This study addressed the lack of implicit measures of religiosity in German research by developing a German Single Category Implicit Association Test for measuring the associative religious self-concept. The SC-IAT was applied to a sample consisting of 389 German students with different subjects of study and internally consistent. To estimate the psychometric criteria of construct validity, SC-IAT scores were correlated to the Centrality of Religiosity Scale, whose construct psychological approach can be theoretically linked to the concept of associative representations in (...) the research on IATs. Corresponding to the average relationship between implicit and explicit measures in literature, the correlation was moderately. Group comparisons relating to religious affiliation and subject of study provided initial evidence for criterion validity. There were complications with the attribute category “non-religious,” especially by participants without a religious affiliation, however, the SC-IAT could also provide a method to investigate this issue. (shrink)

Fisher recognized that the evolution of social insect colonies needed explaining, a point which Charles Darwin had avoided discussing in detail. Fisher, in his 1930 book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, outlined in detail how eusociality could evolve, and developed a verbal model by connecting selection on fecundity with the sterility of workers. Fisher saw social insect colonies as harmonious units, in contrast to human societies that exhibit intra-communal conflict. Fisher’s development of the model was strongly influenced by his (...) correspondence with Leonard Darwin, and so I call it the Fisher-Darwin model. However, Fisher was not influenced by Lamarckian views on the evolution of social insects that were common at that time. The Fisher-Darwin model presages almost exactly the mathematical model recently proposed by Nowak and colleagues. (shrink)

This paper analyses Quentin Meillassoux’s criticism of Kantian philosophy. The objective of the paper is to delineate the connection Meillassoux asserts between the problem of induction and Kant’s account of finitude. After examining Meillassoux’s elucidations on the connection between the two, I argue that Meillassoux’s characterization of Kantian philosophy as ‘weak correlationism’ is not only inaccurate but also undermines the novelty of Kantian philosophy, especially Kant’s (critical) response to the problem of induction. The paper concludes with the claim that Meillassoux’s (...) criticism of modern philosophy, especially Kantian critical philosophy, does not convince us to abandon the problem of finitude but points to the need for a more accurate understanding of finitude. (shrink)

The book also provides insight into overlooked discourses about public sex education by analyzing a previously understudied campaign targeted at African American men in the 1920s, offering theoretical categorizations of discursive ...

Authors and printers together created the New Book of Nature—the printed literature of science—in early modern Europe. Careful attention has been given in recent years to the development of literary and rhetorical techniques in science. This article proposes that these developments were linked to printing technology and the typographic culture that produced the early printed book of science. We focus on several cases in which the roles of author and printer-publisher were joined and thereby highlight connections between knowledge production and (...) reproduction during the Scientific Revolution. Examples include Regiomontanus, Tycho Brake, Galileo, William Leybourn, Joseph Moxon, and the collective practices and privileges of the Royal Society of London and the Paris Academy of Sciences. (shrink)

A translation of Plato's dialogue on the nature of pleasure and its relation to thought and knowledge. It includes a cogent introduction, notes, and comprehensive bibliography.

The powerful combination of genetic, developmental and molecular approaches possible with the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, has led to a profound understanding of the genetic control of early developmental events. However, Drosophila is a highly specialized long germ insect, and the mechanisms controlling its early development may not be typical of insects or Arthropods in general. The beetle, Tribolium castaneum, offers a similar opportunity to integrate high resolution genetic analysis with the developmental/molecular approaches currently used in other organisms. Early results (...) document significant differences between insect orders in the functions of genes responsible for establishing developmental commitments. (shrink)

A best-seller in Europe following its original publication in 1993, this littel book takes on a big subject, offering enduring guidelines from the Greek philosopher Epicurus for achieving lasting happiness. In a letter to his friend Menoecceus, Epicurus gives sound advice on increasing life's pleasures, not through hedonistic pursuits, as commonly assumed, but through intelligence, morality, and decency. Based on a new translation of Epicurus to Menoecceus and complete with the original Greek text, Letter on Happiness expounds upon basic philosophical (...) inquiries concerning pleasure, longevity, death, and desire that are as relevant today as they were in ancient Greece, all in a compact, attractive package that makes a thoughtful gift for any occasion. (shrink)

