Medicine

Buddhism ◽

10.1093/obo/9780195393521-0140 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

C. Pierce Salguero

Keyword(s):

Health Policy ◽

Physical Health ◽

Large Scale ◽

Medical Knowledge ◽

Central Place ◽

The Body ◽

Medical Systems ◽

Early 21St Century ◽

Islamic Medicine ◽

Wide Range

Knowledge about physical health and disease has held a central place within Buddhist thought, and healing has remained a persistent part of Buddhist practice since the earliest times. Though there is no universally agreed-upon term, Buddhist perspectives on health, disease, healers, patients, and therapies are typically spoken of by East Asian scholars and devotees as “Buddhist medicine” (Ch. foyi佛醫 or fojiao yixue佛教醫學, Jp. bukkyō igaku仏教医学), and this terminology is used here as a convenient shorthand for a complex topic. The earliest expressions of medical doctrine in Indian Buddhist texts are closely related to ideas found in Āyurveda and have suggestive similarities with other Eurasian medical systems (including Hippocratic, Galenic, and Islamic medicine) as well. Integrated into Buddhist philosophy, meditation, and ritual, these core doctrines and perspectives were influential in India and China, and they came to be spread as far as Iran, Mongolia, Japan, and Indonesia. Healer-monks and monastic medical institutions played a major role in this dissemination, as did the large-scale translation of texts concerning a wide range of Buddhist medical topics. In the early 21st century, many of the ideas and practices imported from India continue to lie at the foundation of traditions of medicine in Tibet, Nepal, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and other parts of Buddhist Asia. At the same time that Buddhist medicine can be understood as a transnational or cross-cultural phenomenon, however, it has always been reinterpreted locally through the lenses of the many cultures that have adopted it. Historians working on Buddhist medicine have thus focused both on the transmission of medical knowledge to new cultures and societies, as well as on the unique ideological and rhetorical uses of Buddhism by medical practitioners in many specific historical and modern settings. Social scientists have studied the degree to which Buddhist values continue to inform health policy in Asian countries and the complexities of the relationship between Buddhism and biomedicine. This article includes a selective range of scholarship on the history and modern relationship between Buddhism and medicine, with a focus on the former. Scientific studies on the health benefits of meditation, health policy advocacy, and works of a nonscholarly nature geared toward practitioners and devotees are excluded. Also omitted are topics tangential to matters of physical health, such as mental health, conceptions of the body, bioethics, the science of meditation, and so forth. Many publications of all of the above types are available and are covered in other Oxford Bibliographies in Buddhism articles, such as “Buddhism in Psychology and Psychotherapy,” “Buddhism and the Body,” and “Meditation.”

Sociality and Interaction Envelope Organize Visual Action Representations

10.1101/618272 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Leyla Tarhan ◽

Talia Konkle

Keyword(s):

Visual Cortex ◽

Large Scale ◽

Functional Neuroimaging ◽

Action Observation ◽

The Body ◽

Whole Body ◽

Action Perception ◽

Social Content ◽

Wide Range ◽

The Brain

Humans observe a wide range of actions in their surroundings. How is the visual cortex organized to process this diverse input? Using functional neuroimaging, we measured brain responses while participants viewed short videos of everyday actions, then probed the structure in these responses using voxel-wise encoding modeling. Responses were well fit by feature spaces that capture the body parts involved in an action and the action’s targets (i.e. whether the action was directed at an object, another person, the actor, and space). Clustering analyses revealed five large-scale networks that summarized the voxel tuning: one related to social aspects of an action, and four related to the scale of the interaction envelope, ranging from fine-scale manipulations directed at objects, to large-scale whole-body movements directed at distant locations. We propose that these networks reveal the major representational joints in how actions are processed by visual regions of the brain.Significance StatementHow does the brain perceive other people’s actions? Prior work has established that much of the visual cortex is active when observing others’ actions. However, this activity reflects a wide range of processes, from identifying a movement’s direction to recognizing its social content. We investigated how these diverse processes are organized within the visual cortex. We found that five networks respond during action observation: one that is involved in processing actions’ social content, and four that are involved in processing agent-object interactions and the scale of the effect that these actions have on the world (its “interaction envelope”). Based on these findings, we propose that sociality and interaction envelope size are two of the major features that organize action perception in the visual cortex.

