This essay analyses the specific rhetoric of degeneration which was observable in the antisemitic polemic discourse of the last decades of 19th century. It provides an overview of the representation of Jewish art und artists as it took shape in the antisemitic literature of the Wilhelminian epoch. The growing emphasis placed by psychiatrists and racial theorists on the pathologies of the,,Jewish race“, such as hysteria or degeneration, resulted in the tendency to pathologize Jewish art and artists, which were (...) deemed responsible for the alleged decline of German culture. Mere aesthetic categories underwent a process of reduction and ideologization and were finally used for defamatory purposes, as shown in the case of the antisemitic denigration of Heinrich Heine. In order to demonstrate this, the analysis outlines the strict dichotomic logic of these argumentations, as the definition and consolidation of an ideal German essence was usually based on the construction of a degenerated Jewish identity. (shrink)

This paper explores evolving treatments for hysteria in the eighteenth century by examining a selection of works by both physician-writers and educated literary women. The treatments I identify—which range from aggressive bloodlettings, diets, and beatings, to exercise, fresh air, and writing cures—reveal a unique culture of therapy in which female sufferers and doctors exert an influence on one another's notions of what constitutes appropriate management of women's mental illness. A scrutiny of this exchange of ideas suggests that female patients (...) were not simply oppressed and silenced by male practitioners; rather, their collective voice, intellect, and expertise helped to form progressive treatments for eighteenth-century hysteria. (shrink)

According to the 2020 docudrama, The Social Dilemma, our very addiction to “social media” has, today, become encapsulated in the tensions between its facilitation as a mode of interpersonal communication and as an insidious conduit for machine learning, surveillance capitalism and manipulation. Amidst a variety of interviewees – many of whom are former employees of social media companies – the documentary finishes on a unanimous conclusion: something must change. By using the docudrama as a pertinent example of our “social media (...) malaise,” and while remaining aware of the problems and unethical practices encompassing international digital/social media companies, this paper will argue that we continually refrain from the very question(ing) that would call these companies to account: what does the algorithm desire? In approaching this question, this article will draw from Lacan’s ‘hysterical’ position in accordance with Robert Pfaller’s notion of interpassivity. Together, these concepts will be used to provide a psychoanalytic account of how our subjectivization in social media renders an unconscious endorsement that both frames our awareness of the dilemmas encompassing social media, while also positing an inherent limitation that may offer a possible path out of its impeding affects. This subjective ambivalence – delegated yet reluctantly disavowed – offers an opportunity to realign discussions on the lost object of desire (objet a) and its reproduction in social media algorithms. In so doing, the case will be made that an account of interpassivity can help lay bare the hysterical significance underscoring our digital subjectivization. (shrink)

This volume is an introduction to the relationship between psychoanalysis and literature. Jean-Michel Rabaté takes Sigmund Freud as his point of departure, studying in detail Freud's integration of literature in the training of psychoanalysts and how literature provided crucial terms for his myriad theories, such as the Oedipus complex. Rabaté subsequently surveys other theoreticians such as Wilfred Bion, Marie Bonaparte, Carl Jung, Jacques Lacan, and Slavoj Žižek. This Introduction is organized thematically, examining in detail important terms like (...) deferred action, fantasy, hysteria, paranoia, sublimation, the uncanny, trauma, and perversion. Using examples from Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare to Sophie Calle and Yann Martel, Rabaté demonstrates that the psychoanalytic approach to literature, despite its erstwhile controversy, has recently reemerged as a dynamic method of interpretation. (shrink)

In this article, I argue for a reconsideration of the taxonomy of the Histrionic Personality Disorder. First, HPD does not carry the negative ethical implications of the other Cluster Bs, which are Anti-Social, Borderline, and Narcissistic. Using Aristotelian notions of character as a heuristic device, I argue that ontologically HPD is not a personality disorder, but instead a cultural disorder, a result of attitudes toward traditionally feminine styles of interaction. This explains the confusion in the research between HPD and (...) class='Hi'>hysteria and also the curious paucity of literature on HPD itself in contrast to the other Cluster Bs. (shrink)

