Following in the fashion of Stephen Jay Gould and Peter Medawar, one of the world's leading scientists examines how "pure science" is in fact shaped and guided by social and political needs and assumptions.

One of our most brilliant evolutionary biologists, Richard Lewontin has also been a leading critic of those--scientists and non-scientists alike--who would misuse the science to which he has contributed so much. In The Triple Helix, Lewontin the scientist and Lewontin the critic come together to provide a concise, accessible account of what his work has taught him about biology and about its relevance to human affairs. In the process, he exposes some of the common and troubling misconceptions that misdirect (...) and stall our understanding of biology and evolution.The central message of this book is that we will never fully understand living things if we continue to think of genes, organisms, and environments as separate entities, each with its distinct role to play in the history and operation of organic processes. Here Lewontin shows that an organism is a unique consequence of both genes and environment, of both internal and external features. Rejecting the notion that genes determine the organism, which then adapts to the environment, he explains that organisms, influenced in their development by their circumstances, in turn create, modify, and choose the environment in which they live.The Triple Helix is vintage Lewontin: brilliant, eloquent, passionate, and deeply critical. But it is neither a manifesto for a radical new methodology nor a brief for a new theory. It is instead a primer on the complexity of biological processes, a reminder to all of us that living things are never as simple as they may seem. (shrink)

The 65th year of a scholar who has devoted 40 years to editing and elucidating Robert Grosseteste provides us with a collection of essays. Not surprisingly, they emanate from colleagues and former students of Richard Dales and reflect his interest, among other concerns, in Grosseteste's aspectus et affectus - range of vision and disposition of mind - those twin peaks with which the 13th century thinker helped to get Christian thought through Aristotle without mutual destruction.

The philosophical problem of the relation of symbol to truth is far from solved, but there have been significant advances toward its solution. It is the common Christian understanding that God is Truth , and that all truths must ultimately find union in him. This is to say that all genuine truths must be compatible. The true conclusions of genuine science must be compatible with the true conclusions of genuine theology. Or, to bring this general statement to a more particular (...) level, the true conclusions of Biblical scholarship must be compatible with the true conclusions of the natural sciences. When this compatibility is lacking, and it so often is, we must assume that the conclusions of one field of truth-seeking or the other do not partake of the Truth which is God. And there is no guarantee that theology as a field of truth-seeking cannot err. Another characteristic of genuine truth is that it is not dependent upon any particular environment or milieu —either social, cultural, philosophical, or even theological. Unless we are to make the common but dangerous division of sacred and secular, of holy and profane, claim that these areas of human experience have nothing to do the one with the other, compartmentalise our thought, and ask, ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’, it must be concluded that there is no one specifically Christian milieu . Genuine truths must be true at all times, in all places, and for all men. But since we are not gods, we must hold these truths in what St Paul called earthen vessels , vessels shaped and moulded by our particular milieu. (shrink)

"[This book] proposes new foundations for the Bayesian principle of rational action, and goes on to develop a new logic of desirability and probabtility."—Frederic Schick, _Journal of Philosophy_.

Then, in 1960, Carnap drew up a plan of articles for Studies in Inductive Logic and Probability — a surrogate for Volume II of the ...

This brief paperback is designed for symbolic/formal logic courses. It features the tree method proof system developed by Jeffrey. The new edition contains many more examples and exercises and is reorganized for greater accessibility.

’Ethical codes of conduct are superficial and distracting answers to the question of how to promote ethical behaviour in corporate life.’The author is Principal Lecturer in the Department of Business Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Richard Jeffrey is beyond dispute one of the most distinguished and influential philosophers working in the field of decision theory and the theory of knowledge. His work is distinctive in showing the interplay of epistemological concerns with probability and utility theory. Not only has he made use of standard probabilistic and decision theoretic tools to clarify concepts of evidential support and informed choice, he has also proposed significant modifications of the standard Bayesian position in order that it provide a (...) better fit with actual human experience. Probability logic is viewed not as a source of judgment but as a framework for explaining the implications of probabilistic judgments and their mutual compatability. This collection of essays spans a period of some 35 years and includes what have become some of the classic works in the literature. There is also one completely new piece, while in many instances Jeffrey includes afterthoughts on the older essays. (shrink)

This paper examines the lawsuits brought by state and local government entities against prescription opioid producers and sellers. It examines their potential liability as well as some of the defenses they might raise. The paper also discusses multidistrict litigation and government lawsuits in state court. It concludes that litigation is not the best solution to the opioid crisis.

This chapter contains sections titled: Philosophy and theology God and natural philosophy Religion and political philosophy.

After a very brief introduction, Davidson begins with an informed and detailed account of the views of Aristotle and his major commentators, whose writings had enormous influence on the development of the medieval traditions. Davidson's account is supplemented with a critical exposition of the relevant teachings from the Plotiniana Arabica, from al-Kindi, and from a treatise on the soul attributed to Porphyry in the Arabic tradition. Impressive as all this is, it is simply stage setting for Davidson's detailed accounts of (...) the doctrines and arguments of al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes. (shrink)

Preface 9 Introduction 13 1. Classical Materialism 25 2. Enlightenment Materialism 61 3. Nineteeth-Century Materialism 91 4. Twentieth-Century Materialism 129 5. Materialism at the Turn of the Millenium 175 6. A Summary Definition of Materialism 229 Bibliography 233 Index of Names 243.

