We have identified a sample of 53 societies outside of the classical Himalayan and Marquesean area that permit polyandrous unions. Our goal is to broadly describe the demographic, social, marital, and economic characteristics of these societies and to evaluate some hypotheses of the causes of polyandry. We demonstrate that although polyandry is rare it is not as rare as commonly believed, is found worldwide, and is most common in egalitarian societies. We also argue that polyandry likely existed during early human (...) history and should be examined from an evolutionary perspective. Our analysis reveals that it may be a predictable response to a high operational sex ratio favoring males and may also be a response to high rates of male mortality and, possibly, male absenteeism. Other factors may contribute, but our within-polyandry sample limits analysis. (shrink)

The Shodagor of Matlab, Bangladesh, are a seminomadic community of people who live and work on small wooden boats, within the extensive system of rivers and canals that traverse the country. This unique ecology places particular constraints on family and economic life and leads to Shodagor parents employing one of four distinct strategies to balance childcare and provisioning needs. The purpose of this paper is to understand the conditions that lead a family to choose one strategy over another by testing (...) predictions about socioecological factors that impact the sexual division of labor, including a family’s stage in the domestic cycle, aspects of the local ecology, and the availability of alloparents. Results show that although each factor has an impact on the division of labor individually, a confluence of these factors best explains within-group, between-family differences in how mothers and fathers divide subsistence and childcare labor. These factors also interact in particular ways for Shodagor families, and it appears that families choose their economic strategies based on the constellation of constraints that they face. The results of these analyses have implications for theory regarding the sexual division of labor across cultures and inform how Shodagor family economic and parenting strategies should be contextualized in future studies. (shrink)

This paper examines the effects of three different types of father absence on the timing of life history events among women in rural Bangladesh. Age at marriage and age at first birth are compared across women who experienced different father presence/absence conditions as children. Survival analyses show that daughters of fathers who divorced their mothers or deserted their families have consistently younger ages at marriage and first birth than other women. In contrast, daughters whose fathers were labor migrants have consistently (...) older ages at marriage and first birth. Daughters whose fathers died when they were children show older ages at marriage and first birth than women with divorced/deserted fathers and women with fathers present. These effects may be mediated by high socioeconomic status and high levels of parental investment among the children of labor migrants, and a combination of low investment, high psychosocial stress, and low alloparental investment among women with divorced/deserted fathers. Our findings are most consistent with the Child Development Theory model of female life history strategies, though the Paternal Investment and Psychosocial Acceleration models also help explain differences between women in low paternal investment situations (e.g., father divorced/abandoned vs. father dead). Father absence in and of itself seems to have little effect on the life history strategies of Bangladeshi women once key reasons for or correlates of absence are controlled, and none of the models is a good predictor of why women with deceased fathers have delayed life histories compared with women whose fathers are present. (shrink)

Ritual and Myth in the International Corona-Drama. A Conversation with Jeffrey Alexander.

The production of a number of vaccines involves the use of cell-lines originally derived from fetuses directly aborted in the 1960s and 1970s. Such cell-lines, indeed sometimes the very same ones, are important to on-going research, including at Catholic institutions. The cells currently used are removed by a number of decades and by a significant number of cellular generations from the original cells. Moreover, the original cells extracted from the bodies of the aborted fetuses were transformed to produce the cell (...) lines, since otherwise they would be incapable of the kind of culturing that is required. (shrink)

In his recent article entitled ‘Can We Believe the Error Theory?’ Bart Streumer argues that it is impossible (for anyone, anywhere) to believe the error theory. This might sound like a problem for the error theory, but Streumer argues that it is not. He argues that the un-believability of the error theory offers a way for error theorists to respond to several objections commonly made against the view. In this paper, we respond to Streumer’s arguments. In particular, in sections 2-4, (...) we offer several objections to Streumer’s argument for the claim that we cannot believe the error theory. In section 5, we argue that even if Streumer establishes that we cannot believe the error theory, this conclusion is not as helpful for error theorists as he takes it to be. (shrink)

Independent of ecology, subsistence strategy, social complexity, or other aspects of socioecology, the altricial nature of young humans requires mothers to have help raising their offspring. What seems to be context-dependent, however, is who the helpers are, how they invest, and what the impacts of that investment are. In a series of papers that focus on parental and alloparental investment across five populations, this special issue of Human Nature uses evolutionary theory to examine how socioecological context influences modes of direct (...) parental investment among the boat-dwelling Shodagor of Bangladesh, modes of indirect paternal investment in the modern United States, and the biological outcome of paternal investment for men in Jamaica, as well as direct alloparental investment among village Bangladeshis and indirect alloparental investment in breastfeeding practices in the United States. (shrink)

