The ArgumentAlexandre Koyré is one of the most important historians of philosophic and scientific though since the thirties. Research on the Scientific Revolution, on Galileo, Descartes, Newton, as well as on Paracelsus and Boehme has deeply changed under his influential method: it has been a model for Kuhn's methodology of paradigms and revolutions in the histroy of science. Whereas Koyré used to be considered opposed in his ideology and method to sociological approaches, he has recently been characterized by Yehuda (...) Elkana as a sociologist of knowledge. In fact, until now one of the main sources of his method had not been identified: it is only by acknowledging the influence of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl on Koyré that it is possible to explain how the latter wrote his thesis on Boehme's mystical thought just before his Etudes galiléennes. Lucien Lévy-Bruhl was teaching history of philosophy at the Sorbonne, and Koyré was strongly influenced by his idea of “prelogical thinking” as a universel phenomenon and in a general way by the sociological school of Durkheim. Conceptual analysis deriving from Husserl, collective representations and attitude mentale, came together in Alexandre Koyrè's method. (shrink)

In 1909 A. Koyré (1892–1964) came to Göttingen as an exile and there became a student of Edmund Husserl and other philosophers (A. Reinach, M. Scheler): already before leaving his country Russia Koyré read Husserl'sLogical Investigations, a text which interested greatly Russian philosophers and was translated into Russian in the same year. As many other contemporary philosophers, in Göttingen they were discussing on the fundaments of mathematic, Cantor's set theory and Russell's antinomies. On this problems Koyré wrote a long paper (...) inspired to Husserl'sLogical Investigations, read it in the Philosophical Society at Göttingen and submitted it as draft for his Ph.D. dissertation to Prof. Husserl, who refused it. So unhappily the celebrated methodologist and historian of science began his academical career: Koyré came back to write on logical and mathematical paradoxes in 1922 and in 1946–47 saying he was “going back to his first love”. Among other factors this deep interest in mathematic and exact sciences unabled Koyré to analyze Galileo and Newton in his masterly way. (shrink)

Ci troviamo in un’epoca di grandi mutamenti e di veloce evoluzione della comunicazione scientifica. Alla chiusura e inaccessibilità di testi, dati e processi di qualità si sostituisce la richiesta corale di trasparenza, equità e democraticità. All’idea di una scienza competitiva ed esclusiva si sostituisce quella di una scienza collaborativa in cui la condivisione dei risultati è il valore fondante e punto di forza per un più veloce sviluppo. Cambia e viene messo in discussione il ruolo degli editori commerciali che devono (...) reinventarsi in questo nuovo contesto, cambiano gli equilibri di potere fra editor, revisori ed autori. Gli strumenti per rispondere a questa richiesta corale di trasparenza sono tutti a nostra disposizione, ma ancora da parte delle comunità scientifiche si avverte qualche difficoltà a recepire le nuove modalità di pratica, validazione e disseminazione della ricerca. Ancora si assiste a una certa diffidenza e forse sgomento di fronte ai pubblici possibili e ad un ciclo di vita delle ricerche che è potenzialmente infinito. Sulle spalle dei giganti, citava Newton. E ciò è soprattutto vero se vengono eliminate le barriere economiche e legali che hanno fino ad ora rappresentato un ostacolo, o per lo meno un rallentamento per lo sviluppo della ricerca scientifica. "Doctor Virtualis" è una rivista umanistica, di settore, che ha abbracciato in tempi piuttosto lontani la filosofia dell’apertura promossa dall’ateneo che oggi si è rivelata vincente. La sua storia è la storia della piattaforma di riviste che la ospita alla quale la rivista ha aderito fin dal primo anno. We are in an era of rapid evolution of scholarly communication. The inaccessibility of quality texts, data, and processes is being replaced by a choral demand for transparency, equity, and democraticity. The idea of a competitive and exclusive science is replaced by that of a collaborative science in which the sharing of results is the founding value and strength for faster development. The role of commercial publishers who must reinvent themselves in this new context changes and is challenged; the balance of power between editors, reviewers and authors changes. The tools for responding to this choral demand for transparency are all at our disposal, but still from the scientific communities there is some difficulty in taking on board the new ways of practicing, validating and disseminating research. There is still some distrust and perhaps dismay in front of possible audiences and a research life cycle that is potentially never-ending. On the shoulders of giants, Newton quoted. And this is especially true if the economic and legal barriers that have hitherto been an obstacle, or at least a slowdown to the development of scientific research are removed. Doctor Virtualis is a humanistic journal that embraced in rather distant times the philosophy of openness promoted by the university that has proved successful today. Its story is the story of the journal platform that hosts it to which the journal has joined since its first year. (shrink)

