List of contributors; Acknowledgments; Introduction Robert S. Westman and David C. Lindberg; 1. Conceptions of the scientific revolution from Bacon to Butterfield: a preliminary sketch David C. Lindberg; 2. Conceptions of science in the scientific revolution Ernan McMullin; 3. Metaphysics and the new science Gary Hatfield; 4. Proof, portics, and patronage: Copernicus’s preface to De revolutionibus Robert S. Westman; 5. A reappraisal of the role of the universities in the scientific revolution John Gascoigne; 6. Natural magic, (...) hermetism, and occultism in early modern science Brian P. Copenhaver; 7. Natural history and the emblematic world view William B. Ashworth, Jr.; 8. From the secrets of nature to public knowledge William Eamon; 9. Chemistry in the scientific revolution: problems of language and communication Jan V. Golinski; 10. The new philosophy and medicine in seventeenth-century England Harold J. Cook; 11. Science and heterodoxy: an early modern problem reconsidered Michael Hunter; 12. Infinitesimals and transcendent relations: the mathematics of motion in the late seventeenth century Michael S. Mahoney; 13. The case of mechanics: one revolution or many? Alan Gabbey; Index. (shrink)

This book, in language accessible to the general reader, investigates twelve of the most notorious, most interesting, and most instructive episodes involving the interaction between science and Christianity, aiming to tell each story in its historical specificity and local particularity. Among the events treated in When Science and Christianity Meet are the Galileo affair, the seventeenth-century clockwork universe, Noah's ark and flood in the development of natural history, struggles over Darwinian evolution, debates about the origin of the human species, and (...) the Scopes trial. Readers will be introduced to St. Augustine, Roger Bacon, Pope Urban VIII, Isaac Newton, Pierre-Simon de Laplace, Carl Linnaeus, Charles Darwin, T. H. Huxley, Sigmund Freud, and many other participants in the historical drama of science and Christianity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:56~ BOOK REVIEWS of the problem of free will and God's omnipotence- not a problem peculiar to evolution, to be sure, but one that nonetheless arises within the context of the emergence of living things, especially man, on earth and how that process relates to divine intervention; and Francisco J. Ayola starts everything off with a biologist's hardline defense of evolutionary theory. It may be asking too much to (...) expect original thinking on a topic that has been subjected to so much investigation and controversy over the past century. But it is reasonable to expect, in a book such as Evolution and Crea.tion, ways of approaching the topic which spark the reader's interest and furnish him with a competent and sometimes brilliant overview to it. The book fulfills this.expectation. I think it would be particularly useful as a source book and catalyst in graduate level seminars. University of San Francisco San Francisco, California RAYMOND DENNEHY God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Chris·tianity and Science. Edited by DAVID C. LINDBERG and RONALD L. NUMBERS. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986. Pp. xi + 516. $50.00 (cloth), $17.95 (paper). The editors tell us at the outset of this important volume that it is the outcome of two convictions that they share: (1) "that the interaction of science and Christianity has been of profound imp@tance in the shaping of Western civilization" and (2) that the results of extensive specialist work by historians of science and religion in recent decades belie widelyheld stereotypes and ought to be made generally available. The most familiar of the stereotypes is of course the Draper-White 66 warfare" thesis, the origins and continuing influence of which the editors trace in the first part of their helpful introduction. The eighteen contributors to the volume find plenty of controversies-sometimes rising to the level of conflicts-among individuals, among theological schools of thought, among scientific schools of thought, and among social groups, but at no period do they find anything that could be called an overall conflict of science and theology. They find many instances of smallerand larger-scale influences of theological developments on scientific ones, of scientific developments on theological ones, and of social developments on both. But no grand overall interpretative scheme appears in this respect either. Stanley L. Jaki's thesis, for instance, that modern science BOOK REVIEWS 563 was born of Christian theology and has prospered just insofar as it has remained faithful to its parentage, fares no better than the warfare thesis. No sweeping unitary interpretation can be expected to emerge, Lindberg and Numbers sugg.est, from historical work that " shows the respect for the particularity, individuality and value of each people and age that the canons of historical scholarship demand" (p. 10; i:r).ternal quotation from Donald Kagan). Accordingly, each essay is devoted to a particular period-some longer than others, to be sure. Nearly all are by professional historians. One author is primarily a philosopher, and several have at least secondary philosophical interests ; none are primarily scientists or theologians. Nearly all were trained and teach at secular universities, though a few have formal training from religious institutions as well. The coverage by periods is comprehensive, from Lindberg on " Science and the Early Church" to Numbers on "The Creationists" and Keith Yandell (the philosopher) on "Protestant Theology and Natural Science in the Twentieth Century." The last title calls attention, however, to one oddity in the coverage. Whereas in the essays on the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries both Protestant and Catholic figures and movements are treated, in those on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries attention is focused almost exclusively on the Protestant scene. Clearly, eighteen substantial essays cannot be analyzed in detail in a review of reasonable length. I shall indicate the main topics and theses of each with a few comments where these can be made briefly. First, however, I should stress that the book is treasure-trove of information and ideas. All the essays are good; several are superb. Each should be highly instructive for readers who are not specialists in the topic and period it deals with... (shrink)

