Pascal on Happiness

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 8-19
Author(s):  
Michael Moriarty
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Motive Force ◽  
Underlying Condition ◽  
Authentic Happiness

Pascal sees happiness (bonheur) as the ultimate goal of all human activity, but argues that experience shows it to be unattainable; our underlying condition is unhappiness. In the immediate, he argues, human activities are forms of diversion or distraction, by which we seek to screen from ourselves our unhappiness and mortality and to gratify our vanity. This analysis omits the role of pleasure, which he elsewhere identifies as the motive force of all volition. In order to reconcile this anomaly, we need to distinguish between the motive of our actions, the ultimate end they have in view, and the Supreme Good. The motive of our actions is pleasure, their ultimate end happiness, and the Supreme Good God, in union with whom authentic happiness consists.

COVID-19 and Comorbidities: is Inflammation the Underlying Condition in Children? A narrative Review

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giulia Pinna ◽  
Lavinia Sanfilippo ◽  
Pier Paolo Bassareo ◽  
Vassilios Fanos ◽  
Maria Antonietta Marcialis
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factor ◽  
Severe Form ◽  
Narrative Review ◽  
Underlying Condition ◽  
Pathogenic Mechanisms ◽  
Associated Diseases ◽  
Potential Link

: This paper examines the potential link between COVID-19 and the presence of comorbidities and assesses the role of inflammation in this correlation. In COVID-19 patients, the most frequently associated diseases share a pathogenic inflammatory basis and apparently act as a risk factor in the onset of a more severe form of the disease, particularly in adulthood. However, in children, the understanding of the underlying pathogenic mechanisms is often complicated by the milder symptoms presented. A series of theories have therefore been put forward with a view of providing a better understanding of the role played by inflammation in this dramatic setting. All evidence available to date on this topic is discussed in this review.

scholarly journals Fluvial Geomorphology and River Management

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 1608
Author(s):  
Salvatore Ivo Giano
Keyword(s):  
Human Activities ◽  
River Restoration ◽  
Fluvial Geomorphology ◽  
Landscape Evolution ◽  
River Management ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Fluvial Systems ◽  
The Impact

This Special Issue deals with the role of fluvial geomorphology in landscape evolution and the impact of human activities on fluvial systems, which require river restoration and management [...]

Assessing the relative role of climate change and human activities in sandy desertification of Ordos region, China

2009 ◽  
Vol 52 (6) ◽  
pp. 855-868 ◽  
Author(s):  
DuanYang Xu ◽  
XiangWu Kang ◽  
ZhiLi Liu ◽  
DaFang Zhuang ◽  
JianJun Pan
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Relative Role ◽  
Sandy Desertification

scholarly journals The role of cultural practices in the emergence of modern human intelligence

2008 ◽  
Vol 363 (1499) ◽  
pp. 2011-2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin Hutchins
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Human Intelligence ◽  
Symbolic Representations ◽  
High Level ◽  
Human Brains

Innate cognitive capacities are orchestrated by cultural practices to produce high-level cognitive processes. In human activities, examples of this phenomenon range from everyday inferences about space and time to the most sophisticated reasoning in scientific laboratories. A case is examined in which chimpanzees enter into cultural practices with humans (in experiments) in ways that appear to enable them to engage in symbol-mediated thought. Combining the cultural practices perspective with the theories of embodied cognition and enactment suggests that the chimpanzees' behaviour is actually mediated by non-symbolic representations. The possibility that non-human primates can engage in cultural practices that give them the appearance of symbol-mediated thought opens new avenues for thinking about the coevolution of human culture and human brains.