Mill predicted that “[t]he Liberty is likely to survive longer than anything else that I have written … because the conjunction of [Harriet Taylor’s] mind with mine has rendered it a kind of philosophic text-book of a single truth, which the changes progressively taking place in modern society tend to bring out in ever greater relief.” Indeed, _On Liberty_ is one of the most influential books ever written, and remains a foundational document for the understanding of vital political, philosophical and (...) social issues. In addition to its many useful appendices, this new edition includes a chronology, bibliography, and a substantial introduction which outlines Mill’s life and works, and sets this central work of 1859 in the context of both his own intellectual development and of the play of ideas and political forces in Victorian society. (shrink)

This paper discusses two passages from Alexander of Aphrodisias’s commentary on Aristotle’s _ Topics _ that are transmitted in Ps-Jābir’s _ Kitāb al-Nukhab _. It argues that the Arabic translation of Alexander’s commentary may have been made from a fuller version than what came down to us in Greek. Especially since the author(s) of the Jābir-corpus form a tradition different from the school of Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq (d. 873) and authors associated to the ‘Baghdad school’, whose earliest figure (...) is Abū Bishr Mattā b. Yūnus (d. 940), the Arabic fragments of Alexander’s commentary preserved in the _ Kitāb al-Nukhab _ promise to shed more light on the early reception of the _ Topics _ and the different contexts in which Aristotelian dialectic was studied in the Islamic world. (shrink)

R. W. Sharples provides a new edition, with introduction and commentary in English, of the Greek text. The Mantissa is a collection of short discussions, transmitted as a supplement to the treatise On the Soul by the Aristotelian commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias (c.200 AD).The collection includes discussion of a range of topics, among them the nature of soul and intellect, theories of how seeing takes place, issues in ethics, and the nature of fate. The text is based upon a (...) new collation of the principal manuscript, the ninth century Venetus Marcianus graecus 258, and the apparatus corrects Bruns' misreportings of the principal manuscript and of the others that he used. Account has also been taken of the medieval Arabic and Latin versions of some of the sections which circulated independently, notably On Intellect which had a substantial influence on medieval philosophy. The introduction is chiefly concerned with the manuscripts and the relation between them. The commentary is based on the notes to the editor's English translation of the work (London: Duckworth and Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004); however, the commentary also takes into account more recent work on the collection by various scholars. (shrink)

Alexander Hamilton presents his early formative years, sharing the way his engagement with the cyanotype process has informed his art practice, from his time at Edinburgh College of Art, to his program of exhibitions and residencies, through to his work within the field of public arts. This personal history is combined with essays by academics, scholars and curators who engage with the intellectual roots of his work and practice. A comprehensive selection of Hamilton’s photography, including his unique plant-based cyanotypes, (...) completes this beautiful book. (shrink)

Banded geckos (Coleonyx variegatus) were trained, at the rate of five daily trials, on eight intradimensional spatial shifts to a criterion of 80% correct per reversal. In contrast to several previously reported failures to obtain reversal learning, Coleonyx demonstrated significant improvement on both errors and trials to criterion. Their reversal performance compares favorably with that of birds and mammals and a common index of reversal ability, the mean total error, did not differentiate between taxa.

In her recent article, ‘Internalism About Reasons: Sad But True?,’ Kate Manne offers a brilliant defense of a novel version of internalism about normative reasons. But I will argue that this defense is not successful. After explaining the nature of Manne’s internalism, I offer two counterexamples to it, thereby showing that her argument in its favor goes wrong somewhere. I then identify the false premise in her argument. In brief, I suggest that Manne’s ‘practice-based approach’ to practical normativity (or at (...) least, to normative reasons) should be rejected. (shrink)

Originally the constitution was expected to express and channel popular sovereignty. It was the work of freedom, springing from and facilitating collective self-determination. After the Second World War this perspective changed: the modern constitution owes its authority not only to collective authorship, it also must commit itself credibly to human rights. Thus people recede into the background, and the national constitution becomes embedded into one or other system of 'peer review' among nations.This is what Alexander Somek argues is the (...) creation of the cosmopolitan constitution. Reconstructing what he considers to be the three stages in the development of constitutionalism, he argues that the cosmopolitan constitution is not a blueprint for the constitution beyond the nation state, let alone a constitution of the international community; rather, it stands for constitutional law reaching out beyond its national bounds. This cosmopolitan constitution has two faces: the first, political, face reflects the changed circumstances of constitutional authority. It conceives itself as constrained by international human rights protection, firmly committed to combating discrimination on the grounds of nationality, and to embracing strategies for managing its interaction with other sites of authority, such as the United Nations. The second, administrative, face of the cosmopolitan constitution reveals the demise of political authority, which has been traditionally vested in representative bodies. Political processes yield to various, and often informal, strategies of policy co-ordination so long as there are no reasons to fear that the elementary civil rights might be severely interfered with. It represents constitutional authority for an administered world. (shrink)

