In early modern European natural philosophy and medicine, scholars encountered the problem of the “formless birth” in their studies into generation, alongside “monstrous” and “perfect” births. Such formless births included the hen’s egg, the unformed bear cub, and the human false conception – said to be shapeless lumps of moving flesh – and these types of conceptions influenced how natural philosophers, like William Harvey and Jan Baptiste van Lamzweerde, approached experiments on, or explanations of, generation. This article suggests that the (...) history of these unformed births provides fresh insights into how early modern scholars “thought” with formlessness. That is, early modern scholars drew on a longstanding discourse of shapeless conceptions to address the mechanisms of formless generation, “true” generation, as well as to understand other unformed or interstitial creatures in nature. The article argues that this history of thinking with formless births contributes to our picture of the significant role that unnatural births, such as “monsters”, played in early modern natural philosophy. (shrink)

Memory is the least studied dimension of Augustine's psychological trinity of memory-intellect-will. This book explores the theme of 'memory' in Augustine's works, tracing its philosophical and theological significance. The first part explores the philosophical history of memory in Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus. The second part shows how Augustine inherits this theme and treats it in his early writings. The third and final part seeks to show how Augustine's theological understanding of Christ draws on and resolves tensions in the theme of (...) memory. The place of memory in the theological anthropology of Augustine has its roots in the Platonic epistemological tradition. Augustine actively engages with this tradition in his early writings in a manner that is both philosophically sophisticated and doctrinally consistent with his later, more overtly theological writings. From the Cassiacum dialogues through De musica, Augustine points to the central importance of memory: he examines the power of the soul as something that mediates sense perception and understanding, while explicitly deferring a more profound treatment of it until Confessions and De trinitate. In these two texts, memory is the foundation for the location of the Imago Dei in the mind. It becomes the basis for the spiritual experience of the embodied creature, and a source of the profound anxiety that results from the sensed opposition of human time and divine time (aeterna ratio). This tension is contained and resolved, to a limited extent, in Augustine's Christology, in the ability of a paradoxical incarnation to unify the temporal and the eternal (in Confessions 11 and 12), and the life of faith (scientia) with the promised contemplation of the divine (sapientia, in De trinitate 12-14). (shrink)

There was more than one response to the nuclear age. Countering well-documented attitudes of protest and pessimism, Muriel Howorth models a less examined strain of atomic enthusiasm in British nuclear culture. Believing that the same power within the atomic bomb could be harnessed to make the world a ‘smiling garden of Eden’, she utilized traditionally feminine domains of kitchen and garden in her efforts to educate the public about the potential of the atom and to ‘safeguard’ it on their behalf. (...) Boldly entering an overtly masculine arena in which, as a woman and a layperson, she was doubly an ‘other’, Howorth used a variety of publications, organizations and staged events to interpret atomic science and specifically to address women. Her efforts, dating roughly from 1948 to 1962, preceded but had broad overlaps with official Atoms for Peace programmes, and culminated in the formation of the Atomic Gardening Society in 1960 to promote the cultivation of gamma-irradiated seeds by British gardeners. (shrink)

Though the invocation to be “reflexive” is widespread in feminist sociology, many questions remain about what it means to “turn back” and resituate our work—about how to engage with research subjects’ visions of the world and with our own theoretical models. Rather than a superficial rehearsal of researcher and interlocutor standpoints, I argue that “reflexivity” should help researchers theorize the social world in relational ways. To make this claim, I draw together the insights of feminist standpoint theory and Bourdieu’s reflexive (...) sociology to lay the foundation for a renewed reflexive project that centers epistemic privilege, the idea that positions of structural exclusion provide the best resources for theorizing social power. Reflexive sociology should consider interlocutors’ experiences of exclusion and contradiction, engaging with sites of alternative knowledge and incorporating them into the object of study. This type of reflexivity provides improved resources for relational theory building. I offer support for these theoretical arguments with a historical analysis of knowledge production in the feminist anti-violence movement. (shrink)

With this article, Paige Patterson identifies six events in the life of Martin Luther that shaped the Reformer and ultimately affected the entire Reformation. By surveying Luther’s journey to Rome, his friendship with Johann von Staupitz, the Leipzig Disputation, the Diet of Worms, his year in Wartburg Castle, and his marriage to Katharina von Bora, Patterson’s goal is for his readers to gain a greater understanding of Martin Luther. In so doing, Patterson encourages his readers to consider the contribution (...) of these events and the people involved to their own lives still today. (shrink)

