In a recent article in this journal, Brian Alters argued that, given the many ways in which the nature of science is described and poor student responses to NOS instruments such as Nature of Scientific Knowledge Scale, Nature of Science Scale, Test on Understanding Science, and others, it is time for science educators to reconsider the standard lists of tenets for the NOS. Alters suggested that philosophers of science are authorities on the NOS and that consequently, it would be wise (...) to investigate their views of current NOS tenets. To that end, he conducted a survey of members of the Philosophy of Science Association, and, via various statistical techniques, made claims about the nature and extent of variation among philosophers of science regarding basic beliefs about the NOS. As three philosophers of science, we laud Alters’ attempt to understand philosophers of science’ view on the NOS. We believe, however, that his techniques for investigating this question are inappropriate and that consequently, several of his conclusions are unwarranted. In this comment, we will substantiate these criticisms. In addition, we will address some of the important questions that motivate Alters’ research and attempt to unravel the “byzantine complexity” of philosophical views about the NOS. We begin with our concerns regarding Alters’ research. We then provide a taxonomy of philosophic issues; and finally, we suggest some roles for philosophy of science in science teaching and the education of science teachers. (shrink)

George A. Paul; Reports of Discussions at Cardiff (Joint Session of Mind Association and Aristotelian Society, July 1934)1, Analysis, Volume 2, Issue 1-2, 1 Oct.

This is a description of an avian-shaped feature that rests below a network of cellular structures found on a mound within the Argyre Basin of Mars in Mars Global Surveyor image M14-02185, acquired on April 30, 2000, and released to the public on April 4, 2001. The area examined is located near 48.0° South, 55.1° West. The formation is approximately 2,400 meters long from the tip of its beak to the tip of its farthest tail feather. There is a minimum (...) of six different variations in appearance of the surface material over this small area. Utilizing the public targeting request form provided on the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) website, co-author Miller secured a second image of the area that was obtained on July 3, 2006, showing this feature under different conditions S20-00165. The new image was then released to the public on August 11, 2006. A third image of the formation identified as MGS S13-01480 was acquired on December 15, 2005, and although officially processed on June 20, 2006, it was not made available to the public until August 22, 2009, on NASA’s Planetary Data System (PDS) website. All three of the MGS images reveal defining aspects of this avian feature, including a head, beak, body, eye, leg, foot, toes, wing, and feathers. When taken together, these components induce the visual impression of an avian-shaped formation that exhibits a unique set of proportional features. Adjoining this formation is a composite of complex cellular features that form a compartmentalized infrastructure. The three authors who are veterinarians provide a critical analysis of the avian features, and the geologist and geoscientist authors examine natural mechanisms that could contribute to the formation of this feature. An extensive search of comparable regions within and beyond the area of the Argyre Basin was conducted. A list of these sites is provided, and terrestrial comparisons are also offered. (shrink)

Richesse et complexité d’une pensée intégrative mais non réductionniste Dans l’introduction de cet ouvrage, Marie Gaille met en lumière la dimension plurielle du parcours de Cabanis, « formé à la médecine et engagé dans l’histoire politique de son temps, […] auteur d’une réflexion sur les institutions de soin, les prisons et les hôpitaux autant que d’écrits épistémologiques et relatifs à l’enseignement de la médecine ». Cette pluralité d’approches, de thématiques de réflexion et de domaines d...

