Human severe combined immune deficiency (SCID) is the most serious inherited immunological deficit. Recent work has revealed defects in the predominant pathway for double‐strand break repair called nonhomologous DNA end joining, or NHEJ. Progress in the biochemistry and genetics of NHEJ and of human SCID has proven to be synergistic between these two fields in a manner that covers the range from biochemical etiology to considerations about possible gene therapy for the B− SCID patients. BioEssays 25:1061–1070, 2003. © 2003 Wiley (...) Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Even though fatalism has been an intermittent topic of philosophy since Greek antiquity, this paper argues that fate ought to be of little concern to metaphysicians. Fatalism is neither an interesting metaphysical thesis in its own right, nor can it be identified with theses that are, such as realism about the future or determinism.

Am Beispiel eines neueren einschlägigen Themenbeitrages werden einige der Gründe dafür herausgestellt, daß die Bemühungen um eine Theorie der Literaturwissenschaft bisher kaum zu überzeugenden Ergebnissen geführt haben. Es handelt sich hierbei insonderheit um die Verwechslung von Methodenlehre und praktizierter Methode, die Nichtunterscheidung normativer und deskriptiver Aspekte sowie die unzulässige Ineinssetzung von philologischer Arbeit und großzügig verfahrender Textauslegung. In diesem Zusammenhang wird an die alexandrinischen Anfänge der Literaturwissenschaft erinnert, in denen die Interpretation als abschließende Überhöhung verbindlicher und empirisch ausgewiesener Kleinarbeit begriffen (...) wurde. (shrink)

Das literarische Werk Blaise Pascals (1623-1662) zählt zu den großen Klassikern der französischen Literatur. Es umfaßt neben den Lettres provinciales und den Pensées bedeutende kleinere Schriften zur Religion und Philosophie, die in dieser Ausgabe vollständig und zum Teil erstmalig in deutscher Übersetzung vorgelegt werden. Dazu gehören so wichtige Texte wie die Methodenschrift "Betrachtungen über die Geometrie im allgemeinen - Vom geometrischen Geist und Von der Kunst zu überzeugen", die wissenschaftstheoretischen Überlegungen der "Vorrede zu einer Abhandlung über die Leere" oder das (...) packende, die Dialektik der Pensées vorwegnehmende "Gespräch mit Herrn de Sacy über Epiktet und Montaigne", das hier in der Übersetzung der neu entdeckten Originalversion vorliegt. Zu wenig beachtet worden sind bislang die religiösen Schriften, so z.B. das "Gebet zu Gott um den rechten Gebrauch der Krankheiten" oder die umfangreichen, nicht abgeschlossenen "Schriften über die Gnade", die Pascals Ringen um die Problematik von Freiheit und Gnade dokumentieren. Beigegeben ist die Lebensbeschreibung durch seine Schwester Gilberte Périer, eine erstrangige historische Quelle, und im Anhang die "Abhandlung über die Leidenschaften der Liebe" - nicht von Pascal, aber ein Dokument früher Rezeption und gleichzeitig erstaunlicher Fehlurteile mancher Pascal-Forscher bis heute. In den Anmerkungen des Übersetzers und des Herausgebers werden Literatur- und Bibelzitate nachgewiesen. Sie lassen die beträchtliche Quellenverwertung Pascals deutlich werden. (shrink)

This paper aims to identify the sources of a list of twelve dharanis included in Rubric 748 of the Mahavyutpatti. It produces evidence connecting this group with three similar dharani enumerations transmittted in the Ratnamegha, Tathagatagunajñanacintyavisayavataranirdesa and Tathagatamahakarunanirdesa. The exposition of the Tathagatamahakarunanirdesa is particularly valuable since it preserves one of the earliest and most detailed discussions of dharani practice in Mahayana sutras. The Ratnamegha is closest to the Mahavyutpatti and thus the most likely source for its list.

Caring for seriously ill patients and their families during times of extreme stress is a privilege, but it can also bring much sadness and ethical turmoil for everyone involved, particularly at end of life. Patients and their families and the nurses and physicians who care for them are uniquely bonded together as they discuss, discern, and deliberate on some of the most heart-wrenching life and death decisions any patient, parent, family member, or partner can make. Shifting from a curative mode (...) of thinking is never easy, simple, or clear-cut. All of us share hopeful moments with our patients when we see, for example, an unexpected limb movement, a period of lucidity, or short-term physiological stability in... (shrink)

