Too often, the limits of our language are the limits of our thinking. “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought,” warned George Orwell. How we label something too often controls how we think about it. We get particular concepts in our head and they are hard to change. They govern how we think and how we act. “Disease” and “death” used to be considered as “God's will,” and it took hundreds of years and no small number of martyrs (...) to get that corrected. It was very hard to develop modern medicine when so many subjects were thought of as outside of human control. Similarly, the number of children a woman had was thought to be “God's will,” and that has made the development of contraception controversial to this day. Human control over any part of human destiny is usually opposed vigorously. Humankind has the tendency to confuse the familiar with the necessary. (shrink)

I end with another parable, but it is also a true story. Harvey Gushing, the famous surgeon after whom the Gushing Lectures are named, made an international reputation in his allegiance to quality. He badgered his profession to a higher standard of self-effacement and railed against the debasement of clinical skills and overemphasis on research and pursuit of personal gain. We honor him to this day because those were, and remain, important points. Yet, Harvey Gushing served as a surgeon during (...) World War I and at Ypres. Although the Allied mortality was as much as 50,000 soldiers a day, not counting the wounded, Gushing refused to operate on any more than two patients each day, arguing that to do so would have lowered his standard of care for his patients a – standard that made sense in one time but that became strikingly insensitive, and I suggest even unethical, in another when confronted with a different reality. (shrink)

President Clinton, already facing formidable obstacles in reforming the health care system, denies that it will involve any rationing. This is politically understandable, but wrong. Infinite needs are rapidly overtaking finite resources. Most health providers recognize that the genius of modern medicine has outpaced our ability to pay. But the public still has unlimited expectations and a blind faith that everything can be provided to everyone by simply eliminating "waste, fraud, and abuse." Rationing is inherent in any health care system. (...) As government undertakes to define what is "medically necessary or appropriate," it will unavoidably undertake a series of rationing decisions. Health care is being transformed from a private good to a public good. Government, when it reforms the health care system, must inevitably ask: How do we buy the most health for the public? Keywords: Clinton Health Plan, public good, rationing CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The single greatest challenge facing managers in the developed countries of the world is to raise the productivity of knowledge and service workers. This challenge, which will dominate the management agenda for the next several decades, will ultimately determine the competitive performance of companies. Even more important, it will determine the very fabric of society and the quality of life of every industrialized nation. … Unless this challenge is met, the developed world will face increasing social tensions, increasing polarization, increasing (...) radicalization, possibly even class war. (shrink)

Richard Lamm is an eloquent and insistent advocate for healthcare reform. In his paper, he argues that if reform is to be effective, a radical metamorphosis in the values underlying our present system must take place. “New realities” have made the “old values” unsustainable. Unless they are replaced by “new values,” we face a future of disastrous overspending, gross inequities in accessibility, poorer health for many, and more expensive dying.

This book is a succinct introduction to the orienting of attention.

A number of fairness issues and principles are developed and discussed from the context of personnel selection. It is noted that not too much attention has been paid to these issues and concerns in the past. A distinction is made between justice and fairness having to do with the procedural components and processes of selection, the nature of the information used to make selection decisions, and the resulting outcomes of the selection process. Ideas for future research and exploration are also (...) extended. (shrink)

By a thorough study of the Posterior Analytics and related Aristotelian texts, Richard McKirahan reconstructs Aristotle's theory of episteme--science. The Posterior Analytics contains the first extensive treatment of the nature and structure of science in the history of philosophy, and McKirahan's aim is to interpret it sympathetically, following the lead of the text, rather than imposing contemporary frameworks on it. In addition to treating the theory as a whole, the author uses textual and philological as well as philosophical material (...) to interpret many important but difficult individual passages. A number of issues left obscure by the Aristotelian material are settled by reference to Euclid's geometrical practice in the Elements. To justify this use of Euclid, McKirahan makes a comparative analysis of fundamental features of Euclidian geometry with the corresponding elements of Aristotle's theory. Emerging from that discussion is a more precise and more complex picture of the relation between Aristotle's theory and Greek mathematics--a picture of mutual, rather than one-way, dependence. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

The Body Incantatory: Spells and the Ritual Imagination in Medieval Chinese Buddhism. By Paul Copp. Sheng Yan Series in Chinese Buddhist Studies. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. Pp. xxx + 363. $55.

Fractal geometry offers a new approach to describing the morphology of fern leaves. Traditional morphology is based on the Euclidean concept of shape as an area defined by a boundary. This approach has not proven successful with fern leaves because they are so elaborate. Fractal geometry treats forms as relationships between parts rather than as areas. In fern fronds there are often constant relationships between parts. Four fractal methodologies for describing these relations within leaves are explored in this paper. These (...) include recursive line branching algorithms, iterated function systems (IFS), modifications of IFS, and L-systems. The methods are evaluated by comparing their results with measurements and appearances of various ferns. Fractal methods offer objective, quantifiable and succinct descriptions of fern-leaves. We conclude that fractal geometry offers simple descriptions of some elaborate fern shapes and that it will probably have application in investigating different aspects of ferns and other organisms. (shrink)

Savage et al. include groove and dance among musical features which enhance social bonds and group coherence. I discuss groove as grounded in structure and performance, and relate musical performance to play in nonhuman animals and humans. The interplay of individuals' contributions with group action is proposed as the common link between music and play as contributors to social bonding.

This valuable work of reference provides a comprehensive bibliography on all scholarly work that was published on Plato and Socrates during the years 1958-73. It thus forms an important addition to Harold Cherniss’s bibliography, which covered the years 1950-7. The author has sought to include all materials primarily concerned with Socrates and Plato, together with other works which make a contribution to our understanding of the two philosophers. The bibliography is arranged by topic and there are cross-references at the end (...) of each section. The works in each category are arranged chronologically and then alphabetically within each year. An effort has been made to distinguish when a book has had more than one edition and when an article has been reprinted. Additionally the author has listed reviews of books and dissertations as these have come to his attention. (shrink)

This book offers a new way of looking at the 5th century BCE Sophists, rejecting the bad reputation they have had since antiquity and presenting them as individuals rather than a "movement", each with his own speciality and personality as revealed through the scant surviving evidence. It provides an account of the Sophists of this period that explains the historical and social developments that led to their prominence and popularity, demonstrating the reasons for their importance and for their seeming disappearance (...) in the 4th century BCE. Restricted to discussion of the few Sophists for whom there are surviving quotations or other texts, The Sophists avoids generalizations often found in other books. It contains accurate translations of most of the surviving material, which forms the securest possible basis for understanding the Sophists as individuals in their various roles, not only as educators but also as ambassadors and pioneers in other fields. After a general introduction, the following chapters present each of the Sophists individually, followed by three chapters which present topics treated by more than one Sophist, such as Logos, Definition and the Nomos-Phusis contrast. The final three chapters reveal the way three important intellectuals of the fourth century (Plato, his rival Isocrates and Aristotle) dealt with the Sophists. An appendix contains several longer passages or works in their entirety in translation, allowing readers to have access to the original source materials and develop their own interpretations. This thorough treatment of the fifth-century Sophists is of interest to scholars working on the subject and on ancient Greek philosophy more broadly, while also being accessible to undergraduate students and the general public interested in the topic. (shrink)