Abstract Nature Forms

Abstract

This article is the introduction to the special issue about Evaluation, Educational Policy Reforms, and Their Implications for Arts Education. A summary of all the articles comprised in the special issue is reported, mainly featured, on the one hand, by a discussion about how the education policy reforms shape a particular approach to evaluation that ends up conforming education and arts education and, on the other hand, it shows some magnet examples of arts curriculum evaluation combining both standardized assessment with qualitative strategies pertinent to the nature of arts content and experiences. The article also discusses how it could be possible to move from the current scope of school arts education most of the authors depict to the development of another way of evaluation and curriculum development where the experiential process is taken into account. While these signals might be still scarce, for some other authors could be the opportunity to overcome at least partially the current demise of school arts curriculum.     

X. The Interaction of Inner Forms of the Word

The inner form of the word is not limited to logical (semantic) forms.     

The Nature of Folk-Botanical Life Forms

Original work by Brent Berlin, Eugene Hunn, Cecil Brown, and other ethnoscientists has produced significant findings pertaining to claims of universality for folk-biological ranks, in general, and folk-botanical life forms, in particular. These findings implicitly call into question conventional wisdom in the history of biology, which tends to consider life forms as the outworn vestiges of scholastic tradition or as merely socially practical ways of carving up the living world. Unfortunately, however, ethnobiologists continue to rely on faulty analytical schema for assessing the nature of life forms which philosophers and historians of biology have developed in their ignorance of the popular conceptual foundations of folk taxonomy. The error is compounded by the adoption into ethnosystematics of the most empiricistically reductionist, and logically confused, interpretation of such schema that derives from the neo-Adansonian, or pheneticist, school of modern system-atics. This interpretation confounds (1) meaning and reference, (2) the semantics of cognitively distinct object domains, and (3) the conceptual differences between common sense and science. These points are challenged, and it is concluded that life forms, though anthropocentrically biased, are no more "artificial" or "special-purpose" than higher-order scientific taxa. Finally, the problem of so-called "unaffiliated" and "ambiguous" generics is addressed and a new analysis offered.     

Distinct Effects of Memory Retrieval and Articulatory Preparation when Learning and Accessing New Word Forms

Temporal and frontal activations have been implicated in learning of novel word forms, but their specific roles remain poorly understood. The present magnetoencephalography (MEG) study examines the roles of these areas in processing newly-established word form representations. The cortical effects related to acquiring new phonological word forms during incidental learning were localized. Participants listened to and repeated back new word form stimuli that adhered to native phonology (Finnish pseudowords) or were foreign (Korean words), with a subset of the stimuli recurring four times. Subsequently, a modified 1-back task and a recognition task addressed whether the activations modulated by learning were related to planning for overt articulation, while parametrically added noise probed reliance on developing memory representations during effortful perception. Learning resulted in decreased left superior temporal and increased bilateral frontal premotor activation for familiar compared to new items. The left temporal learning effect persisted in all tasks and was strongest when stimuli were embedded in intermediate noise. In the noisy conditions, native phonotactics evoked overall enhanced left temporal activation. In contrast, the frontal learning effects were present only in conditions requiring overt repetition and were more pronounced for the foreign language. The results indicate a functional dissociation between temporal and frontal activations in learning new phonological word forms: the left superior temporal responses reflect activation of newly-established word-form representations, also during degraded sensory input, whereas the frontal premotor effects are related to planning for articulation and are not preserved in noise.     

Adaptive Communication: Languages with More Non-Native Speakers Tend to Have Fewer Word Forms

Explaining the diversity of languages across the world is one of the central aims of typological, historical, and evolutionary linguistics. We consider the effect of language contact-the number of non-native speakers a language has-on the way languages change and evolve. By analysing hundreds of languages within and across language families, regions, and text types, we show that languages with greater levels of contact typically employ fewer word forms to encode the same information content (a property we refer to as lexical diversity). Based on three types of statistical analyses, we demonstrate that this variance can in part be explained by the impact of non-native speakers on information encoding strategies. Finally, we argue that languages are information encoding systems shaped by the varying needs of their speakers. Language evolution and change should be modeled as the co-evolution of multiple intertwined adaptive systems: On one hand, the structure of human societies and human learning capabilities, and on the other, the structure of language.     

水杉未解之谜的初探

通过广泛的文献考证和调研,系统而又深入地对国内外一直存在的有关水杉的争议：水杉是谁发现的,水杉的种子是如何引入美国的,水杉的英文名字用什么,水杉的第一份标本采集时间及保护现状等进行了探讨;并提出：水杉是中国植物学家集体发现的,其关键人物是王战,郑万钧,胡先Su;水杉引种美国是中美两国学者合作的,中方是胡先Su,郑万钧,及种子采集者华敬灿;美方主要是哈佛大学阿诺德树木园和E．D．Merrill;水杉的英文名字最好采用“water fir”或其拉丁文名,即Metasequoia;水杉的第一份标本是王战1943年7月21日采的,至今仍存在一个国内外均未注册且长期无人管理的“标本室”,亟待妥善保管。     

Objectified Selves: An Analysis of Medicines in Andean Sacrificial Healing

This analysis of medicines used in a Quechua soul-calling ritual in the southern Peruvian Andes demonstrates that the items in sacrificial bundles (despachos) embody the identity of patients. The manipulation of these medicinal objects gives insight into the meaning of the concept of embodiment in the Andean cultural context and expands Western conceptions of embodiment. An examination of the material representation of the body, the sacrificial object, illuminates the components of embodied identity in this particular cultural context. Analysis of the manipulation of medicines further illuminates the potency and efficacy of symbolic healing to transform the phenomenological world of the patient. [ethnomedicine, Andes, embodiment, symbolic healing]     

Mystery of mysteries: Darwin and the species problem

Darwin offered an intriguing answer to the species problem. He doubted the existence of the species category as a real category in nature, but he did not doubt the existence of those taxa called “species”. And despite his scepticism of the species category, Darwin continued using the word “species”. Many have said that Darwin did not understand the nature of species. Yet his answer to the species problem is both theoretically sound and practical. On the theoretical side, Darwin’s answer is confirmed by contemporary biology, and it offers a more satisfactory answer to the species problem than recent attempts to save the species category. On the practical side, Darwin’s answer frees us from the search for the correct theoretical definition of “species”. But at the same time it does not require that we banish the word “species” from biology as some recent sceptics of the species category advocate. © The Willi Hennig Society 2010.     

生物螺旋结构的奥妙与应用

在生物界,螺旋结构是生物结构的基本形态之一,无论是宏观的动物、植物界,还是微观的微生物;无论是染色体,还是生物大分子如DNA和蛋白质分子,都有螺旋形结构,它激发了人类越来越多的创造灵感,为人类的发明创造提供了有益的启示,如设计的螺旋形楼梯、新颖的高楼、水轮机导管、锄草机上的切刀等。     

The Mystery of Chaco Canyon

The Mystery of Chaco Canyon. 1999. 56 minutes, color. video produced and directed by Anna Sofaer. For more information, contact Bullfrog Films, Box 149, Oley, PA 19547; 1-800-543-FROG (3764); info@bullfrogfilms.com.