The discourse on the fundamental issues raised by synthetic biology, such as biosafety and biosecurity, intellectual property, environmental consequences and ethical and societal implications, is still open and controversial. This, coupled with the potential and risks the field holds, makes it one of the hottest topics in technology assessment today. How a new technology is perceived by the public influences the manner in which its products and applications will be received. Therefore, it is important to learn how people perceive synthetic (...) biology. This work gathers, integrates and discusses the results of three studies of public perceptions of synthetic biology: an analysis of existing research on how media portray synthetic biology across 13 European countries and in the USA, the Meeting of Young Minds, a public debate between prospective politicians and synthetic biologists in the Netherlands and the experiences of citizen panels and focus groups in Austria, the UK and the USA. The results show that the media are generally positive in their reports on synthetic biology, rather unbalanced in their view of potential benefits and risks, and also heavily influenced by the sources of the stories, namely scientists and stakeholders. Among the prospective Dutch politicians, there were positive expectations as well as very negative ones. Some of these positions are also shared by participants in public dialogue experiments, such as not only the demand for information, transparency and regulation but also a sense of resignation and ineluctability of scientific and technological progress. (shrink)

Although Schütz’s relationship with the Austrian school of economics was an intimate one, Lavoie and other Austrian scholars have challenged (a) Schütz’s characterization of praxeology as an objective science of subjective phenomena and (b) the ability of Schütz’s phenomenology, which emphasizes the subjective meanings of actors, to really make sense of spontaneous social orders. It is my contention, however, that Schütz can be adequately defended against both these charges. First, for Schütz, the claim that social science is an objective science (...) of subjective phenomena need not imply apodictic apriorism nor solipsism. Second, in spite of his emphasis on subjective meanings, the study of spontaneous social orders need not be difficult to justify. (shrink)

Although Schütz’s relationship with the Austrian school of economics was an intimate one, Lavoie and other Austrian scholars have challenged (a) Schütz’s characterization of praxeology as an objective science of subjective phenomena and (b) the ability of Schütz’s phenomenology, which emphasizes the subjective meanings of actors, to really make sense of spontaneous social orders. It is my contention, however, that Schütz can be adequately defended against both these charges. First, for Schütz, the claim that social science is an objective science (...) of subjective phenomena need not imply apodictic apriorism nor solipsism. Second, in spite of his emphasis on subjective meanings, the study of spontaneous social orders need not be difficult to justify. (shrink)

La science économique a toujours été réticente à l’égard du concept de pouvoir, qui ne saurait être opérationnalisé dans les modèles microéconomiques et qui justifierait des rationalisations ex post. Pourtant, le pouvoir est un vecteur d’institutionnalisation sociale que les économistes se doivent d’intégrer pour faire de la firme un objet de recherche de l’économie politique et réaliser de nouveaux progrès explicatifs. Partant, l’article ambitionne de proposer une analyse méthodologique renouvelée du pouvoir, lequel implique une structure collective tout en reposant sur (...) des individus acteurs. Fort de cette clarification conceptuelle, un essai de définition du pouvoir dans la firme est proposé : le pouvoir est la capacité latente (qui sera ou non exercée) d’une entité A à contraindre et à dessiner les choix d’une entité B de telle sorte que le comportement et les actions de B soient orientés dans un sens favorable à A, et ce par des mécanismes intrinsèques à la relation socioéconomique qui peuvent être formels ou informels. Une telle définition du pouvoir permet de reconsidérer l’agir transformatif dans la firme et de lier le pouvoir aux dispositifs relationnels des organisations du capitalisme. (shrink)

La science économique a toujours été réticente à l’égard du concept de pouvoir, qui ne saurait être opérationnalisé dans les modèles microéconomiques et qui justifierait des rationalisations ex post. Pourtant, le pouvoir est un vecteur d’institutionnalisation sociale que les économistes se doivent d’intégrer pour faire de la firme un objet de recherche de l’économie politique et réaliser de nouveaux progrès explicatifs. Partant, l’article ambitionne de proposer une analyse méthodologique renouvelée du pouvoir, lequel implique une structure collective tout en reposant sur (...) des individus acteurs. Fort de cette clarification conceptuelle, un essai de définition du pouvoir dans la firme est proposé : le pouvoir est la capacité latente (qui sera ou non exercée) d’une entité A à contraindre et à dessiner les choix d’une entité B de telle sorte que le comportement et les actions de B soient orientés dans un sens favorable à A, et ce par des mécanismes intrinsèques à la relation socioéconomique qui peuvent être formels ou informels. Une telle définition du pouvoir permet de reconsidérer l’agir transformatif dans la firme et de lier le pouvoir aux dispositifs relationnels des organisations du capitalisme. (shrink)

