John Evelyn (1620-1706) is best remembered for Sylva - his magnum opus - and his Diary . Alongside Pepys' diary, Evelyn's is as well known now as anything else written in their time. A connoisseur of architecture, painting, music, coins, and sermons, Evelyn was renowned for his practical knowledge on horticulture and arboriculture, and he was one of the original Fellows of the Royal Society. His Diary begins with an account of his early life and travels in (...) Europe. In addition to his own jottings of events, Evelyn drew on contemporary newspapers and pamphlets. (shrink)

We develop the concept of ‘aesthetic practices’ to capture the work needed for population data to be disseminated via government data portals. Specifically, we look at the Census Hub of the European Statistical System and the Danish Ministry of Education’s Data Warehouse. These portals form part of open government data initiatives, which we understand as governing technologies. We argue that to function as such, aesthetic practices are required so that data produced at dispersed sites can be brought into relation and (...) projected as populations in forms such as bar charts, heat maps and tables. Two examples of aesthetic practices are analysed based on ethnographic studies we have conducted on the production of data for the Hub and Warehouse: metadata and data cleaning. Metadata enables data to come into relation by containing and accounting for the differences between data. Data cleaning deals with the indeterminacies and absences of data and involves algorithms to determine what values data can obtain so they can be brought into relation. We attend to how both aesthetic practices involve normative decisions that make absent what exceeds them: embodied knowledge that cannot or has not been documented as well as data that cannot meet the forms required of data portals. While these aesthetic practices are necessary to sustain data portals as ‘sites of projection,’ we also bring critical attention to their performative effects for knowing, enacting and governing populations. (shrink)

"-Barbara Ehrenreich, Mother Jones "This book represents the expression of a particular feminist perspective made all the more compelling by Keller's evident commitment to and understanding of science.

We examine the ethical, social, and regulatory barriers that may hinder research on therapeutic potential of certain controversial controlled substances like marijuana, heroin, or ketamine. Hazards for individuals and society and potential adverse effects on communities may be good reasons for limiting access and justify careful monitoring of these substances. Overly strict regulations, fear of legal consequences, stigma associated with abuse and populations using illicit drugs, and lack of funding may, however, limit research on their considerable therapeutic potential. We review (...) the surprisingly sparse literature and address the particular ethical concerns pertinent to research with illicit and addictive substances, such as undue inducement, informed consent, therapeutic misconception, and risk to participants, researchers, and institutions. We consider the perspectives of key research stakeholders and explore whether they may be infected with bias. We conclude by proposing an empirical research agenda to provide an evidentiary basis for ethical reasoning. (shrink)

The practices of outstanding schools selected through the U.S. Department of Education's Blue Ribbon School of Excellence recognition program. Short articles describe the specific practices that led to excellence. Both Vol. 1: Elementary and Middle Schools and Vol. 2: Middle and Secondary Schools offer a rich resource of successful practices.

The practices of outstanding schools selected through the U.S. Department of Education's Blue Ribbon School of Excellence recognition program. Short articles describe the specific practices that led to excellence. Both Vol. 1: Elementary and Middle Schools and Vol. 2: Middle and Secondary Schools offer a rich resource of successful practices.

Mother-to-child transmission of the Human Immunodeficiency –Virus is a serious public health problem, contributing up to 90% of childhood HIV infections. In Tanzania, the prevention-of-mother-to-child-transmission feature of the HIV programme was rolled out in 2000. The components of PMTCT include counselling and HIV testing directed at antenatal clinic attendees. It is through the process of Provider Initiated Counseling and Testing that counselling is offered participant confidentiality and voluntariness are upheld and valid consent obtained. The objective of the study was to (...) explore antenatal clinic attendees’ experiences of the concept of voluntariness vis- a- vis the implementation of prior counseling and subsequent testing for HIV under the PITC as part of their antenatal care. In-depth interviews were conducted with17 antenatal clinic attendees and 6 nursing officers working at the Muhimbili National Hospital antenatal clinic. The study data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Antenatal clinic attendees’ accounts suggested that counselling and testing for HIV during pregnancy was voluntary, and that knowledge of their HIV status led them to access appropriate treatment for both mother and her newborn baby. They reported feeling no pressure from nursing officers, and gave verbal consent to undergo the HIV test. However, some antenatal clinic attendees reported pressure from their partners to test for HIV. Healthcare providers were thus faced with a dilemma of disclosure/ nondisclosure when dealing with discordant couples. Antenatal clinic attendees at MNH undertook the PITC for HIV voluntarily. This was enhanced by their prior knowledge of HIV, the need to prevent mother- to- child transmission of HIV, and the effectiveness of the voluntary policy implemented by nursing officers. (shrink)

