bakhsh-i 1. Shāmil-i imtiyaz-i akhlāq-i Qurʼān va sharḥ-i mawz̤ūʻāt-i akhlāqī -- bakhsh-i 2. Shāmil-i tamām-i āyat-i akhlāqī-i Qurʼān.

Philosophy, Arab Philosophy; 20th century.

On Islam and state, and Islamic philosophy.

Ras proteins function as critical relay switches that regulate diverse signaling pathways between cell surface receptors and the nucleus. Over the past 2‐3 years researchers have identified many components of these pathways that mediate Ras activation and effector function. Among these proteins are several guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs), which are responsible for directly interacting with and activating Ras in response to extracellular stimuli. Analogous GEFs regulate Ras‐related proteins that serve other diverse cellular functions. In particular, a growing family of (...) proteins (Dbl homology proteins) has recently been identified, which may function as GEFs for the Rho family of Ras‐related proteins. This review summarizes our current knowledge of the structure, biochemistry and biology of Ras and Rho family GEFs. Additionally, we describe mechanisms of GEF activation of Ras in signal transduction and address the potential that deregulated GEFs might contribute to malignant transformation through chronic Ras protein activation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Far-Future Paleontology: The Baffling Case of Brunaspis enigmaticaAnne-Sophie Milon (bio) and Jan Zalasiewicz (bio)Paleontologists, for more than two centuries, have studied and debated the petrified remains of plants and animals that have evolved over the past three billion years on Earth. They have argued over the grand concepts that they reveal, such as biological evolution and climate change, and also the many specific questions thrown up by these (...) relics: was such-and-such a shell, a mollusk, or an arthropod? Did this fossil fish live high up in the water, among the plankton, or grub in the mud on the sea floor?These studies have for many paleontologists been a blessedly human-free zone, detached from the busy realities of our everyday lives. The science of paleontology, though, is simply one obscure part of a burgeoning and rapidly evolving technosphere that underpins our lives, and that is now evolving millions of new kinds of fossils—technofossils—far more rapidly than ever happened in biological evolution. Many of these objects will, quite certainly, become part of Earth’s future fossil record.If such an endeavor as paleontology were ever to arise again, in a distant post-human future, how would its practitioners deal with these bizarre relics?We provide a preview, on the following pages, of just one such enigma, and how it may be resolved (or not) by our puzzled disciplinary descendants. [End Page 31] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 32] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 33] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 34] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 35] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 36] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 37] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 38] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 39] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 40] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 41] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 42] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 43] Click for larger view View full resolution[End Page 44]Anne-Sophie Milon Anne-Sophie Milon is an artist-researcher who applies her illustration skills (HEAR, Strasbourg, France, 2010) and 2D traditional animation (UWE, Bristol, UK, 2012) to political arts (SPEAP, Sciences Po, 2015) and science and technology studies (HSTS, EHESS, 2022). For the past ten years, she has translated geological narratives–and ordinary ones for Earth sciences–into extraordinary plots for the uninitiated, including the humanities. She is currently working with Jan Zalasiewicz on a play, The Petrified Museum (2024), based on the British Geological Survey (Keyworth, UK), and on a PhD project in science and technology studies looking at limestones’ agencies in extractive industry practices (2025). She regularly collaborates with researchers from the Anthropocene Working Group: The Cosmic Oasis (Oxford University Press, 2022), “The Victims of Carbon Dioxide are Starting to Appear” in Feral Atlas (2021), and The Epochs of Nature (University of Chicago Press, 2016).Jan Zalasiewicz Jan Zalasiewicz is Emeritus Professor of Paleobiology at the University of Leicester. He was formerly a field geologist and paleontologist with the British Geological Survey, involved in the geological mapping of eastern England and central Wales. His interests include Early Paleozoic fossils, notably the graptolites (a kind of extinct zooplankton), mud and mudrocks, the Quaternary Ice Ages, the nature of geological time, and the geology made by humans. In recent years, he has helped develop the concept of an Anthropocene epoch. He enjoys writing popular science articles and books, and being involved in art/science projects.Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and SubStance, Inc... (shrink)

Taking up Jacques Derrida as a figure of thought in relation to Africa, this edited collection poses the questions: What is Derrida to Africa? And, its corollary, what is Africa to Derrida?

