Volume 20, Issue 2, February 2020, Page 49-50.

The quest for molecular mechanisms that guide axons or specify synaptic contacts has largely focused on molecules that intuitively relate to the idea of an “instruction.” By contrast, “permissive” factors are traditionally considered background machinery without contribution to the information content of a molecularly executed instruction. In this essay, I recast this dichotomy as a continuum from permissive to instructive actions of single factors that provide relative contributions to a necessarily collaborative effort. Individual molecules or other factors do not constitute (...) absolute instructions by themselves; they provide necessary context for each other, thereby creating a composite that defines the overall instruction. The idea of composite instructions leads to two main conclusions: first, a composite of many seemingly permissive factors can define a specific instruction even in the absence of a single dominant contributor; second, individual factors are not necessarily related intuitively to the overall instruction or phenotypic outcome. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Discussions AGOSTINO NIFO'S EARLY VIEWS ON IMMORTALITY Various historians of Renaissance philosophy have taken some notice of the prolific author and important philosopher of the late 15th and early 16th centuries, Agostino Nifo (1470-1538), x but no one has yet studied his writings in a methodical and exhaustive fashion. 2 He not only published philosophical works in logic, physics, psychology and metaphysics, but he also authored treatises (...) on humanist topics? Recent scholars have tended to concentrate their attention on his psychological doctrines, no doubt because he was one of the major opponents of Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1525) during the immortality controversy.4 Nifo published his De Immortalitate Animae in 1518 as a reply to the De lmmortalitate Ardmae, On the year of Nifo)s birth, see Bruno Nardi, Saggi sull'aristotelismo padovano dal secolo xav al xvl ('Florence, 1958), p. 284, n. 8. There is contemporary evidence that he died on January 18, 1538. See Bartolommeo Capasso, "Le cronache de li antiqui ri del regno di Napoli di D. Gaspare Fuscolill0," Archivio storico per le province napoletane, I (1876), p. 538. The standard bio-bibliography still remains Pasquale Tuozzi, "Agostino Nifo 9 le sue opere," Atti e memorie della R. Accademia di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Padova, Nuova scrie, XX (Padua, 1904), pp. 63-86. But see also Giuseppr Tommasino, Tra umanisti e filosoft (Maddaloni, 1921), Porte I, pp. 123-147; and Edward P. Mahoney, "A Note on Agostino Nifo," Philological Quarterly (forthcoming). z See Franeeseo Fiorentino, Pietro Pomponazzi; Studi storici su la scuola bolognese e padovana del secolo xvI (Florence, 1868); Carlo Giacon, La seconda scolastica: 1 grandi commentatori di San Tommaso (Milan, 1944); Etienne Gilson, "L'affaire de l'immortalit6 de l'fime ~t Venise at* d6but du xvIe si~ele," in Umanesirno europeo e uraanesimo veneziano, ed. Vittore Branea (Florence, 1963), pp. 31-61; Miehele Giorgiantonio, "Un nostro filosofo dimentieato dcl '400 (Luea Prassicio e Agostino Nifo)," Sophia, XVI (1948), pp. 212-214 and 303-312; Bruno Nardi, Saggi sulraristotelismo padovano dal secolo x]v al xvI (Florence, 1958); idem, Sigieri di Brabante nel pensiero del Rinascimento Italiano (Rome, 1945); Giovanni di NapoH, L'immortalitd delranima nel Rinascimento ('Turin, 1963); John Herman Randall, Jr., The School of Padua and the Emergence of Modern Science (Padua, 1961); Wilhelm Risse, Die Logik der Neuzeit, I (Stuttgart, 1964); Eugenio Garin, La cultura [ilosofica del Rinascimento Italiano (Florence, 1961); idem, Storia della filosofia italiana, II (Turin, 1966). See Nifo's De Armorum Literarumque Comparatione Commentariolus (Naples, 1526); De Pulchro et Amore (Rome, 1531); De Re Aulica (Naples, 1534); and Prima Pars Opusculorum (Venice, 1535). The second of these works has been studied by Jules Houdoy, La beaut~ des femmes dans la litt#rature et darts rart du xII" au xvIe si~cle; Analyse du livre de A. Niphus du Beau et de l'amour (Paris, 1876). 4 For recent discussion of the immortality controversy, see Etienne Gilson, "Autour de Pomponazzi, ProbMmatique de l'immortalit~ de l'~me en Italic au d~but du xvIe si~.cle," Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litt~raire du moyen dge, Ann6e 1961, pp. 163-179; Giovanni di Napoli, op. cit., especially pp. 227-338; Paul Oskar Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance (Stanford, 1964), pp. 72-90; Bruno Nardi, Studi su Pietro Pomponazzi (Florence, 1965); Martin Pine, "Pomponazzi and the Problem of 'Double Truth'," Journal ot the History of Ideas, XXIX (1968), pp. 163-176; Harold Shulsky, "Paduan Epistemology and the Doctrine of the One Mind," lournal of the History of Philosophy, VI (1968), pp. 341-361. [451] 452 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY (1516) of Pomponazzi, who had argued that personal immortality cannot be philosophically demonstrated, s But while these scholars correctly point out that Nifo abandoned an Averroist interpretation of Aristotle concerning the unity of the intellect and the immortality of the soul for the position which they assume to be Thomistic, they are not precise as to just when Nile made the shift.6 They have not observed that in his first two printed works, namely, the commentary on Averroes' Destructio Destructionum (1497) and the early commentary on the De Anima (1503), Nifo explicitly accepts Averroes as the... (shrink)

