Introduction With an ageing population, end-of-life care is increasing in importance. The present work investigated characteristics and time trends of older peoples' attitudes towards euthanasia and an end-of-life pill. Methods Three samples aged 64 years or older from the Longitudinal Ageing Study Amsterdam (N=1284 (2001), N=1303 (2005) and N=1245 (2008)) were studied. Respondents were asked whether they could imagine requesting their physician to end their life (euthanasia), or imagine asking for a pill to end their life if they became tired (...) of living in the absence of a severe disease (end-of-life pill). Using logistic multivariable techniques, changes of attitudes over time and their association with demographic and health characteristics were assessed. Results The proportion of respondents with a positive attitude somewhat increased over time, but significantly only among the 64–74 age group. For euthanasia, these percentages were 58% (2001), 64% (2005) and 70% (2008) (OR of most recent versus earliest period (95% CI): 1.30 (1.17 to 1.44)). For an end-of-life pill, these percentages were 31% (2001), 33% (2005) and 45% (2008) (OR (95% CI): 1.37 (1.23 to 1.52)). For the end-of-life pill, interaction between the most recent time period and age group was significant. Conclusions An increasing proportion of older people reported that they could imagine desiring euthanasia or an end-of-life pill. This may imply an increased interest in deciding about your own life and stresses the importance to take older peoples' wishes seriously. (shrink)

Places the development of Anaximander's thought within social, political, cosmological, astronomical, and technological contexts.

This book is a sequel to Heaven and Earth in Ancient Greek Cosmology. With the help of many pictures, the reader is introduced into the way of thinking of ancient believers in a flat earth. The first part offers new interpretations of several Presocratic cosmologists and a critical discussion of Aristotle’s proofs that the earth is spherical. The second part explains and discusses the ancient Chinese system called gai tian. The last chapter shows that, inadvertently, ancient arguments and ideas return (...) in the curious modern flat earth cosmologies. (shrink)

The idea of the spherical world, poised in space, and encircled at different distances by the celestial bodies, was introduced by the early Greek cosmologists. With some modifications, it is still our Western world-picture. It differs fundamentally from that of other cultures, which all accept, in one version or another, the idea of a flat earth with the dome of the celestial vault above it. The Greek conception, however, entails the problem of falling. How to account for the earth's stability? (...) Why is it that the earth does not fall? This anxious question has already bothered the Presocratics. Aristotle provided the solution that was satisfying for many hundred of years. Falling, according to Aristotle, is not the problem, but the answer, as the earth, consisting of the heaviest of the elements, finds its natural place in the centre of the spherical universe. For the same reason the earth itself, according to Aristotle, has to be spherical. Thus, his main line of argumentation was what we now would call 'metaphysical'. Recently, some scholars have argued that the early Greek idea of a spherical earth was developed as a protoscientifie hypothesis, based on empirical reasoning and observation. In this article, we show this to be an example of the 'anachronistic fallacy' that seriously obscures our understanding of the ancient Greek philosophers. Aristotle's conception held for two millennia, until the work of Copernicus, Kepler, and Thomas Digges overthrew it. Consequently, Newton had to cope with the fear of falling again — a fear that still haunts our modern world-picture and that was brilliantly articulated by Blaise Pascal, in his Pensées. (shrink)

In Miletus, about 550 B.C., together with our world-picture cosmology was born. This book tells the story. In Part One the reader is introduced in the archaic world-picture of a flat earth with the cupola of the celestial vault onto which the celestial bodies are attached. One of the subjects treated in that context is the riddle of the tilted celestial axis. This part also contains an extensive chapter on archaic astronomical instruments. Part Two shows how Anaximander (610-547 B.C.) blew (...) up this archaic world-picture and replaced it by a new one that is essentially still ours. He taught that the celestial bodies orbit at different distances and that the earth floats unsupported in space. This makes him the founding father of cosmology. Part Three discusses topics that completed the new picture described by Anaximander. Special attention is paid to the confrontation between Anaxagoras and Aristotle on the question whether the earth is flat or spherical, and on the battle between Aristotle and Heraclides Ponticus on the question whether the universe is finite or infinite. (shrink)