Health and Medicine in the Enlightenment

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199546497.013.0005 ◽

2012 ◽

Author(s):

E. C. Spray

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Large Scale ◽

Medical Knowledge ◽

The Body ◽

Medical Practitioners ◽

Ordinary Life ◽

The Enlightenment ◽

History Of ◽

The Subject ◽

Mass Inoculation

This article discusses the transformation of medicine at the very end of the century and thus represents a shift both in the training of medical practitioners and in accounts of the body. The eighteenth century has been described as a time of increasing medicalization of Western societies. Though this is usually portrayed as a growth in the power of medical practitioners over ordinary life, in practice lay people may also understand it as an increasing embrace of the medical. The eighteenth century continues to be viewed as a critical period in the history of medicine, as the century when bodies became the subject of large-scale political intervention, from centralized responses to plague epidemics or mass inoculation programmes early in the century to the growing use of mortality tables at its end. To portray these knowledge projects in all their complexity, historians still need to embrace the full implications of treating eighteenth-century medical knowledge as a political enterprise.

Fatigue-driven boulder exfoliation as a driving mechanism for Bennu’s activity

10.5194/epsc2020-159 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Jamie Molaro ◽

Carl Hergenrother ◽

Steve Chesley ◽

Romy Hanna ◽

Chris Haberle ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Thermal Fatigue ◽

Large Scale ◽

Thermal Strain ◽

Rotation Period ◽

The Body ◽

Thin Layers ◽

Stress Fields ◽

Driving Mechanism ◽

Rock Composition ◽

Wide Range

Abstract: Thermally driven fracture processes, such as thermal fatigue, have been hypothesized to drive rock breakdown and regolith production on asteroid surfaces [e.g., 1-7]. Thermal cycling induces mechanical stresses in rocks that drive the propagation of microcracks, which may grow into larger-scale features. This can drive the development of morphological signatures such as surface fracturing and disaggregation, and through-going fractures that split boulders apart. The nature and rate of boulder breakdown is controlled by rock composition, as well as the rotation period and solar distance of the body, suggesting its signature varies widely across the diverse asteroid population. Understanding how the process operates is critical to characterizing their surface properties and evolution.Images from the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security&#8211;Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft of the surface of Bennu provide the opportunity to search for in situ evidence of thermal breakdown over a wide range of scales. Recent works by the authors [7-9] show observations of boulder morphologies consistent with terrestrial observations [e.g., 10] and models of fatigue-driven boulder exfoliation [e.g., 11], i.e., the flaking of thin layers or shells of material from boulder surfaces. Relating these observations to thermally induced stress fields in phyllosilicate boulders reveals that such features develop via the propagation of surface-parallel fractures during periods of day when boulder surfaces are heating. The magnitude of these stress fields ranges from ~0.3 to 3 MPa for boulders up to 6 m in diameter, which is comparable to the tensile strengths of terrestrial phyllosilicate rocks (e.g., serpentinite) and sufficient to drive subcritical crack growth (thermal fatigue). The thickness of resulting exfoliation layers predicted by the model ranges from ~1 mm to 10 cm, which is consistent with terrestrial observations of exfoliation cracks [10] and with the thicknesses of exfoliation layers observed on Bennu&#8217;s boulders [9].Further, we explore how boulder exfoliation may lead to the ejection of particles observed at Bennu&#8217;s surface [9] in an analogous manner to mobilization of rock fragments during large-scale, terrestrial dome exfoliation events [12]. We have observed particle ejection events from Bennu&#8217;s surface repeatedly since first entering orbit in January 2019. Observed particles range in size from <1 to 10 cm [7], consistent with our predictions for exfoliation. We quantified the available thermal strain energy in boulders beyond what is needed to propagate cracks and converted it to kinetic energy to constrain the speed of ejected particles. We find particles may be ejected with speeds up to ~2 m/s for boulders smaller than or equal to 6 m in diameter, which is comparable to the maximum observed particle speed of 3.3 m/s [7]. These results suggest that fatigue-driven exfoliation is a viable mechanism for producing or contributing to the activity observed at Bennu.Acknowledgements: This material is based upon work supported by NASA under Contract NNM10AA11C issued through the New Frontiers Program, and under Contract NNH17ZDA001N-ORPSP through the Participating Scientist Program. We are grateful to the entire OSIRIS-REx Team for their hard work in making the encounter with Bennu possible.References: [1] Molaro, J.L., et al., 2017. Icarus 294, 247-261. [2] El-Mir, C., et al., 2019. Icarus, 333, 356-370. [3] Hazeli, K., et al., 2018. Icarus, 304, 172-182. [4] Jewitt and Li, 2010. The Astronomical J., 140(5), p.1519. [5] Delbo, M. et al., 2014. Nature 508, 233&#8211;236. [6] Graves, K. J., et al., 2019. Icarus, 10.1016/j.icarus.2019.01.003. [7] Lauretta, D.S., Hergenrother, C.W., et al., 2019. Science, 366(6470). [8] Molaro, J.L., et al., 2020. Nat. Commun., 11(1), 1-11. [9] Molaro, J.L., et al., in review with JGR: Planets. [10] Martel, S.J., 2017. J. Structural Geol., 94, 68-86. [11] Holzhausen, G. R. (1989), Eng. Geol., 27(1-4), 225&#8211;278, 10.1016/0013-7952(89)90035-5. [12] Collins, B.D., et al., 2018. Nat. Commun., 9(1), 1-12.

