And at the other extreme and in a somewhat different sense, a realistic metaphysician in, say, the Aristotelian tradition would be equally insistent that he must be able to consider and talk about beings or things or entities just as such, about being qua being, in other words. And he too would mean to employ such terms in a way that would be all-inclusive and all-embracing. For he would say that there is literally nothing--unless it be just nothing--which could not (...) be said to be in some sense or other, or to be something or other. That is to say, outside being there is nothing. And this, as everyone knows, is simply the basis for Aristotle's celebrated denial that being can be a genus. (shrink)

Purpose: The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to determine whether Facebook use affects biological response to stress and to characterize participants’ use of Facebook during a stressful event. Methods: College students completed a modified Trier Social Stress Test including video recording. Participants were randomly assigned to the Facebook group or control group (no preparatory materials). Pulse and salivary cortisol were measured and compared using t tests. Trained coders assessed videos for 13 common Facebook actions and categorized them as purposeful (...) (tool based) or nonpurposeful (distraction); pulse was compared between groups using Fisher’s exact test. Results: Of 41 participants, 14 (36%) were male and 36 (88%) were Caucasian, mean age was 19.6 ± 1.4 years; 19 participants were randomized to the Facebook group. Comparing Time 1 and Time 3, there were no significant differences in cortisol or pulse change between the Facebook group and the control group. However, males in the control group had a mean pulse reduction of −3.5 ± 0.2 bpm between baseline and Time 3; males in the Facebook group had a mean pulse increase of 10 ± 8.6 bmp (p =.01). Overall, 58.8% of videos were categorized as primarily tool based. Participants who primarily demonstrated distracted use of Facebook had higher than average pulse rates at Time 3 (mean 85.1 vs. 73.6 bpm, p =.03). Discussion: Male Facebook users and participants who demonstrated distracted Facebook use showed increased biologic signs of stress during a stressful event. Some college students may find Facebook use detrimental to performance in stressful situations, but this may vary by gender and type of use. (shrink)

George Herbert Mead, one of America’s most important and influential philosophers, a founder of pragmatism, social psychology, and symbolic interactionism, was also a keen observer of American culture and early modernism. In the period from the 1870s to 1895, Henry Northrup Castle maintained a correspondence with family members and with Mead—his best friend at Oberlin College and brother-in-law—that reveals many of the intellectual, economic, and cultural forces that shaped American thought in that complex era. Close friends of John Dewey, (...) Jane Addams, and other leading Chicago Progressives, the author of these often intimate letters comments frankly on pivotal events affecting higher education, developments at Oberlin College, Hawaii, progressivism, and the general angst that many young intellectuals were experiencing in early modern America. The letters, drawn from the Mead-Castle collection at the University of Chicago, were collected and edited by Mead after the tragic death of Henry Castle in a shipping accident in the North Sea. Working with his wife Helen Castle, he privately published fifty copies of the letters to record an important relationship and as an intellectual history of two progressive thinkers at the end of the nineteenth century. American historians, such as Robert Crunden and Gary Cook, have noted the importance of the letters to historians of the late nineteenth century. The letters are made available here using the basic Mead text of 1902. Additional insights into the connection between Mead, John Dewey, Henry and Harriet Castle, and Hawaii’s progressive kindergarten system are provided by the foundation’s executive director Alfred L. Castle. Marvin Krislov, president of Oberlin College, has added additional comments on the importance of the letters to understanding the intellectual relationship that flourished at Oberlin College. Published with the support of the Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation. (shrink)

"In this revisionist study, Young denies that Adams was a reactionary critic of democracy and instead contends that he was an idealistic, though often disappointed, advocate of representative government. Young focuses on Adams's belief that capitalist industrial development during the Gilded Age had debased American ideals and then turns to a careful study of Adams's famous contrast of the unity of medieval society with the fragmentation of modern technological society."--BOOK JACKET.

