Eighteenth-century England saw the rise of a "peculiarly English" art form—landscape gardening—and a corresponding change in attitudes toward the antural world. While the French, who lived under tyranny, had a tightly organized, restrictive gardens, the "free" English enjoyed gardens where they were at liberty to wander. John Dixon Hunt examines eighteenth-century letters, literary and critical works, biographies, paintings, prints, and drawings to trace the gradual movement from formal regularity toward a carefully calculated naturalness.

The world I grew up in believed that change and development in life are part of a continuous process of cause and effect, minutely and patiently sustained throughout the millenniums. With the exception of the initial act of creation ..., the evolution of life on earth was considered to be a slow, steady and ultimately demonstrable process. No sooner did I begin to read history, however, than I began to have my doubts. Human society and living beings, it seemed to (...) me, ought to be excluded from so calm and rational a view. The whole of human development, far from having been a product of steady evolution, seemed subject to only partially explicable and almost invariably violent mutations. Entire cultures and groups of individuals appeared imprisoned for centuries in a static shape which they endured with long-suffering indifference, and then suddenly, for no demonstrable cause, became susceptible to drastic changes and wild surges of development. It was as if the movement of life throughout the ages was not a Darwinian caterpillar but a startled kangaroo, going out towards the future in a series of unpredictable hops, stops, skips and bounds. Indeed, when I came to study physics I had a feeling that the modern concept of energy could perhaps throw more light on the process than any of the more conventional approaches to the subject. It seemed that species, society and individuals behaved more like thunder-clouds than scrubbed, neatly clothed and well-behaved children of reason. Throughout the ages life appeared to build up great invisible charges, like clouds and earth of electricity, until suddenly in a sultry hour the spirit moved, the wind rose, a drop of rain fell acid in the dust, fire flared in the nerve, and drums rolled to produce what we call thunder and lightening in the heavens and chance and change in human society and personality.LAURENS VAN DER POST, The Lost World of the Kalahari. (shrink)

To students and practitioners of anamorphic art, the name of Jean-François Niceron is more than preeminent; it has become iconic. La Perspective Curieuse was first published in 1638. An augmented version was then translated into Latin by Mersenne in 1646. A newly amended and augmented version was retranslated into French by Roberval in 1652. This book is an English translation of the 1652 text, with reference to the 1638 and 1646 versions. Considering the continued high reputation of the book, the (...) mathematics have been checked for correctness and consistency, and the authors have provided a full commentary, pointing out the most difficult turns of the 17th-century French, the respective contributions of Niceron, Mersenne and Roberval, and explaining Niceron's greatest insights and weaknesses. (shrink)

A textbook for undergraduates. Some 70 selections (more than half are new to this edition) follow an introductory essay. Current controversies (surrogacy, genetic engineering, proxy consent) are thoroughly covered. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This chapter relates a broadly chronological story of the developments over the last 50 years that have sought to reshape the science curriculum in English schools by introducing aspects of the history of science and nature of science. The chapter highlights key curriculum projects by outlining the contexts in which they developed and summarising their rationales as set out in their publications. It also provides signposts to some of the reports of research and scholarship that have evaluated these initiatives. The (...) chapter shows how the first national curriculum in 1989 was influenced by earlier initiatives as it made teaching about the nature of science mandatory for all. This requirement faded into the background after a few years and then re-emerged with a new rationale as ‘how science works’ in 2004. The chapter ends by looking to the future with a discussion of a new course which contrasts with earlier traditions by focussing the teaching and learning on the history and philosophy of science rather than using ideas from these disciplines to teach about science. (shrink)

It is generally accepted that farmers manage a complex farm system. In this article we seek answers to the following questions. How do farmers perceive and understand their farm system? Are they sufficiently aware of their farm system that they are able to represent it in the form of a map? The research reported describes how causal mapping was applied to sheep/beef farmers in New Zealand and shows that farmers can create maps of their farm systems in ways that allow (...) expression of both individual maps and the formation of group maps which represent the general character of farm systems. A group map was made for all the farmers studied and for subgroups using conventional, integrated, and organic management systems. The results are discussed in terms of the depth of meaning associated with individual elements of the map, map complexity and the limitations of causal mapping. Causal mapping has the potential to contribute to our knowledge of how farmers see their farm systems, and this can benefit farmers and other stakeholders concerned with the management of farms and their economic and environmental performance. (shrink)

