This book looks in particular at Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah and Petals of Blood by Ngugi wa Thiong'o, but situates these within the broader context of developments in African literature over the past half-century, discussing writers from Ayi Kwei Armah to Wole Soyinka. M.S.C. Okolo provides a thorough analysis of the authors' differing approaches and how these emerge from the literature. Okolo argues that these authors have been profoundly affected by the political situation of Africa, but have (...) also helped to create a new African political philosophy. (shrink)

The study investigated the supervision of undergraduates’ degree projects in Nigerian universities following the general allegation that the present day projects do not contribute to any knowledge because students copy past work and project supervisors do not have time for supervision. The population of the study was 27 federal Nigerian universities. A random sample of 9 federal Nigerian universities (33.3%) was used for the study. The instrument used in gathering the data was the questionnaire designed by the researcher titled Students’ (...) Project Management Inventory (SPMI). The validity of the instrument was done by both experts in educational administration and planning. Test-retest method was used to ascertain the reliability of the instrument. A Z-Test and common percent were the statistics used to analyze the data. The major finding was that the increased population of degree students with decreased number of supervisors have made it difficult to have good supervision of projects. Based on this finding, it is recommended that degree project requirement should be optional or elective and not compulsory. (shrink)

This survey on biotechnology and bioethics was carried out on national random samples of the public and scientists in November 2000-January 2000 throughout Japan, and attendees at the Novartis Life Science Forum held on 29 September, 1999 in Tokyo. The sample size was 297, 370, and 74 respectively. While there is better awareness of GMOs in 2000 compared to 1991; the trend shows an increase in the perceived risks of GMOs followed by growing resistance in Japan. While a majority of (...) persons believed genetic engineering would make life better over the next twenty years, the proportion of respondents who thought genetic engineering would make life worse over the next twenty years doubled from 1997 to 2000. Respondents were asked whether they had heard about applications in several areas and the order of familiarity was: pest-resistant crops, human genes in bacteria, mouse to develop cancer, food and drinks, pigs with human hearts and pre-implantation diagnosis. A divide of opinion can be seen when the results on benefit, risk and moral acceptability of applications of biotechnology by the public are compared to the forum and scientist samples.A significant change in the acceptance of the public occurred in 2000 where only 22% agreed on the moral acceptability of GM food compared to 41% in 1997. In 2000 fewer people said they are willing to buy genetically modified fruits that taste better compared to 1997. The results show less public support for use of gene therapy than 1993 and twice as many scientists rejected gene therapy than they did in 1991.When asked whom is best placed to regulate modern biotechnology, the respondents were overwhelmingly in favor of international regulatory bodies, such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization, rather than national bodies. The comparison between scientists and public is interesting, however the more enthusastic sample were participants from the Novartis Life Science Forum with its mixed occupations. (shrink)

Se analiza la relación y la distinción entre los conceptos de regulación, autodeterminación y libertad, y se presentan las influencias teóricas que condujeron a su identificación. La cuestión se acota al tratamiento de la teoría de la autodeterminación y la teoría relacional de las necesidades. Se intenta mostrar que la autorregulación no puede identificarse con la autonomía, ni el concepto de autonomía es sinónimo de autodeterminación, porque la autonomía refiere a la propiedad de la voluntad de ser la fuente de (...) la ley, en sentido kantiano, y el concepto de autodeterminación refiere a la propiedad de la voluntad de ser dominio de sí y del resto de las capacidades. El concepto de autorregulación tiene su lugar de origen en la biología y luego se aplica, por extensión, al campo de la psicología. (shrink)

Clinical ethics support services are developing in Europe. They will be most useful if they are designed to match the ethical concerns of clinicians. We conducted a cross-sectional mailed survey on random samples of general physicians in Norway, Switzerland, Italy, and the UK, to assess their access to different types of ethics support services, and to describe what makes them more likely to have used available ethics support. Respondents reported access to formal ethics support services such as clinical ethics committees (...) (23%), consultation in individual cases (17.6%), and individual ethicists (8.8%), but also to other kinds of less formal ethics support (23.6%). Access to formal ethics support services was associated with work in urban hospitals. Informal ethics resources were more evenly distributed. Although most respondents (81%) reported that they would find help useful in facing ethical difficulties, they reported having used the available services infrequently (14%). Physicians with greater confidence in their knowledge of ethics (P = 0.001), or who had had ethics courses in medical school (P = 0.006), were more likely to have used available services. Access to help in facing ethical difficulties among general physicians in the surveyed countries is provided by a mix of official ethics support services and other resources. Developing ethics support services may benefit from integration of informal services. Development of ethics education in medical school curricula could lead to improved physicians sensititity to ethical difficulties and greater use of ethics support services. Such support services may also need to be more proactive in making their help available. (shrink)

