Planar cell polarity (PCP), the alignment of cells within 2D tissue planes, involves a set of core molecular regulators highly conserved between animals and cell types. These include the transmembrane proteins Frizzled (Fz) and VanGogh and the cytoplasmic regulators Dishevelled (Dsh) and Prickle. It is widely accepted that this core forms part of a ‘PCP pathway’ for signal transduction, which can affect cell morphology through activation of an evolutionary ancient regulatory module involving Rho family GTPases and Myosin II, and/or the (...) JNK kinase cascade. We have re‐examined the evidence for interactions between the proposed PCP pathway components, and question the placing of the cell morphology regulators in the same pathway as the PCP core. While Fz and Dsh are clearly involved in both PCP and Rho‐based cell morphology regulation, available evidence cannot currently discriminate whether these processes are linked mechanistically by a shared Fz/Dsh population, or pass by two distinct pathways. (shrink)

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)

A translation of a dialogue between Evelyne Grossman and Jacob Rogozinski on Artaud, Deleuze, and the status of the ego.

An edition of the letters of Erasmus, regarded as one of the greatest humanist writers. All 12 volumes of this work have been reissued, complete with their scholarly apparatus of commentary and notes, as well as plates.

"-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.

In _Beyond Prejudice_, Evelyn B. Pluhar defends the view that any sentient conative being—one capable of caring about what happens to him or herself—is morally significant, a view that supports the moral status and rights of many nonhuman animals. Confronting traditional and contemporary philosophical arguments, she offers in clear and accessible fashion a thorough examination of theories of moral significance while decisively demonstrating the flaws in the arguments of those who would avoid attributing moral rights to nonhumans. Exposing the (...) traditional view—which restricts the moral realm to autonomous, fully fledged "persons"—as having horrific implications for the treatment of many humans, Pluhar goes on to argue positively that sentient individuals of any species are no less morally significant than the most automomous human. Her position provides the ultimate justification that is missing from previous defenses of the moral status of nonhuman animals. In the process of advancing her position, Pluhar discusses the implications of determining moral significance for children and "abnormal" humans as well as its relevance to population policies, the raising of animals for food or product testing, decisions on hunting and euthanasia, and the treatment of companion animals. In addition, the author scrutinizes recent assertions by environmental ethicists that all living things or that natural objects and ecosystems be considered highly morally significant. This powerful book of moral theory challenges all defenders of the moral status quo—which decrees that animals decidedly do not count—to reevaluate their convictions. (shrink)

With the breakdown of traditional racial boundaries in many areas of the world, the widespread and growing consumption of skin-lightening products testifies to the increasing significance of colorism—social hierarchy based on gradations of skin tone within and between racial/ethnic groups. Light skin operates as a form of symbolic capital, one that is especially critical for women because of the connection between skin tone and attractiveness and desirability. Far from being an outmoded practice or legacy of past colonialism, the use of (...) skin lighteners is growing fastest among young, urban, educated women in the global South. Although global in scope, the skin-lightening market is highly segmented by nation, culture, race, and class. This article examines the “yearning for lightness” and skin-lightening practices in various societies and communities and the role of transnational pharmaceutical and cosmetic corporations in fueling the desire for lighter skin through print, Internet, and television ads that link light skin with modernity, social mobility, and youth. (shrink)

Two decades of critique have sensitized historians and philosophers of science to the inadequacies of conventional dichotomies between theory and practice, thereby prompting the search for new ways of writing about science that are less beholden than the old ways to the epistemological mores of theoretical physics, and more faithful to the actual practices not only of physics but of all the natural sciences. The need for alternative descriptions seems particularly urgent if one is to understand the place of theory (...) (and, in parallel, the role of modeling) in contemporary molecular biology, a science where, until now, no division between theory and experiment has obtained, and where distinctions between representing and intervening, and more generally, between basic and applied science, are daily becoming more blurred. Indeed, the very division between theory and experiment threatens to slight the extensive and sophisticated theoretical analyses (and even modeling) on which experimental work in contemporary molecular biology so often depends. My aim in this paper is to find a way of talking about theoretical practices in biology that is directly rooted in the mix of conceptual and material work that biologists do. As an example of such theoretical practices, I choose for the focus of my analysis the development of a model for gene regulation out of the experimental work of Eric Davidson and his colleagues at Cal Tech. (shrink)

What do biologists want? If, unlike their counterparts in physics, biologists are generally wary of a grand, overarching theory, at what kinds of explanation do biologists aim? A history of the diverse and changing nature of biological explanation in a particularly charged field, "Making Sense of Life" draws our attention to the temporal, disciplinary, and cultural components of what biologists mean, and what they understand, when they propose to explain life.

