Senior service colleges provide professional education to prepare military and government civilians for public service at the senior levels of strategy and policy. Inclusive in the program of study...

Craik published only one complete work of any length, this essay on The Nature of Explanation.

In recent years evolutionary theorists have been engaged in a protracted and bitter disagreement concerning how natural selection affects units such as genes, individuals, kin groups, and groups. Central to this debate has been whether selective pressures affecting group success can trump the selective pressures that confer advantage at the individual level. In short, there has been a debate about the utility of group selection, with noted theorist Steven Pinker calling the concept useless for the social sciences. We surveyed 175 (...) evolutionary anthropologists to ascertain where they stood in the debate. We found that most were receptive to group selection, especially in the case of cultural group selection. The survey also revealed that liberals and conservatives, and males and females, all displayed significant differences of opinion concerning which selective forces were important in humanity’s prehistory. We conclude by interpreting these findings in the context of recent research in political psychology. (shrink)

This essay introduces a cluster of articles titled “Devalued Currency: An Elegiac Symposium on Paradigm Shifts.” Eagleton's piece addresses, from a perspective indebted to Walter Benjamin, the notion of Thomas Kuhn that “shifts” in the controlling paradigms of disciplines and practices are entirely transformative not only of their futures but also of their pasts. Benjamin argued that a work of art is a set of potentials that may or may not be realized in the vicissitudes of its afterlife. The true (...) significance of works might be said, therefore, to emerge only after some as-yet-unexpected event or upheaval makes their significance apparent. In this sense, we might argue that historical events make full sense only in the light of “judgment day”; until then, history remains an incoherent chronicle. But the totality that will one day be revealed cannot be anticipated. The past is open-ended because the present is, and meanwhile, the meaning of history is in our hands to change. Since we have that power, Eagleton suggests that we recycle figures of the past as characters in a comedy rather than tragedy. Still, it is never possible to say which figures of the past and which works are ultimately important and which are not, because we cannot say which mutations will result in major developments to come. No work or person is important or peripheral in itself or himself; it is the critic and historian who render them so. (shrink)

Originally published 1978.This volume examines the purpose and the functioning of the present education system inthe UK and when it was originally published it was the first overall review of developments in British education since the 1944 Education Act. It discusses some of the most significant reforms which have stemmed from developments in the primary schools, in particular from the adoption of child-centred and progressive methods of teaching.

Responding to volatile criticisms frequently leveled at Leo Strauss and those he influenced, the prominent contributors to this volume demonstrate the profound influence that Strauss and his students have exerted on American liberal democracy and contemporary political thought. By stressing the enduring vitality of classic books and by articulating the theoretical and practical flaws of relativism and historicism, the contributors argue that Strauss and the Straussians have identified fundamental crises of modernity and liberal democracy.

Defects in man in four steps of 4‐aminobutyric acid (GABA) metabolism may interefere with the function of this major inhibitory neurotransmitter. Glutamic acid decarboxylase, 4‐aminobutyric acid aminotransferase, succinic semialdehyde dehydrogenase, and homocarnosinase are closely identified with the brain, but two of these enzymes are expressed in cultured peripheral cells, which may permit novel approaches to the study of the metabolism and regulation of GABA.

A collection of late essays, an interview, and a poem by Kenneth Burke (1897-1993), renowned literary critic, philosopher, poet, essayist, and rhetorician.

The field of clinical ethics consultation has matured into a multidisciplinary profession, with clinical ethics consultants (CECs) being trained in bioethics, philosophy, theology, law, medicine, n...

New Approaches to Monetary Economics brings together presentations of innovative research in the field of monetary economics. Much of this research develops and applies approaches to modelling financial intermediation, aggregate fluctuations, monetary aggregation and transactions-motivated monetary equilibrium. The contents of this volume comprise the proceedings of the second in a conference series entitled International Symposia in Economic Theory and Econometrics. This conference was held in 1985 at the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. The symposia in this (...) series are sponsored by the IC2 Institute and the RGK Foundation. New Approaches to Monetary Economics, edited by Professors William A. Barnett and Kenneth J. Singleton, consists of five parts. Part I examines transactions-motivated monetary holding in general equilibrium; Part II, financial intermediation; Part III, monetary aggregation theory, Part IV, issues in aggregate fluctuation; and Part V, theoretical issues in the foundations of monetary economics and macroeconomics. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic swept through New York City swiftly and with devastating effect. The crisis put enormous pressure on all hospital services, including the clinical ethics consultation team. This report describes the recent experience of the ethics consultants and Columbia University Irving Medical Center during the COVID-19 surge and compares the case load and characteristics to the corresponding period in 2019. By reporting this experience, we hope to supplement the growing body of COVID-19 scientific literature and provide details of the (...) human toll the virus took on our hospitals and communities. We also aim to highlight the role of the clinical ethics consultant as well as areas of policy and law that may need to be addressed in order to be better prepared for a future public health crisis. (shrink)

In the TACITUS project for using commonsense knowledge in the understanding of texts about mechanical devices and their failures, we have been developing various commonsense theories that are needed to mediate between the way we talk about the behavior of such devices and causal models of their operation. Of central importance in this effort is the axiomatization of what might be called commonsense metaphysics. This includes a number of areas that figure in virtually every domain of discourse, such as granularity, (...) scales, time, space, material, physical objects, shape, causality, functionality, and force. Our effort has been to construct core theories of each of these areas, and then to define, or at least characterize, a large number of lexical items in terms provided by the core theories. In this paper we discuss our methodological principles and describe the key ideas in the various domains we are investigating. (shrink)

Throughout the world, research ethics committees are relied on to prevent unethical research and protect research subjects. Given that reliance, the composition of committees and the manner in which decisions are arrived at by committee members is of critical importance. There have been Instances in which an inadequate review process has resulted in serious harm to research subjects. Deficient committee review was identified as one of the factors In a study in New Zealand which resulted in the suffering and death (...) of many women diagnosed with carcinoma in situ. (shrink)