Aristotle’s restriction of intellect to humans raised the problem of how animals are able to react to and learn from their environment if they lack the ability to recognize classes of objects, an ability supposedly conferred by intellect. Aristotle’s delineation of the internal senses into the common sense, imagination, and memory did not include a locus for the cleverness or prudence that he found animals to possess in varying degrees. Avicenna supplemented Aristotle’s internal senses by adding the estimative power, (...) which allowed animals to recognize the value of a perceived object in terms of its potential benefit or harm. Albert the Great, who showed more interest than most medieval philosophers in the problem of animal behavior, adopted the estimative power and began his inquiry by considering pygmies, which he judged to be the highest form of animal. This inquiry led Albert to weaken but in the end to retain the distinction based on intellectual abilities between animals and humans. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:John Buridan, Quaestiones super libros "De generatione et corruptione" Aristotelis: A Critical Edition with an IntroductionPeter G. SobolMichiel Streijger, Paul J. J. M. Bakker, and Johannes M. M. H. Thijssen, editors. John Buridan, Quaestiones super libros "De generatione et corruptione" Aristotelis : A Critical Edition with an Introduction. History of Science and Medicine Library, 17. Medieval and Early Modern Science, 14. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2010. Pp. ix + 269. (...) Cloth, $141.00.To readers of these pages, John Buridan needs no introduction. A popular and influential teacher in his own time, he came early to the attention of historians of medieval intellectual history who, for the most part, have rested content to read his works in manuscripts and early printed editions. So it is a happy occasion to welcome a new critical edition of a work by Buridan, especially one that expands our access to Buridan's thought beyond his logic, physics, and cosmology.In the introduction, the editors recount the manuscript traditions of Buridan's literal commentary on De generatione et corruptione and the more complex tradition of the Quaestiones, which is the work edited here. The editors discovered two versions of the Quaestiones and chose to work with the version represented by the greater number of manuscripts. They provide detailed evidence from shared accidents among the manuscripts of this version to support their stemma codicum. Using the stemma, they selected a base manuscript and two others, each representing a distinct branch, for collation. The text itself is accompanied by an apparatus criticus and an apparatus fontium.In De generatione et corruptione, Aristotle tried to improve upon the inadequate efforts of his predecessors to explain growth and change in the terrestrial realm. After dismissing atomism and theories relying on a single or several persisting elements, he offered his own theory, in which four primary qualities inhere in prime matter to form four elements, which in turn combine to form mineral, vegetable, and animal bodies. But, as they tried to work out the consequences of his theory, Aristotle's Arabic and Latin commentators discovered several problems, one of which became perhaps the most widely discussed problem in medieval philosophy: how to reconcile the idea that the properties of compound substances derive from the proportion of their constituent elements with the idea that those properties derive from the compound's substantial form. This problem becomes even more difficult when the compound in question is a living body, especially when the living body is human. The problem was addressed by philosophers in commentaries on various works of Aristotle, by theologians in commentaries on the Sentences, and even by physicians. Some historians, such as Anneliese Meier, have seen this as a conflict between the Aristotelian theory of matter and Aristotelian metaphysics, with the metaphysicians insisting that a thing is what it is because of its substantial form, and the natural scientists insisting that a thing it what it is because of what it is made of. For several centuries this problem provoked many unsatisfactory solutions, remaining intractable right up to the time that natural philosophers began to abandon the Aristotelian worldview; indeed, its intractability may have contributed to their willingness to look elsewhere for a coherent theory of matter.Given the importance of this problem in the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century commentaries on De generatione, this edition may frustrate readers who expect pedagogy along with philology. Readers will find where in the text the three manuscripts have column breaks, but will find no explanatory notes. The introduction surveys Buridan's life and ponders the sequence of events through which a medieval quaestiones commentary made [End Page 140] its way from the master in his lecture hall to the copyist's pen, but it offers no overview of the subject matter treated in the commentary itself.Buridan dealt with the problem of the elements in the longest question of his commentary, the twenty-second question of book 1, "Whether the substantial forms of elements remain in a mixed body." He found that incompatible consequences followed whether a mixed body's qualities arose from its constituent elements or from its substantial form. How, for example, could fire and water persist in a compound... (shrink)

