Teratogenesis poses a real problem for all those who wish to see the natural world as a success story, and this includes the Neoplatonists. On their view even ordinary biological reproduction is governed by principles ultimately derived from intelligible Forms. Thus, the generation of terata would seem to call into question the very efficacy of these intelligible principles in the sensible world, since these would seem to be cases in which matter has gotten the upper hand over the intelligible. Although (...) the corpus of surviving Neoplatonic works offers no systematic discussion of the problems surrounding teratology, it is possible to find a number of passages which deal with the explanation of terata. In this article these passages are collected and discussed. It is argued inter alia that, far from capitulating in the face of this putative evidence against the full efficacy of intelligible causes in the world, the Neoplatonists managed to use these phenomena to the advantage of their own views. (shrink)

This article addresses in the first place the use made by Emmanuel Levinas of the contrast between the Bible and Greece. The author attempts to place this contrast in the context of the historical division between Athens and Jerusalem, the Hellenic and the Hebraic, etc. It is argued that one of the main motivations for the presence of this contrast in Levinas s thought is his attempt to address Martin Heidegger's appeal to the relation between the Greeks and the Germans. (...) However, the article claims that it remains the case that Levinas never entirely succeeds in integrating an adequate account of ethnic identities into his ethics of alterity. /// O presente artigo tem por objectivo principal proceder a um estudo do uso feito por Emmanuel Levinas do contraste entre a Bíblia e a Grécia. Trata-se, pois, de uma tentativa de colocar este contraste no contexto da divisão histórica entre Atenas e Jerusalém, entre o mundo helénico e o mundo hebraico, etc. O autor argumenta que uma das principais motivações para a presença deste contraste no pensamento de Levinas é a sua tentativa de responder à associação estabelecida por Martin Heidegger entre a Grécia e a Alemanha. Por outro lado, contudo, o artigo também reclama que Levinas não foi completamente bem sucedido na sua tentativa de integrar de forma adequada as identidades étnicas na sua ética da alteridade. (shrink)

This article explores the political meanings of a relatively unexplored dimension of Edmund Burke's thought: the monster. After first showing the extent to which the figure of the monster appears throughout Burke's work, the article speculates on some of the political reasons for Burke's use of the metaphor of the monstrous. These reasons are rooted in the categories of the aesthetic developed in the Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, and also in his (...) political fear of a new collective entity only beginning to emerge on the historical stage: the proletariat. The article therefore has three aims: first, to contribute to the developing body of literature on Burke's aesthetic ideology; second, to deepen our knowledge of the Gothic tropes in Burke's writings; and third, to broaden our conception of the way conservative ideology conceptualizes order and the threats to that order. (shrink)

At the beginning of the 9th century, anatomists aimed at detaching themselves from a mere classifying and descriptive approach to establish a philosophic science studying form patterns and relationships. Organic forms were part of a research program, grounded on how their components were related from a structuralist perspective, as it is for Étienne and Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, founders of teratology. The monster was a subject freed from superstition and subjected to the gaze of the philosopher of nature who, in (...) analyzing it, found the same laws that nature employed in shaping any normal individual. (shrink)

Les monstres sont des objets inamicaux qui contestent le pouvoir de la raison à dire l'ordre de la nature. La tératologie des Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire est l'une des grandes tentatives rationnelles qui pacifie la figure du monstre en montrant comment ce qui s'apparente au désordre le plus irréductible administre la plus claire des leçons sur l'ordre et l'agencement de la nature dans les êtres vivants. Mais quelque chose du monstre résiste : son apparaître comme monstre. Quelle est la leçon philosophique de (...) cette perception de l'écart monstrueux? Ne pourrait-il pas être un modèle adéquat de compréhension des vivants et de la vie en permettant de faire l'épochè de l'idée d'adaptation? Il faudrait alors penser une errance propre à la vie."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Gli straordinari mutamenti indotti dalle bio-tecnologie stanno radicalmente modificando il discorso e le pratiche della riproduzione e la relazione degli umani con la materia corporea. In un orizzonte che si nutre di un immaginario di catastrofe imminente, si moltiplicano gli interrogativi sull'origine della vita e i poteri della scienza. Occorre dunque ripensare alla relazione antica, complessa e multiforme che c'è tra le madri, i mostri e le macchine, relazione che passa per il corpo ma anche per la sua rappresentazione simbolica. (...) Il corpo gravido e quello mostruoso si mischiano da sempre nell'immaginario maschile come qualcosa di orribile e meraviglioso, affascinante e mortalmente temibile.(Alice). (shrink)

