Where do we come from? Is our destiny determined by the genes we inherit? Do we all see the same blue color when we look at the sky? In this book Gottfried (Jeff) Schatz, the world-renowned biochemist and co-discoverer of mitochondrial DNA, gives lucid - albeit often surprising - answers to universal questions and takes the reader on a fascinating journey of discovery across the boundaries of scientific disciplines. With passion and a keen sense of wonder, he draws (...) on philosophy, cultural history and art to formulate his reflections on the mystery of life. The key to understanding life is to be found in its chemistry, and he proves that this is no dry endeavor and certainly not devoid of beauty. The result is a collection of eloquently and poetically written essays dealing with key issues in the natural sciences. It will appeal not only to scientists, but to all curious minds, regardless of educational and professional background. (shrink)

Although Leibniz's writing forms an enormous corpus, no single work stands as a canonical expression of his whole philosophy. In addition, the wide range of Leibniz's work--letters, published papers, and fragments on a variety of philosophical, religious, mathematical, and scientific questions over a fifty-year period--heightens the challenge of preparing an edition of his writings in English translation from the French and Latin.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This volume explores the questions related to the theory, practice, and policy of the well-being and well-becoming of children. It does so in a truly interdisciplinary way with a focus on the social sciences and philosophy, giving therefore justice to the growing insight that studying and promoting the well-being of children has a strong ethical component. It is dependent on the questions of good life, its conditions and cannot be separated from the concept of social justice and moral entitlements of (...) children and their families. In this book, philosophers and social scientists, in close dialogue, shed light on some of the most challenging matters involved. (shrink)

In this paper I sketch a possible answer to the question of what professional athletes deserve for their sporting activities. I take two different backgrounds into account. First, the content and meaning of desert is highly debated within political philosophy and many theorists are sceptical if it has any value for social justice. On the other hand sport is often understood as a meritocracy, in which all prizes or wins should be solely awarded based on merit. I will distinguish three (...) possible goods that can be deserved for doing professional sport – money, social status and appreciation – and show that athletes deserve them according to their achievements and that this justifies certain inequalities in their distribution. These legitimate disparities have nevertheless been embedded within a broader framework of social justice, which limits them based on a strong understanding of social equality. (shrink)

La decouverte par le Dr. E. A. Fellmann de l'exemplaire des Principia Mathematica de Newton ayant appartenu a Leibniz et contenant des notes marginales manuscrites (datant vraisemblablement de 1689), apporte un temoignage direct de la premiere reaction de Leibniz devant l'oeuvre du savant anglais. La presente edition met le document original entre les mains du lecteur, en l'accompagnant des notes et commentaires objectifs indispensables (en allemand et en francais). Le rapport de Leibniz a Newton a souvent ete envisage dans le (...) cadre de la facheuse querelle de priorite dans l'invention du calcul differentiel et integral. Or Leibniz, prenant connaissance des Principia, n'y voit pas un traite purement mathematique: refusant d'enteriner la scission entre la mecanique et les lois de la pensee, il se soucie avant tout d'etablir une fondation metaphysique pour la dynamique. Les Marginalia ont l'originalite de nous presenter, non pas un Leibniz adversaire ou rival, mais un Leibniz lecteur de Newton, dispose a tirer le meilleur parti d'un systeme qui aurait pu, a bien des egards, lui sembler etranger, comme le confirmera la systemisation ulterieure du concept de vis visa. (shrink)

A seminal figure in the philosophy of history, culture, and language, Johann Gottfried Herder also produced some of the most important and original works in the history of aesthetic theory. A student of Kant, he spent much of his life striving to reconcile the opposing poles of Enlightenment thought represented by his early mentors. His ideas influenced Hegel, Schleiermacher, Nietzsche, Dilthey, J. S. Mill, and Goethe. This book presents most of Herder's important writings on aesthetics, including the main sections (...) of one of his major untranslated works, Kritische Wälder. These notes, essays, and treatises, the majority of which appear here in English for the first time, show this idiosyncratic thinker both deeply rooted in the controversies of his day and pointing the way to future developments in aesthetics. Chosen to reflect the extent and diversity of Herder's concerns, the texts cover such topics as the psychology and physiology of aesthetic perception, the classification of the arts, taste, Shakespeare, the classical tradition, and the relationship between art and morality. Few thinkers have reflected so sensitively and productively on the cultural, historical, anthropological, ethical, and theological dimensions of art and the creative process. With this book, the importance of aesthetics to the evolution and texture of Herder's own thought, as well as his profound contribution to that discipline, comes fully into view. (shrink)

