In a manuscript which is being studied here for the first time, al-Samaw'al quotes a paragraph from al-Bīrūnī which shows that the latter knew not only of Brahmagupta's method of quadratic interpolation, but also of another Indian method. Al-Samaw'al examines these methods, as well as linear interpolation, compares them, and evaluates their respective results. He also tries to improve them. In this article the author shows that al-Bīrūnī had used four methods of interpolation, two of which were of Indian origin; (...) and that al-Samaw'al explicitly introduced a new way of evaluating these different methods. He also throws light on the active movement of research on numerical methods that constitutes the background to al-Bīrūmī's and al-Samaw'al's work, and uses modern means to evaluate the different methods and to justify the mathematicians' choices. The author has edited and translated al-Samaw'al's text in order to make it available to historians of Arabic and Indian mathematics. This allows them to follow the history and the mathematical arguments, and deepens our understanding of the importance to the development of mathematics of certain astronomical work. It also highlights the contribution of Indian mathematicians to the development of Arabic mathematics. Dans un texte manuscrit jamais examiné auparavant, al-Samaw'al cite un paragraphe d'un écrit d'al-Bīrīnī qui montre bien que ce dernier connaissait non seulement la méthode d'interpolation quadratique de Brahmagupta, mais également une autre methode indienne. Al-Samaw'al éetudie ces méthodes ainsi que l'interpolation linéaire, les compare les unes aux autres et par conséquent s'interroge sur leurs performances respectives afin d'opter pour la meilleure, et tente de les perfectionner. Dans cet article, l'auteur montre qu'al-Bīrūnī disposait de quatre méthodes d'interpolation, dont deux sont d'origine indienne, et qu'al-Samaw'al a introduit explicitement une nouvelle interrogation pour juger de la performance des différentes méthodes; il restitue les études d'al- Bī;rūnī et d'al-Samaw'al dans le mouvement actif de recherche sur les méthodes numériques, et reprend avec des moyens modernes la comparaison entre les diverses méthodes pour comprendre les choix des différents mathématiciens. L'auteur établit et traduit le texte d'al-Samaw'al afin de le rendre accessible aux historiens des mathématiques arabes et indiennes, et pour permettre aux lecteurs de suivre l'exposé' historique et mathématique qui vise, au-delà de ces résultats, à mieux connaître l'apport de certaines recherches en astronomie au développement des mathématiques, et d'autre part, la contribution des mathématiciens de l'Inde à l'histoire des mathématiques arabes. (shrink)