The paper advocates an epistemological interpretation of the Peano School axiomatics. The construction of axiom systems is presented as a cognitive enterprise unveiling the internal dynamics, evolution, and architecture of axiomatic systems as well as connections to applications. This approach reveals that the study of the relation between axioms and theorems not only serves to reduce a theory to a minimum number of principles and increase the certainty or justification of the latter, but also to study alternative settings of a (...) given mathematical theory. The paper explains why the Peanian conception of axiomatics differs from axiomatic deductivism, if-thenism and scientific deductivism, and analyzes Peano’s conception of rigor. The paper also postulates that Peano had a set-theoretic but also an algorithmic conception of function, and prioritized functions over relations. Two seemingly contradictory aspects of Peano’s axiomatics, global and local reasoning, are illustrated through the examples of rigor and simplicity. Finally, the paper claims that Peano’s axiomatics was a dynamic mathematical enterprise rather than an a priori axiomatization grounded on logical principles, which explains the difference with respect to Frege’s project. (shrink)

This Handbook offers a broad yet unified treatment of many philosophical issues connected with climate change, ranging from foundational puzzles to detailed applications. It extends to many branches of philosophy that are relevant to the understanding of the premises and implications of the impacts of climate change on human and nonhuman life on Earth. More specifically, the handbook examines the scientific accounts of climate change as well as its causes. It explores the tools offered by social sciences and humanities to (...) study the societal premises and impacts of climate change as well as delving deeper into the ethical and political issues connected with and resulting from climate change. By doing so, it puts it all in an ecological and historical context. In addition, the book offers solutions to some important philosophical puzzles and problems, and indicates paths of interaction between philosophy and other disciplines. The discussion about climate change and the mitigation/adaptation policies spans many areas and levels – from abstract science and philosophy to current on-the-ground politics. However, climate change is also a great a philosophical puzzle. Indeed, its existential and practical relevance can be thought to largely derive from the philosophical complications it engenders. Climate change is applied philosophy par excellence. Preventing dangerous anthropogenic climate change needs very good philosophy applied to concrete and specific practical issues. Climate change is an area where scholars from very different provenances should cooperate on equal terms, having in view a common, and really important, purpose – contribute to preventing great burdens and even the extinction of humankind and the destruction of hospitable and valuable non-human nature. (shrink)

This collection of essays sheds new light on the relationship between two of the main drivers of intellectual discourse in ancient Greece: the epic tradition and the Sophists. The contributors show how throughout antiquity the epic tradition proved a flexible instrument to navigate new political, cultural, and philosophical contexts. The Sophists, both in the Classical and the Imperial age, continuously reconfigured the value of epic poetry according to the circumstances: using epic myths allowed the Sophists to present themselves as the (...) heirs of traditional education, but at the same time this tradition was reshaped to encapsulate new questions that were central to the Sophists' intellectual agenda. This volume is structured chronologically, encompassing the ancient world from the Classical Age through the first two centuries AD. The first chapters, on the First Sophistic, discuss pivotal works such as Gorgias' Encomium of Helen and Apology of Palamedes, Alcidamas' Odysseus or Against the Treachery of Palamedes, and Antisthenes' pair of speeches Ajax and Odysseus, as well as a range of passages from Plato and other authors. The volume then moves on to discuss some of the major works of literature from the Second Sophistic dealing with the epic tradition. These include Lucian's Judgement of the Goddesses and Dio Chrysostom's orations 11 and 20, as well as Philostratus' Heroicus and Imagines. (shrink)

