Throughout the sixteenth century, learned physicians across Europe performed a diverse array of “trials” of phenomena and published reports about them. This essay traces the phrase “periculum facere” (“to make a trial”) and related terms through natural history investigations, drug testing, chymical analysis, and anatomical discoveries. Physicians used ancient precedents, their learned expertise, and pedagogical authority to anchor the epistemic status of their trials and incorporated the historical narratives of their trial-making within arguments to factual and causal knowledge, even philosophical (...) scientia. Developed from engagement with things, ancient texts, other healers, and students, this lively tradition of contrived, first-person empirical trials flourished in some academic institutions, especially the University of Padua. The frequency and visibility of sixteenth-century medical trials, especially in the education of hundreds of students annually, is essential evidence for understanding how experimentation came to be widespread in early modern Europe. (shrink)

Scientific interest in religion often focusses on the “puzzle of belief”: how people develop and maintain religious beliefs despite a lack of evidence and the significant costs that those beliefs incur. A number of researchers have suggested that humans are predisposed towards supernatural thinking, with innate cognitive biases engendering, for example, the misattribution of intentional agency. Indeed, a number of studies have shown that nonbelievers often act “as if” they believe. For example, atheists are reluctant to sell the very souls (...) they deny having, or to angrily provoke the God they explicitly state does not exist. In our own recent work, participants who claimed not to believe in the afterlife nevertheless demonstrated a physiological fear response when informed that there was a ghost in the room. Such findings are often interpreted as evidence for an “implicit” belief in the supernatural that operates alongside (and even in contradiction to) an individual’s conscious (“explicit”) religious belief. In this article, we investigate these arguably tenuous constructs more deeply and suggest some possible empirical directions for further disentangling implicit and explicit reasoning. (shrink)

R J W Evans: Political Chronology; IntroductionJan Rychlík: Czech-Slovak Relations in Czechoslovakia, 1918-39Eagle Glassheim: Ambivalent Capitalists: The Roots of Fascist Ideology among Bohemian Nobles, 1880-1938Melissa Feinberg: The New 'Woman Question': Gender, Nation, and Citizenship in the First Czechoslovak RepublicRobert B. Pynsent: The Literary Representation of the Czechoslovak 'Legions' in RussiaCatherine Albrecht: Economic Nationalism in the Sudetenland, 1918-38R.J.W. Evans: Hungarians, Czechs and Slovaks: Some Mutual Perceptions, 1900-50Mark Cornwall: 'A Leap into Ice-Cold Water': the Manoeuvres of the Henlein Movement in Czechoslovakia, 1933-8Vít (...) Smetana: Old Wine in New Bottles? British Policy towards Czechoslovakia, 1938-9 and 1947-8Tatjana Tönsmeyer: The German Advisers in Slovakia, 1939-45: Conflict or Co-Operation?Mark Dimond: The Sokol and Czech Nationalism, 1918-48Jiri Kocian: The Czechs versus the Slovaks: Bilateral Relations, 1944-8Zdenk Radvanovský: The Transfer of Czechoslovakia's Germans and its Impact in the Border Region after the Second World WarKeith Robbins: Britain and Munich Reconsidered: A Personal Historical Journey. (shrink)

The use of aggregated quality of life estimatesin the formation of public policy and practiceguidelines raises concerns about the moralrelevance of variability in values inpreferences for health care. This variabilitymay reflect unique and deeply held beliefs thatmay be lost when averaged with the preferencesof other individuals. Feminist moral theorieswhich argue for attention to context andparticularity underline the importance ofascertaining the extent to which differences inpreferences for health states revealinformation which is morally relevant toclinicians and policymakers. To facilitatethese considerations, we present (...) an empiricalstudy of preferences for the timing andoccurrence of health states associated withhormone replacement therapy (HRT). Sixteenwomen between the ages of 45 and 55 wereenrolled in this pilot study. Theirpreferences regarding five health statesassociated with HRT (menopausal symptoms, sideeffects of HRT, breast cancer, myocardialinfarction, and osteoporosis) were assessed inquantitative terms known as utilities. Twostandard methods, the visual analog scale (VAS) and the standard gamble (SG), were used toassess utility and time preference (calculatedas a discount rate). The wide variability ofresponses underlines the importance oftailoring health care to individual women'spreferences. Policy guidelines whichincorporate utility analysis must recognize thenormative limitations of aggregatedpreferences, and the moral relevance ofindividual conceptions of health. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America. by Thomas R. Cole.

