According to the received view, the first spyglass was assembled without any theory of how the instrument magnifies. Galileo, who was the first to use the device as a scientific instrument, improved the power of magnification up to 30 times. How did he accomplish this feat? Galileo does not tell us what he did. We hold that such improvement of magnification is too intricate a problem to be solved by trial and error, accidentally stumbling upon a complex procedure. (...) We construct a plausibility argument and submit that Galileo had a theory of the telescope. He could develop it by analogical reasoning based on the phenomenon of reflection in mirrors—as it was put to use in surveying instruments—and applied to refraction in sets of lenses. Galileo could appeal to this analogy and assume Della Porta’s theory of refraction. He could thus turn the spyglass into a revolutionary scientific instrument—the telescope. (shrink)

We discuss anatomical data that may represent the substrate for very diverse input to a single folium, indirectly supporting the notion of a laterolateral beam spreading along the long axis of a folium. We also raise the question of whether the more linear body representation in somatosensory cortico-ponto-cerebellar pathways represent an adaptation to sequential processing of information from contiguous body parts.

ABSTRACT: In this essay I provide one methodology that yields the level of analysis of an alleged knowledge-claim under investigation via its relations to varying gradations of scepticism. Each proposed knowledge-claim possesses a specified relationship with: (i) a globally sceptical argument; (ii) the least sceptical but successful argument that casts it into doubt; and (iii) the most sceptical yet unsuccessful argument, which is conceivably hypothesized to repudiate it but fails to do so. Yielding this specified set of relations, by means (...) of proceeding from global scepticism to (ii) and (iii), increases the chances of identifying the highest evaluative relevancy of the levels of analysis and observation of an alleged knowledge-claim. I argue that the failure to analyse and derive a difference between (i) and (ii) with respect to an alleged knowledge-claim signifies that the claim is grounded within the theoretical framework itself, that the claim lacks specification with regard to content that is analysable via that framework, and the claim is dubious insofar as alternative theoretic frameworks may present greater relevancy to levels of observation. KEYWORDS: knowledge, scepticism, perception, level of observation, magnification level, methodological scepticism. (shrink)

Because computers zoom across magnifications, it is easy to conclude that both knowledge and things exist by nature in precision-nested scales. The technical term is “scalable,” the ability to expand without distorting the framework. But it takes hard work to make knowledge and things scalable, and this article shows that ignoring nonscalable effects is a bad idea. People stumbled on scalable projects through the same historical contingencies that such projects set out to deny. They cobbled together ways to make things (...) and data self-contained and static, and thus amenable to expansion. In European New World plantations, the natives were wiped out; coerced and alienated plants and workers came to substitute for them. Profits were made because extermination and slavery could be discounted from the books. Such historically indeterminate encounters formed models for later projects of scalability. This essay explores scalability projects from the perspective of an emergent “nonscalability theory” that pays attention to the mounting pile of ruins that scalability leaves behind. The article concludes that, if the world is still diverse and dynamic, it is because scalability never fulfills its own promises. (shrink)

Because computers zoom across magnifications, it is easy to conclude that both knowledge and things exist by nature in precision-nested scales. The technical term is “scalable,” the ability to expand without distorting the framework. But it takes hard work to make knowledge and things scalable, and this article shows that ignoring nonscalable effects is a bad idea. People stumbled on scalable projects through the same historical contingencies that such projects set out to deny. They cobbled together ways to make things (...) and data self-contained and static, and thus amenable to expansion. In European New World plantations, the natives were wiped out; coerced and alienated plants and workers came to substitute for them. Profits were made because extermination and slavery could be discounted from the books. Such historically indeterminate encounters formed models for later projects of scalability. This essay explores scalability projects from the perspective of an emergent “nonscalability theory” that pays attention to the mounting pile of ruins that scalability leaves behind. The article concludes that, if the world is still diverse and dynamic, it is because scalability never fulfills its own promises. (shrink)

This article reconsiders the early hominid ‘‘lithic niche’’ by examining the social implications of stone artifact making. I reject the idea that making tools for use is an adequate explanation of the elaborate artifact forms of the Lower Palaeolithic, or a sufficient cause for long-term trends in hominid technology. I then advance an alternative mechanism founded on the claim that competency in making stone artifacts requires extended learning, and that excellence in artifact making is attained only by highly skilled individuals (...) who have been taught and practiced for extensive periods. Consequently both competency and expertise in knapping comes at a high learning cost for both the individual learner and the social group to which they belong. Those high intrinsic costs of learning created contexts in which groups selected cost-reducing forms of social learning and teaching, and in which specialization could develop. Artifacts and their manufacturing processes probably acquired functions as social signals—as honest signals of valuable capacities. The magnification of these signals, through competition between knappers and through inspiring later craftspeople, may account for a substantial amount of the accumulated elaboration visible in the archaeological record. Consequently lithic artifacts operated as material symbols from an early time in hominid evolution. (shrink)

Natural forms, often characterized by irregularity and roughness, have a unique complexity that exhibit self-similarity across different spatial scales or levels of magnification. Our visual system is remarkably efficient in the processing of natural scenes and tuned to the multi-scale, fractal-like properties they possess. The fractal-like scaling characteristics are ubiquitous in many physical and biological domains, with recent research also highlighting their importance in aesthetic perception, particularly in the visual and, to some extent, auditory modalities. Given the multitude of (...) fractal-like scaling manifestations, we explore potential commonalities in the way they might affect aesthetic preference within and across different physical and sensory domains. We use a range of visual and tactile stimuli to explore the equivalence of fractal-scaling effects on aesthetic preferences within and across visual and tactile modalities. Our results suggest that, despite some superficial differences, the underlying dimensional structure mediating the preference across the two domains is remarkably similar. The qualitative nature of this dimensional structure as well as suggestions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that corruption by any firm is problematic. More importantly, its negative effects are compounded when corruption is present in large firms with global reach and corruption ceases to be a single instance but becomes a reoccurring or perpetuating phenomenon over time. Though the magnification of corruption over both time and size of operations creates scale effects that amplify its detrimental consequences, this context remains largely unexamined empirically. Thus, our research question is: What are the factors (...) that contribute to corruption by large global firms? Drawing on institutional theory, we examine the normative pressures that interact to create a vortex of corporate corruption that persisted over several years. We analyze a 9-year longitudinal dataset of 469 unique FT Global 500 companies representing 31 primary industries and 33 countries with over 3700 company year observations. Results help disentangle a complex interaction of firm-level and headquarters country-level factors that drive corruption and impact performance among top global firms. (shrink)

