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Cells evolved some 4 billion years ago, and since then the integrity of the structural and functional continuity of cellular life has been maintained via highly conserved and ancient processes of cell reproduction and division. The plasma membrane as well as all the cytoplasmic structures are reproduced and inherited uninterruptedly by each of the two daughter cells resulting from every cell division. Although our understanding of the evolutionary emergence of the very first cells is obscured by the extremely long timeline since that revolutionary event, the generally accepted position is that the de novo formation of cells is not possible; all present cells are products of other prior cells. This essential biological principle was first discovered by Robert Remak and then effectively coined as Omnis Cellula e Cellula (every cell of the cell) by Rudolf Virchow: all currently living cells have direct structural and functional connections to the very first cells. Based on our previous theoretical analysis, all cells are endowed with individual sentient cognition that guides their individual agency, behaviour and evolution. There is a vital consequence of this new sentient and cognitive view of cells: when cells assemble as functional tissue ecologies and organs within multicellular organisms, including plants, animals and humans, these cellular aggregates display derivative versions of aggregate tissue‐ and organ‐specific sentience and consciousness. This innovative view of the evolution and physiology of all currently living organisms supports a singular principle: all organismal physiology is based on cellular physiology that extends from unicellular roots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally defined as the science of the living, or as the field that beyond anatomical structure and bodily form studies functional organization and behaviour, physiology has long been excluded from evolutionary research. The main reason for this exclusion is that physiology has a presential and futuristic outlook on life, while evolutionary theory is traditionally defined as the study of natural history. In this paper, I re‐evaluate these classic science divisions and situate physiology within the history of the evolutionary sciences, as well as within debates on the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis and the need for a Third Way of Evolution. I then briefly point out how evolutionary physiology in particular contributes to research on function, causation, teleonomy, agency and cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pope Leo XIII's publication of Aeterni Patris (1879) was a major factor in the great revival of Thomistic thought in the late 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. Among the authors that took up the challenge implicit in the Pope's document of bringing Aquinas and his thought into the intellectual debates of the times we find two interesting proposals. The first is that of Juan González Arintero, a Spanish Dominican, and the second one is that of Josef Donat, a Jesuit born and raised in the Austrian Empire. Arintero is mostly known in Catholic circles for his influential works on mysticism, but in fact he devoted much of his early work to the subject of evolution, and how it could interact with the Catholic faith in general, and with Thomism in particular. Donat is the author of a Summa Philosophiae Christianae, a collection that was widely read in Catholic seminaries well into the 20th century. In this paper we will focus on the differing ways in which these authors tackled the problems and questions presented by Darwinian evolutionism to the post-Aeterni Patris Thomism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the domain of legal analysis and its methodologies, emphasising the significance of generalisation in legal systems. It discusses the process of generalisation in relation to legal concepts and the development of ideal concepts that form the foundation of law. The article examines the role of logical induction and its similarities with semantic generalisation, highlighting their importance in legal decision-making. It also critiques the formal-deductive approach in legal practice and advocates for more adaptable models, incorporating fuzzy logic, non-monotonic defeasible reasoning, and artificial intelligence. The potential application of neural networks, specifically deep learning algorithms, in legal theory is also discussed. The article discusses how neural networks encode legal knowledge in their synaptic connections, while the syllogistic model condenses legal information into axioms. The article also highlights how neural networks assimilate novel experiences and exhibit evolutionary progression, unlike the deductive model of law. Additionally, the article examines the historical and theoretical foundations of jurisprudence that align with the basic principles of neural networks. It delves into the statistical analysis of legal phenomena and theories that view legal development as an evolutionary process. The article then explores Friedrich Hayek's theory of law as an autonomous self-organising system and its compatibility with neural network models. It concludes by discussing the implications of Hayek's theory on the role of a lawyer and the precision of neural networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Darwinism and evolutionary theory have a bad track record in political theory, given their entanglements with fin-de-siècle militarist imperialisms, racialized hierarchies, and eugenic reformism. In colonial contexts, however, Darwinism had an entirely different afterlife as anticolonialists marshaled evolutionist frameworks to contest the