Scholars in the early seventeenth century who studied ancient Greek scientific theories often drew upon philology and history to reconstruct a more general picture of the Greek past. Gassendi's training as a humanist historiographer enabled him to formulate a conception of the history of philosophy in which the rationality of scientific and philosophical inquiry depended on the historical justifications which he developed for his beliefs. Professor Joy examines this conception and analyzes the nature of Gassendi's historical training, especially its relationship (...) to his career as a physicist and astronomer. She shows how he rehabilitated Epicurean atomism by bringing together the arguments of the Greek atomists and those of his contemporaries. In doing so, he produced an account of the natural world which made it an object of empirical study and mechanical explanation. (shrink)

Three centuries of history have made us take it for granted that mechanism and empiricism are natural allies. I want to suggest in this article that that alliance ought to surprise us a good deal more than it does, and that it arose out of contingent historical circumstance. This claim is perhaps best approached by considering initially a fundamental issue upon which the mechanists of the seventeenth century were themselves divided. In the “Proemial Discourse” to The Origin of Forms and (...) Qualities, According to the Corpuscular Philosophy, Robert Boyle confronted his readers with an issue which continues to confront modern interpreters of the history of the mechanical philosophy. Boyle stated that he intended to “write rather for the Corpuscularians in general, than any party of them.” What he knew and what modern commentators have since also realized is that the interprétation of the mechanical philosophy crucially depends on whether one chooses to take seriously the conflicts which existed among the seventeenth-century proponents of mechanism or whether one decides deliberately to ignore such conflicts of party. I propose in this article to examine the historical and philosophical consequences of viewing the mechanisms of the seventeenth-century natural philosophers from each of these standpoints. In pursuing this line of inquiry, I shall call attention to certain salient features of their thought which made it rationally justifiable for them either to write for corpuscularians in general or to write for a particular party, but rationally unjustifiable to do both. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655): Lettres Latines, and: Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655): Introduction à la vie savanteMargaret J. OslerPierre Gassendi. Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655): Lettres Latines. Edited by Sylvie Taussig. Vol. 1, Traduction. Pp. xxxiv + 622. Vol. 2, Notes. Pp. x + 609. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2004 Paper, € 175,00.Sylvie Taussig. Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655): Introduction à la vie savante. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2003. Pp. 454. € 60,00.The reputation of Pierre Gassendi (...) (1592–1655), the French natural philosopher responsible for recovering Epicurean atomism and hedonism and modifying it to be compatible with Christian theology, has suffered neglect in part because of the difficult Latin in which his works were written. Hence, the publication of translations of large chunks of his work into a modern language is, prima facie, a welcome addition to scholarship in the history of philosophy. Accordingly, the appearance of Sylvie Taussig's translation of Gassendi's Latin correspondence, published in the posthumous Opera omnia (1658), seemed, at first blush, to make an important body of Gassendi's writings accessible to more modern scholars. The three books under review consist of a French translation of Volume 6 of Gassendi's [End Page 489] Opera omnia (the Latin letters to which the title refers); a volume of notes on the letters; and a book about Gassendi's life, based closely on the Latin letters.Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655): Introduction à la vie savante summarizes various aspects of Gassendi's life and career from 1621–1655, the years covered by the published correspondence. Basically summarizing the letters, this book has sections on Gassendi's biography for these years, the nature of the correspondence, Gassendi's science, his Epicurean project, his interactions with various notables, and his role in the history of his time. In fact, the book is little more than a topical analysis of the letters. Despite the inclusion of an extensive—but incomplete—bibliography of scholarship on Gassendi, the notes to Taussig's text refer to the letters but to almost no secondary sources.The same problem characterizes her notes to the letters. Containing 7491 footnotes and filling a volume of 609 pages, the second volume of the Lettres latines contains virtually no mention of the contributions of other scholars. These notes range from the explication of Classical references to political events in Gassendi's lifetime, from scientific and philosophical controversies to the issues of Church governance in Digne where Gassendi was a canon in the cathedral.The devil is in the details, and here the details undermine one's confidence in the project. There are many errors in the notes to the letters. For example, in note 1087, the inventor of logarithms is named 'Brigg' rather than 'Briggs.' There are numerous gaffes in the bibliography in Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655): Introduction à la vie savante. For example, the entry for Steven J. Dick, is 'Dick, St. J.'