Over the past decade or so a number of historians of science and historical geographers, alert to the situated nature of scientific knowledge production and reception and to the migratory patterns of science on the move, have called for more explicit treatment of the geographies of past scientific knowledge. Closely linked to work in the sociology of scientific knowledge and science studies and connected with a heightened interest in spatiality evident across the humanities and social sciences this 'spatial turn ' (...) has informed a wide-ranging body of work on the history of science. This discussion essay revisits some of the theoretical props supporting this turn to space and provides a number of worked examples from the history of the life sciences that demonstrate the different ways in which the spaces of science have been comprehended. (shrink)

Nineteenth-century natural history societies sought to address the concerns of a scientific and a local public. Focusing on natural history societies in late Victorian Scotland, this paper concentrates on the relations between associational natural history and local civic culture. By examining the recruitment rhetoric used by leading members and by exploring the public meetings organized by the societies, the paper signals a number of ways in which members worked to make their societies important public bodies in Scottish towns. In addition, (...) by narrating a number of disputes between members over how natural history societies should operate, the paper shows how civic science could occasion social discord rather than harmony. Overall, by investigating the presence of field clubs in different urban settings, and describing members' attempts to portray natural historical pursuits as a significant cultural endeavour, the paper seeks to map an important part of the historical geography of Scottish civic science. (shrink)

In the nineteenth century natural history was widely regarded as a rational and ‘distracting’ pursuit that countered the ill-effects, physical and mental, of urban life. This familiar argument was not only made by members of naturalists’ societies but was also borrowed and adapted by alienists concerned with the moral treatment of the insane. This paper examines the work of five long-serving superintendents in Victorian Scotland and uncovers the connections made between an interest in natural history and the management of mental (...) disease. In addition to recovering a significant influence on the conduct of several alienists the paper explores arguments made outside the asylum walls in favour of natural history as an aid to mental health. Investigating the promotion of natural history as a therapeutic recreation in Scotland and elsewhere reveals more fully the moral and cultural significance attached to natural history pursuits in the nineteenth century. (shrink)

The connections between science and civic culture in the Victorian period have been extensively, and intensively, investigated over the past several decades. Limited attention, however, has been paid to Irish urban contexts. Roman Catholic attitudes towards science in the nineteenth century have also been neglected beyond a rather restricted set of thinkers and topics. This paper is offered as a contribution to addressing these lacunae, and examines in detail the complexities involved in Catholic engagement with science in Victorian Belfast. The (...) political and civic geographies of Catholic involvement in scientific discussions in a divided town are uncovered through an examination of five episodes in the unfolding history of Belfast's intellectual culture. The paper stresses the importance of attending to the particularities of local politics and scientific debate for understanding the complex realities of Catholic appropriations of science in a period and urban context profoundly shaped by competing political and religious factions. It also reflects more generally on how the Belfast story supplements and challenges scholarship on the historical relations between Catholicism and science. (shrink)

Edinburgh has long been recognized as one important place where early glacial theory was promoted and debated. This paper, rather than attend to the longer-term development of glacial theory, focuses on the ways in which the theory was assessed, disseminated and received in and through the scientific culture of early Victorian Edinburgh. Edinburgh's scientific and educational societies, science journals, newspapers and field sites are brought to view through examining their engagement with, and use of, early glacial theory. Tracking the theory's (...) passage across a range of spaces bound up with the promotion of geology in mid-nineteenth-century Edinburgh signals relations between local geological endeavour and other sorts of scientific and cultural work. Particular, though not exclusive, attention is given to practices more readily defined as ‘popular’. (shrink)

