DOCSLIB.ORG

A Vital Science1

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
A Vital Science1 A VITAL SCIENCE1 -Jack R. Holt A DISCUSSION Throw theory into the fire; it only spoils life. -Mikhail Bakunin, 1842 Some years ago I was asked to lead a faculty discussion about a book dealing with a biological subject. Silly me. I thought that the exchange would be fairly cursory, and that I would end up answering questions about biology. Instead, after an initial discussion and explanation of terms, several who objected to the book and its message because it was reductionist assailed me. This response took me by surprise because I had heard about this view and studied it in a course on the History of Science. I was intrigued to hear such anachronisms. I would have assumed that the whole exchange was tongue-in-cheek, except that the vocal participants were so passionate. Then, one of them (who retired from the university not long afterwards) in a patronizing tone advised me that I would never understand the real mystery of life until I adopted a more holistic view and rejected the notion that biology could be reduced to chemistry and physics. The theory that my antagonist defended was called vitalism. Since the time of Aristotle, it was believed that life and non-life were fundamentally different. They were so different that Georg Ernst Stahl (1660-1734) declared that living things were not governed by physical laws but by laws or principles that are unique to life and the products of life. Adding heat could destroy the vital force. For example, a living branch of a tree could have its vital force removed by burning and its products (carbon dioxide, water, etc.) rendered non-living. This separation is still apparent in the division of Organic and Inorganic Chemistry. The concept of vitalism persisted in the science of biology and medicine well into the 19th century. WHEN IS IT SCIENCE? All this made me feel that, to everyone of the main problems, I had better answers – more coherent answers - than they had. -Karl Popper Philosopher of Science Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994; see Figure 1) struggled with the question of science and what separates science from pseudoscience. He recognized that pseudoscience could sometimes be right and that science could be in error. What makes theory scientific? He cast about for a measure and found it in the way in which the theory was presented and explained phenomena. In particular, Popper rejected the idea that scientific theories could be proven or even verified. He said what makes a theory scientifically valid is that it can be shown false or falsified. This, he thought was the fundamental attribute of science and that which separated science from pseudoscience. Consider the rival theories of vitalism and mechanism in the 18th century and evaluate them them with Popper’s falsification requirement. The Mechanist theory was a view that there was no fundamental difference between life and non-life and that all of nature existed on a continuum from inorganic to organic. A prediction of the mechanists was 1 This is a revision of an essay that I wrote in 1998 and published in a collection called Paths of Science in 2001. 1 that spontaneous generation of life should occur often. The microscope had been invented and very tiny things were observed in drops of water and scrapings from teeth. Surely, things as simple as these could appear spontaneously. We all see this spontaneous generation as bread goes moldy and forgotten soup in the refrigerator turns cloudy and begins to stink as it teems with bacteria. FIGURE 1. Sir Karl Popper The Vitalist prediction was that the mold and microbes appeared only because they came from spores that fell from the air or were not killed by the boiling. That is, spontaneous generation was not possible. Experiments had been performed in which beef or mutton broth were boiled and then sealed. John Needham (1713-1781) performed the first such experiment or test of the Vitalist theory. He boiled meat broth, sealed it, and the sealed broth began to turn cloudy. He used this as a confirmation of spontaneous generation. An Italian named Lazarro Spallanzani (1729-1799) objected and said that Needham did not boil the broth long enough. Spallanzani repeated the experiment but boiled the broth for nearly 2 hours before he sealed the flasks. This time, the broth did not become cloudy. Mechanists like Needham said that Spallanzani boiled the flask so long that he destroyed the vital principle in the air and so spontaneous generation could not occur. Needham’s objection seemed almost vitalistic. In Popper’s view, the Mechanist theory could be scientific, but its proponents did not set clear boundaries to demonstrate that they were false. The theory seemed to be true regardless of the outcomes. So, it failed Popper’s most important test. All scientific theories must be falsifiable. NORMAL OR REVOLUTIONARY? A scientific theory is usually felt to be better than