This Open Access book combines philosophical and historical analysis of various forms of alternatives to mechanism and mechanistic explanation, focusing on the 19th century to the present. It addresses vitalism, organicism and responses to materialism and its relevance to current biological science. In doing so, it promotes dialogue and discussion about the historical and philosophical importance of vitalism and other non-mechanistic conceptions of life. It points towards the integration of genomic science into the broader history of biology. It details a (...) broad engagement with a variety of nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century vitalisms and conceptions of life. In addition, it discusses important threads in the history of concepts in the United States and Europe, including charting new reception histories in eastern and south-eastern Europe. While vitalism, organicism and similar epistemologies are often the concern of specialists in the history and philosophy of biology and of historians of ideas, the range of the contributions as well as the geographical and temporal scope of the volume allows for it to appeal to the historian of science and the historian of biology generally. (shrink)

Vitalism has spent most of the twentieth century, and part of the twenty-first, being perhaps the most misunderstood and reviled philosophy of life, with organicism being a close second (on the latter see (Martindale 2013), although some theorists seek to drive a wedge between the two in favor of a ‘reasonable’, less ‘metaphysical’ position often associated with organicism (Gilbert and Sarkar 2000). As a number of the essays in this collection point out (see especially the contributions by Donohue and Moir) (...) vitalism has been conjoined to fascism and the Nazi horrors, and has been reduced to a series of ahistorical propositions. As both Moir and Donohue emphasize, such associations require more study, but at the same time are fundamentally misleading. Nonetheless, the traditional association of vitalism and fascism as well as vitalism and pseudoscience (or anti-science, as Shmidt underscores) has been remarkably pervasive, and still operates. (shrink)

A unique and interdisciplinary collection in which scholars from Philosophy join those from Film Studies, English, and Comparative Literature to explore the nature and limits of love through in-depth reflection on particular works of literature and film.

Liberalism at the Crossroads provides a fair but lively introduction to key thinkers and schools of thought in the contemporary debate regarding liberal political theory.

This collection of original essays, written by scholars from disciplines across the humanities, addresses a wide range of questions about love through a focus on individual films, novels, plays, and works of philosophy. The essays touch on many varieties of love, including friendship, romantic love, parental love, and even the love of an author for her characters. How do social forces shape the types of love that can flourish and sustain themselves? What is the relationship between love and passion? Is (...) love between human and nonhuman animals possible? What is the role of projection in love? These questions and more are explored through an investigation of works by authors ranging from Henrik Ibsen to Ian McEwan, from Rousseau to the Coen Brothers. (shrink)

The myside bias in written argumentation entails excluding other side information from essays. To determine the locus of the bias, 86 Experiment 1 participants were assigned to argue either for or against their preferred side of a proposal. Participants were given either balanced or unrestricted research instructions. Balanced research instructions significantly increased the use of other side information. Participants' notes, rather than search patterns, predicted the myside bias. Participants who defined good arguments as those that can be “proved by facts” (...) were more prone towards the myside bias. In Experiment 2, 84 participants of high and low argumentation ability read a text called “More Than Just the Facts” designed to contradict this fact-based argumentation schema. For high argumentation ability participants, the intervention reduced the myside bias, but for low ability participants it increased. The roots of the myside bias are underdeveloped argumentation schemata leading to misconceptions about research and argumentation. (shrink)

"Public reason" is one of the central concepts in modern liberal political theory. As articulated by John Rawls, it presents a way to overcome the difficulties created by intractable differences among citizens' religious and moral beliefs by strictly confining the place of such convictions in the public sphere. Identifying this conception as a key point of conflict, this book presents a debate among contemporary natural law and liberal political theorists on the definition and validity of the idea of public reason. (...) Its distinguished contributors examine the consequences of interpreting public reason more broadly as "right reason," according to natural law theory, versus understanding it in the narrower sense in which Rawls intended. They test public reason by examining its implications for current issues, confronting the questions of abortion and slavery and matters relating to citizenship. This energetic exchange advances our understanding of both Rawls's contribution to political philosophy and the lasting relevance of natural law. It provides new insights into crucial issues facing society today as it points to new ways of thinking about political theory and practice. (shrink)

