During the 1940s and 1950s, the Australian microbiologist F. Macfarlane Burnet sought a biologically plausible explanation of antibody production. In this essay, we seek to recover the conceptual pathways that Burnet followed in his immunological theorizing. In so doing, we emphasize the influence of speculations on individuality, especially those of philosopher Alfred North Whitehead; the impact of cybernetics and information theory; and the contributions of clinical research into autoimmune disease that took place in Melbourne. We point to (...) the influence of local experimental and intellectual currents on Burnet’s work. Accordingly, this essay describes an arc distinct from most other tracings of Burnet’s conceptual development, which focus on his early bacteriophage research, his fascination with the work of Julian Huxley and other biologists in the 1920s, and his interest in North Atlantic experimental investigations in the life sciences. No doubt these too were potent influences, but they seem insufficient to explain, for example, Burnet’s sudden enthusiasm in the 1940s for immunological definitions of self and not-self. We want to demonstrate here how Burnet’s deep involvement in philosophical biology – along with attention to local clinical research – provided him with additional theoretic tools and conceptual equipment, with which to explain immune function. (shrink)

The interest of F. Macfarlane Burnet in host–parasite interactions grew through the 1920s and 1930s, culminating in his book, Biological Aspects of Infectious Disease, often regarded as the founding text of disease ecology. Our knowledge of the influences on Burnet’s ecological thinking is still incomplete. Burnet later attributed much of his conceptual development to his reading of British theoretical biology, especially the work of Julian Huxley and Charles Elton, and regretted he did not study Theobald Smith’s (...) Parasitism and Disease until after he had formulated his ideas. Scholars also have adduced Burnet’s fascination with natural history and the clinical and public health demands on his research effort, among other influences. I want to consider here additional contributions to Burnet’s ecological thinking, focusing on his intellectual milieu, placing his research in a settler society with exceptional expertise in environmental studies and pest management. In part, an ‘‘ecological turn’’ in Australian science in the 1930s, derived to a degree from British colonial scientific investments, shaped Burnet’s conceptual development. This raises the question of whether we might characterize, in postcolonial fashion, disease ecology, and other studies of parasitism, as successful settler colonial or dominion science. (shrink)

In 1936, Frank Macfarlane Burnet published a paper entitled “Induced lysogenicity and the mutation of bacteriophage within lysogenic bacteria,” in which he demonstrated that the introduction of a specific bacteriophage into a bacterial strain consistently and repeatedly imparted a specific property – namely the resistance to a different phage – to the bacterial strain that was originally susceptible to lysis by that second phage. Burnet’s explanation for this change was that the first phage was causing a mutation (...) in the bacterium which rendered it and its successive generations of offspring resistant to lysogenicity. At the time, this idea was a novel one that needed compelling evidence to be accepted. While it is difficult for us today to conceive of mutations and genes outside the context of DNA as the physico-chemical basis of genes, in the mid 1930s, when this paper was published, DNA’s role as the carrier of hereditary information had not yet been discovered and genes and mutations were yet to acquire physical and chemical forms. Also, during that time genes were considered to exist only in organisms capable of sexual modes of replication and the status of bacteria and viruses as organisms capable of containing genes and manifesting mutations was still in question. Burnet’s paper counts among those pieces of work that helped dispel the notion that genes, inheritance and mutations were tied to an organism’s sexual status. In this paper, I analyze the implications of Burnet’s paper for the understanding of various concepts – such as “mutation,” and “gene,” – at the time it was published, and how those understandings shaped the development of the meanings of these terms and our modern conceptions thereof. (shrink)

The Australian scientist Frank Macfarlane Burnet—winner of the Nobel Prize in 1960 for his contributions to the understanding of immunological tolerance—is perhaps best recognized as one of the formulators of the clonal selection theory of antibody production, widely regarded as the ‘central dogma’ of modern immunology. His work in studies in animal virology, particularly the influenza virus, and rickettsial diseases is also well known. Somewhat less known and publicized is Burnet’s research on bacteriophages, which he conducted in (...) the first decade of his research career, immediately after completing medical school. For his part, Burnet made valuable contributions to the understanding of the nature of bacteriophages, a matter of considerable debate at the time he began his work. Reciprocally, it was while working on the phages that Burnet developed the scientific styles, the habits of mind and laboratory techniques and practices that characterized him for the rest of his career. Using evidence from Burnet’s published work, as well as personal papers from the period he worked on the phages, this paper demonstrates the direct impact that his experiments with phages had on the development of his characteristic scientific style and approaches, which manifested themselves in his later career and theories, and especially in his thinking regarding various immunological problems. (shrink)

