Young children judge that violations of ordinary, causal constraints are impossible. Yet children’s religious beliefs typically include the assumption that such violations can occur via divine agency in the form of miracles. We conducted two studies to examine this potential conflict. In Study 1, we invited 5- and 6-year-old Colombian children attending either a secular or a religious school to judge what is and is not possible. Children made their judgments either following a minimal prompt or following a reminder of (...) God’s extraordinary powers. Irrespective of their education, and whether or not they had been reminded of God’s extraordinary powers, children systematically judged violations of ordinary, causal constraints to be impossible. In Study 2, we asked if more extensive reminders of God’s special powers would prompt religious children to say that the impossible can happen. Five- and 6-year-old Colombian children attending either a secular or a religious school were presented with narratives in which the protagonist desired an ordinarily impossible outcome. In half the stories, the protagonist prayed to God for the desired outcome. Irrespective of education and of whether the protagonist prayed, children systematically concluded that the desired outcome would not occur and justified that conclusion by reference to ordinary causal constraints. Nevertheless, in a minority of their replies children did assert that violations of ordinary causality are possible. Overall, irrespective of their religious education, young children judge that events rarely deviate from their natural course; only occasionally do they acknowledge exceptions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Brisbane: Utopian Dreams and Dystopian Nightmares by William (Bill) MetcalfLyman Tower SargentWilliam (Bill) Metcalf. Brisbane: Utopian Dreams and Dystopian Nightmares. Brisbane History Group Studies no. 11. Tingalpa: Boolarong Press, 2022. 297 pp. Australian $30.00 ISBN: 9781922643445.Bill Metcalf, the foremost scholar on Australian intentional communities, has discovered and written about a number of Australian utopias. In Brisbane: Utopian Dreams and Dystopian Nightmares he focuses on a subset of Australian (...) utopias, those written by people who lived in Brisbane plus one Brisbane architect who made designs for a future utopian Brisbane. One of the books, A Workingman’s Paradise: An Australian Labour Novel (1892), is well known, particularly in Australia. A second novel, The Adventures of Halek: An Autobiographical Fragment (1882) by John H. Nicholson, will be familiar to some readers. The others will be unfamiliar to most readers both in Australia and in the rest of the world. I learned of many of them through Metcalf ’s previous work and correspondence with him. Given this situation and the fact that a few of the books are only available in Australia, I have said something about all of them.The book begins with “A Brief Overview of Utopianism” (1–6), an introduction suitable for those unfamiliar with the subject, followed by “Overview of Brisbane in the 1880s and 1890s” (7–12), which gives all readers an initial context. The entire book is strong on context, particularly local context. The following nine chapters are on authors or coauthors of utopian texts and one artist. All the chapters begin with substantial biographical information about the authors, as well as their activities and the Brisbane context within which they lived, followed by a presentation and discussion of their utopias. [End Page 158]The first authors mentioned are William and Annie Lane, which immediately raised a question in my mind. The two works discussed, the racist “White or Yellow? A Story of the Race-war of A.D. 1908” by Sketcher (serialized in The Boomerang in 1888), and the socialist A Workingman’s Paradise by John Maurice Miller, have always been identified as written by William Lane—with no mention of Annie. Metcalf suggests, but with minimal discussion, that while “White or Yellow” was by William, Annie was the unacknowledged coauthor, perhaps even author, of A Workingman’s Paradise. So, I asked Metcalf about the attribution and in a substantial email of October 5, 2022, he laid out the argument, which is based in part on the work of a former student, John Kellett, published as “One-Woman-One Vote: Annie Lane, ‘Lucinda Sharpe,’ and the Female Franchise in Late-Nineteenth Century Queensland” (Hecate 30, no. 2 [2004]: 37–52).Lucinda Sharpe was the nom de plume of a weekly contributor to the newspapers published by William Lane. It has been believed that he wrote all the articles. Kellett, however, makes a strong case that Annie, who was a working journalist in Canada when she met William (also a working journalist), was Lucinda Sharpe. In particular, Kellett notes the extreme differences between William’s usual style and that of Lucinda Sharpe and compares it to material known to be written by Annie. Kellett concludes, based on the similarities between Lucinda and Annie and other evidence, that Lucinda was Annie. But Kellett is only concerned with the Lucinda Sharpe works and the way they presented the case for the franchise; he does not mention either of the works that Metcalf discusses.In his email to me, Metcalf expands on Kellett, saying thatWhile researching for this book I re-read The Workingman’s Paradise and again I was struck by how the sentence structure and language differs from William Lane’s usual work. Then I compared it to “Lucinda Sharpe,” and it was similar. I discussed this observation with John Kellett, now retired and living in Armadale, and he agreed. That led me to conclude that Annie Lane probably wrote The Working Man’s Paradise. Perhaps/probably with William’s input. The real giveaway is when William tries to write in a female voice, as in White or Yellow with the Cissie character, it is very stilted, “twee” and demeaning. When... (shrink)

