Measuring the Tibetan nation: Anthropometry in 1950s Kalimpong

This article explores the anthropometric survey of 5,000 Tibetans by the ethnographer HRH Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark in the northeast Indian Himalayan town of Kalimpong in the 1950s, as part of the Third Danish Expedition to Central Asia. In the context of the crisis created by the Chinese incursion into Tibet in 1950, which pushed thousands of Tibetans into India, stationary field anthropometry, rather than a mobile expedition, became Prince Peter's principal entry into Tibetan worlds. This article explores the scientific paradigms underpinning his anthropometric survey at a time when anthropology had seemingly moved on theoretically and ethically, the historical conditions and contingencies of Prince Peter's research, and the survey's representations of Tibetan peoples and places. We argue that, while Prince Peter's understanding was in essence primordialist, linking particular peoples to particular places, in practice he took a more modernist approach to ‘Tibetaness’ as contingent upon historical processes. The article concludes by reflecting on the potential significance of this vast and unique collection of historic anthropometric data for Tibetans today.

Microbial genetic resources in food security to face COVID-19 pandemic

<p>COVID-19 has had an impact on the regional and worldwide agricultural value chain, jeopardizing food security. It is time to reassess the approach of the agri-food sector and to consider that the food supply and plant health, as agrosystemic services, must depend on strategies with a low impact on productive and environmental assets. One strategy is the use and optimization of microbial genetic resources (MGR) related to agroecosystems as a source of balance, functionality, productivity, inhibition of the impact of pests and pathogens, and contribution to the profitability of agri-food activity. It is necessary to strengthen and develop regional agricultural systems that are dynamic, that mitigate damages to the environment and produce nutritional and nutraceutical foods that ensure human health. Agricultural sciences are undergoing changes in scientific paradigms that will benefit the agri-food sector if we are able to learn from the impacts of an extensive technological agriculture. Approaching agriculture from an agro-systemic point of view in which the crop-community is the functional biological unit of study and to preserve the MGR diversity are the greatest challenges to create sustainable and resilient strategies and technologies that contribute towards human health and help prevent risks during health crises such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.</p>

Developing new ways to listen: the value of narrative approaches in empirical (bio)ethics

The use of qualitative research in empirical bioethics is becoming increasingly popular, but its implementation comes with several challenges, such as difficulties in aligning moral epistemology and methods. In this paper, we describe some problems that empirical bioethics researchers may face; these problems are related to a tension between the different poles on the spectrum of scientific paradigms, namely a positivist and interpretive stance. We explore the ideas of narrative construction, ‘genres’ in medicine and dominant discourses in relation to empirical research. We also reflect on the loss of depth and context that may occur with thematic or content analyses of interviews, and discuss the need for transparency about methodologies in empirical bioethics. Drawing on insights from narrative approaches in the social sciences and the clinical-educational discipline of Narrative Medicine, we further clarify these problems and suggest a narrative approach to qualitative interviewing in empirical bioethics that enables researchers to ‘listen (and read) in new ways’. We then show how this approach was applied in the first author’s research project about euthanasia decision-making. In addition, we stress the important ethical task of scrutinizing methodologies and meta-ethical standpoints, as they inevitably impact empirical outcomes and corresponding ethical judgments. Finally, we raise the question whether a ‘diagnostic’, rather than a ‘problem-solving’, mindset could and should be foregrounded in empirical ethics, albeit without losing a commitment to ethics’ normative task, and suggest further avenues for theorizing about listening and epistemic (in)justice in relation to empirical (bio)ethics.

Decolonising Climate Change: A Call for Beyond-Human Imaginaries and Knowledge Generation

This article calls for transdisciplinary, experimental, and decolonial imaginations of climate change and Pacific futures in an age of great planetary undoing. Drawing from our personal and academic knowledge of the Pacific from West Papua to Samoa, we highlight the need for radical forms of imagination that are grounded in an ethos of inclusivity, participation, and humility. Such imaginations must account for the perspectives, interests, and storied existences of both human and beyond-human communities of life across their multiple and situated contexts, along with their co-constitutive relations. We invite respectful cross-pollination across Indigenous epistemologies, secular scientific paradigms, and transdisciplinary methodologies in putting such an imagination into practice. In doing so, we seek to destabilise the prevailing hegemony of secular science over other ways of knowing and being in the world. We draw attention to the consequential agency of beyond-human lifeforms in shaping local and global worlds and to the power of experimental, emplaced storytelling in conveying the lively and lethal becoming-withs that animate an unevenly shared and increasingly vulnerable planet. The wisdom of our kindred plants, animals, elements, mountains, forests, oceans, rivers, skies, and ancestors are part of this story. Finally, we reflect on the structural challenges in decolonising climate change and associated forms of knowledge production in light of past and ongoing thefts of sovereignty over lands, bodies, and ecosystems across the tropics.