This essay rejects two common views of Pascal: (a) that he holds only temporal and contingent standards of justice to be available to human beings and (b) that he is indifferent to all but eternal standards of justice. Against these reductive misunderstandings, I provide a detailed reconstruction of Pascal's political thought, drawn from the Pensées and other texts. I show that Pascal develops an account of two distinct and hierarchized orders of justice: a temporal order and an eternal order. Pascal (...) recognizes the integrity of the temporal order of justice, as expressed in local, particular custom and the historical development of positive law and, at the same time, holds that the axiological and ontological condition of this temporal order is an eternal order, a horizon beyond history which serves to ground it. Pascal's politics, rather than a tragic pessimism or a passion for the absolute, is simply a limited specification of his moral and metaphysical realism. (shrink)

Virgil's fourth Eclogue is one of the most quoted, adapted and discussed works of classical literature. This study traces the fortunes of Eclogue 4 in the literature and art of the Italian Renaissance. It sheds new light on some of the most canonical works of Western art and literature, as well as introducing a large number of other, lesser-known items, some of which have not appeared in print since their original publication, while others are extant only in manuscript. Individual (...) chapters are devoted to the uses made of the fourth Eclogue in the political panegyric of Medici Florence, the Venetian Republic and the Renaissance papacy, and to religious appropriations of the Virgilian text in the genres of epic and pastoral poetry. The book also investigates the appearance of quotations from the poem in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century fresco cycles representing the prophetic Sibyls in Italian churches. (shrink)

Discussing different types of metaphor, Isidore of Seville quotes an anonymous fragment that uses agricultural vocabulary to describe the sailing of a ship in order to illustratemetaphorae ab inanimali ad inanimale‘metaphors taken from inanimate objects and applied to inanimate objects’ (Etym.1.37.3 = inc. fr. 63 Blänsdorf):1.

Virgil, in his description of the establishment of a new city by Aeneas for those Trojans who wished to remain in Sicily, is thinking of the Roman practice of colonial foundation: ‘Meanwhile Aeneas marked out the city with the plough and allocated the houses ’. We may note the personal role of the founder, the ploughing of the ritual first furrow, the organized grants to the settlers and the equality of treatment implied in the use of lot . (...) class='Hi'>Virgil was writing at the end of the first century B.C. at a time of great activity in land distribution, but the Romans had been founding colonies from the mid fourth century. Each colony involved the creation of an urban area and the settlement of people on the surrounding agricultural land, and so perpetuated the city state, which was central to ancient life and culture. Indeed a colony was a smaller image of Rome itself. In the early Republic, colonies, either of Latins or of Roman citizens, were established on the periphery of Roman territory, largely for military and strategic reasons. Between 200 and 173 B.C. more than 40,000 may have received plots of land, amounting to about 1,000 square miles of territory. Later, the motives for colonial foundations became more complex, being closely connected with increasing economic and political problems. There can have been few more important aspects in the development of colonies than the need to find land for discharged troops. These in the main were rank and file soldiers who would expect equal shares in land allocations. (shrink)

Virgil, in his description of the establishment of a new city by Aeneas for those Trojans who wished to remain in Sicily, is thinking of the Roman practice of colonial foundation: ‘Meanwhile Aeneas marked out the city with the plough and allocated the houses ’. We may note the personal role of the founder, the ploughing of the ritual first furrow, the organized grants to the settlers and the equality of treatment implied in the use of lot. Virgil (...) was writing at the end of the first century B.C. at a time of great activity in land distribution, but the Romans had been founding colonies from the mid fourth century. Each colony involved the creation of an urban area and the settlement of people on the surrounding agricultural land, and so perpetuated the city state, which was central to ancient life and culture. Indeed a colony was a smaller image of Rome itself. In the early Republic, colonies, either of Latins or of Roman citizens, were established on the periphery of Roman territory, largely for military and strategic reasons. Between 200 and 173 B.C. more than 40,000 may have received plots of land, amounting to about 1,000 square miles of territory. Later, the motives for colonial foundations became more complex, being closely connected with increasing economic and political problems. There can have been few more important aspects in the development of colonies than the need to find land for discharged troops. These in the main were rank and file soldiers who would expect equal shares in land allocations. (shrink)