Spousal correlation in risk attitude is estimated using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel over the period 2004–2009. We apply the bivariate panel ordered probit model to the analysis of the simultaneous determination of the male’s and the female’s risk attitude, using the survey question about general willingness to take risk, provided on a 0–10 Likert-scale. The correlations between both the individual-specific effects of the two partners and the two within-individual errors are separately estimated, and found to be +0.285 (...) and +0.310, respectively. We consider the former to be a key parameter, since its positive sign may be interpreted in terms of positive assortative mating on risk attitude: individuals tend to form partnerships with others having a similar risk attitude. We also find evidence that this correlation increases with years of marriage, suggesting either a form of spousal socialization or a selection process in which marriage breakdown is more likely in poorly matched couples. (shrink)

_The Research Review for School Leaders, Volume III_ is specifically designed as a practical resource for school leaders whose schedules preclude opportunities to locate and review key research on every issue they must address. It places comprehensive, current, and accessible reviews of educational research at their fingertips, and is organized to make the research and practices it summarizes useful to them in their professional endeavors. This is the third volume of the _Review._ Although the title has changed, its purpose and (...) substance is continuous with the work of the earlier volumes. The first _Annual Review of Research for School Leaders_ summarized research on the status of public schooling, interdisciplinary curriculum, and educational applications of computers. The second volume addressed the topics of middle-level education, the extracurriculum, mathematics education reform, and drop outs. The present _Volume III_ offers educational leaders reviews of research on five timely educational issues: * citizenship education; * multicultural education; * gifted and talented education; * classroom assessment; and * scheduling. A basic premise of this volume is that, to make sound decisions, professionals need to be up to date on current research related to the problems with which they grapple. A second premise is that research cannot simply be imposed in a formulaic way on a local setting; the nature of the particular problem to be solved will always bear upon the relevance of research to a specific context. Thus, this volume is envisioned as a helpful resource for school leaders as they engage in important discussions of the research with teachers, school board members, parents, and other interested parties as they collaboratively seek effective resolutions to local educational problems. (shrink)

This volume traces the history of animals in philosophy, from antiquity down to contemporary times. Negative attitudes towards animals, as found in Aristotle and Descartes, turn out to be more nuanced than usually supposed, while remarkable discussions of animal welfare appear in late antiquity, India, the Islamic world, and Kant.

In recent years, the opioid crisis in the United States has sparked significant discussion on doctor–patient interactions concerning chronic pain treatments, but little to no attention has been given to investigating the vocal aspects of patient talk. This exploratory sociolinguistic study intends to fill this knowledge gap by employing prosodic discourse analysis to examine context-specific linguistic features used by the interlocutors of two distinct medical interactions. We found that patients employed both low pitch and creak as linguistic resources when (...) describing chronic pain, narrating symptoms and requesting opioids. The situational use of both features informs us about the linguistic ways in which patients frame fraught issues like chronic pain in light of the current opioid crisis. This study expands the breadth of phonetic analysis within the domain of discourse analysis, serving to illuminate discussions surrounding the illocutionary role of the lower vocal tract in expressing emotions. (shrink)

