RésuméLes livres relevant du genre littéraire de l'adab présentent des matériaux sur un grand nombre de sujets, considérés sous des angles divers: sujets religieux, scientifiques, historiques, littéraires, etc. Ils propsent un savoir et, en même temps, de l'agrément aux gens éduqués. Nous considérerons ici deux œuvres relevant de l'adab, en tant qu'elles discutent leurs thèmes d'un point de vue scientifique: Faṣl al-Khiṭāb d'al-Tīfāshī et Mabāhij al-fikar wa-manāhij al-ʿibar d'al-Waṭwāṭ.L'œuvre d'al-Tīfāshī traite de sujets astronomiques et météorologiques. Les passages portant sur l'astronomie (...) dressent le tableau aristotélicien usuel du monde dans une version simplifiée pour non-spécialistes. Les passages sur des sujets météorologiques expliquent ces phénomènes en se conformant à la doctrine aristotélicienne des deux exhalaisons – ils se fondent, dans une large mesure, sur l'interprétation développée par Avicenne de cette théorie.Le traité d'al-Waṭwāṭ comporte quatre sections, qui envisagent respectivement le ciel, la terre, les animaux et les plantes. Un chapitre de la première section traite de phénomènes météorologiques et présente synthétiquement les explications proposées à l'époque, telles qu'on les lit dans les œuvres d'al-Kindī et d'Avicenne.On ne trouvera probablement pas d'idées scientifiques nouvelles dans la littérature d'adab, mais on y perçoit bien comment, à côté de la maîtrise du Coran, du ḥadīth, de la poésie et de la prose littéraire, la connaissance scientifique constituait une partie intégrante de l'éducation d'une certaine classe sociale, assimilée y compris par des gens dont la science n'était pas la préoccupation principale. Il apparaît également que les thèmes scientifiques traités ne se bornaient pas à ceux qui présentaient un intérêt pour la religion et la société musulmane. La science était une activité qui avait partie liée avec la société, poursuivie en vue d'une satisfaction intellectuelle et du plaisir de la connaissance, et la plupart des groupes sociaux formant cette société considéraient qu'il n'y avait rien là d'incompatible avec l'Islam comme religion. Cela pourrait bien corroborer la “thèse de l'appropriation” défendue par Sabra, selon laquelle la science était bien assimilée et largement acceptée par la société islamique médiévale, par opposition à la “thèse de la marginalité” soutenue par von Grünebaum, d'après laquelle la science était une activité marginale, confinée à une certaine élite et sans ancrage social véritable. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 1, Page 43-54, January 2022. This article reviews literature in composition studies since affective science's emergence in the 1980s. It focuses on composition studies’ history of adopting findings and theories from affective science, and distinguishes trends in how the field applies those elements in theoretical versus pedagogical contexts. While composition studies’ adoption of affective science in its theorizing has helped the field progress toward a “complete psychology of writing,” affective science's influence (...) on classroom practices has not been so clear cut or direct. However, affective science is a fast-growing, liberal, and multidisciplinary field. As it progresses, composition studies continues to embrace its concepts and theories. This review notes the expectations and limitations developing through this dynamic interdisciplinary relationship. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 1, Page 43-54, January 2022. This article reviews literature in composition studies since affective science's emergence in the 1980s. It focuses on composition studies’ history of adopting findings and theories from affective science, and distinguishes trends in how the field applies those elements in theoretical versus pedagogical contexts. While composition studies’ adoption of affective science in its theorizing has helped the field progress toward a “complete psychology of writing,” affective science's influence (...) on classroom practices has not been so clear cut or direct. However, affective science is a fast-growing, liberal, and multidisciplinary field. As it progresses, composition studies continues to embrace its concepts and theories. This review notes the expectations and limitations developing through this dynamic interdisciplinary relationship. (shrink)

Richly illustrated study drawing on art, literature and science to explore Victorian attitudes towards sight.

