This book developed from sections of my doctoral dissertation, "The Possibility of Religious Knowledge: Causation, Coherentism and Foundationalism," Brown University, 1982. However, it actually had its beginnings much earlier when, as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, I first read Hume's "Of Miracles" and became interested in it. (Fascinated would be too strong. ) My teacher put the following marginal comment in a paper I wrote about it: "Suppose someone told you that they had been impregnated by an angel whispering into their ear. Wouldn't you think they had gone dotty?" She...

Medical or hio- ethics has in recent years been a growth industry. Journals, Centers and Associations devoted to the subject proliferate. Medical schools seem increasingly to be filling rare positions in the humanities and social sciences with ethicists. Hardly a day passes without some media scrutiny of one or another ethical dilemma resulting from our new-found ability to transform the natural conditions of life. Although bioethics is a self-consciously interdisciplinary field, it has not attracted the collaboration of many social scientists. In fact, social scientists who specialize in the...

In the footsteps of Ingardeniana II, this volume marks the 20th anniver sary of Roman Ingarden's death, partly focusing upon his thought, partly bringing his aesthetics into the present-day framework of research. It might have appeared puzzling to the followers of our Analecta Husserliana why within the original horizon encircled by the research work of our International Society of Phenomenology and Literatur- whose research work is devised in a diametrically opposed direction to that of Roman Ingarden - there is steadfastly running through our discussions a line of Ingardenian reflection....

About 20 years ago the emphasis in soil chemistry research switched from studies of problems related to scarcities of plant nutrients to those arising from soil pollutants. The new problems have come about because of the excessive uses of fertilizers, the inputs from farm and industrial wastes, the widespread applications of anthropogenie xenobiotic chemicals, and the deterioration of soil structure resulting from certain modern agriculture practises. The International Society of Soil Science (ISSS) recognized these problems and challenges. A provisional Working Group was set up in 1978 to...

The cardiac system represents one of the most exciting challenges to human ingenuity. Critical to our survival, it consists of a tantalizing array of interacting phenomena, from ionic microscopic transport, membrane channels and receptors through cellular metabolism, energy production to fiber mechanics, microcirculation, electrical activation to the global, clinically observed, function, which is measured by pressure, volume, coronary flow, heart rate, shape changes and responds to imposed loads and pharmaceutical challenges. It is a complex interdisciplinary system requiring the joint...

A PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH My interest in exploring the nature of the patient's and the physician's understanding of illness has grown out of my own experience as a multiple sclerosis patient. In discussing my illness with physicians, it has often seemed to me that we have been somehow talking at cross purposes, discussing different things, never quite reaching one another. This inability to communicate does not, for the most part, result from inatten tiveness or insensitivity but from a fundamental disagreement about the nature of illness. Rather than representing a shared reality between...

For many years physics and mathematics have had a fruitful influence on one another. Classical mechanics and celestial mechanics have produced very deep problems whose solutions have enhanced mathematics. On the other hand, mathematics itself has found interesting theories which then (sometimes after many years) have been reflected in physics, confirming the thesis that nothing is more practical than a good theory. The same is true for the younger physical discipline -of quantum mechanics. In the 1930s two events, not at all random, became: The mathematical back grounds of both quantum...

Recently, De Nederlandsche Bank in coope: ration with the CentER for Economic Research of Tilburg University organised an international conference on monetary policy. This volume contains the papers, comments and speeches given on that occasion. The organisation of such a conference and the publication of this book were possible only through the efforts of a number of people. More in particular I would like to thank the organising committee (prof Onno de Beaufort Wijnholds, assoc prof Sylvester Eijffinger, dr Lex Hoogduin and Broos van der Werff), Hans Haan the conference manager, Imelda...

Informatics and the Foundations of Legal Reasoning represents a close collaboration between a wide range of disciplines and countries. Fourteen papers, together with a long analytical introduction by the editors, were selected from the contributions of legal theorists, computer scientists, philosophers and logicians who were members of an International Working Group supported by the European Commission. The Group was mandated to work towards determining how far the law is amenable to formal modeling, and in what ways computers might assist legal thinking and practice. The book is the...

The game-theoretic analysis of rights forms a rapidly growing field of study to which this book makes an important contribution. Van Hees combines the game-theoretic approach with the results and tools from logic, in particular from the logic of norms. The resulting synthesis between logic and game theory provides a firm foundation for the game-theoretic approach. The analysis shows how different types of right are related to the strategic opportunities of individuals and of groups of individuals. Furthermore, the book makes an important contribution to the theory of liberalism, in particular...