Growth of spring barley stands was followed in various conditions. Disposition of the seeds parameters the morphogenetic programme of each individual plant, which will afterwards form the stricture of the young plant stand. Later, individual stopping of tillering is controlled by this stricture. In return, the distribution of these events conditions the structure of the canopy during the shoot lengthening period. In sparse or patchy canopies, weak tillers in stopping of growth are able to survive temporarily.The plant is not reducible (...) to the genotype of its variety. Individual whole plant and plant stand are true organization levels in an ecosystem. It is essential to take their relationships into account throughout the growth for understanding the behaviour of a crop. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bataille and Mysticism: A “Dazzling Dissolution”Amy Hollywood (bio)Within Georges Bataille’s texts of the late 1930s and 1940s, in particular those later brought together in the tripartite Atheological Summa, he repeatedly suggests that his primary models for writing and experience are the texts of the Christian and non-Western mystical traditions (often represented, in Bataille, by women’s writings) and those of Friedrich Nietzsche. 1 Inner Experience opens with evocations of Nietzsche, (...) and the final volume of the trilogy, On Nietzsche, is “devoted” to his work. References to mystical writings occur throughout Inner Experience and Guilty, and significant portions of both texts can be read as providing “guides” for inner experience analogous to the “itineraries” of Angela of Foligno (d. 1309) and Teresa of Avila (d. 1582) or as spiritual daybooks like those of Mechthild of Magdeburg (d. ca. 1275). These models are, I think, the key to understanding Bataille’s own writing strategies in the Atheological Summa. 2 Despite their apparent divergence, moreover, Bataille insists that mystical and Nietzschean texts reflect and are constitutive of the same experience and writing practice.Like both Nietzsche and the mystics, Bataille’s “antigeneric” writing mixes genres and styles within and between texts. 3 Throughout the course of his career, experience and writing are in a constant state of movement, flux, or chaos (to echo Bataille’s self-description in On Nietzsche). The Atheological Summa encapsulates within what purport to be three unified books the diversity of genres and styles that run throughout Bataille’s corpus as a whole. They contain ample quotation of Nietzsche’s texts and those of the mystics—undigested hunks and fragments of these allusive writings 4 —together with philosophical reflections, confessional meditations, diary fragments, letters, and, at the end of On Nietzsche, a set of six brief historical and theoretical appendices. Anything broaching traditional textual commentary is reserved for the margins of these nonbooks. Like many mystics, particularly women who were denied access to the traditional genres of sermon, biblical commentary, and philosophical or theological treatise, and like Nietzsche, who eschews and subverts traditional genre distinctions, Bataille comments and critiques through practice rather than exposition. Although Bataille acknowledges the oddity of his coupling the mystics and Nietzsche, he also rigorously defends it, arguing for a mystical and ecstatic experience in Nietzsche’s work. 5 As I hope to show, Bataille’s [End Page 74] experience of the failures of mysticism and of Nietzsche speak to each other and lead to Bataille’s necessary apostasy as his true discipleship.Repetition of the divergences between Bataille and the mystics, first stated by Bataille himself in Inner Experience, has become something of a commonplace, yet his claims have not been sufficiently explored or challenged. So, for example, Alain Arnauld and Giséle Excoffon-Lafarge unproblematically assert that despite all proximities between Bataille’s texts and those of the mystics, they differ in their aims or aimlessness. Michel Surya joins a host of other scholars whose primary concern is to demonstrate (against the insinuations of Sartre, made now almost fifty years ago) that Bataille was not a Christian. Whereas the mystics’ path ends with the divine encounter, Bataille renounces all objects, aims, or end for his quest and his desire. 6 Most importantly, he rejects all idealism and any hope for salvation. Bataille himself insists on his divergence from the Christian mystics in Inner Experience and Guilty. At the same time, his citations and mimings of central texts from the Christian mystical tradition show that what fascinates him within these writings is precisely the moment in which the soul desires “to live without a why,” embracing the suffering of hell—understood as the absence of/from the “object” of desire—as desire. 7 In a move later echoed by Jacques Lacan, Bataille claims that some medieval mystics attained that beyond of which he writes, but without knowing anything about it: “Exuberance is the point where we let go of Christianity. Angela of Foligno attained it and described it, but didn’t know it.” 8Commentators follow Bataille in resisting his identification with the mystics, then, whereas Nietzsche is a less troubling model for Bataille and his readers. In fact, Bataille... (shrink)

