While philosophy and psychoanalysis privilege language and conceptual distinctions and mistrust the image, the philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva recognizes the power of art and the imagination to unblock important sources of meaning. She also appreciates the process through which creative acts counteract and transform feelings of violence and depression. Reviewing Kristeva's corpus, Elaine P. Miller considers the intellectual's "aesthetic idea" and "thought specular" in their capacity to reshape depressive thought on both the individual and cultural level. She revisits (...) Kristeva's reading of Walter Benjamin with reference to melancholic art and the imagination's allegorical structure; her analysis of Byzantine iconoclasm in relation to Freud's psychoanalytic theory of negation and Hegel's dialectical negativity; her understanding of Proust as an exemplary practitioner of sublimation; her rereading of Kant and Arendt in terms of art as an intentional lingering with foreignness; and her argument that forgiveness is both a philosophical and psychoanalytic method of transcending a "stuck" existence. Focusing on specific artworks that illustrate Kristeva's ideas, from ancient Greek tragedy to early photography, contemporary installation art, and film, Miller positions creative acts as a form of "spiritual inoculation" against the violence of our society and its discouragement of thought and reflection. (shrink)

What accounts for the prestige of quantitative methods? The usual answer is that quantification is desirable in social investigation as a result of its successes in science. Trust in Numbers questions whether such success in the study of stars, molecules, or cells should be an attractive model for research on human societies, and examines why the natural sciences are highly quantitative in the first place. Theodore Porter argues that a better understanding of the attractions of quantification in business, government, (...) and social research brings a fresh perspective to its role in psychology, physics, and medicine. Quantitative rigor is not inherent in science but arises from political and social pressures, and objectivity derives its impetus from cultural contexts. In a new preface, the author sheds light on the current infatuation with quantitative methods, particularly at the intersection of science and bureaucracy. (shrink)

Part philosophical meditation, part cultural critique, The Body in Pain is a profoundly original study that has already stirred excitement in a wide range of intellectual circles. The book is an analysis of physical suffering and its relation to the numerous vacabularies and cultural forces--literary, political, philosophical, medical, religious--that confront it. Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range of sources: literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury (...) trials, and military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Kissinger, She weaves these into her discussion with an eloquence, humanity, and insight that recall the writings of Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre. Scarry begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility. Not only is physical pain enormously difficult to describe in words--confronted with it, Virginia Woolf once noted, "language runs dry"--it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme instances to an inatriculate state of cries and moans. Scarry analyzes the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of torture and warfare, and shows how to be fictive. From these actions of "unmaking" Scarry turns finally to the actions of "making"--the examples of artistic and cultural creation that work against pain and the debased uses that are made of it. Challenging and inventive, The Body in Pain is landmark work that promises to spark widespread debate. About the Author: Elaine Scarry is Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. (shrink)

Part philosophical meditation, part cultural critique, The Body in Pain is a profoundly original study that has already stirred excitement in a wide range of intellectual circles. The book is an analysis of physical suffering and its relation to the numerous vocabularies and cultural forces--literary, political, philosophical, medical, religious--that confront it.Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range of sources: literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury trials, (...) and military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Kissinger, She weaves these into her discussion with an eloquence, humanity, and insight that recall the writings of Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre.Scarry begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility. Not only is physical pain enormously difficult to describe in words--confronted with it, Virginia Woolf once noted, "language runs dry"--it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme instances to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry analyzes the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of torture and warfare, and shows how to be fictive. From these actions of "unmaking" Scarry turns finally to the actions of "making"--the examples of artistic and cultural creation that work against pain and the debased uses that are made of it. Challenging and inventive, The Body in Pain is landmark work that promises to spark widespread debate. (shrink)

Abstract: There are epistemic manipulators in the world. These people are actively attempting to sacrifice epistemic goods for personal gain. In doing so, manipulators have led many competent epistemic agents into believing contrarian theories that go against well-established knowledge. In this paper, I explore one mechanism by which manipulators get epistemic agents to believe contrarian theories. I do so by looking at a prominent empirical model of trustworthiness. This model identifies three major factors that epistemic agents look for when trying (...) to determine who is trustworthy. These are (i) ability, (ii) benevolence, and (iii) moral integrity. I then show how manipulators can manufacture the illusion that they possess these factors. This leads epistemic agents to view manipulators as trustworthy sources of information. Additionally, I argue that fact-checking will be an ineffective – or even harmful – practice when correcting the beliefs of epistemic agents who have been tricked by this illusion of epistemic trustworthiness. I suggest that in such cases we should use an alternative correction, which I call trust undercutting. (shrink)

