Originally published in 1937 as part of the 'Yesterday and Today in Germany' series for Cambridge Contact Readers, this German text describes a fantasy tour around Germany taken by David Hanes, a fictional English schoolchild, and his guardian Mr Wilson. During his trip, David interacts with German locals, visits key attractions and travels around the country by zeppelin. The text is illustrated with photographs of inter-war German life, as well as maps, charts and sheet music. This book will be of (...) value to anyone with an interest in Germany and the history of German teaching in Britain. (shrink)

1 Evidence-based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. 2 During a 2-day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for (...) generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short-listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy-led organizations. 3 The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. 4 The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. 5 Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible. (shrink)

Valéry, P. The idea of art.--Sartre, J.-P. The work of art.--Ingarden, R. Artistic and aesthetic values.--Merleau-Ponty, M. Eye and mind.--Moore, G. E. Wittgenstein's lectures in 1930-33.--Findlay, J. N. The perspicuous and the poignant.--Hungerland, I. C. Once again, aesthetic and non-aesthetic.--Wollheim, R. On drawing an object.--Elliott, R. K. Aesthetic theory and the experience of art.--Savile, A. The place of invention in the concept of art.--Bibliography (p. [178]-184).

Upshot: In view of Kenny’s clinical insights, Hug’s notes on the intricacies of rational vs. a-rational “knowing” in the design sciences, and Chronaki & Kynigos’s notice of mathematics teachers’ meta-communication on experiences of change, this response reframes the heuristic power of bisociation and suspension of disbelief in the light of Kelly’s notion of “as-if-ism” (constructive alternativism. Doing as-if and playing what-if, I reiterate, are critical to mitigating intra-and inter-personal relations, or meta-communicating. Their epistemic status within the radical constructivist framework is (...) cast in the context of mutually enriching conversational techniques, or language-games, inspired by Maturana’s concepts of “objectivity in parenthesis” and the multiverse. (shrink)

Ethics is defined as the realm of the 'ought', the realm of conscience which postulates that Man has the freedom to carry out what he judges to be morally right. By such acts he realizes his freedom of making himself into a truer, more authentic person than he was before. A libertarian psychotherapy, based on this ethic, is outlined. Medical science (as all science) belongs to the realm of the 'is' and postulates that the phenomena which it studies follow a (...) necessary course. It is therefore deterministic. In psychiatry, allowance is made for a neurological determinism in cases in which personal freedom has been diminished or abolished by mental illness, but the determinisms of behaviour therapy and of psycho-analysis are rejected by the author. (shrink)

In an article1 entitled Lucrèce et les éléphants, Professor Ernout has referred to recent archaeological evidence that in palaeolithic times the skeletons of mammoths were used in the construction of primitive habitations, and observes that the well-known lines of Lucretius. 532 ff. about India being so prolific inelephants that the whole land ‘milibus e multis vallo munitur eburno’ mayrefer not to anything legendary, nor to themilitary use of elephants in large numbers for frontier defence, but to a recognitionof the fact (...) that even in later times ‘les Indiens avaient pu conserver leurmode de vie et utiliser avec ses défenses d'éléphant le système de protectioninvente par leurs ancêtres, ou simplement conserver ces gigantesques os demammouths’, etc. (shrink)

Human Papillomavirus (HPV) types are sexually transmitted infections that cause a number of human cancers. According to the competitive exclusion principle in ecology, HPV types that have lower transmission probabilities and shorter durations of infection should be outcompeted by more virulent types. This, however, is not the case, as numerous HPV types co-exist, some which are less transmissible and more easily cleared than others. This paper examines whether this exception to the competitive exclusion principle can be explained by the aggregation (...) of infection with HPV types, which results in patchy spatial distributions of infection, and what implications this has for the effect of vaccination on multiple HPV types. A deterministic transmission model is presented that models the patchy distribution of infected individuals using Lloyd’s mean crowding. It is first shown that higher aggregation can result in a reduced capacity for onward transmission and reduce the required efficacy of vaccination. It is shown that greater patchiness in the distribution of lower prevalence HPV types permits co-existence. This affirms the hypothesis that the aggregation of HPV types provides an explanation for the violation of the competitive exclusion principle. Greater aggregation of lower prevalence types has important implications where type-specific HPV vaccines also offer cross-protection against non-target types. It is demonstrated that the degree of cross-protection can be less than the degree of vaccine protection conferred against directly targeted types and still result in the elimination of non-target types when these non-target types are patchily distributed. (shrink)