After spinal cord injury (SCI), motoneuron death occurs at and around the level of injury which induces changes in function and organization throughout the nervous system, including cortical changes. Muscle affected by SCI may consist of both innervated (accessible to voluntary drive) and denervated (inaccessible to voluntary drive) muscle fibers. Voluntary activation measured with transcranial magnetic stimulation (VATMS) can quantify voluntary cortical/subcortical drive to muscle but is limited by technical challenges including suboptimal stimulation of target muscle relative to its antagonist. (...) The motor evoked potential (MEP) in the biceps compared to the triceps (i.e., MEP ratio) may be a key parameter in the measurement of biceps VATMS after SCI. We used paired pulse TMS, which can inhibit or facilitate MEPs, to determine whether the MEP ratio affects VATMS in individuals with tetraplegia. Ten individuals with tetraplegia following cervical SCI and ten non-impaired individuals completed single pulse and paired pulse VATMS protocols. Paired pulse stimulation was delivered at 1.5, 10, and 30 ms inter-stimulus intervals (ISI). In both the SCI and non-impaired groups, the main effect of the stimulation pulse (paired pulse compared to single pulse) on VATMS was not significant in the linear mixed-effects models. In both groups for the stimulation parameters we tested, the MEP ratio was not modulated across all effort levels and did not affect VATMS. Linearity of the voluntary moment and superimposed twitch moment relation was lower in SCI participants compared to non-impaired. Poor linearity in the SCI group limits interpretation of VATMS. Future work is needed to address methodological issues that limit clinical application of VATMS. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Empire of the Tetrarchs: Imperial Pronouncements and Government a.d. 284–324T. D. BarnesSimon Corcoran. The Empire of the Tetrarchs: Imperial Pronouncements and Government a.d. 284–324. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. xv 1 406 pp. Cloth, $85. (Oxford Classical Monographs)The four decades between the accession of Diocletian on 20 November 284 and the abdication of Licinius on 19 September 324 witnessed profound changes in the government and administrative structure of (...) the Roman world. These changes are naturally reflected in the legislation of the period, which survives in relative abundance—indeed, a larger proportion of the emperors’ legal decisions and enactments probably survives from these four decades than from any previous period of forty years in the history of the Roman Empire. The high rate of survival is due in part to the activity of the commissioners who compiled the Theodosian Code in the 430s and the Codex Justinianus in the sixth century: the former set out to collect general laws and edicts of the Christian Roman Empire since the conversion of Constantine, while the latter included in their compilation a large part of two Diocletianic collections of imperial rescripts, the Codex Gregorianus and the Codex Hermogenianus. But the legislation of Diocletian and his imperial colleagues and successors is also known from a wide variety of other sources—papyri, inscriptions, nonofficial collections of laws, Lactantius’ account of the decade of Christian persecution from 303 to 313 in his On the Deaths of the Persecutors, and Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History. Moreover, Eusebius’ Life of Constantine quotes important documents from the last months of 324.Simon Corcoran includes all this varied and historically significant material in his purview, and he provides a reliable guide to it. His monograph is a revised version of an Oxford doctoral thesis which he began in 1987 under the supervision of Fergus Millar and completed in 1992 under that of John Matthews, and he has also taken advice from Tony Honoré. His work is technically proficient. I have not noticed any careless errors of any consequence, and Corcoran has used my work on the period of Diocletian and Constantine in the spirit in [End Page 145] which I intended it to be used: he has understood the underlying principles upon which it rests, then applied them critically, sometimes to reach conclusions which not only differ from my own but are superior to them.Corcoran begins with two introductory chapters which succinctly survey the subject and the evidence available. On interpolation in legal texts, he is cautious and sensible. He proceeds on the assumption that though “the transmitted texts are seldom identical with what the imperial chancery originally issued,” they have seldom undergone drastic alteration: “abbreviation is the most common fate of constitutions in the legal sources” (19). Yet he provides a salutary reminder and example of what can happen (16–18): whereas a rescript in the Fragmenta Vaticana denies that the temporary gift of estates subject to tax is valid (Frag. Vat. 283, si stipendariorum proprietatem dono de-disti,... donatio inrita est), the same rescript in the Codex Justinianus directly contradicts and asserts that such a gift is valid (CJ 8.54.2, si praediorum proprietatem dono dedisti,... donatio valet). On a priori grounds alone, it seems highly probable that something similar has happened to some texts which are known only through the Codex Justinianus—and where the alteration may not be at all obvious.What of the date and contents of the two Diocletianic codes? Corcoran confronts the problems of dating and attribution squarely and honestly. Most of his conclusions may not be new, but his discussion has been able to proceed from the fact that an Aurelius Hermogenianus, who can hardly be anyone other than the jurist, is now securely attested as praetorian prefect between 293 and 305 with Julius Asclepiodotus as his colleague (AE 1987, 456). Corcoran argues that Gregorius published the Codex Gregorianus in 291/2 or ca. 292, after serving as magister libellorum with Diocletian from 285 to 290: he accounts for the ascription of some later constitutions to this code by postulating a second edition compiled ca. 306, possibly at the court of Maximinus or... (shrink)

Literary criticism is neither more nor less important today than it has been since the becoming an accepted activity in the Renaissance. The humanists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries created the institution of criticism as we know it: the recovery and analysis of works of art. They printed, edited, and interpreted texts that dated from antiquity and which had been lost or disheveled. Evangelical in their fervor, avid in their search for lost or buried riches, they also put (...) into circulation certain influential ideas. Perhaps the most important of these was that the authoritative version of a book is the original version, freed from interpolation and accretion. A correlative idea was that, similarly, one could rely on an original or natural light in the interpreter, an intuitive good sense that helped him to a true understanding of a text if it was a genuine text. . . . There are signs that we are now nearing the end of this Renaissance humanism. Not because of a determinist or providential march of history, but ideas eventually exhaust what influence they may have. Today, after all, there is no dearth of ancient texts, or of new ones. Editing, moreover, has become only too conscious of the difficulty of recovering an "original" version or edition: in Wordsworth scholarship, for example, the authority of the 1850 Prelude, the text approved by the poet shortly before his death, was challenged by the 1805-6 Prelude printed by de Sélincourt in the 1920s; and the authority of this is in turn being eroded by antecedent manuscripts, the so-called "Five-Books Prelude" and "Two-Part Prelude." It is equally precarious to establish the text of Emily Dickinson's poems—which of the variants are to be chosen as definitive? Or, from another angle, Melville's Billy Budd has become a mine for genetic speculation. Even when no editorial problem exists, a philosophical issue arises as to the concept of originality itself.1 · 1. For the time being, it is enough to quote Hegel's provocative attack on all "Ur-Metaphysics": "What comes later is more concrete and richer; the first is abstract, and least differentiated." Geoffrey Hartman, professor of English and comparative literature at Yale University, is the author of The Unmediated Vision, Andre Malraux, Wordsworth's Poetry, Beyond Formalism, and most recently The Fate of Reading. He is currently working on a book to be published in late 1977, Criticism in the Wilderness. (shrink)