The language of self and nonself has had a prominent place inimmunology. This paper examines Frank Macfarlane Burnet's introductionof the language of selfhood into the science. The distinction betweenself and nonself was an integral part of Burnet's biological outlook– of his interest in the living organism in its totality, itsactivities, and interactions. We show the empirical and conceptualwork of the language of selfhood in the science. The relation betweenself and nonself tied into Burnet's ecological vision of (...) host-parasiteinteraction. The idiom of selfhood also enabled Burnet to organizeand unify a diversity of immune phenomena. Rather than approach thelanguage of self and nonself as a bluntly imposed metaphor, we focuson its endogenous origins and immanent uses in immunology. (shrink)

The framework of this paper is a defence of Burnet's construal of Apology 30b 2-4. Socrates does not claim, as he is standardly translated, that virtue makes you rich, but that virtue makes money and everything el se good for you. This view of the relation between virtue and wealth is paralleled in dialogues of every period, and a sophisticated development of it appears in Aristotle. My philological defence of the philosophically preferable translation extends recent scholarly work on eínai (...) in Plato and Aristotle to gígnesthai, which is the main verb in the disputed sentence. When attached to a subject, both verbs make a complete statement on their own, but a statement that is further completable by adding a complement. The important point is that the addition of a complement does not change the meaning of the verb from existence to the copula. Proving this is a lengthy task which takes me into some of the deeper reaches of Platonic and Aristotelian ontology, and into discussion of whether Greek ever acquired a verb that corresponds to modem verbs of existence. I conclude that even when later authors such as Philo Judaeus, Sextus Empiricus and Plotinus debate what we naturally translate as issues of existence, none of the verbs they use (eínai, úpárkhein, úphestekénai) can be said to have existential meaning. (shrink)

Cornford's interpretation of Anaxagoras' theory of matter was an attempt to solve the apparent contradiction between the Principle of Homoeomereity, as he calls it, and that which asserts that ‘there is a portion of everything in everything’; and also, perhaps, to assign a more definite place in the system to the qualitative ‘Opposites’ which Tannery and Burnet had asserted, in rather vague terms, to be Anaxagoras' elements. In effect he solves the problem by applying the former principle to the (...) phenomenal world and to the Seeds which are the elements for Anaxagoras, and confining the latter, the principle of Universal Mixture as we may call it, to the Opposites, which are the substantial but inseparable constituents of the Seeds. By this tidy and ingenious solution he avoids not only the above-mentioned contradiction but also what he calls the grotesque and gratuitous absurdity of holding that a Seed of gold contains mostly gold, but also flesh and all other natural substances, in order to explain the possibility of various changes, the great majority of which never occur anyhow. (shrink)

Reflecting on his scientific career toward the end of his life, the French-educated medical researcher René Dubos presented his flowering as an ecological thinker as a story of linear progression—the inevitable product of the intellectual seeds planted in his youth. But how much store should we set by Dubos’s account of his ecological journey? Resisting retrospective biographical readings, this paper seeks to relate the development of Dubos’s ecological ideas to his experimental practices and his career as a laboratory researcher. In (...) particular, I focus on Dubos’s studies of tuberculosis at the Rockefeller Institute in the period 1944–1956—studies which began with an inquiry into the tubercle bacillus and the physiochemical determinants of virulence, but which soon encompassed a wider investigation of the influence of environmental forces and host–parasite interactions on susceptibility and resistance to infection in animal models. At the same time, through a close reading of Dubos’s scientific papers and correspondence, I show how he both drew on and distinguished his ecological ideas from those of other medical researchers such as Theobald Smith, Frank Macfarlane Burnet, and Frank Fenner. However, whereas Burnet and Fenner tended to view ecological interactions at the level of populations, Dubos focused on the interface of hosts and parasites in the physiological environments of individuals. The result was that although Dubos never fully engaged with the science of ecology, he was able to incorporate ecological ideas into his thought and practices, and relate them to his holistic views on health and the natural harmony of man and his environment. (shrink)

