Over one-third of older adults in many countries have a companion animal, and pets may harbor health-promoting potential. Few studies have considered pet-ownership in relation to economic vulnerability, and pet-ownership has not been often considered within policy efforts to promote ageing-in-place. We conducted a mixed methods case study to understand perspectives of both community agencies that support ageing-in-place and older adults themselves. A shortage of affordable, appropriate pet-friendly housing emerged as a challenge, even when framed as (...) a legitimate choice and preference for many older adults. In this manuscript, we share the trajectories of three economically vulnerable older adults whose affordable housing needs became entangled with commitments to pets. Guided by dialogical narrative methodology, we offer each narrative as a short vignette to illustrate the extent to which older adults will practice ‘more-than-human solidarity’ for a pet, even when their own well-being is compromised as a result; and highlight incongruence between the underlying moral values that shape solidaristic practices of individuals versus solidaristic arrangements that shape affordable housing opportunities. We suggest that housing rules and legislation that disrupt, rather than confirm, more-than-human solidarity may render older adults susceptible to, rather than protected from, deteriorating physical, mental and social well-being. We propose that collective solidaristic practices must reflect and subsume the moral complexity of solidarity practiced by individuals, to enable fair and equitable ageing-in-place. (shrink)

That objects of knowledge get moved across boundaries is well known. But how they get moved often goes unexamined. Modes of movement cannot be ignored when considering objects’ historical signi?cance. Put differently, how geographies are negotiated is central to the constitution of knowledge objects. This essay offers a brief assessment of the competing agencies at work in the global collections of the Enlightenment naturalist Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753). While discussing broadly the relationship between collecting and power in Sloane’s career, the (...) essay stresses the passivity and strategic weakness of the collector, and suggests how the meanings of speci?c curiosities varied according to asymmetries in their mode of transfer. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger’s Discourse on Thinking lays out a troubling view of the world which holds true today much as it did at the time of the speech: "The world now appears as an object open to the attacks of calculative thought, attacks that nothing is believed able any longer to resist. Nature becomes a gigantic gasoline station, an energy source for modern technology and industry. This relation of man to the world as such, in principle a technical one, developed in (...) the seventeenth century first and only in Europe. It long remained unknown in other continents, and it was altogether alien to former ages and histories" (50). As an architecture professor in an age of modern technology, I believe it critical that design students cultivate an ability to see more comprehensively and learn how to think more meditatively (as Heidegger later suggests). Coming into a state of attunement with context, culture, and environment must be considered to be the most basic criteria for building in the world, as these are the elements that preserve the feeling and identity of ‘place’. Considering being-in-the-world as a stance that necessarily moves more toward complex understandings of the environment, this paper outlines an effort given to the pedagogical implementation of Martin Heidegger’s description of the phenomenon of ‘world’, the three-fold structure for Being-in as a means of teaching students a more attuned comportment toward place, building, and site. I will discuss how these ideas were used in an preliminary design exercise, then clarified and elaborated through a lecture on Terrance Malick’s film The New World. (shrink)

Ullin Thomas Place died on 2nd January 2000 at the age of seventy-five. I had met him a little over three years earlier, in November 1996, during the annual 'Mind and Brain' symposium organized by Peter Fenwick and held at the Institute of Psychiatry in London. At that meeting Professor Place delivered a slightly shortened version of the paper reproduced here, in which he told his personal story — a pilgrim's progress? — recounting, as he put it, 'the (...) history of a thought process leading from an adolescent interest in mystical experience to an article entitled‘Is consciousness a brain process?’[Place, 1956] in which I argued for an affirmative answer to that question'. (shrink)

The article explores the need to eat as a biological and social practice among children in a preschool in Norway. The children in this preschool are aged from one to two years of age, and some of them have just started there. Different events from mealtimes relate to Derrida's concept of touch and Grosz's notion of bodies in‐place and out‐of‐place. How food touches the children and the practitioners is further discussed through a consideration of body/place relations, which (...) are both material and reflect pedagogical discourses. Its overall context is not only touching the food in a concrete sense, but also food as touch seen as a philosophical concept. Analyzing touching relations around the table including movements in materiality, bodies and discourses of eating may empower the youngest children in a preschool setting. (shrink)

AgeTech involves the use of emerging technologies to support the health, well-being and independent living of older adults. In this paper we focus on how AgeTech based on artificial intelligence (AI) may better support older adults to remain in their own living environment for longer, provide social connectedness, support wellbeing and mental health, and enable social participation. In order to assess and better understand the positive as well as negative outcomes of AI-based AgeTech, a critical analysis of ethical design, digital (...) equity, and policy pathways is required. A crucial question is how AI-based AgeTech may drive practical, equitable, and inclusive multilevel solutions to support healthy, active ageing. In our paper, we aim to show that a focus on equity is key for AI-based AgeTech if it is to realize its full potential. We propose that equity should not just be an extra benefit or minimum requirement, but the explicit aim of designing AI-based health tech. This means that social determinants that affect the use of or access to these technologies have to be addressed. We will explore how complexity management as a crucial element of AI-based AgeTech may potentially create and exacerbate social inequities by marginalising or ignoring social determinants. We identify bias, standardization, and access as main ethical issues in this context and subsequently, make recommendations as to how inequities that stem form AI-based AgeTech can be addressed. (shrink)

As demand grows from various stakeholders for responsible management education in business schools, it is essential to understand how corporate social responsibility and RME are perceived by various subgroups of business students. Following the principles of theories on moral orientation and moral development, we examined the role of gender and age in determining four indicators of business students’ moral approach in the context of business schools committed to RME and CSR. Based on nearly 1300 responses to a survey, conducted with (...) the United Nations-supported principles for responsible management education, we show that overall, female students placed a higher value on ethical responsibilities than male students. Female students were also more welcoming than male students regarding curriculum changes that were focused on CSR-related studies. In addition, older age groups ranked transcendent values and positive CSR attitudes higher than younger age groups. We also found that the subgroups of the age variable could better discriminate the differences in choices made by the respondents between the four indicators of students’ moral approach. The implications of our findings to RME, business schools, and other stakeholders are discussed. (shrink)

