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Human cooperation is highly unusual. We live in large groups composed mostly of non-relatives. Evolutionists have proposed a number of explanations for this pattern, including cultural group selection and extensions of more general processes such as reciprocity, kin selection, and multi-level selection acting on genes. Evolutionary processes are consilient; they affect several different empirical domains, such as patterns of behavior and the proximal drivers of that behavior. In this target article, we sketch the evidence from five domains that bear on (...) the explanatory adequacy of cultural group selection and competing hypotheses to explain human cooperation. Does cultural transmission constitute an inheritance system that can evolve in a Darwinian fashion? Are the norms that underpin institutions among the cultural traits so transmitted? Do we observe sufficient variation at the level of groups of considerable size for group selection to be a plausible process? Do human groups compete, and do success and failure in competition depend upon cultural variation? Do we observe adaptations for cooperation in humans that most plausibly arose by cultural group selection? If the answer to one of these questions is “no,” then we must look to other hypotheses. We present evidence, including quantitative evidence, that the answer to all of the questions is “yes” and argue that we must take the cultural group selection hypothesis seriously. If culturally transmitted systems of rules (institutions) that limit individual deviance organize cooperation in human societies, then it is not clear that any extant alternative to cultural group selection can be a complete explanation. (shrink)

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This article describes our efforts to screen and enrol clinical trial participants conscientiously in the COVID-19 pandemic setting. We present the standard screening and enrolment process prior to, and our process of adapting to, the pandemic. Our goal was to develop a way to screen and enrol people for clinical trials that was both equitable and effective. In addition, we outline the steps our research department took to ensure that ethical, clinical and logistical factors were considered when matching a patient (...) to a clinical trial. (shrink)

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Humans, animals, and the environment face a universal crisis: antimicrobial resistance. Addressing AR and its multi-disciplinary causes across many sectors including in human and veterinary medicine remains underdeveloped. One barrier to AR efforts is an inconsistent process to incorporate the plenitude of stakeholders about what AR is and how to stifle its development and spread—especially stakeholders from the animal agriculture sector, one of the largest purchasers of antimicrobial drugs. In 2019, The Wellcome Trust released Reframing Resistance: How to communicate about (...) antimicrobial resistance effectively, which proposed the need to establish a consistent and harmonized messaging effort that describes the AR crisis and its global implications for health and wellbeing across all stakeholders. Yet, Reframing Resistance does not specifically engage the animal agriculture community. This study investigates the gap between two principles recommended by Reframing Resistance and animal agriculture stakeholders. For this analysis, the research group conducted 31 semi-structured interviews with a diverse group of United States animal agriculture stakeholders. Participants reported attitudes, beliefs, and practices about a variety of issues, including how they defined AR and what entities the AR crisis impacts most. Exploration of Reframing Resistance’s Principle 2, “explain the fundamentals succinctly” and Principle 3, “emphasis that this is universal issue; it can affect anyone, including you” reveals disagreement in both the fundamentals of AR and consensus of “who” the AR crisis impacts. Principle 2 may do better to acknowledge that animal agriculture stakeholders espouse a complex array of perspectives that cannot be summed up in a single perspective or principle. As a primary tool to combat AR, behavior change must be accomplished first through outreach to stakeholder groups and understanding their perspectives. (shrink)

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This paper addresses the potentially interactive effects of descriptive and injunctive norm perceptions on an unethical workplace behavior: counterproductive work behavior perpetration. We draw on the Focus Theory of Normative Conduct and its conceptual distinction between norm types to refine research on this topic. We also test a person-by-environment interaction to determine whether the interactive effects of these norms for CWB are enhanced among employees reporting a stronger need to belong to social groups. In two studies, predictors were assessed in (...) an initial survey and the dependent variable was assessed weeks later. Individuals employed across a range of industries served as participants. In Study 1, descriptive and injunctive norm perceptions of CWB interacted to predict CWB perpetration. This finding was replicated in Study 2. Additionally, Study 2 demonstrated that the interaction between the two norm types was especially strong among individuals high in NTB. Results suggest that to decrease CWB perpetration, organizations may profitably leverage the persuasive effects of “social norms marketing” to alter employee perceptions of the typicality and level of approval for CWBs. This is the first study to demonstrate that both descriptive and injunctive norm perceptions predict CWB perpetration. The demonstrated three-way interaction between the two norm types and NTB advances existing theory regarding the cognitive and motivational mechanisms underlying normative social influence. (shrink)