Life and the living (on Aristotelian biohorror) -- Supernatural horror as the paradigm for life -- Aristotle's De anima and the problem of life -- The ontology of life -- The entelechy of the weird -- Superlative life -- Life with or without limits -- Life as time in Plotinus -- On the superlative -- Superlative life I: Pseudo-Dionysius -- Negative vs. affirmative theology -- Superlative negation -- Negation and preexistent life -- Excess, evil, and non-being -- Superlative life II: (...) Eriugena -- Negation in the periphyseon -- The quaestio de nihilo: on nothing -- The quaestio de nihilo: superlative nothing -- Dark intelligible abyss -- Apophasis -- The apophatic logic -- Negation in Frege and Ayer -- Negation vs. subtraction in Badiou -- Negation and contradiction in Priest -- The dialetheic vitalism of negative theology -- Ellipses: Suhraward and the luminous void -- Univocal creatures -- On spiritual creatures -- Life as form in Aristotle -- The concept of the creature -- Univocity I: Duns Scotus vs. Aquinas -- Univocity in Aquinas' Summa theologica -- Univocity in Duns Scotus' Opus oxoniense -- The common nature of the creature -- Univocity II: Duns Scotus vs. Henry of Ghent -- Univocity in Henry of Ghent -- Negative vs. privative indetermination -- Absolute indetermination -- Univocity III: Deleuze's scholasticism three variations -- Spinoza et le problème de l'expression -- Différence et répétition -- Cours de Vincennes -- Univocal creatures -- Ellipses: Dgen and uncreated univocity -- Dark pantheism -- Everything and nothing -- Life as spirit in Aquinas -- The concept of the divine nature -- Immanence I: Eriugena's periphyseon -- Natura and the unthought -- Universal life -- Four statements on pantheism -- Immanence II: Duns Scotus' reportatio Ia -- Univocal immanence -- Actual infinity -- The pathology of the triple primacy -- Immanence III: Nicholas of Cusa's De docta ignorantia -- The coincidence of opposites -- The folds of life -- Absolute vs. contracted pantheism -- Speculative pantheism (Deleuze's interlocutors) -- Pantheism and pure immanence -- The insubordination of immanence in Deleuze -- Scholia I: the isomorphism of univocity and immanence -- Scholia II: the vitalist logic of common notions -- Scholia III: the life of substance -- Dark pantheism -- Ellipses: Wang Yangming and idealist naturalism -- Logic and life (on Kantian teratology) -- The wandering line from Aristotle to Kant -- Critique of life -- Spectral life and speculative realism -- Ontotheology in Kant, atheology in Bataille -- The night land. (shrink)

In identifying intrinsic molecular chance and extrinsic adaptive pressures as the only causally relevant factors in the process of evolution, the theoretical perspective of the Modern Synthesis had a major impact on the perceived tenability of an ontology of dispositional properties. However, since the late 1970s, an increasing number of evolutionary biologists have challenged the descriptive and explanatory adequacy of this “chance alone, extrinsic only” understanding of evolutionary change. Because morphological studies of homology, convergence, and teratology have revealed a (...) space of possible forms and phylogenetic trajectories that is considerably more restricted than expected, evo-devo has focused on the causal contribution of intrinsic developmental processes to the course of evolution. Evo-devo’s investigation into the developmental structure of the modality of morphology – including both the possibility and impossibility of organismal form – has led to the utilisation of a number of dispositional concepts that emphasise the tendency of the evolutionary process to change along certain routes. In this sense, and in contrast to the perspective of the Modern Synthesis, evo-devo can be described as a “science of dispositions.” This chapter discusses the recent philosophical literature on dispositional properties in evo-devo, exploring debates about both the metaphysical and epistemological aspects of the central dispositional concepts utilised in contemporary evo-devo and addressing the epistemological question of how dispositional properties challenge existing explanatory models in evolutionary biology. (shrink)

