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It has often been argued that Humean accounts of natural law cannot account for the role played by laws in scientific explanations. Loewer (Philosophical Studies 2012) has offered a new reply to this argument on behalf of Humean accounts—a reply that distinguishes between grounding (which Loewer portrays as underwriting a kind of metaphysical explanation) and scientific explanation. I will argue that Loewer’s reply fails because it cannot accommodate the relation between metaphysical and scientific explanation. This relation also resolves a puzzle about scientific explanation that Hempel and Oppenheim (Philosophy of Science 15:135–75, 1948) encountered.

Les travaux de la biologie intégrative remettent en cause le déterminisme strict de l’organisation spatiale et temporelle du vivant. Ce texte, travail collectif de notre groupe d’étude et de réflexion, étudie les changements de l’approche de l’espace et du temps, principalement issus de l’émergence en recherches académiques de la biologie intégrative, et relève leurs principales implications didactiques.Un examen de l’anticipation, comme rapport spécifiquement biologique au temps, constitue un premier exemple d’appréhension originale du temps biologique. Les interactions moléculaires spatiales, leurs enseignements actuels et leurs dimensions stochastiques issues de la biologie intégrative, sont ensuite étudiées à partir de quatre exemples : les interactions spatiales entre molécules, les interactions spatiales au sein des structures cellulaires hétérogènes, les interactions organismes milieu, les interactions spatio-temporelles dans l’ontophylogenèse. Une synthèse de nouveaux besoins éducatifs et de recherche, impulsés par les avancées de la biologie intégrative, est proposée. The works of integrative biology challenge the strict determinism of the spatial and temporal organisation of the living world. This paper studies the changes in the approach to space and time initiated by the emergence of integrative biology in academic research and points to their main didactic effects.An analysis of anticipation as a specifically biological relationship to time is a first example of an original approach to biological time. Then the study of spatial molecular interactions, their current teachings and their stochastic dimensions is then based on four examples: spatial interactions between molecules, spatial interactions within heterogeneous cell structures, organisms/environment interactions and time-space interactions in ontophylogenesis. Finally an overview of new education and research needs spurred by the advances of integrative biology is offered. Die Arbeiten der integrativen Biologie stellen den strikten Determinismus der räumlichen und zeitlichen Integration der Lebewesen in Frage. Dieser Text ist eine kollektive Arbeit unserer Forschungsgruppe und untersucht die Wandlungen in der Erfassung von Raum und Zeit, die hauptsächlich aus der neueren akademischen Forschungsarbeiten in der integrativen Biologie kommen und unterstreicht ihre wesentlichsten didaktischen Wirkungen.Eine Untersuchung der Vorwegnahme als spezifisch biologisches Verhältnis mit der Zeit bildet ein erstes Beispiel originaler Erfassung der biologischen Zeit. Die molekularen Rauminteraktionen, ihr aktuelles Unterrichten und ihre stochastischen Dimensionen aus der integrativen Biologie werden dann in Anlehnung an vier Beispielen untersucht : die Rauminteraktionen zwischen Molekülen, die Rauminteraktionen innerhalb der heterogenen Molekülstrukturen, die Interaktion zwischen Organismen und Umfeld und die raumzeitlichen Interaktionen in der Onthophylogenesis. Wir bieten eine Synthese von neuen erzieherischen Bedürfnissen und von Forschungen an, die von den Fortschritten der integrativen Biologie gefördert wird Los trabajos de biología integrativa cuestionan el determinismo estricto de la organización espacial y temporal de lo vivo. Este texto, trabajo colectivo de nuestro equipo de estudio y de reflexión, estudia los cambios de la aproximación al espacio y al tiempo, sacados en su mayor parte de la emergencia en investigaciones académicas de la biología integrativa y pone de relieve sus principales implicaciones didácticas.Un examen de la anticipación , como relación específicamente biológica al tiempo, constituye un primer ejemplo de aprehensión original del tiempo biológico. Las interacciones moleculares espaciales, las maneras de enseñarlas hoy en día y sus dimensiones estocáticas procedentes de la biología integrativa se estudian después a partir de cuatro ejemplos : la interacciones espaciales entre las moléculas, las interacciones espaciales dentro de las estructuras celulares heterogéneas, la interacciones organismos entorno, las interacciones espaciotemporales dentro de la ontofilogénesis. Se propone una síntesis de nuevas necesidades educativas y de investigación, impulsadas por los avances de la biología integrativa.