Clinical ethics committees (CECs) have been developing in many countries since the 1980s, more recently in the transitional countries in Eastern Europe. With their increasing profile they are now faced with a range of questions and challenges regarding their position within the health care organizations in which they are situated: Should CECs be independent bodies with a critical role towards institutional management, or should they be an integral part of the hospital organization? In this paper, we discuss the organizational context (...) in which CECs function in Europe focusing on five aspects. We conclude that in Europe clinical ethics committees need to maintain a critical independence while generating acceptance of the CEC and its potential benefit to both individuals and the organization. CECs, perhaps particularly in transitional countries, must counter the charge of “alibi ethics”. CECs must define their contribution to in-house quality management in their respective health care organization, clarifying how ethical reflection on various levels serves the hospital and patient care in general. This last challenge is made more difficult by lack of consensus about appropriate quality outcomes for CECs internationally. These are daunting challenges, but the fact that CECs continue to develop suggests that we should make the effort to overcome them. We believe there is a need for further research that specifically addresses some of the institutional challenges facing CECs. (shrink)

« Rythmes et Croyances au Moyen-Âge » Journée d'études organisée par Marie Formarier et Jean-Claude Schmitt 23 juin 2012 – Paris Présentation : Cette journée d'études a eu pour objectif de faire dialoguer les diverses disciplines concernées par le rapport entre rythmes et croyances au Moyen-Âge. Elle a accueilli des historiens, des anthropologues, des sociologues, des philologues et des linguistes. Présents dans la langue latine et les langues vernaculaires, dans la rhétorique du sermon, la prière et (...) - Histoire – (...) NOUVELLE JOURNÉE d'ÉTUDES. (shrink)

(1995). Women and eugenics in Britain: The case of Mary Scharlieb, Elizabeth Sloan Chesser, and Stella Browne. Annals of Science: Vol. 52, No. 5, pp. 481-502.

Models as Mediators discusses the ways in which models function in modern science, particularly in the fields of physics and economics. Models play a variety of roles in the sciences: they are used in the development, exploration and application of theories and in measurement methods. They also provide instruments for using scientific concepts and principles to intervene in the world. The editors provide a framework which covers the construction and function of scientific models, and explore the ways in which they (...) enable us to learn about both theories and the world. The contributors to the volume offer their own individual theoretical perspectives to cover a wide range of examples of modelling, from physics, economics and chemistry. These papers provide ideal case-study material for understanding both the concepts and typical elements of modelling, using analytical approaches from the philosophy and history of science. (shrink)

During the last two centuries, the way economic science is done has changed radically: it has become a social science based on mathematical models in place of words. This book describes and analyses that change - both historically and philosophically - using a series of case studies to illuminate the nature and the implications of these changes. It is not a technical book; it is written for the intelligent person who wants to understand how economics works from the inside out. (...) This book will be of interest to economists and science studies scholars. But it also aims at a wider readership in the public intellectual sphere, building on the current interest in all things economic and on the recent failure of the so-called economic model, which has shaped our beliefs and the world we live in. (shrink)

This book offers a defence of mathematical fictionalism, according to which we have no reason to believe that there are any mathematical objects. Perhaps the most pressing challenge to mathematical fictionalism is the indispensability argument for the truth of our mathematical theories (and therefore for the existence of the mathematical objects posited by those theories). According to this argument, if we have reason to believe anything, we have reason to believe that the claims of our best empirical theories are (at (...) least approximately) true. But since claims whose truth would require the existence of mathematical objects are indispensable in formulating our best empirical theories, it follows that we have good reason to believe in the mathematical objects posited by those mathematical theories used in empirical science, and therefore to believe that the mathematical theories utilized in empirical science are true. Previous responses to the indispensability argument have focused on arguing that mathematical assumptions can be dispensed with in formulating our empirical theories. This book, by contrast, offers an account of the role of mathematics in empirical science according to which the successful use of mathematics in formulating our empirical theories need not rely on the truth of the mathematics utilized. (shrink)