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It is a cliché of self-help advice that there are no problems, only opportunities. The rationale and actions of the BSHS in creating its Global Digital History of Science Festival may be a rare genuine confirmation of this mantra. The global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 meant that the society's usual annual conference – like everyone else's – had to be cancelled. Once the society decided to go digital, we had a hundred days to organize and deliver our first online festival. (...) In the hope that this will help, inspire and warn colleagues around the world who are also trying to move online, we here detail the considerations, conversations and thinking behind the organizing team's decisions. (shrink)

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Digital communication between a patient and their clinician offers the potential for improved patient care, particularly for young people with long term conditions who are at risk of service disengagement. However, its use raises a number of ethical questions which have not been explored in empirical studies. The objective of this study was to examine, from the patient and clinician perspective, the ethical implications of the use of digital clinical communication in the context of young people living with long-term conditions. (...) A total of 129 semi-structured interviews, 59 with young people and 70 with healthcare professionals, from 20 United Kingdom -based specialist clinics were conducted as part of the LYNC study. Transcripts from five sites were read by a core team to identify explicit and implicit ethical issues and develop descriptive ethical codes. Our subsequent thematic analysis was developed iteratively with reference to professional and ethical norms. Clinician participants saw digital clinical communication as potentially increasing patient empowerment and autonomy; improving trust between patient and healthcare professional; and reducing harm because of rapid access to clinical advice. However, they also described ethical challenges, including: difficulty with defining and maintaining boundaries of confidentiality; uncertainty regarding the level of consent required; and blurring of the limits of a clinician’s duty of care when unlimited access is possible. Paradoxically, the use of digital clinical communication can create dependence rather than promote autonomy in some patients. Patient participants varied in their understanding of, and concern about, confidentiality in the context of digital communication. An overarching theme emerging from the data was a shifting of the boundaries of the patient-clinician relationship and the professional duty of care in the context of use of clinical digital communication. The ethical implications of clinical digital communication are complex and go beyond concerns about confidentiality and consent. Any development of this form of communication should consider its impact on the patient-clinician-relationship, and include appropriate safeguards to ensure that professional ethical obligations are adhered to. (shrink)

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Advancements in early diagnosis and novel treatments for children with complex and chronic needs have improved their chances of survival. But many survive with complex medical needs and ongoing medical management in the setting of prognostic uncertainty. Their medical care relies more and more on preference-sensitive decisions, requiring medical team and family engagement in ethically challenging situations. Many families are unprepared as they face these ethical challenges and struggle to access relevant ethical resources. In this paper, Timmy’s narrative, situated in (...) the context of what is known about ethical challenges in the care of children with chronic critical illness (CCI), serves as a case study of the gap in available ethical resources to guide families in their approach to difficult decision making for children with significant medical complexity and CCI. Our author group, inclusive of parents of children with complex medical needs and medical professionals, identifies domains of ethical challenges facing families of children with CCI and we highlight the development of family/caregiver-oriented ethics resources as an essential expansion of pediatric bioethics. (shrink)

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We discuss our concerns associated with three assumptions upon which the model of Levelt, Roelofs & Meyer is based: assumed generalisability of decontextualised experimental programs, assumed highly modular architecture of the language production systems, and assumed symbolic computations within the language production system. We suggest that these assumptions are problematic and require further justification.

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The Monographs produced by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) apply rigorous procedures for the scientific review and evaluation of carcinogenic hazards by independent experts. The Preamble to the IARC Monographs, which outlines these procedures, was updated in 2019, following recommendations of a 2018 expert Advisory Group. This article presents the key features of the updated Preamble, a major milestone that will enable IARC to take advantage of recent scientific and procedural advances made during the 12 years since (...) the last Preamble amendments. The updated Preamble formalizes important developments already being pioneered in the Monographs Programme. These developments were taken forward in a clarified and strengthened process for identifying, reviewing, evaluating and integrating evidence to identify causes of human cancer. The advancements adopted include strengthening of systematic review methodologies; greater emphasis on mechanistic evidence, based on key characteristics of carcinogens; greater consideration of quality and informativeness in the critical evaluation of epidemiological studies, including their exposure assessment methods; improved harmonization of evaluation criteria for the different evidence streams; and a single-step process of integrating evidence on cancer in humans, cancer in experimental animals and mechanisms for reaching overall evaluations. In all, the updated Preamble underpins a stronger and more transparent method for the identification of carcinogenic hazards, the essential first step in cancer prevention. (shrink)

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Though we agree with their argument that language is shaped by domain-general learning processes, Christiansen & Chater (C&C) neglect to detail how the development of these processes shapes language change. We discuss a number of examples that show how developmental processes at multiple levels and timescales are critical to understanding the origin of domain-general mechanisms that shape language evolution.

