Memoirs and papers presented at a conference held on the occasion of the 90th birthday of the Mongolian philosopher Ts. Balkhaajav.

This study tests the hypothesis that university professors (lecturers) (in the U.S. and Spain) with different money profiles (based on Factors Success, Budget, Motivator, Equity, and Evil of the Love of Money Scale) will differ in work-related attitudes and satisfaction. Results suggested that Achieving Money Worshipers (with high scores on Factors Success, Motivator, Equity, and Budget) had high income, Work Ethic, and high satisfaction with pay level, pay administration, and internal equity comparison but low satisfaction with external equity comparison. Careless (...) Money Admirers (high Success but low Budget) had low intrinsic job satisfaction and low satisfaction with pay level and life. Apathetic Money Managers (low Evil and low Motivator) had the highest intrinsic job satisfaction and life satisfaction. Money Repellent Individuals (high Evil and low Success) had low income, work experience, Work Ethic, and low satisfaction with pay administration. Money does not provide the same motivation for people in all four money profiles. Results are discussed in light of the effectiveness of using money to reward people with different money profiles, intrinsic motivation, and unethical behavior. (shrink)

This paper aims to pay tribute to Figal’s comprehensive and innovative analysis of the artwork and beauty, while challenging both his realist position on the immediacy of meaning and his monist stance that reduces sublimity to beauty. To enquire into the origin of aesthetic feelings and sense, and thus, to break the hermeneutic circle, we first trace the origin of this reduction to the reception of Burke’s concept of the sublime by Mendelssohn and Kant. We then recur to Husserl and (...) Dufrenne to trace the origin of the sense of the feeling of sublimity in the realm of affectivity or sensuousness. This genesis takes place in passive experience, where we identify an excess of sensuous sense over categorial meaning that is constitutive of the affective sense that our bodily sensations give to hyletic material. It is argued that this sensuous excess evokes a sublime experience in the phenomenological sense, involving an affective and disruptive bodily experience and an endless process of sense formation. Affective or sensuous sense is thus an event that irreversibly affects the bodily surface. To elucidate this phenomenon, we draw on the theoretical framework of Breton and Bataille, positing it as a form-transgressive ‘convulsive’ sublime, which we then illustrate in the architectural works of Tschumi and Eisenman. In short, we have retrieved the origin of aesthetic experience and redefined the feeling of the sublime as a phenomenological ‘convulsive’ sublimity. (shrink)

The advent of the post-Stalin "thaw," particularly the period after 1956, was marked by a spectacular expansion in the publishing of translated Western writing and also, on occasion, of editions in the original languages: the virtual ban on import of Western books was, as of 1975, never relaxed. The more permissive political atmosphere favored the publication of a vastly larger variety of Western authors and titles and provision for the Soviet public of much larger quantities of such books in the (...) country's bookstores and libraries. While the improvement was very impressive in itself, abundant data attest that it was far from adequate to satisfy reader demand.1 Among the beneficiaries, books by American authors stood out the more prominently since it was these that were most discriminated against during the years immediately preceding.2 Decades of neglect, to say nothing of politically inspired selectivity, resulted in such incongruities as the first Russian translation of Melville's Moby Dick in 1961—more than a century after the novel's appearance—and the first Soviet publication of any work by Henry James in 1973. It was not until the 1960's that Russians had an opportunity to read Faulkner—but then, the same was true of Kafka. However unevenly, the range of American literature, both old and new, now made available to Soviet readers is gradually expanding. · 1. The overall problem is discussed in detail in this writer's forthcoming book, A Decade of Euphoria: Western Literature in Post-Stalin Russia, 1954-64 . · 2. For a thorough and illuminating discussion of the fate of American literature in the U.S.S.R. from the Revolution until the early post-Stalin years, see Deming Brown, Soviet Attitudes toward American Writing . Interesting statistical data on the first post-Stalin years may also be found in Melville J. Ruggles, "American Books in Soviet Publishing," Slavic Review 20, n.3 : 419-35. A useful, very brief list of selected works of American writing published by 1968, though not entirely as complete as it purports to be, may be found in M.O. Mendel'son, A.N. Nikolyukin, R.M. Samarin, eds., Problemy literature S. Sh. A. XX. veka , pp. 391-517. Unfortunately, the Soviet bibliography contains no information on press runs of the books listed. Maurice Friedberg, head of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois, is the author of numerous essays and articles on Soviet literature. Professor Friedberg's most recent book, A Decade of Euphoria: Western Literature in Post-Stalin Russia, 1954-1964, will be published this year. (shrink)

