Laura Nader is a towering figure as anthropologist, teacher, and public intellectual. Her letters give a glimpse of academic life mostly unseen by academics and by the general public. The collection includes letters from academic colleagues, but it also contains correspondence from lawyers, politicians, citizens, people on death row, Peace Corps workers, members of the military, scientists, and more.

Transparency is an underpinning of workplace ethics. However, most of the existing research has focused on the relationship between leader transparency and its consequences. Drawing on social and self-regulation theory research, we examine the antecedents of followers’ transparency. Specifically, we propose that followers have higher levels of transparency when they are working with peers who have a high level of transparency. We further suggest that followers’ conscientiousness and agreeableness moderate the relationship between peer transparency and followers’ transparency. Using a time-lagged (...) design, we provide support for the proposed theoretical model. We found that follower conscientiousness substitutes the social regulation effect, while follower agreeableness enhances this social regulation effect. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are also discussed. (shrink)

A companion volume to Free Will: A Philosophical Study, this new anthology collects influential essays on free will, including both well-known contemporary classics and exciting recent work. Agency and Responsibility: Essays on the Metaphysics of Freedom is divided into three parts. The essays in the first section address metaphysical issues concerning free will and causal determinism. The second section groups papers presenting a positive account of the nature of free action, including competing compatibilist and incompatibilist analyses. The third section concerns (...) free will and moral responsibility, including theories of moral responsibility and the challenge to an alternative possibilities condition posed by Frankurt-type scenarios. Distinguished by its balance and consistently high quality, the volume presents papers selected for their significance, innovation, and clarity of expression. Contributors include Harry Frankfurt, Peter van Inwagen, David Lewis, Elizabeth Anscombe, John Martin Fischer, Michael Bratman, Roderick Chisholm, Robert Kane, Peter Strawson, and Susan Wolf. The anthology serves as an up-to-date resource for scholars as well as a useful text for courses in ethics, philosophy of religion, or metaphysics. In addition, paired with Free Will: A Philosophical Study, it would form an excellent upper-level undergraduate or graduate-level course in free will, responsibility, motivation, or action theory. (shrink)

In Constructing the World, Chalmers seeks to articulate and defend an important epistemic accessibility thesis, the Scrutability of Truth, which is crucial to Chalmers’ rationalist approach to meaning and modality. Chapters 3 and 4 of the book are devoted to persuading us that the move from weaker to stronger forms of Scrutability is intuitively plausible. In these comments, I want to question this move. The plausibility of strong forms of Scrutability hinges on controversial views about epistemic norms for answering (...) ‘what is x?’ questions that semantic externalists have good reason to reject. (shrink)

Philosophers of quantum mechanics have generally addressed exceedingly simple systems. Laura Ruetsche offers a much-needed study of the interpretation of more complicated systems, and an underexplored family of physical theories, such as quantum field theory and quantum statistical mechanics, showing why they repay philosophical attention. She guides those familiar with the philosophy of ordinary QM into the philosophy of 'QM infinity', by presenting accessible introductions to relevant technical notions and the foundational questions they frame--and then develops and defends answers (...) to some of those questions. Finally, Ruetsche highlights ties between the foundational investigation of QM infinity and philosophy more broadly construed, in particular by using the interpretive problems discussed to motivate new ways to think about the nature of physical possibility and the problem of scientific realism. (shrink)

Do not chew with your mouth open! Take your hat off when you enter a church! Do not skip the queue! Pay your taxes! Do not cross on a red light! These are familiar imperatives, and their immediate source are ‘socially constructed norms’: norms that exist as a matter of social fact. These range from informal etiquette and politeness norms to the complex norms making up our legal systems. While we often feel bound by these norms, we are also aware (...) that they can be pernicious: the product of injustice and vehicles for its perpetuation. The question thus arises: when and why, if ever, does the fact that a socially constructed norm requires us to perform a certain action place us under a genuine moral obligation to comply? In Morality and Socially Constructed Norms, I answer that such an obligation, when it exists, is grounded in a broader, familiar duty, namely the duty to respect people’s permissible and authentic exercises of agency. This is what I call the ‘Agency-Respect View.’ The first part of the book outlines and defends the view, the second part considers relevant applications. (shrink)