Silver Ions as a Tool for Understanding Different Aspects of Copper Metabolism

Nutrients ◽

10.3390/nu11061364 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (6) ◽

pp. 1364 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Ludmila V. Puchkova ◽

Massimo Broggini ◽

Elena V. Polishchuk ◽

Ekaterina Y. Ilyechova ◽

Roman S. Polishchuk

Keyword(s):

Active Sites ◽

Large Scale ◽

Copper Ions ◽

Copper Metabolism ◽

Silver Ions ◽

The Body ◽

Copper Binding ◽

Safe Delivery ◽

Protein Motifs ◽

Wide Range

In humans, copper is an important micronutrient because it is a cofactor of ubiquitous and brain-specific cuproenzymes, as well as a secondary messenger. Failure of the mechanisms supporting copper balance leads to the development of neurodegenerative, oncological, and other severe disorders, whose treatment requires a detailed understanding of copper metabolism. In the body, bioavailable copper exists in two stable oxidation states, Cu(I) and Cu(II), both of which are highly toxic. The toxicity of copper ions is usually overcome by coordinating them with a wide range of ligands. These include the active cuproenzyme centers, copper-binding protein motifs to ensure the safe delivery of copper to its physiological location, and participants in the Cu(I) ↔ Cu(II) redox cycle, in which cellular copper is stored. The use of modern experimental approaches has allowed the overall picture of copper turnover in the cells and the organism to be clarified. However, many aspects of this process remain poorly understood. Some of them can be found out using abiogenic silver ions (Ag(I)), which are isoelectronic to Cu(I). This review covers the physicochemical principles of the ability of Ag(I) to substitute for copper ions in transport proteins and cuproenzyme active sites, the effectiveness of using Ag(I) to study copper routes in the cells and the body, and the limitations associated with Ag(I) remaining stable in only one oxidation state. The use of Ag(I) to restrict copper transport to tumors and the consequences of large-scale use of silver nanoparticles for human health are also discussed.

DICOM Imaging Router: An Open Deep Learning Framework for Classification of Body Parts from DICOM X-ray Scans

10.1101/2021.08.13.21261945 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Hieu H. Pham ◽

Dung V. Do ◽

Ha Q. Nguyen

Keyword(s):

