This paper articulates the commitments, contours and justifications for a pluralist but non-eclectic critical, realist, reflexive social science with emancipatory aims. In it, we stress that social science can and should be used to guide the conceptualization of desirable and viable forms of social organization and their conditions of realization. In this regard, we advocate explanatory theorizing as an ethical duty of social scientists and as a moral good in itself as well as being an inherent epistemological component of scientific (...) practice. This entails that we take seriously the research strategies apposite to our disciplinary, intertextual and interdiscursive locations to make a serious theoretical case and practical case for the kind of social science here advocated. In our view, such a social science must acknowledge the path-breaking work of Roy Bhaskar, but must also recognize that the arguments deployed in texts as a resource in intellectual work can never be treated as the axiomatic grounds for further thought, but must be interrogated thoroughly and in each case what is to be retained must be defensible. No position has a monopoly of relevant insights and the development of science often involves syntheses. Syntheses must not be syncretic but reflexively interrogated to assess epistemological, ontological and conceptual coherence to avoid eclecticism. Development in critical realist philosophy will, we believe, continue to confront and offer plausible resolutions to a range of battles within and pertinent to philosophy and social-scientific metatheory. However, realists must recognize the continuing importance and discursive effects of a variety of critical and realist work in being able to defend, sustain and develop rigorous social-scientific research with emancipatory commitments. (shrink)

Articles chiefly on the Bratachāri Movement, founded and popularised by Gurusadaẏa Datta, 1882-1941; includes articles on nationalism with special reference to Bengal, India.

1. Premadharma o Rāsalīlā.-- 2. Bedānta o bijñāna ebaṃ Jagadgurura ābirbhāba.-- 3. Upanishad-brahmatattva ebaṃ yājñabalkyera advaitabāda.-- 4. Upanishad-jaṛa o jībatattva.-- 5. Karmabāda o janmāntara, abatāratattva ebaṃ prakr̥ta yoga ki? -- v. 6. Sāṃkhya paricaẏa, Buddhadebera 'nāstikatā' ebaṃ buddhi o bodhi. -- v. 7. Gītāẏa Īśvarabāda, Raṅgamatī, ebaṃ Meghadūta (mūla o padyānubāda).

How does one decolonize and reclaim the meanings of research and researcher, particularly in the context of Western research? Indigenous communities have long experienced oppression by Western researchers. Is it possible to build a collaborative research knowledge that is culturally appropriate, respectful, honoring, and careful of the Indigenous community? What are the challenges in Western research, researchers, and Western university methodology research training? How have ‘studies’ – critical anti-racist theory and practice, cross-cultural research methodology, critical perspectives on environmental justice, and (...) land-based education – been incorporated into the university to disallow dissent? What can be done against this disallowance? According to Eve Tuck and K Wayne Yang’s suggestion, this article did not use the concept of decolonization as a substitute for ‘human rights’ or ‘social justice’, but as a demand of an Indigenous framework and a centering of Indigenous land, Indigenous sovereign... (shrink)

Transcript of speeches by a Hindu philosopher, chiefly on Hindu philosophy and Hinduism.

The RecQ family of DNA helicases have been shown to be important for the maintenance of genomic integrity in all organisms analysed to date. In human cells, representatives of this family include the proteins defective in the cancer predisposition disorder Bloom's syndrome and the premature ageing condition, Werner's syndrome. Several pieces of evidence suggest that RecQ family helicases form associations with one or more of the cellular topoisomerases, and together these heteromeric complexes manipulate DNA structure to effect efficient DNA replication, (...) genetic recombination, or both. Here, we propose that RecQ helicases are required for ensuring that structural abnormalities arising during replication, such as at sites where replication forks encounter DNA lesions, are corrected with high fidelity. In mutants defective in these proteins, not only is replication abnormal, but cells display aberrant responses to DNA-damaging agents or inhibitors of DNA synthesis. We suggest that RecQ helicases may be important for the integration of cellular responses to these insults, such as by linking cell cycle checkpoint responses to recombinational repair. BioEssays 21:286–294, 1999. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

