Mill predicted that “[t]he Liberty is likely to survive longer than anything else that I have written … because the conjunction of [Harriet Taylor’s] mind with mine has rendered it a kind of philosophic text-book of a single truth, which the changes progressively taking place in modern society tend to bring out in ever greater relief.” Indeed, _On Liberty_ is one of the most influential books ever written, and remains a foundational document for the understanding of vital political, philosophical and (...) social issues. In addition to its many useful appendices, this new edition includes a chronology, bibliography, and a substantial introduction which outlines Mill’s life and works, and sets this central work of 1859 in the context of both his own intellectual development and of the play of ideas and political forces in Victorian society. (shrink)

This study defines the relationship between humanism and liberalism by comparing the two Victorian figures who were most concerned with the preservation of humanistic values in a free and democratic society: Matthew Arnold and John Stuart Mill. The book sets apart Arnold and Mill from their contemporaries and points out their similarities to one another in discussions of their theories of history, poetry, their celebration of the contemplative life and their willingness to welcome democracy. At the same time it examines (...) the differences between the two men, which he uses to create a dialogue between humanism and liberalism on the question of how a high cultural ideal can be realized in democratic society. (shrink)

Apoptosis‐inducing factor (AIF) is expelled from mitochondria after some apoptotic stimuli and translocates to the nucleus, which may contribute to DNA and nuclear fragmentation in some non‐physiological mammalian cell deaths. Conversely, the requirement for mitochondrial AIF in oxidative phosphorylation and energy generation provides a plausible explanation for the embryonic lethality or neurodegeneration that has been found in different AIF‐deficient mouse models. These findings may help illuminate the ability of mitochondrial AIF to suppress cytoplasmic stress granule formation and to promote the (...) tumorigenic growth of cancer cells. AIF is ideally located in the mitochondrion to perform a vital normal function in energy production. Once it translocates to the nucleus, however, the cell might die either of energy failure or nuclear fragmentation (or both). We propose that the main function of AIF is to support energy production in both normal and transformed cell physiology, whereas nuclear‐translocated AIF might contribute to stress‐induced or pathological cell death in certain scenarios. BioEssays 28: 834–843, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

How does talk work, and can we engage the public in a dialogue about the scientific study of talk? This article presents a history, critical evaluation and empirical illustration of the public science of talk. We chart the public ethos of conversation analysis that treats talk as an inherently public phenomenon and its transcribed recordings as public data. We examine the inherent contradictions that conversation analysis is simultaneously obscure yet highly cited; it studies an object that people understand intuitively, yet (...) routinely produces counter-intuitive findings about talk. We describe a novel methodology for engaging the public in a science exhibition event and show how our ‘conversational rollercoaster’ used live recording, transcription and public-led analysis to address the challenge of demonstrating how talk can become an informative object of scientific research. We conclude by encouraging researchers not only to engage in a public dialogue but also to find ways to actively engage people in taking a scientific approach to talk as a pervasive, structural feature of their everyday lives. (shrink)

The structures of specific chromosome regions, centromeres and telomeres, present a number of puzzles. As functions performed by these regions are ubiquitous and essential, their DNA, proteins and chromatin structure are expected to be conserved. Recent studies of centromeric DNA from human, Drosophila and plant species have demonstrated that a hidden universal centromere‐specific sequence is highly unlikely. The DNA of telomeres is more conserved consisting of a tandemly repeated 6–8 bp Arabidopsis‐like sequence in a majority of organisms as diverse as (...) protozoan, fungi, mammals and plants. However, there are alternatives to short DNA repeats at the ends of chromosomes and for telomere elongation by telomerase. Here we focus on the similarities and diversity that exist among the structural elements, DNA sequences and proteins, that make up terminal domains (telomeres and subtelomeres), and how organisms use these in different ways to fulfil the functions of end‐replication and end‐protection. BioEssays 27:685–697, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This article, prompted by an extended essay published in theJournal of Medical Ethicsby Charles Foster, and the current controversy surrounding the case of Vincent Lambert, analyses the legal and ethical arguments in relation to the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment from patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness. The article analyses the legal framework through the prism of domestic law, case-law of the European Court of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and examines the challenge to (...) the ethical consensus made by Foster. It concludes that the right approach remains a version of the approach that has prevailed for the last 25 years since the decision inAiredale NHS Trust v Bland[1993] AC 789, refined to reflect that that there is now, and rightly, a much more limited place for judgments made about the ‘burden’ of treatment or the quality of life enjoyed by the person made on the basis of assumptions about that person as a category as opposed to investigation of that person as an individual human being. (shrink)

