The main point of our hypothesis “coloration undermines camouflage” is that many color patterns in plants undermine the camouflage of invertebrate herbivores, especially insects, thus exposing them to predation and causing them to avoid plant organs with unsuitable coloration, to the benefit of the plants. This is a common case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and a visual parallel of the chemical signals that plants emit to call wasps when attacked by caterpillars. Moreover, this is also (...) a common natural version of the well‐known case of industrial melanism, which illustrates the great importance of plant‐based camouflage for herbivorous insects and can serve as an independent test for our hypothesis. We claim that the enormous variations in coloration of leaves, petioles and stems as well as of flowers and fruits undermine the camouflage of invertebrate herbivores, especially insects. We assume that the same principle might operate in certain animal–parasite interactions. Our hypothesis, however, does not contrast or exclude other previous or future explanations of specific types of plant coloration. Traits such as coloration that have more than one type of benefit may be selected for by several agents and evolve more rapidly than ones with a single type of advantage. BioEssays 26:1126–1130, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Scalar implicatures depend on alternatives in order to avoid the symmetry problem. I argue for a structure-sensitive characterization of these alternatives: the alternatives for a structure are all those structures that are at most as complex as the original one. There have been claims in the literature that complexity is irrelevant for implicatures and that the relevant condition is the semantic notion of monotonicity. I provide new data that pose a challenge to the use of monotonicity and that support the (...) structure-sensitive definition. I show that what appeared to be a problem for the complexity approach is overcome once an appropriate notion of complexity is adopted, and that upon closer inspection, the argument in favor of monotonicity turns out to be an argument against it and in favor of the complexity approach. (shrink)

We revisit a typological puzzle due to Horn (Doctoral Dissertation, UCLA, 1972) regarding the lexicalization of logical operators: in instantiations of the traditional square of opposition across categories and languages, the O corner, corresponding to ‘nand’ (= not and), ‘nevery’ (= not every), etc., is never lexicalized. We discuss Horn’s proposal, which involves the interaction of two economy conditions, one that relies on scalar implicatures and one that relies on markedness. We observe that in order to express markedness and to (...) account for a bigger typological puzzle, namely the absence of lexicalizations of ‘XOR’ (= exclusive or), ‘all-or-none’, and many other imaginable logical operators, one must restrict the basic lexicalizable elements to a small set of primitives. We suggest that an ordering based perspective, following Keenan and Faltz (Boolean semantics for natural language, 1985), makes the stipulated primitives that we arrive at more natural. We also propose a modification to Horn’s proposal, based on recent work on implicatures, in which only the implicature condition is operative and in which markedness is part of the definition of the alternatives for scalar implicatures rather than an independent condition. (shrink)

The semantics of association with focus and the pragmatic conditions governing the appropriateness of focus in discourse are usually taken to depend on focus alternatives. According to a common view, these alternatives are generated by a permissive process. This permissive view has been challenged by Michael Wagner, who has noted that certain alternatives are systematically excluded from consideration. Wagner describes a more restrictive view, on which only contrastive alternatives are relevant for association with focus and for the appropriateness of focus (...) in discourse. I use recent work on the role of contradiction to show that the standard, permissive view derives the same results as the contrast-based view for the basic cases. These basic cases involve a contradiction that prevents us from using them to distinguish the two approaches. I show that when this contradiction is eliminated, evidence of non-contrastive alternatives emerges, supporting the permissive standard view over the restrictive contrast-based one. (shrink)

