Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion positions the vaccine as the end point of the arc of ​pandemic, marking both the containment of an elusive virus and ​the resumption of a life not fundamentally different from ​before the disease outbreak. ​The film reinforces the ​assumption that a pandemic will awaken ​all of us to the urgency of vaccination​, persuading us to put aside our reservations and anxieties ​and the idea that compliance is the inevitable outcome of quarantine. This article explores how pro-vaccination cultural (...) products ​such as Contagion might in fact undermine public health efforts by promoting a false narrative, which simplifies the kind of vaccination campaign necessary for herd immunity to develop. An ethic of sacrifice and selflessness drives the public health messaging of the film but leaves intact certain individualistic tropes and plague narrative scapegoating tendencies, while the framing of the vaccine as “gift” takes it out of the realm of medical science altogether. (shrink)

Manuscript Add. 3965, section 13, folios 541r–542r and 545r–546r is in the Portsmouth Collection of manuscripts and housed in the University Library, Cambridge. These drafts contain a careful account, in Newton's hand, of his views on place, time, and God. They are part of a large number of drafts relating to the three official editions of the Principia published in Newton's lifetime.

According to the received view of practical decisions, ‘deciding to X’ is synonymous with ‘forming an intention to X’. In this article, I argue against the received view on the basis of both experimental evidence and theoretical considerations. The evidence concerns a case involving a side-effect action in which people tend to agree that an agent decided to X yet disagree that the agent had a corresponding intention to X. Additionally, I explain why one should expect decisions and intentions to (...) diverge in the case of certain side-effect actions. (shrink)

Descartes's works are often treated as a unified, unchanging whole. But in Descartes's Changing Mind, Peter Machamer and J. E. McGuire argue that the philosopher's views, particularly in natural philosophy, actually change radically between his early and later works--and that any interpretation of Descartes must take account of these changes. The first comprehensive study of the most significant of these shifts, this book also provides a new picture of the development of Cartesian science, epistemology, and metaphysics. No changes in (...) Descartes's thought are more significant than those that occur between the major works The World and Principles of Philosophy. Often seen as two versions of the same natural philosophy, these works are in fact profoundly different, containing distinct conceptions of causality and epistemology. Machamer and McGuire trace the implications of these changes and others that follow from them, including Descartes's rejection of the method of abstraction as a means of acquiring knowledge, his insistence on the infinitude of God's power, and his claim that human knowledge is limited to that which enables us to grasp the workings of the world and develop scientific theories. (shrink)

That the central thesis of Donald Davidson’s classic article on metaphor “What Metaphor Means” (WMM) is ambiguous between a weak and a strong interpretation is the primary claim that I sought to establish in my article “Sentence Meaning, Speaker Meaning, and Davidson’s Denial of Metaphorical Meaning.” In addition to this, I argued that the weak claim is trivially true and the strong claim is obviously false. Therefore, I concluded that when the central thesis of WMM is disambiguated, it is insignificant. (...) Finally, I explained the ambiguity in that thesis in terms of Davidson’s neglect in WMM for the concept of speaker meaning and this, in turn, in terms of a certain theoretical orientation to language that Davidson held at the time of writing WMM. In his commentary on my article, “Speaker Meaning and Davidson on Metaphor: A Reply to McGuire,” Robert J. Stainton raises objections to several of the foregoing claims. In this article, I review and defend each of these claims against Stainton’s objections. (shrink)

There is a thematic unity to these essays on Newton's thought: they are concerned with the central categories of Newton's metaphysics of nature (matter, causation, force, space, time) and the ways in which Newton's work relates to cultural themes such as providence and creation. Focusing on questions of tradition and innovation and Newton's engaged response to the broader patterns of his contemporary culture, they present a unified, interpretive stance that often challenges the scholarly orthodoxies. The essays contain a large body (...) of unpublished manuscript material that is related exegetically to the corpus of Newton's published writings. Accordingly, they provide a fresh basis for understanding and clarifying the inner dynamics of Newton's thought. Audience: Historians, philosophers and sociologists of early modern thought, and those who have an interest in the intellectual achievements of Isaac Newton. (shrink)

A contribution to ongoing debates in the philosophy of science, aiming to reconceptualize the orientation of the subject. Mobilizing the literature, the authors seek to transform their insights into a new epistemological and ontological basis for studying the enterprise of science.

