Lakatos is considered to be a Popperian who adapted his Hegelian-Marxist training to critical philosophy. I claim this is too narrow and misses Lakatos' goal of understanding scientific inquiry as heuristic inquiry—something he did not find in Popper, but found in Polanyi. Archival material shows that his ‘new method' struggled to overcome what he saw as the Popperian handicap, by using Polanyi.

Concerns about the unsustainability of the conventional food system have brought attention to so called alternative food networks, which are widely thought to be more sustainable. However, claims made about AFNs’ sustainability have been subject to a range of criticisms. Some of them present counterevidence, while others have pointed to problematic underlying features in the academic literature and popular discourse that may hamper our understanding of AFNs’ sustainability. Considering these criticisms, together with the fact that the literature often addresses a (...) specific type of AFN or a specific sustainability-related issue, it is hard to form a clear overall picture of the sustainability promise of AFNs. In this article, we seek to contribute to a clearer understanding of this promise through a structured review, focusing on links between AFN characteristics and sustainability. Through an analysis of AFN conceptualizations reflected in the literature, we identify and consolidate their key characteristics. We then synthesize claims of how these characteristics may translate into sustainability, finding a wide range of potential direct and indirect impacts. Examining these from different angles, we find that the sustainability promise of AFNs found in these claims is qualified by the presence of potentially unaddressed issues, by criticisms regarding for example the evidence base of the assumed impacts and their power in addressing sustainability, and by considerations of how these impacts might play out in actual, real-life food networks. Indirect impacts of learning and participation may be highly significant for sustainability. We conclude with recommendations for research and practice. (shrink)

Four studies show that observers and readers imagine different alternatives to reality. When participants read a story about a protagonist who chose the more difficult of two tasks and failed, their counterfactual thoughts focused on the easier, unchosen task. But when they observed the performance of an individual who chose and failed the more difficult task, participants' counterfactual thoughts focused on alternative ways to solve the chosen task, as did the thoughts of individuals who acted out the event. We conclude (...) that these role effects may occur because participants' attention is engaged when they experience or observe an event more than when they read about it. (shrink)

Quantification is particularly seductive in times of global uncertainty. Not surprisingly, numbers, indicators, categorizations, and comparisons are central to governmental and popular response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This essay draws insights from critical data studies, sociology of quantification and decolonial thinking, with occasional excursion into the biomedical domain, to investigate the role and social consequences of counting broadly defined as a way of knowing about the virus. It takes a critical look at two domains of human activity that play a (...) central role in the fight against the virus outbreak, namely medical sciences and technological innovation. It analyzes their efforts to craft solutions for their user base and explores the unwanted social costs of these operations. The essay argues that the over-reliance of biomedical research on “whiteness” for lab testing and the techno-solutionism of the consumer infrastructure devised to curb the social costs of the pandemic are rooted in a distorted idea of a “standard human” based on a partial and exclusive vision of society and its components, which tends to overlook alterity and inequality. It contends that to design our way out of the pandemic, we ought to make space for distinct ways of being and knowing, acknowledging plurality and thinking in terms of social relations, alterity, and interdependence. (shrink)

Cet article se focalise sur un aspect précis du concept de temps dans l’éducation, sur les priorités que les temps futurs de l’éducation doivent choisir comme les directions les plus pertinentes pour nos sociétés. Les temps structurent et accompagnent la vie de chacun, marquent le passage entre les générations et deviennent un indicateur du développement des sociétés. Le rôle de la réflexion sur l’éducation est de s’atteler aux problématiques qui se dessinent à chaque période, et lui sont liées en termes (...) d’époque spécifique. Ceci implique d’ouvrir les frontières de la recherche vers des objets toujours vus comme nouveaux, au moins en partie, et d’envisager des opportunités et des défis importants et urgents, en ce que par leur condition de nouveauté, ces éléments inattendus sont susceptibles de former un projet tourné vers l’avenir. Au cours de cette réflection, nous proposons d’imaginer des futurs dans lesquels la résilience aux changements profonds et aux mutations complexes est présente. Celle-ci implique d’engager une réflexion sur l’avenir des connaissances et des valeurs qui sont plus importantes et urgents pour les savoirs et pour les sociétés. (shrink)

