Книга является едва ли не первой попыткой отрефлектировать, как происходило становление философского самосознания в России.

Substantive scientific letter writing is a cost-effective mode of complementing observational and experimental research. The value of such philosophically uncommitted and unsponsored well-balanced scientific activity has been relegated. Critical letter writing entails the abilities to: maintain rational scepticism; refuse to conform in order to explain data; persist in keeping common sense centre-stage; exercise logic to evaluate the biological significance of mathematical figures, including statistics, and the ability to sustain the will to share insights regarding disease mechanisms on an ostensibly lower (...) research platform. During peer review, innovative letter writing may share the occasionally unfortunate fate of innovative research. Rejected scientific letters do not automatically lose copyright. Periodicals with high letter loads will see some valuable contributions wasted, but that is the price for maintaining autonomy in scientific publication. The scientific community is an integrated whole that must respect the rights of authors at all levels. Unauthorised forwarding of rejected letters sets the dangerous precedent of justifying unjust means. (shrink)

This commentary reflects on the varieties of high hypnotizable subjects suggested in the works by Barber, Barrett, Pekala and colleagues, and Terhune and Cardeña . These different studies point to the existence of different types of low, medium, and high hypnotizable subjects. However, types of high hypnotizables have received the most attention. Two main concerns are raised in this commentary: drawing parallels between the suggested typologies is not without problems given methodological differences among different studies, and the low base rates (...) of these special types is likely not to appeal to a typical clinician, already resistant to testing for hypnotizability, to conduct initial assessments so as to tailor suggestion to fit specific typologies. (shrink)

The volume presents a set of invited papers based on analyses of legal discourse drawn from a number of international contexts where often the English language ...

The article gives a short account of V.A. Smirnovs scientific biography, including his work in Tomsk University in Siberia and in the Department of Logic of the Institute of Philosophy in Moscow.

This book begins with the assumption that our society is undergoing a widespread moral crisis inasmuch as "many people have, for one reason or another, lost their sense of what is right and what is wrong." The authors argue that this crisis can be successfully met neither by a conservative attempt to re-inculcate traditional values into our youth, nor by a liberal "laissez-faire" approach, which in effect, leaves moral education to chance. The former is unmasked as a form of indoctrination (...) which stultifies the growth of children in their ability and right to think on moral issues for themselves. The latter approach, because it is inherently relativistic, fails to provide young people with any principled foundation or concrete skills for making responsible moral choices. The goal of this book, therefore, is to enunciate the theory and practice of a substantive moral education which is neither moral indoctrination nor moral relativism. (shrink)

This book is divided into four parts with a total of nine chapters, all of which had been previously published, some as far back as 1959. The first part, entitled "Custom versus Ideal: A Case Study in the Evolution of Law and Mores," includes two articles dealing with "The Negro in Our Law." The second part, "Of Obligation: The Citizen and the Law," also contains two articles addressing, independently, the problems of civil disobedience and the relation between the lawyer and (...) his client. The third part on "Ethical Problems of Economic Policy" includes one article comparing British and American legislation against restraint of trade, one article on the ethics of competition, and one discussing the social responsibilities of business corporations. Finally, the fourth part, entitled "Force and Morals in International Relations," consists of a single paper asking whether the United Nations Charter is not going the way of the League of Nations Covenant. (shrink)

In this paper a nonspreading, unnormalizable wave packet satisfying the Schrödinger equation is constructed. A modification of the Schrödinger equation is considered which allows the normalization of the wave packet. The case is generalized for relativistic mechanics.

Nunez's description of the brain as a medium capable of wave propagation has provided some fundamental insights into its dynamics. This approach soon reaches the descriptive limits of the brain as a physical system, however. We point out some biological constraints which differentiate the brain from physical systems and we elaborate on its consequences for future research.