The fossilized primate skull known as the Taungs Baby, discovered in South Africa, was put forward in 1925 as a controversial ‘missing link’ between humans and apes. This essay examines the controversy generated by the fossil, with a focus on practice and the circulation of material objects. Viewing the Taungs story from this perspective provides a new outlook on debates, one that suggests that attention to the importance of place, particularly the ways that specific localities shape scientific practices, is crucial (...) to understanding such controversies. During the 1920s, the fossil itself did not move or circulate from its South African location, a fact that raised methodological concerns in understanding its significance and drew immense criticism from a range of experts. Examining the criticisms regarding the fossil’s failure to circulate draws attention to the importance of centers of accumulation in the analysis of hominid fossils. Diverging from existing histories that primarily emphasize the role of theory in paleoanthropological debates, then, this article argues that scientific practice played an important role in the Taungs fossil controversy. Examining this dimension of the debates has broader implications for revealing the underlying imperial assumptions that guided hominid paleontology during the early twentieth century. (shrink)

During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, domestic violence came to be understood as a national emergency. In this paper, we ask how and why domestic violence was constructed as a crisis specific to the pandemic. Drawing from newspaper data, we show that the domestic violence victim came to embody the violation of gendered boundaries between “public” and “private” spheres. Representations of domestic violence centered on violence spilling over the boundaries of the home, infecting the home, or the home (...) imploding. While theorists of crisis have focused on the central role of temporality in crisis construction, and especially the performative invocation of “new time,” we argue that crisis rhetoric often relies on anxiety about the transgression of spatial boundaries. Our spatial approach to crisis has two components. First, we argue that crisis framings often invoke the idea that seemingly distinct arenas of social life are becoming disorganized or blurred. And second, because thresholds between social spaces are coded as sacred during crisis, this spatial reordering is rendered dangerous, resulting in calls to resecure boundaries. (shrink)

Over the past few decades criminal law scholarship has been dominated by moralistic conceptions of the criminal law but recent years have seen the emergence of the so-called ‘political turn’ in criminal law theorizing. In this article I analyze the theory proffered by Vincent Chiao, one of the most persuasive proponents of the political or ‘public law’ trend, in contradistinction to the moralistic theory of criminalization defended by Anthony Duff. I demonstrate that the differences between the two theories are more (...) nuanced and more complex than first appears. In fact, because of how it concerns itself only with moral wrongdoing of a certain kind – namely, public wrongdoing – it turns out that Duff’s theory is best analyzed as a version of the public law account of criminal law. I argue that taking on Chiao’s public law approach, but allowing it to be informed by the principles of Duff’s (rather than Chiao’s) political philosophy, holds out the most promise for reaching a satisfactory conception of criminal law. I finish by considering this conclusion in light of the fact that hybrid theories are nothing new in the debate between retributivism and instrumentalism, a dividing line along which Chiao’s and Duff’s theories fall. I argue that the particular hybrid theory I defend holds important advantages over other such theories. (shrink)

The extinct human relatives known as Neanderthals have long been described as brutish and dumb. This conception is often traced to paleontologist Marcellin Boule, who published a detailed analysis on a Neanderthal skeleton in the early twentieth century. The conventional historical narrative claims that Boule made an error in his analysis, causing the Neanderthals to be considered brutish. This essay challenges the narrative of “Boule’s error,” arguing instead that the brutish Neanderthal concept originated much earlier in the history of Neanderthal (...) research and was, in fact, an invention of the earliest analyses of the first specimen recognized as a Neanderthal in the mid-nineteenth century. I argue that temporally relocating this conception of Neanderthals allows for a better understanding of the interconnected nature of the study of fossil humans and the science of living human races during the nineteenth century. This new view of the brutish Neanderthal sheds light on the earliest phases of the science that became paleoanthropology, while examining the racial, cultural, and political attitudes about race and extinction that accompanied the science at that time. By inspecting the ways in which the Neanderthals’ image was a product of a particular time and place, we gain a perspective that provides a new basis for thinking about the conceptions of hominin fossil species. (shrink)

Patient data is used to drive an ecosystem of advanced digital tools in health care, like predictive models or artificial intelligence‐based decision support. Patients themselves, however, receive little information about these technologies or how they affect their care. This raises important questions about patient trust and continued engagement in a health care system that extracts their data but does not treat them as key stakeholders. This essay explores these tensions and provides steps forward for health systems as they design advanced (...) health information‐technology (IT) policies and practices. It centers patients, their concerns, and the ways they perceive trustworthiness to reframe advanced health IT in service of patient interests. (shrink)

Policy-makers must allocate scarce resources to support constituents’ health needs. This requires policy-makers to be able to evaluate health states and allocate resources according to some principle of allocation. The most prominent approach to evaluating health states is to appeal to the strength of people’s preferences to avoid occupying them, which we refer to as decision utility metrics. Another approach, experienced utility metrics, evaluates health states based on their hedonic quality. In this article, we argue that although decision utility metrics (...) face a number of significant problems, the appropriate response to these problems is not to replace them with experienced utility metrics. Rather, decision utility metrics should be employed in conjunction with experienced utility metrics. Specifically, respondents to decision utility surveys should be provided with the results of experienced utility metrics in an effort to make their decisions better informed and more robust to the deficiencies of decision utility metrics. Ultimately, this approach would improve quality-adjusted life year calculations and enhance the decision-making of policy-makers in allocating resources to support constituents’ health needs. (shrink)

