Kepler's Somnium is a fantastical story about the world on the moon. It presents a heliocentric world-picture established through a total conversion of the meaning and place of observation in the hierarchy of knowledge. This epistemological program is construed through a critical adaptation of Lucian's "True Story," and Plutarch's "The Face on the Moon." Utilizing his new optics, embodied in the Camera obscura, Kepler inverts the meaning of these classical texts together with the reader's point of view. Astronomical knowledge is (...) vindicated and scientific observation is the only way out of an obscure and mannerist dream. (shrink)

This paper discusses how the teaching of ethics can be interwoven with the most basic concept in finance: time value of money. Although valuation formulas yield precise numerical answers, they require many assumptions about future economic conditions. If decision makers use false information or erroneous assumptions, they will arrive at an incorrect value estimate, even if the calculations are performed correctly. Thus, the valuation process can be manipulated byunscrupulous participants. This concept is illustrated with references to recent events. Examples appropriate (...) for classroom use are included in an appendix. (shrink)

Light is strangely absent from most accounts of the environment. From photosynthesis to vitamin D, however, light is central to human well-being. Human circadian rhythms are keyed the alternation of dark and light. Erosion of the ozone layer makes skin cancer a growing threat from excess ultraviolet radiation. Light plays a significant role in health and illness. In changing historical circumstances, light continues to evoke and to express significant issues of value.

Don Green and Ian Shapiro's Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory, despite the impressive amount of work that has gone into it, is undercut by a number of serious misunderstandings of the use of the rational choice approach by students of American politics. Furthermore, Green and Shapiro adopt an extremely pinched notion of an empirical contribution and an outmoded and idealized view of the scientific method. If their standards were adopted, it would be difficult to allow that anyone in political science (...) has made an empirical contribution, or that political science is a scientific enterprise. (shrink)

For several decades, Dr. Morris has worked primarily with twoproblems: the development of a general theory of signs, and thedevelopment of a general theory of value. He approached both problemsin terms of George Mead's theory of action or behavior. This bookbrings together these two lines of development. For several decades, Dr. Morris has worked primarily with two problems: the development of a general theory of signs, and the development of a general theory of value. He approached both problems (...) in terms of George Mead's theory of action or behavior. This book brings together these two lines of development. In many languages there is a term like the English "meaning" which has two poles: that which something signifies and the value or significance of what is signified. The nature of signification and significance, as well as their relations within human behavior, is the subject matter of this book. This book is addressed to philosophers and to students of the behavioral sciences, but it will also appeal to anyone seriously interested in the study of human communication. (shrink)

Rethinking Existentialism, by WebberJonathan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 229.

Despite an assumption that Christchurch — the Garden City of New Zealand — has historically been viewed as the manifestation of a utopian dream, the experiences of the city's gardeners reveal a variety of sentiments about the meaning of gardens. Hillside gardeners, in particular, tended to see their gardens and their place in them in very different ways from their counterparts on the flat. These hillside gardens were places that allowed for an explicit appreciation of internationalism, localism, and an often (...) spiritual connection with the world at large. They were `celestial', paradisical, and I therefore argue that tropes of utopias and paradise may sit uneasily with each other in colonial discourse. This point requires further attention from historians. (shrink)

Lost in the debate over the use of racial and ethnic categories in biomedical research is community-level analysis of how these categories function and influence health. Such analysis offers a powerful critique of national and transnational categories usually used in biomedical research such as “African-American” and “Native American.” Ethnographic research on local African-American and Native American communities in Oklahoma shows the importance of community-level analysis. Local health practices tend to be shared by members of an everyday interactional community without regard (...) to racial or ethnic identity. Externally created practices tend to be based on the existence of externally-imposed racial or ethnic identities, but African-American and Native American community members show similar patterns in their use of extra-community practices. Thus, membership in an interactional community seems more important than externallyimposed racial or ethnic identity in determining local health practices, while class may be as or more important in accounting for extra-community practices. (shrink)

Believing Philosophy introduces Christians to philosophy and the tools it offers believers, helping them understand, articulate, and defend their faith in an age of unbelief.

This study examines social issues shareholder resolutions filed at S&P 500 companies in 2007. These firms received 86% of all social issues resolutions filed. Findings indicate that green resolutions were the most common single type (30% of social issues resolutions), but nearly one third (32%) of resolutions contained non-traditional content. Firms were more likely to be targeted if they were large in size and demonstrated poor treatment of employees and customers. As might be expected, the primary sponsors of social issues (...) resolutions were socially responsible investment funds, religious groups, and pension funds. Surprisingly, over half (52%) of resolutions made it onto proxy ballots in 2007, while there was sufficient dialogue between the target companies and shareholder activists for filers to withdraw only 29% of the resolutions (although 41% of green resolutions were withdrawn). Resolution content and firm response differed by type of filer. (shrink)

Eros and Illness explores the place of desire in illness. We urgently need such an exploration because illness is no longer simply a natural feature of the human condition. Most people fall ill, but illness now falls under the supervision of biomedicine, a science-based, state-regulated system dominated by the new molecular gaze. The use of a person's distinctive genetic data to guide treatment and to forestall disease--called "personalized medicine"-- reflects how the molecular gaze can produce valuable advances in biomedical healthcare. (...) What does this indispensable super-vision, however, tend to overlook? Eros and Illness proposes that biomedicine ignores, in clinical practice and in bench science, the powerful role of desire in illness. Desire, always double-edged, requires attention because it can do both great harm and great good. Patients, caregivers, family members, and physicians, as they recognize the role of desire, gain access to a power that can make the passage through illness much less onerous and far more healing: truly "personalized. (shrink)

Despite his place as one of the most original thinkers of the Middle Ages, the legacy of Joachim of Fiore has eluded clear comprehension in at least two areas, those of texts and transmission. That is, Joachim studies have, until most recently, been limited by a lack of modern editions for Joachim’s works, and by an incomplete understanding of how the revolutionary ideology inspired by a twelfth-century abbot from Calabria ultimately came to be appropriated by disparate groups such as the (...) Spiritual Franciscans, the Münster Anabaptists, and Spanish missionaries in colonial Latin America. Yet there has been much scholarship, of exacting standards and of immense value, which has pushed forward our knowledge of... (shrink)