bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
How to do disease ecology
Authors: Gilbert Gregory S. , Parker Ingrid M.
Published: May 2023

Plant disease ecologists rely on a wide array of technical skills to diagnose and study plant disease. Disease intensity can be measured as the prevalence of disease across a host population or the severity of disease in individual plants. Sampling plans must consider both precision and accuracy. Plant diseases are diagnosed through the combination of symptoms in the host and signs of the pathogen itself. Pathogens can be detected in plants or in the environment using cultural methods by growing pathogens in medium (including dilution plating), through serological approaches that use antibodies to detect the pathogen, or through a variety of DNA-based molecular approaches. PCR is used to amplify standard organismal barcodes such as the ribosomal RNA internal transcribed spacer region (ITS); the DNA sequence of the ITS uniquely identifies many fungal pathogens to species or genus and is used to distinguish among fungi. Alternatively, pathogen-specific primers are used to detect pathogens and sometimes to quantify them through real-time PCR. Disease severity is measured by assessing the amount of plant tissue affected by the pathogen, and a range of methods is available to aid precision and accuracy. Impact on the host can be quantified via experimental or observational studies. Disease progress over time is synthesized from repeated measurements of disease prevalence in a population using the area under the disease progress curve.
Population ecology of plant disease
Authors: Gilbert Gregory S. , Parker Ingrid M.
Published: May 2023

Population ecology concerns the structure and numerical dynamics of populations; it uses mathematical models to understand patterns in groups of organisms and their interactions. In plant populations, the spread of disease through time generally falls into two types: monocyclic and polycyclic. For monocyclic diseases, plants are infected from primary inoculum of pathogens present in the environment, and the pathogen only reproduces at the end of the life span of the host. Spread to new hosts requires waiting for the next generation of plants. For polycyclic diseases, each infected plant has the potential to serve as a source of pathogen inoculum that can spread to neighboring plants during the same growing season. Polycyclic diseases then follow a logistic model of disease spread, including an exponential phase of spread, followed by a saturating curve as susceptible hosts become limiting. Pathogens with monocyclic life cycles lack the exponential phase; change over time saturates as susceptible hosts become limiting. Plant diseases can also be modeled with the SEIR compartmental models commonly used for diseases of humans and other animals; however, unlike animals, plants seldom recover (R) from disease, and so hosts are removed from the infected compartment primarily via death. Plant population dynamics are investigated with a range of stage-structured models such as matrix models; these provide a robust framework to evaluate the impacts of disease on wild plant populations. Density-dependence is a key ecological feature of populations that influences plant population dynamics as well as population cycles of hosts and pathogens.
Physiology and genetics
Authors: Gilbert Gregory S. , Parker Ingrid M.
Published: May 2023

Plants lack antibody-based immune systems, but they do have a robust system of defenses against pathogens. Constitutive defenses are a broad array of constitutively-produced physical structures and chemical compounds that protect most plants from infection by most pathogens. The three major groups of plant chemical defenses are phenolics, terpenoids, and the nitrogen-containing alkaloids and glucosinolates. Pathogens have evolved enzymes and specialized growth structures to overcome the constitutive defenses of their host plants. Inducible (or induced) defenses are produced in response to pathogen attack, and they rely on the plant detecting the presence of the pathogen. Local induced defenses are initiated when pattern recognition receptors (PRR) recognize specific microbe-associated molecular patterns (MAMPs, otherwise known as pathogen-associated molecular patterns, PAMPs) or effectors and induce pattern-triggered immunity (PTI) or effector-triggered immunity (ETI). Defense responses can include production of toxic phytoalexins or reactive oxygen species (ROS). Host responses may include a hypersensitive response that leads to rapid cell death in the host, limiting colonization by biotrophic pathogens. In many cases, there is a correspondence between specific pathogen genes that code for effectors, which determine virulence (here meaning pathogenicity), and host R-genes that code for receptors, which determine resistance relative to that particular virulence genotype in the pathogen. This correspondence is the gene-for-gene system first discovered in flax rust. In addition to local defense responses, plants can mount systemic resistance defenses in response to pathogen attack, using signaling pathways based on salicyclic acid, jasmonic acid, or ethylene.
Community ecology
Authors: Gilbert Gregory S. , Parker Ingrid M.
Published: May 2023