Everyone knows the statement of Servius that Virgil was compelled by Augustus to alter the second half of the Fourth Georgic after the fall of Gallus, and that he substituted the story of Aristaeus for the laudes Galli. This statement, often doubted by older generations, has had such a remarkable success in recent years that anyone who ventures to impugn it must feel that he is pleading with a halter round his neck before a one-sided jury. It is notable, (...) however, that these jurors, though one-sided, are by no means united, save in their determination to uphold the credit of Servius. One group will assure us that the episode of Aristaeus shows obvious signs not only of haste but of immaturity, and they draw a pathetic picture of the grief-stricken Virgil, ordered to bring out a second edition minus the praises of his friend Gallus, and half-heartedly throwing together some bits of juvenile stuff which he happened to have handy. Others assure us that the tale of Aristaeus shows us a more mature Virgil, nearer to the Virgil of the Aeneid. But the Servians really cannot have it both ways. They must make up their minds in the one direction or in the other if they are to be taken seriously. They make it doubly difficult for us to take them seriously when they try to tell us what Servius meant—but of that more anon. The present paper is an attempt by a converted Servian to examine frankly the arguments which have been advanced in support of Servius. Most of these may be found in Skutsch, Aus Vergils Frühzeit, pp. 140–147. One is very reluctant to use disparaging words about an eminent scholar who has served the cause of learning in so many ways; but it can scarcely be denied that the work just mentioned, in spite of its ingenuity and enthusiasm, shows a lamentable lack of three great essentials—a judicial temper, accurate statement of facts, and cogent reasoning. There is also at times a regrettable vagueness of expression, suggesting that the author is concealing inward doubts or shrinking from thought. All these deficiencies are to some extent present in the section with which this paper is concerned. (shrink)

On Death, by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus of Gadara, is among the most significant philosophical treatments of the theme surviving from the Greco-Roman world. The author was an influential figure in first-century B.C.E. Roman society, associated with poets such as Virgil and politicians such as the father-in-law of Julius Caesar. The surviving copies of his treatises were carbonized following the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 C.E. This edition contains the Greek text, newly reconstituted with the help of the infrared (...) imaging technology that has revolutionized the study of Philodemus’s works in the twenty-first century, and completely translated into English for the first time. An extensive introduction provides background on Philodemus and his writings, accompanying notes enrich the text, and forty-four pages of photographs illustrate the papyrus manuscript from which the translation is drawn. (shrink)

1. The use of the imperfect τικτε ‘was the mother of’, with τíκτουσα; νίκων, ο νικντες; διδος is well known, and no doubt correctly explained. Reference is frequently made to Virgil's quem dat Sidonia Dido, but δίδου seems not to be used, no doubt because it is so extensively used in the sense of ‘offered’. In T. 7. 56. 3 περιεγíγνοντο seems to be a substitute for νíκων, ‘were victorious’; cf. φερε in Find. O. 10 , 74 ‘was prizewinner’ (...) —the other winners all have an aorist. So too Pyth. 3. 44. (shrink)

1. The use of the imperfect τικτε ‘was the mother of’, with τíκτουσα; νίκων, ο νικντες; διδος is well known, and no doubt correctly explained. Reference is frequently made to Virgil's quem dat Sidonia Dido, but δίδου seems not to be used, no doubt because it is so extensively used in the sense of ‘offered’. In T. 7. 56. 3 περιεγíγνοντο seems to be a substitute for νíκων, ‘were victorious’; cf. φερε in Find. O. 10, 74 ‘was prizewinner’ —the (...) other winners all have an aorist. So too Pyth. 3. 44. (shrink)

In Virgil's third eclogue, the goatherd Menalcas responds to his challenger Damoetas by offering as his wager in their contest of song a pair of embossed cups,caelatum diuini opus Alcimedontis, decorated with a pattern of vine and ivy. In the middle of this design, he says, are two figures. One is the astronomer Conon, and the other—at this point Menalcas, afflicted with a sudden loss of memory, professes to have forgotten the name of the second figure, and breaks off (...) into a question :quis fuit alter, | descripsit radio totum qui gentibus orbem, | tempora quae messor, quae curuus arator haberet?Various candidates for the identity of this second astronomer have been suggested, one of the most favoured being Eudoxus of Cnidus, whosePhaenomenahad been versified by the Hellenistic poet Aratus. In 1930 it was proposed by Léon Herrmann that Menalcas in fact answers his own question in his reference tocuruUS ARAToratEcl.3.42: the solution to Virgil's riddle is already written into the question, in the form of the anagram ofAratusconcealed within these two words. Strictly speaking, Hermann notes only that ‘Aratorau v. 42 évoque le nom d’Aratos’; he and later exponents of the theory tend to ignore the preceding ‘-us’—but there seems no reason to exclude it if an allusion to the Greek poet is to be seen in the two following syllables. (shrink)

IN a discussion of the reading in Lucan i. 231, Richard Bentley dismissed Grotius's suggestion Ariminon: ignes on the correct grounds that, like Virgil, Lucan avoids starting a new sentence or clause at the beginning of the sixth foot of the hexameter, except with a pair of monosyllables or with a word emphasized either by repetition or by a strong contrast.