Introducing and implementing corporate sustainability poses many challenges to business organizations. In this longitudinal, inductive study, we focus on how such challenges are handled in a Dutch bank that is developing its sustainability policies. We examine why there is such a high degree of tension and conflict within the organization and identify how the development of these policies is affected by the interplay between subcultures and institutional logics. We show how different subcultures affect the enactment of logics by infusing the (...) rational and mindful behavior coming from logics with (sub)cultural values, beliefs, and assumptions. In turn, conflicting logics amplify subcultural characteristics between groups by shaping different behavior and practices. Together, this leads to a magnification of subcultural differences while, at the same time, logics are increasingly being perceived as incompatible. (shrink)

The human sensory experience of submolecular phenomena is only possible through complex technological mediations that include not just magnifications, but also manipulations of time and translations from one sense to another. In my creative moving image project Wildly Oscillating Molecules, I develop strategies for using an atomic force microscope (AFM) as a cinematographic instrument, specifically using its tactile mechanisms to generate video. Using the AFM over four years to generate experimental moving image installations, I examine my physical and psychological experiences (...) of this nanoscientific instrumentation. Although referred to by the philosopher of technology Don Ihde, the AFM's style of technological mediation has not been subjectively explored. Working to engage with an infinitesimal scale, the AFM has a unique style of spatial and temporal mediation that can be manipulated through the post-production and exhibition practices of the moving image. Wildly Oscillating Molecules provides insight into how the AFM influences human spatial and temporal perception of nanoscale phenomena and provides a new framework with which to analyse nanoscientific imaging practices. Understanding the nuances of technological mediation encourages science artists working with submolecular phenomena to adopt, evolve or transform properties of technological mediation when presenting their work to an audience. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the development and use of images employed by the Dresden Royal Museum for Zoology, Anthropology and Ethnography to resolve debates about how to use visual representation as a means of making ethnographic knowledge. Through experimentation with techniques of visual representation, the founding director, A.B. Meyer, proposed a historical, non-essentialist approach to understanding racial and cultural difference. Director Meyer's approach was inspired by the new knowledge he had gained through field research in Asia-Pacific as well as (...) new forms of imaging that made highly detailed representations of objects possible. Through a combination of various techniques, he developed new visual methods that emphasized intimate familiarity with variations within any one ethnic group, from skull shape to material ornamentation, as integral to the new disciplines of physical and cultural anthropology. It is well known that photographs were a favoured form of visual documentation among the anthropological and ethnographic sciences at thefin de siècle. However, in the scholarly journals of the Dresden museum, photographs, drawings, tables and etchings were frequently displayed alongside one another. Meyer sought to train the reader's eye through organized arrangements that represented objects from multiple angles and at various levels of magnification. Focusing on chimpanzees, skulls and kettledrums from Asia-Pacific, I track the development of new modes of making and reading images, from zoology and physical anthropology to ethnography, to demonstrate how the museum visually historicized humankind. (shrink)

In the seventeenth century the new science was introduced through the works of Bacon, Hooke, Boyle, Power, and others. The advocates of the new science promised to divulge the inner workings of nature and to help man overcome his painful fallen state by means of controlling nature. The new sciences of mechanism and corpuscularism were to be based on objective experiments that would reveal the secret inner natures of minerals, vegetables, animals, the sun, moon, and stars. These experiments were done (...) with new and improved telescopes and microscope with magnifications of up to 100 times. One early critic of the new science was Margaret Cavendish. Cavendish was skeptical of the ambitious claims, methodology, instruments, and institutions of the new science. In her work, Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy, Cavendish argued against “experimental and dioptrical writers,” provided her own account of the natural world, investigated aspects of chemistry, medicine, and the nature of heat and color, as well as many other topics in natural philosophy (OEP 10). While many think Cavendish landed on the wrong side of history with respect to her skepticism regarding microscopes and telescopes, her criticisms of the new science were wide ranging and she was by no means the only one to question the value of such experiments and instruments. While several commentators, like Eve Keller (1997), have argued that Cavendish was against all things experimental, several recent commentators, Emma Wilkins (2014) and Deborah Boyle (2018), have tried to show the much more complicated relationship between Cavendish and the Royal Society and medical studies, respectively. In addition, some commentators, such as Lisa Sarasohn (1984, 2010) and Eve Keller (1997), have argued that Cavendish’s criticisms of the new science are based on her belief that Nature, as a representation of the feminine, was under attack by the experimentalists desire to “penetrate” and “manipulate” her for their own ends. While it is certainly true that Cavendish and many of the experimentalists personified nature as a woman, and that Cavendish does portray the men as trying to make her into something she is not, I agree with Deborah Boyle (2004) that these descriptions are not the focus of her objections to experimentalism. Rather than hold that Cavendish is concerned with, as Sarasohn claims, “the sexual implications for both women and nature of the new philosophy” (2010: 147), it seems that Cavendish’s objections were largely based on her philosophical commitments. However, I believe there is one aspect of the new science that Cavendish does critique from a feminist perspective, and that is what she sees as its institutional nature and its exclusion of women on the basis of sex, and to this I will turn in the last section of the chapter.1 My aim is to address Cavendish’s three major critiques of the new science. The chapter is divided as follows: The first section provides a brief overview of Cavendish’s views on the nature of bodies and perception. The second regards her critique of the methods and aims of the new science as represented by Bacon and Boyle. The third section examines her critique of Hooke and the instruments of experimentalism. The final section lays out her feminist critique of the institution of the new science. (shrink)

Our aim in this paper is to put the concept of moral responsibility under a microscope. At the lowest level of magnification, it appears unified. But Gary Watson has taught us that if we zoom in, we will find that moral responsibility has two faces: attributability and accountability. Or, to describe the two faces in different terms, there is a difference between being responsible and holding responsible. It is one thing to talk about the connection the agent has with (...) her action; it is quite another to talk about the potential interaction the agent might have with her moral community. It turns out, though, that the faces of moral responsibility can themselves be viewed under an even higher level of magnification. If moral responsibility has two faces, then our aim in this paper is to examine their features. To do so reveals subtle distinctions in our concept of moral responsibility and its interaction with surrounding issues that, we argue, can help illuminate various debates in the literature. (shrink)