This paper reports a study of planning processes in the five-disc Tower of London (TOL) task in 20 younger and 20 older adult participants. A concurrent direct ''think-aloud'' method was used to obtain data on planning processes prior to moving discs in the TOL. A check was made of the effects of verbalising by comparing performance data from the experimental groups with data from control groups who did not verbalise during planning or moving. Verbalising slowed down planning and moving but (...) did not appear to distort the participants' approaches to the task. Older and younger participants did not differ in average moves taken to solve the tasks. However, older participants' planning was less complete and more error-prone than that of younger participants. The planning processes were characterised as showing a means-ends ''goal selection'' strategy. In this strategy participants (1) identify a single active goal disc at the start, (2) select moves and move sequences to enable the placing of the current goal disc in its target position, and (3) continue in this way until all discs are in their target positions. Age differences were found in the planning stage, during which there was no stimulus support and hence a substantial working memory load. During the move phase there was stimulus support and hence little loading of working memory. Age differences in moves required were not found in the move phase. As older participants tend to have depleted working memory capacity the present results suggest that working memory is heavily loaded in TOL planning but less so in the move phase of TOL. (shrink)

This paper explains the decline of the humanities, showing hour this was predicted by Alfred North Whitehead, and argues the consequence is decadence. Reviving the humanities, it is argued, involves the advance of process philosophy overcoming the division between the sciences and humanities, and it is shown how this can orient people to challenge our decadent culture.

In this paper I will argue that our own society's philosophy of death and dying has a largely negative effect on public policies towards the elderly, and that these policies will be changed for the better when and if we come to appreciate our elderly as the principal sources of our collective wisdom. Towards these ends, I shall consider in turn some basic types of theories about death, some basic attitudes towards dying and the duration of dying, some models of (...) aging as they affect and/or embody attitudes towards old age, and finally the place of creative expansion in one's advanced years. (shrink)

In this article of 1995, which had been translated into Russian already in 2013, the German Historian Stefan Troebst studied the question of the « breakthrough of the modern age » in Russia, usually attributed to tsar Peter I « the Great », suspecting that the new Era had in fact begun earlier, in the XVIIth century. After a theoretical reflexion about periodization in history, and its application to the history of Russia, he demonstrates that the « threshold year » (...) takes place in 1667, examining this theory from different points of view: state and institutions, international relations, economical policy, religion, culture and fine arts. But this modernization has also caused violent revolts and oppositions during the reign of tsar Alexis Mikhailovitch. (shrink)

Virtual globes, like Google Earth, are increasingly being used by experts and lay publics in the process of 'defending place' against rapidly shifting energy geographies. Drawing upon the fields of visual studies, landscape architecture and geography, this article examines the use of geospatial tools by conservation campaigns challenging new developments. With a focus on wind energy, the article describes the strategic advantages and risks associated with using virtual globes in campaign work. The article suggests that conservation campaigns need to (...) make more judicious use of visualization technologies. While Google Earth may enable distant viewers to 'witness' change, it may add limited value to how local citizens experience their own topographies. (shrink)

This study intended to test whether attachment to one’s own residential place at neighborhood level could represent a coping response for the elderly (consistently with the “docility hypothesis;” Lawton, 1982 ), when dealing with the demands of unfamiliar environments, in order to balance their reduction of spatial abilities. Specifically, a sequential path was tested, in which neighborhood attachment was expected to play a buffer role between lowered spatial competence and neighborhood satisfaction. The participants ( N = 264), senior citizens (...) (over 65-year-old), responded to a questionnaire including the measures of spatial self-efficacy, spatial anxiety, attitude toward wayfinding, residential attachment and residential satisfaction. Results from the mediation analysis showed that a lower perceived spatial self-efficacy is associated to a higher spatial anxiety, and both promote a more negative attitude toward wayfinding tasks in non-familiar places. This leads to a higher attachment to one’s own neighborhood, which in turn predicts a higher residential satisfaction. Thus, the “closure” response of becoming more attached to their residential place may be an adaptive strategy of the elderly for compensating the Person-Environment (P-E) mis- fit ( Lawton and Nahemow, 1973 ) when they feel unable (or less able) to cope with the demands of unfamiliar environments. (shrink)

Brief survey of Charles Taylor's earlier books, followed by an extensive review of Taylor's A Secular Age, published 2007 by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Technology tends toward perpetual innovation. Technology, enabled by both political and economic structures, propels society forward in a kind of technological evolution. The moment a novel piece of technology is in place, immediately innovations are attempted in a process of unending betterment. Bernard Stiegler suggests that, contra Heidegger, it is not being-toward-death that shapes human perception of time, life, death, and meaning. Rather, it is technological innovation that shapes human perception of time, life, death, and meaning. In fact, for (...) Stiegler, human evolution has always been part of technological evolution. While one can quibble with the notion of human-technology co-evolution, there is something to be said for the way in which human perception of time, of ageing, and of death seems to be judged against the horizon of perpetual evolution of technological innovation. In this technological imaginary, of which modern medicine is constituent, ageing and death seemingly may be infinitely deferred, and it is this innovating deferral that shapes the contemporary social imaginary around ageing and death in modern medicine. Yet, the reality of living (which is to say ageing) and dying always manifests itself differently than the scripts given to us by the technological imaginary with its myth of endless innovation. In fact, I shall argue that, where the Church created an ars moriendi, the technological imaginary gives us an ars ad mortem when it becomes clear that ageing and death cannot be infinitely deferred. And further, I shall argue that the Church must revivify its ars vivendi—that is to say, its liturgies, its arts, its technics—as a counter narrative to the myth of perpetual innovation that shapes the technological imaginary. (shrink)