Do children have a theory of mind? If they do, at what age is it acquired? What is the content of the theory, and how does it differ from that of adults? The Child's Theory of Mind integrates the diverse strands of this rapidly expanding field of study. It charts children's knowledge about a fundamental topic - the mind - and characterizes that developing knowledge as a coherent commonsense theory, strongly advancing the understanding of everyday theories as well as the (...) commonsense theory of mind. Wellman presents evidence that children as young as age three do possess a commonsense theory of mind - that they grasp the distinction between mental constructs and physical entities and that they have an understanding of the relationship between individuals' mental states and their overt actions. He delves in detail into questions about the nature of adults' commonsense theories of mind and about the nature of commonsense theories. Wellman then examines the content of the three-year-old's theory of mind, the nature of children's notions of mind before age three, the changes in the theory during subsequent development from ages three to six, and the young child's conception of mind in comparison with those of older children and adults. Henry M. Wellman is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Center for Human Growth and Development at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. (shrink)

Mental model theory has been used to explain many differing phenomena in adult reasoning, including the extensively studied case of conditional reasoning. However, the current theory makes predictions about the development of conditional reasoning that are not consistent with data. In this article, young children's performance on conditional reasoning problems and the justifications given are analysed. A mental model account of conditional reasoning is proposed that assumes that (1) young children can reason with two models and (2) the (...) fleshing out of conditionals involves activation of information in semantic memory that uses the minor premise as a retrieval cue. (shrink)

Young children's early understanding of emotion was investigated by examining their use of emotion terms such as happy, sad, mud, and cry. Five children's emotion language was examined longitudinally from the age of 2 to 5 years, and as a comparison their reference to pains via such terms as burn, sting, and hurt was also examined. In Phase 1 we confirmed and extended prior findings demonstrating that by 2 years of age terms for the basic emotions of happiness, sadness, (...) anger, and fear are commonly used by children as are terms for such related states as crying and hurting. At this early age children produce such terms to refer to self and to others, and to past and future as well as to present states. Over the years from 2 to 5 children's emotion vocabulary expands, their discussion of hypothetical emotions gets underway, and the complexity of their emotion utterances increases. In Phase 2 our analyses go beyond children's production of emotion terms to analyses of their conception of emotion. We focus especially on when children use emotion terms to refer to subjective experiential states of persons. From their earliest uses of these terms in our data children. (shrink)

It is not too great an exaggeration to claim that On the Origin of Species was, along with Das Kapital, one of the two most significant works in the intellectual history of the nineteenth century. As George Henry Lewes wrote in 1868, ‘No work of our time has been so general in its influence’. However, the very generality of the influence of Darwin’s work provides the chief problem for the intellectual historian. Most books and articles on the subject assert (...) the influence but remain very imprecise about its nature. It is very difficult indeed to assess what it was about the Darwinian theory which was so influential and how its influence was felt. This problem in Victorian intellectual history intersects with a related one in the history of science. There has been a tendency on the part of historians of science to isolate Darwin in two related ways. The first is to single him out from the mainstream of nineteenth-century naturalism in Britain and allow ‘Darwinism’ to stand duty for the wider movement of which it was in fact but a part. The second is the tendency to single out his evolutionary theory and to demarcate it sharply from those of his predecessors and contemporaries. According to this interpretation Darwin stood alone as a real, empirical scientist and provided the first genuinely scientific hypothesis for the process by which evolution might have occurred. The theories of the other main evolutionists—Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, Chambers, Spencer, and Wallace—were more or less besmirched by ideological, anthropomorphic, or other ‘non-scientific’ factors or by the uses to which they were put by their authors. Charles Darwin is thus made to stand out as a figure of comparatively unalloyed scientific status and is treated in relative isolation from the social and intellectual context in which he worked and into which his theory was received. (shrink)

True revolutions turn the entire world upside down, in ways expected and surprising, profound and mundane. The revolution spawned by advances in molecular biology is no exception. Most of the attention has gone, deservedly, to the possible effects of these advances on medicine, on society, and on our understanding of what it means to be human. But the revolution has already had effects—large and small, good and bad—in other areas. This paper analyzes one aspect of the industry created by that (...) revolution in molecular biology–biotechnology. Specifically, it surveys the various kinds of conflicting interests, both real and perceived, that develop among commercial enterprises, government, and institutions in biotechnology; and it examines the legal implications and public policy concerns of these conflicting interests.The paper focuses on three different kinds of conflicting interests that confront private and public enterprises competing or collaborating in the biotechnology industry: those among businesses involved within the industry; those in relationships between industry and government; and those in relationships between industry and universities. These types of conflicts raise very different issues, but each stems from circumstances unique to the young biotechnology industry. (shrink)