This is the 1991 (2nd) edition of the 1986 book (MIT Press), considered to be the classic defense of Millianism. The nature of the information content of declarative sentences is a central topic in the philosophy of language. The natural view that a sentence like "John loves Mary" contains information in which two individuals occur as constituents is termed the naive theory, and is one that has been abandoned by most contemporary scholars. This theory was refuted originally by philosopher Gottlob (...) Frege. His argument that the naive theory did not work is termed Frege's puzzle, and his rival account of information content is termed the orthodox theory. In this detailed study, Nathan Salmon defends a version of the naive theory and presents a proposal for its extension that provides a better picture of information content than the orthodox theory gives. He argues that a great deal of what has generally been taken for granted in the philosophy of language over the past few decades is either mistaken or unsupported, and consequently, much current research is focused on the wrong set of questions. Salmon dissolves Frege's puzzle as it is usually formulated and demonstrates how it can be reconstructed and strengthened to yield a more powerful objection to the naive theory. He then defends the naive theory against the new Frege puzzle by presenting an idea that yields both a surprisingly rich and powerful extension of the naive theory and a better picture of information content than that of the original orthodox theory. Nathan Salmon is Professor of Philosophy, University of California at Santa Barbara. (shrink)

Omnipresent calls for more women in university administration assume these women will prioritize using resources and power to increase female representation, especially in STEM fields where women are most underrepresented. However, empirical evidence is lacking for systematic differences in female versus male administrators’ attitudes. Do female administrators agree on which strategies are best, and do men see things differently? To answer this question, we explored United States college and university administrators’ opinions regarding policies, strategies, and structural changes in their organizations (...) designed to increase women professors’ representation and retention in STEM fields. A comprehensive review of past research yielded a database of potentially-effective, recommended policies (e.g., increasing emphasis on teaching, service, and administration during promotion reviews; stopping the tenure clock for childbearing; providing on-campus childcare; couples-hiring; sharing tenure lines; having more women chair search committees; setting gender quotas for promotion). A survey based on these recommended policies was sent to provosts, deans, associate deans, and department chairs of STEM fields at 96 public and private research universities (formerly called R1s) across the U.S. These administrators were asked to rate the quality and feasibility of each recommended policy; 474 provided data, of which 334 contained complete numerical data used in the analyses, so our results are based on a large, geographically diverse group of administrators at research universities. Our data revealed that female administrators perceived the 44 strategies to be higher in quality overall than did male administrators--but not higher in feasibility--with 9 policies perceived differently when rated by women versus men administrators, after imposing conservative statistical controls. There was broad general agreement on the relative rankings of the 44 policies in terms of their perceived quality. Overall, our national survey of U.S. administrators supported the assertion that placing women in administrative roles creates greater emphasis on the importance of enacting policies to attract and retain women in STEM. Topics of disagreement between women and men regarding strategy quality are important focuses of future policy and planning, because female administrators may have insights into how to retain women professors that male administrators do not share. (shrink)

Ullin Thomas Place died on 2nd January 2000 at the age of seventy-five. I had met him a little over three years earlier, in November 1996, during the annual 'Mind and Brain' symposium organized by Peter Fenwick and held at the Institute of Psychiatry in London. At that meeting Professor Place delivered a slightly shortened version of the paper reproduced here, in which he told his personal story — a pilgrim's progress? — recounting, as he put it, 'the history (...) of a thought process leading from an adolescent interest in mystical experience to an article entitled‘Is consciousness a brain process?’[Place, 1956] in which I argued for an affirmative answer to that question'. (shrink)

"Mitchell Franklin (1902-1986) is described by the Buffalo Law Review as the foremost Marxist legal philosopher in the English-speaking world. In these selected writings, Franklin, a professor of law at Tulane University for 37 years, discusses how the development of natural law from an idealist to a materialist concept in the transition from feudalism to capitalism is reflected in the drafting of the U.S. Constitution and its interpretation today" --Publisher's summary.

