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Acquiring intuitive knowledge: a response to Nadler
Get PDFIn this response to Steven Nadler’s paper, I ask whether Spinoza views the transition from rational to intuitive knowledge as an individual or a collective project and conclude that it is largely a collective one. For Spinoza, our individual capacity to reason is underwritten by a social practice, an art of reasoning, which licences the rational conclusions on which intuitive knowledge rests. Equally, the pursuit of intuitive knowledge rests on a shared art of intuiting. Both kinds of knowledge are therefore collective achievements. If this is right, acquiring intuitive knowledge presupposes a certain kind of education. While it may be in principle available to everyone, as Nadler claims, it depends in practice on educational luck
How a metaphor inspired by Formula 1 motor racing can help enhance the work of a social inclusion community center
Get PDFNot-for-profit organizations provide a range of services that satisfy the needs of individuals and help a community to be sustainable. To explain how staff based at a social inclusion community center contribute to social impact, we undertake a case study and incorporate the stakeholder approach that draws on the activities of Pembroke House in south London. Pembroke House engages
in social action and provides a number of services considered beneficial to the local community it serves. By adopting this approach, we place emphasis on how the value co-creation concept, which is reinforced by the social marketing approach, helps staff to provide different forms of intervention
that ultimately give rise to trust-based relationships involving those providing the service and those receiving the service. To explain this, we make an analogy between a Formula 1 motor racing team
servicing a car during a pit-stop while competing in a grand prix and a vulnerable person who visits a food bank seeking assistance in the form of a food parcel. Through the process of drawing
on the use of metaphors and making a link with Formula 1 motor racing, we elucidate the value co-creation process and reveal how the social impact provision provided by Pembroke House can be
intensified through the deployment of the stakeholder approach, which gives rise to a social inclusion community center partnership framework
A study on the laser-induced phenomena of commercial dammar, ketone-based and poly(isobutyl methacrylate) resin artists’ varnishes upon Er:YAG laser irradiation
No full textThis research aims to comprehensively analyse the interaction between a 2940 nm wavelength Er:YAG
laser and several commercial varnishes commonly used in the mid-twentieth century. A selection of
triterpenoid, poly(cyclohexanone), poly(cyclohexanol) and poly(isobutyl methacrylate) resins was chosen
to make dammar, Ketone Resin N, MS2A and Paraloid B67 varnishes. Before creating varnish films, ther-
mogravimetric analysis (TGA) was performed to determine the thermal stability of the resins as received
from the manufacturer. The resins were measured at six different heating rates, and the kinetic activation
energies ( Ea ) were calculated using the Flynn-Wall-Ozawa method. Also, differential scanning calorime-
try (DSC) was performed to determine the resins’ glass transition temperatures ( Tg ). After a 170.6 klux ·h
dose of radiation ( λ> 310 nm) simulating daylight through window glass of approximately 53 museum
years, the varnish films were irradiated with an Er:YAG laser. The laser was used in the Very Short Pulse
(VSP
100 μs) and Short Pulse (SP 300 μs) modes. The 2940 nm laser beam with a 4 mm diame-
ter was fired onto dry and prewetted varnishes using a working distance of 20 cm. Single laser pulses
with fluences ranging between 0.5 and 2.7 J/cm2 were used. A prewetting solution of 1 % v/v Tween®20
surfactant in deionised water was applied to the varnish films. Er:YAG transmission through the aged
varnishes was monitored in real time and showed that the transmitted energy increased almost linearly
with fluence, except for the Paraloid B67 films which did not interact with the laser. Chemical changes
were monitored using Attenuated Total Reflectance/Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR/FT-IR) spectroscopy.
A reduction in hydroxy groups and carbon-hydrogen bonding was observed as a function of fluence for
dammar and Ketone N films, while no change was observed for the dry and prewetted MS2A films. FTIR
was also employed to experimentally determine the absorption coefficient of the varnish films. Optical
Microscopy and low-vacuum Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) in the Backscattered Electron (BSE)
mode were used to compare the dry and prewet irradiated spot areas. These analyses revealed that laser
spots were less noticeable on prewetted varnishes than on dry-irradiated films
Mystics, visionaries, heretics
No full textExplores women's role in mysticism, visionary culture, and heresy, in medieval Europe, in conjunction with major new British Library exhibition
For pet’s sake: discovering a naturally occurring zebrafish virus
Get PDFZebrafish are often used to model host-pathogen interactions, but few models of natural virus infection have been established. A new study in PLOS Biology shows that metatranscriptomics and cohousing experiments can uncover a natural pathogenic virus of zebrafish for laboratory study
Afterlife of ice: animation and air
No full textBook synopsis: As the climate warms and the hydrological cycle is disrupted, ice is no longer a reliable feature of higher latitudes or winter seasons. What are the human and nonhuman consequences of the planet’s waning capacity to cool? In other words, what comes after ice?
