An edition of the letters of Erasmus, regarded as one of the greatest humanist writers. All 12 volumes of this work have been reissued, complete with their scholarly apparatus of commentary and notes, as well as plates.

John Evelyn (1620-1706) is best remembered for Sylva - his magnum opus - and his Diary . Alongside Pepys' diary, Evelyn's is as well known now as anything else written in their time. A connoisseur of architecture, painting, music, coins, and sermons, Evelyn was renowned for his practical knowledge on horticulture and arboriculture, and he was one of the original Fellows of the Royal Society. His Diary begins with an account of his early life and travels in (...) Europe. In addition to his own jottings of events, Evelyn drew on contemporary newspapers and pamphlets. (shrink)

A translation of a dialogue between Evelyne Grossman and Jacob Rogozinski on Artaud, Deleuze, and the status of the ego.

"-Barbara Ehrenreich, Mother Jones "This book represents the expression of a particular feminist perspective made all the more compelling by Keller's evident commitment to and understanding of science.

Much has been written about data politics in the last decade, which has generated myriad concepts such as ‘surveillance capitalism’, ‘gig economy’, ‘quantified self’, ‘algorithmic governmentality’, ‘data colonialism’, ‘data subjects’ and ‘digital citizens’. Yet, it has been difficult to plot these concepts into an historical series to discern specific continuities and discontinuities since the origins of modern power in its three major forms: sovereign, disciplinary and regulatory. This article argues that the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 brought these three forms of (...) power into sharp relief but made particularly visible a fourth form of power that we name ‘sensory power’, which has been emerging since the 1980s. The article draws on early studies of power by Michel Foucault, subsequent studies on biopower and biopolitics that expanded on them, and studies in the past decade that focused on data produced from apps, devices and platforms. Yet, despite its ambition, the article is inevitably an outline of a much larger project. (shrink)

The essays included here represent Fox Keller's attempts to integrate the insights of feminist theory with those of her contemporaries in the history and philosophy of science.

In this powerful critique, the esteemed historian and philosopher of science Evelyn Fox Keller addresses the nature-nurture debates, including the persistent disputes regarding the roles played by genes and the environment in determining individual traits and behavior. Keller is interested in both how an oppositional “versus” came to be inserted between nature and nurture, and how the distinction on which that opposition depends, the idea that nature and nurture are separable, came to be taken for granted. How, she asks, (...) did the illusion of a space between nature and nurture become entrenched in our thinking, and why is it so tenacious? Keller reveals that the assumption that the influences of nature and nurture can be separated is neither timeless nor universal, but rather a notion that emerged in Anglo-American culture in the late nineteenth century. She shows that the seemingly clear-cut nature-nurture debate is riddled with incoherence. It encompasses many disparate questions knitted together into an indissoluble tangle, and it is marked by a chronic ambiguity in language. There is little consensus about the meanings of terms such as nature, nurture, gene, and environment. Keller suggests that contemporary genetics can provide a more appropriate, precise, and useful vocabulary, one that might help put an end to the confusion surrounding the nature-nurture controversy. (shrink)

Two decades of critique have sensitized historians and philosophers of science to the inadequacies of conventional dichotomies between theory and practice, thereby prompting the search for new ways of writing about science that are less beholden than the old ways to the epistemological mores of theoretical physics, and more faithful to the actual practices not only of physics but of all the natural sciences. The need for alternative descriptions seems particularly urgent if one is to understand the place of theory (...) (and, in parallel, the role of modeling) in contemporary molecular biology, a science where, until now, no division between theory and experiment has obtained, and where distinctions between representing and intervening, and more generally, between basic and applied science, are daily becoming more blurred. Indeed, the very division between theory and experiment threatens to slight the extensive and sophisticated theoretical analyses (and even modeling) on which experimental work in contemporary molecular biology so often depends. My aim in this paper is to find a way of talking about theoretical practices in biology that is directly rooted in the mix of conceptual and material work that biologists do. As an example of such theoretical practices, I choose for the focus of my analysis the development of a model for gene regulation out of the experimental work of Eric Davidson and his colleagues at Cal Tech. (shrink)

Assistive technology has great potential to contribute to health, functioning, and quality of life. To date, as exemplified in the Canadian context, variations and inequities in access to assistive technology are evident; the development of legislation, policies, and programs has not kept up with the increasing use of assistive technology. In this article, we apply ;Daniels’s (2008) theory of just health to argue that equitable access to assistive technology funding and services is necessary for justice. In doing so, we offer (...) theoretical guidance for the development of legislation, policies, and programs to guide such access in health and social services. (shrink)

What do biologists want? If, unlike their counterparts in physics, biologists are generally wary of a grand, overarching theory, at what kinds of explanation do biologists aim? A history of the diverse and changing nature of biological explanation in a particularly charged field, "Making Sense of Life" draws our attention to the temporal, disciplinary, and cultural components of what biologists mean, and what they understand, when they propose to explain life.