Just Business provides the first comprehensive, reasoned framework for resolving questions of business ethics and corporate governance. Innovative, accessible, and global in scope, its powerful Ethical Decision Model can be used to manage the ethical problems of business as they arise in all their complexity and variety. Just Business combines business realism with philosophical rigor, and demonstrates that it is not necessary to emasculate or to adulterate business for business to be ethical. The book benefits from Elaine Sternberg's extensive (...) experience as an academic philosopher, an international investment banker, and head of successful businesses. She is now Principal of a London-headquartered consultancy firm, and Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Leeds. (shrink)

Abstract: In this paper I argue that luck and fortune are distinct concepts that apply to different sets of events. I do so by suggesting that lucky events are best understood as significant events that are either modally fragile or improbable (depending on whether you accept a modal account or a probability account of luck), whereas fortunate events are best understood as significant events that are outside of our control. I call this the Pure Control Account of Fortune. I show (...) that this account of fortune forces control theorists about luck to be fortune reductionists but allows those who endorse a modal or probability account of luck to be fortune realists. Additionally, I argue that this account of fortune helps us overcome prominent counterexamples and challenges found in the luck literature. (shrink)

'As an introduction to early modern thinking and the impact of past ideas on present lives, this book can find few equals and no superiors. Porter is a witty, humane writer with an extraordinary vocabulary and a sparkling sense of fun. Whether he is quoting from obscure medical texts or analysing scabrous diaries, dishing the dirt on long-dead bigwigs or evoking sympathy for human suffering, his grasp is masterly and his erudition appealing. I wish I could read it again (...) for the first time: you can.' Times Educational Supplement, Book of the Week In this startlingly brilliant sequel to the prize-winning ENLIGHTENMENT Roy Porter completes his lifetime's work, offering a magical, enthusiastic and charming account of the writings of some of the most attractive figures ever to write English. (shrink)

The capacity to provide satisfactory nursing care is being increasingly compromised by current trajectories of healthcare funding and governance. The purpose of this paper is to examine how well Marxist theories of the state and its relationship with capital can explain these trajectories in this period of ever‐increasing austerity. Following a brief history of the current crisis, it examines empirically the effects of the crisis, and of the current trajectory of capitalism in general, upon the funding and organization of the (...) UK and US healthcare systems. The deleterious effect of growing income inequalities to the health of the population is also addressed. Marx's writings on the state and its relation to the capitalist class were fragmentary and historically and geographically specific. From them, we can extract three theoretical variants: the instrumentalist theory of the state, where the state has no autonomy from capital; the abdication theory, whereby capital abstains from direct political power and relies on the state to serve its interests; and the class‐balance theory, whereby the struggle between two opposed classes allows the state to assert itself. Discussion of modern Marxist interpretations includes Poulantzas's abdication theory and Miliband's instrumentalist theory. It is concluded that, despite the pluralism of electoral democracies, the bourgeoisie do have an overweening influence upon the state. The bourgeoisie's ownership of the means of production provides the foundation for its influence because the state is obliged to rely on it to manage the supply of goods and services and the creation of wealth. That power is further reinforced by the infiltration of the bourgeoisie into the organs of state. The level of influence has accelerated rapidly over recent decades. One of the consequences of this has been that healthcare systems have become rich pickings for the evermore confident bourgeoisie. (shrink)

"--J.M.Coetzee "Here is a writer almost magically summoning up the world through words and ideas, in a new way, and so guiding the reader, lovingly, to receive the treasures and accept the pleasures of this book as naturally as breathing.

