As an outcome of scientific thinking, evolutionary theories change in accordance with progress made. Here, we trace the evolution of evolutionary thought through seven different research schools that have arisen since the introduction of Darwin’s Origin of Species. These schools include Darwinism, the Modern Synthesis, Micro-, Meso-, and Macroevolution, Ecology, and Reticulate Evolution. The schools of Darwinism and the Modern Synthesis together lie at the foundation of the Neo-Darwinian paradigm. This paradigm has now expanded into the schools of Microevolution, Mesoevolution, (...) and Macroevolution that respectively study how genes, organisms, and species evolve over time. The school of Ecology instead investigates how genes, organisms, and species interact with one another and with the physical environment in space. The Eco-Evo-Devo paradigm attempts to integrate the tenets of Ecology with those of Micro-, Meso-, and Macroevolutionary research. The Reticulate Evolution school studies non-selectionist mechanisms such as symbiosis, symbiogenesis, lateral gene transfer, infective heredity, and hybridization. This paper outlines the major research directions and points of controversies that arise between these distinct schools. It furthermore situates the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis and Third Way of Evolution along these schools. The call for an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis originated in the Mesoevolution school, while scholars active in the Third Way of Evolution movement are developing ways to recognize the important contributions made by all evolution schools. (shrink)

Scholarly opinions vary on what language is, how it evolved, and from where or what it evolved. Long considered uniquely human, today scholars argue for evolutionary continuity between human language and animal communication systems. But while it is generally recognized that language is an evolving communication system, scholars continue to debate from which species language evolved, and what behavioral and cognitive features are the precursors to human language. To understand the nature of protolanguage, some look for homologs in gene functionality, (...) brain areas, or anatomical structures such as the supralaryngeal vocal tract; others point toward primates, their gestural, vocal, multimodal, and in later evolving hominins also their pantomimic communication systems; and still others draw parallels between the musicality that characterizes language and the pitch found in the numerous sounds produced by animals. Accordingly, protolanguage theories today are multiple and diverse, and protolanguages might have also been diverse. This special issue on Evolving (Proto)Language/s for Lingua bundles several of the protolanguage theories that were put forward at the sixth edition of the Ways to Protolanguage conference series, held at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, in 2019. Not aimed at surveying all the different ways there are to conceptualize, study, and model protolanguage/s, this issue provides interested readers with good overviews on the role played in current theorizing on protolanguage/s by (paleo)anthropology, genetics, physiology, developmental, evolutionary, ecological, and pragmatic research lines. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est né d'une réalité et d'un besoin. La petite Maëlle, enfant autiste, est devenue adolescente, alors il fallait la suivre pour mieux l'accompagner dans cette nouvelle étape de sa vie. Comme cela arrive chez les autres enfants qui entrent dans l'adolescence, tout est remis en question : les idéaux, l'identité, l'amitié, l'amour. Entre-temps, il y a eu la publication de la cinquième version du Manuel diagnostique et statistique des troubles mentaux (DSM-5). Il fallait donc étudier cette entrée dans (...) l'adolescence à partir des données diagnostiques les plus récentes. Autisme et adolescence est la suite de L'autisme, un jour à la fois et d'Accompagner un enfant autiste. Encore ici, la mère Catherine Kozminski et la psychologue Nathalie Poirier entrent en dialogue afin de se mettre à l'écoute des besoins de l'adolescente et d'élaborer les meilleures formes d'accompagnement. Il en résulte un ouvrage plein de sensibilité et rempli de solutions pratiques. (shrink)

Au début du Sophiste, Socrate demande au visiteur éléate ce qu’ont pensé des genres philosophe, sophiste et politique, « ceux » qui sont de ce lieu-là ». L’article a pour but d’éclairer cette dernière expression et en particulier son mot clef « topos ». Il est montré que les significations de ce terme, dans son contexte, sont multiples et que cette diversité, loin d’apporter la confusion, permet au contraire et précisément d’ouvrir les diverses perspectives du dialogue. At the beginning of (...) the Sophist, Socrates asks the Eleatic Visitor how the three kinds Philosopher, Sophist and Statesman, have been understood by “those who are in this place”. The purpose of this paper is to enlighten this periphrasis and specially its key-word “topos”. We have showed that, in its context, this word has four main meanings, and that this diversity, far from causing confusion, opens up the dialogue to various perspectives. (shrink)

