The question of when and how the basic concepts that characterize modern science arose in Western Europe has long been central to the history of science. This book examines the transition from Renaissance engineering and philosophy of nature to classical mechanics oriented on the central concept of velocity. For this new edition, the authors include a new discussion of the doctrine of proportions, an analysis of the role of traditional statics in the construction of Descartes' impact rules, and go deeper (...) into the debate between Descartes and Hobbes on the explanation of refraction. They also provide significant new material on the early development of Galileo's work on mechanics and the law of fall. (shrink)

Languages differ systematically in how to encode a motion event. English characteristically expresses manner in verb root and path in verb particle; in Chinese, varied aspects of motion, such as manner, path and cause, can be simultaneously encoded in a verb compound. This study investigates whether typological differences, as such, influence how first and second language learners conceptualise motion events, as suggested by behavioural evidences. Specifically, the performance of Chinese learners of English, at three proficiencies, was (...) compared to that of two groups of monolingual speakers in a triads matching task. The first set of analyses regarding categorisation preferences indicates that participants across groups preferred the path-matched (rather than manner-matched) screens. However, the second set of analyses regarding reaction time suggests, firstly, that English monolingual speakers reacted significantly more quickly in selecting the manner-matched scenes compared with monolingual speakers of Chinese, who tended to use an approximately equal amount of time in making manner- and path-matched decisions, a finding that can arguably be mapped onto the typological difference between the two languages. Secondly, the pattern of response latency in low-level L2 learners looked more like that of monolingual speakers of Chinese. Only at intermediate and advanced levels of acquisition did the behavioural pattern of L2 learners become target-like, thus suggesting language-specific constraints from the L1 at an early stage of acquisition. Overall, our results suggest that motion event cognition may be linked to, among other things, the linguistic structure of motion description in particular languages. (shrink)

The aerial manipulator is a complex system with high coupling and instability. The motion of the robotic arm will affect the self-stabilizing accuracy of the unmanned aerial vehicles. To enhance the stability of the aerial manipulator, a composite controller combining conventional proportion integration differentiation control, fuzzy theory, and neural network algorithm is proposed. By blurring the attitude error signal of UAV as the input of the neural network, the anti-interference ability and stability of UAV is improved. At the same (...) time, a neural network model identifier based on Maxout activation function is built to realize accurate recognition of the controlled model. The simulation results show that, compared with the conventional PID controller, the composite controller combined with fuzzy neural network can improve the anti-interference ability and stability of UAV greatly. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the mathematisation of mechanics in the seventeenth century, specifically on how the representation of compounded rectilinear motions presented in the ancient Greek Mechanica found its way into Newton’s Principia almost two thousand years later. I aim to show that the path from the former to the latter was optical: the conceptualisation of geometrical lines as paths of reflection created a physical interpretation of dia­grammatic principles of geometrical point-motion, involving the kinematics and dynamics of light reflection. (...) Upon the atomistic conception of light, the optical interpretation of such geometrical principles entailed their mechanical generalisation to local motion; rectilinear motion via the physico-mathemat­ics of reflection and the Mechanica’s parallelogram rule; circular motion via the physico-mathematics of reflection, the Archimedean squaring of the circle and the Mechanica’s extension of the parallelogram rule to centripetal motion. This appeal to the physico-mathematics of reflection forged a realist founda­tion for the mathematisation of motion. Whereas Aristotle’s physics rested on motions which had their source in the nature of the elements, early modern thinkers such as Harriot, Descartes, and Newton based their new principles of mechanical motion upon selected elements of the mechanics of light motion, projected upon the geometry of the parallelogram rule for rectilinear and, ultimately, circular motion. (shrink)

Decades before Newton’s Principia ushered in the age of modern science, Aristotelian physics faced a serious challenge against its weakest point, in the quest to construct a new theory of projectile motion. Yet how were such new principles of motion conceived, without reference to an established theory of mechanics? This paper explores the conceptual space between the rejection of Aristotle’s physics and the appearance of Newton’s physics in which people such as Harriot and Galileo sought new ways to (...) understand mechanical phenomena. This paper seeks to show that both Harriot and Galileo looked to the (early seventeenth-century) zeitgeist of accepting the law of reflection as a law of oblique projection-rebound for all material bodies, for their foundational (non-Aristotelian) conceptual resource. The kinematics and dynamics of light’s compound, oblique motion had been developed over centuries within optics, and constituted the ‘ideal’ resource for novel analyses of oblique projectile motion. Whereas Harriot’s inclusion of air resistance restricted the generalizability of optical principles to his simplest case, the upright parabola, Galileo’s idealized analysis of projectile motion in a vacuum represented all cases of projectile motion as upright parabolas. He was thus able to generalize these optical principles to projectile motion per se. (shrink)

We shall proceed as follows: In section ii, we shall give a brief over-view of the literature on Gilbert, more to indicate general directions of interest than to present any in-depth analysis. Then, in the main body of this presentation, section iii, we will present three ways in which we think it is accurate to claim that Gilbert influenced Descartes. These are: (1) Gilbert gave Descartes a new definition of an organ; (2) Gilbert gave Descartes a new definition of what (...) constitutes life and animation; (3) Gilbert gave Descartes a new view of natural motion. (shrink)

The nature of motion -- Causes, forces, and resistance -- The concept of the function in fourteenth-century physics -- The significance of the theory of impetus for Scholastic natural philosophy -- Galileo and the Scholastic theory of impetus -- The theory of the elements and the problem of their participation in compounds -- The achievements of late Scholastic natural philosophy.

In this note, we consider a Merton model for default risk, where the firm’s value is driven by a Brownian motion and a compound Poisson process.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:424 CAN HUME'S USE OF A SIMPLE/COMPLEX DISTINCTION BE MADE CONSISTENT? There is little doubt that Hume equivocates on the distinction between simple and complex impressions and ideas. Sometimes he identifies properties such as colors and shapes as simples. This is what he does, in fact, when he first introduces the distinction: Simple perceptions or impressions and ideas are such as admit of no distinction nor separation. The complex (...) are the contrary to these, and may be distinguished into parts. Tho' a particular colour, taste, and smell are qualities all united together in this apple, 'tis easy to perceive they are not the same, but are at least distinguishable from each other. Later, however, Hume speaks of simples not as qualities (or, of course, as substances) but as objects, i.e., things with properties: it is not red and round that are the simples but the red, round spot. He says, for example: Before I leave this subject I shall employ the same principles to explain that distinction of reason, which is so much talk'd of, and is so little understood, in the schools. Of this kind is the distinction betwixt figure and the body figur'd; motion and the body mov'd. The difficulty of explaining this distinction arises from the principle above explain'd, that all ideas, which are different, are separable. For it follows from thence, that if the figure be different from the body, their ideas must be separable as well as distinguishable; if they be not different, their ideas can neither be separable nor distinguishable (T 2425 ). 425 A genuine inconsistency with regard to the simple/complex distinction would have far reaching implications for Hume's system. Even the question concerning his understanding of necessity may be affected. It has been argued, for example, that what Hume believes separates the philosophical relations that are necessary from those that are not is that the former are internal relations. The suggestion is that the doctrine of internal relations, which is inextricably tied to a specific characterization of a simple/complex distinction, provides the essential contrast Hume needs for his ultimate denial that the causal relation is necessary. The consequences are compounded if we also take Robinson to be right in his attempt to reconcile Hume's 'conflicting' statements about causation in terms of the distinction between the natural and philosophical relations. While it is pointless to deny the ambiguity just set out (and, of course, one must remain constantly watchful to determine how Hume is employing the simple/complex distinction in a particular case), I believe a reconciliation of the two positions is still possible and that there is no genuine contradiction in Hume's system over this issue. The principle shift occurs between the distinction presented in logical terms and its presentation in psychological terms. In the latter instance what Hume seems to be worried about is Platonism: a metaphysics that countenances the existence of unexemplif ied qualities. This is most evident in the passage above where Hume, in effect, makes the following argument: if it were the case that (1) what is distinguishable in thought is separable in reality; and (2) figure and body are 426 distinguishable in thought; then it would follow that (3) figure and body are separable in reality. However, (3), i.e., Platonism, is false. But then so must be (2). Hume never deviates from this conclusion and its implications for his model of thought throughout the Treatise. It is this argument, for example, which became the basis for Hume's accusation against Locke's theory of abstraction and the foundation of his own view. So far Hume has it that neither thought nor experience present us with colors and shapes in isolation. This is his psychological point. Yet that need not be seen as conclusive with regard to what is to count as a logical simple. Building on his notion of a distinction of reason, Hume says: Thus when a globe of white marble is presented, we receive only the impression of a white colour dispos 'd in a certain form, nor are we able to separate and distinguish the colour from the form. But observing afterwards... (shrink)