What is this fleeting experience that sometimes hits us when we listen to music? Through several short essays adapted from lectures given at Vanderbilt University between 2008 and 2012, author Joshua McGuire answers this question while exploring what it takes to become better listeners of music. McGuire's premise is that listening to music in a fuller way shows us a fuller way to live, clarifying the way we listen to everything. Ironically, better listening involves a recognition of the (...) absence of time experienced amidst profound silence. After all, the purpose of music is to bring us to silence. "As we listen, we become the silence in which music happens. We disappear.". (shrink)

The promise of personalized medicine and the quest for a greater understanding of the genetic basis of disease has transformed the research enterprise. The Director of the National Institutes of Health, Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., recently predicted “that comprehensive, genomics- based health care will become the norm, with individualized preventive medicine and early detection of illnesses.” This excitement about the potential scientific and clinical advances that may come from genomics- based research has led several NIH institutions to launch initiatives for (...) genome-wide association studies, calling on researchers and institutions to utilize the new DNA analysis technologies to study the genetic variation between individuals with a particular illness and healthy controls. (shrink)

The value of anthropocentric indirect arguments, as stated by Elliott, is to focus on non-environmental benefits that derive from actions or policies that also benefit the environment...

This paper is based on a study that explored the responses of bioscientists to changes in national science policy and research funding in Canada. In the late 1990s, a range of new science policies and funding initiatives were implemented, linking research funding to Canada’s competitiveness in the ‘global knowledge economy’. Bourdieu’s theory of practice is used to explore the multi-scalar, cross-field effects of global economic policy and national science policy on scientific practice. While most science and educational policy studies use (...) Bourdieu’s concepts ontologically, as “thinking tools” to theorize power, this study adopted Bourdieu’s relational epistemology, empirically linking objective positions of power with position-takings towards market-oriented science. A relational epistemology made it possible to explore what forms and weight of capital scientists brought to bear on symbolic struggles over the legitimacy of a market and scientific logic. By empirically investigating how power shaped bioscientists’ responses to market-oriented science policy, this study was able to identify key mechanisms of change within the scientific field and between science, politics and the market. First, it identified the rise of a new form of entrepreneurial capital and a market-oriented logic that coexists alongside a traditional scientific logic within the scientific field in a bipolar system of stratification. Second, it illustrated changes in scientific practice, which contribute to change in the structure of the distribution of capital within the scientific field. This study challenges Bourdieu’s emphasis on a single dominant logic or symbolic order and challenges science and technology scholars to both use and extend his theoretical contributions. (shrink)

This study investigates whether and how sex and race affect access to and rewards for job authority, using 1980 survey data for 1,216 employed workers. The authors examine whether, net of human-capital characteristics, sex and race affect access to and compensation for job authority. In addition, the authors examine whether the translation of credentials into authority and earnings varies depending on workers' sex or race.

John Henry Newman had a fascination with the angels, as evidenced by three of his published poems, a passage devoted to angels in his Apologia pro Vita Sua, as well as sermons on the angels. Surprisingly, Newman’s interest in angels has not attracted much scholarly attention. After examining some of Newman’s writings that touch upon angels, this essay suggests that Newman’s Romantic and Evangelical background prepared him for his reading of the Fathers in 1828, which in turn influenced his consideration (...) of the significance of angels in the spiritual life. (shrink)

