The present volume contains Part Four, "The Great Shift," of Susanne Langer’s projected six-part magnum opus entitled, Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling. The first volume dealt with three parts: "Problems and Principles," "The Import of Art," and "Natura Naturans;" Volume II rests squarely on these three foundational parts. The balance of the work will be concerned with "The Moral Structure," and with "Knowledge and Truth." In this reviewer’s opinion, Professor Langer’s essay is easily the most significant theory of mind (...) yet developed in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. The central task of her essay is to establish the total qualitative difference that divides human from animal mentality by showing that the nature and origin of that difference is explicable in terms of a continuous course of biological development. "The great shift" to human being as a mode of life typified by all that we understand as culture is accomplished, according to the conceptual framework extended throughout Volume II of the work, without recourse to metaphysical assumptions of nonzoological factors. By carefully locating a vast amount of exact psychobiological information in a conceptual structure that extends scientific definitions by modification, she makes the biological concept of human mentality adequate to the extraordinary reality it is intended to make comprehensible. Through the incorporation of highly sophisticated detail, she investigates repertoire and instinct; animal acts and ambients; animal values; interpretation of animal acts; the specialization of man; symbols and the evaluation of mind; and, finally, symbols and the human world. It is difficult to imagine that a reader could find fault with Susanne Langer’s method, because she never expands her conceptual structure by metaphorical extension, but only by modifying definitions in scientific terms so as to comprehend domains wider than those conventionally assigned to the sciences themselves. Her study, however, is not only eminently adequate methodologically, it is immensely satisfying in helping us understand that the uniqueness of human being can be fully articulated and intellectually sustained without resorting to a vitalistic discontinuity of any order. If, as Susanne Langer herself contends, the value of a philosophical outlook rests ultimately on its "serviceability," then this masterwork will serve all manner of investigators for a long time to come.—C.F.B. (shrink)

The polymathic Leibniz was surely one of the greatest and most enigmatic figures produced by the "century of genius." He is the only philosopher whom the renowned historian of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Adolf von Harnack, would admit as a colleague to that august body, and Leibniz is universally admired by metaphysicians, theologians, advocates of cosmopolitanism and religious tolerance, students of international law, and, not the least, by philosophers of logic and language. Although efforts to canonize Leibniz as the (...) pure type of "harmonic synthesizer" have been under way for quite a long time, philosophers and historians are no longer so anxious as they once were to work out a synthetic unification of these and many other perspectives of Leibniz as was Mahnke, for instance, who characterized Leibniz’ philosophy as a synthesis of universal mathematics and individual metaphysics. (shrink)

Etienne Gilson once remarked that if philosophers cannot agree about the nature or meaning of being, they will in all likelihood agree about very little else. This observation is certainly applicable to Professor Webster’s putative "dialogue" with Anglo-American philosophy on the problem of being, rational thought and natural theology. He contends that a genuinely fundamental interpretation of scientism, logicism or linguisticism necessitates a philosophical strategy based on unity as a transcendental which is accessible to logic. This initial confrontation leads to (...) another involving being as a radical transcendental. The author claims that whether we regard What is being? as the most primordial of questions, or as a meaningless phrase, or as a Scheinproblem, modern philosophical developments, antimetaphysical and metaphysical alike, provide the solution to that question in spite of themselves. He thinks that the various different forms of contemporary analytical philosophy represent a renewal of the radical Cartesian demand for univocity. Yet for him being is least of all univocal; rather it is analogous in a nonmathematical sense. His orientation is Thomistic and the book is basically an attempt "to show the functioning of being, univocity and analogy as they inevitably appear against the background of the dominant trends in Anglo-American philosophy." After outlining some general approaches to the respective problems of being, realism, and truth, he devotes almost two thirds of the volume to an analysis of the consequences of exclusive univocity and the logic of being. The remainder of the book turns to a philosophical consideration of the human being and some additional but rather peripheral matters. Webster writes with fervor on behalf of the inevitability of metaphysics, but his valuable insights are somewhat vitiated by the haphazard character of his overall presentation.—C. F. B. (shrink)

