Without extensive argument or elaboration of implications, the author presents Smith's views on ethical matters peculiarly important to our own era. Having previously assumed that Smith's statement alone is sufficient, the author permits him to speak extensively.--C. E. B.

Arguing that Sartre's social philosophy is both heuristic and normative, Greene's book represents a major contribution to the study of Sartre. He desires to eschew any evaluative judgments on Sartre's work and to concentrate on how to unravel the social philosophy of Sartre. But herein lies the major shortcoming: although warning the reader to be wary when interpreting Sartre's fiction and insisting that the major source of Sartre's doctrine is to be found in Being and Nothingness, Greene neither indicates how (...) to interpret Sartre's fiction, nor satisfactorily explicates Sartre's major work. The basic themes of Greene's exposition are that: Sartre is only concerned with the intellectual environment of the twentieth century; Sartre criticizes liberalism, Marxism and Catholicism in order to describe social reality and to define the proper relationship between the individual and society; Sartre has an ethics.—C. E. B. (shrink)

By reference to Lucretius's contemporaries and predecessors, especially Epicurus, Winspear attempts to show the originality of Lucretius. He allows Lucretius to speak for himself and makes many references to the apparent closeness of Lucretius's doctrines to modern thought. The book is challenging and provocative.—C. E. B.

Constantly aware of the mutual limits of philosophy and religion, Montagnes examines the development of St. Thomas' thought concerning the analogy of being and the conformity of his thought to that doctrine of Cajetan largely accepted by Thomists. He argues convincingly that Cajetan's thought differs importantly from that of Aquinas with regard to the source of the analogy.--C. E. B.

The main thrust of this book, novel and yet convincing, is that medieval philosophy cannot be studied without noting the importance its participants paid to political matters. The selections are mostly whole sections of different works, thus enabling the reader to form his own judgments without fear that he is reading the philosophical interpretations of the editors. Writings of al-Fârâbî, Avicenna, Averroes, Maimonides, Abravenel, Aquinas, Roger Bacon and Dante are among the twenty-five entries.--C. E. B.

The metaphysics of Avicenna is subjected to an analytical, historical and comparative method of study. The analysis is only a summary of selected doctrines of Avicenna; no argument for the various interpretations is discernible. The historical and comparative parts suffer from a dependence on general studies. The result is a superficial account of Avicenna's metaphysics.--C. E. B.

The essays presented in this volume are concerned with the history of Greek and Islamic philosophy; the history of doctrines, terminology, and movements in Islamic theology; and the way different Muslim thinkers attempted to explain human ethical problems as well as the nature of divine existence by means of rational discourse. In other words, the term Islamic philosophical theology used in the title of this volume does not announce a new field of intellectual pursuit, but serves merely to indicate succinctly (...) the contents of the work. Most of the eleven essays gathered together here were originally presented at two conferences held at Harvard and Columbia in 1971; discerning a plausible common theme among these papers, Parviz Morewedge commissioned others and arranged the collection under three descriptive headings. With two or three exceptions, each contribution draws attention to important new information or suggests a novel and provocative way of viewing familiar material. An excellent index more than compensates for the numerous typographical errors which seem to have eluded the editor and his assistants. (shrink)

Rousseau considered the Émile to be the most important of all his writings and thought it would be the one to seal his reputation as a thinker. It is not that the Émile is different in any fundamental respect from his other writings, for Rousseau insisted that however the subject might vary he always wrote according to the same principles. No, it is simply that Rousseau develops his basic argument more clearly and at greater length in this, his last substantive (...) work explicitly intended for the public. As Rousseau would have it, this work shows most clearly that man is good by nature, that he is naturally attracted to justice as well as order, that both vice and error are foreign to his original make-up, that they arose only because of society, and that the ills from which man now suffers because of the poor organization of society can be mitigated. These and many other intriguing lines of thought are developed in the Émile as Rousseau pursues his declared goal of explaining how to raise a youth according to nature. Yet until now the subtlety, not to mention the simple formal structure, of Rousseau’s treatise has not been accessible to the English-reading public. With this new translation of the Émile, Allan Bloom has made it possible for those who read only English to encounter Rousseau on his own terms. (shrink)

The author considers the conditions which render possible communication and signifying. Acknowledging that most of the literature now published deals with Anglo-Saxon and Germanic studies, he hopes to effect an application to the Italian language and way of thinking. His arguments are difficult to appreciate because they begin from too broad a base of assumptions. Although having emphasized a desire to strengthen the case for "common sense," he seems brutally to neglect that ideal. Rossi-Landi assumes that all language is construction (...) and accepts as an immediate corollary that thought is another construction. From this basis he pursues faithfully a value-free, historicist-oriented explanation of language which is marred by reasoning that abounds in non-sequitur. No one will deny the interest of the original problem, nor its relevance to the question of philosophy; it is to be regretted that more careful arguments have not been offered.--C. E. B. (shrink)

Without extensive argument or elaboration of implications, the author presents Smith's views on ethical matters peculiarly important to our own era. Having previously assumed that Smith's statement alone is sufficient, the author permits him to speak extensively.--C. E. B.

