This chapter contains sections titled: European Positivism Latin American Positivism Martí Rodó Vaz Ferreira Ingenieros References Further Reading.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Allegory and the Spaces of LoveOscar Martín (bio)Writing about Spanish sentimental fiction from 1450 to 1550 is not an easy task, as we are discussing a genre with a difficult theoretical configuration. The investigation of sentimental fiction, however, has been sorting out the classifications that applied to a hodgepodge of works previously labeled as “sentimental novel” (“novela sentimental”). This label, once attached uncritically to a bunch of heterogeneous texts (...) that shared such intangibles as “loving focus” or “prevalence of psychological description over narratives,” has been applied more consistently nowaday, thanks in part to the scholarly efforts started in the 1980s like those of Martínez Jiménez and Muñoz Marquina (1982), and Martínez Latre (1989).1 Using some of these research efforts, Alan Deyermond has codified the genre accurately:Brevity; focus on psychological interest over external action; a tragic vision of love; autobiography (first-person narration or a narrator as a character) and the insertion of letters or poems (or, often, both) into the narration.[77]2Within this scholarly categorization, Regula Rohland de Langbehn has been pivotal in offering—first in 1986, and more recently in 1999—a threefold scheme in the development of the genre she labels as “sentimental novel”: a first group chronologically of the genre would be represented by Siervo libre de amor and Sátira de felice e infelice vida, both works marked by the influence of cancionero poetry—specially in the allegorical structuring and in the characterization of love, and by other subjects being limited to an abstract and general analysis of emotions. Both works also present a debate over the moral value of love. A second group would gravitate around Triste deleytacion and the works of Diego de San Pedro and Juan de Flores, works that show a wider range of topics and the impact of a broader generic textuality like cancionero poetry and such chivalric novels as Tirant. Finally, she distinguishes a third group whose main characteristic is the imprint of Celestina’s influence on both the narrative surface and its thematic approach. In the same vein, Vicenta Blay Manzanera has taken up this threefold scheme, dividing the genre into “the creation of the paradigm” (“la creación del paradigma”) the climactic stage, and the downfall and disarticulation of the narrative sentimental system” (“la fase climática” and “el tercero la fase de declive o desintegración del paradigma”) [“La conciencia genérica” 221]. [End Page 132]Just as Rohland de Langbehn’s works had at least settled down the arguments about the existence of a sentimental novelistic genre, however, medieval Hispanic scholarship has been shaken by an entrenched debate over not only the identification of this genre (novel or fiction) but whether the genre even existed at all. It was Antonio Cortijo Ocaña who, while editing a critical cluster in La Corónica on sentimental fiction, opened the door to some scholars such as Weissberger who voiced their skepticism over the generic nature of sentimental prose, a skepticism already present in an innovative volume published by Gwara and Gerli in 1997. This skeptical position was also supported by Cortijo Ocaña himself, who in 2001 published a monumental work in which, although using the generic term as a departure point, he ended up suggesting the difficulty of defining it, therefore jettisoning it. This position in turn was contested by Rohland de Langbehn, who in 2002 defended the validity of both the existence of a genre and its name novela sentimental, a position that has sparked a new round of replies in a La Corónica forum in 2003.In this debate, I would join today’s minority position on the existence of a sentimental genre, because, as I explained in my 2001 review of Rohland de Langbehn’s book and as I find convincingly argued in her 2002 contribution, there are internal traits within sentimental fictional texts that do not appear together in other sentimental generic texts [139]. In addition, once we take into account the obvious intertextuality of those sentimental texts, as Blay Manzanera has shown [“La conciencia genérica”], and the overutilization of central motifs in the configuration of love’s debate, we... (shrink)

