In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 277-278 [Access article in PDF] John Hedley Brooke, Margaret J. Osler, and Jitse M. van der Meer, editors. Science in Theistic Contexts: Cognitive Dimensions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Journals Division, 2001. Pp. xiii + 376. Cloth, $39.00. Paper, $25.00. Some twenty years ago, when I submitted a dissertation proposal to explore connections between theologies of creation and views of scientific (...) knowledge in the seventeenth century, my doctoral committee was not initially enthusiastic—my idea might make a good dissertation in religion, but was it really history of science? I doubt I would have a similar experience today. Not only has the "warfare" thesis of science and religion been laid permanently to rest, historians have begun seriously to question whether it makes sense even to treat "religion" and "science" in an essentialist manner as separate ways of thinking that do not ordinarily interact. Many detailed case studies demonstrating a variety of fascinating, often important connections between science and religion have appeared from leading scholars in the past two decades. This trend continues in the latest volume of Osiris, which contains sixteen essays documenting various ways in which religious beliefs have influenced the actual content and presentation of science.The volume opens with two companion essays laying out the terrain. First, Brooke engages the new methodological and conceptual problems that confront historians following the demise of the "warfare" thesis. Then Stephen Wykstra offers criteria for sorting out the various roles for metaphysical and religious beliefs (which he distinguishes) in shaping scientific knowledge. The case studies begin with E. Jamil Ragep's essay on medieval Islamic astronomy, arguing that religion sometimes had a constructive role—a rather novel claim for Islamic science, he points out. Noah J. Efron and Menachem Fisch show how early modern Jewish exegetical practices influenced David b. Solomon Gans's interpretations of astronomical texts, and quite possibly his interpretation of nature also. A Christian astronomer is next, as Peter Barker and Bernard R. Goldstein detail how Johannes Kepler's theology contributed directly to the discovery of scientific laws. Maurice A. Finnocchiaro then reviews various accounts of the Galileo affair, finding far more conflict in the subsequent historiography of the events than in the trial itself.Moving from astronomy to natural philosophy, Margaret G. Cook's essay on Robert Boyle examines the web of connections between theology, the mechanical philosophy, and [End Page 277] "the Aristotelian philosophy that he sought to replace." She demonstrates that Boyle used the classical art/nature distinction "to interpret the biblical account of the Creation and to argue that chemical techniques offered experimental confirmation that the world, created by art, worked by the same mechanical principles as artificial objects, not by the inherent agency of Aristotelian nature" (136). Margaret J. Osler also writes about Boyle. Contrary to the traditional view that final causes were expunged from science by the mechanical philosophy—a view that originated in the "positivism and scientific optimism" of the postwar period (168)—she proves that final causality remained central to the thought of Boyle and Pierre Gassendi. The essay by Stephen D. Snobelen presents substantial evidence that the famous General Scholium, appended to the second edition of Isaac Newton's Principia, was a carefully worded declaration of Newton's heterodox theology. "A Trinitarian," Snobelen concludes, "could not have written the General Scholium" (186). He also shows the degree to which Newton's theology shaped his overall natural philosophy, decisively debunking the late Richard S. Westfall's view that such influences could not be found.The final seven essays are mainly devoted to nineteenth-century science. Michael J. Crowe documents several ways in which Christian beliefs about divine goodness and the Incarnation affected astronomy. Martin Fichman shows how Alfred Russel Wallace's theism—not merely a vague spiritualism, as traditional accounts claim—"shaped the cognitive content of his mature evolutionary synthesis, which included a theoretical reconceptualization of the scope of natural selection" (227). In a revisionist account of Charles Darwin's philosophy of "nature," Phillip R. Sloan challenges the received view that... (shrink)

The volume contains studies by eleven distinguished scholars, concerning changes in ethical and religious consciousness during this important era of Western ...