Community ecology is the study of interactions among species and the resulting diversity, composition, and structure of communities of organisms. Diversity is comprised of the number, types and relative abundances of species in the community. Most communities have a few common species and many rare ones. Within-community diversity is called alpha diversity and is compared among samples using rarefaction; between-community diversity is beta diversity, and differences among communities are visualized through ordination. The collection of interactions among pathogens and plants can be described as a bipartite network, with structural features like modularity and connectedness that influence pathogen spread. Maintenance of plant diversity requires mechanisms that counteract competition, which would otherwise lead to the decline of plant species over time. These include equalizing mechanisms such as the growth-resistance tradeoff, and stabilizing mechanisms, such as niche partitioning, the storage effect, and conspecific negative density dependence. Pathogens are commonly responsive to the density of their hosts, so diseases can be important stabilizing mechanisms promoting plant diversity (Janzen–Connell Hypothesis). Pathogen spillover from one species that is a competent host (supporting pathogen reproduction) to a neighboring species that is susceptible can lead to apparent competition. Plant-soil feedbacks occur when a plant changes its associated soil microbial community in a way that either benefits (enhancing mutualists) or harms (enhancing pathogens) subsequent generations of that species or of other plants. The spread and impact of pathogens can be modulated by a plant community’s composition and structure. Increasing plant diversity sometimes reduces disease pressure, called the dilution effect.
Disease management
Authors: Gilbert Gregory S. , Parker Ingrid M.
Published: May 2023

Management of plant diseases relies on two general strategies: avoidance and control. Avoidance tactics involve evasion of pathogens by not planting susceptible crops in areas where virulent pathogens are present, and exclusion of pathogens through phytosanitary practices. Control tactics rely on planting crop cultivars with genetic and physiological resistance to pathogens, enhancing diversity in cropping systems through intercropping or crop rotation, and cultural practices such as increased plant spacing, sanitation of crop debris, and careful management of irrigation. Breeding for resistant cultivars through traditional backcross breeding has focused mostly on incorporating one or more major genes for resistance into elite cultivars with superior horticultural traits. Increasingly, genetic transformation is used to move genes for resistance or other useful traits directly into the crop genome, using either biolistics or transformation with Agrobacterium. Other useful approaches in agricultural biotechnology include gene editing with CRISPR-Cas nucleases and RNA interference. Major gene resistance is vulnerable to boom-and-bust cycles as pathogens evolve to overcome resistance. To increase the durability of resistance, crop breeders are exploring the use of gene pyramiding, multilines, and quantitative (polygenic) resistance traits. Active management can either disinfect soils of pathogen populations or promote active microbial communities in suppressive soils. Suppressive soils are less conducive to disease development, and can show either general or specific soil suppression. Chemical and biological control applications can supplement these strategies to help reduce infection or spread of pathogens.
Contexts of English Poetry 1400–1500
Authors: Rundle David
Published: May 2023

This chapter provides a historical introduction, considering the role that English vernacular poetry could play in the nations of Britain. It opens with a consideration of the effects of pandemic and disease, which it relates to the changing structures of education, to emphasize two factors; first, literacy was the preserve of a small minority, and, second, the English vernacular was one among several languages in use in Britain. At the same time, English had a place in the most elite spaces, being used at princely courts, where verse compositions in English as well as in Latin and French were read or heard.
Verse Forms and Prosody
Authors: Weiskott Eric
Published: May 2023

In terms of verse form, the fifteenth century was a time of expansion and realignment in English poetry. This chapter describes the range of vernacular metrical options available to a fifteenth-century poet writing in English, in order of their historical attestation. These are the alliterative metre, tetrameter, and pentameter verse. Of these, tetrameter verse accounts for the largest proportion of poetic output during the century. This chapter also describes two of the less common verse forms attested in English poetry in the fifteenth century, tail rhyme, and, around the edges of the category ‘poetry’, the alliterating prose of the Jack Upland series of polemical treatises.
Conduct Poetry
Authors: Giancarlo Matthew
Published: May 2023

This chapter addresses fifteenth-century ‘conduct’ verse. It ranges from general moral guidance to instructions about behaviour, dress, bodily movement, speech, and household etiquette and service, as well as general social interactions and gender expectations. After introducing the category and its background, the chapter examines three areas. Poetry of nurture and manners includes occasional lyrics and didactic poems about basic hygiene and manners, often ostensibly directed at children. Poetry of conduct and courtesy includes longer narrative poems on household courtesy, service guidebooks, decorum guides for men and women, and ethically-orientated advice manuals Lastly, the large number of regiminal works from the period are examined.
John Lydgate
Authors: Edwards Robert R.
Published: May 2023

John Lydgate is the major poet of his era. He is the most successful and recognized claimant to Chaucer’s literary heritage in the national tradition that emerges in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. As a poet and author, he depends on a selective appropriation of Chaucer’s materials and style, balanced by the critical distance of a clerical historian-moralist, the self-described ‘Monk of Bury’. The range of Lydgate’s writing is decisively shaped by commissions, specific occasions, patrons, and audiences. His earliest dated poem, Troy Book (1412), begins an epic project that encompasses the heroic and aristocratic narratives of antiquity and medieval modernity in the Siege of Thebes (1422), the prose Serpent of Division (1422), and Fall of Princes (1431–9). Alongside these dynastic and public works, Lydgate composes courtly dream visions, fables, hagiography, didactic and religious verse, and paradramatic works that rewrite their sources and shift them to a distinctive stylistic register.
Introduction
Authors: Shepherd David J.
Published: May 2023

