For five individuals, a social network was constructed from a series of his or her dreams. Three important network measures were calculated for each network: transitivity, assortativity, and giant component proportion. These were monotonically related; over the five networks as transitivity increased, assortativity increased and giant component proportion decreased. The relations indicate that characters appear in dreams systematically. Systematicity likely arises from the dreamer's memory of people and their relations, which is from the dreamer's cognitive social (...) network. But the dream social network is not a copy of the cognitive social network. Waking life social networks tend to have positive assortativity; that is, people tend to be connected to others with similar connectivity. Instead, in our sample of dream social networks assortativity is more often negative or near 0, as in online social networks. We show that if characters appear via a random walk, negative assortativity can result, particularly if the random walk is biased as suggested by remote associations. (shrink)

The recent scholarly promotion of Pierre Gassendi to a key position in the formative modern period raises doubts about the portrayal of Descartes as “the father” of the post-Scholastic philosophical conceptualization. I defend the Cartesio-centric account against Thomas M. Lennon’s elliptical alternative. The defense necessitates a reassessment of the root nature of Descartes’s contribution—specifically of the interplay between philosophy and science, the latter being the crucial extraphilosophical component of the new practico-cognitive ensemble. This raises questions about the “philosophically” of (...) Descartes’s activity, and with that questions about the quality of modernity. By way of explaining Gassendis nonoriginative position, his attitude toward the post-Scholastic Humanist thought that Descartes simply repudiated is examined. (shrink)

In 1988, David Hull presented an evolutionary account of science. This was a direct analogy to evolutionary accounts of biological adaptation, and part of a generalized view of Darwinian selection accounts that he based upon the Universal Darwinism of Richard Dawkins. Criticisms of this view were made by, among others, Kim Sterelny, which led to it gaining only limited acceptance. Some of these criticisms are, I will argue, no longer valid in the light of developments in the formal modeling of (...) evolution, in particular that of Sergey Gavrilets’ work on adaptive landscapes. If we can usefully recast the Hullian view of science as being driven by selection in terms of Gavrilets’ and Kaufmann’s view of there being “giant components” of high-fitness networks through any realistic adaptive landscape, we may now find it useful to ask what the adaptive pressures on science are, and to extend the metaphor into a full analogy. This is in effect to reconcile the Fisherianism of the Dawkins–Hull approach to selection and replicators, with a Wrightean drift account of social constructionist views of science, preserving, it is to be hoped, the valuable aspects of both. (shrink)

This work analyzes and characterizes the spread of the COVID-19 disease in Mexico, using complex networks and optimization approaches. Specifically, we present two methodologies based on the principle of the rupture for the GC and Newton's law of motion to quantify the robustness and identify the Mexican municipalities whose population causes a fast spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Specifically, the first methodology is based on several characteristics of the original version of the Vertex Separator Problem, and the second is based (...) on a new mathematical model. By solving VSP, we can find nodes that cause the rupture of the giant component. On the other hand, solving the NLM can find more influential nodes for the entire system’s development. Specifically, we present an analysis using a coupled social network model with information about the main characteristics of the contagion and deaths caused by COVID-19 in Mexico for 19 months. This work aims to show through the approach of complex networks how the spread of the disease behaves, and, thus, researchers from other areas can delve into the characteristics that cause this behavior. (shrink)

