Benenson et al. amass impressive evidence of robust sex differences as support for expanding “staying alive” theory. We argue for a broader and more domain-specific conceptualization focusing on life history tradeoffs between survival and mating success. Using three examples – women's disgust, fear of rape, and cultivation of bodyguards – we illustrate these tradeoffs and suggest a broader theoretical framework.

In this paper, we evaluate the pragmatic turn towards embodied, enactive thinking in cognitive science, in the context of recent empirical research on the memory palace technique. The memory palace is a powerful method for remembering yet it faces two problems. First, cognitive scientists are currently unable to clarify its efficacy. Second, the technique faces significant practical challenges to its users. Virtual reality devices are sometimes presented as a way to solve these practical challenges, but currently fall short of delivering (...) on that promise. We address both issues in this paper. First, we argue that an embodied, enactive approach to memory can better help us understand the effectiveness of the memory palace. Second, we present design recommendations for a virtual memory palace. Our theoretical proposal and design recommendations contribute to solving both problems and provide reasons for preferring an embodied, enactive account over an information-processing treatment of the memory palace. (shrink)

If climate change represents a severe threat to humankind, why then is response to it characterized by inaction at all levels? The authors argue there are two complementary explanations for the lack of motivation. First, our moral judgment system appears to be unable to identify climate change as an important moral problem and there are pervasive doubts about the agency of individuals. This explanation, however, is incomplete: Individual emitters can effectively be held morally responsible for their luxury emissions. Second, doubts (...) about individual agency have become overly emphasized and fail to convincingly exonerate individuals from responsibility. This book extends the second explanation for the motivational gap, namely that the arguments for the lack of individual agency do in fact correspond to mechanisms of moral disengagement. The use of these mechanisms enables consumption elites to maintain their consumptive lifestyles without having to accept moral responsibility for their luxury emissions. (shrink)

Abating the threat climate change poses to the lives of future people clearly challenges our development models. The 2011 Human Devel- opment Report rightly focuses on the integral links between sustainability and equity. However, the human development and capabilities approach emphasizes the expansion of people’s capabilities simpliciter, which is ques- tionable in view of environmental sustainability. We argue that capabilities should be defined as triadic relations between an agent, constraints and poss- ible functionings. This triadic syntax particularly applies to climate (...) change: since people’s lives and capabilities are dependent on the environment, sus- tainable human development should also include constraining human activi- ties in order to prevent losses in future people’s well-being due to the adverse effects of exacerbated climate change. On this basis, we will advocate that the goals of sustainable human development should be informed by a fra- mework that consists of enhancing capabilities up to a threshold level, as well as constraining the functionings beyond this threshold in terms of their green- house gas emissions. (shrink)

We propose that virtue ethics can be used to address ethical issues central to discussions about sex robots. In particular, we argue virtue ethics is well equipped to focus on the implications of sex robots for human moral character. Our evaluation develops in four steps. First, we present virtue ethics as a suitable framework for the evaluation of human–robot relationships. Second, we show the advantages of our virtue ethical account of sex robots by comparing it to current instrumentalist approaches, showing (...) how the former better captures the reciprocal interaction between robots and their users. Third, we examine how a virtue ethical analysis of intimate human–robot relationships could inspire the design of robots that support the cultivation of virtues. We suggest that a sex robot which is equipped with a consent-module could support the cultivation of compassion when used in supervised, therapeutic scenarios. Fourth, we discuss the ethical implications of our analysis for user autonomy and responsibility. (shrink)

Technological artefacts have, in recent years, invited increasingly intimate ways of interaction. But surprisingly little attention has been devoted to how such interactions, like with wearable devices or household robots, shape our minds, cognitive capacities, and moral character. In this thesis, I develop an embodied, enactive account of mind--technology interaction that takes the reciprocal influence of artefacts on minds seriously. First, I examine how recent developments in philosophy of technology can inform the phenomenology of mind--technology interaction as seen through an (...) enactivist lens. Second, I show how an enactive account of remembering can improve operationalizations of the memory palace mnemonic through virtual reality devices. Third, I draw on virtue ethics to argue that an enactivist approach allows us to better grasp the morally shaping aspects of artefacts by looking at social robots. Fourth, I fend off an underlying metaphysical concern about enactivism by arguing that an embodied, enactive account is compatible with the multiple realization of cognitive processes. This principle is often seen as a crucial test favouring accounts such as extended functionalism over enactivism and I argue that some forms of enactivism pass this test as well. Finally, I conclude by considering what the future relationship between enactivism and functionalism may have in store for the study of mind--technology interaction. (shrink)