When conducting interart studies, difficulty arises comparing art forms due to differences in discourse between genres. The problem becomes compounded when certain art works extend their mode of communication beyond the boundaries of their genre. Interpreting such works tends to result in subjectivist readings that cannot be justified according to any predetermined analytical model. Rather than negating the subjective response, this article proposes that an artwork is realized within the mind. In examining critical responses to Caravaggio’s painting ‘Beheading of St. (...) John the Baptist’ and Beckett’s play ‘Not I’ according to a cognitive aesthetic, one discovers a rationale for considering the painting as stimulating a feeling of motion while the play evokes a feeling of stasis, contrary to their respective genres. (shrink)

This chapter examines the ancient Stoic theory of the physical composition of pneuma, how its composition relates to pneuma’s many causal roles in Stoic philosophy, and to what extent each of the first three leaders of the Stoic school accepted the claim that pneuma pervades the cosmos. I argue that pneuma is a compound of fire and air. Furthermore, many functions of pneuma can be reduced to the functions of these elements. Finally, it is likely that each of the (...) early Stoics posited a pervasive cosmic pneuma. This paper also explores the nature of pneuma’s tensile movement and offers an account of fire and air’s roles in causing its motion. (shrink)

Aristotle is a rarity in the history of philosophy and science - he is a towering figure in the history of both disciplines. Moreover, he devoted a great deal of philosophical attention to the nature of scientific knowledge. How then do his philosophical reflections on scientific knowledge impact his actual scientific inquiries? In this book James Lennox sets out to answer this question. He argues that Aristotle has a richly normative view of scientific inquiry, and that those norms are of (...) two kinds: a general, question-guided framework applicable to all scientific inquiries, and domain-specific norms reflecting differences in the target of inquiry and in the means of observation available to researchers. To see these norms of inquiry in action, the second half of this book examines Aristotle's investigations of animals, the soul, material compounds, the motions of heavenly bodies, and respiration. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:62. 'HUME ON SPACE AND GEOMETRY': ONE RESERVATION In so far as Rosemary Newman disagrees with any2 thing said in my 'Infinite Divisibility in Hume's Treatise ' - which seems, happily, not to be so very far - I hasten to report that I am now persuaded. Thus my suggested reason for refusing to allow that an impression of blackness could give rise to the idea of extension was (...) not, after all, 3 Hume's. And no doubt his conviction that whatever ^s capable of being divided in_ infinitum, must consist of an infinite number of parts (T26) was in part sustained by "the atomistic type of phenomenalism advanced in the first Part 4 of Book I of the Treatise". For to any objection that this nowadays so plainly unacceptable conviction had been accepted as obviously correct by such formidable predecessors as Berkeley and Hobbes, it could be replied that they too had their commitments to their own brands of atomism. In her further comments upon "Hume's phenomenalist atomism" Newman notices, as "a very curious claim", his statement that when - like the true philosopher he was! - he locked at a table:- My senses convey to me only the impressions of colour 'd points, dispos 'd in a certain manner (T34). So I was sorry that she seems to have missed the bold priority claim which, referring to the same passage, I made on Hume's behalf in that article: "Anyone familiar with the theories and the paintings of Seurat might also mischievously characterize the Hume of this Section as 'the Father of Pointillisme' "! But at the end of her paper, although I think only at the end, Newman begins to go very wrong indeed. She says: "Turning to the Enquiry there is little to indicate any shift in Hume's opinion of geometry as a body of synthetic but necessary knowledge." After remarking that Hume does not repeat "any of his earlier arguments" against infinite divisibility "nor those in support of a system of mathematical 63. points", she notices that, in the paragraph characterizing propositions stating only the relations of ideas, geometry "is classed as a science alongside arithmetic and algebra (E25) ".7 Next she quotes the end of that paragraph, and at once comments: "Flew thinks that in the Enquiry Hume is to be seen as 'restoring pure geometry to its place alongside Q the other two elements in the trinity',..." Newman does not, so far as I can see, offer any reason for dismissing this suggestion - apart, that is, from asserting that the paragraph from which she has just quoted "can be interpreted so as to remove any apparent inconsistency with the claim that the impossibility of conceiving the negation of a geometrical axiom has the same ground in the Enquiry as in the Treatise, namely, the invariant character of sensible space." She just tells us that "Where geometry is concerned I follow Atkinson's opinion in finding no reason to suppose that 9 Hume abandoned the Treatise stand." This I find, to say the least, surprising since the very sentence of Hume's Philosophy of Belief from which she quoted my contrary opinion does provide what I still consider to be a quite decisive reason. Since she does not discuss either my reason or the Hume passage to which I was referring, I can here do nothing else or better than repeat myself; adding only and by the way that Professor Atkinson's paper 'Hume on Mathematics' was published a year before that book:Besides restoring pure geometry to its place alongside the other two elements of the trinity, the Inquiry also sketches an account of applied mathematics. This is something the earlier book did not provide at all. 'Every part of mixed mathematics proceeds on the supposition that certain laws are established by nature in her operations, and abstract reasonings are employed, either to assist experience in the discovery of these laws or to determine their influence in particular instances... Thus it is a law of motion, discovered by experience, that the moment or force of any body in motion is in 64. the compound ratio or proportion of its solid contents and its velocity, and, consequently... (shrink)

This paper starts from a nonlinear fermion field equation of motion with a strongly coupled self-interaction. Nonperturbative quark solutions of the equation of motion are constructed in terms of a Reggeized infinite component free spinor field. Such a field carries a family of strongly interacting unstable compounds lying on a Regge locus in the analytically continued quark spin. Such a quark field is naturally confined and also possesses the property of asymptotic freedom. Furthermore, the particular field self-regularizes the (...) interactions and naturally breaks the chiral invariance of the equation of motion. We show why and how the existence of such a strongly coupled solution and its particle-family, wave duality forces a change in the field equation of motion such that it conserves C, P, T, although its individual interaction terms are of V-A and thus C, P nonconserving type. (shrink)