Needs of our country in the «Ukrainian national idea – XXI » is increasing; the possibility of its creation is doubted even by our former presidents. Fortunately, progress in the last 20 years, the exact sciences created an opportunity for us to put in its basis not myths and lies of the enemy, but proven facts. The author offers scientifical UNI-XXI project, based on the noohistory and the noosciences, as a combination of new discoveries with better cultural heritage and directed (...) to the future, not the past. Achievements of geneticists, physicists and other scientists in the recovery story of agriculture and animal husbandry are highlighted. It is proved that Ukrainians are direct descendants of those who created productive agriculture in the Middle East. By choosing place on the black soil for the Motherland and combined with hunter-Aryans, formed Trypillians. They are the only in the world who domesticated horse, invented the wheeled transport, organized by the Big Trypillia giant space through a combination of copper mines Kargaly, «country towns» and other agricultural areas. Two thousand years protoindoevropean language had been increased, cultural and economic unity suddenly was interrupted by «volcanic winter». This was the impetus for the famous Aryan migrations with many linguistic and cultural consequences. The author proposes to build future component for UNI-XXI based on the development of education and scientific discoveries of recent years, which will make free and publicly solar photovoltaics and «family» production on natural substances for 3D-printers. (shrink)

The German scholar Dieter Schuh is one of the contemporary giants of Tibetan studies. His seminal and ground-breaking work Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der tibetischen Kalenderrechnung, published in 1973, has made a lasting contribution to the field of Tibetan astronomical and historical research, clarifying the essence and calculation bases of Indo-Tibetan astronomy in Tibet (skar rtsis). Further, he has pioneered such new fields in Tibetology as sino-tibetan astrology (nag rtsis), manuscripts and xylographs, historical documents, the diplomatic history between Tibet and Mongolia, (...) law, demography, research into Western Tibet, etc. In this work, I attempt to show the integral components of his scholarship on Indo-Tibetan astronomy by means of presenting the structure and outline of his works. Because I focus on showing the main ideas and contents according to his line of thinking in each work, readers may benefit from easily spotting parts they are interested in. Thereby, this work may serve as a guideline for further research into the details of each work. The amount I assign to each work may vary in accordance with the gravity and importance I subjectively assume. Lastly, the aim of this work is simple: numerous quality non-English writings are not easily used simply because they were not written in English. The depth and breadth of the time-honored German tibetology based on high-level philology has been a great source of inspiration to Tibetan scholars in the world. As a part of bridging the gap between English and non-English scholarship, this work, which introduces Dieter Schuh’s research into Indo-Tibetan astronomy, may be helpful to enrich and foster future research, being another source of inspiration. (shrink)

