Exploring Renaissance humanists’ debates on matter, life and the soul, this volume addresses the contribution of humanist culture to the evolution of early modern natural philosophy so as to shed light on the medical context of the ...

This volume brings Bergson's key ideas from Matter and Memory into dialogue with contemporary themes on memory and time in science, across analytic and continental philosophy. Focusing specifically on the application of Bergson's ideas to cognitive science, the circuit between perception and memory receives full explication in 15 different essays. By re-reading Bergson through a cognitive lens, the essays provide a series of alternative analytic interpretations to the standard continental approach to Bergson's oeuvre, without fully discounting either approach. The relevance (...) of philosophies of mind and memory sit alongside the role of a metaphysics of time in exploring connections to psychology, biology, and physics. This eclecticism includes an exciting focus on numerous topics that are not given sufficient attention in extant studies of Bergson, including the precise nature of his ideas on dualism, memory, and ecological theories of perception, especially in relation to his contemporaries. Led by leading Bergson scholars from France and Japan, this book maps the rich terrain of Bergson's contemporary relevance alongside the historical context of his ideas. (shrink)

One of the fundamental issues in visual awareness is how we are able to perceive the scene in front of our eyes on time despite the delay in processing visual information. The prediction theory postulates that our visual system predicts the future to compensate for such delays. On the other hand, the postdiction theory postulates that our visual awareness is inevitably a delayed product. In the present study we used flash-lag paradigms in motion and color domains and examined how the (...) perception of visual information at the time of flash is influenced by prior and subsequent visual events. We found that both types of event additively influence the perception of the present visual image, suggesting that our visual awareness results from joint contribution of predictive and postdictive mechanisms. (shrink)

Nature and civilization are often regarded in opposition to each other. However, civilization employs technologies and is based on laws of nature. Also, the historical world is a result of the development of the natural world. An “anti-nature” must thus be contained somewhere within nature. The idea of “ anti-nature ” is neither alien to the Eastern nor to the Western traditional concepts of nature. The philosophy of Lao Zi never embraces mere naturalism. Lao Zi has observed that things in (...) the world are not always “ so on their own ” but rather in the mode of anti-nature. A nti-nature in nature itself does not become expressive until Christian theology, in which the origin of evil is reflected upon. The last part of the paper begins with one Buddhist thought expressed in the Diamond Sutra: “The world is not the world that is named the world.” Through naming of a thing, this thing is objectified or substantialized, and an objectified thing is not the thing itself. This self is “ śūnya ”, a non-world, which is what the world is. This non-world (as well nature) is first and foremost concealed by ego-consciousness that tends to objectify the things. E go-consciousness as this anti-nature tends to conceal this non-nature, and begins to act in the form of technology. The radical way of solving the problems caused by this “anti-nature” must begin with gaining an insight into the nature of ourselves as well as the nature of technology. (shrink)

This essay is an overview of the intellectual itinerary of the Japanese philosopher Kuki Shūzō . Kuki first came to the attention of Western readers in Heidegger’s A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer. After correcting the record on Kuki with regards to this famous piece, the essay turns to the work that Heidegger and the Japanese Inquirer were discussing, namely, The Structure of Iki. The essay discusses both the background and basic arguments of this work. The (...) essay then expands on Kuki’s Western reception, indicating that his thinking evolved beyond his early work with the phenomenon of iki. His later thinking concerns the problem of contingency and the essay concludes with a discussion of his late work, The Problem of Contingency. The essay reviews Kuki’s thinking as a whole in order to develop a sense of his hermeneutics. (shrink)

Environmental, physiological, and pathological stimuli induce the misfolding of proteins, which results in the formation of aggregates and amyloid fibrils. To cope with proteotoxic stress, cells are equipped with adaptive mechanisms that are accompanied by changes in gene expression. The evolutionarily conserved mechanism called the heat shock response is characterized by the induction of a set of heat shock proteins (HSPs), and is mainly regulated by heat shock transcription factor 1 (HSF1) in mammals. We herein introduce the mechanisms by which (...) HSF1 tightly controls the transcription of HSP genes via the regulation of pre‐initiation complex recruitment in their promoters under proteotoxic stress. These mechanisms involve the stress‐induced regulation of HSF1‐transcription complex formation with a number of coactivators, changes in chromatin states, and the formation of phase‐separated condensates through post‐translational modifications. (shrink)

