This paper examines the neglected topic of Martin Luther King's comprehension and employment of dialectics. When we examine King's political and ideological development dialectically, we see that there are stages in the development of his thought. Most importantly, the material context of the African-American liberation struggle, as a process of objective development, shaped and directed his thinking as a dialectician. Consequently, the materialcontext of the African-American liberation movement served as a dynamic process which greatly affected King's understanding of dialectics as (...) a tool of analysis. King's early conception of dialectics is not Hegelian. However, after 1965, King becomes more Hegelian, approximating a regulative dialectic. (shrink)

This paper examines the neglected topic of Martin Luther King's comprehension and employment of dialectics. When we examine King's political and ideological development dialectically, we see that there are stages in the development of his thought. Most importantly, the material context of the African-American liberation struggle, as a process of objective development, shaped and directed his thinking as a dialectician. Consequently, the materialcontext of the African-American liberation movement served as a dynamic process which greatly affected King's understanding of dialectics as (...) a tool of analysis. King's early conception of dialectics is not Hegelian. However, after 1965, King becomes more Hegelian, approximating a regulative dialectic. (shrink)

The following article will examine three argumentative strategies to address a recent topic of debate in the philosophy of religion known as the “Gap Problem.” It aims to study the “Stage II” of cosmological arguments, where the goal is to establish the theistic properties or attributes that identify the first cause or necessary being with the concept of God. The unique contribution of this study lies in the formalized and systematic presentation of the various solutions proposed by authors in (...) the philosophical field, synthesizing their central ideas and presenting them in the form of arguments. (shrink)

Successful applications of hierarchical complexity to the behaviors of organisms, animals and humans, and social entities evidence the scaling properties of self-similarity, thus the bounded fractal characteristics of orders of hierarchical complexity. The theory specifies an identical sequence of discrete-state transition steps required from each stage of performance to the next. It repeats at all scales. Tasks nested within the step sequence evidence self-similarity with the orders of complexity. This model introduces questions about noise categories when system tasks are (...) fully accounted for, dependent, self-similar, and measurable. Ubiquitous transition steps are inherent dynamics of evolution. (shrink)

Performance Anxieties looks at the on-going debates over the value of psychoanalysis for feminist theory and politics--specifically concerning the social and psychical meanings of racialization. Beginning with an historicized return to Freud and the meaning of Jewishness in Freud's day, Ann Pellegrini indicates how "race" and racialization are not incidental features of psychoanalysis or of modern subjectivity, but are among the generative conditions of both. Performance Anxieties stages a series of playful encounters between elite and popular performance texts--Freud meets Sarah (...) Bernhardt meets Sandra Bernhard; Joan Riviere's masquerading women are refigured in relation to the hard female bodies in the film Pumping Iron II: The Women ; and the Terminator and Alien films. In re-reading psychoanalysis alongside other performance texts, Pellegrini unsettles relations between popular and elite, performance and performative. (shrink)

1. The birth of dialogue from the spirit of the Polish October political uprising: From social civil war and simple exclusions (even physical) to negotiations andcomplicated “Dialogue of Contradictions” within national entity. Almost 25 years before the much later birth and international triumph of the Solidarity Union, the “Polish October” of 1956, history’s first victorious anti-Stalinist political uprising and most certainly a historical milestone for Poland—if not all of Europe—was the main harbinger of change in all fundamental spheres of life.2. (...) Secularism in the place of atheism or the acceptance of pluralism at the price of indifference :the “our little stability” ideology3. International cooperation as a fundamental inspiration and “umbrella”4. Patriotism as a “civic religion” mainly for unbelievers and even mediatisation of materialism and Christianity5. Towards a new complementarity/synergy-founded universalism6. New names, new problems7. Synopsis, updates8. The next stage: Dialogue and Universalism Virtual University experimental project. (shrink)

