The goal of this article is to understand the value of data and to call for efforts to explore improved data sharing and collection among local, state, and federal agencies. It discusses the data available and existing barriers to sharing it. It also looks at examples of data sharing initiatives and analysis, such as mapping and visualization tools. The article then examines relevant regulations and calls for reforms. Finally, the article considers objections, including privacy interests, data security, and the costs (...) and benefits of data sharing initiatives. (shrink)

Clinicians such as Sir William Osler reinvented Hippocrates and built the image of a noble, lone, professional man replete with black bag, minister...

This article contributes to the project of historicizing the emergence of printed books as a mass cultural form in the 20th century and after, in addition to exploring the political-economic struggles both occasioning and occasioned by their constitution as such. In doing so, it both models and reflects on what a possible historiography of technology "after social constructionism" might look like. More specifically, it attempts to account for the behind-the-scenes or "back office" processes through which commodification takes place in the (...) sphere of book distribution, and it does so by focusing principally on communication and information technologies such as the international standard book number (ISBN) and machine readable bar codes. This history, overall, complements the more hopeful narratives of mass culture's democratizing potential, by telling a story about how increased opportunities for middle class social advancement depend on intensified - and intensely technological - work processes for those employed in the sphere of commodity distribution. This essay demonstrates, moreover, how dominant metaphors and frameworks that have guided Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) research (e.g., "actor-networks," "seamless webs," and so forth) must be amended to account better for power, contradiction, and antagonism within the history of technology. (shrink)

School leaders must navigate multiple education reform issues while remaining focused on the daily commitment of providing a quality education to all students. In many cases, the education reforms enacted by policy makers lack empirical support and/or result in potentially unwelcome or unethical practices, yet they are cloaked in rhetoric that makes it difficult for school leaders to accurately decipher the potential impacts on students and teachers. The lack of a practical framework from which to critique reforms such as using (...) standardized test score to make important decisions about students and teachers, merit pay, and standardized curricula products can leave some school leaders in the position of supporting reforms that have long-term negative effects on students or educators. This book fills a void in the literature through a practical approach to (a) provide school leaders with methods they can use to interpret and critique education reforms within an action-oriented framework grounded in ethics and empirical evidence; (b) offer strategies school leaders can use to creatively comply with reforms that lack an evidence base or violate basic principles of ethics, in ways that lessen the negative aspects of education reforms at the point of contact with students; and (c) model the use of a critique framework through example cases of four empirically and ethically dubious education reforms commonly faced by K-12 school leaders. We will ask Yong Zhao to write a Foreword. (shrink)

Presents a look at the work of Pythagoras, a philosopher who lived in sixth century Greece, and the influence of his theories of mathmatics and music on subsequent intellectual traditions in both the East and West.

The last decade has seen an explosion of research on the gut microbiota—the trillions of microorganisms that colonize the human gut. It is now clear that interindividual diversity in microbiota composition plays an important role in determining susceptibility to a wide variety of diseases. However, identifying the precise changes in microbiota composition that play causal roles has remained a largely unrealized goal. Here, we propose that functional classifications of microbes based on their interactions with and effects on the host—particularly the (...) host immune system—will illuminate the role of the microbiota in shaping human physiology. We outline the benefits of “functional” classification compared to phylogenetic classifications, and review current efforts at functional classification of the microbiota. Finally, we outline a theoretical framework for classifying host-microbiota interactions. Future advances enabling broader functional classifications of the microbiota promise to revolutionize our understanding of the role of gut microbes in health and disease. Functional classifications of the human microbiota reveal previously hidden patterns and will be key to cracking the microbiota composition code. This figure shows a theoretical comparison between phylogenetic classification and functional classification of a host-associated microbial community. (shrink)

I argue, contra Frost, that when prime lexicality and target density are considered, it is not clear that there are fundamental differences between form priming effects in Semitic and European languages. Furthermore, identifying and naming printed words in these languages raises common theoretical problems. Solving these problems and developing a universal model of reading necessitates the orthographic input code.

The essays in Rhetorical Spaces grow out of Lorraine Code's ongoing commitment to engaging philosophical issues as they figure in people's everyday lives. The arguements in this book are informed at once by the moral-political implications of how knowledge is produced and circulated and by issues of gendered subjectivity. In their critical dimension, these lucid essays engage with the incapacity of the philosophical mainstream's dominant epistemologies to offer regulative principles that guide people in the epistemic projects that figure centrally (...) in their lives. In its constructive dimension, Rhetorical Spaces focuses on developing productive, case-by-case analyses of knowing other people in situations where social-political inequalities create asymmetrical patterns of epistemic power and privilege. Framing all of the essays is the conception of rhetorical spaces which shows that prevailing intellectual-political climates can work to enhance or to thwart possibilities of establishing cognitive authority for the members of a society who belong to groups other than the dominant ones. Finally, bridging the gap between theory and practice, Lorraine Code shows how the issue of reconfiguring structures of authority and expertise are not just matters of individual responsibility, but require a radical restructuring of the communities and social orders in which people know and act. (shrink)

CHAPTER ONE Is the Sex of the Knower Epistemologically Significant? The Question A question that focuses on the knower, as the title of this chapter does, ...

