For several decades now a set of researches from a wide range of different sectors has been developed which goes by the name of “science of complexity” and is opposed point by point to the paradigm of classical science. It challenges the idea that world is “simple.” To the reductionist idea that each process is the sum of the actions of its components it opposes a holistic view. The aim of the present article is to analyze the epistemological status attributed (...) in the science of complexity to several fundamental ideas, such as those of scientific law, objectivity, and prediction. The aim is to show that the hope of superseding reductionism by means of concepts such as that of “emergence” is fallacious and that the science of complexity proposes forms of reductionism that are even more restrictive than the classical ones, particularly when it claims to unify in a single treatment problems that vary widely in nature such as physical, biological, and social problems. (shrink)

Honeybees show lateral asymmetry in both learning about odours associated with reward and recalling memory of these associations. We have extended this research to show that bees exhibit lateral biases in their initial response to odours: viz., turning towards the source of an odour presented on their right side and turning away from it when presented on their left side. The odours we presented were the main component of the alarm pheromone, iso-amyl acetate (IAA), and four floral scents. The significant (...) bias to turn towards IAA odour on the right and away from it on the left is, we argue, a lateralization of the fight-flight response elicited by this pheromone. It contrasts to an absence of any asymmetry in the turning response to an odour of the flowers on which the bees had been feeding prior to testing: to this odour they turned towards when it was presented on either the left or right side. Lemon and orange odours were responded to differently on the left and right sides (towards on the right, away on the left) but no asymmetry was found in responses to rose odour. Our results show that side biases are present even in the initial, orienting response of bees to certain odours. (shrink)

There are two competing accounts for a theory for human action proposed by Catholic theologians working within the received moral tradition today: a hylomorphic account and an intentional account. In this article, the author compares each of the rival theories for its ability to explain both the structure and morality of the human acts surrounding the elective termina­tion of the pregnancy of a woman with pulmonary arterial hypertension. This scenario of PAH is a superb test case to compare the explanatory (...) power of the two rival action theories. The author’s analysis reveals that the hylomorphic account is the superior account, which can explain better not only the norma­tive conclusions of the Catholic moral tradition but also our lived experience as acting persons in a world governed by cause-and-effect relationships. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 11.3 : 503–518. (shrink)

Semblanza de G. Tagliacozzo a través de las distintas voces que, desde su infancia hasta su muerte, lo llamaron en su vida: las primeras vocaciones de grandeza , las voces de la academia , la voz de América , la impelente voz de Vico , la voz de los caminos que la naturaleza recorre .Semblance of G. Tagliacozzo through the voices that he followed from his younger age to his death: the first calls for greatness , the voices of academy (...) , the voice of America , the impelling voice of Vico , and the voice of the ways that nature runs. (shrink)

English, French, German, and Italian, with summaries in the same languages.

Giorgio Levi Della Vida (1886-1967) was not only an eminent Islamologist, he was also a man with solid roots in his own time. He taught in Naples and Rome, then for the ten years 1939-1948 at the University of Pennsylvania. He was one of the few university teachers who, when the oath of loyalty to the Italian fascist regime was introduced in October 1931, opted not to accept that act of submission. His memoirs, Fantasmi ritrovati, were published in 1966; (...) the book, now out of print, conjures up a tableau vivant of half a century of intellectual encounters in Italy and Europe between the wars. Among the portraits he paints there is the astounding story of those crucial days in June 1924 when the fascist government became a full-blown regime. This article presents extended extracts from that story. (shrink)

What is an apparatus? -- The friend -- What is the contemporary?

Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben presents an account of the political upheavals that ensued as the COVID-19 pandemic brought his country—and with it his countrymen's personal liberties—to a crashing halt. While controversial, Agamben’s reflections on the transformation of Western democracies hold implications far beyond any present crisis.