its predecessors not only in the sense that it is a better instrument for discovering and solving puzzles but also because it is somehow a better representation of what nature is really like. -Thomas S. Kuhn (1970) In a mild rebuttal to this idea, another philosopher of science named Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996; see Figure 2) said that scientists work to confirm their theories, not to disprove them. In fact it runs counter to human nature to expect otherwise. He describes normal science as an activity of puzzle-solving. In this, scientists accumulate data and 2 information as it is important within the context of a major theory or paradigm. Vitalism is an example of such a paradigm. FIGURE 2. Thomas S. Kuhn Sometimes, in the period of normal science, rival paradigms will arise (as in our example of mechanism vs. vitalism). Scientists then choose the paradigm that helps to better explain the phenomena explored by the theory. Scientists like Einstein, Newton, Darwin, and Mendel were revolutionaries. The hundreds of contemporary scientists who worked in the normal science mode as puzzle-solvers are much less well known. Revolutionaries make a better story. As in political revolutions, scientific revolutionaries sometimes end as intellectual martyrs. Such was the case of Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865; see Figure 3), a Hungarian born physician who came to the hospital of Vienna as a trainee in the obstetrics ward from 1844-1848. The hospital had two different birthing wards. The First Maternity Ward was staffed by physicians and the Second Ward by midwives. That said, he was disturbed by the disparity in death rate between the two wards. Women in The First Ward suffered a death rate of 6.8-11.2% due to an infection called Childbed Fever. The Second Ward had a death rate of only 2-2.5% in the same period. It seemed to Semmelweis that the cause for this could be found and treated. Also, he was certain that the problem represented a difference in the two wards. So, he set about trying a long list of tests. He tried having women deliver on their sides. He changed the route that the priest walked as he went to give last rites to a dying patient (in case the presence of the priest scared the women to death). He was nearly ready to give up when he went to Venice for a vacation to clear his head and attempt to think through the problem. Upon his return to Venice, he learned that the head of Forensic Surgery named Kolletschka had died of all the symptoms of Childbed Fever. This had come on him after he cut himself with a knife during an autopsy. Semmelweis reasoned that Kolletschka had introduced cadaverous (dead) tissue into his bloodstream thereby transmitting the disease to him. Similarly, women in the First Ward were attended to by medical interns who had spent the morning dissecting cadavers. If they carried any "cadaverous" material on their hands or under fingernails, they could transmit the disease to women who had given birth. In 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis instituted a policy of thoroughly washing hands before seeing patients in the First Ward. Quickly, the death rate dropped from more than 12% to less than 2% in the same year. 3 FIGURE 3. Ignaz Semmelweis Semmelweis had pursued a puzzle and solved it. Indeed, he seemed almost revolutionary. However, the physicians were not impressed. By 1848 he was expelled from the hospital, and he finally ended his days in an Insane Assylum where he died. The cause of his death was somewhat mysterious and he may have been the victim of murder. Why didn’t medicine follow his lead? Mainly because the "theory" of Semmelweis did not explain anything. He made certain changes and the death rate dropped. What was the connection? How could the transmission of cadaverous material cause disease? GERM THEORY An investigator with the standard medical view in mind, let alone one with a brain swept clean of all pre-hypotheses, could never have developed the whole concept of infecting microbes from the small evidence with which Pasteur began. -David Bodanis (1988) Louis Pasteur (1822-1895; see Figure 4) had an undistinguished career as a student and received his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1847, the same year as Semmelweis’ discovery. He had a short temper with a somewhat arrogant air about him. Still, he was a genius at cranking out ideas. Through the 1850’s he began to work on fermentation. Also, during this time he finally laid to rest the concept of spontaneous generation by a set of brilliantly conceived demonstrations that built on the work of Spallanzani.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Return of Vitalism: Canguilhem and French Biophilosophy in the 1960S
