scholarly journals Médecine, philosophie et révolution scientifique. Une étude bibliographique

Gesnerus ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-203
Author(s):  
Claire Crignon ◽  
Delphine Antoine-Mahut

This article examines the place that has been reserved for medicine in the historiography of the sciences. More precisely, it focuses on the motifs that have lead historians of science to grant only a minor role to medicine within the movement commonly designated by the notion of the “scientific revolution”. Among those motifs, the persistent and late application of teleological schemas in the thinking of the biological and the difficulties in “mathematizing” anatomy are often invoked. Starting with an overview of the critical literature on the topic, this bibliographical essay shows how the situation has changed over the last decades. The opposition between, on the one hand, the physical sciences founded on a model of mechanistic explanation of nature and, on the other hand, the life sciences that remained guided by a finalist mode of thinking are today much put into question. What we find today is more open reflection on the diversity of “models” for understanding the living, and on how to integrate them into more complex schemas than those that simply oppose mechanism and teleology. The essay is finally based on discussions and debates among medical doctors and philosophers in the modern period, and insists on the importance of studying this “medico-philosophical” tradition in order to avoid reconstructing a posteriori a mythical history that trends to consecrate a single model of rationality.

1958 ◽  
Vol 02 (05/06) ◽  
pp. 462-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Verstraete ◽  
Patricia A. Clark ◽  
Irving S. Wright

SummaryAn analysis of the results of prothrombin time tests with different types of thromboplastins sheds some light on the problem why the administration of coumarin is difficult to standardize in different centers. Our present ideas on the subject, based on experimental data may be summarized as follows.Several factors of the clotting mechanism are influenced by coumarin derivatives. The action of some of these factors is by-passed in the 1-stage prothrombin time test. The decrease of the prothrombin and factor VII levels may be evaluated in the 1-stage prothrombin time determination (Quick-test). The prolongation of the prothrombin times are, however, predominantly due to the decrease of factor VII activity, the prothrombin content remaining around 50 per cent of normal during an adequate anticoagulant therapy. It is unlikely that this degree of depression of prothrombin is of major significance in interfering with the coagulation mechanism in the protection against thromboembolism. It may, however, play a minor role, which has yet to be evaluated quantitatively. An exact evaluation of factor VII is, therefore, important for the guidance of anticoagulant therapy and the method of choice is the one which is most sensitive to changes in factor VII concentration. The 1-stage prothrombin time test with a rabbit lung thromboplastin seems the most suitable method because rabbit brain preparations exhibit a factor VII-like activity that is not present in rabbit lung preparations.


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christel Björkstrand

This paper is an interdisciplinary analysis of Friedrich Schiller’s play Wilhelm Tell (1804). An initial study of its dramatic structure suggests a change in the relationship between the Swiss peasants and nobles. A further analysis, based on Brown’s and Levinson’s politeness theory confirms the development of a social utopia in the play, but also reveals that Wilhelm Tell plays a minor role in the social development described. The comparison of the play with earlier versions of the Tell legend highlights the roles of peasants and nobles in the establishment of the Swiss Confederation and suggests that Schiller elaborated extensively on the idea of a ‘common ground’ among the Swiss from different classes. The comparison between Schiller’s play and the contemporary German philosopher Johann Benjamin Erhard’s essay Über das Recht des Volks zu einer Revolution illustrates that Schiller’s social utopia develops in accordance with contemporary social visions. However, Tell’s act of murder separates him from the other Swiss protagonists in Schiller’s attempt to outline a righteous revolution, different from the one in France.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-128
Author(s):  
Łukasz Duśko ◽  
Mateusz Szurman

Recently, the role of the victim in criminal proceedings became more significant. An observation was made that the legal interests of the victim are much more severely affected by the crime than the collective legal interests in the form of public or social order. However, the differences in the rights the victim is vested with differ substantively between particular countries. The authors present the position of the victim in American, English and French law. The solutions provided for in these systems are confronted with legal regulations adopted in Poland, i.e. the home country of the authors. It shows, surprisingly, that the role of the victim in criminal proceedings has evolved somehow independently of the implementation of the concept of restitution. On the one hand, there are legal systems in which the criminal court may order the offender to pay compensation for the damage caused, but the role of the victim still remains marginal. On the other hand, there are systems in which the victim is not only entitled to receive restitution, but he or she also has significant powers which enable him or her to play an active role in the criminal proceedings.