In this article, an ethical analysis of an educational programme on renal replacement therapy options for patients and their social network is presented. The two main spearheads of this approach are: (1) offering an educational programme on all renal replacement therapy options ahead of treatment requirement and (2) a home-based approach involving the family and friends of the patient. Arguments are offered for the ethical justification of this approach by considering the viewpoint of the various stakeholders involved. Finally, reflecting on (...) these ethical considerations, essential conditions for carrying out such a programme are outlined. The goal is to develop an ethically justified and responsible educational programme. (shrink)

‘Quid vero fit, quod poeta hanc plantam, tanquam munus locustae inprimis gratum, commemoret, nemo dixit; nee ego dicere possum’—so Jacobs in his note on the seventh line of this epigram. Among later commentators, Mackail thinks ‘can hardly mean “leek” here’ and he assumes it to be ‘groundsel’; Dain in the Budé edition is satisfied with the rather prosaic explanation that it is an ‘observation très juste … la cigale ne se nourrit que des sues des plantes’. I hope to show (...) that the diet of leeks and dewdrops from the mouth is promised by the love-sick swain of Meleager's poem for the same specific reason—to refresh the grasshopper's ‘voice’ for a new day's beguilement by song and persuasion to the sleep which will again free him from the cares of love. Although the ancients were aware of the means by which such insects produced their incessant sound, they remained faithful to the poetic tradition, which made them drink dew as a prelude to their singing, first found in Hesiod, Scut. 395, and clearly expressed in a couplet of Antipater of Thessalonica. (shrink)

In 394 most editors of the Knights read, cited uniquely from this passage in the lexica, in the sense ‘dry up, parch’, referring, for the condition and appearance of the prisoners after long captivity and privations, to Nub. 186, where the allusion is to the squalor and emaciation of the Socratics. Now Aristophanes' skill in maintaining allusively an image, once a keyword has been supplied, makes me wonder how line 394 was intended to complete the metaphor of the harvest and (...) the crop in 392–3. (shrink)

This article examines whether a policy of mandatory neonatal eye prophylaxis is ethically justified within the Canadian context. An existing framework for public health ethics is used to examine criteria that would justify state intervention in parental decision-making authority in order to protect public health. The benefits, harms, and utility of mandatory neonatal eye prophylaxis are described. Established criteria for the infringement of basic individual liberties in the interests of public health, including effectiveness, proportionality, necessity, least infringement and public justification, (...) are considered. The extent and limits of parental decision-making authority are then discussed, and conditions that warrant state intervention in parental decision-making based on the harm principle are reviewed. Ultimately, infringement of parental authority is not deemed to be necessary to protect public health or to protect the newborn in this case and existing circumstances do not meet any criteria that would justify such an infringement. Mandatory eye prophylaxis is found not to be ethically justified in the current Canadian context. (shrink)

This second visit to the place of Virgil's birth was made partly in actuality—for my wife and I, before taking part in the Virgilian Cruise of last summer, spent two delightful days at Pietole with our hosts, the Signori Prati, and our guest and friend Bruno Nardi—and partly in a renewed pondering of the arguments presented by my friend Professor Conway both in his earlier article and in his recent review of the question, to which, as he says, I had (...) urged him to return. I promised him at the time that if he should not speak the last word on the subject, I would still further defend the view commonly accepted until he bestowed an extraordinary publicity on Calvisano and Carpenedolo. He declares that I maintain the traditional site at Pietole, ‘though not perhaps with very great confidence.’ He further implies that I ‘do not want to accept the evidence of Probus because “I prefer” to believe a mediaeval tradition.’ Let me assure him and the reader that I do not regard a mediaeval tradition per se as better proof than the certain statement of an ancient authority. I have been led, by studies in various fields, to respect tradition in general until it is disproved, and to lay the burden of the argument on those who would disprove it. But the mere sight of something hoary and mediaeval does not prompt me to exclaim, ‘Media Aetas locuta est; causa finita est’ I relish the attempts of an iconoclast to destroy rigid error, and accept his destruction if it is accomplished. In the present case, however, I have ‘very great confidence’ that Conway's assault on the tradition has come to naught. Possibly some new and unexpected evidence may yet be discovered, showing that Virgil was born at Calvisano, or Carpenedolo, or at some other site than Pietole—but nobody has presented it yet. (shrink)

Problems of the relationship between man and nature are becoming a steadily increasing portion of the questions facing modern civilization. Moreover, their character is changing significantly. Only two or three decades ago, the most acute problems were an unending list of "shortages" of one type or another, while the environment in which men lived was regarded primarily as a set of resources without which things could not be produced. Today it is the threat of excessive human influences on nature that (...) has taken center stage. The biosphere is beginning to be perceived on the level of its capacity to assimilate what has been produced, and the growing question is how best to combine the scientific-technological creations of man with the objective processes occurring in nature. (shrink)

