AQUINO, Orlando Fernandez; PUENTES, Roberto Valdéz. Trabalho didático na Universidade: estratégias de formação. Campinas: Alínea, 2011. 146p. Um dos mais novos trabalhos publicados pelos professores Orlando Fernández Aquino e Roberto Valdéz Puentes intitula-se Trabalho Didático na Universidade: estratégias de formação e apresenta como proposta a estratégia de trabalho metodológico para formação do docente universitário no contexto do desenvolvimento em serviço. O trabalho metodológico é, segundo os autores, além de um processo dinâmico e complexo, processo que pode ser utilizado com outras (...) finalidades tais como: a gestão estratégica do processo de ensino-aprendizagem-pesquisa e a elevação da qualidade da formação dos futuros profissionais e dos profissionais em serviço. [...] Na introdução, os autores destacam a importância da atuação docente na Universidade e apresentam a visão atual a respeito da educação superior e suas instituições. Destacam a inserção das instituições de educação superior na sociedade do conhecimento. O esgotamento do paradigma predominante impede de ver o global e o essencial. Em seu lugar, ganha força o conhecimento interdisciplinar e politransdisciplinar; surge um novo paradigma sociocultural, pós-moderno que busca a organização do saber e a democratização do conhecimento por meio de uma reforma do pensamento. Citam ainda o amparo do trabalho metodológico para os processos de gestão universitária; ensino aprendizagem; pesquisa; produção científica e extensão universitária. Segundo os autores, “sem instituições de educação superior e de pesquisa capazes de formar um corpo crítico de profissionais, qualificado e culto, a sociedade moderna não poderá garantir um desenvolvimento autêntico e sustentável”. Data de registro:29/04/2012 Data de aceite:08/02/2013. (shrink)

The Avali Silūk (The Ultimate Song) and the Kāfir Bodh (The Wisdom of the Infidels) are lesser-known yogic granths, or treatises, in the early modern North Hindustani Nāth literary tradition. Erased from the modern literary canon in the mid-twentieth century, these multilingual teachings are crucial to understanding how the Nāth Yogīs conceptualized their complex relationships with Muslim communities around the time of the Nāth sampradāy’s foundation. Although the better-known Sabadī (The Sacred Utterances) attributed to Guru Gorakhnāth frequently speaks of the (...) porous religious identity of early modern North Hindustani Nāth Yogīs, the Avali Silūk and the Kāfir Bodh are the only two known discourses that highlight Nāth Yogī engagement with Islamic publics from a Nāth point of view. This article examines these teachings, explores possible motives for their erasure in the modern printed canon, and reconsiders how the Nāth Yogīs expressed their identity and relationship with Muslim publics in early modern Hindustan. (shrink)

Este artigo procura apresentar algumas considerações acerca do entrecruzamento do pensamento político de Hannah Arendt e a questão ambiental. Para tanto, o seguinte questionamento servirá de guia para a reflexão aqui pretendida: se o âmbito natural é perturbado pelas ações humanas, é razoável a crença de que a própria ação humana possa ser capaz de frear o atual cenário de catástrofe? Assim sendo, assume-se, aqui, como procedimento metodológico uma análise bibliográfica que recorre ao livro A condição humana (The human condition, (...) 1958 [2010]) e alguns ensaios da coletânea Entre o passado e o futuro (Between Past and Future, 1961 [2009]). De modo geral, busca-se desenvolver o argumento de que embora não se possa enquadrar Hannah Arendt no rol das “historiadoras das ciências”, tampouco uma “pensadora da ecologia”, é certo que ela nunca deixou de se interessar e comentar os eventos científicos de seu tempo, bem como de se preocupar com as consequências das ações humanas. Logo, os assuntos relacionados aos avanços tecnológicos e científicos constituem assuntos de primeira grandeza e importância tanto para o mundo quanto para a política. Em suma, pretende-se sustentar a hipótese de que para Hannah Arendt, a imagem adotada da natureza – ao menos desde a época moderna –, e as ações humanas cometidas a partir desta compreensão, afetam diretamente nossa existência política. (shrink)

