Was ist das Wesen des schopferischen Geistes? Diese Frage steht im Zentrum des Eranos-Bandes. Die sieben Beitrage legen Zeugnis von ausgewahlten Aussenseitern, Sinnsuchern und Visionaren ab. Sie berichten von eigenen Erfahrungen und laden die Leser ein, ihnen in ihrem Diskurs zu folgen. Dieser Band eroffnet ein Spannungsfeld uber die Kulturgrenzen hinaus, das eng mit den Wurzeln der Eranos-Tagungen verbunden ist: Seit dem Beginn 1933 stehen die Tagungen im Zeichen der Begegnung der Kulturen, aber auch des Dialoges zwischen den Geistes- und (...) Naturwissenschaften. Dabei kommt der Psychologie und der Religionswissenschaft eine wichtige Mittlerrolle zu. Der Band enthalt die folgenden Beitrage: Ronald Steckel: Jacob Bohme - ein Wissender Gottes Gunhild Porksen: Wer ist der Mensch? Paracelsus' Entwurf einer umfassenden Anthropologie Marianne Katterfeldt: Die Urschonheit des Menschen - Der Mensch als Mikrokosmos bei Emanuel Swedenborg Akira Ishii: NAIKAN - Innenschau. Eine aus dem Buddhismus erwachsene Meditationsmethode Gerhard M. Walch: Erich Neumann - Leben und Werk eines Aussenseiters und Visionars Christian Jung: Meister Eckharts Philosophie des Nichts Nikolaus Koliusis: Blaupause. (shrink)

Discourse around assisted colonization focuses on the ecological risks, costs, and uncertainties associated with the practice, as well as on its technical feasibility and alternative approaches to it. Nevertheless, the ethical underpinnings of the case for assisted colonization are claims about the value of species. A complete discussion of assisted colonization needs to include assessment of these claims. For each type of value that species are thought to possess it is necessary to determine whether it is plausible that species possess (...) the type of value and, if so, to what extent their possessing it justifies assisted colonization. I conducted such an assessment for each of the predominant types of value ascribed to species: ecological, instrumental (including option value), existence, and intrinsic value (including interest‐based, objective, and valuer‐dependent intrinsic value). The vast majority of species, including several that have been proposed as candidates for assisted colonization, have much less value than is often presumed. Moreover, with respect to some types of value, assisted colonization would not fully preserve the value of the target species even if it were to keep the target species in existence. Therefore, the case for assisted colonization is significantly weaker and more qualified than its advocates often suppose. There may be exceptional species for which assisted colonization is well justified—and for this reason, case‐by‐case assessment is necessary—but in general the burden of justification generated by the ecological risks associated with assisted colonization is not met by the value potentially preserved by assisted colonization. This suggests that assisted colonization ought to have, at most, a very minor role in the portfolio of ecosystem management practices, even as it pertains to species conservation under conditions of rapid climate change. (shrink)

Humans are complex social beings. To understand human behaviour, an integrated perspective is required - one which considers both what we regularly do and what motivates us. Personality, Values, Culture uses an evolutionary perspective to look at the similarities and differences in personality and values across modern societies. Integrating research on personality and human values into a functional framework that highlights their underlying compatibilities, Fischer describes how personality is shaped by the complex interplay between genes and the environment, both over (...) the course of human evolution and within the lifespan of individuals. He proposes a gene-culture coevolution model of personality and values to explain how and why people differ around the world and how genes, economics, social conditions, and climate jointly shape personality. (shrink)

Nurturing Creativity in the Classroom is a groundbreaking collection of essays by leading scholars, who examine and respond to the tension that many educators face in valuing student creativity but believing that they cannot support it given the curricular constraints of the classroom. Is it possible for teachers to nurture creative development and expression without drifting into curricular chaos? Do curricular constraints necessarily lead to choosing conformity over creativity? This book combines the perspectives of top educators and psychologists to generate (...) practical advice for considering and addressing the challenges of supporting creativity within the classroom. It is unique in its balance of practical recommendations for nurturing creativity and thoughtful appreciation of curricular constraints. This approach helps ensure that the insights and advice found in this collection will take root in educators' practice, rather than being construed as yet another demand placed on their overflowing plate of responsibilities. (shrink)

In earlier works, I have argued that it is useful to think of much scientific activity, particularly in experimental sciences, as involving the operation of distributed cognitive systems, as these are understood in the contemporary cognitive sciences. Introducing a notion of distributed cognition, however, invites consideration of whether, or in what way, related cognitive activities, such as knowing, might also be distributed. In this paper I will argue that one can usefully introduce a notion of distributed cognition without attributing other (...) cognitive attributes, such as knowing, let alone having a mind or being conscious, to distributed cognitive systems. I will first briefly introduce the cognitive science understanding of distributed cognition, partly so as to distinguish full-blown distributed cognition from mere collective cognition.1. (shrink)

