Scientism

Can only science deliver genuine knowledge about the world and ourselves? Is science our only guide to what exists? Adherents of scientism tend to answer both questions with yes. Scientism is increasingly influential in popular scientific literature and intellectual life in general, but philosophers have hitherto largely ignored it. This collection is one of the first to develop and assess scientism as a serious philosophical position. It features twelve new essays by both proponents and critics of scientism. Before scientism can be evaluated, it needs to be clear what it is. Hence, the collection opens with essays that provide an overview of the many different versions of scientism and their mutual interrelations. Next, several card-carrying proponents of scientism make their case, either by developing and arguing directly for their preferred version of scientism or by responding to objections. Then, the floor is given to critics of scientism. It is examined whether scientism is epistemically vicious, whether scientism presents a plausible general epistemological outlook, and whether science has limits. The final four essays zoom out and connect scientism to ongoing debates elsewhere in philosophy. What does scientism mean for religious epistemology? What can science tell us about morality and is a scientistic moral epistemology plausible? How is scientism related to physicalism?

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence B. Leonard

Purpose The current “specific language impairment” and “developmental language disorder” discussion might lead to important changes in how we refer to children with language disorders of unknown origin. The field has seen other changes in terminology. This article reviews many of these changes. Method A literature review of previous clinical labels was conducted, and possible reasons for the changes in labels were identified. Results References to children with significant yet unexplained deficits in language ability have been part of the scientific literature since, at least, the early 1800s. Terms have changed from those with a neurological emphasis to those that do not imply a cause for the language disorder. Diagnostic criteria have become more explicit but have become, at certain points, too narrow to represent the wider range of children with language disorders of unknown origin. Conclusions The field was not well served by the many changes in terminology that have transpired in the past. A new label at this point must be accompanied by strong efforts to recruit its adoption by clinical speech-language pathologists and the general public.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-252
Author(s):  
Deborah Solomon

This essay draws attention to the surprising lack of scholarship on the staging of garden scenes in Shakespeare's oeuvre. In particular, it explores how garden scenes promote collaborative acts of audience agency and present new renditions of the familiar early modern contrast between the public and the private. Too often the mention of Shakespeare's gardens calls to mind literal rather than literary interpretations: the work of garden enthusiasts like Henry Ellacombe, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, and Caroline Spurgeon, who present their copious gatherings of plant and flower references as proof that Shakespeare was a garden lover, or the many “Shakespeare Gardens” around the world, bringing to life such lists of plant references. This essay instead seeks to locate Shakespeare's garden imagery within a literary tradition more complex than these literalizations of Shakespeare's “flowers” would suggest. To stage a garden during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries signified much more than a personal affinity for the green world; it served as a way of engaging time-honored literary comparisons between poetic forms, methods of audience interaction, and types of media. Through its metaphoric evocation of the commonplace tradition, in which flowers double as textual cuttings to be picked, revised, judged, and displayed, the staged garden offered a way to dramatize the tensions produced by creative practices involving collaborative composition and audience agency.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (SPL1) ◽  
pp. 1278-1285
Author(s):  
Mohamed Yafout ◽  
Amine Ousaid ◽  
Ibrahim Sbai El Otmani ◽  
Youssef Khayati ◽  
Amal Ait Haj Said

The new SARS-CoV-2 belonging to the coronaviruses family has caused a pandemic affecting millions of people around the world. This pandemic has been declared by the World Health Organization as an international public health emergency. Although several clinical trials involving a large number of drugs are currently underway, no treatment protocol for COVID-19 has been officially approved so far. Here we demonstrate through a search in the scientific literature that the traditional Moroccan pharmacopoeia, which includes more than 500 medicinal plants, is a fascinating and promising source for the research of natural molecules active against SARS-CoV-2. Multiple in-silico and in-vitro studies showed that some of the medicinal plants used by Moroccans for centuries possess inhibitory activity against SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-2. These inhibitory activities are achieved through the different molecular mechanisms of virus penetration and replication, or indirectly through stimulation of immunity. Thus, the potential of plants, plant extracts and molecules derived from plants that are traditionally used in Morocco and have activity against SARS-CoV-2, could be explored in the search for a preventive or curative treatment against COVID-19. Furthermore, safe plants or plant extracts that are proven to stimulate immunity could be officially recommended by governments as nutritional supplements.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alwi Musa Muzaiyin