Reflecting on his scientific career toward the end of his life, the French-educated medical researcher René Dubos presented his flowering as an ecological thinker as a story of linear progression—the inevitable product of the intellectual seeds planted in his youth. But how much store should we set by Dubos’s account of his ecological journey? Resisting retrospective biographical readings, this paper seeks to relate the development of Dubos’s ecological ideas to his experimental practices and his career as a laboratory researcher. In (...) particular, I focus on Dubos’s studies of tuberculosis at the Rockefeller Institute in the period 1944–1956—studies which began with an inquiry into the tubercle bacillus and the physiochemical determinants of virulence, but which soon encompassed a wider investigation of the influence of environmental forces and host–parasite interactions on susceptibility and resistance to infection in animal models. At the same time, through a close reading of Dubos’s scientific papers and correspondence, I show how he both drew on and distinguished his ecological ideas from those of other medical researchers such as Theobald Smith, Frank Macfarlane Burnet, and Frank Fenner. However, whereas Burnet and Fenner tended to view ecological interactions at the level of populations, Dubos focused on the interface of hosts and parasites in the physiological environments of individuals. The result was that although Dubos never fully engaged with the science of ecology, he was able to incorporate ecological ideas into his thought and practices, and relate them to his holistic views on health and the natural harmony of man and his environment. (shrink)

The Swiss-born medical researcher Karl Friedrich Meyer is best known as a ‘microbe hunter’ who pioneered investigations into diseases at the intersection of animal and human health in California in the 1920s and 1930s. In particular, historians have singled out Meyer’s 1931 Ludwig Hektoen Lecture in which he described the animal kingdom as a ‘reservoir of disease’ as a forerunner of ‘one medicine’ approaches to emerging zoonoses. In so doing, however, historians risk overlooking Meyer’s other intellectual contributions. Developed in a (...) series of papers from the mid-1930s onwards, these were ordered around the concept of latent infections and sought to link microbial behavior to broader bio-ecological, environmental, and social factors that impact hostpathogen interactions. In this respect Meyer—like the comparative pathologist Theobald Smith and the immunologist Frank Macfarlane Burnet—can be seen as a pioneer of modern ideas of disease ecology. However, while Burnet’s and Smith’s contributions to this scientific field have been widely acknowledged, Meyer’s have been largely ignored. Drawing on Meyer’s published writings and private correspondence, this paper aims to correct that lacuna while contributing to a reorientation of the historiography of bacteriological epidemiology. In particular I trace Meyer’s intellectual exchanges with Smith, Burnet and the animal ecologist Charles Elton, over brucellosis, psittacosis and plague—exchanges that not only showed how environmental and ecological conditions could ‘tip the balance’ in favor of parasites but which transformed Meyer thinking about resistance to infection and disease. (shrink)

The self/non-self model, first proposed by F.M. Burnet, has dominated immunology for 60 years now. According to this model, any foreign element will trigger an immune reaction in an organism, whereas endogenous elements will not, in normal circumstances, induce an immune reaction. In this paper we show that the self/non-self model is no longer an appropriate explanation of experimental data in immunology, and that this inadequacy may be rooted in an excessively strong metaphysical conception of biological identity. We suggest (...) that another hypothesis, one based on the notion of continuity, gives a better account of immune phenomena. Finally, we underscore the mapping between this metaphysical deflation from self to continuity in immunology and the philosophical debate between substantialism and empiricism about identity. (shrink)

John MacFarlane argues against objectivism about “tasty”/”not tasty” in the following way. If objectivism were true then, given that speakers use “tasty”/”not tasty” in accordance with a rule, TP, speakers would be using an evidently unreliable method to form judgements and make claims about what is tasty. Since this is implausible, objectivism must be false. In this paper, I describe a context in which speakers deviate from TP. I argue that MacFarlane's argument against objectivism fails when applied to (...) uses of “not tasty” within this context. So objectivism about “not tasty” is still a viable position within this context. (shrink)