This paper attempts to reconcile the conceptual conflict between typological and population thinking to provide a philosophical foundation for extended evolutionary synthesis. Typological thinking has been considered a pre-Darwinian, essentialist dogma incompatible with population thinking, which is the core notion of Darwinism. More recent philosophical and historical studies suggest that a non-essentialist form of typology has some advantages in the study of evolutionary biology. However, even if we adopt such an epistemological interpretation of typological thinking, there still remains an epistemological (...) and methodological conflict between these two styles of thinking. How can we relate typological thinking with population thinking in pursuit of more integrated or interconnected research into evolutionary biology? I propose that homology thinking, which is another style of thinking that recognizes homologous characters, provides a common basis for typological representations of character states and for character dynamics in an evolving population. Good examples of this bridging role are found in teratology and breeding, where variation and novelty are recognized in developmental and morphological traits, gene expression patterns, and so on. Essentialism-free, dynamic views of homology have great potential to reconcile typological and population thinking and to set the stage for the EES. (shrink)

In this article we discuss two divergent accounts of non-human animals as analog models of human biomedical phenomena. Using a classical account of analogical reasoning, toxicologists and teratologists claim that if the model and subject modeled are substantially similar, then test results in non-human animals are likely applicable to humans . However, the same toxicologists report that different species often react very differently to the same chemical stimuli . The best way to understand their findings is to abandon the classical (...) view of analogical - i.e., linear - reasoning, and replace it with a version informed by chaos theory. We briefly outline the current understanding of chaos, and trace its implications for toxicology and teratology. (shrink)

This study examines how hunger narratives and performances contribute to a reconsideration of neglected or prohibited domains of thinking which only a full confrontation with the body's heterogeneity and plasticity can reveal. From literary motif or psychosomatic symptom to revolutionary gesture or existential malady, the double crux of hunger and disgust is a powerful force which can define the experience of embodiment. Kafka's fable of the "Hunger Artist" offers a matrix for the fast, while its surprising last-page revelation introduces disgust (...) as a correlative of abstinence, conscious or otherwise. Grounded in Kristeva's theory of abjection, the figure of the fraught body lurking at the heart of the negative grotesque gathers precision throughout this study, where it is employed in a widening series of contexts: suicide through overeating, starvation as self-performance or political resistance, the teratological versus the totalitarian, the anorexic harboring of death. In the process, writers and artists as diverse as Herman Melville, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Christina Rossetti, George Orwell, Knut Hamsun, J.M. Coetzee, Cindy Sherman, Pieter Breughel, Marina Abramovic, David Nebreda, Paul McCarthy, and others are brought into the discussion. By looking at the different acts of visceral, affective, and ideological resistance performed by the starving body, this book intensifies the relationship between hunger and disgust studies while offering insight into the modalities of the "dark grotesque" which inform the aesthetics and politics of hunger. It will be of value to anyone interested in the culture, politics, and subjectivity of embodiment, and scholars working within the fields of disgust studies, food studies, literary studies, cultural theory, and media studies. (shrink)