. The entry for Lynn Sumida Joy is 'Lynn, S. J.'. And the entry for Susanna Åkerman is a mess, obviously because the typesetter was unable to deal with the diacritical mark. Although these points seem trivial, their frequency points to a lack of precision and lack of good proofreading.Unfortunately, these three volumes will not provide a reliable new source for scholars seeking access to Gassendi's writings. The French translation of the letters will provide a shortcut, but they will not eliminate the need to consult the original Latin version.Margaret J. OslerUniversity of CalgaryCopyright © 2005 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655): Lettres Latines, and: Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655): Introduction à la vie savanteMargaret J. OslerPierre Gassendi. Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655): Lettres Latines. Edited by Sylvie Taussig. Vol. 1, Traduction. Pp. xxxiv + 622. Vol. 2, Notes. Pp. x + 609. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2004 Paper, € 175,00.Sylvie Taussig. Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655): Introduction à la vie savante. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2003. Pp. 454. € 60,00.The reputation of Pierre Gassendi (...) (1592–1655), the French natural philosopher responsible for recovering Epicurean atomism and hedonism and modifying it to be compatible with Christian theology, has suffered neglect in part because of the difficult Latin in which his works were written. Hence, the publication of translations of large chunks of his work into a modern language is, prima facie, a welcome addition to scholarship in the history of philosophy. Accordingly, the appearance of Sylvie Taussig's translation of Gassendi's Latin correspondence, published in the posthumous Opera omnia (1658), seemed, at first blush, to make an important body of Gassendi's writings accessible to more modern scholars. The three books under review consist of a French translation of Volume 6 of Gassendi's [End Page 489] Opera omnia (the Latin letters to which the title refers); a volume of notes on the letters; and a book about Gassendi's life, based closely on the Latin letters.Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655): Introduction à la vie savante summarizes various aspects of Gassendi's life and career from 1621–1655, the years covered by the published correspondence. Basically summarizing the letters, this book has sections on Gassendi's biography for these years, the nature of the correspondence, Gassendi's science, his Epicurean project, his interactions with various notables, and his role in the history of his time. In fact, the book is little more than a topical analysis of the letters. Despite the inclusion of an extensive—but incomplete—bibliography of scholarship on Gassendi, the notes to Taussig's text refer to the letters but to almost no secondary sources.The same problem characterizes her notes to the letters. Containing 7491 footnotes and filling a volume of 609 pages, the second volume of the Lettres latines contains virtually no mention of the contributions of other scholars. These notes range from the explication of Classical references to political events in Gassendi's lifetime, from scientific and philosophical controversies to the issues of Church governance in Digne where Gassendi was a canon in the cathedral.The devil is in the details, and here the details undermine one's confidence in the project. There are many errors in the notes to the letters. For example, in note 1087, the inventor of logarithms is named 'Brigg' rather than 'Briggs.' There are numerous gaffes in the bibliography in Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655): Introduction à la vie savante. For example, the entry for Steven J. Dick, is 'Dick, St. J.'. The entry for Lynn Sumida Joy is 'Lynn, S. J.'. And the entry for Susanna Åkerman is a mess, obviously because the typesetter was unable to deal with the diacritical mark. Although these points seem trivial, their frequency points to a lack of precision and lack of good proofreading.Unfortunately, these three volumes will not provide a reliable new source for scholars seeking access to Gassendi's writings. The French translation of the letters will provide a shortcut, but they will not eliminate the need to consult the original Latin version.Margaret J. OslerUniversity of CalgaryCopyright © 2005 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.... (shrink)

