Ruth Myrtle Patrick was a pioneering ecologist and taxonomist whose extraordinary career at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia spanned over six decades. In 1947, an opportunity arose for Patrick to lead a new kind of river survey for the Pennsylvania Sanitary Water Board to study the effects of pollution on aquatic organisms. Patrick leveraged her already extensive scientific network, which included ecologist G. Evelyn Hutchinson, to overcome resistance within the Academy, establish a new Department of Limnology, and carry (...) out the survey, which was a resounding success and brought much needed money to the Academy. As demand for her expertise grew among industrial companies, such as the chemical company DuPont, Patrick became more active in the world of applied science. She repurposed data and instruments from her river surveys to run new experiments, test ecological theories, and conduct long-term ecological studies. Through these studies, she advanced an argument that biologist Thomas Lovejoy dubbed the “Patrick principle,” the idea that the ecological health of a body of water could be measured by the relative abundance and diversity of species living there. Patrick was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1970, became a board member of DuPont in 1975, and received two of the most prestigious awards in ecology: the Eminent Ecologist Award from the Ecological Society of America in 1972 and the Tyler Ecology Award in 1975. This article analyzes Patrick’s unusual success in bridging the worlds of science and industry and her unusual ability to cross, and redefine, the perceived boundary between basic and applied fields in biology. It argues that Patrick’s position at the Academy, an institution of natural history that was both willing and able to accept money from industrial corporations, is key to understanding her success in, and influence on, the field of river ecology. (shrink)

Currently fashionable among critics of enlightenment thought is the charge that Kant's ethics fails to provide an adequate account of character and its formation in moral and political life. G. Felicitas Munzel challenges this reading of Kant's thought, claiming not only that Kant has a very rich notion of moral character, but also that it is a conception of systematic importance for his thought, linking the formal moral with the critical, aesthetic, anthropological, and biological aspects of his philosophy. The first (...) book to focus on character formation in Kant's moral philosophy, it builds on important recent work on Kant's aesthetics and anthropology, and brings these to bear on moral issues. Munzel traces Kant's multifaceted definition of character through the broad range of his writings, and then explores the structure of character, its actual exercise in the world, and its cultivation. An outstanding work of original textual analysis and interpretation, _Kant's Conception of Moral Character_ is a major contribution to Kant studies and moral philosophy in general. (shrink)

This book traces the intellectual revolution initiated by Thales in the sixth century BC to its culmination in the metaphysics of Parmenides.

According to the ‘conceivability argument’ [1] it’s conceivable that a conscious human being H may have a perfect physical duplicate H* who isn’t conscious, [2] whatever is conceivable is possible, therefore [3] H* may possibly exist. This paper argues that the conceivability argument can’t help in discussion of the ‘mind–body problem’ even if [2] is allowed to be true. This is not because [1] is false, but because we don’t and can’t know enough about the nature of the physical to (...) know whether or not [1] is true. This follows from ‘the silence of physics’—the fact that physics neither does nor can tell us about the intrinsic non-structural nature of the physical, and the consequences of this fact for any adequate account of the meaning of the word ‘physical’. (shrink)

In his target paper, John Welwood tells us that we have to beware of 'spiritual bypassing -- using spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep personal, emotional -- unfinished business--, to shore up a shaky sense of self, or to belittle basic needs, feelings, and develop-mental tasks, all in the name of enlightenment'. It's arguable that there is an equal danger of 'narrative bypassing' -- using the idea of one's life as a narrative to 'sidestep personal, emotional --unfinished business--, to shore (...) up a shaky sense of self -- all in the name of' a good life. (shrink)

This book challenges the common assumption that the predominant focus of the history of science should be the achievements of Western scientists since the so-called Scientific Revolution. The conceptual frameworks within which the members of earlier societies and of modern indigenous groups worked admittedly pose severe problems for our understanding. But rather than dismiss them on the grounds that they are incommensurable with our own and to that extent unintelligible, we should see them as offering opportunities for us to revise (...) many of our own preconceptions. We should accept that the realities to be accounted for are multi-dimensional and that all such accounts are to some extent value-laden. In the process insights from current anthropology and the study of ancient Greece and China especially are brought to bear to suggest how the remit of the history of science can be expanded to achieve a cross-cultural perspective on the problems. (shrink)

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1910 Edition.

The paper offers an account of consciousness as a biological process. All its theoretical concepts are derived from the biological context and accurately defined in causal and functional terms. To cover the essence of what is commonly meant by the word ‘consciousness’, and to avoid confusion through a selective or theoretically biased interpretation of that word, the paper addresses the dimensions of awareness which the word denotes according to the dictionaries of the English language, viz., an awareness of the surrounding (...) world, of the self, and of one's thoughts and feelings. These are examined at the primary levels at which they might exist also in nonhuman species. (shrink)

Предназначено для представителей науки и образования, политических партий, общественных и религиозных организаций, органов государственного управления.