Giorgio Levi Della Vida (1886-1967) was not only an eminent Islamologist, belonging to that tradition of Italian Oriental studies that stretches from Ignazio Guidi to Leone Caetani, Carlo Alfonso Nallino and Francesco Gabrieli - he was also a man with solid roots in his own time. He taught in Naples and Rome, then for the ten years 1939-1948 at the University of Pennsylvania. He was one of the few university teachers who, when the oath of loyalty to the Italian (...) fascist regime was introduced, in October 1931, opted not to accept that act of submission. (shrink)

La letteratura slava ecclesiastica durante l'intero arco della sua storia vive in primo luogo di traduzioni, eseguite soprattutto, seppure non esclusivamente, a partire da modelli greci. Mentre tuttavia sul piano storico-letterario l'attenzione si concentra per ovvie ragioni sulla produzione originale, in sede di analisi linguistica le opere di traduzione mantengono, o almeno dovrebbero mantenere, un ruolo fondamentale. A questo proposito ci si può addirittura spingere ad affermare che uno dei motivi per i quali a tutt'oggi mancano una storia complessiva e (...) un grande dizionario storico della lingua slava ecclesiastica risiede verosimilmente proprio nella carenza di ricerche approfondite intorno a molte traduzioni slave ecclesiastiche. Su tale sfondo va letto il libro che qui si recensisce, incentrato sul lessico delle versioni di cinque cronache bizantine, composte in ordine cronologico da Giovanni Malala, Giorgio Amartolo, Simeone Logoteta, Costantino Manasse e Giovanni Zonara, e tradotte in slavo ecclesiastico in tempi e luoghi diversi. Come si ricava dalla breve premessa di A. Guillou (p. 3), lo studio di Katia Tchérémissinoff è approdato alle stampe solo dopo un lungo intervallo dalla sua composizione; un intervallo che la bibliografia usufruita, ferma in buona sostanza al 1980, permette di quantificare in vent'anni. Prima di esaminare il volume più da vicino, il recensore purtroppo non potrà non registrare (e lamentare) il numero esorbitante di errori di stampa che coinvolgono anzitutto i nomi degli autori e i titoli delle opere citate, come per es. Bujuklev in luogo di Bujukliev (p. 19, n. 29), Sandelf per Sandfeld (p. 24, n. 37), Aitzemuller invece di Aitzetmüller (p. 30, n. 52); M. A. Meščeskij per N. A. Meščerskij (p. 42, n. 72; e vd. anche p. 98, n. 157); e quindi, “Das slavische Zort für Kirsche” (in luogo di “Das slavische Wort für Kirche”, a p. 149, n. 240), “Costantinopple byzantine” (p. 186, nn. 303 e 304, e passim), “Byzantinische Uhrkundenlehre. I. Die Kaiser Uhrkunden” (p. 196, n. 310), e così via. Dove però deve essere stato il diavolo in persona a metterci lo zampino, è nelle citazioni slave ecclesiastiche nelle quali, nonostante la revisione cui è stato sottoposto il volume (vd. p. 3), gli errori, grandi e piccoli, semplicemente non si contano: il che di certo non agevola il compito del lettore, sia egli più o meno esperto di slavo ecclesiastico. (shrink)

The end of human history is an event that has been foreseen or announced by both messianics and dialecticians. But who is the protagonist of that history that is coming—or has come—to a close? What is man? How did he come on the scene? And how has he maintained his privileged place as the master of, or first among, the animals? In The Open, contemporary Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben considers the ways in which the “human” has been thought of (...) as either a distinct and superior type of animal, or a kind of being that is essentially different from animal altogether. In an argument that ranges from ancient Greek, Christian, and Jewish texts to twentieth-century thinkers such as Heidegger, Benjamin, and Kojève, Agamben examines the ways in which the distinction between man and animal has been manufactured by the logical presuppositions of Western thought, and he investigates the profound implications that the man/animal distinction has had for disciplines as seemingly disparate as philosophy, law, anthropology, medicine, and politics. (shrink)

This volume constitutes the largest collection of writings by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben hitherto published in any language and all but one appear in English for the first time. The essays consider figures in the history of philosophy (Plato, Plotinus, Spinoza, Hegel) and twentieth-century thought (Walter Benjamin, Heidegger, Derrida, Deleuze, the historian Aby Warburg, and the linguist J.-C. Milner). They also examine several central concerns of Agamben: the relation of linguistic and metaphysical categories; messianism in Islamic, Jewish, and (...) Christian theology; and the state and future of contemporary politics. Despite the diversity of the texts collected here, they show a consistent concern for a set of overriding philosophical themes concerning language, history, and potentiality. (shrink)

