The study of the history of ideas is usually devoted to big problems and to concluded debates. We have attempted to analyze a current theory whose fate and explanatory power is still not determined. The term microparadigm is used to define a currently and widely accepted theory limited in time and in the field of application, compared to the greater problems usually investigated by historians of science. Among the characteristics defining a microparadigm we found: 1) the status of an accepted (...) theory with creative scientific power; 2) the presence of anomalies and unproven inferences; 3) a limited field of application; 4) the peculiarity of interaction with non-scientific ideas. In this context, we discuss the rise of the current microparadigm concerning the pathogenesis and biology of lymphoid neoplasms. We show that the current view of the neoplastic lymphoid cells as populations frozen at a particular differentiative stage has been creative for the last 10 years, thus allowing the generation of a large body of data that would not have been collected within the previous view of the leukemic cell as completely “anarchic”. This paradigm, although containing some anomalies, has survived the impact of molecular biology in hematology and is still creative. We think that microparadigms are widely distributed in everyday science and that an analysis of them is as useful for active scientist as is the study of macroparadigms, which by themselves cannot be representative of everyday science. Finally, the study of microparadigms while they are still operative can be useful to evidence the weakness of the theory and to suggest where new data should be sought. (shrink)

This study analyzes shells of marine gastropods of a zoological museum and the Latin epithets expressing perceptual and connotative attributes that they have received in the standard, Linnaean nomenclature. Making use of the Osgood semantic differential, we presented the subjects with digital 3-D reproductions of the shell specimens to be subjectively evaluated according to 17 pairs of attributes. The results show that, overall, the subjective evaluations given by the subjects are consistent, which suggests that an intersubjective characterization of the shells (...) as wholes according to their qualitative and morphological traits is possible and scientifically explicable. This may apply to other biological items as well. The results also show that the epithets given to the shells by taxonomists do not always reflect the perceptual evaluation of the general population, being a product of the well-known ambiguity in taxonomic categorization and naming. (shrink)

This study analyzes shells of marine gastropods of a zoological museum and the Latin epithets expressing perceptual and connotative attributes that they have received in the standard, Linnaean nomenclature. Making use of the Osgood semantic differential, we presented the subjects with digital 3-D reproductions of the shell specimens to be subjectively evaluated according to 17 pairs of attributes. The results show that, overall, the subjective evaluations given by the subjects are consistent, which suggests that an intersubjective characterization of the shells (...) as wholes according to their qualitative and morphological traits is possible and scientifically explicable. This may apply to other biological items as well. The results also show that the epithets given to the shells by taxonomists do not always reflect the perceptual evaluation of the general population, being a product of the well-known ambiguity in taxonomic categorization and naming. (shrink)

The conversation between Giorgio Barberio Corsetti and Pietro Montani, led by Dario Cecchi, focuses on some of the principal aspects of the career and work of Paolo Rosa and Studio Azzurro, by making reference also to the occasion when the director and the philosopher met the artist and his team. Of such an artistic path, they have been particularly emphasized the interest for the dialogue among different artistic languages (theatre, video art); the attention to the way images are (...) able to refresh the meaning of action and word within theatre and performing arts generally speaking; the relationship between art and technics in the perspective of a “poetic” (or better “poietic”) use of technologies and media; the importance given to the public (ethical and political) dimension of images and art installations, able to working through the sense of belonging to a community. (shrink)

L’articolo indaga l’opera di Paolo Rosa e di Studio Azzurro a partire dal suo rilievo politico. L’articolo rielabora il concetto, formulato originariamente da Walter Benjamin ne L’opera d’arte nell’epoca della sua riproducibilità tecnica, di “politicizzazione dell’arte”. Mentre per Benjamin la politicizzazione dell’arte riguarda il movimento di emancipazione delle masse da opporre alla “estetizzazione della politica”, il concetto si presta qui a una nuova interpretazione. Riprendendo il titolo di un saggio scritto da Rosa insieme ad Andrea Balzola, l’articolo (...) mostra come l’arte debba “uscire fuori di sé”. In altre parole, l’artista deve abbandonare le consuete modalità della creazione e della fruizione, per istituire nuove condizioni di interazione all’interno degli ambienti prodotti attraverso la creazione di immagini. In questo modo, l’opera di Rosa e Studio Azzurro recupera in una nuova accezione l’“aura” dell’opera d’arte. (shrink)