Fundamental Theory has been called an "unfinished symphony" and "a challenge to the musicians among natural philosophers of the future". This book, written in 1944 but left unfinished because Eddington died too soon, proved to be his final effort at a vision for harmonization of quantum physics and relativity. The work is less connected and internally integrated than 'Protons and Electrons' while representing a later point in the author's thought arc. The really interested student should read both books together.The physical (...) and mathematical reasoning are very deep, but it is possible to enjoy much of the flavor of the book even without following everything. The tidbits given below illustrate Eddington's beautiful and mellifluous English style. This edition contains a clickable table of contents and some interesting illustrations.WARNING: Due to the complexity of the mathematical typesetting, the only way to reproduce this book has been as a series of scanned page images. We believe this work is scientifically and culturally important, and despite a few imperfections and the inevitably small print, have brought it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of Eddington's work. On a portable electronic reader the pages come out pretty small, but they are legible. On a desktop computer running the Amazon app, they are perfectly fine. We appreciate your understanding, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.TIDBITS:The number of protons and electrons in the universe would, in itself, be merely a matter of idle curiosity. But N has a more general significance as a fundamental constant which enters into many physical formulae. Its special interpretation as the number of particles in the universe arises in the following way. If we consider a distribution of hydrogen in equilibrium at zero temperature, the presence of the matter produces a curvature of space, and the curvature causes the space to close when the number of particles contained in it reaches a certain total; that number is N. The present investigation seeks to determine N directly from the principles of measurement. We have to show, not that there are N particles in the universe, but that anyone who accepts certain elementary principles of measurement must, if he is consistent, think there are. We have to express in mathematical symbolism what we think we are doing when we measure things; for if we had no conception of what we were doing, the results of the measurements would not persuade us to believe anything in particular. All our results are derived from the condition that the conceptual interpretation which we place on the results of measurement must be consistent with our conceptual interpretation of the process of measurement.If we play about with a pin and a meter standard, we do not become aware of any number in particular unless the standard has been graduated, or unless we use a process of displacement which we interpret as adding pin-extensions. The fact is that, although measurement is primarily a process involving four entities, the conceptual interpretation of measurement postulates in addition the existence (in the structure contemplated) as something referred to as Z. The existence of Z is the condition that makes graduation an exact concept. In the actual universe there exists a basis which is uniform to a very high approximation, and this serves for almost all purposes; but to the much higher approximation required in the calculation of N the ideal exact basis of uniformity does not exist. The finitude of N is, in fact, the cause of the failure of the approximation.It must be remembered that we are now working to what would ordinarily be considered a fantastically high approximation. For ordinary purposes a measurable has 16 eigenvalues; but under the super-magnification here employed (which is not content to overlook 1 part in 10E39) there is a fine structure which splits each of them into 16 components. (shrink)

Vacuum radiation causes a particle to make a random walk about its dynamical trajectory. In this random walk the root mean square change in spatial coordinate is proportional to t 1/2, and the fractional changes in momentum and energy are proportional to t −1/2, where t is time. Thus the exchange of energy and momentum between a particle and the vacuum tends to zero over time. At the end of a mean free path the fractional change in momentum of a (...) particle in a gas is very small. However, at the end of the mean free path each particle undergoes an interaction that magnifies the preceding change, and the net result is that the momentum distribution of the particles in a gas is randomized in a few collision times. In this way the random action of vacuum radiation and its subsequent magnification by molecular interaction produces entropy increase. This process justifies the assumption of molecular chaos used in the Boltzmann transport equation. (shrink)

There is a growing tendency to hyperbolize the U.S.-Mexican borderlands as a “dystopian zone of terror.” Dystopian borderlands hyperbole is double-edged. It can be used to create virulently racist mischaracterizations of borderlands life, and it can be used critically, as Alicia Gaspar de Alba and Sayak Valencia use it in Desert Blood and Capitalismo gore, to draw attention to structural forms of violence that imperil the borderlands on a daily basis. Desert Blood and Capitalismo gore exemplify a tendency in borderlands (...) literature to hyperbolically magnify borderlands crises of violence, misogyny, exploitation, and racism to all-encompassing dimensions. That magnification serves to highlight historical and structural conditions that have created and perpetuated those crises. The borderlands in Desert Blood and Capitalismo gore are hyperbolically reimagined as dystopias of neoliberal patriarchal violence. Gaspar de Alba and Valencia hyperbolize those dystopias to critique and ultimately abolish them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.2 (2003) 402-414 [Access article in PDF] Past's Weight, Future's Promise:Reading Electra William Junker I SOPHOCLES' Electrapresents as its main character a woman who is tortured by the remembrance of things past: Even my pitiful bed remembers, there in that dreadful house, my long night-watches grieving my unlucky father who found no foreign resting place in war but died when my mother and Aegisthus, her lover, (...) took an axe to his head as a woodman does a tree. (85-95) 1The story she tells is a familiar one. Her father, Agamemnon, having returned from the Trojan War, is murdered by Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. Clytemnestra's motives are complex and unclear, for Agamemnon had previously sacrificed their daughter, Iphigenia, in order to ensure military success, and it is an open question as to what extent maternal vengeance as opposed to romantic intrigue motivated [End Page 402] her action. After the murder, Electra rescues her brother Orestes from probable death by sending him abroad (Aegisthus fearing revenge would have killed the child) while she grows and lives as an outcast in her own home, awaiting the day when the grown Orestes will return and bring their father's murderers to justice.The story, and its ensuing consequences, had already been handled masterfully in Aeschylus' Oresteia; but in Sophocles' play there is considerably more interest shown in Electra herself. 2 This focus results in a magnification of Electra's mourning for her father along with a sustained meditation upon how this mourning results in her inability to live, in any full sense, with the knowledge of his death. She cannot escape the memory of the injustice done him, and this memory fuels her hopes for Orestes' return even as it renders her, for all practical purposes, incapacitated.Her character thus described draws continual attention during the course of the play, and in their first appearance the Chorus admonishes her: "When you go on too far with grief, / you come to endless anguish, and destroy yourself. / There is no salvation from your troubles here, / so why should you persist in suffering" (136-39). Electra herself views her persistent suffering as necessary and noble, a show of allegiance to her murdered father and a refusal to compromise with his killers. The Chorus and Chrysothemis, however, argue that by so carrying on Electra is in reality causing more damage to herself than her situation warrants. Her ragged appearance, quite noticeable stench, and public outcries do nothing to help redress her father's honor; they rather highlight her mania and point toward insanity. At one point Chrysothemis implies as much. To Electra's accusation that her position of political compromise is dishonorable, she rebuts: "There's honor in not letting madness defeat you" (395)—suggesting both a different conception of honor and a veiled appraisal of her sister's mental health. In the service of life and sanity, the Chorus and Chrysothemis seem to say, leave off your suffering. In the service of honor and the dead, Electra rejoins, I cannot. The movement of the play in fact continually juxtaposes the position of Electra with that of her critics, and this juxtaposition is one that calls for interpretive elucidation. 3An especially fertile way of adjudicating these issues in Electra is afforded us by Nietzsche, and, specifically, by his On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life. This is the case because, as I want to suggest, Nietzsche's essay provides a framework which reconstructs, and in a unique way, the central problem of Electra. That problem is [End Page 403] essentially one of reconciling the conflicting claims of familial honor and memory with the claims of life. Through Nietzsche's exposition of history and its relation to life, this problem is both illumined and given greater subtlety—illumined, in that the potential agôn between history and life, while present in Sophocles' Electra, is not just obvious; and made subtle, in that Nietzsche's proposed solution to this agôn allows for a reading of the... (shrink)