Metastasis is one of the clinical parameters that has a strong negative influence on the prognosis of cancer patients. In recent years, significant advances have furthered our understanding of this process at the molecular and biological levels. This paper will discuss recent discoveries relating to the earliest, intra‐tumoral stages of metastasis in cancer cells, specifically focusing on: (i) the development of metastatic traits during primary tumorigenesis; (ii) intrinsic and extrinsic cancer cell programs associated with malignant traits; (iii) the intra‐tumoral migration (...) patterns of cancer cells and the dynamic roles played by the Rho/Rac GTPases and epithelial‐mesenchymal transitions in this process; and (iv) the genetic strategies used by metastatic cancer cells to promote intra‐tumoral cell migration and their subsequent escape to peripheral tissues. Finally, the therapeutic and diagnostic relevance of this information will be discussed, as well as potential future developments. (shrink)

I wish to prove in this article that Aristotle divides the ideal scheme of moral education into three stages: first, preliminary education, the most important part of which is the young’s musical-poetic education presented in Politics VIII.5–7; second, moral habituation, in the strict sense explained in Nicomachean Ethics II.1–4, which corresponds to the adult citizens’ military and subordinate political life, in which they learn how to rule through being ruled; finally, theoretical moral education, which means the learning of Nicomachean Ethics (...) and Politics by those mature statesmen who wish to become excellent public educators. (shrink)

Book synopsis: This is the first volume of a two-volume introduction to and guide through philosophy. It is intended to orientate, assist, and stimulate the reader at every stage in the study of the subject. Eleven extended essays have been specially commissioned from leading philosophers; each surveys a major area of the subject and offers an accessible but sophisticated account of the main debates. An extended introduction maps out the philosophical terrain and explains how the different subjects relate to (...) each other. The first part of the book deals with the foundations of philosophical enquiry: epistemology; philosophical logic; methodology; metaphysics; and the philosophy of mind. The second part offers four historical chapters, two on ancient and two on modern philosophy, introducing great thinkers from the past, explaining and discussing their ideas, and showing the value of studying them today. The third part comprises two chapters devoted to questions of value, in ethics and aesthetics. Full annotated bibliographies are provided at the ends of chapters to serve as guides to further reading. This is real philosophy, not simplified philosophy; it will be accessible for the beginner but equally valuable for the third-year student. Deep and challenging questions are not shirked; the reader will be given a sense of involvement in the practice of philosophy today. (shrink)

Amongst the remarkable variety of motility that cells display, cytokinesis (cell division) is particularly striking. Dramatic changes in cell shape occur before, during and after cytokinesis. Myosin II is implicated in the ‘rounding up’ of cells prior to cytokinesis, and is essential in the formation of the contractile cleavage furrow during cytokinesis. Now it appears that myosin II plays a role in all stages of cytokinesis, as a recent report(1) suggests that myosin II drives post‐mitotic cell spreading. A similar type (...) of motile mechanism operating in cell spreading may occur in other cell types in other situations. (shrink)

The history of the Second Vatican Council and the theological and archpastoral activities of Karol Wojtyla are inextricably linked, because it was with the participation in the Cathedral of the life of the bishop that a new stage began - he became one of the leaders of the movement for the renewal of the Catholic Church. In 1962-1963, Bishop Karol Wojtyla participated in the work of the 1 st and 2 nd sessions of the Second Vatican Council. It was (...) at this time in Rome that he met with Cardinal Franz König, one of the most influential and intellectual figures in the church in Europe. This was the beginning of an extremely important shift in the career of Bishop C. Wojtyla1. In October 1962, he participates in the work of the first session of the Second Vatican Council as one of his youngest and most active members1 2. Next year, at the closing of the second session, he is appointed archbishop, Metropolitan Krakowski. (shrink)

Comparison of the preliminary objection to Haskar's and Adams's critiques of Molinism. The difficulty with Haskar's 'Power Inference Principle;' Adams's "New Anti-Molinist Argument;" William Lane Craig's recent response to Adams; Craig's defense of the 'emphemeral' Molinist logical possibility of doing otherwise; the two stages of the Existentialist's alternative strategy against Molinism.