It is not too great an exaggeration to claim that On the Origin of Species was, along with Das Kapital, one of the two most significant works in the intellectual history of the nineteenth century. As George Henry Lewes wrote in 1868, ‘No work of our time has been so general in its influence’. However, the very generality of the influence of Darwin’s work provides the chief problem for the intellectual historian. Most books and articles on the subject assert (...) the influence but remain very imprecise about its nature. It is very difficult indeed to assess what it was about the Darwinian theory which was so influential and how its influence was felt. This problem in Victorian intellectual history intersects with a related one in the history of science. There has been a tendency on the part of historians of science to isolate Darwin in two related ways. The first is to single him out from the mainstream of nineteenth-century naturalism in Britain and allow ‘Darwinism’ to stand duty for the wider movement of which it was in fact but a part. The second is the tendency to single out his evolutionary theory and to demarcate it sharply from those of his predecessors and contemporaries. According to this interpretation Darwin stood alone as a real, empirical scientist and provided the first genuinely scientific hypothesis for the process by which evolution might have occurred. The theories of the other main evolutionists—Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, Chambers, Spencer, and Wallace—were more or less besmirched by ideological, anthropomorphic, or other ‘non-scientific’ factors or by the uses to which they were put by their authors. Charles Darwin is thus made to stand out as a figure of comparatively unalloyed scientific status and is treated in relative isolation from the social and intellectual context in which he worked and into which his theory was received. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reflections on Benjamin ButtonHenry Alexander (bio)IBenjamin Button was born at the age of seventy and as the years accumulated, grew younger physically. There are in his life three separate lines or threads. His chronological age begins in September of 1860 and terminated seventy years later. His "bodily age" consists of those stages of physical changes and of the different ways that he looked to others and to himself. In (...) 1860, he was an old man; his hair was sparse, scraggly, and nearly white; he had "a long smoke-colored beard"; his eyes were faded, watery, and tired; his teeth were ancient; his skin wrinkled, his voice had a cracked quaver and he had an aged stoop, even though he was five feet eight inches tall. From that time on, he gradually and steadily lost these characteristics of old age and became younger looking both to others and to himself until that time in 1930 when, an infant in his white crib, everything "faded out altogether from his mind." Finally, the third thread in Button's life consists of various psychological stages, attitudes, and feelings: his querulousness, his compliancy, his inquisitiveness, his assertiveness, his love for his wife, his business ability, his generosity, his enthusiasm for pleasure, his discontent with home life, his love of military activity and excitement, his delight in the company [End Page 1] of young women, the pleasure he took in his youthful appearance, his ambition to succeed at Harvard, the humiliations he suffered, his childish cheerfulness. These three threads in Benjamin Button's life—his chronological age, his bodily age, and his psychological age are seldom congruent and frequently unharmoniously interwoven.There are times when in ordinary life we may distinguish one or another of these threads out of a person's life. We may on occasion comment that someone looks so much older than she is where physical hardship, unusual sickness, or emotional pressures have left their scars. We may remark that another is so very young for her age, where, for example, inexperience, callousness, naivete show themselves in a person whose age would not lead us to expect such traits. We may remark upon how well one has kept oneself in shape when one's physique, muscle tone, and endurance are those of a decidedly younger person. Sometimes, certain traits of character—crabbiness, bossiness, old womanishness, crankiness, arbitrariness—associated with the elderly, may unexpectedly emerge in young people. Sometimes, traits perhaps conventionally associated with youth may crop up at a later stage of life, for example, carelessness, daredeviltry, sensuality, self-absorption, etc. The theme comes out in cases where we are surprised or shocked by the discrepancies between age and appearance or by changes in appearance or by psychological shifts which strike one as dissonant with one's own or another's age. There must be numerous variations on such discrepancies and they crop up from time to time in the ordinary course of things.But Benjamin Button's life was not ordinary. Those three threads of a person's life which may on occasion be singled out or contrasted are in his case systematically independent of one another. His years bear little relation to his physical age. His psychological states reflect little, if anything, of his years. Except for his middle years (between thirty-five and forty, say), there was little congruence between his chronological age, on the one hand, and his physical appearance or his psychological life, on the other.This dissonance between physical and chronological age has its ironical twists. For instance, when Benjamin was about twenty (in years), he met Hildegarde Moncrief (to whom he was later married). During their first meeting, she mistook him for his father's brother and she told Benjamin that fifty is "the mellow age" and that she "loves fifty." Of course, he appears to be a man of fifty, but he has forgotten how he appears [End Page 2] to others. He even "longed passionately to be fifty" (p. 73).1 The irony is that to Hildegarde and to everyone else, he was fifty.One anomaly that runs through much of Benjamin Button's life is his unawareness as to how... (shrink)