Insights into the intelligence throughout the natural and technical environment, in the fabric of our devices and dwellings, in our clothes, and under our skin. Is there a way to understand the materials that surround us not as passive objects, but as other intelligences interacting with our own? In Parallel Minds, expert in materials science and nanotechnology Laura Tripaldi delivers not only detailed insights into the properties and emergent behaviors of matter as revealed by state-of-the-art chemistry, synthetic biology, and (...) nanotech, but also a rich philosophical reflection that crosses the frontier between nature and culture, where the most cutting-edge scientific syntheses resonate with ancient myth. The result is a technomaterial bestiary full of unexpected encounters with “strange minds”—from cobwebs to kevlar and carbon fibre, from centaurs to amoebas to arachnids, from polycephalic slime to resonating plasmons, from viruses to golems. Parallel Minds reveals the intelligence at large throughout the natural and technical environment, in the fabric of our devices and dwellings, in our clothes, and even under our skin. Full of lateral ideas and unexpected images, Tripaldi’s book imbues the study and synthesis of materials with a new urgency. For not only do the materials that surround us participate actively in the construction of the world in which we live, but harnessing their ability to interact intelligently with their environment could be the key to the future of our species. (shrink)

In his book, Defending the Undefendable, Walter Block makes the case that an individual counterfeiter of fiat notes does not commit a natural law crime, because money issued by the government is itself counterfeit. Several authors, including Murphy, Machaj, and Davidson, have taken issue with Block’s argument. In Davidson, I maintain that while the issuance and use of fiat currency by the state violates the natural law, fiat notes are not counterfeit, and their use by ordinary people is legitimate. (...) The private counterfeiter is a thief when he exchanges his notes with these innocents, because they are rightful owners of both the fiat currency and the goods for which it is exchanged. Block, in a rejoinder, disputes this on both ethical and utilitarian grounds. The present paper is a response to Block, and an elaboration of my original article. From a natural law perspective, I explore the ethical violations surrounding counterfeiting, and the legitimacy of producing and using fiat money by both the state and the individual. (shrink)

Against the tide of philosophers committed to this view this book presents a naturalistic view of human thinking, arguing that computers are merely...

In this comprehensive new study of human free agency, Laura Waddell Ekstrom critically surveys contemporary philosophical literature and provides a novel account of the conditions for free action. Ekstrom argues that incompatibilism concerning free will and causal determinism is true and thus the right account of the nature of free action must be indeterminist in nature. She examines a variety of libertarian approaches, ultimately defending an account relying on indeterministic causation among events and appealing to agent causation only in (...) a reducible sense. Written in an engaging style and incorporating recent scholarship, this study is critical reading for scholars and students interested in the topics of motivation, causation, responsibility, and freedom. In broadly covering the important positions of others along with its exposition of the author’s own view, Free Will provides both a significant scholarly contribution and a valuable text for courses in metaphysics and action theory. (shrink)

The Fold is a book of practical philosophy that takes a radical new approach to aesthetics. Laura U. Marks calls this philosophy "enfolding-unfolding aesthetics," based in ideas derived from Gilles Deleuze and others (G.F.W. Leibniz, David Bohm, and Édouard Glissant) that the universe is folded in on itself. She proposes a theory of mediation as contact and connection across the folds and a set of embodied methods for detecting such cosmic connections. In drawing out this aesthetics, Marks considers (...) the embodied and sensuous dimensions of engaging with audiovisual works and works of art-dimensions that Marks suggests are composed of the very folds that compose everything and everyone: all living beings, from humans to particles, sandwiches to stars, technologies, thoughts and images, in the present, the past, and the future. Making use of art and film, with a focus on African diaspora and Arab cinema, Marks opens ways to strengthen connections to the cosmos and to better trace processes of becoming that are immanent within the fold. (shrink)

Can humans flourish without destroying the earth? In this book, experts on many of the world's major and minor religious traditions address the question of human and earth flourishing. Each chapter considers specific religious ideas and specific environmental harms. Chapters are paired and the authors work in dialogue with one another. Taken together, the chapters reveal that the question of flourishing is deceptively simple. Most would agree that humans should flourish without destroying the earth. But not all humans have (...) equal opportunities to flourish. Additionally, on a basic physical level any human flourishing must, of necessity, cause some harm. These considerations of the price and distribution of flourishing raise unique questions about the status of humans and nature. This book represents a step toward reconciliation: that people and their ecosystems may live in peace, that people from different religious worldviews may engage in productive dialogue; in short, that all may flourish. (shrink)

