Originally published in 1954, on behalf of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, this book presents a general review of British economic statistics in relation to the uses made of them for policy purposes. The text begins with an examination, in general terms, of the ways in which statistics can help in guiding or assessing policy, covering housing, coal, the development areas, agricultural price-fixing, the balance of external payments and the balance of the economy. The problems of statistical (...) application are then separately discussed under the headings of quality, presentation and availability, and organization. A full bibliography and reference table of principal British economic statistics are also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in British economic history and statistics. (shrink)

A class of states obtained by extremizing the energy of a system under certain conditions is introduced and their properties are compared with those of the coherent states. Conditions under which these states move without change of shape and follow the classical path are investigated.

Studies exploring how students learn and understand science processes such as diffusion and natural selection typically find that students provide misconceived explanations of how the patterns of such processes arise (such as why giraffes’ necks get longer over generations, or how ink dropped into water appears to “flow”). Instead of explaining the patterns of these processes as emerging from the collective interactions of all the agents (e.g., both the water and the ink molecules), students often explain the pattern as being (...) caused by controlling agents with intentional goals, as well as express a variety of many other misconceived notions. In this article, we provide a hypothesis for what constitutes a misconceived explanation; why misconceived explanations are so prevalent, robust, and resistant to instruction; and offer one approach of how they may be overcome. In particular, we hypothesize that students misunderstand many science processes because they rely on a generalized version of narrative schemas and scripts (referred to here as a Direct-causal Schema) to interpret them. For science processes that are sequential and stage-like, such as cycles of moon, circulation of blood, stages of mitosis, and photosynthesis, a Direct-causal Schema is adequate for correct understanding. However, for science processes that are non-sequential (or emergent), such as diffusion, natural selection, osmosis, and heat flow, using a Direct Schema to understand these processes will lead to robust misconceptions. Instead, a different type of general schema may be required to interpret non-sequential processes, which we refer to as an Emergent-causal Schema. We propose that students lack this Emergent Schema and teaching it to them may help them learn and understand emergent kinds of science processes such as diffusion. Our study found that directly teaching students this Emergent Schema led to increased learning of the process of diffusion. This article presents a fine-grained characterization of each type of Schema, our instructional intervention, the successes we have achieved, and the lessons we have learned. (shrink)

This volume contains invited and contributed papers delivered at a symposium on the occasion of Professor Glauber's 60th birthday. The papers, many of which are authored by world leaders in their fields, contain recent research work in quantum optics, statistical mechanics and high energy physics related to the pioneering work of Professor Roy Glauber; most contain original research material that is previously unpublished. The concepts of coherence, cooperativity and fluctuations in systems with many degrees of freedom are a common base (...) for all of Professor Glauber's research initiatives and, in fact, for much of contemporary physics. His role in shaping these cconcepts is reflected and honoured in the papers contained in this book. (shrink)

Nanoparticles of cobalt ferrite prepared by the co-precipitation method with crystallite size varying from 4.7 to 41 nm have been characterized by positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy. Three lifetime components are fitted to the lifetime data. The shortest lifetime component is attributed to the delocalized positron lifetime shortened by defect trapping. The intermediate lifetime is assigned to the positron annihilation in diffuse vacancy clusters or microvoids at the grain boundaries and at the grain-boundary triple points. The longest component corresponds to the (...) pick-off annihilation of ortho-positronium formed at the larger voids. The variations in these lifetimes and their relative intensities with annealing temperature and crystallite size have been studied in detail. (shrink)

This paper discusses the role of cultural anthropology in Cognitive Science. Culture is described as a very large pool of information passed along from generation to generation, composed of learned “programs” for action and understanding. These cultural programs differ in important ways from computer programs. Cultural programs tend to be unspecified and inexplicit rather than clearly stated algorithms learned through a slow process of guided discovery, and involve the manipulation of content based rather than formal symbol systems. Cultural symbol systems (...) often have affective as well as objective referents, giving them a strong directive effect. The argument is made that in the process of repeated social transmission and use, cultural programs come to take forms which have a good “fit” to the natural capacities and constraints of the human information processing system. (shrink)