Known today mostly as an author of Romantic short stories and fairy tales for children, Prince Vladimir Odoyevskiy was a distinguished thinker of his time, philosopher and bibliophile. The scope of his interests includes also history of magic arts and alchemy, German Romanticism, Church music. An attempt to understand the peculiarity of eight specific modes used in chants of Russian Orthodox Church led him to his own musical theory based upon well-known writings by Zarlino, Leibniz, Euler, Prony. He realized his (...) theoretical ideas in an enharmonical piano with nineteen notes for every octave. His call for a different musical scale remained largely ignored in the nineteenth century, until the topic was raised anew by twentieth-century composers and musicians. (shrink)

In this article the outlines are sketched of an empirical science of literature as close as possible to the model of the natural sciences. This raises the question of what the standards of an empirical science in the strictest sense should generally be. Practical relevance of its results soon turns up as the fundamental condition for an explanatory empirical science, if the ideology of nearing an empirical truth is no longer accepted and a mere pragmatic justification rejected (...) as its insufficient substitute. As a consequence the logical priority of scientific explanation over scientific description is considered irrefutable. The so-called "sciences of understanding" - among them a "science of literature" - are confronted with a special difficulty, if they want to become explanatory empirical sciences. Their practical problems to be solved are related to linguistically or semiotically coded facts. To empirically describe these problematic facts causes this difficulty, which the author tries to overcome with recourse to ideas from Wittgenstein. And the practical relevance, which may be achieved with the help of nomological explanations, here doesn't consist in predictions for better practical production of means, direct or indirect, for survival, but in the provision of rational understanding for better practical teaching or criticism. This practical relevance is shown in the explanation of valuing acts of readers of The Golden Bowl by Henry James. The meaning of a literary text is no longer taken as a possible object of scientific empirical explanation, nor its rational justification as a scientific goal that might be practically relevant. (shrink)

(1979). THE SCIENCE OF LITERATURE METHOD OF PROF. M. WEISS IN CONFRONTATION WITH FORM CRITICISM, EXAMPLIFIED ON THE BASIS OF Ps. 49. Bijdragen: Vol. 40, No. 2, pp. 152-167.

Objective Apeiron was founded in 1966 and has developed into one of the oldest and most distinguished journals dedicated to the study of ancient philosophy, ancient science, and, in particular, of problems that concern both fields. Apeiron is committed to publishing high-quality research papers in these areas of ancient Greco-Roman intellectual history; it also welcomes submission of articles dealing with the reception of ancient philosophical and scientific ideas in the later western tradition. The journal appears quarterly. Articles are peer-reviewed (...) on a double-blind basis. Topics ancient philosophy ancient science reception of ancient philosophical and scientific ideas in the later western tradition Article formats Original Articles. (shrink)

In eighteenth-century France, scientific progress and its spreading met a growing interest among public, an enthusiasm that was to be reflected in literature. Fictional works including scientific knowledge in their narrative made their appearance, paving the ground for a genre promised to a growing success in the following centuries—science fiction. The article presents three eighteenth-century French literary works, each one centered on a different domain of science: Voltaire’s Micromégas, Charles-François Tiphaigne’s Amilec, or the Seeds of Mankind and François-Félix (...) Nogaret’s The Mirror of Current Events, or Beauty to the Highest Bidder. The first one, an iconic Enlightenment work that promotes critical thinking, relies on discoveries made in astronomy and optics. Tiphaigne de la Roche is far from sharing the fame of Voltaire, but his odd Amilec is noteworthy as it is possibly the very first science-fiction work in which biology is central. Written in the unique atmosphere of the French revolution, Nogaret’s work The Mirror of Current Events depicts androids-like interacting with humans. Our purpose is to show that these works were a precursor of the science fiction genre in literature, to describe how and what science or technology was depicted in them, and how they influenced the view of Man in eighteenth-century France. (shrink)

