This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Investing in Science: Child Health and U.S. Medicine in the Twentieth Century The Impact of Specific Medical Interventions The Changing Definition of ID The “Flynn Effect” and the Impact of Improved Public Health Conclusion References.

Pre-existing medical conditions and co-infections are common to all human populations, although the natures of the pre-existing conditions and the types of co-infections vary. For these reasons, among others, the arrival of a highly infectious pathogenic agent may differentially affect the disease burden in different sub-populations, as a function of varying combinations of endemic disease, chronic disease, genetic or epigenetic vulnerabilities, compromised immunological status, and socially determined risk exposure. The disease burden may also vary considerably by age cohort and socio-economic (...) status. The social consequences of infection, the medical sequelae, and the paths of recovery from infection may also vary, according to these variables. As a result, different sub-populations may have different experiences of a disease process, including when and how an epidemic comes to an end. This essay suggests that historians' engagement with path-breaking biological and medical anthropological research will allow new approaches to understanding disease processes that will enrich the study of epidemics and their endings. It is organized in three sections. The first discusses some general approaches to and assumptions about epidemics that are used by many historians. The second introduces new perspectives on the study of historical epidemics opened up by the medical anthropological concept of syndemic disease interactions and by an engagement with biological scientific perspectives. It briefly discusses two rural epidemics-one of anemia caused by the syndemic interaction of hookworm and malaria co-infections in early 20th-century British Malaya, and the other of rebound infections caused by the loss of acquired immunity to falciparum malaria in mid-20th-century Liberia-that illustrate, respectively, the utility of the concept of syndemic disease interactions and the centrality of immunological status in understanding epidemic outbreaks in these discrete populations. The third section addresses some of the research considerations involved in moving beyond the single pathogen model of epidemic disease. (shrink)

The Franciscan William of Ockham (c.1285-c.1347) was the greatest theologian and philosopher of the first half of the fourteenth century. Spurred on by the activities of a papacy which he saw as destroying the very foundations of his Order, he devoted the last part of his life to examining the extent of papal power over Christians and its relationship to the secular government of people. On the Power of Emperors and Popes (1347) is his last work. Short, passionate and lucid, (...) it represents a distillation of his thought on these questions and forms an excellent and accessible introduction to his political thought as a whole. The extensive new annotations to the text bring to light the range of sources on which Ockham drew, while the new introduction places the work in its historical context and relates it to other works of medieval Franciscan political discourse. Translated here into English for the first time, the work will be of interest to all students and researchers in the field of medieval political thought. --the first English translation of Ockham's classic work, plus extensive new introduction, textual annotation, and bibliography --modern editorial apparatus connects the work with the whole body of Ockham's political thought --the new annotation provides historical and intellectual context and translations of Ockham's source references. (shrink)

The case of John Snow has long been important to epidemiologists and public health officials. However, despite the fact that there have been many discussions about the various aspects of Snow’s case, there has been virtually no discussion about what guided Snow’s reasoning in his coming to believe his various conclusions about cholera. Here, I want to take up this question in some detail and show that there are a number of specific principles of reasoning that played a crucial role (...) for Snow. Moreover, these principles were episte- mologically important to Snow, a fact about which Snow is explicit in many places. An analysis of Snow’s case suggests that, because of the epistemic role such principles of reasoning can play, health care practitioners ought to understand their practices to be theoretically informed in these ways, and not just data driven. (shrink)

This article seeks to re-evaluate the importance of the political in the thinking of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The article first shows that Sartre’s description of Merleau-Ponty’s intellectual trajectory as one of increasing political apathy from the 1950s onwards is inaccurate. The article then demonstrates that throughout the post-war period, including in his project for a new ontology, Merleau-Ponty believed that a revised version of Marxism would provide the methodological framework within which philosophical work could address the political challenges of the (...) present. This revised Marxism was to be a direct alternative to the reifying uses of Marx’s thinking. It would rely upon the latter’s self-reflexive historicism, which meant its very failures showed how philosophy might transform itself in connection with its own time. Cet article tente souligner la place du politique dans la pensée de Maurice Merleau-Ponty. On contestera d’abord la description faite par Sartre de sa trajectoire intellectuelle, selon laquelle il aurait fait preuve d’une apathie croissante, à partir des années cinquante, vis-à-vis des questions politiques. On montrera ensuite que durant toute la période d’après-guerre, jusque dans les recherches ontologiques ultimes, Merleau-Ponty a pensé qu’un usage renouvelé du marxisme permettrait au travail philosophique de répondre aux défis politiques du présent. Une telle révision du marxisme représentait une alternative directe aux usages réifiant de la pensée de Marx. Cette révision serait rendue possible par la réflexivité historiciste de cette pensée, qui fait que, dans ses erreurs mêmes, celle-ci révèle la capacité de la philosophie à se transformer au contact de son temps. (shrink)