Dr. Laura dives into the controversial topics and thorniest problems that face today's parents and grandparents, husbands and wives, men and women, and everyone seeking love, fulfillment, success -- or simply anyone who wants to be a decent and productive human being. With her trademark provocative, firm, but always thought-provoking and values-centered advice, Dr. Laura provides guidance that will inspire readers to be the very best they can be. Based on the tough-love advice from the calls and letters (...) Dr. Laura receives. (shrink)

The Victorian period in Britain was an “age of reform.” It is therefore not surprising that two of the era’s most eminent intellects described themselves as reformers. Both William Whewell and John Stuart Mill believed that by reforming philosophy—including the philosophy of science—they could effect social and political change. But their divergent visions of this societal transformation led to a sustained and spirited controversy that covered morality, politics, science, and economics. Situating their debate within the larger context of Victorian society (...) and its concerns, _Reforming Philosophy_ shows how two very different men captured the intellectual spirit of the day and engaged the attention of other scientists and philosophers, including the young Charles Darwin. Mill—philosopher, political economist, and Parliamentarian—remains a canonical author of Anglo-American philosophy, while Whewell—Anglican cleric, scientist, and educator—is now often overlooked, though in his day he was renowned as an authority on science. Placing their teachings in their proper intellectual, cultural, and argumentative spheres, Laura Snyder revises the standard views of these two important Victorian figures, showing that both men’s concerns remain relevant today. A philosophically and historically sensitive account of the engagement of the major protagonists of Victorian British philosophy, _Reforming Philosophy_ is the first book-length examination of the dispute between Mill and Whewell in its entirety. A rich and nuanced understanding of the intellectual spirit of Victorian Britain, it will be welcomed by philosophers and historians of science, scholars of Victorian studies, and students of the history of philosophy and political economy. (shrink)

"This book focuses on arguments from suffering against the existence of God and on a variety of issues concerning agency and value that they bring out. The central aim is to show the extent and power of arguments from evil. The book provides a close investigation of an under-defended claim at the heart of the major free-will-based responses to such arguments, namely that free will is sufficiently valuable to serve as the good, or prominently among the goods, that (...) provides a God-justifying reason for permitting evil in our world. Offering a fresh examination of traditional theodicies, it also develops an alternative line the author calls a divine intimacy theodicy. It makes an extended case for rejection of the position of skeptical theism. The book expands upon an argument from evil concerning a traditional doctrine of hell, which reveals a number of interesting issues concerning fault, agency, and blameworthiness. In response to recent work contending that the problem of evil is defanged since God's baseline attitude toward human beings is indifference, the book defends the essential perfect moral goodness of God. Finally it takes up the question of whether or not it makes sense to live a religious life as an agnostic or as an atheist"--. (shrink)