Psience Fiction: The Paranormal in Science Fiction Literature is a book that really needed to be written. In an abundance of hubris I once played with the idea myself (and I was probably not alone in the thought). But now Damien Broderick has done it, and much better than I could have even approximated. Given his background as a science fiction literary critic and author himself, no other writer could be better-equipped. Psience Fiction is exactly the right title (...) to encapsulate Broderick’s chosen topic. As he notes in one passage, his purpose here is to explore “the varied representations of the paranormal in science fiction” (p.68)–though by paranormal he refers neither to ghosts nor mediumship nor UFO-related phenomena, but strictly to “paranormal” as it relates to putative mental powers that transcend the scientifically-presumed, neuro-physical limits of our minds and brains. He refines that still further in noting that what he wants to consider is “...the give and take between the science fiction paranormal and the real-world kind, tested and tallied by psi researchers” (p.5). This book is probably most easily described as a book of book reviews (though a few relevant short stories are also considered). Authors covered run the gamut from Olaf Stapledon, E.E. “Doc” Smith, James Blish and Theodore Sturgeon to Zenna Henderson, John Wyndham, Robert Heinlein, Ann McCaffery, Octavia Butler, and John Brunner, plus many more. For a literary work to be included, it must incorporate some aspect of psi as an integral plot element; a mere mention of extrasensory perception or psychokinesis does not suffice. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In what ways can the study of science and popular culture in the American context contribute to ongoing debates on popularization and popular science? This essay suggests that, for several reasons, attention to the antebellum era offers the most significant opportunity to realize more sophisticated understandings of science in American popular culture. First, it enables us to take advantage of comparative opportunities, both by benefiting from the advanced state of historiography for Victorian popular science and (...) by engaging with a generation of historiographic innovations by scholars in U.S. history, American studies, literature, and art history. Second, the emergence of popular science in the context of the republican ethos of the antebellum period provides an important vantage point from which to assess the extent to which the general issue of “popular science” and its cognates is historically variable and multiple in terms of the politics of knowledge. Third, the ramifications of the development of popular science for relations between science and the public well into the twentieth century cannot be understood until we gain a more clearly developed sense of the emergent period. (shrink)

The hermeneutical ontology proposed in this book steers away from the rocks of realism and anti-realism.

This paper describes the case-based approach to teaching philosophy of science courses and argues for its merits. The paper first presents a case study that debates whether the “shock features” of the Slate Islands in Lake Superior were formed by meteorite impact or have an endogenous origin, e.g. from explosive volcanic activity. Next, the virtues of the Slate-Island case are considered, e.g. the case is focused insofar as what is at stake is relatively clear and the case illustrates the (...) truisms that creditable scientists disagree and the claims made in natural science are probable rather than indubitable. Finally, the paper argues for the case-based approach to teaching the philosophy of science by responding to two objections: (i) that case studies get in the way of doing philosophy and (ii) that students won’t be able to understand scientific literature well enough to reflect upon how it relates to science in general. (shrink)

In this article the outlines are sketched of an empirical science of literature as close as possible to the model of the natural sciences. This raises the question of what the standards of an empirical science in the strictest sense should generally be. Practical relevance of its results soon turns up as the fundamental condition for an explanatory empirical science, if the ideology of nearing an empirical truth is no longer accepted and a mere pragmatic justification rejected (...) as its insufficient substitute. As a consequence the logical priority of scientific explanation over scientific description is considered irrefutable. The so-called "sciences of understanding" - among them a "science of literature" - are confronted with a special difficulty, if they want to become explanatory empirical sciences. Their practical problems to be solved are related to linguistically or semiotically coded facts. To empirically describe these problematic facts causes this difficulty, which the author tries to overcome with recourse to ideas from Wittgenstein. And the practical relevance, which may be achieved with the help of nomological explanations, here doesn't consist in predictions for better practical production of means, direct or indirect, for survival, but in the provision of rational understanding for better practical teaching or criticism. This practical relevance is shown in the explanation of valuing acts of readers of The Golden Bowl by Henry James. The meaning of a literary text is no longer taken as a possible object of scientific empirical explanation, nor its rational justification as a scientific goal that might be practically relevant. (shrink)

This book explores contributions by some of the most influential women in the history of philosophy, science, and literature. Ranging from Sappho and Sophie Germain to Stebbing and Evelyn Fox Keller, this work ultimately demonstrates the impact these non-canonical, sometimes unknown or hidden, sources had, or may have had, on the recognized male leaders in their fields, from Aristotle to Pascal, Kant, Whitehead, and Russell. Chapters reflect philosophical pluralism, both analytic and continental themes, and cover figures reaching across the (...) entire history of ideas in the West, from pre-historic times to the twentieth century. Anyone interested in coming to know or in preparing to teach women in the history of philosophy, science, and literature will appreciate this collection and its myriad insights into the still unrecognized voices of non-canonical sources across these disciplines. (shrink)

ArgumentThe purpose of this volume is to investigate a number of selected examples of contact zones between the sciences and literature. We will be dealing with prominent cases of how science and literature encounter and interact with each other and profit by this recourse to their corresponding other, yielding aspects of self-reflection and self-representation. The volume will not attempt to address the question whether the so-called “two cultures” can be brought closer together or superseded by a third. We will (...) be dealing neither with science and literature in an autobiographical or “life-world” sense, nor with popular scientific texts with quasi-literary claims, such as Stephen Hawking's theory of time, nor, in the parallel universe of popular fiction, with science fiction. (shrink)