This volume, a translation of book 1 of Philo of Alexandria's De vita Mosis, with introduction and commentary, aims to introduce new readers, both students and scholars, to Philo of Alexandria through what is widely considered to be one of his most accessible works and one that Philo himself may have intended for readers unfamiliar with Judaism. The introduction provides historical, intellectual, and religious context for Philo, discusses major issues of scholarly interest, considers the relation of De vita (...) Mosis to the Septuagint, and explores the immediate Nachleben of Philo's works. The author's translation is paired with Cohn's edition of the Greek text, thereby providing not only a rendering of the Greek but also the Greek itself for those who wish to read Philo's own words. The English rendering of the Greek aims at clarity and accuracy while retaining as many of Philo's unique stylistic features as possible. Finally, the notes are designed to elucidate the text, especially for new readers, on a variety of levels: extrapolating on points more fully discussed elsewhere in the Philonic corpus, observing specific divergences from the Septuagint, and suggesting aspects of contemporary historical influence on Philo's retelling of the biblical narrative. The volume serves as a succinct entry into the basics of Philo while also preparing the reader for some of Philo's more challenging works. (shrink)

Historical criticism and academic inquiry have led a number of scholars in the nineties not only to change their value orientation and academic standpoint, but at the same time to switch to a different genealogy of learning, to derive an antiradicalist issue from this, and to establish an image of "true intellectuals. " When reading and analyzing these actions or documents, I have found that the natural extension of antiradicalism is self-reflective criticism of modernity. This has, in turn, become (...) the logical starting point for conversion to China's native tradition; that the "suturing up" by academics has perhaps concealed certain mental feelings and certain erroneous judgments with regard to the 1980s; that molding the image of the true intellectual depends on postenlightenment strategy, which has unavoidably been smeared with an embarrassing Western patina and a patina of pop culture. (shrink)

Although every emerging infectious disease occurs in a unique context, the behaviour of previous pandemics offers an insight into the medium- and long-term outcomes of the current threat. Where an informative historical analogue exists, epidemiologists and policymakers should consider how the insights of the past can inform current forecasts and responses.

The Middle Ages is often viewed as a period of low intellectual achievement. The name itself refers to the time between the high philosophical and literary accomplishments of the Greco-Roman world and the technological advances that were achieved and philosophical and theological alternatives that were formulated in the modern world that followed. However, having produced such great philosophers as Anselm, Peter Abelard, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Peter Lombard, and the towering Thomas Aquinas, it hardly seems fair to (...) label the medieval period as such. Examining the influence of ancient Greek philosophy as well as of the Arabian and Hebrew scholars who transmitted it, the Historical Dictionary of Medieval Philosophy and Theology presents the philosophy of the Christian West from the 9th to the early 17th century. This is accomplished through a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on the philosophers, concepts, issues, institutions, and events, making this an important reference for the study of the progression of human thought. (shrink)

Schelling scholars face an uphill battle. His confinement to the smallest circles of ‘continental’ thought puts him at the margins of what today counts as philosophy. His eclipse by Fichte and Hegel and inheritance by better-read thinkers like Kierkegaard and Heidegger tend to reduce him to a historical footnote. And the sometimes obscure formulations he uses makes the otherwise difficult writings of fellow post-Kantians seem comparatively more accessible. For those seeking to widen these circles, see through this eclipse and (...) elucidate these formulations, a deeper internal challenge is to make sense of the appearance and disappearance of intellectual intuition in Schelling’s work. The term’s apotheosis is often attributed to the height of German idealism and especially to Schelling’s identity philosophy, outside which he subjects the term to a radical critique. The identity philosophy aims to cognize the absolute ground of the system of knowledge and the system of nature, for which cognition Schelling enlists intellectual intuition. While the identity philosophy falls between a Fichtean debut and a late attack on Hegel, it is difficult to determine its exact parameter. I propose that a necessary condition for doing so is to clarify the explanatory role of intellectual intuition—that is, the specific problem to which it is the intended solution—on which the identity philosophy depends. To this end, I will trace a nexus of problems that Schelling’s use of intellectual intuition is meant to solve. Doing so will not only help to delineate the identity philosophy, but show it to be continuous with Schelling’s earlier and later periods. In §1, I account for the nexus of the problems of grounding, freedom and meaning. These problems demand, respectively, a principle by which cognition forms a system rather than an aggregate, a principle by which a system of cognition is compatible with freedom rather than incompatible and a principle by which a system of freedom can show why there is meaning rather than none. In §2, I reconstruct Schelling’s argument in the identity philosophy for why intellectual intuition can resolve this nexus of problems and, in §3, his arguments during other periods of his thought for why it cannot. I conclude in §4 by suggesting why the identity philosophy is continuous with these periods. Beyond fulfilling the interpretive task of making sense of intellectual intuition in Schelling’s sprawling corpus, my aim is thus to contribute to a unified reading of the latter. (shrink)

The Sociology of Intellectual Life outlines a social theory of knowledge for the 21st century. Steve Fuller deals directly with a world in which it is no longer taken for granted that universities and academics are the best places and people to embody the life of the mind. While Fuller defends academic privilege, he takes very seriously the historic divergences between academics and intellectuals, attending especially to the different features of knowledge production that they value."--BOOK JACKET.

