The coronavirus-induced lockdown hasn’t just eroded our physical liberty; it has also eroded our intellectual freedom. Our freedom to think has been put under lock and key. Clearly, we are on the threshold of a dangerous phase. Which way we go from here will depend on how soon and how well we gauge the danger and start exploring the ways to c…[Read more]

अधिकांश लोग समझते हैं कि चिकित्सक ही जांच द्वारा तय करते हैं कि किसे कोविड है और किसे नहीं तथा अगर किसी की मौत होती है तो चिकित्सक ही यह तय करते हैं कि वह मृत्यु कोविड से हुई है या किसी अन्य कारण से। इसलिए जब कोई खुद को चिकित्सक बताता है या अपने परिवार में चिकित्सकों के होने का ज़िक्र करता है तो लोग उसकी बात पर अनिवार्य रूप से विश्वास करते ह…[Read more]

As was expected, the country is witnessing an explosion of Covid cases, leading to chaos and mayhem. People are dying for want of oxygen. The protocol for the treatment of Covid patients is faulty and that is one reason for the high number of deaths. Thanks to the protocol, deaths due to other causes are also being added to the Covid toll. In this…[Read more]

Although he obtained a medical degree at the University of Caen in 1618, Isaac Beeckman never practised medicine. Instead, he developed an atomistic conception of Galenic physiology by discussing, throughout his notebook, the constituents and functioning of the living body. Interestingly, Beeckman applied his atomistic interpretation to the notion…[Read more]

This paper examines North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as one of the most important instruments of the U.S. Strategy from energy security perspective. The main purpose, here, is to discuss the evolution of NATO in late 2000s and to show how it was designed in that period as a dimension of the U.S. Strategy for sustaining energy security.…[Read more]

Ecological crisis is a complete balls-up. Deepening crisis has ultimately been moving nature and humanity towards a tremendous zero-point. It is essential to make a holistic and true ascertainment about the reason of the crisis, in order to explain its meaning and overcome it. A more holistic approach can be provided with multidimensional…[Read more]

Spanish abstract: El lenguaje no puede entenderse al margen de la evolución. No basta sólo con explicar el surgimiento evolutivo de una “capacidad de lenguaje”, sino que también hay que explicar la evolución del lenguaje en sí, el lenguaje en acto y no en potencia. En suma, no sólo se trata de averiguar si nuestros ancestros hablaban, pues hoy c…[Read more]

Deep time comes in many forms, including a range of temporal frames, and various approaches to more ethical engagement with the biosphere. In this paper, I explore the recent use and contestation of history, in light of its legacy as a Christian theo- logical project (from Eusebius and Bede into more recent renderings) and a potent political tool.…[Read more]

A hugely prolific and popular writer, Jodi Picoult boasts nearly 30 novels in print worldwide. She has been translated into 34 languages and, in 2018, she was ranked in the “top ten” of Princeton’s most influential living alumni. Yet her name rarely features in the short lists for prestigious literary awards and she is consistently ignored by ac…[Read more]

This paper presents the findings of comparative research into the labor, organizational and spatial practices of a new kind of hybrid civic spaces that we refer to as “social impact-driven repair shops.” These are an emerging typology of urban spaces dedicated to repaired and up-cycled items that also go beyond the functions of a traditional sho…[Read more]

This article offers some provisional analyses of the discourses presented by participants in the School Strike for Climate movement, which (since it began in 2018) has been organised variously under the banners Fridays for Future, Youth for Climate and School Strike 4 Climate.1 This paper contends that the movement goes beyond just…[Read more]

Historically the Red Cross has created opportunities for women that were otherwise denied to them in their wider society. This role for female Red Cross workers is not a recent thing and is deeply embedded in the past and psyche of the organisation.

Spanish abstract: Unas notas sobre el final del libro ‘El lugar del hombre en el cosmos’ de Fred Spier, sobre la sostenibilidad de la actual comunicación globalizada. La Gran Historia sitúa al ser humano en el contexto de la evolución cósmica y de la ecología de los recursos. Vivimos hoy en la Era de los Combustibles Fósiles. Con esta energ…[Read more]

Lynn Margulis’s writing about symbiosis has profoundly influenced contemporary evolutionary theory, as well as continental and analytic philosophy of science, the materialist turn, and new materialism. Nonetheless, her work, and all symbiosis or evolution, is founded on a paradox: symbiosis fictionalizes customary accounts of the origin and e…[Read more]

In two very influential papers from 2008, Tamar Gendler introduced the concept of “alief” to describe the mental state one is in when acting in ways contrary to their consciously professed beliefs. For example, if asked to eat what they know is fudge, but shaped into the form of dog feces, they will hesitate, and behave in a manner that would be…[Read more]

This article examines the political role of illness in Émile Zola’s ‘La Faute de l’abbé Mouret’ (‘The Sin of Father Mouret’, 1875) in articulating the difference between a religious and a secular body. Published in the early French Third Republic (1870–1940), this novel shows the Zolian body as the nexus upon which religious and republi…[Read more]

In ‘Degeneration’ (1892), Max Nordau included Émile Zola in his theory that fin-de-siècle artists were a danger to society. According to Nordau, the ‘false science’ in Zola’s Naturalist novels would erode social progress in their alleged preoccupation with disease, sexual deviancy and amorality. This article proposes that degeneration is, how…[Read more]