Idiopathic Parkinson’s disease impairs working memory, but the exact nature of this deficit in terms of the underlying cognitive mechanisms is not well understood. In this study patients with mild clinical symptoms of PD were compared with matched healthy control subjects on a computerized battery of tests designed to assess spatial working memory and verbal working memory. In the spatial working memory task, subjects were required to recall a sequence of four locations. The verbal working memory task was methodologically identical (...) except for the modality of the stimuli used, requiring subjects to orally recall a sequence of six digits. In either case, half of the sequences were structured in a way that allowed ‘chunking’, while others were unstructured. This manipulation was designed to dissociate the strategic component of task performance from the memory-load component. Mild medicated patients with PD were impaired only on the structured versions of the verbal working memory tasks. The analogous deficit in the spatial working memory was less pronounced. These findings are in agreement with the hypothesis that working memory deficits in PD reflect mainly the executive component of the tasks and that the deficits may be at least partly modality-independent. (shrink)

Studies in philosophy: I. Tufts, J.H. On moral evolution. II. Willcos, W.F. The expansion of Europe in its influence upon population. III. Woods, R.A. Democracy a new unfolding of human power. IV. Sharp, F.C. An analysis of the moral judgment. V. Woodbridge, F.J.E. The problem of consciousness. VI. Norton, E.L. The intellectual element in music. VII. Raub, W.L. Pragmatism and Kantianism. VIII. Lyman, E.W. The influence of pragmatism upon the status of theology.--Studies in psychology: IX. Delabarre, E.B. Influence of surrounding (...) objects on the apparent direction of a line. X. Swift, E.J. Beginning a language; a contribution to the psychology of learning. XI. Pierce, A.H. An appeal from the prevailing doctrine of a detached subconsciousness. XII. Woodworth, R.S. The cause of a voluntary movement. XIII. Burnett, C.T. An experimental test of the classical theory of volition. (shrink)

We argue that in contemporary business organizations, in which fundamental purpose is construed to be increased value—especially in ‘participative’ organizations, in which non–hierarchal interaction (for example, work teams) is the norm; and in ‘adaptive’ organizations, in which unpredictable change is the rule—a process of values covenanting will be much more valueable than just espoused values or even values covenants. We propose such a process model for organizational values covenanting and argue that such covenanting reflects an anthropomorphism of the human character (...) development process, validated in terms of the theory of viable systems. (shrink)

We argue that in contemporary business organizations, in which fundamental purpose is construed to be increased value—especially in ‘participative’ organizations, in which non–hierarchal interaction (for example, work teams) is the norm; and in ‘adaptive’ organizations, in which unpredictable change is the rule—a process of values covenanting will be much more valueable than just espoused values or even values covenants. We propose such a process model for organizational values covenanting and argue that such covenanting reflects an anthropomorphism of the human character (...) development process, validated in terms of the theory of viable systems. (shrink)

This article, prompted by an extended essay published in the Journal of Medical Ethics by Charles Foster, and the current controversy surrounding the case of Vincent Lambert, analyses the legal and ethical arguments in relation to the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment from patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness. The article analyses the legal framework through the prism of domestic law, case-law of the European Court of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and examines (...) the challenge to the ethical consensus made by Foster. It concludes that the right approach remains a version of the approach that has prevailed for the last 25 years since the decision in Airedale NHS Trust v Bland[1993] AC 789, refined to reflect that that there is now, and rightly, a much more limited place for judgments made about the ‘burden’ of treatment or the quality of life enjoyed by the person made on the basis of assumptions about that person as a category as opposed to investigation of that person as an individual human being. (shrink)

Charles Trinkaus can be counted among the eminent intellectual and cultural historians of the Renaissance. This new collection of his articles brings together pieces published since 1982. The studies are concerned with Italian Renaissance humanists and philosophers who tended to affirm human capacities to shape earthly existence, despite the traditional limitations proposed by some scholastics and astrologers. Professor Trinkaus holds that, without abandoning their Christian faith, or their acceptance of physical influences from the cosmos, these writers, in their stress (...) on human capacities, were responding to the vigorous activism of their contemporaries in all aspects of their existence. The final four papers also provide a series of reflections on the modern historiography of the Renaissance. (shrink)

Introduction.--pt. I. The demonology of Thomas Aquinas.--pt. II. Thomas Aquinas as mediator between earlier and later beliefs.--Conclusion.--Bibliography (p. 185-188).