This collection examines the implications of the end of consistent freezing and thawing cycles. The cryosphere traditionally refers to areas where water is solid, such as places on the planet of snow, ice, and permafrost. Today, a new cryosphere is emerging that encompasses experiences generated by the uncertain horizons of melting ice, and whose future is increasingly determined by human behaviour. In this context, After Ice gathers experts in a wide range of disciplines – environmental history, game studies, Indigenous studies – to articulate aspects of the cold humanities. They investigate ice and its dynamic properties as a foundational element of Indigenous communities in the Arctic, as a commodity with technological and political value, and as a reflection of environmental change and the passage of time.
This original, thought-provoking exploration envisions ice not only as a phase of water but also as a milieu for semantic and embodied sensemaking. It asks us to consider how to define, describe, and materially characterize our warming world.
Researchers and students of the environmental humanities, media and cultural studies, environmental history, northern studies, and new materialisms will find this an important addition to their libraries
Artificial intelligence and policy making; can small municipalities enable digital transformation?
Get PDFThis study investigates digital transformation and the usability of emerging technologies in policymaking. Prior studies categorised digital transformation into three distinct phases of digitisation, digitalisation, and digital transformation. They mainly focus on the operational or functional levels, however, this study considers digital transformation at the strategic level. Previous studies confirmed that using new emerging AI-based technologies will enable organisations to use digital transformation to achieve higher efficiency. A novel methodological AI-based approach for policymaking was constructed into three phases through the lens of organisational learning theory. The proposed framework was validated using a case study in the transportation industry of a small municipality. In the selected case study, a confirmatory model was developed and tested utilising the Structural Equation Modelling with data collected from a survey of 494 local stakeholders. Artificial Neural Network was utilised to predict and then to identify the most appropriate policy according to cost, feasibility, and impact criteria amongst six policies extracted from the literature. The results from this research confirm that utilisation of the AI-based strategic decision-making through the proposed generative AI platform at strategic level outperforms human decision-making in terms of applicability, efficiency, and accuracy
Sentiment and spectres: the posthumous influence of animals and women in Marie Espérance von Schwartz’s Gemma, oder Tugend und Laster (1877) and the late nineteenth-century anti-vivisection debate
Get PDFAnimals enjoyed an active afterlife in late nineteenth-century pro-animal texts in Germany. Drawing on a number of primary texts and recent scholarship on the anti-vivisection movement in feminist animal theory, this article argues that remembering, mourning, and haunting by animals is part of a gendered discourse on animal rights that is associated in particular with sentiment and with maternity. This is illustrated with reference to Marie Espérance von Schwartz’s "Gemma, oder Tugend und Laster" (1877), a sentimental anti-vivisection novella in which deceased animals and women return to punish their abusers or shore up the resistant stance of the living. Viewing Schwartz’s fictional novella in the context of non-fictional pro-animal works, including Ernst Grysanowski’s "Die Vivisection, ihr wissenschaftlicher Werth und ihre ethische Berechtigung" (1877) and Ignaz Bregenzer’s "Thier-Ethik: Darstellung der sittlichen und rechtlichen Beziehungen zwischen Mensch und Thier" (1894), allows me, by means of contrast, to highlight its gendered dimension
Is the apparent absence of extraterrestrial technological civilizations down to the zoo hypothesis or nothing?
Get PDFThe ‘Fermi Paradox’ refers to the mismatch between a widely held expectation that advanced technological life should be common in the Universe — recently given impetus by the discovery that other planetary systems are common — and the absence of any evidence for it. In this Perspective, we briefly review attempted solutions to the paradox and conclude that either (i) extraterrestrial technological civilisations are extremely rare (or absent) in the Galaxy; or (ii) that they exist but are deliberately hiding from us, a scenario generally known as the ‘Zoo Hypothesis’. In this sense, we propose that the answer to the Fermi Paradox is ‘the Zoo Hypothesis or nothing.’ We argue that, given a strong commitment to the continued exploration of the Universe, humanity may be able to distinguish between these two alternatives within the next half-century
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