The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning is the first comprehensive and authoritative handbook covering all the core topics of the field of thinking and ...

Pediatric critical careCritical care refers to the health care of children with life-threatening illness or following major surgery or severe injury. This care is offered in different contexts across the globe. In well-resourced environments, critical careCritical care may be provided in pediatric intensive care units, which provide highly complex medical care with advanced, potentially expensive technological devices aimed primarily at sustaining life; whereas in poorly resourced regions, only primary care may be available for critically ill or injured childrenInjured children. Even (...) where PICU facilities are available, they are a scarce and expensive resource. The knowledge and ability to sustain a critically ill or injured child’sInjured children life, potentially with effects on the child and family’s quality of lifeQuality of life and at the expense of other children’s health care, leads to frequent ethical challenges. Ethical issues related to how best to ensure optimal quality of lifeQuality of life and the fair distribution of scarce resources are common. In-depth knowledge and understanding of the individual patient’s medical, scientific and psychosocial context, through interdisciplinary discussion and collaboration; as well as familiarity with the overriding, relevant ethico-legal policiesPolicy and principles is essential for appropriate decision-makingDecision-making. Truthful communicationCommunication with the family is essential, using a shared decision-makingDecision-making process, and the child’s best interestBest interest must be central to every decision. This chapter presents an overview of the recommended approach to, and important considerations for, ethical decision-makingDecision-making in the PICU, using a hypothetical case example. (shrink)

Strong evidence shows that exposure and engagement with the natural world not only improve human wellbeing but can also help promote environmentally friendly behaviors. Human-nature relationships are at the heart of global agendas promoted by international organizations including the World Health Organization’s “One Health” and the United Nations “Ocean Decade.” These agendas demand collaborative multisector interdisciplinary efforts at local, national, and global levels. However, while global agendas highlight global goals for a sustainable world, developing science that directly addresses these agendas (...) from design through to delivery and outputs does not come without its challenges. In this article, we present the outcomes of international meetings between researchers, stakeholders, and policymakers from the United Kingdom and Brazil. We propose a model for interdisciplinary work under such global agendas, particularly the interface between One Health and the UN Ocean Decade and identify three priority research areas closely linked to each other: human-nature connection, conservation-human behavior, and implementation strategies. We also discuss a number of recommendations for moving forward. (shrink)

Do the rich descriptions and narrative shapings of literature provide a valuable resource for readers, writers, philosophers, and everyday people to imagine and confront the ultimate questions of life? Do the human activities of storytelling and complex moral decision-making have a deep connection? What are the moral responsibilities of the artist, critic, and reader? What can religious perspectives—from Catholic to Protestant to Mormon—contribute to literary criticism? Thirty well known contributors reflect on these questions, including iterary theorists Marshall Gregory, James Phelan, (...) and Wayne Booth; philosophers Martha Nussbaum, Richard Hart, and Nina Rosenstand; and authors John Updike, Charles Johnson, Flannery O'Connor, and Bernard Malamud. Divided into four sections, with introductory matter and questions for discussion, this accessible anthology represents the most crucial work today exploring the interdisciplinary connections between literature, religion and philosophy. (shrink)

The tropical lowlands of southern Mexico and Central America are composed of a complex mosaic of landscapes that presented a variety of possibilities and challenges to the subsistence practices of the ancient Maya. The Yalahau Regional Human Ecology Project has been investigating ancient Maya agricultural practices and use of resources in a unique fresh-water wetland zone located in the northeast corner of the Yucatán Peninsula. While containing only a sparse population today, the Yalahau region once supported numerous Maya communities and (...) civic-ceremonial centers, particularly during the Late Preclassic and Early Classic periods, between approximately 100 B.C. and A.D. 450. Our investigations have developed evidence that the ancient Maya manipulated and cultivated the wetland landscape of the region, used soil or algae from the wetlands to enrich upland garden plots, and cultivated trees within their communities. We suggest that the study of ancient Maya agricultural practices can contribute to sustainable development of the area today and in the future. (shrink)

Protagoras, of all the ancient philosophers, has perhaps attracted the most interest in modern times. His saying ‘Man is the measure of all things’ caused Schiller to adopt him as the patron of the Oxford pragmatists, and has generally earned him the title of the first humanist. Yet the exact delineation of his philosophcal position remains a baffling task. Neumann, writing on Die Problematik des ‘Homo-mensura’ Satzes in 1938,2 concludes that no certainty whatever can be reached on the meaning of (...) the dictum, since ‘man’, ‘measure’, and ‘things’ are all ambiguous, nor can we tell which of the three is the predicate. The time is past when it was believed that a man's philosophy could be understood apart from the events of his life and the circumstances of his age: yet in the case of Protagoras the historical method of approach has hardly been attempted, although the impact of environment was perhaps more decisive in the formation of philosophical concepts in the Greek world than anywhere else. The reality about which the Greek philosopher spoke had three aspects: it was either the one universe of physics, or the political unity, or God. For example, the book of Heracleitus Περ φσεως was divided into three chapters or logoi, About the Whole, a political, and a theological. Neither physics nor theology supplies from its own subject-matter the form in which this reality was described. (shrink)

