The folding of RNA sequences into secondary structures is a simple yet biophysically grounded model of a genotype–phenotype map. Its computational and mathematical analysis has uncovered a surprisingly rich statistical structure characterized by shape space covering, neutral networks and plastogenetic congruence. I review these concepts and discuss their evolutionary implications. BioEssays 24:1164–1177, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Periodicals, Inc.

tephen Jay Gould's Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History , has become something of a watershed for those who study contingency and complexity, especially applied to organisms, societies, and history, and discussions of it can be found in many works. Walter Fontana and Leo Buss, for example, ask in the title of their chapter "What Would Be Conserved If 'The Tape Were Played Twice'?" This is a direct reference to Gould's suggestion in Wonderful Life (...) that if the tape of life were rewound to the time of the organisms found in the Canadian outcrop known as the Burgess Shale, dated to about 530 million years ago, and replayed with a few contingencies tweaked here and there, humans would most likely never have evolved. (shrink)

In this radical reinterpretation of Aristotle's Metaphysics, Walter E. Wehrle demonstrates that developmental theories of Aristotle are based on a faulty assumption: that the fifth chapter of Categories is an early theory of metaphysics that Aristotle later abandoned.

Although there are suggestions that the environmental attitudes of men and of women differ, there have been few studies that study and evaluate these differences at the workplace. Given the claim of Ecofeminist writers about the environmental superiority of women's environmental attitudes, and the proclaimed need of business to change attitudes and behaviour with regard to the environment, this is a surprise. The paper is based on 1022 (37% from women) questionnaires which were collected in a U.K. pharmaceutical company, and (...) it compares the empirical results with environmental attitude archetypes, such as those prescribed by O'Riordan. However, the attitude clusters that were found do not correspond greatly with such theoretical modes of environmental ethics. Instead, it appears that women were more likely to be actively involved in environmental behaviour, and showed greater scepticism towards the role of technology in the search for solutions to environmental problems. In addition, men sought to a much greater extent a consistency between an environmental rationality and their behaviour. Men's attitudes were also much more influenced by their position in the organisational hierarchy. There were few significant differences across age groups. (shrink)

A general survey of Aristotle's contributions to physics (in the Ancient sense of the word), including his "De anima" but leaving out his zoological works, with some attention for the differences between his science and modern science.

The paper offers a rather long discussion of E. Berti's book entitled Aristotele: dalla dialettica alla filosofia prima, questioning some important aspects of the approach he adopts. (He replied to my criticism in a successive issue of the same review.).

The paper is concentrated on Aristotle's "Posterior Analytics" and attempts to show that his account of the sciences is less uniform than it is usually taken to be but shows some awareness of important differences between the mathematical and the physical sciences.

The paper is a long, detailed, critical presentation of Ingemar Duering's Aristoteles. Darstellung und Interpretation seines Denkens, Heidelberg 1966, on the occasion of the publication of the Italian translation (by P.L. Donini, Milano 1976) of the same.

Studies in the History of the Renaissance is a highly influential defence of aestheticism. Pater redefined the practice of criticism through his readings of some of the paintings, sculptures, and poems of the Renaissance, and shocked contemporaries for sponsoring a hedonistic ethic with his infamous 'Conclusion'.

To balance Kubovy & Epstein, I evaluate the relationship between Shepard and Gestalt theorists along three dimensions. First, both discover internal universals by reducing external support. Second, they share strengths and weaknesses of the minimum principle. Third, although their attitudes toward an evolutionary account of perception is superficially different, they are fundamentally similar with respect to the internalization process. [Kubovy & Epstein; Shepard].