This paper offers a restatement of the basic project of Hannah Arendt's Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, tries to trace its theoretical motivation, and presents some criticisms of Arendt's interpretation of Kant's Critique of Judgment. Arendt's political philosophy as a whole is an attempt to ground the idea of human dignity on the publicly displayed 'words and deeds' that con stitute the realm of human affairs. This project involves a philo sophical response both to Plato's impugning of the dignity of (...) the polis and to Hegel's founding of modern historicism. The Kant Lectures bring this philosophical project to its completion because the enact ment of public deeds presupposes a company of judging spectators who draw meaning from the spectacle by judging and appreciating what is enacted. But this conception, precisely because it relates so deeply to Arendt's own theoretical impulse, leads to a sometimes onesided and misleading reading of Kant. Key Words: aesthetic judgment • dialogue/communication • Hannah Arendt • Immanuel Kant • political judgment. (shrink)

There is no best scientific model of anything; there are only models more or less good for different purposes. Thus, there is no general answer to the question of whether one should model biological behavior using computer simulations or robots. It all depends on what one wants to learn. This is not a question about models, but about scientific goals.

Husserl has finally begun to be recognized as the precursor of current interest in intentionality — the first to have a general theory of the role of mental representations in the philosophy of language and mind. As the first thinker to put directedness of mental representations at the center of his philosophy, he is also beginning to emerge as the father of current research in cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence.

As historians of science increasingly turn to work on recent (post 1945) science, the historiographical and methodological problems associated with the history of contemporary science are debated with growing frequency and urgency. This book brings together authorities on the history, historiography and methodology of recent and contemporary science to review the problems facing historians of contemporary science, technology and medicine and to explore new ways forward. The chapters explore topics which will be of ever increasing interest to historians of postwar (...) science, including the difficulties of accessing and using secret archival material, the interactions between archivists, historians and scientists and the politics of evidence and historical accounts. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the meaning of the idea of human rights in the works of Kant and Habermas. As a starting point of this examination we take Rorty's Oxford Amnesty Lecture of 1993. In this lecture Rorty claims, among other things, that a Kantian foundationalist approach to human rights is outmoded. It is better to neglect the question concerning our nature as human beings and substitute it for the question what we can make of ourselves. Kant's account of (...) the equal respect that is due to every person, tends to forget that outside our circle of post-Enlightenment European culture most people do not understand why rational agency is a sufficient condition for membership in a moral community. The borders of our moral community are often enough the borders of our family, group or society and do not include every human being. This restriction of the moral community poses a serious challenge to Kantian moral and political theory. On the basis of an analysis of the idea of human rights and the principle of popular sovereignty in the works of Kant and Habermas we try to show that the main claim of both authors is not so much a claim to knowledge about the nature of human beings, but a claim to the counterfactual conditions of a system of rights. As legal subjects we cannot claim a right to equal liberty for ourselves and people like us and deny it to everyone outside the borders of our moral community. As legal subjects we may no longer choose the medium or the language in which we can actualize our autonomy. Every system of rights presupposes certain counterfactual conditions, among which a right to equal liberties, and a certain performative meaning. (shrink)

Maxwell claimed that the electrostatic inverse square law could be deduced from Cavendish's spherical condenser experiment. This is true only if the accuracy claims made by Cavendish and Maxwell are ignored, for both used the inverse square law as a premise in their analyses of experimental accuracy. By so doing, they assumed the very law the accuracy of which the Cavendish experiment was supposed to test. This paper attempts to make rational sense of this apparently circular procedure and to relate (...) it to some variants of traditional problems concerning old and new evidence. (shrink)

The American administrative state is a feature of the new liberalism that is largely irreconcilable with the old, founding-era liberalism. At its core, the administrative state, with its delegation of legislative power to the bureaucracy, combination of functions within bureaucratic agencies, and weakening of presidential control over administration undercuts the separation-of-powers principle that is the base of the founders' Constitution. The animating idea behind the features of the administrative state is the separation of politics and administration, which was championed by (...) James Landis, the New-Deal architect of the administrative state for President Franklin Roosevelt. The idea of separating politics and administration, and the faith such a separation requires in the objectivity of administrators, did not originate with Landis or the New Deal but, instead, with the Progressives who had come a generation earlier. Both Woodrow Wilson and Frank Goodnow were pioneers in advocating the separation of politics and administration, and made it the centerpiece of their broad arguments for constitutional reform. (shrink)

This paper is a contribution to that part of science studies known as 'the cognitive study of science'. The general goal of such studies is to understand cogni-.