The Concept in Life and the Life of the Concept: Canguilhem’s Final Reckoning with Bergson

Foucault famously divided the history of twentieth-century French philosophy between a “philosophy of experience” and a “philosophy of the concept,” placing Bergson in the former camp and his teacher Canguilhem in the latter. This division has shaped the Anglophone reception of Canguilhem as primarily a historian and philosopher of biology. Canguilhem, however, was also a philosopher of life and a careful reader of Bergson. The recently-begun publication of Canguilhem’s Œuvres complètes has revealed the depth of this engagement, and a re-reading of Canguilhem’s final major statement on Bergson, the 1966 essay “The Concept and Life,” has thus become necessary. The basic problem of that essay is the relationship between knowledge and life in the history of biology and philosophy, with a special place for Bergson. Canguilhem’s strong criticism of him turns, however, on a misquotation. In claiming that Bergson fails to account for the struggle of the living being to maintain a species form, Canguilhem misconstrues the crucial Bergsonian distinction between vital order and geometrical identity; he thus misses the importance that Bergson accords to general biological tendencies, rather than to the generality of the species. Despite the differences on display in the 1966 essay, it will be argued that Canguilhem’s earlier remarks on Bergson show a surprising convergence in the underlying aim of each thinker’s biological philosophy: the call for a new ontology that grasps the ordered and intelligible character of life without relying on a principle of identity

The Genesis of Foucault’s Genealogy of Racism: Accumulating Men and Managing Illegalisms

Foucault’s contribution to the critical theorization of race and racism has been much debated. Most commentators, however, have focused on his most direct remarks on the topic, which are found in the first volume of the History of Sexuality and in the lecture course “Society Must Be Defended.” This paper argues that those remarks should be reread in light of certain moves Foucault makes in earlier lecture courses, especially The Punitive Society and Psychiatric Power. Although the earlier courses do not always explicitly address the theme of race, the concepts of the “accumulation of men” and the differential “management of illegalisms” developed in them immensely enrich Foucault’s outline of a genealogy of racism. They also permit a clarification of the problem to which the concept of “state racism” is an answer, and they provide the key for understanding the wider social conditions of state racism. The guiding thread linking these earlier courses to the later material is the problem of a genealogy of logics of enmity. At the same time, the earlier courses make explicit the link between these logics and the development of capitalist society

Ethnicity and statehood in Pontic-Caspian Eurasia (8-13th c.): Contributing to a reassessment

What is the line between the “ancient” world and the “medieval” world? Is it 476? 330? 632? 800? Most historians acknowledge there is no crisp line and that these are arbitrary distinctions, but they are made anyway, taking on lives of their own. I believe they are much the same world, except for the pervading influence of one flavor of monotheism or another. This thesis endeavors to study top-down, monotheistic conversions in Pontic-Caspian Eurasia and their respective mythologizations, preserved both textually and archaeologically, which serve as a primary factor for what we might call “state formation.” These narratives also function, in many cases, as the bases of many modern nationalisms, however haphazard they may be. I have attempted to apply this idea to Christian Rome (Byzantium)’s diachronic missionary policy around the Black Sea to reveal how what we today call the “Age of Migrations” (the so-called “Germanic” invasions of the Roman Empire), was actually in perpetual continuity all the way up to the Mongolian invasions and perhaps even later. In this way, I hope to enhance the context by which we understand the entirety of not only Western history, but to effectively bind it to a broader context of global monotheization

Prey Behavior, Age-Dependent Vulnerability, and Predation Rates

Variation in the temporal pattern of vulnerability can provide important insights into predator-prey relationships and the evolution of antipredator behavior. We illustrate these points with a system that has coyotes (Canis latrans) as a predator and two species of congeneric deer (Odocoileus spp.) as prey. The deer employ different antipredator tactics (aggressive defense vs. flight) that result in contrasting patterns of age-dependent vulnerability in their probability of being captured when encountered by coyotes.We use longterm survival data and a simple mathematical model to show that (1) species differences in age-dependent vulnerability are reflected in seasonal predation rates and (2) seasonal variation in prey vulnerability and predator hunt activity, which can be associated with the availability of alternative prey, interact to shape seasonal and annual predation rates for each prey species. Shifting hunt activity from summer to winter, or vice versa, alleviated annual mortality on one species and focused it on the other. Our results indicate that seasonal variation in prey vulnerability and hunt activity interact to influence the impact that a predator has on any particular type of prey. Furthermore, these results indicate that seasonal variation in predation pressure is an important selection pressure shaping prey defenses

Potential for promoting recurrent laryngeal nerve regeneration by remote delivery of viral gene therapy