This paper discusses the role of cultural anthropology in Cognitive Science. Culture is described as a very large pool of information passed along from generation to generation, composed of learned “programs” for action and understanding. These cultural programs differ in important ways from computer programs. Cultural programs tend to be unspecified and inexplicit rather than clearly stated algorithms learned through a slow process of guided discovery, and involve the manipulation of content based rather than formal symbol systems. Cultural symbol systems (...) often have affective as well as objective referents, giving them a strong directive effect. The argument is made that in the process of repeated social transmission and use, cultural programs come to take forms which have a good “fit” to the natural capacities and constraints of the human information processing system. (shrink)

Thought uses meaning but not necessarily language. Meaning, in the form of a set of possible concepts and ideas, is a nonphysical reality that lay waiting for brains to become smart enough to represent these ideas. Thus, the brain evolved, whereas meaning was discovered, and language was invented – collectively – as a tool to help the brain use meaning.

Strange is our situation here upon the earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose.1.

This essay sets forth the decisive notions and postulates of process philosophy in Process Philosophy and Social Thought, edited by John B. Cobb, Jr. and W. Widick Schroeder. After commenting on the circumstances in which process philosophy came to be a major option among philosophical theologians, I provide some amplification of those notions and postulates. Then, selecting material from the eighteen articles in the volume, I offer several critical assessments of the process viewpoint and its relation to science and to (...) the contemporary call for liberation. (shrink)

Recent research suggests that many microfinance institutions increasingly focus on financial performance at the expense of the social component of their dual objectives. Existing studies typically assume that capital providers and managers mainly drive this so-called mission drift. In this study, we investigate whether ‘personal mission drift’ at the credit officer level can further explain the reduced emphasis on poorer clients among microfinance institutions. We present both qualitative and quantitative evidence that more experienced credit officers tend to serve fewer vulnerable (...) clients. Specifically, we show that all else being equal, credit officer experience is negatively correlated with the provision of small loans, loans to young clients, and loans to clients with disabilities. Our qualitative analysis suggests that perceived client risk and preferences for increased time efficiency mainly drive more experienced credit officers’ relative neglect of more vulnerable clients. This drift appears to be reinforced by the industry’s incentive schemes. Therefore, credit officer incentives and training should be designed to prevent this mission drift, which is observed at the microfinance institution level but is actually initiated at the credit officer level. (shrink)

In the second edition of this groundbreaking text in non-Western philosophy, sixteen experts introduce some of the great philosophical traditions in the world. The essays unveil exciting, sophisticated philosophical traditions that are too often neglected in the western world. The contributors include the leading scholars in their fields, but they write for students coming to these concepts for the first time. Building on revisions and updates to the original, this new edition also considers three philosophical traditions for the first time—Jewish, (...) Buddhist, and South Pacific philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper we compare the propositional logic of Frege’s Grundgesetze der Arithmetik to modern propositional systems, and show that Frege does not have a separable propositional logic, definable in terms of primitives of Grundgesetze, that corresponds to modern formulations of the logic of “not”, “and”, “or”, and “if…then…”. Along the way we prove a number of novel results about the system of propositional logic found in Grundgesetze, and the broader system obtained by including identity. In particular, we show that (...) the propositional connectives that are definable in terms of Frege’s horizontal, negation, and conditional are exactly the connectives that fuse with the horizontal, and we show that the logical operators that are definable in terms of the horizontal, negation, the conditional, and identity are exactly the operators that are invariant with respect to permutations on the domain that leave the truth-values fixed. We conclude with some general observations regarding how Frege understood his logic, and how this understanding differs from modern views. (shrink)

