Drawing on a series of exhibitions curated and installed at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal throughout the 1990s and the early millennium, this essay analyzes how architecture and its representation in museological exhibitions have innovated forms of communication and display practices, transcending the traditions established by the fine arts paradigm since the late eighteenth century. The author argues that in addition to providing a heightened recognition of the narrative and performative potential of the exhibitionary setting, the discourses (...) and tensions specific to architecture and architectural practice have led to a rethinking of the communicative potential of the exhibition environment. Principles inherent to architecture—spatiality, materiality, and the experiential—are fruitful when considering the possibilities of exhibition design to elucidate multiple levels of meaning, and these principles have led to architecture’s coming-of-age in the museological environment in ways that are specific to re aedificatoria—the art of building itself. (shrink)

L’architecture carcérale présente les actes d’un colloque organisé en décembre 2010 à l’occasion du dixième anniversaire de la délocalisation, à Agen, de l’Ecole nationale d’administration pénitentiaire (ENAP). L’ouvrage est illustré de nombreux documents iconographiques provenant du fonds de plans d’architectes et de collections photographiques sur les établissements pénitentiaires conservés au Centre de ressources sur l’histoire des crimes et des peines (CRHCP) de l’ENAP. Comme l’indique le..

L’architecture carcérale présente les actes d’un colloque organisé en décembre 2010 à l’occasion du dixième anniversaire de la délocalisation, à Agen, de l’Ecole nationale d’administration pénitentiaire (ENAP). L’ouvrage est illustré de nombreux documents iconographiques provenant du fonds de plans d’architectes et de collections photographiques sur les établissements pénitentiaires conservés au Centre de ressources sur l’histoire des crimes et des peines (CRHCP) de l’ENAP. Comme l’indique le..

Volume 24, Issue 12, December 2024, Page 51-53.

Résumé La critique situationniste a transformé l’art en pratique de la vie quotidienne. Les punks y ont ajouté le pullulement des groupes autoproduits et le souci de subvertir les moyens de communication de masse. Les cercles underground, l’art vidéo et les sound systems ont fait le reste. Internet a pu brancher le monde sur la contre-culture. Le 18 Juin 1999, de nombreux centres financiers, à commencer par celui de Londres, ont été attaqués par les masques multicolores de Reclaim the Streets (...) et d’autres groupes disparates, qui multipliaient les activités joyeuses depuis plusieurs années. Le net.art a pris le relais de ces carnavals dans l’expression des multitudes insurgées. (shrink)

Analyse de la métaphore du centre dans les Ennéades en tant qu'elle renvoie à l'Un : le nom, les attributs, le rôle que celui-ci assume dans l'architecture du monde intelligible conçue par Plotin. On montrera, ce faisant, comment ce discours philosophique, en partant d'un platonisme pythagorisé, accomplit la figure de la philosophie antique en même temps qu'il libérera quelques-unes des innovations conceptuelles du modèle philosophique moderne en transformant le sens des notions de puissance, d'infini et de perfection.The following is (...) an analysis of the significance of the metaphorical core in the Enneads through the concept of the One in this plotinian architecture of the intelligible universe. The philosophy of Plotinus recapitulates all the traditional conceptions of Greek philosophy but at the same time announces Modern philosophy by the transformation of the following ontological concepts: power, infinity and perfection. (shrink)

By the end of the Republic the Bay of Naples had become a preferred setting for the pleasure villas of wealthy Romans, a centre of fashion and of cultivated ease. The villa of C. Marius at Misenum, though not the first of which we hear, is the earliest coastal Campanian estate whose appointments are explicitly described as having been luxurious. In an epistle of Seneca Marius is said to have built the villa, and on a height; of the location (...) Seneca says, vaguely, in regione Baiana, for the subject of the epistle is the depravity of Baiae, and the author took pleasure in contrasting the character of the early villas in the area with the moral decadence of the imperial resort; the elder Pliny locates the site of Marius' villa more precisely: in Misenensi. From Plutarch's somewhat fuller account come a first indication of date, a different impression of architectural character, and the names of two subsequent owners of the property. He states that after the Social War, when Sulpicius proposed Marius, others Sulla, for command in the Mithridatic War, the detractors of Marius urged him to look after his failing health and to go to the warm baths at Baiae. (shrink)