Within the timespan of two years, two books have been published on the Presocratics as scientists. In 2011 appeared Carlo Rovelli’s The First Scientist. Anaximander and His Legacy, (Yardley: Westholme), and in 2013 Daniel Graham’s Science before Socrates. Whereas Rovelli, whose main field of study is quantum gravity, argues that Anaximander was the first scientist, Graham maintains that Anaximander should not count as a scientist. Empirical science started with Anaxagoras, who used his assumption that solar eclipses occur when the moon (...) blocks its light (“antiphraxis”) to measure the size of the sun on the occasion of a solar eclipse, and to a lesser extent with Parmenides, who recognized that the moon receives its .. (shrink)

In the doxography on Anaximander it is reported that he has made a celestial globe or another kind of model, map or sketch of his astronomical conceptions. Several scholars have tried to reconstruct this model, but without success. In fact the history of the reconstruction of Anaximander's model of the heavens is a concatenation of mistakes and misunderstandings. The various and sometimes ingenious attempts will be discussed hereafter. Mostly the efforts fail through the difficulty of putting oneself into the position (...) of a more primitive astronomy which considers the earth as a flat disk and as the centre of the universe. Yet it is possible to draw a model which is both in agreement with the doxographical tradition on Anaximander's astronomy, without making special assumptions, and explains the movements of the celestial bodies as seen from a flat earth, as will be shown in the present article. (shrink)

In this paper, three problems that have hardly been noticed or even gone unnoticed in the available literature in the cosmology of Philolaus are addressed. They have to do with the interrelationships of the orbits of the Earth, the Sun, and the Moon around the Central Fire and all three of them constitute potentially insurmountable obstacles within the context of the Philolaic system. The first difficulty is Werner Ekschmitt’s claim that the Philolaic system cannot account for the length of the (...) day (νυχϑήμερον). It is shown that this problem can be solved with the help of the distinction between the synodic day and the sidereal day. The other two problems discussed in this paper are concerned with two hitherto unnoticed deficiencies in the explanation of lunar eclipses in the Philolaic system. The Philolaic system cannot account for long-lasting lunar eclipses and according to the internal logic of the system, during lunar eclipses the Moon enters the shadow of the Earth from the wrong side. It is almost unbelievable that nobody, from the Pythagoreans themselves up to recent authors, has noticed these two serious deficiencies, and especially the latter, in the cosmology of Philolaus the Pythagorean. (shrink)

The usual interpretation has it that Anaximander made ‘the Boundless’ the source and principle of everything. However, in the works of Aristotle, the nearest witness, no direct connection can be found between Anaximander and ‘the Boundless’. On the contrary, Aristotle says that all the physicists made something else the subject of which ἄπειρος is a predicate. When we take this remark seriously, it must include Anaximander as well. This means that Anaximander did not make τὸ ἄπειρον the source or principle (...) of everything, but rather called something else ἄπειρος. The question is, then, what was the subject that he adorned with this predicate. The hypothesis defended in this article is that it must have been ϕύσις, not in its Aristotelian technical sense, but in the pregnant sense of natura creatrix: the power that brings everything into existence and makes it grow and move. This ‘nature’ is boundless. It rules everything and in this sense it can be called ‘divine’. Being boundless, the mechanisms of nature, in which the opposites play an important role, are multifarious. The things created by boundless nature are not boundless, but finite, as they are destined to the destruction they impose onto each other, as Anaximander’s fragment says. (shrink)