Dlg (Discs large), Scrib (Scribble) and Lgl (Lethal giant larvae) are evolutionarily conserved components of a common genetic pathway that link the seemingly disparate functions of cell polarity and cell proliferation in epithelial cells. dlg, scrib and lgl have been identified as tumour suppressor genes in Drosophila, mutations of which cause similar phenotypes, involving disruption of cell polarity and neoplastic overgrowth of tissues. The molecular mechanisms by which Dlg, Scrib and Lgl proteins regulate cell proliferation are not clear, but (...) there is some evidence that epithelial polarisation is required for this regulation. Dlg, Scrib and Lgl are highly conserved between human and Drosophila, and we discuss evidence that these proteins also play a role in cancer progression in humans. BioEssays 25:542–553, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Silicon Valley is both object of intense fascination and stark criticism. Academic observers have described it as a unique amalgamation of hippie culture, libertarian thinking, wild experimentation, but also scientific rigor, high-tech precision, and turbo-capitalism – a seemingly improbable, even paradoxical combination. Nevertheless, Silicon Valley continues to be an economic powerhouse and a global innovation hub. The current study explores its socio-cultural and ideological foundations through the lens of an insider perspective to find explanations for its stability and sustained success (...) in light of conflicting components. Based on 15 interviews with Silicon Valley experts from start-ups, tech giants, and academic institutions, the study identifies several paradoxes on the level of ideology and environment, structure(s), and actors. These can be grouped into a binary, oppositional view, indeed describing the Silicon Valley paradox. However, alternative explanations are given, including the conceptualization as a non-dualist phenomenon. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Beyond Personal Identity: Dōgen, Nishida, and a Phenomenology of No-SelfSteven HeineGereon Kopf. Beyond Personal Identity: Dōgen, Nishida, and a Phenomenology of No-Self. Richmond, Surrey, UK: Curzon Press, 2001. Pp. xx + 298.Beyond Personal Identity by Gereon Kopf is in many ways a brilliant work of comparative philosophy that does an outstanding job in taking on the challenge of relating the complex thought of Japanese giants Dōgen and Nishida (...) to various Western conceptions of the person. Kopf succeeds in developing his own philosophical approach to the main issues of nonduality and present-oriented self-awareness, while staying true to the respective thinkers involved in the examination. He is clearly bucking recent trends in the field of Buddhist studies that have emphasized increasingly social-historical methods, but has pulled off a major coup by adhering to his vision of the role of scholarship. Along with Dan Lusthaus' Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogacara Buddhism and the Ch'eng Wei-Shih Lun (Curzon, 2003), which deconstructs the issue of idealism, this work goes a along way toward rehabilitating philosophical approaches to Buddhist doctrine by analyzing text as text rather than trying to relate-and in some cases reduce-text to a reflection or expression of its reconstructed context. At the same time, Kopf's work, understandably as it is his first book, has some basic limitations, which I will address with constructive criticism.The main value of this book is that it takes the reader on a fascinating journey through a wide variety of Western and Buddhist notions of what constitutes the person and the person's relation to the world. Kopf's "theory of personal identity investigates three central questions: How is it possible to identify a person (myself and others) as an individual human being? How is it possible to distinguish between two individual persons? What guarantees the constancy and identity of an individual person over time?" (p. 7). Chapter 1 is primarily dedicated to critiquing Western notions that have substantialist implications, either deliberately and directly or indirectly in an embedded fashion by favoring an essentialist view that personal identity persists over time. Here Kopf demonstrates a mastery of contemporary philosophical materials and of how to examine them critically.The four chapters in part 2 of the book simultaneously unveil Kopf's theory of the tripartite structure of the person-selfhood, otherness, and continuity-and the reasons why he considers that Dōgen and Nishida overcome the flaws and lacunae in Western views of a false sense of constancy. The reason for the fourth chapter (chapter 5) is that Kopf goes into more depth on the third part of the structure, that is, the matter of how the person seems to maintain its identity over a prolonged period, by dividing this into the issues of "continuity of experience" and "temporality." In each chapter, he makes it clear how Dōgen and Nishida appropriate the basic Buddhist doctrines of no-self, dependent origination, and impermanence in formulating their unique perspectives. He convincingly shows that Dōgen's notion of [End Page 569] the dharma-stage (jū-hōi) as articulated in the "Genjōkōan" and Nishida's notion of the discontinuity of continuity stake out the distinctive Zen view. According to Kopf, "the Zen Buddhist notion of immediate now and non-relative present should not be mistaken for a merely atemporal oneness, which melts all individual time-moments into an undifferentiated oneness, but rather as the dialectic of linear temporality and mystical atemporality" (p. 198).In part 3 Kopf fleshes out the meaning of the Zen phenomenology of temporal existence as the central component of a philosophy of personal identity-or, rather, of transpersonal nonessentialist experience-by providing a highly original interpretation of Dōgen's doctrines of the "presencing" (genjō) of "total-working" (zenki) in light of Nishida's paradox or self-contradictory identity of "walking eastward by walking westward." He concludes with a stimulating comparison of Derek Parfit's survivalist philosophy, which represents a Western approach to present-oriented experience, with the Zen view that "the experiential 'I' discovers in its process of self-awakening that it does not... (shrink)