Do philosophic views affect job performance? The authors found that possessing a belief in free will predicted better career attitudes and actual job performance. The effect of free will beliefs on job performance indicators were over and above well-established predictors such as conscientiousness, locus of control, and Protestant work ethic. In Study 1, stronger belief in free will corresponded to more positive attitudes about expected career success. In Study 2, job performance was evaluated objectively and independently by a supervisor. Results (...) indicated that employees who espoused free will beliefs were given better work performance evaluations than those who disbelieve in free will, presumably because belief in free will facilitates exerting control over one’s actions. (shrink)

Drawing on a global sample of microfinance institutions (MFIs), this paper offers insights into the trade-off versus synergy debate of adopting multiple institutional goals in hybrid organisations. Additionally, it unravels which organisation- and country-specific determinants associate with top joint performance using machine-learning techniques. We find that the synergy versus trade-off debate is not dichotomous. Rather, MFIs can be strong both socially and financially but not while charging low interest rates. In our sample, 17% of MFIs serve a low-income clientele in (...) need with a diverse range of services while remaining financially sustainable and ask a close-to-average interest rate. These organisations are larger and more mature as well as financially prudent in that they minimize both financial and credit risk. Moreover, they are located in countries where their services can create larger benefits regarding their underlying goals. (shrink)

In a published exchange, Richard Robinson and Roy A. Sorenson debate the matter of whether begging the question is a fallacy; Robinson thinks it is not, but Sorenson argues that it is. Norman Ten attempts to resolve this debate by making a distinction between begging the question and fallaciously begging the question. While Teng is right to note that Robinson and Sorenson are talking past each other, he incorrectly diagnoses the source of this miscommunication. In this paper, then, I offer (...) what I take to be a more illuminating distinction 3; viz. that between logical and rhetorical fallacies 3; and employ that distinction to resolve the debate. (shrink)

Tomasello argues that humans’ sense of moral obligation emerges early in development, relies on a shared “we,” and serves as the foundation of cooperation. This perspective complements our theoretical view of the human self as information agent. The shared “we” promotes not only proximal cooperative goals but also distal ones via the construction of shared understanding – it promotes culture.

Access to investigational drugs is a concern to patients and regulatory agencies. In order to determine potential trial participants’ views on access to investigational drugs, we surveyed one hundred people who had been referred to a phase I clinical trial. Most respondents indicated that patients had a right to investigational drugs, that the drugs should be offered only in the context of research, that getting access to these drugs is too hard, and that knowing the right people and being persistent (...) increased the likelihood of gaining access. Respondents did not think that investigational drugs should be given to anyone who wanted them, or that physicians were aware of the latest investigational agents. They most frequently recommended two allocation criteria: offering investigational drugs to those who would benefit most or were most needy; and allocating them to maximize scientific advancement. Respondents who understood the purpose of the trial were more likely to choose the second criterion. (shrink)

Four studies tested the hypothesis that a weaker belief in free will would be related to feeling less gratitude. In Studies 1a and 1b, a trait measure of free will belief was positively correlated with a measure of dispositional gratitude. In Study 2, participants whose free will belief was weakened (vs. unchanged or bolstered) reported feeling less grateful for events in their past. Study 3 used a laboratory induction of gratitude. Participants with an experimentally reduced (vs. increased) belief in free (...) will reported feeling less grateful for the favor. In Study 4, a reduced (vs. increased) belief in free will led to less gratitude in a hypothetical favor scenario. This effect was serially mediated by perceiving the benefactor as having less free will and therefore as being less sincerely motivated. These findings suggest that belief in free will is an important part of being able to feel gratitude. (shrink)