Spinoza and modern thought, by Lawson P. Chambers.-- Existence and value, by George R. Dodson.-- The realm of necessity, by Charles E. Cory.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Lorenzo Valla on the Problem of Speaking about the TrinityCharles TrinkausLorenzo Valla was a major Renaissance humanist critic of scholasticism, and a proponent of empirical and language-based thought. He also ventured into the field of theology with his humanistic preconceptions that not ancient philosophy but the literary arts and philology should provide the proper model for its study. Salvatore Camporeale in his major studies of Valla, and in a (...) recent notable article comparing the humanistic method of theologizing of Valla with the scholastic method of Thomas Aquinas, established the major features of this new mode of theologizing as based on Biblical philology and study of the Church Fathers. 1 This was taken up by Erasmus and given its fully developed form. 2 Valla was rash enough to apply his methodology to the central Christian doctrine of the Trinity, not without some disastrous results in his first effort in the 1439 redaction of his Repastinatio dialectice et philosophie, but with greater doctrinal acceptability in his later revised versions of 1448 and 1452. 3 Like all theological mysteries, the Trinity defied both ordinary human language and the most rudimentary rules of thought, i.e., grammar, logic, and “common sense.” 4 Hence there was a [End Page 27] great challenge and a real danger of falling into error in talking about the Trinity either to establish its true “nature,” or to defend it against criticism. Valla’s efforts may be considered likely paradigms of some of the ways language study played a role in unraveling one of the Christian religion’s central mysteries.It was one of Lorenzo Valla’s main convictions that the theology and religious and moral thought of his own age (namely Aristotelian scholasticism) should be purged of philosophy, which he regarded as a seedbed of heresy. Yet he himself, though a rhetorician, was not entirely pure of philosophy...just as elements of philosophical thought remained as indispensable ingredients of the rhetorical teachings of Cicero and Quintilian. Thus Valla, following them, especially Quintilian, found it necessary to retain some simplified elements of systematic thought in his primordia of linguistic theory. Nevertheless, he intended to demonstrate that a more satisfactory description of the Trinity could be attained by adhering to these rules of language than that arrived at by the scholastics seeking to affirm it by metaphysical principles.I: The Repastinatio of 1439Valla in his proem to the 1439 redaction of the Repastinatio stresses the libertas a philosopher should have to think and express his own thoughts and protests the compulsion to think in Aristotelian modes manifested by scholastic philosophers:Why therefore should we fear to contradict this man, especially while following the approved custom of freely stating what we believe? Certainly they treat themselves badly who commit themselves to some sect in which it is necessary to praise everything of the one they follow, whatever it is. We have insisted on that liberty in other books and will hold to it in these. 5In keeping with these sentiments Valla in this first redaction boldly sets forth his own views. For reasons which will be seen he becomes more careful to refute his opponents and justify his own views in the later two redactions. In this first redaction he begins by setting forth his reduction of the ten Aristotelian/Porphyrian/Boethian categories to three “elements,” using a term found in Quintilian. These are “substance,” “quality” and “action.” He follows this up by reducing the so-called six transcendentals to the one, multi-meaninged term res, or “thing,” which is that about which one is talking, or the subject that can comprise substance, quality and action. 6 [End Page 28]Because the res or “thing” is never substance only, since substance can never be perceived except by means of its qualities or actions which are manifest to the perceiver, Valla proposes a new term for the combination of substance, quality and action: “consubstance.” “There are two species of [consubstance],” he writes, “ ‘soul’ and ‘body.’ A third which is composed of both of these may be added, which is ‘animal.’” 