scholarly journals What Future for Evolutionary Biology? Response to Commentaries on “The Illusions of the Modern Synthesis”

Biosemiotics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis Noble

Abstract The extensive range and depth of the twenty commentaries on my target article (Noble, 2021) confirms that something has gone deeply wrong in biology. A wide range of biologists has more than met my invitation for “others to pitch in and develop or counter my arguments.” The commentaries greatly develop those arguments. Also remarkably, none raise issues I would seriously disagree with. I will focus first on the more critical comments, summarise the other comments, and then point the way forward on what I view as a necessary and long-overdue transition in the foundations of biology.

1966 ◽  
Vol 112 (486) ◽  
pp. 471-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saul H. Rosenthal ◽  
Gerald L. Klerman

As currently used, the diagnosis of depression includes a wide range of clinical phenomena. This has not always been the case. Near the end of the 19th century, when the term depression began to evolve the meanings that it has today it was applied primarily to psychotics. The formulations of Freud in Mourning and Melancholia (1917), and of Kraepelin in Manic Depressive Insanity (1921) were based upon observations of patients who were both depressed and psychotic. In their work the contrast was between psychotic depression (or “melancholia”) on one hand, and normal sadness on the other. In the succeeding half-century, however, as psychiatry has extended its boundaries, increasing attention has been focused on non-psychotic depressions, often called “neurotic” or “reactive.” As these “neurotic” or “reactive” depressions reached public attention, a debate began over the way in which the depressive population should be described and the extent to which it should be subdivided. Critical and often sarcastic written battles were fought between the separatists and the unifiers during the 1920's and 1930's. These debates have been informatively chronicled by Partridge (1949). We have found it useful to divide these theorists into unifiers, dualists, and pluralists.


2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-204
Author(s):  
Romy Jaster

Hawthorne (2001) toys with the view that ascriptions of free will are context-sensitive. But the way he formulates the view makes freedom contextualism look like a non-starter. I step into the breach for freedom contextualism. My aim is twofold. On the one hand, I argue that freedom contextualism can be motivated on the basis of our ordinary practice of freedom attribution is not ad hoc. The view explains data which cannot be accounted for by an ambiguity hypothesis. On the other hand, I suggest a more plausible freedom contextualist analysis, which emerges naturally once we pair the assumption that freedom requires that the agent could have acted otherwise with a plausible semantics of "can" statements. I'll dub the resulting view Alternate Possibilities Contextualism, or APC, for short. In contrast to Hawthorne's view, APC is well-motivated in its own right, does not beg the question against the incompatibilist and delivers a context parameter which allows for a wide range of context shifts. I conclude that, far from being a non-starter, freedom contextualism sets an agenda worth pursuing.


1999 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 614-614 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shimon Edelman ◽  
Elise M. Breen

Representational systems need to use symbols as internal stand-ins for distal quantities and events. Barsalou's ideas go a long way towards making the symbol system theory of representation more appealing, by delegating one critical part of the representational burden – dealing with the constituents of compound structures – to image-like entities. The target article, however, leaves the other critical component of any symbol system theory – the compositional ability to bind the constituents together – underspecified. We point out that the binding problem can be alleviated if a perceptual symbol system is made to rely on image-like entities not only for grounding the constituent symbols, but also for composing these into structures.


2008 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Eriksen

Artiklen undersøger med udgangspunkt i landsdækkende aviser og fokus på fodbold, den danske sportspresses stereotyper af Tyskland, England og Spanien. Michael Eriksen: Nationale sportsstereotyper in Danish sport press 1980-2004Football is not just about who’s winning and who’s not. It much more important. In this article the various sporting stereotypes used by the danish sporting press to describe the english, spanish and german national footballteams against the danish national footballteam are identified. These national sporting stereotypes are identified by analyzing a wide range of danish newspapers covering the period 1980-2004. The english are, among other things, described as lions, the germans are frequently referred to by using words originating from the second world war, while the spanish are described as bulls. These stereotypes appear in the way they do as a result of many factors. On the one hand, these stereotypes are a result of football-internal events, and on the other hand footballing external reasons.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Persson

This article examines birth scenes in five mainstream films in order to explore the way norms about birthing are reproduced or challenged. The films are: Juno (Reitman, 2007), Knocked Up (Apatow, 2007), Baby Mama (McCullers, 2008), The Back-up Plan (Poul, 2010) and What to Expect When You’re Expecting (Jones, 2012). What do the birthing scenes look like, are they realistic with non-on-set births and does the directors’ and writers’ gender, age, skin colour and class have any parallels with what is portrayed? The analysis shows that certain norms are upheld in all films; vaginal delivery in hospital, birthing positions of half sitting or laying down and present partners or friends during delivery. Scenes not representing this were depicted as the Other and thus made deviant. Homogeneity in the group behind the camera was found which correlates with certain homogeneity on screen as well. Of all the eight scenes, the women give birth half sitting or laying down in seven, implying a dominance of certain positions. These positions were found to be very common off-screen too, despite the wide range of birthing positions available and recommendations to try different ones during labour. This implies that the practicality for personnel goes beforehand. By using feminist theories on the body and medical studies on births, these findings reveal power structures devaluating female-coded bodies. The results also enhance the importance of analysing patterns of representation in general, but birthing depictions in particular, since these representations can affect people’s understanding of how a birth should be in real life.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 60-72
Author(s):  
Mansour Safran

