In this article, we first provide evidence that Scandinavian contributions to stakeholder theory over the past 50 years play a much larger role in its development than is presently acknowledged. These contributions include the first publication and description of the term “stakeholder”, the first stakeholder map, and the development of three fundamental tenets of stakeholder theory: jointness of interests, cooperative strategic posture, and rejection of a narrowly economic view of the firm. We then explore the current practices of Scandinavian companies (...) through which we identify the evidence of relationships to these historical contributions. Thus, we propose that Scandinavia offers a particularly promising context from which to draw inspiration regarding effective company-stakeholder cooperation and where ample of examples of what is more recently referred to as “creating shared value” can be found. We conclude by endorsing the expression “Scandinavian cooperative advantage” in an effort to draw attention to the Scandinavian context and encourage the field of strategic management to shift its focus from achieving a competitive advantage toward achieving a cooperative advantage. (shrink)

Is one of the roles of theory in biology answering the question “What is life?” This is true of theory in many other fields of science. So why should not it be the case for biology? Yet efforts to identify unifying concepts and principles of life have been disappointing, leading some (pluralists) to conclude that life is not a natural kind. In this essay I argue that such judgments are premature. Life as we know it on Earth today represents a (...) single example and moreover there is positive evidence that it may be unrepresentative of life considered generally. Furthermore, as I discuss, the prototype for theorizing about life has traditionally been based on multicellular plants and animals. Yet biologists have discovered that the latter represent a rare, exotic, and fairly recent form of Earth life. By far the oldest, toughest, most extensive, and diverse form of life on our planet is unicellular, prokaryotic microbes, and there are reasons to suppose that this is almost certainly true elsewhere in the universe as well. If there are explanatorily and predictively powerful, biologically distinctive principles for life that can be gleaned from our insular example of life it is more likely that they will be found among the microbes. I discuss some provocative ways in which unicellular microbes differ from multicellular eukaryotes and argue that some of them just might provide us with key insights into the nature of life. (shrink)

In this opinion piece, the authors offer their personal and idiosyncratic views of the future of the philosophy of science, focusing on its relationship with the history of science and metaphysics, respectively. With regard to the former, they suggest that the Kantian tradition might be drawn upon both to render the history and philosophy of science more relevant to philosophy as a whole and to overcome the challenges posed by naturalism. When it comes to the latter, they suggest both that (...) metaphysics has much to learn from the philosophy of science and that it offers an array of tools that philosophers of science can themselves appropriate. (shrink)

The assumption that all life on Earth today shares the same basic molecular architecture and biochemistry is part of the paradigm of modern biology. This paper argues that there is little theoretical or empirical support for this widely held assumption. Scientists know that life could have been at least modestly different at the molecular level and it is clear that alternative molecular building blocks for life were available on the early Earth. If the emergence of life is, like other natural (...) phenomena, highly probable given the right chemical and physical conditions then it seems likely that the early Earth hosted multiple origins of life, some of which produced chemical variations on life as we know it. While these points are often conceded, it is nevertheless maintained that any primitive alternatives to familiar life would have been eliminated long ago, either amalgamated into a single form of life through lateral gene transfer (LGT) or alternatively out-competed by our putatively more evolutionarily robust form of life. Besides, the argument continues, if such life forms still existed, we surely would have encountered telling signs of them by now. These arguments do not hold up well under close scrutiny. They reflect a host of assumptions that are grounded in our experience with large multicellular organisms and, most importantly, do not apply to microbial forms of life, which cannot be easily studied without the aid of sophisticated technologies. Significantly, the most powerful molecular biology techniques available—polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of rRNA genes augmented by metagenomic analysis—could not detect such microbes if they existed. Given the profound philosophical and scientific importance that such a discovery would represent, a dedicated search for ‘shadow microbes’ (heretofore unrecognized ‘alien’ forms of terran microbial life) seems in order. The best place to start such a search is with puzzling (anomalous) phenomena, such as desert varnish, that resist classification as ‘biological’ or ‘nonbiological’. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd.. (shrink)