Dorian Gray pays a hefty price for years of sin and vice in this completely unabridged edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Oscar Masotta (Buenos Aires, 1930- Barcelona, 1979) is all but forgotten now, except perhapsin the field of Lacanian studies. This is because in the 1970s,Masotta would challenge the master psychoanalyst on hisown turf, creating his own post-Lacanian school of psychoanalysisin Barcelona. But in 1965, aged just 27, Masottataught at the University of Buenos Aires, lectured at theDi Tella, and edited a book series on communication andmedia. A product of the newly open post-Perón era." Page 91.. This is the first (...) exhibition organized with materials from the archive Juan Acha, and includes reactivations of non-object-based art and artistic documentation. (shrink)

Some properties and an algorithm for solving systems of multivariate polynomial equations over finite fields are presented. It is then shown how formulas of propositional logics can be translated into polynomials over finite fields in such a way that several logic problems are expressed in terms of algebraic problems. Consequently, algebraic properties and algorithms can be used to solve the algebraically-represented logic problems. The methods described herein combine and generalise those of various previous works.

El objetivo de esta investigación es analizar los procesos de acreditación de programas de licenciatura en la Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas (UAZ), para identificar áreas de oportunidad para la consolidación del proceso y de los programas. El enfoque es cualitativo, la metodología utilizada fue la revisión de documentos institucionales y la realización de entrevistas semiestructuradas a exfuncionarios, las cuales se transcribieron, codificaron y analizaron con el software ATLAS.ti. Se concluye que la consolidación de procesos de acreditación en la UAZ es (...) una utopía. Sin embargo, se identificaron áreas de oportunidad como insumo para el Proceso de Reforma Universitaria en curso. (shrink)

A presente coletânea é resultado de cooperação de pesquisadores brasileiros e portugueses, envolvidos com a docência no ensino superior e a consequente formação continuada dos professores universitários. A frequência no ensino superior é vista como uma conquista social dos ideais democráticos modernos e teria trazido novos públicos aos bancos escolares, o que tornaria esse ensino uma realidade de maneira qualitativa distinta com a qual decisores políticos, gestores, professores e estudantes devem aprender a lidar. Essas preocupações pretenderam motivar e nortear os (...) temas abordados nesta obra. (shrink)

Los métodos productivos de enseñanza preparan a los estudiantes para resolver problemas semejantes a los que se enfrentarán en el ejercicio laboral. Este trabajo tiene como objetivo fundamentar la pertinencia de la utilización del caso clínico como herramienta didáctica para la enseñanza en las ciencias básicas biomédicas, mediante un sistema de tareas para abordar los contenidos del tema Fisiología de la sangre de la asignatura Sangre y Sistema Inmune de la carrera de medicina. El caso clínico permite la vinculación de (...) las ciencias básicas biomédicas con las ciencias clínicas. Su utilización contribuye a la aproximación del estudiante de las ciencias básicas al estudio de estas durante su formación médica. El aprendizaje se logra a lo largo del proceso de resolución del mismo, se estimula la incorporación de conceptos necesarios para resolver el problema y se aprende un método para abordar situaciones en la práctica. Se elaboró un sistema de tareas y preguntas derivadas del problema profesional síndrome anémico. El problema docente se basó en un artículo médico que expone un caso de lesiones por empalamiento que produjo un gran sangramiento en un individuo. Se elaboraron preguntas problémicas relacionadas con la fisiología de la sangre y el tratamiento que recibió el paciente con eritropoyetina, factores de la coagulación y soluciones cristaloides en sustitución de la sangre. Se incluyó una pregunta que aborda un conflicto ético para sistematizar los conocimientos adquiridos en la asignatura Sociedad y Salud II. Productive teaching methods train students to solve problems similar to those they will face in their work life. The objective of the paper is to argue pertinence in the use of the clinical case as a didactic tool in biomedical basic sciences teaching by means of a task system that deals with the contents of the Blood Physiology subject in the Blood and Immune System subject matter of the medicine degree. Clinical cases enable the link between biomedical basic sciences and clinical sciences. Their use contributes to basic sciences students' approach to the study of the latter during their medical training. Learning is achieved through its solving process; the introduction of necessary problem-solving concepts is encouraged and a method to deal with in-practice situations is learned. A task and questions system derived from the anemic syndrome professional problem was made. The teaching problem was based on a medical article which presents a case of an individual who suffered impaling injuries which caused a great bleeding. Problem questions related to blood physiology and to the erythropoietin-based treatment the patient received, coagulation factors and crystalloid fluids used as blood substitutes, were prepared. It was included a question that deals with an ethical conflict in order to systematize the knowledge acquired in the Society and Health II subject matter. (shrink)