L'étude de l'élaboration historique du dogme du péché originel est propre à dissiper l'illusion qu'il descendrait le cours du temps : il le remonte en réalité. On l'observe en particulier dans la genèse de ce concept chez Augustin, en réponse à la doctrine manichéenne du mal: la rédemption du Christ reflue vers les origines de l'humanité pour dévoiler notre responsabilité de la faute sous le pardon divin qui la recouvre. Ce dogme fournit une clef de lecture de l'histoire, il montre (...) la présence active de l'amour et du pardon aux origines du temps, pour dénoncer et réprimer la violence des hommes ; il conteste l'inertie du temps par la profusion du pardon, il exprime un sens de l'existence, il enseigne une intelligence de la temporalité.Le cas du péché originel illustre le fonctionnement du dogme en général dans la culture, bien au-delà de la sphère de l'Église, son rôle à la fois révélateur, contestant et régulateur. Encore faut-il savoir interpréter les dogmes, à la façon des mythes fondateurs, c'est-à-dire en tant qu'ils relèvent d'une logique symbolique, d'un langage narratif. La contemporanéité du Concile de Trente et du style baroque illustre également l'inscription du dogme dans la culture: le foisonnement des ornementations périphériques ne doit pas détourner le regard du centre de l'architecture, qui est la figure du Christ.The study of the historical development of the dogma of original sin is enough to dissipate the illusion that it descended tbrough time : as a matter of fact it reascended. In particular we see this in the birth of the concept, in Augustine’s answer to the Manichaean doctrine of evil: the redemption of Christ flows back towards the origins of humanity to unveil our responsability for the fault, which is covered over by the divine pardon. This dogma gives a key for reading bistory. It shows the active presence of love and forgiveness from the beginning of time, which denounces and represses the violence of men. It contests the inertia of time by the profusion of forgiveness, it expresses a sense to existence, and it teaches an understanding of temporality.The case of original sin illustrates the functioning in culture of dogma in general, well beyond the spbere of the Cburch, and its role both as revealer, contestant, and regulator. But it is still necessary to know how to interpret dogmas, in the fashion of foundation myths, that is to, say in so far as they are based on a symbolic logic of a narrative language. Tbe contemporaneousness of the Concil of Trent and the baroque style equally show the inscription of dogma in culture: the multiplication of peripberal ornaments ougbt not to turn our look away from the center of the architecture, which is the figure of Christ. (shrink)