The rationale for pesticide use in agriculture is that costs associated with pesticide pollution are to be justified by its benefits, but this is not so obvious. Valuing the benefits by simple economic analysis has increased pesticide use in agriculture and consequently produced pesticide-induced “public ills.” This paper attempts to explore the research gaps of the economic and social consequences of pesticide use in developing countries, particularly with an example of Nepal. We argue that although the negative sides of agricultural (...) development, for example- soil, water, and air pollution; pest resistance and resurgence; bioaccumulation, bio-magnification; and loss of biodiversity and ecosystem resilience caused by the use of pesticides in agriculture, are “developmental problems” and are “unintentional,” the magnitude may be increased by undervaluing the problems in the analysis of its economic returns. Despite continuous effort for holistic system analyses for studying complex phenomena like pesticides impacts, the development within the academic science has proceeded in the opposite direction that might have accelerated marginalization of the third world subsistence agricultural communities. We hypothesize that, if these adversities are realized and accounted for, the benefits from the current use of pesticides could be outweighed by the costs of pollution and ill human health. This paper also illustrates different pathways and mechanisms for marginalization. In view of potential and overall negative impacts of pesticide use, we recommend alternative ways of controlling pests such as community integrated pest management (IPM) along with education and training activities. Such measures are likely to reduce the health and environmental costs of pesticide pollution, and also enhance the capabilities of third world agricultural communities in terms of knowledge, decision making, innovation, and policy change. (shrink)

This article considers scientific data and methods taken as a vocabulary for a visual language of poetics, shaping an artistic practice exploring the liminal poetics of space, time, science and mythology, equally considered. These artworks focus on the moving image as an immersive, architectonic construct, one that makes it possible to blur the boundary between space and time. They are cinematic environments that create a space of spatial and temporal ambiguity, open to the performative role of the viewer in composing (...) the unfolding narrative. The artworks presented here began in the crossover between art and science, technology and anthropology, exploring topics and incorporating methods from each area. Transdisciplinary processes play a critical role in this artistic research. These works reflect cinema approached as a multimodal field of possibilities in which montage motivates movement and focus through this field, creating a participatory composition of sight, sound, movement and memory that immerses viewers by actuating somatic perception. Shape, scale, immersion, interactivity, simultaneity, embodiment, implementation and the manipulation of time create concrete metaphors that echo the multivalent content of the works: a collaboration with 300 tropical spiders to create a Kino, then letting the audience walk freely among them (or the spiders freely among the audience); an immersive environment enacting the space-time of glacial ice to experience the time of a different form of matter as somatosensory experience; a journey through the human history of the Moon, transcending time, political ideologies, realities and cultures as an encompassing field of simultaneous views and sounds; performing a 2000-year-old act of Thessalian magic on the skyline of Hong Kong. Combining the technological tools available to cinema and science, contrasting magnifications and speeds of observation reveal a material poetics beyond appearance. The artworks presented here elaborate the details of cardinal subjects, diving deep into fundamental domains to unravel the cultural implications embedded within the aesthetics of their data artefacts. (shrink)

This paper examines the vital role played by electron microscopy toward the modern definition of viruses, as formulated in the late 1950s. Before the 1930s viruses could neither be visualized by available technologies nor grown in artificial media. As such they were usually identified by their ability to cause diseases in their hosts and defined in such negative terms as “ultramicroscopic” or invisible infectious agents that could not be cultivated outside living cells. The invention of the electron microscope, with (...) class='Hi'>magnification and resolution powers several orders of magnitude better than that of optical instruments, opened up possibilities for biological applications. The hitherto invisible viruses lent themselves especially well to investigation with this new instrument. We first offer a historical consideration of the development of the instrument and, more significantly, advances in techniques for preparing and observing specimens that turned the electron microscope into a routine biological tool. We then describe the ways in which the electron microscopic images, or micrographs, functioned as forms of new knowledge about viruses and resulted in a paradigm shift in the very definition of these entities. Micrographs were not mere illustrations since they did the work for the electron microscopists. Drawing extensively on primary publications, we adduce the role of the new instrument in understanding the so-called eclipse phase in virus multiplication and the unexpected spinoffs of data from electron microscopy in naming and classifying viruses. Thus, we show that electron microscopy functioned not only to provide evidence, but also arguments in facilitating a reordering of the world that it brought into the visual realm. (shrink)

