The Expressiveness of the Body meditates on the contrasts between the human body described in classical Greek medicine and the body as envisaged by physicians in ancient China.

We invite systematic consideration of the metaphors of cycles and circulation as a long-term theme in the history of the life and environmental sciences and medicine. Ubiquitous in ancient religious and philosophical traditions, especially in representing the seasons and the motions of celestial bodies, circles once symbolized perfection. Over the centuries cyclic images in western medicine, natural philosophy, natural history and eventually biology gained independence from cosmology and theology and came to depend less on strictly circular forms. As potent ‘canonical (...) icons’, cycles also interacted with representations of linear and irreversible change, including arrows, arcs, scales, series and trees, as in theories of the Earth and of evolution. In modern times life cycles and reproductive cycles have often been held to characterize life, in some cases especially female life, while human efforts selectively to foster and disrupt these cycles have harnessed their productivity in medicine and agriculture. But strong cyclic metaphors have continued to link physiology and climatology, medicine and economics, and biology and manufacturing, notably through the relations between land, food and population. From the grand nineteenth-century transformations of matter to systems ecology, the circulation of molecules through organic and inorganic compartments has posed the problem of maintaining identity in the face of flux and highlights the seductive ability of cyclic schemes to imply closure where no original state was in fact restored. More concerted attention to cycles and circulation will enrich analyses of the power of metaphors to naturalize understandings of life and their shaping by practical interests and political imaginations. (shrink)

西田幾多郎の哲学は、単なる宗教体験の表現ではない合理的世界観である。その全貌を解読する時、われわれは、西田哲学が封印したもう一つの視点を発見する。そこであらわになるのは、驚くべき「時間」の真相―時間幻 想である。.

時間が流れるとはどういうことか。時間は本当に流れているのか。西田幾多郎は合理的に理解可能な一つの「世界」を描いた。「永遠の今の自己限定」に帰着するその全貌を解読する。そしてそこから、西田哲学が封印した もう一つの時間論が浮上する。.

Mitotic spindles constitute the machinery responsible for equidistribution of the genetic material into each daughter cell during cell division. They are transient and hence quite labile structures, changing their morphology even while performing their function. Biochemical, immunological and genetic analyses of mitotic cells have allowed us to identify a variety of molecules that are recruited to form the spindle at the onset of mitosis. Evaluation of the roles of these molecules in both the formation and in the dynamics of spindle (...) microtubules should be important for understanding the molecular basis of mitosis and its regulation. We have recently identified a novel mitosis‐specific microtubule‐associated protein (MAP) using a monoclonal antibody probe raised against the mitotic spindles isolated from cultured mammalian cells. This 95/105 kDa antigen represents a unique component of the spindle distinct from any of the other MAPs reported so far. Antibody microinjection resulted in mitotic inhibition in a stage‐specific and dosedependent manner, indicating that the protein is an essential spindle component. (shrink)