La décade de Cerisy Gilbert Simondon ou l'invention du futur a rassemblé des philosophes tels que Jean-Hugues Barthélémy, Andrew Feenberg ou Bernard Stiegler, des chercheurs venus d'autres disciplines, tels qu'Armand Hatchuel, Gilles Cohen-Tannoudji ou Thierry Gaudin, et toute une génération de jeunes chercheurs. Il en résulte un livre foisonnant où l'astrophysique côtoie la psychothérapie, où l'architecture dialogue avec l'informatique, et où tous ces savoirs tendent vers une communication encyclopédique. Il débute avec les "transductions politiques de Simondon" pour penser la relation (...) entre les évolutions technologiques et les normativités sociales. Puis, il aborde "la techno-esthétique" et le design, frayant la voie à une esthétique interne à la réalité technique qui ne repose plus sur la contemplation mais sur la participation à la technicité. Avec la "culture technologique", il est question des techniques à l'échelle du nanomètre et des instruments astronomiques spatiaux, qui imposent à la Culture d'intégrer les schèmes de la communication entre échelles. Le quatrième volet, consacré au "préindividuel quantique", propose une ré-interprétation de la mécanique quantique fondée sur les notions de préindividualité, de potentialité et de phases. "L'information et les réseaux", leurs enjeux, sont ensuite étudiés en relation avec l'informatique et les TIC. Ces technologies conditionnant aussi l'individuation psychique et collective, l'enquête se prolonge en direction du "sens du transindividuel". Enfin, ce cycle de réflexions s'achève sur "une philosophie en devenir" et les interventions esquissant des lignes d'évolution possibles pour la philosophie de Simondon. Premier jalon dans l'internationalisation des études simondoniennes, cet ouvrage propose une perspective résolument orientée vers l'invention du futur."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Tristan Murail est, avec Gérard Grisey, un des deux grands représentants de ce qu'il est convenu d'appeler la "musique spectrale". L'expression indique une référence constante à la structure microscopique des spectres sonores : c'est la vie intérieure des sons, avec leur harmonicité ou inharmonicité, leurs transitoires d'attaque ou d'extinction, qui constitue chez Murail le modèle par excellence pour construire des formes musicales. Cet ouvrage - le premier entièrement consacré à l'œuvre de Murail - évoque sa situation esthétique face à d'autres (...) courants de la musique d'après 1945. Un long entretien donne la parole au compositeur, pour retracer un parcours qui l'a mené de Messiaen à Scelsi et au-delà, ainsi qu'au pédagogue (Murail enseigne depuis plusieurs années aux Etats-Unis). Une analyse approfondie de l'une de ses pièces marquantes, L'Esprit des dunes, permet d'entrer dans son atelier, de suivre le processus de création qui conduit de l'analyse des sons à l'invention des formes. Enfin, Tristan Murail lui-même revient en détail sur chacune de ses œuvres, nous livrant son regard rétrospectif en un document précieux. (shrink)

Revue d’études benthamiennes. Special issue edited by Hiroki UENO, Brian Chien-Kang Chen, and Michihiro KAINO, Winter 2022 In the last two decades, one of the most spectacular phenomena in contemporary research of the history of political thought and intellectual history is a turn to empire. This phenomenon has had an impact on the landscape of the doctrines, attracting more and more scholars devoted to the exploration of Enlightenment political thinkers’ observations, criticisms, or justific...

Introduction The ‘Bentham and Australia’ conference took place on 11-12 April 2019 at University College London. It was hosted by the Bentham Project to mark the forthcoming publication of Bentham's Writings on Australia, a new volume edited by Tim Causer and Philip Schofield, as part of the on-going edition of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. Corpus In a format the Bentham Project had already tested in previous events, the ‘Bentham and Australia’ conference saw Bentham and non-Bentham...

Cet ensemble de textes choisis et présentés par Yvan Lamonde, jeune philosophe et historien rattaché au Centre d'Etudes canadiennes-francçaises de l'Université McGill, constitue le premier recueil de la section « Philosophic » des Cahiers du Québec, collection lancée récemment par la maison Hurtubise HMH de Montréal. On peut y voir aussi un instrument attendu qui sans doute devra être complété mais qui s'imposait manifestement chez un peuple qui à force de chercher dans l'avenir le point de départ de sa (...) philosophie en était venu à oublier que celle-ci avait un passé. C'est pour-quoi cet ouvrage mérite de retenir l'attention tant des philosophes québécois à la recherche d'une identité un peu bousculée ces derniers temps que du philosophe anglo-canadien qui s'interroge à son tour sur ce qu'ont voulu jadis et sur ce que veulent aujourd'hui les philosophes du Québec. (shrink)

[Interactive and Immersive Practices; Critical Spatial Practices. The Augmented Reality of the Exhibition Space] The rise of installations, as well as immersive and interactive spaces, in both art and science museums has accustomed the public to heightened interactivity, leading to a better understanding of social, natural and scientific phenomena. These spatial systems have also paved the way for the production of innovative environments within exhibition design. This article aims to present a brief overview of the origins of immersive and sensory (...) practices at work in contemporary museums, and to evaluate the potential of these processes to generate critical thinking in the visitor. A concise description of the evolution of the operational and intellectual premise of these museums and their changing practices demonstrates the transformations that have occurred, their modalities, and their application in selected works, notably: The Weather Project by Olafur Eliasson presented at Tate Modern London; Diller + Scofidio’s media pavilion, Blur Building, in Yverdon-les-Bains in Switzerland; and the exhibition Sense of the City at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. (shrink)

