Rita Bottino,1 Santosh Nagaraju,2 Vikas Satyananda,2 Hidetaka Hara,2 Martin Wijkstrom,2 Massimo Trucco,1 David KC Cooper2 1Institute of Cellular Therapeutics, Allegheny Health Network, 2Thomas E Starzl Transplantation Institute, Department of Surgery, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA: Diabetes mellitus is increasing worldwide. Type 1 diabetes can be treated successfully by islet allotransplantation, the results of which are steadily improving. However, the number of islets that can be obtained from deceased human donors will never be sufficient to cure more than a (...) very small percentage of patients who might benefit from transplantation. Although there are some differences in glucose metabolism between pigs and humans, the use of pigs could provide an unlimited supply of islets, and the insulin produced would undoubtedly control glucose levels. Transplantation of islets into the portal vein results in islets residing in the liver; however, an early inflammatory response and rejection remain problematic, even when the recipient is receiving immunosuppressive therapy. In the long term, immunosuppressive drugs may exhibit toxicities to patients and specifically harm the islet cells. In contrast, encapsulation techniques provide islets with a physical barrier that prevents antibodies binding to the islet graft while still allowing insulin to be released into the recipient's circulation; in theory, patients receiving encapsulated grafts might not require exogenous immunosuppressive therapy. Nonhuman primates with encapsulated pig islet transplants have remained insulin-independent for several weeks, but long-term efficacy remains uncertain. Furthermore, techniques are now available to knock out genes from the pig and/or insert human genes, thus rendering the antigenic structure of pigs closer to that of humans, and providing protection from the human immune response. Islet transplantation from genetically engineered pigs has been followed by insulin independence in a small number of nonhuman primates for greater than 1 year. Neonatal islets have some advantages over adult islets in that they are easier to isolate and culture, and have the ability to proliferate during the first few months after transplantation. In 2009, the International Xenotransplantation Association set up a group to encourage and advise on clinical trials of pig islet xenotransplantation; this group's guidelines are discussed. Clinical trials of encapsulated pig islets are already under way. Keywords: diabetes, islets, pancreatic, pig, xenotransplantation. (shrink)

This ground-breaking and timely book explores how big data, artificial intelligence and algorithms are creating new types of agency, and the impact that this is having on our lives and the rule of law. Addressing the issues in a thoughtful, cross-disciplinary manner, the authors examine the ways in which data-driven agency is transforming democratic practices and the meaning of individual choice. Leading scholars in law, philosophy, computer science and politics analyse the latest innovations in data science and machine learning, assessing (...) the actual and potential implications of these technologies. They investigate how this affects our understanding of such concepts as agency, epistemology, justice, transparency and democracy, and advocate a precautionary approach that takes the effects of data-driven agency seriously without taking it for granted. Scholars and students of law, ethics and philosophy, in particular legal, political and democratic theory, will find this book a compelling and invaluable read, as will computer scientists interested in the implications of their own work. It will also prove insightful for academics and activists working on privacy, fairness and anti-discrimination. Contributors include: J.E. Cohen, G. de Vries, S. Delacroix, P. Dumouchel, C. Ess, M. Garnett, E.H. Gerding, R. Gomer, C. Graber, M. Hildebrandt, C. Maple, K. O'Hara, P. Ohm, m.c. schraefel, D. Stevens, N. van Dijk, M. Veale. (shrink)

We study the problem of the approach to equilibrium in a macroscopic quantum system in an abstract setting. We prove that, for a typical choice of “nonequilibrium subspace”, any initial state (from the energy shell) thermalizes, and in fact does so very quickly, on the order of the Boltzmann time τ B := h/(k B T ). This apparently unrealistic, but mathematically rigorous, conclusion has the important physical implication that the moderately slow decay observed in reality is not typical in (...) the present setting. (shrink)