What is the relationship between ambition and love? While discussions of happiness often mention romances, friendships, aspirations, and achievements, the relationship between these features is seldom discussed. This paper aims to fill that gap. It begins with a suggestive remark made by La Rochefoucauld and repeated by Adam Smith: ‘Love often leads on to ambition, but seldom does one return from ambition to love.’ To explain what accounts for such a pattern, I introduce a distinction between stage-setting emotions and (...) master emotions, which is useful for illuminating relationships between a number of emotions, including ambition and love. Drawing on things Smith says elsewhere in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, I conclude by highlighting one way the pattern might be reversed and ambition might lead to love. (shrink)

The first international Congress for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science was held at Stanford University in August of 1960. Occupying the vacuum created by the demise of the Unity of Science movement, it was the culminating event, on an international scale, of a long process of reorganization of communities of the philosophy of science and of logic that took place in the fifteen years following World War II—a process that involved many competing interests and personalities. Alfred Ta...

The first international Congress for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science was held at Stanford University in August of 1960. Occupying the vacuum created by the demise of the Unity of Science movement, it was the culminating event, on an international scale, of a long process of reorganization of communities of the philosophy of science and of logic that took place in the fifteen years following World War II—a process that involved many competing interests and personalities. Alfred Ta...

The classical roots of ecological sensibility lie not only in the ?theatre of reason? (Greek nature philosophy and natural history), but also in religious mythology. More important than the world seen as the ?theatre of the gods?, however, was the radically ecological view of death stated in mythic form by Empedocles and the Pythagoreans. The very emergence of the ?theatre of reason? marked a significant stage of man's alienation from nature (and from himself), though the struggle between rationalistic anthropocentrism (...) and a more ecological perspective reappeared within philosophy itself, so that the legacy of ?the Philosopher? is a dual one. (shrink)

: In this paper, the author will demarcate three main stages of the development of Étienne Gilson’s doctrine on Christian philosophy through an examination of some of Gilson’s key works, treated in chronological order. Thus, he proceeds to explicate how Gilson’s doctrine developed from its gestational stage in the 1920s through the first Christian philosophy debate of the 1930s, into its 2nd stage of birth and infancy from the 1930s through the early 1950s, ending with the 3rd (...) class='Hi'>stage of maturity in the later 1950s and 1960s. Furthermore, he notes that implicit throughout those three stages are notions of Christian philosophy as existing in two modes: one as the philosophical component present within theology and the second properly speaking outside of theology though by no means outside of the influence of Christianity. Additionally, Gilson’s influence upon St. John Paul II’s treatment of Christian philosophy in Fides et Ratio is addressed. The paper culminates in showing how Gilson’s mature doctrine on Christian philosophy is relevant as a guide for doing Christian philosophy in this Third Christian Millennium. (shrink)

I argue that the tragedies envisioned by the Symposium are two, both of which are introduced in the dialogue: (i) within months of Agathon's victory, half the characters who celebrated with him suffer death or exile on charges of impiety; (ii) Socrates is executed weeks after the dramatic date of the frame. Thus the most defensible notion of tragedy across Plato's dialogues is a fundamentally epistemological one: if we do not know the good, we increase our risk of making mistakes (...) and of suffering what are sometimes their catastrophic consequences. (shrink)

Estimating the effect of a randomized treatment and the effect that is transmitted through a mediator is often complicated by treatment noncompliance. In literature, an instrumental variable (IV)-based method has been developed to study causal mediation effects in the presence of treatment noncompliance. Existing studies based on the IV-based method focus on identifying the mediated portion of the intention-to-treat effect, which relies on several identification assumptions. However, little attention has been given to assessing the sensitivity of the identification assumptions or (...) mitigating the impact of violating these assumptions. This study proposes a two-stage joint modeling method for conducting causal mediation analysis in the presence of treatment noncompliance, in which modeling assumptions can be employed to decrease the sensitivity to violation of some identification assumptions. The use of a joint modeling method is also conducive to conducting sensitivity analyses to the violation of identification assumptions. We demonstrate our approach using the Jobs II data, in which the effect of job training on job seekers’ mental health is examined. (shrink)