The Enlightenment was the age in which the world became modern, challenging tradition in favor of reason, freedom, and critical inquiry. While many aspects of the Enlightenment have been rigorously scrutinized—its origins and motivations, its principal characters and defining features, its legacy and modern relevance—the geographical dimensions of the era have until now largely been ignored. Placing the Enlightenment contends that the Age of Reason was not only a period of pioneering geographical investigation but also an age with spatial dimensions (...) to its content and concerns. Investigating the role space and location played in the creation and reception of Enlightenment ideas, Charles W. J. Withers draws from the fields of art, science, history, geography, politics, and religion to explore the legacies of Enlightenment national identity, navigation, discovery, and knowledge. Ultimately, geography is revealed to be the source of much of the raw material from which philosophers fashioned theories of the human condition. Lavishly illustrated and engagingly written, Placing the Enlightenment will interest Enlightenment specialists from across the disciplines as well as any scholar curious about the role geography has played in the making of the modern world. (shrink)

: This study aims to discuss the basic argument that sociology, as a science, emerged as an intellectual response to the lost sense of community during social and cultural changes. This argument carries the assumption that the dominating metaphors and perspectives of classical sociology are informed by conservatism. In sociology, this claim is supported by well-known and ambivalent theoretical structures that are developed to explain the process of social change. This study aims to make a criticism of nostalgic sociology considering (...) the idea that the fundamental assumptions of the ambivalent theoretical structure in sociology are nostalgic. In addition, this study also aims to critically read the historical development of Islamism, one of the modern ideologies, with nostalgia and utopia. The suggestion of the article is that either classical sociology or Islamism –two subject appear differently in terms of their topics- gave similar intellectual reactions about the subject that they are unable to cope with ‘the present’ and produce a ‘golden age’ discourse as a solution to ‘the present’. The argument of the study is that either the effort of idealizing ‘the past’ in classical sociology or the myth of coming back home in Islamism against cultural alienation and sense of loss which are lived in ‘the present’ are actually determined by sovereign modernity paradigm. Summary: Behind the nostalgic paradigm, there is a rebuilt history that is shaped as a transition from feudalism to capitalism. In this history, the decline of feudalism corresponds to the loss of rural community, the loss of personal expressionism and the loss of unregulated society. In classical sociology, the heritage left by the solution of this historical reconstruction of society has become common. The anomaly of the modern world is precisely where the modern society from traditional society has emerged in the pathological state created by the loss of social ties with the passing. This pathological condition was first seen in Swiss mercenaries serving away from home, diagnosing nostalgia as a diagnosis of discomfort. We know that Johannes Hofer, who has a sense of humor, has not written any prescription for this disease, which gives some common signs with his melancholy. Sociology, shaped by three different intellectual movements as intellectual responses to the French and Industrial revolutions that allow the transformation of the European society, has taken its place as its focal point, and in the pioneering names, this change is "a change in everything at a dizzying pace, everything that has happened has evaporated and the glory of the world has deteriorated.” Modernity, which refers to the ideals of enlightenment, is blessed not to progress by nature, fluid, rational, contingent, lacking certainty. In fact, this blessing has brought with it the enemy of tradition to the 'new' with reference to its etymological origin. This sophisticated and complex structure unique to modernity only, has inspired some thinkers to conceive of an idealized past or future that is now determinative. Both of these ideas are moderators. The nostalgia becomes modern because of the longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed. Nostalgia is coeval with modernity. The article refers to Stauth-Turner's nostalgic paradigm, which provides the meta-phasic and meta-phase dominance of classical sociology detailed in Nietzsche's Dance. This paradigm consists of four main components. The first is that the history that we can summarize as a departure from the golden age when the world was a nest for man is seen as a decline and a loss. History is a history of sorrow and despair, as this decline will continue to exacerbate in the future. The example of such a feeling of grief in society theory is Weber's fate sociology. Because, according to Weber, whatever is waiting for us in the future is the polar night of the icy darkness, not the sunlight of summer. The second component of the nostalgic paradigm is the sense of secularization, together with the loss of integrity and moral certainty. This nostalgic trajectory is a very powerful secularization that emphasizes that such devastating social processes as urbanization, capitalist industrialization and the rationalization of everyday life, such as the diversity and complexity of social structure, the spread of scientific knowledge, urbanization with increasing population ratio, it brings forward its theory. With the announcement of the death of God, the gate of a competing and conflicting world has been opened, from which we have been transformed into a very godlike world. It is possible to observe a similar point of view in classical sociology in Durkheim, which has a theoretical basis for the transformation of social structures through professional distinction in the form of mechanical and organic solidarity. Durkheim analyzes social change in a deliberate way, and pre-change stake favors moral coherence. Moral coherence is now lost when collective consciousness is generally weakened in the post-change phase. The third trajectory we encounter in the nostalgic paradigm is the loss of individual autonomy and the decline of genuine social relations. With the loss of the moral unity, the individual has been caught under the domination of the bureaucratic state, in macro-social processes and institutions. It is inevitable that the individual who lost his autonomy is subject to the denial. The increasing exposure of the individual to social bureaucratic associations has been conceptualized by the iron cage metaphor in Weberian sociology. The enlightenment is the result of the panoptic collection of prison. So there is a nostalgic stance in this compound of the nostalgic paradigm that autonomy-ben lost because of the fall of the bureaucratic world under the domination of the modern state. In the nostalgic paradigm, the ultimate component is the feeling of laxity, spontaneity and loss of naturalness. Here, the individual is subject to not only macro-social processes but also micro-ethics. That is, it is understood that Adorno's "managed society" or Foucault's notion of closure prevents the individual's true emotions and enthusiasm, and that the consumer culture is preoccupied with certain preconceived ways of doing in a world dominated. To sum up, the metaphor of nostalgia that we are living in a world where we have been seized by administrative rules of a central state in a way that has lost the moral certainty and autonomy of the individual. The return to home, which is found in a significant part of the texts and practices put forward in the name of Islamism, has reached a deterministic attitude just as it was in classical sociology. In the nostalgic imagination where those who cannot cope with it are thought of as a safe harbor, there is a certain attitude towards deterministic ideologists that simplify, sanctify, and therefore falsify. Indeed, the imagination of a supra-historical, supra-community model for a time like the Golden Age discourse and for all time is itself history from the very beginning to the end. Therefore, it is a manifestation of a major historical process and the ideological design of sociality. The rhetoric discourse presented as a remedy in the present is possible with an anachronistic point of view which idealizes the past, and therefore the reality is distorted. The authentic one is extremely informal. This kind of discourse of authenticity, which is produced as opposed to the modernity that all that is solid melts into air, eventually has to make iron cages around it. As a result, the nostalgic rhetoric, which aims to be a modern chivalrous remedy that everything changes at a dizzying pace, has been determined by the paradigm of modernity, thanks to its self-reflexive nature which contains the opposite. (shrink)