A Levinasian approach to the photographic offers a unique opportunity to reconsider Levinas’ claim that the ‘face’ cannot be seen. Levinas’ reading of Husserl on time consciousness in mind, it is argued that vision marries an incommensurable debt and reply, a duplicitous interface that is the very expression of embodiment and condition of the face. Brand’s and Pinchevski’s approach to the face and to photography, as incompatible yet necessary conjunctions of address and image, is recruited to advance the thesis that (...) the duplicity belonging to vision and to the face is made explicit when looking at photographs and films. The duplicity of the ‘photographic undergone’, both compelling vision and engineering the self-same, explains as much. Of course the photographic may or may not attest to the face – as address and image, interruption and response, debt and reply – but even when it does the attestation is never without ambiguity and trouble, violations and doubt. (shrink)

Disaster research has grown in scope and frequency. Research in the wake of disasters and during humanitarian crises – particularly in resource-poor settings – is likely to raise profound and unique ethical challenges for local communities, crisis responders, researchers, and research ethics committees. Given the ethical challenges, many have questioned how best to provide research ethics review and oversight. We contribute to the conversation concerning how best to ensure appropriate ethical oversight in disaster research and argue that ethical disaster research (...) requires of researchers and RECs a particular sort of ongoing, critical engagement which may not be warranted in less exceptional research. We present two cases that typify the concerns disaster researchers and RECs may confront, and elaborate upon what this ongoing engagement might look like – how it might be conceptualized and utilized – using the concept of real-time responsiveness. The central aim of RTR, understood here as both an ethical ideal and practice, is to lessen the potential for research conducted in the wake of disasters to create, perpetuate, or exacerbate vulnerabilities and contribute to injustices suffered by disaster-affected populations. Well cultivated and deployed, we believe that RTR may enhance the moral capacities of researchers and REC members, and RECs as institutions where moral agency is nurtured and sustained. (shrink)

This is a contribution to an Author Meets Critics special issue on John Martin Fischer's _Our Fate: Essays on God and Free Will_.

The humanitarian sector continually faces organizational and operational challenges to respond to the needs of populations affected by war, disaster, displacement, and health emergencies. With the goal of improving the effectiveness and efficiency of response efforts, humanitarian innovation initiatives seek to develop, test, and scale a variety of novel and adapted practices, products, and systems. The innovation process raises important ethical considerations, such as appropriately engaging crisis-affected populations in defining problems and identifying potential solutions, mitigating risks, ensuring accountability, sharing benefits (...) fairly, and managing expectations. This paper aims to contribute to knowledge and practice regarding humanitarian innovation ethics and presents two components related to a value-sensitive approach to humanitarian innovation. First is a mapping of how ethical concepts are mobilized in values statements that have been produced by a diverse set of organizations involved in humanitarian innovation. Analyzing these documents, we identified six primary values (do-no-harm, autonomy, justice, accountability, sustainability, and inclusivity) around which we grouped 12 secondary values and 10 associated concepts. Second are two proposed activities that teams engaged in humanitarian innovation can employ to foreground values as they develop and refine their project’s design, and to anticipate and plan for challenges in enacting these values across the phases of their project. A deliberate and tangible approach to engaging with values within humanitarian innovation design can help to ground humanitarian innovation in ethical commitments by increasing shared understanding amongst team members, promoting attentiveness to values across the stages of innovation, and fostering capacities to anticipate and respond to ethically challenging situations. (shrink)

Advancements in fetal assessment and therapeutic intervention in medical practice and clinical research call for corresponding progress in regulatory and ethical guidance. In “A new ethical framewo...