Philosophical anthropology is a tradition that is as old as philosophy itself, so much so that it might be said to be indistinguishable from philosophy itself. Philosophical anthropology, extending as it does from Socrates to Sartre, best describes the work of V.Y. Mudimbe. Anthropology, broadly conceived as the science that studies human origins, the material and cultural development of humanity, is always Mudimbe’s first line of philosophical inquiry. It is certainly Mudimbe’s interest in anthropology that allows him to conduct his (...) investigations into Africa, its modes of thinking, and colonialism and its continuing effects on the continent. Writing on the latter issue in The Invention of Africa, Mudimbe, with his customary deftness of mind, argues that colonialism and its aftermath cannot by itself account for the continent’s extant condition: “The colonizing structure, even in its most extreme manifestations... might not be the only explanation for Africa’s present-day marginality. Perhaps this marginality could, more essentially, be understood from the perspective of wider hypotheses about the classification of beings and societies.” [ Making sense of Africa, in Mudimbe’s terms, must begin with a hypothesization that explicates how “beings and societies” come to be classified, the anthropological undertaking par excellence, which also requires a study of the forces that construct, implement and maintain these classifications. (shrink)

Critical study of Asfār al-arbaʻah fī al-ḥikmah, written by Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī on Islamic philosophy.

This book probes the cultural forces and legacies at play in three events in sports history, exploring how racial, national, sporting, and personal identities overlap and conflict. The author taps into a deep well of Western philosophy and literature to read the resonances in these three moments.

The article investigates the significance of syntax in the multilingual EU law. It attempts to respond to the question whether syntax is apt to contribute to the uniformity of that law and how, with regard to this function, it relates to the (widely disputed yet uncontested) semantic and pragmatic methods of achieving such a uniformity. In order to respond to this question, the article firstly, recalls fundamental concepts which would help conceptualize the endeavour and, secondly, presents examples of analysis of (...) syntax arrangements which can be deemed representative for the study of the said problem of contribution. The study finds that EU law (expressed in 24 official languages which have equal authentic status) relies on diversified syntax of its respective constitutive languages. Syntax structures used in respective language versions of EU law represent narrower, law-specific, form of syntax structures available in these languages. Its specificity is determined mostly by legislative traditions of respective EU member states. Syntactic structures of EU law produced in different official languages do not represent a single pattern because of diversified mode of producing illocutionary value of provisions in which strongly idiomatic modal verbs (modal operators) and even special modal structures (not necessarily containing modal verbs) are used to express legal norms. They also differ when it comes to their law-specific compositionality, i.e. flexibility of different syntax structure to produce the same meaning and, in the same time, to preserve their genre/register informational value. Notwithstanding, these structures have well pronounced and system-significant common features within respective Germanic, Romanic, and Slavic families of languages in which EU law is mostly reproduced. The sentence structure and the relevant register of EU law provisions are the same for respective versions of EU texts of law expressed in the languages belonging to the respective three language families which were examined for the sake of this study. These common features are re-enforced by the synoptic mode of producing EU law which imposes formal resemblance of provisions reproduced in respective EU official languages to each other. The multilingual EU legislator also uses patterns which grant legal text the relevant register, yet its specific EU character ultimately transpires through semantic aspects of EU texts rather than their mere syntax. The unity of the system is achieved most strongly through the EU specific interpretation, where the teleological methods (which can be conceived as a language means to achieve EU law goals and objectives at the pragmatic level) are of utmost importance. Thus, there is no EU-specific syntax which would, as such, contribute to unity of EU law. Instead, unity is achieved in the area of semantics and pragmatics. The well exposed anaphoric character of EU law (as any other type of law) may contribute to narrowing down possibility for differentiation of respective language versions of EU law. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Towards a PL-Metaphysics of Perception: In Search of the Metaphysical Roots of Constructivism” by Konrad Werner. Upshot: In his target article, Werner focuses his efforts on finding a metaphysical paradigm in which it would be suitable to embed - as he puts it - some movements in contemporary philosophy and cognitive science, and especially radical constructivism and the embodied cognition approach. In my commentary, I shall briefly discuss the question of metaphysical grounding or embedding (...) of radical constructivism, and make an attempt to show that the author has failed to explain what this grounding is supposed to be, and that radical constructivism has to remain characteristically an anti-metaphysical doctrine. Of course, I do appreciate the ingenious efforts to find the metaphysical grounding of radical constructivism, as far as the question of cognitive access to and the knowability of reality is concerned, but I would like to undermine the key tenet of the article that radical constructivism is in the pressing need of a metaphysics of some sort. (shrink)