The work of Giorgio Agamben, one of Italy's most important and original philosophers, has been based on an uncommon erudition in classical traditions of philosophy and rhetoric, the grammarians of late antiquity, Christian theology, and modern philosophy. Recently, Agamben has begun to direct his thinking to the constitution of the social and to some concrete, ethico-political conclusions concerning the state of society today, and the place of the individual within it. In Homo Sacer, Agamben aims to connect the problem (...) of pure possibility, potentiality, and power with the problem of political and social ethics in a context where the latter has lost its previous religious, metaphysical, and cultural grounding. Taking his cue from Foucault's fragmentary analysis of biopolitics, Agamben probes with great breadth, intensity, and acuteness the covert or implicit presence of an idea of biopolitics in the history of traditional political theory. He argues that from the earliest treatises of political theory, notably in Aristotle's notion of man as a political animal, and throughout the history of Western thinking about sovereignty, a notion of sovereignty as power over "life" is implicit. The reason it remains merely implicit has to do, according to Agamben, with the way the sacred, or the idea of sacrality, becomes indissociable from the idea of sovereignty. Drawing upon Carl Schmitt's idea of the sovereign's status as the exception to the rules he safeguards, and on anthropological research that reveals the close interlinking of the sacred and the taboo, Agamben defines the sacred person as one who can be killed and yet not sacrificed—a paradox he sees as operative in the status of the modern individual living in a system that exerts control over the collective "naked life" of all individuals. (shrink)

Parthood and composition are everywhere. The leg of a table is part of the table, the word "Christmas" is part of the sentence "I wish you a merry Christmas", the 13th century is part of the Middle Ages. The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg compose Benelux, the body of a deer is composed of a huge number of cells, the Middle Ages are composed of the Early Middle Ages, High Middle Ages, and Late Middle Ages. Is there really a general theory (...) covering every instance of parthood and composition? Is classical mereology this general theory? Are its seemingly counter-intuitive features serious defects? -/- Mereology: A Philosophical Introduction addresses the multifaceted and lively philosophical debates surrounding these questions, and defends the idea that classical mereology is indeed the general and exhaustive theory of parthood and composition in the domain of concrete entities. -/- Several examples of parthood and composition, involving entities of different kinds, are scrutinised in depth. Incidentally, mereology is shown to interact in a surprising way with metaontology. Presenting a well-organized and comprehensive discussion of parthood and related notions, Mereology: A Philosophical Introduction contributes to a better understanding of a subject central to contemporary metaphysics. (shrink)

Arguing that Western power is both "government" and "glory," this book reveals the "theological-economic" paradigm at the origin of several of the most important components of modern politics and illuminates the function of consent and the ...

"The texts published here reproduce, with some variation, those of five lectures held at the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture between October 2012 and April 2013.".

Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer was one of the seminal works of political philosophy in recent decades. It was also the beginning of a series of interconnected investigations of staggering ambition and scope, investigating the deepest foundations of Western politics and thought. The Use of Bodies represents the ninth and final volume in this twenty-year undertaking, breaking considerable new ground while clarifying the stakes and implications of the project as a whole. It comprises three major sections. The first uses Aristotle's (...) discussion of slavery as a starting point for radically rethinking notions of selfhood; the second calls for a complete reworking of Western ontology; and the third explores the enigmatic concept of "form-of-life," which is in many ways the motivating force behind the entire Homo Sacer project. Interwoven between these major sections are shorter reflections on individual thinkers, while the epilogue pushes toward a new approach to political life that breaks with the destructive deadlocks of Western thought. The Use of Bodies represents a true masterwork by one of our greatest living philosophers. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article aims to show how the originality of Jaeggi’s contribution to recent debates in critical theory clearly emerges if one compares her approach with what in many ways represents its antecedent and constant point of reference: namely, the critical theory of Axel Honneth. This comparison offers a privileged way of grasping the advantages of Jaeggi’s approach with respect to that of Honneth. At the same time, reversing perspective, it permits us to focus on some open problems in Jaeggi’s (...) critical theory, which deserve to be discussed with care. The negativistic, formal and procedural character of her critical theory, while on one hand shielding her approach from the risks to which the most recent theory of Honneth is exposed – historical teleologism and ethical substantialism – on the other hand exposes her approach to the risk of an excess of formalism and proceduralism, rendering it unable to tackle the central problem for any critical theory: namely, the link with a critical praxis and with the struggles for the emancipation of one’s own time. (shrink)