Despite the growing importance of ‘social value’ as a central feature of research ethics, the term remains both conceptually vague and to a certain extent operationally rigid. And yet, perhaps because the rhetorical appeal of social value appears immediate and self-evident, the concept has not been put to rigorous investigation in terms of its definition, strength, function, and scope. In this article, we discuss how the anthropological concept of liminality can illuminate social value and differentiate and reconfigure its variegated approaches. (...) Employing liminality as a heuristic encourages a reassessment of how we understand the mobilization of ‘social value’ in bioethics. We argue that social value as seen through the lens of liminality can provide greater clarity of its function and scope for health research. Building on calls to understand social value as a dynamic, rather than a static, concept, we emphasize the need to appraise social value iteratively throughout the entire research as something that transforms over multiple times and across multiple spaces occupied by a range of actors. (shrink)

This paper considers the use of textual analysis of oral histories as a method for historians of nursing. Fifty‐three oral histories of retired nurses in midwestern USA were analyzed for the purpose of historical reconstruction of past education experiences in nursing. Textual analysis was used to determine how nurses made sense of their educational experiences, and it involved gathering data, analyzing the information, and using a different method of interpreting the data. Although the participants responded to specific questions, the oral (...) histories in this study are more than mere answers to the researchers’ queries. The participants’ memories are narratives that are the joint product of both the historian and the participant. As such, the oral history becomes a text to be stored along with other primary sources for future historians’ use. The research also suggests decentering oral histories from an exclusively academic agenda and focusing more on what the participants choose to remember and why they make those choices. (shrink)

This work on the theory of education was first published in 1839. The five writers had been chosen as the winners in a competition for an essay on the 'Expediency and Means of Elevating the Profession of the Educator in Society', organised by the Central Society of Education, founded in 1837 to promote state funding of education, at a time when the 'monitor' system, whereby older children taught younger ones, was seen as an effective method. The journalist John Lalor won (...) first prize with a wide-ranging consideration of all the aspects of education, comparing the status of teachers through history and across several countries, and championing their 'sacred mission'. The runners-up were the writer John A. Heraud, the Unitarian minister Edward Higginson, the lawyer and author James Simpson, and Mrs Sarah Porter, prolific writer on education and sister of the political economist David Ricardo. (shrink)

À propos de la « pensée 68 » selon Serge AudierComme tous les dix ans, l’anniversaire de Mai 68 a donné lieu à un déluge de publications ; et, comme tous les dix ans, il fallait qu’émerge de la masse une poignée de titres qui dispenseraient de regarder les autres. Celui de Serge Audier fit partie de ceux-là, avec son titre accrocheur et toutes les apparences d’une grosse étude sérieuse sur un pan de l’histoire intellectuelle récen..

Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 109 Heft: 2 Seiten: 943-994.

The quantifier “some” often elicits a scalar implicature during comprehension: “Some of today's letters have checks inside” is often interpreted to mean that not all of today's letters have checks inside. In previous work, Goodman and Stuhlmüller (G&S) proposed a model that predicts that this implicature should depend on the speaker's knowledgeability: If the speaker has only examined some of the available letters (e.g., two of three letters), people are less likely to infer that “some” implies “not all” than if (...) the speaker has examined all of the available letters. G&S also provided behavioral evidence in support of their model. In this paper, we first show that a simple extension of G&S's model (1) predicts G&S's knowledgeability effects, and in addition, (2) predicts that the knowledgeability effect will be reduced when the speaker's usage indicates numeral alternatives are available. We tested the new model's predictions in four preregistered experiments. All experiments supported the first model prediction, replicating G&S's finding of a main effect of the speaker's knowledge. Further, Experiments 2 and 4 supported the second model prediction showing that the words that a speaker tends to use affect the strength of scalar implicature that comprehenders make. In particular, when the speaker has partial knowledge (e.g., has only examined two of three letters), comprehenders think that “some” is more likely to mean “not all” when the speaker also tends to produce number words in similar sentences (e.g., “2 of today's rooms have working smoke detectors.”). These results have important ramifications for theories of meaning: the context beyond the sentence (e.g., the speaker's tendency to use particular words) affects the set of alternatives that comprehenders consider when inferring meaning. (shrink)

