We set out an account of how self-domestication plays a crucial role in the evolution of language. In doing so, we focus on the growing body of work that treats language structure as emerging from the process of cultural transmission. We argue that a full recognition of the importance of cultural transmission fundamentally changes the kind of questions we should be asking regarding the biological basis of language structure. If we think of language structure as reflecting an accumulated set of (...) changes in our genome, then we might ask something like, “What are the genetic bases of language structure and why were they selected?” However, if cultural evolution can account for language structure, then this question no longer applies. Instead, we face the task of accounting for the origin of the traits that enabled that process of structure-creating cultural evolution to get started in the first place. In light of work on cultural evolution, then, the new question for biological evolution becomes, “How did those precursor traits evolve?” We identify two key precursor traits: the transmission of the communication system through learning; and the ability to infer the communicative intent associated with a signal or action. We then describe two comparative case studies—the Bengalese finch and the domestic dog—in which parallel traits can be seen emerging following domestication. Finally, we turn to the role of domestication in human evolution. We argue that the cultural evolution of language structure has its origin in an earlier process of self-domestication. (shrink)

1 Evidence-based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. 2 During a 2-day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for (...) generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short-listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy-led organizations. 3 The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. 4 The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. 5 Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible. (shrink)

In February 2018 numerous pundits and commentators rained on the collective parade of countless Black Panther fans, remarking that Wakanda was totally fictional and not a real African nation. Originally created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1966, Wakanda's utopian underpinnings are realized through the depiction of an idealistic vision of human society as a vibranium‐powered Afrofuturistic version of Plato's Republic. Rather than seeing Wakanda as a model of “racial utopianism,” Killmonger considers it as the basis of a (...) dystopian empire. the cinematic depiction of Wakanda in Black Panther remains a dilemma of sorts, laying bare the perils as well as promises of racial utopianism by asking the film's audience if it is possible to make Black excellence a reality, while also asking what Black excellence means. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Tibullus: Elegies II. With introduction and commentaryThomas A. SuitsPaul Murgatroyd, ed. Tibullus: Elegies II. With introduction and commentary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. xx + 305 pp. Cloth, $65.00.This is the companion volume to Murgatroyd’s Tibullus I (Pietermaritzburg, 1980) and with it forms the first detailed commentary on the poet since Kirby Flower Smith’s 1913 edition. The editor has been better served by the Clarendon than the University (...) of Natal Press in that the quality of production is superior and the layout less huddled. Users will want to have access to Tibullus I, however, since Murgatroyd makes regular reference to it. In the main, the new volume follows the pattern of its predecessor; but since the latter received relatively little critical notice in English-language periodicals, it seems appropriate to describe principal features, especially where they represent a change from Murgatroyd’s previous practice.General matters received attention in the introduction to Tibullus I, and so the introduction here is brief, addressing the question of the completeness of this extraordinarily short libellus, its structure, and its main characters. The text is essentially Postgate’s 1915 OCT, without apparatus but rather with the handful of departures discussed in a critical appendix.The commentary itself is bulky—254 pages on only 430 verses, or an average of more than a page per distich. (By way of comparison, the commentary in Tibullus I averages just over half a page per distich.) Each elegy has an introductory essay; each of the five to nine sections into which Murgatroyd divides a poem receives its own introduction; and each distich is discussed separately in detail. All this is rather daunting, and few, other than reviewers, are likely to work through the whole, but there is something to engage readers wherever they decide to dip into it. As befits a commentary on a poet whose Alexandrianism is becoming ever more appreciated, Murgatroyd’s work exhibits both sensitivity [End Page 498] and sophistication. In what follows I touch on some of the book’s leitmotifs, in an attempt to convey its general character.There is naturally a vast store of material illustrative of both language and subject matter, selected from predecessors (the debt to Smith is considerable, though he is not followed in his predilection for copious parallels from modern vernacular literatures) and augmented by the editor, in part through diligent use of the TLL and OLD. Unlike Tibullus I, this volume provides English translations for the relatively few Greek quotations. My extensive samplings suggest a rare degree of accuracy in the citations.In his interpretations, Murgatroyd will often leave open a number of possibilities: e.g., “may refer to... or... or... may denote... or... could be... or... may mean... or... if...” is the wording in one short paragraph on 2.3.1–2. Again, he will lay before the reader a whole menu of possible senses, as he does for nubilus (on 2.5.75–76); it is salutary to be reminded of the wide range of possible connotations, even where one seems to deserve clear preference.A similar lack of dogmatism characterizes Murgatroyd’s many attempts to describe rhythmic and sound effects. Conscious of how subjective these can be, he always couches them guardedly, as (on 2.4.7–10), “the sudden preponderance of spondees and assonance involving long vowels seem to me to have an air of dejection and weariness.” Likewise, he is appropriately cautious in his frequent suggestions of possible etymological plays (here building on F. Cairns, Tibullus: A Hellenistic Poet at Rome [Cambridge 1979] 90–99); the general phenomenon, in any case, is clearly established, even if particular instances may be in doubt.Another recurrent type of note seeks to establish instances where Tibullus was the first to use a word in a new sense or to use a particular word combination (iunctura). Although the accidents of preservation make absolute claims in this area impossible, Murgatroyd makes an impressive case for Tibullus’ inventiveness. He is on more solid ground in his analyses of artistry in the word arrangement in individual lines and distichs. He has a very keen sense for this and demonstrates an impressive variety of... (shrink)

