This volume is fifth in a series, Monuments of Western Thought. Most of the book consists of excerpts from the works of Bacon and Descartes The selections from Bacon are the preface and plan of The Great Instauration, parts of the New Organon, a bit of Advancement of Learning, and all of The New Atlantis. The selections from Descartes are a short passage from the Discourse on Method and all of the Meditations. The text is introduced by a historical sketch (...) of the intellectual, social, and political context in which Bacon and Descartes lived, and by brief intellectual biographies. The volume closes with short critical selections, pointing up and commenting on important issues in the source material. On Bacon: A. N. Whitehead deals with Bacon's concept of matter, the justification of induction, and Bacon's emphasis on quality; C. D. Broad discusses Bacon's concept of "Form" and its relation to the principle of limited variety; R. F. Jones discusses the Idols, especially the Idol of the Market-place, and Bacon's stress on experimentation; B. Farrington interprets Bacon's rejection of scholasticism as part of the contemporary effort to return to the Hebrew origins of Christianity. On Descartes: A. Koyré deals with consequences of the Cartesian identification of matter with extension; S. V. Keeling discusses the importance of the cogito and interprets it as giving knowledge of the existence of a substantival self; A. B. Gibson interprets Cartesian personalism as the foundation of a realism; M. Versfeld interprets Cartesian personalism as an error making knowledge impossible. Each section is followed by a few questions designed to force the student to think about what he has read and to return to the text.--L. G. (shrink)

Rendell and Whitehead's thorough review dispels notions that culture is an exclusive faculty of humans and higher primates. We applaud the authors, but differ with them regarding the evolution of cetacean culture, which we argue resulted from the availability of abundant but spatially and temporally patchy prey such as schooling fish. We propose two examples of gene-culture coevolution: (1) acoustic abilities and acoustic traditions, and (2) transmission of environmental information and longevity.

All the authors of the sixteen essays gathered in this volume are concerned, in their different ways, to clarify, criticize, and develop key ideas and insights of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), one of the towering figures of twentieth-century speculative thought, whose "process philosophy" has, in recent decades, aroused intense intellectual interest both in this country and abroad. The present volume is intended to complement, but not to duplicate, an earlier selection of important Whitehead studies, Alfred North Whitehead: (...) Essays on His Philosophy, ed. G. L. Kline (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1963). (shrink)

G. Deledalle is the author of a Histoire de la philosophie américaine, and of some excellent studies on Dewey, such as La pédagogie de Dewey, philosophie de la continuité, and "Durkheim et Dewey". These are all works that deserve full attention by students of the Golden Age of American philosophy. For a European, Deledalle has an unusual capacity to detect the vitality and freshness, but also the depth, of the growth of higher education in the U.S. in the first half (...) of this century. At the heart of this growth were philosophical ideas, and in particular those of Dewey. Philosophy did not have then dictatorial or competitive designs regarding education, the social and political sciences, psychology, or the natural sciences. It freely mingled with them, not just imparting methodological or epistemological rigor but also contributing some insights and giving the hypotheses and conclusions in these fields the character of "experiences." Experience is the guiding theme of this rich and complicated work, covering a multitude of subjects and positions. The treatment is divided into six parts dealing respectively with Dewey's leanings toward unitary experience, organic experience, dynamic experience, functional experience, instrumental experience, and transactional experience. In the study of the intellectual of Dewey's life practically all of his production is critically examined by Deledalle: a monumental task in itself, made possible by the critical bibliography of Milton Hasley Thomas. There is enough early biographical detail to make this work an effective and affectionate intellectual portrait. The best pages of this work are devoted to a thorough explication and comparative study of Dewey's final synthesis of experience. There are very helpful comparative references to Marx, Freud, Bergson, and Heidegger, and also indispensable parallels and contrasts with Peirce, James, and Whitehead. This is not a modest contribution from a regional point of view: Deledalle is, perhaps more than anybody else, aware of an ongoing international dialogue on Dewey, a dialogue that is preserving experience as a problem-complex at the front line of contemporary reflection.--A. de L. M. (shrink)