Sober 2011 argues that, contrary to Hume, some causal statements can be known a priori to be true—notably, some ‘would promote’ statements figuring in causal models of natural selection. We find Sober's argument unconvincing. We regard the Humean thesis as denying that causal explanations contain any a priori knowable statements specifying certain features of events to be causally relevant. We argue that not every ‘would promote’ statement is genuinely causal, and we suggest that Sober has not shown that his examples of ‘would promote’ statements manage to achieve a priori status without sacrificing their causal character.

L’idee de developpement durable (DD) constitue une problematique qui cristallise une serie de conflits d’interets, interets economiques et interets ecologiques. Elle se heurte a des conflits potentiels entre les rationalites academiques mobilisees. L’enseignement obligatoire et general francais, est tres disciplinarise. L’education au developpement durable se caracterise comme etant a-disciplinaire ce qui la situe au sein d’un ensemble heterogene denomme education a... Les didactiques disciplinaires offrent dans ce contexte peu de reperes. Notre approche permet de proposer des balises curriculaires. Elles visent a jalonner un parcours educatif sans enfermer celui-ci dans une normativite contraire a la problematique du DD. Elles constituent autant de points d’appui pour la formation des enseignants.

A conservation law in physics can be either a constraint on the kinds of interaction there could be or a coincidence of the kinds of interactions there actually are. This is an important, unjustly neglected distinction. Only if a conservation law constrains the possible kinds of interaction can a derivation from it constitute a scientific explanation despite failing to describe the causal/mechanical details behind the result derived. This conception of the relation between “bottom-up” scientific explanations and one kind of “top-down” scientific explanation is motivated by several examples from classical and modern physics.

Despite the routine treatment it receives today, the parallelogram of forces was the subject of controversy, especially during the 19th century. The controversy concerned the reason why forces compose vectorially. If the parallelogram law is explained statically, then the parallelogram law transcends the laws of dynamics. Alternatively, if the parallelogram law is explained dynamically, then it becomes merely a corollary to Newton’s second law. I examine the three most important rival approaches to explaining the parallelogram law and identify their principal strengths, weaknesses, and consequences. The dispute among these approaches ultimately turns on whether the parallelogram law would still have held, if forces had not been governed by Newton’s second law.

Eine qualitativ-empirische AnalyseDiese Studie1) analysiert den Einfluss der Regulierung auf die Geschaftsstrategien und -modelle von deutschen Sparkassen. Auf Basis von leitfadengestutzten Tiefeninterviews mit Vorstanden und Managern von 30 Sparkassen im gesamten Bundesgebiet werden die relevanten Veranderungen mithilfe der Critical Incident Technique identifiziert. Dabei zeigen sich deutliche geschaftsstrategische Anpassungen, die zu Veranderungen der Geschaftsmodelle hinsichtlich dreier Ebenen fuhren: (i) Hinsichtlich der Wertschaffungsidee zeigt sich eine veranderte Bedeutung bestehender und neuer Ertragsquellen sowie eine Neupriorisierung von Zielkunden und eine Anpassung des Nutzenversprechens. (ii) Die Wertschaffungsarchitektur weist die deutlichsten Veranderungen auf. Dies zeigt sich insbesondere in preispolitischen Masnahmen und Anpassungen des Produkt- und Leistungsangebots, der Distributionspolitik und des Asset-Liability-Managements. (iii) Schlieslich mundet die Gesamtheit der Veranderungen im Wertschaffungsergebnis. Neben direkten operativen Kosten zeigen sich erhebliche Opportunitatskosten mit hoher strategischer Bedeutung. Stichworter: Bank-Geschaftsmodelle, Bank-Strategie, Sparkassen, Auswirkungen der Regulierung, Critical Incident Technique.JEL-Classification: G 20, G 21, G 28.We analyze the effects of regulation on the business models of German savings banks. Using an interview-based approach with top managers of 30 savings banks, we identify changes in bank strategy and bank business models with the Critical Incident Technique. We find fundamental changes regarding all three levels of the underlying business model: (i) Changes regarding the idea of value creation comprise a shifting relevance of earnings sources and target customers. (ii) Adjustments in the pricing and range of services, the distribution policy and the asset-liability-management change the architecture of value creation. (iii) These changes finally affect the result of value creation. Beneath increasing direct operational costs, the savings banks face significant opportunity costs that have a high strategic relevance.

