Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712) devoted more than 10 years of his life to developing a science of plants and vegetation, a project in which observation (often at the microscopic level) and experimentation played a prominent role. Grew started by composing a natural history of plants that was concerned with their anatomical structure and functioning, but, as I suggest, he also aimed to use observations and experiments to develop an experimental science that investigated the causes and principles of vegetation. Apart from studying (...) the structure of plants, Grew also treated them as instruments in which different chemical operations took place (such as filtration, digestion, fermentation, and the separation of particles of matter). At a methodological level, the science of plants and vegetation is a project based on experimental comparisons, variations, and extensions that, in some cases, led Grew to revise his explicative hypothesis. (shrink)

In agreement with Blair, I favor the idea of dissociative patterns in cognitive performance, even more when it comes to development. However, such dissociations are present not only between fluid cognition and general intelligence, but also within fluid cognition itself. Heterogeneity of executive attention, even when indexed with a single paradigm, is further discussed in relation to anterior cingulate cortex. (Published Online April 5 2006).

Multiple team membership is a form of work organization extensively used nowadays to flexibly deploy human resources across multiple simultaneous projects. Individual members bring in their cognitive resources in these multiple teams and at the same time use the resources and competencies developed while working together. We test in an experimental study whether working in MTM as compared to a single team yields more individual performance benefits in estimation tasks. Our results fully support the group-to-individual transfer of learning, yet the (...) hypothesized benefits of knowledge variety and broader access to meta-knowledge relevant to the task in MTM as compared to single teams were not supported. In addition, we show that individual estimates improve only when members are part of groups with low or average collective estimation errors, while confidence in individual estimates significantly increases only when the collective confidence in the group estimates is average or high. The study opens valuable venues for using the dynamic model of G-I transfer of learning to explore individual learning in MTM. (shrink)

Smith maintains that Brentano conceives his own theory of substance as a refined and perfected version of the Aristotelian theory. According to Mulligan and Smith, Brentano argues that a range of different habits and training are necessary preconditions of noticing. McDonnell observes that, for Brentano, our consciousness contains a structural unity of its own. Zahavi emphasizes that, according to Brentano, all mental states are characterized by their intentional directedness, they are all conscious of objects. Albertazzi points out that Brentano’s doctrine (...) tries to conciliate the presence of an often irreducible transcendent foundation of perception with its immanent and equally irreducible categorization by the intentional acts. (shrink)

This article tackles the possibility of reframing Cézanne’s reception of still life as a meta-painting in which individuals occasionally become objectified, gathering objects with other ontological dignities, such as things and tools, in a Heideggerian manner. One of the rare situations in which individuals are presented like objects throughout a still life is represented by the series of Card Players. I will argue that the still life form is reflected in objectual painting in which the insertion of individuals is performed (...) in order to recover a Bergsonian élan vital, of which Cézanne retains, by engaging Impressionist techniques, only an instance: the circumstance of a meditative, decisive, ludic action, taken during the game. Once humanised, still life has, in Cézanne’s version, the capacity to express the human condition through two inherent determinations, luck and sociability, reflecting what Arendt would call “the human corner”–something that anyone needs in order to preserve natural instincts, to be “happy around things” and to begin a civilisational process, supported by the double realm of arbitrariness and normativity that lies at the heart of a game. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relation between Gabriel Plattes’ (c. 1600–1644) cosmology and theory of matter, on the one hand, and his method of experimentation, on the other. In my view Plattes based his cosmology and theory of matter on specific “principles of nature” expressed as alchemical qualitative relations between bodies, and these principles formed the theoretical framework for his experimental method and technologies. I also claim that Plattes’ method of experimentation has heuristic purposes, acting as a tool to instantiate and (...) illustrate these natural principles. By quantifiable manipulations of matter (expressed in terms of proportions and numbers), Plattes made use of experimentation to provide technologies whose immediate purpose was to ameliorate or improve the material world. (shrink)

La découverte scientifique radicale, et le changement radical de paradigme associé, sont traités ici comme découlant de la mise à jour de ce qu’on appelle des ‘assomptions’ d’arrière-plan. Celles-ci sont considérées comme plus ou moins équivalentes aux ‘propositions charnières’ discutées par Wittgenstein dans De la certitude. Sur cette base, diverses questions liées aux changements de signification, au changement théorique, à l’incommensurabilité, etc., sont discutées. On montre que la conception d’ensemble de Kuhn, une fois précisée, n’implique ni l’idéalisme ni le relativisme, (...) et que la rationalité et le progrès scientifique peuvent être sauvés d’une manière acceptable par les scientifiques praticiens. (shrink)

This paper focuses on corporate social responsibilities to employees, one key stakeholder for each firm. In particular, the views and attitudes of managers and entrepreneurs with respect to various social aspects related to their employees are investigated. The context of this research, Romania, a postcommunist country in Eastern Europe, allows us to look for dissimilarities between the talk of local firms and MNCs or foreign-based companies. The analysis is based on qualitative research and adopts an interpretative approach.The articles of the (...) weekly Romanian Capital magazine are investigated from an eight-year longitudinal perspective. (shrink)

This paper looks at the current state-of-the-art and at potential changes in CSR thinking in a developing country: Romania. It seeks to understand what kind oftransformations are emerging in this field and what are the reasons behind them. The analysis is interpretative, using discourse analysis and focuses on the articles of the weekly Romanian business publication Capital. The results indicate that the local business environment features the characteristics of wild capitalism, largely contradicting the idea of responsibility. However, foreign actors have (...) recently entered the local environment, acting as travelling vehicles of Western ideas and inducing positive developments in business social behaviour. This study upholds that emerging trends in the business social thinking in Romania are not an outcome of local societal expectations but, rather, are brought from abroad and sold to the local community. (shrink)

