"End-Of-Law week drinkS @ ACT Magistrates Court: Friday 20 May 2005." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (198), pp. 24.

In this paper I address an important question in Aristotle’s biology, What are the causal mechanisms behind the transmission of biological form? Aristotle’s answer to this question, I argue, is found in Generation of Animals Book 4 in connection with his investigation into the phenomenon of inheritance. There we are told that an organism’s reproductive material contains a set of "movements" which are derived from the various "potentials" of its nature (the internal principle of change that initiates and controls (...) development). These movements, I suggest, function as specialized vehicles for communicating the parts of the parent’s heritable form during the act of reproduction. After exploring the details of this mechanism, I then take up Aristotle’s theory of inheritance proper. At the heart of the theory are three general principles (or 'laws') that govern the interactions between the maternal and paternal movements, the outcome of which determines the pattern of inheritance for the offspring. Although this paper is primarily aimed at providing a detailed analysis of Aristotle’s account of inheritance, the results of that analysis have implications for other areas of Aristotle’s biology. One of the most interesting of these is the question of whether Aristotle’s biology is anti-evolutionary (as traditionally assumed) or whether (as I argue) it leaves room for a theory of evolution by natural selection, even if Aristotle himself never took that step. (shrink)

Summary Long-standing claims have been made for nearly the entire twentieth century that the biometrician, Karl Pearson, and his colleague, W. F. R. Weldon, rejected Mendelism as a theory of inheritance. It is shown that at the end of the nineteenth century Pearson considered various theories of inheritance (including Francis Galton's law of ancestral heredity for characters underpinned by continuous variation), and by 1904 he ?accepted the fundamental idea of Mendel? as a theory of inheritance for discontinuous (...) variation. Moreover, in 1909, he suggested a synthesis of biometry and Mendelism. Despite the many attempts made by a number of geneticists (including R. A. Fisher in 1936) to use Pearson's chi-square (X 2, P) goodness-of-fit test on Mendel's data, which produced results that were ?too good to be true?, Weldon reached the same conclusion in 1902, but his results were never acknowledged. The geneticist and arch-rival of the biometricians, Williams Bateson, was instead exceptionally critical of this work and interpreted this as Weldon's rejection of Mendelism. Whilst scholarship on Mendel, by historians of science in the last 18 years, has led to a balanced perspective of Mendel, it is suggested that a better balanced and more rounded view of the hereditarian-statistical work of Pearson, Weldon, and the biometricians is long overdue. (shrink)

Is inheritable genetic modification the new dividing line in gene therapy? The editors of this searching investigation, representing clinical medicine, public health and biomedical ethics, have established a distinguished team of scientists and scholars to address the issues from the perspectives of biological and social science, law and ethics, including an intriguing Foreword from Peter Singer. Their purpose is to consider how society might deal with the ethical concerns raised by inheritable genetic modification, and to re-examine prevailing views about whether (...) these procedures will ever be ethically and socially justifiable. The book also provides background to define the field, and discusses the biological and technological potential for inheritable genetic modification, its limitations, and its connection with gene therapy, cloning, and other reproductive interventions. For scientists, bioethicists, clinicians, counsellors and public commentators, this is an essential contribution to one of the critical debates in current genetics. (shrink)

