ArgumentThis paper analyzes the public fasts of two Italian “hunger artists,” Giovanni Succi and Stefano Merlatti, in Paris in 1886, and their ability to forego eating for a long period (thirty and fifty days respectively). Some contemporary witnesses described them as clever frauds, but others considered them to be interesting physiological anomalies. Controversies about their fasts entered academic circles, but they also spread throughout the urban public at different levels. First, Succi and Merlatti steered medical debates among physicians on the (...) “scientific” explanations of the limits of human resistance to inanition, and acted as ideal mediators for doctors’ professional interests. Second, they became useful tools for science popularizers in their attempt to gain authority in drawing the boundaries between “orthodox” and “heterodox” knowledge. Finally, in the 1880s, Succi and Merlatti’s contest, the controversy around the liquids they ingested, and their scientific supervision by medical doctors, all reinforced their own professional status as itinerant fasters in a golden decade for that kind of endeavor. For all those reasons, Succi and Merlatti can be viewed as useful, epistemologically-active charlatans. (shrink)

From 17 to 22 October 1955, Madrid hosted the UNESCO Festival of Science. In the early years of the Cold War, in a dictatorial country that had recently been admitted into the international community, the festival aimed to spread science to the public through displays of scientific instruments, public lectures, book exhibitions, science writers professional associations, and debates about the use of different media. In this context, foreign visitors, many of whom came from liberal democracies, seemed comfortable in the capital (...) of a country ruled by a dictatorship that had survived after the defeat of fascism in the Second World War and was struggling to gain foreign recognition after years of isolation. This article analyzes the political role of science popularization in Madrid at that time. It approaches the apparently puzzling marriage between UNESCO’s international agenda for peace and democracy and the interests of the Francoist elites. Shared views of technocratic modernity, the fight against communism, and a diplomacy that served Spanish nationalism, paved the way for the alliance. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper analyzes the political dimension of Miguel Masriera's (1901–1981) science popularization program. In the 1920s, Masriera worked at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich – with Hermann Staudinger, the luminary of polymer chemistry – to later become a lecturer of theoretical and physical chemistry at the University of Barcelona. After living in exile in Paris, at the end of the Civil War he returned to Spain but never recovered his position. Instead, Masriera became an active popular (...) science writer and adapted to the severe constraints of General Franco's military dictatorship (1939–1975). Inspired by the astronomer Arthur Eddington's world view, Masriera wrote and translated popular science books, and published articles in daily newspapers and journals. By examining Masriera's popular works, in particular his program for spreading “atomic culture” in Spain during the Cold War, this paper aims to contribute to the assessment of the role of science popularization in the domestic legitimization of that dictatorial regime and also its use as a vehicle for international recognition abroad. (shrink)

Summary The life and works of John Mercer (1791–1866), a calico-printer from Lancashire, is a good example to illustrate the complexity of the process of printing cottons with natural colours, and the different skills required to obtain a final product able to be sold in the markets in the early years of the nineteenth century. A subtle combination of entrepreneurial dynamism, chemical knowledge, and expertise in the workshop provided a very special sort of ‘artisan-chemist’, who played a key role in (...) the industrial prosperity of the coloured textiles in the early Victorian years. The paper tries to show how, apart from the traditional ‘great luminaries’ of the period (Gay-Lussac, Berzelius, Davy, or Dalton), self-educated provincial chemists such as Mercer also made significant practical and theoretical contributions. (shrink)

Summary Scrutinizing the main activities of the Sociedad Astronómica de Barcelona (SAB), a scientific society that was founded in 1910 and lasted until 1921, this paper analyses how and why its members disseminated astronomy to society at large. Inspired by Camille Flammarion (1842–1925), and with a strong amateur character, the programme of the SAB raised interest among academic scientists, politicians, priests, navy officers, educated audiences, and positivist anticlerical writers. It rapidly conquered the public sphere through well-attended lectures, exhibitions, observations, and (...) publications. In the context of an industrial city, which at that time was suffering serious social tensions, the popularization of astronomy transcended social and cultural boundaries. It created common ground between expert and lay knowledge, science and art, the ‘natural’ and the ‘social’, and between science and religion. In addition, it was considered as one of the only possible ways to raise the scientific level of a country such as Spain, which at that time perceived itself as peripheral, even backward, in terms of mainstream innovations in science and technology. (shrink)