Behind the third ventricle of the human brain a miniscule pedunculate bud, close to the optic thalamus, that is, to the two beds of optic nerves, a gland soft in substance yet containing gritty particles. Function: unknown. Because of its pine-cone shape it is called the conarium or pineal body, even though the recent photographs of it by Nilsson and Lindberg show it to be morphologically reminiscent of nothing so much as the plucked tail of a gamebird, which Simon (...) Dedalus refers to as ‘the pope's nose’. Today it is presumed to be an endocrine gland of some sort, even though there is no doubt that morphogenetically in all vertebrates it is a vestigial unpaired eye. As fossil evidence indicates—and we still find it almost fully developed in some extant amphibians—ancestral vertebrates possessed in addition to the paired bilateral eyes a solitary dorsal eye opening at the top of the skull to the sky. This singular evagination of the brain—something betwixt a visual organ and a gland—seems to hold a special fascination for philosophers. Here we shall consider two of them: René Descartes (1596–1650), the father, as we say, of modern philosophy; and Georges Bataille (1897–1962), the father, as many say, of post-modern philosophy. Three hundred years separate them. Devotion to the pineal body conjoins them. (shrink)

Each new decade brings ‘advances’ in technology that are more capable of collecting, aggregating, organizing, and deploying data about human practices. Where we go, what we buy, what we say online, and the people with whom we connect, are captured with ever more sophistication by governmental and corporate institutions. Data are increasingly being sold to schools to help them ‘manage’ teaching and administration tasks. Of course, at the same time, schools, teachers, and students are generating data that further advances the (...) goals of data aggregators. After some discussion regarding data’s philosophical dimensions, this chapter examines the benefits and drawbacks of surveillance and datafication in present educational contexts. In addition, this chapter raises ethical and pragmatic questions related to how datafication often reshapes or redefines agency, choice, personal relationships, and individuality. In response to some of the ethical qualms raised by these questions, a vision (imaginary) is proposed to help conserve some of the educational values threatened by datafication, including values related to genuine interest, sociality, and transformative, and qualitative experiences. -/- CITATION: Hildebrand, D.L. (2024). What are Data and Who Benefits?. In: Buch, A., Lindberg, Y., Cerratto Pargman, T. (eds) Framing Futures in Postdigital Education. Postdigital Science and Education . Springer, Cham. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-58622-4_5 -/- . (shrink)

The question whether two things can be in the same place at the same time is an ambiguous one. At least three distinct questions could be meant: Can two things simpliciter be in the same place at the same time? Can two things of the same kind be in the same place at the same time? Can two substances of the same kind be in the same place at the same time? The answers to these questions vary. In what follows, (...) all three will be discussed in the light both of recent and of classic earlier examinations of the matter. The following theses will be defended. (shrink)

The combination of ethnographic and cognitive neuroscience research provides considerable insight into the origin and symbolism of Native Californian rock art. Although made by different social groups for different purposes in various parts of the state, the ethnographic record demonstrates that the art depicts the mental imagery and somatic hallucinations of trance, taken to represent supernatural experiences. When this art is viewed from a cognitive neuroscience perspective, it suggests that the shamanistic state of consciousness was far from primarily "ecstatic," instead (...) often involving the generation of unpleasant emotions; and that biochemical changes during trance necessitated the making of rock art if the memory of these supernatural experiences was to be preserved. (shrink)

abstract This paper re‐examines some well‐known and commonly accepted arguments for the non‐individuality of the embryo, due mainly to the work of John Harris. The first concerns the alleged non‐differentiation of the embryoblast from the trophoblast. The second concerns monozygotic twinning and the relevance of the primitive streak. The third concerns the totipotency of the cells of the early embryo. I argue that on a proper analysis of both the empirical facts of embryological development, and the metaphysical importance or otherwise (...) of those facts, all three arguments are found wanting. None of them establishes that the embryo is not an individual human being from the moment of conception. (shrink)