The British Association for the Advancement of Science sought to promote the understanding of science in various ways, principally by having annual meetings in different towns and cities throughout Britain and Ireland. This paper considers how far the location of its meetings in different urban settings influenced the nature and reception of the association's activities in promoting science, from its foundation in 1831 to the later 1930s. Several themes concerning the production and reception of science – promoting, practising, writing and (...) receiving – are examined in different urban contexts. We consider the ways in which towns were promoted as venues for and centres of science. We consider the role of local field sites, leading local practitioners and provincial institutions for science in attracting the association to different urban locations. The paper pays attention to excursions and to the evolution and content of the BAAS meeting handbook as a ‘geographical’ guide to the significance of the regional setting and to appropriate scientific venues. The paper considers the reception of BAAS meetings and explores how far the association's intentions for the promotion of science varied by location and by section within the BAAS. In examining these themes – the geographical setting of the association's meetings, the reception of association science in local civic and intellectual context and the importance of place to an understanding of what the BAAS did and how it was received – the paper extends existing knowledge of the association and contributes to recent work within the history of science which has emphasized the ‘local’ nature of science's making and reception and the mobility of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Next SectionObjectives To evaluate the adequacy of paediatric informed consent and its augmentation by a supplemental computer-based module in paediatric endoscopy. Methods The Consent-20 instrument was developed and piloted on 47 subjects. Subsequently, parents of 101 children undergoing first-time, diagnostic upper endoscopy performed under moderate IV sedation were prospectively and consecutively, blinded, randomised and enrolled into two groups that received either standard form-based informed consent or standard form-based informed consent plus a commercial (Emmi Solutions, Inc, Chicago, Il), sixth grade level, (...) interactive learning module (electronic assisted consent). Anonymously and electronically, the subjects' anxiety (State Trait Anxiety Inventory), satisfaction (Modified Group Health Association of America), number of questions asked, and attainment of informed consent were assessed (Consent-20). Statistics were calculated using t test, paired t test, and Mann Whitney tests. Results The ability to achieve informed consent, as measured by the new instrument, was 10% in the control form-based consent group and 33% in the electronic assisted consent group (p<0.0001). Electronically assisting form-based informed consent did not alter secondary outcome measures of subject satisfaction, anxiety or number of questions asked in a paediatric endoscopy unit. Conclusions This study demonstrates the limitations of form-based informed consent methods for paediatric endoscopy. It also shows that even when necessary information was repeated electronically in a comprehensive and standardised video, informed consent as measured by our instrument was incompletely achieved. The supplemental information did, however, significantly improve understanding in a manner that did not negatively impact workflow, subject anxiety or subject satisfaction. Additional study of informed consent is required. Clinical trial registration number ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier NCT00899392. (shrink)

The present research investigated the use of counter-stereotypical pictures as a strategy for overcoming spontaneous gender stereotypes when certain social role nouns and professional terms are read. Across two experiments, participants completed a judgment task in which they were presented with word pairs comprised of a role noun with a stereotypical gender bias (e.g., beautician) and a kinship term with definitional gender (e.g., brother). Their task was to quickly decide whether or not both terms could refer to one person. In (...) each experiment they completed two blocks of such judgment trials separated by a training session in which they were presented with pictures of people working in gender counter-stereotypical (Experiment 1) or gender stereotypical roles (Experiment 2). To ensure participants were focused on the pictures, they were also required to answer four questions on each one relating to the character’s leisure activities, earnings, job satisfaction, and personal life. Accuracy of judgments to stereotype incongruent pairings was found to improve significantly across blocks when participants were exposed to counter-stereotype images (9.87%) as opposed to stereotypical images (0.12%), while response times decreased significantly across blocks in both studies. It is concluded that exposure to counter-stereotypical pictures is a valuable strategy for overcoming spontaneous gender stereotype biases in the short term. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein's notion of aspect-seeing, and Stanley Cavell's notion of aspect-blindness, allow us to situate Abbas Kiarostami's quasi-documentary Close-Up as a radical revision of the genre that fundamentally challenges our assumptions about truth and representation in documentary film. Considering the film through the lens of Wittgenstein's and Cavell's philosophies of seeing puts pressure on the ethical dimension of the process of seeing as it is both enacted by and represented in the film. Kiarostami brings to the foreground the intransigent aspects (...) of documented reality and unsettles certain aspects of the documentary process. In doing so, he reveals our blind spots about what we think documentary film does, or ought to do. Close-Up blends layers of the real: part documented present and part re-enacted past, the film recreates the story of a real group of people who become actors playing themselves, re-enacting the story for Kiarostami's camera, repeating all of their “lines” exactly (or... (shrink)