The neuromodulatory effects of brain stimulation therapies notably involving repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation on nocturnal sleep, which is critically disturbed in major depression and other neuropsychiatric disorders, remain largely undetermined. We have previously reported in major depression patients that prefrontal rTMS sessions enhanced their slow wave activity power, but not their sigma power which is related to sleep spindle activity, for electrodes located nearby the stimulation site. In the present study, we focused on measuring the spindle density to investigate cumulative (...) effects of prefrontal rTMS sessions on the sleep spindle activity. Fourteen male inpatients diagnosed with medication-resistant unipolar or bipolar depression were recruited and subjected to 10 daily rTMS sessions targeting the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. All-night polysomnography data was acquired at four time points: Adaptation, Baseline, Post-1, and Post-2. Clinical and cognitive evaluations were longitudinally performed at Baseline, Post-1, and Post-2 time points to explore associations with the spindle density changes. The PSG data from 12 of 14 patients was analyzed to identify sleep spindles across the sleep stages II–IV at four electrode sites: F3, F4, P3, and P4. Statistical analysis by two-way ANOVA revealed that spindle density at F3 increased at Post-1 but decreased at Post-2 time points. Moreover, the local and transient increase of spindle density at F3 was associated with the previously reported SWA power increase at F3, possibly reflecting a shared mechanism of thalamocortical synchronization locally enhanced by diurnal prefrontal rTMS sessions. Clinical and cognitive correlations were not observed in this dataset. These findings suggest that diurnal rTMS sessions transiently modulate nocturnal sleep spindle activity at the stimulation site, although clinical and cognitive effects of the local changes warrant further investigation. (shrink)

In his embryological treatise De plastica seminis facultate , Jacob Schegk , professor of philosophy and medicine at the University of Tübingen, developed, through a unique interpretation of the Aristotelian embryology, a theory of the "plastic faculty" , whose origin lay in the Galenic idea of the formative power. The present study analyses the precise nature of Schegk's theory, by setting it in its historical and intellectual context. It will also discuss the hitherto unappreciated Neoplatonic dimension of Schegk's notion of (...) the soul's vehicle. (shrink)

Inspired by Christian Platonism as developed in the late fifteenth-century Florentine milieu, the French physician Jean Fernel proposed a particular interpretation of Galen in a medico-philosophical work entitled On the Hidden Causes of Things . With this interpretation, he responded to the serious and urgent need for a reconciliation of the newly reconstituted Galen of Renaissance humanism with Christian faith. The present study examines Fernel's strategy and method in constructing this singular Galenic body of doctrine, special attention being given to (...) the roles attributed to the Creator, the formative force, and the soul. Subsequently, an analysis of the notions of spirit and of its innate heat as indispensable instruments of Fernel's physiology will uncover the very target of his criticism of materialism. (shrink)

In this article, the author begins by noticing a statistical fact: from the seven Japanese translations of Being and Time, in five cases the German word Sein has been translated as sonzai, and in two cases as u. This fact invites the author to a discussion about the Japanese understanding of “Being”, which is developed on three levels: the question of language, the question of historical-cultural world, and the question of the “European”, understood as a Western principle, depictingthis “Abend-land” as (...) a region threatened by night. (shrink)

This study presents and discusses the essential “nearness” and “farness” between Nishitani philosophy and Nishida philosophy, where such “nearness” and “farness” are not meant to be words that simply express the relative positions in which Nishida and Nishitani philosophy stand with respect to each other, but present the internal structure of the very problems at the core of both. Taking as a clue, Nishitani’s words, “nearer to me than I am to myself,” we examine these philosophies by situating their interpretations (...) of Eckhart as an axis for our considerations and then introducing their understandings of an expression from Daitō Kokushi 大燈国師. In conclusion, we consider the problems remaining for both. While it was Nishida philosophy that made it possible to take on the foundation of the history of philosophy as a problem, it would be left to Nishitani to actually carry this out. In turn, while Nishitani presents a criticism of the “intellect,” we must speak of the elucidation of logic as an undeveloped problem left within Nishitani philosophy. (shrink)

One of the most striking features of Giordano Bruno’s philosophy is the marriage of universal animation with atomism. This unusual combination produced an extraordinary image of the universe, which was governed by the World-Soul and its universal intellect along with an infinite number of living atoms or corpuscles, animated by their internal spiritual principle. After examining Bruno’s principal arguments on the World-Soul, universal animation and living atoms or corpuscles, this article explores two possible sources among the works of his near-contemporaries. (...) The first author, Agostino Steuco, tried to reconcile the doctrine of the World-Soul with Christianity, integrating the idea of Anaxagoras on the cosmic mind as the demiurgic agent of the universe. The second figure, Jacob Schegk, further elaborated his unusual atomistic or corpuscular reinterpretation of this Presocratic philosopher’s ideas. (shrink)