    The Return of Vitalism: Canguilhem and French Biophilosophy in the 1960s Charles T. Wolfe Unit for History and Philosophy of Science University of Sydney [email protected] Abstract The eminent French biologist and historian of biology, François Jacob, once notoriously declared ―On n‘interroge plus la vie dans les laboratoires‖1: laboratory research no longer inquires into the notion of ‗Life‘. Nowadays, as David Hull puts it, ―both scientists and philosophers take ontological reduction for granted… Organisms are ‗nothing but‘ atoms, and that is that.‖2 In the mid-twentieth century, from the immediate post-war period to the late 1960s, French philosophers of science such as Georges Canguilhem, Raymond Ruyer and Gilbert Simondon returned to Jacob‘s statement with an odd kind of pathos: they were determined to reverse course. Not by imposing a different kind of research program in laboratories, but by an unusual combination of historical and philosophical inquiry into the foundations of the life sciences (particularly medicine, physiology and the cluster of activities that were termed ‗biology‘ in the early 1800s). Even in as straightforwardly scholarly a work as La formation du concept de réflexe aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (1955), Canguilhem speaks oddly of ―defending vitalist biology,‖ and declares that Life cannot be grasped by logic (or at least, ―la vie déconcerte la logique‖). Was all this historical and philosophical work merely a reassertion of ‗mysterian‘, magical vitalism? In order to answer this question we need to achieve some perspective on Canguilhem‘s ‗vitalism‘, notably with respect to its philosophical influences such as Kurt Goldstein.
    [Show full text]
  • Vitalism and the Scientific Image: an Introduction
    Vitalism and the scientific image: an introduction Sebastian Normandin and Charles T. Wolfe Vitalism and the scientific image in post-Enlightenment life science, 1800-2010 Edited by Sebastian Normandin and Charles T. Wolfe Springer, forthcoming 2013 To undertake a history of vitalism at this stage in the development of the ‘biosciences’, theoretical and other, is a stimulating prospect. We have entered the age of ‘synthetic’ life, and our newfound capacities prompt us to consider new levels of analysis and understanding. At the same time, it is possible to detect a growing level of interest in vitalistic and organismic themes, understood in a broadly naturalistic context and approached, not so much from broader cultural concerns as in the early twentieth century, as from scientific interests – or interests lying at the boundaries or liminal spaces of what counts as ‘science’.1 The challenge of understanding or theorizing vitalism in the era of the synthetic is not unlike that posed by early nineteenth-century successes in chemistry allowing for the synthesis of organic compounds (Wöhler), except that now, whether the motivation is molecular-chemical, embryological or physiological,2 we find ourselves asking fundamental questions anew. What is life? How does it differ from non-living matter? What are the fundamental processes that characterize the living? What philosophical and epistemological considerations are raised by our new understandings?3 We are driven to consider, for example, what metaphors we use to describe living processes as our knowledge of them changes, not least since some of the opprobrium surrounding the term ‘vitalism’ is also a matter of language: of which terms one 1 Gilbert and Sarkar 2000, Laublichler 2000.
    [Show full text]
  • Facing Backwards on the Problem of Consciousness
    JCS-ONLINE http://www.imprint.co.uk/online/HP_dennett.html Facing Backwards on the Problem of Consciousness Daniel C. Dennett Center for Cognitive Studies Tufts University Medford MA 02155 USA Journal of Consciousness Studies, 3 (1), 1996, pp. 4-6 The strategy of divide and conquer is usually an excellent one, but it all depends on how you do the carving. Chalmer's (1995) attempt to sort the `easy' problems of consciousness from the `really hard' problem is not, I think, a useful contribution to research, but a major misdirector of attention, an illusion-generator. How could this be? Let me describe two somewhat similar strategic proposals, and compare them to Chalmers' recommendation. 1. The hard question for vitalism Imagine some vitalist who says to the molecular biologists: The easy problems of life include those of explaining the following phenomena: reproduction, development, growth, metabolism, self-repair, immunological self-defence . These are not all that easy, of course, and it may take another century or so to work out the fine points, but they are easy compared to the really hard problem: life itself. We can imagine something that was capable of reproduction, development, growth, metabolism, self-repair and immunological self-defence, but that wasn't, you know, alive. The residual mystery of life would be untouched by solutions to all the easy problems. In fact, when I read your accounts of life, I am left feeling like the victim of a bait-and-switch. This imaginary vitalist just doesn't see how the solution to all the easy problems amounts to a solution to the imagined hard problem.