The study of historiography is undergoing a revolution akin to that which took place in the history of political thought in the 1960s, and the work of J.G.A. Pocock is central to both. Pocock's continuing exploration, in Barbarism and Religion (1999-), of the intellectual contexts of Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is central to this enterprise, and this essay situates the origins of his own work within a pre-‘Cambridge School’ Cambridge and its experience of (...) what might be called the Butterfieldian moment. That was marked by a desire to treat religion seriously as a driving force in history; and the same concern is applied here to further understanding an eighteenth-century controversy in which history and religion were dramatically involved, and which profoundly affected Gibbon's own historical and religious views. The work of Conyers Middleton and John Jortin is critically examined from this perspective. These preludes to Gibbon lead to a series of postludes examining the particular contexts in which Victorian and twentieth-century historians and writers, from Henry Hart Milman to Evelyn Waugh, variously appreciated and interpreted Gibbon. The whole is to be seen as a reflexive engagement with Pocock's vitally illuminating studies in eighteenth-century historiography. ☆ A slightly revised version of a lecture given at the University of Sussex on 22nd May 2008, on the occasion of a colloquium devoted to J.G.A. Pocock's Barbarism and Religion. It had originally acted as a prelude to a lecture by Pocock on the same occasion, subsequently published as ‘Gibbon and the invention of Gibbon: chapters 15 and 16 reconsidered’, History of European Ideas 35 (2009), 209–16. In this sense, therefore, the present essay has become a postlude. I am deeply grateful to Noël Sugimura for generously reading and commenting on the rescoring of a lecture into an essay. (shrink)

Aimed at those new to studying Spinoza, this book provides a comprehensive introduction to his thought, placing it in its historical and philosophical contexts, and assessing its critical reception. In addition to providing an analysis of Spinoza's metaphysical, epistemological, psychological, and ethical views in the Ethics, Henry Allison also explores his political theory and revolutionary views on the Bible, as well as his account of Judaism, which led to the excommunication of the young Spinoza from the Jewish community (...) in Amsterdam. Although the book's main focus is on the analysis of Spinoza's views, including a close reading of the central arguments of the Ethics, it also considers many of the standard objections to these arguments as well as possible responses to them. This completely revised and updated new edition of Allison's classic book, with two new chapters, will help a new generation of students to understand and value Spinoza's work. (shrink)

Almost all of us would agree that the experience of art is deeply rewarding. Why this is the case remains a puzzle; nor does it explain why many of us find works of art much more important than other sources of pleasure. Art and Knowledge argues that the experience of art is so rewarding because it can be an important source of knowledge about ourselves and our relation to each other and to the world. The view that art is a (...) source of knowledge can be traced as far back as Aristotle and Horace. Artists as various as Tasso, Sidney, Henry James and Mendelssohn have believed that art contributes to knowledge. As attractive as this view may be, it has never been satisfactorily defended, either by artists or philosophers. Art and Knowledge reflects on the essence of art and argues that it ought to provide insight as well as pleasure. It argues that all the arts, including music, are importantly representational. This kind of representation is fundamentally different from that found in the sciences, but it can provide insights as important and profound as available from the sciences. Once we recognise that works of art can contribute to knowledge we can avoid thorough relativism about aesthetic value and we can be in a position to evaluate the avant-garde art of the past 100 years. Art and Knowledge is an exceptionally clear and interesting, as well as controversial, exploration of what art is and why it is valuable. It will be of interest to all philosophers of art, artists and art critics. (shrink)