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. 譚傑志(Joseph Tham) 教授在其 “Bioethics: Cross-Cultural Explorations”(Tham 2022, 13) —文中回顧了生命倫理學在發展過程中的世俗化歷程、聯合國教科文組織生命倫理學和人權主席(UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights) 專案“生命倫理學、多元文化和宗教”在過去12年中的開展情況、以及最近這些年在生命倫理學領域中涉及文化多元性較為突出的問題。譚教授為生命倫理學領域中跨文化交流做出了卓越的貢獻，特別是其擔任上述項目負責人 以來。生命倫理學領域中的很多主題，如代孕、墮胎、基因編輯等，既複雜乂敏感；可以想像，推動生命倫理學領域中跨文化交流是一件富挑戰的事情。正如譚教授所言：“……在不同宗教之間尋求共識或思想融合是一個相當宏 大，甚至有些不現實的目標。”儘管如此，譚教授依然以極大的耐心和熱情通過改進專案中的對話機制，不斷地推動跨文化交流取得實質性進展和一系列學術成果。在這個過程中，如何讓不同文化和宗教背景的學者就某個主題進 行有意義的對話成為關鍵。譚教授探索出的“主旨論文+跨文化回應”模式，即一位元學者基於自身的文化或宗教背景撰寫針對特定主題的主旨論文，由另一位不同文化背景的學者撰寫回應論文，為不同的文化和宗教搭建了對話 的橋樑。(撮要取自內文首段) I am grateful for Professor Joseph Tham's efforts to improve cross-cultural dialogue on bioethics by continually updating the dialogue mechanisms in the “Bioethics, Multiculturalism and Religion Project,” conducted by the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights. The dialogue helps moral strangers to discuss their local cultures and to enter and learn about (...) other cultures and religions. Through this process, moral strangers may find that they hold similar values. The dialogues have also shown us the importance of cross-culture differences. Although we can foster consensus or convergence on some issues, it should be noted that the differences in cultures and religions are not the second-best option when agreement cannot be reached. Such differences constitute the cultural diversity of the world and have their own values. Respecting these differences is just as important as seeking consensus or convergence. (shrink)

The U.S. military is developing augmented reality (AR) capabilities for use on the battlefield as a means of achieving greater situational awareness. The superimposition of digital data—designed to expand surveillance, enhance geospatial understanding, and facilitate target identification—onto a live view of the battlefield has important implications for virtuous conduct in war: Can the soldier exercise practical wisdom while integrated into a system of militarized legibility? Adopting a virtue ethics perspective, I argue that AR disrupts the soldier’s immersion in the scene (...) such that he is blinded to features beyond those identified in advance by the military’s system of cybernetic judgment. I turn to Michael Walzer’s classic account of the “naked soldier” dilemma to illustrate how AR capabilities radically shrink the bounds within which the soldier can cultivate the capacity for right conduct. By transforming the ambiguous ethical matter of killing an enemy combatant into the straightforward application of a rule, AR hollows out the soldier’s potential for virtuous action. The “smart battlefield” leaves no space for deliberative judgments that transcend the technical and legal determinations already written into the soldier’s view of the scene. (shrink)

Philosophy professor Bryan Hilliard begins this unusual medical ethics textbook, composed of selections from U.S. Supreme Court cases, commentaries, and discussion questions, by addressing a questi...

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. 在這篇與黑格爾乃至整個西方現代性訣別的力作中，唐文明教授為我們展現了一種立足於儒家自身的批判性視角，同時也指明了一條通往人倫重建的積極道路。著手閲讀這篇文章的第一個困難或者疑惑可能是：為什麼是承認理論 ？我們知道，自近代中國遭遇西方現代性的衝擊以來，儒學面臨的首要危局就是人倫的解體，而其解體的核心動力就是以平等為基本訴求的現代個體性的覺醒。因此，對於服膺儒學的現代學者來説，如何在現代性的處境中重新理 解與恢復人倫的意義就成了首要問題。(撮要取自內文首段) Professor Tang's article continues his previous research on the intellectual history of the normative reconstruction of human relationships in modern Confucianism and provides a thorough reflection of this reconstruction based on the recognition theory. Drawing on the concept of “Natality” in Augustine's thought, the article proposes a protological conception of original recognition as a reflection of Hegel's and Honneth's desire-based recognition theory. The question of how to properly (...) understand the concept of immortality in this original recognition theory is a crucial issue, and this paper argues that in Confucian tradition, the concept of immortality must be analyzed with a basis in human ethics rather than purely through the immortality of the soul. (shrink)

