesmo antes de realmente obterem os cartões, são promulgadas ações e crenças capitalistas. ABSTRACT In this paper, I analyze a set of six trading cards belonging to Liebig’s Extract of Meat Co. long-standing marketing campaign. The critical analysis of promotional texts produced at the turn of the 20th century offer meaningful insights on the discursive mechanisms that contributed to the hegemonization of bourgeois capitalism. Unlike other forms of advertising, trading cards are not rapidly discarded and forgotten; on the contrary, they can detach themselves from the advertised products to become part of popular discourses of mass instruction. As both products and producers of capitalist ideologies, ads are a privileged site of inscription of capitalism, and thus lend themselves to a critical analysis. My analysis shows how the selected texts draws on and textures the discourses of progress, inculcated as colonialist beliefs and triggering an actional chain whereby, even before they actually obtained the cards, capitalist actions and beliefs are enacted. (shrink)

1. Properties of mirror neurons in monkeys. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (...) . . . 000 1.1. Action types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 000 1.2. Context effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 000 2. Is there a human ‘mirror neuron system’? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 000 2.1. Monkeys versus humans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 000 2.2. Action understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 000 3. The development of mirroring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 000 3.1. Imitation in newborns? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 000 3.2. Effects of experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 000 3.3. Effects of sensorimotor experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. (shrink)

The Protein Ontology provides terms for and supports annotation of species-specific protein complexes in an ontology framework that relates them both to their components and to species-independent families of complexes. Comprehensive curation of experimentally known forms and annotations thereof is expected to expose discrepancies, differences, and gaps in our knowledge. We have annotated the early events of innate immune signaling mediated by Toll-Like Receptor 3 and 4 complexes in human, mouse, and chicken. The resulting ontology and annotation data set has (...) allowed us to identify species-specific gaps in experimental data and possible functional differences between species, and to employ inferred structural and functional relationships to suggest plausible resolutions of these discrepancies and gaps. (shrink)

Background The ambulance service provides emergency care to meet the patient’s medical and nursing needs. Based on professional nursing values, this should be done within a caring relationship with a holistic approach as the opposite would risk suffering related to disengagement from the patient’s emotional and existential needs. However, knowledge is sparse on how ambulance personnel can meet caring needs and avoid suffering, particularly in conjunction with urgent and emergency situations. Aim The aim of the study was to explore ambulance (...) nurses’ experiences of relationships with patients in urgent and emergency situations. Methods Data collection was performed using individual open-ended interviews with six ambulance nurses. The data were analyzed using a thematic analysis. Results Relationships with patients during urgent and emergency assignments emerged as three themes: “ Ambiguous silence,” “ Professional competence” and “ Challenging inadequacy” comprising eight sub-themes in total. The result shows that the ambulance nurses found it difficult to prioritize between medical care and establishing a caring relationship with the patient. However, sometimes a wordless relationship was perceived sufficient and considered a first step towards a verbal relationship. Conclusions Ambulance nurses experience that a caring relationship cannot and does not need to be prioritized in the acute stage. This uncovers a dichotomy approach to medical care versus caring relationships that exclude a holistic approach. Thus, patients’ emotional, existential and physical needs are not considered as equally important. Clinical relevance: It is important to stimulate reflection on core ethical nursing values, in training and simulation exercises among clinically active ambulance nurses. (shrink)

Business ethics is a relatively new topic of academic discussion in Latin America. Corruption and impunity came to be serious moral diseases in the region, probably as a result of a long period of dictatorship in most countries. Low ethical standards in the politics have had deep impact on individuals, organizations and economic systems. Excessive consumption, materialism and selfishness, in contrast with real poverty, have been responsible for a sloppiness in attitudes and principles in many Latin American countries. Even though (...) the majority of the population belongs to the Roman Catholic Church, the lack of education has led people to a dichotomy: faith and business practices are often very distant from each other. Several isolated efforts have been done in order to enhance business ethics through education, publications and professional activities. The relationship business-academia has proved to be an excellent initiative for this objective, mainly in Mexico, Brazil and Peru. (shrink)

