The Cambridge Companion to Socrates is a collection of essays providing a comprehensive guide to Socrates, the most famous Greek philosopher. Because Socrates himself wrote nothing, our evidence comes from the writings of his friends (above all Plato), his enemies, and later writers. Socrates is thus a literary figure as well as a historical person. Both aspects of Socrates' legacy are covered in this volume. Socrates' character is full of paradox, and so are his philosophical views. These paradoxes have led (...) to deep differences in scholar's interpretation of Socrates and his thought. Mirroring this wide range of thought about Socrates, this volume's contributors are unusually diverse in their background and perspective. The essays in this volume were authored by classical philologists, philosophers, and historians from Germany, Francophone Canada, Britain, and the United States, and they represent a range of interpretive and philosophical traditions. (shrink)

The Cambridge Companion to Socrates is a collection of essays providing a comprehensive guide to Socrates, the most famous Greek philosopher. Because Socrates himself wrote nothing, our evidence comes from the writings of his friends , his enemies, and later writers. Socrates is thus a literary figure as well as a historical person. Both aspects of Socrates' legacy are covered in this volume. Socrates' character is full of paradox, and so are his philosophical views. These paradoxes have led to deep (...) differences in scholars' interpretations of Socrates and his thought. Mirroring this wide range of thought about Socrates, this volume's contributors are unusually diverse in their background and perspective. The essays in this volume were authored by classical philologists, philosophers and historians from Germany, Francophone Canada, Britain and the United States, and they represent a range of interpretive and philosophical traditions. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Life and Character Socrates in Aristophanes' Clouds Plato's Apology of Socrates Socratic Method Moral Psychology Education and Politics Irony Xenophon Conclusion Bibliography.

Plato's Euthyrphro, Apology, andCrito portray Socrates' words and deeds during his trial for disbelieving in the Gods of Athens and corrupting the Athenian youth, and constitute a defense of the man Socrates and of his way of life, the philosophic life. The twelve essays in the volume, written by leading classical philosophers, investigate various aspects of these works of Plato, including the significance of Plato's characters, Socrates's revolutionary religious ideas, and the relationship between historical events and Plato's texts.

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

Book review of: Donald R. Morrison (Hg.), The Cambridge Companion to Socrates, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010.

University of Chicago Press, 2001 Review by Adriano Palma, Ph.D. on Aug 1st 2001 Volume: 5, Number: 31.

Finally, in four chapters greatly expanded for this edition, Griffin considers the latest scientific research on animal consciousness, pro and con, and...

I argue that consciousness is an aspect of an agent's intelligence, hence of its ability to deal adaptively with the world. In particular, it allows for the possibility of noting and correcting the agent's errors, as actions performed by itself. This in turn requires a robust self-concept as part of the agent's world model; the appropriate notion of self here is a special one, allowing for a very strong kind of self-reference. It also requires the capability to come to see (...) that world model as residing in its belief base , while then representing the actual world as possibly different, i.e., forming a new world-model. This suggests particular computational mechanisms by which consciousness occurs, ones that conceivably could be discovered by neuroscientists, as well as built into artificial systems that may need such capabilities. Consciousness, then, is not an epiphenomenon at all, but rather a key part of the functional architecture of suitably intelligent agents, hence amenable to study as much as any other architectural feature. I also argue that ignorance of how subjective states could be essentially functional does not itself lend credibility to the view that such states are not essentially functional; the strong self-reference proposal here is one possible functional explanation of consciousness. (shrink)

This book of fifteen essays is presented in honor of one of the premier historians of medieval philosophy, Armand Maurer of the Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies and the University of Toronto. The authors, internationally recognized scholars in the field of medieval philosophy and theology, are friends, colleagues, and students of Fr. Maurer. They are united in a common love of medieval thought and a common appreciation of philosophizing through the study of the history of philosophy. Their interests and methodologies, (...) however, are diverse, and cover a range from Justin Marytr, who died during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, to Bartholomew Mastrius, a contemporary of Descartes. “This is a volume that honors the memory of Armand Maurer not only by reviewing his own scholarly achievements but by advancing the state of scholarship on the subject that he loved, the philosophy of the middle ages. The range of topics covered here richly reflect the pluralism of medieval thought. Some of the essays gathered for this collection give a fresh look at important perennial themes like the nature of Christian philosophy and the real distinction between essence and existence. Others turn—as Maurer loved to do—to figures who are studied less often that help fill out our knowledge of this period and add to our sense of the contributions that study of medieval authors can make for contemporary philosophizing.” —Joseph W. Koterski, S.J., Fordham University “This lovely Festschrift for Armand Maurer contains fourteen essays by distinguished scholars on the tradition of medieval philosophy, from its ancient origins to seventeenth-century inheritors. Since many essays treat large-scale movements or fundamental issues, the volume will be useful to serious undergraduates and graduate students, as well as to scholars._ Laudemus_ indeed: from the editor’s moving tribute to Armand Maurer, through discussions of Avicenna and Thomas and Ockham, to Maurer’s closing recollections of his teachers, this volume is full of well-earned praise.” —Donald Morrison, Rice University. (shrink)