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Instead he argues that there is an essence of comedy in the area of spirit rather than form, perspective rather than pattern. He draws upon the rich historical ensemble of types of comic figures, with a chapter devoted to each: the humorist, comedian, comic hero, rogue, trickster, clown, fool, underdog, and simpleton. He shows how each type incarnates a comic heroism in its own unique manner, offering a profound wisdom and philosophy of life.

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In Moral Passages,Kathryn Pyne Addelson presents an original moral theory suited for contemporary life and its moral problems. Her basic principle is that knowledge and morality are generated in collective action, and she develops it through a critical examination of theories in philosophy, sociology and women's studies, most of which hide the collective nature and as a result hide the lives and knowledge of many people. At issue are the questions of what morality is, and how moral theories (...) (whether traditional or feminist) are implemented. Addelson takes up a large number of historical cases and contemporary social problems, including teen pregnancy, contraception and abortion, and gay rights. These cases allow her to see how the knowledge and lives of some people are declared deviant or immoral, while those of others appear to show the public consensus. One case she uses throughout the book is Margaret Sanger's early work on birth control with the anarcho-syndicalist movement--a revisionist history that reveals rather than hides the collective nature of morality and knowledge. Addelson shows how the usual individualist philosophies promote theories which hide the authority of the professionals who make them. A collectivist approach, she argues, must show the part professionals play in collective action. Her aim is to allow professional knowledge makers to be morally and intellectually responsible. Based on Addelson's twenty years of work in feminist philosophy and interactionist sociology as well as her long-standing involvement in women's community organization, Moral Passages investigates how morality and knowledge are collectively enacted in today's world. (shrink)

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A critique of Karl Friston's "Free Energy Principle" from a bioenactive perspective.

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The Catholic Tradition requires the faithful to form and follow their conscience. This is the case even with the recognition that consciences can be malformed and one can make errors in practical judgments. Water Shaping Stone examines various aspects of this tradition regarding conscience by using, among other sources, twentieth-century magisterial documents, theologians' works, and Scripture.Kathryn Lilla Cox argues that while the Magisterium retains teaching authority, and a responsibility to help form consciences through its teaching, focusing only on (...) the Magisterium leads to incomplete formation. A more holistic vision of conscience formation means considering the formation of the moral agent to be a multifaceted process that draws on, for example, teaching, prayer, rituals, Scripture, practices, and virtues, along with relationships with the Triune God and communities of accountability. This vision of conscience formation retains the magisterial teaching authority while acknowledging discipleship as the theological basis for making and assessing practical judgments of conscience. (shrink)

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How Doctors Think defines the nature and importance of clinical judgment. Although physicians make use of science, this book argues that medicine is not itself a science but rather an interpretive practice that relies on clinical reasoning. A physician looks at the patient's history along with the presenting physical signs and symptoms and juxtaposes these with clinical experience and empirical studies to construct a tentative account of the illness. How Doctors Think is divided into four parts. Part one introduces the (...) concept of medicine as a practice rather than a science; part two discusses the idea of causation; part three delves into the process of forming clinical judgment; and part four considers clinical judgment within the uncertain nature of medicine itself. In How Doctors Think, Montgomery contends that assuming medicine is strictly a science can have adverse side effects, and suggests reducing these by recognizing the vital role of clinical judgment. (shrink)

