Eric Scerri is the world-leading expert on Periodic Table and was quite recently named the second-most influential academic in the field of chemistry over the last decade by Academic Influence. In this interview we discuss his main questions of interest in the philosophy of chemistry—the question of reduction of chemistry to physics and the dual sense of chemical element—in the context of his main study object, the periodic table of elements. Among other things, we touch upon the more specific issues (...) related to chemical classification, such as pair reversal, the placement and order of certain elements, the structure and shape of periodic table, etc. We also discuss the status of chemical kinds as a traditional epitome of ‘natural kinds’, the relevance of philosophy of chemistry for chemical science, the implications of ‘turn to practice’ for philosophy of chemistry, and many other issues. Finally, Eric Scerri also discusses his most recent book, ‘What is a Chemical Element?’, co-edited with Elena Ghibaudi and published by Oxford University Press in 2020. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that interdisciplinarity (ID) is very diverse. Our contribution is a demonstration that considerable diversity exists also on the level of understandings of ID that researchers working in the same ID field express. Specifically, we analyse qualitatively, building on the method of culture contrast, six interviews with researchers working in computational linguistics and language technology in Estonia. We identify six understandings of ID expressed by the interviewees: centred on an ID method; a disciplinary method in an ID (...) field; an ID way of seeing and thinking; ID education; ID interests; one’s field as naturally ID. We show how understandings of ID are significant for analysing research practice, since they are involved in how researchers form a positive picture of themselves and their colleagues. We also show how an awareness of different understandings of ID is useful for discussing the significance of integration in ID. (shrink)

Paradigme universale -- Pornind de la un zâmbet -- Jocul -- Timpul -- Întâlnirea extremelor.

Publication d'un nouveau fragment de l'exemplaire delphique de l'Édit du Maximum, récemment identifié à Delphes (Praefatio §§ 6-8 Lauffer). Il confirme deux corrections qui avaient été faites au texte défectueux des témoins.

L'article montre comment l'édit de Nantes (1598), qui avait été critiqué par les protestants français au moment où il fut promulgué, devint peu à peu pour eux le symbole de leur appartenance à la communauté nationale française et de la reconnaissance de leur spécificité religieuse. Mais c'est en définitive après sa révocation (1685) que cet édit prend, aux yeux des porte-parole huguenots, toute sa valeur. Réfléchissant d'un point de vue théologique, mais aussi historique, juridique et philosophique, ils y voient le (...) symbole de la liberté religieuse. Cependant, c'est en faisant le deuil de leur statut perdu depuis la révocation de l'édit de Nantes qu'ils parviennent à développer une pensée originale à propos des rapports entre l'État et l'individu. Ils doivent pour cela distinguer le sujet ou Je citoyen d'une part, et Je croyant d'autre part. Or cette distinction impose de renoncer à la nostalgie d'un corps protestant, reconnu comme tel, au sein du royaume de France. (shrink)

Volume 8 of this landmark edition follows Peirce from May 1890 through July 1892—a period of turmoil as his career unraveled at the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. The loss of his principal source of income meant the beginning of permanent penury and a lifelong struggle to find gainful employment. His key achievement during these years is his celebrated Monist metaphysical project, which consists of five classic articles on evolutionary cosmology. Also included are reviews and essays from The Nation in (...) which Peirce critiques Paul Carus, William James, Auguste Comte, Cesare Lombroso, and Karl Pearson, and takes part in a famous dispute between Francis E. Abbot and Josiah Royce. Peirce's short philosophical essays, studies in non-Euclidean geometry and number theory, and his only known experiment in prose fiction complete his production during these years. Peirce's 1883-1909 contributions to the Century Dictionary form the content of volume 7 which is forthcoming. (shrink)

Open peer review (OPR) is moving into the mainstream, but it is often poorly understood and surveys of researcher attitudes show important barriers to implementation. As more journals move to implement and experiment with the myriad of innovations covered by this term, there is a clear need for best practice guidelines to guide implementation. This brief article aims to address this knowledge gap, reporting work based on an interactive stakeholder workshop to create best-practice guidelines for editors and journals who wish (...) to transition to OPR. Although the advice is aimed mainly at editors and publishers of scientific journals, since this is the area in which OPR is at its most mature, many of the principles may also be applicable for the implementation of OPR in other areas (e.g., books, conference submissions). (shrink)

Liberty is an expanded edition of Isaiah Berlin's classic of liberalism, Four Essays on Liberty. Berlin's editor Henry Hardy has incorporated a fifth essay, as Berlin wished, and added further pieces on the same topic, so that Berlin's principal statements on liberty are available together for the first time. He also describes the gestation of the book and throws further biographical light on Berlin's preoccupation with liberty in appendices drawn from his unpublished writings.

