Researchers from diverse disciplines, including organismal and cellular physiology, sports science, human nutrition, evolution and ecology, have sought to understand the causes and consequences of the surprising variation in metabolic rate found among and within individual animals of the same species. Research in this area has been hampered by differences in approach, terminology and methodology, and the context in which measurements are made. Recent advances provide important opportunities to identify and address the key questions in the field. By bringing together (...) researchers from different areas of biology and biomedicine, we describe and evaluate these developments and the insights they could yield, highlighting the need for more standardisation across disciplines. We conclude with a list of important questions that can now be addressed by developing a common conceptual and methodological toolkit for studies on metabolic variation in animals. (shrink)

Wittgenstein was one of the most powerful influences on contemporary philosophy, yet he shunned publicity and was essentially a private man. This remarkable, vivid, personal memoir is written by one of his friends, the eminent philosopher Norman Malcolm. Reissued in paperback, this edition includes the complete text of fifty-seven letters which Wittgenstein wrote to Malcolm over a period of eleven years. Also included is a concise biographical sketch by another of Wittgenstein's philosopher friends, Georg Henrik von Wright. 'A (...) reader does not need to care about philosophy to be excited by Mr Malcolm's book; it is about Wittgenstein as a man, and its interest is human interest'. (shrink)

At a time when interest in the Wittgensteinian tradition has quickened, this volume brings together fourteen essays by Norman Malcolm, a prominent philosopher ...

A simple numerical procedure is presented for the problem of estimating the parameters of models for the distribution of eggs oviposited in a host. The modelling is extended to incorporate both host density and time dependence to produce a remarkably parsimonious structure with only seven parameters to describe a data set of over 3,000 observations. This is further refined using a mixed model to accommodate several large outliers. Both models show that the level of superparasitism declines with increasing host density, (...) and the rate declines over time. It is proposed that the differing behaviours represented by the mixed model may reflect a balance between behavioural strategies of different selective benefit. (shrink)

En el núcleo de nuestra imagen de sentido común se encuentra la idea de que los seres humanos somos agentes, es decir, orientamos nuestras acciones a partir de pensamientos, intenciones y deseos. En este texto, Norman Malcolm examina si disponer de una teoría neurofisiológica completa podría llevarnos a abandonar esta suposición. Malcolm argumenta que nuestras explicaciones cotidianas del comportamiento humano dependen de principios a priori que conectan a lo mental con la acción. Puesto que las explicaciones proporcionadas por (...) una teoría neurofisiológica completa dependerían de leyes contingentes, no de verdades conceptuales, tales explicaciones estarían en competencia con las explicaciones psicológicas. Para respaldar esta afirmación, Malcolm introduce un supuesto que se ha vuelto extremadamente influyente en el debate sobre la causación mental: el ‘principio de exclusión causal’. Si las leyes neurofisiológicas fuesen suficientes para explicar la acción, entonces podría prescindirse por completo de las explicaciones psicológicas. La incompatibilidad entre explicaciones psicológicas y explicaciones neurofisiológicas sumada a que las primeras involucran verdades conceptuales parecería conducir a una refutación a priori de la posibilidad de una teoría neurofisiológica completa. Pero la conclusión de Malcolm es más moderada. Él afirma que tal teoría es inconcebible; aun así, sigue siendo una posibilidad lógica. (shrink)

Acclaimed writer and historian Noel Malcolm presents his sensational discovery of a new work by Thomas Hobbes : a propaganda pamphlet on behalf of the Habsburg side in the Thirty Years' War, translated by Hobbes from a Latin original. Malcolm's book explores a fascinating episode in seventeenth-century history, illuminating both the practice of early modern propaganda and the theory of "reason of state".

Jean-Paul Sartre was once described as being the most famous Frenchman of the twentieth century, after President Charles de Gaulle! Certainly from 1945 until his death in 1980, Sartre was the most famous and prolific writer in France, and one of the best known philosophers of his day.

