At the Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES, University of Oslo), a group of biologists has been working for decades to disentangle the complex mechanisms of plague epizootics and epidemics in places where extant wild rodent reservoirs are present. These questions have been approached through ecological and climatic studies, mathematic modeling, as well as genomics and epidemiology. In 2013-2018, the Centre hosted the ERC-project MedPlag, which explored past pandemics through the lenses of additional disciplines, like archaeogenomics (ancient DNA), anthropology, (...) archaeology, and evolution, always against the background of historical information. Here, we reflect on the end of plague in Europe based on the most recent studies on plague carried out in these different disciplines. (shrink)

Scholars have characterised the trial of the life of pleasure in Philebus 20b-21d as digressive or pejorative. I argue that it is neither: it is a thought experiment containing an important argument, in the form of a reductio, of the hypothesis that a life could be most pleasant without cognition. It proceeds in a series of steps, culminating in the precisely chosen image of the jellyfish. Understanding the intended resonance of this creature, and the sense in which it is deprived, (...) is critical for reconstructing the argument, and yields new insight into Plato’s views on the minimal conditions for pleasure. (shrink)

The articles comprising this thematic symposium suggest options for exploring the nexus between freedom and unfreedom, as exemplified by the British abolitionists’ anti-slavery campaign and the paradox of freedom. Each article has implications for how these abolitionists achieved their goals, social activists’ efforts to secure reparations for slave ancestors, and modern slavery. We present the abolitionists’ undertaking as a marketing campaign, highlighting the role of instilling moral agency and indignation through re-humanizing the dehumanized. Despite this campaign’s eventual success, its post-emancipation (...) phase illustrates a paradox of freedom. After introducing mystification as an explanation for the obscuring rhetoric used to conceal post-emancipation violations of freedom during the West’s colonial phase, we briefly discuss the appropriateness of reparations. Finally, we discuss the contributions made by the articles in this thematic symposium. (shrink)

A common reading of the Cyrenaics is that they are a school of extreme hedonist presentists, recognising only the pleasure of the present moment, and advising against turning our attention to past or future pleasure or pain. Yet they have some strange advice which tells followers to anticipate future harms in order to lessen the unexpectedness of them when they occur. It’s a puzzle, then, how they can consistently hold the attitude they do to our concern with our present selves, (...) and yet endorse the practise of dwelling on possible future painful scenarios. To establish that this is a puzzle, though, we must first be convinced that the report is true. Cicero is our only clear source for the Cyrenaic advice, and scholars have noted reasons to be suspicious of the reliability of his report. I discuss these doubts, and why they ultimately fail to undermine Cicero’s testimony as a source. Defending Cicero as a source for Cyrenaic thought removes a barrier to taking seriously an aspect of Cyrenaic psychology which could radically alter our understanding of their views. (shrink)

This volume of essays retrieves the largely unresearched thought and the original ideas of ancient women philosophers and carves out a space for them in the canon. The broad focus includes women thinkers in ancient Indian, Chinese, and Arabic philosophy as well as in the Greek and Roman philosophical traditions.

This paper is a response to and discussion of Maddalena Bonelli’s “Women philosophers in antiquity: Open questions and some results.” It also aims to advance the general discussion of the issues Bonelli raises. In it I contextualise Bonelli’s discussion, and take up three of her questions: What is the status of the work of restoring ancient women to the philosophical canon? What criteria ought we to use to decide who counts as a philosopher? What sort of philosophy did women practice (...) in antiquity, and in what ways might the restoration of ancient women thinkers to the canon change the way we conceive of ancient philosophy itself? I consider the way in which Bonelli’s paper advances the discussion of each question, raise some worries about the discussions, and provide suggestions for how we might think about these issues further. I maintain that the reshaping of the philosophical canon that takes place when we integrate ancient women involves a reshaping of the discipline, and of our methods for accessing it. This is a result I argue we ought to embrace rather than resist. I conclude with a summary of the main contributions of Bonelli’s paper. (shrink)

Human culture is uniquely complex compared to other species. This complexity stems from the accumulation of culture over time through high- and low-fidelity transmission and innovation. One possible reason for why humans retain and create culture, is our ability to modulate teaching strategies in order to foster learning and innovation. We argue that teaching is more diverse, flexible, and complex in humans than in other species. This particular characteristic of human teaching rather than teaching itself is one of the reasons (...) for human’s incredible capacity for cumulative culture. That is, humans unlike other species can signal to learners whether the information they are teaching can or cannot be modified. As a result teaching in humans can be used to support high or low fidelity transmission, innovation, and ultimately, cumulative culture. (shrink)

This book is a rich blend of analyses by leading experts from various cultures and disciplines. A compact introduction to a complex field, it illustrates biotechnology's profound impact upon the environment and society. Moreover, it underscores the vital relevance of cultural values. This book empowers readers to more critically assess biotechnology's value and effectiveness within both specific cultural and global contexts.

