This book provides a detailed reconstruction of the process of formation of the modern concept of society as an objective entity from the 1820s onwards, thus helping to better understand the shaping of the modern world and the nature of the current crisis of modernity. The concept has exerted considerable influence over the last two centuries, during which time many people have conceived themselves and behave as members of a society, and social scientists have explained human subjectivities and conducts as (...) social effects. For both groups, society exists as a very real phenomenon. Historical inquiry shows, however, that the modern concept of society is no more than a historically contingent way of imagining and making sense of the human world.. (shrink)

My main concern in this article is to arrive at a clear view of the nature, extent, and value of Descartes’ universal doubt, not to determine whether Hume’s critique of Cartesian doubt is compellin...

This article examines the expansion of agrofuels in the Americas and the ecological impacts associated with the technologies used in the production of large-scale monocultures of corn and soybeans. In addition to deforestation and displacement of lands devoted to food crops due to expansion of agrofuels, the massive use of transgenic crops and agrochemical inputs, mainly fertilizers and herbicides used in the production of agrofuels, pose grave environmental problems.

This article outlines the theoretical developments experienced in historical studies over the last two decades. As a consequence of the growing critical reconsideration of some of the main theoretical assumptions underlying historical explanation of individuals' meaningful actions, a new theory of society has taken shape among historians during this time. By emphasizing the empirical and analytical distinction between language as a pattern of meanings and language as a means of communication, a significant group of historians has thoroughly recast the conventional (...) notions of society, experience, interests, culture, and identity, and has developed a new concept of social action. Thus, historiographical debate seems to have started to transcend, for the first time, the longstanding and increasingly futile contest or dilemma between objectivism and subjectivism, between materialism and culturalism, between social and intentional explanation, or between social constraints and human agency. The groundwork has now been laid for an alternative to the declining paradigm of social history that does not entail a revisionist return to idealist history but opens a quite different path. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to study Leonardo Polo's conception of the principle of identity. This identity is also called Origin; however, an adequate understanding of that expression requires a careful study of the way man comes to be aware of it.

Higher plants must undergo a major developmental switch, the transition to flowering, if they are to successfully complete their life cycle. In many plants, the crucial decision of when to begin to produce flowers is primarily controlled by environmental signals. The process of floral induction involves the integration of the activities of two types of genes: those that control flowering time as a response to the environment as well as an endogenous clock, and those that determine the floral identity of (...) the cells. The first direct link between these two classes of genes has now been demonstrated(1). Forced expression of CONSTANS, a flowering‐time gene, promotes flowering through the transcriptional activation of LEAFY, a flower‐meristem‐identity gene. (shrink)

The relationship of Hume’s thought with Calvinism is complex and difficult to pin down. He is mordantly critical of the theology and morality of the “predestinarian doctors” and out of tune with the rational theology of Francis Hutcheson and even with that of his friends, Enlightened Ministers of the Church of Scotland such as Hugh Blair and Robert Wallace. Nevertheless, a few of his key philosophical tenets are almost indistinguishable from the main ideas advanced in Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian (...) Religion. I argue that for this reason Hume’s philosophy of religion is an Enlightened form of Calvinism. These strongly parallel doctrines must be considered in any evenhanded interpretation of the chief principles of Hume’s philosophy of religion that are set forth in “Of Miracles,” in The Natural History of Religion, and in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. This approach also opens a thoughtful understanding of the main conclusions of the Dialogues. (shrink)

Based on research on the increasingly popular unconscious thought effect (UTE), it has been suggested that physicians might make better diagnostic decisions after a period of distraction than after an equivalent amount of time of conscious deliberation. However, published attempts to demonstrate the UTE in medical decision making have yielded inconsistent results. In the present study, we report the results of a meta-analysis of all the available evidence on the UTE in medical decisions made by expert and novice clinicians. The (...) meta-analysis failed to find a significant contribution of unconscious thought to the accuracy of medical decisions. This result cannot be easily attributed to any of the potential moderators of the UTE that have been discussed in the literature. Furthermore, a Bayes Factor analysis shows that most experimental conditions provide positive support for the null hypothesis, suggesting that these null results do not reflect a simple lack of statistical power. We suggest ways in which new studies could usefully provide further evidence on the UTE. Unless future research shows otherwise, the recommendation of using unconscious thought to improve medical decisions lacks empirical support. (shrink)

Legislation on Disability/ Functional Diversity in Spain has experimented a great advance since 1982 to 2013, leaving the initial orientation, based on care and rehabilitation, toward another one based on rights and social inclusion as main objectives. However, this legislation has not been effective because in the same lap of time another transformation made it useless: the suppression of social rights that came from Keynesian politics and the progressive neoliberal ideology implantation. The evolution of People with Disability/ Functional Diversity labour (...) situation illustrates the imposition of what we name neoliberal “ableisment” over PFD labour rights. (shrink)

We re-examine Mersenne's critique of Giordano Bruno concerning the question of the extension of the universe and the plurality of worlds as well as that of universal animation. For this, it is necessary to distinguish, especially in the examination of the first question, the strictly cosmological problem from its metaphysical and theological foundation in which the relation between God and the universe is resolved. Mersenne's critique fundamentally concerns this second side of our problem, according to his conviction that Bruno repeats (...) the age-old errors of philosophical paganism and reaffirms an 'impiety' completely incompatible with Christian doctrine.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------. (shrink)

We show that certain type of tree forcings, including Sacks forcing, increases the covering of the strong measure zero ideal \. As a consequence, in Sacks model, such covering number is equal to the size of the continuum, which indicates that this covering number is consistently larger than any other classical cardinal invariant of the continuum. Even more, Sacks forcing can be used to force that \<\mathrm {cov}<\mathrm {cof}\), which is the first consistency result where more than two cardinal invariants (...) associated with \ are pairwise different. Another consequence is that \ in ZFC where \ denotes Marczewski’s ideal. (shrink)

A propósito de la conmemoración del Año Mundial de la Física 2005 se presenta una visión panorámica de la física de los sistemas complejos, que constituye una nueva frontera de la Física cuyos orígenes se remontan a comienzos del siglo XX, pero cuyo influjo y desarrollo se aventuran como un campo muy fructífero de la ciencia del siglo XXI.

Written by pioneers in the field, this practical book presents an authoritative yet accessible overview of the methods and applications of causal inference. The text provides a thorough introduction to the basics of the theory for non-time-varying treatments and the generalization to complex longitudinal data.