Objectives/Hypothesis: The aims of this study were to demonstrate the ability to enhance nerve regeneration by remote delivery of a viral vector to the crushed recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN), to demonstrate the usefulness of a crushed RLN model to test the efficacy of viral gene therapy, and to discuss future potential applications of this approach. Study Design: Animal study. Methods: Adult Sprague‐Dawley rats were assigned to two groups. In the experimental group, an adeno‐associated viral (AAV) vector carrying a zinc‐finger transcription factor, which stimulates endogenous insulinlike growth factor I production (AAV2‐TO‐6876vp16), was injected into the crushed RLN. In the control group, an AAV vector carrying the gene for green fluorescent protein was injected into the crushed RLN. Unilateral RLN paralysis was confirmed endoscopically. At 1 week, laryngeal endoscopies were repeated and recorded. Larynges were cryosectioned in 15‐μm sections and processed for acetylcholine histochemistry (motor endplates) followed by neurofilament immunoperoxidase (nerve fibers). Percentage nerve‐endplate contact (PEC) was determined and compared. Vocal fold motion was evaluated by blinded reviewers using a visual analogue scale (VAS). Results: The difference between PEC on the crushed and uncrushed sides was statistically less in the experimental group (0.54 ± 0.18 vs. 0.30 ± 0.26, P = .0006). The VAS score at 1 week was significantly better in the experimental group ( P = .002). Conclusions: AAV2‐TO‐6876vp16 demonstrated a neurotrophic effect when injected into the crushed RLN. The RLN offers a conduit for viral gene therapy to the brainstem that could be useful for the treatment of RLN injury or bulbar motor neuron disease.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90195/1/22436_ftp.pd

Trace Fossils from the Shawangunk Formation in the Hudson Valley Indicate an Estuarine Depositional Environment

The Middle Silurian Shawangunk Formation crops out in the lower Hudson Valley and extends toward the southwest into New Jersey and Pennsylvania. It reaches a maximum thickness around Guymard (1,400 ft.; 400m) and gradually thins toward the northeast, pinching out near Binnewater, New York. The formation consists of gray conglomerate, quartz arenite, and minor shale. Worm burrows, Arthrophycus, Skolithos, Planolites?, and a bilobed resting trace have been found at different stratigraphic horizons in the Shawangunk Formation. All traces are associated with a finer, sandy matrix and/or hematite-rich interval rather than a coarse, pebbly quartz sandstone lithology dominant in the bulk of the unit, indicating a marine influence as well an environment with less energy than the braided stream environment inferred for most of the formation. Rivers and streams moving away from the eastern Taconic Mountains flowed into a westerly situated shallow marine basin. Eurypterids have previously been found on approximately the same stratigraphic levels as the traces and may be useful for constraining the depositional environment of these beds. Silurian eurypterids, now largely considered euryhaline, suggest that the environment of deposition was a marine-influenced estuary based on recent work documenting autochthonous assemblages of similar taxa in marginal marine settings. Association of eurypterids with Arthrophycus-dominated ichnofacies has been noted elsewhere in the Lower Silurian Tuscarora Formation in central Pennsylvania, suggesting a recurrent nearshore benthic assemblage

Rhythmogenic neuronal networks, pacemakers, and k-cores

Neuronal networks are controlled by a combination of the dynamics of individual neurons and the connectivity of the network that links them together. We study a minimal model of the preBotzinger complex, a small neuronal network that controls the breathing rhythm of mammals through periodic firing bursts. We show that the properties of a such a randomly connected network of identical excitatory neurons are fundamentally different from those of uniformly connected neuronal networks as described by mean-field theory. We show that (i) the connectivity properties of the networks determines the location of emergent pacemakers that trigger the firing bursts and (ii) that the collective desensitization that terminates the firing bursts is determined again by the network connectivity, through k-core clusters of neurons.Comment: 4+ pages, 4 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

The Thermal Properties of Solar Flares Over Three Solar Cycles Using GOES X-ray Observations

Solar flare X-ray emission results from rapidly increasing temperatures and emission measures in flaring active region loops. To date, observations from the X-Ray Sensor (XRS) onboard the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) have been used to derive these properties, but have been limited by a number of factors, including the lack of a consistent background subtraction method capable of being automatically applied to large numbers of flares. In this paper, we describe an automated temperature and emission measure-based background subtraction method (TEBBS), which builds on the methods of Bornmann (1990). Our algorithm ensures that the derived temperature is always greater than the instrumental limit and the pre-flare background temperature, and that the temperature and emission measure are increasing during the flare rise phase. Additionally, TEBBS utilizes the improved estimates of GOES temperatures and emission measures from White et al. (2005). TEBBS was successfully applied to over 50,000 solar flares occurring over nearly three solar cycles (1980-2007), and used to create an extensive catalog of the solar flare thermal properties. We confirm that the peak emission measure and total radiative losses scale with background subtracted GOES X-ray flux as power-laws, while the peak temperature scales logarithmically. As expected, the peak emission measure shows an increasing trend with peak temperature, although the total radiative losses do not. While these results are comparable to previous studies, we find that flares of a given GOES class have lower peak temperatures and higher peak emission measures than previously reported. The resulting TEBBS database of thermal flare plasma properties is publicly available on Solar Monitor (www.solarmonitor.org/TEBBS/) and will be available on Heliophysics Integrated Observatory (www.helio-vo.eu)