The assumption that all life on Earth today shares the same basic molecular architecture and biochemistry is part of the paradigm of modern biology. This paper argues that there is little theoretical or empirical support for this widely held assumption. Scientists know that life could have been at least modestly different at the molecular level and it is clear that alternative molecular building blocks for life were available on the early Earth. If the emergence of life is, like other natural (...) phenomena, highly probable given the right chemical and physical conditions then it seems likely that the early Earth hosted multiple origins of life, some of which produced chemical variations on life as we know it. While these points are often conceded, it is nevertheless maintained that any primitive alternatives to familiar life would have been eliminated long ago, either amalgamated into a single form of life through lateral gene transfer or alternatively out-competed by our putatively more evolutionarily robust form of life. Besides, the argument continues, if such life forms still existed, we surely would have encountered telling signs of them by now. These arguments do not hold up well under close scrutiny. They reflect a host of assumptions that are grounded in our experience with large multicellular organisms and, most importantly, do not apply to microbial forms of life, which cannot be easily studied without the aid of sophisticated technologies. Significantly, the most powerful molecular biology techniques available—polymerase chain reaction amplification of rRNA genes augmented by metagenomic analysis—could not detect such microbes if they existed. Given the profound philosophical and scientific importance that such a discovery would represent, a dedicated search for ‘shadow microbes’ seems in order. The best place to start such a search is with puzzling phenomena, such as desert varnish, that resist classification as ‘biological’ or ‘nonbiological’. (shrink)

In our age of globalization, we need a theory of global management consistent with our common human nature. The place to begin in developing such a theory is the philosophy of traditional cultures. The article focuses on African philosophy and its fruitfulness for contributing to a theory of management consistent with African traditional cultures. It also looks briefly at the Confucian and Platonic-Aristotelian traditions and notes points of agreement with African traditions. It concludes that the needed theory of global management (...) should regard the firm as a community, not a collection of individuals, and should understand the purpose of management as promoting the common good. (shrink)

Three experiments are reported which show that in certain contexts subjects reject instances of the valid modus ponens and modus tollens inference form in conditional arguments. For example, when a conditional premise, such as: If she meets her friend then she will go to a play, is accompanied by a conditional containing an additional requirement: If she has enough money then she will go to a play, subjects reject the inference from the categorical premise: She meets her friend, to the (...) conclusion: She will go to a play. Other contexts suppress the conditional fallacies. The first experiment demonstrates the effects of context on conditional reasoning. The second experiment shows that the inference suppression disappears when the categorical premise refers to both of the antecedents, such as: She meets her friend and she has enough money. In this case, subjects make both the valid inferences and the fallacies, regardless of the contextual information. The third experiment establishes that when subjects are given general information about the duration of a situation in which a conditional inducement was uttered, such as: If you shout then I will shoot you, they reject both the valid inferences and the fallacies. The results suggest that the interpretation of premises plays an even more central role in reasoning than has previously been admitted. Trois expériences montrent que dans certains contextes les sujets rejettent des instances valides de modus ponens et de modus tollens dans des énoncés conditionnels. Par exemple, quand une prémisse conditionnelle comme: Si elle rencontre son ami, alors elle ira jouer, est accompagnée par une phrase contenant une condition supplémentaire: Si elle a assez d'argent, alors elle ira jouer, les sujets rejettent l'inférence liant la prémisse catégorielle: Elle rencontre son ami, à la conclusion: Elle ira jouer. D'autres contextes éliminent également les inférences conditionnelles fallacieuses. La premiére expérience démontre l'effet du contexte sur la raisonnement conditionnel. La deuxiéme expérience montre que la suppression de l'inférence disparait quand la prémisse catégorielle fait référence aux deux antécédants, comme: Elle rencontre son ami et elle a assez d'argent. Dans ce cas, les sujets font aussi bien les inférences valides et fallacieuses, quelle que soit l'information contextuelle. La troisiéme expérience établit que quand l'on donne aux sujets des informations générales à propos de la durée d'une situation dans laquelle une conditionnelle a été prononcée, comme Si tu cries, alors je te tire dessus, ils rejettent autant les inférences valides que les inférences fallacieuses. Ces résultats suggèrent que l'interprétation des prémisses joue un rŏle encore plus central dans le raisonnement que l'on admettait auparavant. (shrink)