This paper consists in an exposition of a proof Newton gave in 1666 of the parallelogram law for compounding velocities, and an examination of its implications for understanding his treatment of motion resulting from a continuously acting force in the Principia. I argue that the “moments” invoked in the fluxional proof of the vector resolution and composition of velocities are “virtual times”, a device allowing Newton to represent motions by the linear displacements produced in such a time; the ratio (...) of velocities at an instant can then be represented by assuming the velocities continue for such a virtual time. By the Method of First and Ultimate Ratios, the first ratio of the velocities is then given by the ratio of such lines, under the presupposition that in the limit they will shrink to zero magnitude. I then argue that the same device is implicit in Newton’s appeal to “moments” or “particles of time” in his proof of Kepler’s Area Law in the “Locke Paper” and in Proposition 1 of Book 1 of the Principia, and that the limiting process involved there is therefore the same as that implicit in the Method of First and Ultimate Ratios. (shrink)

continent. 1.1 : 3-13. / 0/ – Introduction I want to propose, as a trajectory into the philosophically weird, an absurd theoretical claim and pursue it, or perhaps more accurately, construct it as I point to it, collecting the ground work behind me like the Perpetual Train from China Mieville's Iron Council which puts down track as it moves reclaiming it along the way. The strange trajectory is the following: Kant's critical philosophy and much of continental philosophy which has followed, (...) has been a defense against horror and madness. Kant's prohibition on speculative metaphysics such as dogmatic metaphysics and transcendental realism, on thinking beyond the imposition of transcendental and moral constraints, has been challenged by numerous figures proceeding him. One of the more interesting critiques of Kant comes from the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land stating, “Kant’s critical philosophy is the most elaborate fit of panic in the history of the Earth.” And while Alain Badiou would certainly be opposed to the libidinal investments of Land's Deleuzo-Guattarian thought, he is likewise critical of Kant's normative thought-bureaucracies: Kant is the one author for whom I cannot feel any kinship. Everything in him exasperates me, above all his legalism—always asking Quid Juris? Or ‘Haven’t you crossed the limit?’—combined, as in today’s United States, with a religiosity that is all the more dismal in that it is both omnipresent and vague. The critical machinery he set up has enduringly poisoned philosophy, while giving great succour to the academy, which loves nothing more than to rap the knuckles of the overambitious [….] That is how I understand the truth of Monique David-Menard’s reflections on the properly psychotic origins of Kantianism. I am persuaded that the whole of the critical enterprise is set up to to shield against the tempting symptom represented by the seer Swedenborg, or against ‘diseases of the head’, as Kant puts it. An entire nexus of the limits of reason and philosophy are set up here, namely that the critical philosophy not only defends thought from madness, philosophy from madness, and philosophy from itself, but that philosophy following the advent of the critical enterprise philosophy becomes auto-vampiric; feeding on itself to support the academy. Following Francois Laruelle's non-philosophical indictment of philosophy, we could go one step further and say that philosophy operates on the material of what is philosophizable and not the material of the external world. [1] Beyond this, the Kantian scheme of nestling human thinking between our limited empirical powers and transcendental guarantees of categorical coherence, forms of thinking which stretch beyond either appear illegitimate, thereby liquefying both pre-critical metaphysics and the ravings of the mad in the same critical acid. In rejecting the Kantian apparatus we are left with two entities – an unsure relation of thought to reality where thought is susceptible to internal and external breakdown and a reality with an uncertain sense of stability. These two strands will be pursued, against the sane-seal of post-Kantian philosophy by engaging the work of weird fiction authors H.P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti. The absolute inhumanism of the formers universe will be used to describe a Shoggothic Materialism while the dream worlds of the latter will articulate the mad speculation of a Ventriloquil Idealism. But first we must address the relation of philosophy to madness as well as philosophy to weird fiction. /1/ – Philosophy and Madness There is nothing that the madness of men invents which is not either nature made manifest or nature restored. Michel Foucault. Madness and Civilization. The moment I doubt whether an event that I recall actually took place, I bring the suspicion of madness upon myself: unless I am uncertain as to whether it was not a mere dream. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Idea, Vol. 3. Madness is commonly thought of as moving through several well known cultural-historical shifts from madness as a demonic or otherwise theological force, to rationalization, to medicalization psychiatric and otherwise. Foucault's Madness and Civilization is well known for orientating madness as a form of exclusionary social control which operated by demarcating madness from reason. Yet Foucault points to the possibility of madness as the necessity of nature at least prior to the crushing weight of the church. Kant’s philosophy as a response to madness is grounded by his humanizing of madness itself. As Adrian Johnston points out in the early pages of Time Driven pre-Kantian madness meant humans were seized by demonic or angelic forces whereas Kantian madness became one of being too human. Madness becomes internalized, the external demonic forces become flaws of the individual mind. Foucault argues that, while madness is de-demonized it is also dehumanized during the Renaissance, as madmen become creatures neither diabolic nor totally human reduced to the zero degree of humanity. It is immediately clear why for Kant, speculative metaphysics must be curbed – with the problem of internal madness and without the external safeguards of transcendental conditions, there is nothing to formally separate the speculative capacities for metaphysical diagnosis from the mad ramblings of the insane mind – both equally fall outside the realm of practicality and quotidian experience. David-Menard's work is particularly useful in diagnosing the relation of thought and madness in Kant's texts. David-Menard argues that in Kant's relatively unknown “An Essay on the Maladies of the Mind” as well as his later discussion of the Seer of Swedenborg, that Kant formulates madness primarily in terms of sensory upheaval or other hallucinatory theaters. She writes: “madness is an organization of thought. It is made possible by the ambiguity of the normal relation between the imaginary and the perceived, whether this pertains to the order of sensation or to the relations between our ideas” Kant's fascination with the Seer forces Kant between the pincers of “aesthetic reconciliation” – namely melancholic withdrawal – and “a philosophical invention” – namely the critical project. Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis is a combination and reversal of Kant's split, where an aesthetic over engagement with the world entails prolific conceptual invention. Their embrace of madness, however, is of course itself conceptual despite all their rhizomatic maneuvers. Though they move with the energy of madness, Deleuze and Guattari save the capacity of thought from the fangs of insanity by imbuing materiality itself with the capacity for thought. Or, as Ray Brassier puts it, “Deleuze insists, it is necessary to absolutize the immanence of this world in such a way as to dissolve the transcendent disjunction between things as we know them and as they are in themselves”. That is, whereas Kant relied on the faculty of judgment to divide representation from objectivity Deleuze attempts to flatten the whole economy beneath the juggernaut of ontological univocity. Speculation, as a particularly useful form of madness, might fall close to Deleuze and Guattari’s shaping of philosophy into a concept producing machine but is different in that it is potentially self destructive – less reliant on the stability of its own concepts and more adherent to exposing a particular horrifying swath of reality. Speculative madness is always a potential disaster in that it acknowledges little more than its own speculative power with the hope that the gibbering of at least a handful of hysterical brains will be useful. Pre-critical metaphysics amounts to madness, though this may be because the world itself is mad while new attempts at speculative metaphysics, at post-Kantian pre-critical metaphysics, are well aware of our own madness. Without the sobriety of the principle of sufficient reason we have a world of neon madness: “we would have to conceive what our life would be if all the movements of the earth, all the noises of the earth, all the smells, the tastes, all the light – of the earth and elsewhere, came to us in a moment, in an instant – like an atrocious screaming tumult of things”. Speculative thought may be participatory in the screaming tumult of the world or, worse yet, may produce its spectral double. Against theology or reason or simply commonsense, the speculative becomes heretical. Speculation, as the cognitive extension of the horrorific sublime should be met with melancholic detachment. Whereas Kant's theoretical invention, or productivity of thought, is self -sabotaging, since the advent of the critical project is a productivity of thought which then delimits the engine of thought at large either in dogmatic gestures or non-systematizable empirical wondrousness. The former is celebrated by the fiction of Thomas Ligotti whereas the latter is espoused by the tales of H.P. Lovecraft. /2/ – Weird Fiction and Philosophy. Supernatural horror, in all its eerie constructions, enables a reader to taste treats inconsistent with his personal welfare. Thomas Ligotti Songs of a Dead Dreamer. I choose weird stories because they suit my inclination best—one of my strongest and most persistent wishes being to achieve,momentarily, the illusion of some strange suspension or violation of the galling limitations of time, space, and natural law which forever imprison us and frustrate our curiosity about the infinite cosmic spaces beyond the radius of our sight and analysis H.P. Lovecraft. “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” Lovecraft states that his creation of a story is to suspend natural law yet, at the same time, he indexes the tenuousness of such laws, suggesting the vast possibilities of the cosmic. The tension that Lovecraft sets up between his own fictions and the universe or nature is reproduced within his fictions in the common theme of the unreliable narrator; unreliable precisely because they are either mad or what they have witnessed questions the bounds of material reality. In “The Call of Cthulhu” Lovecraft writes: The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. Despite Lovecraft's invocations of illusion, he is not claiming that his fantastic creations such as the Old Ones are supernatural but, following Joshi, are only ever supernormal. One can immediately see that instead of nullifying realism Lovecraft in fact opens up