Review of work on several debates, including Galileo vs. the Church, Bohr vs Einstein, Hoyle vs. Big Bang theory, Oppenheimer vs. Teller, N-rays, magnetic monopoles.

In this chapter, I provide a critical exposition of the contemporary bioethics of life extension (LE). First, I provide critical socio-historical contextualization for contemporary bioethics in general by locating it within postmodernity, which discloses crucial implications for what normative claims can possibly be justified within contemporary bioethics and clarifies the typical form that transgression of these limits takes in contemporary bioethics. In the next section, I analyze the structure of the debate over LE into arguments for the necessary desirability (or (...) undesirability) of LE and those for the contingent desirability (or undesirability) of LE, and I provide a survey of the latter. Then, in the next two sections, I critically explicate the main arguments for the necessary desirability and undesirability of LE. I conclude with some final critical remarks on the debate, emphasizing the need for public bioethicists to recognize and be more responsive to the theoretical and empirical pluralism characteristic of the postmodern liberal states in which they typically operate. (shrink)

This article explores datafication as a speculative discourse that fundamentally and instrumentally misunderstands data, not as a representational system, but as an ontology. This analysis of datafication takes a semiotic and media-archaeological approach to datafication, understanding it as an imaginary media system, and the article looks to supplementary discourses in data visualization and big data to clarify and expand an understanding of datafication as a prescriptive and speculative idea. This critique is sharpened through the exploration of a detailed study of (...) the early visualizations and unpublished fictions of W. E. B. Du Bois, whose imagined technology of the “megascope” gives a remarkable blueprint for contemporary discourses in data visualization and data science. Du Bois’s liberatory perspective is contrasted to a more paranoid example coming from the self-documented delusional system of Daniel Paul Schreber, who provides a much different vision of a totalizing media system in the form of an Aufschreibesysteme, which seems to presage another side of datafication as a surveillance system. Taken together, datafication, the megascope, and the Aufschreibesysteme work as three speculative media that imagine themselves as different instances or visions of a totalizing media system, a notion that has become especially significant in the technological, cultural, and economic systems of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

In this concentrated, intelligible, and useful introductory volume Stanley Porter and Jason Robinson give a splendid overview of hermeneutical and interpretive thought. Neither an all-inclusive survey that moves too quickly over the surface of complex issues nor a specialized volume on a single, narrow topic, Porter and Robinson's Hermeneutics provides critical analysis of major movements and figures in hermeneutics and interpretive theory in the modern era -- from Schleiermacher and Heidegger to Thiselton and Culpepper -- showing especially how (...) these interpreters and their movements have impacted biblical and theological study. (shrink)

The economy for artisanal products, such as Navajo rugs or Pashmina shawls are often threatened by mass-produced fakes. We propose the use of AI-based authentication as one part of a larger system that would replace extractive economies with generative circulation. In this case study we examine initial experiments towards the development of a cell phone-based authentication app for kente cloth in West Africa. We describe the context of weavers and cloth sales; an initial test of a machine learning algorithm for (...) distinguishing between real and fake kente, and an outline of the next stages of development. (shrink)

Aquinas, says Jean Porter, gets justice right. In this book she shows that Aquinas offers us a cogent and illuminating account of justice as a personal virtue rather than a virtue of social institutions. For Aquinas, justice is more about interpersonal morality than civic or social obligations, and Porter masterfully draws out the contemporary significance of Aquinas's perspective. - back of book.