The sensitivity of focus to context has often been analyzed in terms of focus-based anaphoric relations between sentences and surrounding discourse. The literature, however, has also noted empirical difficulties for the anaphoric approach, and my goal in the present paper is to investigate what happens if we abandon the anaphoric view altogether. Instead of anaphoric felicity conditions, I propose that focus leads to infelicity only indirectly, when the semantic processes that it feeds—in particular, exhaustification and question formation—make an inappropriate contribution (...) to discourse. I outline such an account, in line with Roberts (In Papers in semantics, Vol. 49 of Working papers in linguistics, 91–136, The Ohio State University, 1996 ) and incorporating recent insights from Büring (In Questions in discourse, Vol. 36 of Current research in the semantics/pragmatics interface, 6–44, Leiden: Brill, 2019 ) and Fox (In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 22, 403–434, 2019 ). This account, which I motivate on conceptual grounds, has no anaphoric conditions on focus placement and has only an economy condition as a potential felicity condition on focus. However, there are cases where the fine control offered by anaphoricity seems needed, either to block deaccenting that would be licensed by a question or to allow local deaccenting that is not warranted by a question. Such cases challenge non-anaphoric accounts such as the present one and appear to support recent anaphoric proposals such as Schwarzschild (In Making worlds accessible. Essays in honor of Angelika Kratzer, 167–192, 2020 ), Wagner (In The Wiley Blackwell companion to semantics, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020 ), and Goodhue (Journal of Semantics 39: 117–158, 2022 ). I argue that this potential motivation for anaphoricity is only apparent and that to the extent that anaphoric conditions on focus from the literature are not inert, they are in fact harmful. (shrink)

In a sense Maimonides identifies his views on the subject of divine providence with those of Epicurus. He does so by implying an analogy between this Greek philosopher’s atheistic opinions and those put forth by Elihu in the Book of Job. Despite the fact that commentators have discussed Maimonides’ views on providence for eight hundred years the only one to refer to the connection between Elihu and Epicurus was Joseph Ibn Kaspi in the fourteenth century. One of the consequences of (...) this analogy is a modification of our understanding of Maimonides’ concept of “providence according to the intellect.” Whereas Moshe Narboni and other commentators have understood Maimonides’ concept of providence to involve a unification of the human intellect with the Active Intellect, the association with Epicurus suggests an emphasis on the human individual’s material faculties such as the imagination. Indeed, it is possible that, following Al-Fārābī, Maimonides rejected the possibility of conjunction with the Active Intellect altogether, and that “providence according to the intellect” consists of nothing more than the activity of the human individual’s material faculties. (shrink)

In 1918–1919 Walter G. Cady was the first to recognize the significant electrical consequences of the fact that piezoelectric crystals resonate at very sharp, precise and stable frequencies. Cady was also the first to suggest the employment of these properties, first as frequency standards and then to control frequencies of electric circuits—an essential component in electronic technology. Cady’s discovery originated in the course of research on piezoelectric ultrasonic devices for submarine detection (sonar) during World War I. However, for the discovery (...) Cady had to change his research programme to crystal resonance. This change followed Cady’s experimental findings and the scientific curiosity that they raised, and was helped by the termination of the war. Cady’s transition was also a move from “applied” research, aimed at improving a specific technology, to “pure” research lacking a clear practical aim. This article examines how Cady reached the discovery and his early ideas for its use. It shows that the discovery was not an instantaneous but a gradual achievement. It further suggests that disinterested “scientific” research (rather than “engineering” research) was needed in this process, while research aimed at design was required for the subsequent development of technological devices. (shrink)