In a deeper sense, quality of worklife refers to the quality of life of individuals in their working organizations—commercial, educational, cultural, religious, philanthropic or whatever they are. Modern society is organizational society. Individuals spend much of their lives in organizations. Hence, the impor tance of QWL is unquestionable. It has an ideological core comprising the perceptual gap across individu als about the real connotation of QL as well as QWL. In addition to this ideological problem, the study of QWL presents (...) serious methodological problems too. A positivist attitude is always sceptical about the deeper meaning of life, maybe out of honest lack of knowledge, or maybe with some ulterior motives. The present paper therefore is an attempt to touch upon three aspects of QWL: QWL from a human values approach; some viewpoints for subjective observation of QWL; and some ameliorative measures towards im proving QWL. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article explores Rabindranath Tagore’s vision of the future, continuously engaged with and drawing from the past, in relation to my own creative practice as theatre and film director, curator, and singer-performer, a practice that continuously engages with the resonances of Tagorean utopia. Through three case studies from the author’s creative engagement with Tagore’s utopia, the article explores the building of transcultural utopias in which Tagore and Leonard Elmhirst participated and how Dartington Hall rapidly became a magnet for artists, (...) writers, philosophers, and musicians; Tagore’s opera Tasher Desh, a powerful political satire on fascism/free will; and the author’s feature film Life Goes On and the Tagorean construct of the absent-present mother figure. (shrink)

Wittgenstein in his early work viz. Tractatus argued that there is a common, essential, underlying structure that links logic, language and the world. He also argued about the need for an analysis of ordinary language in terms of a perspicuous symbolism that would display a one to one relationship between a proposition and a fact – when both of them are broken down to their simplest components – viz. to atomic propositions and atomic states of affairs. All propositions are ultimately (...) truth-functional combinations of atomic propositions – thus all language is resolvable to a unique constant. So for early Wittgenstein, though there is an apparent complexity and diversity of propositions still there lies a uniform, essential structure of truthfunctional propositions and that can be reduced to a single constant. And language to have a determinate sense must be ultimately based on objects – the absolutely simple logical atoms of the world. These objects imbibe their range of combination with other objects, which implies that any genuine propositions – however unusual and unconventional it may seem to be – must ultimately be constrained by the permissible range of combination of the objects. In this way early Wittgenstein sought to secure an essential metaphysics via an essential structure of language. However in Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein attacked essentialism by rejecting the picture theory, and the search for commonality and uniformity. He denied essence, the universal, the common element present in all the objects of a class and accepted only an indeterminate and incomplete flow of the criss-crossing, the overlapping features. For him language is constituted by an ever expanding flow of uses, which he called language-games. The significance of the term ‘language-game’ lies in the fact that like games language too is not based on any ontology that would confer a common essence across all the widely divergent uses. Nor did Wittgenstein accept any hidden essence behind appearance. In PI the later Wittgenstein denied both analysis and essence and propagated description of usage and behaviours as the only method of philosophy. Later Wittgenstein will neither commit himself to ontological necessity, nor to necessity being a matter of scheme-relative propositions in the Quinean sense. For later Wittgenstein all attempts to establish essences, or the contrary exercises to relativise them to a particular set of presumptions, are themselves language-games – they boil down to usage and practices that do not rest on any foundation. (shrink)

The age old conflict between logical analysis and phenomenological study revealed by different philosophical treatments of our experience of temporal passage are discussed in the present paper. Temporal passage is found to be problematic because philosophers entertain conflicting views regarding the status of the passage of time. As logical analyses prove temporal passage as unreal or illusory and phenomenological study of our experience of temporal passage considers it to be a fundamental structure of our life, the conflict regarding the status (...) of the passage of time emerges. In this paper our aim will be to explore gradually different logical analyses of our experience of temporal passage provided by philosophers of both classical India and the West on the one hand and also to discuss some of the phenomenological treatments of our experience of temporal passage provided by some continental philosophers to show the conflict between the results of these two philosophical treatments. Finally, we would like to state that since this conflict culminates into the conflict between reason and experience, it is not possible to resolve the conflict in the present life form in which both these categories have their distinctive roles to play. (shrink)

Ce recueil d’essais rassemblés par une équipe internationale de chercheurs examine la représentation des hommes dans les œuvres de neuf écrivaines de la Belle Époque. Le volume est composé de onze essais sur neuf écrivaines dont certaines, telle Colette, sont toujours célèbres. La plupart cependant sont beaucoup moins connues aujourd’hui, sauf par des spécialistes. Pourtant, pendant leur époque, elles furent les auteures de best-sellers ou couronnées de prix, bien qu’elles aient dû faire face...

This book presents in brief, yet systematic way the philosophy of the great Indian thinker. The author's purpose in this book is "to present in English to the Western world the life and the philosophy of Gandhi and to show the importance of his ideals of truth, love, and non-violence for the solution of the social and political problems of the present age".