In 1902 Henri Lebesgue (1875-1941) published his thesis containing a new theory of integration which was based on Borel's theory of measure. Independently of this William Henry Young (1863-1942) together with his wife Grace Chisholm Young (1868-1944) developed a similar theory of measure and integration. Only after submitting their papers on this subject to the London Mathematical Society did they learn about Lebesgue's results. Consequently the Youngs decided to publish a revised version in which the concept of (...) Lebesgue was taken into consideration and discussed. This parallel discovery will be analysed both from a mathematical and a psychological point of view. The previously unpublished primary sources from the private correspondence of the Youngs will be used to illuminate the collaboration between the Youngs and their reaction to Lebesgue. (shrink)

Throughout his career as a theologian, deacon, priest and cardinal, John Henry Newman remained a committed believer in the value of education. A graduate of Trinity College, Oxford, his own academic experiences shaped his friendships, politics and faith. His Discourses, delivered initially as a series of lectures when he was rector of the newly-established Catholic University of Ireland, inspired a generation of young and talented Catholic scholars. Providing an intelligent but accessible analysis of the relationship between theology and (...) other academic disciplines, the lectures were celebrated in the popular press for dispensing instruction to those who 'had no traditions to guide them in forming a correct estimate of what a university ought to be'. Newman argued that a university should foster the 'diffusion and extension of knowledge' rather than religious or moral training, and that it should prepare students for life in the world. (shrink)

Henry Brooks Adams (February 16, 1838 - March 27, 1918) was an American historian and member of the Adams political family, being descended from two U.S. Presidents.As a young Harvard graduate, he was secretary to his father, Charles Francis Adams, Abraham Lincoln's ambassador in London, a posting that had much influence on the younger man, both through experience of wartime diplomacy and absorption in English culture, especially the works of John Stuart Mill. After the American Civil War, he (...) became a noted political journalist who entertained America's foremost intellectuals at his homes in Washington and Boston.In his lifetime, he was best known for his History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, a 9-volume work, praised for its literary style.His posthumously published memoirs, The Education of Henry Adams, won the Pulitzer Prize and went on to be named by the Modern Library as the top English-language nonfiction book of the 20th century.A LETTER TO AMERICAN TEACHERS OF HISTORY. It proposes a "theory of history" based on the second law of thermodynamics and the principle of entropy, which essentially states that all energy dissipates, order becomes disorder, and the earth will eventually become uninhabitable. He applied the physics of dynamical systems of Rudolf Clausius, Hermann von Helmholtz, and William Thomson to the modeling of human history. (shrink)

The essays in this volume were written when John Henry Newman was a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. He wrote the first, on biblical miracles "The Miracles of Scripture," in 1825-26, as a relatively young man; the other, "The Miracles of Early Ecclesiastical History," was written in 1842-43. A comparison of the two essays displays a shift in Newman's theological stances. In the earlier essay, Newman argues in accordance with the theology of evidence of his time, maintaining that (...) the age of miracles was limited to those recorded in the Old Testament scriptures and in the Gospels and Acts. He asserts that biblical miracles served to demonstrate the divine inspiration of biblical revelation and to attest to the divinity of Christ. However, with the end of the apostolic age, the age of miracles came to an end; miracles reported from the early ages of the Church Newman dismissed as suspicious and possibly fraudulent. With this view, Newman entered into an ongoing debate between the skepticism of Hume and Paine and its continuation in the utilitarianism of Bentham, on the one hand, and the views of Christian apologists rebutting Hume's arguments, on the other. In "The Miracles of Early Ecclesiastical History," Newman can be seen as coming closer to accepting the doctrines of the Catholic Church. He rejects the stance he took in "The Miracles of Scripture," now arguing for a continuity of sacred history between the biblical and ecclesiastical periods. He had clearly abandoned the position of "evidence theologians" that miracles ended after the time of the Apostles. Newman's movement between the writing of the two essays is essentially a growing into a deeper awareness of the Church as a divine society in whose life miracles and supernatural gifts were to be expected. (shrink)