ArgumentConcentrating on the important developments of quantum physics, historians have overlooked other significant forces that shaped interwar physics, like that of technology. Based on the case of piezoelectricity, I argue that interests of users of technics (i.e. devices of methods) channeled research in physics into particular fields and questions relevant for industrial companies and governmental agencies. To recognize the effects of such social forces on physics, one needs to study the content of the scientific activity (both experimental and theoretical) of (...) the researchers within its social and disciplinary contexts. By examining paths of individual scientists along with a study of the research in the field as a whole this paper exposes a range of reasons that led researchers to studies pertinent to technics. In particular, it shows that commercial, social, and military powers shaped interwar research through institutions aimed at fostering technology, some of them newly founded, and by a general view that academic research should help technology, a position that became more common at the time. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe quartz clock, the first to replace the pendulum as the time standard and later a ubiquitous and highly influential technology, originated in research on means for determining frequency for the needs of telecommunication and the interests of its users. This article shows that a few groups in the US, Britain, Italy and the Netherlands developed technologies that enabled the construction of the new clock in 1927–28. To coordinate complex and large communication networks, the monopolistic American Telephone and Telegraph Company, (...) and national laboratories needed to determine and maintain a common ‘standard’ frequency measurement unit. Exploiting novel piezoelectric quartz methods and valve electronics techniques, researchers in these organizations constructed a new crystal-based frequency standard. To ensure its accuracy they compared it to an accepted absolute standard - an astronomical clock, constructing thereby the first quartz clock. Other groups, however, had different, though connected, technological aims, which originated from the diverse interests of the industrial, governmental and academic institutes to which they belonged, and for which they needed to measure, control and manipulate with frequencies of electric oscillations. The present article suggests a comparative examination of the research and development paths of these groups on their incentives, the technological and scientific resources they utilized, and the kind of research carried out in the various institutional settings. (shrink)

ArgumentUntil the fifteenth century, celibacy was the rule among Christian scholars of northwestern Europe. Celibacy was a major element of the codified cultural representation of the scholar and his specific way of life, sustained by peculiar institutional arrangements and daily routines. Founding family households implied therefore a major reorganization of the scholar’s way of life. Broadly speaking, this involved refashioning the scholarly habitus, redefining social relations, and developing the necessary material infrastructure. The paper focuses on three aspects of this process (...) during a period characterized by uncertainty and experimentation. It discusses the structure of scholars’ families, arguing that at least until the middle of the sixteenth century, received models still persisted, while new viable models for articulating family reproduction with the transmission of scholarly dispositions had not yet crystallized. It then turns to the reorganization of domestic space, focusing on the different uses of the study to manage social distance and regulate domestic relations. Finally, among the different manifestations of the scholarly habitus, it argues that the emotional detachment of learned men was itself a learned habit. The well-documented discussion of competing options for organizing scholars’ family households and cultivating an acquired nature in academic settings provides an exceptional occasion to examine the way a group habitus is reshaped and, explore the cultural work involved in this process. (shrink)

Summary Between 1911 and 1914, Owen Richardson formulated a theory of photoelectricity based on thermodynamics and statistical reasoning. Although this theory succeeded in accounting for most of the relevant phenomena and despite the lack of competing causal or descriptive accounts of the phenomena, it failed to attract other physicists. This paper seeks the reasons for the neglect of this theory in contemporary cultures of photoelectric research. Four main causes of neglect are identified: the relatively high number and the nature of (...) the theory's assumptions, the contradiction of one of these assumptions with contemporary views, the failure to suggest new predictions or to account for hitherto unexplained regularities, and the view shared by many scientists that the problem of electromagnetic radiation required a radical solution that a descriptive theory could not provide. The expectation for a radical solution defines the revolutionary character of a research field. In the case of photoelectricity, it originated in a web of evidence to which other fields contributed. The very possibility of Richardson's theory shows that, taken separately, this phenomenon could receive an account which, unlike Einstein's light quantum, did not require deep changes in the conception of nature. (shrink)

Norbert Elias’s project in The process of civilization involved reconstructing invisible movement—both the slow tempoof long-term historical change and the modification of psychic structures and embodied dispositions. To do this, he resorted to uncommon devices: treating historical texts as constituting a series amenable to a rudimentary discourse analysis, he constructed an imagined ‘curve of civilization’ serving as an approximation of the hidden process of change. Elias’s curve was not supposed to represent single past states, but movement itself, its direction and (...) pace. This novel concept of historical representation was related to the perception of cinema as a new medium making actual movement visible. But beyond making it possible to imagine how one could telescope long-term historical process, cinema also held the promise of serving as a microscope, making the minute movements of the human body, gestures and manners available for close inspection. While anthropologists were devising ways of using the new medium to document fleeting gestures and bodily postures, it was used by popular audiences as a source for remodelling behaviour and acquiring polite manners and body techniques, as noticed by such acute observers as Marcel Mauss and Joseph Roth. Hence, popular appropriation of the cinema gave rise to a heightened awareness of the historicity of gestures and the changing modalities of their transmission. Cinema was itself part of the accelerated motion of history, of a perceived change of pace in the process of civilization, which in its turn shed light on its historical antecedents and played an essential role in rethinking the notion of civilization and culture.Keywords: Norbert Elias; Marcel Mauss; Joseph Roth; Cinema; Gestures; Body; Discourse; Historiography; Sociology of culture. (shrink)