What makes beliefs thrive? In this paper, we model the dissemination of bona fide science versus pseudoscience, making use of Dan Sperber's epidemiological model of representations. Drawing on cognitive research on the roots of irrational beliefs and the institutional arrangement of science, we explain the dissemination of beliefs in terms of their salience to human cognition and their ability to adapt to specific cultural ecologies. By contrasting the cultural development of science and pseudoscience along a number of dimensions, we gain (...) a better understanding of their underlying epistemic differences. Pseudoscience can achieve widespread acceptance by tapping into evolved cognitive mechanisms, thus sacrificing intellectual integrity for intuitive appeal. Science, by contrast, defies those deeply held intuitions precisely because it is institutionally arranged to track objective patterns in the world, and the world does not care much about our intuitions. In light of these differences, we discuss the degree of openness or resilience to conceptual change (evidence and reason), and the divergent ways in which science and pseudoscience can achieve cultural “success”. (shrink)

The historical-cultural theory of Intellectual Disability overcompensation/compensation is referenced in several studies, but little empirical evidence is presented to corroborate this thesis. In this work, 13 current studies were analysed about the behavioural profile of people with Down syndrome, a case of neurobiological ID, published in the last 15 years, in order to verify the possibility of dialogue with the theorizing about compensation. Despite contributing to an up to date understanding of DS, the results point to similarities between (...) different scientific traditions allowing discussions regarding methodologies, data interpretation, language comprehension, and the impact of the studies for school inclusion and the development of people with ID/DS. It is concluded that the theorization in question is pertinent to developmental studies, dialogues with other perspectives and that its progress depends on investigations directed to the affective motivators/emotions of the person with ID/DS by means of more interpretative methodologies. Keywords: Down syndrome, compensation, behavioural profile, Intellectual Disabilities Development. (shrink)

The Historical Dictionary of Existentialism explains the central claims of existentialist philosophy and the contexts in which it developed into one of the most influential intellectual trends of the 20th century. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and more than 300 cross-referenced dictionary entries offering clear, accessible accounts of the life and thought of major existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Martin Buber, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, and Maurice (...) Merleau-Ponty, as well as thinkers influential to its development such as Wilhelm Dilthey, Henri Bergson, Edmund Husserl, and Max Scheler. Historical Dictionary of Existentialism affords readers an integrated, critical, and historically-sensitive understanding of this important philosophical movement. (shrink)

Several contemporary virtue scholars trace the origin of the concept of intellectual virtues back to Aristotle. In contrast, my aim in this paper is to highlight the strong indications showing that Plato had already conceived of and had begun developing the concept of intellectual virtues in his discussion of the ideal city-state in the Republic. I argue that the Platonic conception of rational desires satisfies the motivational component of intellectual virtues while his dialectical method satisfies the success (...) component. In addition, I show that Plato considers episteme as the primary intellectual virtue. Episteme, which is quite similar to Pritchard’s The nature and value of knowledge: three investigations, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010) conception of understanding, is a cognitive achievement that cannot be attained by luck or testimony. The realization that Plato was the first to conceive of and develop the concept of intellectual excellences is not merely of historic significance. I illustrate, through the example of Zagzebski’s virtue theory, how the Platonic conception of intellectual virtues could prove promising in contemporary debates on virtue epistemology theories. (shrink)

The ‘critique of intellectuals’ refers to a genre of normative discourse that holds intellectuals accountable for the consequences of their ideas. A curious feature of the contemporary, especially American, variant of this genre is its focus on intellectuals who were aligned with such world-historic losers as Hitler and Stalin. Why are Cold War US intellectuals not held to a similar standard of scrutiny, even though they turn out to have been aligned with the world-historic winners? In addressing this general question, (...) some self-serving tendencies of intellectual history are observed, in particular the asymmetry between the ease with which intellectuals are credited with the good consequences of their ideas and the difficulty with which they are blamed for the bad consequences. This asymmetry is particularly noted in Richard Rorty, whose pragmatism treats past ideas as a legacy intended for the (American) reader’s benefit. As a corrective, I advocate, in Paul Ricoeur’s terms, a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ that treats intellectual life as fraught with danger, as our adoption of ideas always amounts to passing judgement over those who have borne them in the past. (shrink)

This article seeks to reconcile a historicist sensitivity to how intellectually virtuous behavior is shaped by historical contexts with a non-relativist account of historical scholarship. To that end, it distinguishes between hierarchies of intellectual virtues and hierarchies of intellectual goods . The first hierarchy rejects a one-size-fits-all model of historical virtuousness in favor of a model that allows for significant varieties between the relative weight that historians must assign to intellectual virtues in order to (...) acquire justified historical understanding. It grounds such differences, not on the historians’ interests or preferences, but on their historiographical situations, so that hierarchies of virtues are a function of the demands that historiographical situations (defined as interplays of genre, research question, and state of scholarship) make upon historians. Likewise, the second hierarchy allows for the pursuit of various intellectual goods, but banishes the specter of relativism by treating historical understanding as an intellectual good that is constitutive of historical scholarship and therefore deserves priority over alternative goods. The position that emerges from this is classified as a form of weak historicism. (shrink)

The Paradox of Intellectual Property in Capitalism is an innovative book that comprehensively discusses and analyses intellectual property under capitalistic social conditions and relations. It not only addresses some historical developments of intellectual property but also brings to the fore the very notion of what knowledge is, knowledge creation, and knowledge production and appropriation within a Marxist framework. Nonetheless, the adopted approach pays heed to multiple fields of knowledge, providing rich discussions that facilitate the understanding of (...) actual social totality in which capitalism, knowledge production and appropriation, and the struggles of appropriation mutually reinforce each other, although not devoid of antagonisms and contradictions. In light of contemporary capitalism, the transformations that social property relations are undergoing must be scrutinised – such as those brought about by the development of digitalisation and the convergence between big pharma and tech giants. What are the conditions of intellectual property creation today? What theoretical assumptions does it make? Under what social relations is intellectual property produced? Throughout, the emphasis is not on individual cases or symptoms but on the overarching logic: the logic of capitalism as revealed in intellectual property. (shrink)

