Methods of ethics and the descent of man: Darwin and Sidgwick on ethics and evolution

Darwin’s treatment of morality in The Descent of Man has generated a wide variety of responses among moral philosophers. Among these is the dismissal of evolution as irrelevant to ethics by Darwin’s contemporary Henry Sidgwick; the last, and arguably the greatest, of the Nineteenth Century British Utilitarians. This paper offers a re-examination of Sidgwick’s response to evolutionary considerations as irrelevant to ethics and the absence of any engagement with Darwin’s work in Sidgwick’s main ethical treatise, The Methods of Ethics. This assessment of Sidgwick’s response to Darwin’s work is shown to have significance for a number of ongoing controversies in contemporary metaethics.     

Paternity index and attribution of paternity

If blood typing and similar tests do not exclude a putative father in a paternity case, his probability of paternity can be assessed with the formulae of Essen-M?ller[1938]. Gürtler[1956] uses an alternative route, viz. the paternity index, to reach identical end results. Majumder and Nei [1983] claim that the methods are not powerful enough. This opinion can always be defended, but may have been enhanced by their inadequate computer model. They also contend that current methods may more often than not lead to false attributions of paternity. This is outright erroneous.     

New findings on the innervation of nerves proper]

The study by the author and his co-workers of the innervation of the sheaths of extraorganic (spinal and cerebral) and intraorganic nerves has shown that their nervous apparatus is differentiated in accordance with differentiation of epi-, peri- and endoneurium. The peculiar features of the innervation of sheaths of different nerves correspond to their functions and pathoplastical individuality and manifest themselves by uneven complexity, concentration and microtopography of nerve structures in the sheaths and by distinctions in the development and reactivity. Interrelationships and correlation was established between the specific functional readiness of nerve conductors and the structural organization of their sheaths' nervous apparatus. The phenomenon of reciprocal innervation of nerves was established in experiment as well as earlier reactive and compensatory-reparative processes in the nervous apparatus of nerve sheaths as compared with their conductors.     

Reflections on the Limits of Science and Technology

SYNOPSIS. Exuberance over insights gained in the infant fieldof genetics early this centuryled scientists to extrapolatebeyond their data to heredity of behavioral traits in people.Oneof the direct consequences was the incarceration of Americansand Canadians of Japanese ancestry during World War II as enemyaliens. Drawing on this personal experience of the misapplicationof science, I describe the process of scientific indoctrinationand blindness to the limitations of this way of knowing. Thisled to my attempt to demystify science through the electronicmedia. Only recently have I come to understand that two assumptionsthat impelled me to use television in the first place are wrong.The first was that with access to more information about science,the general public would be in a position of making better informeddecisions on issues involving science and technology. The problemis that we are overwhelmed with information and most peoplelack the ability to distinguish meaningful "signal" (i.e., credibleinformation) from background "noise" (i.e., garbage). We believein phantoms created by the acceptance of anything because itexists as print or television programs. My second assumption had been that we need a mechanism to doan in-depth "cost/benefit" analysis of new technologies beforethey are actually made available. But history reveals that thebenefits of new technologies are immediate and obvious whilethe costs are usually hidden and completely unpredictable. But in the rush to exploit new scientific insights we ignorethe fact that science must lookat nature in isolated bits andpieces. Knowledge gained in fragments does not yield an understandingof the greater context from which the pieces are taken. Witheach new discovery, we itch to apply it, forgetting how muchwe have yet to learn. Our attempts to manipulate nature areoften illusions of control created by our ability to overpowernature by brute strength. In the area of genetic engineering,this could be truly disastrous.     

Reflections on the eyes of butterflies

Recent literature concerning insect vision has placed considerable emphasis upon the brightly coloured reflections observable in the eyes of darkadapted butterflies. It is frequently argued that these reflections originate in tracheoles near the basement membrane and are obscured by pigment migration. This theory was tested by a variety of physiological and optical methods and found to be inadequate.It is proposed that the reflections originate in the sub-corneal region (corneal process). Light adaptation of the eye results in a (photomechanical) contraction of specific retinula cells, thereby ‘stretching’ the corneal process and altering its optical properties. It is this mechanism which causes the extinction of the reflections.It is likely that structures within the cornea are important in determining the ‘colour’ of the reflections.     

面对一个古老传统的反思

联合国教科文组织提出这样的见解：若想取得保护生物多样性的成功,不可离开对文化多样性的保护。而文化多样性的保护不可避免地触及这样一个问题：需要重新看待传统。在这一主旨下我们举办了一次[编者按]