Journal of Early Modern Studies, Volume 10, issue 1 (Spring 2021)

Journal of Early Modern Studies, Volume 10, issue 1 (Spring 2021)
Author: Vlad ALEXANDRESCU
Publisher: Zeta Books
Total Pages: 137
Release:
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

ARTICLES: Patrick BRISSEY, Reasons for the Method in Descartes’ Discours Abstract: In the practical philosophy of the Discours de la Méthode, before the theoretical metaphysics of Part Four and the Meditationes, Descartes gives us an inductive argument that his method, the procedure and cognitive psychology, is veracious at its inception. His evidence, akin to his Scholastic predecessors, is God, a maximally perfect being, established an ontological foundation for knowledge such that reason and nature are isomorphic. Further, the method, he tells us, is a functional definition of human reason; that is, like other rationalists during this period, he holds the structure of reason maps onto the world. The evidence for this thesis is given in what I call the groundwork to Descartes’ philosophical system, essentially the first half of the Discours, where, through a series of examples in the preamble of Part Two, he, step-by-step, ascends from the perfection of artifacts through the imposition of reason (the Architect Example) to the perfection of a constituent’s use of her cognitive faculties (the Wise-Lawgiver Example), to God perfecting and ordering reality (the Divine Artificer Example). Finally, he descends, establishing the structure of human reason, which undergirds and entails the procedure of the method (the Laws of Sparta Example). Hanoch BEN-YAMI, Word, Sign and Representation in Descartes Abstract: In the first chapter of his The World, Descartes compares light to words and discusses signs and ideas. This made scholars read into that passage our views of language as a representational medium and consider it Descartes’ model for representation in perception. I show, by contrast, that Descartes does not ascribe there any representational role to language; that to be a sign is for him to have a kind of causal role; and that he is concerned there only with the cause’s lack of resemblance to its effect, not with the representation’s lack of resemblance to what it represents. I support this interpretation by comparisons with other places in Descartes’ corpus and with earlier authors, Descartes’ likely sources. This interpretation may shed light both on Descartes’ understanding of the functioning of language and on the development of his theory of representation in perception. Osvaldo OTTAVIANI, The Young Leibniz and the Ontological Argument: from Rejection to Reconsideration Abstract: Leibniz considered the Cartesian version of the ontological argument not as an inconsistent proof but only as an incomplete one: it requires a preliminary proof of possibility to show that the concept of ‘the most perfect being’ involves no contradiction. Leibniz raised this objection to Descartes’s proof already in 1676, then repeated it throughout his entire life. Before 1676, however, he suggested a more substantial objection to the Cartesian argument. I take into account a text written around 1671-72, in which Leibniz considers the Cartesian proof as a paralogism and a petition of principle. I argue that this criticism is modelled on Gassendi’s objections to the Cartesian proof, and that Leibniz’s early rejection of the ontological argument has to be understood in the general context of his early philosophy, which was inspired by nominalist authors, such as Hobbes and Gassendi. Then, I take into account the reconsideration of the ontological argument in a series of texts of 1678, showing how Leibniz implicitly replies to the kind of criticism to the argument he himself shared in his earlier works. Joseph ANDERSON, The ‘Necessity’ of Leibniz’ Rejection of Necessitarianism Abstract: In the Theodicy, Leibniz defends the justice of God from two impious conceptions of God—a God who makes arbitrary choices and a God who doesn’t make choices at all. Many interpret Leibniz as navigating these dangers by positing a kind of non-Spinozistic necessitarianism. I examine passages from the Theodicy which reject not only blind (Spinozistic) necessitarianism but necessitarianism altogether. Leibniz thinks blind necessitarianism is dangerous due to the conception of God it entails and the implications for morality. Non-Spinozistic necessitarianism avoids many of these criticisms. Leibniz finds that even necessary actions should receive certain rewards and punishments as long as they necessarily lead to a change in future behavior. But Leibniz rejects even non-Spinozistic necessitarianism on the grounds that it is inconsistent with punitive justice. Whether Leibniz successfully avoids necessitarianism, it ought to be clear that he sees his own position as significantly distinct from necessitarianism and not just Spinozism. REVIEW ARTICLE: Dana JALOBEANU, Big Books, Small Books, Readers, Riddles and Contexts: The Story of English Mythography [Anna-Maria Hartmann, English Mythography and its European Context. 1500-1650, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, x + 283 pp.] CORPUS REVIEW: Andrea SANGIACOMO, Raluca TANASESCU, Silvia DONKER, Hugo HOGENBIRK: Expanding the Corpus of Early Modern Natural Philosophy: Initial results and a review of available sources BOOK REVIEWS Diego LUCCI Ruth Boeker, Locke on Persons and Personal Identity, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Michael DECKARD Stefano Marino and Pietro Terzi (eds.), Kant’s ‘Critique of Aesthetic Judgment’ in the 20th Century: A Companion to its Main Interpretations, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021. Doina RUSU Jennifer M. Rampling, The Experimental Fire. Inventing English Alchemy 1300-1700, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2020.