Ioulios Polydeukes, more commonly known as Pollux, was a Greek sophist and lexicographer active in the closing decades of the second century a.d. His Onomasticon is one of the most important lexicographical texts of the Imperial period. It is essentially a set of word lists dedicated to collecting clusters of related words on topics from a vast range of different areas of intellectual activity and everyday life. The text survives only in epitomized form, and shows signs of interpolation as (...) well as abridgement. Nevertheless, the consensus is that the bulk of what survives is Pollux’ own work, and that reading it in Eric Bethe's Teubner edition gives an accurate cumulative impression of Pollux’ standard procedures and preoccupations, even if we cannot be entirely confident that any particular cluster of words had exactly the same form within the text's original design. It is divided into ten books, each with its own dedicatory preface addressed to the Emperor Commodus. Each book has its own distinctive focus on certain key themes, although the ordering principles are much clearer in some than in others. (shrink)

This article holds that governmental investments in quantum technologies speak to the imaginable futures of digital sovereignty and digital infrastructures, two major areas of change driven by related technologies like AI and Big Data, among other things, in international law today. Under intense development today for future interpolation into digital systems that they may alter, quantum technologies occupy a sort of liminal position, rooted in existing assemblages of computational technologies while pointing to new horizons for them. The possibilities they raise (...) are neither certain nor determinate, but active investments in them (legal, political and material investments) offer perspective on digital technology-driven influences on an international legal imagination. In contributing to visions of the future that are guiding ambitions for digital sovereignty and digital infrastructures, quantum technologies condition digital technology-driven changes to international law and legal imagination in the present. Privileging observation and description, I adapt and utilize a diffractive method with the aim to discern what emerges out of the interference among the several related things assembled for this article, including material technologies and legal institutions. In conclusion, I observe ambivalent changes to an international legal imagination, changes which promise transformation but appear nonetheless to reproduce current distributions of power and resources. (shrink)

This work examines how the conceptualization of knowledge as both problem and solution reconfigured intelligence and law enforcement after 9/11. The idea was that more information should be collected, and better analyzed. If the intelligence that resulted was shared, then terrorists could be identified, their acts predicted, and ultimately prevented. Law enforcement entered into this scenario in the United States, and internationally. "Policing terrorism" refers to the engagement of state and local law enforcement in intelligence, as well as approaching terrorism (...) as a legal crime, in addition to or as opposed to an act of war. Two venues are explored: fusion centers in the United States and the international organization of police, Interpol. The configuration can be thought of schematically as operating through the set of law, discipline and security. Intelligence is predominantly a security approach. It modulates that within its purview, wielding the techniques and technologies that are here discussed.The dissertation is divided into two sections: Intelligence and Policing Terrorism. In the first, intelligence is taken up as a term, and its changes in referent and concept are examined. The Preface and Chapter One present a general introduction to the contemporary situation and intelligence, via Sherman Kent, as knowledge, organization and activities. Chapter Two traces the development of intelligence in the United States as a craft and profession. Chapter Three discusses some of the issues involving the intersection of intelligence and policy, and how those manifested in the aftermath of 9/11 and the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The second section examines the turn to policing terrorism, beginning, in Chapter Four, with how Interpol has dealt with bioterrorism, and an examination of the shifting conceptualization of biological threats in international law. Moving from threats to their consequences, Chapter Five takes up the concept of an event in order to analyze the common comparison of Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Chapters Six and Seven turn to fieldwork done in the United States, with an examination of the suspicious activity reporting system and law enforcement's inclusion in the Information Sharing Environment, focusing on fusion centers and data mining. (shrink)

