According to general relativity, we live in a four-dimensional curved universe. Since the human mind cannot visualize those four dimensions, a popular analogy compares the universe to a two-dimensional rubber sheet distorted by massive objects. This analogy is often used when teaching GR to upper secondary and undergraduate physics students. However, physicists and physics educators criticize the analogy for being inaccurate and for introducing conceptual conflicts. Addressing these criticisms, we analyze the rubber sheet analogy through systematic metaphor analysis of textbooks (...) and research literature, and present an empirical analysis of upper secondary school students’ use and understanding of the analogy. Taking a theoretical perspective of embodied cognition allows us to account for the relationship between the experiential and sensory aspects of the metaphor in relation to the abstract nature of spacetime. We employ methods of metaphor and thematic analysis to study written accounts of small groups of 97 students who worked with a collaborative online learning environment as part of their regular physics lessons in five classes in Norway. Students generated conceptual metaphors found in the literature as well as novel ones that led to different conceptions of gravity than those held by experts in the field. Even though most students showed awareness of some limitations of the analogy, we observed a conflict between students’ embodied understanding of gravity and the abstract description of GR. This conflict might add to the common perception of GR being counterintuitive. In making explicit strengths and weaknesses of the rubber sheet analogy and learners’ conceptual difficulties, our results offer guidance for teaching GR. More generally, these findings contribute to the epistemological implications of employing specific scientific metaphors in classrooms. (shrink)

Pathological morphogenesis on leaves of Fraxinus ornus (ash) and Solanum lycopersicum (tomato) under the influence of mites (Aceria fraxinivora and Eriophyes cladophthirus respectively) leads to a range of structures whose morphology and development cannot be reduced to the classical categories of plant morphology, but present a heterogeneous continuum which links fundamental structural categories. These findings support the pyramid model of plant construction.

Based on the premise that what is relevant, consistent, or true may change from context to context, a formal framework of relevance and context is proposed in which • contexts are mathematical entities • each context has its own language with relevant implication • the languages of distinct contexts are connected by embeddings • inter-context deduction is supported by bridge rules • databases are sets of formulae tagged with deductive histories and the contexts they belong to • abduction and revision (...) are supported by a notion of consistency of formulae and sets of formulae which are relative to a context, and which can, in turn, be seen as constituents of agendas. (shrink)

Which theories of Leibniz are still valid after post-modern critique? Using various methods, this work considers a new interpretation and views Leibniz's work from a different perspective. As such, the authors reconstruct Leibniz's viewpoints on tolerance and truth in light of his position and the influence of church politics. Furthermore, his strategy of differentiation between animal and human will be analyzed on its usefulness to current debate. Leibniz's theory of perception will also be contrasted to comparable theories of today. The (...) usual interpretations of his metaphysics based on substance will here be contrasted by a nature-based interpretation. German text. (shrink)

Combining testimonial reports from independent and partially reliable information sources is an important epistemological problem of uncertain reasoning. Within the framework of Dempster–Shafer theory, we propose a general model of partially reliable sources, which includes several previously known results as special cases. The paper reproduces these results on the basis of a comprehensive model taxonomy. This gives a number of new insights and thereby contributes to a better understanding of this important application of reasoning with uncertain and incomplete information.

Critics of the target article objected to our account of art appreciators' sensitivity to art-historical contexts and functions, the relations among the modes of artistic appreciation, and the weaknesses of aesthetic science. To rebut these objections and justify our program, we argue that the current neglect of sensitivity to art-historical contexts persists as a result of a pervasive aesthetic–artistic confound; we further specify our claim that basic exposure and the design stance are necessary conditions of artistic understanding; and we explain (...) why many experimental studies do not belong to a psycho-historical science of art. (shrink)

This book examines the presence of idealism in modern philosophy from the seventeenth century to the turn of the twenty-first. We define idealism proper as the position that reality is ultimately mental or conceptual in nature, to be contrasted to materialism or physicalism. So defined, idealism has hardly been a popular view, at least in the twentieth century. But we distinguish between metaphysical and epistemological arguments for idealism, and argue that while the former have rarely been popular, the latter are (...) so, and present in many philosophers who would hardly call themselves idealists. We conclude that metaphysical arguments in favor of a reduction of all reality to either mind or matter are highly questionable, because we have no reason to believe that we have arrived at an adequate understanding of either. However, epistemological arguments in favor of idealism that point to some version of conceptual idealism or other are indeed difficult to avoid. (shrink)