The article analyses, in a comparative perspective, the phenomenon of the evolution of the protection of surviving spouse’s inheritance rights in France and Lithuania, the two legal systems historically having some points of interaction. The protection of the surviving spouse is one of the major preoccupations of married couples of today, the couple occupying a central role within the contemporary family. Comparative analysis reveals certain points of convergence between these two legal systems inasmuch the surviving spouse is considered by (...) both legislations as an heir ab intestat and whose protection over the years has been considerably strengthened. The surviving spouse is called to inherit alongside with the heirs of the first or second order and is entitled to the proportions in assets that have not ceased to increase. Lithuanian law seems to have been innovative at an earlier stage than French law, as it is only in the beginning of the 21st century that significant reforms were carried out in this area of law in France. Analysis has also revealed apparent differences in the scope of protection of the surviving spouse, both in regards to the protection provided by law (statutory protection), as well as protection organised by the will of the spouses (voluntary protection). In some respects the statutory protection is more extensive in France (for example, complementary statutory rights of the spouse in regards to the dwelling place or the quality of héritier réservataire) and the instruments of this protection seem to be more varied (for example, the possibility for the spouses to organise their matrimonial regime by inserting specific clauses into the nuptial contract, mechanisms outside the nuptial contracts, such as donations, wills or life insurance contracts). However, this protection might appear to be more extensive under Lithuanian law as far as the voluntary protection is concerned taking into account the introduction, by the new Lithuanian Civil Code of 2000, of the joint will of spouses under which the whole property of the deceased spouse shall be inherited by the surviving spouse (except the mandatory share of succession). The article raises some doubts as to the desirability or even feasibility of aligning the two models of protection given the fact that each of the two countries has its own history and traditions. Nevertheless, a proposition resurges from the analysis in regard to the possible improvement of the protection of the rights to the dwelling place of the surviving spouse under Lithuanian law. Some elements from the existing French model could be transposed given that the dwelling place is an essential family element providing some stability for the surviving spouse. (shrink)

This paper studies both Locke's Two Treatises of Government and Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government. It suggests that there is a much closer relationship between them than has usually been assumed. In particular, there is a community of language, and of argumentation, underlying their justifications of resistance. This hinges upon the rights, and the law, of war. This language was a Dutch inheritance: it derived specifically from Hugo Grotius' classic The Law of War and Peace (1625). But its development here (...) also drew upon two English contexts: both the political crisis of 1678-83 and the earlier experience of the English civil wars. I have argued elsewhere that the crisis of 1678-83, usually called the exclusion crisis, was at one level a reliving of the experience of the civil wars. It was the Restoration crisis, and it was triggered by a collapse of confidence in the Restoration settlement. Indeed beneath the constitutional veneer of the Restoration period as a whole -- a restoration of constitutional normality as superficial as it was brief -- lay the proximity, and eventually the fact, of political (and judicial) violence. It was within this context that there emerged, in the work of Locke and Sidney, an ideology of political and judicial violence that drew upon the experience of half a century of England's troubles. In so tracing their use of Grotius we will be considering the reflections of some of Early Modern Europe's most influential writers upon what was the primary political problem of their age. (shrink)

The Sanskrit term dāya is generally understood as inheritance. This study examines an influential inheritance treatise from medieval Bengal, the Dāyabhāga, to explore how dāya conceptually overlaps with gifts, even though in inheritance, the deceased does not physically hand over the inheritance to the heir, a situation which appears remarkably distinct from gift-giving. Recent Euro-American research has explored the overlap between gift and inheritance considering primarily testate situations. However, attention has not been paid to this (...) overlap by Indological scholarship, though abundant work on Hindu inheritance exist. Apart from certain debates regarding etymology of dāya, there has not been much scholarly reflection on the conceptual understanding of dāya, perhaps due to the practical application of Hindu law during its times. This article, through a close textual study of the Dāyabhāga, attempts to fill in a small gap by demonstrating a conceptual overlap between inheritance and gifts, not just in testate, but in intestate situations as well. The study suggests that dāya is, in essence, gift-like, even though there are distinctions between gifts and inheritance. (shrink)

This dissertation develops a psychoanalytic model of ideology which accounts for the formation of sexual difference. I attempt to distinguish both the origin of sexually differentiated identity and the necessity of a political force at work in founding that origin. With Lacan, I locate the origin in the subjects's psychical accession to the Law of the Father, an accession that is linked to the individual establishment of a relation to the phallus as transcendental signifier. I advance a critique of Lacan (...) through an inquiry into the coming-to-be of the Father's Law as origin, an analysis which is shaped through readings of Althusser, Irigaray, and Derrida. My readings are an attempt to politicize the phallus, or to defend the thesis that 'the psychical is political,' through revealing the dynamics at play in establishing an origin that only ever appears as given. If subject-formation is organized and established around sexual difference through the function of the phallus, then an understanding of this ideological 'contract' reveals subjectivity and sexual difference to be intertwined in the psychic and political development of individuals, a coalition that endures through the lawful 'interpellation' of sexual identity. Conditions of emergence are also, potentially, conditions of transformation because these conditions expose the limits of any order or organization of sexual difference, the limits of its founding principle. If the limits of the phallus are disclosed, if we can reveal the energy that founds the phallus as or at the origin, then we can begin to conceptualize other founding acts. If, in other words, the law of sexual difference functions ideologically, then it is subject to vicissitudes of force. Thus origin can be reclaimed by other significations. In particular, it might be possible to conceptualize an origin that is rooted in a feminine genealogy and that doesn't require the intervention of the Father's Name. Such a genealogy would challenge the economy that maintains patriarchy, and hence its creation might make possible a feminine subjectivity. (shrink)

