Diese neueste Buchveröffentlichung von Professor Vincenzo RUGGIERI SJ, der am Pontificio Istituto Orientale in Rom byzantinische Archäologie und byzantinische Geschichte lehrt, stellt einige archäologische byzantinische Stätten aus seinem traditionellen Forschungsgebiet in der historischen Kirchenprovinz Karien vor, die im westlichen Kleinasien gelegen war. Hier wartet R. nun zum größten Teil mit von ihm selbst aufgefundenen und erforschten Monumenten auf und das vorgelegte Werk kann als die geographisch nördliche Fortsetzung der im selben Verlag bereits im Jahre 2003 erschienenen stattlichen und sehr (...) umfangreichen Monographie über die frühchristlichen und byzantinischen Denkmäler am Golf von Keramos , 295–297.) begriffen werden – dieser Meeresarm gehört übrigens auch zu Karien. Zugrunde liegen beiden Buchpublikationen Ergebnisse etlicher in den 1990er Jahren durchgeführter systematischer Geländebegehungen des Forschungsteams um R., von denen an einigen auch der Verfasser dieser Zeilen mitgewirkt hat; vgl. A. Zäh, OCP 63 147 ff. Die hier vorgestellten bisher zum größten Teil neu aufgefundenen und hiermit bekannt gemachten byzantinischen Denkmäler sind auf der Halbinsel von Halikarnassos und im westlichen Karien gelegen – des Weiteren werden hier einige Binnen-Orte in Zentralkarien und viele weitere kleinere Fundorte vorgestellt. Die großen historischen Stätten des nördlichen Karien, wie Milet, Aphrodisias oder Antiocheia ad Meandrum, werden nicht behandelt. Die hier vorgeführten Orte und Regionen verfügen über eine stattliche Anzahl von Denkmälern, die nun nicht minder bedeutender sind als der Denkmälerbestand am Golf von Keramos, und das mag damit die hier vorgelegte zusammenfassende weitere monographische Abhandlung rechtfertigen. Denn das Werk fasst die wesentlichen Ergebnisse der Ruggieri-Forschungen der 1990er Jahre zusammen, die bisher über diverse JÖB- und OCP-Artikel verstreut erschienen sind und aus, einschränkend erst im Untertitel genannten, diversen Poleïs und deren Umland in Karien stammen. Das Buch bringt aber im Gegensatz zu diesen Artikeln auch gute farbige Abb. der hier entdeckten byzantinischen Wandmalereien und führt ebenso diverse Fußbodenmosaike und Bauskulpturfragmente erneut – zum Teil allerdings bisher auch völlig unbekanntes Material – in übersichtlicher Art und Weise vor. Das Werk ist als eine Gesamtschau der Ruggieri-Entdeckungen in diesem Gebiet anzusprechen. R. ist dem Kleinasien-Kenner seit langem als ein detailverliebter Beobachter und Auffinder sowie hartnäckiger Initiator und fortwährend laufender verlässlicher Motor einer planmäßigen christlichen kunstgeographischen Erschließung nicht nur dieser Region bekannt – wie es auch diese Publikation eindringlich veranschaulicht. (shrink)

The paper lists several editions of Euclid’s Elements in the Early Modern Age, giving for each of them the axioms and postulates employed to ground elementary mathematics.

In his mature works, Kuhn abandons the concept of a paradigm and becomes more interested in the analysis of the conceptual structure of scientific theories. These changes are interpreted as resulting from a ‘linguistic turn’ that Kuhn underwent sometimes around the 1980s. Much of the philosophical discussions about Kuhn’s post-‘linguistic turn’ philosophy revolves around his views on taxonomic concepts. Apart from taxonomy, however, the mature Kuhn introduces other concepts, such as conceptual networks and lexicons. This article distinguishes these three concepts (...) and shows that adopting each one of them has different impacts on Kuhn’s model of science. After distinguishing and assessing the concepts of taxonomy, network, and lexicon, it will be argued that the latter not only fits the Kuhnian model of science better, but it also helps capture the wide sense of Kuhn’s early concept of a paradigm. (shrink)

This article aims at sketching a philosophical theory of sound based on the perspective of sound designers: unique agents blurring the boundaries between engineering, music, acoustics and sound-based art. After having introduced the general framing in Section 1, focusing on a short history of the theory and practice of sound design, in Section 2 we propose a reading of sound as monad. We derive such intuition from the technology of digital sampling of audio signals, based on the decomposition of complex (...) sound waves in a number of elementary sinusoidal waves. Thus, in Section 3, we attempt at grounding the resulting “sound-atom” on Leibniz’s notion of monad, intended both as a “simple substance without parts” and as a “nucleus of forces in statu possibilitatis.” The insight is resumed and further discussed in Section 4, where we draw our conclusions by demonstrating the fitness of such framing with regards to the standpoint of sound design, while accounting for the work of sound artists Carsten Nicolai and Ryoji Ikeda. (shrink)