Diogenes Laërtius and Plinius report that Anaximander made a globe, meaning a celestial globe. These statements must be due to an anachronistic misunderstanding, as a celestial globe presupposes a conception of a spherical universe in which the stars make up the outermost sphere. According to Anaximander, however, the stars are nearest to the earth, as is confi rmed by Aëtius and Hippolytus. Generally speaking, Anaximander’s universe of a column-drum-like earth at the center of the concentric wheels of the celestial bodies (...) can hardly be called spherical. Nevertheless we may assume that Anaximander, who drew a map of the earth, offered some representation of his cosmological ideas as well. Although a three-dimensional representation like a celestial globe is not likely, one may readily imagine that he drew a two-dimensional picture, a kind of ground-plan or map of his conception of the cosmos. The doxographers will erroneously have taken an account about this map as standing for a celestial globe such as they knew from their own experience. In this article I will deal with the problems that arise when we try to draw a map of Anaximander’s universe, and suggest ways to solve them. In discussing several authors who have studied the subject I will point out some bothersome inconsistencies and mistakes in their renditions. One problem, however, which has not been noticed before, will prove to be insolvable within the context of the doxographical evidence. I will argue that the only way to meet this problem is to look upon it as circumstantial evidence for the supposition that Anaximander never made a three-dimensional model whatsoever of his conception of the universe. (shrink)

Silence has gained a prominent role in the field of psychotherapy because of its potential to facilitate a plethora of therapeutically beneficial processes within patients’ inner dynamics. This study examined the phenomenon from a conversation analytical perspective in order to investigate how silence emerges as an interactional accomplishment and how it attains interactional meaning by the speakers’ adjacent turns. We restricted our attention to one particular sequential context in which a patient’s turn comes to a point of possible completion and (...) receives a continuer by the therapist upon which a substantial silence follows. The data collection consisted of 74 instances of such post-continuer silences. The analysis revealed that silence can retroactively become part of a topic closure sequence, can become shaped as an intra-topic silence, and can be explicitly characterized as an activity in itself that is relevant for the therapy in process. Only in this last case, the absence of talk is actually treated as disruptive to the ongoing talk. Although silence is often seen as a therapeutic instrument that can be implemented intentionally and purposefully, our analysis demonstrated how it is co-constructed by speakers and indexically obtains meaning by adjacent turns of talk. In the ensuing turns, silence indeed shows to facilitate access to the patient’s subjective experience at unconscious levels. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe question of how to engage with stakeholders in situations of value conflict to create value that includes a plurality of conflicting stakeholder value perspectives represents one of the crucial current challenges of stakeholder engagement as well as of value creation stakeholder theory. To address this challenge, we conceptualize a discursive sharing process between affected stakeholders that is oriented toward discursive justification involving multiple procedural steps. This sharing process provides procedural guidance for firms and stakeholders to create pluralistic stakeholder value (...) through the discursive accommodation of diverging stakeholder value perspectives. The outcomes of such a discursive value-sharing process range from stakeholder value dissensus to low and increasing levels of stakeholder value congruence to stakeholder value consensus. Hence, this article contributes to the emerging literature on integrative stakeholder engagement by conceptualizing a procedural framework that is neither overly oriented towards dissensus nor consensus. (shrink)

A much-cited definition of placebo is from Shapiro and Shapiro :"any therapy that is intentionally or knowingly used for its nonspecific, psychological, or psychophysiological, therapeutic effect, or that is used for a presumed specific therapeutic effect on a patient, symptom, or illness but is without specific activity for the condition being treated". What nonspecific means and how it relates to the psyche has been written about extensively yet inconclusively. In the end, the term nonspecific doesn't say anything about the crux (...) of the matter.Talking about placebo, one first has to distinguish between " placebo effect proper" and "perceived placebo effect." The. (shrink)

L’ordre public social constituerait, selon la fameuse formule d’Alain Supiot, « la clé de voûte du droit du travail français ». Bien qu’elle semble donc constituer une notion centrale en la matière, il s’avère que de nombreux auteurs ne lui attribuent pas, aujourd’hui encore, une définition ou une fonction clairement et précisément définie. En doctrine, l’ordre public social peut ainsi désigner le fait que la loi, au sens large, admettrait en principe, en droit du travail, des « dérogations » par (...) contrat de travail ou accord collectif plus favorables ; il est également employé comme étant en relation avec le principe de l’application de la disposition la plus favorable. Quel que soit l’angle sous lequel il est envisagé, cet ordre public social a perdu du terrain. Depuis de nombreuses années, la loi admet en effet des dérogations conventionnelles, et au cours des dix dernières années, le « principe de faveur » a vu son champ d’application se restreindre. A un moment où le droit du travail est de plus en plus perçu ou présenté comme susceptible, dans une certaine mesure, de nuire à l’emploi, de nouvelles « régulations » se mettent ainsi en place et pourraient au cours des prochaines années aboutir à un droit du travail étatique très largement supplétif, les normes applicables à l’entreprise provenant alors en principe des accords d’entreprise. (shrink)