El capital social, si bien corresponde a una categoría nacida de la economía política clásica y, en particular, empleada por Karl Marx, en su versión contemporánea se muestra en la combinación del capital físico y el capital humano en el contexto de la teoría de la economía de bienestar. En la primera parte se expone la cuestión conceptual y en la segunda se expone el capital humano en un modelo de crecimiento de Convergencia. Se consideran los niveles de escolaridad promedio (...) en los asentamientos irregulares de la Delegación Milpa Alta en el Distrito Federal entre 2000-2005 y se proyectan las tasas al 2020 que mantiene los resultados de Convergencia obtenidos en el modelo para el 2000-2005, demostrando la relación entre valor, trabajo, educación y crecimiento. (shrink)

A partir de una discusión sobre el concepto de pobreza desde la perspectiva de las necesidades, absoluta y relativa, y su satisfacción, se exponen estrategias metodológicas y alternativas para su medición. Considerando zonas espaciales, se estima la pobreza territorial para las delegaciones del Distrito Federal sincrónica y diacrónicamente en el periodo 2000-2040. Se hace uso del método de ESNBI a fin de comparar espacios territoriales demarcados por una división política, lo cual se desarrolla a través de variables de Necesidades Básicas (...) o variables directas y un indicador de feminización de la pobreza. A las variables seleccionadas se les da un tratamiento con base en el Método de Componentes Principales que da como resultado un índice de pobreza. (shrink)

El presente trabajo busca responder cómo se plantearon la cuestión de la representación política aquellos autores a quienes se considera como las fuentes del pensamiento y la teoría política modernos’ atendiendo por un lado a que actualmente la representación se encuentra vinculada con elecciones libres y democracia, que carecían de existencia real cuando ellos escribieron; y por otro lado, que al poner el consentimiento de los individuos como base de la legitimidad política, necesariamente debieron enfrentar el problema de la representación (...) política. El artículo hace un breve esbozo de los rasgos que definen la novedad que representó la teoría del contrato en relación con el pensamiento filosófico político precedente, y luego se examina el problema de la representación en algunos autores seleccionados, para terminar con algunas reflexiones sobre el valor y presencia de sus contribuciones en la actualidad. (shrink)

Se construye el concepto de “representación política constitutivas” como expresión de la “imaginación social y cultural” desde la teoría sociológica contemporánea en sus dimensiones de mito, ideología, utopía o idea. Paralelamente, se propone un ensayo de análisis de la representación de la “Patria Grande” considerada como una “representación social” con pretensiones de universalidad, contradictoria y polisémica, que permite una gran flexibilidad heurística y una variedad de funciones que la hacen operacional a la investigación, pero también, rodeada de una gran confusión. (...) Finalmente, se interpreta Patria Grande como idea de una historia universal con designio cosmopolita dirigida hacia la paz perpetua expresada en el momento de la ilustración y la independencia de las repúblicas latinoamericanas como alternativa crítica a algunas tesis reduccionistas del análisis político contemporáneo. (shrink)

