In the present study, we have demonstrated hysteresis phenomena in the excitability of single, enzymatically dissociated guinea pig ventricular myocytes. Membrane potentials were recorded with patch pipettes in the whole-cell current clamp configuration. Repetitive stimulation with depolarizing current pulses of constant cycle length and duration but varying strength led to predictable excitation (1:l) and non-excitation (1:0) patterns depending on current strength. In addition, transition between patterns depended on the direction of current intensity change and stable hysteresis loops were obtained in (...) stimulus:response pattern vs. current intensity plots in 14 cells. Increase of pulse duration and decrease of stimulation rate contributed to a reduction in hysteresis loop areas. Changes in amplitude and shape of the subthreshold responses during the transitions from one stable pattern to the other, suggested that activity led to an increase in membrane resistance, particularly in the voltage domain between resting potential, and threshold. Therefore, we modelled the dynamic behaviour of the single cells as a function of diastolic membrane resistance, using previously published analytical solutions. Numerical iteration of the analytical model equations closely reproduced the experimental hysteresis loops in both qualitative and quantitative ways. In particular, the effect of stimulation frequency on the model was similar to the experimental findings. The overall study suggests that the excitability pattern of guinea pig ventricular myocytes accounts for hysteresis and bistabilities when current intensity is allowed to fluctuate around threshold levels. (shrink)

We show that in the Maxwell–Lorentz theory of classical electrodynamics most initial values for fields and particles lead to an ill-defined dynamics, as they exhibit singularities or discontinuities along light-cones. This phenomenon suggests that the Maxwell equations and the Lorentz force law ought rather to be read as a system of delay differential equations, that is, differential equations that relate a function and its derivatives at different times. This mathematical reformulation, however, leads to physical and philosophical consequences for the ontological (...) status of the electromagnetic field. In particular, fields cannot be taken as independent degrees of freedom, which suggests that one should not add them to the ontology. (shrink)

It is part of a global trend today that new relationships are being forged between religion and society, between spirituality and materiality, giving rise to announcements that we live in a ‘postsecular’ or ‘desecularized’ world. Taking up two educational movements, the mindfulness movement in the West and the revival of Confucian education in China, this paper examines what and how postsecular orientations and sensibilities penetrate educational discourses and practices in different cultural contexts. We compare the two movements to reveal a (...) new quality of hybrid modernization in that they react, in different ways, to certain pathologies that are identified as consequences of secular modernity. Burnout syndrome, the sense of a spiritual void, but also the loss of a spiritual and cultural identity are being perceived as correlating to a one-sided push towards a modernity that emphasizes secular rationalization over mindfulness and Westernization over cultural particularity. The two case studies mark a critical insight on the present condition and limits of secularism and highlights the ongoing negotiations of values and modes of self-cultivation in schools. In an increasingly pluralistic world, the entanglement of the secular, spiritual, religious and wisdom traditions provides the opportunity to rethink education as a creative realm and an impossible possibility to re-engage the minds and lives of those in the hybrid pedagogical time. (shrink)

This fascinating exploration of the great discoveries of history's most important mathematicians seeks an answer to the eternal question: Does mathematics hold the key to understanding the mysteries of the physical world?

We show that if G is a definably compact, definably connected definable group defined in an arbitrary o-minimal structure, then G is divisible. Furthermore, if G is defined in an o-minimal expansion of a field, k ∈ ℕ and pk : G → G is the definable map given by pk = xk for all x ∈ G , then we have |–1| ≥ kr for all x ∈ G , where r > 0 is the maximal dimension of abelian (...) definable subgroups of G. (shrink)

Criticisms à la Laudan can block the “no miracles” argument for the (approximate) truth of whole theories. Realists have thus retrenched, arguing that at least the individual claims deployed in the derivation of novel predictions should be considered (approximately) true. But for Lyons (2002) there are historical counterexamples even to this weaker “deployment” realism: he lists a number of novel predictions supposedly derived from (radically) false claims. But if so, those successes would seem unexplainable, even by Lyons’ “modest surrealism” or (...) other surrogates to realism. In fact, I argue, some of those predictions were an easy guess, or independently probable in the light of available evidence; hence, they are no counterexamples to deployment realism, for the no miracles argument wouldn’t apply to them. In other instances, pace Lyon, the prediction was actually false, and could be reinterpreted as true only by interpreting as true also the claim from which it was derived; or again, a false claim was employed in the derivation of a true prediction, but inessentially, the essential role being played by a weaker true claim. But as soon as the paradoxical air of such historical cases is explained away in any of these manners, they cease to represent counterexamples to deployment realism. If, as I suggest, all of them can be dealt with by these strategies, a theoretical claim can still be assumed to be true if it is crucial in deriving an improbable novel prediction. (shrink)