Die zentrale Rolle des Gedächtnisses in der Entwicklung von Lebewesen wurde von Biologen wie Ernst Haeckel, Ewald Hering und Jakob von Uexküll erkannt, wobei zwischen einem Artgedächtnis und einem individuellen Gedächtnis unterschieden wird. Ersteres ist für die Aufrechterhaltung und Weiterentwicklung einer artspezifischen Erscheinungsform verantwortlich, letzteres gestaltet die Erinnerung an individuelle Erfahrungen. Im vorliegenden Band werden die Vorstellungen dieser Biologen mit Ideen der Philosophen G.W.F. Hegel, Alfred N. Whitehead, John Dewey, Ernst Cassirer, Henri Bergson und Reto L. Fetz in einer (...) kohärenten Theorie der Organismen, die auch den Menschen und seine Geschichte umfasst, aufeinander abgestimmt. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 183-187 [Access article in PDF] The 2001 Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies Edward L. Shirley St. Edward's University The annual meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies met in Denver, Colorado, on Friday and Saturday, November 16 and 17, 2001. This year's papers addressed the question of "dual belonging" from both Buddhist and Christian perspectives.On Friday afternoon, two papers were delivered, the first (...) paper by Catherine Cornille, who suggested three categories of dual belonging: syncretism, drawing elements from both traditions; belief that both traditions point to a higher reality, which may not be expressible in itself; and inculturation, incorporating local symbols and rituals into a tradition that is being transplanted from elsewhere. She then focused on the issue of inculturation.Inculturation, she argued, assumed an essence of a religion that had independent existence from cultural expressions. The people involved in the process of inculturation may not, in fact, believe that they are dual practitioners, but rather that they are simply expressing the essence of a tradition through new symbols. She understands this as belonging to a symbol from one religious tradition (e.g., Christ) while using the hermeneutical tools of another.The caveat that must be acknowledged in this process, according to Cornille, is that it is impossible to separate religious developments from their roots. For example, while there has been some talk of a "Christian Vedanta," the fact is Vedanta was developed in a particular context, and cannot be separated from its Vedic roots. At the same time, however, it must be admitted that religious traditions have, in fact, historically developed in such a manner. As Cornille points out, Greek expressions are not in themselves Christian, but have in fact helped to shape Christianity, as, for example, in the Nicene Creed.Ruben Habito, who focused more on his personal journey, delivered the second paper. In his late twenties, while still in Jesuit formation, he was sent to Japan and there was introduced to the practice of Zen. He spoke of his meditation on the mu koan, and his first experience of kensho, direct insight. He went on to further koan meditation from there.As he was preparing for ordination as a Jesuit priest, he began to wonder: How did [End Page 183] he still deal with Jesus, the Trinity, Incarnation, and the Paschal Mystery if he was committed to Zen practice? He found his answer in his Jesuit training: He was being called to continued metanoia, the continual movement from self to love. In Zen terms, he was undergoing a continuing process of transformation.In Buddhism, it is said that the myriad beings are one's true self. This is the meaning of the phrase "to be awakened by the myriad beings." In the Buddhist tradition, one of those myriad beings who assist in awakening is the bodhisattva Kanzeon, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. In the Christian tradition, this function is often associated with the Virgin Mary. The iconography of these two figures is often quite similar, to the point that early Jesuits took the figure of Kanzeon to be the Virgin Mary. During times of persecution, Japanese Christians would use a double-sided figure, with Kanzeon on one side and Mary on the other. This composite of Maria-Kannon has become, for Habito, a symbol of the potential of being nourished by the two traditions.The first response was from Jay McDaniel, who drew an analogy from biology. Some trees have two sets of roots, one a deep taproot and the other a secondary root system. Could this be an image for those drawing from two paths?McDaniel's response was based on his personal encounters with two traditions. He spoke of how reading Thomas Merton twenty-five years ago changed his life and helped him overcome a fundamentalist Christian background. He spoke of how Ruben Habito has helped him understand what it means to walk two paths. Like Whitehead, he feels that he can say "yes" to both a Personal God and to the Ultimate Reality of Emptiness... (shrink)