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

The Monographs produced by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) apply rigorous procedures for the scientific review and evaluation of carcinogenic hazards by independent experts. The Preamble to the IARC Monographs, which outlines these procedures, was updated in 2019, following recommendations of a 2018 expert Advisory Group. This article presents the key features of the updated Preamble, a major milestone that will enable IARC to take advantage of recent scientific and procedural advances made during the 12 years since (...) the last Preamble amendments. The updated Preamble formalizes important developments already being pioneered in the Monographs Programme. These developments were taken forward in a clarified and strengthened process for identifying, reviewing, evaluating and integrating evidence to identify causes of human cancer. The advancements adopted include strengthening of systematic review methodologies; greater emphasis on mechanistic evidence, based on key characteristics of carcinogens; greater consideration of quality and informativeness in the critical evaluation of epidemiological studies, including their exposure assessment methods; improved harmonization of evaluation criteria for the different evidence streams; and a single-step process of integrating evidence on cancer in humans, cancer in experimental animals and mechanisms for reaching overall evaluations. In all, the updated Preamble underpins a stronger and more transparent method for the identification of carcinogenic hazards, the essential first step in cancer prevention. (shrink)

So heftig und kontrovers wie der von Patsy L’Amour LaLove, einer an der HU Berlin promovierten Geschlechterforscherin, herausgegebene Essayband (Beißreflexe, 2017) wurde seit langer Zeit kein (wissenschaftliches) Buch mehr diskutiert. Es drängt sich der Eindruck auf, dass die sich selbst als aktivistische »Polittunte « verstehende Herausgeberin offensichtlich den Zeitgeist eines mit sich selbst strauchelnden Queerfeminismus getroffen habe: Solch eine Vielzahl an mehr als nur leidenschaftlichen Reaktionen allerlei Couleur konnte eine in erster Linie akademische Anthologie mit Texten zur aktuellen Verfassung der (...) LGBTIQ*-Kultur und -Szene sowie zum Stand der akademisch geführten und im Zweifelsfall auch gelebten Queer Studies seit geraumer Zeit nicht verzeichnen – was sich unter anderem in der mittlerweile nun vierten Auflage des Titels innerhalb eines Jahres seit Veröffentlichung niederschlägt. Im Zuge der Debatte, welche in den letzten Wochen und Monaten in verschiedensten Medien (Zeit, Tagesspiegel, NZZ, FAZ, Süddeutsche) um die Publikation entbrannte, haben sich sowohl die darin versammelten AutorInnen als auch Judith Butler, Sabine Hark, Paula-Irene Billa, Alice Schwarzer und andere zu Wort gemeldet. Der selbst als Autor in besagtem Band vertretene freie Journalist und Redakteur Dirk Ludigs beanstandet seinerseits, dass die queeren akademischen Diskurse unserer Tage einem toten Rennen gleichen. Der Stellungskrieg der Kulturtheorien verändere nicht nur nichts mehr in den Köpfen aller Teilnehmenden, seine Debatten gehen zudem noch praktisch spurlos an all jenen vorbei, zu deren Verbesserung der Verhältnisse sie angeblich geführt werden würden. Es sei, so die Position des selber seit den 80er Jahren in der queeraktivistischen Szene Berlins sozialisierten Autors, an der Zeit, die (zu) weitgehende Akademisierung queeren Denkens und Handelns kritisch zu hinterfragen und nach fruchtbaren Quellen für einen anderen queeren Aktivismus zu suchen. Eine entgegengesetzte Position vertritt Andrea Geier. Auch sie räumt ein, dass die Identitätspolitik in eine Krise geraten sei –der Vorwurf, dass mehr um die Anerkennung von Identitäten statt für deren Überwindung gekämpft werde, würde darüber hinaus von Neudeutungen postmoderner Theorien begleiten werden sowie von der Frage, ob sich aus akademischen Theoriediskursen überhaupt noch emanzipatorisches Potential gewinnen ließe. Ihr Beitrag erörtert aus akademisch geschulter und kritischer Perspektive diese Entwicklungen und plädiert mit Nachdruck für eine Debattenkultur, welche sich mit intersektional geschärftem