Arguing that ecological thinking can animate an epistemology capable of addressing feminist, multicultural, and other post-colonial concerns, this book critiques the instrumental rationality, hyperbolized autonomy, abstract individualism, and exploitation of people and places that western epistemologies of mastery have legitimated. It proposes a politics of epistemic location, sensitive to the interplay of particularity and diversity, and focused on responsible epistemic practices. Starting from an epistemological approach implicit in Rachel Carson’s scientific projects, the book draws, constructively and critically, on ecological theory (...) and practice, on (post-Quinean) naturalized epistemology, and on feminist and post-colonial theory. Analyzing extended examples from developmental psychology, from medicine and law, and from circumstances where vulnerability, credibility, and public trust are at issue, the argument addresses the constitutive part played by an instituted social imaginary in shaping and regulating human lives. The practices and examples discussed invoke the responsibility requirements central to this text’s larger purpose of imagining, crafting, articulating a creative, innovative, instituting social imaginary, committed to interrogating entrenched hierarchical social structures, en route to enacting principles of ideal cohabitation. (shrink)

Information and communication technologies (ICT) enable citizens to communicate across state borders with greater ease than ever before, exciting much speculation about the emergence of transnational public spheres. This highly original work introduces this debate to International Relations, by investigating the socio-political implications of ICT in a global governance framework. Classic Habermasian theory is radically reconstructed to take account of contemporary trends in state sovereignty and global civil society. It is argued that if access is not widened and free speech (...) not sufficiently protected, the early promise of ICT as a liberating force will be neutralized. (shrink)

Having adequate knowledge of the world is not just a matter of survival but also one of obligation. This obligation to "know well" is what philosophers have termed "epistemic responsibility." In this innovative and eclectic study, Lorraine Code explores the possibilities inherent in this concept as a basis for understanding human attempts to know and understand the world and for discerning the nature of intellectual virtue. By focusing on the idea that knowing is a creative process guided by imperatives (...) of epistemic responsibility, Code provides a fresh perspective on the theory of knowledge. From this new perspective, Code poses questions about knowledge that have a different focus from those traditionally raised in the two leading epistemological theories, foundationalism and coherentism. While not rejecting these approaches, this new position moves away from a primary concentration on determinate products and towards an examination of ever-changing processes. Arguing that knowledge never exists as an ungrounded abstraction but rather emerges through dialogue between variously authoritative "knowers" situated within particular social and historical contexts, she draws extensively on examples from lived social experience to illustrate the ways in which human beings have long tried to recognize and meet their epistemic responsibilities. This edition of Epistemic Responsibility includes a new preface from Lorraine Code"--Provided by the publisher. (shrink)

Feminist epistemologists who attempt to refigure epistemology must wrestle with a number of dualisms. This essay examines the ways Lorraine Code, Sandra Harding, and Susan Hekman reconceptualize the relationship between self/other, nature/culture, and subject/object as they struggle to reformulate objectivity and knowledge.

In this lively and accessible book Lorraine Code addresses one of the most controversial questions in contemporary theory of knowledge, a question of fundamental concern for feminist theory as well: Is the sex of the knower epistemologically significant? Responding in the affirmative, Code offers a radical alterantive to mainstream philosophy's terms for what counts as knowledge and how it is to be evaluated. Code first reviews the literature of established epistemologies and unmasks the prevailing assumption in Anglo-American (...) philosophy that "the knower" is a value-free and ideologically neutral abstraction. Approaching knowledge as a social construct produced and validated through critical dialogue, she defines the knower in light of a conception of subjectivity based on a personal relational model. Code maps out the relevance of the particular people involved in knowing: their historical specificity, the kinds of relationships they have, the effects of social position and power on those relationships, and the ways in which knowledge can change both knower and known. In an exploration of the politics of knowledge that mainstream epistemologies sustain, she examines such issues as the function of knowledge in shaping institutions and the unequal distribution of cognitive resources. What Can She Know? will raise the level of debate concerning epistemological issues among philosophers, political and social scientists, and anyone interested in feminist theory. (shrink)

