We are never illness or disease, but, rather, always their sum in the world of day-to-day experience. Disease and illness are not closed systems, but mutually constitutive and continuously interacting worlds. In the patient’s case it is always experience as well. Pain, sickness and death help make that particular experienced identity unavoidable, and at some level ultimately inaccessible to medicine’s changing understanding of disease and tools for managing it. Health—rather than cost containment, specific conditions, or technologies—should be the central focus (...) for health care and health-care reform. A compelling reason to focus on health comes from the observation that the prevalence of disease over the .. (shrink)

The paper shows epistemological, methodological and ontological peculiarities of chemistry taken as a classificatory science of materials using experimental methods. Without succumbing to standard interpretations of physical science, chemical methods of experimental investigation, classification, reference, theorizing, prediction and production of new entities are developed one by one as first steps towards a philosophy of chemistry. Chemistry challenges traditional concepts of empirical object, empirical predicate, reference frame and theory, but also the distinction commonly drawn between natural science and technology. Due to (...) its many peculiarities, I propose to treat chemistry philosophically as a special type of science, apart from other sciences. (shrink)

The unique problem of lost territory poses one of the most important and complex challenges of compensating for loss and damage due to anthropogenic climate change. Anthropogenic climate change will cause a significant increase in the sea level for centuries to come. A rising sea level endangers many low‐lying coastal areas but also entire states. However, the inundation of an entire state will remain a rare event. Partial loss of territory will be far more pervasive. As measured by the number (...) of states, the area of land, and, in particular, the number of people affected, the phenomenon of partial territorial loss is much more significant. I address this from the perspective of compensatory justice. In particular, I offer (i) background on basic concepts, (ii) an overview and critique of existing accounts, and propose (iii) a novel interpretation of territory as well as (iv) a corresponding criterion of a duty to compensate before (v) I flesh out the overall theory, (vi) take into consideration implications and details of application, and (vii) respond to potential objections. (shrink)

Was halt eine Gesellschaft im Innersten zusammen? Was macht das Wesen von Freundschaften aus? Wie kann man der Liebe Dauer verleihen? In drei Essays fasst Hans-Joachim Pieper aktuelle und traditionelle Antworten der Philosophie zusammen und zeigt, wie eng die Formen und Motive des Sozialen miteinander verstrickt sind. LIebe kann sich in Institutionen manifestieren. MItgefuhl und Nachstenliebe spielen bei allem Miteinander eine Rolle. FReundschaften werden in Gesprachen und Unternehmungen, in Netzwerken, Parteien und Freizeitvergnugungen gepflegt. IN lebenslangen Verbindungen gewinnt die Freundschaft (...) eine herausragende Gestalt. ZUgleich bildet sie auch einen wesentlichen Bestandteil der Liebe. Die Gemeinsamkeiten der hier besprochenen Formen des Miteinanders und ihre Vielfalt geben Grund zur Hoffnung, dass die Menschen letztlich mehr zum Frieden neigen als zum Krieg und dass die Rede von der Menschheit nicht nur Schonrederei ist. (shrink)

National governments have failed spectacularly to mitigate anthropogenic climate change and a sustainable approach to mitigation remains out of sight. This circumstance alone demonstrates t...

Background Metaphors are central to the human understanding of complex issues; through the immediate associations they evoke and frame problems and suggest solutions. Our suggestion of Music in the Park as a metaphor for health systems reform brings to the forefront the environmentally diverse but bounded spaces of health services that offer a variety of attractors within their confines, while pushing into the background organizational and economic concerns.Reflections Parks, like health services, are embedded in their local landscape, serving their communities, (...) but most importantly parks are public spaces, publically funded, ideally offering universal access and equity and to be shared by all who want to go there.Music, like health, is tangible, technical and scientific, yet ultimately experiential and based on meaning. While it encompasses a wide range of styles and approaches, music making requires as its most important skill active listening which brings with it to be ‘in the moment’, to take personal risks and to draw energy and inspiration from the participants. Hence ‘audiences’ are equally active participants because music only has meaning if it internally resonates with the listener and only can exist in what is a co-constructed experience.Conclusions Music in the Park is a metaphor for primary health care systems based on shared values of experts and unique local communities. Health professionals are players in this arena, who develop and practise the full range of their skills in response to individual and community needs and preferences. Their leadership works through inspiration and empowerment, making patients ‘co-producers’ of their own health and ‘co-shapers’ of their health services. (shrink)