Introduction: Not many writers have made suggestions about Saul’s mental state as reported in the Judaic-Christian bible. He became king under the tutelage of Samuel, a highly-respected prophet of the Israelite God, Yahweh. At some points during his reign, the biblical narrative depicted him as, at least, mentally unstable, if not decidedly insane. Modern-day writers, in some cases have provided lists of conditions, which purport to represent Saul’s psychological malady. None, however proves adequate or appropriate to encompass the complexity of (...) his behavior. The Safety-Oriented Personality Style (SOPS) or Phobicentric Psychopathology (PCP) appears to offer the best explanation of Saul’s psychological condition. Purpose: The main purpose of this paper is to offer a modern-day analysis/explanation of Saul’s apparently disturbed behavior. Evidence for the facts about Saul’s fascinating presentation is adduced both from the biblical passages and from present-day psychological theory. The previous explanations of the psychological disorder that plagued Saul, the first king of Israel, have focused on depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, hysteria, and bipolar disorder. The associated symptoms, however, have been vague and, in some cases, apparently unrepresentative of psychological nosology or, in general, they fail to conform to the prevailing nomenclature. Method: The present study introduces the Safety-Oriented Personality Style (SOPS) or Phobicentric Psychopathology (PCP), a relatively newly-unveiled chronic, anxiety-based disorder, to provide the “best” explanation of the ancient king’s perplexing conduct. Biblical passages pertaining to the topic provide the historical context of the events, which depict Saul’s provable psychopathology. Result: The evidence seems to clearly indicate that the explanation that Saul’s actions were mainly controlled by SOPS/PCP, a chronic anxiety disorder, is valid, applying most aptly to his reaction to David’s military and religious successes, and even to the recorded circumstances of his death. Conclusion: The historical account of Saul’s life and death, recorded primarily in the Christian bible, has remained intriguing, though somewhat esoteric. Probably as a result, its portrayal in the psychological literature has been scant. While the SOPS/PCP construct has apparently helped to provide grounds for diagnostic consensus that Saul’s problem was chronic anxiety, the newness of SOPS/PCP would tend to limit its purview. On a different but relevant level, the study also demonstrates the feasibility of common endeavors between the scientific and theological communities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:(P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American Censorship. by Stephanie Peebles TaveraEtta M. MaddenStephanie Peebles Tavera. (P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American Censorship. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022. Hardback, xii + 220 pp. ISBN 978-1-4744-9319-2.Utopian Studies readers first saw Stephanie Peebles Tavera’s work in print in her 2018 essay on reproductive health in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland. More recently, in (P)rescription (...) Narratives, she gives readers a view of the much broader historical scope of her scholarship in literary and cultural studies. Tavera’s analysis of what she labels “feminist medical fiction” considers not only novels and short stories but also literary reviews, dramas, and documentary films, many of which will be unfamiliar to readers of utopian and dystopian literature. Yet the book contextualizes the ways in which these works capture the “utopian possibilities” of women writers who pushed for breaking the boundaries of the dystopian strictures of embodied life. The literary works “rescript” what had been prescribed by others as “normalized behavior,” from the latter-nineteenth century through the Progressive Era (5, 37). As Tavera illustrates through her detailed analysis, these women’s narratives provide “interventions that... interrupt the dissemination of false [End Page 612] narratives of the female body” and “alter the course of cultural development toward greater inclusivity” (5).To establish the temporal boundaries for the project, Tavera emphasizes the Comstock Law, established in 1873, and the death of its author Anthony Comstock in 1915. While Comstock’s work often has been understood as restricting pornography, she explains the Comstock Law as more than merely that. Comstock sought to control what he and others saw as sexual deviation, which included birth control in any form. Tavera also bookends the project with lawsuits associated with Victoria Woodhull and Margaret Sanger, both women who advocated for abortion and birth control as means of allowing women to avoid the strictures over their bodies. Additionally, she explains, Comstock’s racism caused him to completely overlook Black women, ironically allowing a space in which Black women’s feminist medical fiction especially rescripts “normalized behavior” (37)—a topic she pursues in two parts of the book.The book follows a roughly chronological path as it examines four topics related to women’s health, brilliantly organized into “(p)rescriptions,” indicated by Rx, rather than chapters with numbers. Rx1, “Crip Medicine,” illustrates how authors such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman pointed to the socially constructed status of “hysteria” in a patriarchal culture that saw women as deviant by nature. Instead, these authors advocated for a more holistic examination of women’s health, impacted by the environments in which they lived. Drawing from Lyman Tower Sargent’s widely accepted view of utopianism as dreaming of a place “considerably better than the society in which the author lived,” she underscores “the utopian impulse underlies much of the work of feminist medical fiction” (39). In particular, writers of feminist medical fiction were “driven by failure.”Perhaps most familiar to illustrate this point is Gilman’s work, such as “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which illustrated how the culture failed certain characters. The narrator of that story suffers postpartum depression and is made worse by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell’s rest cure. Consequently, Gilman proceeded to write other works, such as Moving the Mountain (1911) and then Herland (1915), which push readers to envision “alternative societies” without such destructive patriarchal medical practices (39). But Tavera also explains how Louisa May Alcott’s Eight Cousins, or the Aunt-Hill (1875) critiques contemporary culture by providing a “domestic utopia” in the female domain of Aunt-Hill, wherein the male Dr. Alec Campbell demonstrates “a better way... of caring for the female body” (55). And another key example is Rebecca Harding [End Page 613] Davis’s Kitty’s Choice: A Story of Berrytown (1875). Berrytown is described as “the Utopia in actual laths, orchards, and bushel-measures of the advance guard of the reform party in the United States” (qtd. in Tavera 55). Through its two physicians, Dr. Muller and Dr. McCall, who represent homeopathic and allopathic practitioners, readers see that the society... (shrink)