Analisa-se o sentido histórico-social das expressões rûªH yhwh (“espírito de Yahweh”), rûªH-rä`â më´ët yhwh (“espírito mau desde junto de Yahweh”), rûªH-´élöhîm rä`â (“espírito mau de Deus”), rûªH-´élöhîm (“espírito de Deus”) e rûªH härä`â (“espírito mau”), de e em 1 Sm 16,14-23. Postula-se a identidade comum de todos esses personagens noológicos. Guiado por um exercício de crítica aplicada a versões da passagem, bem como pela consulta crítica por amostragem de comentários internacionais, aplica-se análise retórica e histórico-social à narrativa. Conclui-se que, no (...) horizonte de produção do texto, concebia-se essa figura celeste como o equivalente noológico de oficiais a serviço de reis, incumbidos de atividades que tanto podiam ser classificadas eticamente como boas quanto más, correspondendo tal concepção teológica ao estado da cultura judaico-israelita pré-persa. Não se trata de dois personagens: o “espírito de Yahweh” / o “espírito de Deus”, de um lado, e o “espírito mau (de Yahweh ou de Deus)” de outro, mas da descrição diferenciada da mesma figura em conformidade com a ação interpretada como realizada por ele no exercício de sua prestação de serviços ao deus-rei. Palavras-chave : 1 Sm 16,14-23. Espírito de Yahweh. Espírito de Deus. Espírito mau de Yahweh. Espírito mau de Deus. Espírito mau.The sociohistorical meaning of the expressions rûªH yhwh (“spirit of Yahweh”), rûªH-rä`â më´ët yhwh (“evil spirit from Yahweh”), rûªH-´élöhîm rä`â (“evil spirit of God”), rûªH-´élöhîm (“spirit of God”) and rûªH härä`â (“evil spirit”) of and in 1 Sm 16.14-23 is analyzed. The common identity of all these noological characters is postulated. Guided by an exercise of criticism applied to versions of the passage as well as the critical search of samples of international commentaries, rhetoric and the social-historical analysis is applied to the narrative. It is reasoned that, in the text’s production horizon, this celestial figure is conceived as the noological equivalent to officials at service of kings, responsible for activities that could be classified as both ethically good and bad, such theological conception correspond to the pre-Persian state of Jewish-Israeli culture. They are not two characters: the “spirit of Yahweh” / “spirit of God” on one side , and the “evil spirit (of Yahweh or God)” on the other, but different descriptions of the same figure in accordance to the action interpreted as carried out by him in the provision of services to the god-king . Keywords: 1 Sm 16,14-23. Spirit of Yahweh. Spirit of God. Evil spirit of Yahweh. Evil spirit of God. Evil spirit. (shrink)

W. H. Auden, the sometimes Greta Garbo of twentieth-century poetry, once told Stephen Spender that he liked America better than England because in America one could be alone. Further, in his introduction to The Criterion Book of Modern American Verse Auden remarked that while in England poets are considered members of a “clerkly caste,” in America they are an “aristocracy of one.” Certainly it does seem to be the individual poet—Whitman, Williams, Olson, Plath, O’Hara, Ginsberg—who has altered the landscape (...) of American poetry and prosody, not the group. And most American literary “movements,” as Robert Creeley has pointed out, are simply comprised of a few people who on occasion drink together, and who are as likely as not to end the evening in violent argument over an aesthetic or political point. Yet the notion of schools or movements remains, in mainstream historical criticism at least, a vital one. How many introductions to anthologies of American poetry, for example, continue to use such rubrics as the Transcendentals, the Populists, the Black Mountain poets, the Beats, the New York group? And while established poets often rebel from any sense that they are part of a larger community, which by definition is self-limiting, they are often complicit in their initial categorization. For poets as well as critics the idea of a school is often a useful fiction serving as both a kind of protective hothouse and a platform for getting a hearing.The most recent “group” of American poets—the first since the anthology wars of the early sixties really to be of more than passing interest and perhaps to be actually capable of bringing about a major shift of attention in American poetry and poetics—is the so-called “Language” school. Individual volumes by poets often considered part of this group number well into three figures now and there have been important journals and anthologies produced in a serious and sustained fashion by these writers. Yet in part because of what seems the essentially hermetic character of the project , there has been little notice of this activity by academic critics or reviewers.1 What I’d like to do here is briefly map a few major aspects of the territory, describing some of the practical and theoretical questions which seem to occupy many of these writers in their ongoing critique of the “workshop poem.” 1. Two important exceptions are discussions of some of this work in Stephen Fredman, Poet’s Prose: The Crisis in American Verse and Marjorie Perloff’s review “The Word as Such: L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poetry in the Eighties,” American Poetry Review 13 : 15-22. All further references to Perloff’s article, abbreviated “WS,” will be included in the text. For a discussion of the various Language poetry journals and anthologies, see my chapter “American Poetry, 1940s to the Present” in American Literary Scholarship: An Annual/1983, ed. Warren French , pp. 349-74. Lee Bartlett, an associate professor of English, has directed the University of New Mexico’s creative writing program for five years. Coeditor of the critical journal American Poetry, his Talking Poetry: Conversations in the Workshop with Contemporary Poets will be published this fall. Currently he is writing a biography of William Everson. (shrink)