This introduction to the Common Knowledge symposium titled “Comparative Relativism” outlines a variety of intellectual contexts where placing the unlikely companion terms comparison and relativism in conjunction offers analytical purchase. If comparison, in the most general sense, involves the investigation of discrete contexts in order to elucidate their similarities and differences, then relativism, as a tendency, stance, or working method, usually involves the assumption that contexts exhibit, or may exhibit, radically different, incomparable, or incommensurable traits. Comparative studies are required to (...) treat their objects as alike, at least in some crucial respects; relativism indicates the limits of this practice. Jensen argues that this seeming paradox is productive, as he moves across contexts, from Lévi-Strauss's analysis of comparison as an anthropological method to Peter Galison's history of physics, and on to the anthropological, philosophical, and historical examples offered in symposium contributions by Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Marilyn Strathern, and Isabelle Stengers. Comparative relativism is understood by some to imply that relativism comes in various kinds and that these have multiple uses, functions, and effects, varying widely in different personal, historical, and institutional contexts that can be compared and contrasted. Comparative relativism is taken by others to encourage a “comparison of comparisons,” in order to relativize what different peoples—say, Western academics and Amerindian shamans—compare things “for.” Jensen concludes that what is compared and relativized in this symposium are the methods of comparison and relativization themselves. He ventures that the contributors all hope that treating these terms in juxtaposition may allow for new configurations of inquiry. (shrink)

Industrial wind turbines (IWTs) are a new source of community noise to which relatively few people have yet been exposed. IWTs are being erected at a rapid pace in proximity to human habitation. Some people report experiencing adverse health effects as a result of living in the environs of IWTs. In order to address public concerns and assess the plausibility of reported adverse health effects, a number of literature reviews have been commissioned by various organizations. This article explores some of (...) the recent literature reviews on IWTs and adverse health effects. It considers the completeness, accuracy, and objectivity of their contents and conclusions. While some of the literature reviews provide a balanced assessment and draw reasonable scientific conclusions, others should not be relied on to make informed decisions. The article concludes that human health research is required to develop authoritative guidelines for the siting of IWTs in order to protect the health and welfare of exposed individuals. (shrink)

The relative freedom, spontaneity, and complexity of the images formed between the elastic body/mind of the dancer present in the room with me, the projected video of bodies, and performers interacting in space gave a palpable electric sense of virtual synergy. These are the words I wrote to describe the experience of being immersed in my first Interplay multi-site performance. I had the sense that I had experienced a telematic embrace, an event that was truly more than the sum of (...) its parts, which Roy Ascott described as a feeling of connection and close community, almost an intimacy quite unlike face to face meetings. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Virtues, Obligations, and the Prophetic VisionRoy Branson (bio)Ethics at its best is only bad poetry—that is, it seeks to help us see whatwe see every day but fail to see rightly...If ethicists had talent, they might be poets,but in the absence of talent, they try tomake their clanking conceptual anddiscursive chains do the work of art.—Stanley HauerwasThe speaker was so severely bent over that his congenitally deformed back had (...) to be supported. He was a young Ph.D. in history. We were some 50 physicians, lawyers, health care administrators, and ethicists studying the ethics of organ transplants. Before he arrived, the conference had discussed different understandings of equal access and the nuances of federal policies governing organ transplant distribution. 1 In his lecture, our guest matter-of-factly described his own condition. He then pointed out that not only in ancient civilization but in American history as well, the disabled had been killed just because they were disabled. Indeed, even now, he said, they were not being allowed to live.In the question and answer session, he was immediately challenged by nationally prominent transplant surgeons. He responded by asking the surgeons: If two people could avoid death and anticipate significantly prolonged life from receiving an organ transplant and the only difference between them was that one was disabled and the other not, who would receive the life-saving transplant? The surgeons’ initial, spirited defense of excluding the significantly disabled person died down as they began to realize that, as far as they were concerned anyway, they might not have allowed the lecturer to live. They were stunned by the realization that they had not felt the disabled were fully persons. In the silences between their sentences, the participants sensed that they had passed beyond the discussion of economic, medical, and legal terms to glimpse new horizons of responsibility. [End Page 361]The conference was experiencing the truth of William F. May’s claim that moral quandaries must be placed within “a fresh and liberating vision of the world;” within “metaphysical horizons” (May 1983, pp. 15, 19).Pastoral VirtuesIn the late sixties, André Hellegers, the dynamic physician and Catholic layman who founded the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and who claimed that he had invented the word bioethics, focused bioethics elsewhere—on virtue. “As the caring branches of medicine were gradually pushed aside by the curing ones,” Hellegers said, “there seemed to be less use for the Christian virtues.” We must, he declared, “recapture the Christian virtues of care” (cited in McCormick 1985, p. 111). In a subsequent essay on the conceptual foundation of bioethics, Hellegers, writing with Albert Jonsen, did not invoke the word pastor, but he did argue that the codes drawn up for the ethical practice of medicine were, among other things, guides for the cure of physicians’ souls (Jonsen and Hellegers 1976, pp. 35–36).In 1969, at the same time that André Hellegers was in the process of establishing the Kennedy Institute, Edmund Pellegrino, then a medical school dean, led in the founding of humanities programs within American medical schools. Pellegrino, like Hellegers, a physician and Catholic layman, also focused on virtue. Obligations are not irrelevant for Pellegrino, but in biomedical ethics “one starts always with one’s commitment to be a certain kind of person and then approaches clinical quandaries, conflicts of values, and patient interests as a good person ought” (Pellegrino 1988, p. 123). Pellegrino knows that the classical and Christian tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas, a tradition with which he identifies, is concerned with the whole gamut of ethics. But for Pellegrino, that tradition teaches that “no matter to what depths a society may fall, virtuous persons will always be the beacons that light the way back to moral sensitivity” (p. 123). He freely acknowledges that “a virtue-based ethics is inherently elitist, in the best sense, because its adherents demand more of themselves than does the prevailing morality” (p. 123).Hellegers and Pellegrino added to the need of physicians acquiring professional skills their responsibility to become the embodiment of the moral ideal in the patient-physician relationship by caring for the patient... (shrink)