Este texto busca levantar reflexões sobre a importância e necessidades da educação para as relações étnico-raciais e promoção da educação antirracista. A partir do uso conceitual de letramento racial crítico e, da análise de legislações que consideramos oportunas para o enfrentamento do racismo, tais como a Lei nº 14.532, de 11 de janeiro de 2023, Lei nº 7.716, de 5 de janeiro de 1989, que visam criminalizar o racismo, e da Lei nº 10.639, de 9 de janeiro de 2003 sobre (...) a obrigatoriedade do ensino de história e cultura da população afro-brasileira e africana, as compreendemos como avanços no combate ao racismo. Em vista de levantarmos possibilidades para o desenvolvimento de um ensino pautado na luta antirracismo a partir e de que promova o letramento racial crítico, levantamos algumas observações sobre a música Bluesman, de Baco Exu do blues, como alternativa para o levantamento reflexivo em sala de aula para a valorização da história e identidade da população negra. (shrink)

Procurou-se, e esse foi o objetivo essencial, que este volume fosse marcado pelo discurso questionador e crítico de historiadores, de filósofos, de especialistas da ciência política, das ideias, do direito, da economia, da educação, da comunicação, da informação, das ciências, das artes. Surgiram assim interpretações, quadros, configurações e reconfigurações, ângulos de análise diversificados que fomentarão, por certo, uma reflexão viva dos leitores. É fundamental — continua a sê-lo — repensar e questionar campos temáticos à luz das análises teóricas e concetuais, (...) mas também dos processos, das dinâmicas, das relações, das potencialidades explicativas da nossa contemporaneidade. É assim que se entende este livro, com muitas contribuições, que vêm propiciar e enriquecer a reflexão sobre Outros Combates pela História. Combates pela História é, como se sabe, o título de um livro famoso de Lucien Febvre dos anos cinquenta. Através de uma recomposição, de novo se deu importância a todas as modalidades da História, mantendo, todavia, o sentido do rigor que era algo perseguido nos «combates pela História». Quer-se, pois, analisar o sentido da História, nas suas várias áreas. Contudo, ao propor-se este tema, não se desejou que os autores apresentassem tanto as suas investigações nas suas áreas próprias — embora elas estivessem subentendidas e devessem ser expressas —, mas que refletissem sobre o seu sentido no âmbito da História entendida como Ciência Social e Humana. Para tal, desejou-se que discutissem o objeto e o método da História das diversas áreas, equacionando os seus vários problemas. Foi isso que também sucedeu — estamos disso convencidos. Mas será o leitor, melhor do que ninguém, a ajuizá-lo. (shrink)

This book is a large-scale historical reconstruction of liberal legalism, from its inception in the mid-nineteenth century, the moment in which the jurists forged the alliance between political liberalism and legal expertise embodied in classical private law doctrine, to the contemporary anxiety about the possibility of both a liberal solution to the problem of political justification and of law as a respectable form of expert knowledge. Each stage in the history is a moment of synthesis between a substantive and a (...) methodological idea. The former is the liberal political theory of the period, purporting to provide a solution to the problem of political justification. The latter is a conception of legal method or science, supposedly vindicating the access of the expert to the political choices embodied in the law. Thus, each moment in the history of liberal legalism integrates a political theory with a jurisprudential conception. Although it reaches the unsettling conclusion that liberal legalism has largely failed by its own standards, the book urges us to avoid quietism, skepticism or cynicism, in the hope that a deeper understanding of the fragility of our values and institutions inspires a more thoughtful, broadminded and nurtured citizenship. (shrink)