Solar Resources takes stock of the resource - sunlight - on which any plan for solar heat conversion technologies must be based. It describes the evolution of theoretical models, algorithms, and equipment for measuring, analyzing, and predicting the quantity and composition of solar radiation, and it reviews and directs readers to insolation databases and other references that have been compiled since 1975. Following an overview of solar energy research by the editor, Raymond J. Bahm presents a comprehensive guide to available (...) insolation databases and other information resources in the United States. Charles M. Randall and Richard Bird discuss the theoretical models and algorithms used to characterize the transference of solar radiation through the earth's atmosphere. Their chapter also addresses the important question of the accuracy of the data sets produced by the various modeling methods and algorithms. The National Weather Service monitoring network and other major monitoring networks in the United States are discussed by Kirby Hanson and Thomas Stoffel. And Eugene Zerlaut covers the instrumentation used to measure total solar irradiance and spectral solar irradiance; he describes types of equipment, their manufacturers, procedures for calibration, and the accuracy of the data produced. Richard Bird and Carol Riordan explain the nature of spectral solar irradiance at the earth's surface, and John Jensenius describes the NWS Operational Solar Insolation Forecast System, which predicts the daily total global-horizontal insolation for two days. In the concluding chapter, Claude Robbins summarizes daylighting models and resources, and details methods for converting insolation date to illuminance data. Solar Resources is volume 2 in the series Solar Heat Technologies: Fundamentals and Applications, edited by Charles A. Bankston. (shrink)

Hegels Philosophie des Geistes erhebt den Anspruch, den Menschen im Ganzen - durch und durch - als "geistig" zu denken. Thomas Oehl aktualisiert diesen Anspruch, indem er ihn an die gegenwartige philosophische Debatte um die sinnliche Wahrnehmung herantragt und damit kritisch in diese eingreift: Bereits in der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung verhalt sich der Mensch aktiv und nicht, wie es in seinem naheliegenden Selbst(miss)verstandnis scheint, passiv. In der Wahrnehmung konstituiert der Mensch Natur und Welt, und ist eben dadurch selbst nicht einfach (...) Teil der Natur oder Welt, sondern "Geist". "Geist" ist so, wie Hegel sagt, das "absolut Erste" der Natur. Wie Oehl weiter zeigt, schliesst dies ein, dass "Geist" sich gerade dort vollendet, wo er den Menschen von seinem Selbstmissverstandnis befreit, Natur zu sein. Damit stellt sich "Geist" als etwas heraus, das mehr ist als bloss der Mensch, da es den Menschen uber seine Selbstverkehrung hinausfuhrt. So wird ein neuer Zugang zu Hegels Philosophie des absoluten Geistes gewonnen, die eben dieses Geschehen als von Gott bewirkte Befreiung des Menschen von seiner Selbstverkehrung begreift, wie es in Kunst, Religion und Philosophie Gestalt gewinnt. Die vorliegende Arbeit wurde mit dem Promotionsforderpreis der Munchener Universitatsgesellschaft 2020 ausgezeichnet. (shrink)

Self-Knowledge: An Essay in Social Personalism proposes that social Personalism can best provide for self-knowledge. Thomas O. Buford offers a social personalist understanding of self-knowledge which focuses on the relation of persons to each other and to the Personal, and avoids the impersonalisms that erode the dignity of persons and their moral life which characterize modern life.