This essay from 1999, republished in Notre Dame Magazine online in July 2023, explores how the 1950s were a time of fundamental transformations in American society, a time when the United States went fully megatechnic. The hugely increased power of military, corporate-industrial and “big science” institutions developed during the 1950s signaled the transformation to megatechnic America, with atomic bombs and nuclear testing, automobiles and televisions as key symbols of that transformation. Figures such as J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller illustrated (...) the battle between national security dictates controlling nuclear bomb testing and responsible science. -/- Since the Second World War the United States has been problematically guided by a power-oriented culture, which, in the names of national security and convenience, has tended to reshape America toward an increasingly hierarchical model of society based on the system requirements of a machine. This same era gave birth to a generalized economic prosperity in the United States, to the civil rights movement, to feminism, literary and artistic innovations, and to other openings of public equality and freedom. Yet the magnification of bureaucratic-corporate structures in that postwar, cold war prosperity has ultimately tended to restructure America against the basic requirements of democratic community. (shrink)

This paper examines the vital role played by electron microscopy toward the modern definition of viruses, as formulated in the late 1950s. Before the 1930s viruses could neither be visualized by available technologies nor grown in artificial media. As such they were usually identified by their ability to cause diseases in their hosts and defined in such negative terms as “ultramicroscopic” or invisible infectious agents that could not be cultivated outside living cells. The invention of the electron microscope, with (...) class='Hi'>magnification and resolution powers several orders of magnitude better than that of optical instruments, opened up possibilities for biological applications. The hitherto invisible viruses lent themselves especially well to investigation with this new instrument. We first offer a historical consideration of the development of the instrument and, more significantly, advances in techniques for preparing and observing specimens that turned the electron microscope into a routine biological tool. We then describe the ways in which the electron microscopic images, or micrographs, functioned as forms of new knowledge about viruses and resulted in a paradigm shift in the very definition of these entities. Micrographs were not mere illustrations since they did the work for the electron microscopists. Drawing extensively on primary publications, we adduce the role of the new instrument in understanding the so-called eclipse phase in virus multiplication and the unexpected spinoffs of data from electron microscopy in naming and classifying viruses. Thus, we show that electron microscopy functioned not only to provide evidence, but also arguments in facilitating a reordering of the world that it brought into the visual realm. (shrink)

Despite growing interest in improving cognitive abilities across the lifespan through training, the benefits of cognitive training are inconsistent. One powerful contributor may be that individuals arrive at interventions with different baseline levels of the cognitive skill being trained. Some evidence suggests poor performers benefit the most from cognitive training, showing compensation for their weak abilities, while other evidence suggests that high performers benefit most, experiencing a magnification of their abilities. Whether training leads to compensation or magnification effects (...) may depend upon the specific cognitive domain being trained and the training approach implemented. To clarify the association between individual differences in baseline cognitive ability and training gains as well as potential moderators, we conducted a systematic meta-analysis of the correlation between these two variables. We found evidence of a significant meta-correlation demonstrating a compensatory effect, a negative association between initial ability on a trained cognitive process and training gains. Too few papers met our search criteria across the levels of proposed moderators of cognitive domain and training approach to conduct a reliable investigation of their influence over the meta-analytic effect size. We discuss the implications of a compensatory meta-correlation, potential reasons for the paucity of qualifying papers, and important future directions for better understanding how cognitive trainings work and for whom. (shrink)

Fundamental Theory has been called an "unfinished symphony" and "a challenge to the musicians among natural philosophers of the future". This book, written in 1944 but left unfinished because Eddington died too soon, proved to be his final effort at a vision for harmonization of quantum physics and relativity. The work is less connected and internally integrated than 'Protons and Electrons' while representing a later point in the author's thought arc. The really interested student should read both books together.The physical (...) and mathematical reasoning are very deep, but it is possible to enjoy much of the flavor of the book even without following everything. The tidbits given below illustrate Eddington's beautiful and mellifluous English style. This edition contains a clickable table of contents and some interesting illustrations.WARNING: Due to the complexity of the mathematical typesetting, the only way to reproduce this book has been as a series of scanned page images. We believe this work is scientifically and culturally important, and despite a few imperfections and the inevitably small print, have brought it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of Eddington's work. On a portable electronic reader the pages come out pretty small, but they are legible. On a desktop computer running the Amazon app, they are perfectly fine. We appreciate your understanding, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.TIDBITS:The number of protons and electrons in the universe would, in itself, be merely a matter of idle curiosity. But N has a more general significance as a fundamental constant which enters into many physical formulae. Its special interpretation as the number of particles in the universe arises in the following way. If we consider a distribution of hydrogen in equilibrium at zero temperature, the presence of the matter produces a curvature of space, and the curvature causes the space to close when the number of particles contained in it reaches a certain total; that number is N. The present investigation seeks to determine N directly from the principles of measurement. We have to show, not that there are N particles in the universe, but that anyone who accepts certain elementary principles of measurement must, if he is consistent, think there are. We have to express in mathematical symbolism what we think we are doing when we measure things; for if we had no conception of what we were doing, the results of the measurements would not persuade us to believe anything in particular. All our results are derived from the condition that the conceptual interpretation which we place on the results of measurement must be consistent with our conceptual interpretation of the process of measurement.If we play about with a pin and a meter standard, we do not become aware of any number in particular unless the standard has been graduated, or unless we use a process of displacement which we interpret as adding pin-extensions. The fact is that, although measurement is primarily a process involving four entities, the conceptual interpretation of measurement postulates in addition the existence (in the structure contemplated) as something referred to as Z. The existence of Z is the condition that makes graduation an exact concept. In the actual universe there exists a basis which is uniform to a very high approximation, and this serves for almost all purposes; but to the much higher approximation required in the calculation of N the ideal exact basis of uniformity does not exist. The finitude of N is, in fact, the cause of the failure of the approximation.It must be remembered that we are now working to what would ordinarily be considered a fantastically high approximation. For ordinary purposes a measurable has 16 eigenvalues; but under the super-magnification here employed (which is not content to overlook 1 part in 10E39) there is a fine structure which splits each of them into 16 components. (shrink)