In this chapter, the reader is introduced to the topic and to the book. After noting the peculiarity of the language of ‘bloods’, a brief review of scholarship suggests the increasing tendency to read the stories of David as a whole. It is further suggested that it is reasonable to ask what the David story is about, that it might be about some things more than others, and that this ‘aboutness’ is reflected in the notion of its theme(s). After outlining the relevance of previous scholarly discussions of the David story in relation to bloodguilt, retribution, homicide, and ritual violence, this chapter concludes by summarizing the approach of the book. This summary touches on the methodological considerations and the key research questions, and offers an outline of the chapters of the book to come.
‘That the Redeemer of Blood Will Ruin No More’: 2 Sam 13–14
Authors: Shepherd David J.
Published: May 2023

In this chapter, the problem of innocent blood is traced in Absalom’s killing of Amnon (2 Sam 13) and David’s grudging restoration of him (2 Sam 14). Given Tamar’s understanding of Amnon’s rape of her as a humiliation and an egregious violation of a customary norm (Nebalah) akin to what may be seen in Judg 19, it is not surprising that Absalom views his killing of Amnon as fully justified. However, while David evidently views the rape as reprehensible, the unmistakeable resonances of Amnon’s killing with the account of Nabal (1 Sam 25) suggests that David spares Amnon for the same reason he was persuaded by Abigail to spare Nabal. It is argued that David does so because ‘violations’ however egregious should be left to divine justice, lest ‘bloods’ be invited upon one’s house and kingdom for killing without sufficient cause. It is small wonder that Absalom flees immediately to Geshur given David’s tendency to execute those whom he sees as guilty of illegitimate bloodshed. Joab seeks to restore Absalom by enlisting a Tekoite woman, who appeals to David to spare her fictional fratricidal son in order to persuade him to spare his own son by leaving Amnon’s blood unredeemed. When David allows Absalom’s return and eventual restoration, it is argued that David’s kissing of him signals not his forgiveness, but merely his willingness to leave Amnon’s blood unredeemed, in the hope that these further ‘bloods’ will not come back to haunt David and his house in the meantime.
Late Classical Chinese Thought
Authors: Fraser Chris
Published: May 2023

Late Classical Chinese Thought surveys prominent issues and outlooks during the culminating period of classical Chinese philosophy, the third century bc. The book presents novel, informative perspectives on Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, Legalism, and other movements in early Chinese thought while also delving into neglected texts such as the Guǎnzǐ, Lǚ’s Annals, and the Zhuāngzǐ ‘outer’ chapters, restoring them to their rightful, prominent place in the history of philosophy. The book is the first treatment of classical Chinese thought to be organized topically, devoting separate chapters to metaphysics and metaethics, political philosophy, ethics, moral psychology, epistemology, and philosophy of language and logic. It is also the first to focus specifically on the last century of the Warring States era, the most vibrant, diverse period of philosophical discourse in Chinese history. The discussion covers the shared concerns, rival doctrines, and competing criticisms presented in third-century bc sources while explicating the distinctive issues, conceptual frameworks, and background assumptions of classical Chinese thought. The book aims to introduce the rich philosophical discourse of early China to a broad audience, including readers with no prior familiarity with the material. At the same time, the thematic treatment and incisive interpretations of individual texts will be of interest to students and specialists in the field.
The Donkey and the Boat
Authors: Wickham Chris
Published: May 2023

This book aims to reinterpret, and in many places to discover for the first time, what the main lines of economic development were in the central medieval Mediterranean between the mid-tenth century and the end of the twelfth. This is not well understood; we are reliant on sketchy syntheses of fifty years ago. New work on archaeology, especially on ceramics, allows us to understand exchange much better than we could in the last century. The book discusses and compares the regional economies of Egypt, Tunisia, Sicily, the Byzantine Empire, Islamic Spain and Portugal, and north-central Italy. In each case, regional development was more important than the impulse of Mediterranean trade in itself, which developed, by contrast, essentially as a spin-off of regional developments. Egyptian shipping dominated the Mediterranean before 1100; Italian ships became increasingly important in the twelfth century. But Egypt remained the strongest Mediterranean economy, and Islamic Spain the fastest-growing economy, for the whole period of the book; out of the regions studied, northern Italy was the slowest to get off the ground. One of the main drivers in every case was the prosperity and thus demand of at least some strata of the peasant majority; another was the local force of the state. This overturns all previous assumptions about the period.
North-Central Italy
Authors: Wickham Chris
Published: May 2023