The strength of democracy lies in its ability to self-correct, to solve problems and adapt to new challenges. However, increased volatility, resulting from multiple crises on multiple fronts – humanitarian, financial, and environmental – is testing this ability. By offering a new framework for democratic education, Teaching Democracy in an Age of Uncertainty begins a dialogue with education professionals towards the reconstruction of education and by extension our social, cultural and political institutions. -/- This book is the first monograph on (...) philosophy with children to focus on democratic education. The book examines the ways in which education can either perpetuate or disrupt harmful social and political practices and narratives at the classroom level. It is a rethinking of civics and citizenship education as place-responsive learning aimed at understanding and improving human-environment relations to not only face an uncertain world, but also to face the inevitable challenges of democratic disagreement beyond merely promoting pluralism, tolerance and agreement. -/- When viewed as a way of life democracy becomes both a goal and a teaching method for developing civic literacy to enable students to articulate and apprehend more than just the predominant political narrative, but to reshape it. This book will be of interest to scholars of philosophy, political science, education, democratic theory, civics and citizenship studies, and peace education research. (shrink)

The twentieth century discovered the concept of sacred place largely through the work of Martin Heidegger and Mircea Eliade. Their writings on sacred place respond to the modern manipulation of nature and secularization of space, and so may seem distinctively postmodern, but their work has an important and unacknowledged precedent in the Neoplatonism of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Sacred Place in Early Medieval Neoplatonism traces the appearance and development of sacred place in the (...) writings of Neoplatonists from the third to ninth centuries, and sets them in the context of present-day debates over place and the sacred. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Place and the "Spatial Turn" in Geography and in HistoryCharles W. J. WithersI. IntroductionA few years ago, British Telecom ran a newspaper advertisement in the British press about the benefits—and consequences—of advances in communications technology. Featuring a remote settlement in the north-west Highlands of Scotland, and with the clear implication that such "out-of-the-way places" were now connected to the wider world (as if they had not been before), (...) the advert proclaimed "Geography is History." What the advert signalled to as the "end" of geography in the sense of the social gradients associated with space and distance is what is known, variously, as "time-space convergence" and "time-space distanciation."1 The terms embrace not just the "collapse" of geographical space given technical advances (in travel time and in communications—consequences of what Castells calls "the information age" and "the network society"2), but also the idea that the modern world has become [End Page 637] more homogenized. One place is now much the same as another. Further, given the likelihood of such technical and cultural changes continuing into the future, geographical distinctiveness, evident in the particularity of place, would be a thing of the past: geography would indeed be history. There is, of course, much evidence to the contrary: that, in the face of "globalisation," questions of locality, sense of place and of identity in place matter now more than ever. Even, then, as Francis Fukuyama cautioned against the "death" of liberal democratic politics as The End of History,3 geography—that is, geography understood as questions to do with place, and questions to do with where you are in the world as part of questions about how you are and who you are in the world—has had considerably heightened significance and for some places and people more than others.4These notions of place—as a particular location, and the character or sense of place—are only part of the meanings associated with place in geographical and in historical work. Like space, its regular epistemic dancing partner in geographical ubiquity and metaphysical imprecision, place is a widespread yet complex term. What follows is historiographical in focus and, of necessity, partial in range. I offer a historiographical survey of the term place, principally but not alone within recent work in geography. In more detail, and with reference to one of the strong senses in which place is used, namely that of locale, "the local," or localness, I trace here the connections between place, space, and the idea of the local as evident in recent work in history and in geography, especially within the history and the geography of science. Particular attention is paid in this context to the distinctive features of what we may think of as the "spatial turn" in the history of science by looking at the idea of place and space in recent work in Enlightenment studies. My argument is three-fold. Notions of place and space, much debated by geographers, have been as central a concern for intellectual historians and historians of science as for philosophers and others, but they have been differently expressed. There is, I shall argue, value in looking at these different views in order to understand that whilst place is a commonplace term it is not agreed upon: working with imprecision has been both opportunity and restriction. In relation to work within the history of science and in Enlightenment studies, consideration of the so-called "spatial turn," of place [End Page 638] as social practice and of placing as a process in accounting for the uneven movement of ideas over space and time may help provide some precision and strengthen connections between geography and history.II. Place (In Geography): A Partial HistoriographyPlace is one of the most fundamental concepts in human geography. It is also one of the most problematic.5 Place, or small-scale regional space, features as a subdivision within the Classical tripartite division of cosmography (the earth in relation to other planetary bodies), geography (the earth as a whole) and chorography (parts of the earth or regional geography). So, too, does the distinction between chorography and chronology as... (shrink)