Three experiments investigated response times for remember and know responses in recognition memory. RTs to remember responses were faster than RTs to know responses, regardless of whether the remember–know decision was preceded by an old/new decision or was made without a preceding old/new decision . The finding of faster RTs for R responses was also found when remember–know decisions were made retrospectively. These findings are inconsistent with dual-process models of recognition memory, which predict that recollection is slower and more effortful (...) than familiarity. Word frequency did not influence RTs, but remember responses were faster for words than for nonwords. We argue that the difference in RTs to remember and know responses reflects the time taken to make old/new decisions on the basis of the type of information activated at test. (shrink)

Hope is an emotion that has been implicated in social change efforts, yet little research has examined whether feeling hopeful actually motivates support for social change. Study 1 confirmed that hope is associated with greater support for social change in two countries with different political contexts. Study 2 revealed that hope predicts support for social change over and above other emotions often investigated in collective action research. Study 3 replicated this finding using a hope scale and showed the effect occurs (...) independent of positive mood. Study 4 demonstrated experimentally that hope motivates support for social change. In all four studies, the effect of hope was mediated by perceived efficacy to achieve social equality. This research confirms the motivating potential of hope and illustrates the power of this emotion in generating social change. (shrink)

My dissertation concerns the nature of linguistic understanding. A standard view about linguistic understanding is that it is a propositional knowledge state. The following is an instance of this view: given a speaker S and an expression alpha that means M, S understand alpha just in case S knows that alpha means M. I refer to this as the epistemic view of linguistic understanding. The epistemic view would appear to be a mere conceptual truth about linguistic understanding, since it is (...) entailed by the following two claims that themselves seem to be mere conceptual truths: S understands alpha iff S knows what alpha means, and---given that a means M--- S knows what alpha means iff S knows that alpha means M. I argue, however, that this is not a mere conceptual truth. Contrary to the epistemic view, propositional knowledge of the meaning of alpha is not necessary for understanding alpha. I argue that linguistic understanding does not even require belief. My positive proposal is that our understanding of language is typically realized, at least in native speakers, as a perceptual capacity. Evidence from cognitive neuropsychology suggests that our perceptual experience of language comes to us already semantically interpreted. We perceive a speaker's utterance as having content, and it is by perceiving the speaker's utterances as having the right content that we understand what the speaker says. We count as understanding language in virtue of having this capacity to understand what speakers say when they use language. This notion of perceiving an utterance as having content gets analyzed in terms of Dretske's account of representation in terms of a teleological notion of function: you perceive a speaker's utterance as having content when the utterance produces in you a perceptual state that has a certain function in your psychology. I show how this view about the nature of linguistic understanding provides an attractive account of how identity claims can be semantically informative, as opposed to merely pragmatically informative, an account that avoids the standard difficulties for Fregean views that attempt to account for the informativeness of identity claims in terms of their semantics. (shrink)

Despite a large and multifaceted effort to understand the vast landscape of phenotypic data, their current form inhibits productive data analysis. The lack of a community-wide, consensus-based, human- and machine-interpretable language for describing phenotypes and their genomic and environmental contexts is perhaps the most pressing scientific bottleneck to integration across many key fields in biology, including genomics, systems biology, development, medicine, evolution, ecology, and systematics. Here we survey the current phenomics landscape, including data resources and handling, and the progress that (...) has been made to accurately capture relevant data descriptions for phenotypes. We present an example of the kind of integration across domains that computable phenotypes would enable, and we call upon the broader biology community, publishers, and relevant funding agencies to support efforts to surmount today's data barriers and facilitate analytical reproducibility. (shrink)

How do educators better reach their students, better capture their attention and imagination without sacrificing scholarship? Teachable Moments: Essays on Experiential Education examines the pedagogy of Prescott College, a school that has embraced experiential education and been finding success with it for over thirty years. These essays—from scholars in fields as wide ranging as religious studies, environmental science, psychology, dance, literature, adventure education, and peace studies—examine the challenges and, ultimately, the rewards of student-centered education.

Few studies have examined how trait emotion dysregulation relates to momentary affective experiences and the emotion regulation strategies people use in daily life. In the current study, 112 c...

