Lateral gene transfer, the exchange of genetic information between lineages, not only makes construction of a universal Tree of Life difficult to achieve, but calls into question the utility and meaning of any result. Here I review the science of prokaryotic LGT, the philosophy of the TOL as it figured in Darwin’s formulation of the Theory of Evolution, and the politics of the current debate within the discipline over how threats to the TOL should be represented outside it. We could (...) encourage a more realistic and supportive public understanding of evolution by admitting that what we believe in is not a unified meta-theory but a versatile and well-stocked explanatory toolkit. (shrink)

A reforma trabalhista vem sendo normalmente apresentada como uma ruptura neoliberal com a tradição de protecionismo da Justiça do Trabalho e da legislação referente ao tema. Existe, todavia, um elemento de continuidade, que é a persistência na promessa da paz perpétua. A CLT apresenta a fraternidade entre as classes como imposição cristã. A Reforma Trabalhista insiste na superação dos conflitos como imposição da democracia, uma vez removida a intervenção estatal representada pela justiça do trabalho. Trata-se de uma utopia, uma vez (...) que as classes antagonistas disputam recursos limitados na luta pela sobrevivência. (shrink)

This chapter argues that Mary Astell’s Christian Religion as Profess’d by a Daughter of the Church of England was central to her feminist ideas, rather than limiting them—a position taken by most scholars, and especially by those who term her a conservative. Astell was totally devoted to the importance of reason and its link to faith and religious belief. Her primary motivation was reason’s guarantee of an independent and thoughtful Christianity for women. This acceptance of the centrality of reason and (...) its links to faith seems to contradict her dedication to a scripturally-directed religion, and one under the control of political and religious governors. But in many ways it allowed her to develop a feminism not found in others. She stressed equality and independence, granting little standing to men to direct women’s religion and only granted authority to God’s anointed leaders of church and state. Such an analysis allowed her to adopt a conservative political stance while assuming a quite radical one as regarding women’s relationship to men. And in this work, which primarily addressed proper Christian principles, she introduced views compatible with her more central feminist texts, namely the Serious Proposal and Reflections upon Marriage. By focusing on the mind, individual agency, and unjust patriarchal values, she was able to pursue both a strong critique of the status quo and to hone in precisely on the status of women, in ways not before accomplished. (shrink)

This work aims to describe how developments in thinking on evolutionary biology require re-assessment of initial rejection of the relevance and applicability of neo-Darwinian evolution to the Gaia hypothesis.

O artigo tem por objetivo examinar a relação intrínseca entre o teatro e a filosofia a partir do estudo do verbo théorein, revelador de instigantes elementos constitutivos da arte dramática e da maestria especulativa. Cuida-se de um aprendizado do olhar que, no teatro e na filosofia, irá encontrar as condições propícias para o seu pleno exercício nas manifestações artísticas e filosóficas do século V a.C. em Atenas. A invenção do olhar representa um traço peculiar e profícuo da cultura grega, que (...) escreverá uma história artística e filosófica paradigmática para a civilização ocidental. Analisa a querela suscitada com a expulsão dos poetas e tragediógrafos da República de Platão. Destaca-se a importância da interdisciplinaridade como apreensão do humano e desenvolvimento de uma consciência crítica dos problemas artísticos e filosóficos. (shrink)

In 2016, the Atlanta Community Food Bank launched the Stabilizing Lives project to develop programs and policies that could better address clients’ needs as well as including clientele as part of the planning process. The ACFB partnered with a research team at the University of Georgia to conduct a participatory research project aimed at developing deeper insights into the factors contributing to both instability and stability in the lives of pantry clientele. This article describes the outcomes this research, offering both (...) a substantive contribution to scholarship on food insecurity and emergency food systems and a methodological innovation through a staged mixed-method participatory research project. Through use of a culture-centered approach, this project created discursive spaces within which to outline emergency food models that support informal networks of care. We used a range of methods, including photo elicitation, concept mapping, individual interviews, and focus groups, to facilitate conversation among agency staff, volunteers, and clientele about the effectiveness of current program models and potential new ideas. Specifically, we suggest that through such practices, food pantries and local agencies may help inform new program models that contribute to household stability, and push back against the sometimes alienating and atomizing paradigm found in current emergency food programs. (shrink)

