Hyperlink cinema is an emergent film genre that seeks to push the boundaries of the medium in order to mirror contemporary life in the globalized community. Films in the genre thus create an interacting network across space and time in such a way as to suggest that people’s lives can intersect on scales that would not have been possible without modern technologies of travel and communication. This allows us to test the hypothesis that new kinds of media might permit us (...) to break through the natural cognitive constraints that limit the number and quality of social relationships we can manage in the conventional face-to-face world. We used network analysis to test this hypothesis with data from 12 hyperlink films, using 10 motion pictures from a more conventional film genre as a control. We found few differences between hyperlink cinema films and the control genre, and few differences between hyperlink cinema films and either the real world or classical drama (e.g., Shakespeare’s plays). Conversation group size seems to be especially resilient to alteration. It seems that, despite many efficiency advantages, modern media are unable to circumvent the constraints imposed by our evolved psychology. (shrink)

Cohesion may be based primarily on interpersonal ties or rely instead on the connection between member and group, while groups may cohere temporarily based on the immediate alignment of interests among members or may be tied together more permanently by socio-emotional bonds. Together, these characteristics define four prototypical group types. Cliques and coalitions are based primarily on dyadic ties. Groups of comrades or colleagues rely instead on the connection of members to the group for cohesion, which reduces the marginal cost (...) of increasing group size. The strong glue of socio-emotional cohesion binds cliques and comrades, while coalitions and groups of colleagues are often based on weaker forms of cohesion. The mix of strong and weak adhesives and the greater scalability offered by the member-group bond provide the building blocks for assembling very large societies without overtaxing the social brain. (shrink)

Data on the number of adults that an individual contacts at least once a month in a set of British populations yield estimates of network sizes that correspond closely to those of the typical “sympathy group” size in humans. Men and women do not differ in their total network size, but women have more females and more kin in their networks than men do. Kin account for a significantly higher proportion of network members than would be expected by (...) chance. The number of kin in the network increases in proportion to the size of the family; as a result, people from large families have proportionately fewer non-kin in their networks, suggesting that there is either a time constraint or a cognitive constraint on network size. A small inner clique of the network functions as a support group from whom an individual is particularly likely to seek advice or assistance in time of need. Kin do not account for a significantly higher proportion of the support clique than they do for the wider network of regular social contacts for either men or women, but each sex exhibits a strong preference for members of their own sex. (shrink)

Clique sizes for chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) grooming and for human conversation are compared in order to test Robin Dunbar’s hypothesis that human language is almost three times as efficient a bonding mechanism as primate grooming. Recalculation of the data provided by Dunbar et al. (1995) reveals that the average clique size for human conversation is 2.72 whereas that of chimpanzee grooming is shown to be 2.18. The efficiency of human conversation and actual chimpanzee grooming over Dunbar’s primate (...) grooming model (always one-to-one and a one-way interaction) is 1.27 and 1.25, respectively, when we take role alternation into account. Chimpanzees can obtain about the same efficiency as humans in terms of quantity of social interactions because their grooming is often mutual and polyadic. (shrink)

Drama, at least according to the Aristotelian view, is effective inasmuch as it successfully mirrors real aspects of human behavior. This leads to the hypothesis that successful dramas will portray fictional social networks that have the same properties as those typical of human beings across ages and cultures. We outline a methodology for investigating this hypothesis and use it to examine ten of Shakespeare’s plays. The cliques and groups portrayed in the plays correspond closely to those which have been observed (...) in spontaneous human interaction, including in hunter-gatherer societies, and the networks of the plays exhibit “small world” properties of the type which have been observed in many human-made and natural systems. (shrink)

We develop and study the complexity of propositional proof systems of varying strength extending resolution by allowing it to operate with disjunctions of linear equations instead of clauses. We demonstrate polynomial-size refutations for hard tautologies like the pigeonhole principle, Tseitin graph tautologies and the clique-coloring tautologies in these proof systems. Using interpolation we establish an exponential-size lower bound on refutations in a certain, considerably strong, fragment of resolution over linear equations, as well as a general polynomial upper (...) bound on interpolants in this fragment.We then apply these results to extend and improve previous results on multilinear proofs , as studied in [Ran Raz, Iddo Tzameret, The strength of multilinear proofs. Comput. Complexity ]. Specifically, we show the following:• Proofs operating with depth-3 multilinear formulas polynomially simulate a certain, considerably strong, fragment of resolution over linear equations.• Proofs operating with depth-3 multilinear formulas admit polynomial-size refutations of the pigeonhole principle and Tseitin graph tautologies. The former improve over a previous result that established small multilinear proofs only for the functional pigeonhole principle. The latter are different from previous proofs, and apply to multilinear proofs of Tseitin mod p graph tautologies over any field of characteristic 0. We conclude by connecting resolution over linear equations with extensions of the cutting planes proof system. (shrink)