North-central Italy had three important port cities, Genoa, Venice, and Pisa, whose merchants in the twelfth century became the best-documented traders in the Mediterranean. But archaeology shows that they had relatively little effect on the interior of the region, which remained, until the very end of the period of the book, economically fragmented by the standards of the other Mediterranean regions discussed here. At the end of the twelfth century, however, Milan and Piacenza became leaders of productions of iron and cloth, which slowly began to be linked to other urban productions in a much stronger thirteenth-century internal commercial network. That development was fuelled by demographic growth, which allowed fast urban expansion to meet rural demand; only then did it link to the maritime economies of the port cities. It was not helped by the weakness and then absence of state power, which meant that cities had to develop on the basis of their own localized, and often restricted resources.
Kant on Transcendental Freedom, Priority Monism, and the Structure of Intuition
Authors: McLear Colin , Pereboom Derk
Published: May 2023

This chapter argues that Kant’s commitment to conceiving space as exhibiting a kind of priority monistic or “part-on-whole” ontological dependence stems from his more fundamental conception of the structure of intuitive representation. The chapter explicates this structure and make three claims: First, that there is no obviously cogent inference from Kant’s claims regarding the structure of space to adopting transcendental idealism as a means of blocking determinism and securing rational belief in human freedom. Second, it points out that Kant’s aim of securing the legitimacy of belief in freedom by way of transcendental idealism is in apparent tension with his conception of divine intellectual intuition, since God’s intuition of the noumenal realm exhibits the very same sort of freedom-threatening monism that our anthropocentric intuitions of space and time do. Third, the chapter argues that this threat may in fact be avoided even if priority monism about the noumenal holds.
Kant on Cognition of Freedom
Authors: Watkins Eric
Published: May 2023

This chapter considers Kant’s complex reasons for his complex views on transcendental freedom. Specifically, it considers his arguments for maintaining that although we cannot cognize our transcendental freedom, there are theoretical grounds that tempt us to assert its existence anyway. Kant’s argument for our epistemic humility regarding freedom is not based on freedom being an instance of something unconditioned, as one might suspect, but rather on considerations specific to transcendental freedom. At the same time, along with our awareness of our own internal activities, it is the fact that freedom is something unconditioned and thus capable of stopping an explanatory causal regress that can tempt us into thinking that we can cognize our freedom.
Practical Cognition and Knowledge of Things-in-Themselves
Authors: Schafer Karl
Published: May 2023

In the second Critique, Kant argues that our consciousness of the moral law provides us with new grounds for the attribution of freedom to ourselves as things in themselves. This is uncontroversial, but much more controversial is the precise kind of cognitive relation to things in themselves that Kant believes is possible from a practical point of view. This chapter argues that interpreters have radically underestimated the degree to which Kant believes we can achieve genuine “cognition” of things in themselves from a practical point of view—or at least, they have done so with respect to our practical self-understanding as noumenally free agents. For, in this case, far from representing an impoverished cousin of theoretical cognition or knowledge, our practical awareness of ourselves as free possesses the central marks of both cognition (Erkenntnis) and knowledge (Wissen) in Kant’s sense of these terms—albeit on distinctively practical grounds.
Kant on Freedom and Practical Irrationality
Authors: Bader Ralf M.
Published: May 2023

This chapter argues that we have transcendental freedom, according to Kant, due to being both rational and sensible creatures that face two heterogeneous incentives. Freedom is, accordingly, located at the crossroads between reason and sensibility and is restricted to the choice between rational self-love and self-conceit. It then examines how practical deliberation proceeds and how incentives are incorporated to result in actions in order to identify the different types of practical irrationality that Kant countenances. It argues that there is only one type of practical irrationality in the moral sphere, namely having a bad will, but that there cannot be weakness of will in terms of implementing one’s commitment. In the prudential sphere, by contrast, there is no irrationality with respect to end-setting, yet there might be practical irrationality in pursuing happiness, since there can be actions that lead to more pleasure despite bringing about less happiness.
PROOF SHEETS AS EVIDENCE OF EARLY PRE-PUBLICATION PROCEDURES
Authors: Herz Randall
Published: May 2023

Proof sheets provide insight into early pre-press procedures and are evidence of the printers’ efforts to produce well-edited books. The oldest surviving sheets date from the late 1450s and are thus evidence that pulling proofs was an established practice in the first print shops in Mainz and elsewhere; it was instrumental for quality control and accompanied all phases of the printing process. This article will look at four case studies to discuss how proof sheets provide insights into correcting and editing procedures in early printing houses. These include proofreader’s marks, a case of eye-skip, corrections to punctuation, and a case of mise-en-page.
MANAGING MISPRINTS
Authors: Imhof Dirk
Published: May 2023

For Jan Moretus I, Christopher Plantin’s successor at the Antwerp Plantin Press (1589–1610), producing correct texts was an important means by which his enterprise distinguished itself from others and a reason why some authors asked him to produce their publications. Nevertheless, despite the efforts of his proofreaders and occasional external experts, errors occurred. Extant account books and correspondence of the press document when and why Moretus applied different approaches to correction and solved misprints that might have otherwise tarnished his reputation. In particular, for the production of books with a very limited number of misprints, Jan Moretus was largely indebted to his son Balthasar Moretus. Through his careful preparation of the copy and preliminary reduction of the potential errors as much as possible, the compositors and pressmen could start with a superior copy with a minimal number of faults.
‘BEFORE THE LAW’
Authors: Sládek Pavel
Published: May 2023