Blick notwendig komplexen Aushandlungsprozessen der uns heute in all ihren komplexen Facetten und Problematiken begegnenden Identitätskultur und -politik auseinandersetzt. It has been a long time since a (scientific) anthology has been discussed so intensely and controversially as it has been the case with the volume of Patsy L’Amour LaLove (Beißreflexe, 2017), who achieved her PhD in Gender studies at the HU Berlin. It is not easy to shake off the impression that the editor, who thinks of herself as an activist »Polittunte« (political pansy) has captured the Zeitgeist of a queer-feminism that is at war with itself: a fact which is reflected in the multitude of rather passionate responses from all kinds of social backgrounds; no other first and foremost academic anthology composed of texts concerning the current constitution of the LGBTIQ*-culture and –scene as well as discussing the current status of academically argued and sometimes lived queer-studies has been able to garner so much attention. The huge success of this work is also reflected in this being the fourth edition within one year since its original publication. Referring to the debate kindled by the anthology which has been present in different newspapers over the past weeks and months (Zeit, Tagesspiegel, NZZ, FAZ, Süddeutsche), some of the authors have made a public statement as well as other public figures such as Judith Butler, Sabine Hark, Paula-Irene Billa and Alice Schwarzer. Free journalist and editor, Dirk Ludigs, who is an author of one of the articles from the anthology has since stated that today’s academic discussion concerning queer subjects resembles a dead heat. The practice of positional warfare in culture theories not only fails to evoke a change in the minds of its participants but rather passes by the very people whose circumstances it originally helped to alleviate. Being an author of the Berlin queer-activist scene since the 1980s he states that it is time to challenge the (too) extensive academisation of queer thinking and action and to be on the outlook for other sources of queer activism. Andrea Geier supports a contradicting position; she, too, acknowledges the crisis of identity politics – the accusation that the fight is mainly about recognition of identity and less about the triumph over it is backed up by new interpretations of postmodern theories as well as the question of whether it is possible to gain emancipatory potential out of academic theory-driven discussions. Her article discussed these developments from an academically educated and critical perspective and expressively supports the call for a culture of debate that, with a keen eye for intersectional themes, discusses the necessarily complex negotiation processes of identity culture and politics in all their facets and inherent problems. (shrink)

Dirk van Dalen’s biography studies the fascinating life of the famous Dutch mathematician and philosopher Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer. Brouwer belonged to a special class of genius; complex and often controversial and gifted with a deep intuition, he had an unparalleled access to the secrets and intricacies of mathematics. Most mathematicians remember L.E.J. Brouwer from his scientific breakthroughs in the young subject of topology and for the famous Brouwer fixed point theorem. Brouwer’s main interest, however, was in the foundation (...) of mathematics which led him to introduce, and then consolidate, constructive methods under the name ‘intuitionism’. This made him one of the main protagonists in the ‘foundation crisis’ of mathematics. As a confirmed internationalist, he also got entangled in the interbellum struggle for the ending of the boycott of German and Austrian scientists. This time during the twentieth century was turbulent; nationalist resentment and friction between formalism and intuitionism led to the Mathematische Annalen conflict. It was here that Brouwer played a pivotal role. The present biography is an updated revision of the earlier two volume biography in one single book. It appeals to mathematicians and anybody interested in the history of mathematics in the first half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