In human languages, a palindrome reads the same forward as backward (e.g., ‘madam’). In regulatory DNA, a palindrome is an inverted sequence repeat that allows a transcription factor to bind as a homodimer or as a heterodimer with another type of transcription factor. Regulatory palindromes are typically imperfect, that is, the repeated sequences differ in at least one base pair, but the functional significance of this asymmetry remains poorly understood. Here, we review the use of imperfect palindromes in Drosophila photoreceptor (...) differentiation and mammalian steroid receptor signaling. Moreover, we discuss mechanistic explanations for the predominance of imperfect palindromes over perfect palindromes in these two gene regulatory contexts. Lastly, we propose to elucidate whether specific imperfectly palindromic variants have specific regulatory functions in steroid receptor signaling and whether such variants can help predict transcriptional outcomes as well as the response of individual patients to drug treatments. (shrink)

A study was undertaken of the views of users of two genitourinary medicine (GUM) clinics in England on unlinked anonymous testing (UAT) for HIV. The UAT programme measures the prevalence of HIV in the population, including undiagnosed prevalence, by testing residual blood (from samples taken for clinical purposes) which is anonymised and irreversibly unlinked from the source. 424 clinic users completed an anonymous questionnaire about their knowledge of, and attitudes towards, UAT. Only 1/7 (14%) were aware that blood left over (...) from clinical testing may be tested anonymously for HIV. A large majority (89%) said they would agree to their blood being tested, although 74% wanted the opportunity to consent. These findings indicate broad support for UAT of blood in a group of patients whose samples are included in the HIV surveillance programme. The findings suggest the need for greater attention to be given to the provision of information and, if replicated in a larger survey, may justify a reappraisal of UK policy on UAT. (shrink)

In India, domestic workers' movements advocated for their own and other workers’ rights both before and during the pandemic. Over the course of the pandemic, however, the political landscape and de...

Study of Yogasūtra of Patañjali and Vyāsabhāṣya, commentary on Yogasūtra by Vyāsa.

Purified nuclei are being used as a test system to study the regulation of nuclear enzymes in plants. Regulatory agents such as light, hormones and polyamines can stimulate kinases or phosphatases that control nuclear protein phosphorylation and they can modulate the activity of as yet unidentified enzymes required for transcript synthesis and/or stabilization. This essay summarizes current findings and discusses the advantages and pitfalls of using isolated nuclei to investigate how nuclear functions are controlled.

Vaiśeşikas are realist philosophers of classical India. They admit time (kāla) as a ubiquitous real substance. In this paper, our aim is to discuss such a determination of time following sixth century Vaiśeşika scholar Praśastapāda and a few of his interpreters, Vyomaśivācārya and Udayanācārya. This paper is an effort to state realist philosophers’ understanding of time and also to highlight how in classical Indian tradition, interpretations paved the way for proving the reality of time. The application of logical methods by (...) the Vaiśeşika interpreters is also worth studying. These methods show the internal development occurring in the system of Vaiśeşika. Praśastapāda stated different notions like priority etc. (paratvādi) as the linga or hetu of kāla. Vyomaśiva and Udayana have established this statement of Praśastapāda as the lakşaņa of kāla by virtue of different forms of inference. (shrink)

Celebrated yogi Reema Datta adapts her world-renowned 12-week course into a book format that combines the ancient practice of yoga with modern science. The result is a practical method for attaining emotional well-being, physical health, and spiritual nourishment.

Nowadays, essentialism has obtained various senses and its extension reaches out over many branches of study who have some immediate connection with it. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam and David Wiggins are the notable upholders of essentialism. The Essentialist movement which stemmed from the view that philosophy is a speculative study of Reality was temporarily suspended or stagnated by the spirited movement of the logical positivists like Moritz Schlick, Hans Reichenbach, Rudolf Carnap and A. J. Ayer. According to (...) these philosophers, philosophy is simply an activity of analysis of the fundamental concepts of ordinary language or of science or of any other discipline. Such concept—analysis—philosophers are called anti-essentialist. Here, I shall concentrate on the views of Aristotle. I shall discuss the doctrine of essence, natural kinds, real essence in favour of essentialism and also discuss W. V. O. Quine’s view as an anti-essentialist trend. At last I shall try to examine whether and to what extent an attack of essences reflects back certain essentialist commitments, which is to see what reasonable theory of essences can be eked out from the entire exercise. (shrink)

Articles on the life and work of Aurobindo Ghose, 1872-1950, philosopher and thinker from India, and his views on Ramakrishna, 1836-1886, Hindu saint, and his life.