Like nature itself, modern economic life is driven by relentless competition and unbridled selfishness. Or is it? Drawing on converging evidence from neuroscience, social science, biology, law, and philosophy, Moral Markets makes the case that modern market exchange works only because most people, most of the time, act virtuously. Competition and greed are certainly part of economics, but Moral Markets shows how the rules of market exchange have evolved to promote moral behavior and how exchange itself may make us more (...) virtuous. Examining the biological basis of economic morality, tracing the connections between morality and markets, and exploring the profound implications of both, Moral Markets provides a surprising and fundamentally new view of economics--one that also reconnects the field to Adam Smith's position that morality has a biological basis. Moral Markets, the result of an extensive collaboration between leading social and natural scientists, includes contributions by neuroeconomist Paul Zak; economists Robert H. Frank, Herbert Gintis, Vernon Smith, and Bart Wilson; law professors Oliver Goodenough, Erin O'Hara, and Lynn Stout; philosophers William Casebeer and Robert Solomon; primatologists Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal; biologists Carl Bergstrom, Ben Kerr, and Peter Richerson; anthropologists Robert Boyd and Michael Lachmann; political scientists Elinor Ostrom and David Schwab; management professor Rakesh Khurana; computational science and informatics doctoral candidate Erik Kimbrough; and business writer Charles Handy. (shrink)

M. Ally: Why Jaspers gives us Hope: Deconstruc ting the Myth of Cultural Impermeability B. Andrzejewski: Über Kant und Schelling hinaus. Zur Frage der existenziellen Theorie der Kommunikation bei Jaspers A. Cesana: Weltphilosophie und philosophischer Glaube J. M. Cho: Cross-Cultural Adaptations in Karl Jaspers J. Fukaya: The Japanese Moral Framework and Jaspers Philosophy K. Fukui: Karl Jaspers Philosophie aus Sicht der Kyoto-Schule J.-C. Gens: Jaspers Begegnung mit und sein Verhältnis zu China S. Hanyu: The Cross-Cultural Thought in Jaspers Philosophy. In (...) comparison with Kantian Thought in Toward Perpetual Peace K. Hara: Konflikte und Kommunikation der Religionen. Zur Möglichkeit des philosophischen Glaubens A. Hirano: Arendt und Jaspers: Der innere Zusammenhang und die Unterschiede zwischen den Gedanken beider S. C. Kim: Der philosophische Glaube angesichts des religiösen Pluralismus L. Lambrecht: Philosophie gegen den Nationalsozialismus: Hannah Arendt und Karl Jaspers E. Lee: Heidegger and Jaspers on the Public Sphere: Jaspers Theory of Communication as an Antidote to Heideggers Dark Public World W. Lee: Philosophischer Glaube und universale Kommunikation bei Karl Jaspers T. Nakajima: Die Idee der Universität inmitten der Popularisierung" T. Nakayama: Jaspers Philosophie und Buddhismus. Das Denken der Leerheit" C. Olay: Öffentlichkeit bei Jaspers und Hannah Arendt S.-K. Paek: Kants Schrift Zum ewigen Frieden im Spiegel dreier Interpretationen: Volker Gerhardt, Jürgen Habermas, Karl Jaspers E. Park: The Possibility of Social Existenz. A Reinterpretation of the Concept of Existenz in Karl Jaspers F. Peach: Jaspers, Existential Communication and Globalisation C. Piecuch: Welteinheit: Rationale Entscheidung oder kosmische Notwendigkeit? I. Ren: Zwei Wege der philosophischen Logik: Jaspers und Heidegger N. Reyhani: Die Anthropologie-Debatte und der Vorwurf des Positivismus gegen Karl Jaspers I. Sarin: Jaspers on Bridging the Intercultural Gap H.-J. Seideneck: Der Zusammenprall von Kulturkreisen im Weltdorf unter dem Blickwinkel des erhebenden Scheiterns bei Karl Jaspers H. Stelzer: Das Aufbrechen fixierter Weltbilder in der interkulturellen Kommunikation E. Struchholz: Karl Jaspers und Jacob Burckhardt: Existenz und Existenzbild A. Takahashi: Zur Wechselbeziehung zwischen der Kommunikation in der Geschichte und derjenigen in unserer Zeit bei Jaspers M. Wirtz: Die Regionen des Geistes. Zur interkulturellen Relevanz einer Weltphilosophiegeschichtsschreibung nach Karl Jaspers M. Wischke: Kommunikative Übergänge und Grenzsituationen. Über Schuld und Gedächtnis bei Jaspers. (shrink)