Cognitive gadgets are distinctively human cognitive mechanisms – such as imitation, mind reading, and language – that have been shaped by cultural rather than genetic evolution. New gadgets emerge, not by genetic mutation, but by innovations in cognitive development; they are specialised cognitive mechanisms built by general cognitive mechanisms using information from the sociocultural environment. Innovations are passed on to subsequent generations, not by DNA replication, but through social learning: People with new cognitive mechanisms pass them on to others through (...) social interaction. Some of the new mechanisms, like literacy, have spread through human populations, while others have died out, because the holders had more students, not just more babies. The cognitive gadgets hypothesis is developed through four case studies, drawing on evidence from comparative and developmental psychology, experimental psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. The framework employed – cultural evolutionary psychology, a descendant of evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory – addresses parallel issues across the cognitive and behavioural sciences. In common with evolutionary developmental biology and the extended evolutionary synthesis, cultural evolutionary psychology underlines the importance of developmental processes and environmental factors in the emergence of human cognition. In common with computational approaches, it emphasises the power of general-purpose mechanisms of learning. Cultural evolutionary psychology, however, also challenges use of the behavioural gambit in economics and behavioural ecology, and rejects the view that human minds are composed of “innate modules” or “cognitive instincts.”. (shrink)

Teaching allows human culture to exist and to develop. Despite its significance, it has not been studied in depth by the cognitive neurosciences. Here we propose two hypotheses to boost the claim that teaching is a human instinct, and to expand our understanding of how teaching occurs as a dynamic bi-directional relation within the teacher-learner dyad. First, we explore how children naturally use ostensive communication when teaching; allowing them to be set in the emitter side of natural pedagogy. Then, we (...) hypothesize that the capacity to teach may precede to even have a mature metacognition and, we argue that a teacher will benefit from the interaction with her student, improving her understanding on both contents of knowledge: her own and her student’s. Thus, we propose that teaching may be the driving force of metacognitive development and may be occurring as an instinct from very early ages. (shrink)

This book investigates Hegel’s interpretation of the mystical philosophy of Jakob Böhme, considered in the context of the reception of Böhme in the 18th and 19th centuries, and of Hegel’s own understanding of mysticism as a philosophical approach. The three sections of this book present: the historical background of Hegel’s encounter with Böhme’s writings; the development of two different conceptions of mysticism in Hegel’s work; and finally Hegel’s approach to Böhme’s philosophy, discussing in detail the references to Böhme both in (...) published writings and manuscripts. According to Hegel, Böhme is “the first German philosopher”. The reason for placing Böhme at the very beginning of German philosophy is that Hegel considers him to be a profound thinker, despite his rudimentary education. Hegel’s fascination with Böhme mainly concerns the mystic’s understanding of the symbiotic relation between God and his opposite, the Devil: he considers this to be the true speculative core of Böhme’s thought. By interpreting Böhme, Hegel intends to free the speculative content of his thought from the limitations of the inadequate, barbarous form in which the mystic expressed it, and also to liberate Böhme from the prejudices surrounding his writings, placing him firmly in the territory of philosophy and detaching him from the obscurity of esotericism. Combining historical reconstructions and philosophical argumentation, this book guides the reader through an important phase in German philosophy, and ultimately into an inquiry about the relationship between mysticism and philosophy itself. (shrink)

Dennett, a philosopher, and Griffin, an ethologist, have recently presented influential arguments promoting the extended use of intentional language by students of animal behavior. This essay seeks to elucidate and to contrast the claims made by each of these authors, and to evaluate their proposals primarily from the perspective of a practicing comparative psychologist or ethologist. While Griffin regards intentional terms as explanatory, Dennett assigns them a descriptive function; the issue of animal consciousness is central to Griffin's program and only (...) tangentially related to Dennett's. The philosopher's arguments are founded upon a more coherent metaphysics, but Dennett neglects to substantiate his claim that animal competences can be most readily modelled by artificial intelligence specialists when they are described in intentional terms. Both authors assume that some examples of animal behavior should not be given an intentional characterization, but neither provides adequate guidelines for the identification of cases belonging to this negative set. (shrink)

This compilation of around 20 texts presents an heterogeneous spectrum of topics by authors such as: Diamela Eltit, Elvira Hernndez and Guadalupe Santa Cruz, among others who from a philosophical point of view the writings of George ...

The Protein Ontology (PRO) is designed as a formal and principled Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry ontology for proteins. The components of PRO extend from a classification of proteins on the basis of evolutionary relationships at the homeomorphic level to the representation of the multiple protein forms of a gene, including those resulting from alternative splicing, cleavage and/or posttranslational modifications. Focusing specifically on the TGF-beta signaling proteins, we describe the building, curation, usage and dissemination of PRO. PRO provides a framework (...) for the formal representation of protein classes and protein forms in the OBO Foundry. It is designed to enable data retrieval and integration and machine reasoning at the molecular level of proteins, thereby facilitating cross-species comparisons, pathway analysis, disease modeling and the generation of new hypotheses. (shrink)

Revisión de Actividad Que digan dónde están" Una historia de los derechos humanos en Argentina por L. Alonso.