Antonio Gramsci is one of those philosophers, like Socrates, whose philosophizing consists in the critical examination of particular practical problems in terms of certain fundamental concepts. To Socrates' well known moral problems correspond Gramsci's concern with such things as improving the condition of subaltern classes, the interaction between intellectual elites and popular masses, the democratic operation of a political party, the viability of alternative models of revolution which differ from Bolshevism, and the religious component of political activity and political (...) aspects of religions. And to the Socratic concepts that are so familiar to philosophers correspond Gramsci's notions of hegemony, passive revolution, the modern "Prince," philosophy of praxis, integral journalism, Americanism and Fordism, the national-popular, Jacobinism, and folklore. Thus the proper philosophical appreciation of Gramsci has to overcome the widespread equation of philosophy with system, as well as two more external obstacles: the Franco-German hegemony over "continental philosophy" has the effect of relegating this Italian giant to the status of an unavoidably minor, however quaint, figure; and Gramsci's personal involvement with the political fortunes and misfortunes of the Italian Communist Party leads many philosophers to dismiss him as being merely a political leader. (shrink)

Giant bones unearthed throughout the Mesoamerican countryside provoked early modern thinkers to grapple with the earth’s ages, partially syncretizing Nahua histories of human conquest with Spanish colonial medicinal and natural historical knowledge. European naturalists’ willingness to accept the giant remains required them to embrace localized Mesoamerican cosmologies. The fossilized landscape provided evidence that conquest and eradication had happened before at the hands of the peoples whom the Spaniards had conquered in turn. Lost from early modern collections and failing (...) to translate far beyond New Spain during the sixteenth century, the giant remains highlight the possibilities and challenges of integrating Mesoamerican knowledge into the global history of science, with an emphasis on emplaced thinking, medicine and the body, and deeper temporal frameworks. Moving beyond itinerary histories to globalizing cosmologies in the history of science can better explain the compromises Europeans and Mesoamericans were required to make to enter into a syncretic intellectual contract, as well as the non-European concept of time that came with local reckonings with the human and more-than-human natural world. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 30, Issue 2, pp 223 - 235 Scholarship on _Leviathan_ has not fully explored the distinctive pattern of language that Hobbes used to invoke the central conceit of the treatise—“that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH.” This note highlights an earlier instance of that rare linguistic construction, one that presented a similar image of political monstrosity several years before Hobbes’s metaphor was published. _Verses in Honour of the Reverend and Learned Judge of the Law, Judge Jenkin_ celebrated the (...) jurist David Jenkins as a royalist martyr in the fight against “That Giant monster call’d a multitude.” It is possible that the pamphlet might have circulated among the network of English exiles in France, offering Hobbes a linguistic model with which to reconceptualize the early modern understanding of political community. (shrink)

The essay is a comparative look at Descartes' and Pascal's epistemology. For so vast a topic, I shall confine myself to comparing three crucial epistemological topics, through which I hope to evince Descartes' and Pascal's differences and points of contact. Firstly, I will concentrate on the philosophers' engagement with skepticism, which, for each, had different functions and motivations. Secondly, the thinkers' relation to Reason shall be examined, since it is the fulcrum of their thought—and the main aspect that separates them. (...) Lastly, I will examine each philosopher's theist epistemology; this section, of course, will focus on how and by what means Descartes and Pascal set out to prove God's existence. The latter aspect shall take us back to each philosopher's relationship to Doubt: the title, " The Giants of Doubt ", in fact, implies a fundamental link between Descartes and Pascal through Doubt. In addition, and most importantly, the contrast between the two thinkers' epistemology inaugurates a decisive scission in modern thought of enormous repercussion: Descartes' sturdy rationalism initiated the great branch of modern scientific inquiry , while Pascal's appeal to the power of intuition and feelings would eventually be the precursor of the reaction to the enlightenment that invested Europe by the second half of the eighteenth century. This departure of thought, which in my view may be traced back to them, has not been the common conceit of the history of philosophy: the reaction to the enlightenment has customarily been regarded as stemming from its internal contradictions or at best from its more radical doctrines. The essay shall show that these strands of thought were both parallel and born out of the antithetical epistemologies of Descartes and Pascal. (shrink)

