Derrick de Kerckhove

A Theory of Greek Tragedy

Put in simple terms, my theory is that Greek theater was one of the developments of the phonetic alphabet specifically, and that its effect was to transform the sensory life of the Athenian community. The Greek stage projected the prototypes of Western man as models for the acquisition of private consciousness. The theatrical processes amplified and extended to the non-literate members of the Athenian culture, some of the discreet effects which the phonetic alphabet generated among those who could already read and write. While they were attending stage productions illiterates might be deemed to develop their attention span, their concentration, their critical faculties and their capacity for abstraction, their manipulation of language, and even train their visual skills from peripheral to centralized and directional vision. They might be encouraged for the first time to define and fragment experience in sequences and reorganize its patterns in a unified visual space. All these effects and others made the Greek culture what we think it has been, and were initially dependent upon the apprenticeship of the phonetic alphabet.

On Nuclear Communication

relationships. Its line of force and direction is disintegration, not integraThis content downloaded from 157.55.39.96 on Sun, 02 Oct 2016 06:15:18 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Critical Brain Processes Involved in Deciphering the Greek Alphabet

The object of this chapter is to present a hypothesis concerning the underpinnings of Western culture. Did the fully phonetic alphabet developed by the Greeks and still used today in Greece (and in the rest of the West in its Latin and Cyrillic variations), have a conditioning impact on the biases of specialized brain processes? The hypothesis is that when the Greeks introduced vowels to adapt the Phoenician alphabet to suit the needs of their own Indo-European language, they changed the nature of the reading process from a context-based to a sequence-based decipherment. This change in turn may have been responsible for the reorganization of brain strategies, and this may explain why the direction of writing changed from the leftward orientation of Phoenician to rightward. The implications of such a change may have had far-reaching consequences on the biases of Western cognition.

Estimating Fish Exploitation and Aquatic Habitat Loss across Diffuse Inland Recreational Fisheries

The current state of many freshwater fish stocks worldwide is largely unknown but suspected to be vulnerable to exploitation from recreational fisheries and habitat degradation. Both these factors, combined with complex ecological dynamics and the diffuse nature of inland fisheries could lead to an invisible collapse: the drastic decline in fish stocks without great public or management awareness. In this study we provide a method to address the pervasive knowledge gaps in regional rates of exploitation and habitat degradation, and demonstrate its use in one of North Americas largest and most diffuse recreational freshwater fisheries (Ontario, Canada). We estimated that (1) fish stocks were highly exploited and in apparent danger of collapse in management zones close to large population centres, and (2) fish habitat was under a low but constant threat of degradation at rates comparable to deforestation in Ontario and throughout Canada. These findings confirm some commonly held, but difficult to quantify, beliefs in inland fisheries management but also provide some further insights including (1) large anthropogenic projects greater than one hectare could contribute much more to fish habitat loss on an area basis than the cumulative effect of smaller projects within one year, (2) hooking mortality from catch-and-release fisheries is likely a greater source of mortality than the harvest itself, and (3) in most northern management zones over 50% of the fisheries resources are not yet accessible to anglers. While this model primarily provides a framework to prioritize management decisions and further targeted stock assessments, we note that our regional estimates of fisheries productivity and exploitation were similar to broadscale monitoring efforts by the Province of Ontario. We discuss the policy implications from our results and extending the model to other jurisdictions and countries.

Does consumption rate scale superlinearly

Arising from S. Pawar, A. I. Dell & V. M. Savage 486, 485–489 10.1038/nature11131(2012)A recent paper by Pawar and colleagues has provided important insights into the consequences of foraging behaviour for food-web dynamics. One notable pattern predicted by their analysis is that consumption rate (c) scales superlinearly (cm1.16) with consumer body mass (m) in three-dimensional (3D), but not two-dimensional (2D), foraging spaces. Although we feel that the authors should be applauded for this interesting contribution, we argue that their result is not consistent with established life-history theory. To resolve this contradiction, progress in both fields is probably required, including new empirical studies in which consumption rate, metabolism and dimensionality are examined directly under natural conditions.

Alphabetic Literacy and Brain Processes

The object of this chapter is to raise a basic question concerning the underpinnings of Western culture. Did the fully phonetic alphabet invented by the Greeks circa 750 B.C. (for a discussion of a possibly earlier date, see Naveh, 1982) and still used today in Greece (and in the rest of the West in its Latinised version), have a conditioning impact on the biases of specialised brain processes in our culture? Could the alphabet have acted on our brain as a powerful computer language, determining or emphasising the selection of some of our perceptual and cognitive processes?