I present a ‘stage-theoretical’ interpretation of the supervaluationist semantics for the growing-block theory of time according to which the ‘nodes’ on the branching tree of historical possibilities are taken to be possible stages of the growth of the growing-block. As I will argue, the resulting interpretation (i) is very intuitive, (ii) can easily ward off an objection to supervaluationist treatments of the growing-block theory presented by Fabrice Correia and Sven Rosenkranz, and (iii) is also not saddled by the problems (...) affecting the supervaluationist version of the growing-block theory defended by R. A. Briggs and Graeme A. Forbes. (shrink)

In the late 1930s, a few years before the start of the Second World War, a small number of European philosophers of science emigrated to the United States, escaping the increasingly perilous situation on the continent. Among the first expatriates were Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach, arguably the most influential logical empiricists of their time. In this two-part paper, I reconstruct Carnap’s and Reichenbach’s surprisingly numerous interactions with American academics in the decades before their move in order to explain the (...) impact of their arrival in the late 1930s. This second part traces Reichenbach’s development and focuses on his frequent interactions with American academics throughout the 1930s. I show that Reichenbach was quite ignorant about developments in Anglophone philosophy in the first stages of his career but became increasingly focused on the United States from the late 1920s onwards. I reconstruct Reichenbach’s efforts to find a job across the Atlantic and show that some of his English publications—most notably Experience and Prediction—were attempts to change the American narrative about logical empiricism. Whereas U. S. philosophers identified scientific philosophy with the views of the Vienna Circle, Reichenbach aimed to market his probabilistic philosophy of science as a subtler alternative. (shrink)

According to Karl Popper, the evolution of science, logically, methodologically, and even psychologically, is an involved interplay of acute conjectures and blunt refutations. Like biological evolution, it is an endless round of blind variation and selective retention. But unlike biological evolution, it incorporates, at the stage of selection, the use of reason. Part I of this two-part paper begins by repudiating the common beliefs that Hume’s problem of induction, which compellingly confutes the thesis that science is rational in the (...) way that most people think that it is rational, can be solved by assuming that science is rational, or by assuming that Hume was irrational (that is, by ignoring his argument). The problem of induction can be solved only by a non-authoritarian theory of rationality. It is shown also that because hypotheses cannot be distilled directly from experience, all knowledge is eventually dependent on blind conjecture, and therefore itself conjectural. In particular, the use of rules of inference, or of good or bad rules for generating conjectures, is conjectural. Part II of the paper expounds a form of Popper’s critical rationalism that locates the rationality of science entirely in the deductive processes by which conjectures are criticized and improved. But extreme forms of deductivism are rejected. The paper concludes with a sharp dismissal of the view that work in artificial intelligence, including the JSM method cultivated extensively by Victor Finn, does anything to upset critical rationalism. Machine learning sheds little light on either the problem of induction or on the role that logic plays in the development of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Some photographs show determinate features of a scene because the photographed scene had those features. This dependency relation is, rightly, a consensus in philosophy of photography. I seek to refute many long-established theories of photography by arguing that they are incompatible with this commitment. In Section II, I classify accounts of photography as either single-stage or multi-stage. In Section III, I analyze the historical basis for single-stage accounts. In Section IV, I explain why the single-stage view (...) led scientists to postulate “latent” photographic images as a technical phenomenon in early chemical photography. In Section V, I discredit the notion of an invisible latent image in chemical photography and, in Section VI, extend this objection to the legacy of the latent image in digital photography. In Section VII, I appeal to the dependency relation to explain why the notion of a latent image makes the single-stage account untenable. Finally, I use the multi-stage account to advance debate about “new” versus “orthodox” theories of photography. (shrink)

