Summary The enthusiasm of Renaissance humanists for classical learning greatly influenced the development of botany in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Humanist scholars restored the treatises of Theophrastus, Pliny, Galen and Dioscorides on botany and materia medica to general circulation and argued for their use as textbooks in Renaissance universities. Renaissance botanists' respect for classical precepts and models of the proper methods for studying plants temporarily discouraged the use of naturalistic botanical illustration, but encouraged other techniques for collecting and (...) communicating new observations: herbaria, botanical gardens and field trips. (shrink)

This paper provides a translation of the introduction, titled ‘Account of the work’ Ratio operis, to the first edition of Genera plantarum, published in 1737 by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. The text derives its significance from the fact that it is the only published text in which Linnaeus engaged in an explicit discussion of his taxonomic method. Most importantly, it shows that Linnaeus was clearly aware that a classification of what he called ‘natural genera’ could not be achieved by (...) a top-down approach of logical division, but had to rely on inductive, bottom-up procedures. The translation is supplemented by explanatory notes. (shrink)

We show that if H is an effectively completely decomposable computable torsion-free abelian group, then there is a computable copy G of H such that G has computable orders but not orders of every degree.

The volume documents, and makes an original contribution to, an astonishing period in twentieth-century philosophy—the progress of Arne Naess's ecophilosophy from its inception to the present. It includes Naess's most crucial polemics with leading thinkers, drawn from sources as diverse as scholarly articles, correspondence, TV interviews and unpublished exchanges. The book testifies to the skeptical and self-correcting aspects of Naess's vision, which has deepened and broadened to include third world and feminist perspectives. Philosophical Dialogues is an essential addition to the (...) literature on environmental philosophy. (shrink)

Et uventet og uformodet bidrag og introduktion til en filosofisk forståelse af den nye globaliserede verdensorden, der kommer fra et nyt sted i denne vores globaliserede verden: Mexiko. Ny og ukendt i hvert fald i en dansk sammenhæng – hverken vores stats- eller udenrigsminister har garanteret hørt om Enrique Dussel før. -/- Forfatteren forholder sig eksplicit til en europæisk filosofisk tradition, men udbygger en egensindig forståelse af både filosofi og dens anvendelse i enmoderne verdensorden – netop på baggrund af en (...) udkantserfaring i forhold til den fremherskende filosofi, politik og verdensforståelse. Hans idéer har et nyt og tankevækkende anderledes perspektiv i forhold til den kendte vestlige forståelsesramme af virkeligheden. -/- Dussel kan sammenlignes med en lang række tænkere og filosoffer, som han også forholder sig til og er inspireret af – blandt de europæiske især Ricœur og Lévinas – men også den nutidige Naomi Klein. Materien er tungere og kræver mere fordybelse, men den er autentisk og fornyende, også pga. forfatterens baggrund, født i Argentina, hvor hans hus blev bombesprængt i 70'erne i sidste århundrede, da det daværende diktatur mente at måtte bekæmpe anderledes tænkende på denne måde – ligesom andre alternative tænkere (f.eks. en Horatio Cerutti Guldberg), der alle emigrerede til Mexiko. (Tekst fra pressemeddelelse) -/- Filosofi kræver universel gyldighed og en frigørelsesfilosofi må derfor kræve frigørelse for alle mennesker. Frihed er dog meget ulige fordelt, og frigørelsesfilosofi tager følgelig parti for dem, der mest tydeligt er ekskluderede fra samfundsmæssige goder og politiske rettigheder: Den tredjeverdens fattige under den globaliserede kapitalisme, oprindelige folk og farvede i racistiske samfund, kvinder i mandschauvinistiske kulturer, illegale immigranter m.fl.. -/- I Enrique Dussels frigørelsesfilosofi skal etik skal derfor ikke blot diskutere formelle principper, men hele tiden medtænke afhjælpelse af materiel lidelse. Politik kan tilsvarende ikke blot understrege demokratiske principper og menneskerettigheder, men må også indeholde en kritik af selve det kapitalistiske økonomiske system, ligesom der skal være en strategi tilforbedring af kårene for de underprivilegerede. Og i en sådan strategi er staten det vigtigste bolværk mod de transnationale selskabers udbytning af verdensressourcer. -/- Med dette bevidst marginale perspektiv kan Dussel desuden vise, at der i vores almindelige kulturarv og filosofi er begreber og tankegange, der bidrager til at tilsløre den herskende globale ulighed. Over for den udbredte opfattelse af historien som en udvikling fra det traditionelle samfund til moderniteten, viser Dussel, at vores modernitet modsvares af underudvikling og globaludbytning, og at dette ikke er et enestående fænomen. Tidligere har f.eks. Spanien udviklet en meget rig og forfinet højkultur med individuel refleksivitet i sit centrum, der kun var mulig ved at udpine den daværende globale periferi, altså indianerne i på det amerikanske kontinent. -/- Dussels fremhævelse af det marginale perspektiv, hans kompromisløse stillingtagen til fordel for den svage part i ethvert menneskeligt forhold og hans stringent logiske ideologikritik har vakt respekt blandt filosoffer ogintellektuelle over hele kloden. Med denne antologi præsenteres Dussels filosofi for første gang for et dansk publikum. -/- Enrique Dussel (f. 1934), født i Argentina og videreudannet i Spanien, Frankrig, Tyskland og Israel. Doktor fra Universidad Complutense i Madrid og Sorbonne iParis. Siden 1975 professor i etik og politisk filosofi på Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Iztapalapa og fra 1976 også på Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, begge i Mexico by. Blandt hans vigtigste værker er Ética de la liberación [Frigørelsesetikken], der er kommet i fem udgaver siden 1998. Flere af hans øvrige værker er oversat til engelsk, tysk og fransk, universiteter over hele verden har udnævnt ham til æresdoktor, og han er hovedtaler på den filosofiske verdenskongres i Korea i 2008. (Bogens bagside tekst - udvidet version). (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to identify a kind of discrimination that has hitherto gone unrecognised. ‘Terminalism’ is discrimination against the dying, or treating the terminally ill worse than they would expect to be treated if they were not dying. I provide four examples from healthcare settings of this kind of discrimination: hospice eligibility requirements, allocation protocols for scarce medical resources, right to try laws and right to die laws. I conclude by offering some reflections on why discrimination against (...) the dying has been hard to identify, how it differs from ageism and ableism, and its significance for end-of-life care. (shrink)