Homo sapiens have evolved a dual-process cognitive architecture that is adaptive but prone to systematic errors. Fuzzy-trace theory predicts that nested or overlapping class-inclusion relations create processing interference, resulting in denominator neglect: behaving as if one ignores marginal denominators in a 2 × 2 table. Ignoring marginal denominators leads to fallacies in base-rate problems and conjunctive and disjunctive probability estimates.

In this revised and updated edition of a classic text, one of America's leading constitutional theorists presents a brief but well-balanced history of judicial review and summarizes the arguments both for and against judicial activism within the context of American democracy. Christopher Wolfe demonstrates how modern courts have used their power to create new "rights" with fateful political consequences and he challenges popular opinions held by many contemporary legal scholars. This is important reading for anyone interested in the role (...) of the judiciary within American politics. Praise for the first edition of Judicial Activism: "This is a splendid contribution to the literature, integrating for the first time between two covers an extensive debate, honestly and dispassionately presented, on the role of courts in American policy. —Stanley C. Brubaker, Colgate University. (shrink)

'A clear, readable and fair account of the development of judicial review.'-Ashley Montagu.

In this paper we shall consider whether John Rawls’s treatment of Ignatius of Loyola is a fair one. Rawls claims in A Theory of Justice that Catholic theology (and Ignatius’s theology in particular) aims at a “dominant end” of serving God that overrides other moral considerations. Rawls argues that dominant end views lead to a disfigured self and a disregard for justice. We do not question Rawls on the normative issue of whether dominant end conceptions are untenable, but rather on (...) his factual claim that Ignatian spirituality and Catholic theology in general presupposes a dominant end view as he defines it. The Loyola whom Rawls attacks in Theory of Justice is a straw-man. Ignatian spirituality and Catholic theology in general embraces something closer to an inclusive end view, since it argues that several different ways of virtuous living can lead to happiness. (shrink)

In this paper we shall consider whether John Rawls’s treatment of Ignatius of Loyola is a fair one. Rawls claims in A Theory of Justice that Catholic theology aims at a “dominant end” of serving God that overrides other moral considerations. Rawls argues that dominant end views lead to a disfigured self and a disregard for justice. We do not question Rawls on the normative issue of whether dominant end conceptions are untenable, but rather on his factual claim that Ignatian (...) spirituality and Catholic theology in general presupposes a dominant end view as he defines it. The Loyola whom Rawls attacks in Theory of Justice is a straw-man. Ignatian spirituality and Catholic theology in general embraces something closer to an inclusive end view, since it argues that several different ways of virtuous living can lead to happiness. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the analysis of Joseph Raz on coercion, trust, and citizenship. The chapter starts with a number of brief comments on some of his observations regarding the doctrine of liberty and the preference for minimum government. The chapter also includes one of Raz's arguments that states that some people favour non-perfectionist forms of government out of a misunderstanding of the implications of perfectionism for liberty.

Natural Law Today gives a strong voice to classical natural law theory as the best answers to the fundamental questions of ethics and as the best framework for political and social life. It explains various aspects of that theory and defends it against common misperceptions and criticisms.

The empirical research on the psychology of argumentation suggests that people are prone to fallacies and suboptimal performance in generating, comprehending, and evaluating arguments. Reasoning and argumentation are interrelated skills that use many of the same cognitive processes. The processes we use to convince others are also used to convince ourselves. Argumentation would be ineffective if we couldn't reason for ourselves.