The Genesis Quest

The Genesis Quest
Author: Michael Marshall
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2020-08-20
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1474611443

'A fascinating and challenging story' New York Review of Books 'This is an incredibly absorbing and insightful book about the most important scientific question of our age' Mark Miodownik, author of Stuff Matters 'The story of the quest to understand life's genesis is a universal one, in which everyone can find pleasure and fascination. By asking how life came to be, we are implicitly asking why we are here, whether life exists on other planets, and what it means to be alive. This book is the story of a group of fragile, flawed humans who chose to wrestle with these questions. By exploring the origin of life, we can catch a glimpse of the infinite.' How did life begin? Why are we here? These are some of the most profound questions we can ask. For almost a century, a small band of eccentric scientists has struggled to answer these questions and explain one of the greatest mysteries of all: how and why life began on Earth. There are many different proposals, and each idea has attracted passionate believers who promote it with an almost religious fervour, as well as detractors who reject it with equal passion. But the quest to unravel life's genesis is not just a story of big ideas. It is also a compelling human story, rich in personalities, conflicts, and surprising twists and turns. Along the way the journey takes in some of the greatest discoveries in modern biology, from evolution and cells to DNA and life's family tree. It is also a search whose end may finally be in sight. In The Genesis Quest, Michael Marshall shows how the quest to understand life's beginning is also a journey to discover the true nature of life, and by extension our place in the universe.

Small State Foreign Policy in Contemporary World

Small State Foreign Policy in Contemporary World
Author: Rovshan Ibrahimov
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2024-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 364391444X

This book explained the position, behavior, and role of the Small Powers (states) in the international system since Westphalia Treaty via historical prospect. By analyzing European Small Powers, there have been attempting to generalize and optimize within the theoretical framework possible ways for foreign policy activities of the former Soviet Union republics on the examples of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. This book is the first attempt to explain former Soviet states foreign policy as Small Power theoretically and to propose the most possible optimal behavior for them.

The Hungarian Avant-Garde and Socialism

The Hungarian Avant-Garde and Socialism
Author: Katalin Cseh-Varga
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2022-10-06
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1350211605

The emergence and the activities of a second public sphere in the areas of Soviet influence were intricately linked to the performative and intermedial production and usage of alternative spaces. Applying a multitude of perspectives and networked topography, The Hungarian Avant-Garde and Socialism investigates artistic strategies of spaces – namely those of the artist's studio, exhibitions, installations, clubs, apartments, cellars, event halls, and chapels – all of which existed parallel to or were interwoven with the regulated public sphere in Hungary from the beginning of the 1960s to the era immediately following the Kádár regime. This book captures and discusses the exclusionary and inclusionary mechanisms inscribed into public spheres behind the Iron Curtain in all their paradoxes through the looking glass of an artist generation that was controversially labelled “neo-”, and later, “post-avant-garde”. Cross-referencing the international tendencies in the marginal art worlds that existed between and beyond the Cold War reality of Blocs, The Hungarian Avant-Garde demonstrates how mostly non-conformist artists in Hungary, and by extension the spaces they created, reacted to the conflicting, contradictory nature of public spheres in the post-totalitarian condition.

Trans New Wave Cinema

Trans New Wave Cinema
Author: Akkadia Ford
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2021-04-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000379132

This book presents a critical cultural study of the Trans New Wave as a cinematic genre and explores its emergence in the twenty-first century. Drawing on a diverse range of texts, the cultural, social, aesthetic and ethical implications of the genre are placed within the context of rapidly changing understandings of gender diversity. From the cinematic borderlands of independent film festivals to wider public recognition via digital technologies, the genre encompasses a diverse range of texts from short films, documentaries, experimental films, to feature films and narratives that range across life histories, narratives and themes. The book presents transliteracy as an original theoretical approach to reading film representations of the Trans New Wave, and combines it with a new theoretical concept of cinematic ethnogenesis to investigate how the genre emerged from specific communities and the reciprocal interaction of audiences and texts. This interdisciplinary volume engages with contemporary issues of gender diversity, transgender studies, screen and media studies and film festival studies, and as such will be of great interest to scholars working in these fields and in media and cultural studies more generally.

Tools for Green Chemistry, Volume 10

Tools for Green Chemistry, Volume 10
Author: Evan S. Beach
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2017-06-12
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3527695680

Volume 10 in the Handbook of Green Chemistry series provides useful and practical tools, databases, and laboratory approaches to support chemists working in both academia and industry in achieving their green chemistry goals. Among many other helpful techniques covered, the authors offer prediction software, life cycle assessment methodology, and screening tools.