The rationale for pesticide use in agriculture is that costs associated with pesticide pollution are to be justified by its benefits, but this is not so obvious. Valuing the benefits by simple economic analysis has increased pesticide use in agriculture and consequently produced pesticide-induced “public ills.” This paper attempts to explore the research gaps of the economic and social consequences of pesticide use in developing countries, particularly with an example of Nepal. We argue that although the negative sides of agricultural (...) development, for example- soil, water, and air pollution; pest resistance and resurgence; bioaccumulation, bio-magnification; and loss of biodiversity and ecosystem resilience caused by the use of pesticides in agriculture, are “developmental problems” and are “unintentional,” the magnitude may be increased by undervaluing the problems in the analysis of its economic returns. Despite continuous effort for holistic system analyses for studying complex phenomena like pesticides impacts, the development within the academic science has proceeded in the opposite direction that might have accelerated marginalization of the third world subsistence agricultural communities. We hypothesize that, if these adversities are realized and accounted for, the benefits from the current use of pesticides could be outweighed by the costs of pollution and ill human health. This paper also illustrates different pathways and mechanisms for marginalization. In view of potential and overall negative impacts of pesticide use, we recommend alternative ways of controlling pests such as community integrated pest management (IPM) along with education and training activities. Such measures are likely to reduce the health and environmental costs of pesticide pollution, and also enhance the capabilities of third world agricultural communities in terms of knowledge, decision making, innovation, and policy change. (shrink)

Professor Hooker’s mind is not unlike a telescope: it sees farther than the rest of us. Never mind the chromatic aberration that attends his higher magnifications; the present volume is a book of vision, and it will profit any reader to see the philosophical universe through Hooker’s well-turned lens.

Modus vivendi theories are caught in an uneasy relationship with a substantive, normative pluralism of toleration and a conceptual and structural awareness of the unavoidability of sociopolitical diversity and contestation. The chapter explores the semantic space occupied by modus vivendi and the kind of political thinking it represents, in particular as a variant of the quest for order and the inevitability of ranking priorities. The implicit boundary drawn by ‘modus vivendi’ theorists between solid blocs of ideas and practices is questioned. (...) When larger magnification orders are employed, points of contact and intertwining may reveal a messiness with which conventional modus vivendi approaches cannot engage. Modus vivendi would consequently benefit from a micro-analysis of its various components instead of being subject to broad-brush treatment, particularly in view of a morphological approach to political concepts. Modus vivendi is also examined in contrast to consensus theories, compromise theories, and agonism, and some of its different forms—fragmentation, segmentation, and asymmetry—are discussed. Finally, modus vivendi is interrogated as an interpretative rather than a prescriptive thought-practice, relating it to a realism based on the ascertainable core characteristics of the political. (shrink)

Money and support tend to flow in the direction of economics, science, and other academic departments that demonstrate measurable "progress." The humanities, on the other hand, offer more abstract and uncertain outcomes. A humanist's objects of study are more obscure in certain ways than pathogens and cells. Consequently, it seems as if the humanities never truly progress. Is this a fair assessment? By comparing objects of science, such as the brain, the galaxy, the amoeba, and the quark, with objects of (...) humanistic inquiry, such as the poem, the photograph, the belief, and the philosophical concept, Volney Gay reestablishes a fundamental distinction between science and the humanities. He frees the latter from its pursuit of material-based progress and restores its disciplines to a place of privilege and respect. Using the metaphor of magnification, Gay shows that, while we can investigate natural objects to the limits of imaging capacity, magnifying cultural objects dissolves them into noise. In other words, cultural objects can be studied only within their contexts and through the prism of metaphor and narrative. Gathering examples from literature, art, film, philosophy, religion, science, and psychoanalysis, Gay builds a new justification for the humanities. By revealing the unseen and making abstract ideas tangible, the arts create meaningful wholes, which itself is a form of progress. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.2 (2003) 402-414 [Access article in PDF] Past's Weight, Future's Promise:Reading Electra William Junker I SOPHOCLES' Electrapresents as its main character a woman who is tortured by the remembrance of things past: Even my pitiful bed remembers, there in that dreadful house, my long night-watches grieving my unlucky father who found no foreign resting place in war but died when my mother and Aegisthus, her lover, (...) took an axe to his head as a woodman does a tree. (85-95) 1The story she tells is a familiar one. Her father, Agamemnon, having returned from the Trojan War, is murdered by Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. Clytemnestra's motives are complex and unclear, for Agamemnon had previously sacrificed their daughter, Iphigenia, in order to ensure military success, and it is an open question as to what extent maternal vengeance as opposed to romantic intrigue motivated [End Page 402] her action. After the murder, Electra rescues her brother Orestes from probable death by sending him abroad (Aegisthus fearing revenge would have killed the child) while she grows and lives as an outcast in her own home, awaiting the day when the grown Orestes will return and bring their father's murderers to justice.The story, and its ensuing consequences, had already been handled masterfully in Aeschylus' Oresteia; but in Sophocles' play there is considerably more interest shown in Electra herself. 2 This focus results in a magnification of Electra's mourning for her father along with a sustained meditation upon how this mourning results in her inability to live, in any full sense, with the knowledge of his death. She cannot escape the memory of the injustice done him, and this memory fuels her hopes for Orestes' return even as it renders her, for all practical purposes, incapacitated.Her character thus described draws continual attention during the course of the play, and in their first appearance the Chorus admonishes her: "When you go on too far with grief, / you come to endless anguish, and destroy yourself. / There is no salvation from your troubles here, / so why should you persist in suffering" (136-39). Electra herself views her persistent suffering as necessary and noble, a show of allegiance to her murdered father and a refusal to compromise with his killers. The Chorus and Chrysothemis, however, argue that by so carrying on Electra is in reality causing more damage to herself than her situation warrants. Her ragged appearance, quite noticeable stench, and public outcries do nothing to help redress her father's honor; they rather highlight her mania and point toward insanity. At one point Chrysothemis implies as much. To Electra's accusation that her position of political compromise is dishonorable, she rebuts: "There's honor in not letting madness defeat you" (395)—suggesting both a different conception of honor and a veiled appraisal of her sister's mental health. In the service of life and sanity, the Chorus and Chrysothemis seem to say, leave off your suffering. In the service of honor and the dead, Electra rejoins, I cannot. The movement of the play in fact continually juxtaposes the position of Electra with that of her critics, and this juxtaposition is one that calls for interpretive elucidation. 3An especially fertile way of adjudicating these issues in Electra is afforded us by Nietzsche, and, specifically, by his On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life. This is the case because, as I want to suggest, Nietzsche's essay provides a framework which reconstructs, and in a unique way, the central problem of Electra. That problem is [End Page 403] essentially one of reconciling the conflicting claims of familial honor and memory with the claims of life. Through Nietzsche's exposition of history and its relation to life, this problem is both illumined and given greater subtlety—illumined, in that the potential agôn between history and life, while present in Sophocles' Electra, is not just obvious; and made subtle, in that Nietzsche's proposed solution to this agôn allows for a reading of the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:POETRY AS THE NAMING OF THE GODS by Phyllis Zagano There have been many attempts to define poetry, and there is copious advice to would-be poets. Horace writes somewhere "Sit quod vis, simplex dumtaxat et unum" which can be comfortably rendered as "make anything at all, so long as it hangs together." The hanging together is the quality most writers point to as evidence of success: simply, it works. (...) What poetry does is the more complex question, since it is the understanding of its internal kinesis which allows for its definition. Essentially, it takes an object from objective reality (insofar as we can agree such exists) and creates an oxymoronic entity: a static consciousness. This is always seen in phenomenological terms, that is, it must be consciousness of something. The poet recognizes this in deference to the common consciousness and the common understanding of the everyday, by the use of metaphor, simile, and the other accouterments of the trade. Things must be as they appear, and they must be as they appear to some majority of the people, in order for the poet to argue his private vision with clarity. The analogy must have some common ground before it has meaning, before the "naming" takes place. For Martin Heidegger the activity of creating poetry, dichten, is not only an indispensable part of human life, it signals the humanness of the person. He has two principal essays on poetry which show how this activity ofdichten combines his concepts Dasein and Vorhandenheit (despite his later abandonment of Dasein for Lichtung). Heidegger's essay, "Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry," seeks to determine what is common to poetry, that is, what constitutes its essence. 340 Phyllis Zagano341 Another ofhis essays, "What are Poets For?" begins where the first ends (with considerations of Friedrich Hölderlin's "Bread and Wine"). Each essay comments on specific poems and somewhat imperfectly attempts a poetic theory in consonance with the rest of Heidegger's work. Since "Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry" concentrates more on poetic theory than "What are Poets For?," investigation of it will prove more helpful in understanding and appropriating Heidegger's contention that "The writing of poetry is the fundamental naming of the Gods____"· In his "Letter on Humanism," Heidegger calls language the "House of Being," while man is the "Shepherd of Being." This understanding ofthe function oflanguage and the methodweuse tocreateand recreate ourselves and our world recurs often in Heidegger's work. The essay, "Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry," stands as a seeking after what is common to poetry and, while Heidegger recognizes that Hölderlin's work is "only one among many others" (p. 294) and therefore cannot be used as the sole criterion to determine what constitutes poetry, he says that if what we recognize as the "essence of poetry" is present in a universal concept, then it ought to be able to be extrapolated from Hölderlin's poetry as well as from that of any other poet. What constitutes the "essence" of poetry, Heidegger argues, ought to be equally valid in every poem, but it is perhaps well to remind him that what ought to be equally valid in every poem is only equally valid in every poem which "hangs together," that is, every poem which performs its function as poem. Such insistence is ofcourse mere definition of terms, but in this case, without prior argument on the metaphysics of art, it is necessary. In any event, Heidegger concludes that the essence of Hölderlin's poetry is the "essence ofpoetry" itself (p. 294), and that what is common to poetry is found in it. While some critics might argue that Heidegger makes too much of Hölderlin here, the more dangerous weakness in this method of argumentation is the possibility that an idiosyncrasy might be mistaken for an essential element or, more probably, that too much will be generalized from this particular example or set of examples. The trained literary critic can cast a cold eye on such magnification of a single poet as the presenter of both form and content for the meaning of the "essence of poetry." In fact, it... (shrink)