the real to an unbearable degree. In various letters and non-fictional statements Lovecraft espoused strictly materialist tenets, ones which he borrowed from Hugh Elliot namely the uniformity of law, the denial of teleology and the denial of non-material existence. Lovecraft seeks to explore the possibilities of such a universe by piling horror upon horror until the fragile brain which attempts to grasp it fractures. This may be why philosophy has largely ignored weird fiction – while Deleuze and Guattari mark the turn towards weird fiction and Lovecraft in particular, with the precursors to speculative realism as well as contemporary related thinkers have begun to view Lovecraft as making philosophical contributions. Lovecraft's own relation to philosophy is largely critical while celebrating Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. This relationship of Lovecraft to philosophy and philosophy to Lovecraft is coupled with Lovecraft's habit of mercilessly destroying the philosopher and the figure of the academic more generally in his work, a destruction which is both an epistemological destruction and an ontological destruction. Thomas Ligotti's weird fiction which he has designated as a kind of “confrontational escapism” might be best described in the following quote from one of his shortstories, “The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion each of which winds itself on the supreme insanity. That there are persons of any kind when all there can be is mindless mirrors laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream”. Whereas Lovecraft's weirdness draws predominantly from the abyssal depths of the uncharted universe, Ligotti's existential horror focuses on the awful proliferation of meaningless surfaces that is, the banal and every day function of representation. In an interview, Ligotti states: We don't even know what the world is like except through our sense organs, which are provably inadequate. It's no less the case with our brains. Our whole lives are motored along by forces we cannot know and perceptions that are faulty. We sometimes hear people say that they're not feeling themselves. Well, who or what do they feel like then? This is not to say that Ligotti sees nothing beneath the surface but that there is only darkness or blackness behind it, whether that surface is on the cosmological level or the personal. By addressing the implicit and explicit philosophical issues in Ligotti's work we will see that his nightmarish take on reality is a form of malevolent idealism, an idealism which is grounded in a real, albeit dark and obscure materiality. If Ligotti's horrors ultimately circle around mad perceptions which degrade the subject, it takes aim at the vast majority of the focus of continental philosophy. While Lovecraft's acidic materialism clearly assaults any romantic concept of being from the outside, Ligotti attacks consciousness from the inside: Just a little doubt slipped into the mind, a little trickle of suspicion in the bloodstream, and all those eyes of ours, one by one, open up to the world and see its horror [...] Not even the solar brilliance of a summer day will harbor you from horror. For horror eats the light and digests it into darkness. Clearly, the weird fiction of Lovecraft and Ligotti amount to a anti-anthrocentric onslaught against the ramparts of correlationist continental philosophy. /3/ – Shoggothic Materialism or the Formless Formless protoplasm able to mock and reflect all forms and organs and processes—viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells—rubbery fifteen-foot spheroids infinitely plastic and ductile—slaves of suggestion, builders of cities—more and more sullen, more and more intelligent, more and more amphibious, more and more imitative—Great God! What madness made even those blasphemous Old Ones willing to use and to carve such things? H.P. Lovecraft. “At the Mountains of Madness” On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit. Georges Bataille. “Formless”. The Shoggoths feature most prominently in H.P. Lovecraft's shortstory “At the Mountains of Madness” where they are described in the following manner: It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train – a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self -luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter. The term is a litmus test for materialism itself as the Shoggoth is an amorphous creature. The Shoggoths were living digging machines bio engineered by the Elder Things, and their protoplasmic bodies being formed into various tools by their hypnotic powers. The Shoggoths eventually became self aware and rose up against their masters in an ultimately failed rebellion. After the Elder Ones retreated into the oceans leaving the Shoggoths to roam the frozen wastes of the Antarctic. The onto-genesis of the Shoggoths and their gross materiality, index the horrifyingly deep time of the earth a concept near and dear to Lovecraft's formulation of horror as well as the fear of intelligences far beyond, and far before, the ascent of humankind on earth and elsewhere. The sickly amorphous nature of the Shoggoths invade materialism at large, where while materiality is unmistakably real ie not discursive, psychological, or otherwise overly subjectivist, it questions the relation of materialism to life. As Eugene Thacker writes: The Shoggoths or Elder Things do not even share the same reality with the human beings who encounter them—and yet this encounter takes place, though in a strange no-place that is neither quite that of the phenomenal world of the human subject or the noumenal world of an external reality. Amorphous yet definitively material beings are a constant in Lovecraft's tales. In his tale “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadatth” Lovecraft describes Azathoth as, “that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe,” that, “last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blashphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity,” who, “gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time”. Azathoth's name may have multiple origins but the most striking is the alchemy term azoth which is both a cohesive agent and a acidic creation pointing back to the generative and the decayed. The indistinction of generation and degradation materially mirrors the blur between the natural and the unnatural as well as life and non-life. Lovecraft speaks of the tension between the natural and the unnatural is his short story “The Unnameable.” He writes, “if the psychic emanations of human creatures be grotesque distortions, what coherent representation could express or portray so gibbous and infamous a nebulousity as the spectre of a malign, chaotic perversion, itself a morbid blasphemy against Nature?”. Lovecraft explores exactly the tension outlined at the beginning of this chapter, between life and thought. At the end of his short tale Lovecraft compounds the problem as the unnameable is described as “a gelatin—a slime—yet it had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory”. Deleuze suggests that becoming-animal is operative throughout Lovecraft's work, where narrators feel themselves reeling at their becoming non-human or of being the anomalous or of becoming atomized. Following Eugene Thacker however, it may be far more accurate to say that Lovecraft's tales exhibit not a becoming-animal but a becoming-creature. Where the monstrous breaks the purportedly fixed laws of nature, the creature is far more ontologically ambiguous. The nameless thing is an altogether different horizon for thought. The creature is either less than animal or more than animal – its becoming is too strange for animal categories and indexes the slow march of thought towards the bizarre. This strangeness is, as aways, some indefinite swirling in the category of immanence and becoming. Bataille begins “The Labyrinth” with the assertion that being, to continue to be, is becoming. More becoming means more being hence the assertion that Bataille's barking dog is more than the sponge. This would mean that the Shoggotth is altogether too much being, too much material in the materialism. Bataille suggests that there is an immanence between the eater and the eaten, across the species and never within them. That is, despite the chaotic storm of immanence there must remain some capacity to distinguish the gradients of becoming without reliance upon, or at least total dependence upon, the powers of intellection to parse the universe into recognizable bits, properly digestible factoids. That is, if we undo Deleuze's aforementioned valorization of sense which, for his variation of materialism, performed the work of the transcendental, but refuse to reinstate Kant's transcendental disjunction between thing and appearance, then it must be a quality of becoming-as-being itself which can account for the discernible nature of things by sense. In an interview with Peter Gratton, Jane Bennett formulates the problem thusly: What is this strange systematicity proper to a world of Becoming? What, for example, initiates this congealing that will undo itself? Is it possible to identify phases within this formativity, plateaus of differentiation? If so, do the phases/plateaus follow a temporal sequence? Or, does the process of formation inside Becoming require us to theorize a non-chronological kind of time? I think that your student’s question: “How can we account for something like iterable structures in an assemblage theory?” is exactly the right question. Philosophy has erred too far on the side of the subject in the subject-object relation and has furthermore, lost the very weirdness of the non-human. Beyond this, the madness of thought need not override. /4/ - Ventriloquial Idealism or the Externality of Thought My aim is the opposite of Lovecraft's. He had an appreciation for natural scenery on earth and wanted to reach beyond the visible in the universe. I have no appreciation for natural scenery and want the objective universe to be a reflection of a character. Thomas Ligotti. “Devotees of Decay and Desolation.” Unless life is a dream, nothing makes sense. For as a reality, it is a rank failure [….] Horror is more real than we are. Thomas Ligotti. “Professor Nobody's Little Lectures on Supernatural Horror”. Thomas Ligotti's tales are rife with mannequins, puppets, and other brainless entities which of replace the valorized subject of philosophy – that of the free thinking human being. His tales such as “The Dream of the Manikin” aim to destroy the rootedness of consciousness. James Trafford has connected the anti-egoism of Ligotti to Thomas Metzinger – where the self is at best an illusion and we plead desperately for someone else to acknowledge that we are real. Trafford has stated it thus, “Life is played out as an inescapable puppet show, an endless dream in which the puppets are generally unaware that they are trapped within a mesmeric dance of whose mechanisms they know nothing and over which they have no control”. An absolute materialism, for Ligotti, implies an alienation of the idea which leads to a ventriloquil idealism. As Ligotti notes in an interview, “the fiasco and nightmare of existence, the particular fiasco and nightmare of human existence, the sense that people are puppets of powers they cannot comprehend, etc.” And then further elaborates that,“[a]ssuming that anything has to exist, my perfect world would be one in which everyone has experienced the annulment of his or her ego. That is, our consciousness of ourselves as unique individuals would entirely disappear”. The externality of the idea leads to the