(1999). Critical hermeneutics and American legal interpretation:A search for the meaning of new york times v. sullivan. Angelaki: Vol. 4, Judging the law, pp. 173-188.

The goal of this paper is to increase interest in Cicero’s “De Officiis” as both a textbook and resource for developing curricula at the secondary and post-secondary level. The paper begins by tracing the extensive influence that the work has had in ethics, political philosophy, literature, and education before proceeding to an explanation for why its influence has waned since the nineteenth century. Next, the paper contends that “De Officiis” addresses some of the most relevant and pressing questions in ethics. (...) Finally, the paper provides suggestions on how the work can be used in the classroom. (shrink)

Unsupervised learning algorithms are widely used for many important statistical tasks with numerous applications in science and industry. Yet despite their prevalence, they have attracted remarkably little philosophical scrutiny to date. This stands in stark contrast to supervised and reinforcement learning algorithms, which have been widely studied and critically evaluated, often with an emphasis on ethical concerns. In this article, I analyze three canonical unsupervised learning problems: clustering, abstraction, and generative modeling. I argue that these methods raise unique epistemological and (...) ontological questions, providing data-driven tools for discovering natural kinds and distinguishing essence from contingency. This analysis goes some way toward filling the lacuna in contemporary philosophical discourse on unsupervised learning, as well as bringing conceptual unity to a heterogeneous field more often described by what it isnot(i.e., supervised or reinforcement learning) than by what itis. I submit that unsupervised learning is not just a legitimate subject of philosophical inquiry but perhaps the most fundamental branch of all AI. However, an uncritical overreliance on unsupervised methods poses major epistemic and ethical risks. I conclude by advocating for a pragmatic, error-statistical approach that embraces the opportunities and mitigates the challenges posed by this powerful class of algorithms. (shrink)

This paper defends partiality as an inherent, essential part of ethical decision-making. First, the concept of charity as a kind of universal benevolence is spelled out, drawing on key ideas from classical religious thinking. I then argue that any justification of partiality must appeal to the good first, rather than rights. There follows a justification of partiality via an argument from the idea of control over the good. The next section seeks to harmonize partialistic preference with universal charity, explaining the (...) concept of love of neighbour. There follows an outline of the key principles required for setting out an order of charity based on different kinds of special relationship. While not all of this theistically driven approach to the order of charity translates easily into secular moral thought, enough does to suggest that the view defended is at the least worthy of consideration and not to be dismissed lightly. At best, it has much in it that is commendable to secular common sense. (shrink)

This Companion offers a comprehensive introduction to the work and thought of the highly influential twentieth-century critic and theorist Walter Benjamin. The volume provides examinations of the different aspects of Benjamin's work that have had a significant effect on contemporary critical and historical thought. Topics discussed by experts in the field include Benjamin's relation to the avant-garde movements of his time, the form of the work of art, his theories on language and mimesis, modernity, his relation to Brecht and the (...) Frankfurt School, his significance and relevance to modern cultural studies, his formative interpretation of Romanticism, and his autobiographical writings. The volume is aimed at readers who may be coming to Benjamin for the first time or who have some knowledge of Benjamin but would like to know more about the issues and concepts central to his work. Additional material includes a guide to further reading and a chronology. (shrink)

The first English-language collection devoted to Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit.

Necessity and sufficiency are the building blocks of all successful explanations. Yet despite their importance, these notions have been conceptually underdeveloped and inconsistently applied in explainable artificial intelligence, a fast-growing research area that is so far lacking in firm theoretical foundations. In this article, an expanded version of a paper originally presented at the 37th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, we attempt to fill this gap. Building on work in logic, probability, and causality, we establish the central role of (...) necessity and sufficiency in XAI, unifying seemingly disparate methods in a single formal framework. We propose a novel formulation of these concepts, and demonstrate its advantages over leading alternatives. We present a sound and complete algorithm for computing explanatory factors with respect to a given context and set of agentive preferences, allowing users to identify necessary and sufficient conditions for desired outcomes at minimal cost. Experiments on real and simulated data confirm our method’s competitive performance against state of the art XAI tools on a diverse array of tasks. (shrink)

Through Narcissus' Glass Darkly presents a genealogy and critique of the ideal of conscience in modern philosophical theology, particularly in the writings of ...