Most of us struggle with distraction every day: the familiar feeling that our attention is not quite where it should be. We feel it at work and at home and it can be frustrating and uncomfortable. But what is distraction? In his lucid, timely book, Damon Young shows that distraction is more than too many stimuli, or too little attention. It is actually a matter of value - to be distracted is to be torn away from what is worthwhile (...) in life. And for Young, what is most worthwhile is freedom: not simply rights or legal liberties, but the capacity to patiently, creatively craft one's own life. Exploring the lives of such luminaries as Henri Matisse, Karl Marx, Seneca and Henry James, Young exposes distraction in work, technology, art, politics and intimacy. With warmth and wit, he reveals what is most valuable, and what is best avoided, in the pursuit of a life of one's own. (shrink)

Most of us struggle with distraction every day: the familiar feeling that our attention is not quite where it should be. We feel it at work and at home and it can be frustrating and uncomfortable. But what is distraction? In his lucid, timely book, Damon Young shows that distraction is more than too many stimuli, or too little attention. It is actually a matter of value - to be distracted is to be torn away from what is worthwhile (...) in life. And for Young, what is most worthwhile is freedom: not simply rights or legal liberties, but the capacity to patiently, creatively craft one's own life. Exploring the lives of such luminaries as Henri Matisse, Karl Marx, Seneca and Henry James, Young exposes distraction in work, technology, art, politics and intimacy. With warmth and wit, he reveals what is most valuable, and what is best avoided, in the pursuit of a life of one's own. (shrink)

Some of the most imaginative analyses in contemporary science have been fostered by the paradox of irreversibility. Rendered as a question the paradox reads: How can the anisotropic macrophysical behavior of a system of molecules be reconciled with the underlying reversible molecular model? Attempts to resolve and dissolve the paradox have appealed to large numbers of particles, jammed correlations, unseen perturbations, hidden variables or constraints, uncertainty principles, averaging procedures (e.g., coarse graining and time smoothing), stochastic flaws, cosmological origins, etc. While (...) acknowledging these efforts as important articulations of basic ideas of statistical mechanics, we question their relevance to irreversibility as it occurs in nature. It seems to us that once the emergence of the phenomenon of equilibrium is understood in terms of molecular dynamics, the macroscopic appearance of irreversibility can also be understood in terms of the frequency of forced withdrawals from young equilibria. We believe that the paradox of irreversibility can be resolved in a simple, logically clear, and aesthetically pleasing manner. (shrink)

True revolutions turn the entire world upside down, in ways expected and surprising, profound and mundane. The revolution spawned by advances in molecular biology is no exception. Most of the attention has gone, deservedly, to the possible effects of these advances on medicine, on society, and on our understanding of what it means to be human. But the revolution has already had effects—large and small, good and bad—in other areas. This paper analyzes one aspect of the industry created by that (...) revolution in molecular biology–biotechnology. Specifically, it surveys the various kinds of conflicting interests, both real and perceived, that develop among commercial enterprises, government, and institutions in biotechnology; and it examines the legal implications and public policy concerns of these conflicting interests.The paper focuses on three different kinds of conflicting interests that confront private and public enterprises competing or collaborating in the biotechnology industry: those among businesses involved within the industry; those in relationships between industry and government; and those in relationships between industry and universities. These types of conflicts raise very different issues, but each stems from circumstances unique to the young biotechnology industry. (shrink)

Theseus, on entering, immediately demands of the Chorus an explanation of the in the house and of the lack of proper welcome for the returning master. His first thought is that something may have happened to the aged Pittheus. No, say the Chorus, the has nothing to do with the old: it is the young whose death causes pain . Naturally, Theseus now leaps to the conclusion that it is his children whose ‘life is pillaged’ : no, he is (...) told, it is his wife. (shrink)