The philosopher Donald Davidson has argued in an influential article, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” that there is no intelligible basis on which to distinguish between conceptual schemes that Kuhn and Feyerabend have treated as incommensurable or incompatible. He concludes that, given the underlying methodology of interpretation of speech behavior, we cannot be in a position to judge that others have concepts or beliefs radically different from our own. Thus, he adds, we cannot talk meaningfully about the (...) existence of conceptual schemes. I offer a historical rejoinder to Davidson, focusing on the famous seventeenth-century debate between Descartes and Gassendi regarding the use of the first-person pronoun. I show that, in this particular debate, their failure to translate the pronoun “I” was so basic and fundamental a failure that, although it turned on just one word, it forced Gassendi to question the longstanding Renaissance humanist principle of the intertranslatability of all natural languages. Could the Gassendi-Descartes debate similarly challenge Davidson’s assertion of the intertranslatability of all natural languages and his consequent denial of the existence of conceptual schemes? (shrink)

Informal science learning sites create opportunities for children to learn about science outside of the classroom. This study analyzed children’s learning behaviors in ISLS using video recordings of family visits to a zoo, children’s museum, or aquarium. Furthermore, parent behaviors, features of the exhibits and the presence of an educator were also examined in relation to children’s behaviors. Participants included 63 children and 44 parents in 31 family groups. Results showed that parents’ science questions and explanations were positively related to (...) children observing the exhibit. Parents’ science explanations were also negatively related to children’s science explanations. Furthermore, children were more likely to provide science explanations when the exhibit was not interactive. Lastly there were no differences in children’s behaviors based on whether an educator was present at the exhibit. This study provides further evidence that children’s interactions with others and their environment are important for children’s learning behaviors. (shrink)

Tricycles are one of the most popular, most accessible, and least expensive forms of public transit in the Philippines. In addition to being common modes of transportation, motorcycles, and tricycles also contribute significantly to the livelihoods of millions of Filipinos who rely on them for a living. Hence, this study explores the lived experiences and challenges faced by female tricycle drivers. Employing the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, the findings of this study were: The participants strive to assist their husbands in providing (...) for their families. Their motivation comes primarily from their families. They each make every effort to provide a better life for their children. Thus, have faced challenges related to their ability to make ends meet, find time to balance job and family obligations, and encounter discrimination and stereotypes in others, and day-to-day life. Moreover, they evade and disregard the problem and discrimination as a coping mechanism. They feel that if they ignore their problem and focus on achieving their goal of providing for their family, it would eventually disappear. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Weight I Just Can’t LoseShelley Lynn MeyersI have always been a “fat person”. According to the medical definition though, I have not always been obese. I have spent most of my life on a journey from chubby to obese, finally ending at my current “overweight” status. After years of struggling with obesity I had gastric bypass surgery, finally losing enough weight to be “normal.” However, regardless of (...) the number on the scale or the BMI category into which I fell, I was still “fat”. I may have lost weight but I did not lose the experience and memories of life as an obese person. I was a fat girl on the inside.My earliest memories of childhood consist of feeling fat and awkward. I was the kid reading a book, watching other little girls practice their cartwheels and boys play tag. I was the kid who also hated gym class, especially the days we practiced tumbling or had to climb ropes. I heard the other kids laugh when I had difficulty doing these things. It’s no surprise that I was last or next to last when we had to choose teams for sports. At least when we played flag football I could play center and use my weight as an asset, blocking players from the other team.Certainly, taunts about my weight and even my own intrusive condemning thoughts were not constant, but they were frequent. Admittedly, I probably berated myself much more often than my peers did. I hated being different. What saddens me to this very day are promises I would make to God if I only I could be “like everyone else”. Oh the things that I would change, or give up for the gift of being a normal size. Even my good qualities, such as academic achievement, became another characteristic that made me stand out when all I wanted to do was hide amongst the crowd. I would have happily traded the high GPA for a lower number on the scale. [End Page E4]Some memories from that era seem to be forever etched into my mind. It has been more than thirty years since I was in the seventh grade, but I remember one particular incident very clearly. I went to my first school