Sightings of the revolutionary comet that appeared in the skies of evolutionary biology in 1976—the selfish gene—date back to the 19th and early 20th centuries. It became generally recognized that genes were located on chromosomes and compete with each other in a manner consistent with the later appellation “selfish.” Chromosomes were seen as disruptable by the apparently random “cut and paste” process known as recombination. However, each gene was only a small part of its chromosome. On a statistical basis a (...) gene should escape disruption for many generations. This led George Williams and Richard Dawkins to a new definition of the gene, differing from conventional biochemical definitions in that there were no consistent genic boundaries. There had been no previous sightings of another revolutionary, albeit less verbally spectacular, comet that appeared in 1975—the homostability principle of Akiyoshi Wada. Each gene has a base composition “accent” that distinguishes it from its neighbors. We now see that recombination can be triggered by the shift in base composition at genic boundaries. Hence, the Williams-Dawkins definition approaches the conventional definitions. (shrink)

Sightings of the revolutionary comet that appeared in the skies of evolutionary biology in 1976—the selfish gene—date back to the 19th and early 20th centuries. It became generally recognized that genes were located on chromosomes and compete with each other in a manner consistent with the later appellation “selfish.” Chromosomes were seen as disruptable by the apparently random “cut and paste” process known as recombination. However, each gene was only a small part of its chromosome. On a statistical basis a (...) gene should escape disruption for many generations. This led George Williams and Richard Dawkins to a new definition of the gene, differing from conventional biochemical definitions in that there were no consistent genic boundaries. There had been no previous sightings of another revolutionary, albeit less verbally spectacular, comet that appeared in 1975—the homostability principle of Akiyoshi Wada. Each gene has a base composition “accent” that distinguishes it from its neighbors. We now see that recombination can be triggered by the shift in base composition at genic boundaries. Hence, the Williams-Dawkins definition approaches the conventional definitions. (shrink)

My purpose is to offer an assessment of the scientific legacy of Converse's “Belief Systems” by reviewing five productive lines of research stimulated by his authoritative analysis and unsettling conclusions. First I recount the later life history of Converse's notion of “nonattitudes,” and suggest that as important as nonattitudes are, we should be paying at least as much attention to their opposite: attitudes held with conviction. Second, I argue that the problem of insufficient information that resides at the center of (...) Converse's analysis has not gone away, and that newly fashioned models of information processing offer only partial remedies. Third, I suggest that the concept of the “average voter” is a malicious fiction, as it blinds us to the enormous variation in political attention, interest, and knowledge that characterizes mass publics, in Converse's time as in our own. Fourth, I develop an affirmative aspect of Converse's analysis that has mostly been overlooked: namely, that if ideological reasoning is beyond most citizens’ capacity and interest, they might fall back on a simple and reasonable alternative, which I will call “group‐centrism.” And fifth, I consider the possibility that while the majority of individual citizens falls short of democratic standards, the public as a whole might do rather well. (shrink)

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein chose as his prime exemplar of certainty the fact that the skulls of normal people are filled with neural tissue, not sawdust. In 1980 the British pediatrician John Lorber reported that some normal adults, apparently cured of childhood hydrocephaly, had no more than 5 % of the volume of normal brain tissue. While initially disbelieved, Lorber’s observations have since been independently confirmed by clinicians in France and Brazil. Thus Wittgenstein’s certainty has become uncertain. Furthermore, the paradox (...) that the human brain’s information content appears to exceed the storage capacity of even normal-sized brains, requires resolution. This article is one of a series on disparities between brain size and its assumed information content, as seen in cases of savant syndrome, microcephaly, and hydrocephaly, and with special reference to the Victorian era views of Conan Doyle, Samuel Butler, and Darwin’s research associate, George Romanes. The articles argue that, albeit unlikely, the scope of explanations must not exclude extracorporeal information storage. (shrink)

The influence of historiography on aspects of political thought in France, Italy and Germany. In recent years the overlap between political thought and historiography has changed the boundaries of intellectual history. Donald Kelley, the longtime editor of The Journal of the History of Ideas has played a leading part in this process. These essays by his friends and former students follow in his footsteps. The collection is divided into three parts: France, England [six essays], and Italy and Germany [four (...) essays]. Anthony Grafton and John Salmon provide an introduction, and the volume concludes with a bibliography of Donald Kelley's many works. Historians and Ideologues is designed for those with an interest in the contribution of historiography to political thought, and will be a timely addition to the growing reaction against the postmodern scepticism in historiographical research in this field. Contributors include Ann Blair, Julian Franklin, Kathleen Parrow, David Harris Sacks, Sarah Hanley, Daniel Woolf, Gordon Schochet, Joseph Levine, John Pocock, Perez Zagorin, William Connell, Donald Phillip Verene, and Michael Carhart. Anthony Grafton is a Professor in the Department of History at Princeton University. John Salmon is the Marjorie Walter Goodheart Emeritus Professor of History at Bryn Mawr College. (shrink)

