Husserl's Concept of Position-Taking and Second Nature

I argue that Husserl’s concept of position-taking, Stellungnahme, is adequate to understand the idea of second nature as an issue of philosophical anthropology. I claim that the methodological focus must be the living subject that acts and lives among others, and that the notion of second nature must respond to precisely this fundamental active character of subjectivity. The appropriate concept should satisfy two additional desiderata. First, it should be able to develop alongside the biological, psychological, and social individual development. Second, it should be able to underlie the vast diversity of human beings within and across communities. As possible candidates, I contrast position-taking with two types of habit-like concepts: instinct and habitus, on the one hand, and customary habits, on the other. I argue that position-taking represents the active aspect of the subject while the habit-like concepts are passive. A subject’s position-takings and ensuing comportments are tied together by motivations, which evince a certain consistency, and for this reason are expression of the subject’s identity. I conclude by nuancing the relation between Stellungnahme and passivity. Passivity is deemed necessary to action but subservient to it; position-taking is thought to be prior to passivity

Inicios de la producción industrial en antioquia

Aquella etapa de la historia económica conocida como la "Revolución Industrial", y que implicó la introducción definitiva de la maquinaria en el proceso productivo, comenzó en Manchester (Inglaterra) a mediados del siglo XVIII con la invención (1733) de la máquina para tramar tejidos conocida como "Lanzadera". Esta máquina y otras posteriores incluida la de vapor, dieron una completa renovación a la producción textil, a la industria en general, e incluso, a todas las relaciones de producción en la medida que por el alto costo de las mismas, sólo podían ser adquiridas por grandes capitalistas para ser operadas por una naciente y sobreexplotada clase obrera. Dicha revolución implicó que Inglaterra desplazara a la India como productor mundial de textiles, ya que con las máquinas, la producción inicialmente se duplicó en los años posteriores y fue 10 veces más eficiente que la producción puramente artesanal; todos estos factores llevaron a la industria a alcanzar unos rendimientos de escala nunca antes pensados que permitieron situar a los textiles y demás productos ingleses en toda Europa y América. Estos hechos, posicionaron a Inglaterra como la máxima potencia a escala mundial y a su moneda, la libia, como el patrón de intercambio de mayor aceptación

El despegue de la industria en Antioquia (1915-1930)

El año de 1914 es para Europa el comienzo de un oscuro período conocido como la Primera Guerra Mundial, conflicto que se extendería por gran parte del continente europeo durante cinco años (1914-1919) y que afectaría toda la economía mundial y, de manera particular, a Colombia, ya que sus principales socios comerciales: Inglaterra, Francia y la naciente potencia norteamericana, se involucrarían en la contienda estableciendo así una economía de guerra con sus consiguientes consecuencias

The Antioqueña Minery and its Influencein the Primary Acumulation of Capital

El presente artículo pretende mostrar cómo la actividad de la minería de oro llevada a cabo en el departamento de Antioquia (Colombia) durante los siglos XVIII y XIX en sus modalidades de veta y aluvión, permitió formar el recurso humano requerido y generar la acumulación de capital necesaria para que, conjugados los factores técnicos y económicos, se presentara en la Región un proceso sostenido de industrialización durante los años finales del siglo XIX y la primera mitad del siglo XX.The present article pretend to exhibit how the activity of the minery of gold in the Antioquia Department (Colombia) in the centuries XVIII and XIX in its modes of beta and alluvion, permit to form the human resource needed and to generate the acumulation of capital and technic and economic factors. This situation influenced in the region for the industrial process sustained in the ends of the century XIX and the first half of the century XX