L’articolo qui riproposto e apparso originariamente nel 1988 anticipa alcune questioni fondamentali trattate nel presente numero, in riferimento alla collaborazione tra il video-artista Paolo Rosa e il suo gruppo Studio Azzurro e il regista teatrale Giorgio Barberio Corsetti. L’articolo sottolinea come l’incontro tra video-arte e teatro, tra arti tecnologiche e arti performative, rinnovi uno dei tratti caratteristici della pratica artistica moderna, dalla letteratura alle arti visive e performative: lo statuto del soggetto, in cui è in gioco l’interazione tra (...) l’interno e l’esterno della vita, della coscienza e dell’esperienza individuale. La collaborazione di Rosa e Studio Azzurro con Barberio Corsetti si collega così alla tradizione artistica moderna, sottolineata in modo particolare dall’opera letteraria di Rainer Maria Rilke. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer two counterexamples to the so-called ‘Uniqueness Thesis.’ As one of these examples rely on the thesis that it is possible for a justified belief to be based on an inconsistent body of evidence, I also offer reasons for this further thesis. On the assumption that doxastic justification entails propositional justification, the counterexamples seem to work.

Hartmut Rosa advances an account of the temporal structure of society from the perspective of critical theory. He identifies three categories of change in the tempo of modern social life: technological acceleration, evident in transportation, communication, and production; the acceleration of social change, reflected in cultural knowledge, social institutions, and personal relationships; and acceleration in the pace of life, which happens despite the expectation that technological change should increase an individual's free time. According to Rosa, both the structural (...) and cultural aspects of our institutions and practices are marked by the "shrinking of the present," a decreasing time period during which expectations based on past experience reliably match the future. When this phenomenon combines with technological acceleration and the increasing pace of life, time seems to flow ever faster, making our relationships to each other and the world fluid and problematic. It is as if we are standing on "slipping slopes," a steep social terrain that is itself in motion and in turn demands faster lives and technology. As Rosa deftly shows, this self-reinforcing feedback loop fundamentally determines the character of modern life. (shrink)

Social factors have so far been neglected in embodied theories of perception despite the wealth of phenomenological insights and empirical evidence indicating their importance. I examine evidence from developmental psychology and neuroscience and attempt an initial classification according to whether social factors play a contextual, enabling, or constitutive role in the ability to perceive objects in a detached manner, i.e. beyond their immediate instrumental use. While evidence of cross-cultural variations in perceptual styles and the influence of social cues on visual (...) attention could not be said to play more than a contextual role, other factors such as the intricate developmental links between dyadic and triadic interactions in infancy, as well as episodes of peer-learning in children, play enabling roles. A common element in these factors is the presence and resolution of interpersonal conflict. Detached object perception could not develop without these social factors. I argue, in addition, that social skills such as managing partial social acts which are addressed to and completed by others, linguistic mediation, makebelieve play, and the ability to control perspectival switches are constitutive -- i.e. are of the essence -- of the ability to see objects as present with a detached attitude. I discuss the prospects of incorporating such social elements into dynamical interpretations of the sensorimotor approach through the enactive notion of participatory sense-making. (shrink)

In a recent article, I have explored the historical, mathematical, and philosophical issues related to the new theory of numerosities. The theory of numerosities provides a context in which to assign numerosities to infinite sets of natural numbers in such a way as to preserve the part-whole principle, namely if a set A is properly included in B then the numerosity of A is strictly less than the numerosity of B. Numerosities assignments differ from the standard assignment of size provided (...) by Cantor’s cardinality assignments. In this talk, I generalize some specific worries emerging from the theory of numerosities to a line of thought resulting in what I call a ‘good company’ objection to Hume’s Principle (HP). The talk has four main parts. The first takes a historical look at 19th-century attributions of equality of numbers in terms of one-one correlations and argues that there was no agreement as to how to extend such determinations to infinite sets of objects. This leads to the second part where I show that there are countably infinite many abstraction principles that are ‘good’, in the sense that they share the same virtues of HP and from which we can derive the axioms of second order arithmetic. The third part connects this material to a debate on Finite Hume Principle between Heck and MacBride and states the ‘good company’ objection. Finally, the last part gives a tentative taxonomy of possible neo-logicist responses to the ‘good company’ objection and makes a foray into the relevance of this material for the issue of cross-sortal identifications for abstractions. (shrink)

