Metaphysical presuppositions and scientific practices: Reductionism and organicism in cancer research

Metaphysical presuppositions are important for guiding scientific practices and research. The success of twentieth‐century biology, for instance, is largely attributable to presupposing that complex biological processes are reducible to elementary components. However, some biologists have challenged the sufficiency of reductionism for investigating complex biological phenomena and have proposed alternative presuppositions like organicism. In this article, contemporary cancer research is used as a case study to explore the importance of metaphysical presuppositions for guiding research. The predominant paradigm directing cancer research is the somatic mutation theory, in which mutated genes are presumed to be ultimately responsible for explaining carcinogenesis. This reductionistic approach to cancer has been criticised recently, and an organistic approach has been proposed. The article concludes with a discussion of the reciprocal interaction of metaphysical presuppositions and scientific practices for investigating cancer's complex nature.     

Attitudes Towards Premarital Sex in India: Traditionalism and Cultural Change

Every society changes with time. With prosperity and improvement in economic conditions, values change. Traditional values that a society carries attenuate and modernity replaces age-old notions. The present article inspects the sixth wave of the World Values Survey examining changing perceptions of Indian respondents towards sex before marriage. It is observed that premarital sex in India is becoming more common but still not widespread. The ordered logit regression analysis reveals that whereas religious minded, single and left-leaning respondents are more traditional, respondents belonging to higher class or lower education level are more permissive about premarital sex. The article concludes that with the increase in permissiveness towards premarital sex and the possibility of unprotected, risky sexual behaviour, suitable policies should be adopted to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted infections.     

Psychological dimensions and patterns in writings of critics1

Seventy-nine articles by critics in children's literature were described by rater-analysts as projective expressions of personality. A cluster analysis of manifest content concerns, implicit needs, and critical stances produced four clusters: elucidation, appreciation, challenging, and upholding of standards. When the articles were plotted on a “map of criticism,” with the elucidation and appreciation dimensions as coordinates, style of criticism was found to vary from one area of the map to another. Articles from diagonal quadrants had attributed to them characteristics approximating the Jungian functions: thinking-feeling and intuition-sensation. Articles high on challenging and upholding also had distinctive characteristics. The distribution of articles on the map was associated with occupation, sex, and age of the critics. Criticism and related discursive writing seem to reflect personality in important and pervasive ways. An understanding of their connotations may be a useful tool in personality and social psychology. However, personality information from the critics themselves is obviously needed.