The Gendered Cyborg brings together material from a variety of disciplines that analyze the relationship between gender and technoscience, and the way that this relationship is represented through ideas, language and visual imagery. The book opens with key feminist articles from the history and philosophy of science. They look at the ways that modern scientific thinking has constructed oppositional dualities such as objectivity/subjectivity, human/machine, nature/science, and male/female, and how these have constrained who can engage in science/technology and how they have (...) limited our ideas of the possibilities for both humanity and science. Later sections contain readings that present key feminist theories about representation to examine how gender and technoscience are represented in areas of particular contemporary interest: the new human reproductive technologies, science fiction, film and the Internet. The readings constantly ask "Is this for women, for human beings?" Contributors: Alison Adam, Anne Balsamo, Lynda K. Bundtzen, Barbara Creed, Mary Ann Doane, Dion Farquhar, Jennifer González, Evelynn M. Hammonds, Donna Haraway, Fiona Hovenden, Luce Irigaray, Linda Janes, Gill Kirkup, Nina Lykke, Sadie Plant, Rosalind Pollack Perchesky, Londa Schiebinger, Vivian Sobchack, Deborah Lynn Steinberg, Nancy Leys Stepan, Nina Wakeford, Kathryn Woodward. (shrink)

Van Fraassen believes our current best theories enable us to make accurate predictions because they have been subjected to a selection process similar to natural selection. His explanation for the predictive success of our best theories has been subjected to extensive criticism from realists. I aim to clarify the nature of van Fraassen’s selectionist explanation for the success of science. Contrary to what the critics claim, the selectionist can explain why it is that we have successful theories, as well as (...) why it is reasonable to expect past successful theories to be successful in the future. I also argue that the plausibility of the realists’ explanation rests on an inaccurate understanding of the nature of predictive success . The predictive success of our best theories is a relative success. (shrink)

Rejectionists argue that collective belief ascriptions are best understood as instances of collective acceptance rather than belief. Margaret Gilbert objects to rejectionist accounts of collective belief statements. She argues that rejectionists rely on a questionable methodology when they inquire into the nature of collective belief ascriptions, and make an erroneous inference when they are led to believe that collectives do not really have beliefs. Consequently, Gilbert claims that collective belief statements are best understood as instances of belief. I critically examine (...) Gilbert’s criticisms of rejectionism. I argue that rejectionism is still a viable account of collective belief ascriptions. I also argue that Gilbert’s most powerful criticism provides important insight into what really stands between her and the rejectionists. Gilbert and the rejectionists do not yet agree about what background assumptions can be made in developing an account of collective belief ascriptions. (shrink)

Though many agree that we need to account for the role that social factors play in inquiry, developing a viable social epistemology has proved to be a difficult task. According to Longino, it is the processes that make inquiry possible that are aptly described as social, for they require a number of people to sustain them. These processes not only facilitate inquiry, but also ensure that the results of inquiry are more than mere subjective opinions, and thus deserve to be (...) called knowledge. In this paper, I explain Longino’s epistemology and defend it against criticisms recently raised by Kitcher, Schmitt and Solomon. Longino rightly recognizes that not all social factors have the same affect on inquiry. She also recommends that we reconceptualize ‘knowledge,’ distinguishing knowledge from opinion by reference to a social standard. (shrink)

Not so long ago the definition of religion as "a reflection of reality in illusory-fantasy images, ideas, concepts" was perceived as one of the most important arguments of scientific atheism in its anti-religious struggle in the national religious studies. The closeness to the notion of "fantasy" and "fanaticism" made this argument seem irresistible in the fight against religion, as any believer could fall under the murderous characterization of the category of "religious bigotry" it is in some way irreparably backward in (...) comparison to a person with a developed scientific worldview. (shrink)

Heidegger contrasts meditative thinking, which allows detachment from beings, with calculative thinking, which maintains an instrumental and interested relationship with them. In his view, the principle of reason is the main tool for dominating available things. He also embeds the Medieval essence-existence duality within this framework of causality geared towards manipulating beings, judging that the religious notion of creation failed to distance this duality from Greek essentialism. Now, by appropriating the Islamic notion of creation ex nihilo, Avicenna places an ontological (...) indigence at the heart of the created world. He believes that a being necessary by something other than itself remains contingent in itself, even after being caused. Thus, knowledge of the cause doesn’t grant dominance over the thing but fosters detachment from contingent being, recognizing its dependence on an upstream otherness. Moreover, Meister Eckhart, who according to Heidegger perfectly illustrates meditative thought, is indebted precisely to this ontological poverty established by Avicenna. In addition to describing this possible objection from Avicenna to Heidegger, the more general aim of this study is to explore the possibility of an ethical and disinterested use of the principle of reason. (shrink)

Structurally free logic LC was introduced in [4]. A natural extension of LC, in particular, in a sequent formulation, is by conjunction and disjunction that do not distribute over each other. We define a set theoretical semantics for these logics via constructing a representation of a lattice that we extend by intensional operations. Canonically, minimally overlapping filter-ideal pairs are used; this construction avoids the use of an equivalent of the axiom of choice and lends transparency to the structure. We also (...) discuss adapting the present semantics for substructural logics, as well as, the question of cannnonicity of LC+. (shrink)

Journal of the Pali Text Society, Volume XXVI. Edited by O. von Hinüber and R.F. Gombrich. Pali Text Society, Oxford 2000. 234 pp. £15.00. ISBN 0 86013 391 5.

Synonymic Collocations in the Tipitaka: a study. M.G.Dhadphale. Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona 1980. xiii + 267pp. Rs 50.

Thomas Kuhn was never a player in the contemporary realism/anti-realism debates, the debate that gained momentum around 1980 or so, with the publication of Bas van Fraassen’s Scientific Image and Larry Laudan’s “Confutation of Convergent Realism”. But I argue that Kuhn had a significant influence on these debates. Kuhn played a significant role in focusing philosophers’ attention on a different issue than the focus of the realism/anti-realism debate of the 1950s and 1960s. Instead of focusing on the meaning of theoretical (...) terms, philosophers of science turned their attention to the problems raised by changes of theory. The particular shape of the contemporary debate thus owes something to the publication of Structure of Scientific Revolutions. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractGroup photo of the participants at the chromosome stability meeting in Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore, India. The meeting brought together the Indian scientific community and investigators from other countries working on various aspects of chromosome stability.

Jean-Paul Fitoussi needs no introduction as one of the world's foremost Macroeconomists of his generation. This celebration of his work includes contributions from Nobel Prize - winning economists Robert W. Clower and Robert Solow as well as Olivier Blanchard and leading economic theorist, Edmond Malinvaud.

The "gang of four" — Wang Hung-wen, Chang Ch'un-ch'iao, Chiang Ch'ing and Yao Wen-yuan — have created great chaos by confusing the relations between ourselves and the enemy, obliterating the differences between the two kinds of contradiction, wrecking Chairman Mao's policy of uniting with, educating and reforming intellectuals, calling intellectuals the "stinking number nine," smothering the revolutionary initiative of the broad masses of intellectuals, and destroying the ranks of revolutionary intellectuals.