In this article, Bakhtin’s early aesthetics is reread in the context of Hermann Cohen’s system of philosophy, especially his aesthetics. Bakhtin’s thinking from the early ethical writing Toward a Philosophy of Act to Author and Hero in Artistic Activity and Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics is followed. In Author and Hero , an individual is in his life conceived as involved in cognitive and ethical action but as remaining without a consummative form; the form, or the ‘soul’, is bestowed upon a (...) person by the creative activity of the artist alone. In his understanding of artistic creativity and the relationship between the ‘hero’ and the author, Bakhtin closely follows Cohen, with the exception that for Cohen the object of artistic form-giving is the universal, idealized man, whereas for Bakhtin it is an individual. In the concept of a ‘polyphonic novel’ as developed in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics , Bakhtin, however, considers this view of the activity of the artist (or the novelist) to apply to the “traditional” novel only, while in a Dostoevskyean novel the characters are not subordinated to any defining power of the author. Bakhtin’s theory of the Dostoevskyean novel is thus a return to the emphasis of the cognitive and ethical autonomy of the individual. His understanding of the encounter between persons as a ‘subject’—‘subject’ or an ‘I’—‘thou’ relation has a predecessor, among others, in Cohen. (shrink)

Absent as a breeding bird from Britain for at least a century, avocets began nesting on the east coast of Britain, in Suffolk, shortly after the end of the Second World War, having homed in on two spots on Britain’s coast that had been flooded for war-related reasons. The avocets’ presence was surrounded in secrecy, while a dedicated few kept up a protective watch over them. As the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds took over responsibility for the flourishing (...) colony, they claimed the episode as a symbol of success for British protection, later making the bird their logo. Counter to the RSPB’s story of protecting a British bird, I read the narratives of events in terms of making a bird British. I show how, as postwar Britain slumped economically and spiritually and tried to rebuild itself, the birds became a vehicle for formulating national identity: of Britain as a home to which to return and belong. Exploring the themes of returning servicemen and closed territories, the paper also examines the episode in terms of the naturalisation of the military and the militarisation of nature. (shrink)

Natural history collections are typically studied in terms of how they were formed rather than how they were received. This gives us only half the picture. Visiting accounts can increase our historical understanding of collections because they can tell us how people in the past understood them. This essay examines the responses of visitors to Walton Hall in West Yorkshire, home of the traveller-naturalist Charles Waterton and his famous taxidermic collection. Waterton’s specimens were not interpreted in isolation. Firstly, they were (...) experienced as components of a larger visiting experience, in which travelling to the Hall, being admitted to the grounds, viewing the park, and meeting the owner, were all just as significant as seeing the specimens themselves. Secondly, they were interpreted in conjunction with familiar stories and images relating to Waterton’s adventurous collecting activities. Visiting accounts can help us begin to recover what people thought about Waterton and his collection in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, in so far as they were responsible for a large part of his subsequent reputation, they can help us better understand our own, present-day conceptions of Charles Waterton and Walton Hall. (shrink)

Ludwik Fleck is remembered for his monograph published in German in 1935. Reissued in 1979 as Genesis and development of a scientific fact Fleck’s monograph has been claimed to expound relativistic views of science. Fleck has also been portrayed as a prominent scientist. The description of his production of a vaccine against typhus during World War II, when imprisoned in Buchenwald, is legendary in the scholarly literature. The claims about Fleck’s scientific achievements have been justified by referring to his numerous (...) publications in international scientific journals. Though frequently mentioned, these publications have scarcely been studied. The present article discusses differences in interpretation and evaluation of science in relation to the background of the interpreters. For this purpose Fleck’s scientific publications have been scrutinized. In conjunction with further sources reflecting the desperate situation at the time in question, the results of the study account for a more restrained picture of Fleck’s scientific accomplishments. Furthermore, based on the review of the latter, certain demands characterizing good science could be articulated. The restricted possibilities of those not trained in science or not possessing field specific knowledge, evaluating science are discussed, as are also formal aspects of scientific papers and questions related to research ethics. (shrink)

After noting some conditions of historical and contemporary context that favor a dialogue between pragmatism and East‐Asian thought, which could help generate a new international philosophical perspective, this essay focuses on several themes that pragmatism shares with classical Chinese philosophy. Among the interrelated themes explored are the primacy of practice, the emphasis on pluralism, context, and flux, a recognition of fallibilism, an appreciation of the powers of art for individual, social, and political reconstruction, the pursuit of perfectionist self‐cultivation in the (...) art of living, and the crucial role of embodiment in this melioristic pursuit. The last section defends this somaesthetic emphasis against some likely criticisms and closes with an example of how occidental and East‐Asian somatic thinking can be productively integrated. (shrink)