Trade is a form of business that is run by many people around the world, ranging from trading various kinds of daily necessities or primary needs, to selling the need for luxury goods for human satisfaction. For that, to overcome the many needs of life, they try to outsmart them buy products that are useful, economical and efficient. One of the markets they aim at is the second-hand market or the so-called trashy market. As for a trader at a trashy market, they aim to sell in the used goods market with a variety of reasons. These reasons include; first, because it is indeed to fulfill their needs. Second, the capital needed to trade at trashy markets is much smaller than opening a business where the products come from new goods. Third, used goods are easily available and easily sold to buyer. Here the researcher will discuss the behavior of Muslim traders in a review of Islamic business ethics (the case in the Jagalan Kediri Trashy Market). Kediri Jagalan Trashy Market is central to the sale of used goods in the city of Kediri. Where every day there are more than 300 used merchants who trade in the market. The focus of this research is how the behavior of Muslim traders in the Jagalan Kediri Trashy Market in general. Then, from the large number of traders, of course not all traders have behavior in accordance with Islamic business ethics, as well as traders who are in accordance with the rules of Islamic business ethics. This study aims to determine how the behavior of Muslim traders in the Jagalan Kediri Trashy Market in buying and selling transactions and to find out how the behavior of Muslim traders in the Jagalan Kediri Trashy Market in reviewing Islamic business ethics. Key Words: Trade, loak market, Islamic business


2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (3) ◽  
pp. 47-53
Author(s):  
Галина Глембоцкая ◽  
Galina Glembockaya ◽  
Станислав Еремин ◽  
Stanislav Eremin

In order to identify promising strategic development possibilities for the pharmaceutical industry in the Russian Federation, a pilot study was conducted, which has analyzed the main trends in the development of innovative medicines. As a result of the content analysis of available sources of scientific literature, the characteristics of options used in the world practice for increasing the innovative activity of individual subjects and the pharmaceutical market as a whole are presented. Possible reserves for the further development of the innovative component of the pharmaceutical market within the framework of the concept of personalized medicine according to the P4 principle (predictive - personalized - preventive - participatory) are identified and structured. The results of use by individual pharmaceutical companies of scientifically and practically justified approaches to optimizing the costs of development and promoting drugs are presented. The advantages and real prospects of a generally accepted method to reduce the cost of development by «expanding the pharmacological effect» (label expansion) of already existing drugs with a known safety profile in the world practice are shown. A scientific generalization and structuring of the goals and results of the post-registration phase of clinical trials to expand the pharmacological action of a number of drugs already existed at the market have been carried out.


2020 ◽  
pp. 65-75
Author(s):  
S. N. Smirnov

The author considers the problems of typification of society. Some concepts of typification of social stratification models in different countries formulated and justified in historical and legal, historical, sociological, and economic scientific literature are reviewed. The circumstances that make it difficult to formulate universal concepts designed for application in the complex of social Sciences are identified. These circumstances include insufficient consideration of legal factors, including the position of the legislator, the specifics of the corporate legal status, and the characteristics of the mechanism for changing individual legal status. The author offers a variant of classification of society types from the point of view of legal registration of their structure. The possibility of distinguishing types such as consolidated companies and segmented companies is justified.


Author(s):  
Benedetta Zavatta

Based on an analysis of the marginal markings and annotations Nietzsche made to the works of Emerson in his personal library, the book offers a philosophical interpretation of the impact on Nietzsche’s thought of his reading of these works, a reading that began when he was a schoolboy and extended to the final years of his conscious life. The many ideas and sources of inspiration that Nietzsche drew from Emerson can be organized in terms of two main lines of thought. The first line leads in the direction of the development of the individual personality, that is, the achievement of critical thinking, moral autonomy, and original self-expression. The second line of thought is the overcoming of individuality: that is to say, the need to transcend one’s own individual—and thus by definition limited—view of the world by continually confronting and engaging with visions different from one’s own and by putting into question and debating one’s own values and certainties. The image of the strong personality that Nietzsche forms thanks to his reading of Emerson ultimately takes on the appearance of a nomadic subject who is continually passing out of themselves—that is to say, abandoning their own positions and convictions—so as to undergo a constant process of evolution. In other words, the formation of the individual personality takes on the form of a regulative ideal: a goal that can never be said to have been definitively and once and for all attained.


