BackgroundWe describe our experience from a multi-national application of a European Union-funded research-driven paediatric trial (DEEP-2, EudraCT 2012-000353-31; NCT01825512). This paper aims to evaluate the impact of the local and national rules on the trial authorisation process in European and non-European countries. National/local provisions and procedures, number of Ethics Committees and Competent Authorities to be addressed, documentation required, special provisions for the paediatric population, timelines for completing the authorisation process and queries received were collected; compliance with the European provisions were (...) evaluated. Descriptive analysis, Wilcoxon Rank-Sum test and General Linear Model analysis were used to determine factors potentially influencing the timelines. The Cluster Analysis procedure was used to identify homogenous groups of cases.ResultThe authorisation process was completed in 7.7 to 53.8 months in European countries and in 17.1 to 27.1 months in non-European countries. The main factors influencing these timelines were the requests for changes/clarifications in European countries and the different national legislations in non-European countries.ConclusionThis work confirms that the procedures and requirements for the clinical trial application of a paediatric trial are different. In the European Union, the timeframes for submission were generally harmonised but longer. In non-European countries, delays were caused by national dispositions but the entire authorisation process resulted faster with less requests from ECs/cas. The upcoming application of Regulation (EU) 536/2014 is expected to harmonise practices in Europe and possibly outside. Networks on paediatric research acting at international level will be crucial in this effort. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to explore the intersection between the ancient philosophical concept of àskēsis and contemporary boxing discipline, investigating boxing’s potential as an educational tool for cultivating ethics, personality, and virtues. Drawing on Hadot and Foucault’s theories, the study analyzes the ethopoietic purposes of Stoic spiritual exercises and technologies of the self, examining their relevance to modern boxing practices. By scrutinizing the cultural practices of boxing, the article elucidates how they can judiciously be employed to foster ethical (...) development. By analyzing the parallels between philosophical doctrines and boxing ethics, an attempt is made to emphasize the embodiment of virtues that boxing champions could potentially have. In addition, the author, a former boxer turned coach, reflects on the changes in sporting values within boxing over the past two decades and discusses the practical and moral paradox of the problem of sub-concussions and concussions versus the formative purposes of ethos. While acknowledging the risk of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the author argues that boxing, if approached consciously, can contribute positively to the development of personality and ethical behavior. (shrink)

Considers that in ecosystem, landscape and global ecology, an energetics reading of ecological systems is an expression of a cybernetic, systemic and holistic approach. In ecosystem ecology, the Odumian paradigm emphasizes the concept of emergence, but it has not been accompanied by the creation of a method that fully respects the complexity of the objects studied. In landscape ecology, although the emergentist, multi-level, triadic methodology of J.K. Feibleman and D.T. Campbell has gained acceptance, the importance of emergent properties is still (...) undervalued. In global ecology, the Gaia hypothesis is an expression of an organicist metaphor, while the emergentist terminology used is incongruent with the underlying physicalist cybernetics. More generally, an analytico-additional methodology and the reduction of the properties of ecosystems to the laws of physical chemistry render purely formal any assertion about the emergentist and holistic nature of the ecological systems studied. (shrink)

This article reconstructs Abelard’s account of eternal truths as it is presented in the Dialectica, in the so-called Sententiae Parisienses, and in the Theologia “Scholarium.” It first shows how in the Dialectica Abelard had to transform the traditional account of topical inferences in order to make sense of the idea that true conditional propositions express eternal truths. It clarifies Abelard’s claim that eternal truths are grounded on the “nature of things” and explains why Abelard thought that these truths hold even (...) when there are no things. The article then considers Abelard’s reply to an objection according to which eternal truths have in fact been false in the past. It examines Abelard’s mature views on eternal truths as we find them in the Sententiae Parisienses and Theologia “Scholarium.” Here, Abelard grants the status of eternal truth also to what is expressed by contingently true categorical propositions. These truths are grounded on the “events of things” that exist eternally as the proposition-like objects of God’s will and foreknowledge. (shrink)