Where does the notion of free will come from? How and when did it develop, and what did that development involve? In Michael Frede's radically new account of the history of this idea, the notion of a free will emerged from powerful assumptions about the relation between divine providence, correctness of individual choice, and self-enslavement due to incorrect choice. Anchoring his discussion in Stoicism, Frede begins with Aristotle--who, he argues, had no notion of a free will--and ends with Augustine. Frede (...) shows that Augustine, far from originating the idea, derived most of his thinking about it from the Stoicism developed by Epictetus. (shrink)

So far the "Science Wars" have generated far more heat than light. Combatants from one or the other of what C. P. Snow famously called "the two cultures" (science versus the arts and humanities) have launched bitter attacks but have seldom engaged in constructive dialogue about the central issues. In The One Culture?, Jay A. Labinger and Harry Collins have gathered together some of the world's foremost scientists and sociologists of science to exchange opinions and ideas rather than insults. The (...) contributors find surprising areas of broad agreement in a genuine conversation about science, its legitimacy and authority as a means of understanding the world, and whether science studies undermines the practice and findings of science and scientists. The One Culture? is organized into three parts. The first consists of position papers written by scientists and sociologists of science, which were distributed to all the participants. The second presents commentaries on these papers, drawing out and discussing their central themes and arguments. In the third section, participants respond to these critiques, offering defenses, clarifications, and modifications of their positions. Who can legitimately speak about science? What is the proper role of scientific knowledge? How should scientists interact with the rest of society in decision making? Because science occupies such a central position in the world today, such questions are vitally important. Although there are no simple solutions, The One Culture? does show the reader exactly what is at stake in the Science Wars, and provides a valuable framework for how to go about seeking the answers we so urgently need. Contributors include: Constance K. Barsky, Jean Bricmont, Harry Collins, Peter Dear, Jane Gregory, Jay A. Labinger, Michael Lynch, N. David Mermin, Steve Miller, Trevor Pinch, Peter R. Saulson, Steven Shapin, Alan Sokal, Steven Weinberg, Kenneth G. Wilson. (shrink)

Philosophy and conception of Divine authority in legal terms.

This response to Bruce Janz’s African Philosophy and Enactivist Cognition (2023) uses the work of Martin Heidegger and Stanley Cavell to understand the relationship among philosophy, thinking, and place and, most crucially, Africa as a place from which philosophy might be thought, that is, might be proposed as native to philosophy. Invoking the late Heidegger, for whom thinking presents itself as the question, and Cavell’s use of Ralph Waldo Emerson as a thinker native to America, the difficulty is raised as (...) to how these relations manifest themselves in Janz’s Enactivist Cognition. (shrink)

This essay uses Derrida's concept of autoimmunity to critique Homeland, a television show that deals with an American prisoner of war who has been ‘turned’ into an operative for an al Queda-like movement. Autoimmunity is critical to thinking the ways in which the existence of a turned POW within the state, who belongs visibly to the state, presents a particularly heteronomic challenge to how the distinction between Self and Other operates. This Self who has taken up the cause of the (...) Other presents, this essay argues, an infinitely greater threat to the state precisely because it cannot be identified as Other, precisely because bears no ostensible traces of the Other. (shrink)

Each of the essays collected here presents one or more flashpoints or crises in a history of 20 th - and 21 st -century dwelling.