Author(s):  
T. M. Rudavsky

Of the many philosophical perplexities facing medieval Jewish thinkers, perhaps none has challenged religious belief as much as God’s creation of the world. No Jewish philosopher denied the importance of creation, that the world had a beginning (bereshit). But like their Christian and Muslim counterparts, Jewish thinkers did not always agree upon what qualifies as an acceptable model of creation. Chapter 6 is devoted to attempts of Jewish philosophers to reconcile the biblical view of creation with Greek and Islamic philosophy. By understanding the notion of creation and how an eternal, timeless creator created a temporal universe, we may begin to understand how the notions of eternity, emanation, and the infinite divisibility of time function within the context of Jewish philosophical theories of creation.


Geoheritage ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Crofts ◽  
Dan Tormey ◽  
John E. Gordon

AbstractThis paper introduces newly published guidelines on geoheritage conservation in protected and conserved areas within the “IUCN WCPA Best Practice Guidelines” series. It explains the need for the guidelines and outlines the ethical basis of geoheritage values and geoconservation principles as the fundamental framework within which to advance geoheritage conservation. Best practice in establishing and managing protected and conserved areas for geoconservation is described with examples from around the world. Particular emphasis is given to the methodology and practice for dealing with the many threats to geoheritage, highlighting in particular how to improve practice for areas with caves and karst, glacial and periglacial, and volcanic features and processes, and for palaeontology and mineral sites. Guidance to improve education and communication to the public through modern and conventional means is also highlighted as a key stage in delivering effective geoconservation. A request is made to geoconservation experts to continue to share best practice examples of developing methodologies and best practice in management to guide non-experts in their work. Finally, a number of suggestions are made on how geoconservation can be further promoted.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (14) ◽  
pp. 7463
Author(s):  
Ismat Majeed ◽  
Komal Rizwan ◽  
Ambreen Ashar ◽  
Tahir Rasheed ◽  
Ryszard Amarowicz ◽  
...  

The Mimosa genus belongs to the Fabaceae family of legumes and consists of about 400 species distributed all over the world. The growth forms of plants belonging to the Mimosa genus range from herbs to trees. Several species of this genus play important roles in folk medicine. In this review, we aimed to present the current knowledge of the ethnogeographical distribution, ethnotraditional uses, nutritional values, pharmaceutical potential, and toxicity of the genus Mimosa to facilitate the exploitation of its therapeutic potential for the treatment of human ailments. The present paper consists of a systematic overview of the scientific literature relating to the genus Mimosa published between 1931 and 2020, which was achieved by consulting various databases (Science Direct, Francis and Taylor, Scopus, Google Scholar, PubMed, SciELO, Web of Science, SciFinder, Wiley, Springer, Google, The Plant Database). More than 160 research articles were included in this review regarding the Mimosa genus. Mimosa species are nutritionally very important and several species are used as feed for different varieties of chickens. Studies regarding their biological potential have shown that species of the Mimosa genus have promising pharmacological properties, including antimicrobial, antioxidant, anticancer, antidiabetic, wound-healing, hypolipidemic, anti-inflammatory, hepatoprotective, antinociceptive, antiepileptic, neuropharmacological, toxicological, antiallergic, antihyperurisemic, larvicidal, antiparasitic, molluscicidal, antimutagenic, genotoxic, teratogenic, antispasmolytic, antiviral, and antivenom activities. The findings regarding the genus Mimosa suggest that this genus could be the future of the medicinal industry for the treatment of various diseases, although in the future more research should be carried out to explore its ethnopharmacological, toxicological, and nutritional attributes.


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