Scientific culture in Europe and the refugee generation -- Germany and Weimar Berlin as the City of Science -- Origins of a social perspective: doing physical chemistry in Weimar Berlin -- Chemical dynamics and social dynamics in Berlin and Manchester -- Liberalism and the economic foundations of the "Republic of Science" -- Scientific freedom and the social functions of science -- Political foundations of the philosophies of science of Popper, Kuhn, and Polanyi -- Personal knowledge: argument, audiences, and sociological engagement (...) -- Epilogue: SSK, scientific constructivism, and the paradoxical legacy of Polanyi and the 1930s generation. (shrink)

As forms of private self-regulation, multi-stakeholder initiatives have emerged as an important empirical phenomenon in global governance processes. At the same time, MSIs are also theoretically intriguing because of their inherent double nature. On the one hand, MSIs spell out CSR standards that define norms for corporate behavior. On the other hand, MSIs are also the result of corporate and stakeholder behavior. We combine the perspectives of institutional theory and club theory to conceptualize this double nature of MSIs. Based on (...) a stage model that looks at the interplay of actor and institutional dynamics, we generate insights into why actors join a voluntary MSI, how the various motivations and intentions of the actors influence the standard development, and how these as well as the MSI design are subsequently influenced by both external and internal dynamics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 14.4 (2004) 411-425 [Access article in PDF] Vulnerability, Vulnerable Populations, and Policy Mary C. Ruof "Special justification is required for inviting vulnerable individuals to serve as research subjects and, if they are selected, the means of protecting their rights and welfare must be strictly applied."Guideline 13: Research Involving Vulnerable Persons International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects Council for International Organizations (...) of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) and World Health Organization (WHO) Geneva, Switzerland, 2002 Within medical research and healthcare certain groups are afforded special protections and services because of their designation as vulnerable. The vulnerable require special justification to participate in human subject research in order to eliminate potential human rights abuses. The Nuremberg Code of 1947 was written in response to the extreme human subject abuses that occurred under the Nazi regime, and, although the intent of the 1947 Code was to protect human rights, rigid voluntary consent requirements deprived some individuals of the right to participate in clinical trials. Recent human research guidelines, such as the CIOMS/WHO guidelines referenced above and the guidelines referenced in Section V of this Scope Note, attempt to balance both protection from abuse in research and access to new, experimental treatments for the vulnerable.Although various protective guidelines stipulate special protections for vulnerable populations, the concept of vulnerability and consequently the criteria designating vulnerable populations remain vague. Precisely who are the vulnerable? The word "vulnerability" stems from the Latin vulnerare, "to wound." (Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary 1995). In clinical research, the term [End Page 411] vulnerable generally is applied to individuals who are unable to give informed consent or who are susceptible to coercion. The Common Rule (45 CFR 46, Subpart A) includes as vulnerable research subjects: children, prisoners, pregnant women, and persons who are handicapped, mentally disabled, economically disadvantaged, or educationally disadvantaged. Although the Common Rule specifies certain vulnerable categories, the guidelines were not intended to be exclusive, leaving open the interpretation of vulnerability.In medical research and health policy, vulnerability is an abstract concept that has concrete effects both for those labeled vulnerable and for those not. Clinical researchers, healthcare workers, ethical reviewers, and policymakers must be able to identify vulnerable subjects to establish how healthcare resources will be allocated and who will qualify for special protections and socialized benefits. Attempts to quantify vulnerability in clear, measurable ways have met little if any consensus. As Alexander Morawa (II, 2003, p. 150) states, "There is no single approach to definition of vulnerability. In fact, there is no purposeful categorisation at all."Difficulties in defining vulnerability have prompted discourse surrounding its utility as a qualifying factor in the allocation of health resources and its appropriateness as a guiding principle in bioethics. Some of the authors cited in this Scope Note argue against the labeling and categorization of vulnerable individuals and populations. "Labeling individuals as 'vulnerable' risks viewing vulnerable individuals as 'others' worthy of pity, a view rarely appreciated" (III, Danis and Patrick 2002, p. 320). The categories of vulnerable groups listed under the Common Rule have been the source of controversy, "for example, many find the suggestion that pregnant women are vulnerable to be quite sexist" (IV, DeBruin 2001, p. 7). Instead of creating categories of vulnerable populations, would it not be better to derive an account of just treatment from a just social policy at large that encompasses human vulnerabilities (II, Brock 2002, p. 283).For some of the authors listed here, the concept of vulnerability is essential to bioethics. Robert Goodin (I, 1985, p. 107) writes that the vulnerability of other human beings is the source of our special responsibilities to them. In contrast to the four American principles of biomedical ethics—autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice—the four principles of European bioethics and biolaw include vulnerability along with autonomy, dignity, and integrity. According to, Jacob Dahl Rendtorff and Peter Kemp (I, 2000, p. 274) "the principle of vulnerability is ontologically prior to the other [European] principles, it expresses better than all of the other ethical principles... the finitude of the human condition."Some of the... (shrink)