Deep Learning ◽

Large Scale ◽

Imaging Modality ◽

The Body ◽

Superior Performance ◽

Body Parts ◽

Deep Convolutional Neural Networks ◽

X Ray ◽

Wide Range ◽

Dicom Imaging

AbstractX-ray imaging in Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) format is the most commonly used imaging modality in clinical practice, resulting in vast, non-normalized databases. This leads to an obstacle in deploying artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for analyzing medical images, which often requires identifying the right body part before feeding the image into a specified AI model. This challenge raises the need for an automated and efficient approach to classifying body parts from X-ray scans. Unfortunately, to the best of our knowledge, there is no open tool or framework for this task to date. To fill this lack, we introduce a DICOM Imaging Router that deploys deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for categorizing unknown DICOM X-ray images into five anatomical groups: abdominal, adult chest, pediatric chest, spine, and others. To this end, a large-scale X-ray dataset consisting of 16,093 images has been collected and manually classified. We then trained a set of state-of-the-art deep CNNs using a training set of 11,263 images. These networks were then evaluated on an independent test set of 2,419 images and showed superior performance in classifying the body parts. Specifically, our best performing model (i.e., MobileNet-V1) achieved a recall of 0.982 (95% CI, 0.977– 0.988), a precision of 0.985 (95% CI, 0.975–0.989) and a F1-score of 0.981 (95% CI, 0.976–0.987), whilst requiring less computation for inference (0.0295 second per image). Our external validity on 1,000 X-ray images shows the robustness of the proposed approach across hospitals. These remarkable performances indicate that deep CNNs can accurately and effectively differentiate human body parts from X-ray scans, thereby providing potential benefits for a wide range of applications in clinical settings. The dataset, codes, and trained deep learning models from this study will be made publicly available on our project website at https://vindr.ai/datasets/bodypartxr.

Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) for the simulation of central-place foraging trajectories

10.1101/2021.09.27.461940 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Amédée Roy ◽

Sophie Lanco Bertrand ◽

Ronan Fablet

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Animal Movement ◽

Multiple Scales ◽

Electronic Device ◽

Central Place ◽

Generative Adversarial Networks ◽

Central Place Foraging ◽

Ecological Processes ◽

Adversarial Networks ◽

Wide Range

1. Miniature electronic device such as GPS have enabled ecologists to document relatively large amount of animal trajectories. Modeling such trajectories may attempt (1) to explain mechanisms underlying observed behaviors and (2) to elucidate ecological processes at the population scale by simulating multiple trajectories. Existing approaches to animal movement modeling mainly addressed the first objective and they are yet soon limited when used for simulation. Individual-based models based on ad-hoc formulation and empirical parametrization lack of generability, while state-space models and stochastic differential equations models, based on rigorous statistical inference, consist in 1st order Markovian models calibrated at the local scale which can lead to overly simplistic description of trajectories. 2. We introduce a 'state-of-the-art' tool from artificial intelligence - Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) - for the simulation of animal trajectories. GAN consist in a pair of deep neural networks that aim at capturing the data distribution of some experimental dataset, and that enable the generation of new instances of data that share statistical similarity. In this study, we aim on one hand to identify relevant deep networks architecture for simulating central-place foraging trajectories and on the second hand to evaluate GAN benefits over classical methods such as state-switching Hidden Markov Models (HMM). 3. We demonstrate the outstanding ability of GAN to simulate 'realistic' seabirds foraging trajectories. In particular, we show that deep convolutional networks are more efficient than LSTM networks and that GAN-derived synthetic trajectories reproduce better the Fourier spectral density of observed trajectories than those simulated using HMM. Therefore, unlike HMM, GAN capture the variability of large-scale descriptive statistics such as foraging trips distance, duration and tortuosity. 4. GAN offer a relevant alternative to existing approaches to modeling animal movement since it is calibrated to reproduce multiple scales at the same time, thus freeing ecologists from the assumption of first-order markovianity. GAN also provide an ultra-flexible and robust framework that could further take environmental conditions, social interactions or even bio-energetics model into account and tackle a wide range of key challenges in movement ecology.

A simple and dynamic thermal gradient device for measuring thermal performance in small ectotherms

10.1101/2020.08.28.271767 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Marshall W. Ritchie ◽

Jeff W. Dawson ◽

Heath A. MacMillan

Keyword(s):

Thermal Performance ◽

Thermal Gradient ◽

Large Scale ◽

Survival Curve ◽

Cooling Water ◽

The Body ◽

Thermal Environments ◽

Large Numbers ◽

Wide Range ◽

Gradient Device

AbstractThe body temperature of ectothermic animals is heavily dependent on environmental temperature, impacting fitness. Laboratory exposure to favorable and unfavorable temperatures is used to understand these effects, as well as the physiological, biochemical, and molecular underpinnings of variation in thermal performance. Although small ectotherms, like insects, can often be easily reared in large numbers, it can be challenging and expensive to simultaneously create and manipulate several thermal environments in a laboratory setting. Here, we describe the creation and use of a thermal gradient device that can produce a wide range of constant or varying temperatures concurrently. This device is composed of a solid aluminum plate and copper piping, combined with a pair of programmable refrigerated circulators. As a simple proof-of-concept, we completed single experimental runs to produce a low-temperature survival curve for flies (Drosophila melanogaster) and explore the effects of daily thermal cycles of varying amplitude on growth rates of crickets (Gryllodes sigillatus). This approach avoids the use of multiple heating/cooling water or glycol baths or incubators for large-scale assessments of organismal thermal performance. It makes static or dynamic thermal experiments (e.g., creating a thermal performance or survival curves, quantifying responses to fluctuating thermal environments, or monitoring animal behaviour across a range of temperatures) easier, faster, and less costly.