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FOREWORD. Gilbert Gottlieb and the Developmental Point of View. I. INTRODUCTION. 1. Developmental Systems, Nature-Nurture, and the Role of Genes in Behavior and Development: On the Legacy of Gilbert Gottlieb. 2. Normally Occurring Environmental and Behavioral Influences on Gene Activity: From Central Dogma to Probabilistic Epigenesis. II. THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR THE DEVELOPMENTAL STUDY OF BEHAVIOR AND GENETICS. 3. Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on Behavioral Genetics and Developmental Science. 4. Development and Evolution Revisited. 5. Probabilistic Epigenesis and Modern Behavioral and Neural (...) Genetics. 6. The Roles of Environment, Experience, and Learning in Behavioral Development. 7. Contemporary Ideas in Physics and Biology in Gottlieb’s Psychology. III. EMPIRICAL STUDIES OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT AND GENETICS. 8. Behavioral Development during the Mother-Young Interaction in Placental Mammals: The Development of Behavior in the Relationship with the Mother. 9. Amniotic Fluid as an Extended Milieu Interieur. 10. Developmental Effects of Selective Breeding for an Infant Trait. 11. Emergence and Constraint in Novel Behavioral Adaptations. 12. Nonhuman Primate Research Contributions to Understanding Genetic and Environmental Influences on Phenotypic Outcomes across Development. 13. Interactive Contributions of Genes and Early Experience to Behavioural Development: Sensitive Periods and Lateralized Brain and Behaviour. 14. Trans-Generational Epigenetic Inheritance. 15. The Significance of Non-Replication of Gene-Phenotype Associations. 16. Canalization and Malleability Reconsidered: The Developmental Basis of Phenotypic Stability and Variability. IV. APPLICATIONS TO DEVELOPMENT. 17. Gene-Parenting Interplay in the Development of Infant Emotionality. 18. Genetic Research in Psychiatry and Psychology: A Critical Overview. 19. On the Limits of Standard Quantitative Genetic Modeling of Inter-Individual Variation: Extensions, Ergodic Conditions and a New Genetic Factor Model of Intra-Individual Variation. 20. Songs My Mother Taught Me: Gene-Environment Interactions, Brain Development and the Auditory System: Thoughts on Non-Kin Rejection, Part II. 21. Applications of Developmental Systems Theory to Benefit Human Development: On the Contributions of Gilbert Gottlieb to Individuals, Families, and Communities. (shrink)

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This article explores the concept of knowledge as an internal process of inner knowing. In the educational context, we describe our experiences in using art in the classroom to assist our students in accessing this inner knowing. We describe the design and use of such creative expressions. Our findings indicate that students have to integrate both right- and left-brain thinking to access their inner tuition. This slows down linear thinking in order to access the more affective-based learning process. Further, it (...) encourages students to experiment with non-linear methods of learning. We argue that these findings assist students in accessing more choices in their decision making, which in turn will build managers who energize, revitalize and facilitate the growth of humanity through organizational compassion and understanding. (shrink)

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The Benefits and Potential Harms of Genetic Testing for Huntington's Disease: A Case Study Content Type Journal Article Pages 14-19 AuthorsKathryn Edge, BSC, Rheumatic Diseases Centre, CSB, Hope Hospital, The University of Manchester, Stott Lane, Salford M6 8HD, England Journal Human Reproduction & Genetic Ethics Online ISSN 2043-0469 Print ISSN 1028-7825 Journal Volume Volume 14 Journal Issue Volume 14, Number 2 / 2008.

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This article theorizes the politics of witnessing and grief in the context of the embodied experience of cows raised for dairy in the Pacific Northwestern United States. Bearing witness to the mundane features of dairy production and their impact on cows' physical and emotional worlds enables us to understand the violence of commodification and the political dimensions of witnessing the suffering of an Other. I argue that greater attention should be paid to the uneven hierarchies of power in the act (...) of bearing witness. Centering the animal as a subject of witnessing allows us to see with particular clarity the ethical ambiguities at work in witnessing while at the same time attending to the importance of witnessing-as-politics. My project here is to lay bare moments of emotional and physical turmoil not seen as such—the lives that are rendered ungrievable—and examine how we can and should respond to them. Thus, this article contributes to feminist conversations about witnessing, grief, and the political function of emotion. (shrink)

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In The Medical Right, Remaking Medicine in Their Image (2007) (Medical Right Report or Report), the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) applies the term "Medical Right" to refer to religiously influenced medical, bioethics and health policy organizations of the Religious Right. This extremely important, well researched Report examines how the political agenda of the Religious Right, a political force comprised of fundamentalists primarily in the Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions, impacts reproductive health care. The growing influence of medical associations (...) that apply fundamentalist Christian "biblical values" to research and policy affecting reproductive health care is explored. The Report reveals that many consortiums, think tanks, institutes, and programs apply Religious Right ideology to medical concerns under the mantle of "bioethics" or "biomedical ethics." These groups work with conservative advocacy, outreach, and legal organizations, along with politicians, to advance the policy agendas of the Religious Right. The confluence of conservative politics, fundamentalist religion, and ideologically influenced medicine and science, poses a threat to reproductive health care services, as discussed in detail in the Report. While the Report is comprehensive in its discussion of the Religious Right's involvement in reproductive health issues, it addresses in only a cursory fashion how the Medical Right engages health law and policy governing end-of-life care. The purpose of this paper is to explore this area of concern more thoroughly. (shrink)