dance and was thrilled that I actually slow danced with a boy that I had liked since the fourth grade, Jeff1*. We danced to “How Much I Feel” by Ambrosia. Jeff wore a plaid flannel shirt, and I remember how soft it felt when I put my arms around his neck. The puppy love joy I felt that night was short-lived. At school the next day I read a note written by a female classmate. She wrote about the dance, saying that she had wanted to dance with Jeff, but “he was dancing with that fat pig”. She included my name as well, so there was no mistaking to whom she was referring. I felt nauseous. I decided that happiness was just a set-up for disappointment.Even though I thinned out somewhat during high school, I was still larger than most of my friends and saw myself as fat. I received few actual comments about my weight but I just knew they were thinking it. My best friends were exceptionally thin (one, I would later find out had an eating disorder), which added to my distorted body image. I also was the “friend”, rather than the “girlfriend”, with boys asking me to introduce them to my skinny friends. I was ecstatic when I had a horrible case of the flu and lost a lot of weight due to vomiting and the inability to keep food down. I remember hoping that I could get the flu every couple of months.I read fashion magazines and studied the latest, greatest ways to lose weight. Diet pills, fad soup diets and low calorie frozen dinners were popular and I tried most of them. Sadly, the very methods I tried to “get skinny” likely put me on the path to obesity. Starving myself just led to unhealthy eating, cravings and quite possibly, a metabolism that had no... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mild Cognitive Impairment:Where Does It Go From Here?John Bond (bio) and Lynne Corner (bio)Keywordsbiomedicalization, dementia, mild cognitive impairment, subjectivityThe joy of formal interdisciplinary discussion of this kind is the way that ideas presented through the gaze of social scientists stimulate such exciting thoughts and responses from other disciplines such as philosophy and psychology. We would like to thank Sabat and Thornton for their supportive and provocative reactions to our (...) paper. In the spirit of their responses, it is not our intention to respond to their thoughts directly; rather, we take the opportunity to theorize sociologically about this new category of psychiatry that has come to be known simply as mild cognitive impairment (MCI). In reviewing the responses of Sabat and Thornton, three thoughts emerged. First, together we have covered ontologic, epistemologic, methodologic, and theoretical questions about MCI, but none of us has posed basic political questions, such as: Why has MCI emerged as a new psychiatric label at this particular time? Second, this discussion brings together social scientists with a psychologist and a philosopher, but important constituents are missing. Consequently we are missing "insider" views on the importance of MCI to clinical practice. Third, this discussion highlights for us even more acutely the central question: Is MCI a real entity? In the following, we reflect on the first of these because our response also addresses the third. We first revisit the "evidence" about the importance of MCI for clinical practice.The notion of MCI as the transitional state between normal aging and Alzheimer's disease and other dementias has existed in a number of guises for many years, with benign senescent forgetfulness (Kral 1962) being the forerunner of a number of other terms, including questionable dementia, incipient dementia, isolated memory impairment, mild neurocognitive decline, age-associated memory impairment, age-associated cognitive decline, and cognitive-impairment-not-demented (Geda et al. 2004). Given that psychiatric labels implying the existence of MCI have been part of the practice landscape for over forty years, it is perhaps not surprising that its reinvention in the form of MCI has not, it appears, raised much attention outside specialist centers in North America and Europe. The reaction from grassroots clinical practice has been similar in intensity to their subdued reaction to the antipsychiatry movement in the 1960s. But for specialist clinics like the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, it has been an expanding [End Page 29] industry with numerous published papers, international conference presentations, and research funding opportunities.MCI can be distinguished from similar diagnostic categories that preceded its appearance in 1991. A key diagnostic criteria is the requirement for a subjective memory complaint by the person subsequently diagnosed as having MCI. Other diagnostic criteria include normal general cognitive function, normal activities of daily living, and memory being impaired for age, but not being demented (Petersen et al. 1999; Petersen and Morris 2003). To our knowledge, the idea of subjectivity being an important diagnostic criterion, as opposed to a means of identifying signs and symptoms, is a first in medical science. We know of no other medical category or diagnosis where subjectivity plays such a significant role, other than perhaps severe health phobias. Broadly speaking, two