Este trabajo examina el Contrato social de Rousseau como exposición de los principios de derecho político de la “república legítima” (Estado), que están en la base de la comprensión de los cuerpos políticos modernos. Tomando en cuenta el campo agonístico de la teoría del contrato y de la tradición republicana en que se inserta, el interés recae en la identificación y sistematización de los principios formales que subyacen a su concepción de la república como un todo compuesto y complejo, así (...) como al enunciado de sus principios constitutivos. A partir de ello, el artículo identifica el modelo de la república en estado de equilibrio, que le permite dar el paso para el desarrollo de su teoría sobre el funcionamiento del Estado y el papel del gobierno. (shrink)

The research sought to determine the prevalence of Burnout Syndrome in health teachers at a university in north-eastern Peru. The universe was made up of 69 teachers, and 41 responded to the self-administered instrument called Maslach Burnout Inventory. The results show that 14.6% present this syndrome. The highest indicator was personal fulfillment, while depersonalization and emotional exhaustion were low. According to gender, in both it was similar. According to age group, it had a greater effect in ages between 36 and (...) 51 years. Marital status was more prevalent in singles. We conclude that the prevalence of Burnout Syndrome was low. (shrink)

This article provides a critical and philosophical assessment of arguments invoked for and against the constitutional protection of commercial expression and the regulation of commercial speech with a focus on the commercialization of unhealthy food products.

The deformation and wear events that underlie microwear and macrowear signals commonly used for dietary reconstruction in fossil animals can be replicated and quantified by controlled laboratory tests on extracted tooth specimens in conjunction with fundamental micromechanics analysis. Key variables governing wear relations include angularity, stiffness (modulus), and size of the contacting particle, along with material properties of enamel. Both axial and sliding contacts can result in the removal of tooth enamel. The degree of removal, characterized by a “wear coefficient,” (...) varies strongly with particle content at the occlusal interface. Conditions leading to a transition from mild to severe wear are discussed. Measurements of wear traces can provide information about contact force and particle shape. The potential utility of the micromechanics methodology as an adjunct for investigating tooth durability and reconstructing diet is explored. (shrink)

Resumen:Es innegable que desde la publicación de A Theory of Justice en 1971 la filosofía política ha dado un giro en las temáticas que históricamente ha abordado. Pues como afirma Robert Nozick, es imposible realizar cualquier tipo de filosofía práctica, sin considerar el marco teórico ofrecido por la obra de Rawls, dado que lo inédito de su trabajo es ofrecer una teoría sustantiva de justicia que deja atrás la tradición lógica-analítica, así como el mero análisis histórico-sistemático. Las múltiples repercusiones han (...) dado inicio a una vasta cantidad de encuentros y desencuentros en la forma concebir la justicia social. En este debate se enmarca el último libro del profesor Pablo Aguayo Westwood: Justicia social: conceptos, teorías y problemas, donde propone una breve revisión de los principales hitos que han marcado la discusión en torno a la justicia social, así como algunos problemas prácticos que conciernen a esta. (shrink)

Arguments analogous to those found in the late medieval theory of the king’s two bodies, popularized by Ernst Kantorowicz, were resurrected in early nineteenth-century constitutional theories of the moderating powers of monarchy. Post-revolutionary French liberal thought, echoed by its Portuguese counterpart, rediscovered the virtues of the institution of royalty, notably the immaterial and immortal body of the king. This rediscovery was prompted by the uncertainties of different national political contexts which made many contemporaries believe it desirable to integrate restored monarchies (...) within modern constitutional models for state stability. This first occurred with the Bourbons’ return to post-Napoleonic France and the restoration of the monarchy in 1814, and then with the Braganza royal family’s return to Portugal in 1821 after thirteen years of rule from Brazil. Using arguments similar to those previously made in late medieval European political and legal thought, French and Portuguese liberals developed a theory of the king’s two powers, according to which the monarch at once exercised a moderating power, defined by the abstract institutional nature of the king’s person, and an executive power, embodied within his physical person. This conceptualization of royal duality was intended to make it possible to delegate executive power to ministers, leaving the king only the attributes of a largely symbolic power. Liberals thereby hoped to confine the monarch to his purely institutional body in a de-politicized constitutional role. (shrink)