This edited collection testifies to the fact that the animal liberation movement is now entering its political phase, after a period dominated by ethical approaches that undermined the paradigm of human supremacy and demanded justice for nonhuman beings. The contributors of this book collectively confront and take on questions of social transformation, guided by the idea that philosophy has an important role to play even at such a new level. They start from such diverse perspectives as critical theory, left liberalism, (...) and biopolitical thought. The result is an articulated picture in which, beyond any principled divergence, it is possible to detect the emergence of a relevant set of shared political preoccupations. This exploration of those offers fresh theoretical insights and suggestions for praxis. (shrink)

This book explores the current forms of social science theorization starting from some federative themes: Agency, Anthropocene, Coloniality, Intersectionality, Othering, Singularization, Technoscience and Uncertainty. The book proposes a reconstruction of contemporary social theory starting from some thematic issues rather than starting from authors or schools of thought. It emphasizes the usefulness of a rhizomatic way of thinking that recognizes the importance of interconnections, heterogeneity and multiplicity in understanding the complexity of global societies. Focusing on federative themes, it highlights some heuristic (...) and conceptual tools that intersect and intertwine in different themes, returning a complex toolbox for the social sciences, adaptable to different contexts and situations, enriched by voices and theoretical perspectives deriving from reflections on the social that the modern and Eurocentric perspective has tended to marginalize. The book is intended for an academic audience interested in social theory. It is also intended for students from a wide range of disciplines undertaking social science studies. (shrink)

Accelerating environmental uncertainty and the need to cope with increasingly complex market and social demands, combine to create high value for the intuitive approach to decision-making at the strategic level. Research on intuition suffers from marked fragmentation, due to the existence of disciplinary silos based on diverse, apparently irreconcilable, ontological and epistemological assumptions. Not surprisingly, there is no integrated interdisciplinary framework suitable for a rich account of intuition, contemplating how affect and cognition intertwine in the intuitive process, and how intuition (...) scales up from the individual to collective decision-making. This study contributes to the construction of a broad conceptual framework, suitable for a multi-level account of intuition and for a fruitful dialogue with distant research areas. It critically discusses two mainstream conceptualizations of intuition which claim to be grounded in a cross-disciplinary consensus. Drawing on the complexity paradigm, it then proposes a conceptualization of intuition as emergence. Finally, it explores the theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)

Although remote working can involve positive outcomes both for employees and organizations, in the case of the sudden and forced remote working situation that came into place during the COVID-19 crisis there have also been reports of negative aspects, one of which is technostress. In this context of crisis, leadership is crucial in sustainably managing and supporting employees, especially employees with workaholic tendencies who are more prone to developing negative work and health outcomes. However, while research on the role of (...) the positive aspects of leadership during crises does exist, the negative aspects of leadership during the COVID-19 crisis have not yet been studied. The present study aimed to explore the role of authoritarian leadership in a sample of 339 administrative university employees who worked either completely from home or from home and the workplace. The study examined the moderating effect of a manager on this relationship and the connections between workaholism and technostress through conditional process analysis. Results pointed out that high authoritarian leadership had an enhancing effect, whereas low authoritarian leadership had a protective effect on the relationship between workaholism and technostress, only in the group of complete remote workers. Thus, authoritarian leadership should be avoided and training leaders to be aware of its effect appears to be essential. Limitations, future directions for the study, and practical implications are also discussed. (shrink)

The assumption that origins can be defined as a hermeneutic paradigm in the humanities and in the sciences is explored in relation to specific theoretical ...

Interest in German Romanticism has been revitalized in recent years by new post-structural, interdisciplinary, and intertextual perspectives. However until now this renewed interest has not led to a re-examination of Jakob Böhme's formative influence on.

The present study aims at exploring whether the level of well-being vary as a function of fertility status in different phases of the ovulatory cycle. We investigated the multidimensional well-being, including the cognitive component of subjective well-being related to judgments about one’s life satisfaction, the psychological well-being concerning the full growth and self-realization of the individual, and self-esteem, that is the personal judgment of overall self-worth and is recognized as one indicator of well-being. On the basis of the cycle phase (...) estimation at the moment of the experiment, one hundred and sixteen normally cycling women were divided into “fertile” and “non-fertile” groups and were administered the Psychological Well-Being Scale, the Basic Self-Esteem Scale and the Satisfaction with Life Scale. A Multivariate Analysis of Variance has been performed to examine whether there were differences between groups according to their ovulatory phase. All dimensions of psychological well-being, self-esteem and satisfaction with life were found to be stable in the different phases of the menstrual cycle. The implications of these results are discussed. (shrink)