There is a standard story told about the rise and fall of ordinary language philosophy: it was a widespread, if not dominant, approach to philosophy in Great Britain in the aftermath of World War II up until the early 1960s, but with the development of systematic approaches to the study of language—formal semantic theories on one hand and Gricean pragmatics on the other—ordinary language philosophy more or less disappeared. In this paper we present quantitative evidence to evaluate the standard story (...) of the rise and fall of ordinary language philosophy, building on the topic model of over 30,000 philosophy articles in Weatherson (2022). Using a combination of qualitative judgment and a topic-model-based measurement of similarity between individual articles, we find evidence that supports the first part of the standard story, according to which ordinary language philosophy arises in the 1940s, peaks between the early 1950s and the late 1960s, and then rapidly declines. But we argue that there is also evidence of a "new wave" of ordinary language philosophy in the early 21st century that defies the second part of the standard story. (shrink)

6. Jürgen Habermas's Critical Hermeneutics Introduction Habermas and Critical Hermeneutics Life and Influences 132 Habermas's Place in Contemporary Thought ...

Although much attention has been given to Jacques Lacan in his rereading of Freud and to French women analysts in their deconstruction of traditional psychoanalysis, little has been available in the US on contemporary male French analysts and their treatment of women. She Speaks/He Listens illustrates the range of thought among some well-known French male psychoanalysts today--from Lacanians to anti-Lacanians to eclectics--with regard to women and sexual difference. Through the interview format, with its possibilities for surprise and spontaneity, the book (...) makes available the thought of Alain Didier-Weill, Bela Grunberger, Patrick Guyomard, Serge Lebovici, Rene Major, Gerard Pommier and Francois Roustang, as well as the internationally famed analyst Otto Kernberg, who gives a fascinating account of the French influences on his work. Other themes addressed include the place of Freud and Lacan in current theory and the relation of feminism to contemporary French male psychoanalysts. (shrink)

Some considerations are urgent and others are not. Sometimes, we invite criticism if we neglect the urgency of our situation, even if our action seem adequate to respond to it. Despite this significance, the literature does not offer a satisfactory analysis of the normative structure of urgency. I examine three views of urgency, drawn from philosophical and adjacent literature, which fail to explain the distinctive criticism we face when we do neglect the urgency of our reasons. Instead, I argue that (...) urgent considerations pre-empt our deliberation about less urgent considerations. Urgency is then a metanormative phenomenon, setting standards for how we handle and respond to first-order considerations, requiring that we close deliberation. In the face of urgency, appropriate action is not enough. Commitment is called for. This is how we enact appreciation of our practical reasons, independently of our carrying out the action they call for. (shrink)

A debate persists over how to distinguish manic states from non-manic ones (such as depressions). A lacuna exists amongst these efforts, where a specifically agentive account of mania would sit. An agentive account centers the manic person’s view of practical reasons, rationalizing their actions in the same way that sympathetic understandings rationalize the actions of more neurotypical agents. In this paper, I argue that mania restructures our agency by creating a pervasive sense of urgency. This urgency changes the kind of (...) handling that our practical reasons seem to call out for. Whilst this can make us less reliable as agents, I argue that this does not undermine the basic capacities on which personal autonomy is founded. The greater threat to manic agents’ autonomy is nonrecognition of this restructured agency, undermining autonomy in its social dimensions. Without an agentive account, we will fail to recognize distinctly manic agency when we see it, limiting our understanding of autonomy, and withholding recognition, fundamental to autonomy in its social dimensions, from manic agents. (shrink)

I argue that a common philosophical approach to the interpretation of physical theories—particularly quantum field theories—has led philosophers astray. It has driven many to declare the quantum field theories employed by practicing physicists, so-called ‘effective field theories’, to be unfit for philosophical interpretation. In particular, such theories have been deemed unable to support a realist interpretation. I argue that these claims are mistaken: attending to the manner in which these theories are employed in physical practice, I show that interpreting effective (...) field theories yields a robust foundation for a more refined approach to scientific realism in the context of quantum field theory. The paper concludes by briefly sketching some general morals for interpretive practice in the philosophy of physics. (shrink)

This paper addresses the problems that must be considered if computers are going to treat their users as individuals with distinct personalities, goals, and so forth. It first outlines the issues, and then proposes stereotypes as a useful mechanism for building models of individual users on the basis of a small amount of information about them. In order to build user models quickly, a large amount of uncertain knowledge must be incorporated into the models. The issue of how to resolve (...) the conflicts; hot will arise along such inferences is discussed. A system, Grundy, is described that builds models of its users, with the aid of stereotypes, and then exploits those models to guide it in its task, suggesting novels that people may find interesting. If stereotypes are to be useful to Grundy, they must accurately characterize the users of the system. Some techniques to modify stereotypes on the basis of experience are discussed. An analysis of Grundy's performance shows that its user models are effective in guiding its performance. (shrink)