L'importance de l'analyse psychologique dans ce que l'on pourrait appeler, à la suite de George Briscoe Kerferd, « le mouvement sophistique », n'est pas en soi une découverte. De nombreuses études se sont en effet attachées à en souligner la portée, notamment dans ses rapports avec l'art rhétorique et son application pratique dans le cadre de la πόλις athénienne du Ve siècle où la parole — sous forme d'ἀγών, de débat contradictoire à l'assemblée ou au tribunal — prévalait sur (...) tous les autres instruments de pouvoir, violence et contrainte physique notamment. Dans un monde où « l’art politique, pour l'essentiel, maniement du langage », selon les mots de Jean-Pierre Vernant, analyser les mécanismes du logos, en connaître les règles, permettait de se rendre maître en persuasion, de posséder un instrument privilégié de victoire. Néanmoins, en marge de cet intérêt manifeste pour l'analyse du pouvoir du λόγος dans le corpus sophistique, on ne trouve, de manière assez paradoxale, qu'un nombre très limité de travaux s'attachant à questionner le sens, le statut et, in fine, la légitimité d'une « psychologie » au sens plein du terme. Et pourtant, la question se pose : peut-on parler d'une psychologie sophistique ou faut-il considérer que pour ces penseurs la ψυχή se donnait comme un état de fait dont il suffisait de connaître empiriquement le mécanisme? Y a-t-il quelque chose en-deçà de la psychagogie chez les sophistes? Dans cet article, nous tenterons de montrer qu’il est possible de voir en Alcidamas, disciple de Gorgias et auteur du Sur ceux qui composent des discours par écrit ou Sur les Sophistes, un éloge paradoxal, puisqu’écrit, de l’improvisation, un penseur de la ψυχή et non plus seulement de la potentialité psychagogique du λόγος. En effet, le développement d'une réflexion riche et complexe sur l’organisation logique et syntactique du discours d’une part, et sur l'âme et ses opérateurs d’autre part – réflexion qui conduit Alcidamas à réévaluer les modalités de relation entre l'orateur et son auditoire — permet de mettre en évidence une redéfinition (bien qu'en filigrane) de l'art rhétorique qui, ne pouvant plus dès lors reposer sur une revendication du pouvoir de la persuasion a maxima, devra accorder à la notion de vraisemblance une place centrale. (shrink)

Science Times cover story, July 10, 2007.

The reality of revelation was one of the fundamental questions that\noccupied George Tyrrell as a writer until he died on 15 July 1909. The\ncentenary of his death is an opportune time to engage this English\nModernist in a dialogue with Karl Rahner on the subject of revelation.\nTyrrell insists on the primacy of the interior experience of revelation.\nAn exaggerated emphasis on inner religious experience, however, led him\ninevitably to a separation of the interior dimension of revelation from\nits verbal expressions and doctrinal formulations.\nRahner (...) also affirms the primacy of the originating inner experience of\nGod but stresses at the same time the intrinsic unity between this\ntranscendental revelation and its categorical, historical dimension.\nRevelation corresponds to the symbolic nature of the addressee. The\nMystery of the Incarnation is the point of reference for understanding\nGod's self-communication. The fullness of revelation has been realized\nin the indissoluble and irreversible unity of the Divine Logos with the\nMan Jesus. (shrink)