Although all mathematical truths are necessary, mathematicians take certain combinations of mathematical truths to be ‘coincidental’, ‘accidental’, or ‘fortuitous’. The notion of a ‘mathematical coincidence’ has so far failed to receive sufficient attention from philosophers. I argue that a mathematical coincidence is not merely an unforeseen or surprising mathematical result, and that being a misleading combination of mathematical facts is neither necessary nor sufficient for qualifying as a mathematical coincidence. I argue that although the components of a mathematical coincidence may possess a common explainer, they have no common explanation; that two mathematical facts have a unified explanation makes their truth non-coincidental. I suggest that any motivation we may have for thinking that there are mathematical coincidences should also motivate us to think that there are mathematical explanations, since the notion of a mathematical coincidence can be understood only in terms of the notion of a mathematical explanation. I also argue that the notion of a mathematical coincidence plays an important role in scientific explanation. When two phenomenological laws of nature are similar, despite concerning physically distinct processes, it may be that any correct scientific explanation of their similarity proceeds by revealing their similarity to be no mathematical coincidence.

Why (according to classical physics) do forces compose according to the parallelogram of forces? This question has been controversial; it is one episode in a longstanding, fundamental dispute regarding which facts are not to be explained dynamically. If the parallelogram law is explained statically, then the laws of statics are separate from and (in an important sense) "transcend" the laws of dynamics. Alternatively, if the parallelogram law is explained dynamically, then statical laws become mere corollaries to the dynamical laws. I shall attempt to trace the history of this controversy in order to identify what it would be for one or the other of these rival views to be correct. I shall argue that various familiar accounts of natural law (Lewis's Best System Account, laws as contingent relations among universals, and scientific essentialism) not only make it difficult to see what the point of this dispute could have been, but also improperly foreclose some serious scientific options. I will sketch an alternative account of laws (including what their necessity amounts to and what it would be for certain laws to "transcend" others) that helps us to understand what this dispute was all about.

Proposed accounts of scientific explanation have long been tested against certain canonical examples. Various arguments are paradigmatically explanatory, such as Newton's explanations of Kepler's laws and the tides, Darwin's explanations of various biogeographical and anatomical facts, Wegener's explanation of the correspondence between the South American and African coastlines, and Einstein's explanation of the equality of inertial and gravitational mass. Any promising comprehensive theory of scientific explanation must deem these arguments to be genuinely explanatory. By the same token, there is widespread agreement that various other arguments are not explanatory examples so standard that I need only give their familiar monikers: the flagpole, the eclipse, the barometer, the hexed salt and so forth. Although there are some controversial cases, of course (such as 'explanations' of the dormi ti vevirtue variety), philosophers who defend rival accounts of scientific explanation nevertheless agree to a large extent on the phenomena that they are trying to save. Alas, the same cannot be said when it comes to mathematical explanation. Philosophers disagree sharply about which proofs of a given theorem explain why that theorem holds and which merely prove that it holds.1 This kind of disagreement makes it difficult to test proposed accounts of mathematical explanation without making controversial presuppositions about the phenomena to be saved.

Faraday made this remark even before the laws of electricity had all been discovered. Nevertheless, he was utterly confident that all electric phenomena are covered by laws and that all other forces are too indeed, apparently, that the laws cover every kind of situation that every possible kind of thing can manage to get into. The laws are "complete;" there are no gaps in their coverage. If the laws are in fact complete, then is this merely a peculiarity of the actual laws? Or is the laws's completeness metaphysically compulsory? That is the question I shall investigate. In section 2, I shall offer a provisional characterization of what it would be for the laws to be complete. In section 3, I will try to capture some reasons for supposing that the laws must be complete. I will also argue that neither David Lewis's best-system account nor David Armstrong's relations-among-universals account of laws entails that the laws must be complete. If the laws's completeness is an important part of the idea that the laws govern the universe, then an important (but heretofore neglected) criterion of adequacy for any metaphysical analysis of natural law is that it account for the laws's completeness. Since standard analyses of natural law fail to do so, there is an opportunity

