Transcending the various formal concepts of life, this captivating book offers a unique overview of life's history, essences, and future. "A masterpiece of scientific writing. You will cherish "What Is Life?" because it is so rich in poetry and science in the service of profound philosophical questions".--Mitchell Thomashow, "Orion". 9 photos. 11 line illustrations.

SummaryA sample of 104 British parents with criminal convictions had an average fertility of 3·91 children as compared with 2·21 for the general population. The result suggests that fertility for criminal behaviour is dysgenic involving an increase in the genes underlying criminal behaviour in the population.

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) "Policy for the Management of Terminally Ill Patients Who May Become Organ Donors after Death" proposes to take organs from certain patients as soon as possible after expected cardiopulmonary death. This policy requires clear understanding of the descriptive state of the donor's critical cardiopulmonary and neurologic functional capacity at the time interventions to sustain or harvest organs are undertaken. It also requires strong consensus about the moral and legal status of the donor during (...) dying and confirmation of death. There has been no need for the clarity and precision that this policy relies upon, and thus the needed research and conceptual work has not previously been generated. The empiric base and societal consensus are both too frail to provide justification for this policy at this time. (shrink)

The first new translation of this work to appear in more than twenty-five years, the Columbia I Ching presents the classic book of changes for the world of today.

Scotland is usually portrayed as being a country that had weak and terrible queens, like Margaret Tudor and Mary Queen of Scots. Saint Margaret is the only queen who is constantly portrayed positively. However, that is not because of her actions as queen consort, but because she was a devote Christian. Scotland is also portrayed for not producing well known or strong female rulers. This essay will examine two contemporary female rulers from the mid-fifteenth century, one from Scotland, Eleanor of (...) Scotland, and one imported to Scotland, Mary of Gueldres. Using these case studies it will be demonstrated that Scotland did produce strong female rulers along with acquiring them. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary collection presents valuable discourse and reflection on the nature of a good death. Bringing together a leading judge and other legal scholars, philosophers, social scientists, practitioners and parents who present varying accounts of a good death, the chapters draw from personal experience as well as policy, practice and academic analysis.Covering themes such as patients' rights to determine their own good death, considering their best interests when communication becomes difficult and the role and responsibilities of health professionals, the book (...) outlines how ethical healthcare might be achieved when dealing with assisted suicide by organizations and how end of life services in general might be improved. It will be of interest to students and academics working the area of medical law and ethics as well as health professionals and policy-makers. (shrink)

A benchmark volume for an emerging field where mental disorders serve as the springboard for philosophical insights.

The persistence, and international expansion, of food banks as a non-governmental response to households experiencing food insecurity has been decried as an indicator of unacceptable levels of poverty in the countries in which they operate. In 1998, Poppendieck published a book, Sweet charity: emergency food and the end of entitlement, which has endured as an influential critique of food banks. Sweet charity‘s food bank critique is succinctly synthesized as encompassing seven deadly “ins” (1) inaccessibility, (2) inadequacy, (3) inappropriateness, (4) indignity, (...) (5) inefficiency, (6) insufficiency, and (7) instability. The purpose of this paper is to examine if and how the contemporary food bank critique differs from Sweet charity’s “ins” as a strategy for the formulation of synthesizing arguments for policy advocacy. We used critical interpretive synthesis methodology to identify relationships within and/or between existing critiques in the peer-reviewed literature as a means to create “‘synthetic constructs’ (new constructs generated through synthesis)” of circulating critiques. We analyzed 33 articles on food banks published since Sweet charity, with the “ins” as a starting point for coding. We found that the list of original “ins” related primarily to food bank operations has been consolidated over time. We found additional “ins” that extend the food bank critique beyond operations (ineffectiveness, inequality, institutionalization, invalidation of entitlements, invisibility). No synthetic construct emerged linking the critique of operational challenges facing food banks with one that suggests that food banks may be perpetuating inequity, posing a challenge for mutually supportive policy advocacy. (shrink)

What happens during a near-death experience? In an accessible style, this text reviews recent research about unbelievable events, creating an account of activity at the boundaries of science. It also examines research concerns, current theories, methodological issues and clinical implications.