Hundreds of thousands of conferences have taken place since their first appearance in the late eighteenth century, yet the history of science has often treated them as stages for scientific practice, not as the play itself. Drawing on recent work in the history of science and of international relations, the introduction to this special issue suggests avenues for exploring the phenomenon of the international scientific conference, broadly construed, by highlighting the connected dimensions of communication, sociability and international relations. It lays (...) out a typology of scientific conferences as a way of gaining an overview of their diversity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It argues that the international scientific conference is a central locus for understanding science as a social, cultural and political practice. (shrink)

Historians are showing increasing interest in scientific internationalism, the notion that science transcends national differences and hence advances peace and cooperation. This notion became particularly popular in the decades around 1900, the heyday of the universal expositions and the so-called first era of globalization. In this article I argue that in order to properly historicize scientific internationalism, it is imperative to understand how actors imagined science to have pacifist effects, and to relate their technoscientific to their geopolitical imaginaries. To illustrate (...) this, I analyze the 1911 novel Der Menschheit Hochgedanken by the famous Austrian pacifist Baroness Bertha von Suttner. It tells the story of a scientific conference whose participants, by the sheer brilliance of their thought, ward off war and preserve world peace. Relating the novel to von Suttner’s own life experiences, I situate her internationalism in the social texture and international relations of the late Habsburg Empire. It appears that von Suttner mobilized notions of the pacific effects of science with an eye to preserving both the European system of states and the position of the aristocracy. (shrink)

The new field of the history of knowledge is often presented as a mere expansion of the history of science. We argue that it has a greater ambition. The re‐definition of the historiographical domain of the history of knowledge urges us to ask new questions about the boundaries, hierarchies, and mutual constitution of different types of knowledge as well as the role and assessment of failure and ignorance in making knowledge. These issues have pertinence in the current climate where expertise (...) is increasingly questioned and authority seems to lose its ground. Illustrated with examples from recent historiography of the sixteenth to twentieth centuries, we indicate some fruitful new avenues for research in the history of knowledge. Taken together, we hope that they will show that the history of knowledge could build the expertise required by the challenges of twenty‐first century knowledge societies, just like the history of science, throughout its development as a discipline in the twentieth century, responded to the demands posed by science and society. (shrink)

Reconstruction is a central notion in Dewey’s account of inquiry and in his metaphilosophical commitments. In his work, Dewey made a call for reconstruction of philosophy, in the reconstruction of central notions of the discipline, like knowledge, logic, truth, the good, reason, and experience. Inquiry itself is reconstructive, according to Dewey, involving the transformation of an indeterminate situation into one which is determinate and understood. Dewey’s philosophical views should therefore be of interest to those taking part in the recent turn (...) towards revisionary philosophical methodologies, like conceptual engineering, explication, and amelioration. In light of the recent developments in revisionary methodologies, I aim to explore Dewey’s conception of concepts in relation to the conceptual engineering literature, suggesting that it provides a useful conception of concepts for conceptual engineering, and to suggest a Deweyan model of philosophical inquiry where concepts are the objects of inquiry. In both cases, I hope to show a productive interaction between Dewey’s ideas and contemporary discussions of conceptual engineering. (shrink)