7Just before introducing the term “consubstance” for things in their combination of the three elements, and without... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:684 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33:4 OCTOBER 1995 "Private I.anguage" and the pivotal paper in the Stoic section, "The Conjunctive Model," bring out a third feature of Brunschwig's method. Many of his essays take their start from a small text or a relatively local problem, one which does not primafacie bear significantly on large philosophical issues. Yet in a rigorously conceived philosophical system, the whole is often (...) reflected in the details; where possible Brunschwig elicits the larger significance. He shows how Epicurean physics provides a normative model for Epicurean psychology without falling into the reductionist error; the Epicurean does extrapolate from physical theory to human experience, but in so doing he does not forget that human beings are not just atomic; they are atomic compounds. Reductionism does not follow from materialism, for Epicurus or for us. Similarly in "The Conjunctive Model" Brunschwig connects, in a manner which is speculative but nevertheless compelling, a important Stoic thesis in logic (that a conjunction is false if even one of its conjuncts is false) with a comprehensive understanding of Stoic ethics and physics, thereby giving definite content to the Stoic claims about the coherence of their system. The other Stoic papers focus on ontology and logic, showing how central these are to Stoicism. The titles speak for themselves: "Remarks on the Stoic Theory of the Proper Noun," "Remarks on the Classification of Simple Propositions in Hellenistic Logics," "The Stoic Theory of the Supreme Genus and Platonic Ontology," and "Did Diogenes of Babylon Invent the Ontological Argument?" (the answer is 'no'). One essay ("On a Stoic Way of Not Being") disguises by its title a crucial contribution to the philosophy of mind. The papers on Scepticism include "The 6oov ~t~ x~ ~.6"f.t 9 Formula in Sextus Empiricus," a definitive treatment of a verbal formula crucial to understanding the precise character of his sceptical stance, and "Sextus Empiricus on the xptxfl0tov," the only paper in the volume which has previously appeared in English. The papers "Once Again on Eusebius on Aristocles on Timon on Pyrrho" and "The Title of Timon's lndalmoi: From Odysseus to Pyrrho" deal with early Pyrrhonism, for which the evidence is so thin that no firm conclusions can be drawn. Yet even here Brunschwig's care and skill are exemplary, and his argument that we should look to Timon rather than Pyrrho as the creator of Pyrrhonism is as convincing as anything could be in this area. This is a collection which specialists must read and even nonspecialists will value for its elegant combination of rigor, intellectual honesty, and philosophical insight. BRAD INWOOD University of Toronto Michael J. B. Allen. Nuptial Arithmetic: Marsilio Ficino's Commentary on the Fatal Number in Book VIII of Plato's Republic. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. PP. x + 291. Cloth, $5o.oo. Marsilio Ficino was born in 1433 and died in 1499 at the age of 66. He would have been pleased if he could have known that. For three years before in 1496 (or slightly earlier) he declared in his Commentary on the Fatal Number that 6 was the perfect number and BOOK R~VIEWS 685 that contemplations of the sextile relations of the planets might lead to the return of the golden age of Saturn "some day," This is the fifth volume of Michael Allen's seminal studies of Ficino's Platonic commentaries; if his notable additional articles on further Ficino commentaries were assembled, as they sometime must be, it would be his sixth--not that he takes the same pleasure in numbers as his subject Ficino did. But 6 is the key to Ficino's unraveling of Plato's "fatal number" in Republic 546. To end the suspense, Ficino's solution, aided by Aristotle, Politics V. 1316, is (4 + 3 + 5)3or (6 x 2)3 or 1728. But 1728 what? There is no clue. The book is itself a valuable contribution to the history of philosophy. Allen reviews the history of this topos up to Brumbaugh and Rees. Although Ficino's entry was known and discussed in the sixteenth century, it has been lost from sight since, and Alien restores it importantly to... (shrink)