BackgroundHealthcare professionals are exposed to advertisements for prescription drugs in medical journals. Such advertisements may increase prescriptions of new drugs at the expense of older treatments even when they have no added benefits, are more harmful, and are more expensive. The publication of medical advertisements therefore raises ethical questions related to editorial integrity.MethodsWe conducted a descriptive cross-sectional study of all medical advertisements published in the Journal of the Danish Medical Association in 2015. Drugs advertised 6 times or more were compared (...) with older comparators: comparative evidence of added benefit; Defined Daily Dose cost; regulatory safety announcements; and completed and ongoing post-marketing studies 3 years after advertising.ResultsWe found 158 medical advertisements for 35 prescription drugs published in 24 issues during 2015, with a median of 7 advertisements per issue. Four drug groups and 5 single drugs were advertised 6 times or more, for a total of 10 indications, and we made 14 comparisons with older treatments. We found: ‘no added benefit’ in 4 of 14 comparisons, ‘uncertain benefits’ in 7, and ‘no evidence’ in 3 comparisons. In no comparison did we find evidence of ‘substantial added benefit’ for the new drug; advertised drugs were 2 to 196 times more expensive per Defined Daily Dose; 11 safety announcements for five advertised drugs were issued compared to one announcement for one comparator drug; 20 post-marketing studies were requested for the advertised drugs versus 10 studies for the comparator drugs, and 7 studies assessed both an advertised and a comparator drug at 3 year follow-up.Conclusions and relevanceIn this cross-sectional study of medical advertisements published in the Journal of the Danish Medical Association during 2015, the most advertised drugs did not have documented substantial added benefits over older treatments, whereas they were substantially more expensive. From January 2021, the Journal of the Danish Medical Association no longer publishes medical advertisements. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Theologian's Doubts:Natural Philosophy and the Skeptical Games of GhazālīLeor HaleviIn the history of skeptical thought, which normally leaps from the Pyrrhonists to the rediscovery of Sextus Empiricus in the sixteenth century, Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (1058-1111) figures as a medieval curiosity. Skeptical enough to merit passing acknowledgment, he has proven too baffling to be treated fully alongside pagan, atheist, or materialist philosophers. As a theologian defending certain Muslim (...) dogmas, Ghazālī has not met what historians consider the mark of the true skeptic, a mind doubting the possibility of all systems of knowledge. But what is fascinating about him is that he brought into practical operation the tools of what I call "functional skepticism."1He denied the claims to truth of Aristotelian physics—whose basis he showed to rest on groundless belief—then turned and argued for the possibility of the Resurrection tooth and nail. The scholarly debate on The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahāfut al-falāsifa) has concentrated on the extent to which Ghazālī qua Ashcarite theologian was seduced into Aristotelian philosophy despite himself.2 In my view this debate has been misguided in the attempt to distill the [End Page 19] essence of Ghazālī from the book's eclectic theology; I will argue for a different view of Ghazālī on the basis of a close reading of key passages. In the unusual sections where Ghazālī applies Aristotelian language to a world not following the ordinary laws of physics, some have found Ghazālī slipping, unconsciously perhaps, into an Aristotelian frame of mind. I will show that, as a skeptical theologian with a dialogic imagination, he was rather deconstructing Aristotelian discourse while playing a Wittgensteinian sort of language game.Natural Philosopher or Speculative Theologian?The disagreement about the extent to which philosophy infected Ghazālī is ancient. Ghazālī might have studied philosophy only in order to refute it. He himself defended his philosophizing with the claim that one cannot deconstruct a system of thought until one has understood it so deeply as to elaborate upon its fundamental principles.3 His Maqāṣid al-falāsifa was in fact received, especially in trans-Pyrenean Europe, as a philosopher's genuine summary of the object of philosophy.4 The book strikes me as suspiciously creative in its representation of philosophical discourse, but it appears in any case as an expert and surprisingly unbiased treatment.5 Arabic readers knew that Ghazālī had also written a polemical treatise against philosophy, Tahāfut al-falāsifa, but they still wondered about his engagement with the ideas he challenged. Abū Bakr Ibn al-cArabī, for example, commented that Ghazālī had been unable to extricate himself from philosophy.6 Other philosophers pondered whether or not he had been a closeted member of their charmed circle and sought in his writings traces of esoteric philosophy.7Averroës's own sober sense of distance between philosophy and theology was partially a reaction to what he perceived as Ghazālī's dangerous and carefree mixture of the two sciences.8 He attacked Ghazālī's book in The Incoherence [End Page 20] of the Incoherence to restore philosophy's sense of purity, an aim he sought to accomplish by separating religious concerns from the philosopher's field of inquiry.9 Ironically, such a separation is precisely what Ghazālī might have wished to provoke by crisscrossing and blurring the line between religion and philosophy.The modern debate on chapter 17 of Tahāfut al-falāsifa has concentrated on defining Ghazālī as either a natural philosopher or an occasionalist theologian. In his defense of the possibility of miracles Ghazālī presented two theories of causation, one denying the logical basis of Aristotelian notions of natural causality, and the other more or less adopting these notions. Jointly, the two theories have seemed incompatible, and for this reason scholars have attempted to sort Ghazālī out of the apparent confusion. In 1978 L. E. Goodman argued persuasively that Ghazālī exploited rather than denied the philosophers' ideas of causality. In two articles Michael Marmura challenged Goodman, contending... (shrink)