In this paper, we highlight some problems for accounts of disability and enhancement that have not been sufficiently addressed in the literature. The reason, we contend, is that contemporary debates that seek to define, characterise or explain the normative valence of disability and enhancement do not pay sufficient attention to a wide range of cases, and the transition between one state and another. In section one, we provide seven cases that might count as disability or enhancement. We explain why each (...) case might count, and on what basis, and why it is been neglected. Each case is explained as a transition in what we call capacity space. We then argue that no definition of disability or enhancement addresses all of these cases, except for strict welfarist accounts of disability that do not rely on a depiction of any particular capacity. We argue further, however, that this is a serious deficiency of welfarist conceptions of disability. We then address objections to our account. (shrink)

General preface -- Preface to the second edition -- What is philosophy of religion? -- Philosophy of religion and other disciplines -- Philosophy of religion and philosophy -- Can thinking about religion be neutral? -- Fideism -- Neutralism -- Critical dialogue -- The theistic God : the project of natural theology -- Concepts of God -- The theistic concept of God -- A case study : divine foreknowledge and human freedom -- The problem of religious language -- Natural theology -- (...) Proofs of God's existence -- Classical arguments for God's existence -- Ontological arguments -- Cosmological arguments -- Teleological arguments -- Moral arguments -- Conclusions: The value of theistic argument -- Religious experience -- Types of religious experience -- Models for understanding experience -- Experience of God as direct and mediated -- Are religious experiences veridical? -- Checking experiential claims -- Special acts of God : revelation and miracles -- Special acts -- Theories of revelation -- Is the traditional view defensible? -- What is a miracle? -- Is it reasonable to believe in miracles? -- Can a revelation have special authority? -- Religion, modernity, and science -- Modernity and religious belief -- Naturalism -- Do the natural sciences undermine religious belief? -- Objections from the social sciences -- Religious uses of modern atheism -- The problem of evil -- Types of evil, versions of the problem, and types of response -- The logical form of the problem -- The evidential form of the problem -- Horrendous evils and the problem of hell -- Divine hiddenness -- Faith(s) and reason -- Faith : subjectivity in religious arguments -- The evidentialist challenge to religious belief -- Reformed epistemology -- The place of subjectivity in forming beliefs -- Interpretive judgments and the nature of a cumulative case -- Can faith be certain? -- Faith and doubt : can religious faith be tested? -- What is faith? -- Could one religion be true? (shrink)

BackgroundPlagiarism is common and threatens the integrity of the scientific literature. However, its detection is time consuming and difficult, presenting challenges to editors and publishers who are entrusted with ensuring the integrity of published literature.MethodsIn this study, the extent of plagiarism in manuscripts submitted to a major specialty medical journal was documented. We manually curated submitted manuscripts and deemed an article contained plagiarism if one sentence had 80 % of the words copied from another published paper. Commercial plagiarism detection software (...) was utilized and its use was optimized.ResultsIn 400 consecutively submitted manuscripts, 17 % of submissions contained unacceptable levels of plagiarized material with 82 % of plagiarized manuscripts submitted from countries where English was not an official language. Using the most commonly employed commercial plagiarism detection software, sensitivity and specificity were studied with regard to the generated plagiarism score. The cutoff score maximizing both sensitivity and specificity was 15 % (sensitivity 84.8 % and specificity 80.5 %).ConclusionsPlagiarism was a common occurrence among manuscripts submitted for publication to a major American specialty medical journal and most manuscripts with plagiarized material were submitted from countries in which English was not an official language. The use of commercial plagiarism detection software can be optimized by selecting a cutoff score that reflects desired sensitivity and specificity. (shrink)