A powerful movement is afoot to create a national computerized system of health records. Advocates claim it could save the health delivery system billions of dollars and improve the quality of health services. According to Lawrence Gostin, a leading commentator on privacy and health records, this new infrastructure is “already under way and [has] an aura of inevitability.” When it is in place, almost any information that is viewed as relevant to a decision in the health care delivery system would (...) be available to a large and yet undetermined number of individuals. The transformation of the collection and communication of health information from texts housed by health care providers and facilities to data electronically transmitted through networks of linked computers has significant implications for confidentiality and for data collection in scientific research. The best evidence clearly indicates that most people in the United States consider confidentiality for health information important and worry that the increased computerization of health records will result in inappropriate disclosure. (shrink)

This study of the interaction of the Aristotelian and Augustinian views of the soul traces the disarray of Latin concepts by 1240, the solutions of Bonaventure ...

Born in 1126 to a family of Maliki legal scholars, Ibn Rushd, known as Averroes, enjoyed a long career in religious jurisprudence at Seville and Cordoba while at the same time advancing his philosophical studies of the works of Aristotle. This translation of Averroes’ Long Commentary on Aristotle’s _De Anima_ brings to English-language readers the complete text of this influential work of medieval philosophy. Richard C. Taylor provides rich notes on the Long Commentary and a generous introduction that discusses (...) Averroes’ most mature reflections on Aristotle’s teachings as well as Averroes' comprehensive philosophical views on soul and intellect. It is only in the Long Commentary that Averroes finally resolves to his satisfaction the much vexed issue of the nature of intellect, Taylor shows. (shrink)

Prophecy is conspicuous by its complete absence from all three of the commentaries on De Anima by Averroes. However, prophecy and philosophical metaphysics are discussed by him in his Commentary on the Parva Naturalia, a work written before his methodological work on philosophy and religion, the Faṣl al-maqāl, generally held to have been written ca. 1179-1180. The analyses and remarks of Averroes presented in that Commentary have been characterized by Herbert Davidson as “extremely radical” to the extent that “The term (...) prophet would, on this reading, mean nothing more than the human author of Scripture; and the term revelation would mean a high level of philosophical knowledge”. In the present article I discuss Averroes on method in matters of religion and philosophy as well as prophecy in philosophically argumentative works and in dialectical works, with particular consideration of the reasoning of his Commentary on the Parva Naturalia. I conclude that Averroes found in philosophy and its sciences the most complete and precise truth content and highest levels of knowledge and understanding and from them constructed his worldview, while he found prophecy and religion to be like an Aristotelian practical science in that they concern good and right conduct in the achievement of an end attained in action, not truths to be known for their own sake. (shrink)

L'A. esamina in particolare il Commento grande al De anima. In primo luogo evidenzia l'insegnamento averroista in relazione al tema dell'intelletto e dell'individuo, in secondo luogo esamina alcune proposizioni relative all'immortalità dell'anima individuale, ma sottolinea la difficoltà di conciliare tali affermazioni di Averroè con la dottrina dell'intelletto. L'ultima parte dello studio propone un esame critico del recente studio di O.N. Mohammed, Averroes, Aristotle, and the Qur'an on Immortality «International Philosophical Quarterly» 33 37-55.

In his seminal 1935 study of the internal senses in medieval2 thought, Harry Austryn Wolfson presented a detailed account of the development of the "classification and terminology" of the Greek, Arabic, Hebrew and Latin traditions on sensory powers which he called, "post-sensationary faculties,"~ that is, powers which are posterior to the five external senses. In explaining the complex development of teachings on the internal senses from Aristotle's texts, Wolfson recounted the Aristotelian understanding of Galen who specifically locates the OHXVOTl'ttKOV or (...) cogitative faculty in the middle ventricle of the brain and John of Damascus whose equally Aristotelian account follows the Stagirite in attributing judgments of goodand bad as well as combination and separation of ideas to the omvoTl'ttKTJ 'lfUXTt or the cogitative soul and to ouxvma or cogitation.4 One of the many fruits of Wolfson's discussion was an explanation of the development of the Avicennian doctrine of estimation as arising"out of a desire to supplement a deficiency which seemed to exist in Aristotle's account of the actual motion of pursuit and avoidance which is observed in both man and animal. "5 With wahm used to describe instinctive behavior consequent upon non-rational animal imagination analogous to human reasoning or deliberation, Wolfson wrote, the Arabic fikr now was tobe associated with imagination and no longer was to be seen as simply the power of combining and separating ideas. "In the case of ouivotcx combined with imagination, it is the combination and separation of images, i.e., the construction out of images of things existent, new composite images of things nonexistent, or the breaking up of images of things existent into images of things nonexistent."6 From this moment on, and not without some foundation in Aristotle's own texts as indicated, fikr/ cogitatio and their related derivative terms are used to characterize human rational powers which are essentially activities involving the bodyand bodily instruments insofar as imagination is necessarily bodily. (shrink)

A comprehensive treatment of selected aspects of developmental reading. Based on a mastery teaching philosophy and a diagnostic-prescriptive approach, this book relies heavily on the authors' practical experience in working with teachers, principals, and supervisors in many states and in Canada.