This book is a eulogy of Sir Francis Bacon and of his ostensible prophetic insight into the nature of knowledge; it attempts to reinstate him in a position of relevance to contemporary times. Bacon is cast as an innovator in the history of ideas for having espoused experiment and inductive knowledge rather than "scholastic system building." The booklet, however, evokes the uneasy feeling that, according to the author, almost any significant thinker of the past would be just as relevant in (...) facing the "modern dilemma." The reader searches in vain for an explanation of why Bacon ignored the possibility of a mathematically-based philosophy-something, being of no little significance to the development of modern science, that Eiseley needs to consider if his contention is to be persuasive.—C. E. B. (shrink)

"The more we learn about the history of mankind, the more we realize that there is no spontaneous generation in history but only a continuous shaping of new 'Forms' out of existing 'Matter.' Islamic philosophy is an interesting example of this process which constitutes the continuity of human civilization." Walzer concludes that Islamic thought, based on too narrow a concept of reason, failed where Greek philosophy had failed before it.--C. E. B.

These twenty-six essays were first presented at the Fifth Conference of the New York University Institute of Philosophy. They were presented by both philosophers and historians. The first nine essays are divided into three sections dealing with the relation of philosophy and history, relativism and the historian's task, and the problem of science and history. Two articles are of special interest: Paul Weiss's caustic aphorisms and Ernest Nagel's analytic discussion of relativism.—C. E. B.

This biography of Bayle corrects and supplements the famous biography by Desmaizeux with its mode adequate documentation and more thorough knowledge of Bayle's correspondence and social environments. Labrousse has combed Bayle's writings for tiny details and semi-confessional passages in order to animate somewhat the cold, impersonal image previously given of Bayle.--C. E. B.

These essays and critical reviews develop diverse themes in the context of discussing the philosophy of art. Two presuppositions dominate: 1) philosophy and art represent the highest peak of human culture, 2) Italian aesthetics has a decidedly philosophic foundation. One looks in vain for a defense or elaboration of these crucial assumptions.--C. E. B.

A collection of essays aiming to present a historical study of the problematics of a philosophy of science. Relying upon a questionable understanding of Kant and his effect on later thought, the author exhausts his subject more by flank action than by direct, sharp attack. Each thinker is treated separately. Conclusions, he asserts, can be found as a chain of thought from article to article; but that chain resists detection. --C. E. B.

The purpose of this book is to assess the merit of applying technical or economic rationality to social, legal and political problems. Diesing describes reason as calculation, discovery and application of rules to cases, and creative. Tentatively relating each type of rationality to one aspect of reason, he finally declares that creative reason "facilitates the study of social and political rationality, which are more difficult to characterize in terms of the other conceptions of reason."--C. E. B.

Rescher's introduction combines interesting and salient material on the sources of this work and the study of logic in al-Fârâbî's time. The translation has marginal page and line references to the Arabic text.--C. E. B.

This collection of twenty-two essays was originally published in 1932 but political events brought on its immediate destruction. It is only due to the perseverance of the editor, a Spinoza devotee, that the book is now offered to the public. The articles share the common goal of rendering homage to Spinoza. The most sanguine and perhaps clearest argument is David ben Gurion's attempt to redeem Spinoza from the 17th century ban of the Amsterdam Jewish community and to urge upon contemporary (...) Judaism the dutiful re-examination of this "most original and deep-thinking philosopher" yet sired by the Jewish tradition.--C. E. B. (shrink)

This interesting selection of Burke's writings and speeches is marred by two editorial flaws. Stanlis never indicates the sources of the selections. This failure is compounded by the fact that, contrary to his asserted purpose, he has omitted relevant material on almost every page.--C. E. B.

