La théorie étiologique définit les fonctions biologiques en faisant référence à l'action passée de la sélection naturelle. Elle peut ainsi permettre de définir les pathologies comme des dysfonctionnements : il y a pathologie lorsqu'un composant x de l'organisme ne fait plus ce qu'il est censé faire et qui a conduit à le retenir dans le passé de l'histoire évolutive. On peut distinguer trois problèmes qui attendent les partisans de cette solution. Le premier est celui de la conciliation entre deux visées (...) différentes : la théorie de l'évolution peut-elle à la fois contribuer à l'explication du fait récurrent de la maladie (ce que vise une « médecine darwinienne ») et permettre une démarcation entre normal et pathologique ? Le second problème est celui des exceptions : en certains cas, une incapacité acquise a bien valeur de pathologie, mais la présence de la capacité correspondante ne s'explique pas par la sélection, ce qui ôte à la proposition initiale son caractère de nécessité conceptuelle. Enfin, la réalisation d'un trait peut être à la fois atypique et adaptative, ce qui fragilise la notion de normalité biologique impliquée par la théorie étiologique. Ces problèmes sont sérieux et l'article examine pour conclure si un autre concept de fonction, le concept systémique, ne pourrait pas mieux convenir moyennant quelques ajustements, à la philosophie de la médecine. Etiological theory defines biological functions in reference to the past action of natural selection. Accordingly, it may define pathological states as dysfunctional states : component x being in a pathological state would mean x no longer does what it is still supposed to do, that is, what it has been designed to do in past evolutionary history. There are three problems with this solution. First, it may prove difficult to reconcile the evolutionary explanation of the recurring fact of disease (the purpose of a « Darwinian medicine ») and the suggested demarcation between the normal and the pathological. Second, we may think of cases where a certain capacity is impaired, this impairment being clearly a pathology, and where, nonetheless, the explanation of why the corresponding capacity is there is by no means selective. This weakens the initial proposition because it thereby loses its alleged conceptual necessity. Thirdly, a biological feature may be expressed in a way that is both atypical and adaptive, i.e. a challenge to the idea of biological normality involved in etiological theory. These seem to be quite serious problems and one may ask if another concept of function, the systemic concept with a number of adjustments, would not be better suited to the ends of the philosophy of medicine. (shrink)

This study explores how Asian American experiences are depicted in four high school U.S. history textbooks and four middle school U.S. history textbooks used in Virginia. The analytic framework was developed from the scholarship of collective memories and histories of immigration in Asian American studies. Content analysis of the textbooks suggests the overall narrative of Asian American history in U.S. history textbooks aligns with the grand narrative of American history, that is, the “story of progress.” (...) This major storyline of Asian Americans – that they suffered from nativist racism and discrimination for a long time, overcame these obstacles through their hard work and efforts, and achieved the American dream – fits well into the master narrative of American progress, highlighting the process of their belonging to the U.S. as citizens. This storyline misrepresents the realities and diversity among Asian ethnic groups and their migration histories as well as the fluid nature of their identities across national borders. These findings stress the continued challenges in representing Asian American experiences as well as other marginalized groups in U.S. history textbooks. (shrink)

This collection takes its point of departure from Walter Benjamin's concept of the historical constellation, a concept which puts "contemporary" as well as "Romanticism" in play as period designations and critical paradigms. The book regards Romanticism as a thought experiment that poses questions for our own "now" time.

The British Idealists were a force to be reckoned with in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, until they appeared as the philosophical casualty of the Great War. This volume, part of the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, reproduces selections dealing with social and political philosophy from ten different authors of that tradition. Leading political theorist Bernard Bosanquet has three separate selections totaling fifty-three pages. T. H. Green has only one passage included here since there exists (...) a Cambridge published selection of his work put out in 1986. (shrink)