The ArgumentMany inventors, engineers, and scientists think in verbal images. Elmer Sperry (1860–1930), a noted American inventor, was able to “operate” in his mind's eye the machines he was developing. For inventors, engineers, and experimental scientists, visualization is often followed by construction of a physical model of the invention, which can be an experimental apparatus. The model, or apparatus, is then tested in increasingly complex environments and changes are made in the physical artifact until it is ready to be (...) used. Examples of this process of development are Sperry's development of a ship stabilizer for the U.S. Navy and a revolving mirror to be used by Albert Michelson in the determination of the speed of light. Thomas Edison called experimentation his development of an invention through the building and testing of a series of models. So, both scientists and inventors experiment. They are not discovering the “secrets of nature”: they are observing how artifacts – their physical creations – behave. These physical models of thought reflect the characteristics of the tools with which they were made. They are socially constructed, as well. (shrink)

Contrairement à l’attente du lecteur cultivé, ce n’est pas dans l’Analytique du sublime, mais dans celle du beau qu’on peut sentir l’influence de Longin sur Kant. Le rôle de la lecture de Burke est, lui, plus facile à cerner : Kant y trouve le fil directeur d’une opposition systématique du sublime et du beau et de leur nécessaire définition l’un par rapport à l’autre. La question du monisme ou du dualisme esthétique devient alors centrale et rejoint chez Kant (...) celle du sens de la place de la raison humaine. Quelle est la finalité de l’évolution? Et l’espèce humaine parvient-elle à « la fin dernière de sa destination morale » quand « l’art, ayant atteint sa perfection, redevient nature », selon la formule saisissante de Mutmasslicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte (VIII, 117-118, Pléiade, II, p. 513)? (shrink)

Au début de son livre sur la religion de Jésus, Geza Vermes exprimait son aversion pour la méthodologie. Selon lui, elle menace l'inventivité du chercheur, car « la recherche ne doit pas être liée par des règles trop strictes » et mieux vaut faire preuve de « pragmatisme ». La vigueur de la critique que John Meier adresse à son collègue illustre fort bien son refus de l'amateurisme. « Au bout du compte, dit-il dans l'introduction au troisième volume , en (...) écrivant ces trois tomes, j'ai été convaincu, à partir de ma propre expérience, que méthodologie et critères ont beau paraître ennuyeux, ils n'en sont pas moins indispensables pour empêcher le chercheur de trouver dans les données ce qu'il avait décidé d'y voir ». Dans les pages qui suivent J. Schlosser tente d'abord de donner une présentation générale de la méthode utilisée par Meier en la situant dans la discussion en cours, puis il analyse comment elle est appliquée concrètement dans la longue étude que l'auteur a consacrée au règne de Dieu.At the beginning of his book on the religion of Jesus, Geza Vermes expressed his own aversion to methodology. According to Vermes, it threatens the inventiveness of researchers because “research must not be bound by rules that are too strict” and it is better to rely on “pragmatism”. The vigorous critique that John Meier addresses to his colleague illustrates quite well his refusal of amateurism. Meier notes in his introduction to the third volume that he is convinced on the basis of his own experience that methodology and criteria may well appear boring, but that they are nonetheless indispensable in preventing the researcher from finding only what he had decided to look for in his data. In the article presented here, Jacques Schlosser endeavors to provide a general presentation of the method utilized by Meier by putting it into the context of present discussion, and then he analyzes how this method is applied concretely in the long study which Meier devotes to the reign of God. (shrink)