parameters of colonial rule. This article exhumes just such an evolutionary anticolonialism in the political thought of Aurobindo Ghose, radical firebrand of the early Indian independence movement. I argue that Ghose drew on a nuanced reform Darwinism to criticize British imperialism and advance an alternative grounded in the Indian polity's mutualism. Evolutionism formed a conceptual ecosystem framing his understanding of progress—national, civilizational, and spiritual—and reformulating the temporal and conceptual coordinates of the liberal empire he resisted. The article thus exposes the constructiveness of anticolonial politics, the hybridity of South Asian intellectual history, and the surprising critical potential of Darwinism in colonial settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advocates for a deeper engagement with the organizational structures that shape the governance of research ethics in anthropology. The authors argue that anthropological critiques of bureaucracy often sidestep the kinds of knowledge needed to pursue meaningful institutional change. They show how different regulatory dynamics and organizational arrangements across jurisdictions produce more or less responsive bureaucracies, comparing Institutional Review Boards in the United States with a case study of a European university's Ethics Review Committee. The authors suggest that such organizational understandings of bureaucratic processes can more meaningfully inform their redesign and contribute to developing more appropriately scaled ethics governance. In so doing, ethics review promises greater responsiveness to the particular demands of ethnographic research while remaining legible to regulatory stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently there has been a rise in the application of concepts and methods from biological evolutionary theory to human cultures and societies where the aim is to explain these by describing them as population-level phenomena reducible to individual-level processes. I argue against this type of view by using Mesoudi's Cultural Evolution as a case study. I claim that Mesoudi's ontological assumptions about cultures and societies are dubious and his methodological assumptions inadequate when it comes to addressing cultural and social phenomena. A consequence is that this approach to studying culture is, at the very least, incomplete and of limited application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to reveal the interdisciplinarity of information science (IS) from the perspective of the evolution of theory application. Design/methodology/approach: Select eight representative IS journals as data sources, extract the theories mentioned in the full texts of the research papers and then measure annual interdisciplinarity of IS by conducting theory co-occurrence network analysis, diversity measure and evolution analysis. Findings: As a young and vibrant discipline, IS has been continuously absorbing and internalizing external theoretical knowledge and thus formed a high degree of interdisciplinarity. With the continuous application of some kernel theories, the interdisciplinarity of IS appears to be decreasing and gradually converging into a few neighboring disciplines. Influenced by big data and artificial intelligence, the research paradigm of IS is shifting from a theory centered one to a technology centered one. Research limitations/implications: This study helps to understand the evolution of the interdisciplinarity of IS in the past 21 years. The main limitation is that the data were collected from eight journals indexed by the Social Sciences Citation Index and a small amount of theories might have been omitted. Originality/value: This study identifies the kernel theories in IS research, measures the interdisciplinarity of IS based on the evolution of the co-occurrence network of theory source disciplines and reveals the paradigm shift being happening in IS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why and how we age are 2 intertwined questions that have fascinated scientists for many decades. However, attempts to answer these questions remain compartmentalized, preventing a comprehensive understanding of the aging process. We argue that the current lack of knowledge about the evolution of aging mechanisms is due to a lack of clarity regarding evolutionary theories of aging that explicitly involve physiological processes: the disposable soma theory (DST) and the developmental theory of aging (DTA). In this Essay, we propose a new hierarchical model linking genes to vital rates, enabling us to critically reevaluate the DST and DTA in terms of their relationship to evolutionary genetic theories of aging (mutation accumulation (MA) and antagonistic pleiotropy (AP)). We also demonstrate how these 2 theories can be incorporated in a unified hierarchical framework. The new framework will help to generate testable hypotheses of how the hallmarks of aging are shaped by natural selection. Why and how we age are two intertwined questions that have fascinated scientists for many decades. This Essay proposes a new hierarchical model that links genes to vital rates, enabling a critical re-evaluation of the disposable soma theory and the developmental theory of aging in terms of their relationship to evolutionary genetic theories of aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolutionary history of the cephalopod order Vampyromorpha with its only recent representative, Vampyroteuthis infernalis, the deep-sea vampire squid, is still obscure and a new specimen from the Early Jurassic of Luxembourg, provides new information on the vampyromorph morphology at this period. The new taxon Simoniteuthis michaelyi. gen. n. sp., which is based on a nearly