Der Band präsentiert die 21 wichtigsten Enzyklopädie- und Lexikonartikel des 16. bis 19. Jahrhunderts zum Themenfeld "Gedächtnis, Gedächtnislehre, Gedächtniskunst" mit Kommentaren, Übersetzungen (aus dem Lateinischen, Italienischen und Spanischen), ausführlicher Bibliographie und einem Nachwort, das das Verhältnis von frühneuzeitlicher Mnemonik und Enzyklopädik erörtert. Eröffnet wird hiermit eine mehrbändige Reihe »Documenta Mnemonica« (ca. 6 Bände), die die wichtigsten einschlägigen Zeugnisse seit der Antike bis zum Ende der Frühen Neuzeit in mehrsprachigen, kommentierten Quelleneditionen, Quellenverzeichnissen und Forschungsbibliographien dem internationalen Wissenschaftsdiskurs bequem und verläßlich zugänglich (...) macht. (shrink)

Für die Ästhetik des 18. Jahrhunderts bezeichnet G.E. Lessings Laokoon: oder über die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie (1766) einen markanten Höhe- und Wendepunkt. In Dichtung und Wahrheit äußert sich Goethe rückblickend: "Man muß Jüngling sein, um sich zu vergegenwärtigen, welche Wirkung Lessings Laokoon auf uns ausübte, indem dieses Werk uns aus der Region eines kümmerlichen Anschauens in die freien Gefilde des Gedankens hinriß. Das so lange mißverstandene ut pictura poesis war auf einmal beseitigt, der Unterschied der bildenden und Redekünste (...) klar, die Gipfel beider erschienen nun getrennt, wie nah ihre Basen auch zusammenstoßen mochten." Der Band verfolgt das Anliegen, im interdisziplinären Dialog die produktive Offenheit dieser 'unordentlichen Collectanea' (Laokoon, Vorrede) als konstitutives Element der Lessing'schen Ästhetik neu herauszuarbeiten. Lessing will keine systematische Ästhetik vorlegen, sondern 'fermenta cognitionis', die in ihrer Summe jedoch nichts weniger als ein umfassendes Panorama der ästhetischen, kunst- und kulturhistorischen Problemlagen der Zeit bieten. (shrink)

The concept of Integrative Bioethics is the idea of an equal discussion between different ethical concepts from different backgrounds. This concept is not only suitable for the specific situation in Southeast Europe. It can also be a basis to affect the ethical discourse in other parts of the world, either with a homogeneous historical background or within a very diverse ethical setting. With this essay I will try to point out the possibilities for the discussion of ethical problems in other (...) parts of the world if the core idea of Integrative Bioethics is added to bioethical discussions. It seems to be a chance to find a way to deal with the differences between traditional and modern concepts of ethics. Der Entwurf der integrativen Bioethik steht für die Idee einer gleichgestellten Auseinandersetzung zwischen verschiedenerlei ethischen Konzepten aus differenten Hintergründen. Dieses Schema ist nicht lediglich am außerordentlichen Beispiel des Südosteuropas verwendungsfähig. Es könnte gleichermaßen als Basis zur Einflussnahme auf den ethischen Diskurs in den restlichen Regionen der Welt fungieren, entweder jenen mit einem homogenen historischen Hintergrund oder denjenigen mit einer mannigfaltigen ethischen Färbung. Innerhalb dieses Essays wage ich den Versuch, auf die Möglichkeiten zur Debatte über ethische Angelegenheiten in anderen Teilen der Welt zu verweisen, sollte die Kernidee der integrativen Bioethik den bioethischen Erörterungen hinzugefügt werden. Sie nimmt sich aus als die Chance, einen Weg ausfindig zu machen, die Differenzen zwischen den traditionellen und zeitgenössischen Konzepten der Bioethik in Angriff zu nehmen. (shrink)

