In its last round of publications in September 2012, the Encyclopedia Of DNA Elements (ENCODE) assigned a biochemical function to most of the human genome, which was taken up by the media as meaning the end of ‘Junk DNA’. This provoked a heated reaction from evolutionary biologists, who among other things claimed that ENCODE adopted a wrong and much too inclusive notion of function, making its dismissal of junk DNA merely rhetorical. We argue that this criticism rests on misunderstandings concerning (...) the nature of the ENCODE project, the relevant notion of function and the claim that most of our genome is junk. We argue that evolutionary accounts of function presuppose functions as ‘causal roles’, and that selection is but a useful proxy for relevant functions, which might well be unsuitable to biomedical research. Taking a closer look at the discovery process in which ENCODE participates, we argue that ENCODE’s strategy of biochemical signatures successfully identified activities of DNA elements with an eye towards causal roles of interest to biomedical research. We argue that ENCODE’s controversial claim of functionality should be interpreted as saying that 80 % of the genome is engaging in relevant biochemical activities and is very likely to have a causal role in phenomena deemed relevant to biomedical research. Finally, we discuss ambiguities in the meaning of junk DNA and in one of the main arguments raised for its prevalence, and we evaluate the impact of ENCODE’s results on the claim that most of our genome is junk. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to assess the relevance of somatic evolution by natural selection to our understanding of cancer development. I do so in two steps. In the first part of the paper, I ask to what extent cancer cells meet the formal requirements for evolution by natural selection, relying on Godfrey-Smith’s (2009) framework of Darwinian populations. I argue that although they meet the minimal requirements for natural selection, cancer cells are not paradigmatic Darwinian populations. In the second (...) part of the paper, I examine the most important examples of adaptation in cancer cells. I argue that they are not significant accumulations of evolutionary changes, and that as a consequence natural selection plays a lesser role in their explanation. Their explanation, I argue, is best sought in the previously existing wiring of the healthy cells. (shrink)

This paper studies the capture of organisms and materials in soil construction – a branch of ecological engineering dedicated to making soil in order to compensate for soil degradation. This approach takes all organisms to be ‘ecosystem engineers’, and often refers to earthworms as ‘collaborators’ in making soil. I examine the claim that such a convocation of worms amounts to a redistribution of agency and the underlying assumption that form-taking is the shaping of raw matter according to pre-existing forms. Drawing (...) on processual anthropology, I question the distinction between living and material components of soils, and between growing and making. I elaborate on soil scientists’ description of soil growth as pedogenesis in order to propose a view in which soil materials, along with organisms, participate in soil’s transformative and generative fluxes. I envisage the process as a concrescence, an experimentation that brings humans, worms, and soil materials together in new ways. (shrink)

This is the first volume to apply insights from the material turn in philosophy to the study of play and games. At a time of renewed interest in analogue gaming, as scholars are looking beyond the digital and virtual for the first time since the inception of game studies in the 1990s, Material Game Studies not only supports the importance of the turn to the analogue, but proposes a materiality of play more broadly. Recognizing the entanglement of physical materiality with (...) cultural meaning, the authors in this volume apply a range of theoretical approaches, from material eco-criticism to animal studies, to examine games and play as existing within worlds of matter. Different chapters focus on the material properties of board, card and role-playing games, how they are designed and made, how they are touched and played with, and how they connect with other human and nonhuman things. Bringing together international scholars, Material Game Studies defines a new field of material game studies and demonstrates how it is a valuable addition to wider debates about the material turn and the place of embodied humans in a material world. (shrink)

Une modernité indigène: Ruptures et innovations dans les théories politiques japonaise du xviiie siècle, by Olivier Ansart, is a thoughtful, elegantly written book that offers valuable insights into Japanese political thought in an era that culminated in the Meiji Restoration. Despite the specific characteristics of the rigid centralized feudal structure of Tokugawa society, Ansart argues, political ideas generally associated with the advent of “modernity” in the West were generated indigenously in a context in which knowledge of the West was limited (...) primarily to science and technology.The main focus of the book is the thought of Kaiho Seiryō.1 Seiryō was inspired by two schools of thought that... (shrink)

Le présent article se propose de mettre en lumière non seulement la critique platonicienne de la poésie telle qu’elle se déploie dans les livres II, III et X de la République, mais aussi - et surtout - la lecture qu’en fait le néoplatonicien Proclus dans son vaste Commentaire sur la République. Le principal enjeu de cette lecture est le lien entre le mythe et l’éducation. Nous verrons d’abord comment Platon s’emploie à lier ces deux éléments, puis comment Proclus cherche pour (...) sa part à relativiser ce lien, au point où mythe et éducation en viennent, sinon à s’exclure mutuellement, du moins à n’entretenir qu’un faible commerce. (shrink)

Certitudes et incertitudes du déterminisme.--La crise de l'esprit.--Le drame.--La tour de Babel.--Le crépuscule.--L'aube.