Dans ce beau livre, l'historienne Gabrielle Houbre nous livre une analyse fine et imagée de la généalogie des sentiments des jeunes filles et garçons de la bourgeoisie à l'âge romantique. Partant de la période de l'adolescence et allant jusqu'à la veille du mariage, l'auteur met en scène les différentes étapes éducatives des jeunes français sous l'angle de l'amour et de la sexualité. Cette étude nourrie de lectures très diverses ­ écrits intimes, essais, fictions, iconographie ­ propos...

Ce beau livre raconte l’histoire de Marie Isabelle, fille d’un cordonnier, au destin étonnant. À la fois « un récit de séquences biographiques » et un exercice de microhistoire dans le style de Carlo Ginzburg et d’Alain Corbin, le livre de Houbre se distingue pourtant de leurs récits en présentant l’itinéraire singulier d’une fille du peuple. Marie Isabelle a réussi comme femme de théâtre, modiste, femme d’affaires, et dresseuse de chevaux dans les cours royales de l’Europe du XIXe siècle. (...) À... (shrink)

Dans ce beau livre, l'historienne Gabrielle Houbre nous livre une analyse fine et imagée de la généalogie des sentiments des jeunes filles et garçons de la bourgeoisie à l'âge romantique. Partant de la période de l'adolescence et allant jusqu'à la veille du mariage, l'auteur met en scène les différentes étapes éducatives des jeunes français sous l'angle de l'amour et de la sexualité. Cette étude nourrie de lectures très diverses ­ écrits intimes, essais, fictions, iconographie ­ propos...

« Les bijoux ont été présents tout au long de ma vie » écrit Patrizia Ciambelli en présentant son ouvrage. Ce beau livre est, en effet, l'aboutissement d'un long parcours commencé sans doute au milieu des meubles d'ébène et des vitrines de la bijouterie paternelle située dans le quartier de Santa Lucia à Naples, un lieu interdit, en principe, aux femmes de la famille. Sa grande originalité est liée à la double expérience de son auteure, muséographique et ethnographique. Conservatrice (...) d... (shrink)

On ne peut que se réjouir de la multiplicité des initiatives éditoriales concernant les femmes et le féminisme depuis le beau succès de l'Histoire des femmes dirigée par Georges Duby et Michelle Perrot. L'absence de « women's studies » en France a certes retardé l'institutionnalisation à grande échelle d'enseignements spécifiques mais nombre de travaux ont cependant vu le jour qui suscitent aujourd'hui l'attention des éditeurs et du public. L'ouvrage dirigé par Michel de Manassein, De...

L'ouvrage se propose de relier la sous-représentation des femmes dans la sphère du pouvoir et la dévalorisation dont elles sont l'objet dans le champ culturel : littérature, cinéma, théâtre. Si le phénomène est de tous temps et de tous lieux, il semble avoir pris une acuité particulière en France et a été relativement peu étudié. Le livre est dédié à la mémoire de Michelle Coquillat dont un beau texte, Les femmes, le pouvoir et l'influence, forme la première contribution. Ce (...) texte es... (shrink)