Silence in organizations refers to a state in which employees refrain from calling attention to issues at work such as illegal or immoral practices or developments that violate personal, moral, or legal standards. While Morrison and Milliken (Acad Manag Rev 25:706–725, 2000) discussed how organizational silence as a top-down organizational level phenomenon can cause employees to remain silent, a bottom-up perspective—that is, how employee motives contribute to the occurrence and maintenance of silence in organizations—has not yet been given much research (...) attention. In this paper, we argue that this perspective is a meaningful complementation of the existing literature and that it is sensible to conceptualize distinct forms of employee silence (Pinder and Harlos, Research in personnel and human resources management. JAI Press, Greenwich, 2001; van Dyne et al., J Manag Stud 40:1359–1392, 2003). Drawing on past research and theory we conceptualize four forms of employee silence, namely quiescent, acquiescent, prosocial, and opportunistic silence. We present scales to assess the four forms and provide empirical tests for their distinctiveness and patterns of relationships to various correlates and potential antecedents and consequences. (shrink)

Silence in organizations refers to a state in which employees refrain from calling attention to issues at work such as illegal or immoral practices or developments that violate personal, moral, or legal standards. While Morrison and Milliken (Acad Manag Rev 25:706–725, 2000) discussed how organizational silence as a top-down organizational level phenomenon can cause employees to remain silent, a bottom-up perspective—that is, how employee motives contribute to the occurrence and maintenance of silence in organizations—has not yet been given much research (...) attention. In this paper, we argue that this perspective is a meaningful complementation of the existing literature and that it is sensible to conceptualize distinct forms of employee silence (Pinder and Harlos, Research in personnel and human resources management. JAI Press, Greenwich, 2001; van Dyne et al., J Manag Stud 40:1359–1392, 2003). Drawing on past research and theory we conceptualize four forms of employee silence, namely quiescent, acquiescent, prosocial, and opportunistic silence. We present scales to assess the four forms and provide empirical tests for their distinctiveness and patterns of relationships to various correlates and potential antecedents and consequences. (shrink)

We investigated how color preferences vary according to season and whether those changes could be explained by the ecological valence theory. To do so, we assessed the same participants’ preferences for the same colors during fall, winter, spring, and summer in the northeastern United States, where there are large seasonal changes in environmental colors. Seasonal differences were most pronounced between fall and the other three seasons. Participants liked fall-associated dark-warm colors—for example, dark-red, dark-orange, dark-yellow, and dark-chartreuse—more during fall than other (...) seasons. The EVT could explain these changes with a modified version of Palmer and Schloss’ weighted affective valence estimate procedure that added an activation term to the WAVE equation. The results indicate that color preferences change according to season, as color-associated objects become more/less activated in the observer. These seasonal changes in color preferences could not be characterized by overall shifts in weights along cone-contrast axes. (shrink)

Zeki and co-workers recently proposed that perception can best be described as locally distributed, asynchronous processes that each create a kind of microconsciousness, which condense into an experienced percept. The present article is aimed at extending this theory to metacognitive feelings. We present evidence that perceptual fluency—the subjective feeling of ease during perceptual processing—is based on speed of processing at different stages of the perceptual process. Specifically, detection of briefly presented stimuli was influenced by figure-ground contrast, but not by symmetry (...) or the font of the stimuli. Conversely, discrimination of these stimuli was influenced by whether they were symmetric and by the font they were presented in , but not by figure-ground contrast. Both tasks however were related with the subjective experience of fluency . We conclude that subjective fluency is the conscious phenomenal correlate of different processing stages in visual perception. (shrink)

