An advanced introduction to the new philosophical anthropology and an understanding of the most contemporary developments in it.

We assume the existence of a specific G1 protein which is an initiator of DNA replication. This initiator is supposed to be synthesized according to Michaelis-Menten kinetics. In order to start DNA replication, it is assumed that this G1 specific protein must be produced in a required amount. Intra-cellular growth inhibitors and extra-cellular growth factors control the production of the initiator. This model allows to calculate the average G1 phase time as a function of the various chemical concentrations of nutrients, (...) enzymes, growth inhibitors and growth factors. This model is compared to cell kinetics experiments on a leukemic cell line responding to Interleukin 3 deprivation. The curves giving the experimental average G1 phase times with respect to Interleukin-3 concentrations are fitted by the mathematical model with a quite good agreement. (shrink)

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice brings together leading researchers from Canada, the United States, and Europe in an interdisciplinary collection of essays to chart the future of critical inquiry in gender and comedy studies.

What is the future of Philosophy of education? Or as many of scholars and thinkers in this final ‘future-focused’ collective piece from the philosophy of education in a new key Series put it, what are the futures—plural and multiple—of the intersections of ‘philosophy’ and ‘education?’ What is ‘Philosophy’; and what is ‘Education’, and what role may ‘enquiry’ play? Is the future of education and philosophy embracing—or at least taking seriously—and thinking with Indigenous ethicoontoepistemologies? And, perhaps most importantly, what is that (...) ‘Future’? These debates have been located in the work of diverse scholars: from the West, from Global South, from indigenous thinkers. In this collective piece, we purposefully juxtapose diverse takes on the future of these intersections. We have given up the urge to organise, place together, separate with subheadings or connect the paragraphs that follow. Instead, we let these philosophers of education and thinkers who use philosophical texts and ideas to sit together in one long read as potentially ‘strange and unusual bedfellows’. This text urges us to understand how these scholars and thinkers perceive our educational philosophical futures, and how the work and thinking they have done on thinking about what the future of that new key in philosophy of education may look like is embedded in a much deeper and richer literature, and personal experience. (shrink)

Institutionalism has become one of the dominant strands of theory within contemporary political science. Beginning with the challenge to behavioral and rational choice theory issued by March and Olsen, institutional analysis has developed into an important alternative to more individualistic approaches to theory and analysis. This body of theory has developed in a number of ways, and perhaps the most commonly applied version in political science is historical institutionalism that stresses the importance of path dependency in shaping institutional behaviour. The (...) fundamental question addressed in this book is whether institutionalism is useful for the various sub-disciplines within political science to which it has been applied, and to what extent the assumptions inherent to institutional analysis can be useful for understanding the range of behavior of individuals and structures in the public sector. The volume will also examine the relative utility of different forms of institutionalism within the various sub-disciplines. The book consists of a set of strong essays by noted international scholars from a range of sub-disciplines within the field of political science, each analyzing their area of research from an institutionalist perspective and assessing what contributions this form of theorizing has made, and can make, to that research. The result is a balanced and nuanced account of the role of institutions in contemporary political science, and a set of suggestions for the further development of institutional theory. (shrink)

volume 1. Developing institutional theory -- volume 2. New research agendas -- volume 3. Applying institutional theory.

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role (...) of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM – whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part 1 of this article took up the first two questions. Part 2 took up the second two questions. Part 3 now deals with Questions 5 & 6. Question 5 confronts the issue of utility, whether the manual design of DSM-III and IV favors clinicians or researchers, and what that means for DSM-5. Our final question, Question 6, takes up a concluding issue, whether the acknowledged problems with the earlier DSMs warrants a significant overhaul of DSM-5 and future manuals. As in Parts 1 & 2 of this article, the general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