The story of David and Goliath is one of the most famous biblical stories. It had an impact on many branches of contemporary art. It is also an inevitable part of religious education and general education in all schools. Knowing the fact that the Church Fathers have an essential part in the lives of many Christians today (in the Orthodox Church, they were role models from the very beginning), it is interesting to see how did they, these original theologians, read (...) and interpret the story of David and Goliath. Was it for them, in the time when the Bible was the most sacred book for all, important as it is for us today? Did people during the sports events of that time talk on the markets about the underdog who struck the giant? Additionally, if one looks at the ancient Greek and Hebrew text, one will find out that the Hebrew version, which was used as the source for most modern translations, is 40% longer than the Greek one. Could the works of the Fathers help us to determine which version of the story is the Holy Scripture for Christians today? (shrink)

We challenge the idea that a cognitive perspective on therapeutic change concerns only memory processes. We argue that inclusion of impairments in more generative cognitive processes is necessary for complete understanding of cases such as depression. In such cases what is identified in the target article as an “integrative memory structure” is crucially supported by processes of mental model construction.

The problem of religious tolerance is of supreme importance in the contemporary world. Just as, a few centuries ago, many wars were provoked by religious motifs, so today clashes on religious grounds provoke military conflicts that have long overgrown the walls of churches and mosques and keep growing in spite of the sacred traditions of the religions themselves. Orientation to love fails to work, and the ìneighborî becomes an enemy if he does not confess the same religion. Where shall we (...) search for the reason behind religious hostility? What is the history of intolerance? Who was the first to throw the stone that shook the foundations of peaceful coexistence of particular families and whole states? We propose to turn to the following themes: 1. World religions and relations between them (on the question of Christian- Judeo-Islamic dialogue) 2. Relations inside world religions (on the example of Christian confessions) 3. Interrelations between world religions and new religious movements. (shrink)

First, I show that the semantic thesis of scientific realism may be relaxed significantly—to allow that some scientific discourse is not truth-valued—without making any concessions concerning the epistemic or methodological theses that lie at realism’s core. Second, I illustrate how relaxing the semantic thesis allows realists to avoid positing abstract entities and to fend off objections to the “no miracles” argument from positions such as cognitive instrumentalism. Third, I argue that the semantic thesis of scientific realism should be relaxed because (...) it is possible for scientific statements to be partially true, and hence approximately true, without being false. (shrink)

Bianchi, Stanley, and Sutander argue in an insightful, cogent manner for the consideration of harm reduction as an ethically-defensible, non-paternal management approach for capable persons...

We have investigated the nonlinear low-frequency microwave absorption of an ensemble of small metallic grains. Earlier Zhou et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 1958 (1996)] have proved that linear absorption by such a system is due to a mesoscopic relaxation mechanism for which important contribution is from the grains with small level spacings between the ground state and the first excited state. Here we have shown further that such grains are anomalously sensitive to the field amplitude and the distribution of (...) level spacings. Since such a behavior depends on external magnetic field, we expect the appearance of a giant nonlinear magnetoresistance, as well as a very strong temperature dependence of the nonlinear microwave conductivity. (shrink)

Athenaeus preserves an intriguing description by the otherwise unknown writerMoschion of a giant grain-ship, the Syracusia, built by Hiero II of Syracuse in thelater third century B.C.1 The account is extremely circumstantial. Besides a fulldescription of the ship's layout, Moschion gives such details as the name of thearchitect, the size of the construction-force, the construction time, details of the launching arrangements devised byArchimedes, and even the procedure for judging crimes committed on board.