Attention Restoration Theory proposes that exposure to natural environments helps to restore attention. For sustained attention—the ongoing application of focus to a task, the effect appears to be modest, and the underlying mechanisms of attention restoration remain unclear. Exposure to nature may improve attention performance through many means: modulation of alertness and one’s connection to nature were investigated here, in two separate studies. In both studies, participants performed the Sustained Attention to Response Task before and immediately after viewing a meadow, (...) ocean, or urban image for 40 s, and then completed the Perceived Restorativeness Scale. In Study 1, an eye-tracker recorded the participants’ tonic pupil diameter during the SARTs, providing a measure of alertness. In Study 2, the effects of connectedness to nature on SART performance and perceived restoration were studied. In both studies, the image viewed was not associated with participants’ sustained attention performance; both nature images were perceived as equally restorative, and more restorative than the urban image. The image viewed was not associated with changes in alertness. Connectedness to nature was not associated with sustained attention performance, but it did moderate the relation between viewing the natural images and perceived restorativeness; participants reporting a higher connection to nature also reported feeling more restored after viewing the nature, but not the urban, images. Dissociation was found between the physiological and behavioral measures and the perceived restorativeness of the images. The results suggest that restoration associated with nature exposure is not associated with modulation of alertness but is associated with connectedness with nature. (shrink)

This article situates Auden’s poem Musée des Beaux Arts in the process of his conversion to Christianity. The author argues for the layered intertextuality of the poem, in which allusions to Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, The Census at Jerusalem, and The Massacre of the Innocents can be recognised. Moreover, Philippe de Champaigne’s Presentation in the Temple and Peter Paul Rubens’s The Martyrdom of St Livinus seem also to have influenced the poem. Finally, there is reason to suppose (...) that John Singer Sargent’s Crashed Aeroplane influenced Auden. In an analysis of the structure of the poem, the author argues that there is a clear structure hidden under the surface of day-to-day language. He connects this hidden structure with Auden’s poem The Hidden Law, and suggests that Auden wished to claim that even though we cannot understand suffering, it has a hidden meaning known only to God. This hidden meaning connects our suffering with the self-emptying of Christ, a connection which the author demonstrates is in fact also made in Musée des Beaux Arts. (shrink)

To be effective ethical business leaders, students need experience identifying ethical dilemmas. Textbooks provide models and guidelines to categorize ethical challenges, yet students need practice applying these tools in the real world. The exercise described in this study is designed to do just that by helping students learn to identify ethical challenges in marketing. Using the marketing mix as a framework, this scavenger hunt-like exercise provides significant learning experiences by emphasizing teamwork, out of classroom learning, and meeting students where they (...) are with technology. The exercise may be used at either an undergraduate or graduate level in business ethics classes. Learning themes tapped in this exercise can be realized in the on-site classroom or the virtual classroom. Further variations on these themes conclude the article. (shrink)