Roman Ingarden published his two major works in aesthetics in the 1930’s. The Literary Work of Art was published first in a German edition in 1931 and The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art was published first in a Polish edition in 1937. A revised and enlarged edition of the second book was published in Germany in 1968 and it is the German edition translated into English in 1973 which is the subject of this review. Ingarden’s two works, founded (...) on the antipsychologism of Edmund Husserl are intended as companion volumes, the first responding to the question, "How is the object of cognition, the literary work of art, structured?" and the second answering the question, "What is the procedure which will lead to knowledge of the literary work?" In The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, Ingarden is concerned with the mode of cognition which corresponds to the necessary structures of the literary work of art which he has analyzed in his earlier study. He sets out to show that such a cognition is composed of heterogenous but closely connected processes and that it is accomplished in a temporal process. (shrink)

The present work is an excellent translation of Walter Burkert’s Weisheit und Wissenschaft: Studien zu Pythagoras, Philolaus, und Platon, first published in 1962. It is very probably the most illuminating and comprehensive study of Pythagoreanism yet produced by a modern scholar. Obviously Pythagoreanism is a protean historical phenomenon, equally mysterious both in its origin and development, and in all epochs its interpretation has indicated as much about the winds of cultural doctrine as about the nature of Pythagoreanism itself. Burkert’s study (...) is the product of an astonishingly thorough penetration of all the relevant ancient evidence and all the critically significant modern literature, and it evinces the author’s remarkable ability to weave the diverse threads of Pythagoreanism into a comprehensible historical picture. (shrink)

The polymathic Leibniz was surely one of the greatest and most enigmatic figures produced by the "century of genius." He is the only philosopher whom the renowned historian of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Adolf von Harnack, would admit as a colleague to that august body, and Leibniz is universally admired by metaphysicians, theologians, advocates of cosmopolitanism and religious tolerance, students of international law, and, not the least, by philosophers of logic and language. Although efforts to canonize Leibniz as the (...) pure type of "harmonic synthesizer" have been under way for quite a long time, philosophers and historians are no longer so anxious as they once were to work out a synthetic unification of these and many other perspectives of Leibniz as was Mahnke, for instance, who characterized Leibniz’ philosophy as a synthesis of universal mathematics and individual metaphysics. (shrink)

Werner Jaeger’s epic-making work on Aristotle long ago established that the form and substance of the various types of Aristotelian logoi, or treatises, are historically unique in that their intelligibility is indissolubly connected with the Lyceum as an educational institution. The laborious reconstructive work of centuries of commentators should not obscure the fact that both the exoteric and the esoteric treatises have their ultimate Sitz im Leben in the Lyceum, that peculiar philosophical school whose communal life formed, perhaps, the first (...) historical semblance of a "university" in the modern sense. Professor Lynch studies Aristotle’s school from its pre-Aristotelian origins as a religious sanctuary in Athens to the expiration of the Athenian Peripatos at the beginning of the first century before Christ. Although his primary focus is not on the relation between the nature of the school and the kind of philosophical thought it produced, his scholarly book reinforces the conviction of the historian of philosophy that investigating the Peripatos as a community of men concerned with higher education is a necessary propaedeutic for understanding how the Perpatetikoi actually philosophized. In a famous essay on the Academy and the Peripatos Hermann Usener discerned that the essence of these philosophical schools resided in their geistige Arbeit. (shrink)

Van Peursen’s book is an authorized translation and is published under the auspices of the Duquesne Philosophical Series. The purpose of the work is to effect a rapprochement between two of today’s most notable approaches to philosophy: phenomenology and linguistic analysis. These respective philosophical methods are frequently looked upon as two of the conspicuous polar trends within contemporary philosophy, and the author arranges their confrontation in such a way that their most fundamental convergencies and divergencies are revealed. The original phase (...) of phenomenology, that of Edmund Husserl, and the earlier phase of logical positivism as represented by Carnap and Schlick, are described by focusing on their treatment of the problem of meaning. A further comparison is made between the respective ways phenomenological reduction and analytical reduction treat the question of factual existence. Both philosophical methods are presented clearly and sympathetically in their historical depth and with emphasis on their methodological aspects. The author then makes a provisional confrontation between them which centers on the critical problem of defining the appropriate relation between operational and intuitive meaning, the truths of reason and the truths of fact. These two methods of philosophy stem from essentially different attitudes whose significance transcends the limits of philosophy, and one of Van Peursen’s purposes is to explain both schools of thought to a wider public. He then traces the further development of phenomenology through the later Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, while concentrating on the phenomenology of the ego and of the Life-World. This analysis is followed by a description of the movement from logical positivism to analytical philosophy as it was shaped by the linguistic orientation of Wittgenstein and Ryle. The last chapter offers a final confrontation between the transcendental and the linguistic approaches. (shrink)