"C'est en 2010 que le doyen Alassane Ndaw me confia l'édition d'un recueil de ses textes incluant des articles déjà publiés ainsi que des inédits. Il me demanda expressément de rédiger, à cet effet, outre une introduction, une préface, et m'assura que j'avais toute liberté de conduire le travail éditorial. L'ouvrage, Penser l'Afrique noire, se présente donc comme un ensemble de quatorze textes déjà publiés ou inédits, auxquels s'ajoute un quinzième constituant l'épilogue qui fut à l'origine une magistrale préface de (...) Ndaw au beau livre d'art d'Olivier Föllimi, Hommage l'Afrique (Paris, Editions de la Martinière, 2010, 336 p.). Toute sa vie, Alassane Ndaw a poursuivi une seule idée, un seul objectif : établir une puissante synthèse entre tradition et modernité, entre pensée africaine et philosophie occidentale, en vue d'aboutir à la définition d'une personnalité culturelle capable, en surmontant tout déchirement, de se remembrer. Il cherchait moins une philosophie africaine qu'une forme africaine de la philosophie. L'élaboration de cette forme africaine de la philosophie lui apparaissait comme la tâche par excellence de l'herméneutique, qu'il fallait d'abord créer. Aussi bien s'était-il constamment attelé à deux activités majeures : expliciter et interpréter les traditions culturelles africaines, c'est-à-dire créer l'herméneutique africaine en la faisant. De la permanence de cette tâche, en même temps que de son actualité, témoigne cet ouvrage posthume de ce grand maître de la pensée africaine. " Djibril Samb. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 371-373 [Access article in PDF] Book Review French Fiction in the Mitterrand Years: Memory, Narrative, Desire French Fiction in the Mitterrand Years: Memory, Narrative, Desire, by Colin Davis & Elizabeth Fallaize; 160pp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, $24.95. Like the Mitterrand era itself, Davis and Fallaize's French Fiction in the Mitterrand Years is somewhat uneven. The election of François Mitterrand in 1981 as the (...) President of the Fifth Republic was a milestone in modern French history. After the conservative politics of the 1960s and 70s, the election of a socialist president and legislature seemed to offer the possibility of a new political and intellectual atmosphere. Indeed, the first two years of Mitterrand's presidency brought sweeping reforms. However, several scandals, continued economic problems and later "cohabitation" with a right-wing legislative majority muted the original verve. Mired in partisan politics, the government often appeared ineffectual.As with the political arena, French fiction of the 1980s was produced under the shadow of another long-standing French institution--the nouveau roman. Again we find a new direction, a turning-away from the past during the 1980s. Yet there was no outright refusal. There were no manifestos or polemical articles written by budding novelists, no claim to Literature. As Annie Ernaux describes her work Une Femme (1987): "Mon projet est de nature littéraire [...]. Mais je souhaite rester, d'une certaine façon, au-dessous de la littérature" (My project is of a literary nature [...]. But I wish to remain, in a certain way, beneath literature (p. 144).This lack of pretension is important, for it helps us better understand the writing of the period. As Davis and Fallaize point out, in the fiction of the Mitterrand years we find a return to history, to the subject, and to storytelling, three areas disdained by the new novelists of the 1950s and 60s (pp. 12-15). But at the same time, there is not an elegiac return to the conventions of the past. There are no didactic tales of Lucien de Rubempré's lost illusions. A good example of this is Patrick Roegiers's Beau Regard (1990), the account of a dinner during which hardly anyone speaks, told by a narrator who knows no one else at the table. Davis and Fallaize note: "In these novels the event is merely an incident, the story no more than an anecdote, and the anecdote merely a fait divers" (p. 147). Although not inconsequential, argue Davis and Fallaize, there is an unquestionable modesty to these texts.In the introduction to their work Davis and Fallaize write: "The aim of the current book is to analyze some of the most important and interesting directions in French fiction through detailed discussions of a selection of texts, all published during François Mitterrand's period as President of the Fifth Republic (1981-95)" (p. 1). This is exactly what they accomplish, selecting six novels--Duras's L'Amant (The Lover, 1984), Pennac's Au bonheur des ogres (The Scapegoat, 1985), Semprun's La Montagne blanche (1986), Echenoz's Lac (Lake, 1989), Guilbert's A l'ami qui ne m'a pas sauvé la vie (To the Friend Who Did Not Save [End Page 371] my Life, 1990), and Ernaux's Passion simple (Simple Passion, 1991)--and spending one chapter on each. They also discuss some of the important features of the era's fiction including memory, especially of World War II, contemporary culture and postmodernism, and autofiction.However, the book's limited goal also leads to some of its problems. As a whole, the work lacks cohesion. Chapters often read like individual essays. Moreover, although some chapters are well-grounded critically and contextually, others are not. Finally, the conclusion is too brief to synthesize aptly the various topics discussed in the previous chapters. The reader does not have a solid grasp of the fictional landscape of the Mitterrand years, but rather, as the introduction indicated, knowledge of "some of the [...] interesting directions in French fiction."One of the most illuminating chapters considers Daniel... (shrink)

