Few topics in international intellectual property law have been as controversial in recent years as the one we are about to examine. In the 1980s and early 1990s, a Diplomatic Conference attempted to revise the oldest international convention providing some protection for patented inventions outside of the domestic laws. Those efforts broke down, largely because developed and developing countries could not agree on the powers that governments should retain to issue compulsory licenses or on the grounds for which these (...) powers could be exercised. The failure of this Conference, held under the auspices of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), persuaded the technology-exporting countries to link future negotiations concerning international intellectual property protection to the Multilateral Trade Negotiations, known as the Uruguay Round, which got underway in 1986. The end result was Annex IC of the Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization of 1994, which incorporated a new, comprehensive and relatively elevated set of international minimum standards of patent protection into the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). (shrink)

The framing problematic of this dissertation is the political and epistemological relationship between metropolitan theory and post-colonial narrative. By providing multiple determinations to that problematic, I seek to situate the inventions of post-colonial identity. Using "detour" both as a privileged figure of contemporary theory and as the lived socio-historical experience of post-colonials, I examine the theoretical and political consequences using the former to translate the latter. Placing my own discourse at the limits of theory, I show that the predicament (...) in which contemporary theory finds itself is a result of the reduction of narrative to theory . ;I stage the negotiation between metropolitan theory and post-colonial narratives as an allegory of the post-colonial predicament. Finally, through a critique of certain post-colonial theorists , I plot the limits of the post-colonial space in the First World. I conclude that to invent the post-colonial space as a signifying space, we need to develop a poetics of retour which will be as complex and as ambiguous as the poetics of detour that the post-colonials have been living, narrating, and theorizing. ;Chapter I sets the theoretical context for posing the problem of post-colonial self-fashioning. In Chapter II, I sketch the trajectory of post-colonial detour through a close reading of V. S. Naipaul's The Mimic Men. In Chapter III, I interrogate Homi Bhabha's theory of cultural hybridity as a version of the poetics of detour. In Chapter IV, I offer a characterization of the predicament of theory. In the final chapter, I discuss the uses of theory by post-colonial intellectuals and offer a critique of their politics of cultural description and self-description. I argue that post-colonial theorists have evaded the question of inventing the post-colonial space as a signifying space by rewriting the narrative of their detour as a narrative of diplacement, as immigritude. (shrink)

This paper presents an empirical study on the frequency of discoveries and inventions that were awarded with the. More than 70 per cent of all Nobel Prizes were given to discoveries. The majority of inventions were awarded at the beginning of the twentieth century and only three inventions had a direct application for society. The emphasis on discoveries moves the Nobel Prize further away from its original intention to reward the greatest contribution to society in the preceding (...) year. We propose to strengthen the role of inventions for the Nobel Prize, which would encourage inventors to tackle important problems, such as global warming or the gap between the first and the third worlds. (shrink)

Following the 1980 US Supreme Court decision to allow a patent on a living organism, debate has continued on the moral issues involved in biotechnology patents of many kinds and remains a contentious issue for those opposed to the use of biotechnology in industry and agriculture. Attitudes to patenting in the life sciences, including those of the research scientists themselves, are analysed. The relevance of morality to patent law is discussed here in an international context with particular reference to the (...) law of the European Patent Convention administered by the European Patent Office (EPO). The EPO has been the principal forum for opposition to such patents and the few cases under dispute in the EPO are reviewed, including patents for the onco-mouse, human relaxin gene, and the PGS herbicidally resistant plant (gmo). Morality provisions in the European Parliament and Council Directive 98/44/EC are also summarised. (shrink)

The framework of plateaus, dips, and leaps shines light on periods when individuals may be inventing new methods of skilled performance. We begin with a review of the role performance plateaus have played in experimental psychology, human–computer interaction, and cognitive science. We then reanalyze two classic studies of individual performance to show plateaus and dips which resulted in performance leaps. For a third study, we show how the statistical methods of Changepoint Analysis plus a few simple heuristics may direct our (...) focus to periods of performance change for individuals. For the researcher, dips become the marker of exploration where performance suffers as new methods are invented and tested. Leaps mark the implementation of a successful new method and an incremental jump above the path plotted by smooth and steady log–log performance increments. The methods developed during these dips and leaps are the key to surpassing one's teachers and acquiring extreme expertise. (shrink)