During the sixteenth century Galen's De constitutione artis medicae enjoyed a great success: in about fifty years it received four different Latin translations and three commentaries. Certainly this is also true of other medical classical texts, but such success is surprising for a treatise which did not have a wide circulation either in the Middle Ages or in the seventeenth century and later. In fact it is preserved in its entirety in only one Greek manuscript and in a Latin translation (...) by Niccolò of Reggio, who worked mainly for King Robert I in Naples in the first half of the fourteenth century. Furthermore, in his edition of 1679 René Chartier made a mistake, which the humanistic editors of the Greek Galen had avoided. The last part of the De const, art. med. itself enjoyed a considerable fortuna as an independent tract on prognosis in the Greek and Latin manuscript tradition. The editors of the Aldine and the Basle editions knew such an excerptum, at least in the manuscript Par. gr. 2165 of the sixteenth century, and rightly decided not to print it. Chartier found it in the manuscript Par. gr. 2269 of the fifteenth or sixteenth century, and published it in the wrong belief that it was a new treatise of Galen's . He was followed by Carl Gottlob Kühn in his edition of 1821, who printed the De const, art. med. in the first volume and the De praesagitura in vol. xix.497–511. The error was not publicly detected until Kalbfleisch in 1896. (shrink)

Between 1490 to 1625, twenty-two editions of Galen's opera omnia were published in Latin, while only two in Greek. In the Western world Galen's literary production was mostly known through Latin translations, even in the sixteenth century, when Greek medicine was being rediscovered in its original language. The paper discusses the twenty-two Latin editions of Galen's writings and how they evolved. In these editions the number of works increased, especially from 1490 to 1533, while later, from 1576–1577 to 1586, forged (...) commentaries on Hippocrates were added, when Galenic medicine was declining. Moreover, in 1490 Galen's works were printed in medieval translations from Arabic and Greek, while by 1541–1542 most of them had already received new humanist translations. The humanist translations, which started about 1480, depended on Greek manuscripts until 1525, when the Aldine provided the standard Greek text of Galen. Afterwards, the Greek manuscripts were used to correct the Latin, especially in the editions from 1541–1542 to 1565. Therefore the complete Latin editions included most of the philological work on Galen during the sixteenth century, as well as discussions on the authorship of some works, on the order in which they had to be read or printed, and on their selection for medical education. (shrink)

The paper focuses on Giulio Preti’s idea of discourse. According to Preti, everyday speech is the basis for scientific and logical research. The logical signs are not linguistic signs, are not a language, are not able to substitute the human language. Common speech contains historical presuppositions and fleeting figures of truth.

We examined how people think about how things could have turned out differently after they made a decision to cooperate or not in three social interactions: the Prisoner’s dilemma (Experiment 1), the Stag Hunt dilemma (Experiment 2), and the Chicken game (Experiment 3). We found that participants who took part in the game imagined the outcome would have been different if a different decision had been made by the other player, not themselves; they did so whether the outcome was good (...) or bad for them, their own choice had been to cooperate or not, and the other player’s choice had been to cooperate or not. Participants who only read about a fictional protagonist’s game imagined changes outside the protagonist’s control (such as the other player’s decision) after a good outcome but within the protagonist’s control (such as the protagonist’s decision) after a bad outcome. The implications for theories of counterfactual thinking and moral decision-making are discussed. (shrink)

The chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi was one of the first twentieth-century scientists to propose a program to resolve the internal conflict of the modern Enlightenment: scientific detachment and moral nihilism with humanist values. Stefania Jha’s intellectual biography places Polanyi in the context of his time and culture, analyzes his key philosophical ideas, and explicates the application—and at times misappropriation—of his work. Polanyi’s method was not laid out in his published works, and his vocabulary tends to make his writings (...) difficult to understand. By exposing the structure of his theory of tacit knowing, and by tracing the growth of his thinking, Jha shows how the various elements of his thought are integrated. Through examination of his philosophical roots in Kant and the complexity of his evolving thought, she counteracts the popular notion that Polanyi’s philosophy stands apart from the western philosophic tradition. Jha’s deep analysis makes Polanyi’s shift of focus from science to philosophy more intelligible, his philosophy more approachable, and the causes he championed—such as the freedom of science and cultural freedom—more understandable. Applying his notion of tacit knowing in practical directions, Jha seeks to bring the study of Polanyi’s philosophy out of the specialists’ enclave and into such fields as ethics and clinical medicine. (shrink)

Stefania Tutino shows that post-Reformation Catholic culture was a rich laboratory for our current moral and hermeneutical anxieties.