Both immanent and non-immanent (transcendent) factors related to philosophy, its nature, subject-matter, aims, objectives and methods are discussed from a meta-philosophical perspective, It will be noticed that original- and creative-thinkers in the socio-cultural practice of philosophy present us with their own, new and original ideas and patterns, sets or models of such ideas. Paradigms or models that are arrived at through the processes of theorizing. Processes that consist of a number of smaller steps or stages, stages that are multi-dimensional and (...) many-levelled. -/- All kinds of techniques and practices are employed in the contexts on these levels and in these dimensions. Some of these will be philosophical tools. These tools contribute to the doing of philosophy. This process of philosophizing forms one aspect, dimension or feature of the process/es of theorizing. -/- Some of the features will resemble and employ familiar, already existing and institutionalized ideas, models, tools, practices and techniques - usually from the discourse of philosophy, but also from other socio-cultural practices. -/- In the case of original/creative-thinkers these things will be ‘intuitive’ or ‘devised’ by the the individual himself while in the case of lesser original- and creative-thinkers these things (ideas, insights, tools, techniques, the ways they are arrived at or being constituted, employed to devise or express sets of new ideas or insights or models) will be obtained from the ideas, insights, statements, hypotheses and theories of other thinkers. The latter employs insights and ideas of others as ‘facts or factual ideas’ as ‘truths’ so as to argue for, establish, validate and legitimize their own derivative ideas resembling a kind of empirical research and the presentation of data in lectures and conferences and it is far removed from the approach of original thinkers. -/- . (shrink)

FREE download my new book, Philosophy is fiction,speculation, and opinions presented by reasoning and argumentation The tools employed might appear appropriate, the reasoning sound and argumentation valid, but the subject-matter, well one wonders what that has to do with philosophy, if anything at all? Viewing some of the topics one really wonders of the notion of philosophy is not stretched too far? So much that is passed off as philosophy itself or some kind of so-called interdisciplinary issues really appear as (...) irrelevant. Topics from the grievance studies especially fall under this. It seems as if individuals have personal issues, obsessions and psychological, social and cultural problems that they attempt to interpret, perceive and treat as if they are philosophical and/or philosophically related. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Maturana?Hans Ulrich GumbrechtWhy would a German scholar specializing in pedagogical thought travel thousands of miles to Santiago de Chile for an interview with a aging scientist who, it seems, has created for himself a solid reputation in the field of "biology of vision" without being hailed by his peers as a path-breaking innovator? In the German intellectual context, the answer to this question could be as laconic (...) as it would be superfluous: it consists in a deictic reference to the name and, implicitly, to the work of Niklas Luhmann. American readers, in contrast, may need some introductory explanation in order to understand the epistemological triangle between contemporary pedagogical thought, Maturana's biology, and Luhmann's philosophy—and, above all, in order to assess and even to appreciate its intellectual potential.Niklas Luhmann is certainly difficult to read, at least for starters, and to those who met him during his lifetime he invariably appeared to be a dead-serious person. But today, more than five years after Luhmann's death, we begin to discover traces of a sometimes uncanny irony—one may want to call it a "practical irony"—in his writing. One of the discursive gestures that characterized Luhmann's texts were references to academic authors who nobody had ever heard of (let alone read), presented with the same seriousness and with the same attitude of intellectual reverence that we normally reserve for the classics: for example, to the logician Gotthart Guenter, the philosopher Fritz Heider, the biologist Humberto Maturana, or the mathematician George Spencer Brown. There is no doubt that, in each case, a specific concept or a specific thought developed by one of these authors had turned out to be truly important within Luhmann's own work, and yet the "effects of authority" that his very serious quotes produced were nothing short of hilarious. For Luhmann's readers, with that self-flagellating attitude in which we academics so like to indulge, quite regularly attributed the experience that they had never heard of those seeming "authorities" to their own lack of intellectual cosmopolitanism. This is why, until the present day, some departments of sociology or philosophy in Germany have Spencer Brown or Guenter specialists on their payrolls, and this also explains why some of those authors have had moments of intense reception [End Page 22] in the world of the humanities and social sciences at German universities. Among them, Humberto Maturana, together with his co-author the late Francisco Varela, seem to be the exception confirming the rule that none of those Luhmann references had the intellectual power to survive Luhmann himself.Now why should one trust Luhmann's trust in Maturana? The debate about the importance of Luhmann's thought (he labeled it a "theory of social systems") in the larger context of contemporary Western philosophy has barely begun to become serious, and we are certainly many years away from a definitive consensual evaluation. But there are two—very different—features about Luhmann's work that make him fascinating at first glance. One lies in the simple fact that, probably, no other thinker since Hegel has managed to develop a restrained set of basic concepts and premises into a systematically coherent philosophical edifice of similar proportions. In this sense, entering the dimension of Luhmann's thought offers the patient reader a possibility to view many familiar positions and questions from sometimes radically different innovative angles. Less obvious, however, and more intriguing is Luhmann's intellectual bet to develop his systemic thought under strict avoidance of notions such as "subject," "subjecthood," or "agency." It was this very bet (about whose existential and political motivations he only left some rather vague remarks) that explains Luhmann's fascination for much theoretical thinking emerging from biological research, above all for Humberto Maturana's work. For from a biological perspective, subjecthood and agency are highly marginal attributes in the realm of living organisms. I believe that this (almost hidden) component in Luhmann's thinking can explain the particularly strong affinity of contemporary pedagogical thought in Germany with his work. Of course, such an affinity will not necessarily lead to a pedagogical theory that, in orthodox reliance on Luhmann, will... (shrink)