Events can be modeled through a geometric approach, representing event structures in terms of spaces and mappings between spaces. At least two spaces are needed to describe an event, an action space and a result space. In this article, we invoke general mathematical structures in order to develop this geometric perspective. We focus on three cognitive processes that are crucially involved in events: causal thinking, control of action and learning by generalization. These cognitive processes are supported by three corresponding mathematical (...) properties: monotonicity (that we relate to qualitative causal thinking and allows extrapolation); continuity (that plays a key role in our activities of action control); and convexity (that facilitates generalization and the categorization of events, and enables interpolation). We define how such properties constrain events representations and relate them to thinking about events. We discuss the relevance of the three constraints for event segmentation and explore the implications of such constraints for semantics. We conclude by a discussion that relates our approach to other accounts of events. (shrink)

The subject of Time has a wide intellectual appeal across different dis ciplines. This has shown in the variety of reactions received from readers of the first edition of the present Book. Many have reacted to issues raised in its philosophical discussions, while some have even solved a number of the open technical questions raised in the logical elaboration of the latter. These results will be recorded below, at a more convenient place. In the seven years after the first publication, (...) there have been some noticeable newer developments in the logical study of Time and temporal expressions. As far as Temporal Logic proper is concerned, it seems fair to say that these amount to an increase in coverage and sophistication, rather than further break-through innovation. In fact, perhaps the most significant sources of new activity have been the applied areas of Linguistics and Computer Science (including Artificial Intelligence), where many intriguing new ideas have appeared presenting further challenges to temporal logic. Now, since this Book has a rather tight composition, it would have been difficult to interpolate this new material without endangering intelligibility. (shrink)

This article interprets Jakob von Uexkull’s understanding of different beings’ Innenwelt, Gegenwelt, and umwelt through Deleuzian insights of multiplicity, context, and particularity. This Deleuzian interpolation into Uexkull’s insights acknowledges the absence of a unitary ‘human’ view of nature, recognizing instead that plural viewpoints of cultures, subgroups and individuals understand and interpret natural signs variously not just because of ideology but because of physiology and contrastive fundamental ways of accessing the world. Recent formative research in comparative neurobiology suggests that universal anthropological (...) claims of cross-cultural semiotic similarity are incorrect.Interpreting biosemiotics as the investigation of apprehending the Innenwelt of radically different others (species), such semiotic understandings themselves are not necessarily generalizable between different members of the same species in a group, same-species groups in different natural cultural contexts, or even (as with humans) the same animal at different points of time (based on new understandings, patterns, or events of meaning altering interpretations of self and events). Conjoining Deleuze’s insights of the complexity of multiplicity with Uexkull’s scientific-imaginative system of comprehending other creatures’ ways of understanding their world offers an increased self-reflexivity regarding the simultaneous levels of actual semiotic activity for biosemiotic inquiry. (shrink)