Democracy is increasingly being challenged, by disengagement and by anti-pluralist movements (Levitsky and Ziblatt in How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future, Viking, New York, 2018; Wikforss in _Därför demokrati. Om kunskapen och folkstyret_ [Because of this, democracy. On knowledge and people’s rule] Fri Tanke, 2021; Svolik et al. in J Democr 34(1):5–20, 2023). This article draws upon a theoretical discussion about democracy, pluralism, and threats to democracy. Departing from Dewey, Laclau, Mouffe, Young and Allen, we address (...) democracy as an ideology that centers around pluralism, or an ever-increasing inclusion of voices from the margins as its goal. We argue that perceiving democracy pedagogically as a pluralistic ideology would support students’ democratic citizenship and equip them for a world where threats to democracy are being reported. Employing a case study on Finnish social studies textbooks, we analyze how democracy as well as threats to democracy are discursively portrayed. Our study shows that the textbooks present democracy as predominantly institutional and static. We also find that while disengagement is portrayed as a problem for democracy, anti-pluralist movements are generally not referred to as a threat. Additionally, we examine a discourse in the textbooks that connects freedom of speech with democracy in a way that favors a multitude of opinions, even antidemocratic ones, over creating space for marginalized voices. Drawing on the theoretical discussion and the results of the analysis, we argue that a focus on pluralism as the core of democracy makes the opposition between restricting hate speech and advocating for democracy redundant. (shrink)

It is not uncommon to hear that poor school performance, welfare dependancy, youth unemployment, and criminal activity result more from shortcomings in the personal makeup of individuals than from societal forces beyond their control. Are American values declining as so many suggest? And are those values at the root of many social problems today?Shaped by experience and public policies, people's values and social norms do change. What role can or should a democratic government play in shaping values? And how do (...) these values conditon the efficacy of public policy?In this book, six distinguished social scientists identify trends in America's values and their consequences, and consider public policy tools with which some of those values might be changed.Daniel Yankelovich begins with a discussion of how American values have shifted in the last half-century, and argues that affluence is the driving force behind these changes in values. James Q. Wilson argues that destructive habits which can lead to social pathologies, like crime and drug use, are set early in life; he examines how public policy might intervene when children are young to promote better values. David Popenoe maintains that America has veered too far towards industrialist values, and explores the resulting decline of families and many attendant social ills. Nathan Glazer describes the history and present status of the dispute over multicultural education. Jane Mansbridge examines the process of building cooperation, consensus, and public spirit. And George Akerlof and Janet L. Yellen discuss the problem of gang criminality.Inthe past, social scientists have often sidestepped questions about values as undefinable, unquantifiable, and somehow unscientific. The essays in this volume address these questions at last.Henry J. Aaron, director of the Economic Studies program at Brookings, is the authorof numerous books, including most recently Serious and Unstable Condition: Financing America's Health Care (1991), and coeditor of Setting Domestic Priorities (1992). Thomas E. Mann is director of the Brookings Governmental Studies program, coeditor of Media Polls in American Politics (1992), and coauthor of the Renewing Congress series (1993). Timothy Taylor is managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives at Stanford University. (shrink)

Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (TS) is a childhood neuropsychiatric disorder characterised by the presence of motor and vocal tics. Patients with malignant TS experience severe disease sequelae; risking morbidity and mortality due to tics, self-harm, psychiatric comorbidities and suicide. By definition, those cases termed ‘malignant’ are refractory to all conventional psychiatric and pharmacological regimens. In these instances, deep brain stimulation (DBS) may be efficacious. Current 2015 guidelines recommend a 6-month period absent of suicidal ideation before DBS is offered to (...) patients with TS. We therefore wondered whether it may be ethically justifiable to offer DBS to a minor with malignant TS. We begin with a discussion of non-maleficence and beneficence. New evidence suggests that suicide risk in young patients with TS has been underestimated. In turn, DBS may represent an invaluable opportunity for children with malignant TS to secure future safety, independence and fulfilment. Postponing treatment is associated with additional risks. Ultimately, we assert this unique risk-benefit calculus justifies offering DBS to paediatric patients with malignant TS. A multidisciplinary team of clinicians must determine whether DBS is in the best interest of their individual patients. We conclude with a suggestion for future TS-DBS guidelines regarding suicidal ideation. The importance of informed consent and assent is underscored. (shrink)