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

The 2003 blackout in the northern and eastern U.S. and Canada which caused a $6 billion loss in economic revenue is one of many indicators that the current electrical grid is outdated. Not only must the grid become more reliable, it must also become more efficient, reduce its impact on the environment, incorporate alternative energy sources, allow for more consumer choices, and ensure cyber security. In effect, it must become smart. Significant investments in the billions of dollars are being made (...) to lay the infrastructure of the future Smart Grid. However, the authors argue that we must take great care not to sacrifice consumer privacy amidst an atmosphere of unbridled enthusiasm for electricity reform. Information proliferation, lax controls and insufficient oversight of this information could lead to unprecedented invasions of consumer privacy. Smart meters and smart appliances will constitute a data explosion of intimate details of daily life, and it is not yet clear who will have access to this information beyond a person’s utility provider. The authors of this paper urge the adoption of Dr. Ann Cavoukian’s conceptual model ‘SmartPrivacy’ to prevent potential invasions of privacy while ensuring full functionality of the Smart Grid. SmartPrivacy represents a broad arsenal of protections, encapsulating everything necessary to ensure that all of the personal information held by an organization is appropriately managed. These include: Privacy by Design; law, regulation and independent oversight; accountability and transparency; market forces, education and awareness; audit and control; data security; and fair information practices. Each of these elements is important, but the concept of Privacy by Design represents its sine qua non. When applying SmartPrivacy to the Smart Grid, not only will the grid be able to, for example, become increasingly resistant to attack and natural disasters—it will be able to do so while also becoming increasingly resistant to data leakage and breaches of personal information. The authors conclude that SmartPrivacy must be built into the Smart Grid during its current nascent stage, allowing for both consumer control of electricity consumption and consumer control of their personal information, which must go hand in hand. Doing so will ensure that consumer confidence and trust is gained, and that their participation in the Smart Grid contributes to the vision of creating a more efficient and environmentally friendly electrical grid, as well as one that is protective of privacy. This will result in a positive-sum outcome, where both environmental efficiency and privacy can coexist. (shrink)

Steven Macedo's Diversity and Distrust is an effort to apply an unapologetically "transformative" version of liberalism to questions of public education (eschewing any supposedly liberal "neutrality). His candor is refreshing, but this review argues that his effort to defend his transformative liberal views (and the general thrust of American judicial efforts to deal with public education, for the most part) ultimately fails.

In this unique volume, some of today's most eminent political philosophers examine the thought of John Rawls, focusing in particular on his most recent work. These original essays explore diverse issues, including the problem of pluralism, the relationship between constitutive commitment and liberal institutions, just treatment of dissident minorities, the constitutional implications of liberalism, international relations, and the structure of international law. The first comprehensive study of Rawls's recent work, The Idea of Political Liberalism will be indispensable for political philosophers (...) and theorists interested in contemporary political thought. (shrink)

Emergence of the novel pathogenic coronavirus SARS‐CoV‐2 and its rapid pandemic spread presents challenges that demand immediate attention. Here, we describe the development of a semi‐quantitative high‐content microscopy‐based assay for detection of three major classes (IgG, IgA, and IgM) of SARS‐CoV‐2 specific antibodies in human samples. The possibility to detect antibodies against the entire viral proteome together with a robust semi‐automated image analysis workflow resulted in specific, sensitive and unbiased assay that complements the portfolio of SARS‐CoV‐2 serological assays. Sensitive, specific (...) and quantitative serological assays are urgently needed for a better understanding of humoral immune response against the virus as a basis for developing public health strategies to control viral spread. The procedure described here has been used for clinical studies and provides a general framework for the application of quantitative high‐throughput microscopy to rapidly develop serological assays for emerging virus infections. (shrink)

The current crisis in British VET (vocational education and training) is explained in terms of the decline of opportunities beyond preparation for university for young people after school. The continuing large numbers of ‘NEETS’ (those not in employment, education or training) is but one aspect of this problem: much larger is the decline in good quality VET opportunities for those who do not intend to go to university. A very important element in the problem is a misunderstanding of the relationship (...) between education and training and a continuing preoccupation with a narrow skills‐based form of training rather than vocational education. The distinction between training and VET is made clear and it is argued that, although training is an important element in VET, it is a mistake to identify the two. There are significant liberal and civic elements in any VET worthy of the name. There follows a brief review of British VET policy, which starts from the 1964 Industrial Training Act and goes on to follow the decline that took place in the 1980s and 1990s until the point at which it was realised that there was a significant problem with British VET. The article goes on to consider recent developments, culminating in the Wolf Report of 2011. The connection between VET and schooling is considered, as is contrasting VET practice in much of Europe. Finally policy options for VET in the UK are considered. (shrink)