Short-term or working memory provides temporary storage of information in the brain after an experience and is associated with conscious awareness. Neurons sensitive to the multiple stimulus attributes comprising an experience are distributed within many brain regions. Such distributed cell assemblies, activated by an event, are the most plausible system to represent the WM of that event. Studies with a variety of imaging technologies have implicated widespread brain regions in the mediation of WM for different categories of information. Each kind (...) of WM may thus be expected to involve many brain regions rather than a local, uniquely dedicated set of cells. Neurons in a distributed “cell assembly” may be self-selected by their temporally coherent activations. The process by which this fragmented representation of the recent past is reassembled to accomplish essentially automatic and reliable recognition of a recurrent event constitutes an important problem. One plausible mechanism to achieve the identification of past with previous events would require that the representational system mediating WM must coexist in spatial extent and somehow overlap in temporal activation with cell ensembles registering input from subsequent events. The detection of such a postulated mechanism required an experimental approach which would focus upon spatial patterns of coherent activation while information about different events was stored in WM and retrieved, rather than focusing upon the temporal sequences of activation in localized regions of interest. For this purpose, the familiar delayed matching from sample task was modified. A series of information-free flashes, or “noncontingent probes,” was presented before an initial series of visual information items, the Priming Sample, which were to be held in WM during a Delay Period. A second series of visual information items were then presented, the Matching Sample. The task required detection of any item in the second series which had beenabsentfrom the initial series. Thirty such trials with a particular category of visual information constituted a single task. Several DMS tasks with this standardized design, but with different categories of visual information, were presented within each test session. The information categories included letters of the alphabet, single digit numbers, or faces from a school yearbook. Event-related potentials , were computed from 21 standardized electrode placements, separately for information-free probes and for information items in each interval of the trials within a task. Because each electrode is particularly sensitive to coherent activation of neurons in the immediately underlying brain regions, topographic maps were constructed and interpolated across the surface of the scalp. The momentary fluctuations of the resulting voltage “landscapes” throughout the task were then subjected to quantitative analysis. Distinctive landscapes sometimes persisted for prolonged periods, implying sustained engagement of very large populations of neurons. “Difference landscapes” were constructed by subtraction of topographic maps evoked by noncontingent probes during the Delay Period from maps of probe ERPs before the presentation of the initial information in the Priming Sample. Such probe difference landscapes displayed recurrent high similarity to momentary landscapes elicited during subsequent presentation of the information items in the Matching Sample. It seemed as if the distributed cell assembly continuously engaged by mediation of WM of the diverse attributes of the initial stimuli was being dynamically compared to the ensembles engaged by registration of the subsequent stimuli. Spatial Principal Component Analysis was applied to the sequences of momentary voltage landscapes observed throughout trials of each task. This method sought a small number of spatial patterns with which these large sets of inhomogeneous spatial distributions of voltage could be reconstructed. This is the spatial analog of the reconstruction of local ERPs by temporal principal components, as often described previously. Five Spatial Principal Components were found which accounted for about 90% of the total variance of voltage across the surface of the scalp throughout every task. Theloadings,or distinguishing topographic features, of these SPCs, were highly similar during every cognitive task for every subject. However,factor scores,or relative average contribution to the overall voltage distributions, of the different SPCs varied substantially among subjects between the tasks and momentarily within successive intervals of each task. These five SPCs may reflect coherent activation of huge distributed ensembles of neurons which comprise independent but interacting functional brain subsystems. These subsystems may correspond to basic resources available to individuals for allocation to mediate conscious evaluation of information during cognitive activity, providing a filter to bind together fractionated representations of the past to evaluate the present. (shrink)

Sentences such as "The author started the book" are indeterminate because they do not make explicit what the subject (the author) started doing with the object (the book). In principle, indeterminate sentences allow for an infinite number of interpretations. One theory, however, assumes that these sentences are resolved by semantic coercion, a linguistic process that forces the noun "book" to be interpreted as an activity (e.g., writing the book) or by a process that interpolates this activity information in (...) the resulting enriched semantic composition. An alternative theory, pragmatic, assumes classical semantic composition, whereby meaning arises from the denotation of words and how they are combined syntactically, with enrichment obtained via pragmatic inferences beyond linguistic-semantic processes. Cognitive neuroscience studies investigating the neuroanatomical and functional correlates of indeterminate sentences have shown activations either at the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex or at the left inferior frontal gyrus. These studies have supported the semantic coercion theory assuming that one of these regions is where enriched semantic composition takes place. Employing fMRI, we found that indeterminate sentences activate bilaterally the superior temporal gyrus, the right inferior frontal gyrus, and the anterior cingulate cortex, more so than control sentences ("The author wrote the book"). Activation of indeterminate sentences exceeded that of anomalous sentences ("…drank the book") and engaged more left- and right-hemisphere areas than other sentence types. We suggest that the widespread activations for indeterminate sentences represent the deployment of pragmatic-inferential processes, which seek to enrich sentence content without necessarily resorting to semantic coercion. (shrink)

Given that Lucretius offers a systematic and cohesive explanation of the workings of nature, we should not expect inconsistencies in his poem. The explanation presented by Lucretius emphatically rejects any interventionist divine machinery of the cosmos, offering in its place the eminently regular dynamics of atomic configuration and dissolution, which can explain everything that pertains to natural philosophy without necessitating the activity of any divinity. The reader who understands the basics of Lucretius’ philosophy, therefore, should be surprised that theDRNbegins (...) with an anthropomorphic description of the goddess Venus, whom the poet petitions to intervene actively in human affairs. Lucretius gradually refines this initial presentation of the goddess’ essence throughout the poem, suggesting that the Venus who inaugurates the poem must be nuanced once one has learned the basic principles of Epicurean philosophy. At the end ofDRN4, Venus is presented not as a divine being but as nothing more than the sexual drive shared by all creatures in nature (haec Venus est nobis, 4.1058). Historically scholars have been keen to ‘correct’ perceived inconsistencies such as this, either by arguing that such imperfections derive from later interpolators or by appealing to the incomplete nature of the text as we possess it. Of course, no one has suggested that Lucretius would have changed or removed the proem, so the Venus problem remains an issue. One major aim of this article is to show that the process we witness with Lucretius’ Venus is not inconsistent but programmatic, a point grasped by many with regard to Venus herself but not in respect to theDRNas a whole. In other words, this article extends this insight about Lucretius’ Venus, whose providential attributes are only provisionally attached to her at the outset of the poem and, in due course, are completely removed. In fact, I will argue that the technique of gradually redefining initial propositions—a process I will refer to as provisional argumentation—fundamentally informs Lucretius’ famous metaphor of the honeyed cup, and I will suggest that we ought to recognize this technique as a major aspect of Lucretius’ discursive method throughout theDRN. (shrink)