Is the ubiquity of contemporary popular music akin to a deliberate aggression to the hearing, making the listening experience devoid of any sense? If so, is there any strategy to morph this supposed confusion into meaningful stimuli? Relying on epistemology, we attempt at promoting the act of listening as a proper way of world-making and refer to Mark Reybrouck, Bruno Nettl, Steven Brown and Joseph Jordania—among others—to gather appropriate heuristic tools. In the last part of the essay, we advance the (...) concept of timbral quotation as an additional means to grasp meaningful cues in the timbrical richness of contemporary popular compositions. We shall sustain the particular fitness of this tool especially with regard to nowadays’ Western popular music, more and more timbre-centered rather than harmony-centered. (shrink)

In his mature writings, Kuhn describes the process of specialisation as driven by a form of incommensurability, defined as a conceptual/linguistic barrier which promotes and guarantees the insularity of specialties. In this paper, we reject the idea that the incommensurability among scientific specialties is a linguistic barrier. We argue that the problem with Kuhn’s characterisation of the incommensurability among specialties is that he presupposes a rather abstract theory of semantic incommensurability, which he then tries to apply to his description of (...) the process of specialisation. By contrast, this paper follows a different strategy: after criticising Kuhn’s view, it takes a further look at how new scientific specialties emerge. As a result, a different way of understanding incommensurability among specialties will be proposed. (shrink)

In the past few years, social epistemologists have developed several formal models of the social organisation of science. While their robustness and representational adequacy has been analysed at length, the function of these models has begun to be discussed in more general terms only recently. In this article, I will interpret many of the current formal models of the scientific community as representing the latest development of what I will call the ‘Kuhnian project’. These models share with Kuhn a number (...) of questions about the relation between individuals and communities. At the same time, they also inherit some of Kuhn’s problematic characterisations of the scientific community. In particular, current models of the social organisation of science represent the scientific community as essentially value-free. This may put into question both their representational adequacy and their normative ambitions. In the end, it will be shown that the discussion on the formal models of the scientific community may contribute in fruitful ways to the ongoing debates on value judgements in science. (shrink)

Il problema della coscienza, non affrontata in modo scientifico per gran parte del XX secolo, è tornato prepotentemente alla ribalta grazie anche all’enorme sviluppo delle tecniche di indagine non invasive delle funzioni cerebrali. Sorprendentemente questi risultati non hanno portato a una maggiore comprensione della coscienza. Eppure la coscienza (fenomenica) è un fatto empirico: qualcosa che quotidianamente si presenta a ciascuno di noi. Com’è possibile che sia così elusiva e misteriosa? Per risolvere l’enigma è necessario superare la visione cartesiana secondo la (...) quale il mondo da due domini separati: la mente e le cose. Come si legge nella via del Samurai: non è bene quando una cosa diventa due. Per capire la coscienza è importante comprenderne la natura dell’essere in relazione con il mondo. Il cervello fa esperienza del mondo esterno. Com’è possibile? In questo articolo proponiamo una teoria basata, non su oggetti statici, ma su un processo fisico (denominato onfene) che può essere descritto sia da un punto di vista relazionale, che rappresentazionale, che oggettuale. Questo processo fisico non è confinato nei limiti fisici del cervello, ma si estende dagli oggetti di cui siamo consapevoli fino a terminare nelle attivazioni neurali. Secondo questo punto di vista la mente è pertanto “allargata” a comprendere tutto ciò di cui siamo coscienti. (shrink)

A user is a system capable of creating and pursuing individual goals. Is it possible to design and implement an artificial user? Traditional artificial systems focus on how achieving a given goal. Most learning algorithms look for an optimal solution of a problem, given a set of optimization criteria and a goal (or a set of goals). However, real agents and real users have to develop new goals in order to cope with their environment. They must find “what” they want (...) to achieve and not only “how”. The development of completely new goals on the basis of the interaction with the environment is here defined the “what” problem. In this paper we will try to define it and we will propose an architecture capable of addressing it. Such an architecture is proposed as the foundation for an artificial user. (shrink)

La tradizionale distinzione tra i domini dell’ontologia, della fenomenologia e dell’epistemologia ha assunto i caratteri di un dogma la cui esistenza non può venire messa in discussione. Tale dogma determina l’insorgere di una serie di problemi insoluti quali l’unità, la rappresentazione, il rapporto mente-corpo. Ognuno di questi problemi è una manifestazione della contrapposizione tra forma e materia. Il mondo moderno è iniziato, a partire con Cartesio, con l’esclusione dell’aspetto formale dal mondo fisico e la sua esclusiva assegnazione al dominio mentale. (...) In alternativa, proponiamo uno schema di pensiero nel quale forma e materia non sono che due modi diversi di presentarsi di un unico principio a partire dal quale è possibile derivare rappresentato e rappresentazione, esistenza e conoscenza dell’esistente, osservatore e osservato, mente e corpo. (shrink)