The effect of oxytocin on cognitive bias was investigated in rats in a modified conditioned place preference (CPP) paradigm. Fifteen male rats were trained to discriminate between two different cue combinations, one paired with palatable foods (reward training), and the other paired with unpalatable food (aversive training). Next, their reactions to two ambiguous cue combinations were evaluated and their latency to contact the goal pot recorded. Rats were injected with either oxytocin (OT) or saline with the prediction that rats administered (...) oxytocin would display a shorter average latency to approach on ambiguous trials. There was no significant difference between latencies to approach on ambiguous trials compared to reward trials, but the rats were significantly slower on the aversive compared to the ambiguous conditions. Oxytocin did not affect approach time; however, it was unclear, after follow-up testing, whether the OT doses tested were sufficient to produce the desired effects on cognitive bias. Future research should consider this possibility. (shrink)

The provision of standardized hearing aids is now considered to be a crucial part of the UK National Health Service. Yet this is only explicable through reference to the career of a woman who has, until now, been entirely forgotten. Dr Phyllis Margaret Tookey Kerridge (1901–1940) was an authoritative figure in a variety of fields: medicine, physiology, otology and the construction of scientific apparatus. The astounding breadth of her professional qualifications allowed her to combine features of these fields and, later (...) in her career, to position herself as a specialist to shape the discipline of audiometry. Rather than framing Kerridge in the classic ‘heroic-woman’ narrative, in this article we draw out the complexities of her career by focusing on her pursuit of standardization of hearing tests. Collaboration afforded her the necessary networks to explore the intricacies of accuracy in the measurement of hearing acuity, but her influence was enhanced by her ownership of Britain's first Western Electric (pure-tone) audiometer, which she placed in a specially designed and unique ‘silence room’. The room became the centre of Kerridge's hearing aid clinic that, for the first time, allowed people to access free and impartial advice on hearing aid prescription. In becoming the guardian expert and advocate of the audiometer, Kerridge achieved an objectively quantified approach to hearing loss that eventually made the latter an object of technocratic intervention. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 215 Seiten: 193-234.

In this article, I analyze survey data from more than 1,000 financial services employees to understand how gender inequality manifests itself in employees' informal networks. I found that even when Black and white women had jobs in which they controlled organizational resources and had ties to powerful employees, they received less work-related help from their network members than did white men. Drawing on status characteristics theory, I explain that network members were less likely to invest in women than in white (...) men because of cultural beliefs that rank women below that of white men. While past research has documented how employers use gender to rank workers and distribute rewards unequally, my research indicates that workers use gender to categorize and rank their network members as well. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised a host of ethical challenges, but key among these has been the possibility that health care systems might need to ration scarce critical care resources. Rationing p...

Interest in science and math plays an important role in encouraging STEM motivation and career aspirations. This interest decreases for girls between late childhood and adolescence. Relatedly, positive mentoring experiences with female teachers can protect girls against losing interest. The present study examines whether visitors to informal science learning sites differ in their expressed science and math interest, as well as their science and math stereotypes following an interaction with either a male or female educator. Participants were visitors to one (...) of four ISLS in the United States and United Kingdom. Following an interaction with a male or female educator, they reported their math and science interest and responded to math and science gender stereotype measures. Female participants reported greater interest in math following an interaction with a female educator, compared to when they interacted with a male educator. In turn, female participants who interacted with a female educator were less likely to report male-biased math gender stereotypes. Self-reported science interest did not differ as a function of educator gender. Together these findings suggest that, when aiming to encourage STEM interest and challenge gender stereotypes in informal settings, we must consider the importance of the gender of educators and learners. (shrink)

This paper examines the role that population vulnerabilities play in insurance coverage for a representative sample of Latinos and Asians in the United States. Using data from the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS), these analyses compare coverage differences among and within ethnic subgroups, across states and regions, among types of occupations, and among those with or without English language proficiency. Extensive differences exist in coverage between Latinos and Asians, with Latinos more likely to be uninsured. Potential explanations include (...) the type of occupations available to Latinos and Asians, reforms in immigration laws, length of time in the United States, and regional differences in safety-net coverage. Policy implications are discussed. (shrink)