The chapter aims to introduce an integrated approach to concepts of smart cities and age-friendly cities and communities. Although these ideas are widely promoted by the European Union and the World Health Organisation, they are perceived as separate. Meanwhile, these concepts are closely intermingled in theory and practise concerning the promotion of healthy and active ageing, a universal design, usability and accessibility of age-friendly environments, reducing of the digital divide and robotic divide, and reducing of older adults’ social isolation. (...) The conclusion underlines the need for participatory creation of ambient assisted living technologies and applications with older adults and the need for advocacy to promote AAL in the context of the silver economy especially in the Central and Eastern Europe. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to compare working memory (WM), executive function, academic ability and problem classroom behaviors in children aged 8 to 11 years who were either identified via routine screening as having low WM, or had been diagnosed with ADHD. Standardised assessments of WM, executive function and reading and mathematics were administered to 83 children with ADHD, 50 children with low WM and 50 typically developing children. Teachers rated problem behaviors on checklists measuring attention, hyperactivity/impulsivity, oppositional behavior, (...) and difficulties associated with executive function in the classroom. The ADHD and low WM groups had highly similar WM and executive function profiles, but were distinguished in two key respects: children with ADHD had higher levels of rated and observed impulsive behavior, and children low WM had slower response times. Possible mechanisms for these common and distinct deficits are discussed. (shrink)

. The shift from a pre‐Copernican to a Copernican world view has caused an ever increasing sense of homelessness for the idea of a theistically conceived God. This paper first traces the historical development of this problem and its implications for the Christian faith. Next it presents some historically evolved “rescue” attempts and examines them critically. Then follows an inquiry concerning the biblical understanding of God's relation to space and a critical presentation of some contemporary proposals to make God's presence (...) intelligible. In conclusion we propose a dimensional model of relating God and the world, a model which allows for a reasonable discourse of God's immanence and transcendence. (shrink)

Tuning in to nature -- The book of nature -- Reproducing nature -- Digital autochthony -- Contested places -- Zoo-space -- Refuge -- Numinous places -- The machine stops.

The purpose of this essay is to reflect on the Carolingian age and on the assumptions that have governed the study of this important segment of the early Middle Ages. I am concerned with two issues: what happened during the Carolingian period, and where the period should be located in the larger historical context. That is to say, the discussion is both historical and historiographical. It is intended not only for Carolingian specialists, but also for others who have reason to (...) consider the origins and development of medieval history. (shrink)

This volume brings together chapters about aging in many non-Western cultures, from Africa and Asia to South America, from American Indians to Australian and Hawaii Aboriginals. It also includes articles on other issues of aging, such as falling, dementia, and elder abuse. It was thought that in Africa or Asia, elders were revered and taken care of. This certainly used to be the case. But the Western way has moved into these places, and we now find that elders are often (...) left on their own or in institutions, as younger people have migrated to other cities and even countries. Grandparents often find themselves being parents to their grandchildren, a far cry from the kind of life they believed they would have as they aged. This book will explore all these issues and will be of use to students and researchers in this relatively new field. (shrink)

In this fascinating and inventive work, A. David Napier argues that the central assumption of immunology—that we survive through the recognition and elimination of non-self—has become a defining concept of the modern age. Tracing this immunological understanding of self and other through an incredibly diverse array of venues, from medical research to legal and military strategies and the electronic revolution, Napier shows how this defensive way of looking at the world not only destroys diversity but also eliminates the possibility of (...) truly engaging difference, thereby impoverishing our culture and foreclosing tremendous opportunities for personal growth. To illustrate these destructive consequences, Napier likens the current craze for embracing diversity and the use of politically correct speech to a cultural potluck to which we each bring different dishes, but at which no one can eat unless they abide by the same rules. Similarly, loaning money to developing nations serves as a tool both to make the peoples in those nations more like us and to maintain them in the nonthreatening status of distant dependents. To break free of the resulting downward spiral of homogenization and self-focus, Napier suggests that we instead adopt a new defining concept based on embryology, in which development and self-growth take place through a process of incorporation and transformation. In this effort he suggests that we have much to learn from non-Western peoples, such as the Balinese, whose ritual practices require them to take on the considerable risk of injecting into their selves the potential dangers of otherness—and in so doing ultimately strengthen themselves as well as their society. _The Age of Immunology,_ with its combination of philosophy, history, and cultural inquiry, will be seen as a manifesto for a new age and a new way of thinking about the world and our place in it. (shrink)

Si l’âge compte dans les rencontres amoureuses, les femmes et les hommes ne le comptent pas de la même manière. C’est ce que montrent les usages des sites de rencontres sur Internet. La manière dont les utilisateurs s’approprient ces services – par la présentation de soi et la description des critères amoureux – révèle les significations différentes qu’accordent les deux sexes à leur âge comme à celui du partenaire. En prenant pour objet ces attitudes sexuées, l’article éclaire la place (...) de l’âge dans la formation des couples mais souligne aussi l’inégalité des femmes et des hommes face à la conjugalité. (shrink)