In this paper I have not, of course, presented all the embryological data that can be collected from the Talmudic and Midrashic literature. More details can be found in Julius Preuss' classical work on biblical and talmudic medicine, now available in Fred Rosner's English translation and in a French M.D. thesis by Martine Michel.75 I also did not present any data on teratology, and did not deal with the very rich Jewish mystical lore, the Cabbala. But a few comments (...) are in order here about the material on embryology.There are very few original ideas in the Talmudic corpus on embryology, but it is obvious that the Sages were well aware of the Greek and Roman theories on embryology.The fact that the Talmud is a compilation that was built up slowly, during several centuries, explains why the information recorded in it cannot be ascribed solely to one school of thought or one clear-cut influence.When a definite problem was difficult to solve because there were many different theories about it, the Sages based their opinion on a famous experiment that seemed to offer guarantees of validity. This was the case with the controversial problem of the formation of the embryo and its sexual differentiation, where the Sages made use of an experiment allegedly initiated by Cleopatra.The Sages were ready to discuss scientific problems with non-Jewish scholars and even to accept their arguments. This was the case with the important topic of the time of the entry of the soul into the embryo. But the legal conclusions drawn from the Sages' opinion were not consistent with those declared by Churth Fathers such as Tertullian. Embryotomy, for instance, was permitted by Jewish law.Wide interest, scholarly discussions, suggestive descriptions and readiness to inquire and to obtain detailed information characterized the Talmudic discussions of embryology.In conclusion, I quote a Talmudic text that reviews the whole process of embryological development through the sequence of prayers of a faithful Jew who learns that his wife is expecting a baby.The first three days, [he should pray to the Lord] that the seed should not putrefy.From the third to the fortieth day: that the child should be a male.From the fortieth day to the third month: that there should not occur any superfetation, which could lead the first embryo to be a fetus compressus.From the third to the sixth month: that an abortion should not occur.From the sixth to the ninth month: that the birth should be without problems.76. (shrink)

The practice of prenatal diagnosis has brought with it the utilization of pregnancy termination as a preventive approach. In this paper the genetic/teratologic, fetal and maternal indications for termination of pregnancy used in Hungary are described, as well as the legal requirements and the proposed mode of termination at the different stages of gestation. The author is the director of the largest prenatal genetic counseling service in Hungary. Keywords: elective abortion, medico-legal aspects, prenatal diagnosis, genetic disorders, Hungary, bioethics CiteULike Connotea (...) Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In Aristotle's ethics and anthropology the concept of normality or regularity, nature and norm subtly imply each other reciprocally. The ethical criterium, explored throughout Nicomachean Ethics is that illustrated in detail by the "normal" conduct of the so called spoudaios. The point of contact between normality and naturalness is on the other side offered by the concept of physis, analysed both in Physics and in the biological works. Nature is what happens for the most, i.e. within the field of regularity (...) and legality which characterises its processes. But nature at the same time means telos, i.e. the finality and completion of these processes. What is normal is therefore also natural, and what is natural represents the normative level of phenomena. As for the ethical and anthropological field, the normal-natural human condition, and therefore the law which defines man's perfection, can be traced in the human political nature, i.e. in man's complete adjustment to the model given by the spoudaios. What falls outside this virtuous circle of normality, naturalness and legality is considered a moral deviation, which at the same time constitutes a teratology for and of mankind. Accordingly, conformity to the naturalized public ethos excludes in Aristotle any recourse to the transcendental norm of the "ought to be" which had been one of the fundamental characteristics of Plato's ethics. (shrink)

The present essay analyzes an eighteenth-century phase of the querelle des monstres and highlights two main points. 1) As the cases of Lémery and Winslow demonstrate, in the period when preformation was the dominant view, the dispute over the origin of monsters carried into the very field of preformation the contrast which had originally opposed it to the now defeated model of epigenesis, namely the alternative between mechanical genesis and pre-existence of the monstrous form itself. 2) One of the most (...) important episodes in the shift of teratology from a primarily theological or metaphysical issue to a purely natural one was due to Albrecht von Haller. Haller shifted the dispute from anatomy to embryology; and it is on an embryological base and not on metaphysics that he built his own demonstration of the original nature of the monster. He was furthermore the only scientist of authority who dealt with teratology from an epigenetic standpoint. His numerous changes of view in the field of embryology did in fact never affect his early adherence to the thesis of original monstrosity. (shrink)