TOC -/- 0. Introduction (SN/CW) -/- I. Revisiting vitalist themes in 19th-century science -/- 1. Guido Giglioni (Warburg Institute) – Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and the Place of Irritability 2. in the History of Life and Death 3. Joan Steigerwald (York) – Rethinking Organic Vitality in Germany at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century 4. Juan Rigoli (Geneva) –The “Novel of Medicine” 5. Sean Dyde (Cambridge) – Life and the Mind in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Somaticism in the Wake of Phrenology. -/- II. Twentieth (...) century debates on vitalism in science and philosophy -/- 6. Brian Garrett (McMaster) – Vitalism versus Emergent Materialism 7. Christophe Malaterre (Paris) – Life as an Emergent Phenomenon: from an Alternative to Vitalism to an Alternative to Reductionism 8. Sebastian Normandin (Montreal) – Wilhelm Reich: Vitalism and Its Discontents 9. Chiara Elettra Ferrario (Wellington) and Luigi Corsi (Pisa) – Kurt Goldstein: Vitalism and the Organismic Approach 10. Giuseppe Bianco (Paris/Warwick) – The Origins of Canguilhem’s “Vitalism”. Against the Anthropology of Irritation -/- III. Vitalism and contemporary biological developments -/- 11. William Bechtel (UCSD) — Dynamic Mechanistic Explanation: Addressing the Vitalists’ Objections to Mechanistic Science 12. John Dupré and Maureen O’Malley (Exeter) – Varieties of living things: Life at the intersection of lineage and metabolism 13. J. Scott Turner (Syracuse) – Homeostasis and the forgotten vitalist roots of adaptation -/- . (shrink)

Die These, dass neben dem Wohlergehen und der Moral der Sinn eine dritte, irreduzibel eigenständige und fundamentale Dimension des guten Lebens darstellt, hat im Zuge des erneuten Interesses an der Kategorie des Sinns breite Beachtung gefunden. Das Ziel dieses Beitrags besteht erstens darin zu erkunden, was diese These eigentlich beinhaltet. Bei näherer Prüfung zeigt sich nämlich, dass die These auch und gerade von ihren Vertretern bisher überwiegend durch Appelle an Intuitionen und durch Abgrenzung zu alternativen Positionen, aber eben nur unzureichend (...) positiv motiviert und konturiert wurde. Insbesondere wird vorgeschlagen, zwischen einer axiologischen und einer rationalitätstheoretischen Variante der These zu unterscheiden. Während Sinn gemäß der axiologischen Eigenständigkeitsthese eine irreduzibel eigenständige, fundamentale Wertdimension bildet, entlang derer ein Leben als mehr oder weniger gut qualifiziert werden kann, behauptet die rationalitätstheoretische Eigenständigkeitsthese, dass Sinn eine irreduzibel eigenständige, fundamentale Quelle praktischer Gründe bildet. Diese Unterscheidung ist nicht zuletzt deshalb bedeutsam, weil die zweite These die erste vorauszusetzen scheint, während das Umgekehrte nicht gilt: Selbst Hauptvertreter der axiologischen Eigenständigkeitsthese machen sich die rationalitätstheoretische Variante nur mit großen Einschränkungen zu eigen, die wiederum zu kritischen Fragen auch an die axiologische Fassung Anlass geben. Zweitens soll im Zuge einer Erkundung des durch die axiologische wie auch durch die rationalitätstheoretische Version der Eigenständigkeitsthese aufgespannten Problemfeldes gezeigt werden, dass bisher keine überzeugenden Argumente für die Eigenständigkeitsthese vorgebracht und auch keine plausiblen inhaltlichen Kandidaten für eine Theorie des Sinns, die die Anforderungen an eine solche eigenständige Dimension des guten Lebens und Quelle praktischer Gründe sui generis erfüllen würden, identifiziert werden konnten. Des Weiteren sprechen auch allgemeine wert- und rationalitätstheoretische Erwägungen gegen die Annahme einer solchen Dimension. (shrink)