This paper explores possible important relationships and sympathies between Amartya Sen’s Capabilities Approach framework for understanding the human condition and the educational ideas of John Dewey and Paolo Freire. All three focus on the importance of democratic values in a fair, well-functioning society, while Sen and Freire especially explore the difficulties and possibilities of oppressed populations. Sen suggests that all humans have a right to choice in determining their life trajectories and should be provided with the tools that allow them (...) to flourish. Both education and democratic values play important roles in creating the types of context that allow individuals and communities to recognize a wide array of human capabilities. We suggest here that the theories of Dewey and Freire offer avenues through educational processes for developing these contexts for expanded human capability. Dewey suggests an educational approach that stresses democratic values and the ability and willingness of individuals to reach out towards new possibilities. Freire stresses the idea of praxis playing a central role in education—a focus on the cycle of everyday action, reflection, and re-creation of action that leads to productive changes in life trajectories. We argue that Sen, Dewey, and Freire together help to offer a new way of understanding education in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

SARGENT A. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 134–143 [Epub ahead of print]Reframing caring as discursive practice: a critical review of conceptual analyses of caring in nursingThis study critically examines the way in which the concept of caring is presented in the nursing literature through conceptual analytic approaches. A critical reflection on the potential consequences of representing a concept of caring as vague and ambiguous, yet central to ontology and epistemology in professional nursing is presented drawing on comparisons between the conceptual (...) analyses of caring, and of structuralist perspectives of language, and how this potentially limits scholarship in this area. A search of the literature revealed nine conceptual papers. These papers highlight the self‐referential characteristics of the concept of caring, and of analytical methods in general. It is proposed that this is the result of a systematic adherence to a rigid, structuralist view of language, whereby stable relationships between words and their meanings are assumed. An alternative perspective is offered by viewing caring as a discursive practice rather than a fixed conceptual entity, calling into question the role that the concept plays in nursing practice. A poststructuralist perspective requires caring to be perceived as a discourse of nursing that is fluid and contingent, rather than a central and guiding concept, opening up a new orientation for nursing scholarship in caring research. (shrink)

This study investigates the relative attractiveness of production level jobs provided by multinational firms in Mexico's maquiladora industry. We take the position that workers themselves are an important and often overlooked source of information relevant to the controversy focusing on the responsibilities of multinational companies to their employees in the developing world. We conducted interviews with 59 maquila production level workers in the Mexican cities of Cd. Juárez and Chihuahua. Using a relative attractiveness framework that compared maquila jobs to other (...) employment available in the local economy, maquila line and technical workers responded to questions addressing why they were working at a maquila, their work history, the attractiveness of maquila jobs compared to both their prior jobs and the jobs held by friends and family, and whether they planned to continue working in the maquilas. While the responses from maquila workers are diverse, they suggest that maquila jobs provide attractive employment for the economically disadvantaged in Northern Mexico. (shrink)

