Islamic education; Muslims; conduct of life.

Businesses and the social sciences are increasingly facing calls to further scholarship dedicated to understand sustainability. Furthermore, multinationals are also facing similar calls given their high profile and their role in environmental degradation. However, a literature review shows that there is very limited understanding of sustainability at a cross-national level. Given the above gaps, we contribute to the literature by examining how selected GLOBE [House et al., Culture, leadership and organizations: The GOBE study of 62 societies. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, (...) 2004 ] cultural dimensions are related to individuals’ propensity to support sustainability initiatives in 33 countries. We use data from the World Values Survey [World Values Study Group, World Values Surveys and European Value Surveys, 1999–2001. Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, Ann Arbor, 2004 ] and test our hypotheses using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM). Results support all but one hypothesis. Specifically, uncertainty avoidance is not related to propensity to support sustainability initiatives. In contrast, performance orientation and assertiveness have the desired negative relationship with our dependent variable while collectivism, future orientation, and human orientation have the desired positive relationship. We discuss the conceptual and practical implications of this study. (shrink)

Here we present the framework of a new approach to assessing the capacity of research programs to achieve social goals. Research evaluation has made great strides in addressing questions of scientific and economic impacts. It has largely avoided, however, a more important challenge: assessing (prospectively or retrospectively) the impacts of a given research endeavor on the non-scientific, non-economic goals—what we here term public values —that often are the core public rationale for the endeavor. Research programs are typically justified in terms (...) of their capacity to achieve public values, and that articulation of public values is pervasive in science policy-making. We outline the elements of a case-based approach to public value mapping of science policy, with a particular focus on developing useful criteria and methods for assessing public value failure, with an intent to provide an alternative to market failure thinking that has been so powerful in science policy-making. So long as research evaluation avoids the problem of public values, science policy decision makers will have little help from social science in making choices among competing paths to desired social outcomes. (shrink)

In the latest years of the 6th/12th century, two chains of affiliation of a distinctive kind make their appearance in the Muslim world, in the East on one hand, and in the West on the other: the first is referred to in the sources as silsilat al-muṣāfaḥa, the second as silsilat al-mushābaka. These ‘chains’, mentioned mostly in works pertaining to the genre of prosopographic literature in the largest sense, experienced a broad and rapid expansion throughout the dār al-islām. They are (...) linked to a specific ritual aimed at perpetuating, across generations, a physical contact with the Prophet. Widespread among the ʿulamāʾ, they become conflated with the musalsalāt ḥadīths, or ‘chained traditions’, during the Ottoman era. (shrink)

Scholars and policy-makers have expressed concerns about the crediting of coauthors in research publications. Most such problems fall into one of two categories, excluding deserving contributors or including undeserving ones. But our research shows that there is no consensus on “deserving” or on what type of contribution suffices for co-authorship award. Our study uses qualitative data, including interviews with 60 US academic science or engineering researchers in 14 disciplines in a set of geographically distributed research-intensive universities. We also employ data (...) from 161 website posts provided by 93 study participants, again US academic scientists. We examine a variety of factors related to perceived unwarranted exclusion from co-author credit and unwarranted inclusion, providing an empirically-informed conceptual model to explain co-author crediting outcomes. Determinants of outcomes include characteristics of disciplines and fields, institutional work culture, power dynamics and team-specific norms and decision processes. (shrink)

Comparative analysis of Koranic ethics and those of the Prophet Muḥammad recorded in Hadith literature.

The question of what the relevant entities or units of analysis for studying the dynamics of R&D are is central not only for adequate characterizations of the system of scientific and technological knowledge production but also for determining the correct focus for evaluation of R&D activities. Typically, R&D performance evaluations have focused not only on the wrong thing but have looked in the wrong place. Most evaluations have been project or program based. Often this focus is misleading. This article presents (...) a “knowledge value” framework as an alternative focus for understanding and evaluating scientific and technical work. This framework consists of two core concepts: the Knowledge Value Collective and the Knowledge Value Alliance. On the basis of the analysis of twenty-eight case studies of research activities, the authors present a typology of KVAs and conclude that they are a better object of evaluation than discipline-based projects. (shrink)