(2013). NORMAL MONSTERS AND MONSTROUS MONSTROSITIES: a response to cary wolfe. Angelaki: Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 191-196.

Many philosophers in the analytic tradition have recently sought to explore the question of the meaning of life. In the first part of this paper I subject two important approaches from this tradition – those of John Cottingham and Susan Wolf - to criticism. I then suggest that Cottingham and Wolf articulate certain assumptions about the meaning of life that are widely shared amongst analytic philosophers. I go on to subject those assumptions to criticism and seek to develop (...) an alternative approach to the question, one that is largely overlooked in the contemporary literature. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Testament of the Other: Abraham and Torok’s Failed Expiation of GhostsChristopher Lane (bio)Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok. The Shell and the Kernel. Vol. 1. Ed., trans., and intro. Nicholas T. Rand. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1994.Nicholas Rand and Maria Torok. Questions à Freud: Du Devenir de la Psychanalyse. Paris: Belles Lettres-Archimbaud, 1995.Nicholas Rand and Maria Torok. “Questions to Freudian Psychoanalysis: Dream Interpretation, Reality, Fantasy.” Trans. Rand. Critical (...) Inquiry 19.3 (1993): 567–94. [“QFP”]Truly the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyard spectres, but the inextinguishable and immortal elements of life, which, having once been, can never die, though they blend and change and change again for ever.—H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s MinesWhat haunts are not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others.—Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, The Shell and the Kernel1. PrologueNicolas Abraham and Maria Torok may be best known for advancing a theory of transgenerational haunting. According to this theory, repressed secrets are passed from one generation to the next if they are “encrypted” as unprocessed and traumatic information. Before Abraham’s death in 1975, he and Torok saw their analytic role as reparative: Encouraging their analysands to mourn repressed secrets, they hoped to transform their analysands’ perspectives on family history.Abraham and Torok quickly became known for expanding Freud’s emphasis on the subject’s conflicting desires and identifications. From 1968 on, when Abraham published “L’écorce et le noyau” (“The Shell and the Kernel”) as an extended review of Laplanche and Pontalis’s The Language of Psychoanalysis, he and Torok published their claims in cheerful defiance of Freudian orthodoxy, acquiring a reputation in France—and, later, in England and the United States—for shattering such “doctrinaire” elements of psychoanalysis [End Page 3] as the Oedipus complex and death drive, penis envy, and the primal scene, as well as for criticizing Lacan’s alleged stranglehold on psychoanalysis in France and much of Europe. 1 After publishing L’écorce et le noyau (1987), a collection of their essays (many coauthored), and a radically new interpretation of Freud’s patient “the Wolf Man,” Cryptonymie: Le verbier de l’homme aux loups (1976; trans. The Wolf Man’s Magic Word: A Cryptonomy), Abraham and Torok were championed in Europe and the United States by theorists delighted to see a “poststructuralist” critique of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Ironically, Abraham and Torok’s work received almost comparable support from analytical philosophers eager to denounce Freud’s “unscientific” precepts.Now that the first volume of Abraham and Torok’s essays has appeared in translation, non-Francophone readers have an opportunity to assess what Abraham and Torok contributed to psychoanalysis and to revisit the debates they staged with Freud and Lacan in the 1970s and—posthumously for Abraham—in the ‘80s. Reviewing this collection is not a simple task, however, because its conceptual interests are so diverse and because Torok’s coauthored work with Abraham differs radically from the essays and book she published recently with Nicholas Rand, editor and translator of The Shell and the Kernel. Rand’s interventions confirm Torok’s latest arguments but they also, occasionally, misleadingly frame the older work in terms of the new. Readers may therefore see Rand’s editorial notes and introduction as guides to how he and Torok now view Torok’s collaboration with Abraham. We can only speculate whether Abraham would have interpreted the collaboration the same way. 2How does Abraham and Torok’s account of psychic “encryptment” differ from Freud’s model of repression? Assessing their revision of Freud’s metapsychological project, Abraham and Torok declare, “It would be presumptuous indeed to allege that we have reached our goal. Yet it would be false modesty to deny our suspicion that we are finally entering an open road” [140]. 3 Echoing Freud’s conviction that in dreams he had discovered “the royal road to the unconscious,” Abraham and Torok encourage a comparative reading of their psychoanalytic “road” and Freud’s. The following essay undertakes this reading, but it also speculates on what Freud’s and Lacan’s emphasis on [End Page 4] psychic... (shrink)