The basic idea of the present work is this one: supposing the it is not naive nor anachronistic to read the situation psychologically, Ambrose never was a ‘mentor’ who used his friendship to dominate totally Gratian who would have been a weak character. The investigation considers almost the whole reign, in two parts: De fide ad Gratianum libri V. The Council of Aquileia. It aims to develop a more subtle understanding of: the image of each of the two protagonists, as (...) they mirror one another; the history of their links, shaped of course by the existence of powerful cliques at court and by the strict rules governing the relations between a bishop and an emperor; the notion, more broadly, of the progressive establishing of the Christian Empire. This, then, is a work of synthesis. Such an undertaking is timely, given the number, size and importance, of the studies on the subject. (shrink)

We study the complexity of proving the Pigeon Hole Principle in a monotone variant of the Gentzen Calculus, also known as Geometric Logic. We prove a size-depth trade-off upper bound for monotone proofs of the standard encoding of the PHP as a monotone sequent. At one extreme of the trade-off we get quasipolynomia -size monotone proofs, and at the other extreme we get subexponential-size bounded-depth monotone proofs. This result is a consequence of deriving the basic properties of (...) certain monotone formulas computing the Boolean threshold functions. We also consider the monotone sequent expressing the Clique-Coclique Principle defined by Bonet, Pitassi and Raz [9]. We show that monotone proofs for this sequent can be easily reduced to monotone proofs of the one-to-one and onto PHP, and so CLIQUE also has quasipolynomia -size monotone proofs. As a consequence of our results, Resolution, Cutting Planes with polynomially bounded coefficients, and Bounded-Depth Frege are exponentially separated from the monotone Gentzen Calculus. Finally, a simple simulation argument implies that these results extend to the Intuitionistic Gentzen Calculus. Our results partially answer some questions left open by P. Pudlák. (shrink)

Given a graph G whose set of vertices is a Polish space X, the weak Borel chromatic number of G is the least size of a family of pairwise disjoint G -independent Borel sets that covers all of X. Here a set of vertices of a graph G is independent if no two vertices in the set are connected by an edge.We show that it is consistent with an arbitrarily large size of the continuum that every closed graph (...) on a Polish space either has a perfect clique or has a weak Borel chromatic number of at most ℵ1. We observe that some weak version of Todorcevic's Open Coloring Axiom for closed colorings follows from MA.Slightly weaker results hold for Fσ-graphs. In particular, it is consistent with an arbitrarily large size of the continuum that every locally countable Fσ-graph has a Borel chromatic number of at most ℵ1.We refute various reasonable generalizations of these results to hypergraphs. (shrink)

A Ramsey statement denoted \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${n \longrightarrow (k)^2_2}$$\end{document} says that every undirected graph on n vertices contains either a clique or an independent set of size k. Any such valid statement can be encoded into a valid DNF formula RAM(n, k) of size O(nk) and with terms of size \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\left(\begin{smallmatrix}k\\2\end{smallmatrix}\right)}$$\end{document}. Let rk be the minimal n for which the statement (...) holds. We prove that RAM(rk, k) requires exponential size constant depth Frege systems, answering a problem of Krishnamurthy and Moll [15]. As a consequence of Pudlák’s work in bounded arithmetic [19] it is known that there are quasi-polynomial size constant depth Frege proofs of RAM(4k, k), but the proof complexity of these formulas in resolution R or in its extension R(log) is unknown. We define two relativizations of the Ramsey statement that still have quasi-polynomial size constant depth Frege proofs but for which we establish exponential lower bound for R. (shrink)

This article examines the communication networks within and between science and technology studies (STS) and the history of science. In particular, journal relatedness data are used to analyze some of the structural features of their disciplinary identities and relationships. The results first show that, although the history of science is more than half a century older than STS, the size of the STS network is more than twice that of the history of science network. Further, while a majority of (...) the journals in the STS network are connected by weak ties, about half of the history of science network consists of strong ties. The history of science network is thus more cohesive than the STS network. The relatively strong cohesion within the history of science network is associated with comparatively high degrees of intra-disciplinary communication, but comparatively weak ties to only a few related disciplines. The analysis also shows that very few members of the history of science cliques are situated on the shortest path between both specialties. Moreover, given the relatively impermeable nature of the history of science network, the latter partially depends on STS to reach some of the neighboring disciplines. (shrink)