The traditional military-territorial model of the nation state defines international duties in terms of protecting citizens' property from foreign threats. In this 1992 book about the principles of the US agricultural policy and foreign aid, Professor Thompson replaces this model with the notion of the trading state that sees its role in terms of the establishment of international institutions that stabilize and facilitate cultural and intellectual, as well as commercial, exchanges between nations. The argument focuses on protectionist challenges to (...) foreign aid and development assistance programs, and engages with the views of a variety of economists, commodity organizations, and philosophers on world hunger and development. What emerges is a new interpretation of social contract theory that can determine goals for international trade and development policy. (shrink)

In some languages every statement must contain a specification of the type of evidence on which it is based: for example, whether the speaker saw it, or heard it, or inferred it from indirect evidence, or learnt it from someone else. This grammatical reference to information source is called 'evidentiality', and is one of the least described grammatical categories. Evidentiality systems differ in how complex they are: some distinguish just two terms (eyewitness and noneyewitness, or reported and everything else), while (...) others have six or even more terms. Evidentiality is a category in its own right, and not a subcategory of epistemic or some other modality, nor of tense-aspect. Every language has some way of referring to the source of information, but not every language has grammatical evidentiality. In English expressions such as I guess, they say, I hear that, the alleged are not obligatory and do not constitute a grammatical system. Similar expressions in other languages may provide historical sources for evidentials. True evidentials, by contrast, form a grammatical system. In the North Arawak language Tariana an expression such as "the dog bit the man" must be augmented by a grammatical suffix indicating whether the event was seen, or heard, or assumed, or reported. This book provides the first exhaustive cross-linguistic typological study of how languages deal with the marking of information source. Examples are drawn from over 500 languages from all over the world, several of them based on the author's original fieldwork. Professor Aikhenvald also considers the role evidentiality plays in human cognition, and the ways in which evidentiality influences human perception of the world.. This is an important book on an intriguing subject. It will interest anthropologists, cognitive psychologists and philosophers, as well as linguists. (shrink)

Categorical names such as “The English Novel,” “The Modern American Novel,” and “American Literature” often turn up in catalogs as titles of college courses, and we know from them pretty much what to expect. They also have standing in critical discourse, along with allied terms unlikely to serve as course titles: “good writing,” “great literature,” “serious fiction,” “literature” itself. The awareness has grown in recent years that such concepts pose problems, even though we use them with easy enough comprehension when (...) we talk or write to others who share our cultural matrix.Lately, critics like Raymond Williams have been reminding us that the categories change over time and that at any given moment categories embody complex social relations and a continuing historical process. That process deeply invests all terms with value: since not everyone’s values are the same, the negotiating of such concepts is, among other things, a struggle for dominance—whether between adults and the young, professors and their students, one class and another, or men and women. We don’t usually notice the power or the conflict, except when some previously weak or silent group seeks a share of the power: for example, when, in the 1960s, American blacks and their supporters insisted that black literature be included in school and college curricula, or when they openly challenged the candidacy of William Styron’s Confessions of Nat Turner for inclusion in some eventual canon.1 But the gradual firming up of concepts like, say, postwar American fiction is always a contest for cultural hegemony, even if in our society if is often muted—carried on behind the scenes or in the seemingly neutral marketplace. 1. See John Henrik Clarke, ed., William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond . Richard Ohmann is professor of English at Wesleyan University. He is the author of English in America and is presently working on studies in mass culture. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionF. S. [email protected] and Richard [email protected] state that there are no sound bites or video clips from classical antiquity is to repeat the obvious. But it is a surprise perhaps to realize how seldom we can recall our field’s most influential scholars even of the very recent past through such now commonplace media. Moreover, the chance to view and hear personal reflections articulated by any such figures about their (...) career, influences, and impact is rare indeed. It was precious opportunities of this type that Pat Thane, Alastair Reid, and Michael Thompson had the foresight to capture from the mid-1980s by developing a video Interviews with Historians series between 1985 and 1996.1 The series was produced by the Publications Department of the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London. In each instance (eventually a total of twenty-eight), a leading historian is interviewed—usually in a studio—by a younger colleague in the same field; three cameras are used, one long shot and one close-up of each participant.2The interview with Sir Moses Finley was one of the first two made (in October 1985) and, as it turned out fortuitously, only months before his sudden death in June 1986 at age 74. The interviewer is Keith Hopkins (a youthful 51), Finley’s one-time graduate student, who had himself just become Cambridge’s professor of ancient history, the position that Finley occupied from 1970 to 1979. They talked in the studio for approximately one hour, and Alastair Reid then edited the master tape with notable skill [End Page 167] to shorten the interview to thirty-five minutes; once both participants had given their approval, the interview was released.3 Meantime, the hour-long U-Matic master tape was archived, but otherwise forgotten. Fortunately, however, in response to inquiries made by Richard Talbert during summer 2013, the Institute proved able to retrieve the tape and—despite its fragility and long outmoded format—to arrange for a successful transfer of the interview to DVD by Soho Broadcast, London.4Our original intention was to offer a transcript of the edited thirty-five-minute version,5 but once the hour-long tape surfaced, we decided instead to offer the interview in its entirety. Our transcript (below, p. 179) inevitably has its limitations and can make no claim to substitute for the video itself.6 It cannot reproduce the unfailingly good-humored atmosphere throughout the interview, nor the range of tones and emphases, nor Finley’s New York accent, nor the marked variations in the pace at which he makes his points, nor of course his constant, characteristic gestures. The variations in pace have influenced how we resolved to punctuate some passages, an unavoidably subjective exercise. Above all, however, we have resisted the recurrent temptation to “clean up” the conversation, so that repetitious, inconsequential, and incomplete remarks are eliminated, and readers are left with a text that more readily approximates to standard written prose.7 Au contraire, our transcript consciously aims to preserve the untidiness and immediacy of the interview; in consequence, very little in the way of repetitive and inconsequential remarks has been omitted.The transcript must be approached, therefore, as the opportunity to listen in on a cordial conversation. One might fairly wonder how far Hopkins had settled in advance with Finley the directions that it might take. No more than minimally, we may suspect, beyond their mutual acknowledgment of the general scope and purpose outlined by the series organizers—hence Hopkins’ unfailing deference towards Finley and his [End Page 168] successive cues to advance the conversation instructively. But recalling the stage where Hopkins asks, “How did you come to cross the Atlantic?” and Finley blithely declines to offer more than the briefest response, we can only speculate whether this was a prearranged rejection of a question which it was reasonable for Hopkins to pose but which Finley preferred not to pursue; or whether Hopkins failed to anticipate quite such a rapid, firm rebuff, and so had to introduce a fresh line of questioning sooner than expected. After all, if Finley had opted to take up the... (shrink)