The powerful images of the events^ of 9/11 have made an indelible impression on the world psyche. It has given rise to a pervasive rhetoric in practically all fields attempting to explain, interpret and understand the underlying causes and world changing consequences of the events. In a post-modern and secular world it has led to a refocusing on the religious fervour and ideals at work in established religions and in movements that are ostensibly devoid of all religious motivation, such as (...) expansive globalization and American free enterprise capitalism. I argue that similar ideological and "religious" notions are at work in the conflict of worldviews represented by this historical event. In order to substantiate this claim and an identification of the ideological sources of the malaise at work in the world requires a clear distinction between religion, myth and ideology and the legitimate role played by constitutive root metaphors in culture, science and society. Root metaphor analysis reveals the underlying 'war of worlds' at work in the foundational symbolizations of the world (Gibson Winter, 1981) which function as fundamental building blocks of the "cultural cosmologies" of society (Harrington, 1995, 360). It is not only religious convictions that shape the world but the choices of metaphors by scientists, educators and politicians are not random and innocent but fraught with root metaphorical notions as religious as those of their ostensibly secular counterparts and thus laden with frameworks that dramatically alter the perception of phenomena and the behaviour and actions of groups. Harrington's (1995) analysis of the role of holism in the shadow of the Third Reich shows this very clearly. Recognition of the presence and influence of root metaphors of an ideological nature will contribute to the dies-enchantment with their allure. This paper attempts to develop a methodology on the basis of which it is possible to distinguish between the legitimate function of root metaphors in science and society and their hypostatization. (shrink)

Landscape and brandingexplores the way landscape is conceptualised, conceived, represented and designed by professionals in a brand-driven age. Landscape - incorporating tangible physical space as well as intangible concepts, narratives, images, and experiences of place - is constructed by a number of creative industries. This book tests the hypothesis that place branding, a powerful marketing and management practice, increasingly blurs the distinction between the promotionof landscape and its production in design terms. Place branding involves the strategic and systematic composition of (...) single-minded, experiential and market-friendly place identities which are consistently communicated across various media, including physical space. How does this implicate or transform notions of place, nature, landscape experience, and the qualitative value of landscape itself? How does this affect the role of landscape architecture? To answer these questions, place branding theory and practice is critically examined alongside an in depth case study of one specific landscape - the Blue Mountains (Australia). Projects undertaken between 1995 and 2015, including a branding strategy for the region, media campaigns, television, cinema, and several landscape architectural works in the public and private domain are comparatively analysed, focusing on the discourse, conventions and values informing their production, and the landscape narratives they convey. (shrink)

This article aims to contribute to the currently sparse literature on transnational families and gender. It focuses on the retrospective accounts of Caribbean-born adults who as children were serial migrants, joining their parents in the UK following a period of separation. It considers aspects of their relationships with their siblings and with their mothers and fathers. The article illuminates what the serial migrants viewed as contradictory everyday practices that produced ‘non-shared environments’. It discusses three ways in which transnationalism appeared to (...) be a central part of the serial migrants’ family lives. First, it was embodied. Second, it was lived as cultural difference between Caribbean-born and UK-born siblings. Third, it was reported to be evident in parental practices. The article illustrates the importance of viewing gendered narratives in a psychosocial intersectional perspective. (shrink)

This is the first volume on category theory for a broad philosophical readership. It is designed to show the interest and significance of category theory for a range of philosophical interests: mathematics, proof theory, computation, cognition, scientific modelling, physics, ontology, the structure of the world.