AtLeg.666b7, Burnet's emendation of the transmitted λήθην to λήθῃ has been widely accepted. Newly discovered support for this emendation comes from an Arabic version or adaptation of Plato'sLaws, most likely Galen'sSynopsis, quoted by the polymath Abū-Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī (a.d.973–1048) asKitāb al-Nawāmīs li-Aflāṭunin his ethnographic work on India. I transliterate and translate the passage below, proposing two incidental emendations to the Arabic:wa-qāla l-aṯīniyyu fī l-maqālati l-tāniyati mina l-kitābi: lammā raḥima [sic proraḥimati] l-ālihatu ǧinsa l-bašari min aǧli annahū maṭbūʿun ʿalā l-taʿabi hayyaʾū (...) lahum aʿyādan li-l-ālihati wa-li-l-sakīnāti wa-li-ʾf-w-l-l-n mudabbiri l-sakīnāti wa-li-d-y-w-n-w-s-y-s māniḥi l-bašari l-ḫamrata dawāʾan lahum min ʿufūṣati l-šayḫūḫati li-yaʿūdū fityānan bi-l-duhūli ʿani l-kābati wa-ntiqāli ḫulqi l-nafsi [wa-yantaqila ḫulqu l-nafsiperhaps to be read] mina l-šiddati ilā l-salāmati [al-salāsatiprobably to be read].The Athenian said in the second book of the work [sc. theLaws]: The gods, taking pity on the human race since it was born for toil, established for them feast-days (dedicated) to the gods and to the Muses and to Apollo, overseer of the Muses, and to Dionysus, who gave human beings wine as a remedy for them against the bitterness of old age, so that they might be rejuvenated by forgetting sorrow and (by) the character of the soul changing [and (so that) the character of the soul might changeperhaps to be read] from severity into soundness [into tractabilityprobably to be read].The source of the latter part of the passage, that is, the description of Dionysus’ gift and its effect (māniḥi l-bašari…l-salāmati), has until now remained unidentified. In the notes to his translation, Sachau, followed by Gabrieli, correctly identified part ofLeg. 653c–d (θεοὶ … ἔδοσαν) as the origin of much of the passage (see n. 4). No previous scholarship, however, has noted that the latter part translates a passage inLeg.666b–c (τοῖς ἀνθρώποις … τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ἦθος), here joined to the earlier passage (presumably by Bīrūnī’s source, that is, most likely Galen) on the hinge of their shared mention of Dionysus. (shrink)

So far, interpreters have not made the import of this last clause clear. F. J. Church translates the last phrase ‘they act at random’. Burnet says of Adam that he seems to have been the first to point out that the meaning cannot be ‘they act at random’. Instead, ‘the phrase expresses indifference’. Adam′s idea, which Burnet here commends, is that the many are thoughtless in their treatment of the individual; and Adam compares 48C below: the many would (...) lightly put someone to death and just as lightly bring him back to life again. The Burnet-Adam point is evidently that the many have a policy of acting indifferently, or just as it occurs to them—by contrast with the ‘at random’ in Church′s translation, which suggests that they act without policy at all. (shrink)

So far, interpreters have not made the import of this last clause clear. F. J. Church translates the last phrase ‘they act at random’. Burnet says of Adam that he seems to have been the first to point out that the meaning cannot be ‘they act at random’. Instead, ‘the phrase expresses indifference’. Adam′s idea, which Burnet here commends, is that the many are thoughtless in their treatment of the individual; and Adam compares 48C below: the many would (...) lightly put someone to death and just as lightly bring him back to life again. The Burnet-Adam point is evidently that the many have a policy of acting indifferently, or just as it occurs to them—by contrast with the ‘at random’ in Church′s translation, which suggests that they act without policy at all. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall discuss several topics related to Frege's paradigms of second-order abstraction principles and his logicism. The discussion includes a critical examination of some controversial views put forward mainly by Robin Jeshion, Tyler Burge, Crispin Wright, Richard Heck and John MacFarlane. In the introductory section, I try to shed light on the connection between logical abstraction and logical objects. The second section contains a critical appraisal of Frege's notion of evidence and its interpretation by Jeshion, the (...) introduction of the course-of-values operator and Frege's attitude towards Axiom V, in the expression of which this operator occurs as the key primitive term. Axiom V says that the course-of-values of the function f is identical with the course-of-values of the function g if and only if f and g are coextensional. In the third section, I intend to show that in Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik Frege hardly could have construed Hume's Principle as a primitive truth of logic and used it as an axiom governing the cardinality operator as a primitive sign. HP expresses that the number of Fs is identical with the number of Gs if and only if F and G are equinumerous. In the fourth section, I argue that Wright falls short of making a convincing case for the alleged analyticity of HP. In the final section, I canvass Heck's arguments for his contention that Frege knew he could deduce the simplest laws of arithmetic from HP without invoking Axiom V. I argue that they do not carry conviction. I conclude this section by rejecting an interpretation concerning HP suggested by MacFarlane. (shrink)