The visual system adapts to a wide range of visual features, from lower-level features like color and motion to higher-level features like causality and, perhaps, number. According to some, adaptation is a strictly perceptual phenomenon, such that the presence of adaptation licenses the claim that a feature is truly perceptual in nature. Given the theoretical importance of claims about adaptation, then, it is important to understand exactly when the visual system does and does not exhibit adaptation. Here, we take as (...) a case study one specific kind of adaptation: visual adaptation to size. Supported by evidence from four experiments, we argue that, despite robust effects of size adaptation in the lab, (1) size adaptation effects are phenomenologically underwhelming (in some cases, hardly appreciable at all), (2) some effects of size adaptation appear contradictory, and difficult to explain given current theories of size adaptation, and (3) prior studies on size adaptation may have failed to isolate size as the adapted dimension. Ultimately, we argue that while there is evidence to license the claim that size adaptation is genuine, size adaptation is a puzzling and poorly understood phenomenon. (shrink)

Recent work has defended “Euclidean” theories of set size, in which Cantor’s Principle (two sets have equally many elements if and only if there is a one-to-one correspondence between them) is abandoned in favor of the Part-Whole Principle (if A is a proper subset of B then A is smaller than B). It has also been suggested that Gödel’s argument for the unique correctness of Cantor’s Principle is inadequate. Here we see from simple examples, not that Euclidean theories of (...) set size are wrong, but that they must be either very weak and narrow or largely arbitrary and misleading. (shrink)

In this paper we propose an non-machine learning artificial intelligence (AI) based approach for telecom data analysis, with a special focus on clique detection. Clique detection can be used to identify households, which is a major challenge in telecom data analysis and predictive analytics. Our approach does not use any form of machine learning, but another type of algorithm: satisfiability for propositional logic. This is a neglected approach in modern AI, and we aim to demonstrate that for certain (...) tasks, it may be a good alternative to machine learning-based approaches. We have used a simple DPLL satisfiability solver over an artificially generated telecom dataset (due to GDPR regulations), but our approach can be implemented on any telecom data by following the SAT encoding we have developed, and the DPLL solver can be substituted by a more advanced alternative such as CDCL. This paper extends the method presented in [1] for banking logs to data containing caller information, and proposes a more efficient encoding. -/- . (shrink)

Are there different sizes of infinity? That is, are there infinite sets of different sizes? This is one of the most natural questions that one can ask about the infinite. But it is of course generally taken to be settled by mathematical results, such as Cantor’s theorem, to the effect that there are infinite sets without bijections between them. These results settle the question, given an almost universally accepted principle relating size to the existence of functions. The principle is: (...) for any sets A and B, if A is the same size as B, then there is a bijection from A to B. The aim of the paper, however, is to argue that this question is in fact wide open: to argue that we are not in a position to know the answer, because we are not in one to know the principle. The aim, that is, is to argue that for all we know there is only one size of infinity. (shrink)

This article analyzes the question of how the size of bribes should impact criminal sanctions. In contrast to the commonly held view that punishment should increase with the size of the bribe, we argue to the contrary: that the punishment of the bribee should decrease with the size of the bribe. Our conclusion is based both on a philosophical argument and an economic argument. We argue that all else being equal, as an agent’s reservation price for selling (...) public interests decreases, the culpability of the agent willing to receive a bribe increases. In addition, from an economic perspective, the expected social harm of an official acting with a low reservation price for bribes is much greater than one acting with a high reservation price: both the susceptibility of being bribed as well as the potential for social harm is much greater when the reservation price is low. (shrink)

In this paper the exclusive focus on large firms in the field of business ethics is challenged. Some of the idiosyncrasies of small firms are explained, and links are made between these and potential ethical issues. A review of the existing literature on ethics in small firms demonstrates the lack of appropriate research, so that to date we can draw no firm conclusions in relation to ethics in the small firm. Recommendations are made as to the way forward for small (...) firm business ethics research. Questions for investigation are suggested using micro, meso and macro perspectives. Much exploratory work needs to be done to lay the groundwork for this important area of social and commercial research in the future. (shrink)