The Politics of Feminist Knowledge Transfer draws together analytical work on gender training and gender expertise. Its chapters critically reflect on the politics of feminist knowledge transfer, understood as an inherently political, dynamic and contested process, the overall aim of which is to transform gendered power relations in pursuit of more equal societies, workplaces, and policies. At its core, the work explores the relationship between gender expertise, gender training, and broader processes of feminist transformation arising from knowledge transfer activities. Examining (...) these in a reflective way, the book brings a primarily practice-based debate into the academic arena. With contributions from authors of diverse backgrounds, including academics, practitioners and representatives of gender training institutions, the editors combine a focus on gender expertise and gender training, with more theory-focused chapters. (shrink)

This text represents an exploration of the possible significance of Bernard S. Cohn's 1980 essay, `History and Anthropology: The State of Play', for understanding the present of historical anthropology and its futures. My discussion has two aims: (1) to reflect on both Bernard S. Cohn's pedagogy and mode of inquiry; and (2) to explore the complexity and nuance of citationality as a generative principle within the constitution of historical anthropology's subject. Toward this, I examine Cohn's notion of `the colonial (...) situation' and reflect on how the emergence of the human sciences is intertwined with the proliferation of colonialism's enduring legacy within postcoloniality. (shrink)

Fragile kingdoms of innumerable organisms and rich beauty, forests today are both our most plentiful and our most endangered natural resource. Understanding their workings and how to sustain them is imperative to ensuring the future of humanity. John Berger urges us to learn what can be done to preserve these treasures, and he offers here a compelling guide to the complex issues surrounding forest preservation. An expanded and revised version of Berger’s bestselling Understanding Forests, Forests Forever offers a clear (...) and readable survey of forest history and management. Berger draws upon diverse sources in law, ecology, economics, politics, and anthropology to argue that ecology, rather than the marketplace, should be the driving force behind forest management. Historical case studies of forests worldwide support this contention, the book reveals, as does the history of governments’ forest policy. Keeping pace with today’s issues, Berger critically evaluates government policy over the last seven years, including a contrast between the destructive policies of the Bush Administration and model programs instituted by the Canadian Boreal Initiative and others. Ultimately, he offers us the guiding principles of sustainable forestry as an answer to the ever-increasing demand for wood products. Anchoring the account are galleries of breathtaking full-color images of trees, forest, wildlife, and other forestry subjects taken by the world’s leading nature photographers. A concise and wholly readable account, Forests Forever issues a call to arms for all those concerned with preserving and managing the world’s forests today. (shrink)

_Forest Family_ highlights the importance of old-growth forests to Australian art, community, culture, history, and politics. The volume will be of interest to general readers of environmental history, as well as scholars in critical plant studies and the environmental humanities.

An ongoing collaborative project between art and science, Taming the Forest (2022) was implemented by a team of students, artists and researchers charting an interdisciplinary project among bioeconomics, environmental history, policy and artistic practice. In this article, the project acts as a case study for researching the conflicting narratives of history and economics about biodiversity in general, and specifically about forests. It shows how different blends of methodologies in artistic-cum-scientific research can become relevant for both realms, opening (...) new creative pathways and pedagogical registers while repeatedly returning to a specific forest’s microhistory. Moreover, the article stresses the need for a new sensibility and complex knowledge, moving beyond an objective study and becoming attentive to different dimensions of research and its outputs that emerge through the introduction of artistic thinking and methodologies. This kind of transdisciplinary approach becomes necessary in order to tackle the manifold large-scale problems such as the climate and biodiversity crises, which call for both acting decisively and transforming radically, above all with regard to how humans perceive, relate to and manage nature. (shrink)