unfortunate consequence of consciousness eating at itself through horror which, for Ligotti, is more real than reality and goes beyond horror-as-affect. Beyond this, taking together with the unreality of life and the ventriloquizing of subjectivity, Ligotti's thought becomes an idealism in which thought itself is alien and ultimately horrifying. The role of human thought and the relation of non-relation of horror to thought is not completely clear in Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Ligotti argues in his The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,that the advent of thought is a mistake of nature and that horror is being in the sense that horror results from knowing too much. Yet, at the same time, Ligotti seems to suggest that thought separates us from nature whereas, for Lovecraft, thought is far less privileged – mind is just another manifestation of the vital principal, it is just another materialization of energy. In his brilliant “Prospects for Post-Copernican Dogmatism” Iain Grant rallies against the negative definition of dogmatism and the transcendental, and suggests that negatively defining both over-focuses on conditions of access and subjectivism at the expense of the real or nature. With Schelling, who is Grant's champion against the subjectivist bastions of both Fichte and Kant, Ligotti's idealism could be taken as a transcendental realism following from an ontological realism. Yet the transcendental status of Ligotti's thought move towards a treatment of the transcendental which may threaten to leave beyond its realist ground. Ligotti states: Belief in the supernatural is only superstition. That said, a sense of the supernatural, as Conrad evidenced in Heart of Darkness, must be admitted if one's inclination is to go to the limits of horror. It is the sense of what should not be- the sense of being ravaged by the impossible. Phenomenally speaking, the super-natural may be regarded as the metaphysical counterpart of insanity, a transcendental correlative of a mind that has been driven mad. Again, Ligotti equates madness with thought, qualifying both as supernatural while remaining less emphatic about the metaphysical dimensions of horror. The question becomes one of how exactly the hallucinatory realm of the ideal relates to the black churning matter of Lovecraft's chaos of elementary particles. In his tale “I Have a Special Plan for This World” Ligotti formulates thus: A: There is no grand scheme of things. B: If there were a grand scheme of things, the fact – the fact – that we are not equipped to perceive it, either by natural or supernatural means, is a nightmarish obscenity. C: The very notion of a grand scheme of things is a nightmarish obscenity. Here Ligotti is not discounting metaphysics but implying that if it does exist the fact that we are phenomenologically ill-equipped to perceive that it is nightmarish. For Ligotti, nightmare and horror occur within the circuit of consciousness whereas for Lovecraft the relation between reality and mind is less productive on the side of mind. It is easier to ascertain how the Kantian philosophy is a defense against the diseases of the head as Kant armors his critical enterprise from too much of the world and too much of the mind. The weird fiction of both Lovecraft and Ligotti demonstrates that there is too much of both feeding into one another in a way that corrodes the Kantian schema throughly, breaking it down into a dead but still ontologically potentiated nigredo. The haunting, terrifying fact of Ligotti's idealism is that the transcendental motion which brought thought to matter, while throughly material and naturalized, brings with it the horror that thought cannot be undone without ending the material that bears it either locally or completely. Thought comes from an elsewhere and an elsewhen being-in-thought. The unthinkable outside thought is as maddening as the unthought engine of thought itself within thought which doesn't exist except for the mind, the rotting décor of the brain. /5/ - Hyperstitional Transcendental Paranoia or Self -Expelled Thought Weird fiction has been given some direct treatment in philosophy in the mad black Deleuzianism of Nick Land. Nick Land along with others in the 1990s created the Cyber Culture Research Unit as well as the research group Hyperstition. The now defunct hyperstitional website, an outgrowth of the Cyber Culture Research Unit, defined hyperstition in the following fourfold: 1-Element of effective culture that makes itself real. 2-Fictional quantity functional as a time-traveling device. 3-Coincidence intensifier. 4-Call to the Old Ones. The distinctively Lovecraftian character of hyperstition is hard to miss as is its Deleuzo-Guattarian roots. In the opening pages of A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari write, “We have been criticized for over-quoting literary authors. But when one writes, the only question is which other machine the literary machine can be plugged into”. The indisinction of literature and philosophy mirrors the mess of being and knowing as post-correlationist philosophy, where philosophy tries to make itself real where literature, especially the weird, aims itself at the brain-circuit of horror. The texts of both Lovecraft and Ligotti work through horror as epistemological plasticity meeting with proximity as well as the deep time of Lovecraft and the glacially slow time of paranoia in Ligotti. Against Deleuze, and following Brassier, we cannot allow the time of consciousness, the Bergsonian time of the duree, to override natural time, but instead acknowledge that it is an unfortunate fact of existence as a thinking being. Horror-time, the time of consciousness, with all its punctuated moments and drawn out terrors, cannot compare to the deep time of non-existence both in the unreachable past and the unknown future. The crystalline cogs of Kant's account of experience as the leading light for the possibility of metaphysics must be throughly obliterated. His gloss of experience in Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics could not be more sterile: Experience consists of intuitions, which belong to the sensibility, and of judgments, which are entirely a work of the understanding. But the judgments which the understanding makes entirely out of sensuous intuitions are far from being judgments of experience. For in the one case the judgment connects only the perceptions as they are given in sensuous intuition [....] Experience consists in the synthetic connection of appearances in consciousness, so far as this connection is necessary. Here it is difficult to dismiss the queasiness that Kant's legalism induces upon sight for both Badiou and David-Menard. Kant's thought becomes, as Foucault says when reflecting on Sade's text in relation to nature, “the savage abolition of itself”. For Badiou, Kant's philosophy simply closes off too much of the outside, freezing the world of thought in an all too limited formalism. Critical philosophy is simply the systematized quarantine on future thinking, on thinking which would threaten the formalism which artificially grants thought its own coherency in the face of madness. Even the becoming-mad of Deleuze, while escaping the rumbling ground, makes grounds for itself, mad grounds but grounds which are thinkable in their affect. The field of effects allows for Deleuze's aesthetic and radical empiricism, in which effects and/or occasions make up the material of the world to be thought as a chaosmosis of simulacra. Given a critique of an empiricism of aesthetics, of the image, it may be difficult to justify an attack on Kantian formalism with the madness of literature, which does not aim to make itself real but which we may attempt to make real. That is, how do Lovecraft's and Ligotti's materials, as materials for philosophy to work on, differ from either the operative formalisms of Kant or the implicitly formalized images of Deleuzian empiricism? It is simply that such texts do not aim to make themselves real, and make claims to the real which are more alien to us than familiar, which is why their horror is immediately more trustworthy. This is the madness which Blanchot discusses in The Infinite Conversation through Cervantes and his knight – the madness of book-life, of the perverse unity of literature and life a discussion which culminates in the discussion of one of the weird's masters, that of Kafka. The text is the knowing of madness, since madness, in its moment of becoming-more-mad, cannot be frozen in place but by the solidifications of externalizing production. This is why Foucault ends his famous study with works of art. Furthermore extilligence, the ability to export the products of our maligned brains, is the companion of the attempts to export, or discover the possibility of intelligences outside of our heads, in order for philosophy to survive the solar catastrophe. To borrow again from Deleuze, writing is inseparable from becoming. The mistake is to believe that madness is reabsorbed by extilligence, by great works, or that it could be exorcised by the expelling of thought into the inorganic or differently organic. Going out of our heads does not guarantee we will no longer mean we cannot still go out of our minds. This is simply because of the outside, of matter, or force, or energy, or thing-in-itself, or Schopenhauerian Will. In Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zahn” an “impoverished student of metaphysics” becomes intrigued by strange viol music coming from above his room. After meeting the musician the student discovers that each night he plays frantic music at a window in order to keep some horridness at bay, some “impenetrable darkness with chaos and pandemonium”. The aesthetic defenses provided by the well trained brain can bear the hex of matter for so long, the specter of unalterability within it which too many minds obliterate, collapsing everything before the thought of thought as thinkable or at least noetically mutable on our own terms. Transcendental paranoia is the concurrent nightmare and promise of Paul Humphrey's work, of being literally out of our minds. It is the gothic counterpart of thinking non-conceptually but also of thinking never belonging to any instance of purportedly solid being. As Bataille stated, “At the boundary of that which escapes cohesion, he who reflects within cohesion realizes there is no longer any room for him” Thought is immaterial only to the degree that it is inhuman, it is a power that tries, always with failure, to ascertain its own genesis. Philosophy, if it can truly return to the great outdoors, if it can leave behind the dead loop of the human skull, must recognize not only the non-priority of human thought, but that thought never belongs to the brain that thinks it, thought comes from somewhere else. To return to the train image from the beginning “a locomotive rolling on the surface of the earth is the image of continuous metamorphosis” this is the problem of thought, and of thinking thought, of being no longer able to isolate thought, with only a thought-formed structure. [1] One of the central tenets of Francois Laruelle's non-philosophy is that philosophy has traditionally operated on material already presupposed as thinkable instead of trying to think the real in itself. Philosophy, according to Laruelle, remains fixated on transcendental synthesis which shatters immanence into an empirical datum and an a prori factum which are then fused by a third thing such as the ego. For a critical account of Laruelle's non-philosophy see Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound. (shrink)