One of the great difficulties in effecting a synthesis of experience is the contradiction of the apparently mechanical character of the physical universe on the one hand, and the sense of freedom we associate with life on the other. In our own persons, we are told by medical science, or some of it, we are governed by physiological laws which are mechanical, as distinct from vital, in their nature. The best reconciliation of these with freedom, in the writer's opinion, (...) is the philosophy of Samuel Butler. In studying freedom as experienced by human beings Butler pointed out that a large number of practices which are apparently mechanical are really habits that have become stereotyped, and he drew attention to the fact that human actions can be classified as follows:—. (shrink)

One of the great difficulties in effecting a synthesis of experience is the contradiction of the apparently mechanical character of the physical universe on the one hand, and the sense of freedom we associate with life on the other. In our own persons, we are told by medical science, or some of it, we are governed by physiological laws which are mechanical, as distinct from vital, in their nature. The best reconciliation of these with freedom, in the writer's opinion, (...) is the philosophy of Samuel Butler. In studying freedom as experienced by human beings Butler pointed out that a large number of practices which are apparently mechanical are really habits that have become stereotyped, and he drew attention to the fact that human actions can be classified as follows:—. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: The Criteria of State Conduct Against Realism and Natural Law The Kantian Inheritance Rawls's Debt to Rousseau ‐ the Third Criterion Conclusion Notes.

It is argued that de Vries did not see Mendel's paper until 1900, and that, while his own theory of inheritance may have incorporated the notion of independent units, this pre-Mendelian formulation was not the same as Mendel's since it did not apply to paired hereditary units. Moreover, the way in which the term ‘segregation’ has been applied in the secondary literature has blurred the distinction between what is explained and the law which facilitates explanation.

Partial proceedings of the 17th World Congress, International Association for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, Bologna, 1995.

This is a reprint of chapters 4–5 of The Medieval Polish Doctrine of the Laws of Nations: Ius Gentium by Stanisław Wielgus (Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnictw Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 1998), 55–101. The original chapter and section numbering has been retained, but footnote numbers have been adapted. Reprinted with the Author’s permission. In attempting to summarize in a few sentences the achievements of the medieval scholars of the Polish school of ius gentium, we must emphasize that by employing the inherited legal (...) and philosophico-theological tradition and intellectual achievements of the University of Kraków, coupling it with their own genius, they manager to create a coherent and universal system of international law. It was a system so modern, wise, tolerant and universal that it was able to be applied not only in solving the painful problem stemming from the lengthy conflict between Poland and the Teutonic Knights but was also used in resolving global problems of the contemporary Christian’s world conflict with the non-Christian one. That legal system, based upon the eternal principles of Divine and natural law, taking account of the Gospel Law of Love and inseparably connecting law with morality and justice with truth, remains valid even today. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe predication of the eternal law served as premise and and foundation for the existence of the law of nature in the classical/medieval intellectual inheritance of Thomas Hobbes and his contemporaries. Unlike them, he makes no mention of the eternal law in his early writings, The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, and On the Citizen. His triple use of the expression eternal law of God in Leviathan is ambiguous and misleading. Instead, he is one of the first writers (...) in English to assert the eternity of the law of nature. He does that by invoking a biblical-based expression, verbum aeternum. In On the Citizen, and its exegetical, theological identification with Christ, to establish that claim. In Leviathan he repeats his declaration that the law of nature is eternal nine times, spread across more than five Chapters and twelve hundred pages. Four of them are equivalently excised from the Latin Leviathan and the others remain brief assertions, unanalyzed and undefended, rendering their effect incidental and perfunctory. He also abandons the expression verbum aeternum. (shrink)