The algorithm has become an increasingly important concept in understanding human behavior in recent years. In the case of sport, human bodies are seen as superficial to the driving force of the algorithm, whether it be genetic, behavioral or surveillance-technological algorithms (Harari Citation2015, 2020; Zuboff Citation2019). However, the French mathematician and philosopher Michel Serres (1930–2019) structurally relate algorithms to sports and bodily experience at multiple places in his oeuvre. According to Serres, sport actually enables us to reprogram and rewrite our (...) behavior, moods and thoughts, and therefore modifies our algorithmic status (Serres Citation1999, Citation2019). Against deterministic conceptions of the body, Serres argues that human bodies possess a ‘metamorphic’ nature that is similar to the procedural character of computer programs. This paper investigates the relationship between the algorithm and bodily existence through a reading of both Harari and Serres on sport. It will be argued that, against deterministic conceptions of the algorithm, the algorithm can actually broaden an understanding of the role of sports and physical activity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Place of the Money Bag in the Secular-Mendicant Controversy at ParisRobert J. Karris O.F.M. (bio)Money bag, money bag. So many Bible-reading Christians don't know of your existence. In their defense I note that you are only mentioned twice in the entire New Testament: John 12:6 and 13:29. If faithful Bible-reading Christians don't know of your existence, what is your fate among the faithful who are less than (...) faithful?! Is ignorance truly bliss?New Testament ScholarsMoney bag, money bag. Perhaps, New Testament scholars are the reason why you are almost unknown among Christians.1 Commentators on John's Gospel give you a passing notice, if that.2 Even when they make mention of you, they [End Page 21] generally don't integrate your existence with other features of John's theology or life situation.3 As for the Jesus Seminar, its members sweep you into the dustbin of history along with 99.9% of John's Gospel.4 You see, you are deemed unhistorical. A couple of scholars involved in the quest for the historical Jesus say "Hi!" to you, but then go on with more important matters.5 Other scholars involved in the application [End Page 22] of social science methodology to the study of the New Testament opine that you were kept as a security measure and contained money to pay for the annual temple tax and such like obligations, but then they hold their peace.6Money bag, money bag. Scholars who have investigated the theme of rich and poor in the New Testament hardly give [End Page 23] you a second glance. You do not play a leading role in their general conclusions.7So, money bag, we have to take leave of New Testament scholarship if we are going to make your acquaintance on a serious level.The Middle AgesFrancis of AssisiAs we move into the Middle Ages, we ask: Did St. Francis of Assisi provide us with guidance on how to treat you with the respect that you, O money bag, so richly deserve? You see, some scholars maintain that John's Gospel was most important to Francis's worldview.8 However, Francis doesn't seem to see the problem you created for his all-consuming embrace of Jesus' missionary command of traveling with no money.9 [End Page 24] Surely Francis knows of your existence, for he refers to you in his Fourth Admonition n. 3:And the more they (superiors) are perturbed about their superiorship being taken from them than they would be over the loss of the office of washing feet, so much the more do they collect for themselves a money bag (John 12:6; 13:29) to the peril of their souls.10Francis is heir to a Benedictine spiritualization of the money bag. See how Roger the Abbot in his Sermo in ultima cena employs the money bag:Woe, how many money bags, woe, how many purses are in the monasteries of St. Benedict! Woe, how many cowls, which cover the ears of the tonsured, enclose private supplies of the mind, the money bag of one's own will, the purse of murmuring, detraction, idleness, pride, envy, jealousy, and bad will! But remember, most beloved brothers, that those who do such things follow Judas the traitor. And therefore, unless you amend your lives, you will not possess the kingdom of God.11O money bag, so Francis goes his merry way, apparently ignorant of your true meaning and leaves the problems created by your existence to his learned followers such as Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. To Bonaventure we now turn, but do so through his responses to his secular opponents, William of Saint-Amour and Gerard of Abbeville. First let's hear from the secular masters. [End Page 25]William of Saint-Amour and Gerard of AbbevilleWilliam of Saint-Amour comments on John 12:6 and argues that it does not permit begging and is the basis for the normative view that the apostles and their successors should have a money bag. He writes:Augustine, 'the Lord had a purse to keep the offerings... (shrink)

Although'Otherness' is an extremely common phenomenon in every society, related research is still at its beginnings.'Otherness' in the Middle Ages is a versatile and complex theme that covers a great number of different aspects, facets, and approaches: from non-human monsters and cultural strangers from remote places up to foreigners from another country or another town; it can refer to ethnic, cultural, political, social, sexual, or religious'Otherness', inside or outside one's own community. In any case, however,'Otherness' is a subjective phenomenon depending (...) on personal views and ascriptions, an issue of'imagination' and experience rather than'reality'. There is neither one single model of alterity nor is'Otherness' a stable phenomenon, but it changes over time and according to the cultural context. All this calls for methodological reflection and needs thorough investigation.00The methodological introduction and the 18 contributions of this volume demonstrate the great diversity of the theme and its different manifestations and perspectives. They tackle the problem from distinct angles and disciplines (history, art history, archaeology, literary history, and philology) in a wide chronological and thematic frame, using different methodological approaches, dealing with different areas (from Northern and Southern Europe to Byzantium and India), perspectives (including law, social order, the past, a sea), and diverse kinds of sources. They examine all kinds of'Otherness' mentioned above, highlight demarcation and rejection, aversion or acceptance, assimilation and integration, thus relativizing a strict dichotomy between'the Self' and'the Other' or between inside and outside. This volume is so far the most comprehensive attempt to tackle the huge problem of'Otherness' in the Middle Ages. (shrink)

Is 50 considered “old”? When do we stop being considered “young”? If individuals could choose to be any age, what would it be? In a sample of 502,548 internet respondents ranging in age from 10 to 89, we examined age differences in aging perceptions (e.g., how old do you feel?) and estimates of the timing of developmental transitions (e.g., when does someone become an older adult?). We found that older adults reported older perceptions of aging (e.g., choosing to be older, (...) feeling older, being perceived as older), but that these perceptions were increasingly younger than their current age. The age to which individuals hope to live dramatically increased after age 40. We also found that older adults placed the age at which developmental transitions occurred later in the life course. This latter effect was stronger for transitions involving middle-age and older adulthood compared to transitions involving young adulthood. The current study constitutes the largest study to date of age differences in age perceptions and developmental timing estimates and yielded novel insights into how the aging process may affect judgments about the self and others. (shrink)

This article explores the way that senile dementia is represented in contemporary culture, with particular reference to texts which narrate the experience of caring for a parent or spouse with one form of the illness. These narratives raise problematic issues about the materiality of the body and its relation to individual identity, and the unstable relationship between memory and identity in postmodern culture, by drawing on the actual experience of bodily dependency and disorientating memory loss in dementia patients. These speculations (...) about the body, memory and the self are ultimately related in narratives of dementia to the inevitable process of aging and dying and the cultural meanings attached to it. The article places the representation of dementing illnesses within a Foucauldian narrative of surveillance and control in the discourse of aging and death in modern Western societies, redemptive views of illness in western culture and arguments about death in contemporary theory. (shrink)