The study of science popularization in dictatorships, such as Franco’s regime, offers a useful window through which to review definitions of controversial categories such as “popular science” and the “public sphere.” It also adds a new analytical perspective to the historiography of dictatorships and their totalitarian nature. Moreover, studying science popularization in these regimes provides new tools for a critical analysis of key contemporary concepts such as nationalism, internationalism, democracy, and technocracy.

In a recent book onThe Publics of Science; Experts and Laymen Through History, Agustí Nieto-Galan introduced his subject of a (mostly Western) history of public science, covering the times from the Scientific Revolution to the twenty-first century, with reference to Sigmund Freud. In one of his essays of cultural critique, Freud had, so to speak, put culture itself on his couch, and this session also featured talk about science and technological application.Civilization and Its Discontentsidentified a factor of disillusionment in (...) the progress of science and technology, which gave rise to “The Uneasiness in Culture” (the literal translation of the title of Freud's German essayDas Unbehagen in der Kultur), and this uneasiness tainted a great deal of the happiness science and technology were intended to cultivate (Nieto-Galán 2011; Freud 1930). New technology and inventions like telephones, ocean liners, or drugs, Freud argued, were mostly remedies for negative developments technology had just created; for instance, without modern transportation people would stay close to each other and not need any telephone. (However, he did not address the issue of whether scientific knowledge itself may have provided some satisfaction.) The modern individual, as analyzed by Freud, was therefore constantly ill at ease with modern scientific and technological culture. (shrink)

Our conception of logical space is the set of distinctions we use to navigate the world. Agustn Rayo argues that this is shaped by acceptance or rejection of 'just is'-statements: e.g. 'to be composed of water just is to be composed of H2O'. He offers a novel conception of metaphysical possibility, and a new trivialist philosophy of mathematics.

This essay is a study of ontological commitment, focused on the special case of arithmetical discourse. It tries to get clear about what would be involved in a defense of the claim that arithmetical assertions are ontologically innocent and about why ontological innocence matters. The essay proceeds by questioning traditional assumptions about the connection between the objects that are used to specify the truth-conditions of a sentence, on the one hand, and the objects whose existence is required in order for (...) the truth-conditions thereby specified to be satisfied, on the other. This allows one to set forth an assignment of truth-conditions to arithmetical sentences whereby nothing is required of the world in order for the truth-conditions of a truth of pure arithmetic to be satisfied. The essay then argues that such an assignment can be used to account for the a priori knowability of certain arithmetical truths. (shrink)

Functional language is ubiquitous in ecology, mainly in the researches about biodiversity and ecosystem function. However, it has not been adequately investigated by ecologists or philosophers of ecology. In the contemporary philosophy of ecology we can recognize a kind of implicit consensus about this issue: while the etiological approaches cannot offer a good concept of function in ecology, Cummins’ systemic approach can. Here we propose to go beyond this implicit consensus, because we think these approaches are not adequate for ecology. (...) We argue that a sound epistemological framework to function in ecology is to be found in organizational approaches. In this line, we define function in ecology as a precise effect of a given constraint on the ecosystem flow of matter and energy performed by a given item of biodiversity, within a closure of constraints. We elaborate on this definition by developing a case study of a bromeliad ecosystem. (shrink)