In 1962 I offered an analysis of the Line and Cave which maintained that the four main divisions of each are parallel and interpreted the three stages of ascent in the Cave allegory as representing the three stages in Plato's educational programme: music and gymnastic, mathematics and dialectic. At that time a major portion of my task was to counter arguments which purported to show that the Line and Cave could not be parallel. The present situation is quite different since (...) recent writers, for the most part, not only take the four main divisions of the Cave as parallel to those of the Line, but also accept the restriction of the Cave allegory to moral and mathematical education as a crucial step in the establishing of this fact. This last move, which is clearly in harmony with the form and content of the Republic, enables us to allow for the ordinary unenlightened man to be at the bottom level of the Cave without our having to suggest that he confuses the shadows of visual objects with their originals, which could well be the case if the Cave were taken to represent all sense perception as such. Despite fairly general agreement on these basic points of interpretation there remains, however, a wide divergence of opinion as to the significance of the various levels of education or moral awareness portrayed by the Cave. In keeping with several recent papers on this topic I shall focus my attention on the bottom two stages of this allegory: the state of the prisoners viewing shadows on the cave wall and that of the released prisoners, still in the cave, but turned around and looking at the puppets which cast these shadows. (shrink)

This article discusses the role of human-created rules in our collective adapting to Covid-19 and our survival in its wake. Rules that make sense become institutionalised and play a dual role in our response to the pandemic: they provide a guide for individual behavior and they provide a mechanism for coordinating all our behaviors.

That process philosophy can be the foundation of the theory and practice of educating human beings is the main argument of this book. The process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) is the particular thinking on which this book is based. Readers are shown that Whitehead's process philosophy provides a frame, a conceptual matrix, that addresses their concerns about education and offers direction for their educative acts. Whitehead theorized that all living entities are connected in some way. Relatedness, connectedness, and (...) holism are recurring themes in this exploration of Whitehead's implied philosophy of education. Whitehead never wrote a philosophy of education, but his writings over a period of nearly thirty years reveal a persistent interest and concern with education. His work, ranging from Introduction to Mathematics (1911) to Adventures of Ideas (1938), is drawn on here to construct, not Whitehead's philosophy of education, but, a Whiteheadian philosophy of education. Whitehead and Philosophy of Education brings to scholars and students of education an understanding of Whitehead as an important figure in philosophy, particularly philosophy of education; an acquaintance with process philosophy; a brief treatment of Whitehead's life and an account of events and experiences that influenced his philosophizing; and an exploration of the educationally salient concepts found in Whitehead's formal and informal philosophy with special attention to Whitehead's ideas about creativity, process, rhythm, wisdom, and knowledge. Whitehead writes of phases of the rhythm of education - romance, precision, and generalization. The book is organized with attention to these three phases. Part One-Romance introduces readers to Whitehead the person, and the change of context for educating from a mechanistic world-view to an organismic one. Part Two-Precision examines Whitehead's writings, as they relate to process philosophy and to educating. Part Three-Generalization is an application of the explorations of Parts One and Two, yielding a construction of a Whiteheadian philosophy of education and suggestions for educational practice. (shrink)

To ensnare the sophist of the Sophist in a definition disclosing him as a purveyor of images and falsehoods Plato must block the sophistical defence that image and falsehood are self-contradictory in concept, for they both embody the proposition proscribed by Parmenides — ‘What is not, is’. It has been assumed that Plato regards this defence as depending on a reading of ‘what is not’ in its very strongest sense, where it is equivalent to ‘what is not in any way’ (...) or ‘nothing’. Likewise, the initial paradoxes of not-being are seen as requiring that to mē on be understood in this way, that later designated by Plato as the opposite of to on or ‘being’. On this interpretation, Plato's counter-strategy is to recognise a use of to mē on which is not opposed in this strict sense to being, but is indeed a part of it and is ‘being other than’. In a stimulating article, R. W. Jordan challenges this account. I shall briefly attempt to show that his objections are not decisive and that his own interpretation is open to question. Jordan makes the interesting suggestion that a distinction between two senses of not-being, where one is equivalent to nothing and one is not, dates from the middle dialogues — particularly from Republic V, where objects of agnoia are mēdamē onta and objects of doxa are both onta and mē onta. He concludes , ‘Malcolm's view, then, seems to amount to this: that Plato is now extending the moral he draws about objects of belief in the Republic to cover forms. Forms too now are seen to be both being and notbeing.’. (shrink)