In this essay, I study the contested role of magnification as an observational strategy in the generation theories of William Harvey and René Descartes. During the seventeenth century, the grounds under the discipline of anatomy were shifting as knowledge was increasingly based on autopsia and observation. Likewise, new theories of generation were established through observations of living beings in their smallest state. But the question formed: was it possible to extend vision all the way down to the first points (...) of life? Arguing that the potential of magnification hinged on the metaphysics of living matter, I show that Harvey did not consider observational focus on the material composition of blood and embryos to be conducive to knowledge of living bodies. To Harvey, generation was caused by immaterial, and thus in principle invisible, forces that could not be magnified. Descartes, on the other hand, believed that access to the subvisible scale of natural bodies was crucial to knowledge about their nature. This access could be granted through rational introspection, but possibly also through powerful microscopes. The essay thus ends with a reflection on the importance of Cartesian corpuscularianism for the emergence of microscopical anatomy in seventeenth-century England. (shrink)

Research on sexual harassment in the workplace has followed several trajectories: the extent of sexual harassment, labeling sexual harassment, responses to sexual harassment, and contributing factors to sexual harassment. Much of this research has been necessarily applied, leaving theoretical frameworks concerning sexual harassment underdeveloped. This research uses the case of the sexual harassment of temporary workers to develop grounded theory to provide a more structural understanding of sexual harassment. While temporary employment has increased dramatically in the past 15 years, researchers (...) have only recently begun to document the effects of this trend. This research is based on 68 in-depth interviews from two broader studies on clerical temporary work in Chicago and Los Angeles. The researchers find that the organization of temporary work fosters sexual harassment through the magnification of asymmetrical power relationships. (shrink)