Discussions of the theory and practice of systematics and evolutionary biology have heretofore revolved around the views of philosophers of science. I reexamine these issues from the different perspective of the philosophy of history. Just as philosophers of history distinguish between chronicle (non-interpretive or non-explanatory writing) and narrative history (interpretive or explanatory writing), I distinguish between evolutionary chronicle (cladograms, broadly construed) and narrative evolutionary history. Systematics is the discipline which estimates the evolutionary chronicle. ¶ Explanations of the events described in (...) the evolutionary chronicle are not of the covering-law type described by philosophers of science, but rather of the how-possibly, continuous series, and integrating types described by philosophers of history. Pre-evolutionary explanations of states (in contrast to chroniclar events) are still widespread in "evolutionary" biology, however, because evolutionary chronicles are in general poorly known. To the extent that chronicles are known, the narrative evolutionary histories based on them are structured like conventional historical narratives, in that they treat their central subjects as ontological individuals. This conventional treatment is incorrect. The central subjects of evolutionary narratives are clades, branched entities which have some of the properties of individuals and some of the properties of classes. Our unconscious treatment of the subjects of evolutionary narratives as individuals has been the cause of erroneous notions of progress in evolution, and of views that taxa "develop" ontogenetically in ways analogous to individual organisms. We must rewrite our narrative evolutionary histories so that they properly represent the branching nature of evolution, and we must reframe our evolutionary philosophies so that they properly reflect the historical nature of our subject. (shrink)

William Whewell (1794–1866), polymathic Victorian scientist, philosopher, historian, and educator, was one of the great neologists of the nineteenth century. Although Whewell's name is little remembered today except by professional historians and philosophers of science, researchers in many scientific fields work each day in a world that Whewell named. "Miocene" and "Pliocene," "uniformitarian" and "catastrophist," "anode" and "cathode," even the word "scientist" itself—all of these were Whewell coinages. Whewell is particularly important to students of the historical sciences for another word (...) he coined, one that was unfortunately not as successful as many of his others because it is difficult to pronounce. This word, "palaetiology," was the name Whewell gave to the class of sciences that are concerned with historical causation: the class we might today refer to as historical sciences. Although the disciplines Whewell included under the heading of palaetiology might seem to cut across conventional academic boundaries of his day and ours—his exemplary palaetiological sciences were geology and comparative philology—all these fields may be examined together, Whewell argued, because of their common interest in reconstructing the past. ¶ This paper is an essay in the palaetiological sciences, dedicated to Whewell on the bicentennial of his birth, an essay that examines some of the principles, maxims, and rules of procedure that these sciences have all in common. Its first purpose is to demonstrate the continuing validity of Whewell's classification of these sciences through a study of historical representation in three different palaetiological fields: systematics, historical linguistics, and textual transmission. Its second purpose is to continue the development of an extended analogy between historical representation and cartographic representation that I began in an earlier paper (O'Hara, 1993, Systematic Biology), an analogy that makes especially clear the common representational practices that are found throughout palaetiology. (shrink)

Two new modes of thinking have spread through systematics in the twentieth century. Both have deep historical roots, but they have been widely accepted only during this century. Population thinking overtook the field in the early part of the century, culminating in the full development of population systematics in the 1930s and 1940s, and the subsequent growth of the entire field of population biology. Population thinking rejects the idea that each species has a natural type (as the earlier essentialist view (...) had assumed), and instead sees every species as a varying population of interbreeding individuals. Tree thinking has spread through the field since the 1960s with the development of phylogenetic systematics. Tree thinking recognizes that species are not independent replicates within a class (as earlier group thinkers had tended to see them), but are instead interconnected parts of an evolutionary tree. It lays emphasis on the explanation of evolutionary events in the context of a tree, rather than on the states exhibited by collections of species, and it sees evolutionary history as a story of divergence rather than a story of development. Just as population thinking gave rise to the new field of population biology, so tree thinking is giving rise to the new field of phylogenetic biology. (shrink)

