Leemon McHenry

All’inizio del secolo XX, tre filosofi di Cambridge, Alfred North Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, e Charlie Dunbar Broad, sostennero un’ontologia basata sugli eventi che si riteneva fosse compatibile con la recente teoria della relatività . Gli eventi, perciò, rimpiazzavano le sostanze aristoteliche in veste di componenti primari dell’universo – essi erano concepiti come unità di spazio-tempo che si estendevano spazio-temporalmente e che si sovrapponevano al campo elettromagnetico. Via via che la fisica moderna progrediva, le ontologie basate sugli eventi sembrarono guadagnare ulteriore supporto dal comportamento inaspettato delle particelle elementari descritte a livello quantistico. Dall’espansione dell’universo alle traiettorie delle particelle subatomiche, sembrava che tutto potesse essere sistematicamente interpretato in termini di eventi.

Nihilism, as most commonly understood, is the existential thesis that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value. Medical nihilism is the radical skepticism, indeed cynicism, about the objectivity, purpose or value of medical interventions. According to Stegenga, it is the view that we should have little confidence in the effectiveness of medical treatments. Stegenga provides a rigorous epistemological investigation into the evidence for medical interventions, one that is informed by the methods of analytical philosophy and a Bayesian formalism.

Medical ghostwriting is the practice in which pharmaceutical companies engage an outside writer to draft a manuscript submitted for publication in the names of “honorary authors,” typically academic key opinion leaders. Using newly-posted documents from paroxetine litigation, we show how the use of ghostwriters and key opinion leaders contributed to the publication of a medical journal article containing manipulated outcome data to favor the proprietary medication. The article was ghostwritten and managed by SmithKline Beecham, now GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Scientific Therapeutics Information, Inc. without acknowledging their contribution in the published article. The named authors with financial ties to GSK, had little or no direct involvement in the paroxetine 352 bipolar trial results and most had not reviewed any of the manuscript drafts. The manuscript was originally rejected by peer review; however, its ultimate acceptance to the American Journal of Psychiatry was facilitated by the journal editor who also had financial ties to GSK. Thus, GSK was able to take an under-powered and non-informative trial with negative results and present it as a positive marketing vehicle for off-label promotion of paroxetine for bipolar depression. In addition to the commercial spin of paroxetine efficacy, important protocol-designated safety data were unreported that may have shown paroxetine to produce potentially harmful adverse events.

We live in an age alleged devoted to evidence-based medicine. Evidence-based medicine, however, depends on reliable data and if the data are largely, if not completely, manipulated by the manufacturer of pharmaceuticals, then the data are not reliable. Evidence-based medicine is an illusion. This book raises and attempts to answer the following questions: What are the ways in which the profit motive of industry undermines the integrity of science? How is science protected from corporate malfeasance in a capitalist economy? Our particular focus is the relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and medicine. We argue that medicine desperately needs to re-evaluate its relationship with the pharmaceutical industry and re-affirm the ideal of evidence-based medicine. In our view, Karl Popper’s philosophy of science, Falsificationism and Critical Rationalism, provides a rigorous conception of science required to preserve the integrity of the scientific basis of medicine against the commercial influences.

The first thing to note about the present work is that it is divided into twenty short chapters, all of which contain numbered sections averaging two to three pages in length. This organization adds to the concision and clarity of the book and works well with Heil’s attempt to present ideas in an unpretentious manner. The dust jacket tells us that the book is written in an accessible, nontechnical style that is intended for nonspecialists as well as seasoned metaphysicians. But despite the organization and flow of bite-sized nuggets, I doubt anyone with less than graduate training in analytical philosophy will understand the problems and issues. A brief survey of the contemporary philosophers who get the most discussion should confirm the point. This includes: C. B. Martin, D. M. Armstrong, Frank Jackson, David Chalmers, Sidney Shoemaker, E. J. Lowe, Donald Davidson, Saul Kripke, and Hilary Putnam.