Aristotle's Topics is a handbook for dialectic, which can be understood as a philosophical debate between a questioner and a respondent. In book 2, Aristotle mainly develops strategies for making deductions about 'accidents', which are properties that might or might not belong to a subject (for instance, Socrates has five fingers, but might have had six), and about properties that simply belong to a subject without further specification. In the present commentary, here translated into English for the first time, (...) Alexander develops a careful study of Aristotle's text. He preserves objections and replies from other philosophers whose work is now lost, such as the Stoics. He also offers an invaluable picture of the tradition of Aristotelian logic down to his time, including innovative attempts to unify Aristotle's guidance for dialectic with his general theory of deductive argument (the syllogism), found in the Analytics. The work will be of interest not only for its perspective on ancient logic, rhetoric, and debate, but also for its continuing influence on argument in the Middle Ages and later. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.3 (2004) 107-115 [Access article in PDF] The Search for Narrative Laura Felleman Fattal The most cursory cultural investigator cannot help but notice that the visual arts have become a significant source and impetus for the narrative of contemporary books, theater, and dance. In recent memory, the following theatrical and dance performances "Contact" by Susan Stroman and John Weidman, "Art" by Yasmina Reza, (...) "Sunday in the Park with George" by Stephen Sondheim, book by James Lapine, "Les Miserables" by Claude-Michel Schfonberg/music and others, "Picasso at the Lapin Agile" by Steve Martin, and "The Sleep of Reason," by Antonio Buero-Vallego have taken the not-so-dead-life (natura morta) or still life of painting into the vital arena of the performing arts. The quest to seek intra-discipline aesthetics among dance, music, theater, and the visual arts is not the charge, but instead a turn to establish a narrative that has brought about this invasion of interactivity between the arts. Clearly defined boundaries between the arts have beenfading since Fluxus, Happenings, and Performance Art for over half a century. In the early part of the twentieth century, Marcel Duchamp's chess games and use of the fourth dimension of time in his numerous produced and pondered pieces all speak to the interrelatedness of the arts.Contemporary novels based on historical themes and subjects have created characters based on the lives and works of famous and intriguing artists such as Michelangelo Caravaggio, Georges de La Tour, and Jan Vermeer. The silence and pensive qualities of the figures of Jan Vermeer, the seventeenth-century Dutch painter, have been the catalyst for two books, The Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland and the Girl with the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier.1 Vreeland combines the mystic of the Vermeer paintings' characters with the impoverished history of the refugee status of its owners. In various parts of Vreeland's book the authenticity of the Vermeer painting becomes a subtext for describing the work. [End Page 107] Just the lament of some Dutch art historians. Where has such a treasure gone, or some such thing? He turned to pour us both a brandy. So why could this not be? It's his same window opening inward at the left that he has used so often, the same splash of pale yellow light. Take a look at the figures in the tapestry on the table. Same as in nine other paintings. Same Spanish chair with lion's head finials that he used in eleven canvases, same brass studs in the leather. Same black and white tiles placed diagonally on the floor.2A few pages later the interest in the authenticity of the painting continues: No, no signature. But that was not unusual. He often failed to sign his work. Besides, he had at least seven styles of signature. For Vermeer, signatures are not definite evidence. Technique is. Look at the direction of the brush's stroke, those tiny grooves of the brush hairs. They have their lighted and their shaded side. Look elsewhere. You'll find overlapping layers of paint no thicker than silk thread that give a minute difference in shade. That's what makes it a Vermeer.3In Girl with a Pearl Earring, Vermeer's slow and meticulous technique, obsessive involvement with his models and his assiduous composition of light over textures of both animate and inanimate surfaces in the painting become the core of the novel. He had come in and was standing in the studio, looking out a window. "Take a seat, please, Greit," he said, his back to me.I sat in the chair by the harpsichord. I did not touch it — I had never touched an instrument except to clean it. As I waited I studied the paintings he had hung on the back wall that would form part of the concert painting. There was a landscape on the left, and on the right a picture of three people — a woman playing a lute, wearing a dress that revealed much of... (shrink)

This guide offers practical templates and tools for supervisors hoping to refine the problem-solving, decision-making, and instruction of teachers under their supervision.

Focusing on a recent wave of international art cinema, Animal Worldsoffers the first sustained analysis of the relations between cinematic time and animal life. Through an aesthetic of extended duration, films such as Bestiaire(2010), The Turin Horse(2011) and A Cow's Life(2012) attend to animal worlds of sentience and perception, while registering the governing of life through biopolitical regimes. Bringing together Gilles Deleuze's writings on cinema and on animals - while drawing on Jacques Derrida, Jean-Christophe Bailly, Nicole Shukin and others - (...) the book argues that these films question the biopolitical reduction of animal life to forms of capital, opening up realms of virtuality, becoming and alternative political futures. (shrink)

"Hay formas de rabia que intensifican la desigualdad y otras que la combaten. Y en esta duplicidad están en juego diferentes comprensiones de la vida, la identidad y su relación con lo extraño. En distintas actitudes cotidianas y en varias de las decisiones políticas son visibles formas de miedo, odio y resentimiento. En las redes sociales y en las decisiones electorales, en los espacios cotidianos rutinarios y como respuesta a crisis inesperadas, la gente expresa su insatisfacción por aquello que percibe (...) como rechazable y amenazante: personas migrantes estigmatizadas, formas de vida asumidas como degeneradas, figuras públicas satanizadas. A su vez, el descontento ante la violencia y la desigualdad da vida a formas de enardecimiento que confrontan estas condiciones en apuestas políticas disidentes. Rabia: Afectos, violencia, inmunidad analiza estos afectos como experiencias complejas y conflictivas, emergidas históricamente, desde una aproximación situada y relacional del mundo social, mostrándonos. así que son fuerzas corporales vinculadas con la crisis ecológico-política que vivimos, de las que también puede emerger el impulso para enfrentarla."--. (shrink)