Daw-Nay N. R. Evans - Nietzsche and Rée: A Star Friendship - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.4 672-673 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Daw-Nay N. R. Evans, Jr. DePaul University Robin Small. Nietzsche and Rée: A Star Friendship. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. Pp. xxiv + 247. Cloth, $45.00. Nietzsche attracts a wide range of scholarly enthusiasts. There are those who take Nietzsche seriously as a philosopher and study his (...) works for their own sake, while others seek to mine his works for philosophical gold to determine what he might have to offer their particular area of specialization . On the other hand, there are those who seek to sensationalize Nietzsche by making him.. (shrink)

This paper forms an introduction to this issue, the contents of which arose directly or indirectly from a conference in May 2001 on Corruption of scientific integrity? — The commercialisation of academic science. The introduction, in recent decades, of business culture and values into universities and research institutions is incompatible with the openness which scientific and all academic pursuit traditionally require. It has given rise to a web of problems over intellectual property and conflict of interest which has even led (...) to corporate sponsors’ suppressing unfavourable results of clinical trials, to the detriment of patients’ health. Although there are those who see the norms of science developing to recognise the importance of instrumental science aiming at specific goals and of knowledge judged by its value in a context of application, none justifies the covert manipulation of results by vested interest. Public awareness of these problems is growing and creating a climate of opinion where they may be addressed. We suggest a way forward by the introduction of nationally and internationally-accepted guidelines for industrial collaboration which contain proper protections of the core purposes of universities and of the independence of their research. Some codes suggested for this purpose are discussed. We note that some universities are moving to adopt such codes of conduct, but argue the need for strong support from the government through its funding bodies. (shrink)

This book presents a new understanding of Nietzsche’s view of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Through a careful study of how these philosophers appropriate reason in both life-negating and life-affirming ways, Daw-Nay N. R. Evans Jr. offers a fresh perspective on Nietzsche and classical Greek philosophy.

Vaccine hesitancy is a major public health challenge, and racial disparities in the acceptance of vaccines is a particular concern. In this essay, we draw on interviews with mothers of Black male adolescents to offer insights into the reasons for the low rate of vaccination against the human papillomavirus among this group of adolescents. Based on these conversations, we argue that increasing the acceptance of HPV and other vaccines cannot be accomplished merely by providing people with more facts. Instead, we (...) must address the pervasive racial discrimination in the United States that undermines trust in social institutions, including the health care system. In the short term, it may be helpful to increase the number of clinicians of color working in the health system, but more fundamental changes are required. The U.S. must adopt and implement policies that dismantle structural racism if it hopes to produce greater trust and community‐oriented thinking on behalf of people who have been exploited for centuries. (shrink)

This is a sequel to the author's The Language and Logic of the Bible: The Earlier Middle Ages. The period of the reformation saw immense changes of approach to the study of the Bible, which in turn brought huge consequences. This book, seeking to show the direction of endeavour of such study in the last medieval centuries, examines the theory of exegesis, practical interpretation, popular Bible study and preaching, and looks especially at the areas of logic and language in which (...) the scholars of the period had considerable expertise. The condemnation of the scholastics has tended to sink with them a proper recognition of what they achieved. In looking forward to the reformation, Dr Evans demonstrates a greater continuity of attitude than has often been allowed and describes how the enquiries of later medieval scholars opened out into the explorations of the sixteenth century made by Protestant and Roman Catholic thinkers alike. (shrink)

Volume 2 covers one of the richest eras for the philosophical study of religion. Covering the period from the 6th century to the Renaissance, this volume shows how Christian, Islamic and Jewish thinkers explicated and defended their religious faith in light of the philosophical traditions they inherited from the ancient Greeks and Romans. The enterprise of 'faith seeking understanding', as it was dubbed by the medievals themselves, emerges as a vibrant encounter between - and a complex synthesis of - the (...) Platonic, Aristotelian and Hellenistic traditions of antiquity on the one hand, and the scholastic and monastic religious schools of the medieval West, on the other. (shrink)