This essay addresses the relationships between prescription and description in legal rules. The analysis will focus on the culture-laden connotations of factual categories implied in all legal sentences and/or provisions. This investigation is spurred by the need to assess the impact of cultural difference in people’s understanding of legal imperatives and, symmetrically, how that impact is to be considered in the application of law. Differences in ways of categorizing the world could position the cultural pre-understanding required by law, and the (...) pluralism recognized and protected by constitutional principles and human/fundamental rights discourse, at a crossroads. Hence, even when we find an illegitimacy or an ignorance about what legal rules do not explicitly state but instead implicitly presuppose, this does not exclude that behind that ignorance there may be something worthy of legal protection. A question emerges: is it legitimate and reasonable to consider the ignorantia facti resulting from differing ways of categorizing the factual world as automatically and uncritically subject to the principle ignoratia legis non excusat? The essay continues with an assessment of the possible consequences of ignorantia facti in the administration of justice in multicultural societies and migration contexts. For this purpose, the opportunity for an intercultural use of law—including within national law—will be considered as a means of avoiding the discriminatory application of ignorantia facti. This topic will be addressed by leveraging both semiotic and cultural-anthropological analytical tools, including the well-known greimasien “contrat de véridiction”. (shrink)

In the De mineralibus, Albert the Great clearly states that minerals do not possess life, since – following the Aristotelian path – life is always connected with the operations of the soul. Nevertheless, dealing with the virtues of stones, Albert speaks about a curious difference between “living” and “dead” stones: living stones are substances that possess virtues caused by their forms, while non-living stones are called stones only equivocally because their virtues have expired. Moreover, throughout his work, Albert often seeks (...) help from the biological world to explain the nature and the processes of mineral substances: the coming-into-being of stones and metals is often compared to the generation of plants and animals; places where minerals are formed act as the mother’s womb for the embryo; sulphur and quicksilver are said to be the father and the mother of all metals; etc. The tendency to biologise inorganic nature is a key strategy that Albert uses to explain the processes and functions of the mineral world. (shrink)

In the fluid cultural context of today, where the significance of sexual difference is continually diminished, if not completely denied , the encounter with the phenomenology of E. Stein and E. Levinas can be both stimulating and fruitful. Even though they have speculative perspectives that are very different and do not always reach the same conclusions, both authors agree that sexual difference and paternity and maternity connected with it, is not exclusively biological but also anthropological and philosophical. This significant convergence (...) certainly has its origin in a common phenomenological inspiration, which continues to bear fruit, as witnessed by the recent work of J.-L. Marion and of a writer of a clearly feminist inspiration, such as F. Giardini. (shrink)

The paper explains the application of a Social Innovation Based Transformative Learning (SIBTL) pedagogical approach in an undergraduate, final year business ethics course taught at an Australian university. Using social innovation as an enabling process to extend students’ cognitive, behavioural and managerial competencies in an integrated manner, the paper describes how the SIBTL approach helps ethics teachers to promote students’ ethical action.

In the mid-14th century, Henry of Herford wrote the Catena aurea entium, a work of remarkable length and composed of ten books – in turn divided into ansae extending over some 5000 questions. The present study aims to analyse some aspects that the recent critical edition of Book VI of the Catena has brought to light: firstly, the dependence on Albert the Great’s De mineralibus and the compilative method used by Henry in the reworking of his sources; secondly, the main (...) philosophical, medical and encyclopedic sources that structure the treatise on minerals (in which metals are also included); and lastly, the author’s personal contribution, especially highlighting the use of vernacular terms and the recounting of personal experiences, which became useful means in explaining certain natural phenomena such as the formation of fossils or the production of images and seals. (shrink)