Das Wissen um die Art und Weise, in der die Lehrkräfte sich die Aufforderung, die Schüler auf die nachhaltige Entwicklung vorzubereiten als erzieherische Priorität setzen, sie ablehnen oder sie einsetzen, ist eine wichtige Voraussetzung für die Ausarbeitung eines Curriculums zu dieser Problematik. Insbesondere die Denkweisen der Lehrkräfte, ihre pädagogischen Theorien, der ideologische Kontext der Schule, in der sie arbeiten, könnte Einfl uss auf den didaktischen Ausarbeitungsprozess haben. Dieser Artikel hat sich zum Ziel gesetzt, festzustellen, inwiefern ihre Darstellung der nachhaltigen Entwicklung und der Erziehung, die diese Problematik betrifft, einerseits abhängig ist vom Fachwissen, das sie sich im Laufe ihrer Ausbildung angeeignet haben und andererseits vom Umfeld der Schule, in der sie arbeiten. Dafür wurde eine Umfrage in drei Schulbezirken bei Studenten im zweiten Studienjahr an der Pädagogischen Hochschule (IUFM) des Fachs Biologie, des Fachs Physik und des Doppelfachs Erdkunde-Geschichte durchgeführt. Sie ist durch erklärende Gespäche ergänzt worden sowie durch Gespräche mit Lehrerteams im Fach Biologie innerhalb eines Stadtbereiches, allerdings in Schulen mit unterschiedlichem Umfeld. Diese Untersuchung stellt bei den Lehrkräften unterschiedliche Tendenzen fest, wie sie die Erziehung zur nachhaltigen Entwicklung einschätzen, und dies je nach ihrer fachlichen Spezialisierung, sowie die Tatsache, dass sie diese je nach ideologischem Kontext der Schule, in der sie angestellt sind, umsetzen., Understanding how and why teachers view, reject or apply the Ministry of Education’s directives concerning sustainable development which are now considered as a educational priority is necessary prior to developing any syllabus on the topic. A teacher’s personal views, his/ her teaching methods and the type of school at which they work can infl uence the way they prepare their courses. The point of this article is thus to show that their personal views of sustainable development and the teaching of this particular issue partly depends on the initial choice of subject they have chosen to teach as well as on the school where they teach. A study was thus carried out in three different regions on second-year students at teachers college in three different subjects (history and geography, the earth sciences and physics). It was completed by explicative and “ focus-group” input from the different earth sciences teaching staff of various types of schools from the same board of education. The study shows that very differing views towards sustainable development exist within this same group of teachers based upon the subject that they teach as well as upon the type of pupils to whom they teach. N. B. second year of teachers college in France corresponds to a student who has already passed the teachers competitive examination, Connaître la manière dont les enseignants s’approprient, rejettent ou mettent en oeuvre l’injonction d’Éducation au développement durable, présentée comme une priorité éducative, est un préalable nécessaire à l’élaboration d’un curriculum sur cette question. En particulier, les croyances des enseignants, leur théorie pédagogique, le contexte idéologique de l’école dans lequel ils travaillent, pourraient influer sur le processus d’élaboration didactique. Cet article vise donc à établir que leur représentation du développement durable et de l’éducation qui concerne cette problématique est dépendante, pour une part, de la spécialité disciplinaire qu’ils se sont construits au cours de leur parcours de formation initiale et, d’autre part, du contexte de l’établissement dans lequel ils travaillent. Ces résultats ont été obtenus à partir d’une enquête conduite dans trois académies auprès de stagiaires de deuxième année d’IUFM en sciences de la vie et de la Terre, en sciences physiques et en histoire-géographie. Elle a été complétée par des entretiens d’explicitation et par des entretiens «focus groupe» réalisés auprès d’équipes d’enseignants de sciences de la vie et de la Terre au sein d’une même agglomération, dans des établissements de contexte différent., Conocer la manera con la cual los docentes hacen suya, rechazan o ponen en práctica la conminación de educación al desarrollo sostenible, presentada como una prioridad educativa, es una condición previa necesaria para la elaboración de un currículum sobre este tema. En particular, las creencias de los docentes, su teoría pedagógica, el contexto ideológico de la escuela en la que trabajan, podría infl uir en el proceso de elaboración didáctica. Este artículo se propone pues, establecer que su representación del desarrollo sostenible y de la educación que se relaciona con esta problemática, depende por una parte de la especialidad docente que se han construido a lo largo de su recorrido de formación inicial, y, por otra parte, del contexto del centro docente en el que trabajan. Con este objetivo se llevó a cabo una encuesta en tres academias ante alumnos profesores de segundo curso de IUFM (Instituto Universitario de Formación de Maestros) en Ciencias de la Naturaleza, en Ciencias Físicas y en Historia-Geografía. Se completó con entrevistas de explicitación y entrevistas “ focus grupo” realizadas en equipos de docentes de ciencias de la Naturaleza en el seno de una misma ciudad, en centros docentes de diferente contexto. Esta investigación establece que se manifi esta en estos docentes, una tendencia contrastada a concebir la educación al desarrollo sostenible en función de su especialidad docente y a ponerla en práctica en función del contexto ideológico del centro en el que ejercen., Lange Jean-Marc. L'Éducation au développement durable au regard des spécialités enseignantes . In: Aster, n°46, 2008. L'éducation à l'environnement ou au développement durable. pp. 123-154.

After reviewing several failed arguments that laws cannot change, I use the laws’ special relation to counterfactuals to show how temporary laws would have to differ from eternal but time-dependent laws. Then I argue that temporary laws are impossible and that neither Lewis's nor Armstrong's analyses of law nicely accounts for the laws’ immutability.