The invisible object, in the eighteenth century, is not an evidence. It is the result of textual and semantic learning. Which concrete strategies are used to construct and depict objects out of sight? How do we make them a cognitive reality acceptable to a scientific community? This paper first highlights the conditions for the emergence of a field of microscopic knowledge and its epistemological consequences. Then we consider the microscopic gaze in terms of learning, situated between the act of observation (...) as such and discursive practices. We conclude by studying a concrete case of “negotiation of the invisible” in a correspondence between Carl Linnaeus and John Ellis concerning corpuscles observed in mushroom infusions. (shrink)

The biological and neurological capacity to symbolize, and the products of behavioral, cognitive, sociocultural, linguistic, and technological uses of symbols (symbolism), are fundamental to every aspect of human life. The Oxford Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution explores the origins of our characteristically human abilities - our ability to speak, create images, play music, and read and write. The book investigates how symbolization evolved in human evolution and how symbolism is expressed across the various areas of human life. The field is (...) intrinsically interdisciplinary - considering findings from fossil studies, scientific research from primatology, developmental psychology, and of course linguistics. Written by world leading experts, thirty-eight topical chapters are grouped into six thematic parts that respectively focus on epistemological, psychological, anthropological, ethological, linguistic, and social-technological aspects of human symbolic evolution. The handbook presents an in-depth but comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the of the state of the art in the science of human symbolic evolution. This work will be of interest to academics and students active in all fields contributing to the study of human evolution. (shrink)

Tout le monde en conviendra : lire n'est pas une activité de tout repos. La vue y est certes sollicitée, et même d'emblée, mais c'est pour aussitôt s'éclipser. S'il était purement vu, le texte (dans son sens étendu d'objet de l'interprétation) ne serait pas encore lu. La lecture proprement dite aura lieu dès l'instant où je cesse de voir ce qui m'est donné à voir pour me faufiler au-delà. J'embrasse à présent une réalité tri-dimensionnelle, je deviens le texte et le (...) texte m'épouse, je flaire et je ressens, j'hallucine et je jubile, bref : je lis. La lecture sera synesthésique ou ne sera pas. Mon voyeurisme n'est plus trivial mais absolu. Or ce don de voyance que je m'accorde pour pallier mon aveuglement du départ n'est pas sans risques : je ne suis à l'abri ni de la méprise ni de la foi aveugle. Et c'est là le côté ironique de toute lecture. On a beau s'investir dans l'oeuvre, tôt ou tard l'enchantement sera rompu. Je me vois en train de lire, donc je ne lis plus.Le texte me renvoie soudain à mes propres limites. Il n'empêche que cet ébranlement du sujet soit souvent déclencheur d'une expérience esthétique, expérience qui porte également un enseignement : la lecture aujourd'hui engage quiconque s'y adonne à être prêt à abdiquer à chaque instant ou, du moins, à respecter l'illisible et l'inappropriable. L'aboutissement de ce travail ce confond avec son présupposé majeur : inutile de vouloir maintenir le clivage entre lecture textuelle et lecture tout court (d'une image, du monde, d'un corps désiré, etc.), ce sont leurs empiètements qui restituent à ce geste ancestral et sans doute universel son souffle et son ampleur. Des scènes de perception entravée, lacunaire ou défectueuse, glanées dans le patrimoine littéraire et plastique contemporain (Proust, Cocteau, Michaux, Calvino, Manganelli, De Chirico, Alechinsky, Fuentes, Biély, Nabokov, Gombrowicz et tant d'autres) et appréhendées comme autant de simulacres de l'expérience de lecture, nous ont permis de cerner l'activité lectorielle au plus proche des textes. (shrink)