Communities, policy actors and conservationists benefit from understanding what institutions and land management regimes promote ecosystem services like carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation. However, the definition of success depends on local conditions. Forests’ potential carbon stock, biodiversity, and rate of recovery following disturbance are known to vary with a broad suite of factors including temperature, precipitation, seasonality, species’ traits and land use history. Methods like forest changes over time , and comparison with 'pristine' reference forests have been proposed (...) to compare the structure and biodiversity of forests in the face of underlying differences. However, data from previous visits or reference forests may be unavailable or costly to obtain. Here, we introduce a new metric of locally weighted forest inter-comparison to mitigate the above shortcomings. This method is applied to an international database of nearly 300 community forests, and compared with previously published techniques. It is particularly suited to large databases where forests may be compared among one another. Further, it avoids problematic comparisons with old-growth forests which may not resemble the goal of forest management. In most cases, the different methods produce broadly congruent results, suggesting that researchers have the flexibility to compare forest conditions using whatever type of data is available. Forest structure and biodiversity are shown to be independently measurable axes of forest condition, although users’ and foresters’ estimations of seemingly unrelated attributes are highly correlated, perhaps reflecting an underlying sentiment about forest condition. These findings contribute new tools for large-scale analysis of ecosystem condition and natural resource policy assessment. Although applied here to forestry, these techniques have broader applications to classification and evaluation problems using crowdsourced or repurposed data for which baselines or external validations are not available. (shrink)

Cutting the Vines of the Past offers a novel argument: African ways of seeing and interpreting their environments and past are not only critical to how ...

In a recent scholarly debate, the Anthropocene concept has been criticized for diverting attention from the political aspects of contemporary environmental crises, not least by way of the long timescales it implies. This article therefore takes on the matter of long-termism as an historical and political phenomenon, by applying a conceptual historical perspective. Examples are drawn from historical studies of forest politics. It is argued that conceptions of the long term, as in all concepts in political language, are historical (...) and therefore problematic to legitimately define conclusively. However, many of the environmental crises looming in our time do indeed call for long-term perspectives. As a solution in accordance with its historical and democratic conceptual character, it is suggested that political long-termism paradoxically can and should be constantly deliberated upon and renewed in the short term. Its conceptual history can then serve two purposes: First, history can offer exempla of how long-termism can be conceptualized and institutionalized in ways that encourage continuous deliberation and reconceptualization. Second, historical conceptualizations of the long term can be drawn upon, both negatively and positively, in this continuous deliberation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Forest Recollections: Wandering Monks in Twentieth-Century ThailandSulak SivaraksaForest Recollections: Wandering Monks in Twentieth-Century Thailand. By Kamala Tivavanich. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997. 410 pp.History and anthropology professors at Cornell University were very impressed with this Ph.D. dissertation written by a student of Southeast Asian history at this prestigious institution. And rightly so, for Forest Recollections is a valuable study of twentieth-century wandering ascetics in (...) northeast Thailand.The author includes minibiographies of Ajaan Man Phurithat (1871–1949) and nine of his disciples, who also are now no longer in this world. The nine, all ethnic Laotians from the Isaan, are Waen Sujinno, Dun Atulo, Fan Ajaro, Thet Thetrangsi, Li Thammatharo, La Khempatato, Cha Photiyan, Juan Kulachettho, and Wan Uttamo. Her account of the lives of these holy men is woven into a history of Siam, beginning in the middle of the Fifth Reign as King Chulalongklon implemented a series of sweeping reforms, including centralization of the bureaucracy. The increase of central authority over outlying regions of the kingdom had a direct impact on the Sangha (the community and hierarchy of Buddhist Monks) and the forest tradition (which is a fusion of Buddhism, animism, and local customs that had been practiced for centuries). The book provides a background account of how regional Buddhist traditions were affected by various Sangha reforms in the twentieth century and is divided into three sections: forest communities prior to 1957; the “forest-invasion” [End Page 235] period (1957–1988); and the “forest-closure” period (1989 to the present).For centuries, wandering monks had acted as both physical and spiritual healers for villagers they encountered on their travels. The changing political situation, however, resulted in wandering monks being co-opted and used by the elite. In the name of development, monks endorsed the construction of dams and wide modern roads, the wearing of Buddhist amulets, and the erection of ever more elaborate temple buildings. Many were eventually to lose the influence they had once exerted over rural people. With the notable exception of Ajaan Man Phurithat, however, most of them did not realize the very real threat posed to their way of life by an increasingly powerful centralized administration.Tiyavanich has utilized Thai-language sources extensively, an effort that is hardly matched by any previous Western scholar. But despite the excellent research and the obvious care she took in writing her dissertation, Tiyavanich has failed to fully grasp the complexity of the Sangha order and the reality of the wandering monks themselves. What we get instead is a wide-angle portrait that lacks depth. It is rather unfortunate, for example, that she did not interview wandering monks who are still alive, such as Ajaan Maha Bua and Ajaan Viriyang, or foreign-born monks who are practicing in this same tradition, such as Pannavaddho Bhikkhu (of English birth) and Ajaan Sumedho Bhikkhu (an American). Some important figures have been left out, too. There is no mention, for instance, of Ajaan Bunnag, and this is a great pity for his life story reflects the failed attempts of a wandering monk to gain independence from the centralized power of the state. Conservationist monk Phra Prajak Khuttajitto gets only a brief mention, and even the world-famous Buddhadasa Bhikkhu receives scant attention. If the author had been acquainted with the Sekiya Dhamma group of monks or if she had ever read Sanitsuda Ekachai’s excellent Seed of Hope, her account would have been strengthened. Another weakness is that her English spellings of Thai Buddhist names for monks are often not true to their Pali origins.Nonetheless, reservations aside, Forest Recollections is to be commended because it provides a lucid introduction to an influential Buddhist tradition, which may now well be on its way out, to those with little or no background knowledge of the subject.Sulak SivaraksaSanti Pracha Dhamma InstituteCopyright © 1999 The University of Hawai’i Press... (shrink)