My main aim in my thesis is to show that, contrary to the commonly held belief according to which Aristotle was the first to conceive and develop intellectual virtues, there are strong indications that Plato had already conceived and had begun developing the concept of intellectual virtues. Nevertheless, one should not underestimate the importance of Aristotle’s work on intellectual virtues. Aristotle developed a much fuller (in detail and argument) account of both, the concept of ‘virtue’ and the (...) concept of ‘intellect’, metaphysically, epistemologically and psychologically. Still, the first conception of intellectual virtues is to be found in the Platonic corpus. Such a realization is not only of historic interest, but most importantly, as I am going to show, the Platonic conception of intellectual virtues could prove promising in contemporary debates on virtue epistemology theories and in virtue-based approaches to education. Plato’s discussion of rational desires is the strongest indication of the presence of the concept of intellectual virtues in Platonic dialogues. Rational desires are constitutive of intellectual virtues: desires are dispositional; rational desires are dispositions to pursue rational goods. Intellectual virtues are such dispositions. Additionally, there is further evidence that Plato had conceived of intellectual virtues. His rigorous educational program in the Republic aims at the development of rational desires, while in the Symposium he discusses the intense rational desire to know the Good. Nevertheless, in order to be intellectually virtuous, one must not only have a desire for knowledge; one must also be systematically and reliably successful in achieving the end of their rational desires. I will show that the success component of Plato’s intellectual virtues can be found in his dialectic method. Plato’s dialectic is both a virtue developer and a reliable method used by philosophers in order to reach the objects of their rational desires. I will argue that episteme is one of Plato’s primary intellectual virtues. Towards this end, I will invoke Pritchard’s recent argument according to which understanding, which is distinct from knowledge, is a form of cognitive achievement and therefore what is finally valuable. I will argue, based on textual evidence from the middle Platonic dialogues and recent discussions in the exegetical literature, that Plato’s episteme, although commonly translated as knowledge, is closer to Pritchard’s conception of understanding. I will also show that Plato’s episteme, similarly to Pritchard’s conception of understanding, is a cognitive achievement that cannot be attained by luck or testimony. The Platonic conception of intellectual virtues has something unique to offer to contemporary virtue epistemology. Plato, unlike Aristotle, does not differentiate between theoretical and practical wisdom. A wise agent, according to Plato, is wise in both practical and theoretical matters. Moreover, Plato, unlike Aristotle does not make a sharp distinction between moral and intellectual virtues. Therefore, the Platonic conception of intellectual virtues, in comparison to the Aristotelian, offers a more suitable starting point for scholars who want to argue that intellectual virtues are but a subpart of moral. Furthermore, I will argue that the Platonic conception of intellectual virtues is also of significant merit for virtue-based approaches to education. Plato questioned whether we can attain knowledge but nevertheless went on to develop his Socratically inspired theory of education according to which we can teach learning without knowing. Socrates proclaimed his ignorance numerous times; nevertheless, he went on to educate the youth of Athens. This is what I will suggest that Plato’s notion of intellectual virtues can contribute to theories of education: we should teach children not by transferring knowledge to them directly but by building dispositions into them to seek and acquire the truth. I will argue that although somewhat ignored by contemporary scholars, Plato’s theory of education has much to teach us about epistemic character education today. The Platonic educational program does not advocate the direct transmission of knowledge from the teacher to the student but rather focuses on building the learners’ epistemic dispositions. Building upon the Socratic method, Plato’s educational program does not “spoon-feed” knowledge to the learners but rather fosters the growth of intellectual virtues through problem-solving. The Platonic decades long educational regime aims at training Philosopher-Kings in three types of virtue: (i) Moral Virtue; (ii) the Cognitive Virtue of Abstraction; (iii) the Cognitive Virtue of Debate. I will explain ways in which fostering intellectual virtues through problem-solving could be applied in classrooms today and I will argue that Plato’s rigorous education program is of definite merit for contemporary theories of education, especially given the fact that scholars in the field are looking for alternatives to the traditional methods of teaching. I will also dedicate a section to showing that Socrates was not a moral philosopher but rather an epistemic character builder. Socrates trained his students/interlocutors in desiring the truth without offering them any knowledge-education. I will also briefly highlight some of the most significant differences between the Platonic educational program, as described in the Republic, and the Socratic educational method. I will also discuss, before concluding my thesis, two different accounts of educational failure as presented by Plato in the Republic. The first one is the individuals employing the eristic method (as a result of failure in dialectic education) and the second is the individuals who correspond to the four imperfect societies (brought about again by the lack of proper education). I will argue that these two accounts can inform our understanding of what should be avoided when educating for epistemic (and moral) virtue nowadays. (shrink)

