Helisaeus Roeslin’s manuscript Speculum et harmonia mundi, Das ist Wellt Spiegel Erster Theil was conceived as part of a broader project comprising a Speculum ecclesiae as well as a Speculum naturae. This project was connected with a Chronology aiming to establish the precise date of the most important events in history as well as to advance some conjectures about the approaching eschatological future. This article presents some recent discoveries that shed new light on Roeslin’s chronological work after 1579, most importantly (...) the incontrovertible attribution to Roeslin of the anonymous manuscript De potestatibus orbis Christiani, et politicis et ecclesiasticis, Discursus. Here Roeslin presented his discovery of the numerical proportions governing the numbers of spiritual and temporal potestates in the three historical periods, affirming that these numbers were now nearly fullfilled, along with their ensuing eschatological implications. We show how Roeslin published this discovery in his Kurtz Bedencken against the calendar reform and again in 1612 in a short tract on the occasion of the coronation of Emperor Matthias I. The article focuses in particular on the appended broadsheet Tabella des Welt Spiegels, which displayed the completion and culmination of history, according to the astronomical revolutions of the planets as well as the numbers of temporal and spiritual governors. (shrink)

We show that certain type of tree forcings, including Sacks forcing, increases the covering of the strong measure zero ideal \. As a consequence, in Sacks model, such covering number is equal to the size of the continuum, which indicates that this covering number is consistently larger than any other classical cardinal invariant of the continuum. Even more, Sacks forcing can be used to force that \<\mathrm {cov}<\mathrm {cof}\), which is the first consistency result where more than two cardinal invariants (...) associated with \ are pairwise different. Another consequence is that \ in ZFC where \ denotes Marczewski’s ideal. (shrink)

The coexistence of genetically modified (GM) crops and non-GM crops is a myth because the movement of transgenes beyond their intended destinations is a certainty, and this leads to genetic contamination of organic farms and other systems. It is unlikely that transgenes can be retracted once they have escaped, thus the damage to the purity of non-GM seeds is permanent. The dominant GM crops have the potential to reduce biodiversity further by increasing agricultural intensification. There are also potential risks to (...) biodiversity arising from gene flow and toxicity to nontarget organisms from herbicide-resistant (HT) and insect-resistant (Bt) crops. Unless whole regions are declared GM agriculture free, the development of distinct systems of agriculture (GM and non-GM) will be impossible as GM agriculture emerges at the expense of all other forms of production. (shrink)

Many traditional agroecosystems found in Latin America constitute major in situ repositories of crop genetic diversity. This native germplasm is crucial to developing countries and industrialized nations alike. Native varieties expand and renew the crop genetic resources of developed countries while also performing well under the ecological and economic conditions of the traditional farms where they are grown. With agricultural modernization and environmental degradation, crop genetic diversity is decreasing in peasant agricultural systems. Research is urgently needed to document rates and (...) causes of genetic erosion in these systems and the role that peasants play in maintenance of crop genetic diversity. It is proposed that multi-disciplinary teams that work under the paradigms of ethnoecology and agroecology be assembled to integrate farmers’ knowledge with Western scientific approaches to design meaningful in situ crop genetic conservation strategies. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to study Leonardo Polo's conception of the principle of identity. This identity is also called Origin; however, an adequate understanding of that expression requires a careful study of the way man comes to be aware of it.

Authoritative and comprehensive interpretation of the Scottish philosopher's writings on religion.

The relationship of Hume’s thought with Calvinism is complex and difficult to pin down. He is mordantly critical of the theology and morality of the “predestinarian doctors” and out of tune with the rational theology of Francis Hutcheson and even with that of his friends, Enlightened Ministers of the Church of Scotland such as Hugh Blair and Robert Wallace. Nevertheless, a few of his key philosophical tenets are almost indistinguishable from the main ideas advanced in Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian (...) Religion. I argue that for this reason Hume’s philosophy of religion is an Enlightened form of Calvinism. These strongly parallel doctrines must be considered in any evenhanded interpretation of the chief principles of Hume’s philosophy of religion that are set forth in “Of Miracles,” in The Natural History of Religion, and in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. This approach also opens a thoughtful understanding of the main conclusions of the Dialogues. (shrink)

Based on research on the increasingly popular unconscious thought effect (UTE), it has been suggested that physicians might make better diagnostic decisions after a period of distraction than after an equivalent amount of time of conscious deliberation. However, published attempts to demonstrate the UTE in medical decision making have yielded inconsistent results. In the present study, we report the results of a meta-analysis of all the available evidence on the UTE in medical decisions made by expert and novice clinicians. The (...) meta-analysis failed to find a significant contribution of unconscious thought to the accuracy of medical decisions. This result cannot be easily attributed to any of the potential moderators of the UTE that have been discussed in the literature. Furthermore, a Bayes Factor analysis shows that most experimental conditions provide positive support for the null hypothesis, suggesting that these null results do not reflect a simple lack of statistical power. We suggest ways in which new studies could usefully provide further evidence on the UTE. Unless future research shows otherwise, the recommendation of using unconscious thought to improve medical decisions lacks empirical support. (shrink)

The potential for genetically modified (GM) crops to threaten biodiversity conservation and sustainable agriculture is substantial. Megadiverse countries and centers of origin and/or diversity of crop species are particularly vulnerable regions. The future of sustainable agriculture may be irreversibly jeopardized by contamination of in situ preserved genetic resources threatening a strategic resource for the world—s food security. Because GM crops are truly biological novelties, their release into the environment poses concerns about the unpredictable ecological and evolutionary responses that GM species (...) themselves and the interacting biota may express in the medium and long term. One of the consequences of these processes may be a generalized contamination of natural flora by GM traits and a degradation and erosion of the commonly owned genetic resources available today for agricultural development. GM plants carrying pharmaceutical and industrial traits will pose even more dangerous risks if released in the environment. (shrink)

My main concern in this article is to arrive at a clear view of the nature, extent, and value of Descartes’ universal doubt, not to determine whether Hume’s critique of Cartesian doubt is compellin...

We introduce the property “F-linked” of subsets of posets for a given free filter F on the natural numbers, and define the properties “μ-F-linked” and “θ-F-Knaster” for posets in a natural way. We show that θ-F-Knaster posets preserve strong types of unbounded families and of maximal almost disjoint families. Concerning iterations of such posets, we develop a general technique to construct θ-Fr-Knaster posets (where Fr is the Frechet ideal) via matrix iterations of <θ-ultrafilter-linked posets (restricted to some level of the (...) matrix). This is applied to prove consistency results about Cichoń's diagram (without using large cardinals) and to prove the consistency of the fact that, for each Yorioka ideal, the four cardinal invariants associated with it are pairwise different. At the end, we show that three strongly compact cardinals are enough to force that Cichoń's diagram can be separated into 10 different values. (shrink)