Cytoplasmic streaming in characean cells: role of subcortical fibrils

1980 ◽  
Vol 58 (7) ◽  
pp. 760-765 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eiji Kamitsubo
Keyword(s):  
Electrical Stimulation ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Cytoplasmic Streaming ◽  
Motive Force ◽  
Microbeam Irradiation ◽  
Subcortical Fibrils

Three or four parallel fibrils of ca. 0.1 μm in width attached to each file of chloroplasts in intact internodal cells generate the motive force for cytoplasmic streaming. Experimental evidence for this conclusion is drawn from experiments in which fibrillar motion and streaming are interrupted by centrifugation, microbeam irradiation, and electrical stimulation. The role of Pb2+ in preventing cessation of cytoplasmic streaming after electrical stimulation is interpreted in terms of localized changes in viscosity of the cytoplasm.

scholarly journals Institutional-Political Scenarios for Anthropocene Society

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Hoffman ◽  
P. Devereaux Jennings
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Institutional Theory ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Social Sustainability ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Change Mechanisms ◽  
Main Change

Natural scientists have proposed that humankind has entered a new geologic epoch. Termed the “Anthropocene,” this new reality revolves around the central role of human activity in multiple Earth ecosystems. That challenge requires a rethinking of social science explanations of organization and environment relationships. In this article, we discuss the need to politicize institutional theory as a means understanding “Anthropocene Society,” and in turn what that resultant society means for the Anthropocene in the natural environment. We modify the constitutive elements of institutional orders and a set of main change mechanisms to explore three scenarios around which future Anthropocene Societies might be built—Collapsing Systems, Market Rules, and Cultural Re-Enlightenment. Simultaneously, we use observations from the Anthropocene to expose limitations in present institutional theory and propose extensions to remedy them. Overall, this article challenges organizational scholars to consider a new paradigm under which research in environmental sustainability and social sustainability takes place.

scholarly journals Interactions of haemoglobin with the Neisseria meningitidis receptor HpuAB: the role of TonB and an intact proton motive force

2002 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. H. Rohde ◽  
A. F. Gillaspy ◽  
M. D. Hatfield ◽  
L. A. Lewis ◽  
D. W. Dyer
Keyword(s):  
Neisseria Meningitidis ◽  
Proton Motive Force ◽  
Motive Force

scholarly journals SEA LEVEL CHANGES ALONG THE COASTS OF KEA ISLAND AND PALEOGEOGRAPHICAL COASTAL RECONSTRUCTION OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 453 ◽  
Author(s):  
N.D Mourtzas
Keyword(s):  
Sea Level ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Sea Level Changes ◽  
Coastal Morphology ◽  
Sea Levels

Sea level changes during the Upper Holocene submerged the coasts of Kea in three different phases about 5.50m, 3.90m and 1.50m respectively below the contemporary sea level thus causing sea transgression along the shores of Kea, which varied from 8m to 78m depending on the coastal morphology. These changes caused the alteration of the earlier morphology at coastal archaeological sites of the Island, as the prehistoric settlement of Ayia Irini and Classical period port of Karthaia, as well as, submerged under the sea areas of coastal human activity during antiquity, as the ancient schist quarry at Spathi bay. The study of historical, geomorphological and sedimentological data indicative of previous sea levels allow the paleogeographical reconstruction of the coasts during the period of human activities in these areas.

scholarly journals Physiological cost as a factor determining the effectiveness of human activity in the visual images reproduction

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-261
Author(s):  
M. A Merkulova ◽  
M. M Lapkin
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Physiological Changes ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Physiological Indicators ◽  
Physiological Cost ◽  
Single Approach ◽  
Physiological Value

Physiological value is one of the factors affecting the effectiveness of human activities. Currently, there is no single approach to assess the physiological value of human behavior. The article presents data on the role of the physiological cost of human activity, estimated by the indicators of mathematical analysis of heart rate, in the reproduction of matrix visual images. The article puts forward the position that the physiological cost of activity is an important factor in the formation of unequal performance. At the same time, the physiological cost is reflected not only in shifts in a number of physiological indicators when the subjects perform a particular activity, but in the nature and levels of expression of correlation relationships between indicators of this activity and indicators that reflect physiological changes in the body at the same time.

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