In business and government, databases contain large quantities of digital transactional data (purchases made, services used, finances transferred, benefits received, licences acquired, borders crossed, tickets purchased). The data can be understood as ongoing and dynamic measurements of the activities and doings of people. In government, numerous database devices have been developed to connect such data across services to discover patterns and identify and evaluate the performance of individuals and populations. Under the UK’s New Labour government, the development of such devices (...) was part of a broader policy known as ‘joined-up thinking and government’. Analyses of this policy have typically understood joining up as an operation of adding together distributed data about subjects, which can then be used in the service of government surveillance, the database state or informational capitalism. But rather than such technical or managerialist analytics, I argue that topological analytics capture what these database devices enact and do: they materialize the ‘individuality’ of subjects in intensified, distributed and fluctuating ways and materialize and intensify a logic of what Deleuze describes as modulating controls. Through examples of UK New Labour social policy initiatives over the past decade, I argue that topological analytics can account for these as immanent rather than exceptional properties of database devices and, as such, part and parcel of a governmental logic and ontology of subjects. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to intervene in debates about the digital and, in particular, framings that imagine the digital in terms of epochal shifts or as redefining life. Instead, drawing on recent developments in digital methods, we explore the lively, productive and performative qualities of the digital by attending to the specificities of digital devices and how they interact, and sometimes compete, with older devices and their capacity to mobilize and materialize social and other relations. In doing so, (...) our aim is to explore the implications of digital devices and data for reassembling social science methods or what we call the social science apparatuses that assemble digital devices and data to ‘know’ the social and other relations. Building on recent work at CRESC on the social life of methods, we recommend a genealogical approach that is alive to the ways in which digital devices are simultaneously shaped by social worlds, and can in turn become agents that shape those worlds. This calls for attending to the specificities of digital devices themselves, how they are varied and composed of diverse socio-technical arrangements, and are enrolled in the creation of new knowledge spaces, institutions and actors. Rather than exploring what large-scale changes can be revealed and understood through the digital, we argue for explorations of how digital devices themselves are materially implicated in the production and performance of contemporary sociality. To that end we offer the following nine propositions about the implications of digital data and devices and argue that these demand rethinking the theoretical assumptions of social science methods: transactional actors; heterogeneity; visualization; continuous time; whole populations; granularity; expertise; mobile and mobilizing; and non-coherence. (shrink)

Much has been written about data politics in the last decade, which has generated myriad concepts such as ‘surveillance capitalism’, ‘gig economy’, ‘quantified self’, ‘algorithmic governmentality’, ‘data colonialism’, ‘data subjects’ and ‘digital citizens’. Yet, it has been difficult to plot these concepts into an historical series to discern specific continuities and discontinuities since the origins of modern power in its three major forms: sovereign, disciplinary and regulatory. This article argues that the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 brought these three forms of (...) power into sharp relief but made particularly visible a fourth form of power that we name ‘sensory power’, which has been emerging since the 1980s. The article draws on early studies of power by Michel Foucault, subsequent studies on biopower and biopolitics that expanded on them, and studies in the past decade that focused on data produced from apps, devices and platforms. Yet, despite its ambition, the article is inevitably an outline of a much larger project. (shrink)