In his recent authoritative Helmholtz and the Conservation of Energy, Kenneth Caneva has claimed that earlier authors had invoked the principle of conservation of living force only in cases of a system returning to an earlier state, or of one without Newtonian forces. Relaying on texts in the tradition of the French Analytical Mechanics form Lagrange to Coriolis, I argue that this was not the case, and that the principle had been formulated and used for cases where living force proper (...) (mv2) was not conserved but its sum with an integral function (refers today as potential) was constant. In addition. I show that contrary to Caneva’s claim, the principle had been connected to the impossibility of creating power out of nothing. The two points indicate a stronger link between the analytical tradition and Helmholtz and his readers than usually portrayed, and the significant contribution of mechanics to the emergence of energy conservation. On a methodological level the use of living force shows that a common term and even a concept, like energy, is not always needed for its successful employment. (shrink)

Historians, philosophers, and physicists portray the 1920s and 1930s as a period of major theoretical breakthrough in physics, quantum mechanics, which led to the expansion of physics into the core of the atom and the growth and strengthening of the discipline. These important developments in scientific inquiry into the micro-world and light have turned historical attention away from other significant historical processes and from other equally important causes for the expansion of physics. World War II, on the other hand, is (...) often seen as the watershed moment when physics achieved new levels of social and technical engagement at a truly industrial scale. Historians have shown that military interests and government funding have shaped physics to unprecedented degree, and according to some, to the extent of discontinuity with earlier practices of research (Forman 1987; Kevles 1990; Kaiser 2002). In this vein, Stuart Leslie wrote, “Nothing in the prewar experience fully prepared academic scientists and their institutions for the scale and scope of a wartime mobilization that would transform the university, industry, and the federal government and their mutual interrelationships” (Leslie 1993, 6). While one can never befullyready for novelties, the contributors to this issue show that developments in interwar physics did prepare participants for their cold war interactions with industry and government. (shrink)

Exact measurements are a central practice of modern physics. In certain cases, they are essential for determining values of coefficients, for confirming theories, and for detecting the existence of effects. The history of piezoelectricity at the end of the nineteenth century reveals two different methods of exact measurement: a mathematical versus an “artisanal” approach. In the former, a scientist first carried out the experiment and later employed mathematical methods to reduce error. In the latter, a scientist physically manipulated the experimental (...) apparatus to bypass possible sources of error before its performance. These two approaches were related to German theoreticians and to French experimentalists, respectively. However, affiliation with a particular school rather than nationality was the decisive factor in the differences between the two approaches. Despite differences, adherents of both approaches sought to attain high precision and to eliminate even small experimental errors. This history exhibits the complexity and flexibility of experiments and their analysis. It supports the claim of the “New Experimentalism” that theory does not supply complete directions for practical experimental decisions. An example for this is found in the way an experimental error was discovered only by a comparison to an earlier experiment rather than to a theory. (shrink)

We present an argument for revising the theory of alternatives for Scalar Implicatures and for Association with Focus. We argue that in both cases the alternatives are determined in the same way, as a contextual restriction of the focus value of the sentence, which, in turn, is defined in structure-sensitive terms. We provide evidence that contextual restriction is subject to a constraint that prevents it from discriminating between alternatives when they stand in a particular logical relationship with the assertion or (...) the prejacent, a relationship that we refer to as symmetry. Due to this constraint on contextual restriction, discriminating between alternatives in cases of symmetry becomes the task of focus values. This conclusion is incompatible with standard type-theoretic definitions of focus values, motivating our structure-sensitive definition instead. (shrink)