More than a purely philosophical problem, straddling the ambivalent terrain between necessity and impossibility, contingency seems to have become today the very horizon of our everyday life. Often used as a synonym for the precariousness of working conditions under neoliberalism, for the unknown threats posed by terrorism, or for the uncertain future of the planet itself, contingency needs to be calculated and controlled in the name of the protection of life. The overcoming of contingency is not only called upon to (...) justify questionable mechanisms of political control; it serves as a central legitimating factor for Enlightenment itself. In this volume, nine major philosophers and theorists address a range of questions around contingency and moral philosophy. How can we rethink contingency in its creative aspects, outside the dominant rhetoric of risk and dangerous exposure? What is the status of contingency-as the unnecessary and law-defying-in or for ethics? What would an alternative "ethics of contingency"-one that does not simply attempt to sublate it out of existence-look like? The volume tackles the problem contingency has always posed to both ethical theory and dialectics: that of difference itself, in the difficult mediation between the particular and the universal, same and other, the contingent singularity of the event and the necessary generality of the norms and laws. From deconstruction to feminism to ecological thought, some of today's most influential thinkers reshape many of the most debated concepts in moral philosophy: difference, agency, community, and life itself. Contributors: Étienne Balibar, Rosi Braidotti, Thomas Claviez, Drucilla Cornell, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Viola Marchi, Michael Naas, Cary Wolfe, Slavoj Žižek. (shrink)

Nous remercions chaleureusement Thomas Golsenne de nous avoir autorisé à reproduire le texte ci-dessous PM – Cette conférence a été présentée au Centre d'art contemporain du Parc Saint-Léger à Pougues-les-eaux le 4 avril 2017, en marge de l'exposition de Florentine Lamarche et Alexandre Ovize, Les motifs sauvages. Que sa directrice, Catherine Pavlovic, soit chaleureusement remerciée de son invitation. Florentine Lamarche et Alexandre Ovize, L'Artichaut, 2015 Dans leurs gros vases - Esthétique – Nouvel article.

Known as 'Darwin's Bulldog', the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley was a tireless supporter of the evolutionary theories of his friend Charles Darwin. Huxley also made his own significant scientific contributions, and he was influential in the development of science education despite having had only two years of formal schooling. He established his scientific reputation through experiments on aquatic life carried out during a voyage to Australia while working as an assistant surgeon in the Royal Navy; ultimately he became President (...) of the Royal Society. Throughout his life Huxley struggled with issues of faith, and he coined the term 'agnostic' to describe his beliefs. This nine-volume collection of Huxley's essays, which he edited and published in 1893–4, demonstrates the wide range of his intellectual interests. Volume 9 includes lectures delivered at Oxford University on the relationship between scientific thought and ethical problems. (shrink)

The third volume of newly translated selections from the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Fr. Richard Regan turns to his thoughts on the moral dimensions of human action. Focusing on the first part of the second folume of the Summa Theologiae, he deals with such topics as the ultimate human goal, human acts, emotions and virtues. Regan indicates that though Aquinas approaches these topics from the perspective of human reason, it is necessary for the reader to remember that his (...) overall viewpoint is that of a believer seeking to understand his faith. All can weigh the merits of these propositions due to their clarity of language, exposition, and structure. (shrink)

The coming of bioethics to Singapore / W. Calvin Ho and Sylvia S.N. Lim -- The impact of the bioethics advisory committee on the research community in Singapore / Charmaine K.M. Chan and Edison T. Liu -- Engaging the public : the role of the media / Chang Ai-Lien and Judith Tan -- Confucian trust and the biomedical regulatory framework in Singapore / Anh Tuan Nuyen -- The clinician-researcher : a servant of two masters? / Alastair V. Campbell, Jacqueline Chin, (...) and Teck Chuan Voo -- The US model for oversight of human stem cell research / Lindsay Parham and Bernard Lo -- Genetics and stem cell research : models of international policy-making / Bartha Maria Knoppers, Emily Kirby and Rosario Isasi -- Public engagement and bioethics commissions / Thomas H. Murray and Ross S. White -- Norm-making on human-animal chimeras and hybrids in Singapore, the United Kingdom and the international domain / W. Calvin Ho and Martin Bobrow -- How will future bioethical issues engage Singapore? / John Elliott. (shrink)