1978 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 61 ◽  
Author(s):  
PM Bremner ◽  
HM Rawson

The work reported here was done to explore the extent to which the mature weight of a grain is determined by (i) its potential for growth, defined as its intrinsic capacity to accumulate dry matter, and (ii) the resistance to assimilate transport imposed by the vascular system of the ear. Estimation of growth potential was attempted by observing the effects of systematic patterns of grain removal on the mature weights of grains remaining, these being compared with weights of matched grains from intact ears. Resistance to transport of assimilate was inferred from the apparent order of priority between grains for the supply of assimilate, as revealed by comparing their weights when assimilate supply was either normal, or reduced by plant shading. When neighbouring grains were removed, those remaining usually grew larger to an extent that indicated growth potential appreciably in excess of that utilized in intact ears under the most favourable conditions. Although grains within a spikelet of an intact ear attain quite different weights, the experiments suggested that their differing potentials for growth seemed to play only a minor role in this, and that the major influence was the relative ease with which assimilate could reach the grains; this depended largely on the distance of the grains from the spike rachis. Comparing between spikelets, the difference found in intact ears between grains in the same spikelet location tended to persist when some grains were removed from each spikelet, indicating a possible role of growth potential as a controlling influence. This may be partly due to the sequence of morphogenesis, established as early as the double ridge stage. Although the removal of competing grains within a spikelet usually enhanced the growth of the one remaining, this was not always so; there was evidence from one experiment that removal of competing grains towards the spikelet apex represented the removal of some beneficial influence. The bearing of the results on possible limitations to grain yield are discussed.


2008 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 555-561 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Zima ◽  
J. Makinia ◽  
M. Swinarski ◽  
K. Czerwionka

This paper presents effects of dispersion on predicting longitudinal ammonia concentration profiles in activated sludge bioreactor located at “Wschod” WWTP in Gdansk. The aim of this study was to use the one-dimensional advection-dispersion Equation (ADE) to simulate the flow conditions (based on the inert tracer concentrations in selected points) and longitudinal profile of reactive pollutant (based on the ammonia concentration profiles in selected points). The simulation results were compared with the predictions obtained using a traditional “tanks-in-series” (TIS) approach, commonly used in designing biological reactors. The use of dispersion coefficient calculated from an empirical formula resulted in substantial differences in the tracer concentration distributions in two sampling points in the bioreactor. Simulations using the one-dimensional ADE and TIS model, with the nitrification rate incorporated as the source term, revealed that the hydraulic model plays a minor role compared to the biochemical transformations in predicting the longitudinal ammonia concentration profiles.


1988 ◽  
Vol 116 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Pirouz ◽  
F. Ernst ◽  
T. T. Cheng

AbstractIn the growth of thin films of compound semiconductors on (001) silicon substrates by vapor deposition techniques, it is usual to employ a two-step process. In this method, an initial (buffer) layer is first grown at a relatively low temperature; once a continuous film has formed on the substrate, its temperature is raised for the subsequent bulk growth. Carrying out the growth in a one-step process by heating the substrate to the final temperature before allowing the gases into the CVD reactor usually results in a polycrystalline aggregate. In this paper, classical nucleation and growth mechanisms are used to explain-the reasons for the different morphology of the one-step and two-step growth films.The heteroepitaxial films on (001) silicon often contain a high density of stacking faults and twins. The occurrence of these planar defects is usually attributed to stresses that arise from lattice mismatch and/or thermal mismatch (differences in coefficients of thermal expansion) between the substrate and the epilayer. It is argued that, in fact, mismatch stresses play a minor role in the generation of planar defects. Instead, an alternative mechanism for their formation is proposed which is based on the facetted shape of nuclei and errors in stacking of {111} planes which occur during deposition on the facets.Conventional and high resolution transmission electron microscopy have been used to investigate three systems grown by CVD or MOCVD: SiC/Si, GaAs/Si and GaP/Si. These systems have different lattice and thermal mismatches, and the results support the proposed model for the formation of defects.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Jonathan Ehret ◽  
Andrea Bönsch ◽  
Lukas Aspöck ◽  
Christine T. Röhr ◽  
Stefan Baumann ◽  
...  