The article discusses the issue of the nature of analytic philosophy. It is shown that in the 1920s–1940s it was a certain philosophical school, whose representatives were united by some initial principles. Analytic philosophers saw the main task of philosophy in the analysis of the language of natural sciences, in establishing logical connections between scientific propositions, in the empirical substantiation of scientific theories and in the elimination of speculative concepts and proposals from the language of science. The tool for such (...) analysis was the mathematical logic created at the beginning of the 20th century by G. Frege, A.N. Whitehead, B. Russell. Another characteristic feature of the analytic tradition was a negative attitude toward philosophical speculation. Adherents of this tradition believed that philosophy does not provide knowledge about the world, therefore, it is not a science. Analytic philosophers have made a significant contribution to the methodology of scientific knowledge, offering an accurate description of the hypothetical-deductive structure of scientific theory, methods of scientific explanation and prediction, verification, confirmation and refutation of scientific statements. In the late 1930s, most of the analytic philosophers emigrated to England and the United States. The analytic movement is gradually losing its integrity and loses the features of a philosophical school. There is a rejection of mathematical logic as the main means of analysis, the connection with the natural sciences has been lost. In the second half of the 20th century, analytic philosophy from a specific philosophical school turns into a certain style of thinking of the philosophers of various philosophical research areas and orientations. (shrink)

A fundamental tenet of the process philosophy founded by alfred north whitehead and charles hartshorne is that god's causal agency in the world is solely "persuasive," in contradistinction to much of traditional christian theism which portrays a more "coercive" god. The article, However, Seeks to show that hartshorne's God would appear to be somewhat coercive, E.G., In the imposition of the natural laws which are the limits to creaturely freedom and in the "luring" of creaturely actualizations of novel possibilities (...) within those limits. Divine coercion seems to be both a fact and a necessity in hartshorne's metaphysics, Despite his explicit denials. (shrink)

Обобщен опыт работы по диагностике микробиологических повреждений памятников искусства и культуры. Большой иллюстративный материал и конкретные примеры проведения микологических экспертиз памятников помогут разобраться в представленном материале.

The ethical pre-condition of randomised controlled trials is, at present, the presence of equipoise. This refers to an opinion of the investigator that there is uncertainty as to the merits of the treatments being compared. It is argued that since the decision to enrol is the potential subject’s, the investigator’s opinion is not ethically relevant. It is proposed instead that equipoise be patient-centred, and that a trial is in equipoise for a patient when enrolling gives them the same chance of (...) a good outcome as not enrolling. It is shown that trial enrolment is normally easily the best strategy for achieving a good outcome, and that trials currently thought to be unethical may be in patient-centred equipoise. This is so for three reasons: (1) patients in trials receive superior care, (2) trial enrolment minimises the risk of being a victim of a therapeutic disaster and (3) health professionals make mistakes, and a 50% chance of receiving the worse treatment until a trial reports is always better than any chance of receiving the worse treatment indefinitely. It is concluded that so long as the standard of professional conduct is the furtherance of patients’ objective interests randomised controlled trials are ethical. (shrink)

v. 1. De l'ineffable et de l'Un -- v. 2. De la triade et de l'unifié -- v. 3. De la procession.

A particle of molecular dimensions which can exist in two states is associated with a membrane pore through which molecules of a gas can pass. The gas molecules from two identical phases on either side of the membrane may pass only when the particle is in one particular state. If certain restrictions are imposed on the system, then the particle appears to act like a Maxwell's Demon(1) which “handles” the gas molecules during their passage through the pore.