A detailed analysis of joint-contribution of premises and conclusions in classically valid sequents is presented in terms of hypergraphs. In (Saint-Germier, P., Verdée, P., & Villalonga, P. T. (2024). _Relevant entailment and logical ground. Philosophical Studies_ (pp. 1–43). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02101-1 ), this idea of joint-contribution is introduced and motivated as a method for characterizing four kinds of relevant validity, in the sense of selecting the relevantly valid sequents among the classically valid sequents. The account in (Saint-Germier, P., Verdée, P., & Villalonga, (...) P. T. (2024). _Relevant entailment and logical ground. Philosophical Studies_ (pp. 1–43). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02101-1 ) is built on a calculus, called \(\textsf{GLK}^{\hbox {a}}\), which proves grounding claims for (enthymematically) valid sequents. In the present paper an adequate representation of \(\textsf{GLK}^{\hbox {a}}\) is given in terms of hypergraphs. The hypergraphs are a kind of diagrammatic proofs for Classical Propositional Logic, entirely based on the grounds of premises and conclusions. The hypergraphs and their visualization provide insights into the relations between premises and conclusions and into the way validity is produced by the binding of premises and conclusions via their partial grounds. They visualize the network of elements of the sequent that contribute to its logical validity. Non-contributing (i.e. irrelevant) premises and conclusions are then specified to be those that are disconnected from the network, however one constructs the graphs. (shrink)

Institutional explanations have been, and continue to be, one of the most important means of understanding the choices made by governments and other actors in society. This four volume set brings together a collection of the key readings in institutional theory and its applications to political phenomena. Although the principal focus of these readings is on institutional theory based in political science, articles from other disciplines that have been central to the development of theory in this discipline, or that have (...) substantial relevance for political phenomena, have also been included. Forming part of the SAGE Library of Political Science, this set contains a substantial overall introduction and conclusion as well as shorter introductions to each Part. It is an essential purchase for social science libraries around the world. (shrink)

Aggregation methods allow one to replace a large scale dynamical system (micro-system) by a reduced dynamical system (macro-system) governing a small number of global variables. This aggregation of variables can be performed when two time scales exist, a fast time scale and a slow time scale. Perturbation theory allows to obtain an approximated aggregated dynamical system which describes the behaviour of a few number of slow time varying variables which are constants of motion of the fast part of the micro-system. (...) Aggregation methods are applied to the case of the devastation of the great barrier reef by the starfishes. We recall the Antonelli/Kazarinoff model which implies a stable limit cycle for the corals and starfish populations. This prey-predator model describes the interactions between two species of corals and the starfish. Then, we generalize the Antonelli/Kazarinoff model to the case of two spatial patches with a fast part describing the starfish migration on the patches and the human manipulation of the communities by divers and, a slow part describing the growth and the interactions between the populations. We obtain an aggregated model governing the total coral densities on the patches and the total starfish population. This model can exhibit stable limit cycle oscillations and a Hopf bifurcation. The critical value of the bifurcation parameter is expressed in terms of the proportions of coral species and starfish on the two patches. This implies for example that rather than random killing of starfish by the Australian military, it may be better to send teams of divers to outbreaking reefs when they first occur who will then manipulate the community structure to increase protection. (shrink)

This volume is about searching for fundamental theory in physics which has become somewhat elusive in recent decades. Like a group of blind men investigating an elephant, one physicist postulates the trunk as a hose, another a leg as a tree, the body a wall or barrier, the tail a rope and the ears as a fan. The organizers of the Vigier series symposia strongly believe cross polination by exploring many avenues of seemingly disparate research is key to breakthrough discovery (...) and solicited papers on all areas of physics deemed pertinent in Astrophysics, Cosmology, nuclear physics, quantum theory, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, vacuum field theory and topology. (shrink)

A pattern of interaction that arises again and again in programming is a 'handshake', in which two agents exchange data. The exchange is thought of as provision of a service. Each interaction is initiated by a specific agent--the client or Angel--and concluded by the other--the server or Demon. We present a category in which the objects--called interaction structures in the paper--serve as descriptions of services provided across such handshaken interfaces. The morphisms--called (general) simulations--model components that provide one such service, relying (...) on another. The morphisms are relations between the underlying sets of the interaction structures. The proof that a relation is a simulation can serve (in principle) as an executable program, whose specification is that it provides the service described by its domain, given an implementation of the service described by its codomain. This category is then shown to coincide with the subcategory of 'generated' basic topologies in Sambin's terminology, where a basic topology is given by a closure operator whose induced sup-lattice structure need not be distributive; and moreover, this operator is inductively generated from a basic cover relation. This coincidence provides topologists with a natural source of examples for non-distributive formal topology. It raises a number of questions of interest both for formal topology and programming. The extra structure needed to make such a basic topology into a real formal topology is then interpreted in the context of interaction structures. (shrink)