In this... essay,... linguist Roy Harris reflects on the early nineteenth-century doctrine of 'art for art's sake'. Attacked by Proudhon and Nietzsche, but defended by Theophile Gautier and E. M. Forster, it influenced movements as diverse as futurism and Dada. Over the past two centuries, three main positions have emerged. The 'institutional' view declares art to be a status conferred upon certain works by the approval of influential institutions. The 'idiocentric' view gives absolute priority to the judgment of the individual. (...) The third is the 'conceptual' view of art, which insists that what counts is the idea that inspired a work, not the physical execution. But, as Harris shows, the tacit assumptions which once supported this debate and these positions have now collapsed. 'Art' as a coherent category has imploded, leaving behind a historical residue of empty questions that contemporary society can no longer answer." --book cover. (shrink)

RésuméLa sémiotique a inventé ou utilisé plusieurs modèles logiques pour représenter la structure élémentaire de la signification. Le carré sémiotique est sans doute l’un des plus célèbres de ces modèles. Il faut se demander, devant l’importance des phénomènes triadiques, si les modèles dyadiques sont (toujours) adaptés à leur description ou s’il ne faudrait pas se tourner (aussi) vers des modèles triadiques. Or, les modèles triadiques de la structure élémentaire de la signification nous apparaissent bien moins nombreux. À notre connaissance, seule (...) la sémiotique de Peirce et le templum de Boudon occupent cet espace autrement laissé vacant. Nous voulons ici à la fois présenter et exemplifier le templum et le compléter, en nous inspirant du carré sémiotique, pour le faire évoluer vers un « prisme sémiotique ». Nous proposerons également d’autres modèles logiques, comme le pentalemme et le cube sémiotiques. Au passage, nous étudierons plusieurs questions et problèmes – dont la décidabilité – entourant les modèles logiques. Nous ferons quelques applications sommaires de certains modèles, sur le temps, l’espace et la transcendance principalement. (shrink)