The Dead Donor Rule holds that removing organs from a living human being without their consent is wrongful killing. The rule still prevails in most countries, and I assume it without argument in order to pose the question: is it possible to have a metaphysically correct, clinically relevant analysis of human death that makes organ donation possible? I argue that the two dominant criteria of death, brain death and circulatory death, are both empirically and metaphysically inadequate as definitions of human (...) death, and therefore of no epistemic value in themselves. I first set out a neo-Aristotelian theory of death as separation of soul (understood as organising principle) and body, which is then fleshed out as loss of organismic integrity. The brain and circulatory criteria are shown to have severe weaknesses as physiological manifestations of loss of integrity. Given the mismatch between what death is metaphysically speaking, and the dominant criteria accepted by clinicians and philosophers, it turns out that only actual bodily decomposition is a sure sign of death. In this I differ from Alan Shewmon, whose important work I discuss in detail. (shrink)

An inadequate grasp of the role of imagination has vitiated understanding of human cognition in western thinking. Extending a project initiated with George Lakoff in _Metaphors we Live By_ (1980), Mark Johnson's book _The Body in the Mind_ (1987) offers the claim that all thinking originates in bodily experience. A range of schemata formed during our early experience manipulating a physical world of surfaces, distances, and forces, lays the foundation of later, more abstract modes of thought. In presenting his argument, (...) Johnson lays special stress on the qualities and dynamics of the image schemata, the (generally unnoticed) metaphoricity of the transformations underlying abstract thought, and the new significance that should be attributed to the imagination, which is the general term Johnson wishes to claim for the mental processes he expounds. In this paper I draw attention to the importance of Johnson's insights for understanding literary response. In particular, I will show how a typical procedure of literary texts involves bringing to awareness image schemata of the kind that Johnson describes. At the same time, several problems in Johnson's account which limit its usefulness will also be examined: an undue reliance upon the spatial properties of schemata; a conflation of dead with live or poetic metaphors; and a neglect of other bodily influences on thought, especially kinaesthetic and affective aspects. These problems, for example, limit the usefulness of Johnson's attempt to build on Kant's theory of imagination. In comparison with Coleridge, who also attempted to build on Kant, Johnson is unable to overcome the formalism of Kant's theory. Coleridge's account of imagination, I will suggest, provides a better foundation for examining the bodily basis of meaning, while remaining compatible with Johnson's intentions and his more valuable insights. (shrink)

The public forum has been connected to the functioning of democracy, expressive freedom, and the media's role in society. While the public forum's legal contours have been examined, the ethical foundation of the public forum has not. Relying on archival research, this article argues that ideas about the public forum can be traced to the pragmatism of Grenville Clark, who influenced ideas about the public forum through his work on the American Bar Association's Bill of Rights Committee.

Caretaker-infant attachment is a complex but well-recognized adaptation in humans. An early instance of (or precursor to) attachment behavior is the dyadic interaction between adults and infants of 6 to 24 weeks, commonly called "babytalk." Detailed analysis of 1 minute of spontaneous babytalk with an 8-week infant shows that the poetic texture of the mother’s speech—specifically its use of metrics, phonetics, and foregrounding—helps to shape and direct the baby’s attention, as it also coordinates the partners’ emotional communication. We hypothesize that (...) the ability to respond to poetic features of language is present as early as the first few weeks of life and that this ability attunes cognitive and affective capacities in ways that provide a foundation for the skills at work in later aesthetic production and response. By linking developmental social processes with formal cognitive aspects of art, we challenge predominant views in evolutionary psychology that literary art is a superfluous byproduct of adaptive evolutionary mechanisms or primarily an ornament created by sexual selection. (shrink)