The fact that Internet companies may record our personal data and track our online behavior for commercial or political purpose has emphasized aspects related to online privacy. This has also led to the development of search engines that promise no tracking and privacy. Search engines also have a major role in spreading low-quality health information such as that of anti-vaccine websites. This study investigates the relationship between search engines’ approach to privacy and the scientific quality of the information they return. (...) We analyzed the first 30 webpages returned searching “vaccines autism” in English, Spanish, Italian, and French. The results show that not only “alternative” search engines but also other commercial engines often return more anti-vaccine pages (10–53%) than Google (0%). Some localized versions of Google, however, returned more anti-vaccine webpages (up to 10%) than Google. Health information returned by search engines has an impact on public health and, specifically, in the acceptance of vaccines. The issue of information quality when seeking information for making health-related decisions also impact the ethical aspect represented by the right to an informed consent. Our study suggests that designing a search engine that is privacy savvy and avoids issues with filter bubbles that can result from user-tracking is necessary but insufficient; instead, mechanisms should be developed to test search engines from the perspective of information quality (particularly for health-related webpages) before they can be deemed trustworthy providers of public health information. (shrink)

According to an intuitive picture of relevant entailment, an entailment is relevant if all the formulas it contains contribute to its validity. In this paper, we provide a ground-theoretic analysis of this notion of contribution, and as a result of relevant entailment. We build a system of bilateral logical grounding within which we can derive classical entailment and analyze the contribution of premises and conclusions, in terms of a certain type of connection between their respective logical grounds. The resulting framework (...) is shown to have a strong unifying and explanatory power by bringing together the notions of grounding and relevance and explaining the commonalities and differences between alternative contribution-based accounts of relevance. (shrink)

Les travaux du Comité public de suivi Le comité a été créé le 12 avril 2016. À cette occasion, il a annoncé le dépôt d’un rapport de suivi à l’occasion du premier anniversaire du dépôt du rapport de la Commission Charbonneau. Dans les derniers mois, le comité s’est penché sur les initiatives répondant aux recommandations de la Commission, en étudiant les informations rendues publiques sur ce sujet. Aidé d’une équipe...

What does political science tell us about important real-world problems and issues? And to what extent does and can political analysis contribute to solutions? This is the challenge addressed by leading political scientists in this original text which will be essential reading for students and scholars alike.

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

This volume has 41 chapters written to honor the 100th birthday of Mario Bunge. It celebrates the work of this influential Argentine/Canadian physicist and philosopher. Contributions show the value of Bunge’s science-informed philosophy and his systematic approach to philosophical problems. The chapters explore the exceptionally wide spectrum of Bunge’s contributions to: metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of technology, moral philosophy, social and political (...) philosophy, medical philosophy, and education. The contributors include scholars from 16 countries. Bunge combines ontological realism with epistemological fallibilism. He believes that science provides the best and most warranted knowledge of the natural and social world, and that such knowledge is the only sound basis for moral decision making and social and political reform. Bunge argues for the unity of knowledge. In his eyes, science and philosophy constitute a fruitful and necessary partnership. Readers will discover the wisdom of this approach and will gain insight into the utility of cross-disciplinary scholarship. This anthology will appeal to researchers, students, and teachers in philosophy of science, social science, and liberal education programmes. 1. Introduction Section I. An Academic Vocation Section II. Philosophy Section III. Physics and Philosophy of Physics Section IV. Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Mind Section V. Sociology and Social Theory Section VI. Ethics and Political Philosophy Section VII. Biology and Philosophy of Biology Section VIII. Mathematics Section IX. Education Section X. Varia Section XI. Bibliography. (shrink)