Drawing on macro-historical sociological theories, this book traces the development of intellectual property as a new type of legal property in the modern nation-state system. In its current form, intellectual property is considered part of an infrastructure of state power that incentivizes innovation, creativity, and scientific development, all engines of economic growth. To show how this infrastructure of power emerged, Laura Ford follows macro-historical social theorists, including Michael Mann and Max Weber, back to antiquity, revealing that legal instruments (...) very similar to modern intellectual property have existed for a long time and have also been deployed for similar purposes. Using comparative and historical evidence, this groundbreaking work reflects on the role of intellectual property in our contemporary political communities and societies; on the close relationship between law and religion; and on the extent to which law's obliging force depends on ancient, written traditions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Lynn Huffer's Mad For Foucault:An Analysis of Historical Eros?Laura HengeholdMad for Foucault is a remarkably beautiful book balanced on the edges between the personal, the impersonal, and the public and reflected through Foucault's own struggles to establish those divides. Huffer's goal in Mad for Foucault is to draw scholarly attention to the emotional and ethical content of Foucault's writing, as well as to assess the risks of (...) queer theory's dependence on dialectics and psychoanalytic theory. Reading History of Sexuality I in light of History of Madness, she argues, renders the ethical aspects of Foucault's early project clear and reveals the continuity with his later work on ethics, putting the central concerns of queer theory in a different light. But this continuity is only visible through attention to the lyrical force resulting from tensions between these edges, which also separate genders and epochs, as if Las Meninas were to draw the viewer's gaze toward a fractured mirror rather than a sovereign one.The elements of History of Sexuality I that have been most important for the queer theorists Huffer engages are Foucault's attempt to date the shifts from a perception of sinful acts to a perception of homosexual personality types, and his warning that reifying such personality types as "identities" in hopes of liberation from heterosexist oppression continues to support the social mechanisms that identify personal truth with sexuality. Some (associated with Judith Butler) have tried to develop an account of agency that owes less to the exclusions of traditional moral and psychological theories but risks establishing its own hierarchies of psychic "health." Others (Lee Edelman is exemplary) [End Page 226] have also argued that the affects associated with these acts and identities, and possibly the ethical attitudes arising from these affects, are historical effects that must be bracketed in the name of resisting biopower (Huffer 2010, 94-95).Both groups, Huffer argues, have merely performed a dialectical reversal within the order of sexualities inherited from the nineteenth century, without appreciating Foucault's effort to cast the very terms of that order into question—above all, in History of Madness (Huffer 2010, 113-16). What is more disturbing, both sides have enlisted psychoanalysis on their behalf, although Foucault remained skeptical of psychoanalysis. In History of Madness (2006a), Foucault's skepticism was justified in the name of the affective attachments of queer life and his deeply felt fascination for the traces of a sexual hybridity almost erased from European history. For Huffer, the real question posed by both History of Sexuality I and History of Madness is not, as queer theorists might believe, "why sexuality became a moral issue" (and how might it cease to be one) but who was buried when the nineteenth-century medicalization of sexuality replaced erotic experience with explanations of sexual abnormalities (2010, 229). She reads Foucault's work as a meditation on the ethical tragedy presented by the scattered ashes of even "infamous men."Although there are many themes I could address, I will let my comments be guided by Huffer's reading of the explicit and implicit critique of psychoanalysis found in Foucault's work, and its relation to Foucault's ambivalent Kantianism (2010, 127-33, 134). This critique comes from several directions. First, throughout all his works, including Archeology of Knowledge, Foucault criticizes interpretive approaches to the historical record and to human speech. Practices such as "commentary" reduce the variety of events that can be perceived in the historical field and turn some into the content or meaning of others, which are thereby privileged metaphysically as "more real." Second, Foucault criticizes power relations forcing some to confess and to interpret the products of their own confession in terms of the meanings religious or medical authorities insist on finding there. From the seventeenth century through the present, such authorities have identified work and family-oriented behavior as "reasonable" and have forced those whose behavior does not fit those terms to understand themselves as deviations from that norm (Huffer 2010, 105, 107-108).Third, according to Huffer, Foucault subjects belief in the psyche as scientific object and focus of work on the self to historical analysis... (shrink)