How should sociologists use the word theory? Gabriel Abend’s recent insistence that this question should be tackled politically raises two important issues: Is sociology political? And if so, what normative implications follow for its organization? Drawing on Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblance and post-Gramscian theories of hegemony, I argue that Abend’s proposal that semantic questions about theory can be addressed separately from ontological, evaluative, and teleological ones is untenable. Disagreements about the latter are constitutive, not merely supplementary to the meaning (...) of theory. Against Abend’s deliberative-democratically oriented vision, I propose an agonistic politics of theory. In doing so, I consider both the internal inconsistencies of deliberativism and the practical advantages and sociological relevance of agonism. (shrink)

Mario Villalobos and Pablo Razeto-Barry argue that enactivists should understand living beings not as autopoietic systems, but as autopoietic bodies. In doing so, they surrender the principle of multiple realizability of the spatial location of living beings. By way of counterexample, I argue that more motivation is required before this principle is surrendered.

L’ouvrage qu’on va lire se veut être une fondation transcendantale des logiques développementales (essentiellement celle de Lesniewski). Une telle démarche n’a jamais été tentée. Pour ce faire, il a fallu remonter aux sources immanentes de la Critique de la Raison Pure et de son architectonique. L’auteur a ainsi produit une apparence ontologique correspondant à l’ontologie du logicien polonais. Pour saisir la portée des définitions de la vérité et de l’objet, Marc Peeters convoque quatre concepts : la discrépance, le simulacre, (...) la reprise et l’historicité transcendantale. Ces concepts et les principes qui les régissent servent à repenser la logique chez Kant et à poser la question renouvelée, historique et logique, de la métaphysique. (shrink)

Since several elections since 1991 were won by an extreme right political party, especially in the Flanders and in the city of Antwerp, polities has responded with an increase in attention for environmental and social policies. In a first reaction - and after a longstand period of budget cuts - more money was invested in the building ofsocial housing. Later this policy was broadened to a more comprehensive policy for the cities, trying to integrate the brick-and-mortar approaches with welfare policies. (...) In this contribution three things are put into perspective. The first deals with the rise of the urban problems. A second part deals with the new policies who are implemented today. These are territorially targeted at poor neighbourhoods. In a final part these policies are situated in a regional context since the liveability of the central cities can not be seen without its regional context, since very often the more wealthy people are living outside the administrative boundaries while the vulnerable social groups are living in the older inner city neighbourhoods. (shrink)

Semiotics of mediation is based on comparative analysis of mediation processes, on typology of forms of mediation and on the subsequent complementary analysis of culture. Not only does cultural analysis that is based on semiotics of mediation proceed from communication processes, it also searches for possibilities of correlation between concepts of describability, analysability, translatability. Depending on the strategy of mediation semiotics it is possible to create an overview of the main parameters of cultural analysis and to specify the boundaries of (...) semiotic analysis of culture. The main types of mediation are simultaneously parameters of cultural analysis. The main types include autocommunicative mediation, metalingual mediation, intertextual mediation, interdiscursive mediation, and inter- or transmedial mediation. Typology of mediation types facilitates the understanding of the autocommunicative aspect of culture and creates the basis for analysing communication processes not on the level of the immediate sender and receiver but as part of the culture’s communication with itself. Semiotics of mediation starts from semiotic mediation and ends with a culture of mediation in which one and the same cultural language or text operates as a means of dialogue with itself, as a means of communication with others, as part of some textual system or discourse, or as a transmedial phenomenon. Semiotics of mediation is a means of studying the correlation between implicit semiotic mediation and forms of explicit semiotic mediation, thus complementing cultural semiotic study of culture. (shrink)