L'analyse des statistiques du baccalauréat de l'académie de Rennes pour la période 1931-1939 atteste la progression constante des candidates dans l'entre deux guerres, alors qu'a été décrétée en 1925 l'identité des programmes et du baccalauréat pour les enseignements secondaires féminin et masculin. Mais la ventilation entre les sections est significative des écarts de scolarisation qui subsistent entre garçons et filles. En effet, si, chez quelques rares professeurs, l'idée affleure que les différences de sexe sont socialement construites, les préjugés les plus (...) vivaces sur la nature féminine continuent de prévaloir, même parmi ceux et celles pour qui le baccalauréat féminin est une conquête. Dans le contexte de crise de la fin des années 30, le thème du nécessaire retour des femmes instruites au foyer en est l'expression la plus banale. (shrink)

The political integration of the European Union is fragile for many reasons, not least the reassertion of nationalism. That said, if we examine specific practices and infrastructures, a more complicated story emerges. We juxtapose the political fragility of the EU in relation to the ongoing formation of data infrastructures in official statistics that take part in postnational enactments of Europe’s populations and territories. We develop this argument by analyzing transformations in how European populations are enacted through new technological infrastructures that (...) seek to integrate national census data in “cubes” of cross-tabulated social topics and spatial “grids” of maps. In doing so, these infrastructures give meaning to what “is” Europe in ways that are both old and new. Through standardization and harmonization of social and geographical spaces, “old” geometries of organizing and mapping populations are deployed along with “new” topological arrangements that mix and fold categories of population. Furthermore, we consider how grids and cubes are generative of methodological topologies by closing the distances or differences between methods and making their data equivalent. By paying attention to these practices and infrastructures, we examine how they enable reconfiguring what is known and imagined as Europe and how it is governed. (shrink)

Cette méditation indissociablement philosophique, esthétique, anthropologique, poétique et photographique essaie de décentrer nos manières de voir. Qu’y a-t-il à voir dans ce qui s’offre au regard? Comment certaines attitudes et pratiques observées chez les populations amérindiennes Wai-wai peuvent-elles inspirer une autre poétique du regard? Comment quelques photographies peuvent-elles documenter cette poétique? Comment les mots, et parmi eux surtout les intraduisibles, peuvent-ils nourrir une écriture de cette poétique? Cette méditation pose plus de questions qu’elle ne vise à en résoudre.

A recent commentary argued for arbitration to resolve authorship disputes within academic research settings explaining that current mechanisms to resolve conflicts result in unclear outcomes and institutional power vested in senior investigators could compromise fairness. We argue here that arbitration is not a suitable means to resolve disputes among researchers in academia because it remains unclear who will assume the costs of arbitration, the rules of evidence do not apply to arbitration, and decisions are binding and very difficult to appeal. (...) Instead of arbitration, we advocate for peer-based approaches involving a peer review committee and research ethics consultation to help resolve authorship disagreements. We describe the composition of an institutional peer review committee to address authorship disputes. Both of these mechanisms are found, or can be formed, within academic institutions and offer several advantages to researchers who are likely to shy away from legalistic processes and gravitate towards those handled by their peers. Peer-based approaches are cheaper than arbitration and the experts involved have knowledge about academic publishing and the culture of research in the specific field. Decisions by knowledgeable and neutral experts could reduce bias, have greater authority, and could be appealed. Not only can peer-based approaches be leveraged to resolve authorship disagreements, but they may also enhance collegiality and promote a healthy team environment. (shrink)