Philosophers increasingly engage in practical work with other disciplines and the world at large. This volume draws together the lessons learned from this work--including philosophers' contributions to scientific research projects, consultations on matters of policy, and expertise provided to government agencies and non-profits--on how to effectively practice philosophy. Its 22 case studies are organized into five sections: I Collaboration and Communication II Policymaking and the Public Sphere III Fieldwork in the Academy IV Fieldwork in the Professions V Changing Philosophical Practice (...) Together, these essays provide a practical, how-to guide for doing philosophy in the field--how to find problems that can benefit from philosophical contributions, effectively collaborate with other professionals and community members, make fieldwork a positive part of a philosophical career, and anticipate and negotiate the sorts of unanticipated problems that crop up in direct public engagement. Key features: Gives specific advice on how to integrate philosophy with outside groups. Offers examples from working with the public and private sectors, community organizations, and academic groups. Provides lessons learned, often summarized at the end of chapters, for how to practice philosophy in the field. (shrink)

Resumo: A inclusão no Ensino Superior é uma premissa de âmbito social, educacional e político. Muitos passos têm sido trilhados para que os discursos sobre equidade e igualdade possam ser proferidos e perspectivados, reconhecendo que o ajustamento dos estudantes com Necessidades Educativas Especiais (NEE) precede-se de inúmeros fatores, entre eles, das políticas educativas. Para possibilitar algumas reflexões, o presente estudo, de natureza qualitativa, objetivou conhecer as percepções de colaboradores (n=85) de Instituições de Ensino Superior portuguesas sobre o papel das políticas (...) educativas em prol da inclusão. Os dados, provenientes de um questionário online, foram tratados sob a técnica de análise de conteúdo, com apoio do software webQDA. Os resultados evidenciaram 60 referências na categoria de potencialidades, refletidas na garantia da efetivação do percurso acadêmico de estudantes com NEE no Ensino Superior e concretização dos seus direitos. Verificou-se que 91,7% dos participantes compreendem que as políticas educativas são importantes para o seu país, pelo que 88,2% dos colaboradores acreditam que estas políticas potenciam a inclusão e a permanência de estudantes com NEE no Ensino Superior, na qual 40,7% verificaram ações de apoio e incentivo, ao nível político, em prol da inclusão em Portugal. Palavras-chave: Políticas Educativas; Inclusão; Ensino Superior; Portugal; Necessidades Educativas Especiais. Educational policies and inclusion in Higher Education: perceptions about the Portuguese context Abstract: Inclusion in Higher Education is a social, educational and political premise. Many steps have been taken so that the discourses on equity and equality can be delivered and envisaged, recognizing that the adjustment of students with Special Educational Needs (SEN) is preceded by numerous factors, among them, educational policies. To enable some reflections, the present study, of a qualitative nature, aimed to know the perceptions of employees (n = 85) of Portuguese Higher Education Institutions about the role of educational policies on behalf of inclusion. The data, from an online survey, were treated using the content analysis technique, with the support of the webQDA software. The results revealed 60 references in the potentialities category, reflected in the guarantee of the effectiveness of the academic path of students with SEN in Higher Education and the realization of their rights. It was found that 91.7% of participants understand that educational policies are important for their country, so 88.2% of employees believe that these policies enhance the inclusion and permanence of students with SEN in Higher Education, in which 40.7% verified support and incentive actions, at the political level, in favor of inclusion in Portugal. Keywords: Educational Policies; Inclusion; Higher Education; Portugal; Special Educational Needs. Políticas educativas e inclusión en la educación superior: percepciones sobre el contexto portugués Resumen: La inclusión en la Educación Superior es una premisa en el marco social, educativo y político. Se han dado muchos pasos para que los discursos sobre equidad e igualdad puedan ser pronunciados y verificados, reconociendo que la adaptación de los estudiantes con Necesidades Educativas Especiales (NEE) está precedida por numerosos factores, entre ellos, las políticas educativas. Para posibilitar algunas reflexiones, el presente estudio, de carácter cualitativo, tuvo como objetivo conocer las percepciones de los colaboradores (n = 85) de las Instituciones de Educación Superior portuguesas sobre la función de las políticas educativas a favor de la inclusión. Los datos, provenientes de una encuesta online, fueron tratados mediante la técnica de análisis de contenido, con el apoyo del software webQDA. Los resultados evidenciaron 60 referencias en la categoría de potencialidades, reflejadas en la garantía de la efectividad de la trayectoria académica de los estudiantes con NEE en la Educación Superior y la realización de sus derechos. Se constató que el 91,7% de los participantes entiende que las políticas educativas son importantes para su país, por lo que el 88,2% de los empleados cree que estas políticas potencian la inclusión y permanencia de los estudiantes con NEE en la Educación Superior, en la que el 40,7% verificó acciones de apoyo e incentivo, a nivel político, a favor de la inclusión en Portugal. Palabras clave: Políticas Educativas; Inclusión; Educación superior; Portugal; Necesidades Educativas Especiales. Data de registro: 16/04/2021 Data de aceite: 01/12/2021. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Human cloning has been simultaneously a running joke for massive worldwide publicity of fringe groups like the Raelians, and the core issue of an international movement at the United Nations in support of a treaty to ban the use of cloning techniques to produce a child (so called reproductive cloning). Yet, even though debates on human cloning have greatly increased since the birth of Dolly, the clone sheep, in 1997, we continue to wonder whether cloning is after all any (...) different from other methods of medically assisted reproduction, and what exactly makes cloning an ‘affront to the dignity of humans.’ Categories we adopt matter mightily as they inform but can also misinform and lead to mistaken and unproductive decisions. And thus bioethicists have a responsibility to ensure that the proper categories are used in the cloning debates and denounce those who try to win the ethical debate through well‐crafted labels rather than well‐reasoned argumentations. But it is as important for bioethicists to take a position on broad issues such as human cloning and species altering interventions. One ‘natural question’ would be, for example, should there be an international treaty to ban human reproductive cloning? (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.