complete gladius with associated head–arm complex, is morphologically intermediate between the families Loligosepiidae and Geopeltidae. Interestingly, the arm crown displays only four arm pairs, although an arm configuration consisting of five arm pairs should be expected in vampyromorph stem lineage representatives. This observation encouraged us to critically review the presumed homology of the filaments of Vampyroteuthis and the lost arm pair in cirrate and incirrate octopods. Moreover, two bony fishes in the mouth region implicated that Simoniteuthis michaelyi n. gen. n. sp. preyed upon them in hostile water depths, a taphonomic phenomenon called distraction sinking. By contrast to modern Vampyroteuthis infernalis, Simoniteuthis michaelyi n. gen. n. sp. roamed and hunted in shallower waters as typical for Mesozoic stem lineage vampyromorphs. According to the current fossil record, a vertical migration into deeper waters (probably associated with a shift in feeding behaviour) occurred at least since the Oligocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Livestream content has been gaining popularity in recent years. Although it has been known that livestream viewing can mitigate the adverse effects of loneliness on individuals' well-being, the specific cognitive-affective processes involved are not given due attention. Situated in the Evolutionary Theory of Loneliness, the current study draws upon a national survey data (n = 911) to demonstrate that one's hypervigilance and their negative emotional state serially mediate the relationship between their feelings of loneliness and their perceived well-being. The frequency of livestream views was also found to be moderating the serial mediation paths and the direct effect between feelings of loneliness on perceived well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 57-year-old female cadaver donated for research contained an accidental bilateral presence of the psoas minor (PMn) muscle. Bilateral PMn is a rare finding but it may be associated with other anatomical variations or abnormalities in the abdomen or pelvis. In some cases, the muscle may be involved in the development of certain medical conditions or may compress nearby structures, leading to symptoms such as pain or discomfort. Overall, bilateral PMn is a relatively uncommon anatomical variation that may be of interest to anatomists or medical professionals. A thorough understanding of this muscle is essential, particularly when making a clinical diagnosis and carrying out procedures in the iliac area. In this case report, we tried to discuss the clinical, embryological, and evolutionary significance of PMn muscle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the compatibility between theistic evolution and Thomistic metaphysics. It critiques the idea proposed by Mariusz Tabaczek, arguing that it is not possible to reconcile the philosophical views of St. Thomas Aquinas with the concept of biological macroevolution. The article explores points of incompatibility presented by Tabaczek and questions whether they are essential to Aquinas's doctrine. It also discusses the problem of the emergence of new species through evolution and evaluates whether Tabaczek's solution provides an explanation for this issue. The author concludes that theistic evolution is not only in conflict with Thomistic metaphysics but also with the Christian faith as interpreted by the Church. [Extracted from the article]

The article presents the discussion on world news briefs. Topics include new discovery showing a well-known image in anthropology circles, the March of Progress depicting evolution as a linear path from apes to humans; and Philip Jagessar's examination of the Linguistic Survey of India (LSI), led by George Grierson from 1896 to 1928, critically analyzes this vast project's effort to classify India's languages.

This article discusses the methodological and ethical challenges posed by the bureaucratization of research ethics in Eastern Europe, particularly as this impacts the practice of anthropology and fieldwork. It reflects on the authors' extensive fieldwork among Czech‐speaking Protestants in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, highlighting the discrepancy between Western and Eastern European academic norms regarding ethnography. The authors argue that increased formalization and ethical regulation favour more easily bureaucratically managed methodologies, to the detriment of traditional anthropological fieldwork, which is critical for deep cultural understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critiques the expanding influence of research ethics committees (RECs) on social research, emphasizing their adverse effects on ethnographic methodologies. It argues that the bureaucratization of ethics, emphasizing compliance over contextual understanding, fundamentally misunderstands and impedes the nuanced nature of ethnographic work. Drawing on personal experiences and broader critiques, the article proposes the need for an alternative system that better accommodates the ethical complexities of social research, advocating for a more tailored approach that respects disciplinary methodologies and fosters genuine ethical engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the theorization of temporality offered by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze through the books "Capitalism and Schizophrenia," which he authored with colleague Félix Guattari and "Difference and Repetition." It discussed the involvement of immanent variation of coexistence in temporality, the expression of immanent variation through social formations, and the response of Deleuze to Marxian claims regarding the role of economic production in the evolution of society.