This volume comprises a selection of papers that were contributed to the 7th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, which was held in Salzburg from the 11th - 16th July, 1983. There were 14 sections in this congress: 1. proof theory and foundations of mathematics 2. model theory and its applica ti on 3. recursion theory and theory of computation 4. axiomatic set theory 5. philosophical logic 6. general methodology of science 7. foundations of probability and induction (...) 8. foundations and philosophy of the physical sciences 9. foundati ons and phi 1 osophy of biology 10. foundations and philosophy of psychology foundations and philosophy 11. of the social sciences 12. foundati ons and philosophy of linguistics 13. history of logic, methodology and philosophy of science 14. fundamental principles of the ethics of science In each section, three or four invited addresses were given, which will be published in the Congress Proceedings (Ruth Barcan Marcus, Georg J. W. Dorn and Paul Weingartner, eds. : Logic, Metho dology and Philosophy of Science VII. Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of v PREFACE Science, Salzburg, 1983. - Amsterdam, New York, Oxford: North-Holland Publishing 'Company, 1985. ) Every section with the exception of section 14 also contained contributed papers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:John Dewey in Chicago: Some BiographicalNotes* GEORGE DYKHUIZEN DEWEY'S REPUTATION in philosophical, psychological, and educational circles brought him many invitations to lecture at other institutions of higher learning, and he was frequently kept busy meeting these engagements. In July, 1896, for example, he headed the departments of psychology and pedagogy at the Summer Institute of Martha's Vineyard,1 and in August delivered a series of lectures on "Imagination in (...) Education" at Chatauqua. 2 During the summer of 1901, he gave courses at the University of California in Berkeley~ and in the spring of 1904 gave six lectures on "Problems of Knowledge" at Columbia University and three lectures on "Moral Education" at Brooklyn Institute3 Dewey was also very much in demand as a speaker at professional meetings of philosophers, psychologists, and educators. In the spring of 1896 he spoke at the first annual meeting of the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.5 He was elected president of the American Psychological Association for the year 1899-1900 and gave as his presidential address, "Psychology and Social Practice." Later, in December, 1901, he addressed the Association on "Interpretation of Savage Mind." g Dewey was also an active member of the American Philosophical Association and was to become its president in 1905 He was a member of the Illinois Society for Child Study and of the National Herbart Society and frequently addressed meetings of these organizations. With so much of his spare time taken up with off-campus engagements, Dewey could not take as great a part in on-campus activities as he may have wished. Nevertheless, like other members of the faculty, he took his turn speaking at the Wednesday afternoon lecture series which the University provided for the students. The most outstanding of Dewey's talks on these occasions were the two he delivered on successive Wednesdays in the summer of 1897. These were entitled "Evolution and Ethics," and created quite a stir because in them Dewey defended evolution and attacked the dualism between the cosmic and ethical processes set up by T. H. Huxley in his Romanes lecture of 1893. Dewey argued that the ethical has its roots in the cosmic and is continuous with itY *This is the second of two articles on John Dewey'sChicago years. For the first of these articles, see my "John Dewey: The Chicago Years," Journal of the History o/ Philosophy, I1:2 (Oct., 1964),227-253. 1University Record, I (July, 1896),278. Ibid. (Aug.7, 1896),311. 81bid. VI (July 26, 1901),171. ~Ibid. IX (June, 1904),92. 51bid. I (April10, 1896),35. *Ibid. VI (March, 1902), 358. Dewey's talk appeared in Psychological Review, IX (May, 1902),217-230. Ibid. II (July, 1897),162.Dewey'stalks werepublished in the Monist, III (1898),321-341. [217] 218 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY There is no record of Dewey having spoken, as did many of the other faculty members, at the University Chapel services held, for a while, each noon on the campus. Indeed, during his Chicago years and thereafter, Dewey disassociated himself more and more from organized religion and instead devoted his energies to educational and social affairs. He did not join the Hyde Park Congregational Church upon surrendering his membership in the Congregational Church in Ann Arbor, and he did not require that his children do so. When his mother, a loyal and pious Congregationalist who was living with them, remonstrated and declared that the children ought to be sent to Sunday School, Dewey's reply was that in his youth he had gone to Sunday School enough to make up for his children's failure to do so. Dewey attended only irregularly the meetings of the University Senate, being present at only eleven of the nineteen meetings held during his years at Chicago. But he made his voice heard when he was present. He was one of two opposed to the establishment of a separate school of commerce and political science;s he moved to waive the requirement of Latin for graduation from the Senior College ;9 he proposed "a modification of the requirements respecting history in the undergraduate course"; 1~and he voted in favor of requiring one... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:John Dewey: The ChicagoYears GEORGE DYKHUIZEN DEWEYCAMETO CHICAGOin the summer of 1894 as head professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago and left in January, 1905, to become professor of philosophy at Columbia University. During his Chicago years, Dewey's interests led him not only into the field of philosophy but also into that of education, and in each of these areas he acquired a retmtation which placed (...) him among the top thinkers in the country. His work in philosophy resulted in his being acclaimed, along with Charles S. Peirce and William James, as one of the three great founders of American pragmatism, and his achievements in education led to his being regarded as one of the country's most outstanding educational thinkers and a prime mover in educational reform. The University of Chicago was only four years old when Dewey arrived there, but already it had attained a high standing among the universities of the country. The main reason for this was that the University had set out to be not simply another college but a university, like the universities in Europe and like Johns Hopkins and Clark universities in this country. This meant that the graduate schools of the University were to be stressed and that a large part of the faculty was to devote itself exclusively to graduate instruction and research. The type of faculty member the University looked for "must be a teacher, but first and foremost he must be a scholar, in love with learning, with a passion for research, an investigator who could produce, and if what he produced was worthy, would wish to publish." ~ In the four years since its founding, the University had assembled one of the most outstanding faculties in the country, a faculty which included: T. C. Chamberlin in astronomy, Rolin D. Salisburg in geology, Albert Michelson in physics, Jacques Loeb in biology, J. M. Coulter in botany, Thorsten Veblen in political economy, Albion Small in sociology, Paul Shorey in Greek, J. H. Breasted in Egyptology, and R. G. Moulton in English. When Dewey came to the University, therefore, as head of the Department of Philosophy, this meant that he was to teach mostly graduate students, do research, and have associations with some of the most brilliant scholars in the country. These features of the new position had appealed strongly to Dewey when he was considering the offer to 1T. W. Goodspeed, A History of the University of Chicago. The First Quarter (Chicago: 1916), 201. [227] 228 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY become professor of philosophy at Chicago and were among the decisive factors in bringing him to the University. William Rainey Harper, president of the University, was in large measure responsible for its early successes. "Those massive buildings, millions of money, thousands of scholars and scores of teachers," wrote one of his admirers, "are a monument to the foresight, nerve, and ceaseless activity of W. R. Harper, a veritable Napoleon in the educational field." 2 Born July 26, 1856, Harper was three years older than Dewey and every bit as precocious. He received his A.B. degree from Muskingum College when he was fourteen; he entered Yale as a graduate student when he was seventeen and got his Ph.D. degree from there at the age of nineteen. Upon receiving his doctorate, he began a career teaching Hebrew first at the Baptist Union Theological Seminary in Chicago and then, in 1886, at Yale. Harper wrote extensively on theological matters and his views prompted an attack on his orthodoxy in 1888. He weathered the storm, however, and throughout his life was a staunch defender of liberal theological thought. Harper had tremendous vitality and enthusiasm, and these qualities, along with his scholarship, led to his appointment as first president of the University when it was founded in 1890. Harper and Dewey were to have close associations on the administrative level, and though many of these were to be pleasant and cordial, others turned out to be not so harmonious and led eventually to Dewey's resignation from the University. Though Harper was particularly concerned that a strong department of philosophy be established at the University, up to the time of Dewey's... (shrink)