Human rights discourse has been likened to a global lingua franca, and in more ways than one, the analogy seems apt. Human rights discourse is a language that is used by all yet belongs uniquely to no particular place. It crosses not only the borders between nation-states, but also the divide between national law and international law: it appears in national constitutions and international treaties alike. But is it possible to conceive of human rights as a global language or lingua (...) franca not just in a figurative or metaphorical sense, but in a literal or linguistic sense as a legal dialect defined by distinctive patterns of word choice and usage? Does there exist a global language of human rights that transcends not only national borders, but also the divide between domestic and international law? Empirical analysis suggests that the answer is yes, but this global language comes in at least two variants or dialects. New techniques for performing automated content analysis enable us to analyze the bulk of all national constitutions over the last two centuries, together with the world’s leading regional and international human rights instruments, for patterns of linguistic similarity and to evaluate how much language, if any, they share in common. Specifically, we employ a technique known as topic modeling that disassembles texts into recurring verbal patterns. The results highlight the existence of two species or dialects of rights talk—the universalist dialect and the positive-rights dialect—both of which are global in reach and rising in popularity. The universalist dialect is generic in content and draws heavily on the type of language found in international and regional human rights instruments. It appears in particularly large doses in the constitutions of transitional states, developing states, and states that have been heavily exposed to the influence of the international community. The positive-rights dialect, by contrast, is characterized by its substantive emphasis on positive rights of a social or economic variety, and by its prevalence in lengthier constitutions and constitutions from outside the common law world, especially those of the Spanish-speaking world. Both dialects of rights talk are truly transnational, in the sense that they appear simultaneously in national, regional, and international legal instruments and transcend the distinction between domestic and international law. Their existence attests to the blurring of the boundary between constitutional law and international law. (shrink)

Amid the current COVID-19 crisis, everyone has been called upon to offer assistance. What can historians contribute? One obvious approach is to draw on our knowledge of the history of epidemics and proclaim the lessons of history. But does history offer clear lessons? To make their expertise relevant, some historians assert that there are enduring patterns in how societies respond to all epidemics that can inform our experiences today. Others argue that there are informative analogies between specific past epidemics and (...) our present crisis, for instance between COVID-19 and prior outbreaks of SARS or influenza. Both strategies can be pursued, but each must be done with care. It is certainly possible to map COVID-19 onto the classic dramatic structure of an epidemic, but we cannot yet know how it will end, a failure of prognostication that constrains the advice we can offer. It is likewise possible to draw on the history of medical therapeutics and public health interventions to identify the risks we face of both underuse and overuse of our remedies, but we cannot yet judge whether our current commitment to heroic social distancing is warranted. While historians can offer insight, we must temper our contributions with humility. (shrink)

_Moral Theory_ sets out the basic system used to solve moral problems, the system that consequentialists deride as 'traditional morality'. The central concepts, principles and distinctions of traditional morality are explained and defended: rights; justice; the good; virtue; the intention/foresight distinction; the acts/omissions distinction; and, centrally, the fundamental value of human life.

I explore the increasingly important issue of cooperation in immoral actions, particularly in connection with healthcare. Conscientious objection, especially as pertains to religious freedom in healthcare, has become a pressing issue in the light of the US Supreme Court judgement inHobby Lobby. Section ‘Moral evaluation using the basic principles of cooperation’ outlines a theory of cooperation inspired by Catholic moral theologians such as those cited by the court. The theory has independent plausibility and is at least worthy of serious consideration—in (...) part because it is an instance of double-effect reasoning, which is also independently plausible despite its association with moral theology. Section ‘Case study:Burwell v. Hobby Lobby’ examinesHobby Lobbyin detail. Even if the judgement was correct in that case the reasoning was not, as it involved applying a ‘mere sincerity’ test to the cooperation question. The mere sincerity test leads to absurd consequences, whereas a reasonableness test applied using the theory of cooperation defended here would avoid absurdity. Section ‘A question of remoteness: “accommodations” and opt-outs’ explores the post-Hobby Lobbyproblem further, examining opt-outs and accommodations: theLittle Sisters of the Poorcase shows how opt-outs are misunderstood on a mere sincerity test, which the court rightly rejected. Section 'Application to the medical field:Doogan and Wood’ discusses the UK case ofDoogan and Wood, concerning participation in abortion. Again, a judicially recognised ethic of cooperation, if it were part of the fabric of legal reasoning in such cases, would have enabled the conscientious objectors in this and similar situations to have their freedom of conscience and religion respected in a way that it currently is not. (shrink)