In recent years, a handful of model systems from the basal metazoan phylum Cnidaria have emerged to challenge long-held views on the evolution of animal complexity. The most-recent, and in many ways most-promising addition to this group is the starlet sea anemone, Nematostella vectensis. The remarkable amenability of this species to laboratory manipulation has already made it a productive system for exploring cnidarian development, and a proliferation of molecular and genomic tools, including the currently ongoing Nematostella genome project, further enhances (...) the promise of this species. In addition, the facility with which Nematostella populations can be investigated within their natural ecological context suggests that this model may be profitably expanded to address important questions in molecular and evolutionary ecology. In this review, we explore the traits that make Nematostella exceptionally attractive as a model organism, summarize recent research demonstrating the utility of Nematostella in several different contexts, and highlight a number of developments likely to further increase that utility in the near future. BioEssays 27:211–221, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

F. Russell Sullivan analyzes the relationship between faith and reason in Kierkegaard's philosophy. Kierkegaard is widely considered to be an irrationalist. Sullivan argues that he views faith as reasonable in a distinct way that must be uncovered. In some of his pseudonymous works, Kierkegaard speaks of the movement of faith as paradoxical and absurd. There is evidence from his non-pseudonymous works that Kierkegaard does not consider faith irrational. He denigrates reason only in that he wishes to impress upon (...) nominal Christians (who look upon faith only as a body of doctrine) that more and more understanding of the tenets of faith can never yield logical certainty.The doctrines of faith can be argued pro and contra. For Kierkgaard, faith in this context is illogical, but not irrational. (shrink)

Contemplating Suicide: The Language and Ethnics of Self Harm By Gavin J. Fairbairn Routledge, 1995. Pp. xxx. ISBN 415?10606. £12.95(pbk). Religious Transformation in Western Society. The End of Happiness By Harvie Ferguson, Routledge, 1992. Pp. xvi + 269. ISBN 0?415?02574?5. £XX.xx. Feminism and the Self: The Web of Identity By Morwenna Griffiths Routledge, 1995. Pp. 191. ISBN 0?415?09821?1. £12.99 (pbk). Faith, Scepticism and Personal Identity. A Festschrift for Terence Penelhum Edited by J.J. Macintosh and H. A. Meynell University of Calgary (...) Press, 1994. Pp. vii + 304. CAN$27.95. The Shape of Space (second edition) By Graham Nerlich Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN 0?521?45645?2. Logical Learning Theory: A Human Teleology and its Empirical Support By Joseph F. Rychlak University of Nebraska Press, 1994. Pp. 387. ISBN 0?8032?3904?1. £32.95 Philosophical Idealism and Christian Belief By Alan P.F. Sell University of Wales Press, 1995. Pp. x + 338. (shrink)

Henrich et al. reject the within a narrowly-defined economic model, and are premature in claiming that they have demonstrated cross-cultural variability in as defined in broader evolutionary theory. We also question whether a key experimental condition, anonymity, can be maintained in the small, cohesive, social groupings employed in the study.

An integration of rhetoric and method, or communication and inquiry, is important for contemporary communication research because it suggests a framework for understanding Speech Communication as an epistemological discipline. Yet, an integration of rhetoric and method is problematic. A breakdown of the understanding of invention as an epistemologically informative process of discovery has contributed to a schism of rhetoric and method. Nominalistic commitments, primarily characterized by the assumptions of British Empiricism, have led to difficulties in contemporary accounts of communication and (...) inquiry and to a view of inquiry in which rhetoric has no place. ;My aim in this study is to provide a basis for an integration of rhetoric and method with an explication of Charles Peirce's Speculative Rhetoric, or as it is also known, Methodeutic. Speculative Rhetoric is concerned with the semeiotic structure of thought--the laws governing the relations of signs with other signs--and thought is given a dialogic model by peirce. Speculative Rhetoric can thus be viewed as concerned with the semeiotic structure of communication. Speculative Rhetoric as Methodeutic also is concerned with the nature and function of inquiry, i.e., with the inferential structure of method. ;A common assumption among Peirce scholars is that little is known about Speculative Rhetoric, because Peirce did not appear to expose its concerns in any systematic way. The difficulty, however, is that Peirce had much to say about the laws governing the relations of signs with signs, and the conduct of inquiry. And, much of what Peirce said is very systematic. I explicate the interests of speculative Rhetoric by examining Peirce's account of semeiosis and his account of the method of inquiry. The account of semeiosis then provides an explication of the inferential nature of communication, while the account of inquiry provides an explication of the epistemological function of communication. The two accounts together show the integration of rhetoric and method that makes speculative Rhetoric a metatheoretical framework for communication theory, i.e., a pragmatism of communication that grounds a realist philosophy of communication. (shrink)

For years, violence against doctors and healthcare workers has been a growing social issue in China. In a recent series of studies, we provided evidence for a motivated scapegoating account of this violence. Specifically, individuals who feel that the course of their (or their family member's) illness is a threat to their sense of control are more likely to express motivation to aggress against healthcare providers. Drawing on existential theory, we propose that blaming and aggressing against a single individual represents (...) a culturally afforded scapegoating mechanism in China. However, in an era of healthcare crisis (i.e., the global COVID-19 pandemic), it is essential to understand cultural variation in scapegoating in the context of healthcare. We therefore undertook two cross-cultural studies examining how people in the United States and China use different scapegoating responses to re-assert a sense of control during medical uncertainty. One study was conducted prior to the pandemic and allowed us to make an initial validating and exploratory investigation of the constructs of interest. The second study, conducted during the pandemic, was confirmatory and investigated mediation path models. Across the two studies, consistent evidence emerged that, both in response to COVID-related and non-COVID-related illness scenarios, Chinese (relative to U.S.) individuals are more likely to respond by aggressing against an individual doctor, while U.S. (relative to Chinese) individuals are more likely to respond by scapegoating the medical industry/system. Further, Study 2 suggests these culture effects are mediated by differential patterns of primary and secondary control-seeking. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)