A simple numerical procedure is presented for the problem of estimating the parameters of models for the distribution of eggs oviposited in a host. The modelling is extended to incorporate both host density and time dependence to produce a remarkably parsimonious structure with only seven parameters to describe a data set of over 3,000 observations. This is further refined using a mixed model to accommodate several large outliers. Both models show that the level of superparasitism declines with increasing host density, (...) and the rate declines over time. It is proposed that the differing behaviours represented by the mixed model may reflect a balance between behavioural strategies of different selective benefit. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan is one of the most important philosophical texts in the English language, and one of the most influential works of political philosophy ever written. This Introduction accompanies Noel Malcolm's long-awaited critical edition, and gives a path-breaking account of the work's context, sources, and textual history.

This paper undertakes textual exegesis and rational reconstruction of Mukula Bhaṭṭa’s Abhidhā-vṛttta-mātṛkā, or “The Fundamentals of the Communicative Function.” The treatise was written to refute Ānandavardhana’s claim, made in the Dhvanyāloka, that there is a third “power” of words, vyañjanā (suggestion), beyond the two already accepted by traditional Indian philosophy: abhidhā (denotation) and lakṣaṇā(indication).1 I argue that the explanation of lakṣaṇā as presented in his text contains internal tensions, although it may still be a compelling response to Ānandavardhana.

This article offers a theological description of one practice necessary for good local belonging: the creative practice of naming local creatures, both human and non-human. I explore the practice of naming as forming local belonging in dialogue with new nature writers in the British Isles and Jean-Louis Chrétien. I offer a brief review of the scope of theologies of place in the United Kingdom before turning to the themes of displacement and naming in new British nature writing. Finally, I use (...) Jean-Louis Chrétien's theological accounts of naming and corporate prayer, to examine the effect of naming in transforming one's relation to one's locality, and propose that the Church's creative participation in local naming—especially in prayer—offers a transforming narrative as to the kinds of local belonging which ought to be pursued. (shrink)

This book of twelve essays applies the holistic theories of process philosophy to the educational challenges that teachers face in today's complexly changing world. Topics range from staff development to spirituality, exploring issues of student and teacher motivation, developmental stages of learning, imaginative thinking and writing, nourishing relationships, moral and environmental education, and the development of hospitable learning environments.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes is one of the most important figures in the history of European thought. Although interest in his life and work has grown enomrously in recent years, this is the first complete edition of his correspondence. The texts of the letters are richly supplemented with explanatory notes and full biographical and bibliographical information. This landmark publication sheds new light in abundance on the intellectual life of a major thinker.

The editing of the correspondence of major figures in intellectual history is an essential scholarly activity. Yet in this country in recent years it has neither been the priority it should be, nor has it received the support that it deserves. Of course there have been exceptions to this, perhaps notably – for the early modern period – the epic one-man effort of Esmond de Beer in his later years in producing The Correspondence of John Locke (though this regrettably, and (...) frustratingly, lacks a composite index). A further exception, the edition of The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg by A. R. and M. B. Hall, was unfortunately flawed by the need to change publishers midway in the series, which has led to a marked disparity in the availability of the latter part of the set compared with its early volumes. In any case, like the Locke edition, this was conceived in the heady days of the 1960s and early 1970s, and few have ventured such enterprises since. Virtually the only exception is Noel Malcolm's edition of the manageable-sized Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes (two volumes, 1994). Moreover, it is revealing of the acute need to justify the publication of such material felt by editors and publishers alike that the promotional leaflet for this edition went so far as to claim that it was ‘one of the most important scholarly publications of the twentieth century’ – a claim that is the more ironic in view of the quite significant shortcomings in its method of presenting the material that it contains. (shrink)