The article concentrates on the possibilities of bringing into dialogue two different theoretical frameworks for conceptualising social reality and power: those proposed by Ernesto Laclau, one of the leading current theorists of hegemony, and Juri Lotman, a path breaking cultural theorist. We argue that these two models contain several concepts that despite their different verbal expressions play exactly the same functional role in both theories. In this article, however, we put special emphasis on the problem of naming for both theorists. (...) We propose to see naming as one of the central translating strategies in the politico-hegemonic discourse. Our main thesis is that through substituting some central categories of Laclau’s theory with those of Lotman’s, it is possible to develop a model of hegemony that is a better tool for empirical study of power relations in given social formations than the model proposed by Laclau, who in his later works tends more and more to ground it in psychoanalytic ontology. (shrink)

The article sets out to initiate a dialogue between two normative conceptions of democratic society, overwhelmingly depicted as irreconcilable by the partisans of each position: the political liberalism of John Rawls and the radical democracy of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. The paper argues that both approaches share the same underlying ethos in envisioning society (called the “the ethos of contingency” in the paper) informing Laclau and Mouffe’s notion of radical democracy and hegemony, as well as Rawls's view of justice (...) as fairness conceived in terms of reciprocity with its accompanying idea of public reason and reflective equilibrium. (shrink)

This paper motivates the idea that social robots should be credited as moral patients, building on an argumentative approach that combines virtue ethics and social recognition theory. Our proposal answers the call for a nuanced ethical evaluation of human-robot interaction that does justice to both the robustness of the social responses solicited in humans by robots and the fact that robots are designed to be used as instruments. On the one hand, we acknowledge that the instrumental nature of robots and (...) their unsophisticated social capabilities prevent any attribution of rights to robots, which are devoid of intrinsic moral dignity and personal status. On the other hand, we argue that another form of moral consideration—not based on rights attribution—can and must be granted to robots. The reason is that relationships with robots offer to the human agents important opportunities to cultivate both vices and virtues, like social interaction with other human beings. Our argument appeals to social recognition to explain why social robots, unlike other technological artifacts, are capable of establishing with their human users quasi-social relationships as pseudo-persons. This recognition dynamic justifies seeing robots as worthy of moral consideration from a virtue ethical standpoint as it predicts the pre-reflective formation of persistent affective dispositions and behavioral habits that are capable of corrupting the human user’s character. We conclude by drawing attention to a potential paradox drawn forth by our analysis and by examining the main conceptual conundrums that our approach has to face. (shrink)

RESUMO A Escola de Tártu-Moscou aceitou, como atitude profissional, reconstruir a tradição e ligar-se com as realizações - esquecidas ou reprimidas cultural e cientificamente - das primeiras décadas do séc. XX. Uma missão de Lotman como um de seus líderes foi conhecer e mediar a herança esquecida. Na situação de censura muitos contatos entre Lotman e a teoria russa não estavam visíveis. Dessa forma, a síntese de Lotman, Tynianov, Bakhtin, Vygotsky, Eisenstein e outros, num intenso diálogo implícito, pode ser a (...) base para a formação da próxima etapa da semiótica da cultura. Enfim, a compreensão de Tynianov acerca da dinâmica literária e cultural, a teoria semiótica lotmaniana de texto e seus pensamentos sobre um modelo de espaço como uma das linguagens primárias da cultura, e a teoria bakhtiniana do cronotopo formam um complexo teórico que pode oferecer novas possibilidades para o desenvolvimento tanto dos princípios culturais teóricos e práticos quanto da análise textual. ABSTRACT The Tartu‒Moscow School accepted as its professional attitude to reconstruct the tradition and connect itself to the forgotten or repressed cultural-scientific achievements of the period of the first decades of the 20th century. One mission of Lotman as one of the leaders of the Tartu-Moscow School was knowing and mediating forgotten heritage. In the situation of censorship many contacts between Lotman and Russian theory were not visible. Thus, the synthesis of Lotman, Tynianov, Bakhtin, Vygotsky, Eisenstein and others, in an implicit dialogue, can be the basis for the formation of the next stage of semiotics of culture. Finally, Tynjanov’s understanding of literary and cultural dynamics, Lotman’s semiotic theory of text and his thoughts about a model of space as one of the primary languages of culture, and Bakhtin’s theory of chronotope form this theoretical complex that can give new possibilities for developing both, theoretical and practical principles of cultural and textual analysis. (shrink)