In the present paper, we discuss Husserl's deep account of the notions of ?calculation? and of arithmetical ?operation? which is found in the final chapter of the Philosophy of Arithmetic, arguing that Husserl is as far as we know the first scholar to reflect seriously on and to investigate the problem of circumscribing the totality of computable numerical operations. We pursue two complementary goals, namely: (i) to provide a formal reconstruction of Husserl's intuitions, and (ii) to demonstrate on the basis (...) of our reconstruction that the class of operations that Husserl has in mind turns out to be extensionally equivalent to the one that, in contemporary logic, is known as the class of partial recursive functions. (shrink)

. This paper aims to highlight some peculiarities of the semiotic square, whose creation is due in particular to Greimas’ works. The starting point is the semiotic notion of complex term, which I regard as one of the main differences between Greimas’ square and Blanché’s hexagon. The remarks on the complex terms make room for a historical survey in Aristotle’s texts, where one can find the philosophical roots of the idea of middle term between two contraries and its relation to (...) notions such as difference, position and motion. In the Stagirite’s non-logical works, the theory of the intermediate, or middle term, represents an important link between opposition issues and ethics: this becomes a privileged perspective from which to reconsider the semiotic use of the square, i.e., its inclusion in the semio-narrative structures articulating the sense of texts. (shrink)

Sexual Orientation as Symbolic Capital and as the "Object" of Symbolic Violence Sexual orientation is currently understood to be an innate disposition. Heterosexually oriented people are perceived to be in the majority and homosexually oriented people as the minority. Using Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of symbolic power, symbolic violence and symbolic capital, this paper aims to show how symbolic power and symbolic violence contribute to determining which sexual orientation is associated with the majority and minority populations, and establish what role is (...) played by the symbolic capital derived from sexual orientation. (shrink)

PASCAL’S SCEPTICISM Some of Pascal’s statements, like le „pyrronisme est le vrai”, suggest that he should be counted among sceptics, even though this claim seems to contradict the general appeal of his thought. Indeed, Pascal is known as a philosopher who desperately sought truth to finally find certainty in mystical experience. He did not deny that the human reason may have a chance to attain wisdom knowledge, provided that reason would not try to reach beyond its natural limits. Nevertheless, a (...) kind of skepticism is certainly present in his philosophy. Its nature needs clarification, which is the aim of this paper. Drawing on a distinction made by I. Dąmbska between theoretical and normative scepticism, the author introduces the notion of existential skepticism, which most adequately renders Pascal’s view on the inability of reason to grasp by its own power the very nature of human condition. Keywords: PASCAL, SKEPTICISM, NATURE OF HUMAN CONDITION. (shrink)

An ecosystem is like Kantian totality: it cannot be reduced to object of knowledge, since each element of it is internal to the contingent correlation which sustains it. Its accidental metamorphoses create worlds of sense which are infinitely on the way.

BackgroundSeveral investigations have addressed the process of balance adaptation to external perturbations. The adaptation during unperturbed stance has received little attention. Further, whether the current sensory conditions affect the adaptation rate has not been established. We have addressed the role of vision and haptic feedback on adaptation while standing on foam.MethodsIn 22 young subjects, the analysis of geometric and spectral variables of the oscillation of the centre of feet pressure identified the effects of vision, light-touch or both in the anteroposterior (...) and mediolateral direction over 8 consecutive 90 s standing trials.ResultsAdaptation was obvious without vision and tenuous with vision. With trial repetition, path length and median frequency diminished with EC while sway area and mean level of the spectrum increased. The low- and high-frequency range of the spectrum increased and decreased in AP and ML directions, respectively. Touch compared to no-touch enhanced the rate of increase of the low-frequency power. Spectral differences in distinct sensory conditions persisted after adaptation.ConclusionBalance adaptation occurs during standing on foam. Adaptation leads to a progressive increase in the amplitude of the lowest frequencies of the spectrum and a concurrent decrease in the high-frequency range. Within this common behaviour, touch adds to its stabilising action a modest effect on the adaptation rate. Stabilisation is improved by favouring slow oscillations at the expense of sway minimisation. These findings are preliminary to investigations of balance problems in persons with sensory deficits, ageing, and peripheral or central nervous lesion. (shrink)

Seeing through Zen: Encounter, Transformation, and Genealogy in Chinese Chan Buddhism. John R. McRae. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. xx, 204 pp. US $19.95. ISBN 0520237986.