Le but de cet article est de réévaluer l’impact du projet philosophique de Jean Wahl sur la philosophie française postmoderne. L’angle choisi consiste à replacer le projet wahlien dans le cadre des deux grands motifs de la philosophie française de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle: le rejet du paradigme dominant de la vision et le rapport ambivalent à l’hégélianisme, cristallisé dans la ????igure de la conscience malheureuse. En suivant ces deux fils conducteurs, l’article retrace le parcours intellectuel de Jean (...) Wahl depuis sa thèse de doctorat sur les philosophies pluralistes angloaméricaines, en passant par sa réception de l’hégélianisme, pour le mettre en relation avec sa période la moins commentée, celle de l’introduction dans le paysage philosophique français des grands noms du roman moderniste américain de l’époque.The goal of this paper is to re-evaluate the impact of Jean Wahl’s philosophical project on French postmodern philosophy. To complete this task, it is necessary to put the Wahlian project into the context of the two major aims of 20th Century French philosophy: the rejection of ocularcentrism and the ambiguous relationship to Hegelianism characterized by the figure of the Unhappy Consciousness. Following these two threads, the article reconstructs Wahl’s intellectual journey from his Ph.D. on American pluralism to his reception of Hegelianism in order to connect them to his less known work, which consists of introducing American modernist writers into the French philosophical landscape. (shrink)

The ninth-century Irish philosopher, theologian, and speculative grammarian Eriugena invented a number of words, chiefly in order to accommodate Greek terms in Latin. Filiolitas or “sonship” was one of these and a particularly distinctive new word, which almost no one but Eriugena seems to have used. Indeed it appears in all the works ascribed to him and serves both as a word for adoptive sonship in a theological context and as a relative noun in grammatical references. The appearance of the (...) word in a letter of King Charles the Bald may also suggest Eriugena’s authorship of that letter. (shrink)

In this witty and mischievous book, philosopher Peter Cave dissects the most controversial disputes today and uses philosophical argument to reveal that many issues are less straightforward than we'd like to believe. Leaving no sacred cow standing, Cave uses ingenious stories and examples to challenge our most strongly held assumptions. Is democracy inherently a good thing? What is the basis of so-called human rights? Is discrimination always bad? Are we morally obliged to accept refugees? In an age of identity politics (...) and so-called 'fake news', this book is an essential resource for reinvigorating genuine public debate - and an entertaining challenge to accepted wisdom. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: The Origins of Government The Moral Obligation to Government The Right to Revolution The Further Uses of Government The History of Liberty Conclusion References.

The question whether, in the interim, the "socialist morality" allows adequate restraint on revolutionary action, cannot fairly be answered in abstraction from history, in this case our epoch. We submit that the group of projects called corporate "globalization" - imposing free trade, privatization, and dominance of transnational corporations - shapes that epoch. These projects are associated with polarization of wealth, deepening poverty, and an alarming new global U.S. military domination. Using 9/11 as pretext for a "war on terror," this domination (...) backs corporate globalization. If Nazi occupation of France and French occupation of Algeria made Sartre and Beauvoir assign moral primacy to overcoming oppressive systems, then U.S. global occupation should occasion rebirth of that commitment. Parallels among the three occupations are striking. France's turning of colonial and metropolitan working classes against each other is echoed by globalization's pitting of (e.g.) Chinese against Mexican workers in a race to lower wages to get investment. Seducing first-world workers with racial superiority and cheap imports from near-slavery producers once again conceals their thralldom to their own bosses. Nazi and French use of overwhelming force and even torture are re-cycled by the U.S. and its agents, again to hide the vulnerability of their small forces amidst their enemies. (shrink)

Computer simulations may allow us to understand the earth’s fickle climate and how it is affected by detours of the great ocean currents. These detours cause abrupt coolings -- the average global temperature can drop dramatically in just a few years, with droughts that set up El-Niño-like forest fires even in the tropics. While volcanic eruptions and Antarctic ice shelf collapses can also abruptly cool things, what we’re talking about here is a flip-flop: a few centuries later, there’s an equally (...) abrupt rewarming. This cycle has repeated every few thousand years (though it has been 12,000 years since the most recent one). (shrink)

The fourth and final volume of The New Press Postwar French Thought series provides a fresh map and analysis for understanding the history of ideas since 1945. This anthology collects the writings of celebrated philosophers along with work by thinkers highly regarded in France for the first time. It contextualises the material within a larger intellectual and political history and chronology, identifying antecedents and distinguishing four main phases or moments. Indispensable for understanding the development of postwar French philosophy as a (...) whole. (shrink)

In The Society of the Spectacle, Debord describes the spectacle as a capitalist social formation that is at the same time reflective of the privileging of vision in the history of Western philosophy. This article highlights Debord’s appeal to the Hegelian-Marxist notion of reciprocal alienation in his discussion of how the spectacle invents the visual form. Reciprocal alienation produces a dialectical relation between concrete social activity and the spectacle, which I argue is key for understanding how the political subject is (...) represented in the hyper-spectacularized societies of the 21st century. (shrink)

Farmers are experts on their natural environment and are innate experimenters. However they do not know everything. Filling in gaps of missing farmer knowledge can help them improve their experiments. The authors designed and taught a course to Honduran farmers that effectively covered a number of key points on insect ecology and biology that farmers had not understood. After receiving the course many farmers did experiments to solve pest problems without synthetic pesticides.