Israel’s Mediterranean Gas

Israel’s Mediterranean Gas
Author: Sujata Ashwarya
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2019-05-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0429536232

This book examines the internal and external implications of Israel’s natural gas discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean. The nation’s changed status from being an importer of coal and oil to that of an exporter of natural gas has consequences not only for the energy sector but also for the fragile geopolitics of the region. The book: Explores the challenges and issues of energy economics and governance; Analyses Israel’s gas diplomacy with its neighbours in the Middle East and North Africa and its potential positive impact on the amelioration of the Arab-Israeli conflict; Studies how Israel can avoid the deleterious impact of the Dutch disease once the government’s share of the export revenues start flowing. The author traces a consummate picture of history, politics, and conflicts that shape the economics of energy in Israel and its future trajectories. A major intervention in Middle East studies, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of energy studies, development studies, strategic studies, politics, diplomacy, and international relations. It will also be of interest to government agencies, think-tanks, and risk management firms.

Lucky Luke - Volume 1 - The Complete Collection

Lucky Luke - Volume 1 - The Complete Collection
Author: Morris
Publisher: Cinebook
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2019-09-20T00:00:00+02:00
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 184918626X

At last Lucky Luke is getting a hardback collected edition, with the first adventures of the Lonesome Cowboy. After 70 years of life and almost 70 translated volumes, it was high time English-speaking readers were offered a hardback collected edition. This first volume contains the first seven adventures of Lucky Luke, previously published as volumes Arizona, Rodeo and Dick Digger’s Gold Mine, and offers an unrivalled insight into the evolution of the character in terms of design as well as personality. The extras available make up a whooping 48 pages of illustrations, photographs, biographies, essays and anecdotes on Morris and the origins of Luke. A must read for any true fan of this legend of the West!

Influence of Inter- and Intra-Synaptic Factors on Information Processing in the Brain

Influence of Inter- and Intra-Synaptic Factors on Information Processing in the Brain
Author: Vito Di Maio
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2019-10-14
Genre:
ISBN: 2889630730

Any brain activity relies on the interaction of thousands of neurons, each of which integrating signals from thousands of synapses. While neurons are undoubtedly the building blocks of the brain, synapses constitute the main loci of information transfer that lead to the emergence of neuronal code. Investigating synaptic transmission constitutes a multi-faceted challenge that brings together a large number of techniques and expertise ranging from experimental to computational approaches, bringing together paradigms spanning from molecular to neural network level. In this book, we have collected a series of articles that present foundational work aimed at shedding much-needed light on brain information processing, synaptic transmission and neural code formation. Some articles present analyses of regulatory mechanisms underlying neural code formation and its elaboration at the molecular level, while others use computational and modelling approaches to investigate, at synaptic, neuronal and inter-neuronal level, how the different mechanisms involved in information processing interact to generate effects like long-term potentiation (LTP), which constitutes the cellular basis of learning and memory. This collection, although not exhaustive, aims to present a framework of the most used investigational paradigms and showcase results that may, in turn, generate novel hypotheses and ideas for further studies and investigations.

Self-Organization in the Nervous System

Self-Organization in the Nervous System
Author: Yan M. Yufik
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Total Pages: 137
Release: 2017-11-30
Genre:
ISBN: 2889453405

This special issue reviews state-of-the-art approaches to the biophysical roots of cognition. These approaches appeal to the notion that cognitive capacities serve to optimize responses to changing external conditions. Crucially, this optimisation rests on the ability to predict changes in the environment, thus allowing organisms to respond pre-emptively to changes before their onset. The biophysical mechanisms that underwrite these cognitive capacities remain largely unknown; although a number of hypotheses has been advanced in systems neuroscience, biophysics and other disciplines. These hypotheses converge on the intersection of thermodynamic and information-theoretic formulations of self-organization in the brain. The latter perspective emerged when Shannon’s theory of message transmission in communication systems was used to characterise message passing between neurons. In its subsequent incarnations, the information theory approach has been integrated into computational neuroscience and the Bayesian brain framework. The thermodynamic formulation rests on a view of the brain as an aggregation of stochastic microprocessors (neurons), with subsequent appeal to the constructs of statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. In particular, the use of ensemble dynamics to elucidate the relationship between micro-scale parameters and those of the macro-scale aggregation (the brain). In general, the thermodynamic approach treats the brain as a dissipative system and seeks to represent the development and functioning of cognitive mechanisms as collective capacities that emerge in the course of self-organization. Its explicanda include energy efficiency; enabling progressively more complex cognitive operations such as long-term prediction and anticipatory planning. A cardinal example of the Bayesian brain approach is the free energy principle that explains self-organizing dynamics in the brain in terms of its predictive capabilities – and selective sampling of sensory inputs that optimise variational free energy as a proxy for Bayesian model evidence. An example of thermodynamically grounded proposals, in this issue, associates self-organization with phase transitions in neuronal state-spaces; resulting in the formation of bounded neuronal assemblies (neuronal packets). This special issue seeks a discourse between thermodynamic and informational formulations of the self-organising and self-evidencing brain. For example, could minimization of thermodynamic free energy during the formation of neuronal packets underlie minimization of variational free energy?