Contents: Stephen White: Opuscula and Opera in the Catalogue of Theophrastus' Works Han Baltussen: Theophrastean Echoes? The De Sensibus in the Platonic and Aristotelian Tradition Pamela M. Huby: Arabic Evidence about Theophrastus' De Sensibus Todd Ganson: A Puzzle Concerning the Aristotelian Notion of a Medium of Sense-Perception Istvan M. Bodnar: Theophrastus' De igne: Orthodoxy, Reform and Readjustment in the Doctrine of Elements Georg Wohrle: Ps-Aristoteles De Coloribus -aA Theophrastean Opusculum? David Sider: On On Signs - R.A.H. King: Nutrition and Fatigue (...) Amneris Roselli: Greek Medical Theories of Fatigue Sabine Vogt: Theophrast, De Vertigine Armelle Debru: La sueur des corps: le De sudore de Theophraste face a la tradition medicale John Dillon: Theophrastus' Critique of the Old Academy in the Metaphysics H. Takahashi: Syriac Fragments of Theophrastean Meteorology and Mineralogy Index Contributors and Editors. (Franz Steiner 2002). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Learning in Dramatic and Virtual Worlds:What Do Students Say About Complementarity and Future Directions?John O'Toole (bio) and Julie Dunn (bio)A top financial backer has arrived to determine which team of computer interaction designers has developed the most exciting and innovative proposal for the Everest component of the Virtually Impossible Computer Company's Conquerors of the World Series. Tension is high as the presentations begin, but this tension soon turns (...) to outright conflict as some proposals suggest George Mallory as the conqueror, and the financial backer will have none of him. The backer, it seems, has her own agenda and is determined to allow for only one view of history—the one that records Sir Edmund Hillary as a New Zealand hero and the only real conqueror of the tallest mountain on earth. The designers become more and more agitated until suddenly someone bangs their hand on the table and calls out, "Hang on... just because you've got the money doesn't mean... kids need to learn about both these men... they need to learn about history." With that the drama is cut by the teacher. The deep understandings about "history's purchased page" that can be generated when drama and computers are brought together for learning have been made explicit... but could these same outcomes have been achieved using just one of these approaches?IntroductionThe research explored within this article was generated as part of the Media Station, a project funded by the Australasian Collaborative Research Centre for Interaction Design (ACID), with an overall mission to investigate the potential of massively multiplayer online games for learning. This particular subproject, History's Purchased Page, saw researchers from interaction design [End Page 89] and drama education come together with a group of young learners to investigate their perceptions of the complementarity of computers and live classroom drama and to brainstorm future possibilities for applying computer-based technologies to drama-based learning. We sought to discover the following:• What do young learners say about how they experience and value learning in a context involving a combination of drama and computers?• What ideas do these young learners have about how future technologies might enrich the complementarity of this combination?As the drama researchers involved in this project, we had been experimenting with this perhaps slightly unusual combination for over a decade by incorporating computers into a number of our drama units within our primary textbook Pretending to Learn.1 Our goal in these experimentations had always been to enrich the classroom drama experience by taking advantage of the information capacity of the Internet and other computer-based resources, including databases. For example, we had used The First Fleet Database2 to support a drama unit where the learners take on the role of convicts arriving in Australia in 1788. We discovered that this material, combined with other documentation and historical materials available via the Internet, greatly enhanced not only the historical accuracy of the work but also the level of engagement experienced by the learners when in role. Therefore, we were very keen to extend this work by exploring new possibilities and were especially keen to develop a better understanding of what the learners made of this interactivity.In recent years the partnering of these two quite different approaches to learning has developed quite a research following, and a number of drama teachers and researchers have become interested in the complementarity of these ways of learning.3 At the same time, researchers and designers from the field of computer-assisted learning have also noted these connections. This goes back to the work of Brenda Laurel, who first drew attention to the intriguing links between computers and theatre in her now famous text Computers as Theatre.4 With the rapid growth of interactive learning tools such as 3-D immersive worlds, blogs, and online voice and text chat spaces, the opportunities for exploration of these connections have also grown, with each of these offering exciting new possibilities when used in conjunction with the highly interactive and engaging strategies of process drama.Process drama is a way of group learning, through whole-class improvised drama, with students (and sometimes the... (shrink)

