As most work on flower foraging focuses on bees, studying Lepidoptera can offer fresh perspectives on how sensory capabilities shape the interaction between flowers and insects. Through a combination of innate preferences and learning, many Lepidoptera persistently visit particular flower species. Butterflies tend to rely on their highly developed sense of colour to locate rewarding flowers, while moths have evolved sophisticated olfactory systems towards the same end. However, these modalities can interact in complex ways; for instance, butterflies’ colour preference can (...) shift depending on olfactory context. The mechanisms by which such cross‐modal interaction occurs are poorly understood, but the mushroom bodies appear to play a central role. Because of the diversity seen within Lepidoptera in terms of their sensory capabilities and the nature of their relationships with flowers, they represent a fruitful avenue for comparative studies to shed light on the co‐evolution of flowers and flower‐visiting insects. (shrink)

People sometimes persistently pursue hard-to-get targets. Why people pursue such targets is unclear. Here, we hypothesized that choice perseverance, which is the tendency to repeat the same choice independent of the obtained outcomes, leads individuals to repeatedly choose a hard-to-get target, which consequently increases their preference for the target. To investigate this hypothesis, we conducted an online experiment involving an avatar choice task in which the participants repeatedly selected one avatar, and the selected avatar expressed their valence reactions through facial (...) expressions and voice. We defined “hard-to-get” and “easy-to-get” avatars by manipulating the outcome probability such that the hard-to-get avatars rarely provided a positive reaction when selected, while the easy-to-get avatars frequently did. We found that some participants repeatedly selected hard-to-get avatars. Based on a simulation, we found that higher choice perseverance accounted for the pursuit of hard-to-get avatars and that the Pursuit group had significantly higher choice perseverance than the No-pursuit group. Model fitting to the choice data also supported that choice perseverance can account for the pursuit of hard-to-get avatars in the Pursuit group. Moreover, we found that although baseline attractiveness was comparable among all avatars used in the choice task, the attractiveness of the hard-to-get avatars was significantly increased only in the Pursuit group. Taken together, we conclude that people with high choice perseverance pursue hard-to-get targets, rendering such targets more attractive. The tolerance for negative outcomes might be an important factor for succeeding in our lives but sometimes triggers problematic behavior, such as stalking. The present findings may contribute to understanding the psychological mechanisms of passion and perseverance for one’s long-term goals, which are more general than the romantic context imitated in avatar choice. (shrink)

Previous research in the history of physics has led us to believe that Yoshio Nishina (1890–1951) virtually single‐handedly imported quantum physics into Japan. However, there are first‐hand accounts that Yoshikatsu Sugiura (1895–1960) also played an important role. Sugiura made his name in quantum chemistry with his contribution to the Heitler‐London theory of the chemical bond. Yet, historians of physics have paid scant attention to him. This paper brings forward information on Sugiura from his letters, his scientific papers, and his own (...) recollections until ca. 1930. By examining this material, the present paper studies Sugiura's accomplishments in Europe and his contributions to the development of quantum physics in Japan. We conclude that Sugiura was one of the most important physicists when it comes to the arrival of quantum physics in Japan. In addition, we assess why he has been under‐appreciated in the history of physics in Japan. Our historical study on Sugiura suggests that, in addition to the position Nishina and his students rightfully occupy, there still are important unexplored aspects in the history of Japanese quantum physics. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe essay considers the nature and extent of toleration extended by Roman authorities to the religious pluralism of the empire. Roman legal instruments and works of law and political theory identify religion not as a concern of individuals but communities, and above all of juridically-constituted communities. As a related matter, classical and Christian Latin employs the language of political belonging, most notably that of republican citizenship, as its dominant apparatus for discussing religious affiliation. These related conceptual apparatus placed considerable limits (...) on Romans’ ability to afford liberty in matters of religion to individuals. (shrink)

