ArgumentThis article studies the roles three science-based models play in Dutch policy and decision making processes. Key is the interaction between model construction and environment. Their political and scientific environments form contexts that shape the roles of models in policy decision making. Attention is paid to three aspects of the wider context of the models: a) the history of the construction process; b) the political and scientific environments; and c) the use in policy processes over longer periods of time. Models (...) are more successfully used when they are constructed in astablepolitical and scientific environment. Stability and certainty within a scientific field seems to be a key predictor for the usefulness of models for policy making. The economic model is more disputed than the ecology-based model and the model that has its theoretical foundation in physics and chemistry. The roles models play in policy processes are too complex to be considered as straightforward technocratic powers. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the effects of social distancing for embodied lived experience in relation to dementia care and experiences of dementia. From a critical phenomenological perspective, I focus specifically on the safety measures of physical distancing and face-masking in pandemic times, asking whether they might risk marginalizing and disembodying people with dementia, especially in isolated healthcare settings. As much as these measures offer physical protection against spreading the virus, I consider how they might disrupt intersubjective processes (e.g., calming (...) social or therapeutic touch) and contribute to “an alienated bodily communication” (Dolezal 2020). From Husserl and Merleau-Ponty’s philosophies of embodiment and enactive theories of intersubjectivity, to more recent phenomenological work on illness, many authors argue that our existential being-in-the-world is embodied in multimodal and intersubjective ways (Fuchs and De Jaeger 2009; Carel 2016; Ratcliffe 2008; Kontos 2011). For this reason, our lived bodies need to stay in touch and positively interact with other lived bodies. Based on empirical studies of multisensory and interactive therapy in nursing homes before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, I emphasize the effects of distant socializing for patients, care, and carers. My aim is to address the broader structures and discursive practices, which have undergone dramatic changes due to the spread of COVID-19. (shrink)

Are culture driven ethical conflicts apparent in the discourse of the protagonists? A multi-year, multi-cultural study of managers by Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner resulted in two conclusions relevant to business ethics. The first is that intercultural business conflicts can often be traced to a finite set of cultural differences. The second is that enough similarities exist between cultures to provide the grounds for conflict resolution. The research reported here gives credence to their study when applied to an ethical conflict viewed from (...) French and American perspectives. (shrink)

Gottlob Frege lehrte 44 Jahre in Jena als Dozent der Mathematik, aber bisher ist sehr wenig über seine beruflichen, philosophischen und persönlichen Umstände in dieser Zeit bekannt. Dieser Band stellt den Stand der Forschung auf diesem Gebiet vor: Er beginnt mit der Frage, wie Frege aus seiner Heimatstadt Wismar in Mecklenburg überhaupt nach Jena kam (durch Vermittlung des Mathematiklehrers Leo Sachse, später ein Beispielname in Freges Schriften), und setzt sich mit der Frage fort, wie er sich dort im Umfeld der (...) Universität etablierte (mit seinem Mathematikerkollegen J. Thomae und im Umkreis seines Lehrers und Förderers Ernst Abbe, des Gründers der Zeiss-Stiftung). Beleuchtet wird Freges Stellung in der Mathematik seiner Zeit, aber auch sein Verhältnis zu seinem philosophischen Kollegen R. Eucken, das mit zwei erstmals gedruckten Grußkarten Freges dokumentiert wird. Erstmals dargestellt wird auch, wie Frege zu seinem Adoptivsohn (und späteren Erben) Alfred kam und was er für ihn getan hat. Weitere Themen sind Freges Rezeption des Mathematikers Hankel; einige Mißverständnisse des Neukantianers Natorp bezüglich Freges Definition der Zahl; der Gegenstand der "Grundgesetze der Arithmetik", sowie die ursprüngliche Absicht, die Frege mit seiner berühmten Unterscheidung von Sinn und Bedeutung verfolgte. Der Band enthält zahlreiche bisher unbekannte Dokumente zu Freges Leben und Werk, darunter amtliche Schreiben Freges, zwei Schreiben an Eucken, drei Briefe Thomaes, in denen dieser über Frege berichtet, sowie einen Klappentext von 1903, der drei Schriften Freges anzeigt. Eine umfassende, kommentierte Forschungsbibliographie zu Frege und seinem Jenaer Umfeld beschließt den Band. Die Herausgeber lehren Philosophie an der Universität Jena. (shrink)