The conduct of research in settings affected by disasters such as hurricanes, floods and earthquakes is challenging, particularly when infrastructures and resources were already limited pre-disaster. However, since post-disaster research is essential to the improvement of the humanitarian response, it is important that adequate research ethics oversight be available. We aim to answer the following questions: 1) what do research ethics committee members who have reviewed research protocols to be conducted following disasters in low- and middle-income countries perceive as the (...) key ethical concerns associated with disaster research?, and 2) in what ways do REC members understand these concerns to be distinct from those arising in research conducted in non-crisis situations? This qualitative study was developed using interpretative description methodology; 15 interviews were conducted with REC members. Four key ethical issues were identified as presenting distinctive considerations for disaster research to be implemented in LMICs, and were described by participants as familiar research ethics issues that were amplified in these contexts. First, REC members viewed disaster research as having strong social value due to its potential for improving disaster response, but also as requiring a higher level of justification compared to other research settings. Second, they identified vulnerability as an overarching concern for disaster research ethics, and a feature that required careful and critical appraisal when assessing protocols. They noted that research participants’ vulnerabilities frequently change in the aftermath of a disaster and often in unpredictable ways. Third, they identified concerns related to promoting and maintaining safety, confidentiality and data security in insecure or austere environments. Lastly, though REC members endorsed the need and usefulness of community engagement, they noted that there are significant challenges in a disaster setting over and above those typically encountered in global health research to achieve meaningful community engagement. Disaster research presents distinctive ethical considerations that require attention to ensure that participants are protected. As RECs review disaster research protocols, they should address these concerns and consider how justification, vulnerability, security and confidentially, and community engagement are shaped by the realities of conducting research in a disaster. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 273-295 [Access article in PDF] Billy Budd:Melville's Dilemma Lester H. Hunt I THE CHAIN OF EVENTS NARRATED in Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative)—how Billy is falsely accused of plotting mutiny by his Master-at-Arms, John Claggart, how Billy accidentally kills Claggart and, finally, is executed at the urging of the Captain of the Ship, Edward Fairfax Vere, despite Vere's personal conviction (...) that Billy does not deserve to be killed—is simple enough. The text itself, nonetheless, is troublesomely complex. It is a very difficult work to interpret with both honesty and confidence. Melville unflinchingly represents to us the moral horror of what Captain Vere does to Billy, and yet he also depicts Vere himself with a respect that borders on admiration. The attentive reader experiences a painful cognitive dissonance that can only be soothed by a coherent interpretation, and perhaps by a bit of philosophy.Given the way in which the text of Billy Budd emerged—it was assembled by scholars, long after Melville's death, from a confusing collection of manuscript pages he had left behind when he died—it may well be an unfinished work. It is possible that ill health and death overtook Melville before he had a chance to iron out the inconsistencies that inevitably arise as a book is written, and it is therefore also possible that some of our sense of dissonance is produced by this brute fact. 1 Whether or not this is the case, this book is, according to the view I will present here, at least very close to being coherent. The point of view it represents is actually quite appropriate to an unfinished work, and little damaged by textual indeterminateness. Billy Budd is about the inescapably dilemmatic nature of certain choices. It alleges the impossibility of resolving them in any comfortable way. Melville beckons us to [End Page 273] look through the window of Billy Budd into an abyss of undecidability, and perhaps a text that contains some chaos within itself will better serve as such a window than one that does not.The best way to begin trying to understand how we should take this work is to begin at its very beginning. The very beginning of a story is of course its title, and the title of this story, or more exactly its subtitle, tells quite literally what sort of story it is. It is an "inside" narrative. Of course, this immediately raises the question of what an inside narrative is. Inside what? Are we supposed to contrast it with an outside narrative? And what sort of story would that be?Melville does not leave us entirely without an answer to this question. Billy Budd does contain another story, one that contrasts so sharply with the main narrative that it might well be described as its opposite: it is virtually an inverted version of the book's plot. In an "authorized weekly publication" quoted at some length at the end of the book, the events of Melville's tale are briefly recounted. In this version of the story, apparently the only officially sanctioned one, Billy Budd is depicted as the ringleader of a genuine mutiny, who "vindictively stabbed" Claggart for exposing him. Claggart is motivated only by a "strong patriotic impulse" and Billy Budd by "extreme depravity."This account, Melville tells, us was written "for the most part" sincerely enough, "though the medium, partly rumor, through which the facts must have reached the writer served to deflect and in part falsify them" (1432.27-30). 2 It could be called an "outside" narrative in virtue of the fact that its author was not there and consequently was not in a position to know what actually happened. The most direct way to give literal meaning to the "inside" status of Melville's main narrative is simply to observe that it gives a view from inside the ship, from inside the Bellipotent. It represents things that were known by people who were there, and precisely because they were there.This... (shrink)

John Blund's Treatise on the Soul is probably the earliest text of its kind: a witness to the first reception of Greek and Arabic psychology at Oxford and foundation for a new area of medieval philosophical speculation. This book contains Hunt's Latin edition with a new English translation and a new introduction to the text by Michael Dunne.