This paper discusses the establishment of a governance framework to secure the development and deployment of “good AI”, and describes the quest for a morally objective compass to steer it. Asserting that human rights can provide such compass, this paper first examines what a human rights-based approach to AI governance entails, and sets out the promise it propagates. Subsequently, it examines the pitfalls associated with human rights, particularly focusing on the criticism that these rights may be too Western, too individualistic, (...) too narrow in scope and too abstract to form the basis of sound AI governance. After rebutting these reproaches, a plea is made to move beyond the calls for a human rights-based approach, and start taking the necessary steps to attain its realisation. It is argued that, without elucidating the applicability and enforceability of human rights in the context of AI; adopting legal rules that concretise those rights where appropriate; enhancing existing enforcement mechanisms and securing an underlying societal infrastructure that enables human rights in the first place, any human rights-based governance framework for AI risks falling short of its purpose. (shrink)

Research on the influence of industry on chemical regulation has mostly been conducted within the framework of the production of ignorance. This special issue extends this research by looking at how industry asserts its interests––not just in the scientific sphere but also at other stages of policy-making and regulatory process––with a specific focus on the types of tools or instruments industry has used. Bringing together sociologists and historians specialized in Science and Technology Studies, the articles of the special issue study (...) the arenas in which instruments and practical guidelines for public policy are negotiated or used. The aim is to observe the devices in the making or in action, from the selection of actors to the production of thresholds, criteria, and other technical regulations. The introduction highlights how industry influence on expertise and regulation is undoubtedly far more pervasive and multifarious than has been conceptualized to date by social scientists. Putting this issue back at the heart of both the STS and social sciences research agendas is increasingly urgent and could lead to new inquiries able to highlight these logics even more widely, using fresh empirical examples. (shrink)

The author- following his own research on the subject- argues that Wittgenstein ignores argumentation theory and in general, the problems of rhetoric and argumentation. From this point of view, he frames Stephen Toulmin’s reading of Wittgenstein, arguing that the British philosopher- who was a student of the Austrian- advocates precisely the same thesis. He explains that this happens in a very peculiar (rhetorical) context on Toulmin’s part; a context in which, in essence, Wittgenstein’s philosophy is being rehabilitated.

This chapter takes the form of a discussion between the editors of this volume and Steven Lukes, one the most eminent critics of methodological individualism. The focus is on Lukes’ interpretation of methodological individualism in terms of linguistic exclusivism (i.e., naive reductionism), the multiple-realization problem, Boudon’s and Elster’s micro-foundationalist approach, ontological individualism, and the rationality of human action.

Brian C. Ribeiro’s _Sextus, Montaigne, Hume: Pyrrhonizers_ invites us to view the Pyrrhonist tradition as involving all those who share a commitment to the activity of Pyrrhonizing and develops fresh, provocative readings of Sextus, Montaigne, and Hume as radical Pyrrhonizing skeptics.

It is important to understand the drivers of green consumption, because of growing concern for the health of the planet. In this paper, the assumption that a virtue-green product relationship exists is tested. The objective is to understand how product morality can influence the valuation of green products. Relying on virtue theory and positive spillover as conceptual bases, the research implicitly and explicitly tests and confirms green product virtue. The results demonstrate that perceived green product virtue leads to positive emotions, (...) which explain heightened purchase intentions. In line with the conceptualization, I show that the effect is moderated by the importance consumers place on their own morality. Importantly, explicitly framing green products as virtuous activates positive spillover by consumers; when green products are branded with a virtue cue, they encourage consumers to be more virtuous. Beyond being perceived as better people, when consumers interact with green products they effectively engage in more moral acts, such as making donations. The results confirm the perception of green products as moral agents and provide marketers with insights into the marketing value of virtue cues in green product consumption. (shrink)