M'illumino/d'immenso - I'm lit/with immensity is Geoffrey Brock's translation of Giuseppe Ungaretti's poem Mattina. In the poem's minimalism, Ungaretti points to the maximal: the richness of poetry's expressive possibilities and the power of thinking in literature. This book addresses the fascination of readers to transcend the boundaries of their own in fiction, and literature's capacity, according to Kant, even to evoke, with the help of the development of aesthetic ideas, representations that exceed what is empirically and conceptually graspable (...) - in case studies about myths of creativity, images of death and the beyond after the 'death of God', of the soul, of melancholy as the dark ground of genius, of metamorphoses of both evil and good, of ecstasy, of the economy of self-sacrifice, of the art of resistance, and, among others, about figurations of biography and the portrait as approaches to singularity, what is particular and cannot be fully subsumed to any universality. (shrink)

(1996). Surprise in literature. Angelaki: Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 58-68.

How does literature illuminate the way we live? Maurice Natanson, a prominent champion of phenomenology, draws upon this method's unique power to show how fiction can highlight aspects of experience that are normally left unexamined. By exploring the structure of the everyday world, Natanson reveals the "uncanny" that lies at the core of the ordinary. Phenomenology--which involves the questioning of that which we usually take for granted--is for Natanson the essence of philosophy. Drawing upon his philosophical predecessors Edmund Husserl, (...) Alfred Schutz, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Natanson paves his own way with stories and examples that themselves bear witness to how phenomenology occurs in literature. In considering such works as Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, and Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Natanson shows how literature opens us to the domain of possibility and how metaphor offers philosophical power when we think about freedom and change. This book, written by one of the twentieth century's leading phenomenologists, will interest students in philosophy and in literature. They will value the work particularly for its clarification of concepts and terms that frequently emerge in the contemporary intellectual climate. (shrink)

This collection emphasizes a cross-disciplinary approach to the problem of scale, with essays ranging in subject matter from literature to film, architecture, the plastic arts, philosophy, and scientific and political writing. Its contributors consider a variety of issues provoked by the sudden and pressing shifts in scale brought on by globalization and the era of the Anthropocene, including: the difficulties of defining the concept of scale; the challenges that shifts in scale pose to knowledge formation; the role of scale (...) in mediating individual subjectivity and agency; the barriers to understanding objects existing in scalar realms different from our own; the role of scale in mediating the relationship between humans and the environment; and the nature of power, authority, and democracy at different social scales. (shrink)