Do the ethical features of an artwork bear on its aesthetic value? This movie endorses misogyny, that song is a civil rights anthem, the clay constituting this statue was extracted with underpaid labor—are facts like these the proper bases for aesthetic evaluation? I argue that this debate has suffered from a false presupposition: that if the answer is yes (for at least some such ethical features), such considerations feature as pro tanto contributions to an artwork's overall aesthetic value, i.e., as (...) merits or flaws which make something have more or less overall aesthetic value. As the case of ethically laden, aesthetic evaluation makes clear, however, good aesthetic judgement is irreducibly multi-dimensional, e.g., "the movie has an engaging soundtrack, tasteful camera work, and takes a misogynistically prurient perspective on its female lead.'' Such a "non-summative" judgement refuses to reduce those various dimensions of aesthetic value to a single aggregate aesthetic evaluation, like "it's a 6/10" or "it's a pretty good movie!" I defend both the modest claim that such non-summative evaluations are not mistaken and the extremist claim that summative (i.e., unidimensional) aesthetic evaluation is defective by considering other domains of normative assessment in which summing seems inappropriate, notably including evaluations of people's character. (shrink)

Background Noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) designed to screen for fetal genetic conditions, is increasingly being implemented as a part of routine prenatal care screening in the United States (US). However, these advances in reproductive genetic technology necessitate empirical research on the ethical and social implications of NIPT among populations underrepresented in genetic research, particularly Black women with sickle cell disease (SCD).Methods Forty (N = 40) semi-structured interviews were conducted virtually with Black women in the US (19 participants with SCD; 21 (...) participants without SCD) from June 2021 to January 2022. We employed a qualitative approach to examine the study participants’ perceptions of the potential advancement of NIPT for screening SCD in the fetus. Data were analyzed using NVivo 12 qualitative software.Results The themes revealed the complexities involving the intersectional lived experiences of SCD, prenatal care, lack of synergy among health providers, and NIPT decision-making. The results further revealed that even when Black women have shared commonalities in their lived experiences while navigating SCD and motherhood, their perceptions of NIPT screening technologies are divergent.Conclusion Expanding the ethical discourse on the social implications of NIPT is critical to fully elucidate how Black women perceive NIPT’s utility, particularly as NIPT advances to screen for SCD in the fetus. Neglecting to include Black women with genetic conditions in empirical studies on NIPT may contribute to ongoing health inequities and limit and constrain reproductive choices among Black women with and without SCD. (shrink)

First published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Philosophy & Public Affairs, Volume 50, Issue 1, Page 6-49, Winter 2022.

Interroger la diversité des lectures antiques du Parménide pour dégager l’unité et la singularité du néoplatonisme, telle est l’ambition, pleinement tenue, du beau livre de Frédéric Fauquier. Celui-ci se donne comme une passionnante enquête méta-exégétique, qui ne se contente pas de retracer l’histoire des interprétations mais en dégage les stratégies et la visée. « Dès son origine, écrit F. Fauquier, le néoplatonisme est tradition, puisqu’il projette son origine dans l’œuvre de Platon » (p....

Doctors’ strikes are legally permissible in the UK, with the situation differing in other countries. But are they morally permissible? Doug McConnell and Darren Mann have systematically attempted to dismiss the arguments for the moral impermissibility of doctors’ strikes and creatively attempted to provide further moral justification for them. Unfortunately for striking doctors, they fail to achieve this. Meanwhile, junior doctors’ strikes have continued in the UK through 2023 and have now extended into 2024. In this response, which focuses on (...) the UK situation and specifically junior doctors’ strikes in the National Health Service (NHS) in England, I will demonstrate a central problem with their arguments—namely that they underplay the harms caused by prolonged doctors’ strikes by ignoring the harms to patients with cancer. This weakens their conclusion that strikes are morally permissible in terms of the conditions and thresholds they set. I then provide a psychological critique of their justification for strikes in terms of the interests of the public. It follows that invoking the controversial concept of supererogatory action is ungrounded but also absurd when you consider time-critical cancer care. If those representing striking doctors wish to maintain a modicum of moral respectability, they should mitigate for patients with cancer and negotiate reasonably and with urgency. (shrink)

Lettre à Margrit Rosenstock du 29 juillet 1917 (p. 17) Cher être singulier, – car c’est ce que tu es maintenant redevenue depuis des jours, et le temps que cette lettre arrive, cela fera déjà tellement longtemps que tu y seras de nouveau habituée. La période qui suit une permission est et demeure affreuse ; moi non plus je ne me sens pas encore bien dans ma peau d’ours. Ce dimanche qui m’avait momentanément rendu figure humaine était trop beau. (...) S’ajoute à cela pour moi maintenant la contrarié... (shrink)