The debates now in progress about the interactions of science and art compel one involuntarily to recall that such discussions have been held more than once and were, a long time ago, perhaps no less heated. It suffices to cite virtually at random certain statements of Pisarev, for example , for us to see, as in a cloudy mirror, both today's advocates of scientism and the romantics of art. Does this mean that all we need is to bear in mind (...) the wise words of the past in order to advance, as is believed by Iu. I. Kagarlitskii ? Obviously, that is not the case. The problem of the interactions of science and art is a philosophical one, not one of natural science; and the results achieved in debates of the past do not eliminate the questions of world view that constantly arise anew. Philosophy has no axioms such as exist in mathematics. It is therefore difficult to imagine that subsequent history has added nothing whatever to the understanding of past debates. Yet reference to these debates would appear to be essential today to clarify at least one of the factors of the problem we have posed. It might appear that this factor has been pointed to, but it has constantly been beclouded by the explanations of how science influences artists, and how art influences scientists who are at the same time artists, by references to the unity of the creative character of science and art, and so forth. In my opinion, it is essential, however, to emphasize that the very problematics of the interactions between science and art depend on the social and cultural environment within which they exist and are discussed. Turning to the past, we can see that science and art are not realms of activity handed down to humankind "since the creation of the world." They develop in the "body," if one may put it thus, of a specific socium, a specific culture. It would, of course, be absurd to conceive of any direct contact between science and art without the mediation of human beings, of society, of culture. Moreover, the debates themselves are determined by the level at which science and art are found within a given sociocultural space, by virtue of which analysis of these debates may provide data to the researcher for an understanding of the direction of social development. The RST influences all spheres of human activity, including the esthetic. Today, however, particularly in the West, there is a tendency to elevate the significance of the RST to an absolute, to explain many processes by its direct influence on social consciousness independently of the social conditions in which it occurs. Therefore, it would seem to be methodologically important for today's debates to demonstrate, on the basis of some concrete historical material, the connection between those shifts in social consciousness that sometimes explain the direct influence of progress in science and technology, on the one hand, and certain sociocultural conditions, on the other. (shrink)

Every one of us has been a participant these days in futile and endless conversations about the fact that in the past few years violence in our country has excalated to the limit or, more accurately, beyond all limits. No one remembers the nightmares concealed behind the bureaucratic term "mass repressions," when tens and hundreds of thousands of the country's inhabitants were sentenced to death and were exterminated on orders from the top, in a planned manner through "troikas." Human memory (...) is short, and everyday consciousness can only exist thanks to this forgetfulness. Yet it should not be difficult to recall that ten years ago it was no less dangerous to go out for a walk in the evenings. But the newspapers were silent then and crime statistics were secret. If we go back to the origins of the Soviet state, we will see even from the permitted literature of the time that the ferocity of the communist secret police and the White counterintelligence accompanied a deluge of lawlessness that a European can hardly imagine. Suffice it to say that the leader of the world's first proletariat state was accosted and robbed by bandits. (shrink)

In this letter we demonstrate that the fermionic zero modes on a superconducting domain wall can be associated to an one dimensional \ supersymmetry that contains non-trivial topological charges. In addition, the system also possesses three distinct \ supersymmetries with non-trivial topological charges and we also study some duality transformations of the supersymmetric algebras.

"The Party's struggle to educate the people as atheists," said Comrade L. F. Il'ichev in his report to the Ideological Commission of the Central Committee of the CPSU, November 25, 1963, "has had a history and has gone through stages, at each of which concrete problems were solved, and forms and methods of work specific to the given period were developed.".

Certain modifications, by way of improvement, are proposed for the Feynman postulates in quantum mechanics. These modifications incorporate a criterion for the applicability of the principle of superposition. It is shown that the modified postulates, together with certain assumptions regarding the trajectory of a particle, lead to an expression for the position-momentum uncertainty relationship which is broadly in agreement with the conventional expression. The time-energy uncertainty relationship is, however, found to have a likely place only in the relativistic theory. A (...) criterion, in the form of a ratio involving the linear dimensions of the particle, is obtained for the validity of the classical mechanics approximation. The modified postulates are suggested to favor the statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics over the Copenhagen interpretation. (shrink)