The relationship between biological and social scientists as regards the study of human traits and behavior has often been perceived in terms of mutual distrust, even antipathy. In the interwar period, population study seemed an area that might allow for closer relations between them—united as they were by a concern to improve the eugenic quality of populations. Yet these relations were in tension: by the early post-war era, social demographers were denigrating the contributions of biologists to the study of population (...) problems as embodying the elitist ideology of eugenics. In response to this loss of credibility, the eugenics movement pursued a simultaneous program of withdrawal and expansion: its leaders helped focus concern with biological quality onto the developing field of medical genetics, while at the same moment, extended their scope to improving the social quality of populations through birth control policies, guided by demography. While this approach maintained boundaries between the social and the biological, in the 1960s, a revitalized American Eugenics Society helped reunite leading demographers and geneticists. This paper will assess the reasons for this period of influence for eugenics, and explore its implications for the social and biological study of human populations. (shrink)

The Committee on Common Problems of Genetics, Paleontology, and Systematics (United States National Research Council) marks part of a critical transition in American evolutionary studies. Launched in 1942 to facilitate cross-training between genetics and paleontology, the Committee was also designed to amplify paleontologist voices in modern studies of evolutionary processes. During coincidental absences of founders George Gaylord Simpson and Theodosius Dobzhansky, an opportunistic Ernst Mayr moved into the project's leadership. Mayr used the opportunity for programmatic reforms he had been pursuing (...) elsewhere for more than a decade. These are evident in the Bulletins he distributed under Committee auspices. In his brief tenure as Committee leader, Mayr gained his first substantial foothold within the coalescing community infrastructure of evolutionary studies. Carrying this momentum forward led Mayr directly into the project to launch the journal Evolution. The sociology of interdisciplinary activity provides useful tools for understanding the Committee's value in the broad sweep of change in evolutionary studies during the synthesis period. (shrink)

The study of microbial phylogeny and evolution has emerged as an interdisciplinary synthesis, divergent in both methods and concepts from the classical evolutionary biology. The deployment of macromolecular sequencing in microbial classification has provided a deep evolutionary taxonomy hitherto deemed impossible. Microbial phylogenetics has greatly transformed the landscape of evolutionary biology, not only in revitalizing the field in the pursuit of life’s history over billions of years, but also in transcending the structure of thought that has shaped evolutionary theory since (...) the time of Darwin. A trio of primary phylogenetic lineages, along with the recognition of symbiosis and lateral gene transfer as fundamental processes of evolutionary innovation, are core principles of microbial evolutionary biology today. Their scope and significance remain contentious among evolutionists. (shrink)

Es soll ein Beitrag zur epistemischen Charakterisierung von Computersimulationen als jenseits von Experiment und Theorie geleistet werden. Es wird argumentiert, dass die in der Simulationstechnik eingesetzten Verfahren nicht numerische Lösungen liefern, sondern deren Dynamik mittels generativer Mechanismen imitieren. Die Computersimulationen in der Klimatologie werden als systematisches wie historisches Fallbeispiel behandelt. Erst "Simulationsexperimente" gestatten es, mittels Modellen eine Dynamik zu imitieren, ohne deren Grundgleichungen zu "lösen". /// Computer simulations will be characterized in epistemic respect as a method between experiment and theory. (...) It will be argued that simulations do not provide numerical solutions, rather they use generative mechanisms to imitate a dynamics. Climate science will be considered as a case both systematically and historically. Only simulation experiments allow to build models that imitate a dynamics without solving the relevant equations. (shrink)

: The natural philosopher Michael Faraday and the psychologist Jean Piaget experimented directly with natural phenomena and children. While Faraday originated evidence for spatial fields mediating force interactions, Piaget studied children's cognitive development. This paper treats their experimental processes in parallel, taking as examples Faraday's 1831 investigations of water patterns produced under vibration and Piaget's interactions with his infants as they sought something he hid. I redid parts of Faraday's vibrating fluid activities and Piaget's hiding games. Like theirs, my experiences (...) showed that incomplete observations and confusions accompanied—and facilitated —experimental developments. While working with things in their hands, these experimenters' minds were also engaged, inferring new, more coherent understandings of the behaviors under study. Transitory ripples disclosed distinct patterns; infants devised more productive search methods. From the ripples, Faraday discerned an oscillatory condition that informed his subsequent speculations about light. From the infant search, Piaget identified experimenting as a child's means of developing self and world, later envisioning its infusion into education. Taken together, these two stories demonstrate that cognitive capacities emerge in the actual process of experimenting. This finding eclipses the historical context in its implications for education today. When learners pursue their own experiments, their minds develop. (shrink)