Investor recommendation is a critical and challenging task for startups, which can assist startups in locating suitable investors and enhancing the possibility of obtaining investment. While some efforts have been made for investor recommendation, few of them explore the impact of startups’ features, including partners, rounds, and fields, to investor recommendation performance. Along this line, in this paper, with the help of the heterogeneous information network, we propose a FEatures’ COntribution Measurement approach of startups on investor recommendation, named FECOM. Specifically, (...) we construct the venture capital heterogeneous information network at first. Then, we define six venture capital metapaths to represent the features of startups that we focus on. In this way, we can measure the contribution of startups’ features on the investor recommendation task by validating the recommendation performance based on different metapaths. Finally, we extract four practical rules to assist in further investment tasks by using our proposed FECOM approach. (shrink)

Chinese nationality has experienced ups and downs in its cultural confidence with the nation’s rise and fall. China has become the world’s second largest economy and its cultural confidence should be enhanced so that China’s soft power will be strengthened too. Chinese cultural confidence can be restored by taking the following three measures: to improve cultural awareness, to understand and rethink traditional Chinese culture deeply and to deal with the relationship between Chinese culture and western culture properly.

Intuitionistic propositional logic with Galois negations ( \(\mathsf {IGN}\) ) is introduced. Heyting algebras with Galois negations are obtained from Heyting algebras by adding the Galois pair \((\lnot,{\sim })\) and dual Galois pair \((\dot{\lnot },\dot{\sim })\) of negations. Discrete duality between GN-frames and algebras as well as the relational semantics for \(\mathsf {IGN}\) are developed. A Hilbert-style axiomatic system \(\mathsf {HN}\) is given for \(\mathsf {IGN}\), and Galois negation logics are defined as extensions of \(\mathsf {IGN}\). We give the bi-tense (...) logic \(\mathsf {S4N}_t\) which is obtained from the minimal tense extension of the modal logic \(\mathsf {S4}\) by adding tense operators. We give a new extended Gödel translation \(\tau \) and prove that \(\mathsf {IGN}\) is embedded into \(\mathsf {S4N}_t\) by \(\tau \). Moreover, every Kripke-complete Galois negation logic _L_ is embedded into its tense companion \(\tau (L)\). (shrink)

Emotion recognition is an important part of building an intelligent human-computer interaction system and plays an important role in human-computer interaction. Often, people express their feelings through a variety of symbols, such as words and facial expressions. A business ecosystem is an economic community based on interacting organizations and individuals. Over time, they develop their capabilities and roles together and tend to develop themselves in the direction of one or more central enterprises. This paper aims to study a multimodal ER (...) method based on attention mechanism. It analyzes the current emotional state of consumers and the development direction of enterprises through multi-modal ER of human emotions and analysis of market trends, so as to provide the most appropriate response or plan. This paper firstly describes the related methods of multimodal ER and deep learning in detail, and briefly outlines the meaning of enterprise strategy in the business ecosystem. Then, two datasets, CMU-MOSI and CMU-MOSEI, are selected to design the scheme for multimodal ER based on self-attention mechanism. Through the comparative analysis of the accuracy of single-modal and multi-modal ER, the self-attention mechanism is applied in the experiment. The experimental results show that the average recognition accuracy of happy under multimodal ER reaches 91.5%. (shrink)

This paper explores the cooperation mechanisms for the prisoner’s dilemma game, a canonical example for studying cooperation mechanisms, with Bayesian games. By the approach allowing simultaneous moves with the assumption that the players might be self-interested or norm-following, we establish four possible Bayesian game models, all of which are cooperation mechanisms for the prisoner’s dilemma game except for the model in which one of the two players must be self-interested.

本书从现代美育理论研究入手、评论著名美学人物、提出把“完美功利主义”作为中国美学现代传统的想法、并对这种现代传统进行阐述。.

本书包括:古朝鲜三国及统一新罗时期、高丽时期、朝鲜王朝(李朝)时期、近代时期四编。.

本书研究了西方科学哲学中的八个主要问题,即:认知意义的判断标准、归纳与验证、科学说明模型及其问题、科学的发展模式、科学划界、科学实在论、科学与价值、社会科学哲学。.