Group size is a function of relative neocortical volume in nonhuman primates. Extrapolation from this regression equation yields a predicted group size for modern humans very similar to that of certain hunter-gatherer and traditional horticulturalist societies. Groups of similar size are also found in other large-scale forms of contemporary and historical society. Among primates, the cohesion of groups is maintained by social grooming; the time devoted to social grooming is linearly related to group size among the (...) Old World monkeys and apes. To maintain the stability of the large groups characteristic of humans by grooming alone would place intolerable demands on time budgets. It is suggested that (1) the evolution of large groups in the human lineage depended on the development of a more efficient method for time-sharing the processes of social bonding and that (2) language uniquely fulfills this requirement. Data on the size of conversational and other small interacting groups of humans are in line with the predictions for the relative efficiency of conversation compared to grooming as a bonding process. Analysis of a sample of human conversations shows that about 60% of time is spent gossiping about relationships and personal experiences. It is suggested that language evolved to allow individuals to learn about the behavioural characteristics of other group members more rapidly than is possible by direct observation alone. (shrink)

Sexual size dimorphism is generally associated with sexual selection via agonistic male competition in nonhuman primates. These primate models play an important role in understanding the origins and evolution of human behavior. Human size dimorphism is often hypothesized to be associated with high rates of male violence and polygyny. This raises the question of whether human dimorphism and patterns of male violence are inherited from a common ancestor with chimpanzees or are uniquely derived. Here I review patterns of, (...) and causal models for, dimorphism in humans and other primates. While dimorphism in primates is associated with agonistic male mate competition, a variety of factors can affect male and female size, and thereby dimorphism. The causes of human sexual size dimorphism are uncertain, and could involve several non-mutually-exclusive mechanisms, such as mate competition, resource competition, intergroup violence, and female choice. A phylogenetic reconstruction of the evolution of dimorphism, including fossil hominins, indicates that the modern human condition is derived. This suggests that at least some behavioral similarities with Pan associated with dimorphism may have arisen independently, and not directly from a common ancestor. (shrink)

This paper puts forward the following claims: (i) The size of inequality in welfare should be distinguished from its badness. (ii) The size of a pairwise inequality between two individuals can be measured by the absolute or the relative welfare distance between their welfare levels, but it does not depend on the welfare levels of other individuals. (iii) The size of inequality in a social state may be understood either as the degree of pairwise inequality or as (...) its amount. (iv) The badness of a pairwise inequality may differ from its size in several ways; for example, the badness measure might go by the distance between priority-transformed welfare levels and/or it might assign heavier weight to larger distances. (v) The badness of a pairwise inequality may be either personal or impersonal, with the personal interpretation being internally consistent and, pace Temkin, independently tenable even if we reject the so-called Slogan (i.e., the Person-Affecting Claim). (vi) The aggregation procedure by which we arrive from the badness of pairwise inequalities to the badness of the inequality in a social state takes different forms depending on whether the badness of a pairwise inequality is interpreted in a personal or in an impersonal way. (vii) Since Temkin’s complaint-based measures of the badness of inequality follow the format appropriate for the personal interpretation, they seem out of place if one, like him, treats the badness of inequality as an impersonal value. (shrink)

The maintenance of cell size homeostasis has been studied for years in different cellular systems. With the focus on ‘what regulates cell size’, the question ‘why cell size needs to be maintained’ has been largely overlooked. Recent evidence indicates that animal cells exhibit nonlinear cell size dependent growth rates and mitochondrial metabolism, which are maximal in intermediate sized cells within each cell population. Increases in intracellular distances and changes in the relative cell surface area impose biophysical (...) limitations on cells, which can explain why growth and metabolic rates are maximal in a specific cell size range. Consistently, aberrant increases in cell size, for example through polyploidy, are typically disadvantageous to cellular metabolism, fitness and functionality. Accordingly, cellular hypertrophy can potentially predispose to or worsen metabolic diseases. We propose that cell size control may have emerged as a guardian of cellular fitness and metabolic activity. Cell size is intimately connected to metabolism and growth rate, which are influenced by mitochondrial activity and biophysical constraints. We discuss that cellular fitness is often cell-size dependent. While the current evidence relies largely on proliferating cells, this connection from cell size to fitness may also help explain metabolic diseases. (shrink)

Cook and Reckhow defined a propositional formulation of the pigeonhole principle. This paper shows that there are Frege proofs of this propositional pigeonhole principle of polynomial size. This together with a result of Haken gives another proof of Urquhart's theorem that Frege systems have an exponential speedup over resolution. We also discuss connections to provability in theories of bounded arithmetic.