Objective Analyze racial differences in comfort with medical research using an alternative to the traditional approach that treats white people as a raceless norm.Methods Quantitative analysis of survey responses (n = 1,570) from Black and white residents of the US to identify relationships between perceptions of research as a right or a risk, and comfort participating in medical research.Results A lower proportion of white respondents reported that medical experimentation occurred without patient consent (p < 0.001) and a higher proportion of (...) white respondents reported that it should be their right to participate in medical research (p = 0.02). Belief in one’s right to participate was significantly predictive of comfort (b = 0.37, p < 0.001). Belief in experimentation without consent was significantly predictive of comfort for white respondents but not for Black respondents in multivariable analysis.Conclusions A rights-based orientation and less concern about the risks of medical research among white respondents demonstrate comparative advantage. Efforts to diversify medical research may perpetuate structural racism if they do not (1) critically engage with whiteness and its role in comfort with participation, and (2) identify and respond specifically to the needs of Black patients. (shrink)

This essay examines a controversy that erupted in 2004 over the bones of a human relative discovered in Indonesia, proclaimed to be a new species named Homo floresiensis. It argues that the controversy comprised two intertwined struggles with roots in Indonesia’s colonial history. Indonesia’s transition to an independent country, it contends, gave rise to a particular set of cultural values, scientific practices, and theories that resulted in scientific objects becoming tied to national identity in ways that shaped the debates. Highlighting (...) the imbalances that can occur in cross-cultural negotiations over the study of human relatives, this essay reveals that the circulation of scientific objects is not a simple process. By focusing on how anthropological objects moved—and the claims of ownership and access embedded in those movements—it illustrates the role of local circumstances in shaping that knowledge as it contributes to increasingly global science. (shrink)

This book examines the field of bioethics from an international and regional legal perspective. It focuses on major international law documents such as the United Nations Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights and UNESCO declarations on human cloning and the human genome. Coverage of regional legal instruments includes the Council of Europe Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (the Oviedo Convention) and its Protocols on cloning, transplantation, and research with human beings. Work on surrogacy issues by the Hague Conference (...) on Private International Law is also discussed, as are some African regional legal instruments on biosafety, and stem cell research. (shrink)

Has the Internet changed the pattern of social relations? More specifically, have social relations undergone any systematic change during the recent widespread diffusion of new communications technology? This question is addressed using a unique longitudinal survey that bookends the entire period of Internet diffusion in two African nations and one Indian state. We analyze data on nine professional linkages reported by a population of agricultural and environmental scientists in Kenya, Ghana, and Kerala over a sixteen-year period. Factor analysis reveals two (...) clusters of relationships, one interpretable as traditional scientific exchange, the other indicating mediated forms of collaboration. While collaboration increases in frequency, friendship declines. We interpret this shift as a consequence of communications technology that facilitates formal projects, reducing the affective dimension of professional association. (shrink)

In the era of precision medicine and expanding health information technologies, large representative datasets are considered necessary for addressing health inequities. Partially in response to gro...

Since it seems that the leaders of the antiterrorist campaign are scripting their objectives to fit as they go along, the public should be more careful in deciding which policies it wants to support.

A comprehensive measure of organizational culture was developed using a lexical approach, a method typically employed within the study of personality. 1761 adjectives were narrowed down and factor analyzed, which resulted in the identification of a nine factor solution to organizational culture, including the dimensions of: Innovative, Dominant, Pace, Friendly, Prestigious, Trendy, Corporate Social Responsibility, Traditional, and Diverse. Comprised of 135 adjectives most frequently used in describing organizational culture by current employees of several hundred organizations, the Lexical Organizational Culture Scale (...) (LOCS) was found to predict employee commitment, job satisfaction, job search behaviors, and subjective fit better than earlier scales of organizational culture. The study demonstrates that organizational culture measured using a lexical approach such as LOCS was a significant improvement to measuring Organizational Culture using traditional anthropomorphic measures of organizational culture. Scales for each of the nine factors identified in the lexical study are developed and validated. (shrink)