Arma uirumque cano… ‘Je chante les armes et l'homme …’ ainsi commence l’Énéide, ainsi devrait commencer toute poésie.It is far from an overstatement to make the claim that in the surviving corpus of Latin poetry no phrase is more immediately identifiable than the pronouncement of the Virgilian narrator on the ‘arms and the man’ of his subject matter. The presence ofarma uirumquein a particular formation cannot fail to put us in mind of theAeneidand its concomitant ideological associations. A consequence of (...) the epic's centrality as a canonical text was the emergence in antiquity ofarma uirumqueas a synecdochic quotation for the work as a whole and, as such, for the figure of the poet himself. This transformation was further actuated by the ancient practice of ascribing titular authority to a poem's incipit, ensuring that arms and the man took on especial resonance. Even within theAeneid, self-referential intratextual play with the Virgilian utterance can be detected. Furthermore, in post-Augustan verse, Fowler argues thatarmaalone is always loaded in a metaliterary fashion, serving as an identifying marker for Virgil's epic or, more broadly, for epic in general. This was so marked a phenomenon that the opening word of the poem was recycled and reworked by Ovid around a decade after the compositional beginnings of theAeneid, in the first book of theAmores, in what formed an announcement of the redeployment of epicarmainto the elegiac world ofmilitia amoris(Am. 1.1–2). (shrink)

We may now consider this ancient evidence that Andes lay three miles away from Mantua in connection with Conway's remaining arguments and with Virgil's ‘own statement’ in his Bucolics.In the matter of the inscriptions, Conway's ‘impenitence’ does nothing to strengthen his case. All the points that he raises in an apparent refutation had been met by me. I had distinguished between public and private inscriptions, as Conway had not done in his earlier article, where he declared the period of (...) the two monuments to be ‘Virgil's own,’ the inscriptions being ‘cut in the style which marks the best work between 50 B.C. and A.D. 50.’ I had not, as he asserts, failed to notice the point that caps the climax of his recent article, that ‘the P. Magius who wrote the inscription of Casalpoglio … was related to Virgil's mother.’ I was inclined to date both inscriptions, with the approval of Professor Egbert, somewhere in the third quarter of the first century of our era, but ‘even allowing for them both a date as early as the end of the first century B.C.,’ which is apparently as far back as Conway means to stretch their date, I clamored for an inscription of the time of Virgil's birth if it were to serve as evidence for his birthplace. This point is not met by Conway. If Virgil was born at Pietole, his fame and his family could certainly have extended as far north as Casalpoglio and Calvisano at the time of his death in 19 B.C. Supposing that we knew on other evidence that he was born at Calvisano, the presence of an inscription with the name of Magius or Vergilius would corroborate that evidence. (shrink)

This has all the appearance of being a straightforward, even conventional, transition. Indeed, the conceit of Night′s chariot is common and has a history stretching back at least as far as the beginning of the fifth century B.C. Night is elsewhere described by Virgil as umida, the epithet reflecting the traditional view that Night, like Dawn , arises from and sinks back into the stream of Ocean. In fact, the chariot of Night had been referred to as recently as (...) lines 721 and 738 of this book, in the latter instance with the epithet umida applied to Night. What is new and interesting in our passage is the ‘meta caeli’ round which Night′s chariot turns. The effect of this novelty is to make of Night′s vehicle a racing chariot, as it is the chariots in the Circus that must negotiate a meta. The programmatic reasons for Virgil′s having done this in Book 5 are obvious. Earlier in the book Virgil had described the games held in honour of the anniversary of Anchises′ death. The first and most elaborately portrayed event in these games had been the boat-race, which is plainly modelled on the chariot-race in Iliad 23, the first and most elaborately portrayed event in the funeral games for Patroclus. Just as Achilles had required the competing chariots to race once around a distant turning-post, so Aeneas requires the competing ships to race once around a rock out at sea, which rock is three times called a meta . A simile comparing the sailors and their ships to charioteers and their teams makes the connection explicit. (shrink)