Als geronnene Wiederholungen prägen Rituale unseren Alltag und unser Zusammenleben maßgeblich. Nicht von ungefähr galten sie lange Zeit als Inbegriff des Konservativen, Starren und Förmlichen. Eine gänzlich durchritualisierte Welt wäre zweifellos eine unfreie Welt. Im Zeitalter der Deregulierung, der Hyperaktivität und des Aufmerksamkeitsdefizits wird nun ihre Halt gebende und strukturierende Seite wiederentdeckt.Die AutorInnen reflektieren gesellschaftskritisch Theorien und psychoanalytische Erfahrungen rund um das Thema Rituale und widmen sich den folgenden Fragen: Werden Rituale zu Widerstandsnestern gegen die allgemeine Flüchtigkeit? Können sie als (...) Angelpunkte des Innehaltens und als Wegbahner unbeirrten Denkens eine neue kritische Potenz erhalten?Mit Beiträgen von Thomas Dietzel, Gesa Foken, Dirk Hofmeister, Katharina Lacina, Konrad Paul Liessmann, Nina Reis Saroldi, Elisabeth Rohr, Jochen Schade, Hans-Ernst Schiller, Edgar Weiß, Laura Wolf und Carsten Wonneberger. (shrink)

Angelaki, Volume 16, Issue 2, Page 189-193, June 2011.

The current crisis in British VET (Vocational Education and Training) is explained in terms of the decline of opportunities beyond preparation for university for young people after school. The continuing large numbers of ‘NEETS’ (those not in employment, education or training) is but one aspect of this problem: much larger is the decline in good quality VET opportunities for those who do not intend to go to university. A very important element in the problem is a misunderstanding of the relationship (...) between Education and Training and a continuing preoccupation with a narrow skills-based form of training rather than vocational education. The distinction between training and VET is made clear and it is argued that, although training is an important element in VET, it is a mistake to identify the two. There are significant liberal and civic elements in any VET worthy of the name. There follows a brief review of British VET policy, which starts from the 1964 Industrial Training Act and goes on to follow the decline that took place in the 1980s and 1990s until the point at which it was realised that there was a significant problem with British VET. The article goes on to consider recent developments, culminating in the Wolf Report of 2011. The connection between VET and schooling is considered, as is contrasting VET practice in much of Europe. Finally policy options for VET in the UK are considered. (shrink)

The philosophical foundations of human rights are as complex as they are controversial. For some years, the debate has been dominated by the rather gridlocked opposition between moral and political conceptions of human rights. Moreover, a profound examination of the social and relational dimension of human rights has been lacking. Against this background, this volume brings together contributions which scrutinise the multi-faceted foundations of human rights. It is a valuable collection for philosophers, political scientists and legal scholars interested in fresh (...) insights into the idea and practice of human rights. With contributions by Markus Abraham | Andreas Busen | Johannes Haaf | Christoph Herrler | Justine Lacroix | Franziska Martinsen | Luise Müller | Esther Neuhann | Niklas Plätzer | Ned Richardson-Little | Regina Schidel | Tatjana Noemi Tömmel | Alexander Weiß | Markus Wolf. (shrink)