En 1887, Nietzsche écrivait: «Lévénement le plus actuel, à savoir que Dieu est mort, commence à jeter ses premières ombres sur l'Europe». Ceux qui regardent le monde avec attention, avec une certaine suspicion même, remarquent que le soleil s'est couché, que la confiance de jadis s'est transformée en doute, que notre monde quotidien est devenu plus sombre, plus étrange, «vieux». Cependant cet evenement ne s'est pas encore annonce publiquement, continue Nietzsche, et on ne mesure pas encore les implications de la (...) mort de Dieu: une longue suite de démolitions, de destructions, de déclins, de renversements. II y aura une «logique de terreur», comme on ne l'aura pas encore vu sur la surface de la terre. (shrink)

The psychopathological phenomenon of delusions of influence comprises variable disturbances of the self-environment-border leading to the feeling of external influence on thoughts, feelings, impulses or behaviors. Delusions of influence are a hallmark in psychotic illness, but nevertheless, attenuated forms can also appear in healthy individuals. Here we present a newly developed paradigm to induce and assess feelings of external influence during instructed imaginations in healthy individuals. In the current study, we asked 60 healthy individuals to visually imagine different objects. To (...) induce feelings of external influence, we applied one of three different physical setups, and informed the participants whether or not an external influence was attempted during the respective trial. The physical setup as well as the information given to the participants alone were able to modulate the feeling of external influence in all three interventions. The impact of information significantly exceeded the impact of the physical setup on the ratings of experienced external influence. Moreover, the response latency correlated with the estimated feeling of external influence. Additional analyses addressed the influence of the emotional content of imagined objects and examined the intensity and emotional valence of the imaginations. Further supplemental analyses correlated external influence estimation of the participants with other psychopathological measures. In conclusion, this study endorses a quantitative model of psychopathological characteristics, in this case feelings of external influence that can be induced by external cues. (shrink)

Using four examples of models and computer simulations from the history of psychology, I discuss some of the methodological aspects involved in their construction and use, and I illustrate how the existence of a model can demonstrate the viability of a hypothesis that had previously been deemed impossible on a priori grounds. This shows a new way in which scientists can learn from models that extends the analysis of Morgan (1999), who has identified the construction and manipulation of models as (...) those phases in which learning from models takes place. (shrink)

L'auteur s'intéresse à la Vie de Constantin le Juif et plus particulièrement à un phénomène qui avait échappé jusqu'alors à ses commentateurs: celui de "l'imitation divine" . Quand Constantin est sauvé d'un meurtre par une apparition de la Vierge, l'auteur de la Vie affirme qu'il ne s'agit pas de Marie elle-même, mais d'une grâce divine qui a pris son apparence. Ce concept se retrouve dans différentes vies de saints. Selon l'auteur, ce procédé semble vouloir rappeler au lecteur que l'influence de (...) Dieu sur ce monde est prépondérante et ne se "dilue" pas au travers des interventions de certains saints. (shrink)

Volume 1 of this biography of L. E. J. Brouwer was published in 1999.1 The volume under review here covers the period from the early nineteen twenties until Brouwer's death in 1966. It also includes a short epilogue that discusses the disposition of Brouwer's estate after his death, his influence on others, the paths of some of his students and colleagues, and other matters. Van Dalen notes in the Preface that in preparing this volume he consulted some historical studies that (...) appeared after the first volume was published. He also used new material from various archives. The biography contains interesting quotations from unpublished materials in the Brouwer Archive and from correspondence. The bibliographical references to Brouwer's publications, it should be noted, are somewhat different in this volume. This volume, like the first, contains some nice photographs and reproductions. I noted that there were many typographical errors in the earlier book but Volume 2 is relatively free of them.As is the case in Volume 1, the discussion of Brouwer's mathematical and philosophical work is woven into the narrative of Brouwer's life and times. The story in this volume starts with Brouwer's first contacts with Paul Alexandrov and Paul Urysohn in 1923. The interaction began when Urysohn announced that he had found a mistake in Brouwer's definition of dimension in Brouwer's 1913 paper on natural dimension. Was it just a slip of the pen, as Brouwer always maintained, or something more substantial? Urysohn and Alexandrov ultimately came to agree with Brouwer on the matter, and Urysohn was prepared to grant Brouwer priority for the definition of dimension. There were, however, ups and downs along the way. Karl Menger, through his own work in topology and dimension theory, soon got into the picture, and Brouwer and Menger were to …. (shrink)

