I will argue that the cognitive-linguistic enterprise should step up its efforts to embrace the social and pragmatic dimensions of language. This claim will be derived from a survey of the premises and promise of the cognitive-linguistic approach to the study of language and be defended in more detail on logical and empirical grounds. Key elements of a usage-based emergentist socio-cognitive approach known as Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization Model (Schmid 2014, 2015) will be presented in order to demonstrate how social and pragmatic (...) aspects can be integrated and operationalized in a cognitive-linguistic framework. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Cognitive Linguistics Jahrgang: 27 Heft: 4 Seiten: 543-557.

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

There is a widespread assumption in Construction Grammar that the meanings of verbs correlate with or even determine their complementation forms and patterns. There is much less research on noun complementation, however, although this category is even more interesting for a number of reasons such as the potential for valency reduction, nominal topicalization constructions, and additional complementation options, e.g.of-PPs and existential constructions.In this paper we focus on the class of nouns reporting commissive illocutionary acts, and address the question of whether (...) there is a correlation between the meaning of these nouns and their preferred complementation patterns, and between their semantic similarity and their similarity in the distribution of complementation patterns.We report the results of a study of a set of 17 commissive nouns chosen from a wider collection of illocutionary nouns. Two types of analysis were carried out in order to compare the semantic and grammatical characteristics of these nouns. The semantic analysis was based on insights from speech act theory and the philosophy of language. We developed a framework for a systematic comparative description of the nouns in our word field. The results were tallied with a corpus-based grammatical analysis. Two hundred tokens of each noun type were randomly sampled from the Corpus of Contemporary American English. Using these data, the 17 nouns were subjected to an analysis of the relative frequencies of their complementation patterns.Results indicate a general match between noun meanings and complementation patterns. More specifically, however, they indicate that the closeness of this match depends on the prototypicality of nouns as members of the class of commissives.The study, then, contributes to our understanding of the relation between lexis and syntax. At the same time, it confirms the need for a close semantic analysis to account for the great extent to which item-specific information, i.e. properties of individual nouns, have to be taken into consideration at the expense of large-scale generalizations. (shrink)

This paper presents the NeoCrawler – a tailor-made webcrawler, which identifies and retrieves neologisms from the Internet and systematically monitors the use of detected neologisms on the web by means of weekly searches. It enables researchers to use the web as a corpus in order to investigate the dynamics of lexical innovation on a large-scale and systematic basis. The NeoCrawler represents an innovative web-mining tool which opens up new opportunities for linguists to tackle a number of unresolved and under-researched issues (...) in the field of lexical innovation. This paper presents the design as well as the most important characteristics of two modules, the Discoverer and the Observer, with regard to the usage-based study of lexical innovation and diffusion. (shrink)

In this powerful work of conceptual and analytical originality, the author argues for the primacy of the material arrangements of the laboratory in the dynamics of modern molecular biology. In a post-Kuhnian move away from the hegemony of theory, he develops a new epistemology of experimentation in which research is treated as a process for producing epistemic things. A central concern of the book is the basic question of how novelty is generated in the empirical sciences. In addressing this question, (...) the author brings French poststructuralist thinking—notably Jacques Derrida’s concepts of “différance” and “historiality”—to bear on the construction of epistemic things. Historiographical perspective shifts from the actors’ minds to their objects of manipulation. These epistemological and historical issues are illuminated in a detailed case study of a particular laboratory, that of the oncologist and biochemist Paul C. Zamecnik and his colleagues, located in a specific setting—the Collis P. Huntington Memorial Hospital of Harvard University at the Massachusetts General Hospital of Boston. The author traces how, between 1945 and 1965, this group developed an experimental system for synthesizing proteins in the test tube that put Zamecnik’s research team at the forefront of those who led biochemistry into the era of molecular biology. (shrink)

The World Medical Association has announced that a new revision process of the Declaration of Helsinki has been started. This article will identify the criticisms that have been made in the bioethics literature, particularly since the last revision. In addition, criticisms are discussed that were made in the literature even before the last revision and have not fallen silent. The plausibility of the recommendation for a change in the Declaration of Helsinki is examined.