The British Association for the Advancement of Science sought to promote the understanding of science in various ways, principally by having annual meetings in different towns and cities throughout Britain and Ireland. This paper considers how far the location of its meetings in different urban settings influenced the nature and reception of the association's activities in promoting science, from its foundation in 1831 to the later 1930s. Several themes concerning the production and reception of science – promoting, practising, writing and (...) receiving – are examined in different urban contexts. We consider the ways in which towns were promoted as venues for and centres of science. We consider the role of local field sites, leading local practitioners and provincial institutions for science in attracting the association to different urban locations. The paper pays attention to excursions and to the evolution and content of the BAAS meeting handbook as a ‘geographical’ guide to the significance of the regional setting and to appropriate scientific venues. The paper considers the reception of BAAS meetings and explores how far the association's intentions for the promotion of science varied by location and by section within the BAAS. In examining these themes – the geographical setting of the association's meetings, the reception of association science in local civic and intellectual context and the importance of place to an understanding of what the BAAS did and how it was received – the paper extends existing knowledge of the association and contributes to recent work within the history of science which has emphasized the ‘local’ nature of science's making and reception and the mobility of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Ever since Greek antiquity "disembodied knowledge" has often been taken as synonymous with "objective truth." Yet we also have very specific mental images of the kinds of bodies that house great minds--the ascetic philosopher versus the hearty surgeon, for example. Does truth have anything to do with the belly? What difference does it make to the pursuit of knowledge whether Einstein rode a bicycle, Russell was randy, or Darwin flatulent? Bringing body and knowledge into such intimate contact is occasionally seen (...) as funny, sometimes as enraging, and more often just as pointless. Vividly written and well illustrated, Science Incarnate offers concrete historical answers to such skeptical questions about the relationships between body, mind, and knowledge. Focusing on the seventeenth century to the present, Science Incarnate explores how intellectuals sought to establish the value and authority of their ideas through public displays of their private ways of life. Patterns of eating, sleeping, exercising, being ill, and having (or avoiding) sex, as well as the marks of gender and bodily form, were proof of the presence or absence of intellectual virtue, integrity, skill, and authority. Intellectuals examined in detail include René Descartes, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Ada Lovelace. Science Incarnate is at once very funny and deeply serious, addressing issues of crucial importance to present-day discussions about the nature of knowledge and how it is produced. It incorporates much that will interest cultural and social historians, historians of science and medicine, philosophers, sociologists, and anthropologists. (shrink)

This article examines the views of Latin American philosophers on the process of formation of the Latin American subject of history, its characteristic features, as well as the role of the intellectual in this process. The main objective of this paper is to demonstrate the position of the prominent Argentine philosopher A. A. Roig, and to compare his position with the position of another well-known representative of the philosophy of liberation (E. Dussel). In this paper therefore, Roig's works devoted (...) to the philosophical interpretation of the process of formation and development of Latin American national thought are analyzed. It is established that in the writings of this thinker the activity of Latin American people appears as the activity of a single collective subject of history. During the study, we conclude that both philosophers (Roig and Dussel), come to the same idea in different ways: the intellectual identity of the Latin American collective subject of history is based on the history of interaction between the people of Latin America and Europe, unique in its dramatic nature and same for the entire continent. The work uses mainly the historical and bibliographic method, as well as the method of comparative analysis. (shrink)

It is necessary to seek out the origins of the modern world’s problems in their theoretical and intellectual infrastructures, which are based on concepts. This paper aims to study the modern crisis of identity from the viewpoint of the evolution of the Subject. The Subject is one of philosophy’s more complex concepts, and its complexity can be analyzed through its historical evolution. It has been connected with meanings such as subjectness, subjectivity, subjugation, and subjection, and each of these (...) meanings contain a part of the Subject’s complicated definition. In addition to calling the concept of the human subject into question, this paper demonstrates that we are witnessing a rise in feelings of insecurity and meaninglessness. The paper will analyze three main concepts of the Subject, and an explanation of each with reference to history’s great philosophers. (shrink)

The history of ideas is an interdisciplinary field that began as an offshoot of the history of philosophy and was transformed by notions of perspective and cultural context drawn from the tradition of historical studies. The result is the practice of intellectual history, which has been carried out between the poles of inquiry commonly known as internalist and externalist, corresponding to mental phenomena and collective behavior in cultural surroundings. These are not opposed but rather complementary methods, and (...) class='Hi'>intellectual history may be seen as the inside of cultural history and cultural history as the outside of intellectual history, the intellectual historian's task being to bring the two into alliance. (shrink)

AbstractDuring the Covid-19 pandemic, ethicists and researchers proposed human challenge studies as a way to speed development of a vaccine that could prevent disease and end the global public health crisis. The risks to healthy volunteers of being deliberately infected with a deadly and novel pathogen were not low, but the benefits could have been immense. This essay is a history of the three major efforts to set up a challenge model and run challenge studies in 2020 and 2021. The (...) pharmaceutical company Johnson and Johnson, the National Institutes of Health in the United States, and a private-public partnership of industry, university, and government partners in Britain all undertook preparations. The United Kingdom’s consortium began their Human Challenge Programme in March of 2021.Beyond documenting each effort, the essay puts these scientific and ethical debates in dialogue with the social, epidemiological, and institutional conditions of the pandemic as well as the commercial, intellectual, and political systems in which medical research and Covid-19 challenge studies operated. It shows how different institutions understood risk, benefit, and social value depending on their specific contexts. Ultimately the example of Covid-19 challenge studies highlights the constructedness of such assessments and reveals the utility of deconstructing them retrospectively so as to better understand the interplay of medical research and research ethics with larger social systems and historical contexts. (shrink)