Sometimes Strauss argues as if he thought it possible to understand man without raising questions about his relations to other things, and hence about his place in the whole. But when they are viewed in their broader context, such arguments are seen not to be his final word. Man's humanity cannot be understood in its own terms alone. The human soul differs from everything else in that it is "... open to the whole and therefore more akin to the whole (...) than anything else is." In ordinary usage, "whole" implies completeness and autonomy. But the openness of the soul--i.e., of a part--to the whole can only mean that the whole is open to itself. The whole is, then, not, in the ordinary sense of the term, whole. Nor is the soul which is "open" to it. Stripped of myths, "... the human soul is... more akin to the whole than anything else is" because neither of them is whole. The same conclusion follows when one tries to understand the definition of the philosopher as the man animated by quest for knowledge of the whole. Qua philosopher he knows neither that there is a whole, nor what it might be if there were one. To define the philosopher as the man who knows that he does not know only paraphrases the difficulty. It does not solve it. For "know" is here used equivocally. The same equivocation is at play in the comment "... one cannot know that one does not know without knowing what one does not know". Admittedly "knowledge of ignorance is not ignorance." The philosopher believes and perhaps divines more than he actually knows. All men do. The essential difference between the philosopher and other men may well consist in the fact that the philosopher distinguishes more conscientiously than do others between what he knows and what he believes, and that he strives more single-mindedly than do they to transform as large a share of his beliefs as possible into knowledge. He may conceivably at some point be said to have reached the stage where his aspirations have become reasoned expectations. But that is as far as he can possibly go as long as he remains a philosopher and has not become a wise man or a god. Until and unless the philosopher knows, in the strong sense of the term, he can no more decide whether his aspirations could be fulfilled than he can swim before getting wet. (shrink)

In political philosophy, trust, legality and violence are interdependent, with different weights, connecting and excluding. Trust structures suffer most from an anticipation of violence or violence itself. Violence systematically takes place in three stages, according to the german sociologist Jan-Philipp Reemtsma: expulsive, abusive, and homicidal violence, all of which have their distinctive and recurring verbal and nonverbal equivalents. The hyperviolence phenomenon goes beyond this, however, and even mutilates the dead body, whether actually physically, or through massive propaganda that declares the (...) enemy a killable non-human. The goal of hyperviolence is a demonstration of absolute power over victim and bystander by means of a traumatizing violation of trust, reason, and individuality. At the same time, hyperviolence is an atavism in modernity (a historical regression); therefore the practitioner of hyperviolence is the anti-modern type par excellence. The french philosopher Georges Bataille introduces here the concept of "sovereignty" and the "sovereign" as the perpetrator also of hyperviolence. The sovereign's sovereignty is the immediate experience of the moment, free of any responsibility, with a rhetoric of mock justification of each of the three types of violence including hyperviolence. With the ahistorical view of escalating violence and the denial of any rational legitimation by the sovereign as the actor of hyperviolence, the structure of trust and the contract system of democracy itself is also endangered. So the question is, how does one unmask the "sovereign" on his way to undermine legal relations already in his linguistic patterns, in his non-linguistic codes, and how can escalation be prevented by early detection? Keywords: violence, hyperviolence, criminal linguistics, Georges Bataille, sovereign. (shrink)

As we have seen, the crucial step in Nietzsche’s argument for his early doctrine is summed by in the following remark: ‘If we are forced to comprehend all things only under these forms, then it ceases to be amazing that in all things we actually comprehend nothing but these forms’ (1979, pp. 87–8). Before eventually learning to be suspicious of it, Nietzsche spends a good deal of time wondering instead what it would mean to live with the conclusion that (what (...) he calls) “the Kantian philosophy” apparently thus forces upon one, if one allows oneself to take this step. The different ways of living with its implications that Nietzsche goes on to distinguish in his early writings play an important role in his own subsequent retrospective understanding of the stations of the dialectic through which his thought had to traverse in its movement towards his mature perspectivism. Nietzsche contrasts these, in turn, with different possible versions of stage-two perspectivism. It is these finer discriminations that Nietzsche makes among the possible ways of occupying the second and third stages of the dialectic that will briefly concern us in this part of the paper. (shrink)

The Second Vatican Council was built within a solidly constituted tradition in the Catholic Church. All councils were held within the traditional and legal parameters of the Church. The question about the condition of possibility of a renewal Council under this tradition shows relevant. The Vatican II is the result of a negotiation between renewal and preservation. Pope John XXIII personally coordinated the construction of the legitimacy of the new event, following steps which may be rescued during the preparatory stages (...) of the great assembly. The reading of this process from sociological parameters may elucidate its plausibility within the tradition and the Church's bureaucratic organization. Pope John started ably a church renewal process, opening a new phase in the long Catholic tradition. Under his Pope condition, he knew how to seed the idea of a revamping event in the name of a divine inspiration and with the set of bishops’ participation of the Church. (shrink)