The Body as Place in Time(s): Concepts of the Female Body in Medieval Japan

KronoScope ◽

10.1163/15685241-12341452 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 20 (1) ◽

pp. 17-40

Author(s):

Daniela Tan

Keyword(s):

Female Body ◽

Large Scale ◽

Physical Phenomenon ◽

Medical Knowledge ◽

Time Frame ◽

The Body ◽

Human Existence ◽

Cosmological Time ◽

Medieval Japan ◽

Time Frames

Abstract The body reflects the various timescales of human existence, such as physical processes and cosmological patterns. This paper seeks to demonstrate conceptualizations of the female body in medieval Japan, using source texts specifically concerned with menstruation. Its investigative use of medical, religious and literary sources serves to address a variety of the dimensions of human existence. Medical writings such as the 14th century Man‘anpō and the Toni‘shō, both compiled by the monk physician Kajiwara Shōzen, deal with the female cycle as a physical phenomenon in correlation with natural cyclical patterns. The female cycle is not only connected to questions of reproduction and sexuality, but also to larger scale cosmological time frames, such as the cycle of the moon or the tides. Instructions given for the treatment of irregularities, along with preventive measures, take into consideration the large-scale time frame in resonance with the micro-level of the body. Medical knowledge is complemented by religious texts, such as the Blood Bowl Sutra (Ketsubonkyō), that contextualize the perception of the female body within a religious dimension. The Buddhist worldview that permeates medical and literary texts of this era is also reflected in ideas about the female body. The varying physical, cosmological and religious chronomorphologies of the body reflect a multiplicity of time frames in medieval Japan.

Wooden Church Architecture of the Russian North in the Russian Art History of the Early 21st Century

Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University Arts ◽

10.21638/spbu15.2021.407 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (4) ◽

pp. 696-714

Author(s):

Evgeny V. Khodakovsky ◽

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Early Period ◽

Church Architecture ◽

Joint Work ◽

Early 21St Century ◽

The North ◽

Wide Range ◽

Church Building ◽

Russian North ◽

History Of

The article represents a historiographical review of publications on the wooden architecture of the Russian North, published in 2000–2010s. In these years the main perspectives of the research of the wooden church architecture of the Russian North can be distinguished as follows: the regional studies in the framework of large-scale scientific projects; studying the construction history and analysing the architectural features of specific objects, including in connection with their restoration; “rehabilitation” of the late period (19th–20th centuries) in the history of church wooden church building, which is a fundamentally new approach to this segment of the architectural heritage of the North; attracting a wide range of archival sources and gradually moving away from the speculative nature of unsubstantiated theoretical conclusions. An analytical review of publications on wooden church architecture published over the past twenty years is important not only for summing up intermediate results, but also for indicating further prospects for creating a complete panorama of wooden church building in the Russian North, which still remains unconnected and fragmentary, that is, forming from the history of individual monuments in different regions. The interaction of researchers of Russian wooden architecture with each other in the framework of long-term scientific projects is the key to successful joint work on the identification and introduction into scientific circulation of archival documents of the early period (16th–18th centuries) and conducting field surveys of preserved objects. The subsequent integration of the obtained data on chronological, quantitative and typological indicators will allow us to obtain a new objective picture of the historical development and artistic diversity of the monuments of wooden architecture of the Russian North.

Towards a Philosophy of Rhythm: Nietzsche’s Conflicting Rhythms

Journal of Literary Theory ◽

10.1515/jlt-2018-0009 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 151-170

Author(s):

Hannah Vandegrift Eldridge

Keyword(s):