Current Works

This research work explores the relationship of Art and Science from the concept of Uncertainty. Uncertainty is the source of inspiration that drove the author to embark on a journey of discovery within two rather unknown fields to him, Glass and Electricity. The analogy made in this thesis between Glass and Electricity and Art and Science is a personal search for understanding the nature of the world, a dive into both the certainty of rational experimentation in the Scientific method, and the innate uncertain nature of experimentation in Art-making. This work is in essence a mirror that reflects the nature of the author’s mind, making visible some interesting ideas, impossible dreams, failed attempts and small discoveries. But above all, it’s a story of personal resilience, the search for a meaningful ‘ground’ and the ‘connection’ between Art and Science. In terms of practical goal, this study begins with fundamental considerations about how to achieve a new working method for Glass Printing formed from raw materials using controlled electric discharges

Contributions of cluster shape and intercellular adhesion to epithelial discohesion and emergent dynamics in collective migration

As a physical system, a cell interacts with its environment through physical and chemical processes. The cell can change these interactions through modification of its environment or its own composition. This dissertation presents the overarching hypothesis that both biochemical regulation of intercellular adhesion and physical interaction between cells are required to account for the emergence of cluster migration and collective dynamics observed in epithelial cells. Collective migration is defined as the displacement of a group of cells with transient or permanent cell-cell contacts. One mode, cluster migration, plays an important role during embryonic development and in cancer metastasis. Despite its importance, collective migration is a slow process and hard to visualize, and therefore it has not been thoroughly studied in three dimensions (3D). Based on known information about cluster migration from 2D studies of epithelial sheets and 3D single cell migration, this dissertation presents theoretical and experimental techniques to assess the independent contribution of physical and biochemical factors to 3D cluster migration. It first develops two computational models that explore the interaction between cells and the ECM and epithelial discohesion. These discrete mechanistic models reveal the need to account for intracellular regulation of adherens junctions in space and time within a cluster. Consequently, a differential algebraic model is developed that accounts for cross-reactivity of three pathways in a regulatory biochemical network: Wnt/β-catenin signaling, protein N-glycosylation, and E-cadherin adhesion. The model is tested by matching predictions to Wnt/β-catenin inhibition in MDCK cells. The model is then incorporated into a self-propelled particle (SPP) model, creating the first SPP model for study of adhesive mammalian cellular systems. MDCK cell clusters with fluorescent nuclei are grown, seeded, and tracked in 3D collagen gels using confocal microscopy. They provide data on individual cell dynamics within clusters. Borrowed from the field of complex systems, normalized velocity is used to quantify the order of both in vitro and simulated clusters. An analysis of sensitivity of cluster dynamics on factors describing physical and biochemical processes provides new quantitative insights into mechanisms underlying collective cell migration and explains temporal and spatial heterogeneity of cluster behavior

A satellite navigation system to improve the management of intermodal drayage

The intermodal transport chain can become more efficient by means of a good organization of the drayage movements. Drayage in intermodal container terminals involves the pick up or delivery of containers at customer locations, and the main objective is normally the assignment of transportation tasks to the different vehicles, often with the presence of time windows. The literature shows some works on centralised drayage management, but most of them consider the problem only from a static and deterministic perspective, whereas the work we present here incorporates the knowledge of the real-time position of the vehicles, which permanently enables the planner to reassign tasks in case the problem conditions change. This exact knowledge of position of the vehicles is possible thanks to a geographic positioning system by satellite (GPS, Galileo, Glonass), and the results show that this additional data can be used to dynamically improve the solution

Dynamic approach to solve the daily drayage problem with travel time uncertainty

The intermodal transport chain can become more e cient by means of a good organization of drayage movements. Drayage in intermodal container terminals involves the pick up and delivery of containers at customer locations, and the main objective is normally the assignment of transportation tasks to the di erent vehicles, often with the presence of time windows. This scheduling has traditionally been done once a day and, under these conditions, any unexpected event could cause timetable delays. We propose to use the real-time knowledge about vehicle position to solve this problem, which permanently allows the planner to reassign tasks in case the problem conditions change. This exact knowledge of the position of the vehicles is possible using a geographic positioning system by satellite (GPS, Galileo, Glonass), and the results show that this additional data can be used to dynamically improve the solution