The legendary biologist, provocateur, and bestselling author mounts a timely and passionate defense of science and clear thinking with this career-spanning collection of essays, including twenty pieces published in the United States for the first time. For decades, Richard Dawkins has been the world's most brilliant scientific communicator, consistently illuminating the wonders of nature and attacking faulty logic. Science in the Soul brings together forty-two essays, polemics, and paeans--all written with Dawkins's characteristic erudition, remorseless wit, and unjaded awe (...) of the natural world. Though it spans three decades, this book couldn't be more timely or more urgent. Elected officials have opened the floodgates to prejudices that have for half a century been unacceptable or at least undercover. In a passionate introduction, Dawkins calls on us to insist that reason take center stage and that gut feelings, even when they don't represent the stirred dark waters of xenophobia, misogyny, or other blind prejudice, should stay out of the voting booth. And in the essays themselves, newly annotated by the author, he investigates a number of issues, including the importance of empirical evidence, and decries bad science, religion in the schools, and climate-change deniers. Dawkins has equal ardor for "the sacred truth of nature" and renders here with typical virtuosity the glories and complexities of the natural world. Woven into an exploration of the vastness of geological time, for instance, is the peculiar history of the giant tortoises and the sea turtles--whose journeys between water and land tell us a deeper story about evolution. At this moment, when so many highly placed people still question the fact of evolution, Dawkins asks what Darwin would make of his own legacy--"a mixture of exhilaration and exasperation"--and celebrates science as possessing many of religion's virtues--"explanation, consolation, and uplift"--without its detriments of superstition and prejudice. In a world grown irrational and hostile to facts, Science in the Soul is an essential collection by an indispensable author. Advance praise for Science in the Soul "The illumination of Richard Dawkins's incisive thinking on the intellectual world extends far beyond biology. What a treat to see so clearly how matter and meaning fit together, from fiction to philosophy to molecular biology, in one unified vision!"--Daniel C. Dennett, author of From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds "I thank Thor and Zeus that in their infinite wisdom they chose to make the great wordsmith of our age a great rationalist, and vice versa."--Matt Ridley, author of The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge "In this golden age of enlightened science writing, it is stunning that no scientist has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. It is time literature's highest award be granted to a scientist whose writings have changed not just science but society. No living scientist is more deserving of such recognition than Richard Dawkins.Science in the Soul is the perfect embodiment of Nobel-quality literature."--Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, columnist for Scientific American, and author of The Moral Arc: How Science Makes Us Better People "Science in the Soul is packed with Dr. Dawkins's philosophy, humor, anger, and quiet wisdom, leading the reader gently but firmly to inevitable conclusions that edify and educate."--James Randi, author of The Faith Healers. (shrink)

Ekphrasis is familiar as a rhetorical tool for inducing enargeia, the vivid sense that a reader or listener is actually in the presence of the objects described. This book focuses on the ekphrastic techniques used in ancient Greek and Roman literature to describe technological artifacts. Since the literary discourse on technology extended beyond technical texts, this book explores 'technical ekphrasis' in a wide range of genres, including history, poetry, and philosophy as well as mechanical, scientific, and mathematical works. Technical authors (...) like Philo of Byzantium, Vitruvius, Hero of Alexandria, and Claudius Ptolemy are put into dialogue with close contemporaries in other genres, like Diodorus Siculus, Cicero, Ovid, and Aelius Theon. The treatment of 'technical ekphrasis' here covers the techniques of description, the interaction of verbal and visual elements, the role of instructions, and the balance between describing the artifact's material qualities and the other bodies of knowledge it evokes. (shrink)