Bayle's Dictionary is one of the best known and most influential works of the eighteenth century. Banned in Catholic France on first publication in 1697 it became a bestseller and ran into several editions and translations. Its merciless scientific and philosophical enquiring challenged all assumptions and blind reverence for authority, setting new standards for all future encyclopedists. This second English edition is enlarged from the fourth French edition, which in turn had been much enlarged from Bayle's manuscripts. Edited and with (...) a life of Bayle by the highly esteemed Pierre Desmaizeaux, this edition represents the most comprehensive English edition available. (shrink)

Peter G. Sobol - Pierre Gassendi's Philosophy and Science: Atomism for Empiricists - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.1 161-162 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Peter G. Sobol Mcfarland, Wisconsin Saul Fisher. Pierre Gassendi's Philosophy and Science: Atomism for Empiricists. Brill's Studies in Intellectual History 131. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2005. Pp. xxviii + 436. Cloth, $172.50. In 1971, Richard S. Westfall described Pierre Gassendi as "the (...) original scissors and paste man": an irrepressibly eclectic compiler whose Syntagma Philosophicum was published only after his death "when the author was finally beyond the possibility of adding and patching." Westfall here echoes Voltaire and Alexandre Koyré who, as quoted in Saul Fisher's.. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

Although living conditions have improved throughout history, protest, at least in the last few decades, seems to have increased to the point of becoming a normal phenomenon in modern societies. Contributors to this volume examine how and why this is the case and argue that although problems such as poverty, hunger, and violations of democratic rights may have been reduced in advanced Western societies, a variety of other problems and opportunities have emerged and multiplied the reasons and possibilities for protest.

The neural crest is a transient population of multipotent progenitors arising at the lateral edge of the neural plate in vertebrate embryos. After delamination and migration from the neuroepithelium, these cells contribute to a diverse array of tissues including neurons, smooth muscle, craniofacial cartilage, bone cells, endocrine cells and pigment cells. Considerable progress in recent years has furthered our understanding at a molecular level of how this important group of cells is generated and how they are assigned to specific lineages. (...) Here we review a number of recent studies supporting a role for Wnt signaling in neural crest induction, differentiation, and apoptosis. We also summarize the timing of expression of a number of Wnt ligands and receptors with respect to neural crest induction. BioEssays 25:317–325, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Bayle is famous for his defence of religious toleration. In this paper, I will call into question his main argument for toleration, his defence of the erring conscience. While it is often maintained that the argument is self-defeating, my claim will be more fundamental: His defence of the erring conscience does not even qualify as an argument for toleration in the first place, at least not for toleration as it is commonly understood. The argument has been misconceived by both Bayle (...) himself and his commentators. I will conclude by showing that this turns out to have positive effects on Bayle's other arguments for toleration, among which is a Lockean and a Rawlsian defence of toleration. (shrink)

In the conclusion to this multi-part article I first review the discussions carried out around the six essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis – the position taken by Allen Frances on each question, the commentaries on the respective question along with Frances’ responses to the commentaries, and my own view of the multiple discussions. In this review I emphasize that the core question is the first – what is the nature of psychiatric illness – and that in some manner all further (...) questions follow from the first. Following this review I attempt to move the discussion forward, addressing the first question from the perspectives of natural kind analysis and complexity analysis. This reflection leads toward a view of psychiatric disorders – and future nosologies – as far more complex and uncertain than we have imagined. (shrink)

Information?rich environments are created to promote data use in schools for the purpose of self?evaluation and quality assurance. However, providing feedback does not guarantee that schools will actually put it to use. One of the main stumbling blocks relates to the interpretation and diagnosis of the information. This study examines the relationship between data literacy competences, support given in interpreting the information, actual use of the feedback and potential school improvement effect. A randomised field experiment with 188 school principals from (...) primary education was set up and a post?test was used to investigate the effects of a support initiative. The results revealed that a minority of schools invested significantly in the interpretation and diagnosis of the school performance feedback (SPF), despite the fact that most of the respondents showed an interest in the SPF report. In addition, data competence support and the subsequent use of feedback were found to be limited. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss challenges associated with implementing a policy for Ancillary Care (AC) for related and unrelated (serious) adverse events during an Ebola vaccine trial conducted in a remote area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Conducting clinical trials in resourceconstrained settings can raise context-related challenges that have implications for study participants’ health and wellbeing. During the Ebola vaccine study, three participants were injured in road traffic accidents, but there were unexpected difficulties when trying to apply the (...) AC policy. First, because of the nature of the adverse events, the insurer refused to cover the costs. Second, the AC policy did not address treatments by traditional medicine, even though traditional medicines are frequently used and highly trusted in the study community. This highlighted a contrast between the researchers’ well-intentioned AC approach and the participants’ legitimate preferences. The way in which researchers should address their responsibility to provide AC is not straightforward; it requires contextualization. Our experience highlights the importance of involving community representatives and the local ethics committee to ensure development of an AC policy that is culturally and ethically appropriate. Additionally, the insurance contract should clearly stipulate which adverse events are linked to the trial participation, and thus eligible for coverage, to avoid controversies when claims are made. (shrink)