This chapter examines the printed production of books in Hebrew script and language, in the period from the dawn of Hebrew printing in the 1460s until the 1620s, focusing on books produced with Jewish participation and intended for a readership that included, but was not limited to, Jewish readers. Examining these sources reveals that during the second half of the sixteenth century, editors and correctors of Hebrew books often commented on their practices in the notes called ‘correctors’ apologies’ (Heb. hitnatslut, pl. hitnatsluyot). Based on these neglected sources, this chapter discusses the editorial consciousness of the sixteenth-century makers of Hebrew books. ‘Apologies’ as a literary form represent a distinctive channel of communication between the editor/corrector and the readers and also show that the printed text was still perceived as open to the recipients’ intervention.
MISPRINTING ARISTOTLE
Authors: Vorobyev Grigory
Published: May 2023

This chapter explores the origin of the imaginary sargiacus, an ichthyologic species born out of a typo that made its first appearance in the influential editio princeps of Theodore Gaza’s Latin translation of Aristotle’s Historia animalium (1476). Adopting a philological approach and analysing the development of Renaissance zoological studies within the broader context of the history of science, this case study shows how most early modern scholars tried to understand what fish the sargiacus may have been. Notwithstanding their advanced knowledge of textual criticism, however, they ultimately failed to identify it as a typographical error. The chapter also discusses other taxonomical extravagancies, offering several examples of printing mistakes and inconsistencies in rare animal names.
LEARNING FROM MISTAKES
Authors: Carnelos Laura
Published: May 2023

Popular books are generally defined as printed cheaply, in haste, and with poor-quality materials. Yet their material aspects remain largely obscure due to their rarity as well the lack of an established methodology of analysis and meaningful data. This chapter tackles the paper quality and printing defects in a relevant corpus of sixteenth-century Italian popular books, relying on the data collected in the PATRIMONiT database. Analysing these shortcomings reveals that, rather than mistakes, these material flaws were intrinsic features of these products, providing insights into the strategies early modern printers employed to cope with the incessant demand for popular books.
Christine de Pizan
Authors: Latty Franck
Published: May 2023

Christine de Pizan (c1365–c1430) is a medieval author who is one of the first known women, if not the first, to have written on the law of war, in the Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry (1410). The Book combines the art of warfare (strategic advice, qualities required of combatants, techniques of warfare, etc) with the law of war at the time (grounds for just wars; regulation of the conduct of hostilities). It gives an edifying testimony to the lack of identity at that time between sovereignty and the authority, still contested, attached to the person of the king. It not only offers a comprehensive account of the law of war in the early fifteenth century, it also reflects its religious sources and the importance of the law of nature. After highlighting the significance of The Book in this history of international law, the contribution tries to identify the causes (including the gender issue) of the disappearance of Pizan from the ‘family tree’ of international law authors. It then considers the rehabilitation of Pizan among the thinkers who have their place in the pantheon of international law.
Female Staff in the Legal Section of the League of Nations
Authors: Auberer Benjamin
Published: May 2023

The portrait takes the discrepancy between the historiography of the legal section of the League of Nations Secretariat and its visual representation as a starting point to investigate the female workforce of the Legal Section. Article 7 of the Covenant of the League of Nations famously opened all positions within the permanent bureaucratic structure of the League equally for men and women, making the League one of the world’s first equal opportunity employers. The chance to join the first truly international civil service, encouraged many women in the interwar years to work for the League. By combining macro—and micro perspectives this chapter shows how the historical and spatial social contexts restricted the options of women in the Secretariat, but how the League introduced an unprecedented opportunity for women to enter the global stage.
Sarah Wambaugh
Authors: Saunders Imogen
Published: May 2023

Sarah Wambaugh built a career in international law in the early twentieth century as an expert on plebiscites. In doing so, she lived a life at the frontier: literal frontiers formed the substance of her academic work and metaphorical frontiers bounded her career. Wambaugh worked in the field at various international destinations as well as at the League of Nations. She advised Governments and published academic books and journal articles, leading to numerous honours and awards. She was a passionate internationalist, lobbying her own government to join the League at a time when US domestic indifference was high. This portrait was sparked by a chance encounter by the author with one of Wambaugh’s field-leading books. It draws on Wambaugh’s archives which are held at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College, of which Wambaugh was an alumni. It is necessarily limited by the nature of those materials: more a professional headshot than a personal portrait. Wambaugh’s personal views and life are elusive, with glimpses gleaned from a line in a letter, or notes on a lecture.
Human Rights and Communist Internationalism
Authors: Taha Mai
Published: May 2023