The article reflects on the relationship between pedagogy and body moving from the sense of tact. Firstly, the question of the body-mind relationship in contemporary pedagogy is presented. Starting from the cartesian division of mind and body, we expose the main issues related to a possible overcoming of such dualism. In addition, we maintain that cartesian dualism significantly contributed to a dominance of mind over body in education. Then, we reconstruct the history of “pedagogical tact”: this concept changed from an (...) original somatic significance to a more interpersonal sense, putting the question of the body aside. In conclusion, we maintain that re-considering tact in its somatic significance can help build innovative pedagogical theories and practices aimed at a broader reconsideration of bodies in education. (shrink)

The article explores cross-modal iconic relations in nine diverse Western-music songs ranging from 1600 to 2015, all of them thematizing dysphoric weeping. Initial input comes from five recurrent features observed in ancient Greek texts associated with performative events, including the prominence of sound, interjections and strong self-referentiality, repetitions and refrains, the motif of endlessness, and tears associated with streams of water, dew, and libation liquids. The analysis adopts Peirce’s conceptual distinction between image, diagram, and metaphor iconicity, although the continuum reading (...) proposed by several scholars is ultimately favored. The sample turns out to offer plenty of evidence of iconic relations. Interjections, falsetto, verbal repetitions, musical repetitions, musical rendering of sighs and endlessness, ostinato patterns, downward notes, and water images (rain and rivers), all of this is shown to substantiate cross-modal iconicity encompassing weeping, lyrics, music (including musical notation), and images, in different combinations. Quantitative investigations confirming/disconfirming and adding iconicity patterns, and comparative analyses linking Western and non-Western lament traditions constitute desiderata for future work. (shrink)

Parmi les nombreux dialogues noués entre courants architecturaux et théories philosophiques, celui qu’engage le déconstructivisme spatial avec la déconstruction derridéenne apparaît profondément original. Dépassant le stade de la simple interprétation où des architectes empruntent à des philosophes leurs concepts, il a, en effet, pris la forme d’une véritable collaboration qui n’a pas laissé la pensée de Derrida indemne : à l’épreuve du parc de la Villette, le philosophe a été conduit à modifier sa perspective sur la déconstruction, tant dans son (...) contenu que dans ses frontières disciplinaires. (shrink)

Le contrôle de constitutionnalité, dont la magistrature parlementaire de l’Ancien Régime revendiquait le plein droit, n’était pas fondé uniquement sur les lois fondamentales du royaume, mais sur l’ensemble des principes (« les maximes ») tirés de la « Tradition ». Cette dernière était composée en premier lieu par le droit divin et le droit naturel, c’est-à-dire par des systèmes juridiques qui nécessitaient, tous les deux, une interprétation juridictionnelle ‘sapientiale’. Cette activité interprétative était ‘révélatrice’ d’un corpus de valeurs métaphysiques à laquelle (...) seule la Scientia Juris des magistrats pouvait puiser. Mais dans la sphère de la Tradition juridique rentraient aussi le « dépôt légal », c’est-à-dire l’ensemble de toutes les lois, même des lois ainsi dites « ordinaires », c’est-à-dire celles qui avaient été produites par la simple manifestation de volonté souveraine d’un roi prédécesseur « car tel avait été son plaisir » (moderne formulation du brocarde de droit roma.. (shrink)

This article examines the sacredness of modern sports games by comparing the Olympic and Paralympic Games with the ancient Greek Olympics and analysing the evolution of ethos between ancient and modern games. Drawing on the theories of Johan Huizinga and Friedrich Nietzsche, it identifies an originary structure of sacred play that contributes to the formation of social and cultural identity. Concepts of sacredness, rituality, and agonism in ancient games are explored to understand their influence on modern games. Through a hermeneutic (...) investigation of Huizinga and Nietzsche’s works, the article identifies six fundamental elements of sacred play: inviolable rules, space separated from daily reality, symbolic and cultural meaning, experience of transcendence, reflection of myths and meanings, and self-affirmation, self-overcoming and creativity. These elements are applied to the modern Olympic and Paralympic Games, highlighting their presence in shared rituals and symbols. The discussion focuses on the tension between the traditional Olympic Ethos and the current Efficiency Ethos, highlighting the possible implications on the elements of Olympic sacredness. Finally, it calls for critical reflection on the values and practices of the Olympic and Paralympic Games to preserve their sacredness over time. (shrink)