Toutes les occurences des trois termes presentes dans les fragments des philosophes presocratiques ainsi que dans les oeuvres de Platon et d'Aristote ont ete examinees par une quinzaine de professeurs et de chercheurs issus des Universites de Liege, de Bruxelles, de Louvain-la-Neuve et de Leuven. Les resultats de l'enquete ont ete presentes et discutes au cours d'un colloque qui s'est tenu a Liege en mars 2001. Dans le volume, chacun des trois corpus donne lieu en outre a un tableau recapitulatif (...) des occurences et a des conclusions propres. Un quatrieme chapitre comprend une etude sur Proclus ainsi que des investigations relatives aux traductions arabes et latines du vocabulaire concerne. Pour finir, Enrico Berti degage les principaux resultats du travail et montre aussi certains enjeux de cette philosophie de la forme inauguree par les penseurs grecs. L'ouvrage comprend une bibliographie de quelque deux cents quarante titres ainsi qu'un index des mots semantiquement apparentes aux trois termes etudies et des autres mots qui apparaissent frequemment dans leur voisinage. (shrink)

This article discusses the ways in which “walking” in a place that exhibits institutional heritage (albeit is not set as a separate gallery) discloses individuality within institutional/hegemonic intent. Examining photographs taken in a place that,among other activities, comprises institutional heritage, the article adds to the literature by specifying a new mode of walking in heritage “sites.” Walking is regarded a semiotic resource; hence, the article’s insights relate to: (a) arguments in the institution, (b) definitions of “center,” (c) “attractors” in retailing (...) and museums (as places which present heritage), and (d) the architecture of paths. The final section of the article considers heritage ineducationalinstitutions (the specific environment that the article discusses). It relates to the characteristics of classroom talk and offers recommendations for incorporating them in exhibitions dedicated to the heritage of education institutions, as a means to establish teachers’ professional identity. (shrink)

Three architectural members made of tufa, found by chance in the region of ancient Abdera, are published in this study. They revive the type of the Ionic capital in antis, known at Didyma and on Samos. They consist of three semicylindrical horizontal elements placed one above the other, with a leaf-and-dart profile, the ends of which correspond with three volutes superimposed on the sides of the capitals. Capitals of this type generally adorn the antae of altars in Π, but also (...) other structures. Two of the capitals from Abdera adorned with three-leaf palmettes between the volutes are incomplete and probably constituted a pair: the form of the volutes implies a date about 480 BC. The third capital combines Archaic, conservative features with later ones and may be dated about 460 BC. The workmanship of the back of these capitals, the construction details, and the lack of excavation data can not suggest a safe relation to altars or other buildings. (shrink)

Contemporary architecture is increasingly grounded in science and mathematics. Architectural discourse has shifted radically from the sometimes disorienting Derridean deconstruction, to engaging scientific terms such as fractals, chaos, complexity, nonlinearity, and evolving systems. That's where the architectural action is -- at least for cutting-edge architects and thinkers -- and every practicing architect and student needs to become conversant with these terms and know what they mean. Unfortunately, the vast majority of architecture faculty are unprepared to explain them to students, not (...) having had a scientific education themselves. Here is an architecture book by an architect/scientist, just in time to help architects in the new millennium. Alexander discusses many of the scientific terms arising in cutting-edge architecture, and explains them to those who don't have scientific training or advanced mathematical knowledge. We find discussions of the evolution of forms; the importance of process in design; iteration; genetic algorithms; sequences of transformations; different levels of scale (i.e. fractals); etc. They are explained here by an architect who is also a scientist, because he wants to change the way architects think and build. Alexander is not merely popularizing other scientists' results and making them accessible to architects: he is in fact presenting new and original scientific work that ties many of these concepts together in a way that will be useful to architects. (shrink)