In _Beyond Prejudice_, Evelyn B. Pluhar defends the view that any sentient conative being—one capable of caring about what happens to him or herself—is morally significant, a view that supports the moral status and rights of many nonhuman animals. Confronting traditional and contemporary philosophical arguments, she offers in clear and accessible fashion a thorough examination of theories of moral significance while decisively demonstrating the flaws in the arguments of those who would avoid attributing moral rights to nonhumans. Exposing the (...) traditional view—which restricts the moral realm to autonomous, fully fledged "persons"—as having horrific implications for the treatment of many humans, Pluhar goes on to argue positively that sentient individuals of any species are no less morally significant than the most automomous human. Her position provides the ultimate justification that is missing from previous defenses of the moral status of nonhuman animals. In the process of advancing her position, Pluhar discusses the implications of determining moral significance for children and "abnormal" humans as well as its relevance to population policies, the raising of animals for food or product testing, decisions on hunting and euthanasia, and the treatment of companion animals. In addition, the author scrutinizes recent assertions by environmental ethicists that all living things or that natural objects and ecosystems be considered highly morally significant. This powerful book of moral theory challenges all defenders of the moral status quo—which decrees that animals decidedly do not count—to reevaluate their convictions. (shrink)

In business and government, databases contain large quantities of digital transactional data (purchases made, services used, finances transferred, benefits received, licences acquired, borders crossed, tickets purchased). The data can be understood as ongoing and dynamic measurements of the activities and doings of people. In government, numerous database devices have been developed to connect such data across services to discover patterns and identify and evaluate the performance of individuals and populations. Under the UK’s New Labour government, the development of such devices (...) was part of a broader policy known as ‘joined-up thinking and government’. Analyses of this policy have typically understood joining up as an operation of adding together distributed data about subjects, which can then be used in the service of government surveillance, the database state or informational capitalism. But rather than such technical or managerialist analytics, I argue that topological analytics capture what these database devices enact and do: they materialize the ‘individuality’ of subjects in intensified, distributed and fluctuating ways and materialize and intensify a logic of what Deleuze describes as modulating controls. Through examples of UK New Labour social policy initiatives over the past decade, I argue that topological analytics can account for these as immanent rather than exceptional properties of database devices and, as such, part and parcel of a governmental logic and ontology of subjects. (shrink)

Researchers have considered individual and organizational factors of ethical decision making. However, they have little interest in situational factors :101–125, 2013) which is surprising given the many situations sales persons face. We address this issue using two pilot qualitative studies successively and a 2 by 2 within-subject experiment with sales scenarios. Qualitative and quantitative data are obtained from front-line employees of the main French retail banks that serve low-income customers. We show that the recognition of an ethical issue differs depending (...) on the role behavior salespersons are engaged in and the nature of the conflict of interest they face. Moreover, the combined effect of these two situational characteristics is mediated by moral intensity. This study not only adds evidence on situational factors affecting ethical decision but also extends empirical research on sales ethics by revealing sales situations that are not considered in the empirical literature. The research implications of the findings are discussed along with the study’s limitations and suggestions for future research. (shrink)

‘‘COGNITIVE ECOLOGY’’ is a fruitful model for Shakespearian studies, early modern literary and cultural history, and theatrical history more widely. Cognitive ecologies are the multidimensional contexts in which we remember, feel, think, sense, communicate, imagine, and act, often collaboratively, on the fly, and in rich ongoing interaction with our environments. Along with the anthropologist Edwin Hutchins,1 we use the term ‘‘cognitive ecology’’ to integrate a number of recent approaches to cultural cognition: we believe these approaches offer productive lines of engagement (...) with early modern literary and historical studies.2 The framework arises out of our work in extended mind and distributed cognition.3 The extended mind hypothesis arose from a post-connectionist philosophy of cognitive science. This approach was articulated in Andy Clark’s Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again, and further developed by Susan Hurley and Mark Rowlands, among others.4 The distributed cognition approach arose independently, from work in cognitive anthropology, HCI (Human-Computer Interaction), the sociology of education and work, and science studies. The principles of distributed cognition were articulated in Hutchins’s ethnography of navigation, Cogni- tion in the Wild,5 and developed by theorists such as David Kirsh and Lucy Suchman.6 These models share an anti-individualist approach to cognition. In all these views, mental activities spread or smear across the boundaries of skull and skin to include parts of the social and material world. In remembering, decision making, and acting, whether individually or in small groups, our complex and structured activities involve many distinctive dimensions: neural, affective, kines-. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the problematic relation between sex and gender in parallel with the equally problematic relation between nature and science. I also offer a provisional analysis of the political dynamics that work to polarize both kinds of discourse, focusing especially on their intersection (i.e., on discussions of gender and science), and on that group most directly affected by all of the above considerations (i.e., women scientists).