It is always possible to construct a real function f, given random quantities X and Y with continuous distribution functions F and G, respectively, in such a way that f(X) and f(Y), also random quantities, have both the same distribution function, say H. This result of De Finetti introduces an alternative way to somehow describe the `opinion' of a group of experts about a continuous random quantity by the construction of Fields of coincidence of opinions (FCO). A Field of coincidence (...) of opinions is a finite union of intervals where the opinions of the experts coincide with respect to that quantity of interest. We speculate on (dis)advantages of Fields of Opinion compared to usual `probability' measures of a group and on their relation with a continuous version of the well-known Allais' paradox. (shrink)

At the beginning of the 1950s, Reinhold Niebuhr used the Christian concept of ‘irony’ to explain the difficult condition of the United States in the international system. In The Irony of American History the protestant theologian analyzed the ambiguity of American foreign policy during the first years of the Cold War. According to Niebuhr, the United States was involved in an ironic confutation of its sense of virtue, strength, security and wisdom. This confutation was due not only to its lack (...) of (Christian) realism but also to its false claim to dominate history. After the Fall of the Berlin Wall, when America became the most powerful nation of the international system, the irony of its history did not disappear. Even in a totally different situation for structure and distribution of power, compared to the one of sixty years ago, the ambiguous situation the United States is dealing with, can be spelt out trough irony again. This article discusses the lasting validity of the concept of ‘irony’ used to explain American present and, perhaps, future. (shrink)

On August 29, 1995, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio ruled that certain practices of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Ohio relating to the calculation of copayments on insurance claims violated provisions of ERISA, and thus BCBSO could be liable for unpaid benefits and breach of fiduciary duty ). According to BCBSO's Explanation of Benefits and Schedule of Benefits, beneficiaries were responsible for a 20 percent copayment for hospital charges, and the remaining 80 percent (...) of the Provider's Reasonable Charges would be paid by BCBSO. BCBSO negotiated with the hospitals to create discount agreements whereby the actual charge to BCBSO was less than 80 percent of the total amount of the hospital's charges. By this arrangement, BCBSO paid less than 80 percent of what patients were billed; concurrently, patients paid more than 20 percent of the amount ultimately paid to hospitals for their services. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that normative reasons are hyperintensional and put forward a formal account of this thesis. That reasons are hyperintensional means that a reason for a proposition does not imply that it is also a reason for a logically equivalent proposition. In the first part we consider three arguments for the hyperintensionality of reasons: an argument from the nature of reasons, an argument from substitutivity and an argument from explanatory power. In the second part we describe a (...) hyperintensional logic of reasons based on justification logics. Eventually we discuss the philosophical import of this proposal and highlight some limitations and possible developments. (shrink)

For a period of almost twenty years Aldous Huxley made use in his novels and biographies of the theories of physique and character developed by the psychometrist William Sheldon. This is most clearly seen in the novel Time must have a stop, whose characters follow Sheldon's theories in the most intricate and precise fashion. Huxley's use of Sheldon's work in this novel will be examined, and his motives for embarking on this relatively rare use of science in literature discussed.

An interdisciplinary course was designed as an introduction to the applications of, and the socio-economic issues associated with, biotechnology. College students enrolled in the course were surveyed prior to the first formal lecture, and again upon completion of the course. Assessment was made of the impact of the educational materials on the attitudes and perceptions of the students toward the applications of biotechnology to agriculture. Data were collected for the first three semesters in which the course was offered. Answers to (...) survey questions were analyzed on a before and after basis. It was found that students were very accepting of biotechnology prior to taking the course, despite a generally low level of exposure to this type of technology. The course was effective in increasing the knowledge base of the students, but not as effective in allaying their perceptions of risks associated with biotechnology. (shrink)

В указателе собраны изданные в стране за период 1990-2008 гг. сочинения, представителей религиозно-философской мысли русского зарубежья, начало творчества которых в России пришлось на конец XIX в. Для специалистов.

Монография посвящена вопросу о специфики исторических условий, в которых возникает ка античная демократия. так и демократия Нового и Новейшего времени. Для специалистов.