One of the challenges confronted by language learners is to master the interpretation of sentences with multiple logical operators, where different interpretations depend on different scope assignments. Five-year-old children have been found to access some readings of potentially ambiguous sentences much less than adults do :73–102, 2006; Musolino, Universal Grammar and the acquisition of semantic knowledge, 1998; Musolino and Lidz, Lang Acquis 11:277–291, 2003, among many others). Recently, Gualmini et al. have shown that, by careful contextual manipulation, it is possible (...) to evoke some of the putatively unavailable interpretations from young children. Their proposal is quite general, but the focus of their work was on sentences involving nominal quantifiers and negation. The present paper extends this investigation to sentences with modal expressions. The results of our two experimental studies reveal that, in potentially ambiguous sentences with modal expressions, the kinds of contextual manipulations introduced by Gualmini and colleagues do not suffice to explain children’s initial scope interpretations. In response to the recalcitrant data, we propose a new three-stage model of the acquisition of scope relations. Most importantly, at the initial stage, child grammars make available only one interpretation of negative sentences with modal expressions. We call this the Unique Scope Assignment stage. (shrink)

Incommensurability may be regarded as driving specialisation, on the one hand, and as posing some problems to interdisciplinarity, on the other hand. It may be argued, however, that incommensurability plays no role in either specialisation or interdisciplinarity. Scientific specialties could be defined as simply 'different' (that is, about different things), rather than 'incommensurable' (that is, competing for the explanation of the same phenomena). Interdisciplinarity could be viewed as the co- ordinated effort of scientists possessing complemetary and interlocking skills, and not (...) as the overcoming of some sort of incommensurable divide. This article provides a comprehensive evaluative examination of the relations between specialisation, interdisciplinarity, and incommensurability. Its aim is to defend the relevance of incommensurability to both specialisation and interdisciplinarity. At the same time, it aims at correcting the tendency, common among many philosophers, to regard incommensurability in a restrictive manner - such as, for example, as an almost purely semantic issue. (shrink)

In his late years, Thomas Kuhn became interested in the process of scientific specialization, which does not seem to possess the destructive element that is characteristic of scientific revolutions. It therefore makes sense to investigate whether and how Kuhn’s insights about specialization are consistent with, and actually fit, his model of scientific progress through revolutions. In this paper, I argue that the transition toward a new specialty corresponds to a revolutionary change for the group of scientists involved in such a (...) transition. I will clarify the role of the scientific community in revolutionary changes and characterize the incommensurability across specialties as possessing both semantic and methodological aspects. The discussion of the discovery of the structure of DNA will serve both as an illustration of my main argument and as reply to one criticism raised against Kuhn—namely, that his model cannot capture cases of revolutionary yet non-disruptive episodes of scientific progress. Revisiting Kuhn’s ideas on specialization will shed new light on some often overlooked features of scientific change. (shrink)

Le polbusting est une pratique de recreation et récréation esthétique à travers laquelle les protagonistes de la culture électronique détournent et ridiculisent les messages et les corps de la politique contemporaine. Ces performances incarnent emblématiquement la vocation et la sensibilité transpolitiques de la culture postmoderne, indiquant la fête et le jeu comme les matrices sur lesquelles elle se fonde. Ainsi, il apparaît indispensable, pour comprendre la relation contemporaine entre imaginaire, médias et politique, de prendre sérieusement en considération ce qui se (...) produit dans les nouveaux paysages médiatiques, dans la mise en scène de la vie quotidienne, dans la culture de l’éphémère et dans tout ce qui a, jusqu'à présent, constitué la marge et l’ombre de la vie sociale. (shrink)

Interaction mining is about discovering and extracting insightful information from digital conversations, namely those human?human information exchanges mediated by digital network technology. We present in this article a computational model of natural arguments and its implementation for the automatic argumentative analysis of digital conversations, which allows us to produce relevant information to build interaction business analytics applications overcoming the limitations of standard text mining and information retrieval technology. Applications include advanced visualisations and abstractive summaries.

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 1 Seiten: 368-372.

We prove that the unification type of Łukasiewicz logic and of its equivalent algebraic semantics, the variety of MV-algebras, is nullary. The proof rests upon Ghilardiʼs algebraic characterisation of unification types in terms of projective objects, recent progress by Cabrer and Mundici in the investigation of projective MV-algebras, the categorical duality between finitely presented MV-algebras and rational polyhedra, and, finally, a homotopy-theoretic argument that exploits lifts of continuous maps to the universal covering space of the circle. We discuss the background (...) to such diverse tools. In particular, we offer a detailed proof of the duality theorem for finitely presented MV-algebras and rational polyhedra—a fundamental result that, albeit known to specialists, seems to appear in print here for the first time. (shrink)

Both in the bibliography and in the citation in the text, Michelle Gibbons’ article below has been mistakenly attributed to “Gibson.” The proper reference to the article should be: Gibbons, M.. Reassessing discovery: Rosalind Franklin, scientific visualization, and the structure of DNA. _Philosophy of Science, 79_, 63–80.