Since 1984 when J. Lotman’s article “On semiosphere” was published, this concept has been moving from one terminological field to another. In the disciplinary terminological field of the Tartu–Moscow School semiotics of culture, ‘semiosphere’ is connected with terms ‘language — secondary modelling system — text — culture’. From interdisciplinary terminological fields, the associations either with biosphere and noosphere, or with logosphere, are more important. As a metadisciplinary concept, semiosphere belongs to the methodology of culture studies and is associated with the (...) concepts of holism and the part and the whole. In this context, semiosphere marks the complementarity of disciplines studying culture, the movement towards the creation of general culture studies and “understanding methodology”. On the background of the contemporary trends of science it has to be remembered that semiosphere is simultaneously an object- and a metaconcept. The dynamism of culture as a research object forces science to search for new description languages but the new description languages in turn influence the cultural dynamics as they offer new possibilities for self-description. Often, however, from a historical perspective, a new description language is nothing but a methodological translation. Thus also the term semiosphere joins together several concepts that are related to semiotics of culture and that have gained new relevance on the background of the culture’s developmental dynamics. The concept of semiosphere brings semiotics of culture again into contact with its history, as it also brings applicational cultural analysis into contact with the history of culture and with the newest phenomena in culture. These contacts determine the place of the semiotics of culture among the sciences studying culture. (shrink)

Practical realism is focused on the problem of how science really works. In the case of physics and chemistry, experiment is the centrepiece of scientific practice. The rapid development of contemporary natural science does not leave the experiment unaffected. The classical experiment is normally applied only to systems that can be considered structurally stable, repeatability being the key feature. After the introduction of the theoretical basis of irreversibility by Ilya Prigogine the essence of the experiment changed. The strict requirement of (...) repeatability has to be dropped. It will be discussed, whether the change is big enough for calling it revolutionary. There are means to update the understanding of the experiment by applying the experimental settings. The material experiment will probably be with us forever but its position on the scientific landscape will be shifted. (shrink)

The most common difficulty in translation studies has traditionally been the dilemma between the historical and synchronic approaches in the analysis and description of the culture of translation. On the one hand the culture of translation might be presented as the sum of various kinds of translated texts (repertoire of culture), on the other hand it might be described as the hierarchy of the various types of translations themselves. The first approach assumes plenty of languages for such description, in the (...) latter one suggests only one language for the same representation. A cultural critic faces the same problems. In these perspectives the translation reveals important mechanisms of the performance of culture. First of all it is the semiotic interpretation of the theory of translation, introduced by the number of scientists beginning with R. Jakobson and including U. Eco who put together interlinguistic, intra-linguistic, and inter-semiotic translations, so crucial for the further understanding of culture. As a result, the general notion of culture might be described as the process of total translation. And secondly, the othervaluable contribution to the theory of translation has been made by both M. Bakhtin and J. Lotman in terms of the synthesis of two traditions in semiotics of culture resulted in juxtaposing such notions as dialogism and autonomy — creolization, polyphony, counterword, and translation. (shrink)

The semiospherical approach to semiotics and especially to semiotics of culture entails the need of juxtaposing several terminological fields. Among the most important, the fields of textuality, chronotopicality, and multimodality or multimediality should be listed. Textuality in this paper denotes a general principle with the help of which it is possible to observe and to interpret different aspects of the workings of culture. Textuality combines in itself text as a well-defined artefact and textualization as an abstraction (presentation or definition as (...) text). In culture, we can pose in principle the same questions both to a concrete and to an abstract text, although an abstract text is only an operational means for defining, with the help of textualization, a certain phenomenon in the interests of a holistic and systemic analysis. The practice of textualization in turn helps us to understand the necessity of distinguishing between articulation emerging from the textual material itself and articulation ensuing from textuality or textualization — the former provides for comparability between texts made from the same material, thelatter makes comparable all textualized phenomena irrespective of their material. Textuality is a possibility that culture offers to its analyser, and at the same time it is an ontological property of culture and an epistemological principle for investigating culture. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2014 Heft: 202 Seiten: 365-393.