An individual's health, genetic, or environmental-exposure data, placed in an online repository, creates a valuable shared resource that can accelerate biomedical research and even open opportunities for crowd-sourcing discoveries by members of the public. But these data become “immortalized” in ways that may create lasting risk as well as benefit. Once shared on the Internet, the data are difficult or impossible to redact, and identities may be revealed by a process called data linkage, in which online data sets are matched (...) to each other. Reidentification, the process of associating an individual's name with data that were considered deidentified, poses risks such as insurance or employment discrimination, social stigma, and breach of the promises often made in informed-consent documents. At the same time, re-ID poses risks to researchers and indeed to the future of science, should re-ID end up undermining the trust and participation of potential research participants. The ethical challenges of online data sharing are heightened as so-called big data becomes an increasingly important research tool and driver of new research structures. Big data is shifting research to include large numbers of researchers and institutions as well as large numbers of participants providing diverse types of data, so the participants’ consent relationship is no longer with a person or even a research institution. In addition, consent is further transformed because big data analysis often begins with descriptive inquiry and generation of a hypothesis, and the research questions cannot be clearly defined at the outset and may be unforeseeable over the long term. In this article, we consider how expanded data sharing poses new challenges, illustrated by genomics and the transition to new models of consent. We draw on the experiences of participants in an open data platform—the Personal Genome Project—to allow study participants to contribute their voices to inform ethical consent practices and protocol reviews for big-data research. (shrink)

In spite of the considerable literature nowadays existing on the issue of the moral exclusion of nonhuman animals, there is still work to be done concerning the characterization of the conceptual framework with which this question can be appraised. This paper intends to tackle this task. It starts by defining speciesism as the unjustified disadvantageous consideration or treatment of those who are not classified as belonging to a certain species. It then clarifies some common misunderstandings concerning what this means. Next, (...) it rejects the idea that there are different kinds of speciesism. Such an idea may result from confusion because there are (1) different ways in which speciesism can be defended; and (2) different speciesist positions, that is, different positions that assume speciesism among their premises. Depending on whether or not these views assume other criteria for moral consideration apart from speciesism, they can be combined or simple speciesist positions. But speciesism remains in all cases the same idea. Finally, the paper examines the concept of anthropocentrism, the disadvantageous treatment or consideration of those who are not members of the human species. This notion must be conceptually distinguished from speciesism and from misothery (aversion to nonhuman animals). Anthropocentrism is shown to be refuted because it either commits a petitio principia fallacy or it falls prey to two arguments: the argument from species overlap (widely but misleadingly known as “argument from marginal cases”) and the argument from relevance. This rebuttal identifies anthropocentrism as a speciesist view. (shrink)

This Afterword to the special section on Science Popularization in Francoist Spain draws general conclusions from its case studies. Most overarchingly, the different contributions show that popularization existed under this dictatorial regime, and hence does not require a Habermasian liberal-democratic public sphere. Four more specific lessons are also drawn, each shedding new light on either science popularization or dictatorial regimes. Popularization has not only been a way to promote science, it has also been used to prop up dictatorial regimes by (...) associating them with things scientific. Totalitarian regimes are much less monolithic than they appear to be at the surface; they often harbor internal weaknesses and conflicts. The study of science popularization in dictatorships can help open our eyes for comparable forms of propaganda in democracies. Totalitarianism is best understood not as a universal phenomenon, but in its specific historical situatedness. Studying science popularization under Franco brings out the specific traits of this regime: the legacy of the Civil War, Spanish regionalism, and the international dependencies of the Francoist state. (shrink)

I argue that a standard formulation of hinge epistemology is host to epistemic relativism and show that two leading hinge approaches (Coliva’s acceptance account and Pritchard’s nondoxastic account) are vulnerable to a form of incommensurability that leads to relativism. Building on both accounts, I introduce a new, minimally epistemic conception of hinges that avoids epistemic relativism and rationally resolves hinge disagreements. According to my proposed account, putative cases of epistemic incommensurability are rationally resolvable: hinges are propositions that are the objects (...) of our belief-like attitudes and are rationally revisable in virtue of our overarching commitment to avoid systematic deception in our epistemic practices. (shrink)

This paper presents some of the most promising ways wild animals are currently being helped, as well as other ways of helping that may be implemented easily in the near future. They include measures to save animals affected by harmful weather events, wild animal vaccination programs, and projects aimed at reducing suffering among synanthropic animals. The paper then presents other ways of helping wild animals that, while noncontroversial, may reduce aggregate suffering at the ecosystem level. The paper argues that impracticability (...) and normative objections against reducing wild animal suffering fail against these ways of helping wild animals. (shrink)

