Plutarch's essay de fortuna Romanorum has attracted divergent judgements. Ziegler dismissed it as ‘eine nicht weiter ernst zu nehmende rhetorische Stilübung’. By Flacelière it was hailed as ‘une ébauche de méditation sur le prodigieux destin de Rome’. It is time to consider the work afresh and to discover whether there is common ground between these two views. Rather than offering a general appreciation, my treatment will take the work chapter by chapter, considering points of interest as they arise. This method (...) will enable us to compare what Plutarch says on particular subjects and themes in de fort. Rom. with what he says or does not say about them elsewhere. We shall thus be able to see clearly that for the most part the ideas he presents in the essay correspond with his thoughts about the rôle of fortune expressed in more serious writing, and that, where there is no correspondence, this is attributable to the rhetorical background. I do not intend to address directly the frequently discussed but insoluble question of whether we have in de fort. Rom. only one of two original works, that is whether there was once a de virtute Romanorum which Plutarch composed or answered. De fort. Rom. itself in fact gives almost as much prominence to άρετή as to τúχη, and their competing roles will be carefully evaluated. Nor do I look at the dating of the work. (shrink)

This short history of Pembroke College, Cambridge appeared in 1936, during a particularly successful period for the college in terms of both academic and sporting achievements. Pembroke was founded in 1347, when Edward III granted Marie de St Pol, widow of the Earl of Pembroke, a licence for the foundation of a new educational establishment in the young University of Cambridge. The college flourished, and from the mid-nineteenth century expanded greatly. The author of this book, which is still regarded as (...) the 'official history of Pembroke College', was a leading authority on the college's history. However, he died before the manuscript could be completed, and the final part was written as a postscript by S. C. Roberts, a former Master of the college. The book has delightful illustrations and a thorough index of the influential scholars, former students and benefactors connected with the college over the centuries. (shrink)

§1. The origins of recursion theory. In dedicating a book to Steve Kleene, I referred to him as the person who made recursion theory into a theory. Recursion theory was begun by Kleene's teacher at Princeton, Alonzo Church, who first defined the class of recursive functions; first maintained that this class was the class of computable functions ; and first used this fact to solve negatively some classical problems on the existence of algorithms. However, it was Kleene who, in his (...) thesis and in his subsequent attempts to convince himself of Church's Thesis, developed a general theory of the behavior of the recursive functions. He continued to develop this theory and extend it to new situations throughout his mathematical career. Indeed, all of the research which he did had a close relationship to recursive functions.Church's Thesis arose in an accidental way. In his investigations of a system of logic which he had invented, Church became interested in a class of functions which he called the λ-definable functions. Initially, Church knew that the successor function and the addition function were λ-definable, but not much else. During 1932, Kleene gradually showed1 that this class of functions was quite extensive; and these results became an important part of his thesis 1935a. (shrink)

This target article draws together two groups of experimental studies on the control of human movement through peripheral feedback and centrally generated signals of motor commands. First, during natural movement, feedback from muscle, joint, and cutaneous afferents changes; in human subjects these changes have reflex and kinesthetic consequences. Recent psychophysical and microneurographic evidence suggests that joint and even cutaneous afferents may have a proprioceptive role. Second, the role of centrally generated motor commands in the control of normal movements and movements (...) following acute and chronic deafferentation is reviewed. There is increasing evidence that subjects can perceive their motor commands under various conditions, but that this is inadequate for normal movement; deficits in motor performance arise when the reliance on proprioceptive feedback is abolished either experimentally or because of pathology. During natural movement, the CNS appears to have access to functionally useful input from a range of peripheral receptors as well as from internally generated command signals. The unanswered questions that remain suggest a number of avenues for further research. (shrink)

SIR KARL POPPER is a thinker and writer of some distinction, and it is extremely difficult to state the numerous strands of his thought in a short article. But there is one fundamental theme which seems to run through all his works relating to scientific method, and it is impossible to miss this theme if only because it is so forcefully stated. This article attempts to analyse the basic elements of this theme in order to assess its significance for students (...) of scientific method. (shrink)

Despite Decades of scholarly attention certain sections of Kant's first Critique have proved recalcitrant to received readings, canonical interpretations are impossible to come by. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the literature on Kant's treatment of causality in the Second Analogy, where there exists a controversy of many years standing about the success of Kant's arguments in favour of what has come to be known as ‘the causal principle’. For example, contemporary Kant scholars of stature no less than Lewis (...) White Beck and W.H. Walsh argue that Kant offers a uniquely persuasive case for causation. Other interpreters claim that the materials of the Second Analogy fail utterly to provide what is needed to vindicate judgements of cause and effect in a way that would satisfy the sceptic about causation.2 Thus the despairing conclusion of one recent review of the literature on the Second Analogy:It is possible that there lurks somewhere in the pages of the Critique of Pure Reason a convincing reply to Hume's sceptical doubts about the causal principle. But no such reply has yet been brought to light. (shrink)

The present commentary on it greatly contributes to the understanding of thisvery important work. In fact, it is a good expositary commentary, lucidly explaning the knotty points. It evinces deep study and understanding of Navya-Nyaya and its methodology.yhus, the sukhabodhika Tippanika represents a positive and distinctive contribution to the vast commercial literature on the Tattvacimtamani.

Much fundamental progress in medicine and, more broadly, in medical sciences has required or benefited from self-experiments. This review provides a definition of self-experiments in which experimenters themselves are subjects for their research, and it considers the logical steps which such experiments require. Lay, medical and scientific communities are often unaware of the contributions and the full range of outcomes from self-experiments. Hence, some implications for ethics committees are explored.

Originally published in 1904, Whittaker’s A Treatise on the Analytical Dynamics of Particles and Rigid Bodies soon became a classic of the subject and has remained in print for most of these 108 years. In this paper, we follow the book as it develops from a report that Whittaker wrote for the British Society for the Advancement of Science to its influence on Dirac’s version of quantum mechanics in the 1920s and beyond.

ὃσον κατ’ ⋯ρχ⋯ς το⋯ πολ⋯μου οἱ μ⋯ν ⋯νιαυτ⋯ν, οἱ δ⋯ δ⋯ο,οἱ δ⋯ τρι⋯ν γε ⋯τ⋯ν οὐδε⋯ς πλε⋯ω χρ⋯μιζον περο⋯σειν αὐτοὺς, εἰ οἱ Πελοπονν⋯σιοι ⋯σβ⋯λοιεν ⋯ς τ⋯ν χώραν.