This chapter treats the reception and assessment of the two English translations of Simone de Beauvoir's Le deuxième sexe, the first by Howard M. Parshley in 1953 and the second by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany‐Chevallier in 2009. We examine both the criticisms and the appreciations, concluding that the second is superior in many ways to the first. On that basis, we propose a digital edition of the original book and its earlier drafts en face the 2009 English translation, which (...) would also allow as hypertext the addition of curated scholarly notes and textual exegesis, alongside crowd‐sourced discussion. This would both make the book more accessible worldwide, and add the scholarly dimension for which many Beauvoir scholars have long been waiting. (shrink)

The existence of mathematical objects may be explained in terms of their occurrence in problems. Especially interesting problems arise at the overlap of domains, and the items that intervene in them are hybrids sharing the characteristics of both domains in an ambiguous way. Euclid's geometry, and Leibniz' work at the intersection of geometry, algebra and mechanics in the late seventeenth century, provide instructive examples of such problems and items. The complex and yet still formal unity of these items calls into (...) question certain tenets of Resnik's structuralism, and of the reductive projects of the logicists. (shrink)

The relationship between the objects of mathematics and physics has been a recurrent source of philosophical debate. Rationalist philosophers can minimize the distance between mathematical and physical domains by appealing to transcendental categories, but then are left with the problem of where to locate those categories ontologically. Empiricists can locate their objects in the material realm, but then have difficulty explaining certain peculiar “transcendental” features of mathematics like the timelessness of its objects and the unfalsifiability of (at least some of) (...) its truths. During the past twenty years, the relationship between mathematics and physics has come to seem particularly problematic, in part because of a strong interest in “naturalized epistemology” among American philosophers. The tendency to construe epistemological relations in causal and materialist terms seems to enforce a sharp distinction between mathematical and physical entities, and makes the former seem at best uncomfortably inaccessible and at worst irrelevant. (shrink)

This collection of new essays treats the historical, philosophical, and literary dimensions of Simone de Beauvoir's thought, and celebrates the 50th anniversary of her most influential book, The Second Sex. A team of distinguished philosophers and literary critics locate her work in the intellectual and political upheavals that marked Paris in the 1930s and 1940s; analyse her philosophical links to 17th-century rationalism, and to Kant, Hegel, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Simone Weil, and Heidegger; and study the connections between her philosophical and literary (...) writings. Above all, the collection tackles the relationship between theory and concrete situation with fresh insight and renewed urgency. (shrink)

The narrative about the nineteenth century favored by many philosophers of mathematics strongly influenced by either logic or algebra, is that geometric intuition led real and complex analysis astray until Cauchy and Kronecker in one sense and Dedekind in another guided mathematicians out of the labyrinth through the arithmetization of analysis. Yet the use of geometry in most cases in nineteenth century mathematics was not misleading and was often key to important developments. Thus the geometrization of complex numbers was essential (...) to their acceptance and to the development of complex analysis; geometry provided the canonical examples that led to the formulation of group theory; and geometry, transformed by Riemann, lay at the heart of topology, which in turn transformed much of modern mathematics. Using complex numbers as my case study, I argue that the best way to teach students mathematics is through a repertoire of modes of representation, which is also the best way to make mathematical discoveries. (shrink)

The question of how and why mathematics can be applied to physical reality should be approached through the history of science, as a series of case studies which may reveal both generalizable patterns and salient differences in the grounds and nature of that application from era to era. The present examination of Descartes' Principles of Philosophy Part II, reveals a deep ambiguity in the relation of Euclidean geometry to res extensa, and a tension between geometrical form and 'common motion of (...) parts' as principles of individuation for matter in Cartesian physics. (shrink)

The question of how and why the application of mathematics to physical reality is possible has occupied philosophers for many centuries. In contemporary discussions, Philip Kitcher’s attack on a priorist approaches to the question is particularly interesting, for it suggests that there is no global answer (Kitcher 1983, Chapters 1-4). In this essay, I would like to develop his insight by arguing, first, that the problem of how mathematics relates to physical reality should be addressed by an appeal to the (...) history of mathematics and the sciences in the form of case studies which analyze the peculiar and changing ways in which these domains interact. Generalizations about such interaction should be made carefully, in a kind of local and piecemeal retrospective; I believe that the historical record will show that the grounds of justification and the form of applied mathematics changes dramatically from one historical era to the next. (shrink)