One of the most striking features observed throughout tropical agricultural frontiers is the extreme variability in land-use strategies from one farmer to the next. This article analyzes the forest conversion process and predominant land uses associated with smallholder settlement expansion in the Amazon frontier. The discussion seeks to increase understanding of the micro and macro-level forces that propel land-use decisions in the Amazon and offer insights about how farmers' land-use decisions may be altered to bring about forms of resource (...) use that are consistent with the constraints and opportunities of the frontier environment. Recognizing that no frontier area can be truly representative of the Amazon as a whole, this article also introduces some detailed evidence from another Amazon country (Ecuador) within a topic that has been previously dominated by research mainly in Brazil. The analysis suggests that to be effective, any policy or technology-based effort on the part of governments or researchers to alter colonist land-use systems must begin to look systematically at the production systems of agricultural colonist populations already present in frontier environments. This knowledge is essential to understand the social and economic factors affecting present land use and choice of technology. It is also important for understanding factors influencing farmers' demand for more optimal systems of land use that are consistent with varying agroecological potentials, demographic situations, and the management capacity of the farmer. (shrink)

This history of the unique community of Theravada nuns known as siladhara, based at Amaravati and Chithurst Buddhist monasteries is presented in two parts. The history from its inception in the late 1970s until the years 2000 appeared in Buddhist Studies Review 23. This second part gives the most recent developments in the order, from 2000 to the present day, plus reflections on the future. The research is based on personal interview with founding members of the order as (...) well as email, telephone and written communications with nuns past and present. It considers the implications of the revived bhikkhuni ordination for the siladhara and addresses the possibilities for the future. It describes the founding of a parallel order of Theravada nuns in Western Australia, with some significant differences to the UK nuns. It concludes that in attempting a form of monasticism for women, giving all the advantages of renunciation but at the same time negotiating the difficult synthesis of Western expectations, traditional Theravada cultural norms and the monastic rule itself, it has largely succeeded. (shrink)

The history of the sublime within aesthetics has tended to focus on the natural world. Within this history, the sublime has been a category reserved for awe-inspiring and overwhelming experiences, in which the finite subject is dwarfed by a more expansive force. Despite subjectivity being foremost in this topic, what has been overlooked, is the role the body plays in being the centre of aesthetic experience. In this paper, I will turn the tide on this omission and thematize (...) the role of the body within the experience of the sublime. My plan for reconsidering this movement is to unite Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, Wrath of God with the late thought of Merleau-Ponty, especially his enigmatic notion of "flesh". In both Herzog and Merleau-Ponty, a philosophy of nature exists which challenges the dichotomy between the autonomous self encountering the objective realm of wilderness. In each case, an ambiguity undercuts the idea of wilderness existing "there" while human subjectivity remains placed "here." I will "read" the film as an instant of the chiasmatic relation between nature and humanity. Doing so, I will suggest that the reversibility between the body and the environment can be seen as an amplification of Merleau-Ponty’s notion of "wild being". (shrink)