Pierre Thévenaz was Swiss. At the time of his death he was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lausanne. Earlier he had taught philosophyat the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale in Zurich, and at the University of Neuchâtel. A large part of his writings are contained in L'Homme et Sa Raison , De Husserl à Merleau-Ponty , La Condition de ia Raison Philosophique . A collection of his articles has been translated into English by James Edie and published under the (...) title. What is Phenomenology? (shrink)

This article locates Bourdieu’s sociology within the lasting controversy concerning the nature of causal explanation and interpretative understanding in the social sciences, with a special focus on the classical problem surrounding the alleged compatibility between these procedures. First, it is argued that Bourdieu’s praxeological and relational perspective on the social universe leads him not only to join the ‘compatibility field’ of the debate, but to sustain, more radically, the identity between explanation and understanding. Second, the article defends the view that (...) this methodological proposal is tied to a distinction often ignored among the commentators of Bourdieu’s oeuvre, namely that between objectivism, a mode of knowledge of the social which he intends to integrate and overcome in his structural praxeology, and determinism, adopted by the author as a fundamental scientific principle and, at the same time, a potentially emancipatory ethico-political tool bequeathed by his reflexive sociology. While basically sympathetic to Bourdieu’s perspective, the article concludes in a more critical vein, by defending the need to bridge the gap between the ‘pessimism of the intellect’ that marks his portrayal of the reflexive capabilities of the lay agent, on the one hand, and the ‘optimism of the will’ infused in the critical program of reflexive sociology, on the other. (shrink)

Als Verfasser der 1939 unter dem Pseudonym „Lucien Valdor" erschienenen Schrift „Le chrétien devant le racisme" gilt in französischen Bibliotheken und in den Werken einiger namhafter Wissenschaftler Romano Guardini. Der Beitrag weist im ersten Teil nach, dass der Autor des Buches, das die nationalsozialistische Rassenlehre aus christlicher Sicht entschieden zurückweist, in Wirklichkeit jedoch der Jesuitenpater Pierre Lorson, ein gebürtiger Deutscher, war. Der zweite Teil dokumentiert die deutsch-französische Vermittlertätigkeit Pater Lorsons. Die Übersetzung von Guardinis Werk „Der Herr", die er während (...) des Zweiten Weltkriegs anfertigte , wurde in Frankreich mehrfach aufgelegt . Außerdem präsentierte der Jesuit, ein engagierter Repräsentant der Pax Christi, den französischen Lesern im Jahre 1948 einen Vortrag Guardinis an der Sorbonne zur Friedensidee .The book „Le chrétien devant le racisme" that emphatically rejects the National Socialist ideology of racism from the Christian viewpoint was published under a pseudonym, "Lucien Valdor", in 1939. French libraries and distinguished scholars like Henri de Lubac attribute it to Romano Guardini. In the first part of the present contribution, however, the Jesuit father Pierre Lorson who was of German origin is identified as the true author. The second part reports on father Lorson's role as a German-French mediator. His translation of Guardini's book "Der Herr" , prepared during World War II, was published in 1946 und reprinted in France several times . Moreover, in 1948 this Jesuit who was a committed advocate of the Pax Christi Movement presented the French readership to a lecture on the idea of peace held by Guardini at the Sorbonne. (shrink)