This aims to review and analyze the Jordanian experiment in the developmental regional planning field within the decentralized managerial methods, which is considered one of the primary basic provisions for applying and success of this kind of planning. The study shoed that Jordan has passed important steps in the way for implanting the decentralized administration, but these steps are still not enough to established the effective and active regional planning. The study reveled that there are many problems facing the decentralized regional planning in Jordan, despite of the clear goals that this planning is trying to achieve. These problems have resulted from the existing relationship between the decentralized administration process’ dimensions from one side, and between its levels which ranged from weak to medium decentralization from the other side, In spite of the official trends aiming at applying more of the decentralized administrative policies, still high portion of these procedures are theoretical, did not yet find a way to reality. Because any progress or success at the level of applying the decentralized administrative policies doubtless means greater effectiveness and influence on the development regional planning in life of the residents in the kingdom’s different regions. So, it is important to go a head in applying more steps and decentralized administrative procedures, gradually and continuously to guarantee the control over any negative effects that might result from Appling this kind of systems.   © 2018 JASET, International Scholars and Researchers Association


2020 ◽  
pp. 1192-1198
Author(s):  
M.S. Mohammad ◽  
Tibebe Tesfaye ◽  
Kim Ki-Seong

Ultrasonic thickness gauges are easy to operate and reliable, and can be used to measure a wide range of thicknesses and inspect all engineering materials. Supplementing the simple ultrasonic thickness gauges that present results in either a digital readout or as an A-scan with systems that enable correlating the measured values to their positions on the inspected surface to produce a two-dimensional (2D) thickness representation can extend their benefits and provide a cost-effective alternative to expensive advanced C-scan machines. In previous work, the authors introduced a system for the positioning and mapping of the values measured by the ultrasonic thickness gauges and flaw detectors (Tesfaye et al. 2019). The system is an alternative to the systems that use mechanical scanners, encoders, and sophisticated UT machines. It used a camera to record the probe’s movement and a projected laser grid obtained by a laser pattern generator to locate the probe on the inspected surface. In this paper, a novel system is proposed to be applied to flat surfaces, in addition to overcoming the other limitations posed due to the use of the laser projection. The proposed system uses two video cameras, one to monitor the probe’s movement on the inspected surface and the other to capture the corresponding digital readout of the thickness gauge. The acquired images of the probe’s position and thickness gauge readout are processed to plot the measured data in a 2D color-coded map. The system is meant to be simpler and more effective than the previous development.


2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. David Archibald

Studies of the origin and diversification of major groups of plants and animals are contentious topics in current evolutionary biology. This includes the study of the timing and relationships of the two major clades of extant mammals – marsupials and placentals. Molecular studies concerned with marsupial and placental origin and diversification can be at odds with the fossil record. Such studies are, however, not a recent phenomenon. Over 150 years ago Charles Darwin weighed two alternative views on the origin of marsupials and placentals. Less than a year after the publication of On the origin of species, Darwin outlined these in a letter to Charles Lyell dated 23 September 1860. The letter concluded with two competing phylogenetic diagrams. One showed marsupials as ancestral to both living marsupials and placentals, whereas the other showed a non-marsupial, non-placental as being ancestral to both living marsupials and placentals. These two diagrams are published here for the first time. These are the only such competing phylogenetic diagrams that Darwin is known to have produced. In addition to examining the question of mammalian origins in this letter and in other manuscript notes discussed here, Darwin confronted the broader issue as to whether major groups of animals had a single origin (monophyly) or were the result of “continuous creation” as advocated for some groups by Richard Owen. Charles Lyell had held similar views to those of Owen, but it is clear from correspondence with Darwin that he was beginning to accept the idea of monophyly of major groups.


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vidya Dwi Amalia Zati ◽  
Sumarsih Sumarsih ◽  
Lince Sihombing

The objectives of the research were to describe the types of speech acts used in televised political debates of governor candidates of North Sumatera, to derive the dominant type of speech acts used in televised political debates of governor candidates of North Sumatera and to elaborate the way of five governor candidates of North Sumatera use speech acts in televised political debates. This research was conducted by applying descriptive qualitative research. The findings show that there were only four types of speech acts used in televised political debates, Debat Pemilukada Sumatera Utara and Uji Publik Cagub dan Cawagub Sumatera Utara, they were assertives, directives, commissives and expressives. The dominant type of speech acts used in both televised political debates was assertives, with 82 utterances or 51.6% in Debat Pemilukada Sumatera Utara and 36 utterances or 41.37% in Uji Publik Cagub dan Cawagub Sumatera Utara. The way of governor candidates of North Sumatera used speech acts in televised political debates is in direct speech acts, they spoke straight to the point and clearly in order to make the other candidates and audiences understand their utterances.   Keywords: Governor Candidate; Political Debate; Speech Acts


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 165
Author(s):  
Assist. Prof. Dr. Kazım Yıldırım

The cultural environment of Ibn al-Arabi is in Andalusia, Spain today. There, on the one hand, Sufism, on the other hand, thinks like Ibn Bacce (Death.1138), Ibn Tufeyl (Death186), Ibn Rushd (Death.1198) and the knowledge and philosophy inherited by scholars, . Ibn al-Arabi (1165-1240), that was the effect of all this; But more mystic (mystic) circles came out of the way. This work, written by Ibn al-Arabi's works (especially Futuhati Mekkiye), also contains a very small number of other relevant sources.


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