The article examines the role and place of the Mystery within the structure of Mamleev’s metaphysics. The author of the article implicates the concept of “chaosmos’’, introduced by James Joyce in the experimental novel “Finnegans Wake”, to the Mamleev’s Universe. This leads to the transformation of the formula “chaos – osmosis – cosmos”, actualized by postmodern discourse, into the formula “Chaos – Osmosis – Cosmos”. Chaos here is Sacred Chaos, being one of the metaphysical manifestations of Eternal Russia. Osmosis appears (...) to be an antinomic Russian life, which combines the incompatible, and sets itself fundamentally impossible tasks. The Сosmos brings us to the tradition of Russian cosmism with its problem of microcosm and macrocosm conformity. The author of the article points out that the all-pervading and unifying element of Mamleev’s chaos is the Mystery. It is one of the five key metathemes of Mamleev’s oeuvre. The particularity of the Mystery is that it provides a link between other metathemes: utrism “I”, Death, the Abyss and Russia. In the plane of utrism “I” the Mystery is seen as the mystery of man. The Mystery is related to Death by the person’s interest of his own destiny and finiteness. The problem of overcoming death and the passion for eternal life are the central themes that concern almost all the heroes of Mamleev’s novels and short stories. For Mamleev they are the source of values aimed at the human need to achieve a higher “I”. The connection between the Mystery and the Abyss, as well as the connection between the Mystery and Russia are the strongest and the most important for Mamleev. Consideration of these connections prompts the author to conclude that Yuri Mamleev describes such dimensions of the Mystery, which go beyond the categories “unfathomable-to-us” and “unfathomable-in-itself”, introduced by S. Frank. This requires the introduction of new concepts that would bring out the essence of Mamleev’s innovations. The author of the article proposes to consider the Abyss as a “Last Mystery” by the fact it is transcendent to the transcendents themselves, that is it goes beyond the Absolute, as well as to consider Eternal Russia as a Russia-Mystery on the grounds that Mamleev gives it the status of the third metaphysical Beginning, along with the Absolute and the Abyss. (shrink)

"Joyce as Theory is the first study to argue James Joyce can be read as a theorist. Joyce is not just a favourite case study of literary theory; he wrote about how we make meaning, and to what effect. The present volume traces his hermeneutics in those narratives in Finnegans Wake which deal with textual production and interpretation, showing that the Wake's difficulty exemplifies Joyce's theoretical stance. All reading involves responding to problems we cannot quite fathom. This preoccupation places Joyce (...) alongside Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan. Joyce as Theory revives debates on theory with a linguistic focus, laying open misconceptions that have muddled attempts to be over and done with this kind of thought. It demonstrates that Derrida and Lacan, almost exclusively presented as rivals, converge on a common position. It opposes the myth of linguistic theory as a formalist approach, instead showing that Joyce, Derrida, and Lacan give us a hermeneutic ethics alert to how meaning-making impacts our lived experience. And it challenges the notion that theory imposes matters alien to Joyce, demonstrating that it is an appreciation of Joyce's arguments in Finnegans Wake that generates a theoretical perspective. Joyce as Theory is essential reading for researchers and students in Joyce studies, continental philosophy, literary theory, and modernist literature"--. (shrink)

What is the relationship between the Irish modernist writings of James Joyce and the Scottish empirical philosophy of David Hume? Here I discuss Joyce’s conception of Hume as a philosopher and explore the presence of Hume’s work in Joyce’s final masterpiece, Finnegans Wake. How then did Joyce conceive of Hume’s thought, and to what extent did he engage with it? Well, in his lecture “Realism and Idealism in English Literature,” given at Trieste in 1912, Joyce denounces the interest in the (...) sanity of artistic and philosophical geniuses, before offering the following comments. (shrink)

This essay uses process theology, and branch of theology that emphasizes a teleological perspective regarding sin and suffering, to examine the treatment of death and the uncanny in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. The attitude of the mourners of Tim Finnegan from the first chapter of the novel is compared to the attitude of ALP in her closing monologue, with each view corresponding to a different variety of eschatology, futurized (focused on the afterlife) and realized (how knowledge of the end (...) influences lived existence). ALP’s hopeful demeanor illustrates a balance of these two types, and despite Joyce’s denunciation of organized religion, promotes a deeper spiritual existence and self-reflection. (shrink)