Reading the Shape of Nature vividly recounts the turbulent early history of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard and the contrasting careers of its founder Louis Agassiz and his son Alexander. Through the story of this institution and the individuals who formed it, Mary P. Winsor explores the conflicting forces that shaped systematics in the second half of the nineteenth century. Debates over the philosophical foundations of classification, details of taxonomic research, the young institution's financial struggles, and the (...) personalities of the men most deeply involved are all brought to life. In 1859, Louis Agassiz established the Museum of Comparative Zoology to house research on the ideal types that he believed were embodied in all living forms. Agassiz's vision arose from his insistence that the order inherent in the diversity of life reflected divine creation, not organic evolution. But the mortar of the new museum had scarcely dried when Darwin's Origin was published. By Louis Agassiz's death in 1873, even his former students, including his son Alexander, had defected to the evolutionist camp. Alexander, a self-made millionaire, succeeded his father as director and introduced a significantly different agenda for the museum. To trace Louis and Alexander's arguments and the style of science they established at the museum, Winsor uses many fascinating examples that even zoologists may find unfamiliar. The locus of all this activity, the museum building itself, tells its own story through a wonderful series of archival photographs. (shrink)

_Strange Wonder_ confronts Western philosophy's ambivalent relationship to the Platonic "wonder" that reveals the strangeness of the everyday. On the one hand, this wonder is said to be the origin of all philosophy. On the other hand, it is associated with a kind of ignorance that ought to be extinguished as swiftly as possible. By endeavoring to resolve wonder's indeterminacy into certainty and calculability, philosophy paradoxically secures itself at the expense of its own condition of possibility. _Strange Wonder_ locates a (...) reopening of wonder's primordial uncertainty in the work of Martin Heidegger, for whom wonder is first experienced as the shock at the groundlessness of things and then as an astonishment that things nevertheless _are_. Mary-Jane Rubenstein traces this double movement through the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Jacques Derrida, ultimately thematizing wonder as the awesome, awful opening that exposes thinking to devastation as well as transformation. Rubenstein's study shows that wonder reveals the extraordinary in and through the ordinary, and is therefore crucial to the task of reimagining political, religious, and ethical terrain. (shrink)

_Strange Wonder_ confronts Western philosophy's ambivalent relationship to the Platonic "wonder" that reveals the strangeness of the everyday. On the one hand, this wonder is said to be the origin of all philosophy. On the other hand, it is associated with a kind of ignorance that ought to be extinguished as swiftly as possible. By endeavoring to resolve wonder's indeterminacy into certainty and calculability, philosophy paradoxically secures itself at the expense of its own condition of possibility. _Strange Wonder_ locates a (...) reopening of wonder's primordial uncertainty in the work of Martin Heidegger, for whom wonder is first experienced as the shock at the groundlessness of things and then as an astonishment that things nevertheless _are_. Mary-Jane Rubenstein traces this double movement through the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Jacques Derrida, ultimately thematizing wonder as the awesome, awful opening that exposes thinking to devastation as well as transformation. Rubenstein's study shows that wonder reveals the extraordinary in and through the ordinary, and is therefore crucial to the task of reimagining political, religious, and ethical terrain. (shrink)

Mary Hesse's well-known work on models and analogies gives models a creative role to play in science, which rests on developing certain analogical properties considered neutral between the two fields. Case study material from Irving Fisher's work (The Purchasing Power of Money, 1911), in which he used analogies to construct models of monetary relations and the monetary system, highlights certain omissions in Hesse's account. The analysis points to the importance of taking account of the negative properties in the analogies (...) and to certain differences between "ready-made" analogies (models of systems based on existing analogical structures) and "designed" analogies (models built up from separate analogical features). (shrink)

The Supreme Court seems poised to overrule Roe v. Wade and hold that there is no constitutional right to choose abortion. The reversal of Roe seems to run counter to public opinion in the United St...

Arbitrary Rule is the first book to tackle political slavery’s discursive complexity, engaging Eurocolonialism, political philosophy, and literary studies, areas of study too often kept apart.