Accounts of the evolutionary past have as much in common with works of narrative history as they do with works of science. Awareness of the narrative character of evolutionary writing leads to the discovery of a host of fascinating and hitherto unrecognized problems in the representation of evolutionary history, problems associated with the writing of narrative. These problems include selective attention, narrative perspective, foregrounding and backgrounding, differential resolution, and the establishment of a canon of important events. The narrative aspects of (...) evolutionary writing, however, which promote linearity and cohesiveness in conventional stories, conflict with the underlying chronicle of evolution, which is not linear, but branched, and which does not cohere, but diverges. The impulse to narrate is so great, however, and is so strongly reinforced by traditional schemes of taxonomic attention, that natural historians have more often abandoned the diverging tree than they have abandoned the narrative mode of representation. If we are to understand the true nature of the evolutionary past then we must adopt tree thinking, and develop new and creative ways, both narrative and non-narrative, of telling the history of life. (shrink)

The species problem is one of the oldest controversies in natural history. Its persistence suggests that it is something more than a problem of fact or definition. Considerable light is shed on the species problem when it is viewed as a problem in the representation of the natural system (sensu Griffiths, 1974, Acta Biotheor. 23: 85–131; de Queiroz, 1998, Philos. Sci. 55: 238–259). Just as maps are representations of the earth, and are subject to what is called cartographic generalization, so (...) diagrams of the natural system (evolutionary trees) are representations of the evolutionary chronicle, and are subject to a temporal version of cartographic generalization which may be termed systematic generalization. Cartographic generalization is based on judgements of geographical importance, and systematic generalization is based on judgements of historical importance, judgements expressed in narrative sentences (sensu Danto, 1985, Narration and knowledge, Columbia Univ. Press, New York). At higher systematic levels these narrative sentences are conventional and retrospective, but near the "species" level they become prospective, that is, dependent upon expectations of the future. The truth of prospective narrative sentences is logically indeterminable in the present, and since all the common species concepts depend upon prospective narration, it is impossible for any of them to be applied with precision. (shrink)

"The Natural System" is the abstract notion of the order in living diversity. The richness and complexity of this notion is revealed by the diversity of representations of the Natural System drawn by ornithologists in the Nineteenth Century. These representations varied in overall form from stars, to circles, to maps, to evolutionary trees and cross-sections through trees. They differed in their depiction of affinity, analogy, continuity, directionality, symmetry, reticulation and branching, evolution, and morphological convergence and divergence. Some representations were two-dimensional, (...) and some were three-dimensional; n-dimensional representations were discussed but never illustrated. The study of diagrammatic representations of the Natural System is made difficult by the frequent failure of authors to discuss them in their texts, and by the consequent problem of distinguishing features which carried meaning from arbitrary features and printing conventions which did not. Many of the systematics controversies of the last thirty years have their roots in the conceptual problems which surrounded the Natural System in the late 1800s, problems which were left unresolved when interest in higher-level systematics declined at the turn of this century. (shrink)

Neither our evolutionary past, nor our pre-literate culture, has prepared humanity for the use of technology to provide records of the past, records which in many context become normative for memory. The demand that memory be true, rather than useful or pleasurable, has changed our social and psychological under-standing of ourselves and our fellows. The current vogue for lifelogging, and the rapid proliferation of digital memory-supporting technologies, may accelerate this change, and create dilemmas for policymakers, designers and social thinkers.

‘The Natural System’ is the abstract notion of the order in living diversity. The richness and complexity of this notion is revealed by the diversity of representations of the Natural System drawn by ornithologists in the Nineteenth Century. These representations varied in overall form from stars, to circles, to maps, to evolutionary trees and cross-sections through trees. They differed in their depiction of affinity, analogy, continuity, directionality, symmetry, reticulation and branching, evolution, and morphological convergence and divergence. Some representations were two-dimensional, (...) and some were three-dimensional; n-dimensional representations were discussed but never illustrated. The study of diagrammatic representations of the Natural System is made difficult by the frequent failure of authors to discuss them in their texts, and by the consequent problem of distinguishing features which carried meaning from arbitrary features and printing conventions which did not. Many of the systematics controversies of the last thirty years have their roots in the conceptual problems which surrounded the Natural System in the late 1800s, problems which were left unresolved when interest in higher-level systematics declined at the turn of this century. (shrink)