We define a program size complexity function $H^\infty$ as a variant of the prefix-free Kolmogorov complexity, based on Turing monotone machines performing possibly unending computations. We consider definitions of randomness and triviality for sequences in ${\{0,1\}}^\omega$ relative to the $H^\infty$ complexity. We prove that the classes of Martin-Löf random sequences and $H^\infty$-random sequences coincide and that the $H^\infty$-trivial sequences are exactly the recursive ones. We also study some properties of $H^\infty$ and compare it with other complexity functions. In particular, (...) $H^\infty$ is different from $H^A$, the prefix-free complexity of monotone machines with oracle A. (shrink)

This study focuses on the prediction of the engagement of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in environmental management practices, based on a random sample of 689 SMEs. The study finds that several endogenous factors, including tangibility of sector, firm size, innovative orientation, family influence and perceived financial benefits from energy conservation, predict an SME’s level of engagement in selected environmental management practices. For family influence, this effect is found only in interaction with the number of owners. In addition to (...) empirical research on SMEs’ environmental behavior, this article draws on the ecological modernization literature as well as the theory of planned behavior. (shrink)

Unstable Accumulating Activator models for cellular size control propose an activator that accumulates in a size-dependent manner and triggers cell cycle progression once it has reached a certain threshold. Having a short half life makes such an activator responsive to changes in cell size and makes specific predictions for how cells respond to perturbation. In particular, it explains the curious phenomenon of excess mitotic delay. Excess mitotic delay, first observed in Tetrahymena in the '50s, is a phenomenon (...) in which a pulse of protein synthesis inhibition causes a delay in mitotic entry that is longer than the pulse and that gets longer the later in the cell cycle the pulse is delivered. The interpretation of this phenomenon championed by Zeuthen and Mitchison in the '60s and '70s is that an unstable activator of mitosis is degraded during the pulse and has to be resynthesized to a threshold level to trigger mitosis; small cells have more time to resynthesize the activator before mitosis and so suffer less excess delay, whereas, large cells have less time thus suffer greater excess delay. Fifty years later, with our detailed understanding of cell cycle biochemistry, we can identify and test candidate Unstable Accumulating Activators. Here I review the field and further develop this concept. Excess mitotic delay, the phenomenon in which inhibition of protein synthesis causes a longer delay than the pulse of inhibition, is consistent with cell size control by an unstable accumulating activator, but not a stable activator. (shrink)

In this paper the exclusive focus on large firms in the field of business ethics is challenged. Some of the idiosyncrasies of small firms are explained, and links are made between these and potential ethical issues. A review of the existing literature on ethics in small firms demonstrates the lack of appropriate research, so that to date we can draw no firm conclusions in relation to ethics in the small firm. Recommendations are made as to the way forward for small (...) firm business ethics research. Questions for investigation are suggested using micro, meso and macro perspectives. Much exploratory work needs to be done to lay the groundwork for this important area of social and commercial research in the future. (shrink)

Visual illusions provide important evidence for the co-existence of unconscious and conscious representations. Objects surrounded by other figures are consciously perceived as different in size, while the visuo-motor system supposedly uses an unconscious representation of the discs’ true size for grip size scaling. Recent evidence suggests other factors than represented size, e.g., surrounding rings conceived as obstacles, affect grip size. Use of the diagonal illusion avoids visual obstacles in the path of the reaching hand. Results (...) support the dual representation theory. Grip size scaling follows actual size independent of illusory effects, which clearly bias conscious perception in direct comparisons of lengths and in finger-thumb span indications of perceived length. (shrink)

Data from various settings suggest that there is an upper limit of about four on the number of individuals who can interact in spontaneous conversation. This limit appears to be a consequence of the mechanisms of speech production and detection. There appear to be no differences between men and women in this respect, other than those introduced by women’s lighter voices.

Business and Society Review, Volume 127, Issue S1, Page 193-222, Spring 2022.

We generalise the concept of clique width to structures of arbitrary signature and cardinality. We present characterisations of clique width in terms of decompositions of a structure and via interpretations in trees. Several model-theoretic properties of clique width are investigated including VC-dimension and preservation of finite clique width under elementary extensions and compactness.

When no single universal model for a set of structures exists at a given cardinal, then one may ask in which models of set theory does there exist a small family which embeds the rest. We show that for λ+-graphs (λ regular) omitting cliques of some finite or uncountable cardinality, it is consistent that there are small universal families and 2λ > λ+. In particular, we get such a result for triangle-free graphs.