Con el ego cogito sum, Descartes ha buscado ofrecer un suelo seguro para la edificación del conocimiento científico. Sin embargo, la problemática así instaurada ha olvidado totalmente, como señala Heidegger, elucidar el sentido de ser de ese sum. Puede decirse que toda la obra de Michel Henry constituye una tentativa profundamente original de plantear la cuestión del ego sum sobre un contexto verdaderamente ontológico. Es en esta medida que su meditación sobre la obra y el proyecto cartesiano ocupa un lugar (...) central y permanente. Henry nos descubre en L´essence de la Manifestation (1964) y en Phénoménologie du Corps un Descartes cuyo proyecto, basado irreflexivamente sobre un procedimiento intuicionista identifica verdad con evidencia y predetermina así su investigación como una imposible tentativa de exhibir el fundamento bajo la luz. Imposible, pues el fundamento, afirma Henry, el ser del ego, es invisible. Esto es lo que ha comprendido el Descartes al que nos abre Henry en su "Généalogie de la Psychanalyse" (1985): el ser del sum no es un "qué" susceptible de ser dado por un ver sino un "como" que se revela sin mediación a sí mismo como pathos: el aparecerse a si de la vida en la inmanencia de su afectividad. With the cogito ergo sum, Descartes has intended to offer a safe ground for the construction of scientific knowledge. Nevertheless, the problematic thus posed has totally forgotten, as Heidegger points out, to elucidate the sense of the being of this sum. It can be said that the whole work of Michel Henry constitutes a deeply original attempt to raise the question of the ego sum on a truthfully ontological context. Hence, his meditation on Descartes work and project takes up a central and permanent place in his work. Henry discovers to us in L´essence de la Manifestation (1964) and in Phénoménologie du Corps (1965) a Descartes whose project, based unreflectively on an intuitionist procedure, identifies truth with evidence and thus predetermines his investigation as an impossible attempt to exhibit the grounding under light, which is impossible, given that the grounding, the being of the ego - Henry states-, is invisible. This is what Descartes has understood, according to Henry's "Généalogie de la Psychanalyse" (1985): the being of the sum is not a "that" which may be given by a vision but a "how" that reveals itself without any mediation as pathos: the appearing of life to itself in the immanence of its affectivity. (shrink)

The relation between the moral account of the capital vices and the philosophical analysis of the passions of the human soul undergoes an important turning point from the 11th century onwards during the recovery of medical knowledge in the medieval West. In this wave of fervour towards a physiological approach in the investigation of the nature of man, the vice of acedia - as described by the Christian moral tradition - and the melancholic temperament - the result of a millenary (...) reworking and technicalisation of medical knowledge - found a point of contact in the passion of sadness. If authors such as Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, following the Christian heritage, characterised acedia as an escalation of the passion of sadness, the medical tradition from Hippocrates and Galen to Avicenna and Constantine recognised sadness as one of the most distinctive manifestations of the melancholic temperament. The aim of this study is to demonstrate, by retracing some aspects of this interweaving of traditions after the year 1000, how Dante’s description of the sinners of acedia in Canto VII of the Inferno takes up the legacy of this hybridisation between the Christian description of acedia and the physiological description of melancholy. (shrink)

This contribution focuses on some of the latest advances in Eckhart Studies concerning the German sermons, the edition of the Quaestiones Parisienses and the dating of the Opus tripartitum. Though not adressed by Josef Quint's edition, the the liturgical order of the German sermons has been gaining prominence, shading new light on their interpretation: in this respect, considering the order of the medieval Dominican liturgy enables to approach the communicative circumstances of the sermons doing justice to Eckhart's homiletic effort. Moreover, (...) four new Quaestiones Parisienses collected in the Codex Vaticanus latinus 1086 have been recently reconsidered, providing evidence about the attribution to the Dominican master. Lastly, due to the re-examination of the Cod. Amplon. F 181, the recent suggestions for backdating the Opus tripartitum reveal a different overview of Eckhart's intellectual activity. (shrink)