Rewriting the Self is an exploration of ideas of the self in the western cultural tradition from the Renaissance to the present. The contributors analyze different religious, philosophical, psychological, political, psychoanalytical and literary models of personal identity from a number of viewpoints, including the history of ideas, contemporary gender politics, and post-modernist literary theory. Challenging the received version of the "ascent of western man," they assess the discursive construction of the self in the light of political, technological and social changes. (...) Contributors include: Peter Burke, Roger Cardinal, Stephen Connor, Jonathan Dollimore, Terry Eagleton, Kate Flint, E.J. Hundert, John Mullan, Linda Nead, Daniel Pick, Nikolas Rose, Jonathan Sawday, Jane Shaw, Roger Smith, Sylvana Tomaselli and Carolyn D. Williams. (shrink)

Résumé Cet article a pour objectif d’introduire la géoesthésique, une approche des sciences de la culture traitant des interactions entre l’espace et la réception sémiotique. Le tournant spatial des arts et des sciences de la fin du vingtième a inspiré la création de plusieurs nouvelles approches liées à l’espace et au territoire. La Géopoétique de Kenneth White, la Géocritique de Westphal et plus tard de Prieto et Tally, la Géoesthétique de Quirós et Imhoff et éventuellement même la géosymbolique travaillée par (...) Mario Bédard et Christiane Lahaie (2008). C’est en remarquant l’absence, parmi toutes ces approches, d’une approche dont le point central serait, non pas l’espace, mais la réception, et son lien avec l’espace, que Louis Hébert nous a suggérer de concevoir et de rédiger les prémisses d’une telle approche. La géoesthésique serait ainsi une approche pratique et expérimentale grâce à laquelle on pourrait observer l’impact que peut avoir l’espace sur la réception sémiotique d’un élément donné ou l’influence d’une réception sémiotique donnée sur la perception d’un espace fixe. (shrink)

In Kierkegaard’s scheme of concepts, acts of piety and ascetic styles of living — however colorful and conspicuous their ostensible forms — do not eo ipso constitute the religious individual. There is more. According to the logic of this train of thought, no one can know who is a religious individual. To aggravate matters, this blessed ignorance pertains also to the very person who would in all sincerity arrogate such an identity. So, at least, run strains of a theory adumbrated, (...) for example, in Training in Christianity, The Concept of Anxiety and Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Dans le schème des concepts chez Kierkegaard, les actes de piété et les styles de vie ascétiques si colorées et manifestes que soient leurs formes déclarées ne constituent pas d’eux-mêmes l’individu religieux. Il y a plus. Suivant la logique de cette ligne de pensée, nul ne peut savoir qui est un individu religieux. Bien plus, cette ignorance bénie s’applique également à la personne même qui, en toute sincérité, s’arrogerait une pareille identité. C’est bien là, à tout le moins, le sens d’une théorie qui s’esquisse, par exemple, dans L’École du christianisme, Le concept d’angoisse et le Postscriptum aux miettes philosophiques. (shrink)

Ce texte est le fruit d’une collaboration entre un astrophysicien, Jean-René Roy, et un philosophe de l’éducation, Normand Baillargeon. Ils ont en commun d’avoir été marqués par la fréquentation des oeuvres de Mario Bunge, auxquelles ils attachent un grand prix, sur un plan personnel, d’abord, mais aussi, et c’est ce qu’ils veulent rappeler dans ces pages : parce qu’ils estiment que les oeuvres de Bunge contribuent de manière extrêmement forte et positive à rendre plus salubre la vie de l’esprit, en (...) enrichissant notre intellect et en luttant contre diverses formes troublantes d’obscurantisme qui y sévissent parfois, notamment dans les domaines familiers aux deux auteurs. (shrink)

It is proved that for every positive integer n, the number of non-Tukey-equivalent directed sets of cardinality $\leq \aleph _n$ is at least $c_{n+2}$, the $(n+2)$ -Catalan number. Moreover, the class $\mathcal D_{\aleph _n}$ of directed sets of cardinality $\leq \aleph _n$ contains an isomorphic copy of the poset of Dyck $(n+2)$ -paths. Furthermore, we give a complete description whether two successive elements in the copy contain another directed set in between or not.