This paper looks at the issue of consent from children and whether the test of Gillick competency, applied in medical and healthcare practice, ought to extend to participation in research. It is argued that the relatively broad usage of the test of Gillick competency in the medical context should not be considered applicable for use in research. The question of who would and could determine Gillick competency in research raises further concerns relating to the training of the researcher to make (...) such a decision as well as to the obvious issue of the researcher’s personal interest in the project and possibility of benefiting from the outcome. These could affect the judgment of Gillick competency if the researcher is charged with making this decision. The above notwithstanding, there are two exceptional research situations in which Gillick competency might be legitimately applied: when the research is likely to generate significant advantages for the participants while exposing them to relatively minor risks, and when it is likely to generate great societal benefit, pose minimal risks for the participants and yet raise parental objection. In both cases, to ensure that autonomy is genuinely respected and to protect against personal interest, Gillick competency should be assessed by an individual who has no interest or involvement in the research. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay argues that science education can gain from close engagement with the history of science both in the training of prospective vocational scientists and in educating the broader public about the nature of science. First it shows how historicizing science in the classroom can improve the pedagogical experience of science students and might even help them turn into more effective professional practitioners of science. Then it examines how historians of science can support the scientific education of the general (...) public at a time when debates over “intelligent design” are raising major questions over the kind of science that ought to be available to children in their school curricula. It concludes by considering further work that might be undertaken to show how history of science could be of more general educational interest and utility, well beyond the closed academic domains in which historians of science typically operate. (shrink)

Context -- A Jew in Amsterdam -- Conflicts and communities -- Christian philosophy? -- A Bible gallery -- Religion and politics in the TTP -- Miracles, meaning, and moderation -- Christian pluralism -- Ethics reconsidered -- Providence, obedience, and love -- Spinoza and Christianity.

ABSTRACT This essay argues that science education can gain from close engagement with the history of science both in the training of prospective vocational scientists and in educating the broader public about the nature of science. First it shows how historicizing science in the classroom can improve the pedagogical experience of science students and might even help them turn into more effective professional practitioners of science. Then it examines how historians of science can support the scientific education of the general (...) public at a time when debates over “intelligent design” are raising major questions over the kind of science that ought to be available to children in their school curricula. It concludes by considering further work that might be undertaken to show how history of science could be of more general educational interest and utility, well beyond the closed academic domains in which historians of science typically operate. (shrink)

Im ersten Teil dieses Aufsatzes versuche ich, die fundamentalen Irrtiimer in der heutigen Leibnizliteratur, die zu einer fatalistischen Auslegung der Leibnizschen Theorie der Essentia geführt haben, aufzuspüren. Der zweite Teil enthält eine genauere Darstellung der Wesenslehre. Sie wird am Schluß gegen zwei zunachst plausibel erscheinende Einwände verteidigt.

Spinoza is supposed to have denied the existence of miracles. I argue that instead of denying them he offers his readers a way of understanding miracles within his own metaphysical system in which God and nature are identified. I then offer some historical conjectures as to why his view has been misunderstood so often and for so long.

In this paper I show that Arnauld defends a traditional Roman Catholic position on miracles, though he might have been expected to do otherwise. This oddity is explained by the fact that Arnauld, as spokesman for Port-Royal, was called upon to defend one of the most startling and best-documented miracles in history.

Steven Nadler hopes to interest a readership wider than just professional philosophers in a largely forgotten debate he admits was not one of philosophy’s “marquee events.” It sounds like an uphill battle, even for a writer as skilled and for a historian of modern philosophy as accomplished as Nadler. Yet The Best of All Possible Worlds succeeds in unfolding a compelling tale without distorting the fundamental doctrines of its protagonists.And what protagonists they were, however much the passing centuries have dimmed (...) their renown. G. W. Leibniz is still likely to have some name recognition with the target audience. But it would be unsafe to assume it for either the Oratorian Nicolas Malebranche or the Jansenist Antoine Arnauld. So Nadler weaves enough historical and biographical detail into his story, both to introduce all three and to create a background of human interest against which their philosophical differences are displayed. (shrink)

In diesem Aufsatz suche ich zu zeigen, daß das Streitgespräch zwischen Hobbes und Bramhall über das Problem des Fatalismus scheitern mußte, weil der erste von der mechanistischen Philosophie ausging und der zweite von der scholastischen.

This chapter contains section titled: Pascal: The Life Afterlife of Pascal: His Influence.

Stuart Hampshire's Spinoza depicts Spinoza as having tried to free language from its intimate association with the imagination in order to enable it to convey the clear and distinct ideas of true philosophy. The inaccuracy and insufficiency of this account was pointed out by David Savan in an article in the Philosophical Review in 1958. Savan showed that concerns about language were more deeply and widely woven into Spinoza's thought than Hampshire had noticed; and he argued that, for Spinoza, understanding (...) occurs by a sort of simple mental perception, after we have weaned ourselves from our natural dependence on words and images. Savan's paper appeared in the heyday of linguistic analysis and was articulate... (shrink)