Commentary: Content-Free Awareness: EEG-fcMRI Correlates of Consciousness as Such in an Expert Meditator

The search for minimal neuronal requirements for consciousness rests on the premise that there exists a unique state of the human brain, the conscious state, that if one carefully excludes all the confounding cognitive functions, one will be able to isolate those regions that are involved in generating consciousness itself; nothing more, nothing less. I have argued elsewhere (Rahimian, 2021) why this view is deeply flawed and is based on unjustified assumptions mainly from folk psychology. Here I focus on some issues that arise while pursuing such assumptions in scientific paradigms.

Kesempurnaan sebagai Orientasi Keilmuan dalam Teosofi Suhrawardi Al-Maqtul

Knowledge and science are central issues in epistemological debates. The paradigm of knowledge will imply on the methods and means that are used to achieve truth. The social contexts which influence the tradition of thought have also a strong impact on the construction of scientific paradigms. Different social contexts is the reason why the western and eastern scientific paradigms are considered to have different characteristics. In the tradition of eastern thought there are various opinions on scientific paradigm. One of which is from the perspective of Suhrawardi Al-Maqtul. By using the hermeneutic method, the author attempts to answer the question how is the concept of science and its characteristics from the perspective of Suhrawardi and what are the methods and the orientation of science that used by the perspective of Mazhab Al-Isyraqiyyah that Suhrawardi Al-Maqtul created. The paper proposes that the concept of science in Suhrawardi’s thought resulted from syncretism of various previous eastern thoughts. Suhrawardi understood the plurality of methods that can be used, namely the burhani method with ratio and evidence, as well as the irfani method that comes from intuition. The method must be suitable for the objects of study, which is Suhrawardi’s, encompasses not only aspects of the physical world but also the non-physical supra-worldly. The orientation of this thought is not only to achieve the validity of knowledge but to achieve the perfection of knowledge or the transformation from the dark to the light of knowledge.

A TALE OF TWO SCIENTIFIC PARADIGMS: CONFLICTING SCIENTIFIC OPINIONS ON WHAT “FOLLOWING THE SCIENCE” MEANS FOR SARS-COV-2 AND THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments have adopted responses revolving around the open-ended use of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), including “lockdowns”, “stay-at-home” orders, travel restrictions, mask-wearing, and regulated social distancing. Initially these were introduced with the stated goals of “flattening the curve” of hospital demand and/or the eradication of the virus from the country (i.e., “zero covid” policies). Over time, these goals have shifted to maintaining sufficient NPIs in place until such time as population-wide vaccination programmes have achieved an appropriate level of herd immunity to allow lifting of these measures without excessive hospital demand. Supporters of this approach have claimed to be “following the science”, insisting that criticism of any aspects of these measures is non-scientific or even “scientific misinformation”. This idea that only one set of scientifically valid opinions on COVID-19 exists has encouraged the media, social media and even scientific journals to suppress and/or dismiss any differing scientific opinions as “erroneous”, “discredited” or “debunked”, resulting in discouragement of open-minded scientific inquiry or discussion. Accordingly, in the current article we identify two distinct scientific paradigms to analysing COVID-19 adopted within the medical and scientific community. Paradigm 1 is primarily model-driven, while Paradigm 2 is primarily empirically-driven. Using these two paradigms we have analysed the epidemiological data for 30 northern hemisphere countries (with a total population of 882 million). Remarkably, we find using each paradigm leads to diametrically opposite conclusions on many policy-relevant issues. We discuss how these conflicting results might be reconciled and provide recommendations for scientists and policymakers.

IMPLEMENTATION OF INTERDISCIPLINARITY STRATEGY IN MODERN HIGHER EDUCATION

The relevance of this article is conditioned by socio-economic, innovative and educational transformations in the life of Ukraine, as well as by globalization and European integration processes focused on the integration of our state with the world community, a new interpretation of education as a socio-cultural and axiological phenomenon, the transience and changeability of modern society which objectively cause changes in the vectors of development of all levels of education in the direction of introducing the ideas of interdisciplinary approach in the format of interdisciplinary integration. The purpose of the article is to highlight the essence of the strategy of interdisciplinarity and the areas of its implementation at a modern university. The following research methods have been used: analysis of scientific literature and educational programs, synthesis, comparison, systematization of scientific sources; definitional analysis. The article deals with the objective determinants that condition the feasibility of introducing multidisciplinary strategy in modern higher education. The essence, kinds, types and format of interdisciplinarity have been highlighted. The levels of implementation of interdisciplinary approach in modern higher education have been found out, namely, methodological (a set of scientific paradigms and approaches), scientific and theoretical (the emergence of new interdisciplinary scientific branches); practical (interdisciplinary educational programs for applicants of various levels of education). The article proves scientific and educational potential of multidisciplinarity and its priorities: the interaction of various branches of scientific knowledge in the study of the same object while focusing on their own subject; creating conditions for the implementation of links between different sciences; integration of scientific concepts, theories, information, facts, methods, in order to obtain new, coherent knowledge about the real phenomenon of education; it contributes to the resolution of the contradiction between the disparate assimilation of knowledge and the need for its synthesis.