O presente trabalho busca mostrar o processo de criação sob o ponto de vista da poesia mística de Rumi. Portanto, procura demonstrar como Rumi dá vida, em seus escritos, ao máximo ato vivificador, à beleza com a qual ele entende e transporta, pelas palavras, o conhecimento do ato criador divino. Trata-se, portanto, de mostrar o processo de criação pelo qual as criaturas recebem a filiação do Criador, e como esse elo primordial com a transcendência é então capaz de inspirar todo (...) movimento observado pelo místico em direção ao processo de união, que no caso de Rumi, remete ao movimento de influxo do amor. É pelo amor que as criaturas são chamadas a reconhecer, no mundo e no cosmos os atributos de Deus, dos quais elas participam por filiação. (shrink)

I. L'ordine della mente e le forme del pensiero al tempo delle rivoluzioni nelle tecnologie della comunicazione.

It is generally argued that if the wave-function in the de Broglie–Bohm theory is a physical field, it must be a field in configuration space. Nevertheless, it is possible to interpret the wave-function as a multi-field in three-dimensional space. This approach hasn’t received the attention yet it really deserves. The aim of this paper is threefold: first, we show that the wave-function is naturally and straightforwardly construed as a multi-field; second, we show why this interpretation is superior to other interpretations (...) discussed in the literature; third, we clarify common misconceptions. (shrink)

O presente artigo traz reflexões que envolvem infância e experiência a partir da área da educação e, particularmente, das ponderações em torno das pesquisas com crianças pequenas e da educação infantil. Os apontamentos impõem limites relativos a este lugar de estudo e delimita estes como parte de uma crítica e autocrítica da educação e das possibilidades de consolidação de uma Pedagogia da Infância. Nesta direção, no artigo se toma para esta reflexão a análise do sentido da experiência para as principais (...) teorias educacionais ou projetos educativos para a educação na infância, a fim de levar a uma demarcação dos contornos da experiência educativa na/da infância institucionalizada. Para tal, apresenta alguns elementos relativos à experiência educativa como experiência social a partir de estudos empíricos que dão visibilidade às ações das crianças como parte de suas vidas nos coletivos infantis. Por fim, indica como desafios para a possível consolidação de uma Pedagogia da Infância uma aproximação da Pedagogia às manifestações infantis, a criança em situação e as possibilidades de os processos educativos se pautarem na escuta, na dialogicidade e nas relações, possibilitando incluir, nas práticas educativas, as significações produzidas pelas próprias crianças em seus contextos de vida e suas manifestações culturais e expressivas. (shrink)

I want to combine two hitherto largely independent research projects, scientific understanding and mechanistic explanations. Understanding is not only achieved by answering why-questions, that is, by providing scientific explanations, but also by answering what-questions, that is, by providing what I call scientific descriptions. Based on this distinction, I develop three forms of understanding: understanding-what, understanding-why, and understanding-how. I argue that understanding-how is a particularly deep form of understanding, because it is based on mechanistic explanations, which answer why something happens in (...) virtue of what it is made of. I apply the three forms of understanding to two case studies: first, to the historical development of thermodynamics and, second, to the differences between the Clausius and the Boltzmann entropy in explaining thermodynamic processes. (shrink)

The ontological models framework distinguishes ψ-ontic from ψ-epistemic wave- functions. It is, in general, quite straightforward to categorize the wave-function of a certain quantum theory. Nevertheless, there has been a debate about the ontological status of the wave-function in the statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics: is it ψ-epistemic and incomplete or ψ-ontic and complete? I will argue that the wave- function in this interpretation is best regarded as ψ-ontic and incomplete.

Simone Weil's influence has been enormous and in this age of doubt and uncertainty there is something particularly appealing about this French Jewish writer, for Weil lived out her beliefs. From an early age she was attracted to Bolshevism, became an anarchist and helped Trotsky. She joined the International Red Brigade to fight Franco in the Spanish Civil War. An agnostic, she experienced a profound religious conversion, yet never converted to the Christian faith to which she was so deeply attracted. (...) This clear lucid exposition of her life and work shows how Weil is truly a prophet for our age and an indispensable source of encouragement to all those at the frontiers of religion, both within and without. (shrink)