El presente escrito se enmarca en un proyecto de investigación que propone abordar el complejo mundo del trabajo petrolero que se desarrolla en la Cuenca del Golfo San Jorge, en la Patagonia argentina, desde una perspectiva de género. La hipótesis de sentido que guía la investigación indica al universo hidrocarburífero de la región como un entretejido social sumamente heterogéneo. Dicha heterogeneidad se plasma también (quizás paradigmáticamente) en la participación femenina en el sector. A partir de entrevistas en profundidad, reconstruimos las (...) trayectorias laborales de mujeres vinculadas a la industria de los hidrocarburos en Comodoro Rivadavia.En una industria percibida como predominantemente masculina, no es fácil delimitar quiénes pueden entenderse como trabajadoras del petróleo, cuando el calificativo de “petroleros” suele reservarse a los varones. Para ello, en este texto compartimos los desafíos metodológicos de abordar el complejo petrolero en búsqueda de sus trabajadoras. Así, presentamos dilemas, reflexiones y hallazgos de un trabajo de campo atravesado por la reflexividad. Identificar a esas mujeres, caracterizar sus trabajos, prácticas y desplazamientos conllevó reconocer nuestras propias posiciones en el espacio social.Se indican tres perfiles típicos hallados entre nuestras entrevistadas para interrogar sobre su representatividad y provisoriedad, en tanto el análisis en profundidad nos orienta a la identificación de rasgos comunes entre aquellas que en un principio parecen muy diferentes. (shrink)

René Girard’s anthropological theory is founded on the assumption that mimesis in primates may have been a threat to the emergence of new species, particularly for what humans would become. Mimesis necessarily led to rivalry around nonshareable objects, which may have led the members of the earliest anthropoid communities to autodestruction. As known to all who are familiar with the ideas of Girard, mankind has been selected by the repetition of a mechanism according to which a bunch of individuals killed (...) one member of their community. It is the hypothesis of the scapegoat victim that helps to explain the emergence of all cultural forms; in fact, it is the scapegoat victim that makes human thought possible... (shrink)

The interpretation of Parmenides’ Περί Φύσεως is a fascinating topic to which philosophers, historians of philosophy and scientists have dedicated many studies along the history of Western thought. The aim of this paper is to present the reading of Parmenides’s work offered by Federigo Enriques. It is based on several original theses: (1) Parmenides was the discoverer of abstract geometry; (2) his critics was addressed against the Pythagoreans rather than against Heraclitus; (3) Parmenides discovered and applied the contradiction and the (...) third excluded principles in the context of his research on foundation of geometry; (4) Parmenides’s metaphysical and physical conceptions have their bases in his speculation on geometry; (5) Parmenides used the principle of sufficient reason. Enriques’s reading is worth being expounded and discussed within the historical, philosophical and scientific context in which it is inserted. Since Enriques’s ideas are not widely known and discussed, my research has the purpose to fill this gap. The article also aims to provide elements to illustrate the discussion on Parmenides in the first half of the last century. (shrink)

For a long time–--maybe starting from the well known 1929 meeting in Davos–--the philosophy of exact and natural sciences deriving from Neo-positivism and hermeneutics followed separate ways. Post-positivistic philosophy of science and epistemology, though, saw the emerging of theses showing the existence of some affinities between the empirical method and the hermeneutical method. The paper singles these affinities out and discusses their consequences from the point of view of the problems of objectivity and truth. In particular, it supports the ideas (...) of objectivity as achievement and of truth as empty regulative ideal. (shrink)

This article recounts how Neo-Scholastic international lawyers navigated the complex political landscape of the 1920s and 30s, combining universalism, nationalism and religious belief. Participating in the contemporary re-engagement of Catholics with modern politics, they re-imagined the international legal order in Catholic terms. They argued that a universal morality, overruling the extremes of state sovereignty, was the only solid basis for just and stable global legal relations. While the contribution of Catholics to the establishment of the post-war world order and the (...) rise of human rights is widely acknowledged, the interwar genealogy of these developments is not. Reading these thinkers’ universalist legal tenets in conjunction with their political trajectories provides a relevant frame to understand the moral charge characterizing international law in the early years of the Cold War. (shrink)