This study aims to provide a coherent new interpretation of the notorious anti-hedonism of Speusippus, Plato’s nephew and the second scholarch of the Academy, by reconsidering all the relevant sources concerning his attitude toward pleasure—sources that seem to be in tension or even incompatible with each other. By reassessing Speusippus’ anti-hedonism and Aristotle’s response, it also sheds new light on the Academic debate over pleasure in which he and Aristotle participated: This debate is not merely concerned with the truth and (...) credibility of the arguments for or against hedonism; there are also notable differences among the participants in their understanding of the practical significance of evaluating hedonic experiences. This new interpretation allows us to better understand Aristotle’s selective representation of the intra-school debate and some neglected features of his responses to different interlocutors. (shrink)

Emotions are now considered critical elements of a successful education. In English as a Foreign Language context, there are many challenges for teachers to deal with. Hence, it is necessary to take their emotions into consideration. Despite many studies in this area, researching teachers’ positive mood, hope, and academic buoyancy has been left less attended. Trying to introduce this line, the present study reviewed the definitions, related concepts, theories, and previous studies done on these three variables in detail. It also (...) touched upon the origins of researching emotion in educational contexts describing different schools of psychology. Additionally, the study offered some practical implications for EFL teachers, students, policy-makers, teacher trainers, and researchers. Finally, it enumerated the existing gaps in this area and made a number of research suggestions for future research. (shrink)

Foreign Language Enjoyment plays a facilitative role in FL learning and its contributing factors have been the object of scholarly attention in the Positive Psychology approach to second language acquisition. The present study examined the predictive effects of gender and academic discipline on overall FLE and each of its subcomponents in a specific Chinese EFL context. Statistical analyses based on a sample of 1,718 high school students showed that: female students scored significantly higher in overall FLE, FLE-Private, and FLE-Atmosphere than (...) their male counterparts, but no significant difference was found in their FLE-Teacher; students of Humanities and Social Sciences scored significantly higher in overall FLE, FLE-Teacher and FLE-Atmosphere than students of Natural Science, though no significant difference was identified for FLE-Private. Reasons for the statistical variations and their implications were also discussed. (shrink)

This essay develops an inferential account of model explanation, based on Mauricio Suárez’s inferential conception of scientific representation and Alisa Bokulich’s counterfactual account of model explanation. It is suggested that the fact that a scientific model can explain is essentially linked to how a modeler uses an established model to make various inferences about the target system on the basis of results derived from the model. The inference practice is understood as a two-step activity, with the first step involving making (...) counterfactual statements about the model itself and the second step involving making hypothetical statements transferring over claims derived from the model onto the target. To illustrate how this two-step activity proceeds, an agent-based simulation model is discussed. (shrink)

Since 2004, Nanyan Cao and some other scholars have implicitly or explicitly claimed that engineering ethics in China is importantly different from engineering ethics in the United States. The evidence for that claim relies on examination of official documents or certain large features of Chinese society. Though neither is an uncommon approach to studying engineering ethics in China, neither actually studies engineering practice in China. This article does—or at least gets much closer. The authors have asked almost two hundred Chinese (...) engineers about what they do and why they do it. The responses suggest that Chinese engineers, or at least those surveyed, think about engineering ethics much as American engineers do. The responses also suggest that much more empirical work needs to be done before we can claim to understand either the similarities or differences between engineering ethics in China and engineering ethics in “the West.”. (shrink)

abstract: Anaxagoras is notorious for his view that every perception is accompanied by pain but that not all concurrent pains are distinctly felt by the perceiving subject. This thesis is reported and criticized by Aristotle's heir Theophrastus in his De Sensibus. Traditionally, scholars believe that Theophrastus rejects Anaxagoras's thesis of the ubiquity of pain as counterintuitive, with the appeal to unfelt pain looking like a desperate category mistake given that pain is nothing but a feeling. Contra the traditional view, this (...) paper argues that Theophrastus neither aims to defend ordinary phenomenology nor is bothered by the concept of unfelt pain; instead, he develops a series of new Aristotelian arguments to defend a controversial, optimistic picture about the distribution of affective qualities in animal life. More than a supplement to Aristotle's psychology, his engagement with Anaxagoras reveals an important yet often ignored ethical concern behind the Peripatetic philosophy of perception. (shrink)