Among Bryan Norton’s most influential contributions to environmental philosophy has been his analysis and evaluation of democratic processes for environmental decision-making. He examines actual cases of environmental decision-making in their legal, political, ethical and scientific contexts, and, with contextual constraints and goals in mind, he theorizes concerning what they accomplish and how they can be improved. Informed by the political theories of both John Dewey and Jürgen Habermas, Norton’s pragmatist approach holds that appropriate democratic decision procedures will generate broadly defensible (...) decisions. Thus, his view of environmental decision-making is based in—and requires—inclusive, democratic, empirical inquiry. While accepting these criteria, I examine how, in practice, it is difficult to identify when these conditions have been adequately met. I investigate the limitations of Norton’s proceduralist approach through a case study in community-based forest management in a New York State urban old-growth park. I argue that Norton’s procedural priorities are too rigid given the contextual constraints of local decision-making. While they are useful for guiding an ideal, high standards sense of the decision-making process, less rigid Deweyan considerations of social learning and community engagement often provide sufficient guidelines for evaluating success. (shrink)

A commentary on Ronald Sandler, 2013, "Climate change and Ecosystem Management." Rapid ecological change requires rethinking land management goals and strategies. We propose extending Sandler’s view. First, it is a false dichotomy to assume that a definitive choice must be made between reserve oriented and restoration approaches. Second, even more emphasis can be placed on the value of diversity in management approaches.

My aim in this dissertation is threefold. First I explore Cassirer's thesis that all human expression and representation is symbolic. Human life unfolds in the interplay of physical necessity and self-determination. In life we continually integrate and balance material and non-material components. The symbolic function is the vehicle whereby we interweave these two dimensions. To accomplish this task and to show why human expression and representation is symbolic, I trace Cassirer's conception of the symbolic function to Kant's distinction between symbols (...) and schemata. I then develop Cassirer's deviation from Kant, which led to his own formulation of the concept of the symbolic function and his views on objectifying experience. ;The second aim of this work addresses the implications of the symbolic function for objectifying human experience. Though objects may indeed exist independently of us, we cannot express or represent what there is independently of our human modes of expression--our symbolic forms. Objects are never presented directly but are always known indirectly through some form of expression. This constraint stems from our nature as human subjects and is therefore "subjectively necessary" for objectifying human experience. This implies that truth as well as beauty cannot be addressed independently of the modality through which it is expressed and represented. ;Finally, I have one more aim in view. Cassirer was a "cultural activist" who grappled with the source of the creative human potential. Far too often in contemporary times we impose psychic and spiritual binds on ourselves that stifle our creative imagination and reduce us to the level of material objects. Cassirer speaks to the productive activity of the human imagination which can function through any modality to combat the spiritual vacuum of contemporary culture. This source of creative freedom does not hover in an abstract realm oblivious to the irrational tendencies of human beings, but is grounded in the materials of daily life. It enables us to objectify human experience through any form of expression by means of the symbolic function. (shrink)

ArgumentCultivated by a number of writers and studied by psychologists, the phenomenon of déjà vu is an invention of the nineteenth century and is part of a broader exploration of how the mind experiences memory and time. Thus this typically benign mental aberration provides an entry-point into the mechanisms that preside over the regulation of the flow of consciousness. The theories of the mind developed recently by neuroscientists help us understand, meanwhile, why investigations into this mental “event” necessarily invoke concepts (...) of representation and narrative. In fact, our increasingly sophisticated models for processes of memory and perception depend on literary representations. This article relies on the paramnesiac writings of Gérard de Nerval, seen through the lens of Proust's analysis, to argue that a consideration of the aesthetic and representational features of déjà-vu can bring us closer to solving the epistemological challenges we face in studying this phenomenon.For Gregory T. Polletta. (shrink)

The Statements on Responsibilities in Tax Practice (SRTPs) provide guidance to the CPA when making decisions in tax practice. Many of these decisions are ethical in nature and have implications for tax compliance. In this study, a survey methodology is used to test whether the SRTPs affect decisions that CPAs make. The findings suggest that a clear majority of CPAs follow the SRTPs when making ethical decisions relating to tax return preparation and that CPAs follow the SRTPs more often than (...) unlicensed preparers on half the issues tested. However, a statistically significant number of CPAs do not follow the SRTPs and, CPAs do not follow the SRTPs any more often than unlicensed tax preparers on three issues. (shrink)

That Cicero as a young didactic poet embraced the traditions of Hellenistic hexameter poetry is well recognized. Those traditions encompass various forms of wordplay, one of which is the acrostic. Cicero's engagement with this tradition, in the form of an unusual Greek-Latin acrostic at Aratea 317–20, prompts inquiry regarding both the use of the acrostic technique as textual commentary and Cicero's lifelong concerns regarding translation.