In the period of emergence of early modern science, ‘monsters’ or individuals with physical congenital anomalies were considered as rare events which required special explanations entailing assumptions about the laws of nature. This concern with monsters was shared by representatives of the new science and Late Scholastic authors of university textbooks. This paper will reconstruct the main theses of the treatment of monsters in Late Scholastic textbooks, by focusing on the question as to how their accounts conceived nature’s regularity and (...) teleology. It shows that they developed a naturalistic teratology in which, in contrast to the naturalistic explanations usually offered by the new science, finality was at central stage. This general point does not impede our noticing that some authors were closer to the views emerging in the Scientific Revolution insofar as they conceived nature as relatively autonomous from God and gave a relevant place to efficient secondary causation. In this connection, this paper suggests that the concept of the laws of nature developed by the new science –as exception-less regularities—transferred to nature’s regularity the ‘strong’ character that Late Scholasticism attributed to finality and that the decline of the Late Scholastic view of finality played as an important concomitant factor permitting the transformation of the concept of laws of nature. (shrink)

Our goal in this paper is to reassess the relationship between norms and life by drawing on the philosophy of Georges Canguilhem, particularly some of his unpublished lectures about teratology and sexual determination. First, we discuss the difficulties Canguilhem identified in the introduction of life and sexuality as objects of philosophical reflection. Second, we reassess Canguilhem’s understanding of normativity as rooted in life and the axiological activity of the living. Third, we analyze how Canguilhem drew from past and contemporary (...) teratology to conceive of the notions of anomaly and abnormality. Finally, we reconstruct Canguilhem’s analysis of a case of hermaphroditism, highlighting how he presented it as evidence that sexual determination is the result of a normative choice. One of the key contributions of the paper to scholarly literature on Canguilhem is a better understanding of his notion of choice, which was considered not the conscious and intentional act of a subject but rather an axiological activity of the living. We conclude by positioning Canguilhem’s concept of normativity and his belief that norms are produced by the living in relation to the naturalist/normativist divide in medicine. (shrink)

In this article we discuss two divergent accounts of non-human animals as analog models of human biomedical phenomena. Using a classical account of analogical reasoning, toxicologists and teratologists claim that if the model and subject modeled are substantially similar, then test results in non-human animals are likely applicable to humans. However, the same toxicologists report that different species often react very differently to the same chemical stimuli. The best way to understand their findings is to abandon the classical view of (...) analogical - i.e., linear - reasoning, and replace it with a version informed by chaos theory. We briefly outline the current understanding of chaos, and trace its implications for toxicology and teratology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.4 (2002) 313-316 [Access article in PDF] Normativity and Pathology Mike Gane Keywords: positivism, sociology, pathology, normativity. THE STRENGTH OF VICTORIA MARGREE'S contribution to the examination of the thematic of pathology and its Nietzschean/Canguilhemian variation is that it reveals the challenging complexity of this theme. My comments on this contribution are developed from an interest in the ways that the concern with pathology was part (...) of the initial program of the social sciences, particularly sociology, as it was inaugurated by Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim in its formative period. Margree touches on the importance of social analysis at the end of her paper; my comments work to some extent in the opposite direction—from the social to the psychological. My concerns lead me to contest a number of her epistemological positions, particularly those concerning the notion of positivism and "objective" analysis.For the first positivist philosophers, positivism was primarily a method; in fact it embraced the set of methods developed by the sciences to obtain the highest degree of objectivity. It was explicitly opposed to methodological reductionism, arguing that each science had specific methods applicable to its own domain. Canguilhem was certainly against methodological reductionism (Renard 1996, 127), but Margree's conception of positivism in psychology as biological reductionism is quite a different and is a later-derived variation of positivism. As such perhaps it should not be conflated with early notions of pathology. Sociological positivism as developed in Durkheim's methodology, although different in many aspects from that of Comte, retained the idea that scientific objectivity was to be the result of epistemological procedures, not what might be called ontological reduction to a physical level of the object. Durkheim tries to clarify the rules governing the analysis of abnormal forms and to define social dysfunction and teratology. The general field of abnormal forms or pathology in the analysis of social life fell into decline after Durkheim and was abandoned in favor of the study of social deviance. The very idea of a study of social pathology itself was critiqued by Szasz and Foucault in particular as a new form of power, which came into existence at the end of the eighteenth century as an essential component of the disciplinary society. Foucault was himself clearly indebted to Canguilhem, and he made this evident on several occasions, such as his lectures at the Collège de France Les Anormaux given in 1974 and 1975 (Foucault 1999). Thus, although the field of pathology and abnormal forms continues in psychology it has been abandoned in sociology, leaving only traces (such as the concept of anomie) in the works of some thinkers such as Baudrillard, whose usage may be ironic more than an attempt to revive the terrain. Could it be that Canguilhem and Foucault [End Page 313] have then more or less swept the field clear of such scientism, even though the reconceptualization in terms of normativity suggested by Canguilhem has not been widely taken on? Indeed there may be important differences between the conceptualization of Canguilhem and Foucault (after all, as Margree points out, Canguilhem can be read as attempting to invert the relation between normativity and normative, not to withdraw from the terrain altogether). Foucault seems to approach a position elaborated in sociology earlier by Max Weber in his rejection of the attempt to use the field of pathology as a way of evading moral choices. Canguilhem discusses responsibility in "Thérapeutique, expérimentation, responsibilité" (1983, 391), noting the importance of professionalization and legal controls on professional practice.The fundamental issues posed by the project of social science continue to be haunted by the same set of problems as established in analysis of pathological phenomena, whether it be conceived in terms of order and disorder (chaos), social breakdown, radical evil, "failed states," even deviation or noncompliance with "correct" forms of language or behavior (harassment, racism, child abuse) and so on, or pathology (perversion, dysfunction, disease, illness, abnormalities). The question in part is: is there anything lost by replacing pathology with more political, religious, moral, and legal terminologies? From Foucault's point... (shrink)