We are used to considering engineering ethics largely a critical enterprise. By pointing out ethical issues and by raising concerns about a technology, ethicists usually criticise rather than promote the technology in question. Of course, from a utilitarianist perspective, an ethicist might come to the conclusion that a certain technology is better than another one or than doing without. However, such conclusions are rare in philosophy and would not be considered uncritical promotion. In this essay I argue that engineering ethics, (...) almost unavoidably, turns into the promotion and popularisation of a technology if that technology does not exist yet but is considered to be emerging in the near future. In other words, ethics of emerging technologies is not only prone to but almost destined to play a propaganda role in the public sphere. As engineering ethics moves from established to emerging technologies ethicists need to be aware that they become useful instruments in the struggle for public attention and funding. (shrink)

A historical episode of evolutionary theory, which has lead to the Red Queen theory of the evolutionary maintenance of sex, includes two striking contingencies. These are used to explore alternative what-if scenarios, in order to test some common opinions about such counterfactuals. This sheds new light on the nature of science and its historiography. One counterfactual leads to an unexpected convergence of its result to that of the actual science but, nevertheless, differs in its causal structure. The other diverges towards (...) an incompatible alternative, but this requires further contingent choices that also diverge from actual science. -/- The convergence in the first counterfactual is due to a horizontal transfer of knowledge. Similar transfers of knowledge are typical for innovations of actual science. This suggests that contingent choices can merge as well as fork research traditions both in actual research and counterfactual history. Neither the paths of the actual history of science nor those of its counterfactual alternatives will form a tree of exclusively diverging bifurcations, but a network instead. Convergencies in counterfactuals may, therefore, be due to the web-structure of science as much as to the aims of the historians in question. Furthermore, the difference in causal structure between the actual science and its convergent counterfactual might become diagnostic for external factors rather than internal aims forcing a historian towards convergence. (shrink)

There is a particular irony that chemistry – the most visual, tactile, and pungent of sciences – is rarely associated with modern notions of aesthetics and science. Indeed, as any examination of aesthetics and modern science reveals, physics, rather than chemistry or biology, is considered the paradigm because of its extraordinary ability to comprehend and communicate through the symbolic language of mathematics. Echoing Heisenberg’s 1970 essay, "The Meaning of Beauty in the Exact Sciences", this perspective on physics takes the inherent (...) abstraction of quantum mechanics and relativity as the result of the physicists’ search for beauty in nature. (shrink)

Zu Beginn eines wissenschaftlichen Projekts – manchmal schon bei dessen Beantragung – sind Wissenschaftler mit der Frage konfrontiert, wie sie sich öffentlich sichtbar präsentieren. Ein griffiger Name (am besten ein eingängiges Akronym) und ein Logo müssen her, um Website, Visitenkarte, Briefkopf, Plakate und Poster zu zieren. Wer Peinlichkeiten vermeiden will, beauftragt gleich einen Werbedesigner für die visuelle Präsentation. Doch woher weiß der Designer, wie Wissenschaft visuell dargestellt wird? Weiß der Wissenschaftler das nicht viel besser? Der Wissenschaftler kennt all die Dinge (...) im Detail, die typisch für seine spezielle Forschung und Disziplin sind. Der Designer weiß hingegen Bescheid, was im Allgemeinen als typisch für Wissenschaft oder für die jeweilige Disziplin gehalten wird. Im besten Fall setzen sich beide zusammen und finden einen Mittelweg – einerseits zwischen allgemeinem und speziellem Wissenschaftsbild und andererseits zwischen dem, was in der Wissenschaft als typisch gilt, und dem, was öffentlich für wissenschaftstypisch gehalten wird. Der kompromissbereite Wissenschaftler wird vielleicht mit leichtem Unbehagen auch solchen Bildern zustimmen, die er als Platitüden oder überzogene Klischees empfindet, solange sie seinem Projekt öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit einbringen. So wird das öffentliche Bild der Wissenschaft nicht nur in jedem Einzelfall, sondern auch ganz allgemein zwischen unterschiedlichen Interessen und visuellen Kulturen ausgehandelt. Seit piktographische Designerprodukte in großen Datenbanken online verfügbar und nach Stichworten durchsuchbar sind (zum Beispiel in clipart.com), lässt sich das öffentliche Bild der Wissenschaft recht gut qualitativ und quantitativ untersuchen.1 Dabei fällt zunächst auf, dass die meisten klassischen Wissenschaftsdisziplinen stereotypische Piktogramme besitzen, die für typisch gehaltene Gegenstände darstellen. Ein Zirkel und mathematische Formeln sind eindeutige Symbole der Geometrie beziehungsweise der Algebra, ein Fernrohr repräsentiert die Astronomie, Knochen oder Schädel sind unverkennbare Indikatoren der Anatomie, die Biologie wird meist durch ein Mikroskop darstellt und so weiter.. (shrink)

Tom poświęcony XII Międzynarodowemu Kongresowi Slawistów, Kraków 1998.

Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 107 Heft: 2 Seiten: 877-892.

Since intelligent design (ID) advocates claimed the ubiquitous mouse trap as an example of systems that cannot have evolved, mouse trap history is doubly relevant to studying material culture. On the one hand, debunking ID claims about mouse traps and, by implication, also about other irreducibly complex systems has a high educational value. On the other hand, a case study of mouse trap history may contribute insights to the academic discussion about material culture evolution. Michael Behe argued that mouse traps (...) cannot trap mice with any part missing; therefore, they cannot have a precursor with one part less, therefore, cannot have a continuous history, and therefore, cannot have evolved. The patented and seminal precursor of current flat snap traps, however, had one part less, because spring and striker were formed of one wire. Secondly, historical records that reach back into the Bronze Age suggest that its history continued for a very long time. Thirdly, all prerequisites for evolution (variation, transmission, and selection) abound in mouse trap populations. Hence, Behe’s triple-jump conclusion about mouse traps is false each step. There is no, in principle, impossibility for mouse traps to evolve. An evolutionary account of mouse trap history also has academic merits beyond its educational value. Three important conclusions can be drawn: (1) reticulate phylogenies of artifact systems may be resolvable as overlapping, but branching, phylogenies of parts; (2) homologous ideas may be realized by analogous material, that is, phylogenies of information do not necessarily coincide with those of material parts; (3) recombination of parts between different artifact systems increases the cumulative nature of cultural evolution. (shrink)

Discussions of the implications of sexual reproduction have appeared throughout the history of evolutionary biology, from Darwin to Weismann, Fisher, Muller, Maynard Smith, and Williams. The latest of these appearances highlighted an evolutionary paradox that had previously been overlooked. In many animal and plant species reproduction is obligately sexual and also half the offspring are male, yet the males contribute nothing but genes to reproduction. If asexual mutants of such a species were to produce as many asexual offspring on average (...) as sexual females in that species produce daughters and sons, the growth rate of their population would be twice as large. Whereas half the offspring of sexual females are noncontributory males, all the offspring of such an asexual mutant would contribute to growth rate. Nevertheless, sexual reproduction prevails in most species and is not lost evolutionarily. (shrink)

The group selection controversy largely focuses on altruism (e.g., Wilson 1983; Lloyd 2001; Shavit 2004; Okasha 2006, 173ff; Borrello 2010; Leigh 2010; Rosas 2010; Hamilton and Dimond in press). Multilevel selection theory is a resolution of this controversy. Whereas kin selection partitions inclusive fitness into direct and indirect components (via influencing the replication of copies of genes in other individuals), multilevel selection considers within-group and between-group components of fitness (Gardner et al. 2011; Lion et al. 2011). Two scenarios of multilevel (...) selection are often distinguished (Damuth and Heisler 1988; Okasha 2006; Pigliucci 2010): (1) group structure only divides individual fitnesses into within- and between-group components (MLS1); and, (2) groups get their own component of fitness and also, in most definitions, a group-level adaptation (MLS2). (shrink)

In 1935, A. G. Tansley, who was knighted later, proposed the ecosystem concept. Nevertheless, this concept was not without predecessors. Why did Tansley’s ecosystem prevail and not one of its competitors? The purpose of this article is to pin the distinguishing features of Tansley’s ecosystem down, as far as the published record allows. It is an exercise in finding the difference that made a difference. Besides being a pioneering ecologist, Tansley was an adept of psychoanalysis. His interest even led him (...) to visit Sigmund Freud in Vienna for a while. Psychologists had to regard the mind as an entity in its own right, while knowing that it truly was part of a larger whole (body + mind), because the causal relation between body and mind was unknown. This lead Tansley to conclude that psychologists must not objectify the system under study, have to search for causes within their own field, and must not speculate unless this serves a scientific purpose. In 1925, Tansley defended psychoanalysis in a prolonged controversy against a concerted attack criticizing its speculative content and poor scientific standing. This could have been the reason why Tansley kept his ecosystem free of speculative content and unscientific connotation. The competing ecosystem-like concepts, however, have contained philosophical speculation, non-deterministic properties like vitalism or entelechy, or have been burdened with unscientific connotations. Hence, rigorous restraint distinguished the ecosystem concept and made it ready for use by later researchers. (shrink)