Gedachtnis und Erinnerung sind grundlegende Phanomene unseres geistigen Lebens, mit denen sich das abendlandische Denken seit der Antike intensiv auseinander gesetzt hat, von Platon uber Augustinus bis zu gegenwartigen Forschungen in der empirischen Psychologie und Neurophysiologie. Bei Albertus Magnus finden sich uber sein ganzes Werk verteilt immer wieder intensive Reflexionen zu dieser Thematik; sie zeigen, dass er den Fragen, wie und woran man sich (wieder-)erinnert, eine grundlegende anthropologische Bedeutung zugemessen hat. Eine Schlusselstellung fur das Verstandnis in Alberts Oeuvre besitzt dabei (...) sein Kommentar zur aristotelischen Schrift "Uber Gedachtnis und Wiedererinnerung" (De memoria et reminiscentia), dessen kritische Edition zeitgleich in der "Editio Coloniensis" erscheint. Die von Jorn Muller vorgelegte philosophische Lekture dieser Schrift weist nach, dass Albert auf der Basis arabischer Deutungen eine auaerst originelle Interpretation der aristotelischen Gedachtnislehre prasentiert, deren problemgeschichtliche Stellung in der Forschung bisher weitgehend verkannt worden ist. Albert begreift Gedachtnis und Erinnern im Wesentlichen akthaft, also von ihren Vollzugen aus, und zwar als eine Ruckkehr zu der vergangenen Sache, insofern sie vergangen ist. Damit der Leserschaft uber die vorgelegte Interpretation hinaus die Moglichkeit gegeben wird, diese Konzeption selbst Schritt fur Schritt nachzuvollziehen, ist dem Text als Anhang die erste vollstandige Ubersetzung von Alberts Kommentar ins Deutsche beigegeben. (shrink)

'Der komplexe und auf Totalitat abzielende Charakter des von Rusen entworfenen geschichtstheoretischen Konzepts macht seine Uberlegenheit aus. Es vermittelt wohl besser als jeder andere Ansatz einen Einblick in die Vielschichtigkeit der geschichtswissenschaftlichen Grundlagenprobleme.' Geschichte und Gesellschaft.

Der Autor stellt in seinem Buch zum Pantheismusstreit dezidierte historische und struktural-theoretische Überlegungen zur Spinoza-Rezeption in Deutschland an. Der Streit darüber, ob Lessing Pantheist war, geht in einen Streit um die Philosophie Spinozas und den Rationalismus über. Im Laufe der Zeit wird der Korrespondenzstreit zwischen Jacobi und Mendelssohn öffentlich und spricht das deutsche Bewusstsein und Unterbewusstsein an, daher engagiert sich das gesamte "gebildete Deutschland" in dieser philosophischen Auseinandersetzung. Die Arbeit hat grosse Bedeutung für das Verständnis der Situation der deutschen Philosophie (...) am Ende der Aufklärung, aus der wiederum der deutsche Idealismus entstand - ein Denken, das einerseits die deutsche Aufklärung krönte, andererseits aber neue zeitgenössische Perspektiven in der Philosophie eröffnete. Das Buch ermöglicht ein besseres Verständnis von Gegebenheiten, die für die deutsche Philosophie an der Wende des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts von grosser Bedeutung waren. Da die Denkanschauungen dieser Zeit in gewissem Masse noch immer auf die philosophischen Felder des zeitgenössischen Denkens einwirken, kommt der Arbeit auch eine besondere philosophische Relevanz zu."--Publisher's description. (shrink)

Zumeist wird erwartet, dass sich die Wissenschaft stetig weiterentwickelt, dass sie immer mehr Licht ins Dunkel der Natur bringt und wir in den kommenden Jahren immer besser Bescheid wissen. Aber Wissenschaft funktioniert nicht auf diese einsinnige Weise. Es gibt Abbrüche und Neuanfänge. Gelegentlich kommt sie über alte ungelöste oder neue Rätsel auf verworfene Wahrheiten zurück und interpretiert Altes neu. Die Beiträge dieser Publikation beleuchten diesen Umstand genauer. An Fragestellungen aus den Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften – nach dem Beginn des Menschseins, nach (...) Gründen für das Scheitern von Vereinheitlichungsbestrebungen in der Kunst oder nach fundamentalen Naturgesetzen – wird deutlich, dass neue Konzepte teilweise aus rigorosen Brüchen mit angestammten Lösungen entstehen können. (shrink)

Augustine was convinced that the Bible is meant to promote one thing: the love of God and neighbor. Although the human language of the inspired scriptures constitutes a formidable challenge, studying the Bible may be the best use of our limited life span. God the master rhetorician will teach, delight, and move anyone who takes it up and reads.