The title of this volume is somewhat misleading. Though the author begins his argument with a cursory account of medieval Islamic thought and of dialectical theology or kaläm, his subsequent exposition of the way three medieval thinkers adapted the basic features of kaläm tenets to their own arguments on behalf of God's existence is far less detailed or nuanced than his investigation of the shortcomings in nineteenth and twentieth century Western materialist explanations of the universe grounded in modern mathematics and (...) physics. Similarly misleading are the titles of the two appendices, for these are really detailed critiques of two bodies of literature the author repudiates lest his contention that "the universe had a beginning because an actual infinite cannot be formed by successive addition" be infirmed. Kaläm receives such a prominent billing here only because that contention and the reasoning behind it defended throughout this volume can be derived from the writings of certain authors associated with the movement. In other words, this book is less a scholarly investigation of kaläm doctrines than an attempt to identify a general set of arguments purporting to prove God's existence embraced by some of those who are traditionally called mutakallimün or dialectical theologians and to defend the soundness of those arguments against the skepticism of modern science. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to explore neonatal nurses’and mothers of preterm infants’experiences of daily challenges. Interviews took place asking for good, bad and challenging experiences. Data were analysed using qualitative content analysis and findings were clustered in two categories: good and challenging experiences, each containing three themes. The good experiences were: managing with success as a nurse, small things matter for mothers, and a good day anyhow for mothers and nurses. The challenging experiences were: mothering in public, being (...) pulled between responsibilities, and adverse things stick under the nurses’skin. The study shows that small daily clinical matters become big issues and could lead to moral distress, and that nurses integrate ethics of justice and ethics of care while mothers are concerned about health and well-being of their specific infant only. The challenge for nursing to integrate fairness and sensitive care in family-oriented neonatal care is discussed. (shrink)

A total of 1918 loci, detected by the hybridization of 938 expressed sequence tag unigenes from 26 Triticeae cDNA libraries, were mapped to wheat homoeologous group 4 chromosomes using a set of deletion, ditelosomic, and nulli-tetrasomic lines. The 1918 EST loci were not distributed uniformly among the three group 4 chromosomes; 41, 28, and 31% mapped to chromosomes 4A, 4B, and 4D, respectively. This pattern is in contrast to the cumulative results of EST mapping in all homoeologous groups, as reported (...) elsewhere, that found the highest proportion of loci mapped to the B genome. Sixty-five percent of these 1918 loci mapped to the long arms of homoeologous group 4 chromosomes, while 35% mapped to the short arms. The distal regions of chromosome arms showed higher numbers of loci than the proximal regions, with the exception of 4DL. This study confirmed the complex structure of chromosome 4A that contains two reciprocal translocations and two inversions, previously identified. An additional inversion in the centromeric region of 4A was revealed. A consensus map for homoeologous group 4 was developed from 119 ESTs unique to group 4. Forty-nine percent of these ESTs were found to be homoologous to sequences on rice chromosome 3, 12% had matches with sequences on other rice chromosomes, and 39% had no matches with rice sequences at all. Limited homology was found between wheat ESTs on homoeologous group 4 and the Arabidopsis genome. Forty-two percent of the homoeologous group 4 ESTs could be classified into functional categories on the basis of blastX searches against all protein databases. (shrink)

The focus of this study was to analyze the content, distribution, and comparative genome relationships of 996 chromosome bin-mapped expressed sequence tags accounting for 2266 restriction fragments on the homoeologous group 3 chromosomes of hexaploid wheat. Of these loci, 634, 884, and 748 were mapped on chromosomes 3A, 3B, and 3D, respectively. The individual chromosome bin maps revealed bins with a high density of mapped ESTs in the distal region and bins of low density in the proximal region of the (...) chromosome arms, with the exception of 3DS and 3DL. These distributions were more localized on the higher-resolution group 3 consensus map with intermediate regions of high-mapped-EST density on both chromosome arms. Gene ontology classification of mapped ESTs was not significantly different for homoeologous group 3 chromosomes compared to the other groups. A combined analysis of the individual bin maps using 537 of the mapped ESTs revealed rearrangements between the group 3 chromosomes. Approximately 232 of the consensus mapped ESTs matched sequences on rice chromosome 1 and revealed large- and small-scale differences in gene order. Of the group 3 mapped EST unigenes ∼21 and 32% matched the Arabidopsis coding regions and proteins, respectively, but no chromosome-level gene order conservation was detected. (shrink)

The objectives of this study were to develop a high-density chromosome bin map of homoeologous group 7 in hexaploid wheat, to identify gene distribution in these chromosomes, and to perform comparative studies of wheat with rice and barley. We mapped 2148 loci from 919 EST clones onto group 7 chromosomes of wheat. In the majority of cases the numbers of loci were significantly lower in the centromeric regions and tended to increase in the distal regions. The level of duplicated loci (...) in this group was 24% with most of these loci being localized toward the distal regions. One hundred nineteen EST probes that hybridized to three fragments and mapped to the three group 7 chromosomes were designated landmark probes and were used to construct a consensus homoeologous group 7 map. An additional 49 probes that mapped to 7AS, 7DS, and the ancestral translocated segment involving 7BS also were designated landmarks. Landmark probe orders and comparative maps of wheat, rice, and barley were produced on the basis of corresponding rice BAC/PAC and genetic markers that mapped on chromosomes 6 and 8 of rice. Identification of landmark ESTs and development of consensus maps may provide a framework of conserved coding regions predating the evolution of wheat genomes. (shrink)