Accounts of the evolutionary past have as much in common with works of narrative history as they do with works of science. Awareness of the narrative character of evolutionary writing leads to the discovery of a host of fascinating and hitherto unrecognized problems in the representation of evolutionary history, problems associated with the writing of narrative. These problems include selective attention, narrative perspective, foregrounding and backgrounding, differential resolution, and the establishment of a canon of important events. The narrative aspects of (...) evolutionary writing, however, which promote linearity and cohesiveness in conventional stories, conflict with the underlying chronicle of evolution, which is not linear, but branched, and which does not cohere, but diverges. The impulse to narrate is so great, however, and is so strongly reinforced by traditional schemes of taxonomic attention, that natural historians have more often abandoned the diverging tree than they have abandoned the narrative mode of representation. If we are to understand the true nature of the evolutionary past then we must adopt “tree thinking”, and develop new and creative ways, both narrative and non-narrative, of telling the history of life. (shrink)

Classifications of animals and plants have long been represented by hierarchical lists of taxa, but occasional authors have drawn diagrammatic versions of their classifications in an attempt to better depict the "natural relationships" of their organisms. Ornithologists in 19th-century Britain produced and pioneered many types of classificatory diagrams, and these fall into three groups: (a) the quinarian systems of Vigors and Swainson (1820s and 1830s); (b) the "maps" of Strickland and Wallace (1840s and 1850s); and (c) the evolutionary diagrams of (...) the post-Darwin authors (1860 on). The quinarians distinguished between affinity and analogy and used both in their classifications, whereas Strickland rejected the quinarians' belief in numerical regularity and their use of analogy. Wallace's "maps" are easily given an evolutionary interpretation, and his approach was taken up and modified by later evolutionary anatomists. Sharpe returned to Strickland's methods and merely appended a superficial evolutionary interpretation. Contrary to common belief systematics has a rich conceptual history, and many of the conceptual developments in 19th-century systematics were made by ornithologists. (shrink)

The Low-and-Lower-Middle-Income Trap (LLMIT) poses a significant challenge for economies in low-and-lower-middle-income countries (LLMICs), hindering their progress towards higher income levels. This issue is especially prevalent in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa, where job opportunities are scarce, and incomes are unstable. To address these challenges and promote economic development, particularly in terms of innovation and poverty reduction, it is essential to accelerate business activities, with a focus on fostering startup ecosystems. Despite the importance of this relationship, there is (...) a noticeable gap in research, especially regarding the connection between startup ecosystems and economic development aimed at poverty reduction in LLMICs striving to overcome the LLMIT. This study conducts a qualitative empirical review to identify crucial conditions for promoting startup ecosystems as contributors to economic development. Preliminary demonstrations of theoretical foundations for escaping LLMIT through nurturing startup ecosystems are presented, referencing 15 selected literatures. Using the Grounded Theory Approach with ATLAS.ti, the findings highlight the scarcity of research on the mechanisms linking startup ecosystems to economic progress, notably in the context of poverty reduction in LLMICs facing LLMIT. The study emphasizes the necessity for continuous support in reviewing economic development policies and regularly monitoring economic performance, particularly in the aim of extensively mitigating LLMIT. (shrink)