English summary: According to a current prejudice, the God of reason does not have a home in Protestantism. On the basis of model studies on the connection between biblical, Platonic and Aristotelian themes in the development of the Christian concept of God in late antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the authors of this volume show that the reformers did not at all flatly dismiss the rationality of faith. The articles focus on the modern transformations of the concept of (...) God in the 18th and 19th centuries. The volume, a collection of case studies of the history of the problem of the Christian concept of God, concludes with prominent syntheses of revelation and reason in the 20th century. German description: Einem gangigen Vorurteil zufolge hat der Gott der Vernunft im Protestantismus keine Heimat. Nach exemplarischen Studien zur Verbindung von biblischen mit platonischen und aristotelischen Motiven bei der Entfaltung des christlichen Gottesgedankens in Spatantike, Mittelalter und Renaissance zeigt der vorliegende Band aber, dass die Reformatoren der Vernunft des Glaubens keineswegs pauschal den Abschied gaben. Der Schwerpunkt der Beitrage liegt auf den neuzeitlichen Transformationen des Gottesgedankens im 18. und 19. Jh. Prominente Synthesen von Offenbarung und Vernunft im 20. Jh. schliessen den Band ab, der Fallstudien zu einer Problemgeschichte des christlichen Gottes-Denkens versammelt. Mit Beitragen von: Martin Arneth, Christine Axt-Piscalar, Ulrich Barth, Markus Buntfuss, Jorg Dierken, Douglas Hedley, Thomas Kaufmann, Dietrich Klein, Dietrich Korsch, Martin Laube, Jorg Lauster, Friederike Nussel, Bernd Oberdorfer, Joachim Ringleben, Friedemann Voigt, Dorothea Wendebourg, Gunther Wenz. (shrink)

Psychiatric diagnoses such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are primarily attributed on the basis of behavioral criteria. The aim of most of the biomedical research on ASD is to uncover the underlying mechanisms that lead to or even cause pathological behavior. However, in the philosophical and sociological literature, it has been suggested that autism is also to some extent a ‘social construct’ that cannot merely be reduced to its biological explanation. We show that a one-sided adherence to either a biological (...) or a social explanation leads to a moral dilemma, a Catch-22, for autistics and for those living with them. Such explanations close the space for self-identifying as autistic and at the same time being considered to be in good mental health. They foreclose the possibility of making sense of the lived experience of (and with) autistics. In this paper we argue that such lack of space for moral imagination inherently leads to scientific stalemate. We propose that one can only go beyond this stalemate by taking an ethical stance in theorizing, one that enables better intersubjective understanding. Only on such a view can behavior and biology be linked without either disconnecting them or reducing the one to the other. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyse the relation between the second law of thermodynamics and the so-called arrow of time. For this purpose, a number of different aspects in this arrow of time are distinguished, in particular those of time-reversal (non-)invariance and of (ir)reversibility. Next I review versions of the second law in the work of Carnot, Clausius, Kelvin, Planck, Gibbs, Caratheodory and Lieb and Yngvason, and investigate their connection with these aspects of the arrow of time. It (...) is shown that this connection varies a great deal along with these formulations of the second law. According to the famous formulation by Planck, the second law expresses the irreversibility of natural processes. But in many other formulations irreversibility or even time-reversal non-invariance plays no role. I therefore argue for the view that the second law has nothing to do with the arrow of time. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 96 Heft: 1 Seiten: 67-92.

