We report on the small-scale (0.5 13 h - 1M, a large-scale bias of ~2.0 and a satellite fraction of 12 ± 2 per cent. Thus, these galaxies occupy haloes with average masses in between those of the higher redshift BOSS CMASS sample and the original SDSS I/II luminous red galaxy sample © 2012 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society © doi:10.1093/mnras/sts314.

We present a one per cent measurement of the cosmic distance scale from the detections of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our results come from the Data Release 11 sample, containing nearly one million galaxies and covering approximately 8500 square degrees and the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.7. We also compare these results with those from the publicly released (...) DR9 and DR10 samples. Assuming a concordance Λ cold dark matter cosmological model, the DR11 sample covers a volume of 13 Gpc3 and is the largest region of the Universe ever surveyed at this density. We measure the correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the BAO feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of over 7σ in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance relative to the sound horizon at the drag epoch, rd, which has a value of rd,fid = 149.28 Mpc in our fiducial cosmology. We find DV = at z = 0.32 and DV = at z = 0.57. At 1.0 per cent, this latter measure is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. Separating the clustering along and transverse to the line of sight yields measurements at z = 0.57 of DA = and H =. Our measurements of the distance scale are in good agreement with previous BAO measurements and with the predictions from cosmic microwave background data for a spatially flat CDM model with a cosmological constant. © 2014 The Author Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. (shrink)

Joshua Daniel offers a reconstruction of the influence of Josiah Royce and George Herbert Mead on H. Richard Niebuhr to counter predominate strains in Christian ethics that overemphasize the role of socialization in moral formation at the expense of acknowledging the agency of individuals and their importance in preventing communities from turning in on themselves or becoming static. Daniel characterizes the driving worry of postliberal Christian ethics as “the accommodation of Christian communities to prevailing social forces and norms, (...) which is understood to radically undermine the churches’ existence and mission”. The primary accusation against these prevailing social norms is individualism. The modern... (shrink)

Stollenwerk, Daniel J In this essay on the social encyclical Caritas in Veritate, the author looks at Pope Benedict XVI's defense of reason in an age that has lost its faith in reason. Benedict insists we are faced with a choice between being closed within immanence - which leads to an irrational rejection of meaning and value - or open to reason that leads to the transcendent. Pope Benedict, the author concludes, is a contemporary apologist, claiming that Christianity is (...) not only the most reasonable of worldviews, but also necessary for the very survival of humanity. (shrink)

From an early age, humans know a surprising amount about basic physical principles, such as gravity, force, mass, and shape. We can see this in the way that young children play, and manipulate objects around them. The same behaviour has long been observed in primates - chimpanzees have been shown to possess a remarkable ability to make and use simple tools. But what does this tell us about their inner mental state - do they therefore share the same understanding to (...) that of a young child? Do they understand the simple, underlying physical principles involved? Though some people would say that they do, this book reports groundbreaking research that questions whether this really is the case. -/- Folk Physics for Apes challenges the assumptions so often made about apes. It offers us a rare glimpse into the workings of another mind, examining how apes perceive and understand the physical world - an understanding that appears to be both similar to, and yet profoundly different from our own. The book will have broad appeal to evolutionary psychologists, developmental psychologists, and those interested in the sub-disciplines of cognitive science (philosophy, anthropology). The book additionally offers for developmental psychologists some valuable new non-verbal techniques for assessing causal understanding in young children. (shrink)

Although it may seem like a truism to assert that biology is the science that studies organisms, during the second half of the twentieth century the organism category disappeared from biological theory. Over the past decade, however, biology has begun to witness the return of the organism as a fundamental explanatory concept. There are three major causes: (a) the realization that the Modern Synthesis does not provide a fully satisfactory understanding of evolution; (b) the growing awareness of the limits of (...) reductionism in molecular biology; and (c) the renewed interest in the nature of life as a genuine scientific problem. This essay examines these recent developments and considers the new epistemological roles being played by the organism in each of them. It also reflects on what the present resurgence of the organism means for the philosophy of biology. (shrink)

We are bombarded with more information each day than our brains can process especially in election season. It's raining bad data, half-truths, and even outright lies. Daniel J. Levitin shows how to recognize misleading announcements, statistics, graphs, and written reports revealing the ways lying weasels can use them.

Popular discussions of faith often assume that having faith is a form of believing on insufficient evidence and that having faith is therefore in some way rationally defective. Here I offer a characterization of action-centered faith and show that action-centered faith can be both epistemically and practically rational even under a wide variety of subpar evidential circumstances.