In March 2020, the rapid increase in severe COVID‐19 cases overwhelmed the healthcare systems in several European countries. The capacities for artificial ventilation in intensive care units were too scarce to care for patients with acute respiratory disorder connected to the disease. Several professional associations published COVID‐19 triage recommendations in an extremely short time: in 21 days between March 6 and March 27. In this article, we compare recommendations from five European countries, which combine medical and ethical reflections on this (...) situation in some detail. Our aim is to provide a detailed overview on the ethical elements of the recommendations, the differences between them and their coherence. In more general terms we want to identify shortcomings in regard to a common European response to the current situation. (shrink)

Epistemology, as generally understood by philosophers of science, is rather remote from the history of science and from historical concerns in general. Rheinberger shows that, from the late nineteenth through the late twentieth century, a parallel, alternative discourse sought to come to terms with the rather fundamental experience of the thoroughgoing scientific changes brought on by the revolution in physics. Philosophers of science and historians of science alike contributed their share to what this essay describes as an ongoing quest to (...) historicize epistemology. Historical epistemology, in this sense, is not so concerned with the knowing subject and its mental capacities. Rather, it envisages science as an ongoing cultural endeavor and tries to assess the conditions under which the sciences in all their diversity take shape and change over time. (shrink)

This paper proposes an outline for a typology of the different forms that scientific objects can take in the life sciences. The first section discusses preparations (or specimens)—a form of scientific object that accompanied the development of modern biology in different guises from the seventeenth century to the present: as anatomical–morphological specimens, as microscopic cuts, and as biochemical preparations. In the second section, the characteristics of models in biology are discussed. They became prominent from the end of the nineteenth century (...) onwards. Some remarks on the role of simulations—characterising the life sciences of the turn from the twentieth to the twenty-first century—conclude the paper. -/- . (shrink)

: The paper aims at an analysis of the oeuvre of the French historian of science and epistemologist Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962). Bachelard was the founder of a tradition of French thinking about science that extended from Jean Cavaillès over Georges Canguilhem to Michel Foucault. In the past, he has become best known and criticized for his postulation of an epistemological rupture between everyday experience and scientific experience. In my analysis, I emphasize another aspect of the work of Bachelard. It is (...) the way he conceptualizes the relation between scientific thinking and technology in modern science. Within this framework, the notion of "phenomenotechnique" is of crucial importance. It is one of the organizing concepts of Bachelard's historical epistemology, and it serves as the organizing center of this paper. (shrink)

The ArgumentIn the first part of this paper, issues concerning an “epistemology of time” are raised. The Derridean theme of the historial movement of a trace is connected to Prigogine's notion of an operator-time. It is suggested that both conceptions can be used to characterize the dynamics of experimental systems in contemporary science. It is argued that such systems have, to speak with Hacking, “a life of their own” and that this is precisely the reason for their inherent unpredictability.In the (...) second part, a case from the history of virology and cytomorphology is presented. The movement of a particular experimental system is followed in its peculiar tension between deferring and becoming different—i.e., between the persistence of a problem and the vagaries of its successive transformations. They are rendered possible by novel technical implementations, but they are not determined in any meaningful sense on a mere technological level.In conclusion, a point is made for a deconstructive approach to the history of science. (shrink)

Social Justice, Health Inequities, and Access to New Age-Related Interventions Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 281-295 DOI 10.1007/s12376-009-0027-3 Authors Hans-Jörg Ehni, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Baden-Württemberg Germany Georg Marckmann, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Baden-Württemberg Germany Journal Medicine Studies Online ISSN 1876-4541 Print ISSN 1876-4533 Journal Volume Volume 1 Journal Issue Volume 1, Number 3.

This paper is about the interaction and the intertwinement between history of science as a historical process and history of science as the historiography of this process, taking molecular biology as an example. In the first part, two historical shifts are briefly characterized that appear to have punctuated the emergence of molecular biology between the 1930s and the 1980s, one connected to a new generation of analytical apparatus, the other to properly molecular tools. The second part concentrates on the historiography (...) of this development. Basically, it distinguishes three phases. The first phase was largely dominated by accounts of the actors themselves. The second coincided with the general ‘practical turn’ in history of science at large, and today’s historical appropriations of the molecularization of the life sciences appear to be marked by the changing disciplinary status of the science under review. In a closing remark, an argument is made for differentiating between long-range, middle-range and short-range perspectives in dealing with the history of the sciences. (shrink)

The concept of similarity plays a crucial role in biology, especially in natural history. Despite its apparent familiarity it has been subject again and again to reinterpretations — it may even be stated that the main streams of theoretical thinking in the life sciences are reflected and condensed in its ever changing meaning. The changing content of the concept is analyzed from Linnaean systematics through classical morphology and comparative anatomy to Darwinian evolutionary thinking. It appears that the meaning of similarity (...) is inseparable from the function of the concept in theory, viz. its operational determination. In addition a remarkable correspondence has to be recognized between the notion of similarity and the conceptualization of an organism as the basic unit of life. (shrink)