A long-standing theme in discussion of perception and thought has been that our primary cognitive contact with individual objects and events in the world derives from our perceptual contact with them. When I look at a duck in front of me, I am not merely presented with the fact that there is at least one duck in the area, rather I seem to be presented withthisthing (as one might put it from my perspective) in front of me, which looks to (...) me to be a duck. Furthermore, such a perception would seem to put me in a position not merely to make the existential judgment that there is some duck or other present, but rather to make a singular, demonstrative judgment, that that is a duck. My grounds for an existential judgment in this case derives from my apprehension of the demonstrative thought and not vice versa. (shrink)

This book defends antitheodicism, arguing that theodicies, seeking to excuse God for evil and suffering in the world, fail to ethically acknowledge the victims of suffering. The authors argue for this view using literary and philosophical resources, commencing with Immanuel Kant's 1791 "Theodicy Essay" and its reading of the Book of Job. Three important twentieth century antitheodicist positions are explored, including "Jewish" post-Holocaust ethical antitheodicism, Wittgensteinian antitheodicism exemplified by D.Z. Phillips and pragmatist antitheodicism defended by William James. The authors argue (...) that these approaches to evil and suffering are fundamentally Kantian. Literary works such as Franz Kafka'sThe Trial, Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, are examined in order to crucially advance the philosophical case for antitheodicism. (shrink)

Temporal Logic: From Ancient Ideas to Artificial Intelligence deals with the history of temporal logic as well as the crucial systematic questions within the field. The book studies the rich contributions from ancient and medieval philosophy up to the downfall of temporal logic in the Renaissance. The modern rediscovery of the subject, which is especially due to the work of A. N. Prior, is described, leading into a thorough discussion of the use of temporal logic in computer science and the (...) understanding of natural language. Temporal Logic: From Ancient Ideas to Artificial Intelligence thus interweaves linguistic, philosophical and computational aspects into an informative and inspiring whole. (shrink)

In his last book, David Armstrong sets out his metaphysical system in a set of concise and lively chapters each dealing with one aspect of the world. He begins with the assumption that all that exists is the physical world of space-time. On this foundation he constructs a coherent metaphysical scheme that gives plausible answers to many of the great problems of metaphysics. He gives accounts of properties, relations, and particulars; laws of nature; modality; abstract objects such as numbers; and (...) time and mind. (shrink)

Is consciousness a purely physical phenomenon? Most contemporary philosophers and theorists hold that it is, and take this to be supported by modern science. But a significant minority endorse non-physicalist theories such as dualism, idealism and panpsychism, among other reasons because it may seem impossible to fully explain consciousness, or capture what it's like to be in conscious states (such as seeing red, or being in pain), in physical terms. This Element will introduce the main non-physicalist theories of consciousness and (...) explain the most important arguments for them, and consider how they each respond to the scientific and other arguments in support of physicalism. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

Western democracy is now at a critical juncture. Some worry that power has been wrested from the people and placed in the hands of a small political elite. Others argue that the democratic system gives too much power to a populace that is largely ill-informed and easily swayed by demagogues. This classic study of democratic principles is thus now more relevant than ever. A renowned historian of antiquity and political philosophy, Sir M.I. Finley offers a comparative analysis of Greek and (...) modern conceptions of democracy. As he puts the ancient Greeks in dialogue with their contemporary counterparts, Finley tackles some of the most pressing issues of our day, including public apathy, partisanship, consensus politics, distrust of professional politicians, and the limits of free speech. Including three lectures that Finley delivered at Rutgers University, plus two additional essays that further illuminate his thinking, _Democracy Ancient and Modern _explores the dramatic differences between the close-knit civil society of the ancient Greeks and our own atomized mass societies. By mapping out democracy’s past and its present manifestations, this book helps us plot a course for democracy’s future. (shrink)

The ideal introduction for students of semantics, Lexical Meaning fills the gap left by more general semantics textbooks, providing the teacher and the student with insights into word meaning beyond the traditional overviews of lexical relations. The book explores the relationship between word meanings and syntax and semantics more generally. It provides a balanced overview of the main theoretical approaches, along with a lucid explanation of their relative strengths and weaknesses. After covering the main topics in lexical meaning, such as (...) polysemy and sense relations, the textbook surveys the types of meanings represented by different word classes. It explains abstract concepts in clear language, using a wide range of examples, and includes linguistic puzzles in each chapter to encourage the student to practise using the concepts. 'Adopt-a-Word' exercises give students the chance to research a particular word, building a portfolio of specialist work on a single word. (shrink)