"The Natural System" is the name given to the underlying arrangement present in the diversity of life. Unlike a classification, which is made up of classes and members, a system or arrangement is an integrated whole made up of connected parts. In the pre-evolutionary period a variety of forms were proposed for the Natural System, including maps, circles, stars, and abstract multidimensional objects. The trees sketched by Darwin in the 1830s should probably be considered the first genuine evolutionary diagrams of (...) the Natural System—the first genuine evolutionary trees. Darwin refined his image of the Natural System in the well-known evolutionary tree published in the Origin of Species, where he also carefully distinguished between arrangements and classifications. Following the publication of the Origin, there was a great burst of evolutionary tree building, but interest in trees declined substantially after 1900, only to be revived in recent years with the development of cladistic analysis. ¶ While evolutionary trees are modern diagrams of the Natural System, they are at the same time instances of another broad class of diagrams that may be called "trees of history": branching diagrams of genealogical descent and change. During the same years that Darwin was sketching his first evolutionary trees, the earliest examples of two other trees of history also appeared: the first trees of language evolution and of manuscript genealogy. Though these were apparently independent of evolutionary trees in their origin, the similarities among all these trees of history, and among the historical processes that underlie them, were soon recognized. Darwin compared biological evolution and language evolution several times in the Origin of Species, and both Ernst Haeckel and the linguist August Schleicher made similar comparisons. Both linguists and stemmaticists (students of manuscript descent) understood the principle of apomorphy—the principle that only shared innovations provide evidence of common ancestry—more clearly than did systematists, and if there had been more cross-fertilization among these fields the cladistic revolution in systematics might well have taken place in the nineteenth century. ¶ Although historical linguists and stemmaticists have in some respects had sounder theory than have systematists, at least until recently, they have also had the practical problem of very large amounts of data, a problem not often faced by systematists until the advent of molecular sequencing. The opportunity now exists for systematists to contribute to the theory and practice of linguistics and stemmatics, their sister disciplines in historical reconstruction, through application of our commonly used computer programs for tree estimation. Preliminary results from the application of numerical cladistic analysis to a large stemmatic data set have been very encouraging, and have already generated much discussion in the stemmatics community. (shrink)

The joy of intimacy--with yourself, with others, and with the whole universe. The long-awaited first book from a prominent modern American Zen teacher. For Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara, intimacy is what Zen practice is all about: the realization of the essential lack of distinction between self and other that inevitably leads to wisdom and compassionate action. She approaches the practice of intimacy beginning at its most basic level--the intimacy with ourselves that is the essential first step. She then shows (...) how to bring intimacy into our relationships with others, starting with those dearest to us and moving on to those who don't seem dear at all. She then shows how to grow in intimacy so that we include everyone around us, all of society, the whole world and all the beings it contains. Each chapter is accompanied by practices she uses with her students at the Village Zendo for manifesting intimacy in our lives. (shrink)

138 titles across a wide range of scholarly publications illustrate the conceptual affinities that connect the palaetiological sciences of biological systematics, historical linguistics, and stemmatics. These three fields all have as their central objective the reconstruction of evolutionary "trees of history" that depict phylogenetic patterns of descent with modification among species, languages, and manuscripts. All three fields flourished in the nineteenth century, underwent parallel periods of quiescence in the early twentieth century, and in recent decades have seen widespread parallel revivals. (...) "Tree thinking" (O'Hara, 1988) is now standard within evolutionary biology, and the unity of what William Whewell called palaetiology is being once again appreciated by scholars and scientists in many fields. (shrink)

In the eighteenth century the category of the aesthetic sought to bridge the gap between the prevalent dualities of Cartesian thought: art and science, history and science, prejudice and truth. This special issue of _boundary 2_ addresses current debates about the status of art in the context of global modernity. The range of arguments represented here cover a broad historical scope—from Cartesianism to present-day global modernity—of cultural discourse on the aesthetic to bring a focus to contemporary discussions of the corollary (...) concepts of beauty, virtue, taste, and truth. These essays present a rich and provocative account of the place of the aesthetic in late-twentieth-century culture. Included in this volume are considerations of the relation between theories of art and the avant-garde; art’s relation to cognition; the aesthetic as history; the aesthetic as a unique access to modernity; and its impact on problems of identity formation, ideology, and resistances to the institutional powers inherent in dominant social formations. _Contributors. _Charles Altieri, Peter Burger, David Carroll, Anthony J. Cascardi, Howard Caygill, Allen Dunn, Eric Gans, Agnes Heller, Ronald A. T. Judy, Marie-Rose Logan, Daniel T. O’Hara, Donald E. Pease, Alan Singer. (shrink)

The same attitudes that allowed a significant increase in the anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations that are causing climate change are the same attitudes that are retarding an adequate ethical response to the impact that climate change is having on both human populations and the rest of the planet. The industrialized nations of the West paid little attention during the past three centuries to the impacts that their economies and cultures were having on the environment, both locally and globally. There (...) was an underlying belief that the planet could indefinitely absorb the wastes of manufacturing, and the natural resources that were fuelling industrialization were seemingly endless if not actually .. (shrink)