An essay is presented which explores the views and theories of American philosopher and psychologist William James on the philosophy of history. Topics discussed include his defense of the great person theory of history in his 1890 article "The Importance of Individuals," the response of James to the evolutionary philosophy of colleague Herbert Spencer, and the conception of both mental and social evolution which James addressed in his 1890 book "Principles of Psychology."

The article focuses on celebrating Peter Beilharz's 70th birthday, reflecting on his extensive work in Antipodean social theory. It delves into the fixation on place in Australia, the dynamic relationships shaping Antipodean identities, and the evolution of Antipodean modernity through traffic and cosmopolitanism, as highlighted in Beilharz's essays on Bernard Smith's work and Antipodean theory.

Americans since Darwin have projected onto chimpanzees, the primates closest to us in evolutionary history, their anxieties about race, sex, family, and questions regarding the relationship between nature and nurture, questions basic to understanding what it means to be human. The history of scientific discourse and discourse in American popular culture about chimpanzees since the middle of the nineteenth century show patterns responsive to specific American anxieties at moments in history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The divine command theory holds that morality finds its origin in God or that God is somehow closely connected to morality. Many people across the world hold a related, though different belief that Religious belief is required for proper moral behavior. In this paper, I look at a number of evolutionary and cognitive explanations (supernatural punishment theory, big gods theory, moral dyad, and costly signaling) that purport to explain why people hold beliefs concerning a close connection between God and morality. I assess whether any of these theories provide a reason for epistemic concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Generelle Morphologie der Organismen (1866), Ernst Haeckel systematised the biological study of morphology along evolutionary lines and proposed that the 'Anthropozoic Age' should be considered the most recent paleontological time period. This article first examines Haeckelʼs early concept of the Anthropozoic Age in relation to his ambiguous use of the words 'Nature' and 'Culture' in his life's work. It then illustrates how his later travel narrative, Indische Reisebriefe (1882), projects notions of the Anthropozoic Age onto landscapes from his journey to British‐governed Ceylon. Haeckel presents two diverging paleontological timescales: a deep and interconnected past of the island's organisms and the currently escalating consequences of human cultivation of the land. Lending different scientific and aesthetic attention to the depiction of the two environmental developments, discrepant images are fused in his hopes and visions of a new and better 'Age of Culture'. The travel report is thus a very early literary response to the scientific concept of living during a time in which humanity dominates the world's environments. From today's perspective, the text raises familiar questions regarding how humans should conceive their own agency in the Anthropocene. At the same time, it highlights the concept's entanglement with contemporary philosophical and socio‐political discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benatar argues that the absence of cosmic meaning is part of the reason why our lives are so bad that we had better not procreate. The goal of this paper is to argue against this claim from a Kantian point of view. For this goal, I argue first that the fact that human life is a product of blind evolution is not a reason for justifying that our lives are overall bad, mainly on the grounds that the concepts of good and bad make sense only within the logical space of reasons. I also argue that the fact that we can hardly make a significant difference to the universe is not a reason for justifying that our lives are overall bad, either, mainly on the grounds that whether one's life is good or bad can be evaluated primarily in terms of whether one's permissible ends are achieved to a satisfactory extent, and so one's good life does not depend on making a significant difference to the universe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The panda's thumb argument, championed by the late Stephen Jay Gould, stands as one of the most famous polemics for common ancestry. In this essay, I analyze Gould's argument in several steps. First, I attempt to reconstruct the argument in both deductive and likelihood formulations. I contend that both versions of the argument rest on a theological claim—namely, that God would not (likely) create or allow a suboptimal panda's thumb. I then argue that a wide range of people are not rationally obligated to accept this theological claim. Next, I give special attention to the likelihood formulation's emphasis on a contrastive argument for evolution over special creation. I contend that a great number of people are not rationally obligated to accept this formulation either. I next consider and reply to an objection that Gould never intended