In popular usage both ideology and utopia have negative, and somewhat similar, connotations. Utopia is thought to imply something naively idealistic and, as a result, impossible to achieve due to the constraints of the ‘real world’ or because ‘human nature’ will get in the way. Ideology is also thought to imply being out of touch with the ‘real world’ by being blinkered by a set of beliefs that distorts one’s understanding of that ‘real world’. This chapter examines the recent history (...) of the relationship between the two concepts by examining the way they are treated by their best known theorists, Ernst Bloch, Michael Freeden, Fredric Jameson, Ruth Levitas, Karl Mannheim, and Paul Ricoeur. The chapter argues that while they are closely related and one can become the other, they can also be separated because they reflect different ways of understanding the world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.1 (2003) 25-27 [Access article in PDF] Gender, Body, Meaning:Anthropological Perspectives on Self-Injury and Borderline Personality Disorder Carolyn Sargent THE CENTRAL THEMES OF "Commodity Body/Sign: Borderline Personality Disorder and the Signification of Self-Injurious Behavior" reflect issues that cut across the disciplines represented by this journal and have received increasing attention from anthropologists. Medical anthropologists, as well as psychological anthropologists and others interested in symbolic (...) analysis of the body, have addressed such topics as the culture of biomedicine and the cultural shaping of psychiatric classification, the multiple meanings of body modifications, power relations in therapeutic interactions between doctor and patient, and cultural variation in understandings of normality and abnormality.Curiously, there is little anthropological literature that directly focuses on either borderline personality disorder (BPD) or self-injurious acts per se. Indeed anthropological research on psychiatric diagnosis, classification, and treatment, as well as ethnopsychiatry, include scant reference to personality disorders. One exception is Nuckolls' 1992 article, "Toward a Cultural History of the Personality Disorders," which raises pertinent questions for one of Potter's introductory statements—that the majority of those diagnosed with BPD are women. Nuckolls directly addresses gender ideology and gender roles in the United States in his comparison of antisocial personality and histrionic personality diagnoses. In his paper, he argues that these personality disorders have cultural histories and are strongly congruent with prevailing gender stereotypes, such that men are many times more likely to be diagnosed as antisocial than women and women much more likely to be diagnosed as histrionic (Nuckolls 1992, 37). He also historicizes the emergence of certain behavioral styles that have been seen as characteristic of women and men, and the evolution of psychiatric diagnoses that classify extreme manifestations of these behavioral styles.The issue of why women, rather than men, are more frequently diagnosed with BPD is not elaborated in Potter's article, although she notes the importance of considering the intersection of gender and "identifying behaviors" associated with BPD. Cultural analyses of gender ideology in the [End Page 25] United States might suggest that the connection involves gendered expectations concerning emotionality and relational context but these articulations remain intriguing and underexplored. One might speculate that BPD/self-injury occurs in the context of particular gender ideologies, perhaps in class-based, industrialized societies where the body is highly commodified. It appears that the history of this constellation of symptoms and behaviors remains to be written.Cultural analysis of self-injury, a theme that runs through Potter's article, tends to be embedded in the anthropological literature on body ornamentation, initiation rituals, and "culture-bound" syndromes. Mascia-Lees and Sharpe (1992, 1) describe the body as "a site of adornment, manipulation, and mutilation," practices with roots reaching back as far as 30,000 years, and include as examples head deformation, scarification, foot binding, tooth filing, lip plates, nose rings, tattoos, subincision, and genital cutting.However, the concept of self-injury, as Potter notes, is problematic in the discipline of anthropology given the significance historically accorded to cultural relativism. Correspondingly, body "modification" is not "self-injury" as long as it is socially normative, for example, a facet of an initiation ordeal or body ornamentation (e.g., circumcision, scarification, piercing). Among the rare examples of acts that seem readily identifiable as "self-injury" are New Guinea practices of cutting off a finger to demonstrate mourning and Baatombu (West African) male finger amputation to show grief and anger over a wife's infidelity. Both are, however, considered culturally legitimate and not indicative of pathology.Potter's argument draws heavily on the notion of "body as text," derived largely from literary theory and feminist philosophy (Butler 1990; Jaggar and Bordo 1989). The perspective of "body as text" has influenced anthropological theory over the past two decades, particularly in the interpretive and postmodernist schools of thought. The body as a text of femininity is aptly characterized by Bordo, who argues that the continuum between female disorder and normal femininity is revealed by means of an analysis of symbolic meaning of gender in... (shrink)

The most comprehensive collection available in paperback of Bacon’s philosophical and scientific writings, this volume offers Bacon's major works in their entirety, or in substantive selections, revised from the classic 19th century editions of Spedding, Ellis, and Heath. Selections from some of Bacon's natural histories round out this edition by showing the types of compilations that he believed would most contribute to the third part of his Great Instauration. Each work has a separate brief introduction indicating the major themes developed. (...) In her general Introduction, Sargent gives a biographical sketch of Bacon's early life, education, and legal career, discusses the major components of his philosophical project, and traces his influence on subsequent natural philosophy. In addition, she looks at the primarily negative evaluations of Bacon's methodological writings by philosophers of science in the first half of the twentieth century, the reassessments of his works that took place as the influence of logical empiricism declined, and the current revival of interest in Bacon that coincides with the focus on experimental practice today. A bibliography and index complete the text. (shrink)

