Mitchell's formulation of the chemiosmotic theory of oxidative phosphorylation in 1961 lacked any experimental support for its three central postulates. The path by which Mitchell reached this theory is explored. A major factor was the role of Mitchell's philosophical system conceived in his student days at Cambridge. This system appears to have become a tacit influence on his work in the sense that Polanyi understood all knowledge to be generated by an interaction between tacit and explicit knowing. Early in his (...) life Mitchell had evolved a simple philosophy based on fluctoids, fluctids and statids which was developed in a thesis submitted for the Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge, England. This aspect of his work was rejected by the examiners and became a tacit element in his intellectual development. It is argued from his various publications that this philosophy can be traced as an underlying theme behind much of Mitchell's theoretical writing in the 50's leading, through his notion of vectorial metabolism, to the formulation and amplification of the chemiosmotic theory in the sixties. This philosophy formed the basis for Mitchell of his understanding of biological systems and gave him his unique approach to cell biology. (shrink)

This paper is based on a study of museum visitors’ experience of paintings: in particular, the experience of adult non-art specialists. Phenomenology, a form of inquiry that seeks to articulate lived experience, provided the philosophical and methodological framework for the study. Descriptions and themes relating to the experience of paintings were generated from interviews conducted with eight participants. These themes were categorized into two major areas: the articulated aspects and the non-articulated aspects. The former refers to aspects that people can (...) articulate when they describe their experience. For example, they talk about the formal qualities of paintings, related textual information, and the museum environment. The latter refers to aspects that people cannot articulate. For example, they have difficulty in expressing their feelings, their relationship with time, and an understanding of the role of the body. This paper focuses on the aspects that museum visitors cannot articulate when they describe their experience. This inarticulateness provides insights into certain overlooked features of the experience: the embodied nature of the experience, the way time is experienced, and the viewer’s feelings about paintings. The paper ends with a discussion of the implications of the study for art educators. It is suggested that teachers should prepare students in ways that will enable them to make use of their various cognitive, social and cultural frameworks in experiencing works of art. (shrink)

What constitutes our human capacity to engage and be in the same frame of mind as another human? How do we come to share a sense of what ‘looks good’ and what ‘makes sense’? How do we handle differences and come to coexist with them? How do we come to feel that we understand what someone else is experiencing? How are we able to walk in silence with someone familiar and be sharing a peaceful space? All of these aspects are (...) part of human ‘interaction’. In designing interactive technologies designers have endeavoured to explicate, analyse and simulate, our capacity for social adaptation. Their motivations are mixed and include the desires to improve efficiency, improve consumption, to connect people, to make it easier for people to work together, to improve education and learning. In these endeavours to explicate, analyse and simulate, there is a fundamental human capacity that is beyond technology and that facilitates these aspects of being, feeling and thinking with others. That capacity, we suggest, is human entrainment. This is our ability to coordinate the timing of our behaviours and rhythmically synchronise our attentional resources. Expressed within the movements of our bodies and voices, it has a quality that is akin to music. In this paper, disparate domains of research such as pragmatics, social psychology, behaviourism, cognitive science, computational linguistics, gesture, are brought together, and considered in light of the developments in interactive technology, in order to shape a conceptual framework for understanding entrainment in everyday human interaction. (shrink)