the panda argument as an apologetic for evolution (and an attack on special creation) but rather as a critique of adaptationism. Finally, I argue that the panda argument conflicts with Gould's broader views about the human mind and the relationship between theology and science. I also note along the way that the shortcomings of the panda argument apply to a number of other arguments for evolutionary theory. To be sure, I do not criticize evolution itself or the comprehensive grounds for it. Instead, my primary aims are to analyze the panda argument and suggest that caution is in order about similar arguments as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public health interventions targeting coughing and spitting during the Tuberculosis and 1918 flu epidemics were largely successful. Specifically, public health officials' messaging framed the behavior of spitting as repulsive and endangering to others, prompting an elicitation of disgust. Anti-spitting campaigns – messaging that focuses on the threat of spit or sputum – have long been common during pandemics and manifested once again to combat the spread of COVID-19. Yet, few scholars have theorized if and how anti-spitting campaigns function to change behavior. One possibility is parasite stress theory, which posits that human behavior is driven by a desire to avoid pathogenic threats like spit. The application of these types of disgust appeals in public health messaging remains understudied and warrants exploration. To test the applicability of the parasite stress theory, our message experiment with US adults (N = 488) examined reactions to anti-spit messages that varied in visual disgust (low and high). For more highly educated respondents, the high disgust appeal directly decreased spitting intentions, and this relationship was stronger for individuals with higher levels of pathogen and moral disgust. Given the importance of public messaging during pandemics, future research should continue to examine the efficacy and theoretical underpinnings of specific disgust appeals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the teachings of the Abrahamic religions in general and Islam in particular, history is ultimately described as an evolved issue. Nonetheless, if this is accepted, the question arises as to whether the evolution of history occurs over time or all at once. This article examines the works of Martyr Muṭahharī, the Iranian revolutionary philosopher and scholar, with a descriptive-analytical method and tries to answer this question from his point of view. In the first part, the foundations of Martyr Muṭahharī's view to the evolution of the course of history are explained. Then, while expressing the components of realism in the interpretation of history, some problems that are raised against the evolution of history are answered from his point of view. These include human's right-seeking nature, human's utilitarianism, and the legacy of the prophets. Muṭahharī has taken a philosophical approach to commenting on the course of history, which seems to be more relevant to the question of the evolution of history. Emphasizing the legitimacy of the history process and ruling the principle of causality on historical events, he communicates between the past, the present, and the future of history, and thus provides a meaningful basis for historical continuity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new evolutionary-based approach called a Subtraction-Average-Based Optimizer (SABO) for solving optimization problems. The fundamental inspiration of the proposed SABO is to use the subtraction average of searcher agents to update the position of population members in the search space. The different steps of the SABO's implementation are described and then mathematically modeled for optimization tasks. The performance of the proposed SABO approach is tested for the optimization of fifty-two standard benchmark functions, consisting of unimodal, high-dimensional multimodal, and fixed-dimensional multimodal types, and the CEC 2017 test suite. The optimization results show that the proposed SABO approach effectively solves the optimization problems by balancing the exploration and exploitation in the search process of the problem-solving space. The results of the SABO are compared with the performance of twelve well-known metaheuristic algorithms. The analysis of the simulation results shows that the proposed SABO approach provides superior results for most of the benchmark functions. Furthermore, it provides a much more competitive and outstanding performance than its competitor algorithms. Additionally, the proposed approach is implemented for four engineering design problems to evaluate the SABO in handling optimization tasks for real-world applications. The optimization results show that the proposed SABO approach can solve for real-world applications and provides more optimal designs than its competitor algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including evolution theorist Charles Darwin's extensive travel, the interconnectedness of living forms on planet Earth life-world relationships, and relation between neuroscience and phenomenology.

A foreword to "The Importance of Evolution to Understandings of Human Nature" is presented.