The principle of alternate possibilities (PAP), making the ability to do otherwise a necessary condition for moral responsibility, is supposed by Harry Frankfurt, John Fischer, and others to succumb to a peculiar kind of counterexample. The paper reviews the main problems with the counterexample that have surfaced over the years, and shows how most can be addressed within the terms of the current debate. But one problem seems ineliminable: because Frankfurt''s example relies on a counterfactual intervener to preclude alternatives (...) to the person''s action, it is not possible for it to preclude all alternatives (intervention that is contingent upon a trigger cannot bring it about that the trigger never occurred). This makes it possible for the determined PAPist to maintain that some pre-intervention deviation is always available to ground moral responsibility. In reply, the critic of PAP can examine all the candidate deviations and argue their irrelevance to moral responsibility (a daunting prospect); or the critic can dispense with counterfactual intervention altogether. The paper pursues the second of these strategies, developing three examples of noncounterfactual intervention in which (i) the agent has no alternatives (and a fortiori no morally relevant alternatives), yet (ii) there is just as much reason to think that the agent is morally responsible as there was in Frankfurt''s original example. The new counterexamples do suffer from one liability, but this is insufficient in the end to repair PAP''s conceptual connection between moral responsibility and alternate possibilities. (shrink)

One strategy in recent discussions of theological fatalism is to draw on Harry Frankfurt’s famous counterexamples to the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP) to defend human freedom from divine foreknowledge. For those who endorse this line, “Frankfurt counterexamples” are supposed to show that PAP is false, and this conclusion is then extended to the foreknowledge case. This makes it critical to determine whether Frankfurt counterexamples perform as advertised, an issue recently debated in this journal via a pair of articles by (...) David Widerker and John Martin Fischer. I suggest that this debate can be avoided: divine foreknowledge is itself aparadigmatic counterexample to PAP, requiring no support from suspect Frankfurt counterexamples. (shrink)

This essay discusses the question of whether hunting is a competitive sport. The discussion approaches this issue from several angles. The author asserts that there is an anthropomorphic fallacy that the “superiority” of human beings justifies the “right” to exploit animals. The discussion turns to an historical analysis of how hunting emerged as a “sport.” The author discusses evolving standards of what constitutes acceptable forms of amusement, and the basis of moral criticisms of hunting. The author then (...) claims that the techniques commonly employed in hunting constitute animal cruelty. As a further analysis, the author points out a series of asymmetries between competitive sports and hunting, including the claim that sports are structured around and indeed constituted by a set of rules, in contrast to hunting. The essay then discusses wildlife management and distinguishes that from hunting. (shrink)

We argue that the logical outcome of the cladistics revolution in biological systematics, and the move towards rankless phylogenetic classification of nested monophyletic groups as formalized in the PhyloCode, is to eliminate the species rank along with all the others and simply name clades. We propose that the lowest level of formally named clade be the SNaRC, the Smallest Named and Registered Clade. The SNaRC is an epistemic level in the classification, not an ontic one. Naming stops at that level (...) because there is no currently acceptable evidence for clades within it, not because no smaller clades exist. Later, included clades may be named. They would then become the SNaRCs, while the original SNaRC would keep its original name. We argue that all theoretical tasks of biology, in evolution and ecology, as well as practical tasks such as conservation assessment, are better approached using this rankless phylogenetic approach. (shrink)

Gerald Cohen's critique of John Rawls's theory of justice is that it is concerned only with the justice of social institutions, and must thus arbitrarily draw a line between those inequalities excluded and those allowed by the basic structure. Cohen claims that a proper concern with the interests of the least advantaged would rule out 'incentives' for 'talented' individuals. I argue that Rawls's assumption that the subject of justice is the basic structure of society does not arbitrarily restrict the (...) concerns of political justice, as Cohen claims. Further, I argue that it does not allow 'deep' inequalities within a just basic structure. When properly understood, Rawls's theory of justice is strongly egalitarian, taken as a theory of fairness in the way the burdens and benefits of social cooperation are distributed, even if it is not as egalitarian as Cohen wishes. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWe trace Susan Moller Okin’s reception of Mary Wollstonecraft with respect to the relationship between religion and feminist liberalism, by way of manuscripts housed at Somerville College, Oxford and Harvard University. These unpublished documents – dated from 1967 to 1998 – include her Somerville advising file, with papers dated from 1967 to 1979; her 1970 Oxford B.Phil. thesis on the feminist political theory of Wollstonecraft, William Thompson, and J.S. Mill; her teaching notes on Wollstonecraft originating in 1978, for her course (...) ‘Gender and Political Theory’ held at Brandeis and Stanford in the 1980s and 1990s; and her correspondence with John Rawls, dated from 1985 to 1998. A consistently secular feminist liberal, Okin had a blind spot with regard to religion, which led her to misinterpret Wollstonecraft’s theology as contradictory to her consequentialist arguments for women’s rights. Wollstonecraft virtually disappeared from Okin’s published corpus, overshadowed by the secular utilitarian feminist liberal J.S. Mill. Wollstonecraft nevertheless remained a deep philosophical source for both the method and the principle behind Okin’s distinctive brand of feminist liberalism. Okin’s reception of Wollstonecraft suggests that the fissures caused by religious conflict in modern politics have not only generated multiple liberalisms, as Rawls argued, but also multiple feminist liberalisms. (shrink)