To meet the stability requirements for moving quadruped robots, it is important to design a rational structure for a single leg and plan the trajectory of the foot. First, a novel electrically driven leg mechanism for a quadruped robot is designed in this paper to reduce the inertia of the leg swing. Second, a modified foot trajectory based on a compound cycloid is proposed, which has swing-back and retraction motion and continuous velocity in the x-axis direction. Third, a (...) Simulink platform is built to verify the correctness of the proposed foot trajectory. The simulation result shows that when the flight phase and the stand phase switch, the impact of torque is smaller than the foot trajectory before modification. Finally, an experimental platform is constructed, and a control algorithm is written into the controller to realize the foot proposed trajectory. The results of the experiment prove the feasibility of the leg mechanism and the rationality of the proposed foot trajectory. (shrink)

Themed Section of Bruniana & Campanelliana 2022/1, pp. 85-198 -/- - Simone Guidi, Introduction; - Andrew W. Arlig, Part-Whole Interdependence and the Presence of Form in Matter According to Some Fifteenth-Century Platonists; - Jean-Pascal Anfray, Aux limites de la métaphysique: parties, indivisibles et contact chez Suárez; - Simone Guidi, Indivisibles, Parts, and Wholes in Rubio’s Treatise on the Composition of Continuum (1605); - Dana Jalobeanu, Dissecting Nature ad vivum: Parts and Wholes in Francis Bacon’s Natural Philosophy; - Carla Rita Palmerino, (...) From Active Matter to Inertia, from Celerity to Slowness: the Motion of Atoms and of Compound Bodies in Gassendi’s Physics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetoric, Grief, and the Imagination in Early Modern EnglandStephen PenderIn 1633, the Northampton physician James Hart warned that excessive grief "will to some procure irrecoverable Consumptions," dry the brain and bone marrow, hinder digestion, interrupt rest, and "by consequent prove a cause of many dangerous diseases." The risk was grave: "Galen himself maketh answer that one may dye of these passions, and to this doe all Physicians assent; and (...) experience maketh it so appeare" (1633, 393–95).1 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, physicians routinely treated grief and its effects, since it was commonly held that the passions were realized in matter.2 They applied an ensemble of remedies—bleeding, emetics, laxatives—predicated on sympathetic connection between bodies and souls, for disturbance "in the emotional climate of the body alters its inner temperature and causes in turn dangerous mutations in the balance and composition of the humours" (MacDonald 1981, 182).3 The spirits, too, were enlisted: for "the spirit being either withdrawne from the outwarde parts by vehement passio[n] of griefe," the "outward partes not only faile in their sense and motion, but even nourishment & growth thereby are hindered" (Bright 1586, 60; see also 47, 51–52). But grief also "besieged" the mind, weakened reason, hampered discourse, and impugned the will (Reynolds 1640, 229–30). By affecting mental faculties, passions subvented affliction, and thus physicians offered various prophylactics against fulminant emotion in the sick, most [End Page 54] of which focused on the imagination as potentially harmful faculty that prolonged or intensified suffering. A sufferer, Hart writes, "by reason of his sicknesse, hath sorrow enough, especially, if the party be of a feeble, fearfull and pusillanimous spirit, the phansie still framing unto it selfe new fears of some bad and sinistrous event." As wards against excessive passion, Hart recommends vigilance and circumspection, accommodation and distraction. First, physicians must guard against visitors who "prove the causes of infinite evills to the sicke" by occasioning overweening feeling. Drawing on Paul's distinction between worldly and "godly" sorrow in his second letter to the Corinthians, Hart recognizes that sufferers have just cause for fear, and physicians should not interrupt or retard "true sorrow for sinne," which offers comfort to a "drouping and sorrowfull soule." But the effects of any lenitive passion are endangered by "indiscreetly" compounding fear and grief "at an unseasonable time" (1633, 400). To avoid odium, a counselor's efforts must conform to "time, place, and person" (Wilson 1994, 120). Second, a physician should "accommodate himselfe to the severall dispositions of his patients, and to many particular circumstances concerning them," adjusting therapies and practices to individual sufferers. Finally, if not too fragile, the sick should be distracted with mirth (1633, 400).Those expressing "true sorrow for sinne" should read. Hart recommends one of the "many volumes written by our learned Divines, concerning this subject," Robert Bolton's 1631 Instructions for a Right Comforting Afflicted Consciences with Speciall Antidotes Against Some Grievous Temptations. Bolton, who was rector of Broughton, Northamptonshire, and a popular conformist preacher, insists that divines sometimes held even "godly sorrow" unseasonable, "when it unfitteth the body or minde to good duties" (1641, 587). Excessive grief is particularly foul: of "all other passions of the Soule," he writes, "sadnesse, and grief grates most upon the vitall spirits; dries up soonest the freshest marrow in the bones; and most sensibly suckes out the purest, and refinedst bloud in the heart" (1641, 21). Bolton's remedies are to avoid idleness and solitude, for both render the soul susceptible to disquiet (1641, 582), and to read: the sorrowful and the melancholy find succor in scripture. Although both forms of suffering may be treated medically, one remedy for an afflicted conscience is "Gods blessed Booke" (1641, 211–15). One early seventeenth-century Sussex physician turned to Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) for assistance.4Like most physicians in the period, both Hart and Bolton differentiate grief occasioned by humoral imbalance from sorrow born of a repentant conscience, and both confirm that the "phantasie" is central to physical and [End Page 55] moral therapy.5 For Bolton, grief, melancholy, and "terror of conscience" dwell chiefly in the imagination (1641, 212... (shrink)