Based on historical comparisons among master-pupil chains and other aspects of social networks among philosophers, some prmciples are suggested regarding long-term intellectual change. The higher the eminence ofphilosophers, the more tightly they are connected to mtergenerational chains of other eminent philosophers, and to horizontal circles of the intellectual community. Intellectual creativity proceeds through the contemporaneous development of rival positions, dividing up the available attention space in the intellectual community. Strong thought-communities, those that have strong external (...) support for their institutional base, subdivide to maximize internal distinctiveness; weakly supported thought-communities disappear or amalgamate by syncretism. External conditions thus affect the content of ideas indirectly by affecting the space available in the mternal field of the intellectual community. The content of philosophies, the degree of abstraction and self-conscious reflection upon intellectual operations, depends on how many generations intellectual networks maintain continuity under conditions of creative rivalry. New positions are produced by competitive appropriation of prior ideas and by negation of preexisting positions along the lines of greatest organizational rivalry. (shrink)

Intellectual history—the attempt to write the history of consciousness-in-general, rather than discrete histories of, say, politics, society, economic activity, philosophical thought, or literary expression—is comparatively new as a scholarly discipline; but it can lay claim to a long ancestry. It is arguable that intellectual history has its remote origins in the sectarian disputes of ancient philosophers and theologians, who, by constructing “histories” of their opponents’ doctrines, sought to expose the interests that had led them into error or to (...) locate the precise point at which they had strayed from the path of truth or righteousness. An especial interest in the history of thought and expression is, of course, characteristic of transitional ages in the lives of cultures; it arises when received traditions in thought and mythic endowments appear to have lost their relevance to current social problems or their presumed coherency, as in the Hellenistic age or the late Middle Ages. During such times, thinkers may try, by means of what is usually called “historical perspective,” to gain some purchase on their cultural legacy and to distinguish between “what is living and what is dead” within it. (shrink)

If we are to correctly understand the evolutionary transmission of different models of Confucian learning as a historical discourse, we must make a careful analysis of the compositional foundations of this concept of "intellectual," which is the major theme in the discursive narrative.

The rising interest, in the late 20th century, in the foundations of quantum physics, a subject in which Franco Selleri has excelled, has suggested the fair question: how did it become so? The current answer says that experiments have allowed to bring into the laboratories some previous gedanken experiments, beginning with those about EPR and related to Bell’s inequalities. I want to explore an alternative view, by which there would have been, before Bell’s inequalities experimental tests, a change in the (...) views shared by physicists concerning the intellectual status of that issue. I will take three cases which will serve as the threads of our story: the connections between Bohm’s causal interpretation and Bell’s inequalities; Wigner’s ideas on the measurement problem; and finally Everett’s relative states formulation. In the end, I will discuss how those threads were gathered together by creating foundations of quantum physics as a field of research. (shrink)

It should be evident from the foregoing discussion that one man's natural selection is not necessarily the same as another man's. Why should this be so? How can two theories, which both Matthew and Darwin believed to be nearly identical, be so dissimilar? Apparently, neither Matthew nor Darwin understood the other's theory. Each man's viewpoint was colored by his own intellectual background and philosophical assumptions, and each read these into the other's ideas. The words sounded the same, so they (...) assumed the concepts must als be the same.123As Ghiselin has pointed out, historians attempting to evaluate Darwin's predecessors have been similarly blinded by a preoccupation with words, without regard to their proper context.124 In the case of Matthew, the practice of quoting only brief passages from the appendix to Naval Timber and Arboriculture, without relating them to the rest of his work, has suggested a greater resemblance to Darwin's theory than actually exists.It is clear, both from the use which Matthew made of his ideas and from the philosophical roots of his natural world view, that he could not have arrived at the concept of natural selection by the same thought process which Darwin employed. His discussion of natural selection is presented not as an argument, but as an axiom. No theory is proposed, no evidence marshaled to support it. Natural selection is stated as a fact, a Law of Nature, unquestioned, and presumably, unquestionable.Despite his clamor for recognition as the discoverer of natural selection, Matthew recognized and acknowledged this very fundamental difference between Darwin and himself. In a letter to the Gardener's Chronicle of May 12, 1860, he wrote:To me the conception of this law of Nature came intuitively as a self-evident fact, almost without an effort of concentrated thought. Mr. Darwin here seems to have more merit in the discovery than I have had—to me it did not appear a discovery. He seems to have worked it out by inductive reason, slowly and with due caution to have made his way synthetically from fact to fact onwards; while with me it was by a general glance at the scheme of Nature that I estimated this select production of species as an a priori recognisable fact—an axiom, requiring only to be pointed out to be admitted by unprejudiced minds of sufficient grasp.125In the same letter, Matthew maintained that his ideas had not been accepted because “the age was not ripe for such ideas.”126 Nor, he said, was the present age. He considered the inability of most of Darwin's critics to grasp his theory to be “incurable.” Yet he did not argue that natural selection should be accepted because of the evidence, but rather, that it should be accepted on faith:Belief here requires a certain grasp of mind. No direct proof of phenomena embracing so long a period of time is within the compass of short-lived man. To attempt to satisfy a school of ultra skeptics, who have a wonderfully limited power of perception of means to ends... would be labour in vain.... They could not be brought to conceive the purpose of a handsaw though they saw its action, if the whole individual building it assisted to construct were not presented complete before their eyes... Like a child looking upon the motion of a wheel in an engine they would only perceive and admire... without noticing its agency in... affecting the purposed end.127Here, then, is the final irony. In a passage urging acceptance of Darwin's theory, a theory which was to banish design and purpose from the natural world, we find echoes of Paley and of Providence.Loren Eiseley has lamented the fact that Matthew “did not bring his views into the open, because the amount of ground he was able to cover in a few paragraphs suggests that he might have been able to sustain a longer treatise.”128 Now that the intellectual and historical context of Matthew's ideas are known, this statement is no longer tenable. Matthew was not a scientist, and his books were not written as biological treatises. His discussions of natural selection were not attempts to “cover ground” in advancing a particular scientific theory, but were simply reflections of his own assumptions about the natural world.Furthermore, despite Matthew's acceptance of evolution and natural selection, his biological thought was basically conservative on points where Darwin's was radical. Where Matthew saw a series of stable worlds interrupted by violent upheavals, Darwin saw a continuous process of change in an ever-fluctuating world. Where Matthew conceived of species in terms of Aristotelian classes and essences, Darwin revolutionized our concept of species by treating them as populations. Where Matthew saw a world of design and beauty functioning according to natural laws laid down by benevolent Providence, Darwin abolished design and Providence from nature and ushered in a world which cycles ever onward according to laws of chance and probability.It is not even particularly useful to point to Matthew as evidence that evolution was “in the air” prior to 1859.129 His ideas did not represent the first wave of a coming revolution, but were the product of his own personal philosophical outlook, as expressed in the context of the biological thought of the 1830's. Matthew is important in the history of ideas, not simply because he accepted the concept of evolution or thought of something resembling natural selection, but because he did so without overthrowing, in his own mind, any of the basic philosophical assumptions which had underlain biological science since Aristotle. In recognizing Matthew's failure to do so, we are in a position to appreciate more fully the significance of the Darwinian Revolution. (shrink)