Around the world, newly qualified teachers are leaving the profession after only a short time working at school. This not only has a negative effect on the capacities of the respective education systems, but also for the teachers themselves, as it often due to factors such as stress and burnout that leads to this decision. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this situation by adding to the teachers’ workload, uncertainty, and stress. Previous research has investigated strategies that may help teachers improve (...) their well-being and, among other factors, found social support to be an important condition. In this mixed methods design-based research study, we developed a design to enhance social support among newly qualified teachers in their first months working at school. Our quantitative and qualitative results show that the design has positive effects on many aspects of teachers’ well-being in the intervention group both longitudinally and when compared to a comparison group. The findings are being discussed considering the recent changes in the working conditions of teachers as imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

The target article by Locke & Bogin (L&B) focuses on the evolution of language as a communicative tool. They neglect, however, that from infancy onwards humans have the ability to go beyond successful behaviour and to reflect upon language (and other domains of knowledge) as a problem space in its own right. This ability is not found in other species and may well be what makes humans unique.

In the scholium to proposition 49 of Part 2 of the Ethics, Spinoza addresses a number of prejudices that tend to obscure the essentially judgmental nature of ideas. One warning is issued against those who do not distinguish accurately between ideas and images, and, for this exact reason, fail to see that every idea, insofar as it is an idea, always involves an affirmation that something is the case. This paper shows that in order to properly understand Spinoza's remarks in (...) this passage, we must redirect attention to Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, and more particularly to the objections raised against them by Hobbes. Specifically, I argue for the identification of Hobbes and other likeminded “imagists” as Spinoza's main targets, and not, as is often assumed, Descartes himself or Cartesians in general. My identification not only resolves interpretative confusion surrounding this passage, but it also confirms Spinoza's commitment to a key rationalist assumption: the existence of a mind that can grasp or exhibit natures by clear and distinct perceptions. While both adequate and inadequate ideas are necessitated beliefs or judgments in which we assent to something, virtue consists in being propelled by the intellect. (shrink)

Roughly speaking, classical statistical physics is the branch of theoretical physics that aims to account for the thermal behaviour of macroscopic bodies in terms of a classical mechanical model of their microscopic constituents, with the help of probabilistic assumptions. In the last century and a half, a fair number of approaches have been developed to meet this aim. This study of their foundations assesses their coherence and analyzes the motivations for their basic assumptions, and the interpretations of their central concepts. (...) The most outstanding foundational problems are the explanation of time-asymmetry in thermal behaviour, the relative autonomy of thermal phenomena from their microscopic underpinning, and the meaning of probability. A more or less historic survey is given of the work of Maxwell, Boltzmann and Gibbs in statistical physics, and the problems and objections to which their work gave rise. Next, we review some modern approaches to (i) equilibrium statistical mechanics, such as ergodic theory and the theory of the thermodynamic limit; and to (ii) non-equilibrium statistical mechanics as provided by Lanford's work on the Boltzmann equation, the so-called Bogolyubov-Born-Green-Kirkwood-Yvon approach, and stochastic approaches such as `coarse-graining' and the `open systems' approach. In all cases, we focus on the subtle interplay between probabilistic assumptions, dynamical assumptions, initial conditions and other ingredients used in these approaches. (shrink)

This paper shows that the semantics of shenme ‘what’ in Chinese bare conditionals may exhibit a phenomenon of double quantification. I argue that such double quantification can be nicely accounted for if one adopts Carlson's (1977a, b) semantics of bare plurals and verb meanings as well as the following two assumptions: (i) shenme ‘what’ can be a proform of bare NPs and hence has the same kind of denotation as bare NPs, and (ii) Chinese bare NPs are names of kinds (...) of things. This analysis of Chinese bare conditionals lends support to Carlson's approach to bare plurals despite Wilkinson's (1991) criticisms. I also show that an extension of Heim's (1987) analysis of what as ‘something of kind x’ to Chinese shenme ‘what’ encounters problems when shenme ‘what’ is a shared constituent of a predicate which applies to kinds and another predicate which applies to objects. (shrink)

