Biogeographical patterns of the neotropical genus Battus Scopoli 1777 (Lepidoptera Papilionidae)

A phylogenetic approach to the groups of species of the neotropical Troidines currently included in the genus Battus Scopoli 1777 has been conducted. In the light of historical and ecological processes of evolution in the neotropical biota, the cladogram of Battiti is discussed. General vicariance patterns, as well as dispersal events which contributed to the present distribution of the taxa, are suggested to have operated at different spatial and temporal points

The Philosophical and Educational Big Bang: An Aristophanic-Deweyan Archaeology

The article will follow a possibly circuitous path: first, I will propose a cursory interpretation of the Kafka parable as a way of framing current reflections on the “use”2 and “role”3 of philosophy of education, in order to situate the question of this emergence within these debates; second, I will attempt to explore it through a reading of some texts by Dewey (in relation to a constellation of themes and issues revolving around a dialogue between the ideas of Plato and Aristophanes); and finally, I will retie the threads of the reflection by discussing what Gert Biesta has referred to as Dewey’s “imperialistic” claims in relation to philosophy and educatio

EDUCATING HOMO VIDENS. Philosophy for Children as a way of countering the “antimeditative situation” of time and of fostering a democratic attitude

Homo videns is today’s man or woman whose knowledge-frames are shaped by the use of modern media. The passive experience (from childhood on) of an overwhelmingly image-based media can prevent children from developing a capacity for abstraction--that is, the ability to form general concepts, to make comparisons, and to acknowledge different points of view. What is at stake is the future of democracy as a form of life that rests on rational discussion and argumentative skills. Philosophy for Children offers an effective means to counter this phenomenon. If homo videns is (or risks being) overwhelmed by the immediacy of the medium and narcotized by ‘un-reflection’ like a prisoner in Plato’s cave, children and adolescents who participate in the discourses of Philosophy for Children have the opportunity to experiment with thinking, to have first-hand experience in the co-construction of knowledge, and thereby to become citizens of a real and effective democracy

LIPMAN'S NOVELS OR TURNING PHILOSOPHY INSIDE-OUT

Starting from two passages of the autobiography of Lipman, which represent the description of a sort of ‘primary scene’ of P4C, the presented paper shows how the Deweyan notion of qualitative thought is pivotal for the entire Lipmanian undertaking. Dewey’s distinction between ‘situation’ and ‘object’ in thinking is read into the Lipman differentiation of schemata and concepts and used to analyze the reasons for which narrative comes to play a crucial role in the project of education for thinking. The mobilization of narrative entails a movement of turning the history of philosophy inside out, which may be considered the major achievement (both educationally and philosophically) of Lipman. This movement is opposite to that of mere historicization and can also be construed in terms of ‘dramatization,’ culminating in the Bildung

'Outfoxing nature’: Matthew Lipman and the Prolegomena to a Pedagogy of Science

This paper explores the role that the idea of science plays within Matthew Lipman‘s ap-proach to inquiry. On the one hand it seems that Lipman shares a typically modern ‗antago-nist-metascientific‘ view of philosophy (in a quasi Arendtian-Kantian way) in opposing the scientific undertaking and philosophical inquiry. On the other hand, he models his idea of community of philosophical inquiry on the Peircean-Deweyan theoretical construct of com-munity of inquiry which refers exactly to the scientific undertaking. And – what is still more significant – it is just by capitalizing on the ―scientific‖ origin of the construct that Lipman can revive the Socratic tradition of philosophy as a dialogic practice. But Lipman‘s relation-ship with science is still more complex: he identifies science as a project of ―outfoxing and outguessing nature.‖ By tracing the origin of such metaphors to the Heraclitean dictum ―na-ture loves to hide‖ (physis kryptesthai philei) and to Francis Bacon‘s interpretation of ancient myths, and by contrasting them with the Kuhnian idea of normal science as puzzle-solving, it becomes clear that Lipman recognizes the ―thoughtful‖—that is, philosophical -- dimen-sion of science, and the need for complex thinking within science itself as a basic dimension of its development. Against the backdrop of such analyses, the paper attempts to point to the possibility of a pedagogy of science in a Lipmanian vein

The Democratic Public To Be Brought into Existence and Education as Secularization

The paper tackles the fundamental question of whether democracy has by now been turned into a meaningless liturgy of a past religion and proposes a Deweyan answer which points to the need to fully realize modernity in order to bring into existence a genuine democracy. By deploying an archaeological reading of The Public and Its Problems and, in particular, of the key notion of the ‘official,’ it is shown how giving birth to an authentically democratic public demands coming to terms with a re-signification of the idea of transubstantiation, fully valorising education as communication and promoting a ‘secularized’ community. This Deweyan perspective can help us avoid the modern dichotomies that risk haunting even some of the most advanced contemporary educational proposals, which currently struggle against the rationalist outcomes of modernity by invoking ‘other communities.