In an attempt to open a fresh archive of international law beyond that of the League of Nations, the United Nations (UN), and national state archives, this portrait looks into the barracks of activism, specifically the radical activism of Inji Aflatoun (1924–1989). Neither an international lawyer, nor a new name, nor a forgotten face, Aflatoun is remembered as a famous Egyptian communist painter, a feminist, a human rights activist, and a former political prisoner. Through Aflatoun and the surrealists, this portrait shows how radical movements have used human rights when they were rooted in socialist internationalism, anti-imperialism, and feminist solidarity. Her human rights work was informed by both the eclectic leftist politics of the surrealists, as well as the traditional Marxist analysis of the communist movement in Egypt. Key to understanding her activism on international human rights is to recognize that it was one tactic among many—a fragment within a constellation of struggles, that also included armed resistance, political art activism, as well as her commitment to the illegal and underground communist movement.
Fearless Speech
Authors: Otto Dianne
Published: May 2023

This portrait of Shirley Hazzard, Australian expatriate, was taken in 2003, many years after she had left her clerical position at the United Nations (UN). When she took up the position of typist, in 1952, she was filled with hopefulness about the UN’s role in shaping a new world order committed to promoting peace and human rights, but her expectations were soon dashed. While most well-known for her novels, notably The Transit of Venus (1980), Hazzard also wrote to expose the lack of impartiality of the UN in the hope that the public, once informed, would pressure the organization to fulfil its responsibilities under the UN Charter. Her writings, critical of the UN, were published by iconic New York mastheads, including the New Republic, New Yorker, and New York Times, and include two monographs: Defeat of an Ideal: A Study of the Self-Destruction of the United Nations (1973) and Countenance of Truth: The United Nations and the Waldheim Case (1990). Hazzard’s fearless idealism has bequeathed rare insights into the institutional failings of the UN during the Cold War years and counsel readers to be attentive to the everyday operations of power—both private and public—and their interconnectedness.
Political Deference
Authors: Peter Fabienne
Published: May 2023

Political deference, as I understand it, is deference to others on what the right political decision is in a given situation. If they defer politically, citizens set aside their own reasoning about what the right decision is in this situation and defer to others. Can political deference ever be required? Many would answer no. A requirement to politically defer is often seen as in conflict with core democratic commitments. The claim that political deference may be required thus needs a careful defence. The account of well-ordered political deliberation that I developed in the previous two chapters has given us a better understanding of the norms of political deliberation. In this chapter, I use this account to explain why political deference to cognitive political authority may be required.
Brahman as the Cosmic Translator and the Gītā’s Potentiality in American Transcendentalism
Authors: Figueira Dorothy M.
Published: May 2023

This chapter examines the function of the Gītā among the American Transcendentalists (Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman), not because the material has not been covered by other scholars, but rather because their classist, elitist, and mystical exoticism will inform all subsequent American readings of this text. The Gītā found a hospitable home in New England esotericism and spiritualism. Emerson, although initially dismissive of Indian ‘superstition’, became fascinated with the Gītā, composing his poem ‘Brahma’ in homage to it. In A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers, Thoreau channelled the Gītā and in Walden’s parable of Kouroo, Thoreau aestheticized the Gītā’s divine revelation: just as the translator perfects the text through translation, the artist perfects his creation. Thoreau was also the first writer in the West to criticize the institution of caste. Whitman’s prolific references to Indian terms can be seen as superficial. Among these writers, his interest seems to be an expression of exoticism rather than any substantial inquiry. However, the Transcendentalists can be credited with showing how translation truly functions as a potentiality. Once cut from its roots and transplanted in the New World, the Gītā became a different text. It was co-opted, owned, and open to improvement.
Gandhi’s Convenient Text
Authors: Figueira Dorothy M.
Published: May 2023

Gandhi set up an elaborate theory of translation tied to his personal experience and dissociated from the text. He offered an allegorical reading, similar to the practices of the Theosophists who had first introduced him to the Gītā in a flowery English translation. Gandhi dismissed earlier interpretations in order to more easily construct his own. His Gītā, like Aurobindo’s, was also re-enculturated. They both brought a Gītā, translated abroad and transformed into another text, back to India and based their interpretations on it. Gandhi grafted his interpretation upon this altered text that he claimed would define the new cultural identity of modern India. Although Gandhi grossly overvalued his skills as a translator, he was able to create a reading of the Gītā that transcended the text because he insisted that interpretation was totally grounded in his perspective of moral sensibility. Gandhi’s translation strategy—meaning is what he said it was because of his experience of the text—was challenged by Ambedkar who in his work on the Gītā called out Gandhi’s deceptive manipulation of the text and what he called his bringing about the death of criticism. The role of translation is crucial, especially in Gandhi’s persona as a translator and the instability that he imposed on the text. With Gandhi, a distorted reading is legitimate because the meaning of a text is determined by what he experiences and says it is. Ambedkar saw the danger that such a definition of textuality and translation could have in independent India.
Controverting Kierkegaard
Authors: Løgstrup K. E.
Published: May 2023