Préface de Jean-Marc Lange.Autre support d'édition ISBN 978-2-14-000681-4.https://clio-cr.clionautes.org/utiliser-les-representations-sociales-en-education-exemple-de-leducation-au-developpement-durable.html; International audience; Les représentations sociales sont un formidable outil d'analyse des savoirs. L'ouvrage est destiné aux professionnels, aux étudiants, aux enseignants et aux chercheurs dans le domaine de l'éducation ou toute autre discipline susceptible d'analyser les savoirs en présence. L'ouvrage apporte un éclairage nouveau sur les méthodologies disponibles et la façon de les mettre en oeuvre rapidement. Il précise la question de l'épistémologie des savoirs, la façon de les analyser, et s'appuie sur des exemples concrets reproductibles centrés principalement sur les recherches en éducation au développement durable. Les méthodologies présentées peuvent être utiles aux comparaisons interculturelles ou diachroniques, dans l'analyse des enjeux en présence et les préconisations didactiques, notamment dans le cadre des questions socialement vives ou encore dans l'analyse des situations éducatives spécifiques ou la confrontation entre les savoirs d'origines différentes.Sommaire : P. 11. HommageP. 13. PréfaceP. 17. Introduction, L'utilisation des représentations sociales en éducationP. 25. Première partie, Cadrage épistémologique et méthodologiqueP. 25. Les savoirs socialement disponiblesP. 32. Les savoirs mobilisés par l'éducationP. 39. Une approche particulière de la question des savoirs en éducation : le modèle de la transposition didactiqueP. 44. Curriculums, questions vives et conflits de savoirsP. 54. Analyser les savoirs grâce au modèle des représentations sociales : éléments théoriquesP. 66. Jalons théoriquesP. 87. Deuxième partie, Etudes de cas : les modèles analytiques et l'analyse des enjeux éducatifsP. 87. Traiter une question socialement vive : exemple de l'éducation au développement durableP. 127. Cas méthodologiques particuliers du choix de corpus complexes : exemples autour de l'éducation à l'écocitoyennetéP. 149. Les représentations sociales comme méthode de préconisations didactiquesP. 165. Troisième partie, Etude de cas : les modèles comparatifsP. 165. L'analyse diachronique (avant et après un enseignement) pour analyser une action éducative (et la modifier)P. 184. Les représentations sociales comme méthode de comparaisons interculturellesP. 203. Conclusion générale.Ouvrage disponible sur ResearchGate : https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313568889_Utiliser_les_representations_sociales_en_education.

This study reviews the existing literature on the determinants of bank-level deposit volatility and is the first to provide empirical evidence for the German banking system by analyzing a large set of confidential micro-data from 2,262 banks over the period from 2003 to 2015. Taking advantage of the system's three-pillar structure, the analysis reveals that the nature of deposit volatility and the relevance of its determinants vary by banking pillar. The identified differences between larger commercial banks and smaller retail institutions (cooperative and savings banks) may largely be due to different degrees of diversification of the customer base and the funding portfolio. This also holds for market-wide liquidity supply, bank equity capitalization and funding risk that are identified as further determinants. Besides mapping avenues for future research, the findings are relevant for bank management since they may help to improve efficiency of risk management routines and strategy evaluation.

International audience

Cet article vise a proposer des reperes theoriques permettant de penser et de depasser les tensions, voire les contradictions, pouvant exister entre la volonte emancipatrice de l’education et la finalite d’engagement. Ces tensions seront examinees selon un cadre de pensee pragmatiste. Apres avoir clarifie les principes et les caracteristiques d’un curriculum acceptable pour l’education au developpement durable, nous examinerons les elements d’un modele anthropologique, pedagogique et didactique pour cette education. Ces elements conduiront a proposer un schema general permettant de rendre operatoire une finalite d’engagement au service d’une citoyennete eco-responsable dans le cadre de l’institution scolaire. Des indicateurs permettront l’elaboration d’un indice synthetique capable de rendre compte des dynamiques educatives a l’œuvre dans les projets de developpement humain durable menes a l’echelle des etablissements scolaires et des territoires.

International audience; Au moment où la société est confrontée au désengagement de l'Etat et à la tendance d'un renvoi sur l'individu, dans sa singularité, de la responsabilité du devenir de l'humanité, l'éducation se voit renvoyée à sa propre responsabilité : celle d'un rééquilibrage vers des valeurs collectives, le sens du bien commun, la prise en compte des implications de ses actes et décisions, et celle d'un « devoir être », au sens de Castoriadis (1997), vis-à-vis des générations actuelles et futures, des humains et des non-humains. Les liens entre responsabilité, engagement, et citoyenneté apparaissent alors étroits : ils fondent les principes d'une éducation au politique scolaire. Cetarticle vise à développer et étayer la réflexion à mener relativement à une éducation à un vivre ensemble durable et responsable. Dans un premier temps est étudiée la question des valeurs aujourd'hui ; dans un second, le sens d'éduquer aujourd'hui pour demain et enfin, dans un troisième, nous repérons quel principe de responsabilité prendre en compte aujourd'hui et comment le travailler en éducation.