    [Show full text]
  • Middle-Ground Pragmatists: the Popularization of Philosophy in American Culture
    284 GeorgeCotkin to have culturalinfluence, then the philosopherhad to make his work accessibleto a widerpublic. The diffusionof suchknowledge was a neces-neces­ saryprecondition for democratic social reconstruction. The popularizationof pragmatism in the period after the First World War helpedto createa new formof pragmatism, "middle-ground" pragmatism. If middlebrowculture attempted to balance demandsfor accessibilitywith qualityand to reconcile authority with democracy, then middle-ground popu-popu­ larpragmatists wanted to retainthe essentials of pragmatism as developedby Dewey whilebeing open to new thinkersand concepts,especially those of GeorgeSantayana and the"tragic sense of life."3While continuing through-through­ outthe mid-mid-1920s 1920s to speakin thefamiliar language of social reconstruction, criticalintelligence, and scientificmethod, middle-ground pragmatists in-in­ creasinglyemphasized a stanceof moderationand distancelater made fa-fa­ mousin WalterLippmann's A Prefaceto Morals (1929). Middle-groundpragmatists also helpedto definethe chastened liberal-liberal­ ismthat dominated American intellectual life in thelate 1940s and 1950s. It has becomea commonplacein chartingthe history of American intellectuals to focuson how ReinholdNiebuhr, Daniel Bell, Lionel Trilling,and others, out of disillusionmentwith Marxism,adopted a new form of liberalism markedby irony, restraint, and disdain for utopian visions of social recon-recon­ struction. Rather than intending to refute the importance of this sea-change in thought,this essay suggests that middle-ground pragmatists antedated the move towardchastened liberalism by well over a decade, without any sustained engagement with radical politics.politics.4 4 Middle-ground pragmatism proved to be an appealing position because it allowed young intellectuals to popularize philosophical ideas and to battle against the insufficiencies of American cultural life in the 1920s.
    [Show full text]
  • Vitalism in Contemporary Chiropractic: a Help Or a Hinderance? J
    Simpson and Young Chiropractic & Manual Therapies (2020) 28:35 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12998-020-00307-8 DEBATE Open Access Vitalism in contemporary chiropractic: a help or a hinderance? J. Keith Simpson1 and Kenneth J. Young2* Abstract Background: Chiropractic emerged in 1895 and was promoted as a viable health care substitute in direct competition with the medical profession. This was an era when there was a belief that one cause and one cure for all disease would be discovered. The chiropractic version was a theory that most diseases were caused by subluxated (slightly displaced) vertebrae interfering with “nerve vibrations” (a supernatural, vital force) and could be cured by adjusting (repositioning) vertebrae, thereby removing the interference with the body’s inherent capacity to heal. DD Palmer, the originator of chiropractic, established chiropractic based on vitalistic principles. Anecdotally, the authors have observed that many chiropractors who overtly claim to be “vitalists” cannot define the term. Therefore, we sought the origins of vitalism and to examine its effects on chiropractic today. Discussion: Vitalism arose out of human curiosity around the biggest questions: Where do we come from? What is life? For some, life was derived from an unknown and unknowable vital force. For others, a vital force was a placeholder, a piece of knowledge not yet grasped but attainable. Developments in science have demonstrated there is no longer a need to invoke vitalistic entities as either explanations or hypotheses for biological phenomena. Nevertheless, vitalism remains within chiropractic. In this examination of vitalism within chiropractic we explore the history of vitalism, vitalism within chiropractic and whether a vitalistic ideology is compatible with the legal and ethical requirements for registered health care professionals such as chiropractors.