This paper shows that the semantics of shenme ‘what’ in Chinese bare conditionals may exhibit a phenomenon of double quantification. I argue that such double quantification can be nicely accounted for if one adopts Carlson's (1977a, b) semantics of bare plurals and verb meanings as well as the following two assumptions: (i) shenme ‘what’ can be a proform of bare NPs and hence has the same kind of denotation as bare NPs, and (ii) Chinese bare NPs are names of kinds (...) of things. This analysis of Chinese bare conditionals lends support to Carlson's approach to bare plurals despite Wilkinson's (1991) criticisms. I also show that an extension of Heim's (1987) analysis of what as ‘something of kind x’ to Chinese shenme ‘what’ encounters problems when shenme ‘what’ is a shared constituent of a predicate which applies to kinds and another predicate which applies to objects. (shrink)

This paper is a critical examination of Wittgenstein's view of the limits of intelligibility. In it I criticize standard analytic readings of Wittgenstein as an advocate of transcendental or behaviourist theses in epistemology; and I propose an alternative interpretation of Wittgenstein's view as a social contextualism that transcends the false dichotomy between Kantianism and psychologism. I argue that this social contextualism is strikingly similar to the social account of epistemic practices developed by Pierre Bourdieu. Through a comparison between Wittgenstein's and (...) Bourdieu's view and an analysis of the notion of habitus, I try to show how social contextualism can account for the distinction between sense and nonsense without falling into transcendental constructivism or social behaviourism. (shrink)

A substantial body of theoretical literature testifies to the evolutionary functions of emotions. Relatively little has been written about their developmental functions. This article discusses the developmental functions of emotions from the perspective of differential emotions theory (DET; Izard, 1977, 1991). According to DET, although all the emotions retain their adaptive and motivational functions across the lifespan, different sets of emotions may become relatively more prominent in the different stages of life as they serve stage-related developmental processes. In the first (...) section, we present a brief overview of relevant aspects of the theory. In the second section, we discuss how emotions play a central role in helping the individual achieve developmental milestones and tasks during four major periods of life: Infancy, toddler through preschool years, middle to late childhood, and adolescence. The underlying thesis of this article is that emotions play a central role in stimulating social cognitive attainments at each stage of development. (shrink)

I consider the problem of extending Reichenbach's principle of the common cause to more than two events, vis-a-vis an example posed by Bernstein. It is argued that the only reasonable extension of Reichenbach's principle stands in conflict with a recent proposal due to Horwich. I also discuss prospects of the principle of the common cause in the light of these and other difficulties known in the literature and argue that a more viable version of the principle is the one provided (...) by Penrose and Percival (1962). (shrink)

The principle of maximum entropy is a general method to assign values to probability distributions on the basis of partial information. This principle, introduced by Jaynes in 1957, forms an extension of the classical principle of insufficient reason. It has been further generalized, both in mathematical formulation and in intended scope, into the principle of maximum relative entropy or of minimum information. It has been claimed that these principles are singled out as unique methods of statistical inference that agree with (...) certain compelling consistency requirements. This paper reviews these consistency arguments and the surrounding controversy. It is shown that the uniqueness proofs are flawed, or rest on unreasonably strong assumptions. A more general class of inference rules, maximizing the so-called Re[acute ]nyi entropies, is exhibited which also fulfill the reasonable part of the consistency assumptions. (shrink)

It has been a longstanding problem to show how the irreversible behaviour of macroscopic systems can be reconciled with the time-reversal invariance of these same systems when considered from a microscopic point of view. A result by Lanford shows that, under certain conditions, the famous Boltzmann equation, describing the irreversible behaviour of a dilute gas, can be obtained from the time-reversal invariant Hamiltonian equations of motion for the hard spheres model. Here, we examine how and in what sense Lanford’s theorem (...) succeeds in deriving this remarkable result. Many authors have expressed different views on the question which of the ingredients in Lanford’s theorem is responsible for the emergence of irreversibility. We claim that these interpretations miss the target. In fact, we argue that there is no time-asymmetric ingredient at all. (shrink)