Neil Levy argues that the importance of acquiring cultural knowledge in our evolutionary past selected for conformist and deferential social learning, and that contemporary bad beliefs – roughly, popular beliefs at odds with expert consensus – result primarily from the rational deployment of such conformity and deference in epistemically polluted modern environments. I raise several objections to this perspective. First, against the cultural evolutionary theory from which Levy draws, I argue that humans evolved to be highly sophisticated and vigilant social learners. Given this, the ubiquity of bad beliefs in the modern world is puzzling: if humans are so smart and suspicious, why do these characteristics seem so rare in domains such as politics? I argue that the answer rests on the incentives that underlie bad beliefs, and I favorably contrast this explanation with Levy's appeal to epistemic pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue that our general disposition to make moral judgments and our core moral intuitions are likely the product of social selection—a kind of gene–culture coevolution driven by the enforcement of collectively agreed-upon rules. Social selection could potentially track mind-independent moral truth by a process that I term realist social selection: our ancestors could have acquired moral knowledge via reason and enforced rules based on that knowledge, thereby creating selection pressures that drove the evolution of our moral psychology. Given anthropological evidence that early humans designed rules with the conscious aim of preserving individual autonomy and advancing their collective interests, the theory of realist social selection appears to be attractive for moral realists. The goal of evolutionary debunking arguments should be to show not that our moral beliefs are the product of natural selection, but that realist social selection did not occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Allah bestowed His Blessings upon man when He sent His Messenger, Hadrat Muhammad Mustafa (PBUH). At that time, man was entangled in social, cultural, environmental, emotional and psychological barriers which had been weakening his bondage to his Creator, The Almighty. He (PBUH) explicitly planned to free human beings from the shackles that chained them from within and from without". As the Qur'an says that the Prophet (PBUH) is commissioned "to remove from their burdens and the shackles which were upon them". A number of books and articles have been written on his diligent training of mankind for its social, cultural, environmental and emotional evolution. The Researcher felt the need of acknowledgement of his practices in the context of psychological problems. This article has explored the psychological aspect of his (PBUH) character and discussed as to how the Muslims can help themselves to eradicate and solve the psychological problems prevailing in the society with the help of Seerah of the Holy Prophet (PBUH). The study is qualitative and analytical based on the Qur'an, the Hadith and the Researches done so far in the field of Psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parton distribution functions (PDFs) inscribe details about the hadronic substructure in terms of partons, quarks and gluons collectively, which are the fundamental degrees of freedom of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of strong interactions. Study of PDFs has led to a better comprehension of the partonic structure of hadrons and the proton structure function in deep inelastic scattering. Understanding parton densities within the hadrons is vital to estimate the hard-scattering process results. Owing to theoretical and experimental limitations, PDFs cannot be computed from the first principles. The global analysis of parton distribution functions, therefore, requires an unrelenting endeavour. The aim of the present work is to have a comparative study of the PDFs from the plots obtained using APFEL, which is a PDFs evolution library. We discuss the graphical analyses as well as comparisons of the three global PDFs sets, viz. CT10, MSTW2008 and NNPDF30, in a wide range of momentum fraction x and energy scale Q. A comparative analysis of gluons extracted from these global fits has also been done. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributed to a project about Nature and Theology (Prof. Dr. J. Buitendag). The text questioned why our modern concept of nature must be reformulated in a contemporary concept of nature as the anthropocentrism of the modern concept of nature is criticised by a growing knowledge about the cohesion of many phenomena in the evolution of life on planet Earth. This criticism confronts theologians with fundamental deficiencies in their ongoing anthropological approach of life, especially human life. The article looked for a reinterpretation of mystical texts of Gregory of Nyssa in order to question whether this offers a new framework of a theological approach of a contemporary concept of nature. Contribution: Within the project about Nature and Theology new questions arise as the concept of Nature has to be reformulated based on new insights in the evolution of life. Within the debates about the Anthropocene, the planet Earth is approached as being a living reality in one way or another. So theologians have to look for new theological approaches as well. This article suggested that concepts of Gregory of Nyssa contribute in this respect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to recent work in experimental philosophy, folk intuitions concerning various metaphysical issues are heavily teleological. The experiments in question, which belong to a broader research program in psychology about 'promiscuous teleology', have featured prominently in debates about the methodology of metaphysics, with some authors claiming that the folk's teleological bias debunks everyday intuitions concerning composition, persistence, and organisms. The present paper argues for a possibility that is very rarely discussed in that debate, namely the idea that the folk's intuitions could be veridical. Our argument is based on an emerging naturalistic theory of biological functions called "the organismic view". The gist of the organismic view is that