In response to Germain argument that evolution by natural selection has a limited explanatory power in cancer, Lean and Plutynski have recently argued that many adaptations in cancer only make sense at the tumor level, and that cancer progression mirrors the major evolutionary transitions. While we agree that selection could potentially act at various levels of organization in cancers, we argue that tumor-level selection is unlikely to actually play a relevant role in our understanding of the somatic evolution of (...) human cancers. (shrink)

This article analyzes the influence of Chinese Neo-Confucianism on the development of German idealism. Information obtained by Leibniz from Jesuit missionaries included key concepts in Neo-Confucian philosophy that not only confirmed Leibniz’s belief in the universality of his organic image of the cosmos but also influenced Leibniz’s later writings. Such influence is also exhibited in Kant’s work, especially in his crucial noumenon-phenomenon distinction, as well as in Hegel’s phenomenology and philosophy of history. Recognition of these influences, unacknowledged by either Kant (...) or Hegel, enhances our assessment of the import of both Neo-Confucianism and German idealism in international religio-philosophical discourse. (shrink)

Cette communication est une interprétation personnelle du livre de Jacques Monod. Mais cette interprétation est beaucoup plus interrogative qu'affirmative et n'est que l'occasion, sinon le prétexte, d'entendre d'autres voix se prononcer sur ce qui me semble être d'un très grand intérêt philosophique actuel. Cet exposé sera donc bref: s'il recueille quelques citations essentielles, étayées des références qui les prolongent et ramifient le courant de leurs penseées, il se contente le plus souvent de simples références aux pages qu'il interprète. Pour faciliter (...) l'échange des idées, il se divise en énonciations et interrogations numérotées. (shrink)

Dans son livre American Philosophy and the Future, Michael Novak nous rappelle que nous vivons sous la menace des conflits nucléaires. Si nous n'y prenons garde, nous dit-il, nous serons bientôt dans l'impossibilité de philosopher. Cet avertissement a de quoi nous étonner. Y aurait-il des bombes atomiques sans une philosophie de la bombe?Il y aurait bien d'autres objets, les uns plus extraordinaires que les autres, que nous apporte à un rythme toujours plus accéléré la nouvelle technologic et sur lesquels il (...) nous faudrait aussi philosopher et même davantage. Ainsi, un éditorial de Journal of the American Medical Association nous fait part des craintes que provoquent, chez médecins et biologistes, les expériences faites en vue de la fabrication des bébés-éprouvette — ‘test-tube babies’. (shrink)

This book evaluates the claim that in order to explore the changing social foundations of global power relations today, we need to include in our analysis an understanding of global civil society, particularly if we also wish to raise ethical questions about the changing political and institutional practices of transnational governance. The authors engage directly with the notion of global civil society in order to examines the ethical, social, and political conditions that make certain kinds of globalizing practices a reality (...) today. They explore and utilize the normative dimensions of the civil discourse to further debate about the meaning of citizenship in a world of multi-level governance, as well as the changing characteristics of political community and democracy. Bridging the normative concerns of political theorists with the historical and institutional focus of scholars of international relations and international political economy, this book will be of broad interest to students and researchers concerned with international relations, civil society, global governance and ethics. (shrink)

Gil Germain's Spirits in the Material World reflects on the vital role technology plays in liberating humankind from the real world of space and time, and examines the broad implications of this development for contemporary society. Germain argues that we ought to be wary of our spiritual sojourn and suggests ways to offset technology's otherworldly impulse.

Previous research suggests that social anxiety symptoms are maintained and intensified by inflexible emotion regulation (ER). Therefore, we examined whether trait-level social anxiety moderates ER flexibility operationalised at both between-person (covariation between variability in emotional intensity and variability in strategy use across occasions) and within-person (associations between emotional intensity and strategy use on a given day) levels. In a sample of healthy college-aged adults (N = 185, Mage = 21.89), we examined overall and emotion-specific intensities (shame, guilt, anxiety, anger, sadness) (...) and regulatory strategies (i.e. experiential avoidance, expressive suppression, and rumination) in response to each day’s most emotionally intense event over 6 days. During the study period, we found a positive association between variability in emotional intensity and variability of experiential avoidance in individuals with lower, rather than higher, levels of trait social anxiety after controlling for key covariates (i.e. gender, personality traits, and stress exposure). However, we did not find evidence for the moderating role of trait social anxiety in ER flexibility assessed at within-person levels. Our findings highlight the need to delineate dynamic ER flexibility across everyday events. (shrink)

Sinous voulions tirer une ligne d'unité à travers les branches si disparates qui se sont épanouies sur les racines cartésiennes, nous pourrions affirmer que l'homme est rentré en lui-même et de plus en plus profondément jusqu'à nos jours. Son regard s'est détourné d'un objet extérieur pour considàrer le produit intérieur de son acte d'esprit, puis pour essayer de pénétrer dans le mystère même de cet acte. L'homme s'est vu responsable de l'homme. Son existence lui est donnée mais il ne peut (...) la maintenir sans lui fournir une forme, une essence dont la spécification dépendra de son “je” libre. Tout un éventail d'humanismes s'est alors déployé à partir d'une concrétude enfouie irrévocablement et désespérément dans la condition charnelle jusqu'à la concrétude la plus spirituelle de la pensée réflexive contemporaine. En un mot, l'histoire de la philosophic moderne devient l'histoire de la prise de conscience de l'immanence. (shrink)

This book traces the roots of the contemporary abortion debate in the tradition of existential philosophy of the Sartrian type by investigating the work of four feminist writers on abortion—each with a specific focus: Simone de Beauvoir, Mary Daly, Carol Gilligan, and Beverly Wildung Harrison. _No Higher Court_ attempts to envisage a pro-life feminism that is able to provide a "new world for women without abortion as its linchpin and bedrock.".