La Guerra Civil fue una experiencia decisiva en la evolución del pensamiento de María Zambrano. Entendida y vivida como una tragedia cuyo sujeto es el pueblo, personificación de lo más elemental de la condición humana en su lucha contra el fascismo, esa experiencia abolió cualquier razón en clave idealista y reductora de la vida. En su lugar y en diálogo íntimo con la poesía de Antonio Machado, Zambrano elaborará una razón amorosa que retoma su reflexión anterior a la guerra y (...) la proyecta hacia una razón poética que, ya en el exilio y ante la imposibilidad de una redención de la tragedia, tendrá que orientarse hacia una interioridad radical. (shrink)

I refer to the social embodiment of creative intelligence as creative democracies. Today’s world pose great challenges and serious threats to human life and cannot be faced by just having new ideas or more knowledge and thoughts. Today’s world requires the power to face the unknown, a key feature of intelligence. Hence the urgent need of societies to mutate into creative democracies. We need to begin with a strong base. We need an understanding and development of human life from its (...) foundations and the simplicity of its origin in the creative freedom of reality and its intra-active intelligence, the power of all humans in our global world to meet and share meaning and interests. This essaysuccinctly highlights their foundations, prefaced by three cautionary reflections. (shrink)

Background: The high level of satisfaction of users of a health service is largely due to the fact that they receive excellent care from healthcare professionals. Compassionate care is an essential component of excellent care. But what do nurses understand compassion to be? Research objectives: To analyse the concept of compassion from the perspective of nurses in the Andalusian Public Health System, Spain. Research design: This is a qualitative study following the grounded theory model. Four focus groups and 25 in-depth (...) interviews were conducted. Participants and research context: A total of 68 nursing professionals working in the Andalusian Public Health System (Spain) participated. Theoretical sampling was used, with participants being recruited using the snowball technique. Ethical considerations: This research was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Centro-Almería Health District (CEICA 27/9/17). Findings: From the analysis of the data, four themes emerged that helped to understand the concept of compassion according to nurses: ‘Negative perception of the term compassion’, ‘Compassion and empathy as synonyms’, ‘Beyond empathy’, and ‘Effects of having a compassionate attitude’. Discussion: Nurses perceive the concept of compassion differently to each other and even contradictorily. This concept is imbued with cultural elements, which adds confusion to understanding it, and is even perceived as something negative similar to pity. Conclusion: Nurses confuse the concepts of empathy and compassion as if they were synonymous. Before considering training in compassion for healthcare professionals, it is essential to clarify the concept of compassion through educational interventions. (shrink)

Neste artigo, discutimos o papel das explicações teleológicas na teoriaGaia. Mostramos que seu principal proponente, James Lovelock, pretendeevitá-las devido a uma interpretação equivocada da natureza de taisexplicações. Na tentativa de evitar compromissos com a teleologia,Lovelock recorre ao conceito de propriedades emergentes. Esta não é,contudo, uma saída consistente, porque os conceitos de propriedadesemergentes e teleologia não são mutuamente excludentes. Discutimostambém as dificuldades de uma interpretação de Gaia de uma perspectivateleonômica, considerando problemas como o da noção de superorganismo.Para avaliar o estatuto das (...) explicações teleológicas em Gaia, examinamoso caso da interação entre algas e nuvens, que resultou num novo campo depesquisas e expõe as contribuições teóricas e empíricas que Gaia podeoferecer. Com base nos argumentos apresentados ao longo do artigo,sugerimos uma reorganização da estrutura do programa de pesquisa Gaia,visando à continuação de seu progresso teórico e empírico.In this paper, we discuss the role of teleological explanations in Gaia theory.We show that its main proponent, James Lovelock, intends to avoid themdue to a misinterpretation of the nature of teleological explanations. Inorder to avoid a commitment to teleology, Lovelock appeals to the conceptof emergent properties. This is not a consistent solution, however, since the concepts of emergent properties and teleology are not mutuallyexclusive. We also discuss difficulties in an interpretation of Gaia from ateleonomic perspective, discussing problems such as that of the notion ofsuperorganism. In order to appraise the status of teleological explanationsin Gaia, we examine the case of the interaction between algae and clouds,which gave birth to a new research field and show the theoretical andempirical contributions that Gaia can bring. Based on the argumentsdeveloped in the paper, we suggest a reorganization of the structure ofGaia research program, in order to go on with its theoretical and empiricalprogress. (shrink)

