I begin by examining the answer to a traditional puzzle concerning supererogatory acts: if they are good to do, why are they not required? The answer often given is that they are optional acts because they cost the agent too much. This view has parallels with the traditional view of religious sacrifice, which involves offering up something or someone valuable as a gift or victim and experiencing a ‘cost’ as part of the ritual. There are problems with the idea that (...) costs justify the optional nature of supererogatory acts, however, and I suggest that these problems mirror the tensions that are found in Christian theology when a traditional view of sacrifice is adopted. (shrink)

This book explores the tradition of the 'science of man' in French medicine of the era 1750-1850, focusing on controversies about the nature of the 'physical-moral' relation and their effects on the role of medicine in French society. Its chief purpose is to recover the history of a holistic tradition in French medicine that has been neglected because it lay outside the mainstream themes of modern medicine, which include experimental, reductionist, and localistic conceptions of health and disease. Professor Williams also (...) challenges existing historiography, which argues that the 'anthropological' approach to medicine was a short-term by-product of the leftist politics of the French Revolution. This work argues instead that the medical science of man long outlived the Revolution, that it spanned traditional ideological divisions, and that it reflected the shared aim of French physicians, whatever their politics, to claim broad cultural authority in French society. (shrink)

There is an emerging ethical consensus that injured research participants should receive medical care and compensation for their research-related injuries. This consensus is premised on notions of beneficence, distributive justice, compensatory justice and reciprocity. In response, countries around the world have implemented no-fault compensation systems to ensure that research participants are adequately protected in the event of injury. The United States, the world's leading sponsor of research, has chosen instead to rely on its legal system to provide injured research participants (...) with medical care and compensation. This article argues that US reliance on its legal system leaves injured research participants unprotected in the event of injury. Nearly every injured research participant will have difficulty receiving compensation in court, and certain classes of research participants will be barred from receiving compensation altogether. The United States’ outlier status also threatens to impede US-sponsored multinational research, potentially delaying important biomedical advances. To rectify this injustice, researchers, Institutional Review Boards, sponsors and research institutions should advocate systematic no-fault compensation in the United States to bring US law into accord with global ethical norms and ensure that injured research participants are adequately protected. (shrink)

: The natural philosopher Michael Faraday and the psychologist Jean Piaget experimented directly with natural phenomena and children. While Faraday originated evidence for spatial fields mediating force interactions, Piaget studied children's cognitive development. This paper treats their experimental processes in parallel, taking as examples Faraday's 1831 investigations of water patterns produced under vibration and Piaget's interactions with his infants as they sought something he hid. I redid parts of Faraday's vibrating fluid activities and Piaget's hiding games. Like theirs, my experiences (...) showed that incomplete observations and confusions accompanied—and facilitated —experimental developments. While working with things in their hands, these experimenters' minds were also engaged, inferring new, more coherent understandings of the behaviors under study. Transitory ripples disclosed distinct patterns; infants devised more productive search methods. From the ripples, Faraday discerned an oscillatory condition that informed his subsequent speculations about light. From the infant search, Piaget identified experimenting as a child's means of developing self and world, later envisioning its infusion into education. Taken together, these two stories demonstrate that cognitive capacities emerge in the actual process of experimenting. This finding eclipses the historical context in its implications for education today. When learners pursue their own experiments, their minds develop. (shrink)

In “Body, Cyborgs and the Politics of Incarnation,” Bruno Latour recounts the story of Professor Paul Churchland, his colleague, carrying a portrait of his wife. “Nothing unusual in this,” Latour writes. “No, except that this picture was an image produced by computed tomography, a CT scan of his wife’s inner brain, in full colour”. The image of Professor Church-land proudly showing off a full-color CT of his wife’s beautiful brain has a wonderful sense of absurdity to it, and its punch (...) line depends on the reader being jolted by the strangeness of medical imagery standing in place of portraiture—no matter how stunning the cerebellum.However.. (shrink)

... [T]here manifestly is not one drop of principle in the whole vast reservoir of established scientific theory that has sprung from any other source than the power of the human mind to originate ideas that are true. But this power, for all it has accomplished, is so feeble that as ideas flow from their springs in the soul, the truths are almost drowned in a flood of false notions; and that which experience does is gradually, and by a sort (...) of fractionation, to precipitate and filter off the false ideas, eliminating them and letting the truth pour on in its mighty current. But precisely how does this action of experience take place? It takes place by a series of surprises. Throughout the.. (shrink)

Faraday demonstrated electromagnetic induction in 1831 using an iron ring wound with two wire coils; on interrupting battery current in one coil, momentary currents arose in the other. Between Faraday's ring and the induction coil, coiled instruments developed via meandering paths. This paper explores the opening phase of that work in the late 1830s, as the iron core, primary wire coil, and secondary wire coil were researched and differentiated. ‘Working knowledge’ gained with materials and phenomena was crucial to innovations. To (...) understand these material-based interactions, I experimented with hand-wound coils, along with examining historical texts, drawings, and artefacts. My experience recovered the historical dead-end of two-wire coils and ensuing work with long-coiled single conductors initiated by Faraday and Henry. The shock and spark heightened in these coils provided feedback to the many instrumental configurations tested by Page, Callan, Sturgeon, Bachhoffner, and others. The continuous conductor differentiated into two segments soldered together: a thick short wire carrying battery current and a long thin wire for elevating shocks . The joined wires eventually separated, yet their transitional connection documents belief that the induced effects depend on continuity. These coiled instruments, with their intertwined histories, show experimental work and understandings in the process of developing. Seeing the nonlinear paths by which these instruments developed deepens our understanding of historical experiences, and of how people learn. (shrink)