(1) and (50%) can be true together, but (1) and (50%) cannot together be laws of nature. Indeed, (50o%)'s mere (non-vacuous) truth logically precludes (1)'s lawhood. A satisfactory analysis of chance and lawhood should nicely account for this relation. I shall argue first that David Lewis's Humean picture accounts for this relation only by inserting this relation 'by hand. Next, I shall argue that this relation between law and chance also threatens a radically non-Humean picture of laws and chances. Finally, I shall offer an account of natural law that nicely explains the relation between chancy facts and deterministic laws. This explanation is not ad hoc because it derives the relation from the very same features of lawhood that account for the laws' special relation to counterfactuals and explain how the laws (unlike the accidents) possess a variety of necessity. The reason that a chancy fact such as (50%) keeps (1) from being a law, without keeping (1) from being true, is ultimately that a chancy fact constrains the subjunctive facts and (1)'s lawhood, unlike (1)'s truth, depends upon the subjunctive facts.

In Lange 2004a, I argued that ‘scientific essentialism’ [Ellis 2001 cannot account for the characteristic relation between laws and counterfactuals without undergoing considerable ad hoc tinkering. In recent papers, Brian Ellis 2005 and Toby Handfield 2005 have defended essentialism against my charge. Here I argue that Ellis's and Handfield's replies fail. Even in ordinary counterfactual reasoning, the ‘closest possible world’ where the electron's electric charge is 5% greater may have less overlap with the actual world in its fundamental natural kinds than a ‘more distant possible world’ where the electron's charge is 5% greater. But more importantly, essentialism's flexibility in being able to accommodate virtually any relation between laws and counterfactuals is a symptom of essentialism's explanatory impotence as far as that relation is concerned.

From the time of Zeno, instantaneous velocity has puzzled natural philosophers. Today, physics and mathematics textbooks routinely follow Bertrand Russell in explicating a body's instantaneous velocity not merely as equal to, but moreover as identical to the time-derivative of its trajectory. This approach exploits the conceptual advances in "arithmeticizing" the foundations of the calculus that were made over the course of the nineteenth century. On this view, a body's instantaneous velocity is ontologically parasitic on its trajectory; the property of having at time t an instantaneous speed of, say, 5 centimeters per second is nothing over and above the property of having a trajectory, in the neighborhood of t, possessing a certain mathematical feature. Recently, this "reductive view" of instantaneous velocity has been challenged by some philosophers, such as Tooley (1988), Bigelow and Pargetter (1990), and Carroll (2002). Toolev, Bigelow, and Pargetter propose instead that a body's instantaneous velocity at t stands on an ontological par with and is metaphysically independent of the body's trajectory in t's neighborhood. A body's velocityjoins its mass and electric charge as among its ontologically primitive properties. According to "velocity primitivism," instantaneous velocity and trajectory are related only by virtue of natural law, not by metaphysical necessity. I shall look at some objections to the reductive view, paying particular attention to whether instantaneous velocity and instantaneous acceleration, as understood reductively, can play the causal and explanatory roles that classical physics is often interpreted as demanding of them. I shall argue that they cannot. Velocity primitivism, on the other hand, fails to recognize that instantaneous velocity is not merely nomologically connected to trajectory, but rather is essentially something to do with trajectory. To capture velocity's essentially kinematic character along with velocity's causal and explanatory roles, I shall advance a radical proposal: that instantaneous velocity is roughly akin to a dispositional property. I shall confine myself to classical physics with (for the sake of simplicity) absolute space and time. (My remarks could easily be extended to relativistic physics. Quantum mechanics is quite another matter.) My aim is to give an analysis of instantaneous velocity and acceleration that

This paper analyzes the logical truths as (very roughly) those truths that would still have been true under a certain range of counterfactual perturbations.What’s nice is that the relevant range is characterized without relying (overtly, at least) upon the notion of logical truth. This approach suggests a conception of necessity that explains what the different varieties of necessity (logical, physical, etc.) have in common, in virtue of which they are all varieties of necessity. However, this approach places the counterfactual conditionals in an unfamiliar foundational role.