This is the first book to offer the best essays, articles, and speeches on ethics and intelligence that demonstrate the complex moral dilemmas in intelligence collection, analysis, and operations. Some are recently declassified and never before published, and all are written by authors whose backgrounds are as varied as their insights, including Robert M. Gates, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; John P. Langan, the Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Professor of Catholic Social Thought at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, (...) Georgetown University; and Loch K. Johnson, Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia and recipient of the Owens Award for contributions to the understanding of U.S. intelligence activities. Creating the foundation for the study of ethics and intelligence by filling in the gap between warfare and philosophy, this is a valuable collection of literature for building an ethical code that is not dependent on any specific agency, department, or country. (shrink)

Many U.S. corporations and the goods they produce negatively impact our society without breaking any laws. We are all too familiar with the tobacco industry's effect on public health and health care costs for smokers and nonsmokers, as well as the role of profit in the pharmaceutical industry's research priorities. It's Legal but It Ain't Right tackles these issues, plus the ethical ambiguities of legalized gambling, the firearms trade, the fast food industry, the pesticide industry, private security companies, and more. (...) Aiming to identify industries and goods that undermine our societal values and to hold them accountable for their actions, this collection makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing discussion of ethics in our time. This accessible exploration of corporate legitimacy and crime will be important reading for advocates, journalists, students, and anyone interested in the dichotomy between law and legitimacy. Nikos Passas is Professor in the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University. Neva Goodwin is Co-director of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University. (shrink)