This research examines wearable, fashionable interaction design to mediate the narrative and semiotic concepts found in technology and fashion. We discuss the principles of design anthropology using Taiwan proverbs to transmit the “people-situation-reason-object” method and analyze five case studies that provide new approaches for designers engaged in future industry. Design anthropology attempts to engage physiological and psychological design through technological function, meaning formation, and fashion aesthetics to achieve cognition between people and the environment. The wearable, fashionable interaction displays characteristics of (...) narrative and semantics transmitted through craft culture as well as collective, cheerful, and creative performance. It is a confident and innovative attempt, which bears a joyful and fundamental interface. This study takes two directions, with cultural thinking serving as the basis to establish a set of traditional craft designs and interactive objects that assist designers in using the senses to inform and initiate new lifestyle values. (shrink)

This research examines wearable, fashionable interaction design to mediate the narrative and semiotic concepts found in technology and fashion. We discuss the principles of design anthropology using Taiwan proverbs to transmit the “people-situation-reason-object” method and analyze five case studies that provide new approaches for designers engaged in future industry. Design anthropology attempts to engage physiological and psychological design through technological function, meaning formation, and fashion aesthetics to achieve cognition between people and the environment. The wearable, fashionable interaction displays characteristics of (...) narrative and semantics transmitted through craft culture as well as collective, cheerful, and creative performance. It is a confident and innovative attempt, which bears a joyful and fundamental interface. This study takes two directions, with cultural thinking serving as the basis to establish a set of traditional craft designs and interactive objects that assist designers in using the senses to inform and initiate new lifestyle values. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose an empirically based Monte Carlo bus-network model as a test bed to simulate intervention strategies to overcome the inefficiencies of bus bunching. The EMB model is an agent-based model which utilizes the positional and temporal data of the buses obtained from the Global Positioning System to constitute a set of empirical velocity distributions of the buses and a set of exponential distributions of interarrival time of passengers at the bus stops. Monte Carlo sampling is then (...) performed on these two derived probability distributions to yield the stochastic dynamics of both the buses’ motion and passengers’ arrival. Our EMB model is generic and can be applied to any real-world bus network system. In particular, we have validated the model against the Nanyang Technological University’s Shuttle Bus System by demonstrating its accuracy in capturing the bunching dynamics of the shuttle buses. Furthermore, we have analyzed the efficacy of three intervention strategies: holding, no-boarding, and centralized-pulsing, against bus bunching by incorporating the rule set of these strategies into the model. Under the scenario where the buses have the same velocity, we found that all three strategies improve both the waiting and travelling times of the commuters. However, when the buses have different velocities, only the centralized-pulsing scheme consistently outperforms the control scenario where the buses periodically bunch together. (shrink)

Tu (Chinese history and philosophy, Harvard U.) offers a panoramic view of the core values of Confucian intellectual thought that have kept it vital for more than two millennia, and underlie the recent resurgence in eastern Asia. Of interest to students of either China or religion and ethics. Paper edition (unseen), $14.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This paper examines Aristotle’s vocabulary of pain, that is the differences and relations of the concepts of pain expressed by synonyms in the same semantic field. It investigates what is particularly Aristotelian in the selection of the pain-words in comparison with earlier authors and specifies the special semantic scope of each word-cluster. The result not only aims to pin down the exact way these terms converge with and diverge from each other, but also serves as a basis for further understanding (...) Aristotle’s philosophical conception of pain. (shrink)

The spread of epidemics, especially COVID-19, is having a significant impact on the world. If an epidemic is not properly controlled at the beginning, it is likely to spread rapidly and widely through the coexistence relationship between natural and social systems. A university community is a special, micro-self-organized social system that is densely populated. However, university authorities in such an environment seem to be less cautious in the defence of an epidemic. Currently, there is almost no quantitative research on epidemic (...) spreading and response strategies in universities. In this paper, a case study of a university community is considered for a simulation of an infection evolving after an epidemic outbreak based on the method of system dynamics of the three stages. The results show the following: By improving the speed of the initial emergency response, the total number of patients can be effectively controlled. A quarantine policy helps to slow down the evolution of infection. The higher the isolation ratio, the higher the cost; therefore, the isolation ratio should be optimized. It is important to make emergency plans for controlling epidemic spreading and carry out emergency drills and assessments regularly. According to the results of this study, we suggest an emergency management framework for public health events in university communities. (shrink)

I propose a dynamic causal approach to characterizing the notion of a mechanism. Levy and Bechtel, among others, have pointed out several critical limitations of the new mechanical philosophy, and pointed in a new direction to extend this philosophy. Nevertheless, they have not fully fleshed out what that extended philosophy would look like. Based on a closer look at neuroscientific practice, I propose that a mechanism is a dynamic causal system that involves various components interacting, typically nonlinearly, with one another (...) to produce a phenomenon of interest. (shrink)