This article draws out ecological aspects convergent on the first page of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and explores them through Žižek’s theoretical perspectives on humanity today and its relation to the waste and chaos that underpins the state of nature that it is reliant on; that is in relation to the Lacanian category of the Real. It does so in an attempt to bring together Joyce and Žižek so as to demonstrate the theoretical possibilities that can arise out of their (...) synthesis. The essay’s methodology is tripartite, working through a theoretical part – utilising, as well as Žižek’s ecology, Lacanian psychoanalysis and the ecosophical thought of Félix Guattari – a textual part, drawing on Joyce scholarship pertinent to the first section of the Wake, and towards a practical part, which aims to condense the work of the essay and outline a route to a possible praxis, which takes into account the real of nature. (shrink)

It may be argued that Joyce's work can be seen either as the defining text of a real and historically grounded nationhood or, conversely, as the defining text of an imaginary and ahistorical nationhood. It may in other words be viewed as either epical or Utopian—and as addressing a modernist predilection for either of those forms. But it may also be argued that Joyce's work might paradoxically be seen as both of these things and that Joyce's writing is able to (...) suspend and maintain such contradictory positions in a synthetic harmony through its uses of ambiguity and irony. Indeed, it might also be argued that Joyce herein offers the conditions of possibility of a realizable and sustainable mode of Utopianism—a .. (shrink)

The philosopher Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) was an original thinker whose voice echoes today in the humanities and in fields of social thought. In this book Vico's career and works are considered from a new viewpoint. Donald Philip Verene examines in full for the first time the interconnections between Vico's new science and James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Maintaining that Joyce is the greatest modern "interpreter" of Vico, Verene demonstrates how images from Joyce's work offer keys to Vico's philosophy. The volume also (...) features a detailed chronology of the philosopher's career, historical illustrations related to his works, and an extensive bibliography of Vico scholarship and all English translations of his writings. (shrink)

This chapter talks about how two robot hosts of Westworld, Dolores Abernathy and Maeve Millay, are operating within what philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein calls “language games”. At the heart of the revolutionary nature of the language game is Wittgenstein's insistence on binding saying to saying what counts. The chapter enlists Wittgenstein's critique of the theory of an “ideal” language that could perfectly represent reality for the author's own critique of the “ideal” picture of narrative with in Westworld. This “ideal” is amplified (...) by glorified violence, the objectification of women, profoundly rigid and heteronormative gender roles, and an ineluctable longing for transcendence. On the smooth, slippery surface of the “ideal” narratives of the Westworld universe, Dolores and Maeve are losing traction. What they need is to get back to the rough ground; but first they will need to learn how to create their own new language games to get there. (shrink)

Coherence and correspondence are classical contenders as theories of truth. In this paper we examine them instead as interacting factors in the dynamics of belief across epistemic networks. We construct an agent-based model of network contact in which agents are characterized not in terms of single beliefs but in terms of internal belief suites. Individuals update elements of their belief suites on input from other agents in order both to maximize internal belief coherence and to incorporate ‘trickled in’ elements of (...) truth as correspondence. Results, though often intuitive, prove more complex than in simpler models (Hegselmann & Krause 2002, 2006; Grim, Singer, Reade & Fisher 2015). The optimistic finding is that pressures toward internal coherence can exploit and expand on small elements of truth as correspondence is introduced into epistemic networks. Less optimistic results show that pressures for coherence can also work directly against the incorporation of truth, particularly when coherence is established first and new data is introduced later. (shrink)

The Problem of Perception offers two arguments against direct realism--one concerning illusion, and one concerning hallucination--that no current theory of ...

In this paper I examine Grace A. de Laguna’s theory of universals in its historical context and in relation to contemporary debates in analytic metaphysics. I explain the central features of her theory, arguing that her theory should be classified as a form of immanent realism and as a powers ontology. I then show in what ways her theory affords a theory of modality in terms of potentialities and discuss some of its consequences along the way.