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Full-Text Articles in History
John Goodricke, Edward Pigott, And Their Work On Variable Stars, Linda French
John Goodricke, Edward Pigott, And Their Work On Variable Stars, Linda French
Linda French
John Goodricke and Edward Pigott, working in York, England, between 1781 and 1786, determined the periods of variation of eclipsing binaries such as b Persei (Algol) and b Lyrae and speculated that the eclipses of Algol might be caused by a “dark body,” perhaps even a planet. They also determined the periods of variation of the first two known Cepheid variables, the stars whose period-luminosity relation today enables astronomers to determine distances to distant galaxies. Goodricke holds special interest because he was completely deaf and because he died at the age of 21. The lives and work of these two …
Affective Neuroscience And The Philosophy Of Self, Stephen Asma
Affective Neuroscience And The Philosophy Of Self, Stephen Asma
Stephen T Asma
The nature of self awareness and the origin and persistence of personal identity still loom large in contemporary philosophy of mind. Many philosophers have been wooed by the computational approach to consciousness, and they attempt to find the self amidst the phenomenon of neocortical information processing. Affective neuroscience offers another pathway to understanding the evolution and nature of self. This paper explores how affective neuroscience acts as a positive game-changer in the philosophical pursuit of self. In particular, we focus on connecting 'mammalian agency' to (a) subjective awareness, and (b) identity through time.
Big History: First Year Experience (Panel Presentation), Lynn Sondag
Big History: First Year Experience (Panel Presentation), Lynn Sondag
Lynn Sondag
No abstract provided.
The Role Of Optimality In Aristotle's Natural Science, Devin Henry
The Role Of Optimality In Aristotle's Natural Science, Devin Henry
Devin Henry
In this paper I examine the role of optimality reasoning in Aristotle’s natural science. By “optimality reasoning” I mean reasoning that appeals to some conception of “what is best” in order to explain why things are the way they are. We are first introduced to this pattern of reasoning in the famous passage at Phaedo 97b8-98a2, where (Plato’s) Socrates invokes “what is best” as a cause (aitia) of things in nature. This passage can be seen as the intellectual ancestor of Aristotle’s own principle, expressed by the famous dictum “nature does nothing in vain but always what is best for …