This essay considers James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time as a philosophical contemplation on love. Drawing on sources such as the Bible, Jacques Derrida, and a host of Baldwin critics, this essay understands the Christian love of The Fire Next Time as asymmetrical. The asymmetry of love derives from its understanding of love as the responsibility to Self and Other that demands no reciprocation. Asymmetrical love makes itself vulnerable before the Other and, most importantly, it is a love that risks (...) itself absolutely by offering love to those who will do violence to the subject who gives love. (shrink)

“The Fourth Spartacus” uses Alain Badiou’s work, especially Logics of Worlds, to critique the 1976 Soweto student rebellion. Soweto 1976 is one of the key events in black South African anti-apartheid history. Taking its cue from the figure of Spartacus, a figure that assumes many iterations in political history, this essay argues for a fidelity to the event of Soweto 1976: the recognition that Soweto 1976 must be understood as a radical moment that is not continuous with the preceding and, (...) particularly, successive moments of anti-apartheid struggle. Soweto 1976, “The Fourth Spartacus” insists, did not culminate, as the dominant political narrative in post-apartheid South Africa claims, in the democratic elections of 1994. More than anything, the event of Soweto 1976 stands determinedly opposed to the democratic materialism of post-apartheid South Africa. (shrink)

Targeting high-risk populations for public health interventions is a classic tool of public health promotion programs. This practice becomes thornier when racial groups are identified as the at-risk populations. I present the particular ethical and epistemic challenges that arise when there are low-risk subpopulations within racial groups that have been identified as high-risk for a particular health concern. I focus on two examples. The black immigrant population does not have the same hypertension risk as US-born African Americans. Similarly, Finnish descendants (...) have a far lower rate of cystic fibrosis than other Caucasians. In both cases the exceptional nature of these subpopulations has been largely ignored by the designers of important public health efforts, including the recent US government dietary recommendations. I argue that amending the publicly-disseminated risk information to acknowledge these exceptions would be desirable for several reasons. First, recognizing low-risk subpopulations would allow more efficient use of limited resources. Communicating this valuable information to the subpopulations would also promote truth-telling. Finally, presenting a more nuanced empirically-supported representation of which groups are at known risk of diseases (not focusing on mere racial categories) would combat harmful biological race essentialist views held by the public. (shrink)

For some time now feminists have been pointing an accusing finger at science, urging that the relationship between women and science has been far from a beneficial one for women. Indeed, science has generally excluded women from its most important activities, feminists have charged, science has tended to leave women largely invisible in its knowledge and research, and science has often portrayed women, and things feminine, in negative terms when it has considered us. I suggest that the philosophy of science (...) has helped in various ways to keep these problems for women in science invisible and intact, and suggest a number of changes in philosophy of science to rectify the situation. (shrink)

Upshot: According to its introduction, the aim of Enaction is to “present the paradigm of enaction as a framework for a far-reaching renewal of cognitive science as a whole.” While many of the chapters make progress towards this aim, the book as a whole does not present enactivism as a coherent framework, and it could be argued that enactivism’s embrace of phenomenology means it is no longer a theory of cognition.

Application of technologies has an important role in agricultural development. Identifying and assessing the impacts of agricultural technologies is necessary. This study aimed at assessing the impacts of laser levelling economically, socially, environmentally, and technically in the viewpoint of the agricultural experts and identifying factors determining their perception of the impacts. The study samples (151 experts) were selected using multi-stage random sampling in Fars Province, Iran. The results revealed that experts considered uniform distribution of water, using conservation tillage, facilitating agricultural (...) activities, decreased water consumption and decrease of water wasting as the most important technical impacts of laser levelling technology. The most environmentally important impacts were the decrease of soil erosion and retention of crop residues. Experts stated the most significant social impacts as improvement in villages living conditions and sense of belonging to rural areas. Besides, an increase of income and reduction of inputs costs were among the economic impacts of laser levelling technology. According to the results, attitude towards water and soil resources conservation and environmental beliefs had the highest direct effect on individual perception toward impacts. Practical recommendations have been presented based on the results of the study. (shrink)