Der Aufsatz beschäftigt sich am Beispiel des deutschen "Kopftuchstreits" mit der rechtlich-politischen Auseinandersetzung um subjektive Rechte innerhalb des liberalen Rechtsstaats. Wie Christoph Menke in seiner Deutung der für den politischen Liberalismus wesentlichen politischen Konflikte gezeigt hat, bezieht sich diese Auseinandersetzung vorrangig auf zwei Fragen: Wer sollte Anspruch darauf genießen, ein politisches Subjekt zu sein, das heißt, als Gleiche oder Gleicher berücksichtigt zu werden? Welche Ansprüche politischer Subjekte könneen als schützenswerte Verwirklichung subjektiver Rechte gelten? Der vorliegende Beitrag beschäftigt sich vorwiegend mit (...) der Frage, wie die politischen Konflikte des letztgenannten Typs auf die rechtliche Auseinandersetzung um Grundrechte abfärben. Damit wende ich mich gegen ein Verständnis der Grundrechte, das diese als Garant der ethischen Neutralität eines liberalen Gemeinwesens ansieht. Ich möchte zeigen, dass der Sinn subjektiver Rechte in der liberalen Demokratie zwar unter anderem genau darin besteht, dass sie partikulare ethische Wertvorstellungen neutralisieren und die Bürgerinnen und Bürger innerhalb eines vernünftigen Rahmens vor Unterdrückung schützen. Wie eine Analyse der Entscheidungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts (BVerfG) zum "Kopftuchstreit" zeigt, wird diese Funktion aber stets zugleich durch die partikulare Interpretation gleicher Rechte unterminiert. Dies bezeichne ich als die Dekonstruktion der Neutralität, die sich im Recht vollzieht. (shrink)

In light of scientific advances such as genomics, predictive diagnostics, genetically engineered agriculture, nuclear transfer cloning, and the manipulation of stem cells, the idea that genes carry predetermined molecular programs or blueprints is pervasive. Yet new scientific discoveries—such as rna transcripts of single genes that can lead to the production of different compounds from the same pieces of dna—challenge the concept of the gene alone as the dominant factor in biological development. Increasingly aware of the tension between certain empirical results (...) and interpretations of those results based on the orthodox view of genetic determinism, a growing number of scientists urge a rethinking of what a gene is and how it works. In this collection, a group of internationally renowned scientists present some prominent alternative approaches to understanding the role of dna in the construction and function of biological organisms. Contributors discuss alternatives to the programmatic view of dna, including the developmental systems approach, methodical culturalism, the molecular process concept of the gene, the hermeneutic theory of description, and process structuralist biology. None of the approaches cast doubt on the notion that dna is tremendously important to biological life on earth; rather, contributors examine different ideas of how dna should be represented, evaluated, and explained. Just as ideas about genetic codes have reached far beyond the realm of science, the reconceptualizations of genetic theory in this volume have broad implications for ethics, philosophy, and the social sciences. Contributors. Thomas Bürglin, Brian C. Goodwin, James Griesemer, Paul Griffiths, Jesper Hoffmeyer, Evelyn Fox Keller, Gerd B. Müller, Eva M. Neumann-Held, Stuart A. Newman, Susan Oyama, Christoph Rehmann-Sutter, Sahotra Sarkar, Jackie Leach Scully, Gerry Webster, Ulrich Wolf. (shrink)

