Wicked problems’ are tricky to solve because of their many interconnected components and a lack of any single optimal solution. At the science–policy interface, all problems can look wicked: research exposes the complexity that is relevant to designing, executing and implementing policy fit for ambitious human needs. Expertise in philosophical research can help to navigate that complexity.

We present an argument against physicalism in two steps: 1) Physics reduces the world to a mathematical structure; 2) The notion of 'structure' only makes sense when carried by something and interpreted by something else. Physicalism does not allow such a carrier and interpreter at a fundamental level, hence it must be wrong. An extended notion of Mind is presented as the fundamental 'hardware' which is necessary by the argument. In particular, qualia correspond to the 'monitor component' of mind. Some (...) ideas are presented on how to extend this mind-matter relation to a more elaborate picture: (1) A system of two complementary reductionisms (one physical, the other mental) may hint toward a deeper reality in which mind and the physical world are closely entangled. (2) A division of mind into a conscious 'monitor' and an unconscious 'processor' is suggested using the analogy of dreams. Finally, the problem of Solipsism and the existence of 'minds other than my own' is discussed. (shrink)

Reinvention of the form of expression is a conceptual approach characteristic for the evolution of all arts. This research study provides one such step forward in the advancement of scientific paper, a standard form of expression in natural sciences, toward more progressive terrains. The paper adopts the form of a theatrical play where a scientific family of four attempts to find the way around a writer’s block (Act I). Their idealess sense of confinement is overcome through arts or, more specifically, (...) through scientific research implementing the aesthetics of music as its key element. The characters record compositions differing in the degrees of consonance, rhythmicity and tonality, and play them to birds to observe their vocal and behavioral responses (Act II). They note that the birdsong volume drops significantly when the piano tunes, especially the compositionally complex ones, are played to the birds and increases signifcantly when the white noise of ocean waves is played. The bird count experiment proves indirectly that the birdsong volume reduction is an auditory response of the birds to music rather than the effect of their migrating to or away from the sound source. This science with the flavor of art elevates the characters beyond the limits of their confinement and they, exalted and uplifted, gain ideas for creative research in their own disciplines of biomedical science (Act III). They relinquish the newly gained freedom in favor of embracing love for humanity that underlies medical research and return to their confinement, where they conduct, in the coda of the paper, a series of experiments that venture beyond musicology and ornithology and fall in the domains of tissue engineering and drug delivery, but also psychology (Act III). First, sparrow nests are used as templates for tissue engineering constructs, which facilitate the growth of human fibroblastic cells better than their artificial, gridded replicas. Next, the shell of an Easter egg, predominantly calcite in composition, is used with success as a drug delivery carrier. Lastly, the bird nest drawing experiment demonstrates a greater mental health of children than that of the adults, correlating with one of the overarching points of the paper, which is to present children as a model for grownups to follow rather than the other way around. Over the course of the play, the characters discuss the value of the various fusions between art and science, question the limits of human language and repeatedly go off-topic to celebrate the freeness of the creative thinking process. The play reports on real-life research methods and scientific results through a narrative, without diminishing their empirical rigor and analytical accuracy. (shrink)

Scientific papers written as dialogues evoke Platonist philosophical discourses and are foreseen as elementary forms of expression in neoclassical scientific renaissance. Here we report on a study of the Brazil nut effect in a series of macroscopic and microscopic systems in the form of a play in three acts. The nut effect predicting the segregation of smaller grains at the bottom of the mixture and larger ones at the top was observed in a polydisperse mix of manually shaken playground pebbles, (...) albeit following different kinetics than in an agitated pile of chess pieces. Common sense predicts that vertical, gravity-driven segregation in colloidal dispersions with heterogeneous particle size distributions is such that larger particles would settle toward the bottom and the lighter ones cream at the top. Here we refute this expectation and demonstrate that segregation of colloidal particles in the vertical direction conforms to the Brazil nut effect when the agitation is delivered in the forms of vortex mixing or audio vibration, but not when the colloids are manually shaken. The effect is demonstrated on aqueous dispersions of hydroxyapatite and iron oxide nanoparticles. Kinetic experiments showed that segregation increases with the agitation time in mixtures of pebbles and with the post-agitation aging time in fine particle colloids. The particle size gradient established due to agitation-induced segregation led to a corresponding gradient in optoelectronic properties—band gap, conductivity, lattice acoustics—in the vertical direction of the colloidal column for both types of nanoparticles. Such morphological gradients induced by the Brazil nut effect can be harnessed as affordable and facile templates for the synthesis of functionally gradient materials. Discussion of the mechanism and the application potential of the observed effect in colloidal and coarse systems is enriched with a literature review of this curious effect and entwined with the literary elements of the dramaturgical narrative involving a family of scientist in exile from mainstream scientific institutions: the mother, the father, an elementary school boy and a kindergarten girl. The narrative conforms in its structure to the shape of a Brazil nut and presents the first research study whose findings are enacted through a dream. The play questions the humaneness and creative prospects of modern science and celebrates children’s science projects performed with meager resources and a plentiful of imagination, showing that they could be gateways to important scientific discoveries. (shrink)

