French naturalists at the Muséum Nationale d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris in the early nineteenth century recognized that their individual and collective successes were intimately linked to questions of power over specimens. France’s strength abroad affected the growth of the museum’s collections. At the museum, preserving, naming, classifying, displaying, interpreting, and otherwise deploying specimens went hand in hand with promoting scientific theories, advancing scientific careers, and instructing the public. The control of specimens, both literally and figuratively, was the museum’s ongoing concern. (...) The leopard in this essay’s title, a live specimen confiscated from the streets of Paris in 1793, serves here to represent the tensions created in an existing order of things by the introduction of a potentially disruptive agent. The essay explores the life of the museum and the interrelations among its naturalists, the special challenges created by the establishment of a menagerie, and the histories of particular specimens and ideas. (shrink)

The Cleavage in Our Culture BOYD H. BODE Professor Emeritus of Education, Ohio State University DURING RECENT YEARS there have been occasional opportunities ...

The purpose of this dissertation is to provide a defence of Aristotle's principle of contradiction against the critique made on it by Jan Lukasiewicz in an article he wrote in 1910 which was translated and published in the March 1971 number of The Review of Metaphysics. Lukasiewicz maintains in general that the law of contradiction has no logical worth. Specifically, he charges Aristotle with having several laws of contradiction instead of one as Aristotle claims; with attempting to prove the law (...) despite his claim that this is impossible and finally with failing in the very attempt to prove the law, or at least one of its formulations. In 20 chapters, each dealing with a respective section of Lukasiewicz's article, I attempt to show that all of Lukasiewicz's allegations are unfounded. My methodology is simply to follow Lukasiewicz through his 20 sections and compare what he says with what Aristotle actually wrote. If successful, this dissertation will show, in basic agreement with Professor Joseph Owens, that the best way to read Aristotle is on his own terms and not, as in the case of Lukasiewicz, via the latest developments in symbolic logic. I reiterate, with Aristotle, that the law of contradiction is the basic principle of being qua being and has logical worth precisely because of that fact. (shrink)

Two kinds of causal inference rules which are widely used by social scientists are investigated. Two conceptions of causation also widely used are explicated -- the INUS and probabilistic conceptions of causation. It is shown that the causal inference rules which link correlation, a kind of partial correlation, and a conception of causation are invalid. It is concluded a new methodology is required for causal inference.

During the past decades several philosophers of science and social scientists have been interested in the problems of causation. Recently attention has been given to probabilistic causation in dichotomous causal systems. The paper uses the basic features of probabilistic causation to argue that the causal modeling approaches developed by such researchers as Blalock (1964) and Duncan (1975) can provide, when an additional assumption is added, adequate qualitative measures of one variableś causal influence upon another. Finally, some of the difficulties and (...) issues involved in developing adequate quantitative measures are discussed, and it is concluded that the causal modeling measures cannot provide adequate quantitative measures. (shrink)

Philosophers and scientists have maintained that causation, correlation, and "partial correlation" are essentially related. These views give rise to various rules of causal inference. This essay considers the "claims of several philosophers and social scientists for causal systems with dichotomous variables. In section 2 important commonalities and differences are explicated among four major conceptions of correlation. In section 3 it is argued that whether correlation can serve as a measure of A's causal influence on B depends upon the conception of (...) causation being used and upon certain background assumptions. In section 4 five major kinds of "partial correlation" are explicated, and some of the important relations are established among two conceptions of "partial correlation", the conception of "screening off", the conception of "partitioning", and the measures of causal influence which have been suggested by advocates of path analysis or structural equation methods. In section 5 it is argued that whether any of these five conceptions of "partial correlation" can serve as a measure of causal influence depends upon the conception of causation being used and upon certain background assumptions. The important conclusion is that each of the approaches (considered here) to causal inference for causal systems with dichotomous variables stands in need of important qualifications and revisions if they are to be justified. (shrink)

The essays in this book, by a variety of leading Augustine scholars, examine not only Augustine's multifaceted philosophy and its relation to his epoch-making theology, but also his practice as a philosopher, as well as his relation to other philosophers both before and after him. Thus the collection shows that Augustine's philosophy remains an influence and a provocation in a wide variety of settings today.

The non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that assume the bulk of emergency care during large-scale disasters in the developing world must expend considerable time and resources to ensure donations to sustain their field operations. This long-standing dilemma for the humanitarian community can create a competitive environment that: • Compromises the delivery and quality of services,• Allows the effectiveness of operations to be compromised by a lack of cooperation and collaboration,• Disrupts the timely and accurate coordination and analysis of outcome measures that• Undermines (...) the long-term capacity of indigenous aid organizations. (shrink)

Suppe, F. The search for philosophic understanding of scientific theories (p. [1]-241)--Proceedings of the symposium.--Bibliography, compiled by Rew A. Godow, Jr. (p. [615]-646).