In attempting to debunk moral realism through an appeal to evolutionary facts, debunkers face a series of problems, which we label the problems of scope, corrosiveness, and post‐hoc justification. To overcome these problems, debunkers must assume certain metaphysical or epistemological positions, or otherwise pre‐establish them. In doing so, they must assume or pre‐establish the very conclusion they seek in advancing the argument. This means that such debunking arguments either beg the question against the moral realist or are undermined as standalone (...) metaethical arguments. (shrink)

The emergence of conferences in the late nineteenth century significantly changed the ways in which the international scientific community functioned and experienced itself. In the early modern Republic of Letters, savants mainly related through print and correspondence, and apart from at local and later national levels, scholars rarely met. International conferences, by contrast, brought scientists together regularly, in the flesh and in great numbers. Their previously imagined community now became tangible. This paper examines how conferencing reshaped the collective of international (...) scientists by zooming in on the massive meetings of the International Congress of Applied Chemistry, 1893–1914. Drawing on Emile Durkheim's studies of religious gatherings it analyses the ritualization of routine conference practices, such as plenary ceremonies, toasts, ladies’ programmes and committee meetings. It looks at how roles were distributed as participants performed as hosts and guests, and in masculine and feminine and national and international identities. Importantly, it shows both how the sacralization of chemistry as a higher aim served to instil senses of dedication in order to organize labour and mitigate conflict, and how the self-perception of the international chemical community was based on contemporary understandings of parliament, democracy and representation. (shrink)

From 1918 to the late 1940s, a host of influential scientists and intellectuals in Europe and North America were engaged in a number of far-reaching unity of science projects. In this period of deep social and political divisions, scientists collaborated to unify sciences across disciplinary boundaries and to set up the international scientific community as a model for global political co-operation. They strove to align scientific and social objectives through rational planning and to promote unified science as the driving force (...) of human civilization and progress. This volume explores the unity of science movement, providing a synthetic view of its pursuits and placing it in its historical context as a scientific and political force. Through a coherent set of original case studies looking at the significance of various projects and strategies of unification, the book highlights the great variety of manifestations of this endeavour. These range from unifying nuclear physics to the evolutionary synthesis, and from the democratization of scientific planning to the utopianism of H.G. Wells's world state. At the same time, the collection brings out the substantive links between these different pursuits, especially in the form of interconnected networks of unification and the alignment of objectives among them. Notably, it shows that opposition to fascism, using the instrument of unified science, became the most urgent common goal in the 1930s and 1940s. In addressing these issues, the book makes visible important historical developments, showing how scientists participated in, and actively helped to create, an interwar ideology of unification, and bringing to light the cultural and political significance of this enterprise. (shrink)

Experimental studies show that some corvids, apes, and rodents possess a common long-term memory system that allows them to take goal-directed actions on the basis of absent spatiotemporal contexts. In other words, evidence supports the hypothesis that Episodic Memory —far from being uniquely human— has evolved as a cross-species meaning making system. However, within this zoosemiotic breakthrough, neurocognitive studies now struggle characterizing the relations between teleological factors and phenomenological factors that would account for the episodic behavior displayed by these living (...) beings. Within such field, this paper identifies four epistemological gaps —the ‘Nagelian’, ‘de Waalian’, ‘Chomskyan’, and ‘semiotic’ gaps—, making a case for the need of a future biosemiotic model of Alloanimal Episodic Memory to come into the equation. As a whole, I conclude that experimental developments in AEM research, and philosophical advancements in biosemiotics could converge through the concept of semiosis. Introducing the latter would account for animal episodic agency as a causal influence and continuity between the above relations, outclassing the reductionist and Cartesian separation between ‘external’ bodily behavior and ‘internal’ computational operations. (shrink)