Cartesian method both organizes and impoverishes the domains to which Descartes applies it. It adjusts geometry so that it can be better integrated with algebra, and yet deflects a full-scale investigation of curves. It provides a comprehensive conceptual framework for physics, and yet interferes with the exploitation of its dynamical and temporal aspects. Most significantly, it bars a fuller unification of mathematics and physics, despite Descartes' claims to quantify nature. The work of his contemporaries Galileo and Torricelli, and of his (...) successor Newton, illustrates conceptual possibilities Descartes left aside, due to his attachment to method. (shrink)

In this essay, I consider the use of mathematical statistics in the study of biological systems in the field, using as case studies the work of Ruth Geyer Shaw and her colleagues at the University of Minnesota. To address practical issues, like how to enhance prairie restoration, and how to prepare for (and perhaps prevent) the effect of rapid climate change, she and her colleagues combine mathematical modeling and intensive data collection in the field. Using ANOVA and the more versatile (...) approach of Aster Models, they show the effects of inbreeding (which follows from the fragmentation of prairie) to lower the fitness of plant populations. They study the genetic variance of plants in stable populations, which is important when that population must deal with changing conditions. And they study the consequences of rapid climate change: even good genetic variance and initial fitness may not save a given population from extinction. This leads to a new alliance of science with local, state, federal and global politics. (shrink)

During the past few decades, philosophers of biology have debated the issue of reductionism versus anti-reductionism, with both sides often claiming a ‘pluralist’ position. However, both sides also tend to focus on a single research paradigm, which analyzes living things in terms of certain macromolecular components. I offer a case study where biologists pursue other analytic pathways, in a tradition of quantitative genetics that originates with the initially purely mathematical theories of R. A. Fisher, J. B. S. Haldane, and Sewall (...) Wright in the 1930s. Aster Models offers a class of statistical models designed for studying the fitness of plant and animal populations, by integrating the measurements of separate, sequential, non-normally distributed fitness components in novel ways. Their work generates important theoretical and practical results that do not require elaboration by molecular biology, and thus serves as a counterexample to the claims of philosophers whose ‘pluralism’ still harbors reductionist assumptions. (shrink)

There has long been a curious fascination with eyes and mirrors as evident throughout art, film, and literature. From fantastical characters who shoot lasers from their eyes to those whose memories are altered visually, the way in which a story portrays the function of the eyes demonstrates the way the storyteller imagines the character's relationship to the world. Is the character powerful or powerless? Does she impact her world or is she impacted by that world? The storyteller's portrayal of vision (...) answers those questions and reveals deeper assumptions about the individual and her ability to move within and to know her world. While eyes are associated with interacting with this world, mirrors are distinctly associated with interacting with some other world. Mirrors function as portals to other worlds, windows that glimpse an alternate reality, or harmful traps that hide sinister intentions. How an author portrays eyes reveals how she understands the world, while how she portrays mirrors reveals how she imagines the unknown. (shrink)

Book review of Emily Grosholz's Representation and Productive Ambiguity in Mathematics and the Sciences (2007).

Decades of research have focused on children's reasoning about math equivalence problems for both practical and theoretical insights. Not only are math equivalence problems foundational in arithmetic and algebra, they also represent a class of problems on which children's thinking is resistant to change. Feedback is one instructional tool that can serve as a key trigger of cognitive change. In this paper, we review all experimental studies on the effects of feedback on children's understanding of math equivalence. Meta-analytic results indicate (...) that feedback has positive effects for low-knowledge learners and negative effects for high-knowledge learners, and these effects are stronger for procedural outcomes than conceptual outcomes. Findings highlight the variable influences of feedback on math equivalence understanding and suggest that models of thinking and reasoning need to consider learner characteristics, learning outcomes, and learning materials, as well as the dynamic interactions among them. (shrink)

Despite having paved the way for face, womb and penis transplants, hand transplantation today remains a small hybrid of reconstructive microsurgery and transplant immunology. An exceptionally limited patient population internationally complicates medical researchers’ efforts to parse outcomes “objectively.” Presumed functional and psychosocial benefits of gaining a transplant hand must be weighed in both patient decisions and bioethical discussions against the difficulty of adhering to post-transplant medications, the physical demands of hand transplant recovery on the patient, and the serious long-term health (...) risks of immunosuppressant drugs. This paper relates five narratives of hand transplantation drawn from an oral history project to show how narrative methods can and should inform ethical evaluations and the clinical process of hand transplantation. The interviews with patients and their partners analyzed here lead us to suggest that qualitative accounts of patient experiences should be used to complement clinical case studies reported in medical journals and to help develop instruments to assess outcomes more systematically. (shrink)

Introduction: The man who drank the hemlock -- Socrates' philosophy -- Politics and society -- Plato and others : who created the death of Socrates? -- 'A Greek chatterbox' : the death of Socrates in the Roman Empire -- Pain and revelation : the death of Socrates and the death of Jesus -- The apotheosis of philosophy : from enlightenment to revolution -- Talk, truth, totalitarianism : the problem of Socrates in modern times.