Think Rich. Look Poor.Andy Warhol 1 Quadro introduttivo: la vita e l’opera di Danto Arthur C. Danto inizia la sua biografia intellettuale My Life as a Philosopher, a tutt’oggi inedita, con l’affermazione: «ho avuto l’immensa fortuna di crescere nel mezzo di due epoche d’oro — quella della filosofia e quella dell’arte». Sarà questa costellazione [Konstellation; N. d. T.] a modellare i suoi interessi, il suo sviluppo filosofico e in particolare la sua filosofia dell’arte che è stata influenzata...

Descriptions of body imagery and body parts are evident in expressions of Old Testament texts. Although there is no single term for ‘body’ in the Hebrew mind, the concept of ‘body’ functions in its different parts. As part of anthropomorphic descriptions of God and expressions attached to humankind, body parts have special significance, contributing to the theological dimension of texts. The poems in the Psalter are no exception. Several body parts are mentioned in Psalm 38, an individual lament song. In (...) addition to God’s hand (v. 3) and an allusion to his voice (v. 16), several body parts describe the psalmist’s condition. These include ‘flesh’ (bāšār, 3, 8), bones (‘ætsæm, 3), head (rôsh, 5), loins (kæsæl, 8), heart (lēb, 9, 11), eyes (‘yn, 11), mouth (pæh, 14, 15), and feet (rægæl, 17). In addition, allusions to the ear (14, 15) and injured body (wounds, 6) form part of the psalmist’s lamenting experience.Contribution: This presentation touches on the general meaning of these body imagery in the Old Testament and their specific function and meaning in the text of Psalm 38. A textual analysis will portray their theological significance. (shrink)

Referring to MacOS’s »swoosh« as the signal of a successfully sent E-Mail the paper looks into the contribution of cultural values to communication with invisible machines. This contribution can be assessed within the context of Talcott Parsons’ action theory which addresses culture as one of four functional aspects of any one action (L), the other three being adaptation to physical, material, and technical environment (A), reference to the goal-attainment of both organism and personality (G), and the integration into, and differentiation (...) from, other action (I). The swoosh signals an »infrathin«, i.e. fleeting, connection of black boxes like machine, body, consciousness, and society being interrelated orthogonally. A culture develops, which momentarily leaves open the question whether or what controls whom or what, even though the calculi of computation themselves are becoming ever more incomputable. (shrink)

In diesem Beitrag werden die Bedingungen f ̈ur die Entscheidbarkeit eines lo-gischen Systems untersucht, indem Theorien der Unentscheidbarkeit, inner-halb der formalen Logik und der rekursiven Funktionen, analysiert werden.Eine notwendige und implizite Voraussetzung f ̈ur den Beweis des Fixpunkt-theorems (Diagonalisierungslemma) ist die Annahme der Abgeschlossenheitaller Formeln unter einerVariablen-Komposition, d.h., der Verkn ̈upfung vonVariablen in den Signaturen von Formeln. Eine Variablen-Kompositionvon Formeln ist in einer Pr ̈adikatenlogik repr ̈asentierbar, wenn der Satz∀ψ∀k(⊢ψ(k)↔∃y(ψ∧y≡k))hergeleitet werden kann, etwa durch einegeeignete semantische Definition der Quantoren. Als weitere (...) Bedingung wirdim Beitrag herausgearbeitet, dass bei dem Beweis eine Interpretation zugrun-deliegen muss, aus der sich die Existenz einer in diesem Text definiertenvari-ablen Signatur in einer Unbestimmtenmit einerkonstanten Interpretationher-leiten l ̈asst.Es wird ein Rekursionssatz f ̈ur Formeln in Analogie zum Rekursionssatz vonKleene (1943, S. 52-53) bewiesen, der das Diagonalisierungslemma als Spezial-fall abdeckt. Die hier gew ̈ahlte Notation und Beweisf ̈uhrung soll die Bedin-gungen f ̈ur seine Beweisbarkeit deutlich machen. Es wird zudem bewiesen,dass die Annahmen der Repr ̈asentierbarkeit einer Variablen-Kompositionund der mittels einer variablen Signatur in einer Unbestimmten darstellbarenkonstanten Interpretation aus der Behauptung des Rekursionssatzes folgen,also ̈aquivalent sind zur Existenz von Fixpunkten∀ψ∃φ(⊢φ↔ψ(⌜φ⌝)).Mit diesen Resultaten kann begr ̈undet werden, warum in einem pr ̈adikativenlogischen System die Negation des Diagonalisierungslemmas bewiesen wer-den kann, in dem diese Pr ̈amissen nicht gelten aber dennoch die expliziteVoraussetzung des Diagonalisierungslemmas erf ̈ullt ist. D.h. eine Spracheder pr ̈adikativen Logik ist m ̈achtig genug, alle berechenbaren Funktionen zurepr ̈asentieren, so wie Solte 2020 es als unerwartetes Ergebnis aufgezeigt hat.Als Ausblick auf ein derartiges logisches System wird eine entscheidbareStruktur berechenbarer Funktionen skizziert.Das bedeutet, in dieserStruktur kann eine pr ̈adikative Logik interpretiert werden, in der es keineunentscheidbaren S ̈atze gibt. (shrink)

