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Thinking bodies: Aristotle on the biological aspects of human cognition
No full textThis paper aims to establish that, for Aristotle, the state of the physical body is crucial to the human capacity for theoretical understanding. In recent years, scholars have begun to recognise the importance of Aristotle’s biological writings for understanding his psychology, after the relative neglect of these connections. The relevance in particular of the so-called Parva naturalia, small works on what is common to body and soul, and the De motu animalium, a work devoted to animal motion in broad terms, has begun to fill in the picture of how the living body is involved in cognition. This paper will support this point of view by adding the De generatione animalium, a work which gives an account of the advent of soul capacities through the development of the body from the blood, under the control of the nutritive soul. An Aristotelian science of human physiology is a study of the “thinking body”, a person as a whole rather than disembodied nous.
I will first set out factors that have made it difficult to integrate Aristotle’s biological treatises into our understanding of human thinking. Next, I will distinguish the thinking shared with other animals, from theoretical understanding, which is something only humans can achieve. I will then explain the aspects of the body that must facilitate and eventually bring about the capacity for thinking, before turning to Aristotle’s embryology where nutritive soul is ultimately responsible for the construction and maintenance of the thinking body. It will be concluded that only a human body leads to theoretical understanding and only a healthy human body can do so adequately
Human-Crocodilian interactions in Latin America and the Caribbean region
Get PDFIn order to mitigate harmful interactions with wildlife, we need to understand the interactions between predators, domesticated animals and humans. Largescale transformations of crocodilian habitats across the Latin America and Caribbean region, alongside significant use of crocodilians as a resource, and retaliatory killing of crocodilians following (or to prevent) attacks on humans and their animals, are generating significant conservation challenges. This matters because this is the world’s most biodiverse region for crocodilians. Because there is little information on specific situations across this vast and complex region, in 2018 we initiated a biannual questionnaire survey to establish a reporting network. In this paper, we summarise the findings of surveys conducted in 2018 and 2020. We triangulate this feedback with croc attack data, consultation with regional experts, and the published and grey literature. We identify overall trends in negative human-crocodilian interactions at country level, the most reported causes of these, and identify the key species and regions of concern. We report on management policies and responses to negative interactions including direct action and outreach activities. We acknowledge (and clarify) key knowledge gaps, and motivate for improved cooperation across the region with regard to policies, management and data collection and sharing
Lived experience and the Holocaust: spaces, senses and emotions in Auschwitz
Get PDFThis article examines lived experience during the Holocaust, focusing on Auschwitz, the most lethal Nazi concentration camp. It draws on spatial history, as well as the history of senses and emotions, to explore subjective being in Auschwitz. The article suggests that a more explicit engagement with individual spaces—prisoner bunks, barracks, latrines, crematoria, construction sites, SS offices—and their emotional and sensory dimension, can reveal elements of lived experience that have remained peripheral on the edges of historical visibility. Such an approach can deepen understanding of Auschwitz, by making the camp more recognisable and by contributing to wider historiographical debates about the nature of Nazi terro
Mantle dynamics beneath the Sichuan Basin and Eastern Tibet from teleseismic tomography
Get PDFThe cratonic Sichuan Basin is located east of the Tibetan Plateau, and is surrounded by mountains that have undergone complex deformation and uplift since the Cenozoic. Imaging mantle structure is important for understanding its formation, and to date most models suggest a deep cratonic root underlies the basin, blocking eastward extrusion of lithospheric material beneath Tibet. Here, we obtain detailed upper mantle structure from teleseismic tomography in the region utilizing travel time data from earthquakes recorded at 506 seismic stations, including 25 new stations in the poorly sampled Sichuan Basin. Contrasting to previous models, we show eastward and southeastward dipping high‐velocity anomalies extending eastward ∼150–400 km into the upper mantle from the Sichuan Basin. We suggest, the southeastward subduction of the Yangtze Block occurred in the Mesozoic and may be reactivated in the Cenozoic, with the relatively thin and weak lithosphere to the east of the Sichuan Basin prone to deformation in response to the eastward growth of the Tibetan Plateau. A west‐dipping high‐velocity anomaly beneath eastern Tibet is interpreted as delaminated lithosphere. This delamination may accelerate the development of the Xianshuihe fault zone and the horizontal extrusion of the Tibetan Plateau. Beneath the East Qinling orogen, the eastward extrusion of the plateau material is not obvious suggesting limited horizontal lithospheric extrusion is present north of the Sichuan Basin
Towards sustainable agroforestry management: harnessing the nutritional soil value through cocoa mix waste
Get PDFClimate change and environmental degradation have contributed in compromising the soil nutrient integrity of cocoa farmlands, yet sustainable nutrient recycling innovation in cocoa waste management has received less research attention. Utilizing experimentation methodology in an agroforestry system composed of cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.) and a Nitrogen-fixing Gliricidia sepium (Jacq. Kunth ex Walp.), the study examines how the soil nutritional level of farmland can be enhanced. The study confirms the proposition that the rate of decomposition and nutrients release from an innovative mixed waste sample (60% cocoa waste and 40% gliricidia waste in this case) is significantly higher in comparison with the traditional cocoa waste only sample. The results further established that innovative mixed waste sample had a faster decomposition rate (no biomass left at 216 days after laying) as compared to traditional cocoa waste which fully decomposed at 277 days after laying. A difference of 51 days after laying justifies the waste mixture decomposition as a sustainable nutrient recycling innovation within cocoa agroforestry waste management context. These results have implications for agroforestry waste management, soil nutrient recycling and cocoa industry performance