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Assuming similarities between the domestic and global spheres of justice, I consider how lessons from the debate over women's rights and multiculturalism can be applied to global justice. In doing so, I focus on one strain of thinking on global justice, current moderations and modifications to cosmopolitanism. Discussions of global justice tend to approach the question of gender equity in one of two distinct ways: through articulations a cosmopolitanism ethic, advancing women's rights with the discourse of universal human rights or (...) through the lens of Care Ethics. The former approach emphasizes a universal core shared by all human beings, the latter the specific relationships we each are situated within. Recently, the discourse of global justice has moved away from this universal/particular dichotomy, with a range of theories, call them rooted cosmopolitanisms. My goal in this paper is to consider how these rooted versions of cosmopolitanism might respond to issues of gender equity and women's rights. (1) In pursuit of this aim, I first outline the parameters that define rooted cosmopolitanism. (2) I then assume, for the sake of argument, a continuity between domestic and global domains of justice, a continuity which allows for a translation of insights gained in domestic debates over multiculturalism into the global domain. (3) Finally, offering an answer to my leading question, I claim that rooted cosmopolitanism might assist in the struggle to protect the well-being of women as it endeavors to advance global justice. (shrink)

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Children’s understanding of status and group norms influence their expectations about social encounters. However, status is multidimensional and children may perceive status stratification differently across multiple status dimensions. The current study investigated the effect of status level and norms on children’s expectations about intergroup affiliation in wealth and popularity contexts. Participants were randomly assigned to hear two scenarios where a high- or low-status target affiliated with opposite-status groups based on either wealth or popularity. In one scenario, the group expressed an (...) inclusive norm. In the other scenario, the group expressed an exclusive norm. For each scenario, children made predictions about children’s expectations for a target to acquire social resources. Novel findings indicated that children associated wealth status to some extent, but they drew stronger inferences from the wealth dimension than from the popularity dimension. In contrast to previous evidence that children distinguish between high- and low-status groups, we did not find evidence to support this in the context of the current study. In addition, norms of exclusion diminished children’s expectations for acquiring social resources from wealth and popularity groups but this effect was more pronounced between wealth groups. We found age differences in children’s expectations in regards to norms, but not in regards to status. The implications of how these effects, in addition to lack of effects, bear on children’s expectations about acquiring resources are discussed. (shrink)

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Sometimes form-meaning mappings in language are not arbitrary, but iconic: they depict what they represent. Incorporating iconic elements of language into a compositional semantics faces a number of challenges in formal frameworks as evidenced by the lengthy literature in linguistics and philosophy on quotation/direct speech, which iconically portrays the words of another in the form that they were used. This paper compares the well-studied type of iconicity found with verbs of quotation with another form of iconicity common in sign languages: (...) classifier predicates. I argue that these two types of verbal iconicity can, and should, incorporate their iconic elements in the same way using event modification via the notion of a context dependent demonstration. This unified formal account of quotation and classifier predicates predicts that a language might use the same strategy for conveying both, and I argue that this is the case with role shift in American Sign Language. Role shift is used to report others’ language and thoughts as well as their actions, and recently has been argued to provide evidence in favor of Kaplanian “monstrous” indexical expressions. By reimagining role shift as involving either quotation for language demonstrations or “body classifier” predicates for action demonstrations, the proposed account eliminates one major argument for these monsters coming from sign languages. Throughout this paper, sign languages provide a fruitful perspective for studying quotation and other forms of iconicity in natural language due to their lack of a commonly used writing system which is otherwise often mistaken as primary data instead of speech, the rich existing literature on iconicity within sign language linguistics, and the ability of role shift to overtly mark the scope of a language report. In this view, written language is merely a special case of a more general phenomenon of sign and speech demonstration, which accounts more accurately for natural language data by permitting more strict or loose verbatim interpretations of demonstrations through the context dependent pragmatics. (shrink)