BackgroundAn editorial expression of concern (EEoC) is issued by editors or publishers to draw attention to potential problems in a publication, without itself constituting a retraction or correction.MethodsWe searched PubMed, PubMed Central (PMC), and Google Scholar to identify EEoCs issued for publications in PubMed and PMC up to 22 August 2016. We also searched the archives of the Retraction Watch blog, some journal and publisher websites, and studies of EEoCs. In addition, we searched for retractions of EEoCs and affected articles (...) in PubMed up to 8 December 2016. We analyzed overall historical trends, as well as reported reasons and subsequent editorial actions related to EEoCs issued between August 2014 and August 2016.ResultsAfter screening 5076 records, we identified 230 EEoCs that affect 300 publications indexed in PubMed, the earliest issued in 1985. Half of the primary EEoCs were issued between 2014 and 2016 (52%). We found evidence of some EEoCs that had been removed by the publisher without leaving a record, and some were not submitted for PubMed or PMC indexing. A minority of publications affected by EEoCs had been retracted by early December 2016 (25%). For the subset of 92 EEoCs issued between August 2014 and August 2016, affecting 99 publications, the rate of retraction was similar (29%). The majority of EEoCs were issued because of concerns with validity of data, methods, or interpretation of the publication (68%), and 31% of cases remained open. Issues with images were raised in 40% of affected publications. Ongoing monitoring after the study identified another 17 EEoCs to year’s end in 2016, increasing the number of EEoCs to 247 and publications in PubMed known to be affected by EEoCs to 320 at the end of 2016.ConclusionsEEoCs have been rare publishing events in the biomedical literature, but their use has been increasing. Most have not led to retractions, and many remain unresolved. Lack of prominence and inconsistencies in management of EEoCs reduce the ability of these notices to alert the scientific community to potentially serious problems in publications. EEoCs will be made identifiable in PubMed in 2017. (shrink)

That holobionts are units of selection squares poorly with the observation that microbes are often recruited from the environment, not passed down vertically from parent to offspring, as required for collective reproduction. The taxonomic makeup of a holobiont’s microbial community may vary over its lifetime and differ from that of conspecifics. In contrast, biochemical functions of the microbiota and contributions to host biology are more conserved, with taxonomically variable but functionally similar microbes recurring across generations and hosts. To save what (...) is of interest in holobiont thinking, we propose casting metabolic and developmental interaction patterns, rather than the taxa responsible for them, as units of selection. Such units need not directly reproduce or form parent-offspring lineages: their prior existence has created the conditions under which taxa with the genes necessary to carry out their steps have evolved in large numbers. These taxa or genes will reconstruct the original interaction patterns when favorable conditions occur. Interaction patterns will vary in ways that affect the likelihood of and circumstances under which such reconstruction occurs. Thus, they vary in fitness, and evolution by natural selection will occur at this level. It is on the persistence, reconstruction, and spread of such interaction patterns that students of holobiosis should concentrate, we suggest. This model also addresses other multi-species collectively beneficial interactions, such as biofilms or biogeochemical cycles maintaining all life. (shrink)