Enlightenment - both the phenomenon specific to the eighteenth century and the continuing trend in Western thought - is an attempt to dispel ignorance, achieve mastery of a potentially hostile environment, and contain fear of the unknown by promoting science and rationality. Enlightenment is often accompanied and challenged by countercultures such as German Romanticism, which explored the nature of fear and deployed it as a corrective to the excesses of rationalism. The Aesthetics of Fear in German Romanticism uncovers the formative (...) role this movement played in the development of dark or negative aesthetics. Recovering a missing chapter in the history of the aesthetics of fear, Paola Mayer illustrates that Romanticism was a crucial transitional phase between the eighteenth-century sublime and the early twentieth-century uncanny. Mayer puts literature and philosophy in dialogue, examining how German Romantic literature employed narratives of fear to radicalize and then subvert the status quo in society, culture, and science. She traces the development of this aesthetic from its inception with pre-Romantics such as Jean Paul Richter to its end in Joseph von Eichendorff's critical retrospective, and juxtaposes canonical authors such as E.T.A. Hoffmann - the father of the modern fantastic - with writers who have previously been ignored. Today, when the dark side of science looms in the foreground, The Aesthetics of Fear in German Romanticism points to the power of a literary movement to construct competing currents of thought. (shrink)

We animals have evolved a variety of mechanisms to avoid conspecifics who might be infected. It is currently unclear whether and why this “behavioral immune system” targets unfamiliar individuals more than familiar ones. Here I answer this question in humans, using publicly available data of a recent study on 1969 participants from India and 1615 from the USA. The apparent health of a male stranger, as estimated from his face, and the comfort with contact with him were a direct function (...) of his similarity to the men in the local community. This held true regardless of whether the face carried overt signs of infection. I conclude that our behavioral immune system is finely tuned to degrees of outgroupness — and that cues of outgroupness are partly processed as cues of infectiousness. These findings, which were consistent across the two cultures, support the notion that the pathogens of strangers are perceived as more dangerous. (shrink)

Cross-situational statistical learning of words involves tracking co-occurrences of auditory words and objects across time to infer word-referent mappings. Previous research has demonstrated that learners can infer referents across sets of very phonologically distinct words, but it remains unknown whether learners can encode fine phonological differences during cross-situational statistical learning. This study examined learners’ cross-situational statistical learning of minimal pairs that differed on one consonant segment, minimal pairs that differed on one vowel segment, and non-minimal pairs that differed on two (...) or three segments. Learners performed above chance for all pairs, but performed worse on vowel minimal pairs than on consonant minimal pairs or non-minimal pairs. These findings demonstrate that learners can encode fine phonetic detail while tracking word-referent co-occurrence probabilities, but they suggest that phonological encoding may be weaker for vowels than for consonants. (shrink)

A pesar de los innumerables beneficios, hay varias críticas y preocupaciones en relación con el uso de la Inteligencia Artificial (IA), especialmente en Brasil, donde no hay ninguna legislación federal en vigor hasta el momento. Las legislaciones estatales existentes y los proyectos de ley que se están votando en el Congreso, como el PL 21/20, son defectuosos e incompletos, especialmente en lo que respecta a algunas aplicaciones de la IA que implican altos riesgos para los derechos y libertades fundamentales, además (...) de traer a menudo un sesgo potencial, duplicando o potenciando el racismo institucionalizado existente en la sociedad u otras formas de discriminación. Existe una inequidad codificada que propicia infraestructuras injustas, sinembargo, donde hay poder hay resistencia, y en este sentido es necesario señalar la importancia de las contra codificaciones basadas en la solidaridad y que repiensan la justicia, es decir, un enfoque emancipador de la tecnología. Este es el cambio paradigmático necesario, y siendo necesario, tiene que ser posible y debe buscarse con el máximo esfuerzo. Se trata de verdaderas formas de resistencia, como instrumentos abolicionistas para el “Nuevo Código Jim”, nuevas formas de discriminación de raza, género y clase existentes a través del uso de las nuevas tecnologías, en el sentido de prácticas de diseño orientadas a la justicia. (shrink)