Based on results of an experiment, hypotheses are tested concerning the effects of computer use on decision commitment. The experiment required subjects to make an adoption decision regarding a hypothetical government agency's innovation. Subjects could choose from a variety of information sets, some computer based, some not, before making the decision. After their decision the subjects were given “new evidence” that contradicted their initial position. Two experimental treatments included more difficult access to the computer-based information and higher cost for the (...) computer-based information. Results indicate that access difficulty diminishes confidence in decisions and leads to lesser commitment. However, the cost of the computer information seems to have little bearing on decision commitment. (shrink)

We use the term “Zoomification” to refer to the primary mode of research collaboration used by academic researchers during much of the COVID-19 pandemic. While neither video-enabled technology or remote collaboration is new, the technology developments and needs that occurred during the pandemic proved exceptional, indeed a step-change in approaches to research collaboration. This study, based on in-depth interviews with 65 tenured and tenure track professors in dozens of United States universities in a wide variety of STEM disciplines, focuses on (...) collegial effects of Zoomification on research collaboration, including research with graduate students. We find diverse impacts according to career status, with younger faculty and doctoral students faring least well with an absence of face-to-face communication. As expected, impacts vary according to the nature of work, including the need to work in the field, reliance on laboratory equipment, laboratory animals, samples and high cost, centralized equipment. The effects of remote collaboration are to some extent predictable but there are results that point toward realignment in some of the ways research collaboration is established and maintained. We conclude with speculations about the long-range implications of Zoomification of research collaboration. (shrink)

We provide a critical assessment of the National Science Foundation's “broader impacts criterion” for peer review, which has met with resistance from the scientific community and been characterized as unlikely to have much positive effect due to poor implementation and adherence to the linear model heuristic for innovation. In our view, the weakness of NSF's approach owes less to these issues than to the misguided assumption that the peer review process can be used to leverage more societal value from research. (...) This idea, although undoubtedly well-meaning, is fundamentally flawed. Retooling or refining the Broader Impacts Criterion does not alter the fact that conventional peer review, based on specialized scientific and technical expertise, is not up to the task of ensuring adequate judgements about social impact. We consider some possible alternative approaches to providing greater social impact in science and include in our assessment past and current efforts at NSF and throughout the federal research establishment that address, in some cases having addressed for decades, the intentions and goals of the Broader Impacts Criterion, albeit using alternate mechanisms. We conclude that institution-building and explicit and targeted policy-making are more useful and democratically legitimate approaches to ensuring broad social impacts. (shrink)

This new edition of Introduction to Lattices and Order presents a radical reorganization and updating, though its primary aim is unchanged. The explosive development of theoretical computer science in recent years has, in particular, influenced the book's evolution: a fresh treatment of fixpoints testifies to this and Galois connections now feature prominently. An early presentation of concept analysis gives both a concrete foundation for the subsequent theory of complete lattices and a glimpse of a methodology for data analysis that is (...) of commercial value in social science. Classroom experience has led to numerous pedagogical improvements and many new exercises have been added. As before, exposure to elementary abstract algebra and the notation of set theory are the only prerequisites, making the book suitable for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students. It will also be a valuable resource for anyone who meets ordered structures. (shrink)

Philosophy; criticism and interpretation.

Ce travail sur la réduction segmentale (c.-à-d. la suppression ou réduction temporelle de segments) en français spontané nous a permis de proposer une méthode de recherche pour les études en linguistique, ainsi que d’apporter des connaissances sur la propension à la réduction des segments à l’oral. Cette méthode, appelée méthode ascendante, nous permet de travailler sans hypothèse spécifique sur la réduction. Les résultats suggèrent que les liquides, les glides et la fricative voisée /v/ sont plus facilement réduites que les autres (...) consonnes et que les voyelles nasales résistent mieux à la réduction que les voyelles orales. Parmi les voyelles orales, les voyelles orales arrondies ont tendance à être plus souvent réduites que les autres voyelles orales. (shrink)