Pragmatic comparative effectiveness randomized controlled trials evaluate the effectiveness of one interventions under real-world clinical conditions. The results of ceRCTs are often directly generalizable to everyday clinical practice, providing information critical to decision-making by patients, clinicians, and healthcare policymakers. The PRECIS-2 framework identifies nine domains that serve to score a trial on a continuum between very explanatory to very pragmatic. According to the framework, pragmatic trials may have one or more of the following features: there are fewer eligibility criteria for (...) participants, in an... (shrink)

This chapter outlines the theoretical deep structure that is common to Durkheim's social psychology and the general theory of action. It first demonstrates the limits of the intellectual-historicist approach to classic sociology (Jones, 1977). It then induces the generative theoretical paradigm of Suicide from a textual analysis. It concludes by demonstrating the formal and substantive equivalence of this paradigm to the four-function general action system of Talcott Parsons.

Though the name of Robert Mallet was once inevitably associated with the scientific study of earthquakes, it is less well known today. As part of an overdue reappraisal, this essay examines Mallet's major seismological projects and publications, emphasizing his theoretical contributions. Mallet's own claim to be a founder of modern seismology is upheld. Beyond that, however, he is also seen to be an important precursor of plate tectonics.

Benjamin Franklin, the colonial American, maintained a now little-known interest in geological questions for more than sixty years. He began as a follower of English theorists, but soon assimilated some of their ideas with original speculations and discoveries, particularly regarding earthquakes. Though Franklin became famous for his experiments with electricity, he never attempted to explain earthquakes as if they were electrical phenomena; others, however, did. Through his access to American materials, Franklin contributed significantly to the work of several English and (...) French geological theorists. Though some of his own theories were ultimately of limited value, Franklin played an important role in the international science of his time. In addition to his other accomplishments, he was colonial America's foremost student of geology. (shrink)

Although the history of the word ‘ geology ’ has often been referred to by those interested in the development of the science, that history has never been fully traced. An endeavor is made to do so here, taking the story at least as far as 1813, by which time the basic word had unquestionably been established in its modern form and meaning. Various claims as to who first gave the science its present name are also briefly examined.

James Hutton knew before its publication that his geological theory would be subjected to religious criticism, and in an eventually rejected preface he endeavoured to mitigate that criticism. His theory is an almost perfect expression of the deistic tenets in which he believed. But he sensed that his attempted defence was inadequate, and so he submitted his preface to William Robertson for advice. Robertson rewrote Hutton's preface for him but also suggested tactfully that it not be published, advice which Hutton (...) took. Upon publication, his theory received its full measure of religious opposition, but it is unlikely that Hutton's preface would have forestalled any of it. I transcribe and attempt to date the preface, discuss its contents, and suggest its usefulness in Huttonian studies. (shrink)

Though virtually unknown before 1851, the exceptionally scenic Yosemite Valley of California soon attracted continuing attention as a geological anomaly. J. D. Whitney, state geologist and Harvard professor, advocated a tectonic theory of its origin. Despite its seemingly official status, Whitney's theory even failed to convince some of his own subordinates. An unexpectedly effective dissenter not associated with Whitney was John Muir, then a tatterdemalion vagrant. Though the two men never met, conflict between their inflexible and mutually exclusive geological theories (...) persisted well into the twentieth century. Eventually, both dogmatists were proved wrong, but Muir had come closer to what we now accept. Several geological and geomorphological issues of importance entered into later discussions of Yosemite. The whole controversy, moreover, illuminates such further issues as the influence of preconceptions on theorizing, the role of authority in science, and the interactions of professionals with amateurs. (shrink)

John Playfair left a library of over 1,400 volumes at his death. Analysing these augments our understanding of his mind, particularly with regard to geology. Two questions of special import are why this teacher of mathematics was interested in geology at all, and why, having written his Illustrations of the Huttonian theory of the Earth he never completed the proposed second edition of this famous and influential work.

The recent publication of twenty European travel journals originally written in the nineteenth century by William Maclure, the sometime ‘father of American geology’, has entailed major revisions in our understanding of their author. In the present essay I review geological portions of all twenty journals, integrating their contents with Maclure's already known but never before comprehensively discussed publications, which now appear in a new perspective. I then suggest a more adequate evaluation of Maclure's significance within a considerably revised schematization of (...) the history of early American geology. (shrink)

Speculation concerning the age of the earth begins with civilisation itself. The creation myths of ancient Egypt and other early cultures were soon expanded into elaborate cosmologies by Indian, Persian and Greek philosophers. Jewish and, more insistently, Christian scholars long believed that the Bible provided an exact chronology beginning with the Creation . Such truncated apocalyptic chronologies were opposed first by Aristotelian advocates of an eternal earth and then by deistic freethinkers who regarded the earth's age as indefinite but immense. (...) As textual scholarship cast doubt upon the literal reliability of Genesis, alternative chronologies arose which depended increasingly upon geological evidence. James Hutton's assertions about the earth's age reflect his awareness of this broader context and define his own important contribution to it. (shrink)