We consider the evidence that RA†, the vitamin A metabolite, is involved in three fundamental aspects of the development of the CNS: (1) the stimulation of axon outgrowth in particular neuronal sub‐types; (2) the migration of the neural crest; and (3) the specification of rostrocaudal position in the developing CNS (forebrain, midbrain, hindbrain, spinal cord). The evidence we discuss involves RA‐induction of neurites in cell cultures and explants of neural tissue; the teratological effects of RA on the embryo's nervous system; (...) the observation that RA can be detected endogenously in the spinal cord; and the fact that the receptors and binding proteins for RA are expressed in precise domains and neuronal cell types within the nervous system. (shrink)

Monsters as a category seem omnipresent in early modern natural philosophy, in what one might call a “long” early modern period stretching from the Renaissance to the late eighteenth century, when the science of teratology emerges. We no longer use this term to refer to developmental anomalies (whether a two-headed calf, an individual suffering from microcephaly or Proteus syndrome) or to “freak occurrences” like Mary Toft’s supposedly giving birth to a litter of rabbits, in Surrey in the early eighteenth-century (...) (Todd 1995). But the term itself has a rich semantic history, coming from the Latin verb monstrare (itself deriving from monere, to remind, warn, advise), “to show,” from which we also get words like “monitor,” “admonish,” “monument” and “premonition”; hence there are proverbs like, in French, le monstre est ce qui montre, difficult to render in English: “the monsters is that which shows.” Scholars have discussed how this “monstrative” dimension of the monster is in fact twofold: on the one hand, and most awkwardly, the monster is an individual who is “pointed at,” who is shown; on the other hand, the monster is a sign, a portent, an omen, and in that sense “shows us” something (on the complex semantic history of the term across Indo-European languages see Ochsner 2005). The latter dimension persists in naturalized form in the early modern period when authors like Bacon, Fontenelle or William Hunter insist that monsters (or anomalies) can show us something of the workings of Nature. (shrink)