Watching children at play is favorite pastime for many elderlies. However, the growing safety concerns have prompted parents to become increasingly resistant to the idea of having strangers watch their children in parks and playgrounds. This creates an intergenerational gap in communication with potentially detrimental consequences for all social groups. Oral interviews were conducted and written surveys distributed that validated the hesitance of seniors, especially in the United States, to spend time at children’s playgrounds despite their finding the vicinity of (...) children stimulating. Behavioral observations were conducted at playgrounds to quantify the positive and negative effects of supervisors’ ages on children’s play and thus indirectly assess whether there can be mutual benefits of making the presence of older people at playgrounds, which is customary in many countries, more culturally acceptable. Observations focused on the behavior of a pair of siblings showed that there is an increased probability of both conflicts and joyful expressions when the children were in the presence of a middle-aged person than when they were watched over by the elderlies. This has suggested that freer expressions stimulated in the presence of parent-like figures simultaneously induce the undesired and the desired behavioral patterns in the form of propensities for conflict and propensities for expressions of joy, respectively. This has confirmed that the observational stance has a critical effect on the observational outcome and that the age of the watchers has an effect on the behavior of children at play, with the age correlating directly with the calmness of the play, but also with a lower degree of exhilaration. (shrink)

Este trabajo indaga las resemantizaciones del mito de Venus en tres poetas latinoamericanos: Julián del Casal, Rubén Darío y José Lezama Lima teniendo en cuenta la intertextualidad y las poéticas correspondientes. This paper analyses the Venus myth appropiation into the poetry of Julián del Casal, Rubén Darío and José Lezama Lima considering their poetry and intertextuality.

En este artículo abordamos registros narrativos producidos por profesores de enseñanza secundaria y superior de provincias del noroeste argentino, con el objetivo de hacer memorias de las experiencias pedagógicas, focalizando en algunas aperturas que podrían capitalizarse para el trazado de lineamientos orientados a la revisión de la escolarización secundaria en la pospandemia. Se conformó un corpus con los registros producidos por 74 profesores y profesoras en diferentes momentos del año 2020. Los registros fueron producidos en bitácoras virtuales alojadas en dos (...) aulas virtuales de plataformas digitales. Las narrativas fueron abordadas reflexivamente en encuentros sincrónicos quincenales con los participantes con el objeto de explorar colectivamente sus significaciones. El trabajo expone tres ejes sobre los que se ha realizado el ejercicio de _memoriar_ la pandemia y concluye recuperando algunos aprendizajes profesionales construidos en el transcurso de la experiencia como evento crítico de la vida escolar. (shrink)

El proceso educativo sufrió un drástico cambio debido a la pandemia que padecimos a nivel mundial, tuvimos que aprender a usar las herramientas tecnológicas en la enseñanza y en el aprendizaje. Por lo que siguiendo esta tendencia planteamos la utilización de la aplicación “Física M-Lab” en su primera versión para la enseñanza de la cinemática.Como estamos en el campo de las ciencias sociales, utilizamos el diseño cuasiexperimental que nos permitió concluir en que los aprendizajes mejoraron significativamente.

gloria evangelina anzaldúa has been hailed as one of most important cultural theorists of the past fifty years. Her work, especially her groundbreaking Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, continues to animate many contemporary discourses, especially those concerned with cultural and linguistic hybridity, intersectionality, and women of color feminism. Yet one may ask: What is Anzaldúa's distinctive contribution to contemporary discourses of spirituality and religion? In a 1993 interview, Anzaldúa herself lays bare the relative inattention that critics have given to (...) her understanding of spirituality: One of the things that doesn't get talked about is the connection between body... (shrink)