Early settlers, many seeking freedom of thought and religious ideology, left England and traveled across the Atlantic to seek their own version of Utopia. Some of the transatlantic travelers brought Ralph Robinson’s 1551 translation of Sir Thomas More to America. Following the early sixteenth-century migration, hundreds of Utopia-seeking individuals embraced, predominantly, the Robinson translation, and later, in the late seventeenth century, various individuals looked to Gilbert Burnet’s translation. A third translation by G. C. Richard was done in the early (...) twentieth century. One other translation that should be mentioned is that of F. S. Ellis, whose translation was... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On Cosmogony and Ecpyrosis In HeraclitusAryeh FinkelbergThe traditional attribution to heraclitus of the theory of recurrent reabsorption of the world into fire was challenged as early as 1807 by F. Schleiermacher. That contention, supported by F. Lassalle, was criticized by E. Zeller but was restated by J. Burnet in 1892. Burnet’s argument was elaborated by K. Reinhardt and then revised and restated by G. S. Kirk. The (...) endeavors of these commentators, supported by the contributions of a number of other critics, have firmly established the new interpretation (which I call “cosmological”). However the controversy has not ceased: the traditional interpretation (which I conventionally term “cosmogonical”) has been maintained and defended by a number of critics.1 The argument against cosmogony and ecpyrosis in Heraclitus is not easy to appreciate. Concerned as it is with a wide range of evidence, both secondary and authentic, and repeatedly refashioned and improved, it has accumulated many assessments, exegeses, and inferences. The critical objections put forward by supporters of the traditional interpretation, failing to meet the argument in its entirety, remain indecisive. Discussion is further complicated in that both sides tend to treat the problem within the broader framework of Heraclitus’ teaching. It thus seems desirable to examine the problem thoroughly as a separate issue, seeking a judgment independent of one or another general construal of Heraclitus’ thought. Hence in the first part of this essay I discuss the argument of Burnet and his followers with the aim of appraising its success in producing conclusive evidence against cosmogony and ecpyrosis. In the second part I propose a reconsideration of the evidence, in order to appreciate whether and to what extent it supports the cosmogonical interpretation. [End Page 195]THE ARGUMENT AGAINST COSMOGONY AND ECPYROSISSecondary EvidenceBurnet and his followers contend that the earliest testimonia do not ascribe the theory of cosmic cycles to Heraclitus, whereas the later authors followed Theophrastus’ supposedly erroneous interpretation which was adopted by the Stoics,2 eager to see in Heraclitus a partisan of their own theory of world conflagration, and, through the Stoics, by Christian writers. This assessment rests on questioning Aristotle’s support of ecpyrosis,3 on relying heavily on Plato’s Sophist 242d–e, and on tracing a heterodox opinion in certain late sources.(1) Aristotle De Caelo 1.10.279b12 and Physica 3.5.205a1–6:(De Caelo 1.10)... and some, as Empedocles of Acragas and Heraclitus of Ephesus, [believe] that it [the heaven] alternately is now in this state and now, in the course of destruction, in another...(Physica 3.5)Grammatical construction of the latter passage is ambiguous. Burnet (1930, 157–59) dismisses both passages as irrelevant. Yet as Kirk (1962, 320–21) acknowledges, Burnet’s interpretation of the De Caelo passage, to the effect that Aristotle’s reference to the alternations of the in Empedocles and Heraclitus concerns not the whole world but only the first heaven, “unfortunately involves a neglect of the context, in which without question refers (as often in this treatise: see the definition at 1.9.278b11) to the whole sum of things enclosed by the outer ‘heaven.’ ” In dismissing the second passage Burnet quotes the dependent clause and says that nothing [End Page 196] implies that all things become fire at once. Again unfortunately, this interpretation makes the example from Heraclitus irrelevant to the view Aristotle is refuting, namely that, the world as a whole, becomes one of the elements.4 But if Heraclitus’ doctrine exemplifies the view Aristotle is refuting, then, on the traditional construal of the Greek, he says that Heraclitus believed that “at some time or other” the world becomes fire, which would mean a recurrent conflagration, or, on Cherniss’s reading,5 that “at some time or other” fire becomes the world, which would mean a recurrent cosmogony and would imply a recurrent conflagration.(2) Plato Sophist 242d–e:According to one [person] there are three real things, some of which now carry on a sort of warfare with one another, and then make friends and set about marrying and begetting and bringing up their children. Another tells us that there are two—moist and dry, or hot and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Re-editing the RepublicMalcolm SchofieldS. R. Slings, ed. Platonis Respublica. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003. xxiv + 428 pp. Cloth, $45.S. R. Slings' Republic is the second volume to appear in the new OCT edition of Plato. Reviewing the first—the new volume I, containing the first two tetralogies—Slings rounded off with some general remarks for the "average user of OCTs," who "will want to know to what degree (...) all this work has improved the text" (Mnemosyne 51 [1998] 101). If we apply the question to the fruits of his own tireless labours (the last of his seven general editorial principles is: editori non est fatiscendum), the answer is the same verdict as Slings passed on volume I: "The text is not all that different from Burnet's, and rightly so," for "he was a superb editor with a feeling for Platonic Greek that is unlikely to be ever surpassed" (ibid. 93). But did you know something Slings reports elsewhere (Mnem. 42 [1989] 192): that "when the volumes of Burnet's Platonis Opera first appeared, they were generally considered a provisional editio minor, soon to be superseded by more impressive tomes?" What is hugely improved is the apparatus criticus. There are two main reasons for this.First, Slings' text is based on a much more secure assessment of the textual tradition than was Burnet's, thanks not least to the comprehensive work of his former pupil Gerard Boter in The Textual Tradition of Plato's Republic (Leiden: Brill, 1989). Burnet gave pride of place to three primary witnesses: Parisinus 1807, ninth century (A); Marcianus 185, twelfth century (D); and Vindobonensis suppl. gr., dated by Slings to the period 1250-1325 (F). But he reported them selectively and sometimes inaccurately and never collated any of them himself. Moreover, while he was the first editor to recognise the true importance of the Vindobonensis, in Slings' opinion he accorded it more authority, particularly relative to the Parisinus, than it really carries. Finally, Burnet attached some weight to M, a manuscript in the library of the Malatestas at Cesena variously attributed to the twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth centuries (but considered fifteenth century by Slings and Boter) and collated for the Republic by Lewis Campbell. Boter's investigations have established that M carries no independent authority. Slings and Boter have reexamined all three of the primary medieval manuscripts both in photocopies and in situ, with what was evidently extreme care, and Slings says he has no doubt that the readings reported in the new OCT are a lot more reliable than in any previous edition. His general view of the [End Page 607] merits and demerits of A, D, and F—repeated here—was already set out in Appendix 2 to his major edition of the Clitophon (which precedes the Republic in the seventh tetralogy and shares its textual tradition); see Plato: Clitophon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 340-44. Roughly speaking, A is the weightiest, D is of relatively minor importance, and F is "a typical representative of the cheap Plato omnibus as found in later antiquity," with "many uniquely true readings" but lots of errors and "untrustworthy variants in word order and particles" (ibid. 341).Second, as well as exploiting Plato papyri and translations into Coptic, Arabic, and Hebrew, Slings makes more generous use of the indirect tradition than do earlier editions by using quotations and allusions in subsequent ancient authors and scholia. He thanks a number of other Dutch scholars for their help in compiling this material and cites in particular Gerard Boter's index of testimonia in The Textual Tradition. Slings includes a list of those cited in his apparatus criticus as an appendix (it runs to seventeen pages). Moreover, interpretation of the information provided in the apparatus is aided by the clear explanation in the editor's pithy Latin preface of the rules and the orthographic practices he proposes to follow. In general, while Slings' apparatus is not consistently bulkier than Burnet's, it is often richer. Mostly this is thanks to better information about the textual tradition. But in line with the usual modern practice, Slings also gives the source of any Platonic quotation... (shrink)