My paper draws on examples from molecular biology, the details of which I have developed elsewhere (Rheinberger 1992, 1993, 1995, 1997). Here, I can give only a brief outline of my argument. Reduction of complexity is a prerequisite for experimental research. To make sense of the universe of living beings, the modern biologist is bound to divide his world into fragments in which parameters can be defined, quantities measured, qualities identified. Such is the nature of any "experimental system." Ontic complexity (...) has to be reduced in order to make experimental research possible. The complexity of the research object, however, is epistemically retained in the rich context of an experimental landscape, where the eruption of "volcanic systems" can change the scenery dramatically as the result of particular, unprecedented findings. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe paper is divided into the two parts. In the first, I examine the relations among molecular biology, gene technology, and medicine as some aspect of the consequences of these relations with respect to the human genome project of the consequences of these relations with respect to the human genome project. I argue that the prevailing momentum of early molecular biology resided in argue that the prevailing momentum of relay molecular biology resided in crating the technical means for an (...) extracellular representation of intracellular configurations. Assuch, its medical impact was rather limited. With the advent of recombinant DNA technology is based on the prospects of an intracellular representation of extracellular projects—the “rewriting” of life. Its medical impact is potentially unlimited. In the second part, I question the very opposition between nature and culture that implicitly underlies the notion of medicine as a “cultural system.” I argue that both on a macroscopic level and on a microscopic level, the “natural” and the “social” are no longer to be seen as ontologically different.In its uncanny oscillation between retrospection and foresight, between description and proclamation, and between assertion and hesitation, this essay translates an uneasiness that I have not been able to overcome while writing it. The essay conveys the tangled views of a hybrid author who himself cannot but oscillate between the perspectives of an actor in the field of molecular biology, a participant in the field of science studies, and a citizen. (shrink)

While monadic second-order logic (MSO) has played a prominent role in model theoretic syntax, modal logics have been used in this context since its inception. When comparing propositional dynamic logic (PDL) to MSO over trees, Kracht (1997) noted that there are tree languages that can be defined in MSO that can only be defined in PDL by adding new features whose distribution is predictable. He named such features “inessential features”. We show that Kracht’s observation can be extended to other modal (...) logics of trees in two ways. First, we demonstrate that for each stronger logic, there exists a tree language that can only be defined in a weaker logic with inessential features. Second, we show that any tree language that can be defined in a stronger logic, but not in some weaker logic, can be defined with inessential features. Additionally, we consider Kracht’s definition of inessential features more closely. It turns out that there are features whose distribution can be predicted, but who fail to be inessential in Kracht’s sense. We will look at ways to modify his definition. (shrink)

There is a longstanding and ongoing controversy about whether Buffon is to be regarded as a forerunner of evolutionism in the eighteenth century, or even as one of the founders of transformistic biology. There are good reasons to deny this claim. There are good reasons even to deny that the question which is going to be answered negatively is of particular importance. The present paper addresses the issue from a different angle. It analyzes the concept of time operative in the (...) natural history writings of Buffon, and it delineates the articulation of the concepts of time, change, and history with its organizing impact on Buffon's discourse on earth and organisms. It is argued that although with his species concept Buffon tries to introduce the classical notion of a physical system into biology, in order to do so, he has to subvert it by an element of time. This guides him in considering various aspects of organic change, but by itself does not lead to a general perspective of transformation. On the other hand, in his Epoques de la nature, Buffon introduces a general law of geological change, thus arriving at something which could be called a physically intelligible history. The conquest of natural history by physics, in one and the same movement, leads to a subversion of physical geology by history, and prevents biology from becoming evolutionistic in the sense in which the nineteenth century understands this term. (shrink)

It is generally accepted that the development of the modern sciences is rooted in experiment. Yet for a long time, experimentation did not occupy a prominent role, neither in philosophy nor in history of science. With the ‘practical turn’ in studying the sciences and their history, this has begun to change. This paper is concerned with systems and cultures of experimentation and the consistencies that are generated within such systems and cultures. The first part of the paper exposes the forms (...) of historical and structural coherence that characterize the experimental exploration of epistemic objects. In the second part, a particular experimental culture in the life sciences is briefly described as an example. A survey will be given of what it means and what it takes to analyze biological functions in the test tube. (shrink)