This study integrates corpus-assisted text analysis with frame semantics to study a social problem. Taking a cognitive-linguistic approach to critical discourse studies, in this article I examine the linguistic construction of minors in a corpus of 489 articles from the Uruguayan newspaper El País in the context of the so-called ‘Criminal Imputability Referendum’. Throughout, I focus on the construal operation of framing and identify a host of discursive patterns via which minors and adolescents are recurrently placed within the semantic frame (...) CRIME, and within this, they profile the frame elements of perpetrators of violent crimes rather than victims. I argue that, in the context of the referendum, these discursive strategies run the risk of facilitating the consolidation of a strong conceptual link whereby youth become readily associated with criminality, and are subservient to the political views of groups supporting a lower cut-off age for criminal responsibility and more stringent punishments. The observations arrived at in this instance set the foundations for a future experimental study testing whether the discursive patterns unearthed here have an effect on how readers conceptualize minors outside the texts. (shrink)

The original stimulus for the choice of this topic was a book on intellectual history. One of the most brilliant authors in this field, Carl Becker, claims that the most important event in the intellectual history of modern time was the shift in the place of logic in science. According to Becker, the high esteem for logic which the scientist had in the age of St. Thomas Aquinas and through all the Middle Ages declined in the period of Galileo (...) and Newton. But at that time this decline was not yet fully understood. “The marriage of fact and reason” as Becker expresses himself “proved to be somewhat irksome in the nineteenth century and was altogether dissolved in the twentieth century.” The modern, twentieth century, physicist lives in an “atmosphere, which is so saturated with the actual that we can easily do with a minumum of theoretical” … “We have long since learned not to bother much with reason and logic.” To describe the spirit of twentieth century physics which emphasizes facts and minimizes reason Becker says: “Experiments seem to show that an electron may, for reasons best known to itself, be moving at two orbits at the same time. To this point Galileo's common sense method of noting the behavior of things, of sticking close to the observable facts has brought us. It has at last presented us with a fact that common sense repudiates.”. (shrink)

Current academic philosophy is being challenged from several angles. Subdisciplinary specialisations often make it challenging to articulate philosophy’s relevance for the societal questions of our day. Additionally, the success of the ‘scientific method’ puts pressure on philosophers to articulate their methods and specify how these can be successful. How does philosophical progress come about? What can philosophy contribute to our understanding of today’s world? Moreover, can it also contribute to resolving urgent societal challenges, such as anthropogenic climate change? This edited (...) volume evaluates the place of philosophy in the age of science. It addresses three related sub-themes: philosophical progress, philosophical method and philosophy’s societal relevance. Fourteen authors engage with these sub-themes, focusing on the topics of their philosophical expertise, such as the philosophy of religion, evolutionary ethics and the nature of free will. In doing so, they explore their methods of enquiry, and look at how progress in their research comes about. (shrink)

This book argues that hope is the indispensable precondition of religious practice and secular politics. Against dogmatic complacency and despairing resignation, David Newheiser argues that hope sustains commitments that remain vulnerable to disappointment. Since the discipline of hope is shared by believers and unbelievers alike, its persistence indicates that faith has a future in a secular age. Drawing on premodern theology and postmodern theory, Newheiser shows that atheism and Christianity have more in common than they often acknowledge. Writing in a (...) clear and engaging style, he develops a new reading of deconstruction and negative theology, arguing that they share a self-critical hope. By retrieving texts and traditions that are rarely read together, this book offers a major intervention in debates over the place of religion in public life. (shrink)

In today's age of restrictionism, a growing number of countries are closing their gates of admission to most categories of would-be immigrants with one important exception. Governments increasingly seek to lure and attract “high value” migrants, especially those with access to large sums of capital. These individuals are offered golden visa programs that lead to fast-tracked naturalization in exchange for a hefty investment, in some cases without inhabiting or even setting foot in the passport-issuing country to which they now officially (...) belong. In the U.S. context, the contrast between the “Dreamers” and “Parachuters” helps to draw out this distinction between civic ties and credit lines as competing bases for membership acquisition. Drawing attention to these seldom-discussed citizenship-for-sale practices, this essay highlights their global surge and critically evaluates the legal, normative, and distributional quandaries they raise. I further argue that purchased membership goods cannot replicate or substitute the meaningful links to a political community that make citizenship valuable and worth upholding in the first place. (shrink)

Examines the place of individuation in the work of over 25 scholastic writers from when Arabic and Greek thought began to impact Europe, until scholasticism died out.

The motto of the Royal Society—Nullius in verba—was intended to highlight the members’ rejection of received knowledge and the new place they afforded direct empirical evidence in their quest for genuine, useful knowledge about the world. But while many studies have raised questions about the construction, reception and authentication of knowledge, Evidence in the Age of the New Sciences is the first to examine the problem of evidence at this pivotal moment in European intellectual history. What constituted evidence—and for (...) whom? Where might it be found? How should it be collected and organized? What is the relationship between evidence and proof? These are crucial questions, for what constitutes evidence determines how people interrogate the world and the kind of arguments they make about it. In this important new collection, Lancaster and Raiswell have assembled twelve studies that capture aspects of the debate over evidence in a variety of intellectual contexts. From law and theology to geography, medicine and experimental philosophy, the chapters highlight the great diversity of approaches to evidence-gathering that existed side by side in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this way, the volume makes an important addition to the literature on early science and knowledge formation, and will be of particular interest to scholars and advanced students in these fields. (shrink)

This is the first book-length study of one of the most influential traditions in eighteenth-century Anglophone moral and political thought, 'theological utilitarianism'. Niall O'Flaherty charts its development from its formulation by Anglican disciples of Locke in the 1730s to its culmination in William Paley's work. Few works of moral and political thought had such a profound impact on political discourse as Paley's Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy. His arguments were at the forefront of debates about the constitution, the judicial (...) system, slavery and poverty. By placing Paley's moral thought in the context of theological debate, this book establishes his genuine commitment to a worldly theology and to a programme of human advancement. It thus raises serious doubts about histories which treat the Enlightenment as an entirely secular enterprise, as well as those which see English thought as being markedly out of step with wider European intellectual developments. (shrink)