1. There is a commonly held endoxon that idealism did not exist and could not exist before Plato, since the «Presocratics» did not yet distinguish between the material and the ideal etc. This preconception is based on the misleading conception of «Presocratics» as physicalists and the simplistic evolutionist scheme of Aristotle’s Metaph. A. In fact, religious and idealist metaphysics are attested in different archaic traditions before Plato, whereas «simple» physical theories of elements of the Milesian type did not exist before (...) the 6th century B.C. scientific revolution. 2. Those who deny the existence of idealism in Greek philosophy commonly refer to Myles F. Burnyeat. We will argue against this article on the following grounds: a) it is based on a selective and incomplete data from early Greek philosophy, b) Burnyeat understands by «idealism» subjective idealism and anti-realism. But Greek idealism as a rule is a form of objective idealism and has nothing to do with anti-realism. The two basic forms are: dualstic idealism and monistic idealism. 3. We will argue against modern naturalist interpretations of the Pythagorean first principles by Huffmann and others. Both in the table of opposites and in Philolaus πέρας καὶ ἄπειρον denote self-subsistent mathematical essences, ‘out of which’ physical bodies are composed. It is impossible to interpret “the limit and the unlimited” as physical bodies themselves or as properties of physical bodies. 4. We will argue for the Pythagorean origin of the 5th centu-ry graffiti on bones’ plates from Olbia. According to this early table of oppo-site, the body is ψεῦδος, i.e., an illusion. 5. The Zeller-Burnet interpretation of Parmenides B3 is grammatically impossible. The fragment states the identity of νοεῖν καὶ εἶναι, i.e., affirms mental nature of Being.6.The basic opposition of Parmenides’ Aletheia exactly corresponds to the basic opposition of doxa. Light is the active and thinking element, night is the «heavy», dense, corporeal substance. Sine light corresponds to Being, night corresponds to non-Being. The philosophy of Parmenides is a radical form of immaterialism and idealistic monism. (shrink)