Drawing on macro-historical sociological theories, this book traces the development of intellectual property as a new type of legal property in the modern nation-state system. In its current form, intellectual property is considered part of an infrastructure of state power that incentivizes innovation, creativity, and scientific development, all engines of economic growth. To show how this infrastructure of power emerged, Laura Ford follows macro-historical social theorists, including Michael Mann and Max Weber, back to antiquity, revealing that (...) legal instruments very similar to modern intellectual property have existed for a long time and have also been deployed for similar purposes. Using comparative and historical evidence, this groundbreaking work reflects on the role of intellectual property in our contemporary political communities and societies; on the close relationship between law and religion; and on the extent to which law's obliging force depends on ancient, written traditions. (shrink)

"Provides a grounding in the philosophical, historical, and legal development of the concept of intellectual freedom by providing current thinking on a range of intellectual freedom concepts, cases, and controversies"--.

The subject of this study will be to analyze the contribution of an important figure of the period known as the period of new ilm al kalām in the history of kalām, which started in the mid-nineteenth century and included the first periods of the Republic. This person is Mehmet Şerafettin Yaltkaya (1880-1947). Yaltkaya stands out with his original aspects such as being both a school and a madrasa student, representing his scholar and government bureaucrat personality together and strongly, and (...) his open support for the changes and transformation periods of Republican Turkey. It is known that difficult and troubled times in history have been the source of the emergence of rich intellectual movements. Yaltkaya was also nourished by such a political and intellectual hinterland. As is known, the changes in Western thought in the nineteenth century led to the emergence of atheist and materialist worldviews, which was one of the important reasons that caused us to open a new era in kalām. It has even been interpreted that the Ottoman scholars' work on the criticism of materialism was the main reason for the opening of this new era in kalām. In this regard, before discussing Yaltkaya's point of view and his contributions, we have tried to briefly discuss the historical conditions, changes and transformations of the new period of kalām, accompanied by the views of some of its representatives, which will help us to recognize the period. Secondly, we have endeavored to deal with the main dynamics of Şerafettin Yaltkaya's theological views, especially his scholarly and actional aspects that came to the fore in the course of his life, and in particular his up to date understanding of isbāt al-wājib regarding the existence of God and the social theory of kalām (ictimaī ilm al-kalām) about which the debates intensified. As far as we have been able to determine, Yaltkaya's theological views are actually a multiple-polarized structure that draws from all schools of kalām, philosophy, and Sufism. His interest in different disciplines of Islamic sciences and his curiosity in modern sciences also contributed to his vigorous personality. On the other hand, it must be said that he was also influenced by Western intellectuals and evaluated the possibilities of reason and instinct. Yaltkaya's support for Ottoman modernization and Republic reforms are among the significant aspects of Yaltkaya, both an Islamist and a kind of cultural nationalist. He made great contributions to the world of scholarship and thought of his time with his knowledge and works in different disciplines such as kalām, philosophy, literature, sufism history of sects and history of medicine. In addition, we believe that his lectures on kalām, philosophy and history of sects in important high schools and universities that were newly opened at the time and his position as the second head of the Presidency of Religious Affairs supported the background of his ideas that we highlight in this article. We have determined that Yaltkaya, who criticized the theological views of the traditional scholars, was also closely familiar with and influenced by Western scholars and philosophers who were his contemporaries. (shrink)