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In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.1 (2000) 75-95 [Access article in PDF] "Not heretofore extant in print": Where the Mad Ranters AreKathryn Gucer In 1654 Ephraim Pagitt published the fifth edition of Heresiography, subtitled "a Description of the Hereticks and Sectaries of these latter times." On the title page Pagitt promoted this latest edition of the catalog by stressing the "Additions" he had made. Among the (...) new targets of his anti-sectarian polemic were the Ranters, whom he introduced in a pithy character sketch as "an unclean beast much of the make with our Quaker." 1 But although Pagitt claimed to introduce the sect, Ranters had been around in print since Gerrard Winstanley attacked them in defense of his group, the Diggers, in 1649. 2 In fact writers had been attacking the sects generally--Anabaptists, Seekers, Brownists, Familists--in brief pamphlets like Winstanley's Vindication and in tome-like catalogs of sectarian "errours" since the outbreak of the Civil War. The anti-Ranter pamphlets were thus an incursion into an ongoing printed dialogue about the sects in general. Pagitt himself had been an interlocutor in this dialogue, having published four previous editions of his list. Why had he not marked the Ranters in 1649 and 1650 when Winstanley and others first noticed them?This essay will answer this question by arguing that the Ranters arose in dialogue across time, that they did not emerge spontaneously in Pagitt's 1654 text. When Pagitt introduced the sect in 1654, he was in fact responding to a heated discussion about the Ranters that had been developing for four years. He thus entered the debate a moment after "Ranters" and "ranting" had been defined by other pamphleteers. In this debate about the Ranters we can see the process by which pamphleteers invented a linguistic means of talking about religious diversity before it was an accepted feature of English society. At the same time that writers were exposing the Ranters' blasphemous excesses, they were also crafting a political identity for the group by attaching characteristic words and [End Page 75] behaviors to them in print. The printed controversy over the Ranters thus raises interesting questions about the relation between textual signification and actual politics. What were the processes by which pamphleteers invented new ways of talking about groups--sects and parties--in the period? What did labeling have to do with political identity?In fact the collective dialogue about the Ranters centered on a label that pamphleteers consistently attached to the group, their "madness." Although each writer identified the Ranters with a variety of creeds and practices, anti-Ranter pamphleteers all told their readers to view the group as an absence of reason. They claimed that Ranters were incapable of recognizing and conveying God's truth to their audience. Pagitt himself participated in the cooperative assault on Ranter madness. He consistently borrowed this language from his fellow interlocutors, branding the Ranters with terms such as "nonsensicall" and "absurd." Yet I argue that the label itself was largely a red herring. Writers shrewdly focused on Ranter unreason in order to persuade their readers not to use their own reason to consider the sectarian claims to authority. Moreover, writers shaped and reshaped what they meant by Ranter unreason in order to modulate its rhetorical effect on their readers. Thus it is not surprising that the precise construction of Ranter unreason shifted with the various responses these writers wanted to elicit from their readers. 3The explosion of anti-Ranter tracts, many of which had sensational titles showcasing the word "Ranters," indicated that the sect had particular rhetorical purchase on the public in the early 1650s: The Ranters Religion (11 October 1650), The Routing of the Ranters (19 November 1650), The Ranters Bible (9 December 1650), The Ranters Recantation And their Sermon (20 December 1650), The Joviall Crew, or the Devill turn'd RANTER (6 January 1651), Ranters of both Sexes, Male and Female (3 June 1651), RANTERS MONSTER (30 March 1652). 4 Although talk about Ranters was neither confined to print nor to... (shrink)

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This book argues for a new approach to the intellectual history of the Hellenistic world. Despite the intense cross-cultural interactions which characterised the period after Alexander, studies of 'Hellenistic' intellectual life have tended to focus on Greek scholars and institutions. Where cross-cultural connections have been drawn, it is through borrowing: the Greek adoption of Babylonian astrology; the Egyptian scholar Manetho deploying Greek historiographical models. In this book, however,Kathryn Stevens advances a 'Hellenistic intellectual history' which is cross-cultural in scope (...) and goes beyond borrowing and influence. Drawing on a wide range of Greek and Akkadian sources, she argues that intellectual life in the Greek world and Babylonia can be linked not just through occasional contact and influence, but also by deeper parallels in intellectual culture that reflect their integration into the same overarching imperial system. Tracing such parallels yields intellectual history which is diverse, multipolar and, therefore, truly 'Hellenistic'. (shrink)

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