Umbilical cord blood banking is one of many biomedical innovations that confront pregnant women with new choices about what they should do to secure their own and their child’s best interests. Many mothers can now choose to donate their baby’s umbilical cord blood (UCB) to a public cord blood bank or pay to store it in a private cord blood bank. Donation to a public bank is widely regarded as an altruistic act of civic responsibility. Paying to store UCB may (...) be regarded as a “unique opportunity” to provide “insurance” for the child’s future. This paper reports findings from a survey of Australian women that investigated the decision to either donate or store UCB. We conclude that mothers are faced with competing discourses that force them to choose between being a “good mother” and fulfilling their role as a “good citizen.” We discuss this finding with reference to the concept of value pluralism. (shrink)

This paper argues that Aquinas and other scholastic theologians offer unexpected resources for a moral theology that is fully engaged with today’s pluralistic societies. In order to do so, it is necessary to bring Aquinas into a conversation with these diverse perspectives, rather than treating his thought as a closed system, and to extend his insights through original, constructive analysis.

This is a “bottom-up” paper in the sense that it draws lessons in defining disciplinary categories under study from a series of empirical studies of interdisciplinarity. In particular, we are in the process of studying the interchange of research-based knowledge between Cognitive Science and Educational Research. This has posed a set of design decisions that we believe warrant consideration as others study cross-disciplinary research processes.

How do we determine whether an action is right or wrong? Until recently, philosophers assumed that this question could be answered by means of a theory of morality, which set forth clearly established rules for moral behaviour. More recently, however, a number of philosophers have challenged a theory of morality in this sense. Porter is sympathetic to their criticisms but questions whether they go far enough in offering a positive alternative to a modern view of the moral act. She (...) argues that the work of Aquinas offers an alternative account of moral rationality, in terms of which moral reasoning is understood as dialectical rather than deductive, and questions are resolved in a wider context of ethical thought. Aquinas's account of the moral virtues and prudence is seen to offer unexpected insights into the relationship between moral rules and the practice of the virtues, thus contributing to our own moral reflection. (shrink)

In this 1835 work, Sarah Porter, née Ricardo shows her enthusiasm for arithmetic, and her concern for teaching it in a way that will develop the pupil's mind: 'There is no branch of early education so admirably adapted to call forth and strengthen the reasoning powers.' She uses the device of a conversation between pupil and teacher, popularised by Jane Marcet, to guide young Edmund from the written symbols for numbers through addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, fractions and decimals, (...) proportion, and square and cube roots. Answers to the questions are provided at the end of the book. A member of the Central Society of Education, which promoted imaginative theories of education instead of rote learning, Mrs Porter reworked her book in 1852 as Rational Arithmetic, a more conventional and less entertaining textbook for use in schools. (shrink)

The traditional distinction between the agent’s intention and the effects which she merely permits would seem to allow for a re-description of the act in terms of the agent’s overall good aims. This paper argues that Aquinas understands the relation between the agent’s choice and her overall intention in a different and more persuasive way. His analysis of the object and the end of the act is complicated, but once the relevant distinctions have been sorted out, it is apparent that (...) he does not hold that a particular action can be described, or much less morally evaluated, in terms of the agent’s overall good intentions. On the contrary, he insists that the object of the agent’s immediate choice is always morally relevant, and can be morally decisive for assessing the overall value of the act. (shrink)

Viewed in the light of the discussions ofscientificlecturing in eighteenth-century London contained in this issue, the case of medicine may be said to be both more of the same but also something different.

I would like to thank Scott Waterman for sharing what must have been very challenging personal circumstances. Waterman's reflections touched upon many complex issues. For my part, I would like to explore how Waterman's experience underscores the importance of epistemic humility regarding the limits of scientific knowledge and our sense of the meaning of scientific knowledge while still recognizing the significance and power of scientific knowledge. The first epistemic challenge presented by Scott Waterman's experience of "patienthood" that demonstrates the limits (...) of scientific knowledge is the ability to know pain. Of course, we have all known pain, but such firstperson knowledge would not qualify as scientific... (shrink)

This essay compares Aquinas' understanding of the precepts of justice with the various accounts of moral rules developed in the debate over proportionalism among contemporary moral theologians. It is argued that both sides in this debate oversimplify Aquinas' account of moral rules so drastically as to misread him. Moreover, it is argued that because Aquinas' account reflects a sense of the communal context for moral discernment, it is superior to both traditionalism and proportionalism.