After reading Savulescu and colleagues,1 one ought to be in no doubt that human heritable genome editing is a ‘moral imperative’: to cure disease, reduce inequalities, improve public health and protect future generations. They make this argument repeatedly and in no uncertain terms. Yet are they right to do so? I am certainly not against developing HGE or exploring its possibilities. Instead, I aim to sound a cautionary note in relation to claims about its technological potential and how we frame (...) arguments on this basis. The ‘moral imperative’ argument has been made many times, since well before the advent of genome editing, by the present authors and others. It generally rests on a number of preconditions, implicit or explicit: that HGE will be safe, effective, cost-efficient and equitably available. Now, many bioethicists would take no issue with, indeed have supported,5 the proposition that, once all of these conditions are satisfied, HGE is something we have good moral reasons to pursue. At this pivotal moment for global science, ethics and governance, however, we need equally to be concerned with the technology’s immediate future trajectory: whether and how we can reach the point of satisfying these conditions. In this context, the MIA is something of a distraction; at worst, it may even be corrosive and damaging. Consider first the argument from evolutionary fitness, that HGE is morally required to counteract the supposed ‘genetic deterioration’ produced by medically enabled ‘survival of the weak’, that makes …. (shrink)

Liberty is a new, expanded edition of what Isaiah Berlin himself regarded as his most important book - Four Essays on Liberty, a standard text of liberalism and constantly in demand since it was first published in 1969. Berlin's editor, Henry Hardy, has revised the text, incorporating a fifth essay that Berlin himself had hoped to include. He has also added further pieces that bear on the same topic, so that all Berlin's principal statements on liberty are at last available (...) together in one volume. (shrink)

In the corollaries to Book I, Chapter 5 of De causa Dei, Thomas Bradwardine assumes the existence of an actual, infinite, God-filled extramundane void. Thomas Buckingham, Bradwardine’s former student, develops in the unedited Question 23 of his Quaestiones theologicae a rejection of the void’s existence precisely in opposition to the theory of his master. His argumentation is not only remarkable in its own; it also allows us to reassess essential concepts from Bradwardine’s De causa Dei, such as divine power, causality (...) and ubiquity. This paper first presents the Aristotelian notion of the void in rendering it in the context of the philosophy of nature at fourteenth-century Oxford; it is then dedicated to the analysis of the chapter in question from De causa Dei along with Buckingham’s answer. It is accompanied by a critical edition of Question 23 from Buckingham’s Quaestiones theologicae, »Utrum sit necesse ponere Deum esse extra mundum in situ seu vacuo imaginario infinito«. (shrink)

Lucrările Simpozionului Internaţional Cartea, România, Europa. Ediţia a II-1, 20–24 septembrie 2009. Edited by Julieta Rotaru. Secţiunea a treia: Studii Euroasiatice şi Afroasiatice—De la mit la ritual. Bucharest: Editura Biblioteca Bucureştilor, 2010. Pp. 461–738. Travaux de Symposium International Le Livre, la Roumanie, l’Europe. Troisième édition, 20–24 septembre 2010. Vol. 3: Études euro- et afro-asiatiques, III A: La Veda-Vedāṅga et l’Avesta entre oralité et écriture. Edited by Jan E. M. Houben and Julieta Rotaru. Bucharest: Éditeur Bibliothèque de Bucarest, 2011. Pp. 11–532.

Analytic philosophy - arguably the most important philosophical movement in the 20th century - has gained a new historical self-consciousness, particularly about it's own origins. The period between 1880 and 1930 saw the most important work of its founding figures (Frege, Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein) take root and flourish. The fifteen previously-unpublished essays in this collection explore different facets of this period, with an emphasis on the vital intellectual relationship between Frege and the early Wittgenstein.

Mon évasion (2008) de Benoîte Groult est une autobiographie de femme qui s’inscrit non seulement dans l’histoire du féminisme, mais représente ici une féminité complexe et nuancée constituant l’axe du développement de la personnalité et aussi une certaine manière de se raconter. La femme y est généralement représentée à travers ses relations humaines, en tant que membre d’un « couple ». Cette nouvelle manière (féminine ?) de se raconter a aussi des conséquences sur l’écriture : outre l’alternance constante entre le (...) récit et le discours du narrateur, la discontinuité structurelle (insertion des interviews, réécriture d’une bande dessinée), et les problèmes de dénomination du personnage, le texte de Groult présente des emplois variés des temps verbaux et des pronoms personnels : en fait, on y trouve des passages écrits au passé composé, au présent, au passé simple combinés aux pronoms personnels à la première, à la troisième ou à la deuxième personne. Il s’ensuit que l’espace autobiographique de Mon évasion revêt une complexité inédite : récit, interviews, bande dessinée et une photo sur la couverture contribuent tous, en tant que supports variés, à une pluralité des temporalités qui amènent de nouvelles formes des représentations de la féminité. (shrink)

An insightful reading of Deleuze, from the point of view of a student, a reader and a fellow philosopher with whom Deleuze himself corresponded about his work.

Ever since Proclus wrote his commentary on Plato's Republic, repeated attempts have been made to find a hidden number of cosmic significance in Rep. 8.546. For the Neo-Platonist it was natural to look for esoteric secrets in ancient works; among the men of the New Learning at the end of the Middle Ages there were enough astrologers and necromancers to ensure respect for the proposition; we are now again enamoured of irrationality. But the scholars who attempted such calculations around 1900 (...) must have considered Plato himself a mystery-monger. In this article I propose: to show why such attempts are mistaken, to discuss what early writers who mention the passage say about its meaning, to provide a mathematician's translation that fits the context, and to comment on it; for the currently accepted explanation is unsatisfactory. ‘There is fairly widespread agreement that the geometrical number is 12,960,000 = 3,6002 = 4,800 × 2,700, but on the method by which this number is reached the widest divergence exists’ or, from an earlier, different guess: ‘…one can, so to speak, state a priori that Plato's number is a multiple of 19 ten thousands’, i.e. the text is approached with a ready-made answer in mind. There are three further objections to the conventional view, It takes the text out of its context as if it had strayed from the Timaeus. (shrink)