Pregnancy is a frequently applied exclusion criteria for many forms of research. Common justifications for this exclusion include the potential for teratogenicity, as well as the potential for physiologic changes in pregnancy to impact the research itself. The systematic exclusion of pregnant persons from clinical studies has created a significant gap in knowledge regarding medication safety and efficacy in pregnancy, which continues to cause significant harm to pregnant persons in need of medical therapy. To produce meaningful data and facilitate effective (...) knowledge translation to the clinical setting, special consideration to the pharmacology of pregnancy, as well as to outcomes of concern for this population is essential. The exclusion of pregnant participants from research is not ethically justifiable, as it violates the principles of autonomy, justice and nonmaleficence. While the inclusion of pregnant patients in research presents it’s own challenges, with appropriate methodological, ethical, and clinical considerations, we may be able to narrow the knowledge gap and improve drug availability and safety for pregnant patients and their children. (shrink)

In a first part I present the results of the philosophy of scientific explanation with an attempt to apply them to the case of the theory of evolution. Then I observe that the requirements of modelization of phenomena with the help of inductive logic do not capture efficiently the pertinent factors and fail just as much to exclude those which end up being neutral as explanatory premises. I then query in the direction of confirmation theory, and show that probabilistic reasoning (...) does not possess the syntactic means of testing evolutionary hypotheses in a way that would rely on a valid mode of inference. In a second part, I try to show how biology has oscillated between two privileged modes of explanation, the first one being through form of which I suggest here that it has never been replaced and that it has known a forgotten vitality in the middle and latter part of the 19th Century, and the second one being through function here evaluated critically alongside that of tinkering. Finally, some limits are seen to hold against the pretence to epistemological exclusivism of those two outlooks on the biological object. (shrink)

The conventional view of vitamins reflects a diverse group of small molecules that facilitate critical aspects of metabolism and prevent potentially fatal deficiency syndromes. However, vitamins also contribute to the shaping and maintenance of the human phenome over lifecycle and evolutionary timescales, enabling a degree of phenotypic plasticity that operates to allow adaptive responses that are appropriate to key periods of sensitivity (i.e., epigenetic response during prenatal development within the lifecycle or as an evolved response to environmental challenge over a (...) great many lifecycles). Individually, vitamins are important, but their effect is often based on nutrient‐nutrient (vitamin‐vitamin), nutrient‐gene (vitamin‐gene), and gene‐gene interactions, and the environmental influence of shifting geophysical cycles, as well as evolving cultural practices. These ideas will be explored within what I refer to as the “adaptive vitome (vitomics)” paradigm. (shrink)

What is a “Monster”? In the first part of my paper, I answer this question by delving into the historical changes that the concept of “monster” underwent in Western culture along with centuries. I claim that what we call “monster” had been the object of an “integral gaze” since its origin, while, during the 19th Century, it has become the object of a “disintegrated gaze”. What I mean with “integral gaze” is that we look at and understand something in one (...) sole way: the monster exceeds the natural order. On the contrary, with “disintegrated gaze”, I mean that we look at and understand something in different ways, so that looking at and understanding do not gather nor hold together: the monster as much is experienced as an unnormal living being as is thought as a normal living being. This condition is far more general. Though, I contend that the analysis of the transformations undergone by the concept of “monster” over the last two centuries make us aware of such historical condition. This condition is concerning in so far as it “disintegrates” our understanding of the world. In the second part of my paper, I point out a way to surpass such condition, at least with regard to the concept of “monster”. To this purpose, I will answer my starting question by describing the ontological structure of a “monster”. This is the structure of a paradox. The monster is a paradox. (shrink)

