Book reviewed:D. S. Clarke, Philosophy’s Second Revolution.

Una riflessione, talvolta discutibile, su un problema centrale nello studio della storia, sul modo cioè di comprendere la sensibilità di uomini del passato, cercando di accostarla alla sensibilità di uomini nostri contemporanei. Si considera, come caso esemplare e particolarmente difficile, la riflessione di Agostino sul tema della grazia e della predestinazione. Ogni trasposizione di dottrine anche lungo la linea del tempo storico è certamente un tradimento delle intenzioni originali dell’autore, ma un tradimento necessario per sperare di capirlo. L’intreccio di tesi (...) su predestinazione, grazia, destino e carattere può aiutare, ma solo a condizione di essere consapevoli che si tratta comunque di analogie che mai riescono a chiarire completamente, ma possono aiutare. A reflection, sometimes questionable, on a central problem in the study of history, that is, on how to understand the sensibility of men of the past, trying to approach it to the sensibility of our contemporary men. We investigate, as an exemplary and particularly difficult case, Augustine's reflection on the subject of grace and predestination. Any transposition of doctrines even along the historical timeline is certainly a betrayal of the author's original intentions, but a necessary betrayal to hope to understand him. The interweaving of theses on predestination, grace, destiny, and character can help, but only on the condition of being aware that these are nevertheless analogies that never succeed in fully clarifying, but can help. (shrink)

Not many studies have focused on the analysis of the rhetorical organization of a genre and the respective frequency of occurrence of moves and steps as they occur in a corpus across disciplines – particularly, with a complementary qualitative-quantitative approach. This article aims to become a step in helping to fill this gap in research on Spanish. In this way, the textbook genre, the occurrence of its rhetorical macro-moves, moves and steps and disciplinarity are the central focus of this study. (...) More specifically, in this article we seek to determine and to compare the frequency of occurrence of macro-moves, moves and steps in a corpus of 126 university textbooks across the academic discourse of four disciplines. We distinguish the major areas of knowledge as well as the specific disciplines. The main findings show there are differences between the occurrence of some discourse moves and steps across the texts of disciplines under study, which reveals a distinctive feature in the didactic component of textbooks. So we can infer that knowledge construction process through this genre is not carried out in the same way and that disciplinarity plays an important role in the diversifying organizational discourse patterns detected. (shrink)

La mistica, come l’essere, si può dire in molti modi diversi e questi modi non possono essere presi in considerazione in maniera sistematica. Accostando autori non considerati mistici in senso proprio, si intende fornire qualche spunto di riflessione, mostrando come aspetti tradizionalmente considerati mistici, si possano trovare nei più diversi ambiti: scienza, filosofia, poesia, politica. Se questo livello del pensiero è indispensabile per non cedere alle pretese tiranniche della ragione analitica, è opportuno in ogni caso evitare di farne un mondo (...) a parte che si nutre della propria diversità e del proprio orgoglio. Mysticism, as well as being, can be said in many different ways and these ways cannot be taken into account in a systematic way. By comparing authors not considered mystical in the proper sense, we intend to provide some ideas for reflection, showing how aspects traditionally considered mystical can be found in the most diverse contexts: science, philosophy, poetry, politics. If this level of thought is indispensable in order not to submit to the tyrannical claims of analytical reason, it is necessary in any case to avoid making it a separate world that is nourished by its own diversity and pride. (shrink)

Distinction de l'esprit et de la raison. L’élément de nécessité et l'élément de liberté impliqués l’un et l'autre dans tous les champs d’application de la raison. L’esprit est l’activité concrète qui, découvrant et acceptant sa loi immanente, devient raison.

This article identifies and describes the rhetorical organization of the Textbook genre, based on a corpus-based approach and on part of PUCV-2006 Corpus of Academic Spanish. This subcorpus includes 126 textbooks collected from four scientific disciplines at undergraduate university programmes: Social Work, Psychology, Construction Engineering and Industrial Chemistry. In order to fulfil the goals, the article determines and describes the communicative purposes of each of the moves and steps identified, and gives examples from the four disciplinary domains. A new macro-level (...) to fully account for the analysis is introduced and justified, which turned out to be essential for a better description of an extensive textual unit as these texts are. This is named as macro-move. The main findings reveal a well-organized organization directed towards educational instruction. The genre fundamental nucleus is formed by the macro-move Conceptualization and Exercising, which is repeated as many times as the contents are displayed. By the end of the article, the question appearing in the title is answered and arguments are offered to explain why the genre’s rhetorical organization is described as a ‘colony-in-loops’. (shrink)

As the specter of climate change looms on the horizon, people will face complex decisions about whether to support climate change policies and how to cope with climate change impacts on their lives. Without some grasp of the relevant science, they may find it hard to make informed decisions. Climate experts therefore face the ethical need to effectively communicate to non-expert audiences. Unfortunately, climate experts may inadvertently violate the maxims of effective communication, which require sharing communications that are truthful, brief, (...) relevant, clear, and tested for effectiveness. Here, we discuss the ‘mental models’ approach towards developing communications, which aims to help experts to meet the maxims of effective communications, and to better inform the judgments and decisions of non-expert audiences. (shrink)

In alcuni settori della riflessione filosofica contemporanea appare evidente una sorta di ritorno ad Agostino, per sottolineare una componente affettiva, nella conoscenza umana, accanto alla componente intellettuale. Dal punto di vista storico si tratta di comprendere se i temi ripresi siano autenticamente agostiniani o siano piuttosto caratteristici di una tradizione nata dalla crisi del paradigma agostiniano e sviluppatasi in particolar modo nel pensiero monastico e mistico. La dottrina agostiniana della conoscenza non individua infatti né distinzione, né gerarchia tra le facoltà (...) dell'anima; mentre l'accentuazione di una sorta di supremazia dell'amore rispetto all'intelligenza, analitica e calcolante, risulta ancora, secondo l'autore, una forma di accettazione del modello cartesiano di ragione. (shrink)

We study the performance of holonomic quantum gates, driven by lasers, under the effect of a dissipative environment modeled as a thermal bath of oscillators. We show how to enhance the performance of the gates by suitable choice of the loop in the manifold of the controllable parameters of the laser. For a simplified, albeit realistic model, we find the surprising result that for a long time evolution the performance of the gate (properly estimated in terms of average fidelity) increases. (...) On the basis of this result, we compare holonomic gates with the so-called Stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) gates. (shrink)