How tax practitioners approach ethical dilemmas remains generally unexplored in academic literature. We use here Rest’s original Defining Issues Test (Development in judging moral issues. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979; Moral development. Advances in research and theory. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1986), combined with a tax context-specific test and in conjunction with a control group of non-tax specialists, to examine tax practitioners’ moral reasoning in a social and tax context. We investigate: (i) the effect of a tax context on (...) issues raised (finding that practitioners generally reason at lower levels than in social scenarios); (ii) whether the profession attracts people who reason at certain levels (finding that it does not); and (iii) whether practitioners are affected by training/socialization in their professional context (finding that that they are). (shrink)

In this concentrated, intelligible, and useful introductory volume Stanley Porter and Jason Robinson give a splendid overview of hermeneutical and interpretive thought. Neither an all-inclusive survey that moves too quickly over the surface of complex issues nor a specialized volume on a single, narrow topic, Porter and Robinson's Hermeneutics provides critical analysis of major movements and figures in hermeneutics and interpretive theory in the modern era -- from Schleiermacher and Heidegger to Thiselton and Culpepper -- showing especially how (...) these interpreters and their movements have impacted biblical and theological study. (shrink)

The recent discovery of the Higgs at 125 GeV by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the LHC has put significant pressure on a principle which has guided much theorizing in high energy physics over the last 40 years, the principle of naturalness. In this paper, I provide an explication of the conceptual foundations and physical significance of the naturalness principle. I argue that the naturalness principle is well-grounded both empirically and in the theoretical structure of effective field theories, and (...) that it was reasonable for physicists to endorse it. Its possible failure to be realized in nature, as suggested by recent LHC data, thus represents an empirical challenge to certain foundational aspects of our understanding of QFT. In particular, I argue that its failure would undermine one class of recent proposals which claim that QFT provides us with a picture of the world as being structured into quasi-autonomous physical domains. (shrink)

"--Robert Fagles, translator of Homer's "Iliad" "I finished "Dreaming by the Book" feeling that fundamental aspects of the nature of consciousness had been peeled open and exposed to view."--Stephen M. Kosslyn, author of "Image and Brain".

Rather than representing a break with his earlier philosophical undertakings, The Birth of Tragedy can be seen as continuous with them and Nietzsche's later works. James Porter argues that Nietzsche's argumentative and writerly strategies resemble his earlier writings on philology in his 'staging' of meaning rather than in his advocacy of various positions. The derivation of the Dionysian from the Apollinian, and the interest in the atomistic challenges to Platonism, are anticipated in earlier works. Also the theory of the (...) all-too-human subject is a thread that runs throughout Nietzsche's oeuvre, critically undoing what his philosophy appears to erect, confirming that Nietzsche is a most unreliable witness to his own meaning. As well as studying the relation of The Birth of Tragedy to later writings, the author examines it on its own terms as a self-standing and complete piece of imagining, with close regard to the self-presentation of the work itself. (shrink)

Much has been said about intuitionistic and classical logical systems since Gentzen’s seminal work. Recently, Prawitz and others have been discussing how to put together Gentzen’s systems for classical and intuitionistic logic in a single unified system. We call Prawitz’ proposal the Ecumenical System, following the terminology introduced by Pereira and Rodriguez. In this work we present an Ecumenical sequent calculus, as opposed to the original natural deduction version, and state some proof theoretical properties of the system. We reason that (...) sequent calculi are more amenable to extensive investigation using the tools of proof theory, such as cut-elimination and rule invertibility, hence allowing a full analysis of the notion of Ecumenical entailment. We then present some extensions of the Ecumenical sequent system and show that interesting systems arise when restricting such calculi to specific fragments. This approach of a unified system enabling both classical and intuitionistic features sheds some light not only on the logics themselves, but also on their semantical interpretations as well as on the proof theoretical properties that can arise from combining logical systems. (shrink)

While much of the empirical accounting literature suggests that, if differences do exist, Big Four employees are more ethical than non-Big Four employees, this trend has not been evident in the recent media coverage of Big Four tax practitioners acting for multinationals accused of aggressive tax avoidance behaviour. However, there has been little exploration in the literature to date specifically of the relationship between firm size and ethics in tax practice. We aim here to address this gap, initially exploring tax (...) practitioners’ perceptions of the impact of firm size on ethics in tax practice using interview data in order to identify the salient issues involved. We then proceed to assess quantitatively whether employer firm size has an impact on the ethical reasoning of tax practitioners, using a tax context-specific adaptation of a well-known and validated psychometric instrument, the Defining Issues Test. (shrink)