The arguments in this book are informed at once by the moral-political implications of how knowledge is produced and circulated and by issues of gendered subjectivity. In their critical dimension, these lucid essays engage with the incapacity of the philosophical mainstream's dominant epistemologies to offer regulative principles that guide people in the epistemic projects that figure centrally in their lives. In its constructive dimension, ____Rhetorical__ ____Spaces__ focuses on developing productive, case-by-case analyses of knowing other people in situations where social-political inequalities (...) create asymmetrical patterns of epistemic power and privilege. (shrink)

In this lively and accessible book Lorraine Code addresses one of the most controversial questions in contemporary theory of knowledge, a question of fundamental concern for feminist theory as well: Is the sex of the knower epistemologically significant? Responding in the affirmative, Code offers a radical alterantive to mainstream philosophy's terms for what counts as knowledge and how it is to be evaluated. Code first reviews the literature of established epistemologies and unmasks the prevailing assumption in Anglo-American (...) philosophy that "the knower" is a value-free and ideologically neutral abstraction. Approaching knowledge as a social construct produced and validated through critical dialogue, she defines the knower in light of a conception of subjectivity based on a personal relational model. Code maps out the relevance of the particular people involved in knowing: their historical specificity, the kinds of relationships they have, the effects of social position and power on those relationships, and the ways in which knowledge can change both knower and known. In an exploration of the politics of knowledge that mainstream epistemologies sustain, she examines such issues as the function of knowledge in shaping institutions and the unequal distribution of cognitive resources. What Can She Know? will raise the level of debate concerning epistemological issues among philosophers, political and social scientists, and anyone interested in feminist theory. (shrink)

The path-breaking Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories is an accessible, multidisciplinary insight into the complex field of feminist thought. The Encyclopedia contains over 500 authoritative entries commissioned from an international team of contributors and includes clear, concise and provocative explanations of key themes and ideas. Each entry contains cross references and a bibliographic guide to further reading; over 50 biographical entries provide readers with a sense of how the theories they encounter have developed out of the lives and situations of their (...) authors. Areas covered: * traditional taxonomies of feminist theory (eg socialist thought) * theoretical subdivisions (eg ecofeminism and feminist spirituality) * discipline-specific issues (eg philosophy and anthropology) * the conceptual apparatus of gender theory (eg biologism) * methodologies (eg deconstruction and narrative theory) * intersections (eg with racial theory, queer theory) * political issues (eg citizenship, reproductive rights). (shrink)

I evaluate post-Quinean naturalized epistemology as a resource for postcolonial and feminist epistemology. I argue that naturalistic inquiry into material conditions and institutions of knowledge production has most to offer epistemologists committed to maintaining continuity with the knowledge production of specifically located knowers. Yet naturalistic denigrations of folk epistemic practices and stereotyped, hence often oppressive, readings of human nature challenge the naturalness of the nature they claim to study. I outline an ecologically modelled epistemology that focuses on questions of epistemic (...) responsibility and community, while refusing the reductivism of totalizing theory, and producing realistic moral-epistemic analyses of specific, local epistemic resources to ground its normative injunctions. (shrink)

A relatively late arrival on the philosophical scene, feminist epistemology has evolved and undergone multiple refinements since, in 1981, I posed the then still outrageous question: “is the sex of the knower epistemologically significant?” At the time, that question was beginning to receive affirmative answers, within philosophy, from the essays in Sandra Harding and Merrill Hintikka's Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, from Nancy Hartsock's Money, Sex, and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism, and (...) from Alison Jaggar's Feminist Politics and Human Nature, with its chapter on feminist epistemology, all published in 1983. These writings were mapping a new epistemic terrain within professional philosophy that was also being opened out in the work of such non‐philosophers as Dorothy Smith, Carol Gilligan, and Nancy Chodorow. Nonetheless, in the philosophical projects of the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, even as feminist moral and political philosophy were growing to constitute an impressive body of critical‐constructive literature, the suggestion that analogous interventions were not merely indicated, but urgently required, in epistemology, philosophy of science, and even logic still sounded like a preposterous manifestation of ideological excess. Knowledge, science, and logic seemed, virtually by definition, to stand secure as the repositories and guardians of truth and objectivity, occupants of a space isolated and protected from the vagaries of politics and of gendered specificities. (shrink)

Addresses the meaning of rationality. The author argues that common conceptions of this notion are founded upon dubious myths of reason; and that systematic approaches to rational understanding are inherently limited by denying the cognitive value of myth and metaphor.

Order and Organism shows how Alfred North Whitehead's thought can reconcile some of the most insistent demands of common sense with the esoteric results of modern physics and mathematics.

Fifteen essays examine the work of German philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer to provide feminist interpretations of his views on science, language, history, ...

Who is the autonomous moral agent? The individual? The exemplary/typical knowing, acting, suffering, or thriving human being? Such questions in diverse modalities, originating in multiple circumsta...