This major new study by one of the most penetrating and persistent critics of philosophical and scientific orthodoxy, returns to Aristotle in order to examine the salient categories in terms of which we think about ourselves and our nature, and the distinctive forms of explanation we invoke to render ourselves intelligible to ourselves. The culmination of 40 years of thought on the philosophy of mind and the nature of the mankind Written by one of the world’s leading philosophers, the co-author (...) of the monumental 4 volume _Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations_ Uses broad categories, such as substance, causation, agency and power to examine how we think about ourselves and our nature Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of human nature are sketched and contrasted Individual chapters clarify and provide an historical overview of a specific concept, then link the concept to ideas contained in other chapters. (shrink)

In this paper, I reply to 18 of the essays on panpsychism in this issue. Along the way, I sketch out what a post-Galilean science of consciousness, one in which consciousness is taken to be a fundamental feature of reality, might look like.

Together again for the first time, Marx and Durkheim join forces in the pages of Disintegration: Bad Love, Collective Suicide, and the Idols of Imperial Twilight for a dialectical exploration of the moral economy of neoliberalism, animated, as it is not only by the capitalist chase for surplus value, but also by an immortal vortex of sacred powers. Classical sociology and psychoanalysis are reconstituted within Hegelian social ontology and dialectical method that differentiates between the ephemeral and free and the eternal (...) and fixed aspects of modern life. (shrink)

t. 1. Dialog s V. V. Davydovym -- t. 2. Nereshennye problemy razvivai︠u︡shchego obrazovanii︠a︡.

The concept of normal is so familiar that it can be hard to imagine contemporary life without it. Yet the term entered everyday speech only in the mid-twentieth century. Before that, it was solely a scientific term used primarily in medicine to refer to a general state of health and the orderly function of organs. But beginning in the middle of the twentieth century, normal broke out of scientific usage, becoming less precise and coming to mean a balanced condition to (...) be maintained and an ideal to be achieved. In Normality, Peter Cryle and Elizabeth Stephens offer an intellectual and cultural history of what it means to be normal. They explore the history of how communities settle on any one definition of the norm, along the way analyzing a fascinating series of case studies in fields as remote as anatomy, statistics, criminal anthropology, sociology, and eugenics. Cryle and Stephens argue that since the idea of normality is so central to contemporary disability, gender, race, and sexuality studies, scholars in these fields must first have a better understanding of the context for normality. This pioneering book moves beyond binaries to explore for the first time what it does—and doesn’t—mean to be normal. (shrink)

The recent piece ‘When Does Catholic Social Teaching Imply a Duty to be Vaccinated for the Common Good?’ by Stephen M.A. Bow (29 [4], 304–321) provides 12 criteria for the duty to vaccinate in acco...

Incorporating significant editorial changes from earlier editions, the fourth edition of Ludwig Wittgenstein's _Philosophical Investigations_ is the definitive _en face_ German-English version of the most important work of 20th-century philosophy The extensively revised English translation incorporates many hundreds of changes to Anscombe’s original translation Footnoted remarks in the earlier editions have now been relocated in the text What was previously referred to as ‘Part 2’ is now republished as _Philosophy of Psychology – A Fragment_, and all the remarks in it (...) are numbered for ease of reference New detailed editorial endnotes explain decisions of translators and identify references and allusions in Wittgenstein's original text Now features new essays on the history of the _Philosophical Investigations_, and the problems of translating Wittgenstein’s text. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

We apply an online optimization process based on machine learning to the production of Bose-Einstein condensates. BEC is typically created with an exponential evaporation ramp that is optimal for ergodic dynamics with two-body s-wave interactions and no other loss rates, but likely sub-optimal for real experiments. Through repeated machine-controlled scientific experimentation and observations our ’learner’ discovers an optimal evaporation ramp for BEC production. In contrast to previous work, our learner uses a Gaussian process to develop a statistical model of the (...) relationship between the parameters it controls and the quality of the BEC produced. We demonstrate that the Gaussian process machine learner is able to discover a ramp that produces high quality BECs in 10 times fewer iterations than a previously used online optimization technique. Furthermore, we show the internal model developed can be used to determine which parameters are essential in BEC creation and which are unimportant, providing insight into the optimization process of the system. (shrink)