Central to the development of geology has been the growth of systematic empirical observation as a programme of scientific practice. Fieldwork has focused on many objects—strata, fossils, and landforms—and has issued in a variety of products, such as maps, sections, and monographs on regional geology, particular rock formations and fossils. Early in the nineteenth century, above all, many influential geologists sought to define their science as one exclusively of field observation, description, and the accumulation of data. The rise of fieldwork, (...) in Britain as elsewhere, is an important phenomenon in the making of geology. It must be explained. (shrink)

The Journal of "Religious Ethics" marks the tercentenary of Edwards's birth with the following collection of essays. In keeping with the overall mission of the journal, this tribute takes the form of historical and constructive reflection, in which diverse perspectives on Edwards's work and diverse forms of engagement with it supplement and correct one another. Our hope is that these essays will serve both to generate interest in Edwards's work among those who are unfamiliar with him, and to advance the (...) discussion of central issues in theological and religious ethics. In this introductory essay, we will offer some reflections on Edwards's general significance for contemporary ethics, followed by a closer examination of his main texts and a brief summary of the essays collected here. (shrink)

Alexander Herzen was the most outstanding figure in the early period of the Russian revolutionary movement. Lenin claimed him as a forerunner of the Bolsheviks, and Soviet scholars have sought to establish his latent sympathy with Marxism. In the west on the other hand, he has been seen as a precursor of Solzhenitsyn, the personification of protest against all forms of oppression. Dr Acton provides a compelling intellectual biography. The focus is on the years between 1847 and 1863. Herzen's (...) ideas are set in the context of those political developments and dramatic private experiences that affected his outlook. His profound faith in human nature and in the inevitable triumph of socialism was undermined not only by the failure of the revolutions of 1848, but even more deeply by personal catastrophe - the discovery of the infidelity of his beautiful wife Natalie. This dual blow, Dr Acton shows, had a decisive impact upon Herzen's approach to Russian problems. It lay at the root of the ambivalent attitude he adopted towards peasant revolution in the critical period of Emancipation. (shrink)