Kepler’s intricate trajectory, his self-reflective comments about the conditions of production of knowledge in his time, and the wealth of materials preserved make it possible to reconstruct a whole set of regimes of scholarly work around 1600, each with its typical mode of control, forms of subordination, temporal economy, and means of remuneration. Kepler’s maneuvering in this landscape was shaped by his attempts to carve out spaces for the kind of work he considered his very own – his “speculations” or (...) “private studies” – within work relationships involving service and subordination. Thus, we find nonalienated, self-directed scholarly work embedded, constrained, and enabled by heteronomous regimes of work, a field of tensions that I seek to capture in the formula “work within work.” A labor history of science could thus offer us an opportunity for exploring historically documented, nonincidental and partly institutionalized forms of less alienated work, and trace the ways in which they related to and interacted with dominant relations of production. (shrink)

Jewish parables from the Hasidic masters and their lessons are illustrated by the interactions of Fishel the beggar, the slick thief, the rich businessman, the fat governor, the Russian soldiers, and other village characters.

This article explores antiphilosophical polemics written by Muslim and Jewish thinkers in the medieval Mediterranean world. These writings demonstrate, in both traditions, a struggle with the incorporation of nontraditional texts and interpretations of theology and textuality. My examination of these writings “against the philosophers” suggests that, far from constituting the reflexive, antiphilosophical fundamentalism that typically characterizes assessments of these texts, authors like al-Ghazali, Halevi, and Ibn Arabi were concerned with what they believed to be the subordination of Jewish and Islamic (...) tradition to Greek philosophy—a rhetoric that, for them, undermined the “conditions of identification” for Muslims and Jews. I argue that these antiphilosophical texts highlight the extent to which these thinkers believed that writing was the battleground for identity in the medieval Middle East. (shrink)

From classical to quantum physics. Theoretical challenges by experimental physics : radiation and its interaction with matter / Shaul Katzir. Challenging the boundaries between classical and quantum physics : the case of optical dispersion / Marta Jordi Taltavull. Putting the quantum to work : Otto Sackur's pioneering exploits in the quantum theory of gases / Massimiliano Badino and Bretislav Friedrich -- Quantum mechanics in the making. The concepts of light atoms and light molecules and their final interpretation / Dieter (...) Fick and Horst Kant. Early interactions of quantum statistics and quantum mechanics / Daniela Monaldi. Pourparlers for amalgamation : some early sources of quantum gravity research / Dean Rickles -- Extending the framework of quantum physics. Superposing dynamos and electrons : electrical engineering and quantum physics in the case of Nishina Yoshio / Kenji Ito. The origins of Maria Göppert's dissertation on two-photon quantum transitions at Göttingen's Institutes of Physics, 1920-1933 / Barry R. Masters. An act of creation : the Meitner-Frisch interpretation of nuclear fission / Roger H. Stuewer -- The challenges of quantum field theory. Tsung-Sui Chang's contribution to the quantization of constrained Hamiltonian systems / Xiaodong Yin, Zhongyuan Zhu, Donald C. Salisbury. Feynman's struggle and Dyson's surprise : the development and early application of a new means of representation / Adrian Wüthrich -- Traditions and debates in recent quantum physics. Orthodoxies on the interpretation of quantum theory : the case of the consistent history approach / Olival Freire. From do-it-yourself quantum mechanics to nanotechnology? : the history of experimental semiconductor physics, 1970-2000 / Christian Kehrt. (shrink)

People experience various negative emotions in their everyday lives. They feel anger toward aggressive drivers, shame for making a mistake at work, and guilt for hurting another person. When these...