All theory makes assumptions about the nature of reality (either implicitly or explicitly) and such ontological assumptions necessarily regulate how one studies the things and events under investigation. Successful study is inex- tricably dependent upon an adequate ontology. As Bryant neatly puts it, "Effective application, in turn, is connected with adequate working assumptions about the constitution of society. Argument about the constitution of society is thus not a recondite activity which most sociologists [and organi- sation theorists] can safely ignore" (...) (1995: 58, interpolation added). The central concern in this paper is with the ontological underpinnings of much of the current literature in organisation studies in respect of struc- ture and culture. It will be argued that conflation of irreducible and causally-efficacious strata of social reality in the shape of social structure and culture permeates much of the current literature, thus rendering analysis of the interplay between them and their relationship with human agency diffi- cult to elucidate. The ontological underpinnings of organisational analysis have arguably turned full circle from the depth of social reality acknowl- edged by functionalism, structural Marxism and systems theory to the generic endorsement of Giddens’ structuration theory. As will be argued, Giddens’ theory entails a depthless ontology, which necessarily precludes methodological prescription. (shrink)

This article is about ‘genogeographic’ maps produced by late-Soviet geneticists and published during post-Soviet time. It focuses on the visual and numerical techniques scientists used to project genetic data onto geographic space. Rather than discussing their representational character, I follow these visuals as ‘folded objects’, describing the layering and realigning of measurements and temporalities as well as the shifts in the practices and meanings of genetics. In the 1970s Soviet biological anthropologists transformed scattered data points by means of spatial statistics (...) into visually coherent maps for a ‘genogeographical atlas’, by interpolating data for the entire USSR territory. Computer-aided modelling rendered ‘populations’ as systemic entities and enacted specific cybernetic versions of population, evolution and difference. Tracing the history of their making helps one in understanding what these folded objects hold in store, in terms of data ranging from Russian imperial and colonial anthropology, through early Soviet traditions, to cold war technologies. Folded into those maps in intricate ways, they have co-shaped post-Soviet human genetics as an ever-active site for possible reinscriptions of difference. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.1 (2000) 2-24 [Access article in PDF] Three-Way Misreading Mieke Bal Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999. [CPR] Introduction: Reading Other-Wise This openly declared interest makes my reading the kind of "mistake" without which no practice can enable itself. 1 --Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Critique of Postcolonial ReasonAs many readers of this journal familiar with her (...) earlier work will surmise, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's Critique of Postcolonial Reason (CPR) is not easy to read. Yet reading is what the book is about, what it does, and what it teaches. The book, on more levels than one but beginning with its own accessibility, teaches how to read, other-wise. Indeed, this book is perhaps overreadable, if such a notion makes sense. I mean a form of readerliness based on multiplicity, both of (academic) levels and of lines of argumentation, subjects, and discourses. It can be read in a number of ways, none of which is adequate, all of which are enriching and useful for whatever area of specialization one is working in, as long as one is engaged in (thinking through) culture and the activity of analysis."My aim, to begin with, was...": beginning in the past tense and ending on the word "undone," this is a book with no beginning and no end, just like its subject matter, which can be briefly summarized as a passage from its title to a program of developing "transnational literacy." To pretend that either book or subject matter does have an end is to closet it. 2 But both book and subject matter have many openings that beckon you in yet leave the doors open so you can leave when and how you wish. Thus, it sets itself up to be appropriated, and in full awareness of how that makes me complicitous with much that the author at times rants about, I feel compelled to do just that: to productively misread it. Feeling invited to take the book "home"--to divert it from its many-branched course but confirming its multiple readership--I will offer here three readings of CPR. All three are willful misreadings, for misreading, always inevitable, is particularly indispensable in this encounter. 3 Instead of a review, I offer a pedagogical supplement. I will follow or spin three threads, to which the book is in no way reducible, and which [End Page 2] [Begin Page 4] are even insufficiently complex to account for the part-issue on which they focus. My goal is simply to convey one sense in which this book can be read with enormous productivity. I have selected three issues that appear as misreadings even at first sight, to the extent that they foreground aspects of the book's reasoning and analysis that are paradoxical here. In a study explicitly allied to postcolonial theory and politics, I will discuss aesthetics; in a practice of deconstruction, referentiality; and in a book of intricate and self-reflective writing, orality. These three elements are meant to underscore and remedy the profound misreadings to which those who mistrust, misinterpret, or misjudge the author's triple allegiance to transnational culture studies, deconstructive critique, and teaching have subjected her work.CPR contains four long chapters, simply titled "Philosophy," "Literature," "History," "Culture." Simply, or overambitiously? Neither. Whenever the book appears to spread out, it narrows down in the same move. The enumeration embodies a tight program. The sequence of the chapters is clear and significant. It is justified forwards and backwards as an itinerary and guideline for an interdisciplinary culture study that is responsible to each of its components as well as to the objects that can be confined to none. Moving forwards, "Philosophy" examines the arguments, "Literature" the figurations, "History" the archival material in which arguments and figurations collaborate to determine, and retrospectively leave traces of, what happened. 4 "History" also changes the practice of history by interpolating between positive research and philosophy the need to read and a way to do it, borrowed largely from literature. "Culture" opens up to the politics of a world in... (shrink)