Mazur & Booth's (1998) target article concerns basal and reciprocal relations between testosterone and dominance, and has its roots in Mazur's (1985; 1994) model of primate dominance-submissiveness interactions. Threats are exchanged in these interactions and a psychological stress-manipulation mechanism is suggested to operate, making sure that face-to-face dominance contests are usually resolved without aggression. In this commentary, a recent line of evidence from human research on the relation between testosterone, cortisol, and vigilant (dominant) and avoidant (submissive) responses to threatening “angry” (...) faces is discussed. Findings, to a certain extent, converge with Mazur & Booth's theorizing. However, the strongest relations have been found in subliminal exposure conditions, suggesting that biological instead of psychological mechanisms are involved. (shrink)

Progressive supranuclear palsy is a movement disorder with prominent tau neuropathology. Brain diseases with abnormal tau deposits are called tauopathies, the most common of which is Alzheimer's disease. Environmental causes of tauopathies include repetitive head trauma associated with some sports. To identify common genetic variation contributing to risk for tauopathies, we carried out a genome-wide association study of 1,114 individuals with PSP and 3,247 controls followed by a second stage in which we genotyped 1,051 cases and 3,560 controls for the (...) stage 1 SNPs that yielded P ≤ 10-3. We found significant previously unidentified signals associated with PSP risk at STX6, EIF2AK3 and MOBP. We confirmed two independent variants in MAPT affecting risk for PSP, one of which influences MAPT brain expression. The genes implicated encode proteins for vesicle-membrane fusion at the Golgi-endosomal interface, for the endoplasmic reticulum unfolded protein response and for a myelin structural component. © 2011 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore a particular philosophical underpinning for Information Systems (IS) research – critical systemic thinking (CST). Drawing upon previous work, the authors highlight the principal features of CST within the tradition of critical research and attempt to relate it to trends in the Italian school of IS research in recent years, as exemplified by the work of Claudio Ciborra but also evident in work by, e.g. Resca, Jacucci and D'Atri.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper which (...) explores CST, characterised by a focus on individual uniqueness, and socially‐constructed, individual worldviews as generators of human knowing.FindingsThe paper draws on work by Heinz Klein in which he elaborated three constitutive stages in critical research: interpretive, genealogical and constructive. The authors introduce a fourth, reflective stage and discuss five categories of critical research, reflecting different perspectives on emancipation, culminating in emergent expressionism, associated with Ciborra and the Italian school more generally.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper discusses approaches to CST and how they might have practical implications in IS development. The distinction between approaches founded in logical empiricism and those founded in hermeneutic dialectics are considered and the development of critical and systems strands are discussed.Practical implicationsThe paper addresses CST as an approach to development of information systems. Such approaches enable users to explore their individually unique understandings and create a constructive dialogue with one another, which emancipates and empowers users to own and control their own development processes and hence build more productive and usable systems.Social implicationsA focus on research which is oriented towards emancipation in the tradition of critical social theory.Originality/valueThe paper draws on extensive theoretical research carried out by the authors over a period of more than ten years in CST and synthesises the practical implications. (shrink)