A ideia do reconhecimento adquire uma relevância significativa na contemporaneidade. A filosofia política vem assistindo, nos últimos anos, a um acirrado debate em torno desse conceito. Um crescente número de autores, de diversas áreas científicas, debruça-se sobre o tema. Autores do nível de Axel Honneth, atual diretor do Instituto de Pesquisa Social e Crítica de Frankfurt é um exemplo interessante desta discussão. O presente artigo tem como objetivo apresentar as principais realizações do pensamento político de Axel Honneth. Mais especificamente, a (...) filosofia do reconhecimento encontrada na teoria critica deste filósofo. Os motivos apresentados por Honneth para essa escolha são diversos. Em primeiro lugar, elucidar a relação existente entre subjetividade e intersubjetividade. Em segundo lugar, a retomada da filosofia hegeliana. E o terceiro motivo são os argumentos críticos que Honneth pretende desenvolver. Dito de outro modo, construir um “arcabouço argumentativo” capaz de refutar as teses de outros autores. Dentre eles, encontra-se Habermas. Assim, a trajetória argumentativa deste artigo segue os seguintes passos: no primeiro momento, apresentaremos os passos argumentativos de Axel Honneth a essa problemática. Em segundo, a influência hegeliana e, por fim, a quem Honneth dirige suas críticas de forma mais incisiva. Mais especificamente, criticas dirigidas a Habermas. (shrink)

RESUMEN: La labor del Tribunal Penal Internacional para la Ex-Yugoslavia tuvo un momento importante en la compresión del principio de legalidad, como principio básico en la garantía de los derechos humanos, al enfrentar no sólo el derecho consuetudinario como fuente de derecho sino también diferentes modos o enfoques en la identificación de este derecho consuetudinario. Esta relación debe ser analizada a la luz de las limitaciones que tiene el derecho internacional y, sobre todo, de los procedimientos de creación de normas. (...) No resulta fácil exigir responsabilidad en el cumplimiento del derecho internacional humanitario y de los derechos humanos. La práctica de este Tribunal abre una vía para la reflexión con la finalidad de asegurar el respeto de los derechos humanos en cualquier circunstancia, incluso de aquellos que llevaron a cabo la comisión de graves crímenes contra la comunidad internacional.ABSTRACT: The work of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was important for understanding the principle of legality as a key principle on the guarantee of Human Rights. The former was due to the Tribunal’s work on having faced the customary law as a source of law using different perspectives for its identification. The link between customary law, principle of legality and human rights has to be analyzed taking in account the limits of International law and the procedures for creating legal norms. It is not easy to invoke responsibility in the fulfillment of international humanitarian law and international law of human rights. The practice developed by this Tribunal provides an avenue for thinking about ensuring the respect of the human rights in any case including the commission of grave crimes against international community. PALABRAS CLAVE: derecho internacional de los derechos humanos, principio de legalidad, derecho internacional humanitario, costumbre internacionalKEYWORDS: international law of human rights, principle of legality, international humanitarian law, international custom. (shrink)

CHAPTER III THE FACTS OF THE CASE: FACTS AND EVIDENCE 1. The Importance of the Case THE theory and practice of law come down to the application of scientific methodology in the analysis of cases1, because the law is, in fact, ...