Among the various attempts to re-humanize economics, the ‘humanomics’ proposed by Vernon Smith and Bart Wilson stands out. We contribute to the “humanomics project” by mapping its territory – core, periphery and frontiers – with an eye, also, on future explorations. First, we critically study the core: Smith and Wilson’s interpretation and experimental application of Adam Smith’s ideas on beneficence and injustice. Using the distinction between reciprocal cooperation and reciprocal kindness, we provide a different interpretation of Smith which helps to (...) better understand the difference between exchange and trust, based on mutual advantage, and (reciprocal) beneficence proper. Secondly, we turn to the periphery, going beyond the ‘dichotomous representation of the human personality’ – personal-social/impersonal-economic – and showing other possible worlds: nuances of humans equally worthy of study, such as the personal-economic and the impersonal-social. Thirdly, we argue that the humanomics project should keep its frontiers as open as possible to human diversities and frailties. (shrink)

The article examines the meaning of spiritual essence within absolute knowing. The analysis presented will shed light on the logical and phenomenological difference between the object of experience and the object of consciousness. The form of spiritual essence is introduced through a syllogistic structure and seems to determinate the scientific character of absolute knowing. Hegel's conception of syllogism in the Phenomenology is not the one of his mature works, but proves to be more articulate than the syllogism as it was (...) conceived in the Jena period. The syllogistic structure of spiritual essence discloses the logical dimension beneath the phenomenological path. (shrink)

Since the early 1990s, an increasing number of troops have been deployed in peacekeeping missions all around the world. The mixed success and high-profile failures of several missions have provided peacekeepers and scholars with a wealth of experience from which to generate knowledge and understand key lessons. In this article I use the Rwandan case to explore the issue of the use of force to protect unarmed civilians that have become the target of violence. In particular, I focus on the (...) moral responsibilities implied in such operations. I contend that in order for peacekeepers to be effective, they need to subscribe to, and be motivated by a peacekeeper ethos. The core element of this ethos is the protection of human life. Those peacekeepers who, through experience and education, internalize this ethos will be the best prepared for the difficult task they face. This article emphasizes the importance of sharpening moral autonomy among peacekeepers, in order to provide them with the skills they need to be more effective in saving lives. To illustrate this point, I analyze the slaughter of more than 2000 refugees at the ETO school in Kigali, Rwanda; a UN site protected by Belgian peacekeepers in 1994. (shrink)

In the essay “Das Wort” (“Words”), Martin Heidegger wrote about “renunciation” (verzicht) in the context of the poetry of Stefan George. According toHeidegger the entrance into the possibility of Saying, with the capital “S” – as opposed to the chatter of every-day life – could be achieved in the instance of the poet’s deliberate acceptance of renunciation. Heidegger’s writings, including “Words,” have had an enormous influence in the second part of the 20th century on authors and thinkers alike. And yet (...) this influence may have had a pernicious effect, at least in the opinion of some commentators. In the 2005 book L’adieu à la littérature, William Marx, for instance, claimed that the 20th century is the time of a literature sans style. If on the one hand literature achieved its autonomy, on the other it farewelled the cognitive purpose with regard to the world, which, some could argue, equates with a retreat from its civilizing purpose. This essay does two things: first it illustrates and contextualizes the notion of “renunciation” from philosophical as well as literary and cultural perspectives: second it discusses a set of authors who have experienced the category of “renunciation” in different ways and with different outcomes. I refer to Maurice Blanchot, Frances Ponge and Édouard Glissant. (shrink)

As is made clear by the exergue by Carlo Ginzburg at the beginning of the introduction to the volume, the topic of fakes, forgeries, deceptions, and hoaxes in early modern science touches upon several crucial issues for historians of science, such as the possibilities of disentangling the true from the false in writing history, and to assess criteria of demarcations of truth and falsity in knowledge. Moreover, dealing with fakes also means going beyond rigid disciplinary boundaries. Indeed, the editors Marco (...) Beretta and Maria Conforti underline that the inspirational sources for this book—which has its origins from the Second Watson Seminar in the History of Material and Visual Science held at the Museo Galileo in Florence in June 2013—range from Orson Welles to Trevor Roper’s famous The Hermit of Peking. Consequently, starting from the “rather naïve question” of why, since fakes, forgeries, and deception techniques proliferate in early modern sciences and culture, we still have v .. (shrink)

According to the quantificational Quinean model in meta-ontology, the question of ontology boils down to the question of whether a sortal property is exemplified. I address some complications that arise when we try to build a philosophical reconstruction of the link between individuals and kinds displayed in the exemplification relation from the point of view of conceptualism about kinds and having in mind this stand in ontology. I distinguish two notions of resemblance, object-to- object and object-to- kind, and show the (...) problems with both of them. Finally, I argue for a better awareness of the implicit "bias" involved in the very notion of "resemblance," without indulging in Quine's veto toward this notion. (shrink)