The 'history of ideas', better known these days as intellectual history, is a flourishing field of study which has been the object of much controversy but hardly any historical exploration. This major new work from Donald R. Kelley is the first comprehensive history of intellectual history, tracing the study of the history of thought from ancient, medieval and early modern times, its emergence as the 'history of ideas' in the 18th century, and its subsequent expansion. The point of departure (...) for this study is the perspective opened up by Victor Cousin in the early 19th-century on 'Eclecticism' and its association with the history of philosophy established by Renaissance scholars. Kelley considers a broad range of topics, including the rivalry between 'ideas' and language, the rise of cultural history, the contributions of certain 19th- and 20th-century practitioners of the history of ideas in interdisciplinary areas of philosophy, literature and the sciences, and finally the current state of intellectual history. The central theme of the book is the interplay between the canon of philosophical thought and the tradition of language and textual study, the divergence of the latter marking the 'descent of ideas' into the realm of cultural history. (shrink)

Aberrations -- Absorption -- Accuracy and precision -- Alpha radiation -- Amplitude -- Angular forces -- Angular momentum -- Antenna -- Arago dot -- Aperture -- Archimedes's principle -- Band theory of solids -- Bernoulli's principle -- Beta radiation -- Blackbody radiation -- Bohr atom -- Bose condensation -- Bra-ket notation -- British thermal unit (BTU) -- Calculating system efficiency -- Circular motion -- Closed systems and isolated systems -- Concave and convex -- Conservation of charge -- Conservation of energy (...) -- Convection and conduction -- Cosmic radiation -- Crest and trough -- Density and specific gravity -- Diode -- Distance and area -- Distortion -- Doppler effect -- Dynamic systems theory -- Edison effect -- Eigenvectors -- Elastic and inelastic collisions -- Electric circuits: Parallel vs series, diagrams and components -- Electric potential -- Energy and power -- Enthalpy -- Entropy -- Euler's laws of motion -- Falling bodies and physics -- Faraday's law -- Feynman diagrams -- Flywheel -- Focal point -- Free body diagram -- Frequency -- Gamma radiation -- Gauss's law -- Gluon -- Gravitational potential energy -- Harmonic oscillator -- Harmonics -- Heisenberg uncertainty principle -- Higgs boson -- Horsepower -- Ideal gas law -- Joule --. (shrink)

Jung said that all human beings have a religious instinct, a longing for wholeness, and that God is a part of every human being. This volume organizes more than 6,000 references to "God" in Jung's work and contains a chronology of his writing on the subject.

A collection of essays from some of the world's leading intellectual historians, representing an international spectrum of research into the history of philosophy, intellect, science and music. This collection of essays addresses, in specific historical ways and from particular disciplinary standpoints, the problem of knowledge and what used to be called the classification of the sciences. What is, or what passes for, knowledge? What are its divisions, and how should they be related? Who possesses this knowledge, and to what uses (...) has it been put? How is it transmitted, and how can its history be understood and written? Ranging across the epistemological barrier formed by the revolution of modern science, these contributions inquire into the changing disciplinary patterns of the tumultuous times between the renaissance and the enlightenment, that saw the fragmentation of old ideals and the creation of European modernity. Contributors: Donald R. Kelley, Ann Blair, Paul Nelles, Constance Blackwell, Ulrich Schneider, Martin Mulsow, J.B. Schneewind, Donald Verene, Peter Miller, Ann Moyers, Michael Seidler, Anthony Pagden, Paula Findlen, Anthony Grafton, Heikki Mikkeli, Nicholas Jardine, Londa Schiebinger. (shrink)

In animals' natural lives, uncertainty is normal; and certainty, exceptional. Evaluating ambiguous information is essential for survival: Does what is seen, heard, or smelled mean danger? Does that gesture mean aggression or fear? Is he confident or uncertain? If they are conscious of anything, the content of animals' awareness probably includes crucial uncertainties, both their own and those of others.

Examples of terror generated by an aircraft disaster, of human courtship behaviour, and of the application of laboratory techniques to the commercial training of animals suggest (1) that emotion is simply the subjective counterpart of (objective) motivation (so that separate brain mechanisms would be an embarrassment) and (2) the apparent involvement of reward and punishment is a consequence of the excessively narrow range of experimental procedures used and has no foundation in the design of the brain.

To find out more information about Rowman & Littlefield titles please visit us at www.rowmanlittlefield.com.