Michael Weisberg’s account of scientific models concentrates on the ways in which models are similar to their targets. He intends not merely to explain what similarity consists in, but also to capture similarity judgments made by scientists. In order to scrutinize whether his account fulfills this goal, I outline one common way in which scientists judge whether a model is similar enough to its target, namely maximum likelihood estimation method. Then I consider whether Weisberg’s account could capture the judgments involved (...) in this practice. I argue that his account fails for three reasons. First, his account is simply too abstract to capture what is going on in MLE. Second, it implies an atomistic conception of similarity, while MLE operates in a holistic manner. Third, Weisberg’s atomistic conception of similarity can be traced back to a problematic set-theoretic approach to the structure of models. Finally, I tentatively suggest how these problems might be solved by a holistic approach in which models and targets are compared in a non-set-theoretic fashion. (shrink)

Polger and Shapiro argue that their official recipe, a criterion for judging when the phenomenon of multiple realization exists, renders MR less widespread than its proponents have assumed. I argue that, although Polger and Shapiro’s criterion is a useful contribution, they arrive at their conclusion too hastily. Contrary to Polger and Shapiro, I claim that the phenomenon of multiple realization in the biological world, judged by their criterion, is not as scarce as they suggest. To show this, an updated official (...) recipe, namely a multiple mechanistic realization thesis, integrating Polger and Shapiro’s criterion with a compositional conception of realization, is developed. Then, three examples of varied kinds are examined, showing that cases of MR are not so hard to find in the biological world. (shrink)

Why Lazarus Laughed explicates the essential doctrine shared by the traditions of Zen Buddhism, Advaita, and Tantra. Wei Wu Wei has become an underground spiritual favorite whose fans anxiously await each reissued book.

How do speakers learn the social meaning of different linguistic variants, and what factors influence how likely a particular social–linguistic association is to be learned? It has been argued that the social meaning of more salient variants should be learned faster, and that learners' pre‐existing experience of a variant will influence its salience. In this paper, we report two artificial‐language‐learning experiments investigating this. Each experiment involved two language‐learning stages followed by a test. The first stage introduced the artificial language and (...) trained participants in it, while the second stage added a simple social context using images of cartoon aliens. The first learning stage was intended to establish participants' experience with the artificial language in general and with the distribution of linguistic variants in particular. The second stage, in which linguistic stimuli were accompanied by images of particular aliens, was intended to simulate the acquisition of linguistic variants in a social context. In our first experiment, we manipulated whether a particular linguistic variant, associated with one species of alien in the second learning phase, had been encountered in the first learning phase. In the second experiment, we manipulated whether the variant had been encountered in the same grammatical context. In both cases we predicted that the unexpectedness of a new variant or a new grammatical context for an old variant would increase the variant's salience and facilitate the learning of its social meaning. This is what we found, although in the second experiment, the effect was driven by better learners. Our results suggest that unexpectedness increases the salience of variants and makes their social distribution easier to learn, deepening our understanding of the role of individual language experience in the acquisition of sociolinguistic meaning. (shrink)