Through the examination of anti-psychiatric theory and literary texts, this timely and thought-provoking volume explores the possibilities of liberating our habitual patterns of perception and consciousness beyond the confines of a capitalist era. In Post-Capitalist Subjectivity in Literature and Anti-Psychiatry, Skott-Myhre asks the question, how might we be different if we didn't live in a capitalist society? By drawing on Marxist and post-Marxist theory, and conducting nuanced analysis of the professional writings of anti-psychiatrists including Basaglia and Laing, and the (...) work of fiction writers Kafka and Garcia Marquez, the text identifies alternative conceptualizations of the self. Focusing in particular on portrayals of institutions and the family, Skott-Myhre proposes that these social systems offer new modes of reading the world and ourselves which will transform social organization and free subjectivity from dominant capitalist structures. This transdisciplinary text responds to a revitalized interest in alternatives to traditional psychology, an interest in life beyond capitalism, and the crisis in the traditional family. Post-Capitalist Subjectivity in Literature and Anti-Psychiatry will offer timely reading for graduate students, researchers, and scholars in the fields of cultural studies, psychology, philosophy, family studies, and interdisciplinary studies. (shrink)

The semiotic model that disregards the normative context represented by the protagonist examines how we can distinguish the three conceptions of heroism, namely hero, semi-hero, and anti-hero. What are the methodological criteria whereby we can follow the protagonist in the text from beginning to end? To answer them, this article tries to present a model made up of five stages/criteria which constitute a semiotic model by means of which the connection to heroism can be determined. These are: (1) motivation, (2) (...) will, (3) ability, (4) execution, and (5) outcome. These stages can be logically classified into three categories: 1) Pre-action (the first three stages), 2) Action (the fourth stage), 3) Post-action (the fifth stage). The model proposed here suits all types of narrative and drama and all performance and film production arts. (shrink)

Richly illustrated study drawing on art, literature and science to explore Victorian attitudes towards sight.

Volume 23, Issue 2, June 2019, Page 120-123.

The United Nations World Tourism Organization has acknowledged 2020 as the worst year in tourism history due to the worldwide pandemic COVID-19. Destinations, tourists, local communities, stakeholders, and residents, and their daily activities were affected. Thus, wellbeing and resilience are two crucial variables to help the industry and the people recover. This research aims to analyze early positive approaches and attitudes to respond to the negative impact of COVID-19 in tourism everyday activities that have at its core wellbeing and resilience, (...) the two main variables of the Positive Psychology field of studies. A systematic literature review was conducted, following PRISMA guidelines to achieve this aim. The research was done using the Online Knowledge Library and all the available databases. The research led to 32 articles that were screened using the inclusion and exclusion criteria. A total of 18 scientific articles met all criteria. Overall, results show that a positive and resilient approach to deal with the adverse outcomes of the pandemic is a concern for stakeholders and the future of the organizations in the tourism and hospitality sector, as is tourists’ wellbeing. However, less research has been done on wellbeing and a clear lack of research regarding residents’ wellbeing and resilience is evident. A deeper study of wellbeing and resilience in tourism is needed, and actual practices and interventions to ensure that all tourism actors have the resources to overcome the pandemic and restart the industry’s daily lives feeling well and safe. (shrink)

This article reconstructs the forgotten friendship between Georges Bataille and the Russian émigré poet and philosopher Boris Poplavsky. Comparing their solar metaphysics, I focus on conceptions of friendship, sacrifice and depersonalisation. First, I retrace Bataille’s relationship to early Surrealis and Russian circles in interwar Paris, with a focus on his friendship with Irina Odoevtseva. I then offer a novel reading of Poplavsky’s poetry through the lens of Bataille’s philosophy, analysing a recurring motif that I call ‘dark solarity’. Uncovering a hidden (...) intertextual dialogue between Poplavsky and Bataille, I argue for Poplavsky’s lasting impact on Bataille’s anti-Icarian sun cult. Finally, my paper demonstrates how Poplavsky’s writings on solar sacrifice, excess and friendship left marks on Bataille’s vision of a solar community, embodied in the secret society Acéphale. The dialogue between Poplavsky and Bataille, I finally suggest, is a missing piece in the entangled history of Russian and French philosophy, as well as an original contribution to discourses on friendship in twentieth-century continental thought. (shrink)