The machine conception of the organism (MCO) is one of the most pervasive notions in modern biology. However, it has not yet received much attention by philosophers of biology. The MCO has its origins in Cartesian natural philosophy, and it is based on the metaphorical redescription of the organism as a machine. In this paper I argue that although organisms and machines resemble each other in some basic respects, they are actually very different kinds of systems. I submit that the (...) most significant difference between organisms and machines is that the former are intrinsically purposive whereas the latter are extrinsically purposive. Using this distinction as a starting point, I discuss a wide range of dissimilarities between organisms and machines that collectively lay bare the inadequacy of the MCO as a general theory of living systems. To account for the MCO’s prevalence in biology, I distinguish between its theoretical, heuristic, and rhetorical functions. I explain why the MCO is valuable when it is employed heuristically but not theoretically, and finally I illustrate the serious problems that arise from the rhetorical appeal to the MCO. (shrink)

Some concepts relating to learned, structured functioning of local modules in neocortex are clarified in order to ensure that the integration from the small scale to the global attempted by Wright & Liley does not miss the target.

The notion that Jesus' death is an atoning sacrifice is grounded in Jesus' own understanding of the temple and sacrificial cult in light of the dawn of the New Age.

Responding to renewed interest in political rhetoric among contemporary International Relations –realists, this article advances three main claims. First, it suggests that tragedy—the dominant...

The controversy over the old ideal of “value-free science” has cooled significantly over the past decade. Many philosophers of science now agree that even ethical and political values may play a substantial role in all aspects of scientific inquiry. Consequently, in the last few years, work in science and values has become more specific: Which values may influence science, and in which ways? Or, how do we distinguish illegitimate from illegitimate kinds of influence? In this paper, I argue that this (...) problem requires philosophers of science to take a new direction. I present two case studies in the influence of values on scientific inquiry: feminist values in archaeology and commercial values in pharmaceutical research. I offer a preliminary assessment of these cases, that the influence of values was legitimate in the feminist case, but not in the pharmaceutical case. I then turn to three major approaches to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate influences of values, including the distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic values and Heather Douglas’ distinction between direct and indirect roles for values. I argue that none of these three approaches gives an adequate analysis of the two cases. In the concluding section, I briefly sketch my own approach, which draws more heavily on ethics than the others, and is more promising as a solution to the current problem. This is the new direction in which I think science and values should move. (shrink)

The context of the target article is delimited again, underlining the intended locationof the argument in the bottomup hierarchy of brain study. The central message is that collective delay activity distributions (reverberations) in cortical modules extend the role of a spike (a potentialinformation carrier across long distances) to an active memory of structured, learned information that can be carried across long time intervals. Moreover, the population code of the reverberations makes them readable down the cortical processing stream. Most of the (...) critical comments are then interpreted and addressed in relation to misreading of the proper context. The price for the limitation of the context (in cognitive, behavioral, and computational terms) is compared with the advantages of a clear, direct contact with experiment on the one hand and with a well controlled body of modeling and analysis on the other. (shrink)

The strong coupling of binding to cross-correlations is methodologically problematic. A completely unstructured network of neurons can produce cross-correlations very similar to the measured ones, and yet they have little dynamic effect.

Stollenwerk, Daniel J In our contemporary age that has lost confidence in both faith and reason, Pope Benedict XVI insisted throughout his pontificate upon the need for a new synthesis of both. In this article I consider Benedict's study of faith in relation to the ecumenical dialogue and point out that the schism between the Reformed Churches and the Roman Catholic Church occurred at the same time as the breakdown in the Western synthesis of faith and reason. I argue (...) that Benedict's call for a new synthesis may be the only way toward unity at the same time that such a synthesis would fulfil Christianity's call to help direct history and thus construct a more hopeful future. (shrink)

Many mathematics students have trouble the first time they take a course, such as linear algebra, abstract algebra, introductory analysis, or discrete mathematics, in which they are asked to prove various theorems. This textbook will prepare students to make the transition from solving problems to proving theorems by teaching them the techniques needed to read and write proofs. The book begins with the basic concepts of logic and set theory, to familiarize students with the language of mathematics and how it (...) is interpreted. These concepts are used as the basis for a step-by-step breakdown of the most important techniques used in constructing proofs. The author shows how complex proofs are built up from these smaller steps, using detailed "scratchwork" sections to expose the machinery of proofs about the natural numbers, relations, functions, and infinite sets. Numerous exercises give students the opportunity to construct their own proofs. No background beyond standard high school mathematics is assumed. This book will be useful to anyone interested in logic and proofs: computer scientists, philosophers, linguists, and of course mathematicians. (shrink)