Dividido em cinco partes, o presente artigo procura esboçar uma interpretação sistemática do pensamento filosófico criacionista do portuense Álvaro Ribeiro (1905-1981), um dos discípulos de Leonardo Coimbra que maior influência vem exercendo na filosofia portuguesa da segunda metade do século. Após apresentar os traços essenciais da vida e da obra do pensador, o artigo detém-se na exposição do modo como Álvaro Ribeiro concebia a Filosofia, como arte da palavra ou arte de filosofar, e como entendia as diversas disciplinas filosóficas. Passando, (...) depois, a considerar a doutrina do homem como Razão animada, aborda, sucessivamente, os problemas relativos à origem do homem, aos elementos do composto humano -corpo, alma e espírito - à 1 iberdade, que, no seu pensamento, depende da verdade e não da vontade, ao amor, à morte e à imortalidade. No domínio cosmológico, a que o filósofo dedicou menor atenção do que às questões antropológicas, o seu pensamento apresenta-se radicalmente pluralista, admitindo diversas regiões da realidade, e dinamista, pois entendia que, à excepção de Deus, tudo no mundo se encontra em movimento, para atingir o seu fim próprio. Quanto à teologia filosófica, considera o artigo a posição do filósofo sobre a essência, a existência e os atributos de Deus e os problemas do mal e do milagre, concluindo por analisar a posição de Álvaro Ribeiro perante o cristianismo e a divindade de Jesus. /// Divisé en cinq parties, le présent article cherche à tracer une interprétation systématique de la pensée philosophique créationniste de Âlvaro Ribeiro (1905-1981), originaire de la ville de Porto et un des disciples de Leonardo Coimbra qui ait le plus marqué la philosophie portugaise de la seconde moitié du siècle. Après avoir présenté les principaux traits de la vie et de l'oeuvre du penseur, l'article s'arrête sur la façon dont Alvaro Ribeiro concevait aussi bien la philosophie, comme art de la parole ou art de philosopher, que les diverses disciplines philosophiques. On en vient par après à considérer la doctrine de l'homme comme Raison animée, et l'on aborde successivement les problèmes concernant l'origine de l'homme, les éléments du composé humain (corps, âme, esprit), la liberté, laquelle, en sa pensée, dépend de la vérité et non de la volonté, l'amour, la mort, l'immortalité. Au plan cosmologique, auquel le philosophe prêta moins d'attention qu'aux questions anthropoplogiques, sa pensée se présente comme radicalement pluraliste, admettant diverses régions de la réalité et dynamique, car il entendait qu'à l'exception de Dieu, tout dans le monde se trouve en mouvement, en vue d'atteindre sa fin propre. Quant à la théologie philosophique, l'article considère la position du philosophe sur l'essence, l'existence et les attributs de Dieu, et les problèmes du mal et du miracle, et termine par l'analyse de la position de Âlvaro Ribeiro sur le christianisme et la divinité de Jésus. /// This paper is divided into five parts, and is an attempt to sketch a systematic interpretation on the creationist philosophical thought of Alvaro Ribeiro (1905-1981), from Oporto, one of the disciples of Leonardo Coimbra that has had a greater influence upon the Portuguese philosophy during the second half of the XXth century. After the presentation of the main elements of his life and work, the paper explains Alvaro Ribeiro's concept of philosophy - as a word art or an art of philosophizing -, and how he conceived the main philosophical disciplines. Next, after the consideration of his doctrine of man as animated Reason, the main problems are analyzed as to the origin of man, the elements of the human compound - body, soul and spirit - freedom, which according to him depends on truth and not on will, love, death and immortality. Within the cosmological domain, to which the author dedicated less attention than to the anthropological questions, his views are radically both pluralistic, as he admited several areas of reality, and dynamist, as he believed that everything in the world but God has been set in motion in order to reach its own end. As to his philosophical theology, this paper considers the author's position as to the essence, the existence and the attributes of God, and also to the questions of evil and miracle, concluding with an analysis of Álvaro Ribeiro's views on both Christianity and the divinity of Jesus. (shrink)

James A. Diefenbeck, Wayward Reflections on the History ofPhilosophyThomas R. Flynn Sartre, Foucault and Historical Reason. Volume 1:Toward an Existential Theory of HistoryMark Golden and Peter Toohey Inventing Ancient Culture:Historicism, Periodization and the Ancient WorldZenonas Norkus Istorika: Istorinis IvadasEverett Zimmerman The Boundaries of Fiction: History and theEighteenth‐Century British Novel.