This book explores how we can measure consciousness. It clarifies what consciousness is, how it can be generated from a physical system, and how it can be measured. It also shows how conscious states can be expressed mathematically and how precise predictions can be made using data from neurophysiological studies.

Agrifood scholars have long investigated the relationship between farm size and a wide variety of social and ecological outcomes. Yet neither this scholarship nor the extensive research on farmworkers has addressed the relationship between farm size and job quality for hired workers. Moreover, although this question has not been systematically investigated, many advocates, popular food writers, and documentaries appear to have the answer—portraying precarious work as common on large farms and nonexistent on small farms. In this paper, we (...) take on this question by describing and explaining the relationship between farm size and job quality for hired farm workers. To do so, we draw on data from two independently conducted, mixed-methods case studies—organic fruit and vegetable production in California, and dairy farming in Wisconsin—each of which offers a different set of insights into the farm size-job quality relationship. In both cases, larger farms fared better than or no worse than their smaller-scale counterparts for most job quality metrics investigated, though many of the advantages of working on large farms accrue disproportionately to white, U.S.-born workers. We explain that these patterns stem from economies of scale, industrialization, firm size itself, the dominant class identities and aspirations of farmers and their peers, as well as farmers’ and immigrant workers’ fears of immigration enforcement. (shrink)

We extend results of Bonet, Buss and Pitassi on Bondy’s Theorem and of Nozaki, Arai and Arai on Bollobás’ Theorem by proving that Frankl’s Theorem on the trace of sets has quasipolynomial size Frege proofs. For constant values of the parametert, we prove that Frankl’s Theorem has polynomial size AC0-Frege proofs from instances of the pigeonhole principle.

Animal size is a relevant and unappreciated consideration in moral evaluations of killing animals for food, especially for utilitarians, who must weigh the gustatory satisfaction of eating meat-the quantity of which varies greatly throughout the animal kingdom-against animal suffering in utilitarian calculations. I argue that animal size can drastically alter not only the extent but even the valence of such calculations. Then I show how the business ethics literature on vegetarianism is deficient for not taking animal size (...) into account. Last, I argue that market conditions are also relevant in moral assessments of vegetarianism. (shrink)

The shortest stories are zero words long. There is no maximum length.

In 1926, Haldane published an essay titled 'On Being the Right Size' in which he argued that the structure, function, and behavior of an organism are strongly conditioned by the physical forces that exert the greatest impact at the scale at which it exists. This chapter puts Haldane’s insight to work in the context of contemporary cell and molecular biology. Owing to their minuscule size, cells and molecules are subject to very different forces than macroscopic organisms. In a (...) sense, macroscopic and microscopic entities inhabit different “worlds”: the former is ruled by gravity and inertia, whereas the latter is governed by Brownian motion. One implication is that we should be extremely skeptical of models and analogies that seek to explain properties of microscopic entities by appealing to properties of macroscopic ones. Unfortunately, this is precisely what the appeal to engineering metaphors in molecular biology attempts to do. Molecular biologists routinely resort to such metaphors because they are familiar and intuitively intelligible. But if our machines were the size of molecules it would be impossible for them to function the way they do. It follows that we should avoid distorting biological reality by construing it in engineering terms. In this chapter I examine four key metaphors in molecular biology – “genetic program,” “cellular circuitry,” “molecular machine,” and “molecular motor” – and I argue that their deficiencies derive from their neglect of scale. I also try to explain why many biologists today appear to have forgotten the importance of scale that Haldane drew attention to in his essay. I suggest that the reason has to do with the influence of Schrödinger’s argument in 'What is Life?' regarding the stability of the gene. (shrink)

Recent downward trends in corporate giving have renewed interest in the factors that shape corporate philanthropy. This paper examines the relationships between charitable contributions, firm size and industry. Improvements over previous studies include an IRS data base that covers a much broader range of firm sizes and industries as compared to previous studies and estimation using an instrumental variable technique that explicitly addresses potential simultaneity between charitable contributions and profitability. Important findings provide evidence of a cubic relationship between charitable (...) giving and firm size and evidence of strong industry effects. The plus-minus-plus regression coefficient sign pattern for the cubic firm size model suggests that small and large firms give more relative to total receipts with lower giving ratios among medium size firms. One interpretation for this finding is that small firms are close to the communities they serve while high visibility creates a need for large firm philanthropy. Strong industry effects provide evidence of inter-industry differences in giving culture and/or different public relations requirements across industries. (shrink)