O fundamento normativo da concepção republicana de justiça é a liberdade como não-dominação. Esse conceito de liberdade política compreende as relações sociais em igualdade de poder. A não-dominação representa a condição social de não estar submisso a capacidade de interferência arbitrária de outrem. A liberdade republicana pressupõe o desenvolvimento das capacidades humanas em sua plenitude. O potencial de desenvolvimento das capacidades humanas deve ser protegido pela estrutura jurídica do Estado. O Estado tem a função de equiparar os desníveis de bens (...) e recursos dos indivíduos com a sua estrutura institucional. Ele atua para oferecer as condições necessárias, os direitos e as liberdades básicas, aos indivíduos em sua vida social e política. A perspectiva republicana de Philip Pettit enseja realizar a dedução normativa da liberdade republicana e demonstrar que a teoria da justiça tem que pressupor os recursos necessários para o desenvolvimento da vida humana em sua condição de igualdade e liberdade. A estruturação democrática da sociedade pressupõe o estabelecimento de relações sociais que se caracterizem pelo status social de não-dominação. (shrink)

O texto investiga os “indesconstruíveis” na filosofia de Jacques Derrida e sua relação com espectrologia, fé e messianidade. Partindo de uma imagem de ziguezague, ela própria presente em diversos ensaios derridianos, aproxima e desaproxima os indesconstruíveis (justiça, perdão, promessa, dom etc.) das ideias de indecidível e decisão, místico e espectral e, finalmente, imanente e transcendente. A partir do debate sobre a Era Axial, pergunta-se, então, se os indesconstruíveis derridianos podem mesmo postular a universalidade, apresentando como contraponto o tratamento da fé (...) secular em Hägglund e da espectralidade nas metafísicas ameríndias tal como descritas por Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. (shrink)

CAVALCANTI NETO, Lamartine de Hollanda. Contributions of Thomistic Psychology to the study of the plasticity of the ethos. 2012. 571s. Thesis (Doctorate in Bioethics) – Centro Universitário São Camilo, São Paulo,2012. If Ethics is not a static science, it is because ethos — its basic object of study — is a mutable reality. For this reason, ethical themes, chiefly those of Bioethics, are directly related to the study of the plasticity of the ethos. Nevertheless, such investigation requires that the (...) researcher distance himself from concrete ethical questions, to apply himself to the theoretical examination of what enables the existence and development of such questions — that is, the aforementioned plasticity. However, bibliographical literature on this subject has revealed a scarcity of works focused specifically on the theme. This scarcity seems to indicate that the subject is still in a process of methodological definition. Therefore, we propose as a research question, to investigate at the theoretical level, if Thomistic Psychology can be considered a valid study tool for the plasticity of ethos. For this aim, we adopt a documental and bibliographical research methodology adapted to the aforesaid question, based on the presupposition that such validity can be gauged to the extent that Thomistic Psychology offers objective contributions to the study of the plasticity of the ethos. Backed by extensive literature, we present an overview of Thomistic Psychology, as well as of ethos and its plasticity. With the data obtained, we establish a discussion with a view to identifying these contributions. Based on the results, we close with a reply, while still open, to our research question, hoping to afford, in this way, a kind of platform on which new studies can be developed with greater facility. (shrink)

Contrary to the common-sense view and positivist aspirations, scientific concepts are often imprecise. Many of these concepts are ambiguous, vague, or have an under-specified meaning. In this paper, I discuss how imprecise concepts promote integration in biology and thus benefit science. Previous discussions of this issue focus on the concepts of molecular gene and evolutionary novelty. The concept of molecular gene helps biologists integrate explanatory practices, while the notion of evolutionary novelty helps them integrate research questions into an interdisciplinary problem (...) New directions in the philosophy of science, Springer, Dordrecht, 2014). In what follows, I compare molecular gene and evolutionary novelty to another imprecise concept, namely biological lineage. This concept promotes two other types of scientific integration: it helps biologists integrate theoretical principles and methodologies into different areas of biology. The concept of biological lineage facilitates these types of integration because it is broad and under-specified in ways that the concepts of molecular gene and evolutionary novelty are not. Hence, I use the concept of biological lineage as a case study to reveal types of integration that have been overlooked by philosophers. This case study also shows that even very imprecise concepts can be beneficial to scientific practice. (shrink)