Abstract:Queer Chicana author Gloria Anzaldúa often used visual art to develop and teach her theories, which address issues relating to social identity and institutions as well as creativity and spirituality. Her large collection of archived sketches at the Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa Papers at the University of Texas demonstrates her drive to visually express ideas. The archive also holds unpublished works and talks in which Anzaldúa discusses her concepts of creativity and the image-making process. Despite the prevalence of images in (...) her work, few scholars have analyzed her artwork or her writings on creativity. To address this gap, I explore the question: How do Anzaldúa's sketches inform her theoretical concepts of creativity and image-making? Analyzing her visual work significantly contributes to academic scholarship, especially for scholars looking to engage with Anzaldúan theorizing beyond that of her written works. (shrink)

In "Resonanzen", scholars and artists explore aspects of memory and recollection in music. Composers Georg Friedrich Haas and Isabel Mundry set out how their art involves memory (as well as oblivion). Music historians Laurenz Lütteken, Nicole Schwindt and Klaus Aringer scrutinize the role of memory in early modern music; Anselm Gerhardt, Peter Franklin, László Vikárius and Harald Haslmayr follow up the theme for compositional practice of the 19th and 20th centuries. Aaron Williamon adds a psychological perspective on memory in (...) musical performance. (shrink)

Our paper examines Gloria Anzaldúa’s critical appropriation of Mexican philosophical sources, especially in the writing of Borderlands/La Frontera. We demonstrate how Anzaldúa developed a transnational Philosophy of Mexicanness, effectively contributing to what has been recently characterized as the “multi-generational project to pursue philosophy from and about Mexican circumstances” (Vargas). More specifically, we recover “La Mexicana en la Chicana” by paying careful attention to Anzaldúa’s Mexican sources, both those she explicitly cites and those we have discovered while conducting archival research using (...) the Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa Papers from the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. The three sections of our paper: 1) define the terms Mexican and philosophy in conversation with Anzaldúa’s work, 2) examine the Mexican philosophical sources that Anzaldúa cites in Borderlands/La Frontera, and 3) present the other major Mexican philosophical influences on Anzaldúa that we have found in her archive. The eight Mexican philosophical sources we discuss here include: José Vasconcelos (1882-1959), Miguel León-Portilla (1926-2019), Juana Armanda Alegría (1938- ), Octavio Paz (1914-1998), Samuel Ramos (1897-1959), Rosario Castellanos (1925-1974), Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz (1648-1695), and Jorge Carrión (1913-2005). (shrink)

This article examines Gloria Anzaldúa’s critical appropriation of Mexican philosophical sources, especially in the writing of Borderlands/La Frontera. We argue that Anzaldúa effectively contributed to la filosofía de lo mexicano by developing an Inter-American Philosophy of Mexicanness. More specifically, we recover “La Mexicana en la Chicana” by paying careful attention to Anzaldúa’s Mexican sources, both those she explicitly cites and those we have discovered while conducting archival research using the Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa Papers at the Benson Latin American Collection (...) at the University of Texas at Austin. The eight Mexican philosophical sources we examine and discuss here are: José Vasconcelos (1882-1959), Miguel León-Portilla (1926-2019), Juana Armanda Alegría (1938- ), Octavio Paz (1914-1998), Samuel Ramos (1897-1959), Rosario Castellanos (1925-1974), Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz (1648-1695), and Jorge Carrión (1913-2005). (shrink)

ArgumentThe history of Italian “popular science” publishing from the 1860s to the 1930s provides the context to explore three phenomena: the building of a scientific community, the entering of women into higher education, and (male) scientists’ reaction to women in science. The careers of Evangelina Bottero (1859–1950) and Carolina Magistrelli (1857–1939), science writers and teachers in an institute of higher education, offer hints towards an understanding of those interrelated macro phenomena. The dialogue between a case study and the general (...) context in a comparative perspective will help us understand why Italian scientists, in the last decades of the nineteenth century, unlike their British colleagues, did not close the doors of the university on women. The case confirms the history of so-called popular science as a useful tool for historians of science generally and also when dealing with the awakening of a new social actor: in this case the “new woman” who, from the 1870s, was determined to take up science in a professional capacity. (shrink)