This essay re-examines Hegel’s critique of Spinoza’s Ethics, focusing on the question of method. Are the axioms and definitions unmotivated presuppositions that make the attainment of absolute knowledge impossible in principle, as Hegel charges? This essay develops a new reading of the Ethics to defend it from this critique. I argue that Hegel reads Spinoza as if his system were constructed only according to the mathematical second kind of knowledge, ignoring Spinoza’s clear preference for knowledge of the third kind. The (...) Ethics, I argue, is a book with several layers: it is at once a deductive mathematical system, and a handbook to aid the intuitive power of the active philosophical reader. The letter of each text may be identical, but they have little else in common – Pierre Menard’s rewriting of Don Quixote given systematic philosophical form. (shrink)

The writings of Joseph Henry Woodger (1894–1981) are often taken to exemplify everything that was wrongheaded, misguided, and just plain wrong with early twentieth-century philosophy of biology. Over the years, commentators have said of Woodger: (a) that he was a fervent logical empiricist who tried to impose the explanatory gold standards of physics onto biology, (b) that his philosophical work was completely disconnected from biological science, (c) that he possessed no scientific or philosophical credentials, and (d) that his work was (...) disparaged – if not altogether ignored – by the biologists and philosophers of his era. In this paper, we provide the first systematic examination of Woodger’s oeuvre, and use it to demonstrate that the four preceding claims are false. We argue that Woodger’s ideas have exerted an important influence on biology and philosophy, and submit that the current consensus on his legacy stems from a highly selective reading of his works. By rehabilitating Woodger, we hope to show that there is no good reason to continue to disregard the numerous contributions to the philosophy of biology produced in the decades prior to the professionalization of the discipline. (shrink)

My first book, The Physicists, was conceived when I. I. Rabi visited Princeton in 1961–1962 as a Shreve Fellow in the History Department. Some two years earlier C. P. Snow had published his influential provocation, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, and the academic world was abuzz with initiatives aimed at achieving better literacy in science among liberal arts majors. Rabi was a Nobel laureate in physics at Columbia University and his visit was one of Princeton's efforts to this (...) end. It had been arranged by my mentor, Eric F. Goldman, a historian of modern America who had gotten to know Rabi through their mutual engagement with current issues in American democracy. (shrink)

The term “medium independence” has different meanings. One sense maps onto “abstract-as-abstracta” descriptions while the other maps onto “abstract-as-omission” descriptions. Both senses have been deployed when it comes to understanding the nature of physical computation. However, because medium independence is a polysemic term, the sense being used should be clearly stated. If the sense is not clearly stated, then those who wish to engage in debates regarding medium independence and physical computation run the risk of conflating different but related issues (...) which can have consequences when it comes to thinking about physical computation across contexts. (shrink)

In contrast to his Anglican writings and practice—where fasting played a prominent role—Newman as a Roman Catholic was practically silent about fasting. This essay suggests that there were many reasons for Newman’s silence on fasting as a Roman Catholic, such as his health, his Oratorian vocation, and the presence of an established communal practice of fasting in the Roman Catholic Church.

Stollenwerk, Daniel J Like so much of Catholic social teaching before it, Pope Francis' Laudato Si' points to synthesis-a synthesis of reason and faith, science and religion, technology and ethics, practicality and beauty-as the key to not only care for our common home, but also the alleviation of poverty, and a sustainable and integral, ecological and human development. What the social teachings of the church have slowly established as a principle for development, education and ecumenism, Pope Francis specifically applies (...) to today's ecological and humanitarian crisis. This article will look at the principle of synthesis as crucial to understanding Laudato Si' and its place in recent Catholic social teaching. (shrink)

In the preface to his Theodicy, Leibniz describes the whole of his philosophical work as an attempt to follow Ariadne’s thread through “the two famous labyrinths in which our reason goes astray.” The first and best known of these—the labyrinth of freedom—concerns the relation between contingency and necessity in history. The second—and the one I want to discuss—is what Leibniz calls the labyrinth of the composition of the continuum. The problem itself is relatively simple: how can indivisible and distinct elements (...) constitute a continuum? How, that is, can singularity possibly be thought if the real is everywhere continuous, without interruption or break? Leibniz, as is well known, affirms both extremes of these questions: what really exists are simple unities or wholes, and yet the totality of these unities constitutes a single, organically complete world. While one mode of approach would be to turn immediately to Leibniz’s elaboration of monadic expression and intrinsic predication, I want to examine the effects the problem generates for the specifically Leibnizian conception of the real and the ideal, as well as the transition this entails from the metaphorics of the labyrinth to the figure of the infinite library and the problem of repetition. (shrink)