In 1824 Eduard Gans, in the course of a study of inheritance law, had occasion to deal with the class of women known in Athens as epikleroi—daughters of a deceased man who, in the absence of sons, were married to their nearest relative, with the estate of the deceased passing to the son or sons of the new union. ‘For these,’ he wrote, ‘… the basic concept throughout is not that, in the absence of descendants, they themselves appear as (...) inheritors, but rather that they are inherited along with the property by the collaterals.’. (shrink)

Cyberspace, a term popularized in the 1984 novel Neuromancer, was used by William Gibson to describe the ‘consensual hallucination’ and interstitial online world that lies between the reality of our world and that of the surreal terrain of dreamscapes. While many attempts have been made to describe this intangible, yet seemingly perceptible space, the digital domain as a metaphor mirrors in many ways our own inadequate understanding of consciousness. Conversely, the physicist Michio Kaku explains that our reality is bounded by (...) hyperspace – a multi-dimensioned space beyond our quotidian 3D existence that runs parallel, or tangential, to us along with the phenomenon of time. Indeed, if space and time (here considered as space–time) are a consolidated whole in the physical sense, perhaps our consciousness, as a structure manifest within this continuum may itself be thought of as a sensorial projection of this amalgam that attempts to observe and make sense, or meaning, of this condition. In truth, what if our need and delight in storytelling is driven by the evolution of our biology, as well as our impulse to locate our place in the universe? This article will attempt to examine and delimit the narrative confines of space–time as an appeal to, and an endeavour at, uncovering the alterity of storytelling as a function of consciousness. It will visit the realms of the holograph, quantum mechanics, virtual and augmented realities, as well as other scientific and philosophical tracts as a means to investigate and explore the physiology of space and our imperative desire to share stories. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 94 Heft: 2 Seiten: 322-335.

Although much recent social science and humanities work has been a revolt against simplification, this volume explores the contrast between simplicity and complexity to reveal that this dichotomy, itself, is too simplistic. John Law and Annemarie Mol have gathered a distinguished panel of contributors to offer—particularly within the field of science studies—approaches to a theory of complexity, and at the same time a theoretical introduction to the topic. Indeed, they examine not only ways of relating to complexity but complexity _in (...) practice._ Individual essays study complexity from a variety of perspectives, addressing market behavior, medical interventions, aeronautical design, the governing of supranational states, ecology, roadbuilding, meteorology, the science of complexity itself, and the psychology of childhood trauma. Other topics include complex wholes in the sciences, moral complexity in seemingly amoral endeavors, and issues relating to the protection of African elephants. With a focus on such concepts as multiplicity, partial connections, and ebbs and flows, the collection includes narratives from Kenya, Great Britain, Papua New Guinea, the Netherlands, France, and the meetings of the European Commission, written by anthropologists, economists, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and scholars of science, technology, and society. _Contributors._ Andrew Barry, Steven D. Brown, Michel Callon, Chunglin Kwa, John Law, Nick Lee, Annemarie Mol, Marilyn Strathern, Laurent Thévenot, Charis Thompson. (shrink)

An important historical relation that has hardly been addressed is the influence of Prosper Lucas's Treatise on Natural Inheritance on the development of Charles Darwin's concepts related to inheritance. In this article we trace this historical connection. Darwin read Lucas's Treatise in 1856. His reading coincided with many changes concerning his prior ideas on the transmission and expression of characters. We consider that this reading led him to propose a group of principles regarding prepotency, hereditary diseases, morbid tendencies (...) and atavism; following Lucas, he called these principles: laws of inheritance. (shrink)

Revisiting Dawkin’s proposal of memes – a piece of thought copied from person to person – raises the question: can narrative, and by extension narratology, be utilized to explore the ‘infecting’, or transferring agent of cultural ideas, identity and the creation of self? Intriguingly, and perhaps even more relevant to the role of emergent models and the shifting divide between engineered and organic constructions, what role does media play in the fabrication of self? This article proposes to examine various attempts (...) to define modes of being using the formative and delimiting lens of narrative. It will investigate the role of media as the carrier agent for memetic modes of being, and their application in creating and sustaining cultural individuation. Jung’s declarative of the collective unconscious and archetypes, as well as Hofstadter’s loops, a common, but neglected field of enquiry that interrogates how memetic transference begins with the stories we tell, will inform the exploration of narrative as a means to define, delineate and bound the self. (shrink)