In their environment, plants are continuously submitted to natural stimuli such as wind, rain, temperature changes, wounding, etc. These signals induce a cascade of events which lead to metabolic and morphogenetic responses. In this paper the different steps are described and discussed starting from the reception of the signal by a plant organ to the final morphogenetic response. In our laboratory two plants are studied: Bryonia dioica for which rubbing the internode results in reduced elongation and enhanced radial expansion and (...) Bidens pilosa for which the response occurs at distance, hence pricking the cotyledon of a plantlet induces the growth inhibition of both the hypocotyl and the axillary bud of the pricked cotyledon. Reception of the signal and transmission of the message. In Bryonia the signal is received by epidermal cells while in Bidens they are the cells adjacent to the midrib of the cotyledon which receive the mechanical signal. In both plants the message is transmitted via a wave of electric depolarization. This latter is composed of an action potential associated with a slow wave whose transmission rates are respectively 1cm s−1 and 1 mm s−1. Recent results have shown the involvement of Ca2+ in the triggering of the slow wave and the role of the H+ pump during the slow wave. Transient and fast biochemical responses. An entry of extraceilular Ca2+ into the cells and a transient increase in IP3 occur within seconds following the mechanical stimulus. At the same time, the membrane becomes more fluid, correlated with qualitative changes in phospholipids. The rapid increase in the concentration of peroxidated lipids may be correlated with ethylene biosynthesis which is stimulated after rubbing. Other parameters such as cytoplasmic pH, relative water content, hydric potential, membrane potential and modifications of K+, Mg2+-ATPase and Ca2+-ATPase activities, play a key role in the early responses induced by the traumatisms. Irreversible-biochemical responses. The mechanical stimulus performed on a Bryonia internode induces an acceleration of: i) enzymatic activities related to the lignification, ii) esterification of phenolic acids in the cell wall. Consequently the lignification process is accelerated. Storage of the information. After being received by the target cells the information can be stored during several days before being expressed. At the level of cotyledonary bud, the first message, previously stored, can be expressed or not by a second treatment. Bidens thus behaves as if it was able to “store” and to “retrieve” morphogenetic messages, using a sort of rudimentary memory. The nuclei of the bud cells of the pricked cotyledon show that these cells, initially in G2 phase, divide and then remain in the G1 phase. In Bryonia, calli derived from young stimulated internodes, keep thigmomorphogenetic characteristics during several weeks. In the last part of this paper the particularity of our plant model which permits a study of the transmission and storage of the message, is underlined. The links between the different steps induced by the stimulus are discussed. Special attention is devoted to second messengers and to the amplification of the message. (shrink)

In 2006, young people were flocking to MySpace, discovering the joys of watching videos of cute animals on YouTube, and playing online games. Not many of them were watching network news on television; they got most of their information online. So when NBC and MIT launched iCue, an interactive learning venture that combined social networking, online video, and gaming in one multimedia educational site, it was perfectly in tune with the times. iCue was a surefire way for NBC to (...) reach younger viewers and for MIT to test innovative educational methods in the real world. But iCue was a failure: it never developed an audience and was canceled as if it were a sitcom with bad ratings. In _The More We Know_, Eric Klopfer and Jason Haas, both part of the MIT development team, describe the rise and fall of iCue and what it can teach us about new media, old media, education, and the challenges of innovating in educational media. Klopfer and Haas show that iCue was hampered by, among other things, an educational establishment focused on "teaching to the test," television producers uncomfortable with participatory media, and confusion about the market. But this is not just a cautionary tale; sometimes more can be learned from an interesting failure than a string of successes. Today's educational technology visionaries might keep this lesson in mind. (shrink)