    [Show full text]
  • Proceedings of the Vitalism Conference the Lifesource Octagon, a Center for Infinite Thinking Presentsvital Conversations
    Proceedings of the Vitalism Conference The LifeSource Octagon, A Center for Infinite Thinking PresentsVital Conversations Vis Medicatrix Naturae: Stewardship of the Source of Healing Exploring the New Vitalism April 17-18, 2009 1 I Prelude to a Conversation Welcome to the Proceedings document of the inau- truths acknowledged the evident and commanding gural Vital Conversation of the LifeSource Octagon: presence of a power and force that, while perhaps in- A Center for Infinite Thinking. articulate in scientific terms, spoke unending, eloquent volumes through the observable and replicable myster- The subject of this event was developed out of an ies of living processes. awareness of the need to have a new, academically- driven effort that would examine vitalism. The percep- There is a powerful temptation to name this force, this tion of the need for this effort arose from a variety of presence. The act of naming it serves the interests of needs and influences: some provincial to the interests many, but not all. Vitalism is neither cult, nor religion, of specific professions, some more connected to nor the province of any single profession or group. It the awareness of a hunger at a different level, where is, rather, in perhaps its purest form, the most inclu- policy-makers hunger for more complete and sustain- sive method of acknowledgement: acknowledgement able models of health and wellness. of the presence of information and associated data; acknowledgement of the presence of order and pre- The concept of vitalism is ancient, based on ob- sumptive intelligence, and acknowledgement of mys- servational phenomena, a cosmology that served tery.
    [Show full text]
  • Greco, Monica. 2019. Vitalism Now – a Problematic. Theory, Culture & Society, Pp
    Greco, Monica. 2019. Vitalism Now – A Problematic. Theory, Culture & Society, pp. 1-23. ISSN 0263-2764 [Article] https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/26231/ The version presented here may differ from the published, performed or presented work. Please go to the persistent GRO record above for more information. If you believe that any material held in the repository infringes copyright law, please contact the Repository Team at Goldsmiths, University of London via the following email address: [email protected]. The item will be removed from the repository while any claim is being investigated. For more information, please contact the GRO team: [email protected] Vitalism now – A problematic Monica Greco Goldsmiths, University of London New Cross, London SE14 6NW [email protected] Abstract This paper considers whether and how ‘vitalism’ might be considered relevant as a concept today; whether its relevance should be expressed in terms of disciplinary demarcations between the life sciences and the natural sciences; and whether there is a fundamental incompatibility between a 'vitalism of process' and a 'vitalism as pathos' (Osborne, 2016). I argue that the relevance of vitalism as an epistemological and ontological problem concerning the categorical distinction between living and non- living beings must be contextualised historically, and referred exclusively to the epistemic horizon defined by classical physics. In contrast to this, drawing on the philosophies of Canguilhem, Whitehead, and Atlan, I propose an appreciation of the contemporary relevance of vitalism premised on the pathic and indeterminate character of nature as a whole. From this perspective vitalism expresses a politically significant ethos concerning the relationship between life, knowledge, problems and their solutions.
    [Show full text]
  • The Life of the Soul: Vitalism and the Invisible in the Norwegian Fin De Siècle
    The Life of the Soul: Vitalism and the Invisible in the Norwegian Fin de Siècle By Benjamin Arthur Bigelow A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Scandinavian Languages and Literatures and the Designated Emphasis in Film Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Mark Sandberg, Chair Professor Linda H. Rugg Professor Karin Sanders Professor Barbara Spackman Summer 2017 The Life of the Soul: Vitalism and the Invisible in the Norwegian Fin de Siècle © 2017 by Benjamin Arthur Bigelow Abstract The Life of the Soul: Vitalism and the Invisible in the Norwegian Fin de Siècle by Benjamin Arthur Bigelow Doctor of Philosophy in Scandinavian Languages and Literatures Designated Emphasis in Film Studies University of California, Berkeley Professor Mark Sandberg, Chair This dissertation examines the Norwegian literary culture of the 1890s, a decade often described with labels such as nyromantikken [neo-romanticism] and decadence. Rather than perpetuating the conventional literary-historical narrative that the foremost literature of the 1890s represented an absolute break with literary naturalism, I show that naturalist materialism persisted, even as the literary optic was shifted from the realm of social realism to a representation of the inner forces at work within the modern individual. Combined with materialism, this shift in focus from the external to the internal realm resulted in the crucial concept of the embodied soul, a seemingly contradictory combination of ideal and the material that I argue was characteristic of this literary generation. Looking forward to the form of literary and artistic vitalism that became central in Scandinavian culture after the turn of the century, I show how this tendency toward vitalism actually began with the depiction of the material soul in the literature of the 1890s.
