MICHAEL POLANYI'S DARING EPISTEMOLOGY AND THE HUNGER FOR TELEOLOGY

Abstract. The linking of Michael Polanyi's name with a center (now changed to another name) at Baylor University that espoused intelligent‐design theory calls for examination of Polanyi's teleology. This examination attempts to put Polanyi's epistemology in the perspective of his total philosophical work by looking at the clarification of teleology in philosophy of biology and in the framework of three major features of Polanyi's thought: open and truth‐oriented, purposive but open to truth, and transcendent yet intelligible. The conclusion is that Polanyi would not support intelligent design according to the nature of his own theory.     

凋亡--一个令人困惑的名称

就"细胞凋亡"这个热点名称进行探讨,从凋亡的起因及定义、由凋亡定义引起的哲学思考及就定义所做的建议进行分别论述.凋亡最初提出的是一种形态学特点,描述与坏死相对应的细胞解体的主动过程,之后大多数文章把凋亡定义为程序性的细胞死亡,并逐步演绎把死亡之前的细胞内生化变化称为凋亡.由此引起凋亡判断标准的混乱,并产生相关的药理学问题.细胞凋亡的实际情况与人类冠以的定义产生矛盾,其根本原因是真正实体与人为定义概念的哲学思维的混淆.提出应用直接描述真正实体的名称较凋亡更为可取.     

Culture and change blindness

Research on perception and cognition suggests that whereas East Asians view the world holistically, attending to the entire field and relations among objects, Westerners view the world analytically, focusing on the attributes of salient objects. These propositions were examined in the change-blindness paradigm. Research in that paradigm finds American participants to be more sensitive to changes in focal objects than to changes in the periphery or context. We anticipated that this would be less true for East Asians and that they would be more sensitive to context changes than would Americans. We presented participants with still photos and with animated vignettes having changes in focal object information and contextual information. Compared to Americans, East Asians were more sensitive to contextual changes than to focal object changes. These results suggest that there can be cultural variation in what may seem to be basic perceptual processes.     

Drawing Memories: Edouard Manet's Remembrances of the Past

The author examines Edouard Manet's quotations of traditional masters in his work. Instead of debating whether Manet simply imitated, competed with, or paid tribute to the great painters of the past, the author suggests that Manet used the depictions of his painterly past not as a remedial but as a deliberate device. By relying primarily on Freud's Interpretation of Dreams and Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, the author interprets the traditional works embedded in Manet's paintings as dream thoughts lying behind a façade. The author examines these depictions as if they were associations and memories of Manet's painterly past and in so doing uncovers Manet's subtle use of the past as a means of articulating social commentaries and of creating dialogues with both his contemporaries as well as his predecessors. Drawing on Freud's idea of deferred action (Nachtraegklichkeit), the author illustrates how Manet reflects upon the present through images of the past while at the same time rearticulating the scenes of the past through the lens of the present.     

Communication and Strong Compositionality

Ordinary semantic compositionality (meaning of whole determined from meanings of parts plus composition) can serve to explain how a hearer manages to assign an appropriate meaning to a new sentence. But it does not serve to explain how the speaker manages to find an appropriate sentence for expressing a new thought. For this we would need a principle of inverse compositionality, by which the expression of a complex content is determined by the expressions of it parts and the mode of composition. But this presupposes that contents have constituent structure, and this cannot be taken for granted. However, it can be proved that if a certain principle of substitutivity is valid for a particular language, then the meanings expressed by its sentences can justifiably be treated as structured. In its simplest form, this principle says that if in a complex expression a constituent is replaced by another constituent with a different meaning, the new complexhas a meaning different from the original. This principle is again inversely related to the normal compositional principle of substitutivity. The combination of ordinary and inverse compositionality is here called strong compositionality. The proof is carried out in the algebraic framework developed by Wilfrid Hodges and Dag Westerståhl.     

论中国古代德性主义经济伦理思想的萌芽

周代的“敬德保民”思想中包括了三个方面的经济伦理思想内涵：一、“无逸”的劳动伦理观和“孝养父母”的生产观;二、反对“独专于利”,主张利益分配的公正性;三、在生活方式上,主张“恭俭惟德”的消费观。这些思想具有德性主义的性质。     

脑内移植:医学的冷静哲学的忧思

脑内移植的发展历史从狂热到冷静的过程,说明科学必须是要踏实地,实事求是,过于冒进只能导致失败。我们应当从中总结经验。吸取教训。同时,脑内移植的研究存在许多社会和伦理问题有待解决。     

PCR技术的传奇诞生与发展

通过介绍ＰＣＲ技术富有传奇色彩的诞生和发展过程以及它对分子生物学乃至整个生命科学界产生的巨大作用,可以看到分子生物学的发展和进步时刻离不开创造性思维,其中的每一项新发明和新理论都是创造性思维的外现或物化,充分体现出它是科学技术革命的先导。作为分子生物学工作者,对现阶段的专业理论和技术不能盲从,只有善于思考、勤于动手、富于创新,才能在分子生物学这片创造性思维的沃土上实现人生价值,迎接新的生命科学世纪的到来     

BEHAVIOR MANAGEMENT OF INFANT SLEEP DISTURBANCE

Using a nonconcurrent multiple baseline design, we evaluated the effects of extinction and stimulus control on nighttime sleep disturbances exhibited by 7 infants. Results showed that frequency and duration of night wakings decreased for all subjects, with corresponding improvements reflected through changes in responses to the sleep behavior scale. Observed improvements maintained at 3 and 24 months posttreatment.     

ONE BRAIN,TWO MINDS: AN ESSAY ON PRIMORDIAL AND ADVANCED MENTAL ACTIVITY

The Primordial Mind in Health and Illness: A Cross‐Cultural Perspective. By Michael Robbins. London/New York: Routledge, 2011. 240 pp.