More than 6% of babies are born with a structural or functional defect, and many of these need special care and treatment to survive and thrive. Such defects can be inherited, arise through exposure to altered conditions or compounds in the womb, or result from a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Since the 1940s, animal experiments and epidemiological studies have identified many environmental factors that can cause particular birth defects. More recently, advances in genomics have allowed a simple genetic (...) diagnosis in ∼ 30% of birth defects. However, the cause of the remainder is a mystery. I believe that a key limiter to successful identification of new environmental factors is that clinicians, epidemiologists and developmental biologists all approach the topic from different angles. I propose that better communication between such experts will further increase our understanding of the environmental causes of birth defects, and potentially reduce their global burden. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Boundaries: Writing and DrawingTom ConleyBoundaries: Writing and Drawing, edited by Martine Reid; Yale French Studies, iv & 268 pp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994, $15.95 paper.The fifteen articles of this issue of Yale French Studies discern the limits of meaning and legibility wherever writing and drawing become coextensive. In pondering the origins of writing Henry-Jean Martin (in Le pouvoir et l’histoire de l’écrit) has recently asked if (...) script and print have evolved from pictographic or hieroglyphic writing. If so, he implies, to what degree does visual force animate all writing? How does meaning, otherwise conveyed through writing, get complicated or subverted by the shape or motion of its form? When does the writer engage the illegible to call into question communication in general? Citing Michel Foucault, for whom calligraphy and drawing offer a glimpse of an “immense and unavowable teratology” (p. 12), the editor argues that the visible matter of discourse becomes its repressed or irrecuperable—hence supremely literary—worth.She organizes the contributions under three rubrics. Part one studies the history of the relation of writing to drawing through emphasis on psychogenesis. For Serge Tisseron an “inscriptive gesture” (p. 29), a memory of a manual pleasure, is relayed through the artist’s or writer’s labors. The written trace recalls originary separation, the page becoming a “metaphoric container of one’s own body and the mother’s body” (p. 41). Georges Roque shows how postcartesian ideology associates line with philosophy and relegates color to a lower order of sensation. In a Derridean turn he notes, “color is to drawing as [End Page 410] writing is to speech” (p. 57). Jean-Gérard Lapacherie argues that we are taught to exclude reading from the act of looking at a text, and that contemporary literature forcibly erodes that division.Part two is devoted to close analysis of writers who draw. Jacques Leenhardt brilliantly analyzes visual and aural displacements, even condensations, what he calls “monograms of sensation,” in the sketches and notes in Stendhal’s Journal de Paris. Alain Buisine traces the appeal that drawings of Rimbaud’s face had for the poet’s milieu. Claude Gandelman studies Proust’s manuscript drawings in light of the broader process of dreamwork in A la recherche du temps perdu. Looking at the Cahiers, 1894–1914, Serge Bourjea contends that for Paul Valéry the labors of intellection and writing are a “matter of sketching” (p. 137), or of perpetually “rough” drafting. Jacques Derrida’s “Maddening the Subjectile,” Mary Ann Caws’s limpid translation of an essay on Artaud’s textual drawings (“Forcener le subjectile”), defines a pictogram as what moves ceaselessly and inseparably between painting, drawing, and verbal expression.Part three moves toward artists who write. Bernard Vouilloux rehearses Derrida’s arguments about the “supplement” and the pictogram to themes of painting and painters in Rousseau’s early and later works. Michel Thévoz gives a dazzling reading of Jean Dubuffet’s art brut dans l’écriture, the explosive sketching of discourse that fractures the icons of elegance and control that project the myth of clear and classical French. Jan Baetens calls “latent violence” the marvelous areas where image, geometrical form, typography, and enunciation abut each other in M. C. Escher’s drawings, Régis Franc’s comic strips, and Martin Vaughn-James’s La Cage. Renée Riese Hubert sums up the volume with a study of the double binds that Derrida and Adami project in their collaborations of drawing and writing.This issue of Yale French Studies holds to the theme of writing as drawing. Martine Reid’s introduction and her two interviews with Michel Butor and Yves Bonnefoy map out an overall itinerary of vicious circularity. Literature is a continuing regression, fraught with pleasure and risk, that takes place when language, writing, and drawing are conflated. All of the essays are of high quality. Tisseron, Leenhardt, Derrida, and Thévoz set a standard to which the others conform. All adepts of art and literature will welcome this fabulous volume.Tom ConleyHarvard UniversityCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Observational drawing provides a means of focusing on anomalous infant bodies. Time required by drawing connects the artist to the humanity of the subjects rather than to the deformities that make them, initially, frightening.