The absorption of the Greek world into the Roman empire created intellectual problems on several levels. In the first instance, Greek confidence in the superiority of Hellenic culture made explanations for the swiftness of Roman conquest all the more necessary. In accounting for Rome's success, Greeks focused on the structure and character of the Roman state, on Roman attitudes towards citizenship, and on the nature of the Roman constitution. Greeks initially attempted to understand Roman institutions and beliefs by assimilating them (...) to paradigms within Hellenistic political thought. On the one hand, this process tended to obscure substantial differences between Greek and Roman political theory. At the same time, appreciation of Rome's relations with Italy created a means through which Greeks could imagine their own integration into the Roman community. Among the conceptual models available to Greeks of this age, only the polis provided a paradigm for a collectivity in which individuals had equal rights and toward which they directed their patriotic sentiments. That Roman Italy was not a polis did not force the coinage of new terminology: the polis formed a conceptual boundary that Hellenistic political philosophy never truly escaped. Repeated construals of Roman ideas and institutions on analogy with polis-based models ultimately forced a shift in the semantic fields of Greek political terminology and altered Greeks' conceptual archetype of the political collectivity. This process provided a framework within which Greeks could justify their wholesale participation in imperial culture and political life: they could, on these terms, argue that the gradual evolution of the world toward a single, unified empire actualized man's natural tendency to center his life around a single polis. (shrink)

The idea of a canonical transformation emerged in 1837 in the course of Carl Jacobi's researches in analytical dynamics. To understand Jacobi's moment of discovery it is necessary to examine some background, especially the work of Joseph Lagrange and Siméon Poisson on the variation of arbitrary constants as well as some of the dynamical discoveries of William Rowan Hamilton. Significant figures following Jacobi in the middle of the century were Adolphe Desboves and William Donkin, while the delayed posthumous publication in (...) 1866 of Jacobi's full dynamical corpus was a critical event. François Tisserand's doctoral dissertation of 1868 was devoted primarily to lunar and planetary theory but placed Hamilton–Jacobi mathematical methods at the forefront of the investigation. Henri Poincaré's writings on celestial mechanics in the period 1890–1910 succeeded in making canonical transformations a fundamental part of the dynamical theory. Poincaré offered a mathematical vision of the subject that differed from Jacobi's and would become influential in subsequent research. Two prominent researchers around 1900 were Carl Charlier and Edmund Whittaker, and their books included chapters devoted explicitly to transformation theory. In the first three decades of the twentieth century Hamilton–Jacobi theory in general and canonical transformations in particular would be embraced by a range of researchers in astronomy, physics and mathematics. (shrink)

This work comprises the works of Shoeki translated in full. When Ando Shoeki's writings were discovered nearly a century ago, they were thought to be forgeries, such was their uniqueness and revolutionary nature. But his sharp and thoughful criticism of the Japanese feudal order proved to be genuine. Shoeki's philosophy combines and criticizes Buddhism, Confucianism and traditional Oriental medical theories offering a unique view of humanity, society and the natural world that is startling in its modernity. He advocates ecology, (...) equality of the sexes and the abolition of the feudal order. His writings combine Swiftian parable, Platonic dialogue and philosophical treatise, and is an important key to understanding the history of Japanese thought. (shrink)

dai 1-kan. Kōhon "Shizen shinʼeidō" -- dai 10-kan. Kankei shiryō.

Against the dominant trend in contemporary republicanism, which views Roman political theory as providing significant resources to contemporary emancipatory projects, this article reads the Roman legal and political theoretical tradition as revealing above all the capacity of Republican resources to be coopted in support of monarchic domination. It does so by tracing changes in doctrines of liberty, popular sovereignty, magistracy and majoritarianism from the period of the free Republic into the Principate and thence into the Justinianic codifications, as well as (...) their reception in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Italy. Along the way it urges a more nuanced view of the sources of the Republican tradition: an awareness both of when specific sources on Rome became available to late medieval and early modern thinkers and of the imperial origins of the major sources available before the sixteenth century. (shrink)

世界は多元的であるがゆえに一つである。われわれの思考、言葉と表現の生まれた場所とは!?近代思想史を斬新に塗りかえる画期的論考。.

西田幾多郎の哲学に多大なる影響を与え、アメリカにおいても仏教思想を広く知らしめた近代日本最大の仏教者・鈴木大拙の全貌に迫る。.

In this Swiftian parable from 18th-century Japan, four tribunals of animals - the birds, the beasts, the crawling creatures and the fishes - gather in turn to judge the follies of the human race.