We hypothesize that life began not with the first self‐reproducing molecule or metabolic network, but as a prebiotic ecology of co‐evolving populations of macromolecular aggregates (composomes). Each composome species had a particular molecular composition resulting from molecular complementarity among environmentally available prebiotic compounds. Natural selection acted on composomal species that varied in properties and functions such as stability, catalysis, fission, fusion and selective accumulation of molecules from solution. Fission permitted molecular replication based on composition rather than linear structure, while fusion (...) created composomal variability. Catalytic functions provided additional chemical novelty resulting eventually in autocatalytic and mutually catalytic networks within composomal species. Composomal autocatalysis and interdependence allowed the Darwinian co‐evolution of content and control (metabolism). The existence of chemical interfaces within complex composomes created linear templates upon which self‐reproducing molecules (such as RNA) could be synthesized, permitting the evolution of informational replication by molecular templating. Mathematical and experimental tests are proposed. BioEssays 28: 399–412, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This paper addresses the silence about the Haitian revolution in the oeuvre of Karl Marx. He, who regarded revolutions as “locomotives of world history,” ignored the history of the revolution in Haiti and remained silent about its protagonists. In a brief approach to this paradox, I argue that the main reason for this blank space was Marx’s deficient analysis of contemporary racism. This is made clear in relation to 1) his acceptance of the biological meaning of race, 2) his involvement (...) in two main racisms of the time, antisemitism and colonial racism, and 3) his differentiation and gradation of historical subjects. The consequences were dramatic not because of Marx’s involvement in the racist zeitgeist but insofar as his learning process with regard to the relevance of anti-colonial movements and his awareness of negative societalization as well as its significance were not reflected in a theory of racism. This was to prove a debacle for subsequent attempts at a Marxist analysis of racism and has had effects that are still evident today. (shrink)

Tous les mots, phrases et expressions avec leur prononciation pour pouvoir communiquer en toute situation.

Synthetic biology presents a challenge to traditional accounts of biology: Whereas traditional biology emphasizes the evolvability, variability, and heterogeneity of living organisms, synthetic biology envisions a future of homogeneous, humanly engineered biological systems that may be combined in modular fashion. The present paper approaches this challenge from the perspective of the epistemology of technoscience. In particular, it is argued that synthetic-biological artifacts lend themselves to an analysis in terms of what has been called ‘thing knowledge’. As such, they should neither (...) be regarded as the simple outcome of applying theoretical knowledge and engineering principles to specific technological problems, nor should they be treated as mere sources of new evidence in the general pursuit of scientific understanding. Instead, synthetic-biological artifacts should be viewed as partly autonomous research objects which, qua their material-biological constitution, embody knowledge about the natural world—knowledge that, in turn, can be accessed via continuous experimental interrogation. (shrink)

En este trabajo se examina la relación interna entre educación y democracia, así como la razón por la cual, pese a su papel crucial en la formación de culturas democráticas, esta relación se ha hecho problemática. Con el fin de mostrar, en primer lugar, qué consecuencias negativas tiene para la vida política contemporánea esta ruptura entre pedagogía y filosofía política y, en segundo lugar, cómo superarlas, este artículo explora algunos malentendidos básicos en torno a las condiciones culturales para la democracia (...) y el papel neutral del Estado, finalizando con la propuesta de un programa renovado de educación democrática. (shrink)

El presente artículo se ocupa del problema de si existen formas de reconocimiento moral y social caracterizables como ideológicas, analizando qué propiedades de tales modos de reconocimiento justifican tal calificación. Pretende, además, articular un criterio que permita dirimir normativamente entre formas ideológicas y no ideológicas de reconocimiento. Este criterio será puesto a prueba en el análisis crítico de discursos actuales que reivindican el carácter de reconocimiento social para recientes transformaciones del mercado laboral en el mundo desarrollado.

As a young scholar, Eric Voegelin wanted to prove whether the ‘race idea’ could function as a means of political integration. He published two books on race that, after his flight to the USA, were eventually passed off as an early critique of racism. This is a complete misinterpretation and inversion of his endeavor. In his tracts, Voegelin only criticized a certain direction of race thinking that he identified as a materialistic biological approach to the problem. At the same time, (...) he advocated another spiritual and metaphysical attempt, represented by the examples of Carl Gustav Carus, Othmar Spann, and Ludwig Ferdinand Clauß. Both versions of race thinking were abundant in different types of fascism and also in Nazi Germany. That is why Voegelin could publish his books in Germany—and one of them even at the recommendation of a Nazi philosopher, with a publisher close to völkisch and fascist ideology. The revaluation of his racist texts was only possible on the basis of their affirmative or superficial and uncritical reading against the backdrop of the development of a one-dimensional conception of racism. (shrink)

The Construction of Social Reality can be read at different levels, and this makes it hard to assess. At one level, it is a stunningly clear, comprehensive, and extremely simple introduction to the foundations of the social sciences. At another level, it is an idiosyncratic and interesting statement by a philoso pher of note who writes in a field with which he is barely acquainted. And at yet another level, it is a philosophical treatment of certain philosophical problems that Searle's (...) independent reflections on the nature and possibility of social reality have disclosed. Different readers will find different things in Searle's book. What I found is an original contribution to a theory of institu tional facts and to a certain kind of restricted idealism that Anscombe (1976) called "linguistic idealism.". (shrink)

In the most general sense this thesis is about the formal structure of the Geisteswissenschaften. This does not mean that It presents a taxonomic classification of the special social sciences. It is a basic analysis of the structure of social reality that underlies all the special social sciences. Social facts have a basic ontological and logical structure that I believe can be displayed. By displaying this structure I show how we can transform inadequate prehensions of social facts into a more (...) complete or perfect grasp of the concept. The theory of social facts I present is broadly Hegelian. My analysis shows that it has practical applications. I apply the theory to the special science of legal anthropology in order to show that and bow it can be used to clarify methodological problems in the social sciences. (shrink)

T. 1. Die Entstehung des mechanischen Naturbildes.

The author calls attention to and discusses certain basic but neglected and/or obscured features of Hegel's idealism. He treats these features as paradigmati cally sociological and uses them as a baseline with which to chart Hegel's critique of, and against which to measure, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Section 1 introduces Hegel's criticism of Kant's idealism; in contrast to his own objective idealism, transcendental idealism is individualistic. This criticism is elaborated in section 2, issuing in the quasi-Wittgensteinian indictment that Kant (...) cannot account for the possibility of language and human thought. Section 3 argues that Hegel's criticism that mind is social and that objectivity cannot be understood in isolation from social interaction amounts to a sociological critique of Kant. (shrink)

In the first half of this paper I show how H. L. A. Hart's theory of rules can resolve, or at least clarify, a central methodological problem in legal anthropology that was first posed in Llewellyn and Egebel's The Cheyenñe Way In the second half I explore and develop Hart's theory of rules, and apply it to problems of agency and behaviourism in legal anthropology, and of legal development, and apply it to the problem of rule-scepticism in legal anthropology as (...) it is posed in Roberts and Comaroffs Rules and Processes and elsewhere. (shrink)

The author argues that Kant was working out a theory of society in his postcritical work, and that he intentionally, and studiously, kept the 1st Critique sociology-free.

In this note I examine a case of teleological reasoning in international law and find it to be the fallacy of affirming the consequent.I then show that and how the basis of this fallacy is a manipulation (or juxtaposition) of ?necessary? and ?sufficient? conditions.I conclude by giving reasons for thinking that this kind of reasoning is a regular feature of international law.