The first comprehensive presentation of the dynamical approach to cognition. It contains a representative sampling of original, current research on topics such as perception, motor control, speech and language, decision making, and development.

We present two approaches to investigate the validity of connexive principles and related formulas and properties within coherence-based probability logic. Connexive logic emerged from the intuition that conditionals of the formif not-A,thenA, should not hold, since the conditional’s antecedentnot-Acontradicts its consequentA. Our approaches cover this intuition by observing that the only coherent probability assessment on the conditional event$${A| \overline{A}}$$A|A¯is$${p(A| \overline{A})=0}$$p(A|A¯)=0. In the first approach we investigate connexive principles within coherence-based probabilistic default reasoning, by interpreting defaults and negated defaults in terms (...) of suitable probabilistic constraints on conditional events. In the second approach we study connexivity within the coherence framework of compound conditionals, by interpreting connexive principles in terms of suitable conditional random quantities. After developing notions of validity in each approach, we analyze the following connexive principles:Aristotle’s theses,Aristotle’s Second Thesis,Abelard’s First Principle, andBoethius’ theses. We also deepen and generalize some principles and investigate further properties related to connexive logic (likenon-symmetry). Both approaches satisfyminimalrequirements for a connexive logic. Finally, we compare both approaches conceptually. (shrink)

The nature of matter was as intriguing a question for ancient philosophers as it is for contemporary physicists, and Matter, Space, and Motion presents a fresh and illuminating account of the rich legacy of the physical theories of the Greeks from the fifth century B.C. to the late sixth century A.D.

In a series of excellent, recent papers, Deborah Hellman expounds the intuitively appealing idea that we have a duty not to compound injustice. Roughly, one compounds injustice when facts that obtain as a result of prior injustice form part of one’s reason for imposing further disadvantages on the victims of this prior injustice. This article identifies several complexities and problems motivating various amendments to Hellman’s formulation of the duty not to compound injustice. Critically, it argues that the intuitions (...) she and others have sought to explain in terms of the duty not to compound injustice are better explained by the duty not to cause additional harm to people who are already unjustly worse off – perhaps in conjunction with a duty not to implicate ourselves in injustice. (shrink)

This book is an examination of the metaphysical systems of Margaret Cavendish and Anne Conway, who share many superficial similarities. By providing a detailed analysis of their views on substance, monism, self-motion, individuation, and identity over time, as well as causation, perception, and freedom, it demonstrates the interesting ways in which their accounts differ. Seeing their systems in tandem highlights the originality of each philosopher. In addition to providing the details of their metaphysical views, the book also shows how (...) they put these views to use: for Cavendish in grounding her natural philosophy and for Conway in developing her theodicy. The account of Cavendish is more naturalistic than current interpretations. It argues that God plays no substantive role in Cavendish’s philosophy. The book provides an account of Cavendish’s matter and her biological holism. It shows how sensitive and rational matter are expressed differently in different natural kinds. It provides the first account of Cavendish’s views on individuation and identity over time and a detailed account of her views on causation, arguing that nature is the only principal cause. The book also provides an account of Conway’s spiritual substance, arguing that it is a unique type of substance. It discusses Conway’s two types of motions and causation. In addition, a detailed account of her view of motion as a mode of body, and how it is transferred, is provided. Finally, the book concludes that Conway’s metaphysics and morality are inseparable and that she holds a type of perfectionism. (shrink)

The ArgumentMost historians of science share the conviction that the incorporation of the corpuscular theory into seventeenth-century chemistry was the beginning of modern chemistry. My thesis in this paper is that modern chemisty started with the concept of the chemicl compound, which emerged at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, without any signifivant influence of the corpuscular theory. Rather the historical reconstruction of the emergence of this concept shows that it resulted from the (...) reflection on the chemical operations in the sixteenth-century metallurgy and seventeenth-century pharmacy. I argue that the reversibility of these operations and their understanding as crafts (metallurgy) or chemical arts (pharmacy) were decisive factors for the emergence of the first ideas about chemical compounds in the seventeenth-century pharmaceutical works written by pharmaceutically trained authors, influenced by the Paracelsian image of nature. There is a direct line of descent from these authors to E.F.Geoffroy (1675–1742), who integrated the first scattered ideas of chemical compound into a general concept comprising chemical artefacts as well as natural bodies. (shrink)

Hud Hudson has recently suggested a scenario intended to show that, assuming the doctrine of temporal parts and a sufficiently liberal view of composition, there are material objects that move faster than light. I accept Hudson's conditional but contend that his modus ponens is less plausible that the corresponding modus tollens. Reversed in this way, the argument stemming from the scenario raises the cost of mereological liberalism and advances the case for a principled restriction on diachronic composition.

It is often claimed (most recently by Michael Friedman) that Kant intended to justify Newton’s most fundamental claims expressed in the Principia, such as his laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation. In this article, I argue that the differences between Newton’s laws of motion and Kant’s laws of mechanics are not superficial or merely apparent. Rather, they reflect fundamental differences in their respective projects. This point can be seen especially clearly by considering the nature of (...) the various projects undertaken in Germany prior to Kant that discuss the laws of motion. Wolff and his followers qua metaphysicians were especially interested in providing nonempirical justifications of their laws of motion as well as an intelligible account of the fundamental properties of bodies in terms of substance, accident, and force. Maupertuis and Euler, despite often being seen as Newtonians, both drew on traditions other than Newton’s. Physics textbooks (by figures such as Erxleben, Karsten, ‘s Gravesande, and Musschenbroek) vary considerably in their aims, but in none of these cases is Newton’s main argument of the Principia presented. In light of the fact that these projects are distinct in significant ways from Newton’s project, the differences between Newton’s laws of motion and Kant’s laws of mechanics are most likely not merely apparent but reflect the fact that Kant, too, was pursuing a project fundamentally distinct from Newton’s. (shrink)

Usain Bolt’s Lightning Bolt pose, one arm highly extended to one side, suggests action. Likewise, static pictures of animals, legs extended, show animation. We tested a new cue for motion perception—extension—and in particular extension of dancer’s legs. An experiment with pictures of a dancer finds larger angles between the legs suggest greater movement, especially with in-air poses and in lateral views. Leg positions graded from simply standing to very difficult front and side splits. Liking ratings were more related to (...) Difficulty ratings than Movement ratings. (shrink)

The essays contained in this volume illustrate the work of Fr. James A. Weisheipl, whose writing and teaching have resulted in important additions to our understanding of nature and motion.