Priming of lineage‐specific genes in pluripotent embryonic stem cells facilitates rapid and coordinated activation of transcriptional programmes during differentiation. There is growing evidence that pluripotency factors play key roles in priming tissue‐specific genes and in the earliest stages of lineage commitment. As differentiation progresses, pluripotency factors are replaced at some primed genes by related lineage‐specific factors that bind to the same sequences and maintain epigenetic priming until the gene is activated. Polycomb and trithorax group proteins bind many genes in pluripotent (...) cells generating bivalent domains that contain both active and repressive histone modifications. The properties of polycomb proteins suggest that they act as gatekeepers, helping to maintain silencing in pluripotent stem cells while establishing a chromatin environment that is permissive for priming by sequence‐specific factors. The overall effect of factor‐mediated priming is to initiate the input of information required for cell differentiation before the first lineage choices have been made. (shrink)

Separated decision-making for maintenance and spare ordering is unrealistic in the industry, so this paper aims to optimize them together. A joint policy of inspection-based preventive maintenance and spare ordering considering two modes of spare ordering, namely, a regular order and an emergency order, is proposed for single-unit systems using a three-stage failure process. If the system is recognized to be in the minor defective stage, the original inspection interval is shortened and a regular order is placed. However, (...) replacement is undertaken preventively or correctively if the severe defective stage is identified or a failure occurs. Depending on the system state and the state of the regular ordered spare when replacement is needed, all possible scenarios are considered to construct optimization model I. The decision variables are the optimal inspection interval and the times of shortening the original inspection interval. Additionally, model II on the basis of an assumption that the spare is always ordered at time 0 is also developed. The results from a numerical example illustrated the applicability and the effectiveness of model I compared to model II, and the irregular inspection policy is validated to be cost-saving compared to the regular inspection policy. (shrink)

Original, or 'old', institutional economics (OIE) – also known as 'institutionalism' – played a key role in its early stages; it could be said that it was once the 'mainstream economics' of the time. This period ran approximately from the first important contributions of Thorstein Veblen in 1898 to the implementation of the New Deal in the early 1930s, where many institutionalists played a significant role. However, notwithstanding its promising scientific and institutional affirmation, institutional economics underwent a period of marked (...) decline that spanned from the mid-1930s to the late 1980s, when a new season for institutional economics was set in motion. In order to cast some light on this complex issue – without any claim of completeness – we have organised the work as follows: in the first section we consider the main interpretations of this phenomenon. In the subsequent sections we analyse a number of 'endogenous' aspects which might have played a significant role in the period of decline: (i) the relations of institutional economics with Keynes's macroeconomic theory; (ii) the links between theoretical and empirical analysis and the supposed lack of a clear theory; (iii) the interdisciplinary orientation. (shrink)

The article is dedicated to the problems of European political identity and European identity as a whole conception and as a foundation for European integration. Before 24 February 2022, European political identity had been in crisis. The contradictions between the EU member states seemed to be hardly resolvable. The Russian aggression against Ukraine gave a strong impetus to the formation of European identity. However, it is still a negative incentive for unity and solidarity rather than cohesion around positive values, as (...) well as from the outset the European integration was caused by devastating World War II as a negative experience, which should never be repeated. The text makes use of methods peculiar to the philosophical sciences, i.e. critical textual analysis, historical-analytical and comparative methods. (shrink)

Like in all industrial societies, in the United States economic planning was a prominent political-economic ideal in the wake of World War II. Paying attention to the postwar decades, this article focuses on how and why private American industrial corporations appropriated the practice and rhetoric of planning, in the context of the outbreak of the Cold War. This corporate appropriation displaced debates about planning into a social and cultural register in the United States. Paradoxically, the outward-looking U.S. state accepted robust (...) state planning regimes abroad even as the Cold War hampered the legitimacy of state-centered economic planning at home. The paradox helped set the stage for the global crisis of industrial societies after 1968 that brought the postwar era to a close and would ultimately undermine economic planning everywhere. (shrink)