The article proposes to further develop the ideas of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis by including into evolutionary research an analysis of phenomena that occur above the organismal level. We demonstrate that the current Extended Synthesis is focused more on individual traits (genetically or non-genetically inherited) and less on community system traits (synergetic/organizational traits) that characterize transgenerational biological, ecological, social, and cultural systems. In this regard, we will consider various communities that are made up of interacting populations, and for which the (...) individual members can belong to the same or to different species. Examples of communities include biofilms, ant colonies, symbiotic associations resulting in holobiont formation, and human societies. The proposed model of evolution at the level of communities revises classic theorizing on the major transitions in evolution by analyzing the interplay between community/social traits and individual traits, and how this brings forth ideas of top-down regulations of bottom-up evolutionary processes (collaboration of downward and upward causation). The work demonstrates that such interplay also includes reticulate interactions and reticulate causation. In this regard, we exemplify how community systems provide various non-genetic ‘scaffoldings’, ‘constraints’, and ‘affordances’ for individual and sociocultural evolutionary development. Such research complements prevailing models that focus on the vertical transmission of heritable information, from parent to offspring, with research that instead focusses on horizontal, oblique and even reverse information transmission, going from offspring to parent. We call this reversed information transfer the ‘offspring effect’ to contrast it from the ‘parental effect’. We argue that the proposed approach to inheritance is effective for modelling cumulative and distributed developmental process and for explaining the biological origins and evolution of language. (shrink)

Both biosemiotics and evolutionary epistemology are concerned with how knowledge evolves. (Applied) Evolutionary Epistemology thereby focuses on identifying the units, levels, and mechanisms or processes that underlie the evolutionary development of knowing and knowledge, while biosemiotics places emphasis on the study of how signs underlie the development of meaning. We compare the two schools of thought and analyze how in delineating their research program, biosemiotics runs into several problems that are overcome by evolutionary epistemologists. For one, by emphasizing signs, biosemiotics (...) needs to delineate a semiotic threshold, which is a problem not encountered by evolutionary epistemologists. Instead, the latter recognizes that all organisms are knowers that evolve knowledge, which they recognize to extend toward phenomena produced by organisms such as behavior, cognition, language, culture, science, and technology. Secondly, biosemiotics attempts at continuing adaptationist notions on how organisms relate to their environment, while especially Applied Evolutionary Epistemology comes to redefine the nature of the organism–environment relationship in such a way that it recognizes the spatiotemporal boundedness of existence, which in turn makes adaptationist accounts obsolete. (shrink)

While methodological individualism is a fundamental approach within the social sciences, it is often misunderstood. This highlights the need for a discursive and up-to-date reference work analyzing this approach’s classic arguments and assumptions in the light of contemporary issues in sociology, economics and philosophy. This two-volume handbook presents the first comprehensive overview of methodological individualism. Chapters discuss historical and contemporary debates surrounding this central approach within the social sciences, as well as cutting edge developments related to the individualist tradition with (...) philosophical and scientific implications. Bringing together multiple contributions from the world’s leading experts on this important tradition of theorizing, this collective endeavor provides teachers, researchers and students in sociology, economics, and philosophy with a reliable and critical understanding of the founding principles, key thinkers and intellectual development of MI since the late 19th century. ​. (shrink)

This chapter takes the form of a discussion between the editors of this volume and Daniel Little regarding the relationship between methodological individualism and methodological localism. The focus is on Little’s view that methodological individualism is incompatible with the assumption that actors are socially constituted and socially situated as well as on other topics such as micro-foundations, the micro–macro link, ontological individualism, causal explanation, rationality, Bourdieu’s theory of habitus, and Durkheim.

Perceptual experience and visual imagination both offer a first-person perspective on visible objects. But these perspectives are strikingly different. For it is distinctive of ordinary perceptual intentionality that objects seem to be present to the perceiver. I term this phenomenal property of experience ‘presence’. This paper introduces a positive definition of presence. Dokic and Martin (2017) argue that presence is not a genuine property of perceptual experience, appealing to empirical research on derealisation disorders, Parkinson’s disease, virtual reality and hallucination. I (...) demonstrate that their arguments fall short of establishing that presence is not perceptual. (shrink)