J. H. van 't Hoff's 1874 Dutch pamphlet, in which he proposed the spatial arrangement of atoms in a molecule, is one of the most significant documents in the history of chemistry. This essay presents a new narrative of Van 't Hoff's early life and places the appearance of the pamphlet within the context of the 'second golden age' of Dutch science. We argue that the combination of the reformed educational system in The Netherlands, the emergence of graphical molecular modelling (...) within the theoretical and practical culture of chemistry during the 1860s and 1870s, as well as Van 't Hoff's own personal research trajectory, formed the background to his unprecedented attribution of spatial meaning to the traditional concept of atomic 'arrangement'. We also present a new English translation of the pamphlet, for we have found that the existing translation, published by G. M. Richardson in 1901, contains many errors, changes and omissions. The new version offers a more accurate rendition in English of Van 't Hoff's style and argument. (shrink)

This is an analysis of the interpretation of Christian theology that is found in G. W. F. Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Hodgson argues that these lectures are among the most valuable resources from the nineteenth century for theology as it faces the challenges of modernity and postmodernity. The author is also editing and translating the critical edition of the lectures, which are being published concurrently by Oxford University Press.

In G. K. Chesterton's story The Doom of the Darnaways, Lord Darnaway put on the spines of dummy books in his library such empty designations as The Snakes of Ireland and The Religion of Frederick the Great : I too might appear to have chosen a non-subject for this paper. My coming to the contrary conclusion was the unwitting work of the man whom Balliol College employed to give us tutorials in political philosophy. I soon noticed that his interpretation of (...) Hobbes seemed to be based on a few chapters of Leviathan ; desiring to get material for probing questions, and allured by Hobbes's style, I quickly devoured the whole of Leviathan. This reading left me with an abiding respect for the moral and political philosophy of Hobbes; his religious views, at this time, I found curious rather than impressive, but already I had no doubt that they were not mere hollow professions thinly cloaking an immoralist atheism, but were considered opinions sincerely held. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:American Philosophy: The Basics by Nancy StanlickPeter [email protected] Stanlick. American Philosophy: The Basics. London: Routledge, 2013. 174 pp with index.In 174 pages American Philosophy: The Basics covers the American philosophical tradition from its European roots to some of its contemporary leanings. The stated goal of the book is to give an overview of American philosophy and “explain what makes American philosophy a national or cultural philosophical tradition.” This (...) is a particularly tall order for such a short book, and it might be understandable if Stan-lick necessarily omits numerous thinkers from the canon. Overall, the book succeeds at giving a quick overview of the history of American philosophy.The text covers a fairly diverse selection of philosophers. Starting from Jonathan Edwards’ Calvinist theology, the book moves through early American social and political thought, and the European enlightenment ideals that underwrite them, as found in revolutionary era thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Benjamin [End Page 578] Franklin. The rest of the chapters quickly address New England transcendentalism and classical pragmatism. The book ends with two quick summaries of “recent” developments in American philosophy split between metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of science; and a second section on social, political, and ethical writings. The latter section includes summaries of recent writings on feminist ethics and African American social thought. Although these themes are particularly welcome, the book would have benefited by addressing feminist and African American contributions not just to ethics or social thought, but also to debates in epistemology or the philosophy of science.The author’s intended audience is undergraduates taking an American philosophy course or those wholly uninformed about the American philosophical tradition. Although the book serves as a helpful summary of various views in the American intellectual tradition, it would need to be supplemented by a substantial amount of primary texts to provide enough course material for a semester. The text does not contain enough critical commentary to function as a secondary resource by itself, but could function alongside additional secondary material.This last point is particularly telling about the book’s goals. Stanlick manages to introduce and explain numerous classic philosophical problems throughout the text (e.g., the mind-body problem, the problem of freewill, arguments for God’s existence, etc…) and provides a glossary at the end of the book, but does not do much to explore any of the issues in-depth. In part this is because of the overview nature of the text, but additional explanations, as well as a longer list of secondary sources, would have gone a long way in strengthening the author’s overall approach. This is an interesting, and I think helpful, approach for a lower-level philosophy text: it provides clear exposition of philosophical terminology while never straying from the overall goal of exploring the American philosophical tradition.One initial problem is the author’s narrative commitment to what makes American philosophy uniquely American. Stanlick argues that what is indicative of American philosophy is more of an emphasis on “what we can do with theories, principles, and arguments” than with theoretical or abstract problems. While we may be able to see this emphasis in some of the classical pragmatists and early American intellectuals, I think it’s difficult to claim that such an emphasis is indicative of all American philosophy.Additionally, seemingly major American philosophers are simply absent. Though discussions of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and Richard Rorty compose the pragmatism chapter, no mention is made of C.I. Lewis or Sidney Hook. Recent pragmatists, outside of W.V.O Quine and Rorty, are missing from both the pragmatism chapter and later chapters on contemporary developments in American philosophy. It seems reasonable to expect some mention of [End Page 579] Robert Brandom’s analytic pragmatism, the contemporary revival of Peirce’s philosophy, Cheryl Misak’s extensive work on American pragmatism (although one of her edited volumes is mentioned in a “further readings” sections), Susan Haack’s epistemology, or Richard Shusterman’s work on embodiment and pragmatism. Although not American in genesis, 19th Hegelianism (as especially seen in the St. Louis and Ohio Hegelians) does not appear... (shrink)