In response to the many changes currently going on in health care, this book offers the combined insight and wisdom of a stellar group of scholars and professionals with extensive experience in the health care field. The book opens with a look at people's actual experience of health care today, from four different perspectives. It then addresses foundational questions, including the nature of medicine, nursing, and justice. Surveyed next are the changing economics of health care as well as the impact (...) of these changes on such areas as mental health care, long-term care, health care for minorities, and legal malpractice. The closing section of the book assesses from a Christian perspective available constructive alternatives, including creative funding strategies with special attention to the needs of poor persons, physician unions, and the use of "alternative medicine" therapies. (shrink)

Cette édition numérique a été réalisée à partir d'un support physique, parfois ancien, conservé au sein du dépôt légal de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, conformément à la loi n° 2012-287 du 1er mars 2012 relative à l'exploitation des Livres indisponibles du XXe siècle. Pages de début -- I -- Phénoménologies hégelienne et husserlienne Hegel et Husserl sur l'intersubjectivité Itinéraires phénoménologiques La dialectique de l'intentionnalité Essai de synthèse d'une méthode phénoménologique -- II -- Classes sociales selon Marx Imaginaire social et (...) creation des idéologies Production et classes sociales dans Le Capital L'évolution du concept de la lutte des classes dans la pensée de Marx Lesclasses sociales dans la philosophie de l'histoire de Marx Pages de fin. (shrink)

Nous publions, en ouverture de ce numéro d’Etudes Ricœuriennes / Ricoeur Studies, un article de Paul Ricœur intitulé « Architecture et narrativité ». Ce texte est la reprise d’une communication délivrée à Paris en 1996 sous le titre: « De la mémoire ». Desti-née au Groupe de réflexion des architectes, cette rencontre était organisée par la Di-rection de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine – rattachée aujourd’hui à la Direction géné-rale des patrimoines. Le texte fut publié en 1998 dans la revue Urbanisme. (...) Si l’architecture n’est pas habituellement un objet d’étude de Ricœur, le philosophe l’a néanmoins souvent intégrée à une pensée qui s’est elle-même définie comme anthro-pologie philosophique en élaborant une herméneutique de la voie longue. Ricœur a pu notamment situer l’architecture, dans Histoire et vérité, soit comme un « “monde” in-séré dans le monde », soit comme un mode de « l’incorporation » des « images de l’homme qui font toute la réalité de la culture ». La période qui s’étale de Temps et ré-cit (1983- 1985) à La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli (2000) ne cesse de développer la phi-losophie du récit, et étend même l’usage de concepts nés dans un premier contexte à d’autres domaines de la pensée. Le présent article peut être placé dans ce cadre. L’architecture est un domaine qui, d’une manière générale, sort du domaine des thé-matiques explicitement étudiées par le philosophe. Or, et c’est ce qui fait l’intérêt de ce texte, Ricœur propose d’appliquer à l’architecture le paradigme élaboré dans Temps et récit. (shrink)

Cette édition numérique a été réalisée à partir d'un support physique, parfois ancien, conservé au sein du dépôt légal de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, conformément à la loi n° 2012-287 du 1er mars 2012 relative à l'exploitation des Livres indisponibles du XXe siècle. Pages de début Les auteurs Présentation La science en mutation Les savoirs en question, réflexions après coups Première partie : La science : idéal et réalités La science : ambiguïtés contemporaines La vocation manipulatoire de la science (...) Ça marche, enquête chez les branches Deuxième partie : Les mathématiques, aujourd'hui Analyse des épisodes d'une controverse : la réforme des mathématiques des années soixante L'enseignement des mathématiques : savoirs ou savoir-faire? Mathématiques et métapsychologie Troisième partie : Le sujet du savoir Sujet/objet Rencontre avec Jeanne Favret-Saada A propos du livre de Jeanne Favret-SaadaDiscours de la méthode corporelle Postface Pages de fin. (shrink)