Galligan (Professor Emeritus, English, Western Michigan U.-Kalamazoo) argues that contemporary American critics should embrace literary truths with all of their uncertainties rather than cling to make- believe certainties of ideologies. He celebrates values commonly associated with modern, not postmodern, criticism, applying them to contemporary works in a series of fresh and unusual inquiries. He finds implications for criticism in work from the physical sciences and in the works of largely ignored novelists. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This article describes the historical development of HPS/NOS mainly in higher education. Because the establishment of universities in Japan in late-nineteenth century was a reaction against Western imperialism, higher education aimed to cultivate scientists and engineers with an emphasis on practical applications. This direction in higher science and engineering education continues into the present. It has conditioned elementary and secondary education via university entrance examinations, where no questions on NOS appear. Hence, HPS research and education has developed in Japanese (...) higher education with little connection to elementary and secondary education. Instead, NOS is communicated in literature, movies, and other media. Scientific and technological communication occurs mainly outside the school curriculum in venues like museums. (shrink)

The author in terms of idealizational theory of science explicates two approaches to history represented by positivism (Hempel) and narrativism (White). According to positivism, history is branch of science, according to narrativism, history is closer to literature. In the second part of this paper, the author paraphrases some paradoxes of historical narrative elaborated by mentioned-above representatives of these standpoints what is argument for unity of scientific methods presupposed by idealizational theory of science.

Ian Duncan’s Human Forms and Devin Griffiths’s Age of Analogy attempt to illuminate inter­actions between evolutionary theories and literature from the late eighteenth century up through the nineteenth century. They do not advance knowledge about this subject. Both authors treat evolution as a semi-fictional construction that owes more to literary inspiration than to the scientific method, and they reduce literature to a battleground for ideological forces. They write using dense terminology, shifting rhetoric, and flights of verbal performance that obscure their (...) claims. In all these respects, they are representative of the field “science and literature”-and particularly of the subfield that studies evolution and literature. I analyze the history of this subfield of literary scholarship and attempt to explain how it developed into its present form. The subfield was founded in the 1980s on the basis of poststructuralist theory and has never escaped the core assumptions of that theory: our minds cannot reach outside culture; our thoughts, behaviors, and ideas about the world are primarily the result of our culture; some cultural traditions are oppressive while others are liberating; and the meaning of texts cannot be determined. Though Duncan and Griffiths represent the highest level of schol­arship on evolution and literature, I argue that they fail their fascinating subject by offering very little that is new within their own field, and nothing that is of value to other fields. (shrink)

ArgumentThis essay seeks to identify the cultural significance of Goethe's scientific writings. He reformulates, in the light of his own concrete experience, “crucial turning-points” in the history of science – key ideas, the historical understanding of which is vital to present understanding – thus situating his own scientific work at the bi-polar center of the Western scientific tradition, conceived as the dramatic interplay over centuries of two opposing modes of thought. For in his experimentation he recaptures the glimpse of (...) living form gained in aesthetic perception, from which such inherited theoretical positions are ultimately derived. At each stage of this process, imagination, in its aesthetic modality, is essential, for it alone reveals the world as it truly is. The literary quality of his writings on nature, as on culture, reveals Goethe's stylistic achievement in devising a medium in which the insights gained in contemplation may be so transmitted as to make a similar, imaginative, appeal to his reader – re-enacting the abstract-concrete equilibrium characterizing all aesthetic experience. Matching his style to the subtle, delicate, connectedness of Nature, Goethe recreates the delights of participating in natural creativity. His Janus-faced, scientific-literary, style illustrates “binary synthesis,” the principle that unites Goethe's science with his art.Beauty is the normal state.There can be no such thing as an eclectic philosophy, but there can be eclectic philosophers. But an eclectic is anyone who, from whatever exists and is happening round about, appropriates the things he or she finds congenial to her or his nature; and this context validly includes all that can be called culture and progress in a theoretical and practical sense. It follows that two eclectic philosophers could turn into the greatest opponents if they are antagonistic to one another, each picking out whatever suits him or her in every traditional system of philosophy. (shrink)

The idea of "spirit" has manifold meanings and plays a crucial role in Early Modern medicine, psychology, religion, natural philosophy, and cosmology. This book contains twenty papers, written by international experts; it explores how those disciplines conceived of the spirits and shows that knowledge of the spirits is an essential prerequisite for the understanding of Renaissance literature and music. The volume focuses on the way in which the spirits act upon the soul's perception, imagination, and cognition, and on the cultural (...) practices which aim to use, purge, or ban the spirits. (shrink)