Cet article montre ce que la cooccurrence peut nous apprendre sur la monosémie et comment on peut exploiter l’analyse des cooccurrences de deuxième ordre pour quantifier l’analyse sémantique. Les analyses sont conduites sur un corpus technique (1,7 million d’occurrences) relevant du domaine spécialisé des machines-outils pour l’usinage des métaux. Dans cet article, nous expliquons la méthodologie adoptée pour déterminer le degré de monosémie d’un mot technique à partir de l’analyse du recoupement de ses cooccurrences de deuxième ordre. Dans le but (...) d’affiner les résultats de la mesure de recoupement, nous procédons également à quelques expérimentations qui vont au-delà du simple repérage statistique des cooccurrences et qui font varier différents paramètres, tels que la fenêtre d’observation, le seuil de significativité et la forme graphique ou le lemme des cooccurrences de premier et deuxième ordre. Finalement, nous abordons l’importance de l’intégration des étiquettes morphosyntaxiques dans l’analyse des cooccurrences. (shrink)

There are basically two ways to view intuitionistic logic: as a philosophical‐foundational issue in mathematics; or as a technical discipline within mathematical logic. Considering first the philosophical aspects, for they will provide the motivation for the subject, this chapter follows L. E. J. Brouwer, the founding father of intuitionism. Although Brouwer himself contributed little to intuitionistic logic as seen from textbooks and papers, he did point the way for his successors.

In the present paper the story is told of the brief and far from tranquil encounter of L.E.J. Brouwer and A. Fraenkel. The relationship which started in perfect harmony, ended in irritation and reproaches.The mutual appreciation at the outset is beyond question. All the more deplorable is the sudden outbreak of an emotional disagreement in 1927. Looking at the Brouwer–Fraenkel episode, one should keep in mind that at that time the so-called Grundlagenstreit was in full swing. An emotional man like (...) Brouwer, who easily suffered under stress, was already on edgewhen Fraenkel's book Zehn Vorlesungen Über die Grundlegung der Mengenlehre, [Fraenkel 1927] was about to appear.With the Grundlagenstreit reaching a level of personal abuse unusual in the quiet circles of pure mathematics, Brouwer was rather sensitive, where the expositions of his ideas were concerned. So when he thought that he detected instances of misconception and misrepresentation in the case of his intuitionism, he felt slighted. We will mainly look at Brouwer's reactions. since the Fraenkel letters have not been preserved.The late Mrs. Fraenkel kindly put the Brouwer letters that were in her possession at my disposal. I am grateful to the Fraenkel family for the permission to use the material.I am indebted to Andreas Blass for his valuable suggestions and corrections.Abraham Fraenkel was one of the first non-partisan mathematicians, if not the first, who developed a genuine interest in intuitionism. (shrink)