In this book, Danish theologian K. E. Løgstrup (1905–81) engages in a critique of Kierkegaard’s understanding of human existence and Christianity, especially Kierkegaard’s understanding of life in finitude and of human existence as a state of despair, where the individual needs to become themselves through reflection and decision. Løgstrup criticizes Kierkegaard’s Christology and his view on suffering, and he also argues that Kierkegaard’s understanding of Christianity and human existence is rooted in Platonism. Furthermore, Løgstrup here introduces the idea of ‘the sovereign expressions of life’ (such as trust, compassion, and the openness of speech), which came to take up a central position in his ethics and ontology. He understands these sovereign expressions of life as part of life’s own structure, where human inadequacies and self-obsession can be overcome, effectively releasing the individual from their existence in untruth so that they can become themselves without Kierkegaardian reflection and the so-called ‘double movement of faith’. The book was the culmination of a long-standing debate between Løgstrup and contemporary existentialist Kierkegaardians (especially the Danish Tidehverv movement, which was based in Kierkegaardian theological existentialism), and which had begun twenty years prior and had also been a theme in the ‘Polemical Epilogue’ in Løgstrup’s main work The Ethical Demand (1956).
The Movement of Infinity
Authors: Løgstrup K. E.
Published: May 2023

Here Løgstrup focuses on Kierkegaard’s double movement of faith, where the task is to resign from the untruth of immediacy and to return to life in the second immediacy of faith. Løgstrup objects that in setting this task for humans, Kierkegaard devalues life and misconstrues what it is to become a self. Through a discussion involving Sartre’s play The Devil and The Good Lord, Løgstrup draws attention to sovereign expressions of life (such as trust, compassion, and the openness of speech): namely, created structures in human existence which are given to us, where we exist in an immediate and true relation to others and the world, and where we become ourselves in an immediate way. He contrasts these sovereign expressions of life with our self-made circling and obsessive thoughts and emotions (envy, jealousy, and feeling insulted). He also discusses their significance in relation to the will and morality.
Don’t do it for my Sake
Authors: Begon Jessica
Published: May 2023

It seems obvious the state should fulfil the obligation to ameliorate the disabling effects of impairments. However, the state is distrusted by much of the disabled community, and for good reason. Even when making a genuine attempt to advance disabled people’s interests, it often assumes it knows what these are, ignoring the views of intended beneficiaries. Disabled individuals should not be treated as passive beneficiaries, whose voices are side-lined, but respected as autonomous agents. This demands a commitment to anti-paternalism. Often paternalism is objectionable because it fails by its own terms: not actually conferring benefits. Yet even if successful, paternalism should be avoided. Paternalist redistribution is not merely objectionable because it misuses individuals’ good, but because it mistakes the aim of redistribution. Our goal should not be ensuring individuals lead the best possible life, but that they can control the shape of their life, exercising broadly specified opportunities however they choose.
Syllogistic Logic and Mathematical Proof
Authors: Mancosu Paolo , Mugnai Massimo
Published: May 2023

Syllogistic Logic and Mathematical Proof chronicles and analyzes a debate centered on the following question: does syllogistic logic have the resources to capture mathematical proofs? The history of the attempts to answer this question, the rationales for the different positions, their far-reaching implications, and the description of the cast of major and minor mathematicians and philosophers who made contributions to it, has hitherto never been the subject of a unified account. Aristotle had claimed that scientific knowledge, which includes mathematics, is given by syllogisms of a special sort, “scientific” (“demonstrative”) syllogisms. Thus, it is puzzling that in ancient Greece and in the Middle Ages the claim that Euclid’s theorems could be recast syllogistically was accepted without further scrutiny. And yet Galen had early on already noticed the importance of relational reasoning for mathematics. More critical voices will emerge in the Renaissance and the topic will attract more sustained attention in the next three centuries when, supported by detailed analyses of Euclidean theorems, one finally encounters attempts at extending logical theory to include relational reasonings, arguments purporting to reduce relational reasoning to syllogisms, and philosophical proposals to the effect that mathematical reasoning is heterogeneous with respect to logical proofs. The latter position was famously defended by Kant and the philosophical implications of the debate discussed in the book are at the very core of Kant’s account of synthetic a priori judgments. We know today that syllogistic logic is not sufficient to account for the logic of mathematical proof. Yet, the history and the analysis of this debate, spanning from Aristotle to de Morgan and beyond, is a fascinating and crucial aspect of the relationship between philosophy and mathematics.
Syllogistic and Mathematics
Authors: Mancosu Paolo , Mugnai Massimo
Published: May 2023