This study aims to identify research trends of scaffolding in the field of science education. To this end, both descriptive analysis and co-word analysis were conducted to examine the selected articles published in the Social Science Citation Index journals from 2000 to 2019. A total of 637 papers were retrieved as research samples through rounds of searching in Web of Science database. Overall, this study reveals a growing trend of science educators' academic publications about scaffolding in (...) the recent two decades. In these sample papers, from 1,487 non-repeated keywords, we extracted 286 author-defined keywords shared by at least two studies as a benchmark dictionary. A series of co-word analyses were then conducted based on the dictionary to reveal the underlying co-occurring relationships of the words in title and abstract of the sample papers. Results showed that “scaffolding,” “support,” and “design” were the top three most frequently used keywords during 2000 and 2019. Visualization of co-word networks in each 5-year period further helps clarify both educators' common research foci and relevant research trends. Derived discussion and potential research directions are also provided. (shrink)

This article describes a team-taught environmental studies course called Animal Metaphors. Focusing on animal metaphors in literature and film, the course emphasizes various cognitive and perceptual biases that lead humans to place ourselves above and beyond nature, making us more likely to engage in practices destructive to the environment. Whereas the first iteration of the course underscored various ways in which humans are less rational or moral than we imagine, the new iteration shifted more of the focus to what inspires (...) and motivates humans, gives us emotional resilience, and best creates conditions for mental well-being as we cooperate and collaborate. This seemed an appropriate tack to take in an age commonly referred to as the “Anthropocene.” We thus continued to examine our status as evolved animals while also calling more attention to spiritual or ecstatic experience, music, humor, and the uniquely human ability for shared intentionality. (shrink)

Though underexplored in contemporary scholarship, the Victorian attempts to turn aesthetics into a science remain one of the most fascinating aspects of that era. In The Outward Mind, Benjamin Morgan approaches this period of innovation as an important origin point for current attempts to understand art or beauty using the tools of the sciences. Moving chronologically from natural theology in the early nineteenth century to laboratory psychology in the early twentieth, Morgan draws on little-known archives of Victorian intellectuals such (...) as William Morris, Walter Pater, John Ruskin, and others to argue that scientific studies of mind and emotion transformed the way writers and artists understood the experience of beauty and effectively redescribed aesthetic judgment as a biological adaptation. Looking beyond the Victorian period to humanistic critical theory today, he also shows how the historical relationship between science and aesthetics could be a vital resource for rethinking key concepts in contemporary literary and cultural criticism, such as materialism, empathy, practice, and form. At a moment when the tumultuous relationship between the sciences and the humanities is the subject of ongoing debate, Morgan argues for the importance of understanding the arts and sciences as incontrovertibly intertwined. (shrink)

The goal of most scientific research published in peer-review journals is to discover and report the truth. However, the research record includes tongue-in-cheek papers written in the conventional form and style of a research paper. Although these papers were intended to be taken ironically, bibliographic database searches show that many have been subsequently cited as valid research, some in prestigious journals. We attempt to understand why so many readers cited such ironic science seriously. We draw from the literature on (...) error propagation in research publication for ways categorize citations. We adopt the concept of irony from the fields of literary and rhetorical criticism to detect, characterize, and analyze the interpretations in the more than 60 published research papers that cite an instance of ironic science. We find a variety of interpretations: some citing authors interpret the research as valid and accept it, some contradict or reject it, and some acknowledge its ironic nature. We conclude that publishing ironic science in a research journal can lead to the same troubles posed by retracted research, and we recommend relevant changes to publication guidelines. (shrink)

Historian James Gilbert argues that the dialogue between science and religion is an important dynamic in the creation of contemporary American culture. He traces the dialogue not only in the confines of the academic world but also in popular culture. The science‐religion dialogue reveals a basic tension between the material and the spiritual that helps define the core of the American psyche: fascination with material progress yet commitment to traditional religious beliefs. Gilbert's cultural narrative traces the dialogue in (...) a unique way because of the attention given to popular renditions of science and religion in evangelical films used by the military, in televised science programs, in science‐fiction literature, and at the Seattle World's Fair in 1962. Gilbert suggests that the discussion between science and religion is significant because it is part of the process of creating new cultural structures necessitated by social, scientific, and technological developments. The tensions between religiously informed commonsense science and professional science work to create new cultural forms in a democratic society. Religion and science in dialogue are part of the process of cultural creation. Dogmatism on the part of either scientists or religionists is countered by the democratic process itself. (shrink)