biological systems are characterized by a special circular causal regime where each part of the system contributes to the boundary conditions of some other parts, as well as of the whole. We argue that teleological folk intuitions are veridical in the biological domain under such a view, and they are veridical in the social and artefactual domains under coherent extensions of the organismic view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay offers a technocentric perspective on two space operas by Stanis»aw Lem, The Invincible (1966) and Fiasco (1987), novels that span much of his creative career. As an evolutionary philosopher, Lem was decades ahead of his time in recognizing the idea of postbiological evolution and how technology shapes it. Pivoting around this central theory, Lem shows how our understanding of mind in the universe is narrow and anthropocentric, while engineering and the design space of evolution act as fixed Archimedean points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his article, Grossmann argues that, in the context of human cooperative caregiving, heightened fearfulness in children and human sensitivity to fear in others are adaptive traits. I offer and briefly defend a rival hypothesis: Heightened fearfulness among infants and young children is a maladaptive trait that did not get deselected in the process of evolution because human sensitivity to fear in others mitigates its disadvantageous effects to a sufficient extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay attempts to combine some recent theoretical results in (bio)semiotics on arbitrariness, semiotic fitting, umwelt, choice, and extended theory of evolution into a more coherent whole. The proposed model describes a living being through its subjectivity and the ability to create meaning, which are often overlooked in models based on replicability. The concept of the umwelt is divided into two - the synchronic umwelt and the distributed or diachronic umwelt. For the latter, a new term 'umweb' is introduced. A mechanism of evolution is described in which arbitrary relating followed by semiotic fitting is somewhat analogous to the neo-Darwinian mechanism of random mutations followed by natural selection. The paper proceeds to discuss the alternativity and coexistence of these two radically different ways of evolution and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An issue that might concern the species problem is the understanding and acceptance of evolution by students. The reason is that some of the modern concepts, which have been developed to define the species category, do not fit the evolutionary theory. In addition, some other concepts are simply criteria for the delimitation of species taxa. In particular, the biological and morphological species concepts, which are present in every textbook and are used almost exclusively in the teaching of evolution, can intensify students' essentialist perceptions. However, these perceptions could be effectively dealt with the development of the species problem and the nature of species taxa in the classroom, and also the treatment of species as one more level of organization of biological systems during teaching process. This approach is employed in a lesson with a view to contributing to the structure of a fully developed conceptual framework by the students in order to understand the evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citation analysis can provide us with models of the evolutionary dynamics in scholarly and scientific communication. We propose to distinguish between institutional research evaluation (usually, ex post) and knowledge evaluation ex ante, in relation to directionality in citation analysis. We discuss the theoretical literature on communication systems which distinguishes between information and meaning, in which the concept of redundancy plays an important role as measure of the potential of a communication system. This is the basis for a model of knowledge dynamics which differentiates between observable variation and latent selection environments. We use indicators at the journal level and analyze the citation environments of journals in both the cited and citing directions. Among journals, the citing direction can be analyzed by co-citation and indicates the integration of knowledge from different fields. The cited direction can analogously be analyzed by bibliographic coupling and represents the extent to which the cited journal has become relevant for different disciplines, hence indicates knowledge diffusion. We apply this analysis on three different case studies of journal-journal relations: a small scale study of the journal Public Understanding of Science, a random sample of 100 journals, and a large-scale analysis of the set of JCR 2016 journals. Combined, the results seem to confirm the hypothesis that interdisciplinarity cannot be captured by one-dimensional citation analysis. Both citing and cited directions are relevant for knowledge and research evaluations, respectively. We raise the question whether indicators of interdisciplinarity can be developed by combining both directions in citation analysis, indicate further research, and discuss the normative implications of our preliminary results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolutionary process involved the suffering of quadrillions of sentient beings over millions of years. I argue that when we take this into account, then it is likely that when the first humans appeared, the world was already at an enormous axiological deficit, and that even on favorable assumptions about humanity, it is doubtful that we have overturned this deficit or ever will. Even if there's no such deficit or we can overturn it, it remains the case that everything of value associated with humanity was made possible by our evolutionary history and all that animal suffering. It can seem indecent to regard all that past suffering as having been worth it simply because it was a causal precondition for our existence. But when we consider the realistic alternatives to the way evolution in fact unfolded, there is nevertheless a conditional case for regarding past sentient suffering as a kind of necessary evil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]