This article examines the ideological implications of different interpretations of the statement "Humans are animals." It contrasts theories that regard humans as literally sophisticated animals with those who interpret the statement metaphorically. Sociobiological theories, bolstered by metaphors in the dictionary of English emphasize competitiveness and aggression as features shared by humans and nonhuman animals. Other theories emphasize symbiosis and cooperation. Some of these theories are prescriptive—metaphor patterns in English reflect the strong tendency to regard animal behavior as something for humans (...) to avoid. Conversely, sociobiologists suggest it is natural and right to behave like animals, the naturalistic fallacy. Other cultural theories suggest that the statement is only metaphorical; our differences from animals are what make us most human. The article notes the tendency to metaphorically project the values and structures of current human society onto the animals being studied, serving the interest of those who, in power, benefit from the status quo. (shrink)

From a cultural-historical perspective, nature and nurture are contested concepts. The paper focuses on the nature/nurture debate in the work of William Shakespeare and in the Romantic tradition, and argues that while our Romantic inheritance problematises nurture, it tends to mystify nature. Given that conceptions of nature are culturally driven, there is an urgent educational challenge to problematise nature as well as nurture.

According to the Copernican myth, geocentrism was a form of anthropocentrism because it showcased humankind as being both the centre and the purpose of the Cosmos, whereas heliocentrism, in dethroning humankind from this privileged position, luckily provided a means to quash this point of view, which was illusory and vain, and that even went against scientific progress. According to the anthropocentric myth, which is a part of it, geocentrism is a form of anthropocentrism, while heliocentrism is really an anti-anthropocentrism and (...) not simply a non-anthropocentrism. This article, in the form of a dialogue, questions these two myths, looking in particular for the causes of their appearance, among which is a guilty anachronism. (shrink)

The London mathematical practitioner Henry Bond correctly forecast in The Sea-Mans Kalendar for 1636 [?1638] that the then easterly magnetic declination in London would become zero in 1657 and would then increase westerly for 'at least 30 years'. In 1668, he published a table of predicted changes in annual declination for the years 1668-1716. Despite a detailed examination of his later claim to be able to determine longitude using a dip needle, the basis for his earlier forecasts was not examined (...) and Bond himself appears never to have fully revealed his methods. It is demonstrated that Bond's predictions of 1636 and 1668 are consistent with the fitting of quadratic and cubic equations to existing observational data by means of the solution of simultaneous equations, and it is therefore argued that he anticipated 'Meyer's method' by over 100 years. Furthermore, Bond's forecast of 1668 made use of his discovery that the tangent of the angle of inclination is equal to twice the cotangent of the angle of magnetic latitude, thereby anticipating the findings of Biot and Krafft by c . 130 years. (shrink)

Humoralism, the view that the human body is composed of a limited number of elementary fluids, is one of the most characteristic aspects of ancient medicine. The psychological dimension of humoral theory in the ancient world has thus far received a relatively small amount of scholarly attention. Medical psychology in the ancient world can only be correctly understood by relating it to psychological thought in other fields, such as ethics and rhetoric. The concept that ties these various domains together is (...) character (êthos), which involves a view of human beings focused on clearly distinguishable psychological types that can be recognized on the basis of external signs. Psychological ideas based on humoral theory remained influential well into the early modern period. Yet, in 17th-century medicine and philosophy, humoral physiology and psychology started to lose ground to other theoretical perspectives on the mind and its relation to the body. This decline of humoralist medical psychology can be related to a broader reorientation of psychological thought in which the traditional concept of character lost its central position. Instead of the focus on types and stable character traits, a perspective emerged that was primarily concerned with individuality and transient passions. (shrink)