Many proteins responsible for genome maintenance interact with one another via short sequence motifs. The best known of these are PIP motifs, which mediate interactions with the replication protein PCNA. Others include RIR motifs, which bind the translesion synthesis protein Rev1, and MIP motifs, which bind the mismatch repair protein Mlh1. Although these motifs have similar consensus sequences, they have traditionally been viewed as separate motifs, each with their own target protein. In this article, we review several recent studies that (...) challenge this view. Taken together, they imply that these different motifs are not distinct entities. Instead, there is a single, broader class of motifs, which we call “PIP‐like” motifs, which have overlapping specificities and are capable of binding multiple target proteins. Given this, we must reassess the role of these motifs in forming the network of interacting proteins responsible for genome maintenance. (shrink)

Goethe and Friedrich Schiller stand together immortalised in Ernst Rietschel's statue at the centre of Weimar. In their lifetime, Goethe and Schiller shaped the culture of German-speaking lands, not only through their poetry, plays, and novels, but also in their role as editors of journals that helped to set the intellectual tone of the period. Schiller's journalDie Horen and Goethe'sPropyläen, although short-lived, were important literary vehicles of the period and provided a forum that brought scientists, historians, philosophers, and poets into (...) conversation with one another. The late 1700s and early 1800s were years of intense intellectual development in Germanspeaking lands; the arts flourished and aesthetics developed as a serious branch of philosophy.During the ‘Age of Goethe and Schiller’, philosophy was dominated by Kant's philosophy and its post-Kantian variations. A problem with traditional philosophical histories of this period is the overwhelmingly Hegelian reading of it, a reading that subsumes all of the so-called minor figures under the shadows of the great system builder, Hegel. Richard Kroner's influentialVon Kant bis Hegelof 1921 set the tone for this reading. Silenced by such narratives are the voices of the early German Romantics, a group of thinkers whose impudence created problems for them, and whose work posed hermeneutical challenges that continue to plague a proper understanding of the movement and the worth of its contributions. As we shall see, Hegel himself began to prepare the ground for a history of philosophy that would dismiss the contributions of the early German Romantics, a dismissal that is unfair and unfortunate: unfair because it is based on false characterisations of the movement, and unfortunate because such misreadings lead us to overlook the wealth of insights offered by the early German Romantics. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the role of propaganda use in cyberterrorism. The main premise is that cyberterrorists display various semiotic gestures (e.g., the use of images and Internet videos) to communicate their intents to the public at large. In doing so, they communicate themes—these themes range from hate to anger. Cyberterrorism, then, is a form of theater or spectacle in which terrorists exploit cyberspace to trigger feelings of panic and overreaction in the target population. In many cases, this form of propaganda (...) is the primary means of communication for various cyberterrorist groups to convey their intents. Internet sites also produce numerous opportunities for in-group communication and publicity. (shrink)

Daniel John Gogerly, a British Wesleyan Methodist missionary, served in Sri Lanka from 1818 until his death. He learnt P?li in M?tara in the 1830s and was one of the first British translators of the P?li texts into English. Praised by fellow orientalist, T.W. Rhys Davis, as ‘the greatest Pali scholar of his age’ and hailed by his missionary colleagues as the expert who showed them how to attack Buddhism, his work was both pioneering and deeply flawed. This paper first (...) situates Gogerly in his missionary context and then examines one translation — the first 18 vaggas of the Dhammapada, using three versions, one of which was an unpublished rough translation. It demonstrates that Gogerly, in spite of a commendable wish to be just to Buddhism, used his translations to highlight difference between Buddhism and Christianity in furtherance of his missionary agenda. Gogerly is important not only because his translations were so early but also because the differing factors that conditioned them underscore the complexity within any study of orientalist representations of Buddhism. (shrink)

This paper elucidates Hannah Arendt’s conditions for collective responsibility in light of her political writings. In turn, it pushes back on Iris Marion Young’s reservations about Arendtian collective responsibility and demonstrates its compatibility with Youngian political responsibility. At issue is how to understand (a) Arendtian collective responsibility as political and therefore forward-looking, (b) Arendt’s view of responsibility in the political realm as different from her view in the moral-legal realm, and (c) what Arendt’s vision of collective responsibility requires of everyone. (...) If Young’s political responsibility relates to Arendt’s collective responsibility more than she thinks, then this may call for a significant rethinking of Young’s reliance on Arendt. My inquiry into their debate leads to a standpoint from which one can contribute to contemporary discussions about responsibility in a world with growing and elaborate public spheres. (shrink)