Artikkel käsitleb kriitiliselt üht viimaste kümnendite vastandust poliitilises filosoofias — ‘poliitilise liberalismi’ (Rawls) ja ‘radikaalse demokraatia’ (Laclau ja Mouffe) vahel. Artikkel püüab käivitada potentsiaalset dialoogi nende kahe näiliselt lahkneva lähenemise vahel. Kokkuvõttes näitab artikkel, et vastandus on möödarääkimine vähemalt ühes fundamentaalses mõttes: mõlemad lähenemised jagavad ühiskonnastmõtlemisel sama aluseetost. Artiklis nimetatakse seda ‘sattumuslikkuse eetoseks’ ning väidetakse, et see on kõige fundamentaalsem alusveendumus nii Laclau ja Mouffe’i ‘radikaalse demokraatia’ kui ka Rawlsi ‘õigluse kui ausameelsuse’ idee jaoks. Artikkel osutab ka ühele kesksele kitsaskohale (...) Laclau ja Mouffe’i lähenemises: nende suutmatusele kontseptualiseerida institutsioonilisi korraldusi tulenevalt nende ülemäärasest rõhuasetust demokraatia dekonstruktiivsele potentsiaalile. Selles suhtes osutatakse ka Rawlsi käsitluse ilmselgetele eelistele, kuna see pakub juhiseid organiseerimaks demokraatlikke institutsioone. The paper concentrates on a controversy in recent decades’ political thought between ‘political liberalism’ of Rawls and ‘radical democracy’ (represented in this paper by Laclau and Mouffe). The article tries to initiate a potential dialogue between these seemingly divisive approaches. In conclusion the paper maintains that the whole controversy is misguided in one fundamental respect: both approaches share the same underlying ethos in envisioning society—‘the ethos of contingency’. It is argued that it is the most fundamental tenet informing both Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of hegemony with its complementary idea of ‘radical democracy’, and justice as fairness conceived in terms of reciprocity with its accompanying idea of public justification and reflective equilibrium. _e article points to a central impasse in Laclau and Mouffe’s approach: its incapability to conceptualize institutional arrangements due to their overemphasis on the deconstructive potential of democracy. In this respect the obvious merits of Rawls’ conception are highlighted in view of his proposals for organizing democratic institutions. (shrink)

In view of the recent criticisms of Janar Mihkelsaar the authors explicate their position on what political semiotics is and why it is important for both semiotics and the social sciences. Some further research trajectories are also discussed in moving from semiotic theory of hegemony to fully developed subdiscipline of political semiotics that would be part of the “relational turn” in political analysis more generally.

This biography of Jacques Derrida tells the story of a Jewish boy from Algiers, excluded from school at the age of twelve, who went on to become the most widely translated French philosopher in the world – a vulnerable, tormented man who, throughout his life, continued to see himself as unwelcome in the French university system. We are plunged into the different worlds in which Derrida lived and worked: pre-independence Algeria, the microcosm of the École Normale Supérieure, the cluster of (...) structuralist thinkers, and the turbulent events of 1968 and after. We meet the remarkable series of leading writers and philosophers with whom Derrida struck up a friendship: Louis Althusser, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean Genet, and Hélène Cixous, among others. We also witness an equally long series of often brutal polemics fought over crucial issues with thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, John R. Searle, and Jürgen Habermas, as well as several controversies that went far beyond academia, the best known of which concerned Heidegger and Paul de Man. We follow a series of courageous political commitments in support of Nelson Mandela, illegal immigrants, and gay marriage. And we watch as a concept – deconstruction – takes wing and exerts an extraordinary influence way beyond the philosophical world, on literary studies, architecture, law, theology, feminism, queer theory, and postcolonial studies. In writing this compelling and authoritative biography, Benoît Peeters talked to over a hundred individuals who knew and worked with Derrida. He is also the first person to make use of the huge personal archive built up by Derrida throughout his life and of his extensive correspondence. Peeters’ book gives us a new and deeper understanding of the man who will perhaps be seen as the major philosopher of the second half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