Our focus in this article concerns Leibniz’s views on evil. Our goal is to examine which are the consequences of his conception of moral agency for the moral psychology of the genuinely evil person. For Leibniz, moral failure is an epistemic error since it involves some false practical judgement. Moral maxims may be represented in blind or symbolic cognitions, but then moral agents can misrepresent the evil consequences of their behaviour. Finally, we discuss Leibniz’s view on habits that may help (...) virtuous persons strive for perfection but also enable evil persons to continue sinning. (shrink)

Les communications du colloque sur "La fonction critique de l'Art" qui s'Est déroulé à l'Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour, les 28, 29 et 30 novembre 2007 sous l'Impulsion d'Evelyne Toussaint, témoignent d'Une volonté d'eclairer la production d'Artistes qui ont pris position sur des questions politiques, sociales, économiques ou esthétiques. Sans céder à certains jugements qui se révèlent souvent comme autant de témoignages de méconnaissance, de distraction, d'emballements rhétoriques ou de volonté d'emprise, résistant aux arbitrages qui les inciteraient (...) à opter exclusivement pour l'esthétique relationnelle, la micropolitique, le détournement, le documentaire, l'art contextuel ou l'art autonome, de nombreux artistes se moquent, en effet, de l'injonction qui lescontraindrait à dissocier œuvre sensible et œuvre critique. (shrink)

L’alternance entre N2’s N1/N1 of N2/N2N1 est généralement expliquée en France par le recours au modèle de la grammaire métaopérationnelle, selon lequel c’est la « soudure » entre les référents de N2 et N1 qui détermine le choix de structure. Le modèle est mis à mal par l’analyse des occurrences du corpus : il est inapte à rendre compte de leur emploi, et sur un plan plus général, il ne remplit pas les principaux critères scientifiques de validité : universalité, raisonnement (...) non circulaire, réfutabilité et pouvoir de prédiction. L’article propose une autre explication de l’alternance en question, élaborée dans un cadre théorique qui rejette l’idée de l’existence systématique d’un invariant sémantique. L’hypothèse avancée est que le choix de structure, en dehors des cas de spécialisation fonctionnelle, se fait principalement selon la fonction de N2. De plus, il est suggéré que s’opère aujourd’hui une poussée du schéma N2N1 et une baisse de productivité du génitif, en cohérence avec le déclin historique du système casuel de l’anglais. (shrink)

‘‘COGNITIVE ECOLOGY’’ is a fruitful model for Shakespearian studies, early modern literary and cultural history, and theatrical history more widely. Cognitive ecologies are the multidimensional contexts in which we remember, feel, think, sense, communicate, imagine, and act, often collaboratively, on the fly, and in rich ongoing interaction with our environments. Along with the anthropologist Edwin Hutchins,1 we use the term ‘‘cognitive ecology’’ to integrate a number of recent approaches to cultural cognition: we believe these approaches offer productive lines of engagement (...) with early modern literary and historical studies.2 The framework arises out of our work in extended mind and distributed cognition.3 The extended mind hypothesis arose from a post-connectionist philosophy of cognitive science. This approach was articulated in Andy Clark’s Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again, and further developed by Susan Hurley and Mark Rowlands, among others.4 The distributed cognition approach arose independently, from work in cognitive anthropology, HCI (Human-Computer Interaction), the sociology of education and work, and science studies. The principles of distributed cognition were articulated in Hutchins’s ethnography of navigation, Cogni- tion in the Wild,5 and developed by theorists such as David Kirsh and Lucy Suchman.6 These models share an anti-individualist approach to cognition. In all these views, mental activities spread or smear across the boundaries of skull and skin to include parts of the social and material world. In remembering, decision making, and acting, whether individually or in small groups, our complex and structured activities involve many distinctive dimensions: neural, affective, kines-. (shrink)

The enshrinement of William Shakespeare’s plays in printed editions has led to the assumption that they were performed with an ideal of exact verbatim reproduction of the language. Evidence drawn from alternative versions of the plays circulating in Shakespeare’s lifetime and from our knowledge of the material practices of playing in early modern England presents us with a very different picture. Performing practices in this period were marked by a tension between improvisational here-and-now languaging practices, including the use of gesture (...) in playing, and a new set of expectations based upon an emergent conception of plays as written documents. (shrink)

The practices of outstanding schools selected through the U.S. Department of Education's Blue Ribbon School of Excellence recognition program. Short articles describe the specific practices that led to excellence. Both Vol. 1: Elementary and Middle Schools and Vol. 2: Middle and Secondary Schools offer a rich resource of successful practices.