This paper focuses around women in the food chain, not in terms of agriculture and development, but as food ourselves. I start from the work of Eva-Maria Simms and Val Plumwood, who examine being eaten by non-human animals, and by human infants and fetuses. I use Simms’s and Plumwood’s examples to argue that in viewing our human selves as edible creatures, we not only distance ourselves from the role of "eater" in the masculinist domination framework but reject and break down (...) the very dichotomy of eater/eaten, predator/prey, diner/dinner. Through the work of Maurice-Merleau Ponty, I argue that our being edible is the obverse of our being consumers: it is this fact which is proven or fulfilled when the consumer is consumed. I then suggest that seeing ourselves as edible is both a call to a greater onto-ecological understanding and to a new understanding of the life/death/life cycle: as an asymmetrical yet symbiotic relationship between organic, decaying, and nourishing bodies. (shrink)

Thus far, little attention has been paid by Foucauldian scholars to the role of laughter in our subjectivation and normalization, nor to the possible roles of laughter practices in political resistance. Yet, there is a body of references to laughter in both Foucault’s own work and that of his contemporary commentators, subtly indicating that it might be a tool for challenging normalization through transgression. I seek to negotiate the different functions that our laughter practices can have, proposing that laughter is (...) a worthy site of exploration for Foucauldian feminists in particular. Examining the differential norms, requirements, and sanctions around laughter shows that we are shaped as gendered subjects through the regulation of laughter’s timing and its bodily presentation. I argue that the contemporary state of laughter practices works to uphold docile femininity, using tools such as compulsory happiness and labelling feminists as killjoys. In brief, this article interrogates the ways in which cultivating different laughter practices can function as a path for Foucauldian-feminist political resistance. (shrink)

Human culture is uniquely complex compared to other species. This complexity stems from the accumulation of culture over time through high- and low-fidelity transmission and innovation. One possible reason for why humans retain and create culture, is our ability to modulate teaching strategies in order to foster learning and innovation. We argue that teaching is more diverse, flexible, and complex in humans than in other species. This particular characteristic of human teaching rather than teaching itself is one of the reasons (...) for human’s incredible capacity for cumulative culture. That is, humans unlike other species can signal to learners whether the information they are teaching can or cannot be modified. As a result teaching in humans can be used to support high or low fidelity transmission, innovation, and ultimately, cumulative culture. (shrink)

This review essay examines three recent books addressing recurring or current controversies in public education. One is historically based, a second focuses on a range of questions, and the third concentrates on the single issue of school choice. All of them, however, may be read against a backdrop of tension among three enduring liberal democratic values: individualism, diversity and unity. Public education is surely aimed at individual success and at preparing future adults to make choices, ideally among a range of (...) opportunities. The existence of a multicultural society and the development of identity politics, however, mean that members of groups often wish to preserve their particular identities despite a common education. Finally, public education has been based on inculcating values that ostensibly we all share in common. Each of these aims may conflict with one or both of the others. Therefore, setting the proper course requires an ongoing attempt to strike the proper balance among them. It is within this framework that I examine these books. (shrink)

This review essay examines three recent books addressing recurring or current controversies in public education. One is historically based, a second focuses on a range of questions, and the third concentrates on the single issue of school choice. All of them, however, may be read against a backdrop of tension among three enduring liberal democratic values: individualism, diversity and unity. Public education is surely aimed at individual success and at preparing future adults to make choices, ideally among a range of (...) opportunities. The existence of a multicultural society and the development of identity politics, however, mean that members of groups often wish to preserve their particular identities despite a common education. Finally, public education has been based on inculcating values that ostensibly we all share in common. Each of these aims may conflict with one or both of the others. Therefore, setting the proper course requires an ongoing attempt to strike the proper balance among them. It is within this framework that I examine these books. (shrink)