Introduction: working together on individuality / Lynn K. Nyhart and Scott Lidgard -- The work of biological individuality: concepts and contexts / Scott Lidgard and Lynn K. Nyhart -- Cells, colonies, and clones: individuality in the volvocine algae / Matthew D. Herron -- Individuality and the control of life cycles / Beckett Sterner -- Discovering the ties that bind: cell-cell communication and the development of cell sociology / Andrew S. Reynolds -- Alternation of generations and individuality, 1851 / (...) Lynn K. Nyhart and Scott Lidgard -- Spencer's evolutionary entanglement: from liminal individuals to implicit collectivities / Snait Gissis -- Biological individuality and enkapsis: from Martin Heidenhain's synthesiology to the völkisch national community / Olivier Rieppel -- Parasitology, zoology, and society in France, ca. 1880-1920 / Michael A. Osborne -- Metabolism, autonomy, and individuality / Hannah Landecker -- Bodily parts in the structure-function dialectic / Ingo Brigandt -- Commentaries: historical, biological, and philosophical perspectives -- Distrust that particular intuition: resilient essentialisms and empirical challenges in the history of biological individuality / James Elwick -- Biological individuality: a relational reading / Scott F. Gilbert -- Philosophical dimensions of individuality / Alan C. Love and Ingo Brigandt. (shrink)

This essay critiques feminist treatments of maternal-fetal "relationality" that unwittingly replicate features of Western individualism (for example, the Cartesian division between the asocial body and the social-cognitive person, or the conflation of social and biological birth). I argue for a more reflexive perspective on relationality that would acknowledge how we produce persons through our actions and rhetoric. Personhood and relationality can be better analyzed as dynamic, negotiated qualities realized through social practice.

Clahsen's compelling evidence for the dual-mechanism model of the lexicon derives in part from the use of cross-linguistic data in psycholinguistic research. This approach reflects a growing (and positive) trend toward incorporating data from several languages when analyzing and modeling human language behavior. This perspective should be expanded to include data from typologically distinct languages to develop more explanatory models of language.

This article draws on core insights of critical realism to explain why the international diffusion of women's human rights norms has varied greatly from one state to another and why states in general have been slower to incorporate these norms domestically than other human rights norms. Its central argument is that the gender-biased corporate identity of many states represents the most significant barrier to diffusion. However, it also shows that particular norms have been incorporated into particular states at particular points (...) in time as a consequence of articulated international and domestic pressure from a variety of actors. It begins by examining the limitations of existing explanations of international norms before developing an alternative critical realist argument to explain cross-national variation in the diffusion and efficacy of international norms of sexual non-discrimination. Through the cases of Germany and Japan, it demonstrates how the diffusion of these norms is conditioned and more often than not impeded by the dynamic interplay between various international and domestic structures and agents, discourse, and power. Finally, it briefly discusses the theoretical and practical implications of the argument. (shrink)

Grush describes a variety of different systems that illustrate his vision of representation through emulation. These individual data points are not necessarily sufficient to determine what level of detail is required for a representation to count as emulation. By examining one of his examples closely, this commentary suggest that salience of the information supplied is a critical dimension.

D. M. Armstrong proposes to explain the possibility of unconscious sensations by means of a distinction between the perceptual consciousness, which is essentially involved in sensations, and our introspective consciousness of sensations. He holds that unconscious sensations are instances of perceptual consciousness of which we are not introspectively conscious. I contend that, although Armstrong''s distinction is plausible and significant, it fails to explain his own examples of unconscious sensation. I argue that the puzzle of how unconscious sensations are possible arises (...) at the level of perceptual consciousness and does not concern our introspective awareness of mental states. (shrink)