The many constraints of outer space experience challenge the human ability to coexist. Paradoxically, astronauts assert that on the international space station there are no conflicts or, at least, that they are able to manage their differences, behavioral as well as cognitive, in full respect of human rights and the imperatives of cooperative living. The question is: Why? Why in those difficult, a-terrestrial, and therefore almost unnatural conditions do human beings seem to be able to peacefully and collaboratively live together? (...) What is there beyond terrestrial boundary conditions that allows for such a result? And what can we learn from the astronauts’ experience about the effectiveness of human rights on Earth? My proposal is that the a-terrestrial dimension deeply alters the mind/body indexical framework and, in this way, disentangles the human inclination to semiosis from the cognitive and behavioral habits of categorization and territorialization inherent in the experience on Earth. If analyzed through the spectrum of an interdisciplinary approach involving anthropology, semiology, law, and human geography, I think that outer space enterprises can offer many insights into the cognitive and ethical/political hindrances to the effectiveness of human rights and their intercultural uses. Meanwhile the compulsive greed for a possessive territorialization of outer space and celestial bodies is growing by leaps and bounds. It haunts and imbues both astropolitics and space law. The astronauts’ semio-anthropological experience of human rights and cooperative coexistence seems to have been left in orbit. The future requires awareness and action by anthropologists, semioticians, cognitive scientists, geographers and lawyers, working all together in an interdisciplinary effort to move beyond approaching the experiential with a territorial mindset. The hope is that the “dark dream” of human exploitation/colonization of outer space will not turn from a political and legal speculation into a future reality. (shrink)

This essay, between serious and facetious, addresses an apparently secondary implication of the planetary tragedy produced by Covid-19. It coincides with the ‘problem of the veil,’ a bone of contention in Islam/West relationships. More specifically, it will address the question of why the pandemic has changed the proxemics of public spaces and the grammar of ‘living together.’ For some time—and it is not possible to foresee how much—in many countries people cannot go out, or enter any public places, without wearing (...) a sanitary mask. In short, almost all of us, by obligation or by urgent advice from the public authorities of the various countries, will not live the public sphere with our faces uncovered. The alteration of the social context affecting many Western countries will inevitably involve also the ‘local’ perception of the Islamic veil and—as a matter of equality—the consistency of the prohibition of wearing it. What will thus become of the ban on wearing it in public places established by some countries such as France and asseverated by the ECHR? If everyone can and will have to go around with their faces covered, why should only Islamic women be discriminated against? Will not the change in boundary conditions produced by Covid-19 also induce Western people to re-categorize the meaning of the veil? And will this re-categorization not directly affect the ‘fact’ of wearing the veil, that is, its empirical perception? And still, will this psycho-semantic change not show how empirical perceptions are cultural constructs rather than ‘objective facts,’ as such allegedly independent from the observer’s point of view? Consequentially, will the plurality of perceptions and cultural meanings related to the gesture of covering one’s own face not gain renewed relevance in determining the legitimacy of wearing the veil? The socio-semantic earthquake produced by Covid-19 compels us to rethink this and other issues orbiting around the translation of ‘facts’ into legal language; furthermore, it highlights the instrumentality of many ideological/partisan and ethnocentric assumptions passed off as objectivity regarding those alleged ‘facts.’ The essay will attempt to provide an answer to the above questions by proposing a semiotic-legal approach to intercultural conflicts and, indirectly, the pluralism in law. (shrink)

The ArgumentI propose a revisionist account of the production and reception of Galileo's telescopic observations of 1609–10, an account that focuses on the relationship between credit and disclosure. Galileo, I argue, acted as though the corroboration of his observations were easy, not difficult. His primary worry was not that some people might reject his claims, but rather that those able to replicate them could too easily proceed to make further discoveries on their own and deprive him of credit. Consequently, he (...) tried to slow down potential replicators to prevent them from becoming competitors. He did so by not providing other practitioners access to high-power telescopes and by withholding information about how to build them. This essay looks at the development of Galileo's monopoly on early telescopic astronomy to understand how the relationship between disclosure and credit changed as he moved from being an instrument-maker to becoming a discoverer and, eventually, a court philosopher. (shrink)

It is well known that Frege separates drastically logic from psychology. Now, if we consider carefully which is the task Frege accords to psychology, we see three things, that is, first that in reality it consists not in one but in several tasks; second that in some cases it is just doubtful whether psychology can handle them and, finally, third that Frege, even if it seems the contrary, has said relevant things with respect to the aforementioned questions. From the latter (...) it follows that Frege’s drastic separation between logic and psychology does not contradict the fact that he has a clear conception of subjectivity which is intentional and not naturalistic. (shrink)

Reality is much more than the physical world before us. In Expanding Reality, Mario Beauregard examines a variety of phenomena investigated by the most open-minded and visionary scientists. These phenomena provide the evidence that mind, consciousness, and spirit cannot be simply reduced to electrical and chemical activity in the brain.