Censoring government scientists and the role of consensus in science advice A structured process for scientific advice in governments and peer-review in academia should shape science communication strategies

Before the Second World War, science advocacy in politics was rare and usually only in the context of religious or philosophical debates. It seldom affected political decisions, elections or policies [1], [2]. During the war, the technological arms race with Nazi Germany gave scientific advisors great influence over military strategy and political decisions, in particular in the USA and the UK. After 1945, many governments continued to use either permanent or ad hoc scientific advisors, who shaped both research policy and influenced political decision‐making and discourse. An early example of actual political advocacy by scientists dates back to the 1964 US presidential race between Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson, when “Scientists and Engineers for Johnson‐Humphreys” successfully campaigned against Goldwaters pro‐nuclear weapons position. Yet, even then, many scientists worried about the politicization of science, arguing that the integrity of scientific insights could only be maintained if science remained apolitical. Notwithstanding, scientists are increasingly called upon to participate in public policy discussions. Science advocacy has become commonly involved in issues ranging from the regulation of genetically modified foods to public health policies, to understanding and mitigating the effects of global climate change. Advocacy gives scientists an opportunity to shape political discourse and provide a rational and informed perspective, but it can lead to conflict between scientific advice and government policy. Although there remains a desire to keep science separate from politics, many scientists worry that, unless they openly voice their opinion and concerns, political decisions will not reflect their perspectives and could even distort scientific findings [3], [4]. For example, stem cell research was a polarizing topic throughout the 1990s and 2000s: In 1994, a scientific committee advising the director of the US National Institutes of Health devised a strategy to inform politicians who …

Logical Principles Underlying the Layout of Greek Orthography

There are two principal categories of writing systems; those representing words, images, or ideas contained in language, and those representing the sound of the languages. Among the latter, there are two main types, those representing so-called “concrete” sounds (Havelock, 1976, 1982), called syllabaries because each sign represents a fully pronounceable syllable, and those that represent phonemes, i.e., parts or segments of sounds, namely the alphabets. There are two kinds of alphabets: those like Hebrew and Arabic which use consonants alone to indicate the radicals of the words, and those like Latin or Greek which use a combination of consonants and vowels to represent fully the sequence of syllables that form the words. (Some syllabaries, such as the Indic Nagari and its derivates, and also the Ethiopian script and the Korean Hangul, are in fact very sophisticated systems of phonemic articulation that include the phonemic analysis within the syllabic character. They present a different situation which must be investigated on its own terms.)

Text, Context and Hypertext, three conditions of language, three conditions of mind

Argument: The technologies that support or manage language also affect the mind, of necessity, simply because language is a system for the articulation of the mind, a kind of operating system writ large. Language thus entertains a close and intimate relationship with our inmost sensibility and also with both the content and the structure of our minds as we show it in this paper. For example, oral societies, having little verbal memory support have been more or less obliged to live in world in which the body has to do the job of remembering and they have to keep reenacting the past. Two major technologies have modified our earlier relationships with language, literacy and electricity. Literacy by detaching text from context also detached the reader and liberated individual minds from the collective one of the tribe. Electricity brings all the senses back into language, but, at the same time, it externalizes the minds of the readers on screen, and makes public once more, the contents and traumas of the private literate mind.

The effectiveness of terrestrial protected areas for lake fish community conservation

Freshwater protected areas are rare even though freshwater ecosystems are among the most imperiled in the world. Conservation actions within terrestrial protected areas (TPAs) such as development or resource extraction regulations may spill over to benefit freshwater ecosystems within their boundaries. Using data from 175 lakes across Ontario, Canada, we compared common indicators of fish-assemblage status (i.e., species richness, Shannon diversity index, catch per unit effort, and normalized-length size spectrum slopes) to evaluate whether TPAs benefit lake fish assemblages. Nearest neighbor cluster analysis was used to generate pairs of lakes: inside versus outside, inside versus bordering, and bordering versus outside TPAs based on lake characteristics. The diversity and abundance indicators did not differ significantly across comparisons, but normalized-length size spectrum slopes (NLSS) were significantly steeper in lakes outside parks. The latter indicated assemblage differences (greater abundances of small-bodied species) and less-efficient energy transfer through the trophic levels of assemblages outside parks. Although not significantly different, pollution- and turbidity-tolerant species were more abundant outside parks, whereas 3 of the 4 pollution-intolerant species were more abundant within parks. Twenty-one percent of the difference in slopes was related to higher total dissolved solids concentrations and angling pressure. Our results support the hypothesis that TPAs benefit lake fish assemblages and suggest that NLSS slopes are informative indicators for aquatic protected area evaluations because they represent compositional and functional aspects of communities.