Poetry of life in literature and through literature, and the vast territory in between - as vast as human life itself - where they interact and influence each other, is the nerve of human existence. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are profoundly dissatisfied with the stark reality of life's swift progress onward, and the enigmatic and irretrievable meaning of the past. And so we dramatise our existence, probing deeply for a lyrical and heartfelt yet (...) universally valid sense of our experience. It is in great works of literature that we seek those hidden springs that so move us. It is in honour of this search that this collection focuses on the creative imagination at work in literature and aesthetics. (shrink)

The article explores the possibilities of literary studies as a hermeneutics of the social by focusing on intermediations of literary and social studies in the present and in the early days of the DVjs, i.e. in the 1920s. It first investigates, how sociology interrogates itself by reading detective stories (Kracauer, Boltanski). As a testing ground for the productivity of the proposed orientation the article then takes a closer look at German crime fiction of the interwar years (Perutz, Jacques) and demonstrates (...) how these novels problematize the workings of a social imaginary in the »time of monsters«. (shrink)

BackgroundVulnerability is a key concept in traditional and contemporary bioethics. In the philosophical literature, vulnerability is understood not only to be an ontological condition of humanity, but also to be a consequence of contingent factors. Within bioethics debates, vulnerable populations are defined in relation to compromised capacity to consent, increased susceptibility to harm, and/or exploitation. Although vulnerability has historically been associated with older adults, to date, no comprehensive or systematic work exists on the meaning of their vulnerability. To fill (...) this gap, we analysed the literature on aged care for the meaning, foundations, and uses of vulnerability as an ethical concept.MethodsUsing PRISMA guidelines, we conducted a systematic review of argument-based ethics literature in four major databases: PubMed, Embase®, Web of Science™, and Philosopher’s Index. These covered biomedical, philosophy, bioethical, and anthropological literature. Titles, abstracts, and full texts of identified papers were screened for relevance. The snowball technique and citation tracking were used to identify relevant publications. Data analysis and synthesis followed the preparatory steps of the coding process detailed in the QUAGOL methodology.ResultsThirty-eight publications met our criteria and were included. Publication dates ranged from 1984 to 2020, with 17 publications appearing between 2015 and 2020. Publications originated from all five major continents, as indicated by the affiliation of the first author. Our analyses revealed that the concept of vulnerability could be distinguished in terms of basic human and situational vulnerability. Six dimensions of older adults’ vulnerability were identified: physical; psychological; relational/interpersonal; moral; sociocultural, political, and economic; and existential/spiritual. This analysis suggested three ways to relate to older adults’ vulnerability: understanding older adults’ vulnerability, taking care of vulnerable older adults, and intervening through socio-political-economic measures.ConclusionsThe way in which vulnerability was conceptualised in the included publications overlaps with distinctions used within contemporary bioethics literature. Dimensions of aged care vulnerability map onto defining features of humans, giving weight to the claim that vulnerability represents an inherent characteristic of humans. Vulnerability is mostly a value-laden concept, endowed with positive and negative connotations. Most publications focused on and promoted aged care, strengthening the idea that care is a defining practice of being human. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10.2 (2000) 175-188 [Access article in PDF] Scope Note 38 Bioethics Resources on the Web * Once described as an "enormous used book store with volumes stacked on shelves and tables and overflowing onto the floor" (Pool, Robert. 1994. Turning an Info-Glut into a Library. Science 266 (7 October): 20-22, p. 20), Internet resources now receive numerous levels of organization, from basic directory listings (...) to elaborate "links" (cross-references to other Internet documents) that flash and glow in the dark. In many ways, the Internet functions as a direct extension of the traditional library. Following linked references across various sites is an electronic version of browsing library stacks, and the serendipitous discoveries made while "surfing the Net" recall the wonders of physically going "book-to-book." Although many of the Internet's best aspects augment library strengths by eliminating physical distance from sources, Net resources pose unique problems for researchers. It is not always clear who is responsible for the content of Web documents, when the document was produced, or how often (if ever) it is updated. Internet resource tools, then, must enable researchers to identify appropriate resources and to evaluate what they find when they get there. Web Research as Taking "Snapshots" Given the Internet's visual nature and fluid content, the process of conducting research on the Web has been likened to taking an informal picture of information on a specific date at a particular time. This metaphor also conveys the "zoom-in" aspect of searching through Web pages by going from general to specific categories. In the first section of this Scope Note, National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRCBL) staff present a snapshot of bioethics resources taken during the spring months of 2000. Entries are divided into the categories of directories, electronic journals, full-text documents, news/current awareness, and teaching resources. In the two subsequent sections, this series of categories is repeated for entries on a specific topic within bioethics-genetics-and again for general search and evaluation tools. Where a Web site may contain pages applicable [End Page 175] to more than one category, multiple entries are made for that site with appropriate information for each category.Much as telecommunication advances have strengthened the relationship of patients and providers as partners, the dynamic nature of the Internet acknowledges that the researcher functions as a librarian whenever accessing the Web. It is our hope that BIOETHICSLINE and the other NRCBL databases not only will enable researchers to search the Web more efficiently, but also will help them to evaluate what they find when they get there. Bioethicsline on the Web: An International Plan in Progress Once only available through libraries, the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), the funding agency for the ongoing development of the BIOETHICS LINE® database from the Kennedy Institute, has provided free Web access to that database of 63,000 citations since September 1998 through Internet Grateful Med. Plans are now underway to eliminate such specialty databases and incorporate all citations into PubMed (for journal articles) or LOCATORplus (for book-like materials and chapters in books). Both of these databases are likewise available at no cost on the Web. In the transition to PubMed and LOCATORplus some features of BIOETHICSLINE that presently are available may be lost. Researchers are encouraged to contact the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature with search requests or for search strategy assistance with either the current or the future system ([email protected]).The inclusion of bioethics citations in PubMed and LOCATORplus will have several advantages. First, unique keywords from the Bioethics Thesaurus will be considered for inclusion in Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), the indexing vocabulary for PubMed and LOCATORplus, thereby enhancing retrieval of relevant clinical literature by offering more precise terminology covering ethical issues. Second, it will be easier to identify foreign-language materials, which are not currently included in the scope of BIOETHICSLINE. Third, the updating schedule will become more frequent. On the other hand, there may be some loss of searching precision because certain specialized features... (shrink)