The obstacle to more objective knowledge of early Pythagoreanism is the ideological conflict over the proper mission of historiography. Not only the confusing evidence, but also the different investigative procedures and theories of history employed, make solving the Pythagorean problem difficult. I analyze the historiographic methodologies of some modern historians of Pythagoreanism in respect to the kinds of historical explanation they provide. Immediately ideological controversy arises between idealist and materialist historians. ;My critical evaluation proceeds from two theses. The content of (...) ideas reflects their social referents. Consequently, one must identify the class interests of early Pythagoreans. Writing history is a contemporary undertaking by which historians reflect their own social interests. Therefore, historiographic methodology continually must be objectified to overcome the subjectivism of historical relativism. ;I review the reconstructions of six historians. John Burnet, an empiricist, held that the Greeks entirely broke from their religious past to develop philosophy. F. M. Cornford, a Durkheimian, used anthropology to reveal philosophy's totemic content. J. E. Raven is a philologist; he maintaned that ancient philosophy was the Eleatic-Pythagorean debate. W. K. C. Guthrie, an eclectic, held that science served Pythagorean religious interests. These idealist historians attributed the Greek achievement to absolutized temperaments or racial factors; the development of ideas is not mediated by practical necessity. George Thomson and Alban Winspear are historical materialists. They explained ancient philosophy by showing the class interests of philosophers in a mercantile economy based on slave labor. ;After introducing the Pythagorean problem, I present, by chapter, first an exposition of each historian's account of the causes of Greek philosophy and then his exposition of early Pythagoreanism. My analyses follow each section. In the first part of the final chapter I discuss each historian in the context of the ideological controversy. In the second part I present a general outline of procedure for scientific historiography. (shrink)

This essay explores the thesis that for vague predicates, uncertainty over whether a borderline instance x of red/large/tall/good is to be understood as practical uncertainty over whether to treat x as red/large/tall/good. Expressivist and quasi-realist treatments of vague predicates due to John MacFarlane and Daniel Elstein provide the stalking-horse. It examines the notion of treating/counting a thing as F , and links a central question about our attitudes to vague predications to normative evaluation of plans to treat a thing (...) as F . The essay examines how the account applies to normatively defective or contested terms. The final section raises a puzzle about the mechanics of MacFarlane’s detailed implementation for the case of gradable adjectives. (shrink)