In a recent article Mr. D. A. West investigated the meaning of haurire, haustus, showing how the primary sense ‘to take by scooping, to draw’ is present in a number of passages which have been incorrectly interpreted in the light of extensions made only later of this usage. He noted in passing that ‘this sense may well survive in, the cognate of haurire’. In this article I hope to show that the recognition of this as the basic sense of and (...) its cognates and compounds helps to clear away a number of errors arising from the misunderstanding of the fact that the action of scooping, or drawing, is at the root of Gk., as of Lat. haurire. (shrink)

The literary contest of the two tragedians in Frogs is introduced by four stanzas redolent of Homeric combat, with their predominantly dactylic metre and a number of high-flown epic words. I am surprised that several editors prefer the reading ὑψὑλøωυ at 818, as íππóλοøος surely has a resonance of íπποκορυστ⋯ς of Iliad 2.1, etc. The readings and sense, however, of both halves of 819 have long been controversial. As Dover suggested in his 1993 edition the MSS ‘linch-pins of splinters’ is (...) less satisfactory than his proposed transposition to ‘splintering of linch-pins', which suggests a recollection of the dangers of chariot accidents or collisions, as in the funeral games of Il. 23. But the following expression ‘shavings of deeds’ is even more puzzling, and highly improbable, and Heiberg's emendation to σμιλο⋯, agreeing with φωτÓς, is preferred by Stanford among others, though doubted by Dover. (shrink)

Context: The idea for this article sprang from a desire to revive a conversation with the late Ernst von Glasersfeld on the heuristic function - and epistemological status - of forms of ideations that resist linguistic or empirical scrutiny. A close look into the uses of humor seemed a thread worth pursuing, albeit tenuous, to further explore some of the controversies surrounding the evocative power of the imaginal and other oblique forms of knowing characteristic of creative individuals. Problem: People generally (...) respond to humor, i.e., they are inclined to smile at things they find funny. People like to crack jokes, make puns, and, starting at age two, human infants engage in pretense or fantasy play. Research on creativity, on the other hand, has mostly scorned the trickster within. Cognitivists in particular are quick to relegate wit, whimsy, and even playfulness to the ranks of artful or poetic frivolities. Method: We use the emblems of the craftsman, the trickster, and the poet to highlight some of the oblique ways of knowing by which creative thinkers bring forth new insights. Each epitomizes dimensions intrinsic to the art of “possibilizing.” Taken together, they help us better understand what it means to be playful beyond curious, rigorous beyond reasonable, and why this should matter, even to constructivists! Results: The musings characteristic of creative individuals speak to intelligent beings’ ability to use glitches intentionally or serendipitously as a means to open up possibilities; to hold on to a thought before spelling it out; and to resist treating words or images as conventional and arbitrary signs regardless of their evocative power. To fall into nominalism, Bachelard insisted, is a poet’s nightmare! Implications: Psyche is image, said Jung, and when we feel alive we rely on the imaginal to guide our reason. Note that image is not here to be understood as a picture in the head or a photographic snapshot of the world. The imaginal does not represent, it brings forth what we understand beyond words. It does not lock us into a single mode. Instead, it is a call to be mindful, in Ellen Langer’s sense: in the present, mentally alert, and on the outlook for our psyche’s own surprising wisdom (sagacity. Constructivist content: Debates on the heuristic function and epistemological status of oblique ways of knowing have long occupied constructivist scholars. I can only guess whether my uses of Jung’s imaginal or Bachelard’s anti-nominalism would have amused or exasperated Ernst! I do know that, on occasion, Ernst the connoisseur, bricoleur, and translator allowed the rationalist-within to include the poet’s power to evoke as a legitimate form of rationality. He himself has written about oblique knowing as legit! (shrink)

Understanding the mental life of persons with psychosis/schizophrenia has been the crucial challenge of psychiatry since its origins, both for scientific models as well as for every therapeutic encounter between persons with and without psychosis/schizophrenia. Nonetheless, a preliminary understanding is always the first step of phenomenological as well as other qualitative research methods addressing persons with psychotic experiences in their life-world. In contrast to Rashed's assertions, in order to achieve such understanding, phenomenological psychopathologists need not necessarily adopt the transcendental-phenomenological attitude, (...) which, however, is often required if performing phenomenological philosophy. Additionally, in the course of these scientific endeavors, differences between persons with psychosis/schizophrenia and so-called normal people seem to have a methodological function and value driving the scientist in her enterprise. Yet, these differences do not extend to ethical dimensions, and therefore, do not by any means touch ethical equality. (shrink)