Down syndrome (DS), the most common genetic cause of intellectual disability, results from the partial or complete triplication of chromosome 21. Individuals with DS are impaired at using a high-resolution, allocentric spatial representation to learn and remember discrete locations in a controlled environment. Here, we assessed the capacity of individuals with DS to perform low-resolution spatial learning, depending on two competing memory systems: (1) the place learning system, which depends on the hippocampus and creates flexible relational representations of the (...) environment; and (2) the response learning system, which depends on the striatum and creates fixed stimulus-response representations of behavioral actions. Individuals with DS exhibited a preservation of the low-resolution spatial learning capacities subserved by these two systems. In place learning, although the average performance of individuals with DS was lower than that of typically-developing (TD) mental age-matched children and TD young adults, the number of individuals with DS performing above chance level did not differ from TD children. In response learning, the average performance of individuals with DS was lower than that of TD adults, but it did not differ from that of TD children. Moreover, the number of individuals with DS performing above chance level did not differ from TD adults, and was higher than that of TD children. In sum, whereas low-resolution place learning appears relatively preserved in individuals with DS, response learning appears facilitated. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the neural pathways supporting low-resolution place learning and response learning are relatively preserved in DS. (shrink)

The finding that women are attracted to men older than themselves whereas men are attracted to relatively younger women has been explained by social psychologists in terms of economic exchange rooted in traditional sex-role norms. An alternative evolutionary model suggests that males and females follow different reproductive strategies, and predicts a more complex relationship between gender and age preferences. In particular, males' preferences for relatively younger females should be minimal during early mating years, but should become more pronounced as the (...) male gets older. Young females are expected to prefer somewhat older males during their early years and to change less as they age. We briefly review relevant theory and present results of six studies testing this prediction. Study 1 finds support for this gender-differentiated prediction in age preferences expressed in personal advertisements. Study 2 supports the prediction with marriage statistics from two U.S. cities. Study 3 examines the cross-generational robustness of the phenomenon, and finds the same pattern in marriage statistics from 1923. Study 4 replicates Study 1 using matrimonial advertisements from two European countries, and from India. Study 5 finds a consistent pattern in marriages recorded from 1913 through 1939 on a small island in the Philippines. Study 6 reveals the same pattern in singles advertisements placed by financially successful American women and men. We consider the limitations of previous normative and evolutionary explanations of age preferences and discuss the advantages of expanding previous models to include the life history perspective. (shrink)

Technology is not just a tool but an amalgam of conceptual, institutional, and interactional issues that occupy the space of technical reason. In this space, parents' identity is becoming narrowed according to a limited conception in which the place of caring is in danger of being lost. Parents are increasingly required to adopt knowledge on parent ing instead of adapting it to their child's needs. By use of the Heideggerian idea of Enframing, I argue that educational experts and practitioners (...) need to undo parent ing from this technological straitjacket. It needs to be recognised that being a parent is about ac knowledging that caring for your children is about questioning the borders of Enframing rather than accepting its boundaries uncritically. I argue that experts, in order to provoke parents to care, ought to create space for ethical questions on how the Information and Communication Technology we once managed has come to manage us. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there is a need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education, particularly in the light of a recent tendency to focus discussions about education almost exclusively on the measurement and comparison of educational outcomes. I first discuss why the question of purpose should always have a place in our educational discussion. I then explore some reasons why this question seems to have disappeared from the educational agenda. The central part of the (...) paper is a proposal for addressing the question of purpose in education—the question as to what constitutes good education—in a systematic manner. I argue that the question of purpose is a composite question and that in deliberating about the purpose of education we should make a distinction between three functions of education to which I refer as qualification, socialisation and subjectification. In the final section of the paper I provide examples of how this proposal can help in asking more precise questions about the purpose and direction of educational processes and practices. (shrink)

After we die, our persona may live on in the minds of the people we know well. Two essential elements of this process are mourning and acts of commemoration. These behaviors extend well beyond grief and must be cultivated deliberately by the survivors of the deceased individual. Those who are left behind have many ways of maintaining connections with their deceased, such as burials in places where the living are likely to return and visit. In this way, culturally defined places (...) often serve as metaphors of social association and shared experience. Humans are the only kind of animal that buries their dead, and this gesture is preserved in Paleolithic sites as early as 120,000 years ago. Though not the only method of honoring the dead in human cultures, the emergence of burial traditions in the Middle Paleolithic implies that both Neandertals and early anatomically modern humans had already begun to conceive of the individual as unique and irreplaceable. Claims of primitive mortuary behavior in earlier periods than the Middle Paleolithic fall short in that they lack any signs of positive social-spatial associations between the deceased and survivors. The archaeological evidence for burial behavior in the Middle Paleolithic provides the first clear translation of mourning into a stereotypical action. These burials therefore may represent the first ritualized bridge between the living and the deceased in human evolutionary history. (shrink)

The article presents an overview of medieval approaches to understanding the phenomenon of intentionality. First, the author outlines the approach of Thomas Aquinas, according to which the process of cognition consists in assimilating the intellect to the object of cognition. This theory insists that there is no difference between the form of a real object, thanks to which it exists, and the form of this object in the mind of the cognizing subject. Duns Scotus makes this picture more sophisticated when (...) he begins to distinguish in the mind the sensory image of the cognized thing (phantasma) and the intelligible representation (species) of this thing. William of Ockham, on the other hand, refuses to introduce any additional entities between the object of knowledge and the mind of the knower. This rejection, together with the nominalism, led to the emergence of the concept of mental language, in which there is no place for signs connecting thought and object, instead, a direct connection between the spoken word and the corresponding mental words is postulated. In conclusion, the author considers the problem of the justification and legitimacy of the discovery of proto-phenomenological concepts in medieval philosophy. (shrink)