In diesem Buch liefert Hans-Ulrich Wöhler einen repräsentativen geschichtlichen Überblick zum dialektischen Denken in der mittelalterlichen Philosophie. Untersucht werden ausgewählte Texte von Autoren unterschiedlicher sprachlicher, religiöser und philosophischer Provenienz aus dem Zeitraum zwischen dem 6. und dem 17. Jahrhundert. Die den Autor dabei leitende Frage lautet: Inwiefern dachten diese Denker in ihrer Philosophie dialektisch? Im Zentrum des Bandes steht somit die Beschreibung und Rekonstruktion von konkreten Äußerungs- und Anwendungsformen und vor allem von Inhalten eines dialektischen Denkens, unabhängig von ihrer (...) Selbstkennzeichnung durch deren Urheber. Entscheidend für die Beantwortung der Leitfrage ist es, ob und in welcher Weise in den untersuchten Texten ein Verständnis für die Kompatibilität, die Relativität, die Vermittelbarkeit oder auch die Einheit von Gegensätzen artikuliert wird. Der gewählte zeitliche Rahmen integriert in die Darstellung nicht nur einige klassische Vertreter der Philosophie im lateinischen, islamischen und jüdischen Mittelalter, sondern er bezieht zugleich die Perioden der Rezeption und Aneignung des antiken Erbes am Anfang und des kritischen Rekurses darauf am Ende der Epoche ein. (shrink)

According to Maslow's Hierarchy of needs, only when lower or basic needs are satisfied will an individual be able to concentrate on higher needs. The motivation for the doing of original and creative philosophizing, theorizing in sciences and original work in disciplines or socio-cultural practices are some of the highest 'needs', values and attitudes. What are the values, attitudes and beliefs that groups of individuals subscribe to and employ to constitute their selves and realities? These things(that individuals experience as it (...) is their nature, their selves, their motivations, values and attitudes) are determined by genotypes, phenotypes, personality-types and other factors. (shrink)

This book, inspired by the sociologist Günter Dux, co-edited by the historian Hans Ulrich Vogel, and introduced by Mark Elvin, is a collective intellectual ...

Kann ein Mensch wirklich verstehen, wie es ist, eine Fledermaus zu sein? Natürlich nicht. Er kann sich nur vorstellen, wie es sich anfühlen könnte. Nagel zeigt damit dem Menschen die Grenzen seiner Erkenntnis- und Empathiefähigkeit auf. Radikal, provokativ und erhellend zugleich, ist der Essay von 1974 einer der am häufigsten zitierten philosophischen Aufsätze des 20. Jahrhunderts. Ulrich Diehl erklärt in einem Nachwort die besondere Bedeutung und spannende Wirkungsgeschichte dieses Klassikers der Philosophie des Geistes.

Der Laureatus dieser Schrift hatte 1986 Hans Jonas eröffnet, daß er an einer Politischen Philosophie arbeite, aus der, wie die Autoren dieses Bandes wissen, nichts geworden ist und von der man auch sonst nicht viel vernommen hat. Jonas wandte damals ein: "Wie wollen Sie der Politischen Vernunft auf die Beine helfen? Das Wissen über die politischen Bewußtseinsvoraussetzungen in uns und ihre Struktur in Gesellschaften ist in esoterische Teilbestände und exoterische politische Religionen, Ideologien und Denkschulen zerfallen. Diese Angelegenheit müßte einer umfassenden (...) Kritik unterzogen werden. Außerdem müßten alle gescheiterten Restitutionsversuche von Platon bis heute auf ihre Prägnanz hin durchgegangen werden. Er nannte Thomas von Aquin, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Arendt, Strauss, Voegelin und sich selbst. Sie müßten die Erfahrungen und die Maßstäbe, aus denen das politische Bewußtsein sich ernährt und aufrichtet und die, die es vergiften, frei legen." Im nachfolgenden Gespräch über verschiedene Denker und ihre Texte zur politischen Philosophie tauchten metaphorisch die "leuchtenden Fünkchen" oder "Goldklümpchen" auf, in denen Jonas und der Laureatus lebendige Reste der Politischen Vernunft und die menschheitliche Erinnerung an sie erkannten. "Wir sind womöglich aus einer Jeremiade herausgekommen …" lautete der verheißungsvolle Schlußpunkt des kurzen Gesprächs. Der Laureatus, Jurist und Politikwissenschaftler, konnte während seiner Lehr- und Forschungstätigkeit einige Anregungen für "philosophische Fragestellungen" zu den grotesken und verflachten Formationen des politischen Denkens unserer Zeit geben. Die Autoren sind Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch, Giandomenico Bonanni, Ulrich Diehl, Michael Ensslen, Jürgen Gebhardt, Volker Gerhardt, Manfred Henningsen, Vittorio Hösle, Klaus Kodalle, Peter König, Daniel Krochmalnik, Jan-Ivar Lindén, Reiner Manstetten, Krzysztof Maurin, Peter J. Opitz, Thomas Petersen, Walter Rothholz, Florian Sattler, Stephan Sattler, Julius H. Schoeps, Peter von Sivers, Chiara Staude-Colli, Jakob Staude, Kurt Stenzel, Peter Weber-Schäfer, Reiner Wiehl und James Wood. (shrink)