The phenomenal powers view claims that phenomenal properties metaphysically necessitate their effects in virtue of how they feel, and thereby constitute non-Humean causal powers. For example, pain necessitates that subjects who experience it try to avoid it in virtue of feeling bad. I argue for this view based on the inconceivability of certain phenomenal properties necessitating different effects than their actual ones, their ability to predict their effects without induction, and their ability to explain their effects without appeal to laws (...) or regularities. I also offer a harmony argument according to which the view offers the best explanation for otherwise seemingly fortunate psychophysical regularities. I then outline the view’s main implications for the metaphysics of causation and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The concept of the receptive field, first articulated by Hartline, is central to visual neuroscience. The receptive field of a neuron encompasses the spatial and temporal properties of stimuli that activate the neuron, and, as Hubel and Wiesel conceived of it, a neuron’s receptive field is static. This makes it possible to build models of neural circuits and to build up more complex receptive fields out of simpler ones. Recent work in visual neurophysiology is providing evidence that the classical receptive (...) field is an inaccurate picture. The receptive field seems to be a dynamic feature of the neuron. In particular, the receptive field of neurons in V1 seems to be dependent on the properties of the stimulus. In this paper, we review the history of the concept of the receptive field and the problematic data. We then consider a number of possible theoretical responses to these data. (shrink)

This book presents a collection of essays on institutional theory written by the German sociologist and Weber-expert M. Rainer Lepsius. Based on Weber's work, the author develops concepts of institutional theory, which he subsequently applies to topics such as National Socialism, democratization processes, German unification, and the institutionalization of the European Union. By showing how charismatic leadership can under certain circumstances threaten democratic structures and curtail individual freedoms, and by analyzing the structural and cultural conditions under which people develop trust (...) in political and social structures and ultimately come to support and comply with them, the author provides a sound analytical understanding of the development of democratic institutions and a democratic political culture. This collection of essays was edited, translated and commented on by Claus Wendt. (shrink)

Early in his Essays on Intellectual Powers, Reid draws a distinction between mental power, mental operation, and mental capacity (EIP 21). To the untrained eye, these terms could probably be used interchangeably, and Reid believes this is correct, up to a point. He argues that, if we are interested in understanding exactly how the human mind works, we must use these terms with more precise meanings. This is part of his more general strategy of trying to always use the words (...) with their common meanings, as much as possible, but also pointing out that certain philosophical distinctions are needed to carry out the project of laying out the foundations of the science of the mind. This paper explains what the distinction between power, operation, and capacity is, according to Reid, with the goal of understanding why it is important to draw such a distinction, not only for the Reidian project, but for action theory, more generally. (shrink)

The Ismaili Imam and Imamat -- Ethical foundations -- Tradition and modernity -- The ethos of modernism -- Pluralism and cosmopolitan ethics -- Cohesion within the Umma -- Islam and the West -- Cultivating and enabling environment -- Living the ethics of Islam -- Global convergence.

The socialist construction in Vietnam, aspect of human role.

The given is the state of a mind in its primary engagement with the world. A satisfactory epistemology—one, it turns out, that is foundationalist and includes a naïve realist view of perception—requires a certain account of the given. Moreover, knowledge based on the given requires both a particular view of the world itself and a heterodox account of judgment. These admittedly controversial claims are supported by basic ontological considerations. I begin, then, with two contradictory views of the world per se (...) and the structure one experiences. I draw out the consequences of these two views for what intentionality is. The two views yield incompatible accounts of the given. The definitive spontaneity of the one account, and passivity of the other, can be understood in terms of the structure (or lack thereof) in the given. In defense of the claim that a structured given is not an apt epistemic basis, I examine an attempt to found an epistemology on such an account in light of the so-called myth of the given. I maintain that the given, if it is to provide some justification for taking the world to be a particular way, must be unstructured. To support this, I first discuss a significant problem with traditional foundationalism. I then argue that a satisfactory (foundationalist) epistemology requires the rejection of the orthodox propositional view of judgment in favor of a non-propositional, reistic view. (shrink)