How and why did experience and knowledge become separated? Is it possible to talk of an infancy of experience, a "dumb" experience? For Walter Benjamin, the "poverty of experience" was a characteristic of modernity, originating in the catastrophe of the First World War. For Giorgio Agamben, the Italian editor of Benjamin's complete works, the destruction of experience no longer needs catastrophes: daily life in any modern city will suffice. Agamben's profound and radical exploration of language, infancy, and everyday life (...) traces concepts of experience through Kant, Hegel, Husserl and Benveniste. In doing so he elaborates a theory of infancy that throws new light on a number of major themes in contemporary thought: the anthropological opposition between nature and culture; the linguistic opposition between speech and language; the birth of the subject and the appearance of the unconscious. Agamben goes on to consider time and history; the Marxist notion of base and superstructure (via a careful reading of the famous Adorno–Benjamin correspondence on Baudelaire's Paris); and the difference between rituals and games. Beautifully written, erudite and provocative, these essays will be of great interest to students of philosophy, linguistics, anthropology and politics. (shrink)

La ricerca può essere effettuata anche con parole non complete. Per esempio - per la ricerca dell'autore 'Gerardus van der Leeuw' può bastare l'inserimento della parola 'lee' o di altre parti del nome o del cognome. Questa possibilità facilita la ricerca di parole difficili o di cui non è semplice memorizzare la trascrizione. Se invece si inserisce nella ricerca, oltre al cognome dell'autore, anche il nome ed il titolo del libro, o almeno alcune parole significative del titolo, il risultato della (...) ricerca sarà più selettivo. (shrink)

Since Economics survey by Windrum et al., research on empirical validation of agent-based Agent-based model in Economics has made substantial advances, thanks to a constant flow of high-quality contributions. This Chapter attempts to take stock of such recent literature to offer an updated critical review of the existing validation techniques. We sketch a simple theoretical framework that conceptualizes existing validation approaches, which we examine along three different dimensions: Comparison between artificial and real-world Data; Calibration and estimation of model parameters; and (...) parameter space Exploration. Finally, we discuss open issues in the field of ABM validation and Estimation. In particular, we argue that more research efforts should be devoted toward advancing HypothesisTesting in ABM, with specific emphasis on model stationarity and ergodicity. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe development of modern mathematical biology took place in the 1920s in three main directions: population dynamics, population genetics, and mathematical theory of epidemics. This paper focuses on the first trend which is considered the most significant. Modern mathematical theory of population dynamics is characterized by three aspects (the first two being in a somewhat critical relationship): the emergence of the mathematical modeling approach, the attempt at establishing it in a reductionist-mechanist conceptual framework, and the revival of Darwinism. The (...) first section is devoted to the analysis of the concept of mathematical model and the second one presents an example of a mathematical model (Van der Pol's model of heartbeat) which is a good prototype of that concept. In section 3 the main trends of mathematization of biology and the cultural and scientific contexts in which they found their development are discussed. Sections 4 and 5 are devoted to the contributions of V. Volterra and A. J. Lotka, to the analysis of the differences of their scientific conceptions, and to a discussion of a case study: the priority dispute concerning the discovery of the Volterra-Lotka equations. The historical analysis developed in this paper is also intended to detect the roots of some recent trends of mathematization of biology. (shrink)

Recent investigations have revealed 1) that the isochores of the human genome group into two super‐families characterized by two different long‐range 3D structures, and 2) that these structures, essentially based on the distribution and topology of short sequences, mold primary chromatin domains (and define nucleosome binding). More specifically, GC‐poor, gene‐poor isochores are low‐heterogeneity sequences with oligo‐A spikes that mold the lamina‐associated domains (LADs), whereas GC‐rich, gene‐rich isochores are characterized by single or multiple GC peaks that mold the topologically associating domains (...) (TADs). The formation of these “primary TADs” may be followed by extrusion under the action of cohesin and CTCF. Finally, the genomic code, which is responsible for the pervasive encoding and molding of primary chromatin domains (LADs and primary TADs, namely the “gene spaces”/“spatial compartments”) resolves the longstanding problems of “non‐coding DNA,” “junk DNA,” and “selfish DNA” leading to a new vision of the genome as shaped by DNA sequences. (shrink)