This book demonstrates the presence of literature within speech act theory and the utility of speech act theory in reading literary works. Though the founding text of speech act theory, J. L. Austin's _How to Do Things with Words_, repeatedly expels literature from the domain of felicitous speech acts, literature is an indispensable presence within Austin's book. It contains many literary references but also uses as essential tools literary devices of its own: imaginary stories that serve as (...) examples and imaginary dialogues that forestall potential objections. _How to Do Things with Words_ is not the triumphant establishment of a fully elaborated theory of speech acts, but the story of a failure to do that, the story of what Austin calls a "bogging down." After an introductory chapter that explores Austin's book in detail, the two following chapters show how Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man in different ways challenge Austin's speech act theory generally and his expulsion of literature specifically. Derrida shows that literature cannot be expelled from speech acts—rather that what he calls "iterability" means that any speech act may be literature. De Man asserts that speech act theory involves a radical dissociation between the cognitive and positing dimensions of language, what Austin calls language's "constative" and "performative" aspects. Both Derrida and de Man elaborate new speech act theories that form the basis of new notions of responsible and effective politico-ethical decision and action. The fourth chapter explores the role of strong emotion in effective speech acts through a discussion of passages in Derrida, Wittgenstein, and Austin. The final chapter demonstrates, through close readings of three passages in Proust, the way speech act theory can be employed in an illuminating way in the accurate reading of literary works. (shrink)