At 10.17.6–16 Polybius relates how Scipio seized the opportunity offered by his capture of New Carthage in 209 B.C. to increase his fleet of quinqueremes by half as much again. There is a briefer passage on the same subject in Livy 26.47.1–3. Polybius says that the total number of prisoners taken was nearly ten thousand, from whom Scipio separated two groups: first citizens, men and women with their young children, and secondly craftsmen. He freed the former, and made the latter, (...) numbering about 2000, public slaves of Rome. In Livy's account women and children are not mentioned; the prisoners are said to be ten thousand free men. As in Polybius, the citizens are said to have been set at liberty and the two thousand craftsmen made public slaves. In Polybius Scipio is said to have selected from all those not in the first two groups ‘the strongest, the fittest looking and the youngest and mixed them up with his own crews. And making the whole body of oarsmen half as many again as before he succeeded in manning the captured ships as well as his own στε τος νδρας κστ σκει βραχ τι λεπειν το διπλασους εναι τος πρχοντας τν προγενομνων, for the captured ships were eighteen in number and the original ships thirty-five’. The corresponding passage in Livy is as follows: ‘the remaining multitude [multitudinem, a word suggesting a larger number than the two former groups together] of young inhabitants and of strong slaves he handed over to the fleet to increase the number of oarsmen . And [an increase was needed because] he had added eight captured ships to the fleet’. (shrink)

At 10.17.6–16 Polybius relates how Scipio seized the opportunity offered by his capture of New Carthage in 209 B.C. to increase his fleet of quinqueremes by half as much again. There is a briefer passage on the same subject in Livy 26.47.1–3. Polybius says that the total number of prisoners taken was nearly ten thousand, from whom Scipio separated two groups: first citizens, men and women with their young children, and secondly craftsmen. He freed the former, and made the latter, (...) numbering about 2000, public slaves of Rome. In Livy's account women and children are not mentioned; the prisoners are said to be ten thousand free men. As in Polybius, the citizens are said to have been set at liberty and the two thousand craftsmen made public slaves. In Polybius Scipio is said to have selected from all those not in the first two groups ‘the strongest, the fittest looking and the youngest and mixed them up with his own crews. And making the whole body of oarsmen half as many again as before he succeeded in manning the captured ships as well as his own στε τος νδρας κστ σκει βραχ τι λεπειν το διπλασους εναι τος πρχοντας τν προγενομνων, for the captured ships were eighteen in number and the original ships thirty-five’. The corresponding passage in Livy is as follows: ‘the remaining multitude [multitudinem, a word suggesting a larger number than the two former groups together] of young inhabitants and of strong slaves he handed over to the fleet to increase the number of oarsmen. And [an increase was needed because] he had added eight captured ships to the fleet’. (shrink)

In the myth of the Phaedrus Plato sets forth a picture of the life of discarnate souls in heaven. He represents these souls by the symbol of a winged charioteer driving winged horses. In the case of the souls of the gods, the charioteers and horses are good. In the case of the other souls whom Plato calls daimones, and among whom our own souls are included, the soul is represented by a charioteer with two horses of which the right (...) one is good but the left one evil. It is generally agreed that the right and left horses represent thumos and passion respectively, while the charioteer symbolizes reason. Plato goes on to describe a procession which the gods and daimones make up to the outer edge of heaven in order to contemplate the Forms which lie beyond. The gods, we are told, make the ascent easily and when they reach the edge of heaven have no difficulty in staying there and beholding the Forms. The daimones, however, experience difficulty due to the recalcitrance of the evil horse, which all their charioteers possess (247 b Plato divides the daimones into three main groups: those who succeed in beholding the Forms though with difficulty; those whose vision is only partial; those, finally, who fail to see the Forms at all. Since contemplation of the Forms provides the nourishment by which the wings of the soul are nurtured, those daimones who fail to see the Forms at all lose their wings and fall to earth. They have to go through a series of earthly existences for 10,000 years, before they regain their wings and return to heaven. (shrink)

This essay sets forth the decisive notions and postulates of process philosophy in Process Philosophy and Social Thought, edited by John B. Cobb, Jr. and W. Widick Schroeder. After commenting on the circumstances in which process philosophy came to be a major option among philosophical theologians, I provide some amplification of those notions and postulates. Then, selecting material from the eighteen articles in the volume, I offer several critical assessments of the process viewpoint and its relation to science and to (...) the contemporary call for liberation. (shrink)

Gerald Grace's (2000) paper Research and the Challenges of School Leadership: the Contribution of Critical Scholarship is applauded for making a powerful case for critical leadership studies to be taken seriously and for providing an exhortation for many educationists to think again about headship. However, this paper suggests that Grace's paper is weakened by:(a) traditionalism (e.g. a false equation of leadership with headship and neglect of more recent discourses of leadership, distributed leadership and complexity theory); (b) reductionism, oversimplification, selectivity and (...) misrepresentation in his consideration of educational management studies; (c) neglect of the considerable overlap between critical leadership studies and educational management studies; (d) an untenably negative view of educational management studies (neglecting their potential for realising the same agenda as critical leadership studies); (e) eurocentrism; and (f) his neglect of foundational issues in, and authors on, critical theory. (shrink)