An analysis of the interpretation of Christian theology that is found in G. W. F. Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Peter C. Hodgson argues that these lectures are among the most valuable resources from the nineteenth century for theology as it faces the challenges of modernity and postmodernity.

Teleosemantics explains mental representation in terms of biological function and selection history. One of the main objections to the account is the so-called ‘Swampman argument’ (Davidson 1987), which holds that there could be a creature with mental representation even though it lacks a selection history. A number of teleosemanticists reject the argument by emphasising that it depends on assuming a creature that is fi ctitious and hence irrelevant for teleosemantics because the theory is only concerned with representations in real-world organisms (...) (Millikan 1996, Neander 1996, 2006, Papineau 2001, 2006). I contend that this strategy doesn’t succeed. I off er an argument that captures the spirit of the original Swampman objection but relies only on organisms found in the actual world. Th e argument undermines the just mentioned response to the Swampman objection, and furthermore leads to a particular challenge to strong representationalist theories of consciousness that endorse teleosemantics such as, e.g., Dretske’s (1995) and Tye’s (1995, 2000) accounts. On these theories, the causal effi cacy of consciousness in actual creatures will be undermined. (shrink)

It was a novel, among other things, which originated the atomic bomb. H. G. Wells dedicated The World Set Free, published in 1913, to Frederick Soddy, a pioneer in the exploration of radioactivity. Using Soddy’s research as a base, Wells predicted the advent of artificial radioactivity in 1933, the year in which it actually took place; and he foresaw its use for what he named the “atomic bomb.” In Wells’ novel these bombs are used in a world war that erupts (...) in mid-century and is so catastrophic that a world government is formed, initiating a new age powered by the peaceful use of the atom. The physicist Leo Szilard, a long-time admirer of Wells, read this novel in 1932, the year before he first intuited the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction. The novel seems to have become part of his own mental chain reaction. One that took place at an almost unconscious level during the spring that Szilard spent at the Strand Palace Hotel in London, by his own admission doing nothing. He would only monopolize the bath from around nine to twelve in the morning, since “there is no place as good to think as a bathtub.”1 The theories that resulted from this prolonged immersion were introduced by references to Wells; and Szilard, having realized the atomic bomb, spent the rest of his life trying to realize the world government which, in the Wells novel, was its consequence.Literature, which was part of the genesis of nuclear weaponry, continues to be an inextricable aspect of its nature. For Derrida, in fact, we are facinga phenomenon whose essential feature is that of being fabulously textual, through and through. Nuclear weaponry depends, more than any weaponry in the past, it seems, upon structures of information and communication, structures of language, including non-vocalizable language, structures of codes and graphic decoding. But the phenomenon if fabulously textual also to the extent that, at the moment, a nuclear war has not taken place: one can only talk and write about it.2The linguistic nature of the arms race, of peace talks and negotiations, has been thoroughly analyzed. Likewise there is a growing number of books on the nature of nuclear war. But there is also a growing body of novels, poems, and plays making up a literature of nuclear holocaust. As the example of Wells’ novel shows, this is not altogether unprecedented; nuclear literature predates Hiroshima. But the subject of nuclear war has, up till now, mainly served the purposes of science fiction; only rarely—as in the cases of A Canticle for Leibowitz and On the Beach—have science fiction authors risen above the lowest common denominator of that genre. In the 1980s, every year sees the publication of works which demand serious attention both as literature and as fictive strategies for comprehending a subject that is commonly called “unthinkable.” Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker, Bernard Malamud’s God’s Grace, Maggie Gee’s The Burning Book, Tim O’Brien’s Nuclear Age—these works explicitly preoccupied with nuclear holocaust may be supplemented by other works of the eighties with a persistent apocalyptic undertone, works such as Doris Lessing’s Canopus in Argos series, Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose, and Mario Vargas Llosa’s War of the End of the World. And these are only the literary manifestations of a widespread movement in all the arts aimed at expressing the dominant condition of our time.3 1. Leo Szilard, Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts: Selected Recollections and Correspondence, ed. Spencer R. Weart and Gertrud Weiss Szilard , p. 19.2. Jacques Derrida, “No Apocalypse, Not Now ,” Diacritics 14 , p. 23.3. Examples can be found in painting , mixed media , opera , oratorio , dance , film , television , and popular music . Peter Schwenger is associate professor of English at Mount St. Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The author of Phallic Critiques: Masculinity and Twentieth-Century Literature, he is working on a book-length study of nuclear holocaust literature. (shrink)