There remains considerable debate over the existence of ecological laws. However, this debate has not made use of an adequate account of what a relationship would have to be like in order for it to qualify as an ecological law. As a result, confusions have persisted not only over how to show that ecological laws do (or do not) exist, but also regarding why their existence would matter – other than to whether ecology looks like physics. I argue that ecological laws would have to possess collectively a distinctive kind of invariance under counterfactual perturbations. I call this invariance “stability.” A law of physics, such as the law that all bodies travel no faster than the speed of light, is not only true, but also necessary in a physically significant sense. (A body must travel no faster than light; it couldn't do otherwise, even if it were subjected to a greater force.) Likewise, the stability of ecological laws would render them necessary in an ecologically relevant sense. Furthermore, ecological laws would differ from fundamental laws of physics in the range of counterfactual perturbations under which they are invariant. Therefore, I argue, the existence of ecological laws would make ecological explanations irreducible to even the most complete possible physical explanations of the same phenomena. Ecological laws would make ecology genuinely autonomous from physics.

Scientific essentialism aims to account for the natural laws' special capacity to support counterfactuals. I argue that scientific essentialism can do so only by resorting to devices that are just as ad hoc as those that essentialists accuse Humean regularity theories of employing. I conclude by offering an account of the laws' distinctive relation to counterfactuals that portrays laws as contingent but nevertheless distinct from accidents by virtue of possessing a genuine variety of necessity.

Recently, there has been a modest resurgence of interest in the ‘‘Humean’’ problem of induction. For several decades following the recognized failure of Strawsonian ‘‘ordinary-language’’ dissolutions and of Wesley Salmon’s elaboration of Reichenbach’s pragmatic vindication of induction, work on the problem of induction languished. Attention turned instead toward confirmation theory, as philosophers sensibly tried to understand precisely what it is that a justification of induction should aim to justify. Now, however, in light of Bayesian confirmation theory and other developments in epistemology, several philosophers have begun to reconsider the classical problem of induction. In section 2, I shall review a few of these developments. Though some of them will turn out to be unilluminating, others will profitably suggest that we not meet inductive scepticism by trying to justify some alleged general principle of ampliative reasoning. Accordingly, in section 3, I shall examine how the problem of induction arises in the context of one particular ‘‘inductive leap’’: the confirmation, most famously by Henrietta Leavitt and Harlow Shapley about a century ago, that a period-luminosity relation governs all Cepheid variable stars. This is a good example for the inductive sceptic’s purposes, since it is difficult to see how the sparse background knowledge available at the time could have entitled stellar astronomers to regard their observations as justifying this grand inductive generalization. I shall argue that the observation reports that confirmed the Cepheid periodluminosity law were themselves ‘‘thick’’ with expectations regarding as yet unknown laws of nature. The observations that confirmed the Cepheid law could not have been made without being fortified by these expectations, and

Myrvold (2003) has proposed an attractive Bayesian account of why theories that unify phenomena tend to derive greater epistemic support from those phenomena than do theories that fail to unify them. It is argued, however, that “unification” in Myrvold's sense is both too easy and too difficult for theories to achieve. Myrvold's account fails to capture what it is that makes unification sometimes count in a theory's favor.

Rosenberg has recently argued that explanations supplied by (what he calls) “functional biology” are mere promissory notes for macromolecular adaptive explanations. Rosenberg's arguments currently constitute one of the most substantial challenges to the autonomy, irreducibility, and indispensability of the explanations supplied by functional biology. My responses to Rosenberg's arguments will generate a novel account of the autonomy of functional biology. This account will turn on the relations between counterfactuals, scientific explanations, and natural laws. Crucially, in their treatment of the laws' relation to counterfactuals, Rosenberg's arguments beg the question against the autonomy of functional biology. This relation is considerably more subtle than is suggested by familiar slogans such as “Laws support counterfactuals; accidents don't.”

FT-IR spectroscopy and multivariate analysis have been used to investigate four closely related species of an important bacteria genus: Enterococcus . Since some species belonging to this genus are highly pathogen, and some others present technological interest in food industry, their differentiation is an essential task. The aim of this work was to discriminate Enterococcus strains (9 E. faecalis , 12 E. faecium , 4 E. durans and 1 E. hirae ) at the species and strain level, using FT-IR spectroscopy. Experiments were performed in two different laboratories with a good reproducibility, and were checked against a molecular biology technique, ribotyping. Discrimination at the species level was correct with both methods. Regarding the strain level, more than half the E. faecalis and E. faecium strains were differentiated by FT-IR spectroscopy, which confirms to be a rapid and promising method in microbiology.