There are many debates about what constitutes a utopia. Are utopias benign or dangerous? Is the idea of utopianism essential to Christianity or heretical? What is the relationship between utopia and ideology? In this Very Short Introduction, Lyman Sargent, one of the leading scholars in the field of utopian studies, explores these issues and examines utopianism and its history, discussing the role of utopianism in literature and in the development of colonies and in immigration. The idea of utopia has (...) become commonplace in social and political thought, both negatively and positively. Sargent notes that some thinkers see a trajectory from utopia to totalitarianism, with violence an inevitable part of the mix. Others see utopia directly connected to freedom and as a necessary element in the fight against totalitarianism. In Christianity, utopia is labeled as both heretical and as a fundamental part of Christian belief, and such debates are also central to such fields as architecture, town and city planning, and sociology among many others. Sargent addresses all these issues in this clear, compact introduction. (shrink)

In a number of recent and forthcoming articles and papers, I have argued that while utopia can be dangerous, utopian visions are absolutely essential, that we must choose utopia. Today, I want to try to give you the essence of that argument while also relating it to some new issues. Let me summarize my argument:1.Hope/desire for a better life in this life is a central aspect of the human experience.2.That hope/desire has often been distorted by ideology and religion.3.That hope/desire has (...) often been captured to serve the economic and political ends of the powerful.4.When that hope/desire is distorted or captured, it can become dangerous.5.That danger usually comes about because the hope/desire is warped so that the better life is only for a select few or in-group, thus creating an out-group, an other, who can be neglected, harmed, even killed to achieve the end. Such groups have included members of other religions, indigenous peoples, other ethnic groups, ideologies, and so forth. The boundaries of the other have often been changed to include some formerly in the in-group.6.Even so, that hope/desire for a better life is the only effective means of overcoming such distortion/capture. (shrink)

This paper presents an analysis of the applicability of a principalist approach for a global, or cross-cultural, bioethics. We focus especially on the principle of individual autonomy, a core value in ethical discourse. We echo some long-standing criticisms of other anthropologists, sociologists, and many medical ethicists that the individualistic approach to autonomy is a Euro-American value and cannot be ethically applied in all settings. As a remedy, we suggest an adaptation of Kleinman's Explanatory Model approach to questions of decisionmaking. We (...) argue that the analysis and resolution of ethical dilemmas might also benefit from forms of pedagogy that integrate anthropological and other social science perspectives, and the incorporation of ethnographic techniques in ethical practice. (shrink)

If we are dissatisfied with our situation in life, we often dream of how our life could be improved. Most basically, we want a full stomach, decent clothing and housing, and a sense of security, and millions of people in the world today do not now have these things. Throughout American history, African Americans were kept from achieving this most basic decent life, let alone the more complex needs that become possible for those who fulfill the first needs. All the (...) elements of this fundamental vision are included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted in 1948 but was not ratified by the United States until 1992. Among the rights included in the Universal Declaration are Article 4. No one... (shrink)

This essay answers the “Bayesian Challenge,” which is an argument offered by Bayesians that concludes that belief is not relevant to rational action. Patrick Maher and Mark Kaplan argued that this is so because there is no satisfactory way of making sense of how it would matter. The two ways considered so far, acting as if a belief is true and acting as if a belief has a probability over a threshold, do not work. Contrary to Maher and Kaplan, Keith (...) Frankish argued that there is a way to make sense of how belief matters by introducing a dual process theory of mind in which decisions are made at the conscious level using premising policies . I argue that Bayesian decision theory alone shows that it is sometimes rational to base decisions on beliefs; we do not need a dual process theory of mind to solve the Bayesian Challenge. This point is made clearer when we consider decision levels : acting as if a belief is true is sometimes rational at higher decision levels. (shrink)

In this article, we explore how sub-Saharan African immigrant populations in France have been constructed as risk groups by media sources, in political rhetoric, and among medical professionals, drawing on constructs dating to the colonial period. We also examine how political and economic issues have been mirrored and advanced in media visibility and ask why particular populations and the diseases associated with them in the popular imagination have received more attention at certain historical moments. In the contemporary period we analyze (...) how the bodies of West African women and men have become powerful metaphors in the politics of discrimination prevalent in France, in spite of Republican precepts that theoretically disavow cultural and social difference. (shrink)