    [Show full text]
  • Pseudoscience Versus Science
    W&M ScholarWorks Arts & Sciences Articles Arts and Sciences Winter 11-2016 Pseudoscience versus science Hans Christian von Baeyer College of William and Mary, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/aspubs Recommended Citation von Baeyer, Hans Christian, Pseudoscience versus science (2016). PHYSICS TODAY, 69(11). 10.1063/PT.3.3345 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Arts and Sciences at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Arts & Sciences Articles by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Pseudoscience versus science Hans Christian von Baeyer Citation: Physics Today 69, 11, 11 (2016); doi: 10.1063/PT.3.3345 View online: https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3345 View Table of Contents: http://physicstoday.scitation.org/toc/pto/69/11 Published by the American Institute of Physics Articles you may be interested in Pseudoscience versus science Physics Today 69, 12 (2016); 10.1063/PT.3.3346 Pseudoscience versus science Physics Today 69, 10 (2016); 10.1063/PT.3.3342 Pseudoscience versus science Physics Today 69, 10 (2016); 10.1063/PT.3.3344 Pseudoscience versus science Physics Today 69, 10 (2016); 10.1063/PT.3.3343 Transforming nature Physics Today 69, 8 (2016); 10.1063/PT.3.3341 Commentary: The dangerous growth of pseudophysics Physics Today 69, 10 (2016); 10.1063/PT.3.3151 the passionate claims of pseudoscientific was well-packaged: “Well, there’s a book beliefs, it’s our duty to dust off our ne - for that!” Ham’s audience vibrantly ap- glected tools of scientific rhetoric.
    [Show full text]
  • Mary Shelley's Theistic Investigation of Scientific Materialism and Transgressive Autonomy
    Christianity and Literature Vol. 60, No. 4 (Summer 2011) Metaphysical Intersections in Frankenstein: Mary Shelley's Theistic Investigation of Scientific Materialism and Transgressive Autonomy David S. Hogsette Abstract: Frankenstein is a speculative narrative that asks: what would happen if man created human life without the biologically and relationally necessary woman and with indifference to God? What if Adam were to reject his own Creator and create life after his own fleshly or material image? Mary Shelley's answer to these questions is not a triumphant humanist manifesto, nor is it an ironic subversion of a supposedly outmoded theistic perspective. Rather, she offers a philosophical nightmare revealing the horriflc consequences of methodological naturalism taken to its logical conclusion. Frankenstein explores the ideological vacuum engendered by scientißc materialism and examines the spiritual bankruptcy of replacing theism with secular humanism. Victor Frankenstein's transgressive autonomy, grounded in scientiflc materialism, results in a reductionism that ultimately leads to existential despair, individual crisis, and communal disintegration. It is in vain, O men, that you seek within yourselves the remedy for your ills. All your light can only reach the knowledge that not in yourselves will you find truth or good. The philosophers have promised you that, and have been unable to do it. They neither know what is your true good, nor . what is your true state. How could they have given remedies for your ills, when they did not even know them? Your chief maladies are pride, which takes you away from God, and lust, which binds you to earth; and they have done nothing else but cherish one or other of these diseases.