Ce texte a déjà paru dans L'espace Géographique, n° 1, 1er trim. 2007, p. 15-26. Nous remercions Rachel Thomas de nous avoir autorisé à le reproduire ici. Résumé : La thématique de la marche en ville a occupé une grande partie de la littérature du XIXe et du début du XXe siècle. Au point qu'aujourd'hui, la figure du flâneur, décrite par Walter Benjamin, domine encore nos représentations. Pour autant, si marcher en ville requiert un art du voir dont le (...) flâneur demeure un artiste accompli, il engage aussi le - Sociologie – Nouvel article. (shrink)

At a key moment in the 1988 presidential debates, Michael Dukakis claimed that the issue in the campaign was not ideology but competency. A major reason for Bush’s victory was that Dukakis was most competent at creating the illusion that even George Bush was competent. Even so, a useful way to begin some reflections on the law and literature revival is to note that even a hardened political pragmatist like Bush felt that it was in his political interest to declare (...) that the issue was indeed ideology. Bush’s insistence on the importance of ideology is noteworthy for those interested in the humanities because it seems to much at odds with the conservative position in current cultural politics. Ideology might be the issue in political campaigns, but for the conservatives it has no role in the humanities, which properly understood are the repository of essential human values. As contradictory as this position might seem, it is actually quite consistent. The ideological function of government is to impart to its citizens the proper values, values that find expression in great humanistic documents. To turn the role of the humanities from that of guarding and defending these sacred documents to that of demystifying them as ideological products is to undermine the possibility of government performing its proper ideological function. Radicals in the current wars over culture thus stand accused of subverting the fundamental values that the country represents. Brook Thomas is professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of Cross-Examinations of Law and Literature; Cooper, Hawthorne, Stowe, and Melville and The New Historicism and Other Old-Fashioned Topics. (shrink)

High quality images sell products. Here's how you do it. From cereal boxes to billboards to photos on Amazon, product photos have a strong impact on viewers. Now you can master the secrets of effective product photography with this essential guide. Author J. Dennis Thomas guides you through the basics, from selecting the right equipment and practicing different lighting techniques to controlling exposure, using backgrounds and props, and much more. Whether it's jewelry, food, fashion, or other products, learn how (...) to photograph for effective selling, while building the skills and tools you need for a career. Explains how to produce quality photos for product or commercial photography, including fashion, food, jewelry, technology, and more The author is a professional photographer whose work has been published in major U.S. magazines including Rolling Stone, Elle, W Magazine, and US Weekly Covers choosing the right equipment, practicing different lighting techniques, controlling exposure, using backgrounds and props, and more Gives new and even experienced photographers the tools they need to build careers in product photography Take photographs that impress, intrigue, dazzle, and sell with The Art and Style of Product Photography. (shrink)

Professor Frey expresses surprise at my assertion that, ultimately, nothing is provable in ethics. What about Pol Pot’s atrocities, he asks—surely we can all condemn them? Let us take a more recent example, the Beslan school massacre. The terrorists appear to have weighed against the unquestionably serious harm to the children the boost to their cause which they judged the attendant publicity would achieve. I may believe that even to attempt such a utilitarian assessment is obscene, and most would no (...) doubt agree. I cannot, however, prove that this is the wrong approach. A few people, at least, take a different view.The example shows the problem with utilitarian assessments where the harm is both certain and direct, the victims and beneficiaries are wholly distinct and the victims have no say in the assessment—precisely the pattern with vivisection.I do not, of course, advocate an ethical free for all. As I …. (shrink)

This essay examines the contemporary masculinity of straight, white men in the business classes of the United States as a category of identity. I argue that this form of masculine identity is currently in crisis, and, through a reading of the 1995 film Toy Story, develop an argument about the value of ‘downsizing’ masculinity in an era of diminished work expectations.

& co-graphy names here writing experienced as differance of ‘now’ and ‘then’, of memory and erasure called here ‘saw’ and ‘was’ and the rupture that const...

Macmurray’s understanding of the vocation of the artist and how it is that the artist can create and be are discussed in two sections. In the first, which is subdivided into four smaller sections, presents a discussion of what Macmurray means by ‘contemplation’. The second is devoted to the artist’s role in helping to bring about ‘the Kingdom of the Future’.

A stereospecific binding site is not the only determinant governing the selectivity of transport proteins. An understanding of transport across cellular membranes requires a description of the different compartments within a transmembrane channel; evidence for the existence of these compartments comes from the selectivity properties of genetically modified maltoporin. Such compartments may also be of significance in determining the specificity of other transport proteins.