Professor Vendler’s book is a notable recent addition to the Cornell Contemporary Philosophy Series, and it attempts to develop a more adequate, but still distinctly rationalistic, Cartesian perspective on ideas, thought, and speech by using the techniques of generative linguistics and of analytical philosophy. Initially, he elucidates the relationship between speech and thought by demonstrating that the former is an expression of the latter. He then distinguishes between the subjective and objective dimensions of thought by concentrating particularly on the concepts (...) of belief and knowledge. These analyses are followed by an acute inquiry into the learning and understanding of speech by reference to the native and acquired elements of knowledge. His investigations culminate in an explicit rejection of all forms of empiricism and behaviorism in philosophical psychology, most particularly the influential view propounded by Ryle in Concept of Mind. Furthermore, Professor Vendler’s study extends some insights of J. L. Austin, and he finds Wittgenstein’s understanding of language and speech to be incorrect because our knowledge of what a word means is "a function of, and is to be explained in terms of, understanding certain incomplete propositions.". (shrink)

The distinguished Dutch cultural historian, Johan Huizinga, once observed that the 17th was the most complex and least understood of the modern European centuries. Professor Loemker, one of America’s foremost Leibniz scholars has written a learned and searching study in the intellectual history of the "baroque" century in an effort to illuminate the background of Leibniz’ synthesis of order of freedom, his system of universal harmony. The cacophonous period within which Leibniz philosophized presented an overriding geistige Aufgabe and the very (...) essence of his thought can be interpreted as a response to that task. The peculiar burden or problematic of his age required the defining of those ideals and conditions which could lead to the foundation of an adequate and more comprehensive form of order. It is the author’s conviction that the systematic thinkers of the time accomplished this "on the basis of an enlarged version of Neoplatonism, particularly the Christian Neoplatonism of St. Augustine, though they differed greatly on details.". (shrink)

This volume is an authorized and slightly emended English translation of the second revised German edition of Die Logik der Dichtung, a work whose influence on the philosophy of literature is perhaps comparable only to that of Roman Ingarden, Emil Staiger, or Northrop Frye. The study aims at a phenomenological description of literature by appeal to logic, ontology, and the scientific study of literature. All of its analytical intricacies notwithstanding, the book is not overwhelmingly abstract and unremittingly formal in its (...) presentation, and its analyses are amply buttressed with concrete examples drawn predominately from European but also from Anglo-American literature. At a time when neo-Marxists such as Sartre have pronounced the concept of literature itself ideologically suspect and structuralists like Todorov, who contends that the very existence of literature constitutes its greatest paradox, Hamburger correctly discerns that the logic of literature has its foundation in the general theory of language. (shrink)

Werner Jaeger once remarked that fifth-century sophistry is the one ancient intellectual movement that is readily comprehensible to a modern mind. In the light of this fact, it is all the more surprising that until the publication of the present volume there has been no complete English version of the sophist material collected in the standard edition of Diels-Kranz. Kathleen Freeman’s Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A Complete Translation of the Fragments in Diels’ "Fragmente der Vorsokratiker" included some of the (...) material, but the longer extracts from Gorgias and Prodicus, a concluding essay by the Anonymous Iamblichi, and the Dissoi Logoi were summarized rather than translated. Apparently complete translations of sophist texts have heretofore existed only in two Italian versions, one of which dates back to 1923. The present handbook is the first complete English translation of the sophist material, and it is the work of ten different hands under the general editorship of Rosamond Kent Sprague. It is also a new edition in that J. S. Morrison, the translator of Antiphon, believed, contrary to Diels, that the sophist Antiphon and the orator Antiphon of Rhamnus were one and the same, and he has reedited the material completely so as to produce a unified Antiphon. Another exception is the sophist Euthydemus of Chios, who is an historical person and is included in an appendix. (shrink)