Cultural Values ◽

Cultural Context ◽

Large Scale ◽

Ways Of Knowing ◽

The Body ◽

Small Scale ◽

Scientific Paradigms ◽

Wide Range ◽

Evolutionary Aesthetics ◽

The Impact

Abstract In recent years, theories of rhythm have been proposed by a number of different disciplines, including historical poetics, generative metrics, cognitive literary studies, and evolutionary aesthetics. The wide range of fields indicates the transdisciplinary nature of rhythm as a phenomenon, as well as its complexity, highlighting the degree to which many of the central questions surrounding rhythm remain extraordinarily difficult even to state in terms that can traverse the disciplinary boundaries effortlessly transgressed by rhythm as a phenomenon. In particular, any theory of rhythm, whether in music, dance, sociology, or language, must grapple with two quandaries. First, the precise site of rhythm remains opaque: rhythms occur in, affect, and are produced by all of bodies, cultures, and universals (whether metaphysical or species-physiological). What is the relation between species-wide characteristic, individual body, cultural context, and the history of art making in the experience of rhythm? Second, rhythm is simultaneously a phenomenon of fixed, organizing form and one of dynamic, changing flow. How can rhythm encompass both the measurement of regular recurrences across time and the organizing of temporal phenomena as they unfold? In this article, I draw on Emile Benveniste and Henri Meschonnic to elucidate these quandaries or conflicts before turning to Friedrich Nietzsche’s work on rhythm. I argue that Nietzsche’s work with rhythm provides a historically situated model for how we might continue to take the questions and conflicts within rhythm seriously, rather than privileging an abstract and universally applicable theory of rhythm. This model is especially crucial for our own historical moment, when cultural-political emphasis on science and technology at the expense of aesthetics devalues all insights not presented in the form of countable data points or empirically testable facts. Nietzsche is, of course, one of the great critics of positivist-scientistic epistemologies, part of a long tradition questioning the naturalness of natural-scientific paradigms and alerting us to the metaphors at play even in the ›hard sciences‹. I use rhythm as one paradigmatic place to resist the importation of scientistic thought into discussions of language, literature, and culture. I show how Nietzsche’s writings on rhythm prove illuminating for contemporary understandings of rhythm because the tensions in his work are shaped by the quandaries inherent to rhythm that I have used Benveniste and Meschonnic to elaborate, namely the question of rhythm’s site as individual, cultural, or universal, and the conflict between rhythm as form and as flow. The question of the site of rhythm appears in Nietzsche’s discussions of Greek and Latin meters both in his philological works, in his aphorisms, and in his letters: on the one hand, he argues that Greek and Latin metrical and rhythmic resources are irrevocably lost to modern cultures (indicating that rhythm is a product of culture), while on the other, he emphasizes the impact of rhythm on the body and offers advice for replicating Ancient metrical and rhythmic techniques (suggesting that rhythm is based on physiological universals). And the conflict between flow and form appears as Nietzsche praises both the productive constraint created by large-scale, architectonic, or macro-formal rhythms and the freedom from such constraint enabled by small-scale, leitmotiv-based, or micro-formal rhythms. The conflicts in Nietzsche’s work between the loss and recovery of Ancient rhythms and between rhythm as small scale freedom vs. large scale constraint thus represent one particular unfolding of the dilemmas for rhythmical theory worked out by Benveniste and Meschonnic. The various modern disciplines engaged with rhythm will answer different sets of these questions in different ways. Most practitioners of, e. g., evolutionary aesthetics, neuroaesthetics, or cognitive poetics would no doubt contend that they are using the tools of the natural sciences to investigate long-standing humanistic inquiries. Nietzsche, as a critic of his own era’s scientific positivism who allows tensions inherent in these questions to remain open in his own work, is an ideal interlocutor with whom to ask whether even the adoption of these tools ends up placing excessive faith in natural-scientific paradigms and undercutting other—affective, bodily, metaphorical, poetic, etc.—ways of knowing, as I demonstrate briefly in the examples of evolutionary aesthetics and generative metrics. Because Nietzsche leaves open the conflicts over rhythm’s site and its qualities as form or flow, he can use individual bodily experience to make physiological arguments about the effects of rhythm on culture and vice versa: Nietzsche takes his bodily response to be an index of cultural values inherent to rhythmical practices. The particular values that Nietzsche critiques shift across his career—early on he condemns German musical and poetic rhythms for being too rigid, while later he sees them as pathologically heightening affect and emotion. In both cases, detrimental rhythmic practices lead to detrimental bodily practices and to the degeneration of culture, while rhythmic practices work as a bodily and cultural corrective. In his critiques of German forms and praises of Greek forms, and in the moments in which he brings them together, Nietzsche thus asserts the complex interrelation of culture, body, and history.