Population counts and longitude and latitude coordinates were estimated for the 50 largest cities in the United States by computational linguistic techniques and by human participants. The mathematical technique Latent Semantic Analysis applied to newspaper texts produced similarity ratings between the 50 cities that allowed for a multidimensional scaling (MDS) of these cities. MDS coordinates correlated with the actual longitude and latitude of these cities, showing that cities that are located together share similar semantic contexts. This finding was replicated using (...) a first‐order co‐occurrence algorithm. The computational estimates of geographical location as well as population were akin to human estimates. These findings show that language encodes geographical information that language users in turn may use in their understanding of language and the world. (shrink)

The crucial phase of speciation is argued to be the evolution of mating cross-incompatibility (prezygotic incompatibility) between the genotypes distinguishing the prospective species populations. Based on this idea, a single-locus model of speciation is presented, which is shown to be biologically plausible and may help to settle the controversy as to the biological significance of single-locus modes of speciation. The model involves three alleles, two of which characterize in homozygous state the prospective species populations and in heterozygous state their hybrids. (...) The third allele represents a mutant which is equivalent to one of the first two alleles with the exception that it inhibits mating with carriers of the third allele. This third allele is fixed in one population and immigrates into a second population which contains the mutant inhibiting matings with members of the former population. Migration in the reverse direction does not occur. Proceeding from a widely applicable concept of fitness and mating preference it is shown that postzygotic incompatibility (hybrid or heterozygote disadvantage) alone suffices to trigger evolutionary replacement of the extant mating relations in the population receiving immigrants by any arbitrary degree of prezygotic incompatibility. This corroborates Wallace's hypothesis and emphasizes the potential biological relevance of speciation by reinforcement (parapatric speciation) at single gene loci. (shrink)

Because of their elementary significance in almost all fields of science, measures of association between two variables or traits are abundant and multiform. One aspect of association that is of considerable interest, especially in population genetics and ecology, seems to be widely ignored. This aspect concerns association between complex traits that show variable and arbitrarily defined state differences. Among such traits are genetic characters controlled by many and potentially polyploid loci, species characteristics, and environmental variables, all of which may be (...) mutually and asymmetrically associated. A concept of directed association of one trait with another is developed here that relies solely on difference measures between the states of a trait. Associations are considered at three levels: between individual states of two variables, between an individual state of one variable and the totality of the other variable, and between two variables. Relations to known concepts of association are identified. In particular, measures at the latter two levels turn out to be interpretable as measures of differentiation. Examples are given for areas of application (search for functional relationships, distribution of variation over populations, genomic associations, spatiogenetic structure). (shrink)

Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--Universit'at Erlangen-N'urnberg, 1981.

Gibt es einen spezifisch "linken" Kitsch in Abgrenzung zu politisch "rechtem"? Dieser vernachlässigten, für das Verständnis "linken Denkens" seit der Französischen Revolution aber wichtigen Frage gehen die Beiträge dieses Bandes nach.0Gezeigt wird, dass "linkes" Denken aus ganz anderen Gründen kitschanfällig ist als sein "rechtes" Pendant, auch wenn die Pathosformeln sich mitunter frappierend ähneln. Denn während rechte Ideologien den Veränderungsdruck der Moderne kompensieren, streben linke eher danach, ihn nach dem Motto "Mehr desselben" zu überbieten. Dieses Phänomen »linker Kitsch± nimmt der Band (...) in historischer und theoretischer Hinsicht anhand von sprachlichen, bildlichen und filmischen Beispielen in den Blick, sodass es in seinem konstitutiv transmedialen Charakter zur Geltung kommt. (shrink)

T. 1. Synthese und Theorie. Trägerschichten.

The coordinate-free methods of the preceding paper are illustrated in three problems. First, the electrodynamics of a homogeneous, isotropic, and gyrotropic medium is investigated; it is shown that such a medium can exhibit optical activity, and the propagation of a plane electromagnetic wave in such a medium is discussed. Then, the electrodynamics of a homogeneous system made anisotropic by a uniform external magnetic field is considered; a description of Faraday rotation is provided, the ionosphere being used in an example. Finally, (...) the reflection and refraction of a plane electromagnetic wave at the interface of two media are described by coordinate-free operators. (shrink)

Theoretical Laws and Normative Rules: Kant and Bolzano's Views on Logic'"1" Anita Von Duhn, Genf Does logic instruct us how to think correctly? ...