Cet article entend cerner la spécificité de la critique littéraire de l’art telle qu’elle fut pratiquée par les écrivains et poètes en France entre 1850 et 1950, dans le sillage de Diderot, à partir d’un examen des écrits sur l’art de Diderot, Baudelaire, Zola, Stendhal, Huysmans, Valéry, Proust, Reverdy, Leiris. Au-delà des différences individuelles de goût, de statut, de sujets traités et de la prolixité discursive évidente dans la pratique, on peut mettre en lumière les points de convergence qui s’observent (...) dans leurs écrits, afin de cerner le propre de la critique littéraire de l’art du point de vue de la démarche, de la méthode et du style. Ces convergences prennent fond dans une posture commune aux écrivains, qui est celle du non-spécialiste, cultivant résolument la pensée libre et subjective. (shrink)

In the 1990s, Building Information Modeling (BIM) software significantly altered architectural approaches to planning and building. Based on parametric methods, BIM technologies sought to simulate the construction process prior to a building’s realisation. These computer simulations challenged the existing practice of representing a building through plan, section and elevation, proposing that one computational model could create a more efficient way of building. The history of BIM explorations and applications, while hardly linear, can be traced back to developments in computing since (...) the post-war period. This article maps some of these histories by examining how the computational model became an organisational infrastructure, collecting data about design and building parameters, and facilitating knowledge transfer across industries. Special attention will be given to the foundational role of Charles Eastman’s work on a Building Description System (BDS) in the 1970s, as well as Robert Aish’s contribution to RUCAPS, one of the earliest applications of Building Modeling for the design of parametric structures. I will further address research on interface technologies and computational curve modelling as well as the popularisation of Building Information systems through the office of Gehry Partners. By highlighting the interrelated nature of technology and cultural shifts in the making of BIM, this contribution sheds light on the epistemic status of computer simulations in architecture, and the dynamics of the design and building processes in which they are used. (shrink)

In the 1990s, Building Information Modeling (BIM) software significantly altered architectural approaches to planning and building. Based on parametric methods, BIM technologies sought to simulate the construction process prior to a building’s realisation. These computer simulations challenged the existing practice of representing a building through plan, section and elevation, proposing that one computational model could create a more efficient way of building. The history of BIM explorations and applications, while hardly linear, can be traced back to developments in computing since (...) the post-war period. This article maps some of these histories by examining how the computational model became an organisational infrastructure, collecting data about design and building parameters, and facilitating knowledge transfer across industries. Special attention will be given to the foundational role of Charles Eastman’s work on a Building Description System (BDS) in the 1970s, as well as Robert Aish’s contribution to RUCAPS, one of the earliest applications of Building Modeling for the design of parametric structures. I will further address research on interface technologies and computational curve modelling as well as the popularisation of Building Information systems through the office of Gehry Partners. By highlighting the interrelated nature of technology and cultural shifts in the making of BIM, this contribution sheds light on the epistemic status of computer simulations in architecture, and the dynamics of the design and building processes in which they are used. (shrink)

Dans leurs écrits sur l’art, Diderot et Baudelaire montrent comment les lignes des tableaux dirigent l’œil pour générer un intérêt, voire un choc déclencheur d’une expérience esthétique lorsqu’elles sont brisées. Les rides, fissures, plis qui rompent l’harmonie des figures sont pour Diderot une source profonde d’émotion, tandis que la ligne serpentine est de préférence infléchie en arabesque par Baudelaire. À leur façon, le philosophe et le poète montrent ainsi comment la pensée esthétique moderne se nourrit de ces désordres et irrégularités (...) de l’art en redéfinissant le beau idéal classique en une brisure de l’idéal. (shrink)

This paper argues that the idea of inclusion is linked to the democratic tradition rather than to the republican one. By analyzing the origins and meaning of these two concepts, the author holds that democracy is rather linked to desire and republic to will (and to the expression of desire), and concludes that, since North Atlantic political tradition has not given a key role to desire, democracy, in order to overcome the difficulties it has been encountering in all parts of (...) the world, should take more account of desire and of the social struggles it brings to the fore. (shrink)