Advances in neuroscience have enabled the transition of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) from research and clinical settings to public use. For this primarily home-based context, tDCS has been popularized as a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to improved cognition and wellness. The line between wellness and health is blurry, however, and little is known about how engagement with therapeutic tDCS impacts users’ interactions with other interventions such as clinical consultations, pharmacotherapy, complementary medicine, and even other neurotechnology. To close this gap, we (...) collected data from the online content aggregator Reddit and analyzed posts pertaining to tDCS. Findings indicate that most users turn to Reddit to request information about tDCS as an adjunct, but not as a bypass, to ongoing or prior approaches. Posts suggest that mainstream medical care is viewed as necessary but not sufficient to address conditions such as depression and anxiety. Users discuss a mix of benefits and harms. This discourse provides valuable insights into the health practices, concerns and priorities of users, and new knowledge for informing applications of neurotechnology both inside and outside the therapeutic setting. (shrink)

Various explanations for the success of science have become central to both sides of the philosophical debate over scientific realism. In this paper I argue that the recent attempt by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, in Leviathan and the Air-Pump, to provide a sociological explanation for the success of experimental science fails to make any significant contribution to this debate because of (1) the historical prejudgments that they employ and (2) their oversimplification of present-day philosophy of science.

Francis Bacon’s call for philosophers to investigate nature and ‘‘join in consultation for the common good’’ is one example of a powerful vision that helped to shape modern science. His ideal clearly linked the experimental method with the production of beneficial effects that could be used both as ‘‘pledges of truth’’ and for ‘‘the comforts of life.’’ When Bacon’s program was implemented in the following genera- tion, however, the tensions inherent in his vision became all too real. The history of (...) the Royal Society of London, from its founding in 1660 to the 42-year presidency of Joseph Banks (1778–1820), shows how these tensions led to changes in the way in which both the experimental method and the ideal of the common good were understood. A more nuanced understanding of the problems involved in recent philosophical analyses of science in the public interest can be achieved by appreciating the complexity revealed from this historical perspective. (shrink)

The standard of disinterested objectivity embedded within the US Data Quality Act (2001) has been used by corporate and political interests as a way to limit the dissemination of scientific research results that conflict with their goals. This is an issue that philosophers of science can, and should, publicly address because it involves an evaluation of the strength and adequacy of evidence. Analysis of arguments from a philosophical tradition that defended a concept of useful knowledge (later displaced by Logical Empiricism) (...) is used here to suggest how the legitimacy of scientific findings can be supported in the absence of disinterested objectivity. (shrink)

This paper recollects meetings with Robert E. Lucas, Jr. over many years. It describes how, through personal interactions and studying his work, Lucas taught me to think about economics.