Despite the National Science Foundation's recent clarification of the Broader Impacts Criterion used in grant evaluation, it is not clear that this criterion is being understood or applied consistently by grant writers or reviewers. In particular, there is still confusion about how to interpret the requirement for broadening the participation of under-represented groups in science and scepticism about the value of doing so. Much of this stems from uncertainty about why the participation of under-represented groups is desirable or beneficial in (...) the first place. This paper distinguishes three different rationales for the importance of diversity in science and draws out the implications for the kind of diversity that is desirable, as well as how the diversity requirement of the Broader Impacts Criterion should be applied and weighed against other criteria in reviewing particular grants. I argue that there are epistemic, as well as social, benefits to diversity that can help promote scientific progress. (shrink)

Microfluidic technology – the manipulation of fluids at micrometer scales – has revolutionized many areas of synthetic biology. The bottom‐up synthesis of “minimal” cell models has traditionally suffered from poor control of assembly conditions. Giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) are good models of living cells on account of their size and unilamellar membrane structure. In recent years, a number of microfluidic approaches for constructing GUVs has emerged. These provide control over traditionally elusive parameters of vesicular structure, such as size, lamellarity, (...) membrane composition, and internal contents. They also address sophisticated cellular functions such as division and protein synthesis. Microfluidic techniques for GUV synthesis can broadly be categorized as continuous‐flow based approaches and droplet‐based approaches. This review presents the state‐of‐the‐art of microfluidic technology, a robust platform for recapitulating complex cellular structure and function in synthetic models of biological cells. (shrink)

Many views define the concept of automaticity in terms of a number of features, but they differ with regard to the features they put most emphasis on, as well as with regard to the coherence they assume among the features. One contemporary account is the gradual and decompositional view, which proposes to investigate each automaticity feature separately and determine the degree to which it is present. In this chapter, we engage in a detailed analysis of the most important features in (...) order to examine whether they can indeed be regarded as gradual, and whether they can be conceptually and logically separated. (shrink)

In Singapore’s multicultural society, a sizable proportion of the population subscribes to complementary and alternative medicine. In this article, we discuss the impact this has on medical practice in the context of the four principles of medical ethics. To uphold the principle of autonomy, we propose a non-judgmental approach towards patients who use CAM. Nevertheless, in order to promote health and prevent harm, the safety profiles of CAM must be studied through systematic research. In addition, the principle of justice is (...) one concerned with the fair distribution of scarce healthcare resources, while granting equal access to healthcare regardless of beliefs. Understanding CAM from an ethical perspective allows for the provision of safe, holistic, and culturally relevant care. (shrink)

Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, raises an interesting philosophical issue, namely, how can one be in touch with past things if they no longer exist? It provides us with a way to address this issue by outlining an ontological view according to which past things still exist within a four-dimensional world. Although one cannot be in touch with past things by means of ordinary perception, one can do so by combining perception and memory. In this sense, In Search (...) of Lost Time helps us to reconcile a four-dimensionalist ontology according to which things have both spatial and temporal parts with a realist phenomenology according to which experience gives us access to things as they are. In so doing, Proust’s masterpiece allows us to shed some light on what it means for a subject of experience to exist in a four-dimensional world. (shrink)

The authority of great scholars such as Fraenkel and Wilamowitz means that any mistakes they make tend to be accepted even when the evidence adduced is weak. Fraenkel’s interpretation of ego, quem vocas in Odes 2. 20. 6 as “I, whom you invite to dinner” has apparently silenced all debate. Yet Bentley construed non ego, pauperum sanguis parentum, non ego, quem vocas as a single idea, “I, the man you call the offspring of penniless parents.” For various reasons this seems (...) preferable to Fraenkel’s rendering. Likewise, Fraenkel has silenced doubts about 3. 30. 10–14, where he takes qua violens obstrepit Aufidus et qua pauper aquae Daunus agrestium regnavit populorum with dicar although this implies the boast that Horace will be famous in Apulia, a spatial restriction hard to square with the limitless temporal vistas of 1–9. Unless we alter the text, the words cited above have no anchoring point in what follows, but potens in 12 seems for various reasons dubious and should be replaced by, e.g. editus. (shrink)

On the Shoulders of Giants collects previously unpublished essays from the last fifteen years of Umberto Eco's life. With humor and erudition, one of the great contemporary thinkers takes on the roots of Western culture, the origin of language, the nature of beauty and ugliness, the imperfections of art, and the lure of mysteries.