A close look at Frege's proof in "Foundations of Arithmetic" that every number has a successor. The examination reveals a surprising gap in the proof, one that Frege would later fill in "Basic Laws of Arithmetic".

A number of recent discussions about ethical issues in climate change, as engaged in by economists, have focused on the value of the parameter representing the rate of time preference within models of optimal growth. This essay examines many economists' antipathy to serious discussion of ethical matters, and suggests that the avoidance of questions of intergenerational equity is related to another set of value judgments concerning the quality and objectivity of economic practice. Using insights from feminist philosophy of science and (...) research on high reliability organizations, this essay argues that a more ethically transparent, real-world-oriented, and flexible economic practice would lead to more strongly objective, reliable, and useful knowledge. (shrink)

Advocates of a more socially responsible discipline of economics often emphasize the purposive and unpredictable nature of human economic behavior, contrasting this to the presumably deterministic behavior of natural forces. This essay argues that such a distinction between “social” and “natural” sciences is in fact counterproductive, especially when issues of ecological sustainability are concerned. What is needed instead is a better notion of science—“science-with-wonder”—which grounds serious science in relational, non-Newtonian thinking.

In this paper the authors argue that the exploration of the nature of needs and rights should begin with the actually existing organization of care and of justice in society. The authors raise two key concerns with this organization: 1) the invisibility of care to some, and 2) the inaccessibility of rights to others. Recent work by care scholars has called attention to the ways the current organization of care work perpetuates the myth of self-sufficiency for some, while reducing others (...) to mere dependents. Law and Society scholars have demonstrated the problems of uneven access to legal remedies within the current organization of the legal system. Addressing these concerns simultaneously reveals both the problems of the current organization of needs and rights as well as illuminating alternative possibilities. The authors argue, first, that a justice perspective, based on rights is inadequate because its presumed universality is belied by the reality of the inaccessibility of rights to many. Second, the authors argue that a care perspective, currently formulated upon the assumption that only some people have needs, is also flawed because its presumed particularity distorts the human experience and subsequent policies. Instead, the authors need to conceive of care in a public way that permits both rights and needs to be understood as applicable to all. The authors propose some initial thoughts about how to create such a public concept of care. (shrink)

Ethics instructors often use cases to help students understand ethics within a corporate context, but we need to know more about the impact a case-based pedagogy has on students’ ability to make ethical decisions. We used a pre- and post-test methodology to assess the effect of using cases to teach ethics in a finance course. We also wanted to determine whether recent corporate ethics scandals might have impacted students’ perceptions of the importance and prevalence of ethics in business, so we (...) used in-depth case studies of several of the major scandals (e.g., Enron, Tyco, Adelphia). Our results are somewhat surprising since studying ethics scandals positively impacts students’ ethical decision making and their perceptions of the ethics of businesspeople. (shrink)

This essay explores the profoundly gendered nature of the split between the disciplines of economics and sociology which took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, emphasizing implications for the relatively new field of economic sociology. Drawing on historical documents and feminist studies of science, it investigates the gendered processes underlying the divergence of the disciplines in definition, method, and degree of engagement with social problems. Economic sociology has the potential to heal this disciplinary split, but only if (...) the field is broadened, deepened, and made wiser and more self-reflective through the use of feminist analysis. (shrink)