This is a well-behaved concept in Newtonian physics. But a center of gravity is not an atom or a subatomic particle or any other physical item in the world. It has no mass; it has no color; it has no physical properties at all, except for spatio-temporal location. It is a fine example of what Hans Reichenbach would call an abstractum. It is a purely abstract object. It is, if you like , a theorist's fiction. It is not one of (...) the real things in the universe in addition to the atoms. But it is a fiction that has nicely defined, well delineated and well behaved role within physics. (shrink)

The primary objective was to review pediatric ethics consultations at a large academic health center over a nine year period, assessing demographics, ethical issues, and consultant intervention. The secondary objective was to describe the evolution of PECs at our institution. This was a retrospective review of Consultation Summary Sheets compiled for PECs at our Academic Health Center between January 2008 and April 2017. There were 165 PECs reviewed during the study period. Most consult requests came from the inpatient setting, with (...) the Pediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care Units being the highest utilizers. Consultation utilization increased over the study period. The most common patient age was less than one year. Physicians were most likely to request consultation. Patient Best Interest, Withholding/Withdrawing of Life Sustaining Therapy, and Provider Moral Distress were ethical issues most commonly identified by the consultants. Making recommendations was the most common consultant intervention. The ethics consultation process evolved over time from informal provider discussions, to a hospital infant care review committee, to a pediatric only consultation service, to a combined adult/pediatric consultation service, with variable levels of salary support for consultants. Ethics consultation requests are growing at our institution. Similarities in identified ethical issues exist between our findings and existing literature, however meaningful comparisons remains elusive secondary to variability in approaches to investigation and reporting. A combined paid/volunteer/trainee ethics consultation service model appears sustainable and real time ethics consultation is feasible using this approach. (shrink)

Science and technology studies scholars have turned their attention to the materiality of objects and buildings in order to examine what they make users do in practice. Taking a close look at a therapeutic community in a psychiatric day care center for teenagers, this paper joins these discussions by exploring the materiality of “spaces of care” as part of the center’s everyday practice. The analysis incorporates the concepts of scripts and dispositifs to describe the conditions of possibility in which caregivers (...) and youths may position themselves in relation to others and to the space itself. This paper describes how spaces of care offer open, enticing, and variable conditions for fostering a dynamic of personal and relational responses as part of the care work. In this sense, the material environment entails potentialities in ways that are unpredictable but nonetheless consequential. Rather than arguing that material arrangements and things act, this paper draws attention to their impact via their potential within dispositifs of care that request participants’ attentiveness and responsiveness. Describing these potentialities brings out the subtler requirements of material environments in care practices that aim at circumventing the coercion of disciplinary spaces and their impersonal classifications. (shrink)

La première note est consacrée à un bloc interprété par F. Courby comme un élément du dallage ayant porté le tombeau de Dionysos. Mais ce bloc constituait à l’origine un socle isolé ; ce n’est que dans une seconde phase qu’il a été associé à d’autres blocs pour former un plateau sur lequel on a implanté un pressoir. La seconde note se fonde sur de nouveaux relevés des canalisations aménagées dans les substructions Sud du temple des Alcméonides, destinées à réunir (...) deux sources. Celle de l’Ouest existait depuis longtemps ; son débouché était situé au pied du mur de terrasse qui avait porté le temple préalcméonide et qui constitue le premier aménagement monumental du sanctuaire. L’hypothèse d’un détournement de la fontaine Cassotis à l’intérieur du temple est rejetée. La troisième note est consacrée aux fragments d’une sima en marbre provenant d’une toiture inachevée ; l’existence de deux modules amène à postuler à l’existence d’un bâtiment à deux ailes, probablement contemporain du temple du ive s. et peut-être à confondre avec le «monument en calcaire gris ». (shrink)