Werner Jaeger’s epic-making work on Aristotle long ago established that the form and substance of the various types of Aristotelian logoi, or treatises, are historically unique in that their intelligibility is indissolubly connected with the Lyceum as an educational institution. The laborious reconstructive work of centuries of commentators should not obscure the fact that both the exoteric and the esoteric treatises have their ultimate Sitz im Leben in the Lyceum, that peculiar philosophical school whose communal life formed, perhaps, the first (...) historical semblance of a "university" in the modern sense. Professor Lynch studies Aristotle’s school from its pre-Aristotelian origins as a religious sanctuary in Athens to the expiration of the Athenian Peripatos at the beginning of the first century before Christ. Although his primary focus is not on the relation between the nature of the school and the kind of philosophical thought it produced, his scholarly book reinforces the conviction of the historian of philosophy that investigating the Peripatos as a community of men concerned with higher education is a necessary propaedeutic for understanding how the Perpatetikoi actually philosophized. In a famous essay on the Academy and the Peripatos Hermann Usener discerned that the essence of these philosophical schools resided in their geistige Arbeit. (shrink)

Professor Lucas has written what is perhaps the most trenchant, sophisticated, and comprehensive treatise on time and space to have appeared in a long while. The book is distinguished not only by its acute treatment of the mathematical and physical concepts constituting its subject but also by a meditative quality all too rare in philosophical works dealing with the unquestionably fundamental and complex themes of time and space. The book is a phenomenology or morphology of time and space in that (...) it is a foundational analysis of the philosophical, mathematical, physical, logical, and theological aspects of our understanding of these concepts. The work is organized into five general sections each of which is internally refined with a keen sense of what is essential to the particular context of discussion. The first section investigates "Time by Itself" through reference to such notions as instant and interval, the topology and direction of time, cyclic time, permanence and omni-temporality, and the mathematical ideas of denseness and continuity. (shrink)

We report the results of an optical analogue of the fullerene molecule diffraction experiment. Our results, and an analysis of the fullerene experiment, suggest that the patterns observed in the latter can be explained using a localized particle model. There is no evidence that the grating period contributed to the published fullerene diffraction pattern. De Broglie waves, if they exist, are unlikely to have played a significant part in the fullerene diffraction experiment. The observed patterns are not consistent with those (...) expected according to wave theory for the experimental geometry corresponding to the slit-detector system and the de Broglie wavelength. The measurements were performed in the near field, making the demonstration of wave properties difficult. We outline a new classical approach to the electron and neutron interference experiments. The magnetic moment is crucial to this model, which emphasizes a mechanism for generating narrow-band continuum X-radiation. Some experiments are proposed which can decide between the suggested model and quantum mechanics, and which can also rule out an alternative stochastic model. (shrink)

Yoga is believed to have beneficial effects on cognition, attenuation of emotional intensity and stress reduction. Previous studies were mainly performed on eastern experienced practitioners or unhealthy subjects undergoing concomitant conventional therapies. Further investigation is needed on the effects of yoga per se, as well as its possible preventive benefits on healthy subjects. We investigated the effects of yoga on memory and psychophysiological parameters related to stress, comparing yoga practice and conventional physical exercises in healthy men . Memory tests, salivary (...) cortisol levels and stress, anxiety, and depression inventories were assessed before and after 6 months of practice. Yoga practitioners showed improvement of the memory performance, as well as improvements in psychophysiological parameters. The present results suggest that regular yoga practice can improve aspects of cognition and quality of life for healthy individuals. An indirect influence of emotional state on cognitive improvement promoted by yoga practice can be proposed. (shrink)

Hull et al.'s analysis of operant behavior in terms of interaction and replication does not seem consistent with a genuine selection model. The putative replicators do not replicate, and the overall process is more reminiscent of directed mutation than of natural selection. General analogies between natural selection and operant reinforcement are too superficial to be of much scientific use.