Phylogenetic relationships, virulence factors, alone and in specific combinations, and virulence in a rat meningitis model were examined among 132 isolates of Escherichia coli neonatal meningitis from France and North America. Isolates belonging to phylogenetic groups A (n=11), D (n=20), and B2 (n=99) had similar high prevalence rates of the siderophores aerobactin and yersiniabactin and the K1 capsule (>/=70%) yet induced different level of experimental bacteremia. Ectochromosomal DNA-like domains involved in blood-brain barrier passage (PAI III(536) [sfa/foc and iroN; 34%]; GimA [ibeA and ptnC; 38%]; PAI II(J96) [hly, cnf1, and hra; 10%]) were restricted to B2 isolates. Among group B2 isolates, representatives of the O45:K1 clonal group (n=30), which lacked these domains, were as able as the archetypal O18:K1 strain C5 to cause meningitis. Molecular epidemiology combined with experimental virulence assays demonstrate that known virulence factors are insufficient to fully explain the pathophysiology of ECNM and to allow for rational search for new virulence factors.

To assess the impacts of forest harvesting and fires on lentic fish assemblages in the Boreal Plains ecoregion (Alberta, Canada), we applied a reference condition approach to 37 lakes in burned, logged, or undisturbed catchments. Fish assemblages in the reference lakes were classified into two types: those dominated by large-bodied piscivores and those dominated by small-bodied fishes. A discriminant function analysis with only two environmental descriptors (lake maximum depth and average slope of the catchment) could correctly predict assemblage type in 84% of reference lakes. Depth likely reflects the influence that winter oxygen concentrations have on fish assemblage type, whereas catchment slope is correlated with a variety of landscape-level features. Although potential effects of forest harvesting and fire can increase the susceptibility of lakes to winter hypoxia (via nutrient enrichment) and alter connectivity to the regional drainage network (via altered hydrology), fish assemblages in 9...

In order to implement a new and reliable method for characterizing different species of Legionella , a genetic fingerprinting study with an automated ribotyping system (RiboPrinter) was completed with members of this genus which were deposited at the American Type Culture Collection. The RiboPrinter examined the different patterns of Eco RI digestion fragments from the rRNA operons of 110 strains, representing 48 of the 49 described Legionella species as well as 70 serogroups of those species. Distinctive and consistent patterns were obtained for the type strains of the 48 species investigated. Legionella pneumophila subsp. fraseri and L. pneumophila subsp. pascullei each generated a specific pattern, whereas L. pneumophila subsp. pneumophila produced six different fingerprint patterns. No correlation seemed to exist between the ribotypes obtained and the 15 serotypes of L. pneumophila . For the other species, those with two known serogroups presented two distinctive patterns with the RiboPrinter with the exception of L. hackeliae and L. quinlivanii , which yielded only one pattern. We also encountered ribotypes for strains which were not identified to the species level. The ribotypes generated for these strains with the RiboPrinter did not match those generated for known type strains, suggesting the putative description of new serogroups or species. Although the automated system did not have sufficient discriminatory ability to serve as an epidemiological tool in a clinical setting, it appeared to be a powerful tool for general genomic analysis of the Legionella isolates (e.g., determination of new species) and assessment of the interrelationship among Legionella strains through the RiboPrinter database connection.

International audience; This article aims to propose theoretical milestones allowing to think and overcome the tensions and the contradictions that may exist between the will for emancipatory education and a commitment or engagement purpose. These tensions will be reviewed within a framework of pragmatic thought. After clarifying the principles and characteristics of an acceptable education for sustainable development curriculum, we examine the elements of an anthropological, teaching and learning model for such an education. These elements lead to propose a general scheme to make operational such a commitment or engagement purpose that is dedicated to an environmentally responsible citizenship within a school institution. Indicators will allow the development of a synthetic index able to account for educational dynamics at work in sustainable human development projects conducted at the level of schools and territories.; Cet article vise à proposer des repères théoriques permettant de penser et de dépasser les tensions, voire les contradictions, pouvant exister entre la volonté émancipatrice de l’éducation et la finalité d’engagement. Ces tensions seront examinées selon un cadre de pensée pragmatiste. Après avoir clarifié les principes et les caractéristiques d’un curriculum acceptable pour l’éducation au développement durable, nous examinerons les éléments d’un modèle anthropologique, pédagogique et didactique pour cette éducation. Ces éléments conduiront à proposer un schéma général permettant de rendre opératoire une finalité d’engagement au service d’une citoyenneté éco-responsable dans le cadre de l’institution scolaire. Des indicateurs permettront l’élaboration d’un indice synthétique capable de rendre compte des dynamiques éducatives à l’œuvre dans les projets de développement humain durable menés à l’échelle des établissements scolaires et des territoires.