Inspired by Christian Platonism as developed in the late fifteenth-century Florentine milieu, the French physician Jean Fernel proposed a particular interpretation of Galen in a medico-philosophical work entitled On the Hidden Causes of Things. With this interpretation, he responded to the serious and urgent need for a reconciliation of the newly reconstituted Galen of Renaissance humanism with Christian faith. The present study examines Fernel's strategy and method in constructing this singular Galenic body of doctrine, special attention being given to the (...) roles attributed to the Creator, the formative force, and the soul. Subsequently, an analysis of the notions of spirit and of its innate heat as indispensable instruments of Fernel's physiology will uncover the very target of his criticism of materialism. (shrink)

In the near future, our life will normally be surrounded with fairly complicated artifacts, enabled by the autonomous robot and brain–machine interface technologies. In this paper, we argue that what we call the responsibility flaw problem and the inappropriate use problem need to be overcome in order for us to benefit from complicated artifacts. In order to solve these problems, we propose an approach to endowing artifacts with an ability of socially communicating with other agents based on the artifact-as-a-half-mirror metaphor. (...) The idea is to have future artifacts behave according to the hybrid intention composed of the owner’s intention and the social rules. We outline the approach and discuss its feasibility together with preliminary work. (shrink)

The treatise On Formative Power of Ferrara's emblematic medical humanist, Nicolò Leoniceno, is the one of the first embryological monographs of the Renaissance. It shows, at the same time, the continuity of medieval Arabo-Latin tradition and the new elements brought by Renaissance medical humanism, namely through the use of the ancient Greek commentators of Aristotle like Simplicius. Thus this treatise stands at the crossroad of these two currents. The present study analyses the range of Leoniceno's philosophical discussion, determines its exact (...) sources and brings to light premises for the early modern development of the concept of formative force, which will end up in the theory of "plastic nature" at the heart of the Scientific Revolution. (shrink)

Organogenesis and metamorphosis require the intricate orchestration of multiple types of cellular interactions and signaling pathways. Glutamate (Glu) is an excitatory extracellular signaling molecule in the nervous system, while Ca2+ is a major intracellular signaling molecule. The first Glu receptors to be cloned are Ca2+‐permeable receptors in mammalian brains. Although recent studies have focused on Glu signaling in synaptic mechanisms of the mammalian central nervous system, it is unclear how this signaling functions in development. Our recent article demonstrated that Ca2+‐permeable (...) AMPA‐type Glu receptors (GluAs) are essential for formation of a photosensitive organ, development of some neurons, and metamorphosis, including tail absorption and body axis rotation, in ascidian embryos. Based on findings in these embryos and mammalian brains, we formed several hypotheses regarding the evolution of GluAs, the non‐synaptic function of Glu, the origin of GluA‐positive neurons, and the neuronal network that controls metamorphosis in ascidians. (shrink)

Summary The famous Jesuit father Athanasius Kircher (1602?1680) tried to interpret the Creation of the world and to explain the origin of life in the last book of his geocosmic encyclopedia, Mundus subterraneus (Amsterdam, 1664?1665). His interpretation largely depended on the ?concept of seeds? which was derived from the tradition of Renaissance ?chymical? (chemical and alchemical) philosophy. The impact of Paracelsianism on his vision of the world is also undeniable. Through this undertaking, Kircher namely developed a corpuscular theory for the (...) spontaneous generation of living beings. The present study examines this theory and its relationship with Kircher's chymical interpretation of the Creation in order to place it in its own intellectual and historical context and will uncover one of its most important sources. (shrink)

The treatise On Formative Power of Ferrara's emblematic medical humanist, Nicolò Leoniceno , is the one of the first embryological monographs of the Renaissance. It shows, at the same time, the continuity of medieval Arabo-Latin tradition and the new elements brought by Renaissance medical humanism, namely through the use of the ancient Greek commentators of Aristotle like Simplicius. Thus this treatise stands at the crossroad of these two currents. The present study analyses the range of Leoniceno's philosophical discussion, determines its (...) exact sources and brings to light premises for the early modern development of the concept of formative force, which will end up in the theory of "plastic nature" at the heart of the Scientific Revolution. (shrink)