Les etudes reunies dans ce volume sont consacrees a l'interpretation des theses principales que defend Aristote en plaidant pour l'exercice d'une veritable politique par le citoyen juste. Ce sont des theses d'un enjeu redoutable. Elles impliquent le plus souvent les conceptions que se fait Aristote des vertus morales et intellectuelles composant le portrait de l'homme, non seulement heureux, mais susceptible d'apporter le bonheur a la Cite. Elles engagent aussi a considerer l'unite profonde que forment, chez Aristote, l'ethique et la politique. (...) A cote d'etudes recemment publiees par l'auteur, le receuil contient d'importants inedits qui font le point sur des questions disputees. L'ensemble peut introduire aux differents aspects de la pensee ethico-politique d'Aristote qui font, aujourd'hui encore, son actualite. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Christian PhilosopherKerry S. WaltersThe Christian Philosopher, by Cotton Mather; edited by Winton U. Solberg; cxlii & 488 pp. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994, $49.95.Poor Cotton Mather! For well over two centuries now he has been a popular icon of unctuous self-righteousness, superstitious fanaticism, and dogmatic intolerance. Nor has endorsement of this stereotype been confined to casual laypersons who know of Mather only from lurid accounts of (...) Salem witch-hunting. Scholars who ought to know better often buy into it. Perry Miller, the doyen of early American studies, consistently wrote of Mather in a particularly unsympathetic manner. More odious, as Professor Solberg reminds us (p. xciii), was the treatment by historians at a Florida planetarium who in 1982 put together a short film on early European and American doomsday predictors which included segments on Mather the astronomer. When these segments appeared, a projector was programmed to flash the words “Feel Free to Boo and Hiss” on the planetarium’s dome—an invitation which audiences, presumably, gleefully accepted.Mather deserves better than this, and Winton Solberg’s critical edition of The Christian Philosopher goes a long way towards rehabilitating the Puritan divine. Along with recent studies such as Kenneth Murdock’s edition of Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana (1977) and Kenneth Silverman’s masterful The Life and Times of Cotton Mather (1984), Solberg’s study painstakingly presents us with a detailed account of a man who undoubtedly was one of the most important literary figures in early America.Mather published The Christian Philosopher in 1721, seven years before his [End Page 167] death and eight years after being named to the Royal Society of London. The book was both the culmination of a lifetime of learning as well as a calculated effort on Mather’s part to show that his election to the prestigious Royal Society was deserved. The book is the first attempt by an American-born author to take a comprehensive look at the “new learning” associated with that period known since as the Enlightenment. Mather was an omnivorous reader and an equally thorough observer of natural phenomena, and he welcomed the scientific interpretations of reality offered by such savants as Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, and John Ray. In the mind of Mather, such explanations posed no challenge to the Christian worldview. On the contrary, he concluded, they supported it by providing clear and indisputable evidence of design in nature. The Christian Philosopher (or, in more contemporary jargon, The Christian Scientist) is Mather’s attempt to defend this thesis. It is an exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting!) compendium of data gleaned from the natural realm which, in Mather’s judgment, irrefutably points to the existence of a grand Designer. Although Mather explicitly claimed that his primary goal in writing the book was to demonstrate that atheism is contrary to reason, he also penned one of the New World’s first systematic Enlightenment documents.One of the difficulties in reading The Christian Philosopher traditionally has been the sheer breadth of learning that went into its composition. Mather cites over four hundred books, includes hundreds of allusions to classical and scriptural sources, and so inundates the reader with evidence in support of his fundamental design argument that it is quite easy to lose one’s way. Professor Solberg has considerably lightened these burdens with his critical edition. He prefaces Mather’s text with a masterful 115-page introduction which places the work in its historical context as well as analyzes its methodology and arguments. Moreover, his edition includes 170 pages of endnotes, biographical notes, biblical references and a recapitulation of Mather’s own sources. Finally, Solberg supplies almost each page of Mather’s text with footnotes that identify literary or scriptural allusions and translate Mather’s liberal use of Greek and Latin quotations.Solberg’s edition of The Christian Philosopher will prove, I’m confident, to be the definitive text. It is an invaluable reference tool for the specialist, but it can also serve as a friendly and intriguing introduction for the layperson. Convinced Puritan-bashers who read this study may still regard Mather’s worldview with distaste, but I suspect that Solberg’s sensitive... (shrink)

Biosemiotics is a theoretical approach that makes a research on signs, sign systems and semantic processes of the biosphere. It provides a conceptual framework for describing biological phenomena at all levels of the organization of life, and its relevance may be due to the unstable relationship between culture and nature. We are able to use this approach to initiate safe cultural forms and practices. Biosemiotic approach makes it possible to combine cultural and semiotic concepts with biological and biosemiotic frames in (...) the relevance to ecosemiotics, as we are able to update cultural civilizational meanings and identify new vectors of human’s civilization development in the epoch of the post-anthropocentrism. (shrink)

It was a great privilege to know Professor Charity Scott. I first met her when I was finishing Emory University’s joint law and public health program in the early 2000s, through the Office of General Counsel at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in the early days of CDC’s Public Health Law Program, now the Office of Public Health Law Services. In those days, introductions were generous and frequent for excited students beginning their careers, but meeting Professor (...) Scott made an impression on me. She was the first and only female health law professor in the field that I had the opportunity to know in the early years of my career. (shrink)