This book offers an introduction to the Sophists of fifth-century Athens and a new overall interpretation of their thought. Since Plato first animadverted on their activities, the Sophists have commonly been presented as little better than intellectual mountebanks - a picture which Professor Kerferd forcefully challenges here. Interpreting the evidence with care, he shows them to have been part of an exciting and historically crucial intellectual movement. At the centre of their teaching was a form of relativism, most famously expressed (...) by Protagoras as 'Man is the measure of all things', and which they developed in a wide range of views - on knowledge and argument, virtue, government, society, and the gods. On all these subjects the Sophists did far more than simply provoke Plato to thought. Their contributions were substantial and serious; they inaugurated the debate on many central philosophical questions and decisively shifted the focus of philosophical attention from the cosmos to man. (shrink)

"First published by Oxford University Press, 1916."--Title page verso.

Various U.S. laws, such as the Clean Air Act and the Food Quality Protection Act, require additional protections for susceptible subpopulations who face greater environmental health risks. The main ethical rationale for providing these protections is to ensure that environmental health risks are distributed fairly. In this article, we (1) consider how several influential theories of justice deal with issues related to the distribution of environmental health risks; (2) show that these theories often fail to provide specific guidance concerning policy (...) choices; and (3) argue that an approach to public decision making known as accountability for reasonableness can complement theories of justice in establishing acceptable environmental health risks for the general population and susceptible subpopulations. Since accountability for reasonableness focuses on the fairness of the decision-making process, not the outcome, it does not guarantee that susceptible subpopulations will receive a maximum level of protection, regardless of costs or other morally relevant considerations. (shrink)

We provide a critical assessment of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) “broader impacts criterion” for peer review, which has met with resistance from the scientific community and been characterized as unlikely to have much positive effect due to poor implementation and adherence to the linear model heuristic for innovation. In our view, the weakness of NSF's approach owes less to these issues than to the misguided assumption that the peer review process can be used to leverage more societal value from (...) research. This idea, although undoubtedly well-meaning, is fundamentally flawed. Retooling or refining the Broader Impacts Criterion does not alter the fact that conventional peer review, based on specialized scientific and technical expertise, is not up to the task of ensuring adequate judgements about social impact. We consider some possible alternative approaches to providing greater social impact in science and include in our assessment past and current efforts at NSF and throughout the federal research establishment that address, in some cases having addressed for decades, the intentions and goals of the Broader Impacts Criterion, albeit using alternate mechanisms. We conclude that institution-building and explicit and targeted policy-making are more useful and democratically legitimate approaches to ensuring broad social impacts. (shrink)

Bridging the gap between the world of science and the realm of the spiritual, B. Alan Wallace introduces a natural theory of human consciousness that has its roots in contemporary physics and Buddhism. Wallace's "special theory of ontological relativity" suggests that mental phenomena are _conditioned_ by the brain, but do not _emerge_ from it. Rather, the entire natural world of mind and matter, subjects and objects, arises from a unitary dimension of reality that is more fundamental than these dualities, as (...) proposed by Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung. To test his hypothesis, Wallace employs the Buddhist meditative practice of _samatha_, refining one's attention and metacognition, to create a kind of telescope to examine the space of the mind. Drawing on the work of the physicist John Wheeler, he then proposes a more general theory in which the participatory nature of reality is envisioned as a self-excited circuit. In comparing these ideas to the Buddhist theory known as the Middle Way philosophy, Wallace explores further aspects of his "general theory of ontological relativity," which can be investigated by means of _vipasyana_, or insight, meditation. Wallace then focuses on the theme of symmetry in reference to quantum cosmology and the "problem of frozen time," relating these issues to the theory and practices of the Great Perfection school of Tibetan Buddhism. He concludes with a discussion of the general theme of complementarity as it relates to science and religion. The theories of relativity and quantum mechanics were major achievements in the physical sciences, and the theory of evolution has had an equally deep impact on the life sciences. However, rigorous scientific methods do not yet exist to observe mental phenomena, and naturalism has its limits for shedding light on the workings of the mind. A pioneer of modern consciousness research, Wallace offers a practical and revolutionary method for exploring the mind that combines the keenest insights of contemporary physicists and philosophers with the time-honored meditative traditions of Buddhism. (shrink)