Deterministic models in population dynamics often are really approximations to stochastic models, justified by an appeal to the law of large numbers. It is proposed to call such models pseudodeterministic. Four questions are discussed in this article: (1) What errors may be made by equating deterministically predicted values to expectations? (2) When, and in what sense, may numbers be assumed to be large? (3) How large are the variances, coefficients of variations, etc., as assigned to the variables in the stochastic (...) versions of the models? (4) What role may pseudodeterministic models play in empirical research, where problems of statistical reliability arise?As an example, a modified Nicholson-Bailey model of the interaction between insect parasitoids and their hosts is discussed; the modification consists of assigning a random (density-independent) mortality to the parasitoid population. A stochastic version of this model is discussed. The expectation of the final host density is compared with the value computed from the deterministic model. The latter value is systematically lower than the former. The magnitude of the difference depends on parameter values. The variability to be expected with the stochastic model is characterized by the coefficient of variation of the final host density; its dependence on parameter values and initial conditions is discussed. It is concluded that it is worthwhile in practical applications to estimate parasitoid mortality, and that the coefficient of variation in real situations may be far from negligible. (shrink)

This collection of essays marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Frantz Fanon’s classic study of anticolonial struggle, _The Wretched of the Earth_. Scholars explore the relevance of Fanon’s work for current modes of psychoanalysis, postcolonial theory, and political thought. One contributor reposes a classic question of postcolonial scholarship: what does it mean for a colonial Caribbean man to practice a Continental intellectual tradition? Others identify Fanon’s experiences working at a mental institution in colonial French Algeria as a powerful (...) influence on his psychoanalytic perspective. This issue revitalizes Fanon’s canonical status as Third World theorist by asserting that the main imperatives of Fanon’s work remain as urgent as ever: combating the psychic and physical violence of colonialism, achieving real forms of liberation for colonized peoples, and ending the degradation of people of color. Contributors: Matthew Abraham, Gerard Aching, John E. Drabinski, Grant Farred, Nigel C. Gibson, Priyamvada Gopal, Joy James, Ranjana Khanna, Alfred J. López, Miguel Mellino, Simon Morgan Wortham, Richard Pithouse Grant Farred is Professor of Africana Studies and English at Cornell University. He is the former editor of the _South Atlantic Quarterly_ and the author, most recently, of_ Long Distance Love: A Passion for Football_. (shrink)

Aim/PurposeThis paper is a review of the progress of the Vietnam socio-economic and development plan and an assessment of the extent to which Vietnam is putting in place the critical social and economic development structures that will enable it to reach the status of “developed nation” in the time set (2020) by its national strategic plan. The research will identify and review trade patterns, trade policy and the effect of foreign aid on Vietnam’s plan to transform its economy and society (...) from a developing nation status to status of developednation. The overriding question stands as “is” Vietnam effec-tively moving towards developed nation statussoon”?BackgroundThis paper examines the history of Vietnam from the command economy in its transition to a market driven economy, the criteria, hurdles and challenges as the country moves towards a developed country status. MethodologyApplied research based on the body of research in socio-economic develop-ment theory, international trade and market theory. The review is conducted by collecting and analyzing data on foreign trade, foreign aid, business and general economic growth, development and social wellbeing. Itidentifies and appraises the trade patterns,trade effects, socio-economic policies and the effect of foreign aid] on the economic growth and the progress of the coun-try towards becoming a developed nation state. (shrink)

Objectives: to assess physicians’ and patients’ views in Saudi Arabia towards involving the patient versus the family in the process of diagnosis disclosure and decision-making, and to compare them with views from the USA and Japan.Design: A self-completion questionnaire was translated to Arabic and validated.Participants: Physicians from different specialties and ranks and patients in a hospital or attending outpatient clinics from 6 different regions in KSA.Results: In the case of a patient with incurable cancer, 67% of doctors and 51% of (...) patients indicated that they would inform the patient in preference to the family of the diagnosis . Assuming the family already knew, 56% of doctors and 49% of patients would tell the patient even if family objected . However, in the case of HIV infection, 59% of physicians and 81% of patients would inform the family about HIV status without the patient’s consent . With regards to withholding ventilatory support, about 50% of doctors and over 60% of patients supported the use of mechanical ventilation in a patient with advanced cancer, regardless of the wishes of the patient or the family. Finally, the majority of doctors and patients were against assisted suicide.Conclusions: Although there was more recognition for a patient’s autonomy amongst physicians, most patients preferred a family centred model of care. Views towards information disclosure were midway between those of the USA and Japan. Distinctively, however, decisions regarding life prolonging therapy and assisted suicide were not influenced to a great extent by wishes of the patient or family, but more likely by religious beliefs. (shrink)