Factors such as subsistence turnover, warfare, or interaction between different groups can be major sources of cultural change in human populations. Global demographic shifts such as the transition to agriculture during the Neolithic and more recently the urbanization and globalization of the twentieth century have been major catalysts for cultural change. Here, we test whether cultural traits such as patri/matrilocality and postmarital migration persist in the face of social upheaval and gene flow during the past 150 years in postcolonial South (...) Africa. The recent history of South Africa has seen major demographic shifts that resulted in the displacement and forced sedentism of indigenous Khoekhoe and San populations. During the expansion of the colonial frontier, the Khoe-San admixed with European colonists and enslaved individuals from West/Central Africa, Indonesia, and South Asia, introducing novel cultural norms. We conducted demographic interviews among Nama and Cederberg communities representing nearly 3,000 individuals across three generations. Despite the history of colonial expansion, and the subsequent incorporation of Khoe-San and Khoe-San-descendant communities into a colonial society with strong patrilocal norms, patrilocality is the least common postmarital residence pattern in our study populations today. Our results suggest that more recent forces of integration into the market economy are likely the primary drivers of change in the cultural traits examined in our study. Birthplace had a strong effect on an individual’s odds of migration, distance moved, and postmarital residence form. These effects are at least partially explained by the population size of the birthplace. Our results suggest that market factors local to birthplaces are important drivers of residence decisions, although the frequency of matrilocal residence and a geographic and temporal cline in migration and residence patterns also indicate the persistence of some historic Khoe-San cultural traits in contemporary groups. (shrink)

Smilek, Eastwood, Reynolds, and Kingstone suggests that the studies reported in Beck, M. R., Levin, D. T. and Angelone, B. A. are not ecologically valid. Here, we argue that not only are change blindness and change blindness blindness studies in general ecologically valid, but that the studies we reported in Beck, Levin, and Angelone, 2007 are as well. Specifically, we suggest that many of the changes used in our study could reasonably be expected to occur in the real world. (...) Furthermore, the conclusion from Beck et al. that knowledge about the role of intention and scene complexity in change detection is not readily accessible applies not only to the laboratory studies we conducted but also to real world situations. (shrink)

We extend the relational algebra of Chin and Tarski so that it is multisorted or, as we prefer, typed. Each type supports a local Boolean algebra outfitted with a converse operator. From Lyndon, we know that relation algebras cannot be represented as proper relation algebras where a proper relation algebra has binary relations as elements and the algebra is singly-typed. Here, the intensional conjunction, which was to represent relational composition in Chin and Tarski, spans three different local algebras, thus the (...) term distributed in the title. Since we do not rely on proper relation algebras, we are free to re-express the algebras as typed. In doing so, we allow many different intensional conjunction operators. We construct a typed logic over these algebras, also known as heterogeneous algebras of Birkhoff and Lipson. The logic can be seen as a form of relevance logic with a classical negation connective where the Routley-Meyer star operator is reified as a converse connective in the logic. Relevance logic itself is not typed but our work shows how it can be made so. Some of the properties of classical relevance logic are weakened from Routley-Meyer’s version which is too strong for a logic over relation algebras. (shrink)

This article looks at the public debate which took place in the first half of the twentieth century and has repercussions to the present day. It was about the ethical stance of scientists, and how science should be organized. In particular, it examines the positions taken by Professor F. Soddy, F.R.S. and Nobel Laureate, who stressed the responsibility of scientists for the uses made of their research, Professor Michael Polanyi, F.R.S., who emphasised the obligation of scientists to the truth and (...) the essential role of morality in the organization of science, and Professor J.D.Bernal, F.R.S., who insisted that science was practised for utilitarian reasons and should be consciously developed for the good of society. (shrink)

The ‘traditional’ view among philosophical theologians, that God is eternal not merely in the sense of being everlasting but in the sense of being outside time altogether, has come under sharp criticism in recent years, both from biblical theologians and from philosophers. It is against the latter form of attack, particularly as represented by the detailed criticisms of Professor Nelson Pike, that I wish to try and defend the notion of a divine timelessness.

I have come to believe that the whole framework of our current thought is about to begin a long and radical transformation, based on what I shall call a new science of pure consciousness. The content of most of the matters to be considered by this science have hitherto been the concern of some areas of religion, particularly what in our culture we call ‘mysticism’; but the treatment of it would legitimately be called scientific. Thus one aspect of the transformation (...) would be to overcome that apparent conflict between ‘science’ and ‘religion’, which has been so characteristic of our culture over the last few centuries. (shrink)

Thomas Hill Green was one of the most influential English thinkers of his time, and he made significant contributions to the development of political liberalism. Much of his career was spent at Balliol College, Oxford: having begun as a student of Benjamin Jowett, he later acted effectively as his second-in-command at the college. Interested for his whole career in social questions, Green worked on the commission which led to the Endowed Schools Act of 1869, and supported the temperance movement, the (...) extension of the franchise, and the admission of women to university education. He became Whyte's professor of moral philosophy at Oxford in 1878, and his lectures had a lasting influence on a generation of students of philosophy and political thought. This collection of Green's writings, published in three volumes from 1885 to 1888, was edited by R. L. Nettleship, one of his Balliol students. (shrink)