If one wants to understand translation, it is necessary to look at all its aspects from the psychological to the ideological. And it is necessary to see the process of translation, on the one hand, as a complex of interlinguistic, intralinguistic, and intersemiotic translations, and on the other hand, as a complex of linguistic, cultural, economic, and ideological activities. Translators work at the boundaries of languages, cultures, and societies. They position themselves between the poles of specificity and adaptation in accordance (...) with the strategies of their translational behaviour. They either preserve the otherness of the other or they transform the other into self. By the same token, they cease to be simple mediators, because in a semiotic sense they are capable of generating new languages for the description of a foreign language, text, or culture, and of renewing a culture or of having an influence on the dialogic capacity of a culture with other cultures as well as with itself. In this way, translators work not only with natural languages but also with metalanguages, languages of description. One of the missions of the translator is to increase the receptivity and dialogic capability of a culture, and through these also the internal variety of that culture. As mediators between languages, translators are important creators of new metalanguages. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to identify the forms of being of science in the philosophy of the Muslim thinker Abū Naṣr Muhammad al-Fārābī, who lived in the 9th–10th centuries. In this regard, the article first addresses the problem of the origin of science. The enumeration of sciences is manifested in al-Farabi’s research as “divine science,” that is, metaphysics and individual sciences, with a Muslim specificity. Science as a process of cognition is an ascent from the imperfect to the (...) perfect. The First Cause (the First Being) of everything is the absolute perfection. It is also a deity and the “cause” of the origin of sciences. The comprehensive encyclopedism of al-Farabi’s predetermined science is a kind of worldview. In this context, he distinguished between the science of language, logic, mathematics, physics, metaphysics, and civil science, which explains the essence of real happiness. Only members of the ideal community (“the inhabitants of a virtuous city”) are able to achieve happiness. Therefore, the study of sciences in totality creates the respective “virtuous” worldview. (shrink)

For decades, the British philosopher of science Nicholas Maxwell has been promoting a new approach to science called aim-oriented empiricism. Maxwell's basic claim is that the regular way of doing science, called standard empiricism, is untenable because it does not account for the basic general assumptions that scientists actually adhere to without acknowledgment. Standard empiricism is unable to make sense of the progress of science as it is happening. The alternative approach that Maxwell advocates, aim-oriented empiricism, acknowledges some basic metaphysical (...) assumptions, comprehensibility, unity and simplicity as inherent parts of science itself. By including these metaphysical assumptions into science, Maxwell is looking for ways to make sense of the progress of science from a philosophical perspective. This paper challenges Maxwell's claim with the help of another new approach to science, practical realism. While the founder of practical realism, Rein Vihalemm, claims that his approach is closely related to Maxwell's views, he does not acknowledge any need for metaphysics in science. (shrink)

This is an attempt to take a look at chemistry from the point of view of practical realism. Besides its social–historical and normative aspects, the latter involves a direct reference to experimental research. According to Edward Caldin chemistry depends on our being able to isolate pure substances with reproducible properties. Thus, the very basis of chemistry is practical. Even the laws of chemistry are not stable but are subject to correction. At the same time, these statements do not necessarily make (...) Edward Caldin a predecessor of practical realism. The latter has other predecessors, like Rom Harré’s policy realism or Sami Pihlström’s pragmatic realism. Chemistry is an experimental science. The experiment is a purposeful and critically theory-guided constructive, manipulative, material interference with nature according to Rein Vihalemm, the founder of practical realism. Chemistry is physics-like science but just partly so. This is an important point in the context of the current paper. (shrink)