Research on knowledge hiding has largely focused on its antecedents while overlooking its consequences. Drawing on moral cleansing theory, we adopt a “perpetrator-centric view” and posit that employees who engage in playing dumb and evasive hiding–two specific knowledge hiding behaviors that involve deception–will subsequently perform more organizational citizenship behavior directed toward individuals (OCB-I) because they perceive a loss of moral credits following their moral transgression. Further, we propose that the indirect effects are contingent on perpetrators’ moral identity internalization. We tested (...) our hypotheses using a time-lagged research design with a sample of 362 respondents from a large pharmaceutical group company. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that employees who engaged in playing dumb and evasive hiding subsequently exhibited more OCB-I as they perceived a loss of moral credits, whereas employees who engaged in rationalized hiding did not. In addition, the positive relationships between playing dumb and evasive hiding with perceived loss of moral credits were stronger when perpetrators had high moral identity internalization, as were the indirect effects of playing dumb and evasive hiding on OCB-I via perceived loss of moral credits. Our research contributes to the understanding of when and how engaging in knowledge hiding affects perpetrators and their compensatory behaviors toward coworkers. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I investigate the role of Aristotle's theory of science, and specifically the homogeneity criterion, for the set-up of Aristotle's metaphysics project as sketched in Met. IV, 1--3 and VI, 1. I argue that Aristotelian metaphysics takes shape through a dialectical argument stretching from Met. I to VI, 1. Along this path, both Aristotle's theory of science , and the Platonist competitor in metaphysics are constantly kept in view. They propel the argument at crucial stages. The resulting metaphysics (...) is compatible with Aristotle's theory of science, though it is not a direct application of it. Rather, metaphysics is a content-neutral complement to the content-specific sciences. The Platonist competitor remains refuted. Some of its central ideas and tools are nevertheless assimilated into Aristotelian metaphysics. ;Aristotle's postulate of a universal science of being seems to contradict a central requirement for a science: the homogeneity principle. According to the Posterior Analytics, every science has its specific subject matter , which it explores in terms of predicative content, and to which it is restricted. Being, does not constitute such a genos. Aristotle has to find a feature which can play a role for 'being' that is analogous to 'genos' in a special science. Aristotle finds it in the pros hen notion . Pros hen makes the content-neutral, focal structure of being transparent. It is not an extension of synonymy . With the help of pros hen, Aristotle can construct a content-neutral universal metaphysics project, solving the puzzles which arose in III, 1/2 precisely as a conflict between the questions which metaphysics should address and the homogeneity criterion for content-specific sciences. His theory of science remains fully intact for the sciences for which it was designed. The objections against Platonist metaphysics remain in place as well. The content-neutral analysis of being meets the expectations formulated for metaphysics in I, 1/2, on the basis of endoxa. Aristotle's project is constituted by what is commonly called 'general metaphysics'. It includes a consideration of the divine. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 409-410 [Access article in PDF] Christoph Riedweg. Pythagoras: Leben, Lehre, Nachwirkung. Munich: Beck, 2002. Pp. 206. Cloth, € 19.90.Another book about Pythagoras? Hasn't it been shown that we do not have any precise information about him, especially about his contributions as a scholar and a philosopher? Maybe we have been overly skeptical about the information transmitted about Pythagoras. In Pythagoras: Leben, (...) Lehre, Nachwirkung, Christoph Riedweg suggests we should take a different perspective, and he shows what we might gain if we loosen our standards on what counts as information about Pythagoras's contribution to the history of philosophy and science. We can reconstruct a cluster of ideas, motifs, and motivations relevant for early Pythagoreanism. This will give us an idea of the factors influencing Pythagoras and those influenced in turn by him. Even if we will not know what exactly he claimed or achieved (whether he did or did not use the Pythagorean psephoi, for example), we can still get a reasonably informative (if somewhat fuzzy) picture of Pythagoras's contribution and his significance. Riedweg's book outlines the terrain for such an approach. It is what it announces to be: an introduction (Einführung). It does not promise, nor does it offer, any radically new theories on Pythagoras.I will focus on chapters 2 and 3 (61-149) of the book. After a survey of ancient reports and legends about Pythagoras (chapter 1), Riedweg approaches the historical Pythagoras through a sketch of the cultural setting in which he lived and worked, and through the reactions of his contemporaries and near contemporaries (chapter 2, sections 1-2). Unfortunately, a reference to the socio-political sphere is missing. This is a serious gap, given the poignancy of the socio-political changes in the sixth-century Ionian poleis, and given Pythagoras's cooperation with the local aristocratic elites, for political purposes. One is, however, provided with a sketch of the contemporary cultural setting in which Pythagoras put forth his religious and his philosophical teachings—philosophy, art, technology, contacts (chapter 2, section 1). Apparently (Riedweg documents this conclusively), Pythagoras provoked extreme reactions from the very beginning, even from people that lived far away. Riedweg's label "Charismatiker"—a borrowing from Weberian