In a Socratic spirit of coming to a better understanding of man who finds himself in the midst of a "crisis about knowledge," this dissertation proposes to examine the human subject as a cognitive animal by turning to the long and rich tradition of Aristotelian philosophy, largely ignored today, to focus on and gain inspiration from one of its principal currents of reflection: nous inasmuch as this refers to the human intellectual operation intuiting the substantial level of reality, which can (...) then anchor scientific knowledge of it. ;The examination of nous is based on the text Posterior Analytics II.19, in which Aristotle briefly presents the "habit of nous" as the culmination of a non-rational-discursive process by which the principles of demonstration are acquired. By looking at each of the stages mentioned in the text, there is offered the opportunity to study in detail the different human cognitive capacities and the cognition they provide. This also allows for a comparison and contrast of the capacities and the relationships that can be established between them, which is helpful in understanding man as a cognitive animal, in general, and in determining, in particular, the place and role of intuition in human cognition. ;Starting with Aristotle's views on logic and science, it is established that the rational-discursive operations of the intellect presuppose other non-rational-discursive operations of the intellect, which opens the door to another intellectual operation that can complement the first-mentioned. This other intellectual operation is seen to be closely related to sense cognition and its powers, the means through which the intellect makes contact with external reality. The most important of the different levels of cognition provided by the senses is its highest level, experience; and since human experience involves the activity of the intellect, induction of the principles of science is seen to be an act of the intellect starting from the intelligibility of sense experience. It is concluded, finally, that this act of the intellect is essentially intuitive, consisting mainly in an intellectual grasp of a substance, an insight into its essence. (shrink)

The Koran being the “Great Code” of Islamic culture and civilization, the Koranic disciplines (‘ulūm al-Qur'ān) and Koranic hermeneutics are considered in the Islamic representation among the most important fields of knowledge. We shall deal here with the spectrum of “classical” Koranic exegesis from the II./viii. to the XII./xix. century according to a chronological point of view. After an introduction on exegesis and Koranic disciplines (A), we shall examine the principal stages and elements of the Koranic exegesis from the II./viii. (...) to the beginning of the IV./x. century (B); then the question of continuity and change of this exegesis from the second half of the IV./x. to the XII./xix. century CE (C). At the end we shall deal with some peculiarities of this discipline (D). The question of the formative period per se and that of mystical exegesis have been dealt with by us more lengthy elsewhere. (shrink)

Japan is a country largely lacking supplies of many essential natural resources including petroleum, coal, and iron ore. As her industrial base and economy expanded during the 1920s and 1930s, Japan's dependence on imports of these resources became increasingly evident. The onset of the Depression in the 1930s further threatened Japan's lifeline, and, in an effort to become economically independent and self-sufficient in natural resources , Japan's militaristic government pursued a policy of territorial expansion. Beginning in 1937, Japan's military forces (...) swept out of Manchuria into China and then into Southeast Asia in search of strategic materials such as petroleum, coal, copper, zinc, and rubber. To achieve independence in petroleum, the Japanese developed a dual approach: they would acquire natural petroleum sources in Southeast Asia and at the same time establish a synthetic fuel industry for the conversion of coal to oil. Actually, the Japanese had begun research on synthetic fuel in the 1920s, only a few years after other countries, such as Germany and Britain, that lacked sources of natural petroleum. They did excellent laboratory research on the coal hydrogenation and Fischer-Tropsch conversion processes, but in their haste to construct large synthetic fuel plants they bypassed the intermediated pilot-plant stage and failed to make a successful transition from small- to large-scale production. Unable to synthesize liquid fuels from coal, they instead derived significant quantities from the technologically simpler coal carbonization and shale oil distillation processes. In the last year of World War II, the Japanese attempted to revive their synthetic fuel industry and entered into an agreement with IG Farben for technical assistance. Germany's defeat ended this final effort. The Japanese synthetic fuel industry presents a good case study of technological failure. It shows that high-quality basic scientific research does not necessarily translate into large-scale technological success. (shrink)