I. Logic, rationality and ideology Herbert Marcuse once claimed that the ‘“rational” is a mode of thought and action which is geared to reduce ignorance, destruction, brutality, and oppression.’ He echoed a widespread folk belief that a world in which people were rational would be a better world. This could be taken as an optimistic empirical conjecture: if people were more rational then probably the world would be a better place (a trust that ‘virtue will be rewarded’, so to speak). (...) However, it is also worth considering a stronger hypothesis: that if something did not reduce ignorance, destruction, brutality, and oppression then it would not constitute rationality. On this view there is no mere correlation between rationality and a propensity toward reduction in ignorance and the rest, it is the propensity to reduce ignorance, destruction, brutality and oppression which in part constitutes rationality. Call this a broad conception of rationality, because it expands beyond the epistemic goal of reducing ignorance, and reaches out to moral concerns like oppression. (shrink)

In books such as The World Within the World and The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, astronomer John Barrow has emerged as a leading writer on our efforts to understand the universe. Timothy Ferris, writing in The Times Literary Supplement of London, described him as "a temperate and accomplished humanist, scientist, and philosopher of science--a man out to make a contribution, not a show." Now Barrow offers the general reader another fascinating look at modern physics, as he explores the quest for (...) a single, unifying theory that will unlock nature's secrets. Theories of Everything is more than a history of science, more than a popular report on recent research and discoveries. Barrow provides a reflective, intelligent commentary on what a true Theory of Everything would be--its ingredients, its limitations, and what it could tell us about the universe. Never before, he writes, have physicists been so confident and so eager in the hunt for this "cosmic Rosetta Stone," as he calls it: "a single all-embracing picture of all the laws of nature from which the inevitability of all things seen must follow with unimpeachable logic." He lays out eight essential ingredients for a Theory of Everything and then explores each in turn, tracing how our knowledge has developed and how scientific discovery relates to our changing philosophy and religious thought in each area. Some of these ingredients are obvious--the laws of nature must be explained, for example, as well as its organizing principles--but others may be surprising, such as broken symmetries and selection biases. A Theory of Everything must account for the fact that the universe is "messy and complicated," he tells us, and for the limitations imposed by the questions we ask and the information we can obtain. The key lies in the remarkable capacity of mathematics to express the fundamental workings of the physical world--a language that the human mind is uniquely equipped to understand and manipulate. Barrow examines what mathematics actually is and describes how it makes the universe intelligible and provides a path to the underlying coherence in nature--which has led, in fact, to arguments that the universe itself is a vast computer. Yet even the most complete theory, even the most comprehensive mathematical explanation, cannot account for the uncomputable varieties of human experience and thought. "No non-poetic account of reality," he writes, "can be complete." In a field where the authorities converse in equations and mathematical notations, John Barrow speaks with the voice of thoughtful and knowledgeable humanist. Written with eloquence and expertise, Theories of Everything establishes a new perspective on humanity's efforts to explain the universe. (shrink)

How can women’s rights be seen as a universal value rather than a Western value imposed upon the rest of the world? Addressing this question, Eileen Hunt Botting offers the first comparative study of writings by Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill. Although Wollstonecraft and Mill were the primary philosophical architects of the view that women’s rights are human rights, Botting shows how non-Western thinkers have revised and internationalized their original theories since the nineteenth century. Botting explains why this (...) revised and internationalized theory of women’s human rights—grown out of Wollstonecraft and Mill but stripped of their Eurocentric biases—is an important contribution to thinking about human rights in truly universal terms. (shrink)

Period homeostasis is the defining characteristic of a biological clock. Strict period homeostasis is found for the ultradian clocks of eukaryotic microbes. In addition to being temperature-compensated, the period of these rhythms is unaffected by differences in nutrient composition or changes in other environmental variables. The best-studied examples of ultradian clocks are those of the ciliates Paramecium tetraurelia and Tetrahymena sp. and of the fission yeast, Schizosaccharomyces pombe. In these single cell eukaryotes, up to seven different parameters display ultradian rhythmicity (...) with the same, species- and strain-specific period. In fission yeast, the molecular genetic analysis of ultradian clock mechanisms has begun with the systematic analysis of mutants in identified candidate genes. More than 40 “clock mutants” have already been identified, most of them affected in components of major regulatory and signalling pathways. These results indicate a high degree of complexity for a eukaryotic clock mechanism. BioEssays 22:16–22, 2000. ©2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)