Imperfect Information, Heterogeneous Demand Shocks, and Inflation Dynamics
Get PDFUsing sector-level survey data for the universe of Japanese firms, we establish the positive co-movement in the firm’s expectations about aggregate and sector-specific demand shocks. We show that a simple model with imperfect information on the current aggregate and sector-specific components of demand explains the positive co-movement of expectations in the data. The model predicts that an increase in the relative volatility of sector-specific demand shocks compared to aggregate demand shocks reduces
the sensitivity of inflation to changes in aggregate demand. We test and corroborate the theoretical prediction on Japanese data and find that the observed decrease in the relative volatility of sector-specific demand has played a significant role for the decline in the sensitivity of inflation to movements in aggregate demand from mid-1980s to mid-2000s
A crosslinguistic study of the perception of emotional intonation. Influence of the pitch modulations
Get PDFPitch perception plays a more important role in emotional communication in English than in Korean. Interpreting the semantic aspects of pitch levels therefore presents a challenge for Korean learners of English. This study investigated how 49 Korean learners of English perceived 20 English emotional utterances. Participants were asked to complete a congruency task in which they indicated whether the category of the semantic valence was congruent with the intonation type. They also described each emotional utterance by providing an adjective. The task results of Korean participants were compared with those of a control group of 49 Anglo-American students. Statistical analyses revealed that the incongruence between the semantic meaning and the intonation type interfered with American participants’ performance more than Korean participants. The adjective task results also showed that American participants were more attuned to the interplay between the semantic meaning and the intonation type than Korean participants
The politics of documentary photography: three theoretical perspectives
Get PDFPhotographers are often inspired by politics but can they influence it? Drawing on the study of public policy and the history of photography, this article considers three ways in which documentary photographers enter the policy process. It considers the photographer as: a bureaucrat working within government networks to achieve individual and institutional aims; an advocate working with like-minded actors to advance shared political beliefs; an expert working within an epistemic community driven by a shared policy enterprise. These roles highlight the institutional channels through which photographers seek and sometimes secure political change and the contradictions and constraints they face in so doing. These contrasting perspectives are discussed with reference to the work of canonical and contemporary photographers engaged in national and international politics from 1890 to today
Get a grip: variation in human hand grip strength and implications for human evolution
Get PDFAlthough hand grip strength is critical to the daily lives of humans and our arboreal great ape relatives, the human hand has changed in form and function throughout our evolution due to terrestrial bipedalism, tool use, and directional asymmetry (DA) such as handedness. Here we investigate how hand form and function interact in modern humans to gain an insight into our evolutionary past. We measured grip strength in a heterogeneous, cross-sectional sample of human participants (n = 662, 17 to 83 years old) to test the potential effects of age, sex, asymmetry (hand dominance and handedness), hand shape, occupation, and practice of sports and musical instruments that involve the hand(s). We found a significant effect of sex and hand dominance on grip strength, but not of handedness, while hand shape and age had a greater influence on female grip strength. Females were significantly weaker with age, but grip strength in females with large hands was less affected than those with long hands. Frequent engagement in hand sports significantly increased grip strength in the non-dominant hand in both sexes, while only males showed a significant effect of occupation, indicating different patterns of hand dominance asymmetries and hand function. These results improve our understanding of the link between form and function in both hands and offer an insight into the evolution of human laterality and dexterity
Different placement practices for different families? Children's adjustment in LGH adoptive families
Get PDFObjective: The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics of children placed with lesbian, gay, and heterosexual adopters, and to examine children’s problem behaviors and positive psychosocial adjustment across the three family types.
Background: There is evidence that children with hard-to-place profiles may be more likely to be matched with lesbian and gay parents. In addition, children adopted from care face greater developmental difficulties than children raised by their birth families, although adoptive parents may buffer the negative effects of early adversity on their children’s psychosocial adjustment.
Method: A final sample of 149 adoptive families from across the United Kingdom was recruited: 71 heterosexual parented, 39 lesbian parented, and 39 gay parented.
Results: The results showed that gay and lesbian parents were more likely than heterosexual parents to be matched with hard-to-place children, partially because they were more open to being matched with children with hard-to-place profiles. However, no differences among the three family types on children’s psychosocial adjustment were found, when controlling for children’s early adversity.
Conclusion: Adopted children displayed similar levels of problem behaviors and positive adjustment in lesbian, gay, and heterosexual parented families. Early adversity and having a physical problem/disability accounted for much of the variance in problem behaviors whereas parenting did not. In contrast, it was suggested that parenting processes, namely, parental closeness, may help to explain children’s positive adjustment
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