The first serious attempt in the West at analyzing a mathematical proof according to syllogistic theory was carried out by Alessandro Piccolomini in 1547. Aristotelian scholars had claimed that mathematics was to be considered most certain because it used “scientific” (“demonstrative”) syllogisms which, among other features, were supposed to connect the major and the minor term of the premises by means of a middle term that provided the “cause” of the conclusion. Piccolomini argued that mathematics did not make use of causal syllogisms and thus that it did not satisfy the criteria set by Aristotle for “scientific” syllogisms. In order to prove his claim, Piccolomini reconstructed the first proposition of Euclid’s Elements according to syllogistic logic but then objected that the syllogisms used in the proof were not “causal,” and hence not “scientific.” The chapter presents Piccolomini’s syllogistic reconstruction of the first proposition of Euclid’s Elements and points out its shortcomings.
Obliquities and Mathematics in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Authors: Mancosu Paolo , Mugnai Massimo
Published: May 2023

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Euclid’s work became the model of argumentative rigor and was at times seen as an alternative to Aristotelian syllogistics. In the seventeenth century, Joachim Jungius, a Hamburg philosopher, and his student Vagetius proposed extending syllogistics with new inferences not reducible to traditional syllogisms. These new inferences include the inversion of relation and the inference from the straight case to the oblique case. Leibniz, for his part, believes that these are inferences amenable to demonstration by resorting to a logic ‘superior’ to syllogistic logic and that they can be proved by means of grammatical transformations. The philosopher Juan Caramuel Lobkowitz was aware that oblique terms, insofar as they imply relations, are of fundamental importance for mathematical reasoning, and in his Oblique Logic he developed a systematic treatment of inferences containing relational propositions.
The Extent of Syllogistic Reasoning
Authors: Mancosu Paolo , Mugnai Massimo
Published: May 2023

In the eighteenth century, after Jungius and Vagetius, a decidedly critical position toward traditional syllogistics was taken by the philosopher Andreas Rüdiger, who denied that mathematical reasoning could be reduced to syllogistic form. A position analogous to that of Rüdiger was held by Friedrich Müller, Adolf Friedrich Hoffmann, and Christian August Crusius, all of whom were hostile to the identification of the philosophical method with the mathematical method and therefore stood in open contrast to Christian Wolff, who sought to reduce ‘oblique’ inferences to syllogistic reasoning. Although the positions of Müller, Hoffmann, and Crusius are not identical regarding the relations between syllogism, philosophy, and mathematics, they can be traced, however, to an obvious influence of Rüdiger. The latter’s positions, although subject to some significant change over time, have considerable affinity with those taken later by Kant.
Lambert and Kant
Authors: Mancosu Paolo , Mugnai Massimo
Published: May 2023

Lambert made some contribution to a theory of relations. But the philosophically most pregnant contribution to the question of the possibility of recasting mathematics according to logic takes place with Kant. Kant claims that mathematics is synthetic a priori and that it cannot be reduced to conceptual analysis. Under the widespread assumption that logic and analysis go hand in hand, this also implies that logic is not sufficient to carry the burden of mathematical inference. Indeed, Michael Friedman’s interpretation of Kant sees Kant’s postulation of a priori intuition as a recognition on the part of Kant that the logic of his time (identified with syllogistic logic) was insufficient to account for mathematical reasoning. The chapter highlights how the debate on the possibility of recasting mathematical proofs in syllogistic terms is at the core of some of the major issues concerning Kant’s philosophy of mathematics and argues for a decoupling of analyticity and logicality.
Cerebral Neocortex
Authors: Phillips William A.
Published: May 2023

For those who know, anatomy quite often reveals function. This chapter outlines the cellular and regional neuroanatomy of mammalian neocortex and also discusses the specific thalamic nuclei that connect primary sensory regions to the sensors and the higher-order thalamic nuclei that mediate some of the interactions between neocortical regions. It shows that the neocortex is composed of a vast number of neurons, has roughly six layers (not three), and is organized into regions that form hierarchies of increasing abstraction. Finally, it summarizes the neurobiological and psychological grounds for supposing that some basic information processing operations are common to those regions.
An Information-theoretic View of Context-sensitive Computation
Authors: Phillips William A.
Published: May 2023

Information theory is used to define and quantify context-sensitive cooperativity in the theory of coherent infomax, which implements conditional statistical inference in neural systems by distinguishing between the receptive fields (RFs) and the contextual fields (CFs) of the local processors of which neural systems are composed. The distinction between the functions of RFs and CFs is made precise by using recently developed techniques of partial information decomposition (PID). Their application to information from multisite patch-clamping studies of pyramidal cells shows that inputs to their apical dendrites can indeed amplify information transmitted about more direct activation of the cell body. Context-sensitive cooperative computing is shown to pass the acid test of computational adequacy by describing its use to inspire effective and efficient neural network algorithms for learning and processing as applied to big real-world data. The chapter closes by emphasizing the potential dangers of releasing context-sensitive cooperative computing from its biological constraints.