In recent years, observational techniques at cosmological distances have been sufficiently improved that cosmology has become an empirical science, rather than a field for unchecked speculation. There remains the fact that its object, the whole universe, exists only once; hence, we are unable to separate “general” features from particular aspects of “our” universe. This might not be a serious drawback if we were justified in the belief that presently accepted laws of nature remain valid on the cosmological scale. In the (...) author's opinion, however, there are grounds for doubting that belief. The three arguments presented are (1) the possibility that apparent constants of nature may, during cosmological times, turn out to vary (Dirac conjecture); (2) the effective breakdown of the principle of relativity caused by the effects of the cosmological environment on local experiments; and (3) the fact that present theory leads to field singularities at the early stages of the expanding universe, which might be a signal that currently accepted theoretical concepts are inadequate for an understanding of highly condensed matter. (shrink)

This is a study of how self-transformation may occur through the practice of reframing one's personal experience in terms of a canonical language: that is, a system of symbols that purports to explain something about human beings and the universe they live in. The Christian conversion narrative is used as the primary example here, but the approach used in this book also illuminates other practices such as psychotherapy in which people deal with emotional conflict through language.

No descriptive material is available for this title.

More than thirty-five years ago, a longitudinal study was established to research the health and well-being of older people living in an English city. Self and Meaning in the Lives of Older People provides a unique set of portraits of forty members of this group who were interviewed in depth from their later seventies onwards. Focusing on sense of self-esteem and, especially, of continued meaning in life following the loss of a spouse and onset of frailty, this book sensitively illustrates (...) these persons' efforts to maintain independence, to continue to have a sense of belonging and to contribute to the lives of others. It examines both the psychological and the social resources needed to flourish in later life and draws attention to this generation's ability to benefit from strong family support and from belonging to a faith community. In conclusion, it questions whether future generations will be as resilient. (shrink)

In this important book Peter G. Brown seeks to chart a new future for the species that share the earth. He offers an innovative, yet historically grounded, argument for human rights to bodily integrity; to moral, religious, and political choice; and to subsistence that all persons owe each other irrespective of nationality. He also argues that we have direct moral obligations to non-humans - he calls this 'respect for the commonwealth of life'. Honouring these obligations requires a thorough regrounding (...) of human institutions. Through a series of careful arguments the reader is shown: *How we could reconceptualise economics from a growth orientation to an economics of stewardship as a moral end.*How governments could be thought of as trustees to protect human rights and commonwealth of life.*How civil society could be organised and property rights reconceptualised in service of these objectives.The book concludes with the argument that traditional prerogatives of nation states need to be transparent to enforceable international standards concerning human rights and the commonwealth of life, and offers a practical agenda for beginning this fundamental reorientation. (shrink)