We formulate and analyze the dynamics of an influenza pandemic model with vaccination and treatment using two preventive scenarios: increase and decrease in vaccine uptake. Due to the seasonality of the influenza pandemic, the dynamics is studied in a finite time interval. We focus primarily on controlling the disease with a possible minimal cost and side effects using control theory which is therefore applied via the Pontryagin’s maximum principle, and it is observed that full treatment effort should be given while (...) increasing vaccination at the onset of the outbreak. Next, sensitivity analysis and simulations (using the fourth order Runge-Kutta scheme) are carried out in order to determine the relative importance of different factors responsible for disease transmission and prevalence. The most sensitive parameter of the various reproductive numbers apart from the death rate is the inflow rate, while the proportion of new recruits and the vaccine efficacy are the most sensitive parameters for the endemic equilibrium point. (shrink)

Placebo-controlled trials are controversial when individuals might be denied existing beneficial medical interventions. In the case of malaria, most patients die in rural villages without healthcare facilities. An artesunate suppository that can be given by minimally skilled persons might be of value when patients suddenly become too ill for oral treatment but are several hours from a facility that can give injectable treatment for severe disease. In such situations, by default, no treatment is (or can be) given until the patient (...) reaches a facility, making the placebo control design clinically relevant; alternative bioequivalence designs at the facility would misrepresent reality and risk incorrect conclusions. We describe the ethical issues underpinning a placebo-controlled trial in severe malaria. To protect patients and minimise risk, all patients were referred immediately to hospital so that each had a higher chance of prompt treatment through participation. There was no difference between artesunate and placebo in patients who reached clinic rapidly; among those who could not, a single artesunate suppository significantly reduced death or permanent disability, a finding of direct and indirect benefit to patients in participating villages and elsewhere. (shrink)

The sporadic nature of Alzheimer's disease argues for an environmental link that may drive AD pathogenesis; however, the triggering factors and the period of their action are unknown. Recent studies in rodents have shown that exposure to lead during brain development predetermined the expression and regulation of the amyloid precursor protein and its amyloidogenic beta-amyloid product in old age. Here, we report that the expression of AD-related genes [APP, BACE1 ] as well as their transcriptional regulator were elevated in aged (...) monkeys exposed to Pb as infants. Furthermore, developmental exposure to Pb altered the levels, characteristics, and intracellular distribution of Abeta staining and amyloid plaques in the frontal association cortex. These latent effects were accompanied by a decrease in DNA methyltransferase activity and higher levels of oxidative damage to DNA, indicating that epigenetic imprinting in early life influenced the expression of AD-related genes and promoted DNA damage and pathogenesis. These data suggest that AD pathogenesis is influenced by early life exposures and argue for both an environmental trigger and a developmental origin of AD. (shrink)

In the Classical Quarterly, xlix , Mrs. A. D. Ure mentions a Corinthian pyxis which had been previously published by her in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, lxix. 19 f. . This vase, at first believed to be of Boeotian origin, appears to come from Corinth, as subsequently shown by Mrs. Ure in J.H.S. lxxii. 121. Its subject is quite well known, consisting of an unbearded figure dressed in a fawn-skin with two horns growing from its head, and sitting on (...) what very probably is a heap of corn. In his right hand he is holding a staff thickened at the head, and in his left a stick terminating in forklike prongs. The figure is flanked on the right by a small animal and on the left by a basket of fruit. (shrink)

The formation of particles of elemental tin in association with the nucleation of the precipitate phase θ′ in an Al–1.7 at.% Cu–0.01 at.% Sn alloy has been investigated by high resolution transmission electron microscopy. Analysis of lattice images has demonstrated that these tin particles associated with θ′ platelets formed during short-term ageing (typically 3 min at 200 degrees Celcius) exhibit a crystallographic form that is distinctly different from that previously reported in such ternary alloys and also from that observed in (...) the binary alloy Al–0.01 at.% Sn. Those tin particles that could be clearly identified as β-Sn phase shared a crystallographic relationship of the form (001)Sn‖(001)Al‖(001)θ′, [110]Sn‖[100]Al‖[100]θ′ with the α-Al and θ′ phases with which they were simultaneously in contact. The observations imply that, while tin may assist nucleation of platelets of θ′, the formation of θ′ equally influences the crystallography of β--Sn that forms in association with θ′. Following prolonged ageing (typically 50 h at 200°C), the β-Sn particles in contact with θ′ plates had coarsened and diminished in number, and most now exhibited an orientation relationship with α-Al matrix similar to that observed in the binary alloy Al–0.01 at.% Sn (i.e. (100)Sn‖(111)Al, [010]Sn‖[112]Al) and to that previously observed in the later stages of ageing of the ternary alloy Al–1.7 at.% Cu–0.01 at.% Sn. (shrink)