« Que l’on étudie donc la nécessité des phénomènes matériels et l’ordre des causes efficientes, on trouvera que rien ne se passe sans une cause qui satisfait l’imagination, que rien n’échappe aux lois mathématiques du mécanisme. Que l’on contemple d’autre part la chaîne d’or des fins et la sphère des formes qui constituent comme un monde intelligible, et l’on reconnaîtra que, grâce à la perfection de l’Auteur suprème, les sommets de l’éthique et de la métaphysique se confondent, de sorte que (...) rien ne se fait sans la plus haute raison. Car le même Dieu est à la fois la forme éminente et la cause efficiente première et la fin ou l’ultime raison des choses. Il sied que nous adorions ses traces dans les choses et que non seulement nous contemplions les moyens par lesquels il agit et le mécanisme des causes matérielles, mais qu’encore nous méditions sur les fins sublimes de cette admirable habileté; que nous reconnaissions en Dieu, en même temps que l’architecte du monde matériel, aussi et surtout le Roi des esprits, dont l’intelligence a tout ordonné pour le mieux et créer l’univers comme l’État le plus parfait possible sous le gouvernement du plus puissant et du plus sage des monarques. ». (shrink)

This is the only work to provide a histori­cal account of Kant’s theory of arith­metic, examining in detail the theories of both his predecessors and his successors.

So far, recognition theory has focused its attention on modern capitalism and its formation in richer Western societies and has neglected issues of global poverty. A brief sketch of Axel Honneth's recognition theory precedes an examination of how the theory can contribute to a better understanding of global poverty, and justice in relation to poverty. I wish to highlight five ways in which recognition theory can enrich our inventory of theories dealing with global poverty and justice: It emphasizes the importance (...) of giving victims of poverty due weight in theorizing about poverty. It provides a vocabulary to conceptualize the experiences of suffering by poverty in terms of misrecognition. It highlights the importance of legal recognition and of actually having certain rights in order to be respected. It bases its critique of poverty on a particular idea of justice and how it should unfold. Finally, recognition theory demands that the poor must be involved in decision-making processes and their agency has .. (shrink)

We argue that any account of mental disorders that meets the desideratum of assigning causal efficacy to mental disorders faces the so-called “causal exclusion problem”. We argue that fully reductive accounts solve this problem but run into the problem of multiple realizability. Recently advocated symptom-network approaches avoid the problem of multiple realizability, but they also run into the causal exclusion problem. Based on a critical analysis of these accounts, we will present our own account according to which mental disorders are (...) dispositional properties that are token-identical to physical properties. More specifically, they are analyzed as dispositions to cause the specific set of symptoms. We argue that our account is not only able to account for multiple realizability without running into the causal exclusion problem, but that it also allows for the integration of very different factors into the description and explanation of mental disorders, such as neurological and neurochemical factors on the one side and social and cultural factors on the other. It thereby gives the psychiatric level of causal explanation autonomy while securing the causal efficacy of mental disorders in a causally closed physical world. (shrink)

Tout au long de sa vie Leibniz remettra sur le metier le projet d'un calcul geometrique qui exprime directement, et non par le biais des equations de l'analyse, les relations purement geometriques et leur degre zero, la situation ou situs. Dans cet echantillon de caracteristique universelle il n'est guere difficile d'identifier les premisses de la topologie moderne. Nous trouvons ici un apercu quasi complet (et en grande partie inedit) de la premiere phase des travaux leibniziens, dont l'objectif initial est a (...) lui seul une gageure, la reforme de l'axiomatique euclidienne. (shrink)