That Cicero as a young didactic poet embraced the traditions of Hellenistic hexameter poetry is well recognized. Those traditions encompass various forms of wordplay, one of which is the acrostic. Cicero's engagement with this tradition, in the form of an unusual Greek-Latin acrostic at Aratea 317–20, prompts inquiry regarding both the use of the acrostic technique as textual commentary and Cicero's lifelong concerns regarding translation.

Il s’agit d’étudier dans ce volume non pas juste une classe de mots, mais une fonction, qui a fait l’objet de grandes divergences théoriques quant à ses délimitations, sa définition exacte, et dont le concept même n’est pas utilisé par toutes les écoles de linguistique. Le but de ce volume est de faire le point sur les facteurs de divergence, sur les concepts limitatifs ou concurrents à celui de détermination, afin de voir si certaines...

In the Philosophical Investigations §242, Wittgenstein asserts paradoxically that objectivity is not lost even though communication requires the interplay of agreement in definitions and agreement in judgments. Although Wittgenstein does not claim that objectivity is only determined by this interplay, the objective status of logic initially appears to have disappeared. Wittgenstein here foresees the criticism launched by Kripke that objectivity has been replaced by inter-subjectivity. However, he retorts that the only aspect of objectivity that has vanished is the illusion of (...) any access to an absolute truth independent of language-use. In a transcendental rotation reminiscent of Kant, Wittgenstein maintains that when the notion of a direct trajectory between human consciousness and truth is relinquished, objectivity of any kind relies on rules that language-use generates in the play of a language-game. Wittgenstein grounds objectivity in judgment, and thereby subjects logic to the possibility of communication. (shrink)

My aim in this dissertation is threefold. First I explore Cassirer's thesis that all human expression and representation is symbolic. Human life unfolds in the interplay of physical necessity and self-determination. In life we continually integrate and balance material and non-material components. The symbolic function is the vehicle whereby we interweave these two dimensions. To accomplish this task and to show why human expression and representation is symbolic, I trace Cassirer's conception of the symbolic function to Kant's distinction between symbols (...) and schemata. I then develop Cassirer's deviation from Kant, which led to his own formulation of the concept of the symbolic function and his views on objectifying experience. ;The second aim of this work addresses the implications of the symbolic function for objectifying human experience. Though objects may indeed exist independently of us, we cannot express or represent what there is independently of our human modes of expression--our symbolic forms. Objects are never presented directly but are always known indirectly through some form of expression. This constraint stems from our nature as human subjects and is therefore "subjectively necessary" for objectifying human experience. This implies that truth as well as beauty cannot be addressed independently of the modality through which it is expressed and represented. ;Finally, I have one more aim in view. Cassirer was a "cultural activist" who grappled with the source of the creative human potential. Far too often in contemporary times we impose psychic and spiritual binds on ourselves that stifle our creative imagination and reduce us to the level of material objects. Cassirer speaks to the productive activity of the human imagination which can function through any modality to combat the spiritual vacuum of contemporary culture. This source of creative freedom does not hover in an abstract realm oblivious to the irrational tendencies of human beings, but is grounded in the materials of daily life. It enables us to objectify human experience through any form of expression by means of the symbolic function. (shrink)

The essays included here represent Fox Keller's attempts to integrate the insights of feminist theory with those of her contemporaries in the history and philosophy of science.

Environmental pragmatists are committed to analyzing questions of environmental policy. Bryan Norton's pragmatic critique of environmental decision-making shows how an implicit commitment to the fact/value distinction has hindered productive environmental action. Nonetheless, Norton, as well as the majority of environmental ethicists, have devoted more attention to theorizing value disagreements as a primary cause of controversy than to examining epistemic structures. A case study demonstrates why and how Norton's procedural account may be supplemented with sensitive attention to the construction of epistemic (...) authority in environmental disputes. I recommend supporting the development of local knowledges and just distributions of epistemic authority. (shrink)

Complex environmental problems require well-researched policies that integrate knowledge from both the natural and social sciences. Epistemic differences can impede interdisciplinary collaboration, as shown by debates between conservation biologists and anthropologists who are working to preserve biological diversity and support economic development in central Africa. Disciplinary differences with regard to 1) facts, 2) rigor, 3) causal explanation, and 4) research goals reinforce each other, such that early decisions about how to define concepts or which methods to adopt may tilt research (...) design and data interpretation toward one discipline’s epistemological framework. If one of the contributing fields imposes a solution to an epistemic problem, this sets the stage for what I call disciplinary capture. Avoiding disciplinary capture requires clear communication between collaborators, but beyond this it also requires that collaborators craft research questions and innovate research designs which are different from the inherited epistemological frameworks of contributing disciplines. (shrink)