I attempt to define the concept of ‘living organism’. Intuitively, a living organism is a substantial entity with a capacity for certain relevant activities. But biology has discovered that living organisms have a particular compositional or microstructural nature. This nature includes carbon-based macromolecules and water molecules. I argue that such living organisms belong to a natural kind of compound physical object, viz., carbon-based living organism. My definition of a living organism encompasses both the intuitively relevant activities and the empirically discovered (...) compositional nature. The definition is designed to deal with a variety of problem cases, e.g., viruses, proteinoid microspheres, sterile organisms, suspended animation cases, and living parts of organisms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche and the Political by Daniel W. ConwayDaniel BreazealeDaniel W. Conway. Nietzsche and the Political. London: Routledge, 1997. Pp. xii + 163. Cloth, $65. Paper, $16.95.This brief but stimulating work is a vigorous effort to defend the importance of Nietzsche as a “political” thinker. In order to make this case, Conway has to fight on two fronts: simultaneously rebutting the views of the many contemporary interpreters who argue (...) that Nietzsche is either an anti-political philosopher or else a distinctively inferior political thinker, while also reclaiming Nietzsche’s political thought from the race-theorists and Nazis who so successfully appropriated it earlier in this century. Conway is victorious on both fronts, and makes a compelling case for the contemporary relevance of Nietzsche’s thoughts on the broad topics of “culture” and “education.” This, of course, by no means exhausts the realm of the “political,” and Conway has little or nothing to say about Nietzsche’s views on such topics as the state, justice, legality, etc. Instead, he is concerned with what Nietzsche himself called “great politics.” For this reason, the book is concerned almost exclusively with Nietzsche’s later writings, focusing primarily upon the writings of 1886–88, while generally ignoring the Nachlass altogether.Chapter 1 (“Political Perfectionism”) deals with Nietzsche’s conception of the fundamental task of politics: namely, to facilitate humankind’s endless quest for “perfection,” a quest that alone justifies human existence. Since Nietzsche associated the perfection of the species with the appearance of the rarest and most exotic individual specimens, it follows that the specific task of political activity is “to legislate the conditions under which such exemplars will most likely emerge.” It is within the context of this “political” ideal that Conway offers his own, ingenious and controversial interpretation of Zarathustra’s teaching concerning the Übermensch.The relationship between Nietzsche’s perfectionism and his moral pluralism is the subject of Chapter 2 (“On the Uses and Disadvantages of Morality for Life”). Here Conway offers a thoughtful comparison between Nietzsche himself and some of his “models,” such as Caesar, Napoleon, and the Laws of Manu, and takes advantage of this comparison in order to introduce Nietzsche’s crucial—albeit extremely problematic—notions of the “order of rank” and “pathos of distance.” Chapter 3 (“Perfectionism in the [End Page 177] Twilight of the Idols”) is devoted to Nietzsche’s “critique of modernity.” Here Conway offers his own “political” interpretation of Nietzsche’s withdrawal from the “political macrosphere” of his own age and retreat into the “political microsphere” of his personal life and literary/cultural projects, including his various “educational” schemes. A certain ambiguity in the overall conception of this book becomes apparent at this point, however, inasmuch as Conway finds himself simultaneously distinguishing between Nietzsche’s “moral” and “political” perfectionism, while continuing to insist upon the larger “political” significance of the former—even while conceding that, for Nietzsche himself, political perfection was a mere means for moral perfection. Chapter 4 (“Regimens of Self-Overcoming”) contains a detailed account of the necessary antagonism between the (“untimely”) Nietzschean philosopher and his own age and an insightful discussion of what Conway calls “the aversive mechanism of self-overcoming” (69). Conway’s discussion of the link between Nietzschean perfectionism and the adoption of multiple perspectives (“experimentalism”) is one the clearest and best in the literature. Nietzsche’s own self-experiments and his understanding of the same as “signs” for others are discussed in Chapter 5 (“The Philosopher’s Versucherkunst”). Like other recent interpreters, Conway calls attention to the essential role of erotic love in Nietzsche’s conception of the process of experimental self-education and to the way in which eros links purely individual goals to larger cultural and educational ones. The chapter concludes with an admirable account of how Nietzsche was able to harness and to employ his own resentment as an instrument of self-overcoming. This theme is continued in Chapter 6 (“Comedians of the Ascetic Ideal”), which tries to show how Nietzsche sought to safeguard the crippled will in an unpropitious era, not by rejecting the ascetic ideal, but by employing it in a new way. This is perhaps Conway’s most original... (shrink)

Death from cancer is usually due to metastasis. Fortunately, most cells that escape from a primary tumor fail to form metastases. Identifying reasons for this failure will help development of anti‐metastatic therapies. Intravital videomicroscopy (IVVM) can be used to observe cancer cells injected into live animals. Co‐injected microspheres can be used to assess cell survival. These techniques have been used to show that circulating tumor cells generally arrest in the microcirculation and may extravasate with high efficiency. While many tumor (...) cells may survive in a secondary site, only a small subset form micrometastases and only a subset of these micrometastases persist to form vascularized macrometastases. Furthermore, solitary tumor cells may remain dormant for long periods of time in secondary sites. These findings suggest that metastatic growth and angiogenesis are prime targets for anti‐metastatic therapy. BioEssays 24:885–893, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This article discusses the ethical dimension of Sloterdijk's spherology and its contribution to the current debate on globalization. It is shown that Sloterdijk already developed the core of his ethics in his earlier works. The central distinction here is the ontological difference between the intimate stay of the fetus in its mother's womb and the ominous outside of the world. From its birth onwards the infant has to develop new intimate spheres to make life bearable and to expand into the (...) world. This coming into the world depends on the quality of macrospheres that take over the immunological functions of the microspheres. Sloterdijk believes that the current debate on globalization is a late and superficial reflection of the crisis of the metaphysical globalization. This crisis means that Europeans have lost their all-embracing macrosphere of the idealized globe. As a consequence, modernity means that people and cultures have to become more self-reliant to protect themselves from a radical outside. The actual globalization of the earth can therefore be understood as an ongoing exteriorization of the animated space of the local spheres. At the same time people from different cultures and states are forced to work together on an unprecedented scale. This actual globalization does not mean however, that there is a universal moral law that obliges us to put our self-interest aside in favour of the interests of strangers. In this respect Sloterdijk stresses the importance of care for one's own spheres, be it an individual, a family or a company, as a condition of responsibility and solidarity. (shrink)

The new discipline of exobiology formed from the intertwining of origin of life research with the search for life or its building blocks on other planets, from 1957-1973. The field was inherently highly interdisciplinary, yet it coalesced very quickly and was responsible in its first twenty years for numerous important contributions to twentieth century life science and planetary sciences such as climatology, the study of mass extinctions, etc. NASA played a very important role in catalyzing the rapid consolidation of exobiology, (...) both through research grants and through sponsored meetings that overcame disciplinary boundaries, bringing together scientists from diverse backgrounds. The presence of a handful of prominent senior scientists such as Joshua Lederberg, Melvin Calvin and Norman Horowitz helped gain credibility for exobiology, in the face of criticism and competition from existing life sciences disciplines. Tensions within the exobiology research community and between NASA-funded science and the academic research community are explored, as are such milestones of discipline formation as journals and professional societies. (shrink)