Uberto Decembrio's Four Books on the Commonwealth (De re publica libri IV, ca. 1420), edited and translated by Paolo Ponzù Donato, is one of the earliest examples of the reception of Plato's Republic in the 15th century. This humanistic dialogue provides a thoughtful insight on themes such as justice, the best government, the morals of the prince and citizen, education, and religion. Decembrio's dialogue is dedicated to Filippo Maria Visconti, duke of Milan, the 'worst enemy' of Florence. Making use (...) of literary and documentary sources, Ponzù Donato convincingly proves that Decembrio's thought, sharing many points with the Florentine humanist Leonardo Bruni, belongs to the same world of Civic Humanism. (shrink)

In this paper we present a new framework of idealization in biology. We characterize idealizations as a network of counterfactual and hypothetical conditionals that can exhibit different “degrees of contingency”. We use this idea to say that, in departing more or less from the actual world, idealizations can serve numerous epistemic, methodological or heuristic purposes within scientific research. We defend that, in part, this structure explains why idealizations, despite being deformations of reality, are so successful in scientific practice. For illustrative (...) purposes, we provide an example from population genetics, the Wright-Fisher Model. (shrink)

The contrast between the strategies of research employed in reductionism and holism masks a radical contradiction between two different scientific philosophies. We concentrate in particular on an analysis of the key philosophical issues which give structure to holistic thought. A first (non-exhaustive) analysis of the philosophical tradition will dwell upon: a) the theory of emergence: each level of organisation is characterised by properties whose laws cannot be deduced from the laws of the inferior levels of organisation (Engels, Morgan); b) clarification (...) of the relations between the “whole” and the “parts” (Woodger, Needham); c) the ontological or epistemological nature of the emergent properties; are they a phenomenological reality or solely an artefact of the state of our knowledge? (Pepper, Henle, Hempel and Oppenheim); d) the proposition of the holistic theoretical and methodological model ( Novikoff, Feibleman). I then go on to examine the differences that exist between the reductionist and the holistic approaches at various levels of analysis: that is to say, the differences which affect their ontologies, methodologies and epistemologies respectively. I attempt to understand the spirit of a holistic approach to ecology by analyzing the major work of E.P. Odum Fundamentals of ecology (1953, 1959, 1971). I set forward what might be meant by the “holistic approach”, which is implicated in all the different levels of organisation at which the problem of “complexity” is debated. Ecology presents itself as an “holistic science” and Odum’s book offers a vision of the world which dates far back in the history of philosophy. By looking at the three different editions of this fundamental text on ecology, we may become aware of the evolution of Odum’s thought. In fact, only in the third and last edition is there a conscious appropriation of the holistic approach (by using the theoretical models of Feibleman who, for his part, refers to Novikoff). However, even when formally referring to the theory of emergence (that is to say the ontological nucleus of every holistic approach), Odum’s systemic analysis presents the same logical errors, which push him back into the reductionist domain. Above all, in his examination of the main concepts of “population”, “community” and “ecosystem”, there is a misunderstanding of the profound difference between “collective properties” and “emergent properties”. Moreover, the cybernetic models of Odum’s systemic analysis (introduced into ecology by Margalef), allowed him to vastly oversimplify his methodological task: in fact, neither how many levels nor which levels of organization are fundamental for the study of each individual level is clearly marked. Finally, Odum analyses the ecosystem as composed of energetic flux and cycles of matter, referring to the trophic-dynamic vision of Lindeman. That is to say, in my opinion, he juxtaposes a reductionistic methodology and epistemology to an holistic ontology. (shrink)

This paper is part of a broader project in which I investigate autobiographical experiences and transcribed memories. Specifically, this essay analyzes the potential linkages between philosophical ideas and everyday social existence. First, I consider the correspondence between an anecdote from my own lived experience and the concept of Bildung—a multidimensional notion loosely translated as “formation,” “self-formation,” “cultivation,” “self-cultivation,” “self-development,” “cultural process,” and so on. Building on Hegel’s and Gadamer’s contributions to Bildungstheorie, I introduce readers to the concept. Then, in analyzing (...) my anecdote, I destabilize the concept and demonstrate that any act of Bildung can be trivialized easily by Rückbildung. The general scope of this essay is neither to contribute to the systematization of the concept of Bildung nor to discuss potential commonalities within the realm of interpretative contributions to this notion. Instead, I demonstrate that thinkers cannot measure this concept with a set of fixed criteria and, finally, I propose a critical understanding of Bildung through a dialogue of theoria and praxis. (shrink)