The word euthanasia, meaning a peaceful, gentle, or easy death, has been traced back to Roman times. But the "good" in a good death is obviously open to interpretation. Good for whom? The individual? The family of the individual? The society? And, who decides? The individual? The doctor? The family of the individual? The legal system? These questions are constantly raised throughout the literature with diametrically opposed answers given from the earliest times to the present. And, unfortunately, one word is (...) used for all the positions, with two subcategories, voluntary and involuntary, both of which are perceived as good for someone.Death is universal but whether or not a person should have a choice about when to... Read More. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.1 (2004) 104-105 [Access article in PDF] William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe. Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. xv + 344. Cloth, $40.00. Newman and Principe have produced a masterful study of intellectual context, primarily by correcting the commonly held belief that there was a radical break (...) in the seventeenth century between late medieval alchemy and early modern chemistry. Although their main focus is on George Starkey (the 'alchemist') and Robert Boyle (the 'chemist'), they also provide copious details on the chemical practices and theories of Van Helmont, Benjamin Worsley, Frederick Clodius, and Kenelm Digby, among others. It is hard to do justice to their complex study in a short review. Following a brief summary, therefore, I will limit my discussion to how the authors' conclusions are significant for a more in-depth and nuanced understanding of philosophy in the seventeenth century.After a helpful introduction, Chapter 1 outlines the differences in the early lives of the English, aristocratic Boyle and the American, Harvard-educated Starkey. Chapter 2's background on late medieval chemistry includes an examination of corpuscular theories within that tradition as well as Van Helmont's arguments concerning the way in which mathematics is useful for explaining "superficial" changes but not the real, internal changes in bodies. Chapters 3 and 4 provide a close study of Starkey's laboratory notebooks. Among the entries, recorded in a style adapted from Scholasticism, there are passages that adopt the secrecy of alchemy, while others show Starkey's effective use of theoretical principles and such experimental quantitative methods as mass balance. Chapter 5 examines Boyle's intellectual context. Newman and Principe argue convincingly for Starkey's role in Boyle's addition of Helmontian elements to the general Baconian program. Chapter 6 looks at the [End Page 104] results of Boyle's eclectic mix of chemistry and mechanism. Although Helmontian chemistry played a significant role in Boyle's natural philosophy, the authors attribute his meager interest in quantitative measures and analyses to his attempts to use chemistry as a support for mechanism and as evidence against Aristotelianism. The concluding chapter draws together elements from previous chapters to provide the full argument against the idea of a radical break between medieval alchemy and modern chemistry.Newman and Principe's reconsideration of traditional categories surrounding the idea of a radical break should provide an impetus for similar reconsideration in the history of philosophy. As they point out, 'the' mechanical philosophy drew from a diverse range of disciplines. Boyle's eclectic and complex attempt to develop a unique version of the mechanical philosophy can be seen in other English philosophers, especially Locke and Newton. This study provides a promising basis for yet more extensive and refined studies of the seventeenth-century milieu. The continuing over-emphasis on the physical principles of Descartes and Gassendi's versions of the mechanical philosophy and the tendency to reduce all mechanism to their view needs revision. Also in need of reconsideration is the currently popular belief that the study of context simply means adding social elements to an uncontroversial intellectual context. As the authors clearly show, much more work on the intellectual context remains to be done.One line of research in the history of philosophy that could be pursued concerns the role of Francis Bacon in this context. Although Newman and Principe mention the general Baconian ethos, a detailed discussion of Bacon was clearly beyond their scope. Yet Bacon's own debts to chemistry, although frequently unrecognized, seem more significant given this study. Also, it would be interesting to see the extent to which Bacon's works influenced Van Helmont or Starkey. Newman and Principe's claims regarding the novelty of Starkey's notebooks, for example, may be a little overstated. Many of the elements from Starkey's notebooks can be found in Bacon's advice in his Natural and Experimental Histories (1622). In that work, Bacon advised writers... (shrink)

How to avoid disease, how to breed successfully, and how to live to a reasonable age are questions that have perplexed humankind throughout history. This book explores our progress in understanding these challenges, and the risks and rewards of devising solutions. A broad range of topics are covered, including reproduction, the development of human progeny from conception to adulthood, staying healthy, ageing, cancer, infection and the burden of our genetic legacy.

This is a survey of bounded rationality, an area of theoretical macroeconomics which is receiving increased attention. The book is written by a leading macroeconomist who outlines the issues involved, describes some of the analytic tools that are being used, and shows how they can be applied in a range of models. It points to further potential positive developments of the theory as well as some of its limitations.

This book is a study of three intentional communities established with government support in the 1890s in Queensland, Australia. All three were short-lived, and as the title suggests, although there is considerable information on the communities, the focus of the book is on the settlers rather than on the communities. In fact, and extremely unusual in studies of intentional communities, there are extensive biographical dictionaries on the members of all three communities. And these dictionaries include information on the men involved (...) from before they joined to after they left, with, as available, information on their wife or wives and their children, in some cases to the near present. As is to be expected, much... (shrink)

Although the title Dreamstreets and the use of the word utopias in the subtitle strongly suggest a focus on the utopian, there are only a few references to utopia in the book, which is about the author’s responses to some of the model villages established in Britain in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The author says that there were about four hundred such villages, and she has visited many I have not visited and know little about; she is particularly (...) good on some of the less well-known model towns. While the table of contents suggests that she visited ten of them, she discusses quite a few more, all of which she has visited.I found the discussion of New Lanark (which is one of those not in the table... (shrink)