Numinous spaces in British literature from William Wordsworth to Samuel Beckett -- Jesus figures in American literature from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Edward Albee -- Using Bakhtin's definitions to discover ethical voices in Solzhenitsyn and Tolstoy -- René Girard's categories of scapegoats in literature of the American South -- Hopkins's metaphysics of nature as sacred disclosure -- The book of job as mirrored in Hopkins's metaphysics -- Beckett's mythos of the absence of God.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A THOMISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE GAIA HYPOTHESIS: HOW NEW IS THIS NEW LOOK AT LIFE ON EARTH? LAURA LANDEN, 0.P. Providence College Providence, Rhode Island W:HAT IS THE Gaia hypothesis? A recent article in Time magazine mentions the first major scientific conerence on Gaia, sponsored by the American Geophysical Union in 1988.1 The scientists ended their meeting by giving James Lovelock an exuberant standing ovation. Lovelock 's (...) class='Hi'>book Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, first published in 1979, is now in its second edition.2 James E. Lovelock, British atmospheric chemist, introduced the Gaia hypothesis in 1975. This hypothesis emerged from his comparison of the chemical composition of Earth's atmosphere with the atmospheres of Venus and Mars. He found the contrast striking: Earth's atmosphere, hospitable to life, is markedly unlike the atmospheres of her two closest neighbors, Venus and Mars, both considered lifeless. Unsatisfied with mere chance as an explanation of this difference, Lovelock attributed a kind of active influence on the atmosphere by the whole of living organisms (called the biosphere) to effect conditions favorable for life. The following is taken from Lovelock's initial article on Gaia in 1975 : 1 Eugene Linden, "How the Earth Maintains Life," Time, November 13, 1989, p. 114. 2 See James E. Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). Lovelock has published more recent work on Gaia. See James E. Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth (New York: Bantam Books, 1990). 1 2 LAURA LANDEN, O.P. It appeared to us that the Earth's biosphere is able to control at least the temperature of the Earth's surface and the composition of the atmosphere. Prima facie, the atmosphere looked like a contrivance put together co-operatively by the totality of living systems to carry out certain necessary control functions. This led to the formulation of the proposition that living matter, the air, the oceans, the land surface were parts of a giant system which was able to control temperature, the composition of the air and sea, the pH of the soil and so on as to be optimum for survival of the biosphere. The system seemed to exhibit the behaviour of a single organism, even a living creature. One having such formidable powers deserved a name to match it; William Golding, the novelist, suggested Gaia-the name given by the ancient Greeks to their Earth goddess.• In this paper I present some of the factual evidence for the Gaia hypothesis and identify the underlying concepts of this position. Next, I note some reasons the hypothesis has encountered objections within the scientific community. Finally, I look to Aristotle and to Thomas Aquinas, as commentator, for insight as to how these apparent contrasts might find resolution. The factual evidence for Lovelock's claim lies in known measurements about the atmospheres of Venus, Earth, and Mars. In addition, he was able to construct a mathematical model of an abiological Earth. The following comparisons are of interest : GASES. PLANETS Lifeless Actual Venus Earth Mars Earth Carbon Dioxide 96.5% 98% 95% 0.03% Nitrogen 3.5% 1.9% 2.7% 79% Oxygen trace 0.0% 0.13% 21% Surface Temp °C 459 240to -53 13 340 aJames E. Lovelock and Sidney Epton, "The Quest for Gaia," New Scientist 65 (1975) : 304. 'Table taken from Lovelock, Ages, p. 9. GAIA HYPOTHESIS: A THOMIST ANALYSIS 3 Carbon dioxide, one of the " greenhouse " gases, is related to surface temperature. Nitrogen and oxygen, both highly reactive gases, are essential to life as we know it. When he first proposed the Gaia hypothesis, Lovelock himself may not have been aware of the ancient roots of the concept of earth, even the universe, as a living organism. J. Donald Hughes has traced this ancient view among the Greeks and Romans, noting the following progression : First, the Earth is the oldest goddess, supporter and nurturer of her children, human and non-human, and therefore entitled to respect and worship.... Second, the Earth is a living being of whom humans are only part. Right relationship with the Earth means that the total organism is... (shrink)

A new assessment of baron d’Holbach (1723-1789), his works, his circle and his legacy, gathering together generations of d’Holbach scholars to analyse multiple aspects of his diverse intellectual commitment from fresh perspectives.