Discutir aspectos teórico-metodológicos que subsidie a análise dos dados na pesquisa científica é atividade complexa, pois toda produção científica está relacionada às escolhas teóricas e metodológicas do pesquisador. Este texto busca responder à seguinte questão: como podemos organizar a proposta geral do plano de análise na pesquisa científica qualitativa? Essa inquietação tem como base a condição de ser e estar professora da disciplina de Pesquisa em Educação no ensino superior, de atuar em Programa de Pós-Graduação e de integrar o Grupo (...) de Pesquisa FORMAR que pressupõe a unidade pesquisar-formar em contexto de investigação científica. Essas circunstâncias possibilitaram dialogar com a dialética existencial em Vieira Pinto (1979), entre outras literaturas. O propósito deste trabalho é apresentar sugestões que possam auxiliar na elaboração do plano de análise e gerar uma proposta que possa nortear o processo de orientação e interpretação dos dados produzidos na pesquisa científica. Os dados trazem as seguintes evidências: formação do pesquisador com consciência crítica; análise norteada pelos objetivos específicos ou perguntas norteadoras; apropriação da teoria; descrição, explicação e interpretação na mobilização do geral, do particular e do singular do objeto de estudo; o plano de análise deve ser inteligível, interpretável, compreensível e aplicável, consoante as escolhas teórico-metodológicas. Palavras-chave: Pesquisa qualitativa; Plano de análise; Formação e pesquisa; Práxis. How to prepare a data analysis plan in qualitative research: description, explanation or interpretation? Abstract: Discussing theoretical-methodological aspects that support the analysis of data in scientific research is a complex activity, as all scientific production is related to the theoretical and methodological choices of the researcher. This text seeks to answer the following question: how can we organize the general proposal of the analysis plan in qualitative scientific research? This concern is based on the condition of being and being a professor of the Research in Education discipline in higher education, of working in the Graduate Program and of being part of the FORMAR Research Group, which presupposes the research-training unit in the context of scientific investigation. These circumstances made it possible to dialogue with the existential dialectic in Vieira Pinto (1979), among other literatures. The purpose of this work is to present suggestions that can help in the elaboration of the analysis plan and generate a proposal that can guide the process of orientation and interpretation of the data produced in the scientific research. The data bring the following evidences: formation of the researcher with critical awareness; analysis guided by specific objectives or guiding questions; theory appropriation; description, explanation and interpretation in the mobilization of the general, the particular and the singular of the object of study and; the analysis plan must be intelligible, interpretable, understandable and applicable, depending on the theoretical-methodological choices. Key-words: Qualitative research; Analysis plan; Training and research; Praxis. ¿Cómo elaborar un plan de análisis de datos en investigación cualitativa: descripción, explicación o interpretación? Resumen: Discutir aspectos teórico-metodológicos que sustentan el análisis de datos en la investigación científica es una actividad compleja, ya que toda producción científica está relacionada con las elecciones teóricas y metodológicas del investigador. Este texto busca responder a la siguiente pregunta: ¿cómo podemos organizar la propuesta general del plan de análisis en la investigación científica cualitativa? Esta preocupación se fundamenta en la condición de ser y ser docente de la disciplina Investigación en Educación en la educación superior, de laborar en el Programa de Posgrado y de formar parte del Grupo de Investigación FORMAR, lo que presupone la unidad de investigación-formación en el contexto de investigación científica. Estas circunstancias permitieron dialogar con la dialéctica existencial en Vieira Pinto (1979), entre otras literaturas. El propósito de este trabajo es presentar sugerencias que puedan auxiliar en la elaboración del plan de análisis y generar una propuesta que pueda orientar el proceso de orientación e interpretación de los datos producidos en la investigación científica. Los datos traen las siguientes evidencias: formación del investigador con conciencia crítica; análisis guiado por objetivos específicos o preguntas orientadoras; apropiación de la teoría; descripción, explicación e interpretación en la movilización de lo general, lo particular y lo singular del objeto de estudio y; el plan de análisis debe ser inteligible, interpretable, comprensible y aplicable, en función de las elecciones teórico-metodológicas. Palabras-clave: Investigación cualitativa; Plan de análisis; Formación e investigación; Práctica Data de registro: 04/04/2022 Data de aceite: 17/05/2022. (shrink)

Clade selection is unpopular with philosophers who otherwise accept multilevel selection theory. Clades cannot reproduce, and reproduction is widely thought necessary for evolution by natural selection, especially of complex adaptations. Using microbial evolutionary processes as heuristics, I argue contrariwise, that (1) clade growth (proliferation of contained species) substitutes for clade reproduction in the evolution of complex adaptation, (2) clade-level properties favoring persistence – species richness, dispersal, divergence, and possibly intraclade cooperation – are not collapsible into species-level traits, (3) such properties (...) can be maintained by selection on clades, and (4) clade selection extends the explanatory power of the theory of evolution. (shrink)

This article aims to analyze the constitution of a subject of right capable of respect and esteem through the concept of capacity elaborated by Paul Ricœur. It intends to evaluate the capable, emancipated human being, the self that has an ethical and moral dimension and that is susceptible of ethical and juridical imputation, as it is explained in “Who is the Subject of Rights?” in The Just . There is an erratum for this article located here .  .