Many ethics instructors turn to peculiar examples and cases to highlight ethical concerns about autonomy and collective goods. While these efforts are respectable, they lamentably reinforce the valorization of independence and the opposition of individuality to collectivity that are too prevalent in ethics today. Attending to the event of pregnancy would help overcome these troubles. By concentrating on pregnancy, we can better appreciate the dependence that is integral to the human experience, the discrete value of each individual, the possible noncompetition (...) between individual and society, and the importance of appreciating the sources of our existence. Religious ethicists would do well to think more about pregnancy, a condition which is sui generis and yet also illustrative of the fundamental interdependence of human beings. (shrink)

Desde mediados del siglo XX, el devenir de la salvaguarda relacionada con las viviendas ha avanzado desde la monumentalidad hasta el contexto, desde la individualización hasta la caracterización paisajística, desde las condiciones materiales hasta los aspectos vivenciales. Sin embargo, amparar el cuerpo de las residencias típicas de cada territorio, en especial en los dinámicos marcos urbanos, resultó —y resulta— un desafío. Las experimentaciones de propuestas hacia un amparo residencial a más largo plazo han coincidido en dos aspectos de interés: la (...) promoción de indicadores de sustentabilidad patrimonial, inscriptos en cada marco estatal-local preservacionista, junto con el reconocimiento y el tratamiento del rol usuario. En este sentido, desde variables histórico-arquitectónicas y sociales se propuso la construcción y la aplicación de indicadores de sustentabilidad patrimonial residencial para visibilizar problemas y potencialidades hacia una formulación de estrategias de preservación apropiadas. Para ello se abordó la ciudad de Mar del Plata, una aglomeración intermedia bonaerense paradigmática debido a sus dinamismos pasados y presentes, con foco en sus chalets “estilo Mar del Plata” y sus usuarios. Se analizaron dos barrios históricos —Stella Maris y La Perla—, donde sobrevive una relevante diversidad de chalets en un marco de múltiples riesgos que afectan su permanencia. Desde una perspectiva principalmente cualitativa, apoyada por datos cuantitativos, se articularon relevamientos in situ, fuentes escritas (investigaciones previas, artículos científicos, cartas patrimoniales), gráficas (planimetrías, fotografías, imágenes aéreas) y orales (encuestas, entrevistas). De esta manera, la indagación desarrollada permitió avanzar en renovados caminos para progresar en la salvaguarda del legado residencial contextual. (shrink)

Introduction -- The problem of Socrates : Kierkegaard and Nietzsche -- Kierkegaard : Socrates vs. the God -- Nietzsche : call for an artistic Socrates -- Plato's Socrates -- Love, generation, and political community (the Symposium) -- The prologue -- Phaedrus' praise of nobility -- Pausanias' praise of law -- Eryximachus' praise of art -- Aristophanic comedy -- Tragic victory -- Socrates' turn -- Socrates' prophetess and the daemonic -- Love as generative -- Alcibiades' dramatic entrance -- Alcibiades' images of (...) socrates -- Alcibiades' praise of Socrates' virtues -- Aftermath -- The incompleteness of the Symposium -- Self-knowledge, love, and rhetoric (Plato's Phaedrus) -- The setting -- Non-lovers (Lysias' speech and Socrates' first speech) -- Souls and their fall -- Lovers and their ascent -- Prayer to love -- Contemporary rhetoric and politics -- A genuine art of rhetoric -- Writing -- Prayer to Pan -- Who is the friend? (the Lysis) -- Joining the group -- Getting acquainted -- Seeking a friend -- Are friends the ones loving, the ones loved, or both? -- Are likes friends? -- Are unlikes friends? -- Are those who are neither good nor bad friends to the good? -- Are the kindred friends? -- Who might friends be? -- Friendly communities -- Socratic philosophizing -- Socrates' youthful search for cause -- Socrates' second sailing and the ideas -- Piety, poetry, and friendship. (shrink)

Adolescence, defined in the US as 11–21 years of age, is a critical period for prevention, as it marks the onset of risk behaviors. Minor (<18 years) self-consent and inclusion in biomedical resear...

This paper addresses the problem of how scientific knowledge, which is always locally generated, becomes accepted in other sites. The analysis suggests that there are a small number of strategies that enable scientists to resituate knowledge and that these strategies are generic: they are not restricted to specific disciplines or modes of doing science but rather are found in a variety of different forms across the sciences.

This chapter is Mary Whiton Calkins’ articulation and defense of the personalistic conception of reality.