Background Voluntary post-mortem donation to science (PDS) is the most appropriate source for body dissection in medical education and training, and highly useful for biomedical research. In Mexico, unclaimed bodies are no longer a legal source, but PDS is legally possible, although scarcely facilitated, and mostly ignored by the general population. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the attitude and willingness for PDS and to identify a sociodemographic profile of people with willingness toward PDS. Methods A validated on-line survey was distributed (...) by the convenience method via the social networks of a Catholicism-inspired, private university in northern Mexico. Frequency analyses of all variables and coded free comments were complemented with association studies. Results Although the responder cohort (n = 143) was too small and biased to be representative of the university community (n = 13,500), willingness to post-mortem organ donation was 90.7% and to PDS 70.7%. In this cohort, PDS willingness had the strongest association with mature age (> 40 years old; P, 0.0008). Among young adults, willingness to PDS was the lowest among volunteers from technical and business schools and the highest among those from the social sciences (P, 0.009). Respondents from the social sciences were also the most consistent between attitude and behavior with respect to organ donation. A free comment option revealed respondents were interested in the unusual taboo topic. Conclusions A small, but sufficiently large proportion expressed willingness toward PDS. In our university cohort, which was biased in higher education and altruism, mature age and social interest were associated with PDS willingness. (shrink)

Among the scanty remains of poetry attributed to Eumelus of Corinth two lines 2 stand out as different from the rest, first because they are concerned not with the legendary past but with an actual, present occasion, and secondly because they are composed not for Corinthians but for Messenians. Our evidence comes from Pausanias and may be set out at the start.

Coleridge has been seen by some not so much as a poet spoiled by philosophy, but as a philosopher who was also a poet. It could be argued that his major endeavor was an attempt to save the life sciences form the mechanistic interpretation which he saw as the outcome of Lockean "mechanico-corpuscularian" philosophy. This contribution describes that endeavour. It shows its connection to the social circumstances of the time. It discussess its relationship to the poetic sensibility of the "Lake (...) poets" and to the German thought which Coleridge absorbed during and after his sojourn in Gottingen in 1798-99. It describes the nature of his "Theory of Life" as seen not only from the posthumous publication itself, but also from the numerous hints and struggles recorded in his voluminous notebooks, letters and lecture notes. It is concluded that, although never adequately assembled, it forms the only serious attempt to construct a profound alternative to the ultimately mechanistic biology of Charles Darwin and the physiologists of the second half of the century. As such it strongly influenced the young Richard Owen and, as is well known, was eventually overwhelmed by the Darwin-Huxley synthesis of the 1860s. Nevertheless, insofar as Coleridge's concept of life ultimately derived from his ambition to find a way of healing the Cartesian divide, we may wonder whether the recent upsurge in consciousness studies may cause us to look again at his panentheistic ideas and, discarding the obsolete and fanciful metaphysics, recast them into a more acceptable form. (shrink)

M. C. Dillon was widely regarded as a world-leading Merleau-Ponty scholar. His book Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology is recognized as a classic text that revolutionized the philosophical conversation about the great French phenomenologist. Dillon followed that book with two others: Semiological Reductionism, a critique of early-1990s linguistic reductionism, and Beyond Romance, a richly developed theory of love. At the time of his death, Dillon had nearly completed two further books to which he was passionately committed. The first one offers a highly original (...) interpretation of Nietzsche’s ontology of becoming. The second offers a detailed ethical theory based on Merleau-Ponty’s account of carnal intersubjectivity. The Ontology of Becoming and the Ethics of Particularity collects these two manuscripts written by a distinguished philosopher at the peak of his powers—manuscripts that, taken together, offer a distinctive and powerful view of human life and ethical relations. (shrink)

We give an example of a countable theory $T$ such that for every cardinal $\lambda \geq \aleph_2$ there is a fully indiscernible set $A$ of power $\lambda$ such that the principal types are dense over $A$, yet there is no atomic model of $T$ over $A$. In particular, $T$ is a theory of size $\lambda$ where the principal types are dense, yet $T$ has no atomic model.