In the first part of chapter 2 of book II of the Physics Aristotle addresses the issue of the difference between mathematics and physics. In the course of his discussion he says some things about astronomy and the ‘ ‘ more physical branches of mathematics”. In this paper I discuss historical issues concerning the text, translation, and interpretation of the passage, focusing on two cruxes, the first reference to astronomy at 193b25–26 and the reference to the more physical branches at 194a7–8. In (...) section I, I criticize Ross’s interpretation of the passage and point out that his alteration of has no warrant in the Greek manuscripts. In the next three sections I treat three other interpretations, all of which depart from Ross's: in section II that of Simplicius, which I commend; in section III that of Thomas Aquinas, which is importantly influenced by a mistranslation of, and in section IV that of Ibn Rushd, which is based on an Arabic text corresponding to that printed by Ross. In the concluding section of the paper I describe the modern history of the Greek text of our passage and translations of it from the early twelfth century until the appearance of Ross's text in 1936. (shrink)

"The Invention of Modern Science proposes a fruitful way of going beyond the apparently irreconcilable positions, that science is either "objective" or "socially constructed." Instead, suggests Isabelle Stengers, one of the most important and influential philosophers of science in Europe, we might understand the tension between scientific objectivity and belief as a necessary part of science, central to the practices invented and reinvented by scientists."--pub. desc.

Psyche: Inventions of the Other is the first publication in English of the twenty-eight essay collection Jacques Derrida published in two volumes in 1998 and 2003. Advancing his reflection on many issues, such as sexual difference, architecture, negative theology, politics, war, nationalism, and religion, Volume II also carries on Derrida's engagement with a number of key thinkers and writers: De Certeau, Heidegger, Kant, Lacoue-Labarthe, Mandela, Rosenszweig, and Shakespeare, among others. Included in this volume are new or revised translations of (...) seminal essays (for example, "Geschlecht I: Sexual Difference, Ontological Difference," "Geschlecht II: Heidegger's Hand," "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials," and " Interpretations at War : Kant, the Jew, the German"). (shrink)

What is commonly known as the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, regarded as representing a unitary Copenhagen point of view, differs significantly from Bohr's complementarity interpretation, which does not employ wave packet collapse in its account of measurement and does not accord the subjective observer any privileged role in measurement. It is argued that the Copenhagen interpretation is an invention of the mid‐1950s, for which Heisenberg is chiefly responsible, various other physicists and philosophers, including Bohm, Feyerabend, Hanson, and Popper, having (...) further promoted the invention in the service of their own philosophical agendas. (shrink)

Inventing the Market explores two paradigms of the market in the thought of Adam Smith and G.W.F. Hegel, bridging the gap between economics and philosophy, it shows that both disciplines can profit from a broader, more historically situated ...

The technological breakthroughs and entrepreneurial adventures of Frank J. Sprague during the transformative years of the early electrical industry. Over the course of a little less than twenty years, inventor Frank J. Sprague achieved an astonishing series of technological breakthroughs--from pioneering work in self-governing motors to developing the first full-scale operational electric railway system--all while commercializing his inventions and promoting them to financial backers and the public. In Engineering Invention, Frederick Dalzell tells Sprague's story, setting it against the backdrop (...) of one of the most dynamic periods in the history of technology. In a burst of innovation during these years, Sprague and his contemporaries--Thomas Edison, Nicolas Tesla, Elmer Sperry, George Westinghouse, and others--transformed the technologies of electricity and reshaped modern life. After working briefly for Edison, Sprague started the Sprague Electric Railway and Motor Company; designed and built an electric railroad system for Richmond, Virginia; sold his company to Edison and went into the field of electric elevators; almost accidentally discovered a multiple-control system that could equip electric train systems for mass transit; started a third company to commercialize this; then sold this company to Edison and retired. Throughout his career, Dalzell tells us, Sprague framed technology as invention, cast himself as hero, and staged his technologies as dramas. He toiled against the odds, scraped together resources to found companies, bet those companies on technical feats--and pulled it off, multiple times. The idea of the "heroic inventor" is not, of course, the only way to frame the history of technology. Nevertheless, as Dalzell shows, Sprague, Edison, and others crafted the role consciously and actively, using it to generate vital impetus behind the process of innovation. (shrink)