In den Jahren nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg wurde im Jenaer Zeiss-Werk im Auftrag des Deutschen Museums in München das Projektionsplanetarium als immersives Modell des Universums entwickelt. In ihm hallte eine lange Geschichte von Himmelsgloben, Armillarsphären, Astrolabien und mechanischen Planetarien nach, die seit der Antike als astronomische Demonstrationsobjekte gedient hatten. Erstmals aber fand sich diese Aufgabe nun mit einer Simulation des raum-zeitlichen In-der-Welt-Seins des Menschen verbunden.

"In den Jahren nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg wurde im Jenaer Zeiss-Werk im Auftrag des Deutschen Museums in München das Projektionsplanetarium als immersives Modell des Universums entwickelt. In ihm hallte eine lange Geschichte von Himmelsgloben, Armillarsphären, Astrolabien und mechanischen Planetarien nach, die seit der Antike als astronomische Demonstrationsobjekte gedient hatten. Erstmals aber fand sich diese Aufgabe nun mit einer Simulation des raum-zeitlichen In-der-Welt-Seins des Menschen verbunden. In the years following the First World War, commissioned by the German Museum in Munich, (...) the projection planetarium was developed as an immersive model of the universe at the Zeiss plant in Jena. In it, a long history of celestial globes, armillary spheres, astrolabes, and mechanical planetaria resonated, which had served as astronomical demonstration objects since ancient times. For the first time, however, this task was associated with a simulation of man’s spaciotemporal being-in-the-world. ". (shrink)

In 1890, the famous Jena Glass Works of Carl Zeiss released the Anastigmat photographic lens to great fanfare. The nearly faultless realism it generated seemed to conclude a chapter in optical technology that had progressed in a predetermined manner since photography’s origins. But why exactly had Zeiss developed its expensive mechanism, and what drove photographers to buy it? This article proposes that the consistent focus and varied depth of field that the Anastigmat provided were not in and of (...) themselves the desired goals of the new corrected lens, but that they were instead visible signals of a pictorial model that makers and consumers had been circling since the public introduction of photography in 1839. The goal was a strict verisimilitude that remained stubbornly external to the medium, an illusionistic standard that had largely been mediated by painting and was now apparently possible in photography as well. But this history of pictorial perfection and the Anagstimat was not inevitable. Other lenses developed around the same time answered to dramatically different technological and aesthetic imperatives. They tell an alternative story of photography’s identity that is less tethered to mimetic fidelity and the idealized human vision with which photography was increasingly associated. (shrink)

The Greenough stereomicroscope, or “Stemi” as it is colloquially known among microscopists, is a stereoscopic binocular instrument yielding three-dimensional depth perception when working with larger microscopic specimens. It has become ubiquitous in laboratory practice since its introduction by the unknown scientist Horatio Saltonstall Greenough in 1892. However, because it enabled new experimental practices rather than new knowledge, it has largely eluded historical and epistemological investigation, even though its design, production, and reception in the scientific community was inextricably connected to the (...) new epistemological ideals of the life sciences caught between natural history and modern science. The development of the microscope will be contextualized within the scientific and technological landscape, showing how Greenough navigated his way through this terrain, and what led him to sow the seeds for the stereoscopic microscope. The historical controversy over the optical mechanism, through which the instrument would generate the desired depth perception, and how this quality was embedded into laboratory practice, will be examined. Subsequently, it will become evident that the specific image of nature produced by the stereoscopic microscope corresponded to the new ideals of the life sciences and their representation. (shrink)