AI-based algorithms are used extensively by public institutions. Thus, for instance, AI algorithms have been used in making decisions concerning punishment providing welfare payments, making decisions concerning parole, and many other tasks which have traditionally been assigned to public officials and/or public entities. We develop a novel argument against the use of AI algorithms, in particular with respect to decisions made by public officials and public entities. We argue that decisions made by AI algorithms cannot count as public decisions, namely (...) decisions that are made in the name of citizens and that this fact should be taken into consideration when utilizing AI to replace public officials. (shrink)

The literature in semantics and pragmatics provides extensive evidence for the strengthening of linguistic expressions, both in matrix positions and when embedded under various operators. We study the properties of such strengthening using a very simple setting. Specifically, we look at when the expression “crate with a banana” can be understood as a unique crate even though two different crates have a banana in them. By varying the scenarios in which an expression such as “Pick the crate with a banana” (...) is evaluated, we show that the strengthening of “crate with a banana” within the scope of the definite article parallels the entailments of “crate with only a banana” (with an overt exhaustivity operator, ‘only’). We use this observation to argue that strengthening in embedded positions follows the logic of an exhaustivity operator rather than that of rational inference. We then note that a similar pattern obtains in matrix positions. (shrink)

This paper is intended first for the formal argumentation community (see https://comma.csc.liv.ac.uk/). This community develops logics and systems modelling argumentation and dialogues. The community is in search of major applications areas for their models. One such application area e.g. is Law. The message of this paper is that there is another major application area for formal argumentation. There is an international community of sex offender therapist that is well established and well funded, and their therapy methods use (methods that can (...) be modelled by) formal argumentation and logic. This community presents a natural application area for formal argumentation. We thus describe in this paper how the sex offender therapists work, to give the formal argumentation researcher a view of this application area. What is especially important about this application area is that in order to model it and learn from it, the formal argumentation community have to evolve their formal methods and adapt to this new application. Part of this enhancement is to modify and import certain methods from other areas of Logic e.g. from Non-Monotonic logic. The members of the formal argumentation community are not familiar, on average, with other areas of logic, and so we also describe in this paper, what we need from neighbouring logics. This makes this paper of interest also to sex offender therapist as well. They may be already familiar with their own practices, but the additional logics described will be of interest to them. (shrink)

Presents a plethora of approaches to developing human potential in areas not conventionally addressed. Organized in two parts, this international collection of essays provides viable educational alternatives to those currently holding sway in an era of high-stakes accountability.

Biobanks and biospecimen collections are becoming a primary means of delivering personalized diagnostics and tailoring individualized therapeutics. This shift towards precision medicine requires interactions among a variety of stakeholders, including the public, patients, healthcare providers, government, and donors. Very few studies have investigated the role of healthcare students in biobanking and biospecimen donations. The main aims of this study were to evaluate the knowledge of senior healthcare students about biobanks and to assess the students’ willingness to donate biospecimens and the (...) factors influencing their attitudes. A cross-sectional study was conducted among senior healthcare students at King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. The data were obtained using a self-administered questionnaire in English. In addition to the respondents’ biographical data section, the questionnaire assessed the respondents’ general knowledge about biobanking, the factors influencing their willingness to donate biospecimens to biobanks and their general attitudes towards biomedical research. A total of 597 senior healthcare students were included in the study. The general knowledge score was 3.2 out of 7. Only approximately 44% and 27% of students were aware of the terms “Human Genome Project” and “biobank,” respectively. The majority of the students were willing to donate biospecimens to biobanks. Multiple factors were significantly associated with their willingness to donate, including their perceived general health, past experience with both tissue testing and tissue donation, biobanking knowledge score and biomedical research attitude score. The main reasons for students’ willingness to donate were advancement of medical research and societal benefits, whereas misuse of biospecimens and confidentiality breaches were the main reasons for a reluctance to donate. Despite their strong willingness to donate biospecimens, students exhibited a notable lack of knowledge about biobanking and the HGP. To expedite the transition towards PM, it is highly recommended to enhance healthcare curricula by including more educational and awareness programmes to familiarize students with OMICs technologies in addition to the scope of research and clinical applications. (shrink)