Kant, Neo-Kantianism, and Phenomenology

This chapter offers a reassessment of the relationship between Kant, the Kantian tradition, and phenomenology, here focusing mainly on Husserl and Heidegger. Part of this reassessment concerns those philosophers who, during the lives of Husserl and Heidegger, sought to defend an updated version of Kant’s philosophy, the neo-Kantians. The chapter shows where the phenomenologists were able to benefit from some of the insights on the part of Kant and the neo-Kantians, but also clearly points to the differences. The aim of this chapter is to offer a fair evaluation of the relation of the main phenomenologists to Kant and to what was at the time the most powerful philosophical movement in Europe

Postcolonial Theory

Rather than agreeing to any one meaning or referent, most critics these days speak of ‘post-colonialisms’ to refer principally to ‘historical, social and economic material conditions’ and at other times to ‘historically-situated imaginative products’ and ‘aesthetic practices: representations, discourses and values’ (McLeod 2000: 254). Arising from subaltern studies, its theorists embrace hybridity, indict alterity, analyze colonial discourse, and employ strategic essentialism to promote identity politics. Under its influence, a strain of self-interrogation has for decades run as an undercurrent through much of anthropology and archaeology. Topics including looting, repatriation, stewardship, and the transformation of disciplinary identity are now persistent tropes in the field. Indigenous archaeology, emergent cosmopolitanisms, building up knowledge from below—these now occupy ongoing archaeological work. Limiting its applicability, though, are charges against its homogenization of colonial experience, its perpetuation of academic imperialism, and its relative neglect, until recently, of regions such as Latin America

Empirical characteristics of different types of pedestrian streams

Reliable empirical data and proper understanding of pedestrian dynamics are necessary for fire safety design. However, specifications and data in different handbooks as well as experimental studies differ considerably. In this study, series of experiments under laboratory conditions were carried out to study the characteristics of uni- and bidirectional pedestrian streams in straight corridor. The Voronoi method is used to resolve the fine structure of the resulting velocity-density relations and spatial dependence of the measurements. The result shows differences in the shape of the relation for \rho > 1.0 m-2. The maximal specific flow of unidirectional streams is significantly larger than that of all bidirectional streams examined

Mind and Body

This chapter discusses Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s philosophical reflections on mind and body. It first considers Leibniz’s distinction between substance and aggregate, referring to the former as a being that must have true unity (what he calls unum per se) and to the latter as simply a collection of other beings. It then describes Leibniz’s extension of the term “substance” to monads and other things such as animals and living beings. It also examines Leibniz’s views about the union of mind and body, whether mind and body interact, and how interaction is related to union. More specifically, it asks whether mind and body together constitute an unum per se and analyzes Leibniz’s account of the per se unity of mind-body composites. In addition, the chapter explores the problem of soul-body union as opposed to mind-body union and concludes by discussing Leibniz’s explanation of soul-body interaction using a system of pre-established harmony

Experimental study of pedestrian flow through a T-junction

In this study, series of experiments under laboratory conditions were carried out to investigate pedestrian flow through a T-junction, i.e., two branches merging into the main stream. The whole duration of the experiments was recorded by video cameras and the trajectories of each pedestrian were extracted using the software Petrack from these videos. The Voronoi method is used to resolve the fine structure of the fundamental diagram and spatial dependence of the measured quantities from trajectories. In our study, only the data in the stationary state are used by analyzing the time series of density and velocity. The density, velocity and specific flow profiles are obtained by refining the size of the measurement area (here 10 cm \times 10 cm are adopted). With such a high resolution, the spatial distribution of density, velocity and specific flow can be obtained separately and the regions with higher value can be observed intuitively. Finally, the fundamental diagrams of T-junction flow is compared in three different locations. It is shown that the fundamental diagrams of the two branches match well. However, the velocities in front of the merging are significantly lower than that in the main stream at the same densities. After the merging, the specific flow increases with the density \rho till 2.5 m-2. While in the branches, the specific flow is almost independent of the density between \rho = 1.5 m-2 and 3.5 m-2Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables, TGF'1