Es gibt Gegenstände, von denen gilt, daß es dergleichen Gegenstände nicht gibt. Dieser Satz hat dem Österreicher Alexius Meinong nicht nur Berühmtheit, sondern auch vernichtende Urteile beschert. Hindern konnten sie ihn jedoch keinesfalls daran, die weltweit bekannte Schule der Grazer Gegenstandstheorie zu etablieren. Wertphilosophische, erkenntnistheoretische sowie psychologische Schriften und die Gründung des ersten experimentalpsychologischen Laboratoriums in Österreich komplettieren das Schaffen dieses Philosophen. Meinongs Lebensgeschichte ist die Verquickung der Geschichte seiner Publikationen und der akademischen Aktivitäten seiner kleinen Schule von Schülern. Platz (...) für private Belange schien in jenem Leben, das sich nahezu vier Jahrzehnte in der steiermärkischen Universitätsstadt Graz abspielte, kaum zu sein. Eine äußerst starke Sehschwäche, die Meinong vor Kollegen, Freunden und sogar seiner Frau auf ungewöhnliche Weise zu verbergen suchte, lastete schwer auf ihm. In der ersten vollständigen Biographie Meinongs zeichnet Evelyn Dölling das leidenschaftliche Ringen dieses Denkers um höchste wissenschaftliche Präzision nach. Aus der Recherche des umfangreichen Nachlaßmaterials sowie der zahlreichen Korrespondenzen (8 300 Briefe) entsteht ein Bild von Meinongs Familienleben und seinen Beziehungen zu Freunden, wie man es so bislang nicht kannte. (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)

In much of the discourse of evolutionary theory, reproduction is treated as an autonomous function of the individual organism — even in discussions of sexually reproducing organisms. In this paper, I examine some of the functions and consequences of such manifestly peculiar language. In particular, I suggest that it provides crucial support for the central project of evolutionary theory — namely that of locating causal efficacy in intrinsic properties of the individual organism. Furthermore, I argue that the language of individual (...) reproduction is maintained by certain methodological conventions that both obscure many of the problems it generates and serve to actively impede attempts to redress those difficulties that can be identified. Finally, I suggest that inclusion of the complexities introduced by sexual reproduction — in both language and methodology — may radically undermine the individualist focus of evolutionary theory. (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)