sociology of religion—seems fitting. The sixth- and fifth-century "outside" testimonies (chapter 2, section 2) are predominantly polemical. In the religious sphere, Pythagoras comes across as a mystic, with a guru-attitude. But he also constructed a sophia, using the writings and ideas of others. The contents of this sophia remain unclear. The witnesses accuse Pythagoras of foul trickery and plagiarism. Nevertheless, he must have produced some sort of systematic explanatory account of the world, its origin and its meaning. From the very beginning, both the "guru" and the "scholar" aspect are thus attested for Pythagoras. The content of the religious teachings is much more concrete than the content of Pythagoras's own philosophical and scientific doctrines. This trend continues as Riedweg examines later sources for the reconstruction of Pythagoras's ideas (chapter 2, section 3). As is already known, we get a relatively accurate picture of Pythagoras's position regarding rituals, lifestyle, and beliefs about the nature of the human soul (chapter 2, section 3, a-f), i.e., his ethical and religious [End Page 409] teachings. With regard to his contributions to science and philosophy, however, we are faced with the problem that we are no longer in the position to differentiate between early Pythagoreanism and Pythagoras himself—even if we leave the Platonic and the Platonist tradition out of the picture, and even where we can reconstruct details. Riedweg bases his outline predominantly on Aristotle's reports on pre-Platonic Pythagoreanism.Though Aristotle's evaluation rests mostly on Philolaus, the picture he develops for early Pythagoreanism throws some light also on Pythagoras himself. Riedweg thus uses Aristotle for an elucidation of a context for Pythagoras's contributions as a philosopher and scientist (chapter II, section 3, i). Another source of indirect information consists in comparisons with Orphic texts. Riedweg succeeds... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 123-124 [Access article in PDF] Andrew Barker. Scientific Method in Ptolemy's Harmonics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. viii + 281. Cloth, $69.95. Ptolemy's Harmonics is an important source not only for the history of music, but also for the history and philosophy of science. Two recent monographs, by J. Solomon, and A. Barker, now provide a basis for a (...) more widespread discussion of this much neglected work. Barker focuses on the part that is concerned with musical science proper (I, 1-III, 3), and more specifically on the scientific method it displays.Barker uses an analysis of Ptolemy's programmatic statements in I, 1/2, as a key to a reading of Ptolemy's treatise. His exposition has the format of a commentary, with special emphasis on the methodologically relevant passages. For the most part, he follows the order of Ptolemy's text closely, providing historical background information in excursus form. One needs to read a complete text of Ptolemy's treatise along with Barker's exposition in order to understand some of his arguments. It is preferable to also use Düring's [End Page 123] edition of the Greek text. One is rewarded with a detailed and in-depth analysis of the passages that helps one understand Ptolemy's method in harmonics as it unfolds in his treatise. This is so even if one disagrees with Barker's claims concerning Ptolemy's methodology.These claims are outlined in chapter 2, on the basis of I, 1/2 of the Harmonics. The methodological program Barker filters out of the text remains vague in a number of important respects. One misses, for example, a clear exposition on what will count as a sufficient integration of "empirical and theoretical phases," and on what will count as "empirical." This is a serious drawback, since Barker claims that Ptolemy instantiates a complex scientific methodology with a decisive, fully integrated empiricist trait. The drawback is aggravated by the fact that the already vague terms of the postulated methodology have to be watered down considerably in the subsequent chapters to make them fit with Ptolemy's actual procedures. Ptolemy does not seem to deliver even on the vague terms. One may very well remain unconvinced both by Barker's initial arguments concerning Ptolemy's methodology, and by his attempts to show that Ptolemy's procedure in the Harmonics can count as a satisfactory instantiation. Perhaps Ptolemy's intentions are less ambitious. When he states (5.13 ff. Düring, ed.) that "the aim of the student of harmonics must be to preserve the hupotheseis..., as never in any way conflicting with the perceptions that correspond to most people's estimation," he may just mean that he intends to vindicate an essentially Pythagorean (locally modified) account by showing it does not conflict with the phenomena. In my view, he certainly delivers on this less ambitious program. In fact, it seems to me that the understanding of Ptolemy's argumentative path is impeded by Barker's interpretation of Ptolemy's goal of "saving the hupotheseis" as a commitment to the integration of a genuine empiricist trait.Chapters 7 and 8 give an exposition of Ptolemy's tetrachord divisions. For the reader interested in an evaluation of the theoretical aspect of Ptolemy's scientific method, these are the central chapters of Barker's book. Barker provides a detailed analysis, together with an exposition of the historical and technical information needed for a non-specialist to follow both his and Ptolemy's argument. Barker's analysis reveals inter alia that a considerable part of Ptolemy's theory has no counterpart in the realm of phenomena perceived as musical, and that another part, concerning the single most important division of musical practice, is not justified, and not justifiable, by derivation from the principles. It is difficult to see how Ptolemy's account can nevertheless be viewed as a genuine integration of empirical and theoretical aspects. It appears to be an attempt at showing that an essentially Pythagorean theory... (shrink)