Written by leading experts in the field, Stellar Spectral Classification is the only book to comprehensively discuss both the foundations and most up-to-date techniques of MK and other spectral classification systems. Definitive and encyclopedic, the book introduces the astrophysics of spectroscopy, reviews the entire field of stellar astronomy, and shows how the well-tested methods of spectral classification are a powerful discovery tool for graduate students and researchers working in astronomy and astrophysics. The book begins with a historical survey, followed by (...) chapters discussing the entire range of stellar phenomena, from brown dwarfs to supernovae. The authors account for advances in the field, including the addition of the L and T dwarf classes; the revision of the carbon star, Wolf-Rayet, and white dwarf classification schemes; and the application of neural nets to spectral classification. Copious figures illustrate the morphology of stellar spectra, and the book incorporates recent discoveries from earth-based and satellite data. Many examples of spectra are given in the red, ultraviolet, and infrared regions, as well as in the traditional blue-violet optical region, all of which are useful for researchers identifying stellar and galactic spectra. This essential reference includes a glossary, handy appendixes and tables, an index, and a Web-based resource of spectra. In addition to the authors, the contributors are Adam J. Burgasser, Margaret M. Hanson, J. Davy Kirkpatrick, and Nolan R. Walborn. (shrink)

Indem dieser Band sich auf das Verhältnis von Naturerkennen und Natursein konzentriert, thematisiert er einen wesentlichen Ausschnitt aus dem weiten Spektrum von Böhmes philosophischer Arbeit. Um die Naturthematik möglichst breit zu entfalten und für Querverbindungen offenzuhalten, ist der vorliegende Band in drei Abschnitte gegliedert. Im ersten Abschnitt stehen Charakter und Reichweite der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis von Natur im Mittelpunkt. Der zweite Teil des Bandes stellt alternative Perspektiven auf Natur vor. Im dritten Teil schließlich stehen der Mensch und sein Verhältnis zu sich (...) selbst im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchungen. Inhaltsverzeichnis Krohn, Wolfgang: Wissenschaftsentwicklung zwischen Dezentrierung und Dekonstruktion. Stehr, Nico: Von den Grenzen der Macht wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis. Schäfer, Wolf: Zweifel am Ende des Baconschen Zeitalters. Kamper, Dietmar: Wissen ist Ohnmacht. Macht ist Unwissen. Gamm, der Technik. Janich, Peter: Zeit und Natur. Kimmerle, Heinz: »Es ist Zeit, daß es Zeit wird«. Wie kann Zeit Zeit werden? Schiemann, Gregor: Natur auf dem Rückzug. Zur Relevanz der aristotelischen Unterscheidung von Natur und Technik. Hauskeller, Michael: Ist Schönheit eine Atmosphäre?. Zur Bestimmung des landschaftlich Schönen. Schmitz, Hermann: Situationen und Atmosphären. Zur Ästhetik und Onthologie bei Gernot Böhme. Rehmann-Sutter, Christoph: Über Relationalität. Was ist das »Ökologische« in der Naturästhetik? Meyer-Abich, Klaus Michael: Erinnerung an die natürliche Mitwelt. Andreas-Griesebach, Manon: Idee plus Erfahrung. Goethes Begründung eines neuen Typs von Naturwissenschaft. Engelhardt, Dietrich von: Madame de Stael über Naturphilosophie, Naturwissenschaft und Medizin in De l'Allemagne. Deneke, Michael: Schramm, Engelbert: »Soziale Naturwissenschaft«. Zwischen Sozialwissenschaften und Naturwissenschaften. Böhme, Hartmut: Enthüllen und Verhüllen des Körpers. Biblische, mythische und künstlerische Deutungen des Nackten. Lippe, Rudolf zur: Eine Logik des gestischen Wissens. Müller, Rudolf Wolfgang: Gernot Böhme - Anima naturaliter japonica. Hoffmann, Gisbert: Das menschliche Sein als mediales. Martens, Ekkehard: »Natürlich« denken?. Heideggers Pseudosokratismus als Irrationalismus. Fleischer, Helmut: Naturalität ohne Naturalismus. Zum lebensweltlichen Fundus jeder höheren Erkenntnis-Artistik. Gerhard: Technik als Medium. Grundlinien einer Philosophie. (shrink)