Sante De Sanctis (1862—1935), a pioneer of psychology in Rome at the end of the 19th century, applied methods from the expanding field of experimental psychology to the study of dreams, which was considered one of the leading ways to gain an understanding of normal and pathological psychic life. Taking inspiration from several traditions, De Sanctis proposed a study that anticipated a scientific program that also differentiated between contemporary psychoanalytical interpretations according to which previous dream psychology was considered a 'dark (...) forest'. On the contrary, the multi-faceted methodology that he adopted for the study of an, until then, marginal phenomenon of the 'new' psychology, represented an element of originality that also included the elaboration of a psycho-physiological theory of dreams. Although the Italian psychologist's work on dreams was characterized by these important methodological changes, it disappeared from the references of those who contributed to the foundation of modern dreaming psychology after the Second World War. The present article places De Sanctis' psychology of dreams in its scientific context and singles out its originality while also analyzing the reasons for its marginalization. (shrink)

With a profound cultural crystalization, China was one of the first countries to brew wine in the world. As a Cultural carrier, wine ever performed the functions of religion, literature, art, and entertainment. To have a deep understanding of Chinese extensive and profound culture, it is necessary to pore over Chinese ancient wine’s various functions.

The transformation of forests to agriculture is a dominant theme in human history, previously associated with progress, increasingly associated with local and global danger. A workshop at the Smithsonian Institution brought together scholars interested in one very large and fragile deltaic forest system of international importance: the Sundarbans. We found that land-hungry peasants are not quite the villain of the piece, as often portrayed; destruction and deterioration of the forest reflected pre-colonial dynamics of community and state formation, (...) colonial land and forest policy, international economics, and failure to solve international commons dilemmas. Preservation of the remaining Sundarbans depends on profound shifts in values concerning nature as well as changes in political structure and national economic pressures. Conventional wisdom in the form of the “tragedy of the commons” in explaining environmental degradation stands in need of revision. (shrink)

Wherever there is life, there are lies. Slick-suited politicians lie on the podium, ready to tell voters what they want to hear. Cheating lovers, swindling businessmen, double-crossing villains – all liars. But nature lies too – the cheetah crouching in the tall grass waiting to pounce, its spots and straw-coloured fur blending in with its surroundings, the chameleon with its adaptable skin, the octopus hiding in its cave. Juan Jacinto Muñoz-Rengel uncovers the slippery history of lies, some dark and (...) elusive, others thunderous and dazzling. From primeval forests to modern politics, he explores the uncomfortable truths of our white lies, fudged facts and blatant deceptions. For centuries, philosophers, writers and poets have grappled with the paradox of what’s fact and what’s fiction. So who can we really believe? Our friends? Our partners? Our leaders? Can we even trust ourselves? Truly, this is the only book in which the abundance of lies on its pages is a sign of success. Or maybe it isn’t. Who can really tell? (shrink)

Silence is not simply the absence of noise. It is within us, in the inner citadel that great writers, thinkers, scholars and people of faith have cultivated over the centuries. It characterizes our most intimate and sacred spaces, from private bedrooms to grand cathedrals – those vast reservoirs of silence. Philosophers and novelists have long sought solitude and inspiration in mountains and forests. Yet despite the centrality of silence to some of our most intense experiences, the transformations of the twentieth (...) century have gradually diminished its value. Today, raucous urban spaces and a continual bombardment from different media pressure us into constant activity. We are losing a sense of our inner selves, a process that is changing the very nature of the individual. This book rediscovers the wonder of silence and, with this, a richer experience of life. With his predilection for the elusive, Corbin calls us to listen to another history. (shrink)