This is an attempt to take a look at chemistry from the point of view of practical realism. Besides its social–historical and normative aspects, the latter involves a direct reference to experimental research. According to Edward Caldin chemistry depends on our being able to isolate pure substances with reproducible properties. Thus, the very basis of chemistry is practical. Even the laws of chemistry are not stable but are subject to correction. At the same time, these statements do not necessarily make (...) Edward Caldin a predecessor of practical realism. The latter has other predecessors, like Rom Harré’s policy realism or Sami Pihlström’s pragmatic realism. Chemistry is an experimental science. The experiment is a purposeful and critically theory-guided constructive, manipulative, material interference with nature according to Rein Vihalemm, the founder of practical realism. Chemistry is physics-like science but just partly so. This is an important point in the context of the current paper. (shrink)

Darwin1 introduced the idea that ornamental secondary sexual traits have evolved in response to female preferences for showy males. Among such traits, yellow and red carotenoid‐based ornaments have been considered as particularly good candidates for explaining why and how females would benefit from mating with showy partners. Because carotenoids can be used for promotion of both health and appearance, colourful male ornaments should honestly reveal the vigour of the bearers. Two recent experiments with birds2,3 now show how allocation of bodily (...) carotenoids to sexual signalling is traded off against the use of carotenoids for boosting immune function. BioEssays 25:746–747, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Georges Frédéric Parrot, the first Rector of the University of Tartu after it was reopened in 1802, was a son of the French Enlightenment. He considered it his mission to implement these ideas in the context of the new university. One of the foci of his activities was arranging the university according to a new type of statutes endorsing free development of all kinds of branches of science in the framework of the so-called ‘Academic Republic’, which would be no longer (...) dominated by theology. Parrot was successful in his pursuits. The University of Tartu became an outstanding centre of astronomy, mathematics and natural science—the fields Parrot himself was actively involved in. Today, the term Academic Republic is becoming more and more frequently used by the university employees again. The emphasis on the role of natural science, which was one of Parrot’s main ideas, caused the need for a New Enlightenment. This is the term invented by Nicholas Maxwell, the British philosopher of science. Although the focus of Maxwell’s New Enlightenment seems to be much narrower than that of the classical one, the final goal is still the same. According to Maxwell, making physics the science proper, the basis of constructing serious academic knowledge, has caused the concentration of research on the quest for some kind of special knowledge, the scientific one. Everything stops there. We have lost sight of the general goal of serving humanity, looking for solutions to actual grave problems that Homo sapiens is facing today. Obviously, to serve the whole humanity was the basic goal of the “original” Enlightenment as well. We have to restore the view of the so-called philosophes concerning the position of social science in the academia. It is social science that form the basis for the understanding and solving the problems that are of real importance to human life. (shrink)

Georges Frédéric Parrot (1767–1852), the first Rector of the University of Tartu (Dorpat) after it was reopened in 1802, was a son of the French Enlightenment. He considered it his mission to implement these ideas in the context of the new university. One of the foci of his activities was arranging the university according to a new type of statutes endorsing free development of all kinds of branches of science in the framework of the so-called ‘Academic Republic’, which would be (...) no longer dominated by theology. Parrot was successful in his pursuits. The University of Tartu became an outstanding centre of astronomy, mathematics and natural science—the fields Parrot himself was actively involved in. Today, the term Academic Republic is becoming more and more frequently used by the university employees again. The emphasis on the role of natural science, which was one of Parrot’s main ideas, caused the need for a New Enlightenment. This is the term invented by Nicholas Maxwell, the British philosopher of science. Although the focus of Maxwell’s New Enlightenment seems to be much narrower than that of the classical one, the final goal is still the same. According to Maxwell, making physics the science proper, the basis of constructing serious academic knowledge, has caused the concentration of research on the quest for some kind of special knowledge, the scientific one. Everything stops there. We have lost sight of the general goal of serving humanity, looking for solutions to actual grave problems that Homo sapiens is facing today. Obviously, to serve the whole humanity was the basic goal of the “original” Enlightenment as well. We have to restore the view of the so-called philosophes concerning the position of social science in the academia. It is social science (and the humanities) that form the basis for the understanding and solving the problems that are of real importance to human life. (shrink)