The Hegel Lectures SeriesSeries Editor: Peter C. HodgsonHegel's lectures have had as great a historical impact as the works he himself published. Important elements of his system are elaborated only in the lectures, especially those given in Berlin during the last decade of his life. The original editors conflated materials from different sources and dates, obscuring the development and logic of Hegel's thought. The Hegel Lectures series is based on a selection of extant and recently discovered transcripts and manuscripts. The (...) original lecture series are reconstructed so that the structure of Hegel's argument can be followed. Each volume presents an accurate new translation accompanied by an editorial introduction and annotations on the text, which make possible the identification of Hegel's many allusions and sources. Lectures on the History of PhilosophyVolume II: Greek PhilosophyHegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy offer one of the best points of entry to his philosophical system. The second volume covers a thousand years of ancient Greek philosophy; this is the period to which Hegel devoted by far the most attention, and which he saw as absolutely fundamental for all that came after it. This edition sets forth clearly, and for the first time for the English reader, what Hegel actually said. It forms part of OUP's Hegel Lectures series, presenting accurate new translations accompanied by editorial introductions and annotations.These lectures challenged the antiquarianism of Hegel's contemporaries by boldly contending that the history of philosophy is itself philosophy, not just history. It portrays the journey of reason or spirit through time, as reason or spirit comes in stages to its full development and self-conscious existence, through the successive products of human intellect and activity. Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy proved to be extremely influential on the intellectual history of the past two centuries. These lectures are crucial to understanding Hegel's own systematic philosophy in its constructive aspect, as well as his views on the centrality of reason in human history and culture. The volume on Greek Philosophy covers the first one thousand years, the period to which Hegel devoted by far the most attention, and which he saw as absolutely fundamental for all that came after it. This edition adapts the considerable editorial resources of the German edition that it translates, to the needs of the general reader as well as the serious scholar, so as to constitute an unparalleled resource on this topic in the English language. (shrink)

The Greek Prophetologion manuscript Q12 from the library of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, copied in 1275, contains some thirty marginal notes written in Alanic, a pre-stage of Ossetic. On leaf 100r, the glossator provided the Greek heading τ παραμο(ν) τς μέ(σο) ν´ (i.e. μεσοπεντηκοστς), ‘Eve of Mid-Pentecost’, with a gloss πητζινάκ χουτζάου πάν which most probably means ‘Pecheneg Sunday’. A Pecheneg festival established after the decisive victory of John II over the Pechenegs is attested by both (...) Nicetas Choniates and Ecloga Basilicorum. It is no wonder that this festival reached distant Alania, since the 12th century was a heyday for the Orthodox Christianity in the Northern Caucasus. The battle took place near Beroea in spring of the “fifth year” of John II's reign. The majority of historians tend to opt for 1122, but we would not exclude 1123 either. Whatever the year, the marginal note from Q12 may help in establishing the day of the battle, which is not mentioned either in Greek or in Scandinavian sources. If the battle of Beroea took place in 1122, it happened either on the 20th–22nd or on the 24th–26th of April. If the battle was fought in 1123, the day of the victory could then be either the 10th–12th or the 14th–16th of May. (shrink)

The history of drug/vaccine development has included major advances guided primarily by risk/benefit analyses concerning the innovative agent, not by evidence-based clinical trials (Phase I–IV). Because the approval for new drugs is hindered under the present process, the system requires restructuring. The Phase I/II study period should be more flexible, using the “environment of knowledge” about the new agent, plus risk/benefit assessments. Phase III, as presently constructed, does not add new adverse events data, it provides a narrower profile of drug (...) efficacy than properly done Phase II studies, and placebo-controlled trials continue to raise unresolved ethical and social issues. Phase III studies should be abandoned for most drugs, and substituted with properly powered Phase II doseranging studies plus careful post-marketing surveillance. Phase III should be a penalty for poor drug development, not a regulatory requirement. (shrink)