kinds of clinical evidence for MCI exist: first, that originating from studies (some quite small) applying the diagnostic criteria in specialist clinic populations; and, second, that found in large population studies. The main distinction between these two sets of evidence is that one is based on selected clinic populations and the other on unselected community populations. Most studies conclude that people whose memory is impaired for their age, as measured by similar cognitive tests such as the Mini-Mental State Examination, show decline in cognition that often leads to Alzheimer's disease and other kinds of dementia in the future. This finding is not remarkable given that it has long been known that age is a predictor of cognitive impairment. However, the population studies suggest a lower conversion rate than those for specialist clinics (Ritchie, Artero, and Touchon 2001).Petersen (2005) provides a robust defense as to why MCI might be a useful category in research and also indicates the potential benefits of treating MCI... (shrink)

This paper examines, on the basis of a longitudinal corpus of 50 early modern authors, how change at the aggregate level of the community interacts with variation and change at the micro-level of the individual language user. In doing so, this study aims to address the methodological gap between collective change and entrenchment, that is, the gap between language as a social phenomenon and the cognitive processes responsible for the continuous reorganization of linguistic knowledge in individual speakers. Taking up the (...) case of the prepositional passive, this study documents a strong community-wide increase in use that is accompanied by increasing schematicity. A comparison of the 50 authors reveals that regularities arising at the macro-level conceal highly complex and variable individual behavior, aspects of which may be explained by studying the larger (social) context in which these individuals operate (e. g., age cohorts, community of practice, biographical insights). Further analysis, focusing on how authors use the prepositional passive in unique and similar ways, elucidates the role of small individual biases in long-term change. Overall, it is demonstrated that language change is an emergent phenomenon that results from the complex interaction between individual speakers, who themselves may change their linguistic behavior to varying degrees. (shrink)

For a long time, linguists more or less denied the existence of individual differences in grammatical knowledge. While recent years have seen an explosion of research on individual differences, most usage-based research has failed to address this issue and has remained reluctant to study the synergy between individual and community grammars. This paper focuses on individual differences in linguistic knowledge and processing, and examines how these differences can be integrated into a more comprehensive constructionist theory of grammar. The examination is (...) guided by the various challenges and opportunities that may be extracted from scattered research that exists across disciplines touching on these matters, while also presenting some new data that illustrate how differentiation between individuals can improve models of long-term language change. The paper also serves as the introduction to this special issue of Cognitive Linguistics, which collects seven contributions from various linguistic disciplines focusing on key aspects of individuals’ grammars. (shrink)

We have conducted a retrospective study of deaths on a paediatric medical intensive care unit over a two-year period and reviewed similar series from outside the UK. There were 89 deaths out of 651 admission (13.7% mortality). In almost two-thirds of the cases death occurred with a decision to limit medical treatment or withdraw mechanical ventilation, implying that additional or further therapy was considered futile. We highlight this as a crucially important issue in the practice of intensive care. More comprehensive (...) studies are needed to help clinicians derive consensus on what constitutes a futile intervention, and therefore when such an intervention should be withheld. This will help families and society better understand the limitations of intensive care. (shrink)

In Poetics of Deconstruction, Lynn Turner develops an intimate attention to independent films, art, and the psychoanalyses by which they might make sense other than under continued license of the subject that calls himself man. Drawing extensively from Jacques Derrida's philosophy in precise dialogue with feminist thought, animal studies and posthumanism (Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Donna Haraway, Cary Wolfe) this book explores the vulnerability of the living as rooted in non-oppositional differences. From abjection to mourning, to the speculative and (...) the performative, it reposes concepts and buzzwords seemingly at home in feminist theory, visual culture and the humanities more broadly. Stepping away from the carno-phallogocentric legacies of the signifier and the dialectic, Poetics of Deconstruction asks you to welcome nonpower into politics, always sexual but no longer anchored in sacrifice. (shrink)