In editing Plato's Sophist for the new OCT vol. I, ed. E. A. Duke, W. F. Hicken, W. S. M. Nicoll, D. B. Robinson, and J. C. G. Strachan , there was less chance of giving novel information about W = Vind. Supp. Gr. 7 for this dialogue than for others in the volume, since Apelt's edition of 1897 was used by Burnet in 1900 and was based on Apelt's own collation of W. The result was better than the (...) somewhat confused information printed by Burnet, even in his 1905 reprint, for W for the other dialogues in vol. I. But in the Sophist as elsewhere in vol. I collations largely due to Dr W. S. M. Nicoll added new facts about all of BDTWP and their correctors, and the search for testimonia largely carried out by Dr E. A. Duke added new facts in that area. A reviewer counts 66 changes in our text of the Sophist, which may perhaps be a slight over-estimate. Classification of changes as substantive or as falling into different groups is sometimes difficult, but I think plausible figures are as follows. We have in 25 places made a different choice of readings from the primary mss. and testimonia. We have printed conjectures where Burnet kept a ms. reading in 17 places, but conversely we have reverted to a ms. reading where Burnet had a conjecture in 8 places. We have printed alternative conjectures to conjectures adopted by Burnet in 6 places. So we have actually departed from the primary sources on at most 9 more occasions overall than Burnet. What must be noted is that Burnet had already printed conjectures on something like 87 occasions , so our percentage addition to Burnet's departures from the primary sources is modest. Moreover Burnet printed about 25 readings from testimonia; we have followed him in 20 or so of these cases, and this in turn implies that the primary mss. are in error at these further 20 places. It needs to be underlined that though Burnet undoubtedly deserved to be regarded as a safe and cautious editor, nevertheless he departed from the primary mss. on average about twice per Stephanus page in this dialogue. Sometimes, of course, testimonia showed him right to do this, but testimonia cover only a quite small part of this dialogue. Otherwise Burnet accepted almost 90 conjectures. For the Politicus the figures are fairly similar; Burnet accepted 22 Byzantine conjectures and 35–40 more modern ones. The new OCT there adds 15 or so more conjectures. (shrink)

Brain-centered theories of consciousness seem to face insuperable difficulties. While some philosophers now doubt that the hard problem of consciousness will ever be solved, others call for radically new approaches to conscious experience. In this article I resurrect a largely forgotten approach to consciousness known as neorealism. According to neorealism, consciousness is merely a part, or cross-section, of the environment. Neorealism implies that all conscious experiences, veridical or otherwise, exist outside of the brain and are wholly independent of being perceived (...) or not; nonveridical perceptions of the environment over an arbitrarily short period of time are supposed to be objective constituents of the environment over a more extended time scale. I argue here that neorealism fares at least as well as brain-centered theories of consciousness on a number of fundamental issues. On one fundamental issue—the nature of the relation between veridical and nonveridical perceptions—neorealism outperforms its competitors. (shrink)

The defining principle of evolutionary biology is that all species, extant and extinct, evolved from ancient prokaryotic cells. Their initial appearance and adaptive evolution are proposed to have been accompanied by a cellular sentience, by feelings, subjectivity or, in a word, 'consciousness'. Prokaryotic cells, such as archaea and bacteria, have natural unitary, valence-marked 'mental' representations. They process and evaluate sensory information in a context-dependent manner. They learn, establish memories, and communicate using biophysical fields acting on excitable membranes. Symbiotic eukaryotic cells, (...) which evolved much later, initiated a compound cellular subjectivity utilizing 'senomic' and 'ephaptic' principles that evolved into the varieties of consciousness seen in multicellular species. This Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) model provides a novel framework within which to approach fundamental issues such as the origins of life and the emergence of mind. (shrink)

Why are we interested in history at all? Why do we feel the need to distinguish between past and present? In this book, the author argues that the past originates from an experience of rupture separating past and present. Think of the radical rupture with Europe's past that was effected by the French and the Industrial Revolutions. Sublime Historical Experience investigates how the notion of sublime historical experience complicates and challenges existing conceptions of language, truth, and knowledge. These experiences of (...) rupture are paradoxical since they involve both the separation of past and present and, at the same time, the effort to overcome this separation in terms of historical knowledge. The experience unites feelings of loss/pain with those of love/satisfaction, and thus is in agreement with how sublime experience is ordinarily defined. The experience is also precognitive since it precedes historical knowledge. As such it is a challenge to traditional conceptions of the relationship between experience and truth or language. It compels us to disconnect the notions of experience and truth. (shrink)

First published in 1982. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.