We present four new change detection methods that create an automated change map from a probability map. In this case, the probability map was derived from a 3D model. The primary application of interest is aerial photographic applications, where the appearance, disappearance or change in position of small objects of a selectable class (e.g., cars) must be detected at a high success rate in spite of variations in magnification, lighting and background across the image. The methods rely on an (...) earlier derivation of a probability map. We describe the theory of the four methods, namely Bernoulli variables, Markov Random Fields, connected change, and relaxation-based segmentation, evaluate and compare their performance experimentally on a set probability maps derived from aerial photographs. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 203-205 [Access article in PDF] The Taipai, Taiwan, Museum of World Religions Maria Reis Habito Dallas, Texas A new museum dedicated to exploring the world's great religious traditions opened in Taipei this past November. Its professed mission is rather unique: to teach about religions and religious life in the world, and to provide instructive experiences about the variety of the world's religious expressions as a (...) basis for mutual understanding, peace, and love among peoples of the world. The vision for the museum as a place that will foster religious learning, interreligious dialogue, and cooperation was developed by its founder, the Venerable Dharma Master Hsin Tao. He conceived the museum as an educational institution that will "explore the fundamental values that are at the roots of all religions." The mission of the museum—"to encourage respect, tolerance and love by fostering dialogue among people of all faiths and backgrounds as we work together to create greater understanding and peaceful interaction in the New Millennium"—has attracted widespread support among his disciples in Taiwan and overseas, whose contributions have made the museum project possible. The Content of the Museum of World Religions The goal in the content development and design of the museum has been twofold: (1) to create an institution of learning in which the visitor will find well structured information about important aspects of the world's religions and (2) to create an interactive space that, in the words of Ralph Applebaum, "immerses the visitors in an experience that enables them to view religion from many different perspectives to gain a better understanding of their own faith and the faith of others." To this, Professor Sullivan added, "[V]isitors will be invited to explore all religions as expressions of a universal search for purpose, meaning, and enlightenment. The museum will be a living monument to the human spirit and a sanctuary honoring the world's myriad faith traditions." To engage the visitor in this exploration, the visit to the museum has been designed as a journey that, even though not a ritual per se, has a structure analogous to the three-part structure of religious rituals.First, visitors experience a moment of separation from everyday life and enter into a very different quality of space and time. Second, during this kind of "time out," [End Page 203] suspended between the normal moments of everyday activity, the visitors undergo a special and intense experience, during which they receive knowledge that transforms their understanding and alters their self-perception. Such transformation occurs in the face of powerful sacred objects, symbols, or events that are displayed and experiencedin relatively dramatic presentations in the museum. They invite the visitor to participate and interact. Thirdly, steps are undertaken to reinsert the visitor back into the life of daily activity.There are fourteen steps to the museum experience, each of which lands the visitor in a different place, with its own experience of time. At each step, in each place, the religious structure of time is viewed on a different scale, seen under a different order of magnification. The museum experience is an orderly succession of times, magnified and mapped onto a series of spaces that invite the visitor's interaction. The aim is to offer the visitor an experience that, like a ritual, is satisfying and transformative and yet remains an experience proper to an institute of learning.As an example of one of the steps, imagine coming from the lobby (step 5) into the Prime Times Theater (step 6). The panel on the eastern wall of the lobby slides aside, and you enter into the darkened theater as into a cave. You are implanted there in the mysterious and primeval space to relive the experience of the seed of love and peace, planted in the fertile grounds of origins. In a fifteen-minute film you view the primordial times described in religious myths and relive the drama and emotion of how life came to be as it is. A powerful weave of narration and imagery retells the stories and poses fundamental questions... (shrink)

Complex, risk-generating and predicament-laden patterns of global interdependence pose significant imperatives for radically reframing the purposes and provision of higher education. Changes already ongoing in higher education reflect and respond to global dynamics that are intensifying interdependence and, at the same time, deepening inequalities both within and among societies. Recognizing this is to recognize the need to question whether the arcs of change in higher education should remain passively entrained with globalization-driven magnifications and multiplications of difference, or whether higher education (...) can and should play a unique and critical role in reorienting the dynamics of global interdependence. This paper argues that if current trends toward both institutional and epistemic differentiation can be inflected toward enhancing diversification—rather than mere variation—21st-century higher education can come to serve as a global relational commons crucial to realizing ever more deeply shared and equitable expressions of global flourishing and public good. (shrink)

The paper leans on a movie cult from the 1960s, Blow-Up (1966) by Michelangelo Antonioni, of which a famous sequence is often mentioned, the one in which the protagonist, the photographer Thomas (considered here as a "conceptual character"), repeatedly enlarged the photographs he made in a park, in order to find an answer to the mystery surrounding the murder of a man: magnification which leads, on the one hand, to a gradual loss of definition of images, with the grain (...) of the picture becoming more and more evident, but also, on the other, in the emergence, from the very material of the print, of a fundamental detail that will help solve the mystery. What interests is the link between indicative referentiality and evidence documentary, between degrees of definition and authentication powers. The paper also analyzes the links that intertwine, in the film, between the photographs of Thomas (by Don McCullin) and paintings painted by another character of the movie, Bill (directed by Ian Stephenson), but also, outside the film, with all a series of examples from artistic production and visual culture of the time: very low definition images of the Kennedy assassination in Dallas (the famous Zapruder Film), the portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald directed by Sigmar Polke by simulating the halftone technique, the war photographs of Don McCullin and David Bailey's Fashion Photographs, Random Earths Studies by Mark Boyle and Joan Hills, Materialologies and Texturologies by Jean Dubuffet, as well as Zen for Film by Nam June Paik. Fimiani's text addresses also two contemporary installations which have tried to return to the issues from the photographic sequence of Antonioni's film: Blow-Up Blow-Up (2010) by Joan Fontcuberta and Portrait Landscape (from the Object Classifier series) (2015) by John Houck, an installation in which photograms of Blow-Up are analyzed through facial recognition software. (shrink)

Although true in some aspects, the suggested characterization of today’s science as a dichotomy between traditional science and data-driven science misses some of the nuance, complexity, and possibility that exists between the two positions. Part of the problem is the claim that Data Science works without theories. There are many theories behind the data that are used in science. However, for data science, the only theories that matter are those in mathematics, statistics, and computer science. In this conceptual paper, we (...) add two other philosophy of science tenets, experiments and data, to the discussion to create a more nuanced view of how data science uses theories. Following Ihde’s concept of technoscience and the incessant quest for more precision, magnification, and resolution, we argue that technology-driven science created a need for more technology-driven science, culminating in data science. Further, we adapt Hacking and Galison’s views on physics to argue that data science is also an experimental science, which uses data objects in experiments. Drawing from Heelan, we called these objects “data-objects-for-knowing”. Finally, we conclude that data science is a science to study artificially created phenomena—a science to study the data manipulated by the equations and operations of AI. It disregards the connections between data and the real world that were carefully built by the theories from other sciences. In the experiments of data science, data are the world itself. The knowledge created by data science is purposely disconnected from any theory from other sciences; it is a knowledge for the sake of itself. (shrink)