This paper, like many before it, aims to solve the “species problem” by declaring it a non-problem. It borrows its title from an earlier article by Jeff Lawrence and its philosophical concepts from Marc Ereshefsky, John Dupré, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Ken Waters, and Jody Hey. The emphasis is on bacteria, but my pragmatic species anti-realist conclusion may be a general one.

Here I advance two related evolutionary propositions. (1) Natural selection is most often considered to require competition between reproducing “individuals”, sometimes quite broadly conceived, as in cases of clonal, species or multispecies-community selection. But differential survival of non-competing and non-reproducing individuals will also result in increasing frequencies of survival-promoting “adaptations” among survivors, and thus is also a kind of natural selection. (2) Darwinists have challenged the view that the Earth’s biosphere is an evolved global homeostatic system. Since there is only (...) one biosphere, reproductive competition cannot have been involved in selection for such survival-promoting adaptations, they claim. But natural selection through survival could reconcile Gaia with evolutionary theory. (shrink)

Our understanding of what microbes are and how they evolve has undergone many radical shifts since the late nineteenth century, when many still believed that bacteria could be spontaneously generated and most thought microbial “species” (if any) to be unstable and interchangeable in form and function (pleomorphic). By the late twentieth century, an ontology based on single cells and definable species with predictable properties, evolving like species of animals or plants, was widely accepted. Now, however, genomic and metagenomic data show (...) that lateral gene transfer compromises this picture of stability and predictability, and refocuses our attention on multilineage communities. Treating such communities as unstable but identifiable evolving “individuals” makes us again pleomorphists, of a sort. (shrink)

Eukaryogenesis is widely viewed as an improbable evolutionary transition uniquely affecting the evolution of life on this planet. However, scientific and popular rhetoric extolling this event as a singularity lacks rigorous evidential and statistical support. Here, we question several of the usual claims about the specialness of eukaryogenesis, focusing on both eukaryogenesis as a process and its outcome, the eukaryotic cell. We argue in favor of four ideas. First, the criteria by which we judge eukaryogenesis to have required a genuinely (...) unlikely series of events 2 billion years in the making are being eroded by discoveries that fill in the gaps of the prokaryote:eukaryote “discontinuity.” Second, eukaryogenesis confronts evolutionary theory in ways not different from other evolutionary transitions in individuality; parallel systems can be found at several hierarchical levels. Third, identifying which of several complex cellular features confer on eukaryotes a putative richer evolutionary potential remains an area of speculation: various keys to success have been proposed and rejected over the five-decade history of research in this area. Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, it is difficult and may be impossible to eliminate eukaryocentric bias from the measures by which eukaryotes as a whole are judged to have achieved greater success than prokaryotes as a whole. Overall, we question whether premises of existing theories about the uniqueness of eukaryogenesis and the greater evolutionary potential of eukaryotes have been objectively formulated and whether, despite widespread acceptance that eukaryogenesis was “special,” any such notion has more than rhetorical value. (shrink)

Drawing on contemporary coverage, particularly in The Field and Country Life, this article considers the construction of rabbits and squirrels as images of the past in England. By the 1930s, the red squirrel had become increasingly rare in the English countryside. Particularly in towns and suburbs, the population of the grey squirrel was growing rapidly. Those who saw themselves as the custodians of the countryside depicted the grey squirrel as a foreign force inimical to a mythical English way of life (...) as epitomized by the red squirrel. In the post war period, the debate resurfaced about the nature of the countryside and who had a right to defend it. The focus then was upon the spread of myxomatosis from France, which was depicted as a foreign disease. Wild rabbits, who died in the thousands from this infection, became appropriated, as red squirrels before them, as symbols of a lyrical and ordered past in the countryside. (shrink)

This article analyzes the sculptural depiction of two nonhuman animals, Greyfriars Bobby in Edinburgh, Scotland and the Brown Dog in Battersea, South London, England. It explores the ways in which both these cultural depictions transgress the norm of nineteenth century dog sculpture. It also raises questions about the nature of these constructions and the way in which the memorials became incorporated within particular human political spaces. The article concludes by analyzing the modern "replacement" of the destroyed early twentieth century statue (...) of the Brown Dog and suggests that the original meaning of the statue has been significantly altered. (shrink)