From Descartes to designer babies, The Philosophy Gym poses questions about some of history's most important philosophical issues, ranging in difficulty from pretty easy to very challenging. He brings new perspectives to age-old conundrums while also tackling modern-day dilemmas -- some for the first time. Begin your warm up by contemplating whether a pickled sheep can truly be considered art, or dive right in and tackle the existence of God. In this radically new way of looking at philosophy, Stephen Law (...) illustrates the problem with a story, then lets the argument battle it out in clear, easily digestible and intelligent prose. This perfect little mental health club is sure to give each reader's mind a great workout. (shrink)

There is an old but powerful argument for the claim that exhaustive divine foreknowledge is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise. A crucial ingredient in this argument is the principle of the “Fixity of the Past”. A seemingly new response to this argument has emerged, the so-called “dependence response,” which involves, among other things, abandoning FP for an alternative principle, the principle of the “Fixity of the Independent”. This paper presents three arguments for the claim that FI ought to (...) be preferred to FP. (shrink)

We all know that we have and are our bodies. But might it be possible to leave this common place? In the present article we try to do this by attending to the way we do our bodies. The site where we look for such action is that of handling the hypoglycaemias that sometimes happen to people with diabetes. In this site it appears that the body, active in measuring, feeling and countering hypoglycaemias is not a bounded whole: its boundaries (...) leak. Bits and pieces of the outside get incorporated within the active body; while the centre of some bodily activities is beyond the skin. The body thus enacted is not self-evidently coherent either. There are tensions between the body’s organs; between the control under which we put our bodies and the erratic character of their behaviour; and between the various needs and desires single bodies somehow try to combine. Thus to say that a body is a whole, or so we conclude, skips over a lot of work. One does not hang together as a matter of course: keeping oneself together is something the embodied person needs to do. The person who fails to do so dies. (shrink)

Society has historically not taken a benign view of genetic disease. The laws permitting sterilization of the mentally re tarded~ and those proscribing consanguineous marriages are but two examples. Indeed as far back as the 5th-10th centuries, B.C.E., consanguineous unions were outlawed (Leviticus XVIII, 6). Case law has traditionally tended toward the conservative. It is reactive rather than directive, exerting its influence only after an individual or group has sustained injury and brought suit. In contrast, state legislatures have not (...) been inhibited in enacting statutes. Many of their products can be characterized as hasty, unnecessary, ill-conceived, and based on the heart rather than the head. Moreover the lack of expert consultation sought has also been remarkable. One state legislature, for example, has advocated immunization for sickle cell anemia! Many others have enacted laws for the screening of inborn errors of metabolism, e.g., phenylketon uria, but have poorly defined the lines of responsibility to secure compliance. A spate of specific disease-related bills has emerged in the u.S. Congress, each seeking recognition and appropriations. Sickle cell anemia, hemophilia, Cooley's anemia and Tay-Sachs disease have been among the front-runners for support. Finally, in 1975, Congress has begun to examine an omnibus bill concerning all forms of genetic disease. The bill, termed the National Genetic Diseases Act is, however, still far from being enacted. (shrink)

Let (leeway) incompatibilism be the thesis that causal determinism is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise. Several prominent authors have claimed that incompatibilism alone can capture, or at least best captures, the intuitive appeal behind Jorge Luis Borges's famous “Garden of Forking Paths” metaphor. The thought, briefly, is this: the “single path” leading up to one's present decision represents the past; the forking paths that one must decide between represent those possible futures consistent with the past and the (...) class='Hi'>laws of nature. But if determinism is true, there is only one possible future consistent with the past and the laws and, hence, only one path to choose from. That is, if determinism is true, then we are not free to do otherwise. In this paper, I argue that this understanding of the Garden of Forking Paths faces a number of problems and ought to be rejected even by incompatibilists. I then present an alternative understanding that not only avoids these problems but still supports incompatibilism. Finally, I consider how various versions of (leeway) compatibilism fit with the Garden of Forking Paths as well as the broader question of whether metaphors, however intuitive, have any dialectical force in the debates over freedom. (shrink)