The Journal of "Religious Ethics" marks the tercentenary of Edwards's birth with the following collection of essays. In keeping with the overall mission of the journal, this tribute takes the form of historical and constructive reflection, in which diverse perspectives on Edwards's work and diverse forms of engagement with it supplement and correct one another. Our hope is that these essays will serve both to generate interest in Edwards's work among those who are unfamiliar with him, and to advance the (...) discussion of central issues in theological and religious ethics. In this introductory essay, we will offer some reflections on Edwards's general significance for contemporary ethics, followed by a closer examination of his main texts and a brief summary of the essays collected here. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 124.3 (2003) 473-476 [Access article in PDF] Metamorphoses and Metamorphosis:A Brief Response David H. Porter Like Joseph Farrell, I found much to admire in Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses, 1 but I nonetheless left the theater disappointed. Given all that the play—and this production—had to offer, what was it that I looked for but did not find? Excerpts from the foreword to Cesare Pavese's Dialogues with (...) Leucò suggest an answer: What is more acutely disturbing than to see familiar stories troubled into new life?... The surest, and the quickest, way for us to arouse the sense of wonder is to stare, unafraid, at a single object. Suddenly—miraculously—it will look like something we have never seen before. 2For me, what Pavese describes did not happen in Metamorphoses: I found the play an imaginative retelling of Ovid, but I'd been hoping for a true metamorphosis. In terms of the play's most famous feature, the pool of water that serves as a central stage, I felt most of the time that figures I knew from Ovid were playing out their expected roles around and in this pool. My hope had been that this brilliant theatrical innovation might mirror a play in which Ovid's tales themselves take on liquid freedom and fluidity, plunging, as it were, into this central metaphor to emerge changed, unexpected, reborn.The distinction I draw is one I've found useful both in assessing modern versions of ancient myth for myself and in teaching such works. 3 Readers will undoubtedly vary widely as to their favorites among the growing list of such versions, but I expect most would agree that a handful, including perhaps Joyce's Ulysses, Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, [End Page 473] Strauss's Elektra, Yeat's "Leda and the Swan," and Picasso's "Guernica," fall into a special category: different as they are in genre, style, and approach, all strike us as works of artists who have so inhabited a myth, so made it part of themselves—and themselves part of it—that what emerges is totally their own, totally transformed: a re-creation. With each we feel that never before have we experienced the myth this way, and that never again will the myth be quite the same for us—precisely what a New York Times reviewer wrote about a version of Medea that was playing at the Classical Theater of Harlem in April 2002: "I suspect that no matter how many versions I see in the future, my perception of them all will be affected by the revelations here." 4Again, this is the sort of reaction that Metamorphoses, for all its virtues, did not elicit in me, and I would extend this exclusion to most other modern reworkings of ancient myth—among them Pavese's own Dialogues with Leucò, which, despite the penetrating insights of his foreword, strike me the same way—as charming, distinctive retellings, not revelations. The issue, I think, has to do with the depth and degree of an artist's immersion in a myth, something that goes well beyond the superficial test of how far the artist diverges from "the original." Eliot's and O'Neill's myth-based plays, for instance, or a novel like Updike's The Centaur, make radical changes in the names and settings of the ancient myths, but in contrast to Joyce's Ulysses, the changes feel artificial, incompletely realized—transpositions rather than transformations. In contrast, Odilon Redon's painting of Polyphemus as a mountainous crag from which a huge voyeuristic eye peers out springs directly from an image in the Odyssey—and yet has a nightmare quality that is indeed "like something we have never seen before." 5A musical analogy may be useful. Listeners reported that when Franz Liszt played Beethoven, he gave the impression at each performance [End Page 474] that he was creating the music anew. 6 And Edward Steuermann, Arnold Schoenberg's long-time colleague, once wrote, "Is not music, the great music, so much alive because it was... (shrink)

Mohandas Gandhi is civil disobedience’s most original theorist and most influential mythmaker. As a newspaper editor in South Africa, he chronicled his experiments with satyagraha by drawing parallels to ennobling historical precedents. Most enduring of these were Socrates and Henry David Thoreau. The genealogy Gandhi invented in these years has become a cornerstone of contemporary liberal narratives of civil disobedience as a continuous tradition of conscientious appeal ranging from Socrates to King to Rawls. One consequence of this contemporary canonization of (...) Gandhi’s narrative, however, has been to obscure the radical critique of violence that originally motivated it. This essay draws on Edward Said’s account of travelling theory to unsettle the myth of doctrine that has formed around civil disobedience. By placing Gandhi’s genealogy in the context of his critique of modern civilization, as well as his formative but often-overlooked encounter with the British women’s suffrage movement, it reconstructs Gandhi’s paradoxical notion that sacrificial political action is the fullest expression of self-rule. For Gandhi, Socrates and Thoreau exemplify civil disobedience as a fearless practice of fidelity to truth profoundly at odds with liberal conceptions of disobedience as fidelity to law. (shrink)

Over the course of human history, the sciences, and biology in particular, have often been manipulated to cause immense human suffering. For example, biology has been used to justify eugenic programs, forced sterilization, human experimentation, and death camps—all in an attempt to support notions of racial superiority. By investigating the past, the contributors to _Biology and Ideology from Descartes to Dawkins_ hope to better prepare us to discern ideological abuse of science when it occurs in the future. Denis R. (...) class='Hi'>Alexander and Ronald L. Numbers bring together fourteen experts to examine the varied ways science has been used and abused for nonscientific purposes from the fifteenth century to the present day. Featuring an essay on eugenics from Edward J. Larson and an examination of the progress of evolution by Michael J. Ruse, _Biology and Ideology_ examines uses both benign and sinister, ultimately reminding us that ideological extrapolation continues today. An accessible survey, this collection will enlighten historians of science, their students, practicing scientists, and anyone interested in the relationship between science and culture. (shrink)