This is a theoretical and methodological statement of what isn’t and what is Cognitive poetics. It is focused on Peter Stockwell’s discussion of deixis; but, I claim, much of what I have to say on Stockwell’s work would apply to some degree to the work of many other critics. I argue that Stockwell translates traditional critical terms into a “cognitive” language, but does not rely on cognitive processes to account for issues related to the texts discussed; and that he uses (...) these terms to label or classify poetic expressions rather than point out their interaction in generating poetic effects. The present paper does not presume to tell what is the “correct” way to handle those terms, but attempts to give examples of how the same terms could be used with reference to cognitive processes, so as to account for poetic effects. (shrink)

In Giulio Aleni’s The True Source of the Myriad Things chapter 4 contains the following question and answer:One might say that it is like seeds: from only one seed the subsequent branches, trunk, and blossoms are produced in a truly spontaneous manner. There need not be an external creator. All things have their own inherent natures, and they come forth on the basis of their inherent natures spontaneously; why must they have some external maker?1I [i.e., Aleni] say: The sprouting of (...) a seed cannot be separated from the efficient cause. Suppose that the seed had no prior tree to produce it. Then the present tree would not have come to be. Therefore the prior tree is considered the... (shrink)

Interpersonal coordination in soccer has become a trending topic in sports sciences, and several studies have examined how interpersonal coordination unfolds at different levels (i.e., dyads, sub-groups, teams). Investigations have largely focused on interactional behaviors at micro and macro levels through tasks from dyadic (i.e., 1 vs. 1) to team (i.e., 11 vs. 11) levels. However, as the degree of representativeness of a task depends on the magnitude of the relationship between simulated and intended environments, it is necessary to address (...) a discussion on the correspondence between competitive and practice/experimental settings in soccer. The aims of this paper are to: (i) provide a brief description of the main concepts underlying the subject of interpersonal coordination in sports teams; (ii) demonstrate, through exemplar research findings, how interpersonal coordination in soccer unfolds at different scales; and (iii), discuss how coaches and researchers may ensure representativeness for practice and experimental tasks. We observed that papers addressing the analysis of interpersonal coordination tendencies in soccer often resort to dyadic (one vs. one) or sub-group (many vs. many) experimental tasks, instead of full-sized (11 vs. 11) games. Consequently, the extent to which such patterns reflect those observed in competition is somewhat uncertain. The design of practice and/or experimental tasks that rely on sub-phases of the game (e.g., 1 vs. 1, 4 vs. 4) should ensure the preservation of players’ behavior patterns in intended match conditions (11 vs. 11). This can be accomplished by measuring the level of action fidelity of the task, ensuring correspondence and successful transfer across contexts. (shrink)

The prevalence, course and prognosis of diseases in patients referred to tertiary medical centers frequently differ from those treated in primary care settings. Extrapolation of findings from one population to another may therefore be unwarranted. Other factors that contribute to misinterpretation of medical literature include failure to distinguish statistical from clinical significance and advocacy of medical interventions prior to adequate clinical trials.

This essay concentrates on philosophizing that happens outside and in addition to planned philosophical discussions, philosophizing that comes alive in practice, that is intensified in children’s encounters with the world, with others, with language, in play. It contemplates how adults, educators and parents encounter children and are affected by children’s philosophical explorations. What is the role of the adult in children’s philosophical questioning? How can we respond to children’s philosophizing? What does it mean to do so? The essay explores philosophical (...) exercises for early childhood educators in a range of examples from literature – memoirs, autobiographies, fiction and works that play in between those. By thinking through these literary examples, it investigates how educators can prepare for philosophical encounters with children through exercises of reading and thinking. In doing so the essay experiments with a form of writing that itself becomes a philosophical exercise. Through the examples and exercises the essay suggests how early childhood educators can train for a pedagogical immediacy that involves listening to the philosophical and existential questioning in children’s play, tantrums, and silences. The investigations and readings of the examples are not meant to lead to conclusions that can be directly applied in pedagogical practices; neither do they work as arguments for listening or listening in a particular way to children. What we get, and what I am looking for, is rather the experience of working and thinking through these examples. (shrink)