The origin and prevalence of transposable elements may best be understood as resulting from “selfish” evolutionary processes at the within-genome level, with relevant populations being all members of the same TE family or all potentially mobile DNAs in a species. But the maintenance of families of TEs as evolutionary drivers, if taken as a consequence of selection, might be better understood as a consequence of selection at the level of species or higher, with the relevant populations being species or ecosystems (...) varying in their possession of TEs. In 2015, Brunet and Doolittle made the case for legitimizing claims for an evolutionary role for TEs by recasting such claims as being about species selection. Here I further develop this “how possibly” argument. I note that with a forgivingly broad construal of evolution by natural selection we might come to appreciate many aspects of Life on earth as its products, and TEs as—possibly—contributors to the success of Life by selection at several levels of a biological hierarchy. Thinking broadly makes this proposition a testable Darwinian one. (shrink)

To date, no definition of life has been unequivocally accepted by the scientific community. In frustration, some authors advocate alternatives to standard definitions. These include using a list of characteristic features, focusing on life’s effects, or categorizing biospheres rather than life itself; treating life as a fuzzy category, a process or a cluster of contingent properties; or advocating a ‘wait-and-see’ approach until other examples of life are created or discovered. But these skeptical, operational, and pluralistic approaches have intensified the debate, (...) rather than settled it. Given the failure of even these approaches, we advocate a new strategy. In this paper, we reverse the usual line of reasoning and argue that the “life problem” arises from thinking incorrectly about the nature of life. Scientists most often conceptualize life as a class or kind, with earthly life as a single instance of it. Instead, we advocate thinking about Earth’s Life as an individual, in the way that species are now thought to be. In this view, Life is a monophyletic clade that originated with a last universal common ancestor, and includes all its descendants. We can continue to use the category ‘life’ pragmatically to refer to similarities between various phenomena and Life. But the relevant similarities are a matter of interest and preference, not a matter of fact. The search for other life in the Universe, then, is merely a search for entities that resemble parts of Life in whatever sense astrobiologists find most appealing. This does not mean that the search for evolved complexity elsewhere in the universe or its creation in the lab are futile endeavors, but that debates over whether they count as ‘life’ are. Ironically, finally abandoning the concept ‘life’ may make our searches for evolved complexity more fruitful. We explain why. (shrink)

El encargo que recibe la escuela de gestionar las emociones para producir indicadores, mejorar la convivencia o desarrollar las competencias, es solo una de las aristas que tiene la educación escolarizada. En este artículo, y a partir de las vivencias en algunas instituciones educativas de la ciudad de Medellín, se busca indicar otra ruta posible para las emociones en la escuela; aquella que está referida no a su gestión, sino a la comprensión de su componente cognitivo para, por la vía (...) de la formación, contribuir a la transformación creativa de sí. * Este artículo recoge algunas reflexiones del proyecto de investigación Educación global/pedagogía planetaria y espacio social. Una relación colaborativa entre Suiza y Colombia, que desarrollamos en convenio con la Universidad Pedagógica de Berna, con un equipo binacional. En Berna: Angela Stienen y Katryn Oester; en Colombia: Jesús Alberto Echeverri, Juan Camilo Estrada, Juan Carlos Vásquez García. (shrink)

La escuela, siempre cuestionada, en constante crisis es vista desde otra perspectiva a partir de marzo del 2020, cuando en razón de la pandemia global del covid-19 se deslocaliza y se traslada a las pantallas. En este artículo exploramos, desde la síntesis reflexiva de las experiencias de maestros y maestras en Antioquia-Colombia, el lugar de la escuela y su rol en la tarea utópica de formar la humanidad en tiempos de crisis pandémica, en la cual, maestros y maestras eligieron la (...) enseñanza para reafirmar la educación ante un contexto de desorden y conmoción. (shrink)

Routledge is now re-issuing this prestigious series of 204 volumes originally published between 1910 and 1965.

Annotation Routledge is now re-issuing this prestigious series of 204 volumes originally published between 1910 and 1965. The titles include works by key figures such asC.G. Jung, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Otto Rank, James Hillman, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Susan Isaacs. Each volume is available on its own, as part of a themed mini-set, or as part of a specially-priced 204-volume set. A brochure listing each title in theInternational Library of Psychologyseries is available upon request.