This paper aims to give an impression of how biologists, at the turn of the twentieth century, came to conceptualize and define the hidden entities presumed to govern the process of hereditary transmission. With that, the stage was set for the emergence of genetics as a biological discipline that came to dominate the life sciences of the twentieth century. The annus mirabilis of 1900, with its triple re-appreciation of Gregor Mendel’s work by the botanists Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns, and (...) Erich Tschermak, can be seen as the watershed after which theorizing about heredity and experimentation—selecting pure lines and Mendelian crossing—became tightly connected. As to concepts before this, this paper will analyze Carl von Nägeli’s ‘idioplasm’, Hugo de Vries’s ‘pangenes’, and August Weismann’s ‘germ plasm’. Carl Correns’s Anlagen and Wilhelm Johannsen’s ‘genes’ would replace them in the decade after 1900.Keywords: Idioplasm ; Pangenes ; Germ plasm ; Anlagen ; Gene; Genotype. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The ethical aspects of placebo control in clinical trials have been extensively and controversially debated in the last decade. However, a thorough analytical comparison of the different existing international regulations, their terminologies and their ethical principles concerning placebo, is still missing. The central issue in the ongoing controversy is the justification of placebo‐use, if proven treatment exists. All present versions of the examined guidelines propose such justifications, but each guideline differs from the others in relevant details. Therefore the conditions (...) justifying placebo‐use according to each guideline are the focus of our attention. We will first propose a formalized general principle that defines the ethical acceptability of placebo‐use. Then we will analyse three categories of conditions put forward by the different documents: the risk of harm or burden, compelling scientific reasons, and the availability of proven treatment. The analysis shows important normative discrepancies and contradictions between the examined guidelines. Especially striking is the fact that some guidelines allow the participants in clinical trials to be exposed to a risk of serious harm, while others do not. Finally, we try to show how the normative difference of each guideline could influence the decision of researchers or IRBs concerning the ethical acceptabililty of placebo‐use. (shrink)

Had anybody told me at the beginning of my university studies that I would end up as a historian of science, I would not only have shaken my head in disbelief, I would in all probability not even have understood the prophecy. When I left high school, my interests ranged from literary writing to the life sciences. After an initial attempt to study biochemistry, which I aborted after a year, my early university education was in philosophy, with an emphasis on (...) continental philosophy, from Descartes to Spinoza, from Kant to Hegel, from Nietzsche to Heidegger, pretty much the curriculum that would dominate the vast majority of the philosophical institutes in German universities in the mid-1960s. Having moved from Tübingen to Berlin, in addition I absorbed early on, as part of a group of students around Jacob Taubes, what came to be subsumed under the label of structuralism and post-structuralism: linguistics and semiotics from the Prague School through Noam Chomsky to Julien Greimas, grammatology from Ignace Gelb to Jacques Derrida, historical epistemology in its latest, Canguilhemian and Foucauldian versions, literary theory as practiced by Roland Barthes, to mention just a few names that formed the horizon of our student reading circles. (shrink)

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere is a key contribution to political philosophy, media history, democratic theory and political economy – published almost 60 years ago – that left a deep imprint on the process of democratic consolidation of the Federal Republic of Germany. At the same time, the Habermasian model of the public sphere was used to test out the possibilities of democratisation beyond the nation-state. The theory of the public sphere was, however, mainly discussed as a contribution (...) to normative political theory and, as such, the applicability of its normative standards remained contested. In this article, I focus instead on a second sociological reading of Habermas’ theory of the public sphere as an exploration of the cognitive foundations of modern society. The relevance of this approach can be shown in an exemplary way by discussing the functioning of publicity, which, by creating social visibility and facilitating public opinion formation, on the one hand, provides the knowledge base of a shared social world and, on the other hand, becomes the main driver of social change through critical self-reflection. The article goes on to take a look at recent public sphere transformations in the context of digitalisation and globalisation, and argues that public sphere principles are both undermined and gain new relevance when facing the challenges of new and digital media. (shrink)

The ethical aspects of placebo control in clinical trials have been extensively and controversially debated in the last decade. However, a thorough analytical comparison of the different existing international regulations, their terminologies and their ethical principles concerning placebo, is still missing. The central issue in the ongoing controversy is the justification of placebo‐use, if proven treatment exists. All present versions of the examined guidelines propose such justifications, but each guideline differs from the others in relevant details. Therefore the conditions justifying (...) placebo‐use according to each guideline are the focus of our attention. We will first propose a formalized general principle that defines the ethical acceptability of placebo‐use. Then we will analyse three categories of conditions put forward by the different documents: the risk of harm or burden, compelling scientific reasons, and the availability of proven treatment. The analysis shows important normative discrepancies and contradictions between the examined guidelines. Especially striking is the fact that some guidelines allow the participants in clinical trials to be exposed to a risk of serious harm, while others do not. Finally, we try to show how the normative difference of each guideline could influence the decision of researchers or IRBs concerning the ethical acceptabililty of placebo‐use. (shrink)

SummaryThe paper exposes the views of Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger on the dynamics of the sciences of their day, as both developed them in the two decades after the encounter of the two philosophers in Davos in 1928. It emphasizes points of common concern, and it compares their positions to those of contemporary philosophers of science Gaston Bachelard and Edgar Wind.