Ethical dilemmas involving tax issues were identified by members of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants as posing the most difficult ethical problem for them (Finn et al., Journal of Business Ethics 7(8), pp. 607–609, 1988). The KPMG tax shelter fraud case proves that the tax profession has not gone untainted in the age of numerous accounting and corporate scandals, such as the Enron débâcle (Sikka and Hampton, Accounting Forum 29(3), 325–343, 2005). High-profile scandals serve to highlight the problems (...) caused by differences in ethical judgement among accountants and tax practitioners and the issue of ethics has been brought publicly to the forefront of the profession. Nevertheless, the nature and dimension of ethical issues in tax practice have been largely unexplored (Erard, Journal of Public Economics 52(2), 163–197, 1993; Marshall et al., Journal of Business Ethics 17(12), 1265–1279, 1998; Frecknall Hughes, Unpublished PhD Thesis, The University of Leeds, 2002). This research aims to contribute to the debate on ethics in tax practice by reporting interview data on tax practitioners’ perceptions of ethics in the jurisdictions of Ireland and the United Kingdom and exploring the link or equation of ethics with risk management. (shrink)

This paper reports on the development of a research instrument designed to explore ethical reasoning in a tax context. This research instrument is a version of the Defining Issues Test originally developed by Rest [1979a, Development in Judging Moral Issues ; 1979b, Defining Issues Test ], but adapted to focus specifically on the environment encountered by tax practitioners. The paper explores reasons for developing a context- specific test, and details the manner in which this was undertaken. The study on which (...) it is based aims to compare the reasoning of tax practitioners in the taxspecific context and in the general social context covered by the original DIT, and to compare this with the reasoning of non-specialists in these two contexts. The paper therefore also considers the issues that arise when using such tests to compare reasoning in different domains or to compare groups. The focus on instrument development to measure ethical reasoning in a specific domain will contribute to the literature on research methods in the area of the DIT and will facilitate cross-study comparisons. (shrink)

Recent semantic approaches to scientific structuralism, aiming to make precise the concept of shared structure between models, formally frame a model as a type of set-structure. This framework is then used to provide a semantic account of (a) the structure of a scientific theory, (b) the applicability of a mathematical theory to a physical theory, and (c) the structural realist’s appeal to the structural continuity between successive physical theories. In this paper, I challenge the idea that, to be so used, (...) the concept of a model and so the concept of shared structure between models must be formally framed within a single unified framework, set-theoretic or other. I first investigate the Bourbaki-inspired assumption that structures are types of set-structured systems and next consider the extent to which this problematic assumption underpins both Suppes’ and recent semantic views of the structure of a scientific theory. I then use this investigation to show that, when it comes to using the concept of shared structure, there is no need to agree with French that “without a formal framework for explicating this concept of ‘structure-similarity’ it remains vague, just as Giere’s concept of similarity between models does ...” (French, 2000, Synthese, 125, pp. 103–120, p. 114). Neither concept is vague; either can be made precise by appealing to the concept of a morphism, but it is the context (and not any set-theoretic type) that determines the appropriate kind of morphism. I make use of French’s (1999, From physics to philosophy (pp. 187–207). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) own example from the development of quantum theory to show that, for both Weyl and Wigner’s programmes, it was the context of considering the ‘relevant symmetries’ that determined that the appropriate kind of morphism was the one that preserved the shared Lie-group structure of both the theoretical and phenomenological models. (shrink)

Recent genetic manipulations have revealed that the cytoplasm of the early Drosophila embryo contains localized information that specifies the future embryonic axes. It is the restricted distribution or activity of particular gene products, either messenger RNA or protein, that is crucial for this specification. While some of the genes responsible for this information have been seqenced and the nature and distribution of their products examined, it is not known how this localization is established or maintained. The actin‐based cytoskeleton is a (...) likely candidate for the formation of a cytomatrix that would allow such distributions and yet no direct evidence has yet been found that implicates actin in positional cue localization. In this review I summarize what is known about actin filament behavior. in Drosophila embryos and compare it to the distribution of positional cues. My purpose is to juxtapose these two bodies of information such that the relationship between them may be revealed. (shrink)

This special volume of Studies in Christian Ethics constitutes the most significant continuation to date of Christian social ethics in the tradition of Ronald Preston. It brings together leading scholars and new voices in the field from around the world, covering a broad range of contemporary issues, including globalisation, poverty, feminism, civil society, economics and religious pluralism.