Goodman’s style may be elusive sometimes, so that it may result difficult to interpret what he really has in mind. This is a consequence of his masterful use of irony and metaphorical language. This difficulty of interpretation affects important parts of his philosophical thoughts and had led to misunderstandings. In the present article, I discuss the significance of Goodman’s pluralism, one of his most relevant theses. I try to show that Goodman’s pluralism does not lead to skepticism or the relativism (...) of “anything goes”. One of the most common arguments directed against Goodman’s pluralism is that his attempt to provide a genuine standard of “rightness” fails, leaving us without a conception of truth or an appropriate substitute. I will argue that the conclusion of this argument is false, trying to show that Goodman’s aim of defending an irrealist pluralism is perfectly coherent and defensible against the common interpretation of his critics. (shrink)

Le livre de Nicolas Bourguinat, analysant les écrits de femmes ayant voyagé en Italie entre 1770 et 1870, se situe à l’intersection de plusieurs champs de recherche, l’histoire des femmes, celles du voyage, du livre, de la littérature. Ces domaines d’études confluent dans une relecture originale de l’histoire de l’Europe dans une perspective transnationale. La recherche privilégie une période que l’auteur qualifie de « mal identifiée et mal aimée de l’histoire du voyage en Italie… à cheval en...

Andrey Tarkovsky _Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema_ Translated by Kitty Hunter-Blair Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996 ISBN: 0-292-77624-1 255 pp.

Our purpose in this paper is to contribute to a practice-based characterization of scientific inference. We want to explore whether Brandom’s pragmatist–inferentialist framework can suitably accommodate several types of ampliative inference common in scientific reasoning and explanation (probabilistic reasoning, abduction and idealisation). First, we argue that Brandom’s view of induction in terms of merely permissive inferences is inadequate; in order to overcome the shortcoming of Brandom’s proposal, we put forward an alternative conception of inductive, probabilistic reasoning by appeal to the (...) notion of degrees of commitment. Moreover, we examine the sorts of inferential commitments operative in other types of ampliative inferences, such as abduction or reasoning involving idealizations and assumptions. We suggest that agents engaging in these forms of reasoning often undertake restricted inferential commitments, whose scope and reach are more limited that in the case of the commitments associated with full beliefs. (shrink)

We discuss the solution proposed by Fermi to the so called “4/3 problem” in the classical theory of the electron, a problem which puzzled the physics community for many decades before and after his contribution. Unfortunately his early resolution of the problem in 1922–1923 published in three versions in Italian and German journals (after three preliminary articles on the topic) went largely unnoticed. Even more recent texts devoted to classical electron theory still do not present his argument or acknowledge the (...) actual content of those articles. The calculations initiated by Fermi at the time are completed here by formulating and discussing the conservation of the total 4-momentum of the accelerated electron as seen from the instantaneous rest frame in which it is momentarily at rest. (shrink)

In evolutionary biology and ecology, ontological and epistemological perspectives based on the replicator and the interactor have become the background that makes it possible to transcend traditional biological levels of organization and to achieve a unified view of evolution in which replication and interaction are fundamental operating processes. Using the transactional perspective proposed originally by John Dewey and Arthur Fisher Bentley, a new ontological and methodological category is proposed here: the transactor. The transactional perspective, based on the concept of the (...) transactor, bridges the dichotomy between organisms and environment that characterizes the interactional perspective on evolution and provides epistemological support for the emergentist, systemic view of evolutionary and developmental processes. (shrink)

The holism-reductionism debate, one of the classic subjects of study in the philosopy of science, is currently at the heart of epistemological concerns in ecology. Yet the division between holism and reductionism does not always stand out clearly in this field. In particular, almost all work in ecosystem ecology and landscape ecology presents itself as holistic and emergentist. Nonetheless, the operational approaches used rely on conventional reductionist methodology.From an emergentist epistemological perspective, a set of general 'transactional' principles inspired by the (...) work of J. Dewey and J.K. Feibleman are proposed in an effort to develop a coherent ontological and methodological semantics. (shrink)