Prayer spaces in schools: a subversion of policy implementation?

Based on a major evaluation project, this article presents an emerging theme from research on the activities supported by Prayer Spaces in Schools, an organisation supporting ‘pop-up’ prayer spaces in schools across the UK and internationally. Evaluating the activities primarily in terms of their possible contribution to spiritual development, a number of important issues arose relating to policy on education and religion. This article focuses on how some engage with these prayer spaces as a way of reimagining and renegotiating educational policy. Based on data gathered from interviews with staff and students (aged 7–16) across seven schools in England, questionnaire responses from 555 students across 15 schools and feedback from two prayer spaces conferences, a hermeneutic approach is used to compare the interpretations of staff with those of students and the implicit positions of policy documents. This article explores various forms of policy implementation and how staff engagement with prayer spaces can be seen as a form of subversion, with staff tactically subverting policy implementation sometimes in order to promote the very intention of those policies – a form of what we refer to as subversive obedience.     

Science teaching: science teachers in Trinidad and Tobago share their stories

Qualitative narrative inquiry using exploratory interviews with five experienced secondary school science teachers in Trinidad and Tobago were analysed to reveal what learnings can be derived from the experiences and stories shared by these individuals. The stories present science teaching as an evolutionary process, which portrays science teaching with the following attributes: a work in progress, a haven for students, a lifelong vocation, and a personal commitment. Integral elements of science teaching as a process rather than a product in an atmosphere of discipline, respect, and trustworthiness were revealed. While this work is instructive for aspiring teachers and has several implications for teacher preparation programmes, the aim in this instance is to share the stories of these five teachers, and in that regard it serves a celebratory rather than a theoretical purpose.     

Should We Call E.T.? An Ethical-Political Analysis of METI

Is it possible to mount a compelling ethical argument for METI? As we have argued elsewhere, conventional ethical theories are highly anthropocentric, making them difficult to apply to unknown alien intelligences, whose characteristics, needs, and concerns may differ radically from our own. In the absence of ethically relevant information about ETIs we contend that it isn’t possible to provide a strong conventional ethical argument for METI. Drawing upon the ancient, less widely known, ethical-political tradition of cosmopolitanism, however, we show how proponents of METI could provide an ethical argument for trying to contact ETIs under the right procedural conditions.     

Reweighing the Ethical Tradeoffs in the Involuntary Hospitalization of Suicidal Patients

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States and the second cause of death among those ages 15–24 years. The current standard of care for suicidality management often involves an involuntary hospitalization deemed necessary by the attending psychiatrist. The purpose of this article is to reexamine the ethical tradeoffs inherent in the current practice of involuntary psychiatric hospitalization for suicidal patients, calling attention to the often-neglected harms inherent in this practice and proposing a path for future research. With accumulating evidence of the harms inherent in civil commitment, we propose that the relative value of this intervention needs to be reevaluated and more efficacious alternatives researched. Three arguments are presented: (1) that inadequate attention has been given to the harms resulting from the use of coercion and the loss of autonomy, (2) that inadequate evidence exists that involuntary hospitalization is an effective method to reduce deaths by suicide, and (3) that some suicidal patients may benefit more from therapeutic interventions that maximize and support autonomy and personal responsibility. Considering this evidence, we argue for a policy that limits the coercive hospitalization of suicidal individuals to those who lack decision-making capacity.     

Aristotle on Philosophia

Aristotle uses philosophia (and philosophos, philosophein, philosophôs, sumphilosophein, philosophêteon) in at least ten senses across his oeuvre, as this first study of every instance in his writings reveals. Irrespective of the specific approaches of its practitioners, philosophia may be, for example, an exercise of cleverness; or leisurely study; or the desire to know; or the pursuit of fundamental explanation; or a historically extended discipline. This variety allows us to go some way in reconstructing the complex attitude Aristotle had toward a culturally specific practice in which he located himself and soon helped develop into a specialized discipline. Another benefit is that it allows us to clarify the argumentative method in his Protrepticus, which depends on several senses of philosophia. It also puts up obstacles to determining whether, for example, Aristotle believes philosophia is an epistêmê.     

Vikingism as a Metametaphysical Thesis

This paper aims to be a contribution to the recent discussion on the science‐metaphysics relationship. After drawing a distinction between two aspects of the relationship, it defends the theoretical importance of the proposed distinction and argues for the interconnectedness of the aspects in question. The paper then focuses on one of those aspects: that is, the methodological strategy of some metaphysicians to appeal to scientific findings and practice in the course of discussing various pure metaphysical problems. It discusses the question about the scope of science‐informed metaphysics and its relation to the issue concerning the existence of an autonomous metaphysical possibility. Finally, the paper explores the reasons metaphysicians have for involving science in metaphysical discussions.     

Is Science Neurotic?

Neurosis can be interpreted as a methodological condition from which any aim-pursuing entity can suffer. If such an entity pursues a problematic aim B but represents to itself that it is pursuing a different aim C and, as a result, fails to solve the problems associated with B which, if solved, would lead to the pursuit of aim A, then the entity may be said to be "rationalistically neurotic." Natural science is neurotic in this sense insofar as its basic aim is represented as improving knowledge of factual truth as such (aim C), when actually the aim of science is to improve knowledge of explanatory truth (aim B). Science itself does not suffer significantly from this neurosis, but philosophy of science does. Much more serious is the rationalistic neurosis of the social sciences and academic inquiry more generally. freeing social science and academic inquiry from neurosis would have far-reaching beneficial, intellectual, institutional and cultural consequences.     

John Dewey and the Role of Scientific Method in Aesthetic Experience

In this paper I examine a controversy ongoingwithin current Deweyan philosophy of educationscholarship regarding the proper role and scopeof science in Dewey's concept of inquiry. Theside I take is nuanced. It is one that issensitive to the importance that Dewey attachesto science as the best method of solvingproblems, while also sensitive to thosestatements in Dewey that counter a wholesalereductivism of inquiry to scientific method. Iutilize Dewey's statements regarding the placeaccorded to inquiry in aesthetic experiences ascharacteristic of his method, as bestconceived.     

Questions for a Millennium: Religion and Science from the Perspective of a Scientist

This essay addresses a series of eight questions about what religion can do for science. It explores the secular role of religion in contemporary science and the need for greater synthesis between science and religion. It concludes that, for survival in the twenty-first century, religion cannot exist without acknowledging and using the enormous information pool of science, and science can no longer shun or ignore religion. Humankind will always need the large, synthetic explanations that religion provides of why we are here and what we ought to do and believe. The world needs to mark this new millennium with a sense of respect, cooperation, and even synthesis between science and religion.     

Laboratory Ritual: Experimentation and the Advancement of Science

Technical achievement in laboratories requires millennia–old ritual formulations; the methodological expectations and presuppositions of scientists stem not only from investigations of the last three centuries but also from the ritual knowledge making that has governed human religion. Laboratory research is a form of human ritual open to interpretation in the manner of religious ritual. The experiments of the laboratory are fact–gathering ventures, but the integration of that knowledge into our general understanding of a universe of information networks is the process of knowledge making, and it is the highest achievement of all rituals, be they religious or scientific. Ritual theory offers insight into the nature of scientific experimentation.