In this powerful critique, the esteemed historian and philosopher of science Evelyn Fox Keller addresses the nature-nurture debates, including the persistent disputes regarding the roles played by genes and the environment in determining individual traits and behavior. Keller is interested in both how an oppositional “versus” came to be inserted between nature and nurture, and how the distinction on which that opposition depends, the idea that nature and nurture are separable, came to be taken for granted. How, she asks, (...) did the illusion of a space between nature and nurture become entrenched in our thinking, and why is it so tenacious? Keller reveals that the assumption that the influences of nature and nurture can be separated is neither timeless nor universal, but rather a notion that emerged in Anglo-American culture in the late nineteenth century. She shows that the seemingly clear-cut nature-nurture debate is riddled with incoherence. It encompasses many disparate questions knitted together into an indissoluble tangle, and it is marked by a chronic ambiguity in language. There is little consensus about the meanings of terms such as nature, nurture, gene, and environment. Keller suggests that contemporary genetics can provide a more appropriate, precise, and useful vocabulary, one that might help put an end to the confusion surrounding the nature-nurture controversy. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt beschäftigt sich in ihren Schriften mit konkreten Erfahrungen in der Welt. Ihr Verständnis von Politik definiert sich durch Phänomenalität und entsteht als Handeln zwischen den Menschen. Die Verfasserin zeigt, dass Arendts Denken auch für aktuelle politikdidaktische Fragestellungen wegweisend ist.

In 1991, the myotonic dystrophy gene was cloned by researchers from Cardiff, London, and elsewhere overseas. This article examines the relationships between the different research groups. It shows that the scientific collaboration on the myotonic dystrophy research was not a constant, stable feature of scientific progress but a process whereby the relationships among the scientists altered over time according to the stage of the research. This process was mediated by vested interests, by personalities, by the power differentials of the groups, (...) by the resources of the groups, by subcollaborations, and by interactions with those outside the main research network. The collaboration can be seen as a continuum, ranging from full cooperation with all parties to selected revelations to specific parties to intense competition. These cooperative and competitive relationships are seen primarily from the perspective of one research group, with whom intensive field research was conducted. (shrink)

Scientists have shown that the practice of factory farming is an increasingly urgent danger to human health, the environment, and nonhuman animal welfare. For all these reasons, moral agents must consider alternatives. Vegetarian food production, humane food animal farming, and in-vitro meat production are all explored from a variety of ethical perspectives, especially utilitarian and rights-based viewpoints, all in the light of current U.S. and European initiatives in the public and private sectors. It is concluded that vegetarianism and potentially in-vitro (...) meat production are the best-justified options. (shrink)

A substantial literature on risk perception demonstrates the limits of human rationality, especially in the face of catastrophic risks. Human judgment, it seems, is flawed by the tendency to overestimate the magnitude of rare but evocative risks, while underestimating risks associated with commonplace dangers. Such findings are particularly relevant to the problem of crafting responsible public policy in the face of the kinds of threat posed by climate change. If the risk perception of ordinary citizens cannot be trusted, then it (...) would seem logical to base policy decisions on expert judgment. But how rational, how trustworthy, are expert assessments of catastrophic risk? I briefly review the limitations of conventional models of expert risk analysis, especially in dealing with the large uncertainties endemic to the risk of low-probability, high-impact events in the distant future. The challenges such events pose to the underlying assumptions of these analyses are severe enough to question their basic rationality. I argue that a conception of rationality premised on the bounded knowledge of experts and lay citizens alike, based on context-appropriate heuristics, may help us in the search for a more trustworthy basis for decision making. (shrink)

The Statements on Responsibilities in Tax Practice (SRTPs) provide guidance to the CPA when making decisions in tax practice. Many of these decisions are ethical in nature and have implications for tax compliance. In this study, a survey methodology is used to test whether the SRTPs affect decisions that CPAs make. The findings suggest that a clear majority of CPAs follow the SRTPs when making ethical decisions relating to tax return preparation and that CPAs follow the SRTPs more often than (...) unlicensed preparers on half the issues tested. However, a statistically significant number of CPAs do not follow the SRTPs and, CPAs do not follow the SRTPs any more often than unlicensed tax preparers on three issues. (shrink)

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.

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)