Edward Harold Fulcher Swain (1883?1970) developed a unique idea about the importance of forests, advocating the creation of a new society based upon forests, and he pursued policies to implement his unique vision of forestry when he served as the Director of Queensland's Forestry Board from 1918 to 1924 and the Forestry Commissioner for New South Wales from 1935 to 1948. Swain's beliefs developed out of a combination of his Australian experiences and connections with foresters in the British Empire and (...) America. When he could not convince Australian elites about the need to create a forest-based society, he asked foresters at the 1947 Empire Forestry Conference in London to assert the primacy of forestry in land management in the British Empire. Many foresters positively received parts of Swain's argument, but his ideas could never be fully implemented in the British Empire because of the dominance of agrarian doctrines of development in post-Second World War colonial planning and the rapid process of decolonization. Swain's life sheds light onto current debates among historians about the origin and legacy of forestry in Australia and the British Empire. His ideas, many that parallel the basic tenets of modern environmentalism, require historians to rethink the relationship between Empire forestry and environmentalism. (shrink)

This paper summarizes the results from the first European Advanced Seminar in the Philosophy of the Life Sciences, which was held at the Brocher Foundation in Hermance (Switzerland) 6-10 September 2011. The Advanced Seminar brought together philosophers of the life sciences to discuss the topic of "Causation and Disease." The search for causes of disease in the biomedical sciences, we argue on the basis of the contributions to this conference, has not resulted in a simplification and unification of biomedical knowledge, (...) as once hoped for by philosophers of science, but rather in its "complexification.". (shrink)

This essay critically examines the emerging view among some ethnologists that replicable models of sustainable management of tropical forests may be found within the knowledge systems of contemporary indigenous peoples. As idealized epistemological types, several characteristics distinguishing “indigenous” from “modern” knowledge systems are described. Two culturally distinctive land use systems in Latin America are compared, one developed by an indigenous group, the Huastec Maya, and the other characteristic of colonist farms in Rondonia, Brazil. While each of these systems reflects a (...) different cultural-historical tradition, I argue that the process of knowledge formation and cultural adaptation is coevolutionary and continuous in both cases. The very concept of “indigenous” as a discrete analytic category is questioned; indigenicity alone cannot explain local adaptation of farming systems. Rather than dichotomize indigenous and colonist knowledge as inherently different categories, differences in land use patterns between such social groups may be more accurately viewed as reflecting different points on a single epistemological continuum. (shrink)

“Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results” has long been recognized for the special place that it occupies in the history of American philosophy. In it, American pragmatism enters into a wider, popular consciousness for the first time, acquiring both its name and its lineage. In the course of a brief hour with George Holmes Howison’s Philosophical Union at Berkeley in August of 1898, in a gymnasium before an audience of eight hundred people, pragmatism also acquires its living voice as William (...) James introduces a new uniquely American philosophy based upon the innovative ideas of the then obscure Charles Peirce. After describing a new strategy for arriving at the meaning of an idea, he goes on to illustrate.. (shrink)

Viruses are major drivers of global biogeochemistry and the etiological agents of many diseases. They are also the winners in the game of life: there are more viruses on the planet than cellular organisms and they encode most of the genetic diversity on the planet. In fact, it is reasonable to view life as a viral incubator. Nevertheless, most ecological and evolutionary theories were developed, and continue to be developed, without considering the virosphere. This means these theories need to be (...) to reinterpreted in light of viral knowledge or we need to develop new theory from the viral point-of-view. Here we briefly introduce our viral planet and then address a major outstanding question in biology: why is most of life viral? A key insight is that during an infection cycle the original virus is completely broken down and only the associated information is passed on to the next generation. This is different for cellular organisms, which must pass on some physical part of themselves from generation to generation. Based on this premise, it is proposed that the thermodynamic consequences of physical information (e.g., Landauer’s principle) are observed in natural viral populations. This link between physical and genetic information is then used to develop the Viral Information Hypothesis, which states that genetic information replicates itself to the detriment of system energy efficiency (i.e., is viral in nature). Finally, we show how viral information can be tested, and illustrate how this novel view can explain existing ecological and evolutionary theories from more fundamental principles. (shrink)