    [Show full text]
  • Cinematic Vitalism Film Theory and the Question of Life
    INGA POLLMANN INGA FILM THEORY FILM THEORY IN MEDIA HISTORY IN MEDIA HISTORY CINEMATIC VITALISM FILM THEORY AND THE QUESTION OF LIFE INGA POLLMANN CINEMATIC VITALISM Cinematic Vitalism: Film Theory and the INGA POLLMANN is Assistant Professor Question of Life argues that there are in Film Studies in the Department of Ger- constitutive links between early twen- manic and Slavic Languages and Litera- tieth-century German and French film tures at the University of North Carolina theory and practice, on the one hand, at Chapel Hill. and vitalist conceptions of life in biology and philosophy, on the other. By consi- dering classical film-theoretical texts and their filmic objects in the light of vitalist ideas percolating in scientific and philosophical texts of the time, Cine- matic Vitalism reveals the formation of a modernist, experimental and cinema- tic strand of vitalism in and around the movie theater. The book focuses on the key concepts rhythm, environment, mood, and development to show how the cinematic vitalism articulated by film theorists and filmmakers maps out connections among human beings, mi- lieus, and technologies that continue to structure our understanding of film. ISBN 978-94-629-8365-6 AUP.nl 9 789462 983656 AUP_FtMh_POLLMANN_(cinematicvitalism)_rug17.7mm_v02.indd 1 21-02-18 13:05 Cinematic Vitalism Film Theory in Media History Film Theory in Media History explores the epistemological and theoretical foundations of the study of film through texts by classical authors as well as anthologies and monographs on key issues and developments in film theory. Adopting a historical perspective, but with a firm eye to the further development of the field, the series provides a platform for ground-breaking new research into film theory and media history and features high-profile editorial projects that offer resources for teaching and scholarship.
    [Show full text]
  • Journal of Consciousness Studies Controversies in Science & the Humanities
    Journal of Consciousness Studies controversies in science & the humanities an international multi-disciplinary journal Volume 3, No.1, 1996 I I Explaining Consciousness - The 'Hard I I Problem' I SPECIAL ISSUE, PART 2, EDITED BY JONATHAN SHEAR I Facing Backwards on the Problem ofConsciousness Daniel C. Dennett I The Why of Consciousness: A Non-Issue for Materialists Valerie Hardcastle The Hardness ofthe Hard Problem William S. Robinson Giving Up on the Hard Problem ofConsciousness Eugene Mills Solutions to the Hard Problem ofConsciousness Benjamin Libet Conscious Events as Orchestrated Stuart HamerofJ Space-Time Selections and Roger Penrose The Hard Problem: Closing the Empirical Gap Jonathan Shear The Easy Problems Ain't So Easy David Hodgson Rethinking Nature: A Hard Problem Within the Hard Problem Gregg Rosenberg Computers Near the Threshold? Martin Gardner Journal ofConsciousness Studies controversies in science & thehumanities SPECIAL ISSUE: Explaining Consciousness The 'Hard Problem' (Part 2) 4 Facing Backwards on the Problem ofConsciousness Daniel C. Dennett 7 The Why of Consciousness: A Non-Issue for Materialists Valerie Hardcastle 14 The Hardness ofthe Hard Problem William S. Robinson 26 Giving Up on the Hard Problem of Consciousness Eugene Mills 33 Solutions to the Hard Problem of Consciousness Benjamin Libet 36 Conscious Events as Orchestrated Space-Time Selections Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose 54 The Hard Problem: Closing the Empirical Gap Jonathan Shear 69 The Easy Problems Ain't So Easy David Hodgson 76 Rethinking Nature: A Hard Problem Within the Hard Problem Gregg H. Rosenberg STANDARD ISSUE: 89 Computers Near the Threshold? Martin Gardner Subscription Information Full details on our website: http://www.zynet.co.uk/imprint Volume 3 (1996): bi-monthly (6 Issues pa) Individuals: $US 40.00 (£25.00); Institutions: $US 77.00 (£48.00).
    [Show full text]