A landslide inventory is a detailed register of the spatial distribution, geometry, and attributes of landslides and is essential for landslide hazard analysis, risk management, regional planning, and land use management and development, especially in landslide-prone regions. However, the development of a national landslide inventory is time-consuming and costly. Accordingly, most developing countries, including Sri Lanka, have basic landslide databases, which identify the location, date, and time of occurrence on a point map. This study, therefore, aimed to introduce a new (...) method to report landslide information via a mobile application based on a participatory approach with information recorded in a web portal called the participatory landslide inventory. Twenty-one landslide site locations and their attributes were captured on the PLI web portal using the PLI mobile app. The system administrator then demarcated the landslide boundaries and performed geometrical calculations for each landslide to complete the inventory. Finally, the landslide information was published through the PLI web portal. The PLI is an effective and efficient tool for developing a landslide inventory economically. (shrink)

A total of 944 expressed sequence tags generated 2212 EST loci mapped to homoeologous group 1 chromosomes in hexaploid wheat. EST deletion maps and the consensus map of group 1 chromosomes were constructed to show EST distribution. EST loci were unevenly distributed among chromosomes 1A, 1B, and ID with 660, 826, and 726, respectively. The number of EST loci was greater on the long arms than on the short arms for all three chromosomes. The distribution of ESTs along chromosome arms (...) was nonrandom with EST clusters occurring in the distal regions of short arms and middle regions of long arms. Duplications of group 1 ESTs in other homoeologous groups occurred at a rate of 35.5%. Seventy-five percent of wheat chromosome 1 ESTs had significant matches with rice sequences, where large regions of conservation occurred between wheat consensus chromosome 1 and rice chromosome 5 and between the proximal portion of the long arm of wheat consensus chromosome 1 and rice chromosome 10. Only 9.5% of group 1 ESTs showed significant matches to Arabidopsis genome sequences. The results presented are useful for gene mapping and evolutionary and comparative genomics of grasses. (shrink)

To localize wheat ESTs on chromosomes, 882 homoeologous group 6-specific ESTs were identified by physically mapping 7965 singletons from 37 cDNA libraries on 146 chromosome, arm, and sub-arm aneuploid and deletion stocks. The 882 ESTs were physically mapped to 25 regions flanked by 23 deletion breakpoints. Of the 5154 restriction fragments detected by 882 ESTs, 2043 were localized to group 6 chromosomes and 806 were mapped on other chromosome groups. The number of loci mapped was greatest on chromosome 6B and (...) least on 6D. The 264 ESTs that detected orthologous loci on all three homoeologs using one restriction enzyme were used to construct a consensus physical map. The physical distribution of ESTs was uneven on chromosomes with a tendency toward higher densities in the distal halves of chromosome arms. About 43% of the wheat group 6 ESTs identified rice homologs upon comparisons of genome sequences. Fifty-eight percent of these ESTs were present on rice chromosome 2 and the remaining were on other rice chromosomes. Even within the group 6 bins, rice chromosomal blocks identified by 1-6 wheat ESTs were homologous to up to 11 rice chromosomes. These rice-block contigs were used to resolve the order of wheat ESTs within each bin. (shrink)

The complex hexaploid wheat genome offers many challenges for genomics research. Expressed sequence tags facilitate the analysis of gene-coding regions and provide a rich source of molecular markers for mapping and comparison with model organisms. The objectives of this study were to construct a high-density EST chromosome bin map of wheat homoeologous group 2 chromosomes to determine the distribution of ESTs, construct a consensus map of group 2 ESTs, investigate synteny, examine patterns of duplication, and assess the colinearity with rice (...) of ESTs assigned to the group 2 consensus bin map. A total of 2600 loci generated from 1110 ESTs were mapped to group 2 chromosomes by Southern hybridization onto wheat aneuploid chromosome and deletion stocks. A consensus map was constructed of 552 ESTs mapping to more than one group 2 chromosome. Regions of high gene density in distal bins and low gene density in proximal bins were found. Two interstitial gene-rich islands flanked by relatively gene-poor regions on both the short and long arms and having good synteny with rice were discovered. The map locations of two ESTs indicated the possible presence of a small pericentric inversion on chromosome 2B. Wheat chromosome group 2 was shown to share syntenous blocks with rice chromosomes 4 and 7. (shrink)