What does it take to understand a phenomenon ideally, or to the highest conceivable extent? In this paper, we answer this question by arguing for five necessary conditions for ideal understanding: (i) representational accuracy, (ii) intelligibility, (iii) truth, (iv) reasonable endorsement, and (v) fitting. Even if one disagrees that there is some form of ideal understanding, these five conditions can be regarded as sufficient conditions for a particularly deep level of understanding. We then argue that grasping, novel predictions, and transparency (...) are not reasonable conditions for ideal understanding. (shrink)

Philosophers now seem to agree that frequentism is an untenable strategy to explain the meaning of probabilities. Nevertheless, I want to revive frequentism, and I will do so by grounding probabilities on typicality in the same way as the thermodynamic arrow of time can be grounded on typicality within statistical mechanics. This account, which I will call typicality frequentism, will evade the major criticisms raised against previous forms of frequentism. In this theory, probabilities arise within a physical theory from statistical (...) behavior of almost all initial conditions. The main advantage of typicality frequentism is that it shows which kinds of probabilities (that also have empirical relevance) can be derived from physics. Although one cannot recover all probability talk in this account, this is rather a virtue than a vice, because it shows which types of probabilities can in fact arise from physics and which types need to be explained in different ways, thereby opening the path for a pluralistic account of probabilities. (shrink)

This paper investigates the historical origin and ancestors of typicality, which is now a central concept in Boltzmannian Statistical Mechanics and Bohmian Mechanics. Although Ludwig Boltzmann did not use the word typicality, its main idea, namely, that something happens almost always or is valid for almost all cases, plays a crucial role for his explanation of how thermodynamic systems approach equilibrium. At the beginning of the 20th century, the focus on almost always or almost everywhere was fruitful for developing measure (...) theory and probability theory. It was apparently Hugh Everett III who first mentioned typicality in physics in 1957 while searching for a justification of the Born rule in his interpretation of quantum mechanics. The historically closest concept before these developments is moral certainty, which was invented by the medieval French theologian Jean Gerson, and it became a standard concept at least until the Age of Enlightenment, when Jakob Bernoulli proved the Law of Large numbers. (shrink)

We present strategies how to reconstruct (estimate) properties of a quantum channel described by the map E based on incomplete measurements. In a particular case of a qubit channel a complete reconstruction of the map E can be performed via complete tomography of four output states E[ρj] that originate from a set of four linearly independent “test” states ρj (j = 1,2,3,4) at the input of the channel. We study the situation when less than four linearly independent states are transmitted (...) via the channel and measured at the output. We present strategies how to reconstruct the channel when just one, two or three states are transmitted via the channel. In particular, we show that if just one state is transmitted via the channel then the best reconstruction can be achieved when this state is a total mixture described by the density operator ρ = I/2. To improve the reconstruction procedure one has to send via the channel more states. The best strategy is to complement the total mixture with pure states that are mutually orthogonal in the sense of the Bloch-sphere representation. We show that unitary transformations (channels) can be uniquely reconstructed (determined) based on the information of how three properly chosen input states are transformed under the action of the channel. (shrink)

We argue that the asymmetry between diverging and converging electromagnetic waves is just one of many asymmetries in observed phenomena that can be explained by a past hypothesis and statistical postulate (together assigning probabilities to different states of matter and field in the early universe). The arrow of electromagnetic radiation is thus absorbed into a broader account of temporal asymmetries in nature. We give an accessible introduction to the problem of explaining the arrow of radiation and compare our preferred strategy (...) for explaining the arrow to three alternatives: (i) modifying the laws of electromagnetism by adding a radiation condition requiring that electromagnetic fields always be attributable to past sources, (ii) removing electromagnetic fields and having particles interact directly with one another through retarded action-at-a-distance, (iii) adopting the Wheeler-Feynman approach and having particles interact directly through half-retarded half-advanced action-at-a-distance. In addition to the asymmetry between diverging and converging waves, we also consider the related asymmetry of radiation reaction. (shrink)

Philosophy is sometimes perceived as an abstract and nerdy discipline dealing with problems of its own creation in an isolated chamber of the Ivory Tower. And there is some truth to this view. But philosophy can help us deal with common problems, such as the disagreements we have in our everyday lives.