An analysis of the treatment of time in literature and its relationship to science and philosophy. Since the consciousness of time seems to the author to have greatly increased in contemporary culture, he refers primarily to such twentieth-century authors as Proust, Joyce and Mann.--A. R.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10.2 (2000) 175-188 [Access article in PDF] Scope Note 38 Bioethics Resources on the Web * Once described as an "enormous used book store with volumes stacked on shelves and tables and overflowing onto the floor" (Pool, Robert. 1994. Turning an Info-Glut into a Library. Science 266 (7 October): 20-22, p. 20), Internet resources now receive numerous levels of organization, from basic directory (...) listings to elaborate "links" (cross-references to other Internet documents) that flash and glow in the dark. In many ways, the Internet functions as a direct extension of the traditional library. Following linked references across various sites is an electronic version of browsing library stacks, and the serendipitous discoveries made while "surfing the Net" recall the wonders of physically going "book-to-book." Although many of the Internet's best aspects augment library strengths by eliminating physical distance from sources, Net resources pose unique problems for researchers. It is not always clear who is responsible for the content of Web documents, when the document was produced, or how often (if ever) it is updated. Internet resource tools, then, must enable researchers to identify appropriate resources and to evaluate what they find when they get there. Web Research as Taking "Snapshots" Given the Internet's visual nature and fluid content, the process of conducting research on the Web has been likened to taking an informal picture of information on a specific date at a particular time. This metaphor also conveys the "zoom-in" aspect of searching through Web pages by going from general to specific categories. In the first section of this Scope Note, National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRCBL) staff present a snapshot of bioethics resources taken during the spring months of 2000. Entries are divided into the categories of directories, electronic journals, full-text documents, news/current awareness, and teaching resources. In the two subsequent sections, this series of categories is repeated for entries on a specific topic within bioethics-genetics-and again for general search and evaluation tools. Where a Web site may contain pages applicable [End Page 175] to more than one category, multiple entries are made for that site with appropriate information for each category.Much as telecommunication advances have strengthened the relationship of patients and providers as partners, the dynamic nature of the Internet acknowledges that the researcher functions as a librarian whenever accessing the Web. It is our hope that BIOETHICSLINE and the other NRCBL databases not only will enable researchers to search the Web more efficiently, but also will help them to evaluate what they find when they get there. Bioethicsline on the Web: An International Plan in Progress Once only available through libraries, the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), the funding agency for the ongoing development of the BIOETHICS LINE® database from the Kennedy Institute, has provided free Web access to that database of 63,000 citations since September 1998 through Internet Grateful Med. Plans are now underway to eliminate such specialty databases and incorporate all citations into PubMed (for journal articles) or LOCATORplus (for book-like materials and chapters in books). Both of these databases are likewise available at no cost on the Web. In the transition to PubMed and LOCATORplus some features of BIOETHICSLINE that presently are available may be lost. Researchers are encouraged to contact the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature with search requests or for search strategy assistance with either the current or the future system ([email protected]).The inclusion of bioethics citations in PubMed and LOCATORplus will have several advantages. First, unique keywords from the Bioethics Thesaurus will be considered for inclusion in Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), the indexing vocabulary for PubMed and LOCATORplus, thereby enhancing retrieval of relevant clinical literature by offering more precise terminology covering ethical issues. Second, it will be easier to identify foreign-language materials, which are not currently included in the scope of BIOETHICSLINE. Third, the updating schedule will become more frequent. On the other hand, there may be some loss of searching precision because certain specialized features... (shrink)

This article addresses the contributions of the literature on the new mechanistic philosophy of science for the scientific practice of model building in ecology. This is reflected in a one-to-one interdisciplinary collaboration between an ecologist and a philosopher of science during science-in-the-making. We argue that the identification, reconstruction and understanding of mechanisms is context-sensitive, and for this case study mechanistic modeling did not present a normative role but a heuristic one. We expect our study to provides useful (...) epistemic tools for the improvement of empirically-riven work in the debates about mechanistic explanation of ecological phenomena. (shrink)

Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the works of (...) Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

This title, first published in 1991, opens with an account by Gadamer of his own life and work and their relation to the achievements of hermeneutics. Building upon the key theme of dialogue, Gadamer and Hermeneutics provides a series of essays, either linked Gadamer to other major contemporary philosophers or focusing on a given Gadamerian theme. This book will be of interest to students of literary theory.