Do the sciences aim to uncover the structure of nature, or are they ultimately a practical means of controlling our environment? In Instrumental Biology, or the Disunity of Science, Alexander Rosenberg argues that while physics and chemistry can develop laws that reveal the structure of natural phenomena, biology is fated to be a practical, instrumental discipline. Because of the complexity produced by natural selection, and because of the limits on human cognition, scientists are prevented from uncovering the basic structure (...) of biological phenomena. Consequently, biology and all of the disciplines that rest upon it--psychology and the other human sciences--must aim at most to provide practical tools for coping with the natural world rather than a complete theoretical understanding of it. (shrink)

This volume contains essays by five British philosophers and one Swedish philosopher working in metaphysics and in particular metaphysics as it relates to the philosophy of science. These philosophers are the core of a tight network of European philosophers of science and metaphysicians and their essays have evolved as a result of workshops in Lund, Edinburgh, and Athens.

A. G. Baumgarten's foundation of aesthetics as a branch of philosophical reflection is itself deeply rooted in Leibnizian metaphysics. From this starting-point Baumgarten comes to a kind of monadological concept of the work of art, that gets now an inexhaustible and thruthrepresenting meaning. This truth of the work of art however cannot be recognized rationally, for it is impossible for human beings to be aware of a beautiful object's 'metaphysical truth', which can only be perceived by the senses as - (...) to quote Baumgarten - 'aesthetical truth'. Still it is possible, by rational and scientific hermeneutics, to transfer some aspects of aesthetical to logical truth. The interest in art is therefore at the same time an interest in the cognition of the metaphysical cosmic order, and Baumgarten's aesthetics similarly are the first foundation of philosophical hermeneutics of art. (shrink)

Economics today cannot predict the likely outcome of specific events any better than it could in the time of Adam Smith. This is Alexander Rosenberg's controversial challenge to the scientific status of economics. Rosenberg explains that the defining characteristic of any science is predictive improvability--the capacity to create more precise forecasts by evaluating the success of earlier predictions--and he forcefully argues that because economics has not been able to increase its predictive power for over two centuries, it is not (...) a science. (shrink)

The "Supplement" transmitted as the second book of "On the Soul" by Alexander of Aphrodisias is a collection of short texts on a wide range of topics from psychology, including the general hylomorphic account of soul and its faculties, and the theory of vision; questions in ethics ; and issues relating to responsibility, chance and fate. One of the texts in the collection, "On Intellect", had a major influence on medieval Arabic and Western thought, greater than that of (...) class='Hi'>Alexander's "On the Soul" itself. The treatises may all be by Alexander himself; certainly the majority of them are closely connected with his other works. Many of them, however, consist of collections of arguments on particular issues, collections which probably incorporate material from earlier in the history of the Peripatetic school. This translation is from a new edition of the Greek text based on a collation of all known manuscripts and comparison with medieval Arabic and Latin translations. (shrink)

Alexander Eliot, distinguished critic and art historian, breaks through to the silent world of masterpieces and makes them live anew in the eye of the imagination. Eliot plumbs the truths expressed by the greatest works of painting, sculpture and architecture. Eliot¿s style is crystalline, and his purpose plain: to bring art back to the center of our culture.

It is too often assumed that Voltaire is uninterested in metaphysics and that his whole attitude is inimical to such studies. This assumption is of course largely dependent on the definition of the term metaphysics. To modern minds metaphysics tends to imply knowledge of the absolute obtained by some direct intuition of reality, and to the Bergsonian definition of metaphysics as the science which claims to dispense with symbols the present writer would largely subscribe. Given this modern definition of metaphysics, (...) which is also the Kantian one, as a special mode of knowledge, it is an undoubted fact that Voltaire is not in this sense a metaphysical mind; the appeal to any peculiar or specifically a priori mode of thought was, of course, incompatible with his empiricism. (shrink)

Weintraub is not really interested in whether economics is “science” or not. “Economists are not so unsophisticated as to think that calling economics a ‘science’ says anything about what economists do or should do”. But can it really be a matter of indifference to him whether the subject has the character of chemistry as opposed to literary criticism?