William Whewell’s philosophy of scientific discovery is applied to the problem of understanding the nature of unification and explanation by the composition of causes in Newtonian mechanics. The essay attempts to demonstrate: the sense in which ”approximate’ laws successfully refer to real physical systems rather than to idealizations of them; why good theoretical constructs are not badly underdetermined by observation; and why, in particular, Newtonian forces are not conventional and how empiricist arguments against the existence of component causes, and against (...) the veracity of the fundamental laws, are flawed. (shrink)

In the first full-length study in any modern language dedicated to the Meteorologica, Malcolm Wilson presents a groundbreaking interpretation of Aristotle's natural philosophy. Divided into two parts, the book first addresses general philosophical and scientific issues by placing the treatise in a diachronic frame comprising Aristotle's predecessors and in a synchronic frame comprising his other physical works. It argues that Aristotle thought of meteorological phenomena as intermediary or 'dualizing' between the cosmos as a whole and the manifold world of (...) terrestrial animals. Engaging with the best current literature on Aristotle's theories of science and metaphysics, Wilson focuses on issues of aetiology, teleology and the structure and unity of science. The second half of the book illustrates Aristotle's principal concerns in a section-by-section treatment of the meteorological phenomena and provides solutions to many of the problems that have been raised since the time of the ancient commentators. (shrink)

The aesthetics of nature has over the last few decades become an intense focus of philosophical reflection, as it has been ever more widely recognised that it is not a mere appendage to the aesthetics of art. Everyone delights in the beauty of flowers, and some are thrilled by the immensity of mountains or of the night sky. But what is involved in serious aesthetic appreciation of the natural world? Malcolm Budd presents four interlinked studies in the aesthetics of (...) nature, approaching the subject from a variety of angles. As well as developing Budd's own original ideas, the book provides a comprehensive treatment of Kant's classic aesthetics of nature, and an encyclopaedic critical survey of recent literature on the subject. (shrink)

The Stoic Idea of the City offers the first systematic analysis of the Stoic school, concentrating on Zeno's Republic . Renowned classical scholar Malcolm Schofield brings together scattered and underused textual evidence, examining the Stoic ideals that initiated the natural law tradition of Western political thought. A new foreword by Martha Nussbaum and a new epilogue written by the author further secure this text as the standard work on Presocratic Stoics. "The account emerges from a jigsaw-puzzle of items from (...) a wide range of authorities, painstakingly pieced together and then annotated in a series of appendixes, the whole executed with fine scholarship, clarity, and good humor."-- Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

Plato is the best known and most widely studied of all the ancient Greek philosophers. Malcolm Schofield, a leading scholar of ancient philosophy, offers a lucid and accessible guide to Plato's political thought, enormously influential and much discussed in the modern world as well as the ancient. Schofield discusses Plato's ideas on education, democracy and its shortcomings, the role of knowledge in government, utopia and the idea of community, money and its grip on the psyche, and ideological uses of (...) religion. (shrink)

This book offers an innovative account of Cicero's treatment of key political ideas: liberty and equality, government, law, cosmopolitanism and imperialism, republican virtues, and ethical decision-making in politics. Cicero, a major figure in Roman politics, was the first to articulate a philosophical rationale for republicanism.

Over several decades, ethics and law have been applied to medical education and practice in a way that reflects the continuation during the twentieth century of the strong distinction between facts and values. We explain the development of applied ethics and applied medical law and report selected results that reflect this applied model from an empirical project examining doctors’ decisions on withdrawing/withholding treatment from patients who lack decision-making capacity. The model is critiqued, and an alternative “constitutive” model is supported on (...) the basis that medicine, medical law, and medical ethics exemplify the inevitable entanglement of facts and values. The model requires that ethics and law be taught across the medical education curriculum and integrated with the basic and clinical sciences and that they be perceived as an integral component of medical evidence and practice. Law, in particular, would rank as equal in normative authority to the relevant clinical scientific “facts” of the case, with graduating doctors having as strong a basic command of each category as the other. The normalization of legal knowledge as part of the clinician’s evidence base to be utilized in practice may provide adequate consolation for clinicians who may initially resent further perceived incursions on their traditional independence and discretion. (shrink)