The academic path of Jean Gayon (1949–2018) follows in the wake of the “French style” in epistemologyEpistemology, but he is also one of the first representatives of philosophy of biology in France. In the light of this double philosophical heritage, this chapter re-examines the relations between the works of Gayon, the tradition in which he first studied, and the one he later adopted, but not without reservations. Tracing his intellectual journey, this article explores why he naturally appears as a (...) Canguilhemian, a view against which he defends himself. Attending to the connexions that he established with the philosophers of biology will bring to light the growing tension that inhabits him, from the middle of the 1980s onwards, and which led him to identify some of the limits inherent to theHistorical epistemology matrix of historical epistemologyGayon, JeanOn historical epistemology, without disowning his first philosophical tradition. Finally, in an attempt to reconcile two approaches, I will underline the emergence in the thought of Jean Gayon of a third way seeking to overcome the opposition between a “unitarian” style that seeks to make a clear break with the history of scienceHistory of science and its philosophical past, and the “dualist” style which tends to stay above scientific debates, and which accepts a clear distinction between the work of science and the work of philosophy. Reuniting the history and the philosophy of the sciences, privileging the long durée and depths of history, where the problems of biology unfold, while also recognizing the value of analysing the conceptual puzzles which structure the contemporary life sciences, the oeuvre of Jean Gayon illustrates the complementary character of these disciplines. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 231-232 [Access article in PDF] Donald R. Kelley. The Descent of Ideas: The History of Intellectual History. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2002. Pp. vii + 320. Cloth, $59.50. The field of intellectual history, once known as the history of ideas, intersects with many other historical sub-disciplines, especially the history of philosophy, the history of literature, the history of science, (...) and cultural history. Donald Kelley, a distinguished intellectual historian and editor of The Journal of the History of Ideas, has written a comprehensive history of his field that emphasizes the process by which scholars who studied the history of thought gradually adopted an approach to their subject that resulted in "the descent of ideas" from philosophical abstraction to the "sublunar" realm of human experience and understanding. This intellectual descent, just like the biological descent of man plotted by Darwin in 1871, has not followed a linear course. Displaying remarkable scholarly range and erudition, Kelley guides the reader through a complex and sometimes amorphous history of intellectual history that covers developments in scholarship from ancient times to the present.The most original and distinctive feature of the book is Kelley's emphasis on the importance of eclecticism in the emergence of intellectual history. The book begins with an exposition of the scholarship of the early nineteenth-century Liberal French philosopher and educator Victor Cousin, whose eclectic approach to teaching the history of philosophy was for him not only the best route to attaining true wisdom but also the key to organizing the history of thought. In this way Cousin helped to make intellectual history a distinct branch of historical scholarship, while his contemporaries Abel-François Villemain and François Guizot marked a parallel shift in interest from the history of ideas to the history of literature and the history of civilization. From this starting point Kelley looks back to classical, medieval, and early modern thought, exploring earlier expressions of eclecticism, including that of Diogenes Laertius in the third century CE, as a distinct and often maligned philosophical tradition. An excellent chapter on the "new" or modern eclecticism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which rejected syncretism as well as skepticism and which found a place for Christian thought, gives new significance to the work of [End Page 231] Jakob Thomasius, his son Christian Thomasius, and J. J. Brucker, whose Critical History of Philosophy (1742-44) established the history of philosophy as a distinct discipline.Kelley devotes considerable space to discussing the intersection between the history of philosophy and intellectual history. The former has long served as the "taproot" of the latter, even after eighteenth-century philosophers, striving to establish philosophy as a rigorous science, rejected a historical approach to attaining wisdom. This development caused a split within the ranks of philosophers between the "purists" in the Kantian tradition and "culturalists" like J. G. Herder who, "following the descent of ideas into the medium of language, strayed off into what came to be known as cultural history" (p. 4). In a chapter devoted to the history of philosophy in modern times, Kelley explores the contributions made by the philosophers Ernst Cassirer, Benedetto Croce, and Arthur Lovejoy to the field of intellectual history.By taking a long historical perspective on the development of his field, Kelley is able to demonstrate that some recent trends in intellectual and literary history have longstanding precedents. Thus he traces the recent "linguistic turn" in historical analysis, which he styles the "linguistic return," back to the Renaissance, and he sees the claims of twentieth-century scholars who emphasize the importance of narrative structures in giving meaning to the past as restatements of ancient literary theory. In his chapter, "The Way of Ideas and the Ways of Words," Kelley shows that the descent of ideas began long before the emergence of intellectual history as a distinct field. As might be expected in a work of historiography, Kelley's methodology in establishing these precedents and continuities in scholarship is in a certain sense traditional. Yet there is little that... (shrink)

What is Japanese philosophy? This paper will address this question, not by giving a survey of the works of Japanese philosophers or a definition of the subject matter of Japanese philosophy, but by attempting to present how it emerged as a distinct philosophical tradition—by sketching the controversies that gave rise to its formation; the social, intellectual, and historical factors that paved the way to its development; and the revolution of thought which finally gave it the title “Japanese philosophy.” (...) I will argue that Japanese philosophy was born not because Japanese thinkers desperately wanted a philosophy that they could call their own, but because, first and foremost, they were thinking of ways to articulate the ever changing and paradoxical nature of reality. Formed by their religion and informed by the Chinese and Japanese classics, they used the language learned from the West and tried to answer the most fundamental questions of existence. A unique way of philosophizing thus emerged and became a true locus of dialogue between Eastern and Western thought.An Inquiry into the Historical Development of Philosophy in Japan. (shrink)