This article presents the first detailed analysis of the ways in which border-crossing author and balladeer John Jones (pseudonym ‘Jac Glan-y-Gors’) remodelled a range of Thomas Paine’s writings into Welsh republican pamphlets by translating key passages, interpolating culturally relevant indigenous material, and consolidating Paine’s anti-monarchical core vocabulary. In doing so, the article provides a blueprint for examining the operation of intellectual networks who transferred ideas and cultural artefacts to smaller or non-hegemonic cultures and the process of embedding them. Jones’s work (...) is analysed against the history of an early modern Welsh ‘translation culture’ that enabled a substantial expansion of radical translation activity, in tandem with the democratisation of the English press in the wake of the French Revolution of 1789, transferring Enlightenment and revolutionary artefacts, formats and ideas to Wales and the Welsh language. Using publishing networks that linked metropolitan London to rural Wales, an indigenous Welsh intelligentsia combined English models with indigenous cultural forms to produce a radical print culture in their own language. Jones’s republican pamphlets, the only substantial reception of Paine’s writings in Welsh, are read in the context of these processes. (shrink)

In this paper we draw attention that there have been significant increases in activity relating to child sexual abuse and exploitation on both the surface web and dark web during the COVID-19 lockdown period. This paper aim is an analyse about how the COVID-19 pandemic is presently modifying the trends and threats of child sexual exploitation and abuse offences, which were already at high levels prior to the pandemic. This article highlights the trends and threats in the current COVID-19 (...) context compared to pre-pandemic measures, what impact these are having in the short-term, and what changes we have seen when COVID-19 measures are reduced. It contributes to the space of the dark web during lockdown by manifestation on the ongoing organised business model that has evolved as technology expands and the level of threat that it poses to children. The objective is to share these trends across the global law enforcement community and science in order to improve the monitoring and detection of child sexual exploitation and abuse online, further investigations and global police response. (shrink)

It is traditionally believed that cerebral activation (the presence of low voltage fast electrical activity in the neocortex and rhythmical slow activity in the hippocampus) is correlated with arousal, while deactivation (the presence of large amplitude irregular slow waves or spindles in both the neocortex and the hippocampus) is correlated with sleep or coma. However, since there are many exceptions, these generalizations have only limited validity. Activated patterns occur in normal sleep (active or paradoxical sleep) and during states (...) of anesthesia and coma. Deactivated patterns occur, at times, during normal waking, or during behavior in awake animals treated with atropinic drugs. Also, the fact that patterns characteristic of sleep, arousal, and waking behavior continue in decorticate animals indicates that reticulo-cortical mechanisms are not essential for these aspects of behavior. (shrink)