The following article is a response to the position paper of the Hastings Center, “Ethical Challenges of Chronic Illness”, a product of their three year project on Ethics and Chronic Care. The authors of this paper, three prominent bioethicists, Daniel Callahan, Arthur Caplan, and Bruce Jennings, argue that there should be a different ethic for acute and chronic care. In pressing this distinction they provide philosophical grounds for limiting medical care for the elderly and chronically ill. We give a critical (...) survey of their position and reject it as well as any attempt to characterize the physician-patient relationship as a commercial contract. We emphasize, as central features of good medical practice, a commitment to be the patient's agent and a determination to acquire and be guided by knowledge. These commitments may sometimes conflict with efforts to have the physician serve as an instrument of social and economic policies limiting medical care. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to take the Center for Inquiry’s ((CFI) a highly influential organization in the west), mission statement to task with respect to their critique of supposed extraordinary claims through the application of Carl Sagan’s quote: “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Specifically, those which are defensible through rational argumentation (God’s existence) i.e., in order to question whether or not they are actually promoting rigorous critical thought through the utilization of science and reason. A look will be (...) also taken into whether they are actually fostering freedom of inquiry or if they are becoming masterful at insulating themselves from any criticisms against their own respective position. This will be carried forth through the examination of the following: i) emotions and non-belief, ii) the epistemology of Carl Sagan’s quote, iii) philosophy, science and the question of God, iv) the presumption of atheism and its relation to Sagan’s quote, v) proper basicality and Sagan’s quote and vi) Jesus’ resurrection as a test case. (shrink)

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology is a consortium that comprises leading informaticians, biologists, clinicians, and ontologists, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Roadmap, to develop innovative technology and methods that allow scientists to record, manage, and disseminate biomedical information and knowledge in machine-processable form. The goals of the Center are (1) to help unify the divergent and isolated efforts in ontology development by promoting high quality open-source, standards-based tools to create, manage, and use ontologies, (2) to create (...) new software tools so that scientists can use ontologies to annotate and analyze biomedical data, (3) to provide a national resource for the ongoing evaluation, integration, and evolution of biomedical ontologies and associated tools and theories in the context of driving biomedical projects (DBPs), and (4) to disseminate the tools and resources of the Center and to identify, evaluate, and communicate best practices of ontology development to the biomedical community. Through the research activities within the Center, collaborations with the DBPs, and interactions with the biomedical community, our goal is to help scientists to work more effectively in the e-science paradigm, enhancing experiment design, experiment execution, data analysis, information synthesis, hypothesis generation and testing, and understand human disease. (shrink)

Footnote: My thanks to Zvi Biener and Balazs Gyenis for comments. 1. What is the relationship between philosophy and physics? What should the relationship be? To someone who does not work in philosophy of physics, it can be hard to distinguish what a theoretical physicist does from what a philosopher of physics does. The differences lie in two areas: their goals and their methods. The highest goal of theoretical physicists is to find the next theory. That profoundly colors the way (...) they approach foundational ideas. Any idea that aids in finding the next theory is deemed useful. Sometimes the most suggestive ideas are so because they are on the edge of plausibility. However if they show promise of opening new pathways, physicists are quite willing to suspend critical scrutiny. There is no point abandoning a goose about to lay a golden egg because you suspect it may be a turkey! Gold is gold. As a result they may put up with what seems like patent nonsense to a philosopher. For philosophers of physics, the goal is different. The basic questions remain those asked by philosophers for milennia: What is the nature of space? What is the nature of time? What is the nature of matter? How are things in the world connected? And so on. They seek answers from our best understanding of space, time and matter -modern physics. There is no room for tolerance of fringe thinking for that would compromise the project. They ask: What is our understanding now on the basis of our best science? Philosophy of physics also differs from physics in its method. Philosopher of physics bring the sensibilities of philosophy to physics. To those outside physics, philosophy is synonymous with gazing in wonder at intractable mysteries. To the professional philosopher, the project is just the reverse. It is to take things that are conceptually puzzling and, through rigorous analysis, render them simple and transparent so that the original sense of mystery evaporates. Their method looks to the traditional demands of philosophy that theses must be clearly enunciated and defended by clear and cogent argumentation; and that these demands cannot be compromised.. (shrink)