Natural language does not express all connectives definable in classical logic as simple lexical items. Coordination in English is expressed by conjunction and, disjunction or, and negated disjunction nor. Other languages pattern similarly. Non-lexicalized connectives are typically expressed compositionally: in English, negated conjunction is typically expressed by combining negation and conjunction (not both). This is surprising: if $$\wedge $$ ∧ and $$\vee $$ ∨ are duals, and the negation of the latter can be expressed lexically (nor), why not the negation (...) of the former? I present a two-tiered model of the semantics of the binary connectives. The first tier captures the expressive power of the lexicon: it is a bilateral state-based semantics that, under a restriction, can express all and only the distinctions that can be expressed by the lexicon of natural language (and, or, nor). This first tier is characterized by rejection as non-assertion and a Neglect Zero assumption. The second tier is obtained by dropping the Neglect Zero assumption and enforcing a stronger notion of rejection, thereby recovering classical logic and thus definitions for all Boolean connectives. On the two-tiered model, we distinguish the limited expressive resources of the lexicon and the greater combinatorial expressive power of the language as a whole. This gives us a logic-based account of compositionality for the Boolean fragment of the language. (shrink)

In this article we analyze the method of forcing from a more philosophical perspective. After a brief presentation of this technique we outline some of its philosophical imports in connection with realism. We shall discuss some philosophical reactions to the invention of forcing, concentrating on Mostowski’s proposal of sharpening the notion of generic set. Then we will provide an overview of the notions of multiverse and the related philosophical debate on the foundations of set theory. In conclusion, we connect this (...) modern debate and Mostowski’s proposal, suggesting a way to analyze the notion of genericity within the framework of a multiverse structure. (shrink)

This handbook offers a deep analysis of the main forms of legal reasoning and argumentation from both a logical-philosophical and legal perspective. These forms are covered in an exhaustive and critical fashion, and the handbook accordingly divides in three parts: the first one introduces and discusses the basic concepts of practical reasoning. The second one discusses the main general forms of reasoning and argumentation relevant for legal discourse. The third one looks at their application in law as well as at (...) the different areas of legal reasoning. The handbook’s division in three parts reflects its conceptual architecture, since legal reasoning and argumentation are considered in relation to the more general types of reasoning. (shrink)

O presente artigo tem por meta analisar a possibilidade de conciliação entre a determinação e a liberdade em Espinosa. Dessa maneira, o artigo iniciará tratando das duas séries causais indicadas por Espinosa no §100 do TIE: a “série das coisas fixas e eternas” e a “série das coisas singulares mutáveis”. A abordagem dessas duas séries causais tem por meta compreender o que as distingue e as implicações dessa distinção para a filosofia de Espinosa. Em seguida analisar-se-ão as noções de essência (...) objetiva e essência formal evidenciando que o que está em jogo em EIIP7 é a adequação entre essas duas essências, e não uma adequação entre a essência e a existência. Nesse momento também será evidenciado que o tipo de causalidade que está em jogo em EIIP7 e EIIP8 é uma causalidade imanente, do tipo todo-parte, a qual se faz entre o conjunto e seus subconjuntos: ser parte é ser um subconjunto de Deus. Feito isso, mostrar-se-á que no âmbito da existência dos subconjuntos — e não no âmbito de sua essência — é possível autonomia relativa interpares, desde que essa autonomia seja concebida como subordinada aos conjuntos anteriores. Nesse momento também será evidenciado em que medida os modos finitos podem ser deduzidos da substância infinita sem que isso implique a negação de sua liberdade. (shrink)

What is a paradigm? -- Theory of signatures -- Philosophical archeology.

What does it mean to be responsible for our actions? In this brief and elegant study, Giorgio Agamben traces our most profound moral intuitions back to their roots in the sphere of law and punishment. Moral accountability, human free agency, and even the very concept of cause and effect all find their origin in the language of the trial, which Western philosophy and theology both transform into the paradigm for all of human life. In his search for a way (...) out of this destructive paradigm, Agamben not only draws on minority opinions within the Western tradition but engages at length with Buddhist texts and concepts for the first time. In sum, Karman deepens and rearticulates some of Agamben's core insights while breaking significant new ground. (shrink)