The emotion of surprise entails a complex of immediate responses, such as cognitive interruption, attention allocation to, and more systematic processing of the surprising stimulus. All these processes serve the ultimate function to increase processing depth and thus cognitively master the surprising stimulus. The present account introduces phasic negative affect as the underlying mechanism responsible for this switch in operating mode. Surprising stimuli are schema-discrepant and thus entail cognitive disfluency, which elicits immediate negative affect. This affect in turn works like (...) a phasic cognitive tuning switching the current processing mode from more automatic and heuristic to more systematic and reflective processing. Directly testing the initial elicitation of negative affect by surprising events, the present experiment presented high and low surprising neutral trivia statements to N = 28 participants while assessing their spontaneous facial expressions via facial electromyography. High compared to low surprising trivia elicited higher corrugator activity, indicative of negative affect and mental effort, while leaving zygomaticus (positive affect) and frontalis (cultural surprise expression) activity unaffected. Future research shall investigate the mediating role of negative affect in eliciting surprise-related outcomes. (shrink)

The problem of free will lies at the heart of modern scientific studies of consciousness. An influential series of experiments by Libet has suggested that conscious intentions arise as a result of brain activity. This contrasts with traditional concepts of free will, in which the mind controls the body. A more recent study by Haggard and Eimer has further examined the relation between intention and brain processes, concluding that conscious awareness of intention is linked to the choice or selection (...) of a specific action, and not to the earliest initiation of action processes. The exchange of views in this paper further explores the relation between conscious intention and brain activity. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 132-160, April 2022. Autonomic nervous system activity is a fundamental component of emotional responding. It is not clear, however, whether positive emotional states are associated with differential ANS reactivity. To address this issue, we conducted a meta-analytic review of 120 articles, measuring ANS activity during 11 elicited positive emotions, namely amusement, attachment love, awe, contentment, craving, excitement, gratitude, joy, nurturant love, pride, and sexual desire. We identified a widely dispersed collection of (...) studies. Univariate results indicated that positive emotions produce no or weak and highly variable increases in ANS reactivity. However, the limitations of work to date – which we discuss – mean that our conclusions should be treated as empirically grounded hypotheses that future research should validate. (shrink)

Leibniz explains both activity and sensation in terms of the relative distinctness of perception. This paper argues that the systematic connection between activity and sensation is illuminated by Leibniz’s use of distinctness in analyzing each. Leibnizian sensation involves two levels of activity: on one level, the relative forcefulness of an expression enables certain expressions to stand out against the perceptual field, but in addition to this there is an activity of the mind that enables sensory experience. (...) This connection of mental activity and perceptual distinctness enables us to better appreciate the fundamental role perceptual distinctness plays in Leibniz’s theory of sensation. (shrink)

This paper propounds a new reading of Berkeley's account of the activity of finite spirits. Against existing interpretations, the paper argues that Berkeley does not hold that we causally contribute to the movement of our bodies. In contrast, our volitions to move our bodies are but occasions for God to cause their movement. In answer to the question of wherein then consists our activity, the paper proposes that our activity consists in the dual powers to produce (1) (...) our volitions ? the acts of willing ? and (2) our ideas of imagination. (shrink)

Do plants represent according to Kant? This is closely connected to the question of whether he held plants are alive, because he explains life in terms of the faculty to act on one’s own representations. He also explains life as having an immaterial principle of self-motion, and as a body’s interaction with a supersensible soul. I argue that because of the way plants move themselves, Kant is committed to their being alive, to their having a supersensible ground of their self- (...) class='Hi'>activity, and to their having desires (although these are not conscious). This has important ramifications for Kant’s teleology and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has led teachers to an unpredictable scenario where the lockdown situation has accelerated the shift from traditional to online educational methods, and relationships have been altered by the avoidance of direct contact with the others, with implications for their mental health. Physical activity seemed to be a factor that could prevent from mental disorders such as anxiety or depression in this peculiar situation. Therefore, the aims of this study were to explore how teachers have been affected (...) by the lockdown in respect to their mental health and their relationships in three main fields, work, family and social relationships; and to know which is the role of physical activity in the mentioned variables. For that purpose, an online survey was designed to collect quantitative and qualitative data. Results showed that indoor physical activity acts as preventive in lockdown situations, while the level of activity does not affect mental health. Also, teachers have experienced higher levels of depression and distress due to the workload generated during the lockdown. In conclusion, to prevent health problems among teachers in future similar situations it would be important to facilitate the practice of physical activity at home. Furthermore, teacher training in blended or online educational methods would be crucial for their favorable work development. (shrink)