Firm–employee relationships are dependent on the wider societal context and on the role business plays in society. Changes in institutional arrangements in society affect the perceived responsibilities of firms to their personnel. In this study, we examine mass media discussions about firm–employee relationships from a social responsibility perspective via a longitudinal study in Romanian society. Our analysis indicates how the expected responsibilities of firms towards employees have altered with the changing role of firms in society since the early 1990s. These (...) transformations correspond to the ideological developments, from communist to market-based thinking, which have taken place in post-communist Eastern Europe. More specifically, our study shows how the diminishing expectations of corporate social responsibility (CSR) are linked in mass media to increasingly important talk of human resource management (HRM). HRM is a modern business approach believed to address personnel needs and organisational objectives simultaneously. The congruency of goals in HRM may mistakenly lead to the conclusion that organisations are inherently responsible toward their personnel. We argue that this may not necessarily be the case. HRM, matching well the new free-market ideology in post-communist Eastern Europe, was eagerly embraced in that it defined firm–personnel relationships. In this study, we question whether this was an adequate theoretical perspective for Romanian firms to adopt as it lacks sufficient ethical grounding. We also call for a higher awareness concerning the role of mass media in the management literature, since its current role in constructing the ‘rightness’ and ‘wrongness’ in firm–personnel relationships is hardly considered. (shrink)

Presents the Nicomachean Ethics as a work of political philosophy, emphasizing the interplay between its practical political concerns and its underlying philosophic perspective and arguing that it is rhetorical in the precise Aristotelian meaning of the term.

Sustainable entrepreneurship is a vital and growing area of entrepreneurship studies. Although charged with multiple potentially conflicting discourses, sustainable entrepreneurship is usually viewed from a binary logic of business versus sustainability. This article uses an aesthetic process approach to sustainable entrepreneurship to move beyond this binary logic and unearth the tensions between multiple discourses. The authors introduce the construct of embodied multi-discursivity that addresses this issue methodologically as well as conceptually. By combining discourse analysis with aesthetic inquiry, the article pushes (...) the boundaries of “traditional” qualitative methods. The aim is to encourage sustainable entrepreneurship scholars to expand their methodological horizon to capture the emotionally charged, value-laden processes they study. Embodied multi-discursivity shows how multi-discursive processes of entrepreneurship come into being, how they are disrupted, and how they can break into a duality that ignores the variety of discourses. The authors conclude by drawing some implications for sustainable entrepreneurship. (shrink)

Despite the separation between classical and modern theories of government, contributors to Aristotle and Modern Politics find Aristotle a useful interlocutor for assessing both possibilities and limitations in contemporary politics. In this collection, noted political scientists, theologians, and philosophers discuss the magnitude of Aristotle's presence in contemporary debate and demonstrate some of the ways in which Aristotle sheds new light on contemporary problems. This engaging book also exhibits the persistence of political philosophy at a time when the pervasive influence of (...) "ideology" and "historicism" lead many to deny its possibility. Although the authors of these essays differ on the nature of Aristotle's contribution, all are united by the conviction that he has something important to teach citizens of modern political societies. If the fundamental principles of modern politics were drawn from critical reflections of reason over and against the imposition of authority under its various guises, modern politics can best sustain itself by nurturing the critical attitude that initially brought it into being. Paradoxically, serious engagement with the "preliberal" thought of Aristotle can render contemporary debate more fruitful by bringing to light subtle limitations in the political discourse of any era, including our own. If the modern understanding of freedom is primarily freedom to speak and think for oneself, the essays in Aristotle and Modern Politics exhibit the persistence of political philosophy by thinking beyond limits often constricting contemporary paradigms. (shrink)

This study examines the potential of fake news to produce effects on social media engagement as well as the moderating role of education and government approval. We report on a 2x2x2 online experiment conducted in Romania (N=813), in which we manipulated the level of facticity of a news story, its valence, and intention to deceive. Results show that ideologically driven news with a negative valence (rather than fabricated news or other genres, such as satire and parody) have a greater virality (...) potential. However, neither the level of education nor government approval moderate this effect. Additionally, both positive and negative ideologically driven news stories enhance the probability that people will sign a document to support the government (i. e., potential for political engagement on social media). These latter effects are moderated by government approval: Lower levels of government approval lead to less support for the government on social media, as a consequence of fake news exposure. (shrink)

The Law and Economics approach to law dominates the intellectual discussion of nearly every doctrinal area of law in the US and its influence is growing steadily outside America as well. 2013 marked the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Richard Posner's Economic Analysis of Law, the book that launched the Law and Economics movement. The eighth edition of the book was published in 2011, this time competing against over twenty textbooks, collections and casebooks on law and economics. Although there (...) has been phenomenal growth in this area questions remain. Why has Law and Economics movement become so successful? What is the current status of the Chicago School? What are the alternative theories and how much influence do they exert? What can be considered mainstream today? What are the norms and values underlying this impressive body of research? These issues, amongst others, are thoroughly explored by the contributors. (shrink)

Bacon’s projects of natural history were extremely popular in the mid-seventeenth century, especially for a group of people devoted to experimental activities, namely the Hartlib Circle. Ralph Austen, one member of the Hartlib Circle, tried to construct his own project of natural history using Bacon’s Sylva sylvarum as a pattern and following the Baconian scheme with particular interest for the methodological aspects entailed by such an endeavor. This paper provides an account of Austen’s at­tempts at writing a natural history as (...) found in his Observations upon some part of Sr Francis Bacon’s Naturall History. It discusses the methodology and aims served by such an enterprise, both practical and theoretical: the role of experimentation in the process of compiling a natural history as the most reliable activity able to provide accurate knowledge of the natural world and the determination to provide general rules and axioms about nature. (shrink)