Like biological species, languages change over time. As noted by Darwin, there are many parallels between language evolution and biological evolution. Insights into these parallels have also undergone change in the past 150 years. Just like genes, words change over time, and language evolution can be likened to genome evolution accordingly, but what kind of evolution? There are fundamental differences between eukaryotic and prokaryotic evolution. In the former, natural variation entails the gradual accumulation of minor mutations in alleles. In the (...) latter, lateral gene transfer is an integral mechanism of natural variation. The study of language evolution using biological methods has attracted much interest of late, most approaches focusing on language tree construction. These approaches may underestimate the important role that borrowing plays in language evolution. Network approaches that were originally designed to study lateral gene transfer may provide more realistic insights into the complexities of language evolution.Editor's suggested further reading in BioEssaysLinguistic evidence supports date for Homeric epics Abstract. (shrink)

We describe a formal framework for analyzing how statistical properties of natural environments and the process of natural selection interact to determine the design of perceptual and cognitive systems. The framework consists of two parts: a Bayesian ideal observer with a utility function appropriate for natural selection, and a Bayesian formulation of Darwin's theory of natural selection. Simulations of Bayesian natural selection were found to yield new insights, for example, into the co‐evolution of camouflage, color vision, and decision criteria. The (...) Bayesian framework captures and generalizes, in a formal way, many of the important ideas of other approaches to perception and cognition. (shrink)

Pain and pleasure are generally conceived as opposites and are often experienced as such. Nevertheless, there is the phenomenon that people voluntarily seek out and enjoy pain. In this essay, I argue that the pleasure of pain is not a rare deviance, but rather an everyday phenomenon. I use eidetic variation to examine the constitution of pain and attempt to shed light on the phenomenon by describing different pain pattern experiences and to show that pain and pleasure are not mutually (...) exclusive. (shrink)

This work copiles key metrics to measure and evalute the impact of science and technology on academia, industry and government. it covers such topics as ...

Extractive reserves, usually associated with the survival of rubber tappers in the Brazilian tropics, have close parallels elsewhere, including temperate zones. This research isolates the distinctive features of recent Amazonian reserves, illustrates parallel features in a fifty year-old management experiment in the United States, and explores the advantages extractive reserves offer land reformers interested not only in social equity and efficiency but in biological conservation. Extractive reserves stand apart from traditional land reforms in their innovative use of common property, a (...) tenure mode well adapted to sustainable management of marginal lands. (shrink)

In contrast to the jeopardy caused to commonproperty regimes by conditions of open access, factorssuch as boundary ambiguity, shifts, and maintenancefailures are the causes of a different set of problemsin the Los Haitises National Park, a controversialprotected area in the Dominican Republic. Survey data,historical sources, and digital mapping informationoverlaying past boundary changes show that this areahas undergone two decades of design modifications inits perimeters. Despite a long history of communalownership in that country, there appears to be littlelikelihood of transforming this (...) tradition into amodern common property regime of use to community andenvironment in the park‘s buffer zone. This is due, atleast in part, to its highly porous, constantlychanging boundary, a source of on-going, open-accessproblems among local cultivators peripheral to thepark. (shrink)

To examine whether high moral reasoning competence of adolescents is associated with low levels of bullying, and to understand whether moral disengagement mediates or moderates this relationship, 925 German children ranging from 11 to 17 years of age (M = 14.18, S = 1.21) completed questionnaires on moral reasoning competence and moral disengagement in surveys at three different schools. The children were classified according to their bullying role, based on a peer- nomination procedure. Multinomial logistic regression analyses showed that moral (...) reasoning competence negatively predicted whether a student took an aggressive role. Moral disengagement partially mediated this relationship. Corresponding effects for defenders and outsiders were not found. These results extend previous findings about the effect of moral reasoning on bullying in primary school. The implications for the prevention of bullying are discussed. (shrink)

Hans Reichenbach, a philosopher of science who was one of five students in Einstein's first seminar on the general theory of relativity, became Einstein's bulldog, defending the theory against criticism from philosophers, physicists, and popular commentators. This book chronicles the development of Reichenbach's reconstruction of Einstein's theory in a way that clearly sets out all of its philosophical commitments and its physical predictions as well as the battles that Reichenbach fought on its behalf, in both the academic and popular (...) press. The essays include reviews and responses to philosophical colleagues, such as Moritz Schlick and Hugo Dingler; polemical discussions with physicists Max Born and D. C. Miller; as well as popular articles meant to clarify aspects of Einstein's theories and set out their philosophical ramifications for the layperson. At a time when physics and philosophy were both undergoing revolutionary changes in content and method, this book is a window into the development of scientific philosophy and the role of the philosopher. (shrink)

Das Buch gibt einen Überblick über die Arbeiten von Hans Albert und behandelt ausgewählte Konsequenzen seines Werks für die Philosophie des Kritischen Rationalismus und ihre Anwendungen in Gebieten der Soziologie, Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Rechtswissenschaften und weiteren Wissenschaften.

What we usually think of as higher order skills in argumentation can be profitably viewed as systematic structures for organizing and representing information. Standard terms like “line of argument”, “synthesis”, “analysis” and “draft” can be viewed as ways of constructing, storing, and accessing data in a social context — data structures for social communication. What makes argument difficult are the multiple structures that arguers have to construct and negotiate when reading and composing. In this paper, we describe the WARRANT project, (...) a project designed to identify data structures of written argument and to design and implement computer tools to aid in the reading and design of argument. (shrink)

Dans cet ouvrage, Gadamer (1900-2002) nous confie un veritable testament philosophique. Abordant des questions centrales de la pensee contemporaine, le maitre de l'hermeneutique livre ici ses dernieres reflexions sur des themes qui lui tiennent a coeur: l'art et la poesie, la reconnaissance et l'humanisme, l'amitie et l'ecoute. L'hermeneutique, selon Gadamer, est la theorie selon laquelle nous devons apprendre a ecouter.

Giuseppe Franco hat mich mit süditalienischer Liebenswürdigkeit dazu eingeladen, einen kleinen Beitrag zum vorliegenden Hommage-Band zu schreiben, in dem ich von meiner „intellektuellen Beziehung“ zu Dir und „von der Bedeutung des Kritischen Rationalismus“ für meinen „eigenen Denkweg“ berichte. Kennengelernt haben wir einander vor inzwischen 53 Jahren kurz nach Deinem Dienstantritt an der Mannheimer Wirtschaftshochschule. Ich studierte damals in Wien, vor allem bei Bela Juhos, der in einer Art Dachkammer der Alten Universität seine Seminare, z. B. eines über „Wissenschaftstheorie und Quantenmechanik“ (...) mit maximal zehn älteren Studenten und bereits habilitierten Wissenschaftsphilosophen abhielt, sowie beim Altmeister Victor Kraft, dessen Privatissime-Veranstaltungen in seiner Wohnung in der Walfischgasse von noch weniger, handverlesenen Geistesschaffenden besucht wurden. (shrink)