In his celebrated masterpiece, Symposium, Plato imagines a high-society dinner-party in Athens in 416 BC at which the guests - including the comic poet Aristophanes and, of course, Plato's mentor Socrates - each deliver a short speech in praise of love. The sequence of dazzling speeches culminates in Socrates' famous account of the views of Diotima, a prophetess who taught him that love is our means of trying to attain goodness. And then into the party bursts the drunken Alcibiades, the (...) most popular and notorious Athenian of the time, who insists on praising Socrates himself rather than love, and gives us a brilliant sketch of this enigmatic character. The power, humour, and pathos of Plato's creation engages the reader on every page. This new translation is complemented by full explanatory notes and an illuminating introduction. (shrink)

Prior generations’ electoral crises (e.g., gerrymandering) have dealt mainly with political maneuverings around geographical shifts. We analyze four recent (1998–2003) American electoral crises: the Clinton impeachment controversy, the 2000 Florida presidential election, the Texas legislators’ flight to Oklahoma and New Mexico, and the California gubernatorial recall. We show that in each case temporal manipulation was at least as important as geographical. We highlight emergent electoral practices surrounding the manipulation of time, which we dub “temporal gerrymandering.” We suggest a theory of (...) postmodern electoral crises, in which the rules of time and space are simultaneously in flux. These crises expose concerns with early American democratic theory, which was based on an understanding of “the people” as geographically and temporally unidimensional. Representative systems, therefore, were designed largely without reference to geographic and temporal complexity. (shrink)

Republic is the central work of the Western world's most famous philosopher. Essentially an inquiry into morality, Republic also contains crucial arguments and insights into many other areas of philosophy. It is also a literary masterpiece: the philosophy is presented for the most part for the ordinary reader, who is carried along by the wit and intensity of the dialogue and by Plato's unforgettable images of the human condition. This new, lucid translation by Robin Waterfield is complemented by (...) full explanatory notes and an up-to-date critical introduction. (shrink)

The trial of Socrates -- Socrates in court -- How the system worked -- The charge of impiety -- The war years -- Alcibiades, Socrates, and the aristocratic milieu -- Pestilence and war -- The rise and fall of Alcibiades -- The end of the war -- Critias and Civil War --- Crisis and conflict -- Symptoms of change -- Reactions to intellectuals -- The condemnation of Socrates -- Socratic politics -- A cock for Asclepius.

The first philosophers paved the way for the work of Plato and Aristotle - and hence for the whole of Western thought. Aristotle said that philosophy begins with wonder, and the first Western philosophers developed theories of the world which express simultaneously their sense of wonder and their intuition that the world should be comprehensible. But their enterprise was by no means limited to this proto-scientific task. Through, for instance, Heraclitus' enigmatic sayings, the poetry of Parmenides and Empedocles, and Zeno's (...) paradoxes, the Western world was introduced to metaphysics, rationalist theology, ethics, and logic, by thinkers who often seem to be mystics or shamans as much as philosophers or scientists in the modern mould. And out of the Sophists' reflections on human beings and their place in the world arose and interest in language, and in political, moral, and social philosophy. This volume contains a translation of all the most important fragments of the Presocratics and Sophists, and of the most informative testimonia from ancient sources, supplemented by lucid commentary. (shrink)

For many centuries, Aristotle's Physics was the essential starting point for anyone who wished to study the natural sciences. This is the first complete translation since 1930 of Aristotle's key work on science. It presents Aristotle's thought accurately, while at the same time simplifying and expanding the often crabbed and elliptical style of the original, so that it is very much easier to read. A lucid introduction and extensive notes explain the general structure of each section of the book, and (...) shed light on particular problems. (shrink)