In the article "The Epistemological Nature of Information Modeling" [Gnoseologicheskaia priroda informatsionnogo modelirovaniia], Voprosy filosofii, 1963, No. 10, Academician V. M. Glushkov examines two important methodological aspects of the modeling of natural objects and phenomena in the contemporary natural sciences. The first consists of the informational nature of the models created, and the second of their dynamism. The dynamic nature of today's models in the natural sciences means that it is not so much the material structure of the object that (...) is modeled as its behavior and functions in some sphere of natural phenomena. In this sense, the models under examination may also be termed functional, as distinct from the structural models pertaining to a static description of objects. (shrink)

This book offers an introduction to the Sophists of fifth-century Athens and a new overall interpretation of their thought. Since Plato first animadverted on their activities, the Sophists have commonly been presented as little better than intellectual mountebanks - a picture which Professor Kerferd forcefully challenges here. Interpreting the evidence with care, he shows them to have been part of an exciting and historically crucial intellectual movement. At the centre of their teaching was a form of relativism, most famously expressed (...) by Protagoras as 'Man is the measure of all things', and which they developed in a wide range of views - on knowledge and argument, virtue, government, society, and the gods. On all these subjects the Sophists did far more than simply provoke Plato to thought. Their contributions were substantial and serious; they inaugurated the debate on many central philosophical questions and decisively shifted the focus of philosophical attention from the cosmos to man. (shrink)

Brian Wormald provides a fundamental reappraisal of one of the most complex and innovative figures of the late-Elizabethan and Jacobean age. In the centuries since his death, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) has been perceived and studied as a promoter and prophet of the philosophy of science--natural science--but he saw himself also as a clarifier and promoter of what he called "policy" or the study and improvement of the structure and function of civil states. Mr. Wormald shows that Bacon was concerned equally (...) with the knowledge of the world of nature and with that of policy. The junction between the two enterprises was effected by his work in history; and in the end it was Bacon's conception and practice of history that provided the answer to his efforts to advance policy and natural philosophy. (shrink)

The practice of paternalism has changed along with developments in medicine, philosophy, law, sociology and psychology. Physicians have learned that a patient's values are a factor in determining what is best for that patient. Modern paternalism continues to be guided by the principle that the physician decides what is best for the patient and pursues that course of action, taking into account the values and interests of the patient. In the autonomy model of the doctor-patient relationship, patient values are decisive. (...) In the paternalistic model, they are but one among several factors the physician must consider in making a medical decision. Although difficult to practise because of limitations in empathising with another person, modern paternalism remains a way to achieve maximum patient benefit. (shrink)

In an earlier study I argued that the appearance of the name of Memmius in the first, second, and fifth books alone of Lucretius de Rerum Natura is only the most striking indication of a fundamental change in the poet's attitude towards his reader which is already well established quite a short way through book 5, and which makes it almost incontestable that Lucretius wrote books 3, 4, and 6 after he had lost all hope of converting Memmius to Epicureanism.

Thirteen essays on the treatment of a criterion for truth by such classical writers as Parmenides, Protagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Philo, Epicurius, the Stoics, Plotinus, and Ptolemy, whose neglected Greek work on the subject is included here, along with an annotated English translation. The price $LB12.50, has been estimated to US $24. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Anselm: I agreed that Pegasus is a flying horse according to the stories people tell, the paintings painters paint and so on . That is, Pegasus is a flying horse in the understanding of storytellers, their readers and the artists who depict Pegasus. You asked whether flying is not an unmediated causal power . Well, it could be an unmediated causal power if you or I had it, but not if a being with only mediated powers had it. And so (...) poor Pegasus, a being whose powers are only those given him by storytellers and artists, has only the mediated power of flying that they have given him. He flies in the thoughts and depictions of beings with unmediated powers. Still, Pegasus has not only the mediated power to fly but also the mediated power to entertain us, and perhaps even inspire us. Fool: But people could tell stories about you, too, about how you sprouted wings and flew onto the roof of Canterbury Cathedral. Anselm: Alas, if it were only in stories that I could do that, then flying would not be an unmediated causal power of mine. I would still have unmediated causal powers all right, and so would be greater than Pegasus. But flying is not one of my unmediated causal powers. However, something than which nothing greater can be conceived would, and does, as I have proved in my Proslogion, have unmediated causal powers – indeed, much greater unmediated causal powers than any poor mortals like you and me.1 •↵1 For …. (shrink)