For conversational agents’ speech, either all possible sentences have to be prerecorded by voice actors or the required utterances can be synthesized. While synthesizing speech is more flexible and economic in production, it also potentially reduces the perceived naturalness of the agents among others due to mistakes at various linguistic levels. In our article, we are interested in the impact of adequate and inadequate prosody, here particularly in terms of accent placement, on the perceived naturalness and aliveness of the agents. We compare (1) inadequate prosody, as generated by off-the-shelf text-to-speech (TTS) engines with synthetic output; (2) the same inadequate prosody imitated by trained human speakers; and (3) adequate prosody produced by those speakers. The speech was presented either as audio-only or by embodied, anthropomorphic agents, to investigate the potential masking effect by a simultaneous visual representation of those virtual agents. To this end, we conducted an online study with 40 participants listening to four different dialogues each presented in the three Speech levels and the two Embodiment levels. Results confirmed that adequate prosody in human speech is perceived as more natural (and the agents are perceived as more alive) than inadequate prosody in both human (2) and synthetic speech (1). Thus, it is not sufficient to just use a human voice for an agents’ speech to be perceived as natural—it is decisive whether the prosodic realisation is adequate or not. Furthermore, and surprisingly, we found no masking effect by speaker embodiment, since neither a human voice with inadequate prosody nor a synthetic voice was judged as more natural, when a virtual agent was visible compared to the audio-only condition. On the contrary, the human voice was even judged as less “alive” when accompanied by a virtual agent. In sum, our results emphasize, on the one hand, the importance of adequate prosody for perceived naturalness, especially in terms of accents being placed on important words in the phrase, while showing, on the other hand, that the embodiment of virtual agents plays a minor role in the naturalness ratings of voices.


2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
Chris Reyns-Chikuma

On the one hand, there is a great number of « national » fictions. To various degrees (patriotic, nationalistic) and consciously or not, these fictions participate in the construction of a nation. On the other hand, there are also a lot of fictions that we can characterize as cosmopolitan or postnational and which are situated outside any clear national boundaries. On the contrary, one can count very few fictions on the construction of a European supranationality. To my knowledge, Constellation by Alain Lacroix (2008) is the only one in French and that is the one I am going to write about in this essay. My goal here is threefold. It is first to show that although the interpreter seems to play a minor role (according to the number of pages) and although she is apparently considered an insignificant quantity by both male protagonists, as her regular and obsessive return in the text proves it she is actually important since she haunts the characters sexually and ideologically. I will also show that this haunting spreads through the whole novel through the issue of the interpretation of signs. The second goal is to show that the interpreter, who is explicitly presented as an impersonation of Europe, actually incarnates the ambivalence of any « europeanist » project. She is indeed a bridge not only between two languages & cultures but also between both faces of any European policy. The first one, concrete, tries to incorporate the real life of the Europeans, their daily concerns which themselves are often inscribed within their « national habitus», and the other one to exceed it within a transnational project which is often perceived as too abstract. Finally, I will conclude showing how Constellation “foreignizes” (Venuti, 2008, 6) its translation of the European realities, not by its choices but by the choice of avant-garde esthetic techniques.


Behaviour ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 104 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 300-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthijs B.H. Schilder

AbstractThe relationships between 4-5 adult zebra stallions, living in a safari park, were investigated over a period of 5 years. Asymmetries in the distributions of a number of behaviours could be explained by adopting dominance as an intervening variable. Dominance in stallions was of a bipolar nature with on the one hand behaviours representing subordinance and defence, and on the other hand behaviours reinforcing and confirming dominance. Expression of formal dominance seems to play a minor role. The dyadic relationships of stallions differed as to the number of behaviours reflecting dominance relationships. Although often linear rank-orders could be constructed, these rank-orders were not necessarily identical. This means that the concept of dominance is of only limited value for describing relationships between zebra stallions.


2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jürgen Gerhards ◽  
Silke Hans ◽  
Michael Mutz

Abstract Pierre Bourdieu’s work has argued that there is a homology of social classes on the one hand and cultural consumption on the other. In contrast, theories of individualisation posit that social class plays only a minor role in shaping lifestyle in contemporary societies. In this paper we examine a) how much contemporary highbrow lifestyles in 27 European countries are structured by class membership, b) the extent to which highbrow consumption varies according to the level of modernisation of a society and c) whether the explanatory power of social class in relation to highbrow consumption decreases in more modernised European countries. The findings show that highbrow lifestyles are strongly influenced by social class, and that highbrow consumption is more common in more modernised societies. Moreover, the findings confirm the hypothesis that the formative power of social class on lifestyle decreases in highly modernised societies, albeit without disappearing completely.


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