A familiar post-Kantian criticism contends that Kant enslaves sensibility under the yoke of practical reason. Friedrich Schiller advanced a version of this criticism to which Kant publicly responded. Recent commentators have emphasized the role that Kant’s reply assigns to the pleasure that accompanies successful moral action. In contrast, I argue that Kant’s reply relies primarily on the sublime feeling that arises when we merely contemplate the moral law. In fact, the pleasures emphasized by other recent commentators depend on this sublime (...) feeling. These facts illuminate Kant’s views regarding the relationship between morality, freedom, and the development of moral feelings. (shrink)

Plato seems to have been pessimistic about how most people stand with regard to virtue. However, unlike the Stoics, he did not conclude that most people are vicious. Rather, as we know from discussions across several dialogues, he countenanced decent ethical conditions that fall short of genuine virtue, which he limited to the philosopher. Despite Plato's obvious interest in this issue, commentators rarely follow his lead by investigating in detail such conditions in the dialogues. When scholars do investigate what kind (...) of virtue, if any, Plato thinks is open to non-philosophers, they typically look to the Republic. But in the Republic Plato sets out an ideal city; therefore, the virtue available to non-philosophers there is likely different from what he thinks is available to them in the real world. If we want to determine Plato's thoughts about the virtue of actual non-philosophers, we must look elsewhere. In this paper, I set my sights on the Phaedo. (shrink)

This study examines how individual members of the public make moral sense of the potentially conflicting “economic problem” or “public health problem” representations of the COVID-19 crisis when judging responsible business behavior. The data are based on a qualitative survey involving a thought experiment with 119 participants in the United States conducted at the initial stage of the pandemic. This article proposes a typology matrix using the theories of cognitive polyphasia and cognitive dissonance to understand better individual moral sensemaking of (...) responsible business behavior in the context of a societal paradox in which there are contradictory and interdependent demands between important social objectives. The typology, referred to as the 4R Model of Moral Sensemaking of Competing Social Problems, provides insights for how companies may be perceived when responding to competing social problems, expanding the micro-CSR (corporate social responsibility) and paradox literatures. (shrink)

The Toulmin diagram layout is very familiar and widely used, particularly in the teaching of critical thinking skills. The conventional box-and-arrow diagram is equally familiar and widespread. Translation between the two throws up a number of interesting challenges. Some of these challenges (such as the relationship between Toulmin warrants and their counterparts in traditional diagrams) represent slightly different ways of looking at old and deep theoretical questions. Others (such as how to allow Toulmin diagrams to be recursive) are diagrammatic versions (...) of questions that have already been addressed in artificial intelligence models of argument. But there are further questions (such as the relationships between refutations, rebuttals and undercutters, and the roles of multiple warrants) that are posed as a specific result of examining the diagram inter-translation problem. These three classes of problems are discussed. To the first class are addressed solutions based on engineering pragmatism; to the second class, are addressed solutions drawn from the appropriate literature; and to the third class, fuller exploration is offered justifying the approaches taken in developing solutions that offer both pragmatic utility and theoretical interest. Finally, these solutions are explored briefly in the context of the Araucaria system, showing the ways in which analysts can tackle arguments either using one diagrammatic style or another, or even a combination of the two. (shrink)