Are there basic religious certainties? That is, are there any beliefs which religious people legitimately hold without the need for rational justification? The question has been tackled, in different ways, by both Hinge Epistemologists and by Reformed Epistemologists. For the former, discussion has revolved around very general religious beliefs such as ‘God exists’ (e.g. Pritchard, 2000; Helm, 2001; Hoyt, 2007; Ariso, 2020). Reformed Epistemologists, like Alvin Plantinga, argue that Christian theism and particular Christian beliefs are ‘properly basic’ in that ‘I (...) don’t believe them on the basis of any other propositions’ (Plantinga, 1981, p. 42). In this paper I want to do two things. First, I give an account of what basic religious certainty is from a Wittgensteinian, Hinge Epistemology point of view. On this account I will argue that the clearest examples of basic religious certainties are found in local, historical and more narrow expressions of religious belief, as opposed to the very general acontextual religious beliefs usually discussed. Secondly, I challenge the Reformed Epistemological notion that Christian doctrine can be ‘properly basic’, mainly by showing that the New Testament writers did not treat very general religious beliefs, such as ‘God exists’ or God is good’, as properly basic in either the Hinge or Reformed Epistemological ways. I will conclude by drawing out some implications for contemporary Christian epistemology. (shrink)

This paper explores the concept of digital modernity, the extension of narratives of modernity with the special affordances of digital networked technology. Digital modernity produces a new narrative which can be taken in many ways: to be descriptive of reality; a teleological account of an inexorable process; or a normative account of an ideal sociotechnical state. However, it is understood that narratives of digital modernity help shape reality via commercial and political decision-makers, and examples are given from the politics and (...) society of the United Kingdom. The paper argues that digital modernity has two dimensions, of progression through time and progression through space, and these two dimensions can be in contradiction. Contradictions can also be found between ideas of digital modernity and modernity itself, and also between digital modernity and some of the basic pre-modern concepts that underlie the whole technology industry. Therefore, digital modernity may not be a sustainable goal for technology development. (shrink)

This book is an extended and provocative exercise in describing pragmatism’s past and in attempting to chart a course for its future. This description is not merely a history of philosophy or paean to American thought. It is rather a re-description that draws attention to a neglected and potentially fruitful theme in pragmatism, one that Koopman has termed “transitionalism” for its focus on historicity and temporality. One of the enduring features of pragmatism is its commitment to the revisability of truth (...) claims and even to revising its own methods and aims. If pragmatism encourages philosophers to revise old ways of thinking, then pragmatists are people who expect important ideas and institutions to develop .. (shrink)

This brief notice records anecdotes about Wittgenstein gathered from Br. Herbert Kaden OSB.

In this article, the rotational invariance of entangled quantum states is investigated as a possible cause of the Pauli exclusion principle. First, it is shown that a certain class of rotationally invariant states can only occur in pairs. This is referred to as the coupling principle. This in turn suggests a natural classification of quantum systems into those containing coupled states and those that do not. Surprisingly, it would seem that Fermi–Dirac statistics follows as a consequence of this coupling while (...) the Bose–Einstein follows by breaking it. In Sec. 5, the above approach is related to Pauli's original spin-statistics theorem and finally in the last two sections, a theoretical justification, based on Clebsch–Gordan coefficients and the experimental evidence respectively, is presented. (shrink)

This paper provides a queer critique of the European Court of Human Rights’ use of ‘European consensus’ as a method of interpretation in cases concerning sexuality rights. It argues that by routinely invoking the notion of ‘consensus’ in such cases, the Court (re)produces discourses and induces performances of sexuality and Europeanness that emphasise sameness and agreement, while simultaneously suppressing expressions of difference and dissent. As a result, this paper contends that the Court’s use of European consensus has ultimately functioned to (...) uphold and sustain the heteronormative order that underpins both the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and European society more generally. This is so, despite the role that European consensus has played in the Court’s recognition of ‘new’ rights for lesbian, gay and bisexual people under the ECHR. Drawing on insights from queer theory, as well as the work of Rancière and Foucault, this discussion is carried out through a close reading of Strasbourg cases relating to sexuality. (shrink)

The paper attempts to establish the importance of addressing what Chalmers calls the ‘easy problems’ of consciousness, at the expense of the ‘hard problem’. One pragmatic argument and two philosophical arguments are presented to defend this approach to consciousness, and three major theories of consciousness are criticized in this light. Finally, it is shown that concentration on the easy problems does not lead to eliminativism with respect to consciousness.