La communication se rapporte à la richesse des interprétations temporelles par l’intermédiaire de Vintila Horia, l’une des personnalités du XX‐e siècle, qui l’applique à l’histoire du monde par ses personnages, leurs époques et les conceptions de vie correspondantes, phénomène exprimé à l’aide de l’art littéraire d’une complexité particulière, invitant à la méditation et aux réactions nécessaires. Le but de sa création est d’éclaircir la personnalité humaine dans sa variété expressive, modulée par le contexte philosophique dans lequel chacun réagit conformément à (...) sa raison et aux procès à caractère social, politique et culturel caractéristiques à la société décrite. (shrink)

Background: Previous studies have investigated the effects of dance interventions on Parkinson’s motor and non-motor symptoms in an effort to develop an integrated view of dance as a therapeutic intervention. This within-subject study questions whether dance can be simply considered a form of exercise by comparing a Dance for Parkinson’s class with a matched-intensity exercise session lacking dance elements like music, metaphorical language, and social reality of art-partaking.Methods: In this repeated-measure design, 7 adults with Parkinson’s were tested four times; before (...) and after a Dance for Parkinson’s class, as well as before and after a matched-intensity exercise session. Physiological measures included heart rate and electrodermal activity. Self-reported affect and body self-efficacy were collected. Gait symmetry and dual task cost were analyzed using the 6 min walking test and Timed-Up-and-Go test, respectively.Results: Average heart rate was the same for both conditions, while electrodermal activity was higher during Dance for Parkinson’s. Significant differences were found in body self-efficacy, beauty subscale, symmetry of gait, and dual task performance.Conclusion: Dance, compared to an exercise intervention of matched intensity, yields different outcomes through the means of intrinsic artistic elements, which may influence affective responses, the experience of beauty, self-efficacy, and gait performance. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to examine the role of aesthetic practice in elementary school and the consequences for children’s meaning-making in science. More specifically, we intended to scrutinise what science learning emerges within the process, to target the consequences of adopting art practice in science class and to explore these two dimensions as a whole in order to better understand how children make meaning when exploring animals’ ecology. The data, comprising audio recordings, photographs of children’s drawings and field (...) notes, were collected in one school which we visited on three occasions over a period of four consecutive days. The school is located in Sweden, and the children participating in the study were between 6 and 7 years old. In this particular study, the children were involved in exploring animals’ ecology. Data was analysed by means of practical epistemology analysis, taking its stance in Deweyan pragmatic philosophy on learning and meaning-making. The results reveal that art practice was important for children’s cognitive and aesthetic learning in science. The entanglement of science learning and art-in-the-making was shown to be of significance for broadening and deepening children’s science repertoire. In addition, children’s imagination and creativity was a vital part of their meaning-making when exploring a complex phenomenon, such as the spinneret, the “spider-thread machine”. All along the process, the young learners, in transaction with the contextual features, developed agency meaning that the children owned the problems and developed action strategies through art and speech. (shrink)

What is the relationship between imitation and culture? This article charts how definitions of imitation have changed in the last century, distinguishes three senses of “culture” used by contemporary evolutionists (Culture1–Culture3), and summarises current disagreement about the relationship between imitation and culture. The disagreement arises from ambiguities in the distinction between imitation and emulation, and confusion between two explanatory projects—the anthropocentric project and the cultural selection project. I argue that imitation gives cultural evolution an inheritance mechanism for communicative and gestural (...) skills (but not technological skills), and cultural selection yields the cognitive mechanisms that make imitation possible. (shrink)

This book investigates Hegel’s interpretation of the mystical philosophy of Jakob Böhme (1575-1624), considered in the context of the reception of Böhme in the 18th and 19th centuries, and of Hegel’s own understanding of mysticism as a philosophical approach. The three sections of this book present: the historical background of Hegel’s encounter with Böhme’s writings; the development of two different conceptions of mysticism in Hegel’s work; and finally Hegel’s approach to Böhme’s philosophy, discussing in detail the references to Böhme both (...) in published writings and manuscripts. According to Hegel, Böhme is “the first German philosopher”. The reason for placing Böhme at the very beginning of German philosophy is that Hegel considers him to be a profound thinker, despite his rudimentary education. Hegel’s fascination with Böhme mainly concerns the mystic’s understanding of the symbiotic relation between God and his opposite, the Devil: he considers this to be the true speculative core of Böhme’s thought. By interpreting Böhme, Hegel intends to free the speculative content of his thought from the limitations of the inadequate, barbarous form in which the mystic expressed it, and also to liberate Böhme from the prejudices surrounding his writings, placing him firmly in the territory of philosophy and detaching him from the obscurity of esotericism. Combining historical reconstructions and philosophical argumentation, this book guides the reader through an important phase in German philosophy, and ultimately into an inquiry about the relationship between mysticism and philosophy itself. (shrink)