Seeing the entwinement of social and epistemic challenges through COVID, we discuss the perils of simplistic appeals to ‘follow the science’. A hardened scientism risks excarbating social conflict and fueling conspiracy beliefs. Instead, we see an opportunity to devise more inclusive medical knowledge practices through endorsing experiential knowledge alongside traditional evidence types.

Foveated stimuli receive visual processing that is quantitatively and qualitatively different from nonfoveated stimuli. At normal interpersonal distances, people move their eyes around another’s face so that certain features receive foveal processing; on any given fixation, other features therefore project extrafoveally. Yet little is known about the processing of extrafoveally presented facial features, how informative those extrafoveally presented features are for face perception (e.g., for assessing another’s emotion), or what processes extract task-relevant (e.g., emotion-related) cues from facial features that first (...) appear outside the fovea, and how these processes are implemented in the brain. (shrink)

Olfaction has recently been highlighted as a sense poorly connected with language. Odor is difficult to verbalize, and it has few qualities that afford mimicry by vision or sound. At the same time, emotion is thought to be the most salient dimension of an odor, and it could therefore be an olfactory dimension more easily communicated. We investigated whether sounds imitative of an innate disgust response can be associated with unpleasant odors. In two experiments, participants were asked to make a (...) forced choice between a pseudoword including a disgust sound and a neutral pseudoword, for pleasant and unpleasant odors. Overall, participants chose more disgust pseudowords than neutral pseudowords for unpleasant odors, but this was not the case for pleasant odors. This effect was not driven by a general association between unpleasant sounds and unpleasant odors, but specifically the sounds [x/χ] and [f], thought to reflect physical responses to disgusting odors, as seen in the Polish fu! or the English ugh!. In line with growing evidence that language can encode odor, we provide the first experimental evidence for an association between the sound of a word and odor valence. (shrink)

„My sole purpose in this paper is to try and correct what I take to be a common misinterpretation of Hume’s opinions on mathematics. I shall not enquire whether he was right or wrong in holding these opinions. Nor shall I offer opinions of my own.“.

Some scholars have raised the potential functional role of fictive kinship for religion, generally. This paper seeks to develop that idea. It is argued in this paper that fictive kinship language in religion (and some other non-religious contexts) recruits traits connected to Hamilton’s rule as it is expressed inHomo sapienspsychology. The effect is that cooperation is augmented within a population that generally shares the same religious worldview. The general position is that if religions are in the business of cooperation and (...) this partially accounts for their evolution and preservation, then it follows that we should take particular note of any significant feature of religions that might lend itself to the cooperation account of religion’s apparent evolutionary success. Fictive kinship is one such feature. (shrink)

The original article has been corrected. Erroneously, a comma and a space were added in line 164 to 500, 500, and the authors would like readers to know that this should instead read 500,500.

This minicourse on quantum mechanics is intended for students who have already been rather well exposed to the subject at an elementary level. It is assumed that they have surmounted the first conceptual hurdles and also have struggled with the Schrödinger equation in one dimension.

This paper engages with Manuel DeLanda’s Deleuze-inspired ‘assemblage theory’ from a perspective sympathetic to Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory. It first outlines DeLanda’s proposed new ‘philosophy of society’, focusing on his major works in this vein, and registers some scepticism as to its originality for sociology. It then introduces and responds to DeLanda’s critique of Bourdieu. Rather than simply reject assemblage theory outright, however, I draw on selected insights from DeLanda to push field theory in new directions. More specifically, I conceptualise (...) the interplay of fields and assemblages and use notions of ‘exteriority’ and ‘possibility space’ to help conceive individual plurality of social positioning and its effects for subjectivity and practice. (shrink)

This volume brings together research in the GeoHumanities from various intellectual perspectives to illustrate the benefits of humanities-inspired approaches in understanding and confronting historically entrenched and recently emergent health-related challenges. In three main sections, this volume seeks to foreground the richness of work entangling medicine and health with the concerns of geography and of the Humanities. This volume will be of interest to academics and researchers in the Geographies of health and medicine, social sciences in GeoHumanities, and health humanities, and (...) students in programs focusing on the humanities and health. In the book's first section, Bodies, the authors explore the material, sensory and more than physical capacities of bodies in accounting for experiences of death, air raids, immigration, dance therapy, asthma and blindness. Section two, Voice, addresses the nature of evidence, HIV/AIDS policy, patient voices in animal research, homelessness, and constructions of truth. The final section, Practice, focuses on creative writing, as well as the pedagogic tools of teaching with the asylum, the creative practice of nuclear emergency planning zones, arts-based care for the elderly, and cartographic practices within health research. (shrink)

Zika virus infection in a pregnant woman may cause severe brain malformations and other birth defects in her child, and women living in or traveling to areas where it is endemic are urged to postpone pregnancy. Do the dangers posed by microcephaly justify the use of contraceptives under the principle of double effect? The author discusses ambiguities in Humanae vitae n. 14 and the claim that the use of contraceptives was approved by Pope Paul VI for nuns at risk of (...) rape, and uses the principle of double effect to show that the answer to this question is no: the use of the anovulant pill by married couples for the purpose of preventing conception of a microcephalic child cannot be licit. (shrink)

The Welfare State is a key policy issue of the 1990s. The essays in this book depart from much of the recent economic debate in emphasising the positive contributions of the Welfare State, and in assessing its efficiency in relation to the objectives which it is intended to achieve. These objectives are not just the alleviation of poverty but more broadly the provision of security and the redistribution of income. Part A of the book sets the current debate in the (...) context of the current evidence about income inequality and poverty in Europe. Part B analyses the existing role of the Welfare State, with particular reference to retirement pensions and unemployment benefit. Part C investigates proposals for reform and security. What is the case for greater targeting? How can we design a social safety net? What is the future of European social protection policy? (shrink)

The resistance between two arbitrary nodes in an infinite square lattice of identical resistors is calculated. The method is generalized to infinite triangular and hexagonal lattices in two dimensions, and also to infinite cubic and hypercubic lattices in three and more dimensions. © 1999..

This paper critically supports the modern evolutionary explanation of religion popularised by David Sloan Wilson, by comparing it with those of his predecessors, namely Emile Durkheim and Thomas Hobbes, and to some biological examples which seem analogous to religions as kinds of superorganisms in their own right. The aim of the paper is to draw out a theoretical pedigree in philosophy and sociology that is reflected down the lines of various other evolutionarily minded contributors on the subject of religion. The (...) general theme is of evolved large-scale cooperative structures. A scholarly concern is as follows: Wilson draws on Durkheim, using Calvinism as an example without mentioning Hobbes, but it was Thomas Hobbes who used Calvinism as an example of a leviathanesque religious structure—which is not acknowledged by either Wilson or Durkheim. If there are even any similarities between these authors, there appears to be an omission somewhere which should rightly be accounted for by giving credit to Hobbes where it is due. I issue on conclusion, what it is that makes Wilson’s approach radically different to that it skates on. I also issue it with a cautionary word. (shrink)

An eight parameter family of the most general nonnegative quadruple probabilities is constructed for EPR-Bohm-Aharonov experiments when only 3 pairs of analyser settings are used. It is a simultaneous representation of 3 Bohr-incompatible experimental configurations valid for arbitrary quantum states.