Starting from the postmodern, the philosophical and sociological speculation by Zygmunt Bauman, opens - through the analysis of the phenomenon of globalization - to the meta-level of life, and then circumscribes the most recent thinking on political life, until reaching the liquid modernity: overcoming postmodernity itself. As a result individual, society, ethics, power, religion become those w...

In this chapter, we propose a unified framework for a holistic understanding of granular computing. It is developed based on three perspectives, namely, the philosophical, the methodological, and the computational perspectives. The three perspectives lead to structured thinking, structured problem solving, and structured information processing. We argue that the subject of the study of granular...

Jean-André Rochoux (1787-1852) can be considered the author, in 1812, of the first clinical and neuropathological description of cerebral hemorrhage and ischemia, based on concepts that underlie current vascular neurology. His biography reveals how his thinking was shaped by materialist philosophy, which was also the basis of his rigorous scientific reasoning. Due to his intransigent defence of...

‖ In connection with the preceding article by Otto Meyerhof, a few words on Nelson’s significance for the philosophy of mathematics might be added. Nelson was among those philosophers whose style of thinking resulted from a familiarity with the spirit of the exact sciences. Mathematics and physics represented the methodical ideal that he strove to achieve in elaborating his philosophical though...

The philosophy of technology deals with the nature of technology and its effects on human life and society. The increasing influence of modern technology on human existence has triggered a growing interest in a philosophical analysis of technology. Nevertheless, the philosophy of technology as a coherent field of research does not yet exist. The subject covers studies from almost every branch o...

A reorientation is needed in methodological debate about the role of intuitions in philosophy. Methodological debate has lost sight of the reason why it makes sense to focus on questions about intuitions when thinking about the methods or epistemology of philosophy. The problem is an approach to methodology which gives a near exclusive focus to questions about some evidential role that intuitio...

Sir John Eccles wrote that Descartes' dualist-interactionism guided his scientific career, yet his scientific work reached far beyond the bounds of this or any other philosophical proposition. Indeed, the untestable, metaphysical foundation of dualism in all its forms conflict with scientific thinking. Thus, if Eccles had concentrated on spirit as distinct from matter, he would have positioned ...

We consider the term aidea from a philosophical point of view. In particular we are interested in the concept s origins, its relevance to human thinking and in particular in its pedagogical value for computer science lessons in schools as well as universities. Since the concept of fundamental ideas in computer science has been seized, extended, and reviewed by other authors and applied to lesso...

This study seeks to understand how community newspaper editors negotiate the professional complexities posed by citizen journalism*a phenomenon that, even in the abstract, would appear to undermine their gatekeeping control over content. Through interviews with 29 newspaper editors in Texas, we find that some editors either favor or disfavor the use of citizen journalism primarily on philosophi...

The choice of studying economics instead of another subject should be motivated by the fact that economics training equips students with skills and knowledge that other disciplines do not provide. Which are these skills and knowledge, however, is not always very clear. This article clarifies such issue by first exploring the philosophical foundations and the defining features of the discipline,...