Let me make it clear from the outset that my main point isnoteither of the following: one, that there should be more women economists and research on “women's issues”, or two, that women as a class do, or should do, economics in a manner different from men. My argument is different and has to do with trying to gain an understanding of how a certain way of thinking about gender and a certain way of thinking about economics have become intertwined (...) through metaphor – with detrimental results – and how a richer conception of human understanding and human identity could broaden and improve the field of economics for both female and male practitioners. (shrink)

An article by Luigino Bruni and Robert Sugden published in this journal argues that market relations contain elements of what they call ‘fraternity’. This Response demonstrates that my own views on interpersonal relations and markets – which originated in the feminist analysis of caring labour – are far closer to Bruni and Sugden's than they acknowledge in their article, and goes on to discuss additional important dimensions of sociality that they neglect.

This essay discusses the origins, biases, and effects on contemporary discussions of economics and ethics of the unexamined use of the metaphor an economy is a machine. Both neoliberal economics and many critiques of capitalist systems take this metaphor as their starting point. The belief that economies run according to universal laws of motion, however, is shown to be based on a variety of rationalist thinking that – while widely held – is inadequate for explaining lived human experience. Feminist scholarship (...) in the philosophy of science and economics has brought to light some of the biases that have supported the mechanistic worldview. Possible alternatives to the an economy is a machine include an economy is a creative process and an economy is an organism. Such metaphors are intellectually defensible as guides to scientific inquiry and provide a richer ground for moral imagination. (shrink)

Patricia Elliot distorts my work, in summarizing my position as one of advocating a revaluing of feminine qualities. After clarifying my position, I flesh out in greater detail my argument that complete gender neutrality is neither necessary nor sufficient for a non-sexist society. The argument focuses on gender as a cognitive category and on the crucial question of "how do we get there from here.".

Ecologically valid procedures for eliciting and measuring children's anger are needed to enhance researchers' theories of children's emotional competence and to guide intervention efforts aimed at reactive aggression. The purpose of this article is to describe a laboratory-based game-playing procedure that has been used successfully to elicit and measure children's anger across observational, physiological, and self-report channels. Steps taken to ensure that participants are treated ethically and fairly are discussed. The article highlights recently published data that emphasize the importance of (...) provoking and assessing children's anger across multiple channels using laboratory-based procedures. Finally, it presents preliminary data that suggest that the safeguards taken to protect children were successful in making both children and their parents feel well treated and comfortable. (shrink)

Past research finds that after menopause some women experience negative changes such as vaginal dryness, decreased libido, and decreased orgasm quality; very little research inquires about positive changes. In contrast, this study shifts the research focus from whether women experience menopausal changes to how women view any changes in sex life. Based on 30 in-depth interviews with heterosexual and lesbian women, the author finds that most women emphasize cultural and social issues, such as relationship status and quality, health, and sexual (...) history, rather than menopausal changes when they describe sex after menopause. However, she finds a difference by sexual orientation in how women handle problems in sex. The author concludes by discussing the implication of this research for future menopause and sex research; most important, she emphasizes studying sex in the context of women's lives rather than as a result of the biological changes of menopause. (shrink)

Across three decades in both Britain and the United States, surveys indicate that women must work harder than men do. Using data from the 1997 Skills Survey of the Employed British Workforce and the 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce, the authors investigate two possible explanations for this gap in reports of required effort: gender differences in job characteristics and family responsibilities. In multivariate ordered logistic regressions, extensive measures of job characteristics do not explain the difference between women and (...) men. Family obligations, as well, account for little or none of the gap. The authors argue that the association between gender and reported required work effort is best interpreted as reflecting stricter performance standards imposed on women, even when women and men hold the same jobs. The authors discuss alternative interpretations and implications for research. (shrink)

Not understanding that doing nothing can be much more preferable to doing something potentially harmful. Recent developments in cognitive science have highlighted the power that stories, metaphors, and archetypes have on human thinking. In fact, to a large extent they are our thinking. Consider the archetypal image of the young adult male hero. He is brave, active, adventurous, innovative, knowledgeable, clever, confident, independent, in control, and not constrained by family, tradition, or public opinion. He is a character that appears in (...) myths, in histories of conquest and discovery—from Odysseus to the Medusa-slayer, the.. (shrink)