Macphail’s (1985) null hypothesis challenged researchers to demonstrate any differences in intelligence between vertebrate species. Rather than focus on differences, we asked whether rats would show the same unexpected, counterintuitive features of skill learning observed in humans: Factors that degrade performance during acquisition often enhance performance in a subsequent retention/autonomy phase. Providing post-trial “knowledge of results” (KR) on 30%-67% of trials instead of 100% degrades accuracy, yet increases retention in a subsequent phase without KR. We tested this feature by providing (...) three groups of rats with KR on every trial (100% KR), 67% KR, or 0% KR. We also provided operant feedback in every trial for completing the left-right lever-press skill (food for correct sequences, timeout for all others). In the autonomy phase, we assessed their ability to complete the skill independently—in the absence of differential cues and KR feedback. In agreement with human performance in the autonomy phase, 67% KR yielded higher skill accuracy than providing 100% KR. Also, providing 67% KR improved skill accuracy above that observed with operant feedback alone (0% KR). Rather than degrading performance during acquisition, the 67% KR condition yielded unexpected higher accuracy than the other conditions. Accuracy increased systematically across our extended acquisition phase, which provided each rat with over 3600 trials compared to 20-30 trials for human studies. Providing limited KR promoted skill learning in rats as it does in humans, consistent with the conjecture that both species share common learning processes. Introducing difficulties to rats during training improved their autonomy. (shrink)

Cocreating meaning in collaboration is challenging. Success is often determined by people's abilities to coordinate their language to converge upon shared mental representations. Here we explore one set of low‐level linguistic behaviors, linguistic alignment, that both emerges from, and facilitates, outcomes of high‐level convergence. Linguistic alignment captures the ways people reuse, that is, “align to,” the lexical, syntactic, and semantic forms of others' utterances. Our focus is on the temporal change of multi‐level linguistic alignment, as well as how alignment is (...) related to communicative outcomes within a unique collaborative problem‐solving paradigm. The primary task, situated within a virtual educational video game, requires creative thinking between three people where the paths for possible solutions are highly variable. We find that over time interactions are marked by decreasing lexical and syntactic alignment, with a trade‐off of increasing semantic alignment. However, greater semantic alignment does not translate into better team performance. Overall, these findings provide greater clarity on the role of linguistic coordination within complex and dynamic collaborative problem‐solving tasks. (shrink)

Spatial skills predict important life outcomes, such as mathematical achievement or entrance into Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics disciplines. Children significantly vary in their spatial performance even before they enter formal schooling. One correlate of children's spatial performance is the spatial language they produce and hear from others, such as their parents. Because the emphasis has been on spatial language, less is known about the role of hand gestures in children's spatial development. Some children are more likely to fall behind (...) in their spatial skills than others. Children born premature constitute such a risk group. Here, we compared performance of term and preterm-born children on two non-verbal spatial tasks—mental transformation and block design. We also examined relations of children's performance on these tasks to parental spatial language and gesture input and their own production of spatial language and gesture during an independent puzzle play interaction. We found that while term and preterm-born children as a group did not differ in the mental transformation or block design performance, children varied widely in their performance within each group. The variability in mental transformation scores was predicted by both a subset of spatial words and all spatial gestures children produced. Children's spatial language and gesture were in turn related to their parents' spatial language and gesture. Parental spatial language and gesture had an indirect relation on children's mental transformation, but not block design, scores via children's spatial language, and gesture use. Overall, results highlight the unique contributions of speech and gesture in communicating spatial information and predicting children's spatial performance. (shrink)

Throughout Mary Shelley’s early life, she was exposed to numerous well-known and influential people regarding cultural, political, and socio-economic matters. As she began writing, these influences undoubtedly played a role in her narrative. Her novel, _Frankenstein_, written during the time of the first Industrial Revolution in Britain, was one such novel that exhibited her political and economic influences through science fiction. This article addresses many of those influences, including the introduction of the machine into manufacturing. It further addresses how Frankenstein’s (...) Monster may have been one of the first created forms of artificial intelligence (AI). We further expound upon many economic concepts that have persisted through time and are relevant today given the faciliatory aspects, as well as the uncertainty, of AI. We relate these through the literary piece _Frankenstein_ to explore how a two-century-year-old tale provides a blueprint for understanding the conflict among humans and machines and provides a roadmap for harmonization in the past, present, and future. (shrink)

Drawing on ethnographic research with two Orthodox Jewish outreach organizations, this article conceptualizes interpellative styles and offers a framework to analyze how styles are variously situated, mediated, performed, and disruptive. I mobilize a micro-interactional approach to parse out how these four dimensions shape ideological recruitment and their roles in the choreographies of identity disruptions and repairs. The two case studies illuminate why and how groups deploy different interpellative styles and what elements shape whether styles are effective. In these ways, the (...) article contributes to scholarship on how people become persuaded to take on new identities and provides insight into the resistance and failures groups encounter when attempting to interpellate others. I conclude with a discussion of how a theory of interpellative styles can be applied more broadly and used to investigate the overlap between cultural, physiological, and psychological processes in identity formation and alteration. (shrink)