In this brief but formidable monograph Dorothy Emmet presents a splendid account of causation woven around numerous contemporary discussions. The largest portion of this book is devoted to an analysis of the epistemological problems of describing events in terms of cause and effect. Here Emmet defines her position in relation to the views of Davidson, Mellor, Anscombe, O'Neill, Prichard, Hornsby and others. Her main task however is to "pass beyond the epistemology to a metaphysics underpinning it", and this she achieves with admirable clarity in the remainder of the book. As far as the latter is concerned, Emmet's views are strongly influenced by her former teacher, A. N. Whitehead, but unlike the followers of his process thought dominant in America today, she is more sympathetic to his views of nature developed in his middle period rather than those largely developed in Process and Reality. Furthermore, Emmet is more concerned to develop a substantial metaphysical position of her own rather than simply to expound Whitehead's doctrines.

Philosophy: The Classic Readings is a collection of accessible readings from the history of philosophy specifically intended for the introductory student. The readings were chosen for courses that focus on metaphysics and epistemology. Each reading contains a brief introduction to the philosopher's life and works, thought-provoking study questions, and a bibliography for further reading at the end of each chapter. The philosophers include Plato, Aristotle, Rene Descartes, John Locke, David Hume, Bertrand Russell and Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia.

Editorial independence is a bedrock principle of academic publishing. The growing domination of academic publishing by large, for-profit corporations threatens this independence. There is alarming evidence that large companies too often serve their own business interests and those of powerful clients rather than serving the scientific community and the general public. This evidence includes the publication of infelicitous commercial science and concealing scientific misconduct. We present two case studies in which the UK-based publisher Taylor & Francis interfered in the editorial process by blocking publication of legitimate criticism that had been reviewed and approved for publication by its specialized editors. The integrity of science depends in part on the transparency and intellectual honesty of all stakeholders. The widely acknowledged inadequacies of English libel law are reviewed as context for some of Taylor & Francis’s fearful decisions.

This thesis examines the affinities and contracts between A. N. Whitehead's process metaphysics and F. H. Bradley's Absolute Idealism. Whitehead drew upon Bradley's notion of experience in formulating his ontology, but disagreed sharply with Bradley on the status of relations. Whereas Bradley argued that relations and temporal transition are riddled with contradictions and cannot adequately characterize the nature of reality, Whitehead's interpretation of experience as happening in atomic or epochal units commits him to the reality of asymmetrical, temporal relations. Whitehead and Bradley share an opposition to the seventeenth-century cosmology which treated nature as a inert mechanism, but disagreed about the role of science in metaphysics. Bradley treated all science as dealing with appearances rather than reality. Whitehead formulated his metaphysics within the framework of modern physics, especially electromagnetism, relativity physics and quantum mechanics. This thesis ends with further comparisons between Bradley's Absolute and Whitehead's process theism.

The lingering controversy concerning the usefulness and safety of antidepressants for children and adolescents is likely to confuse clinicians. Recent papers perpetuate the claim that antidepressants are shown to be safe and effective in randomised controlled trials. Others claim that antidepressants have been shown to prevent suicides. In this editorial we address the manipulation of outcomes that result from academics’ alliance with industry. We explain how industry and key opinion leaders have distorted the clinician’s perception of the safety and usefulness of antidepressants for the treatment of depression in children and adolescents through publication bias, poor methodology, and selective reporting.

The argument of this book is the culmination of the author’s work that has been under way since the 1970s, and it brings together a wealth of ideas from his earlier books, What’s Wrong with Science?, From Knowledge to Wisdom, The Comprehensibility of the Universe, and The Human World and the Physical Universe. There are fine tunings of points and discussion of cutting-edge developments in physics that provide an excellent update to his views. Maxwell also explains the basic principles of the theory he espouses, namely, “aim-oriented empiricism.”

In his vigorous defense of the reality of time, Capek champions a tradition of process philosophy that includes such figures as Bergson, James, and Whitehead, against both philosophers and physicists that subordinate time to some lower status in reality or regard it as a peculiar dimension of space. This is, in fact, the point of his last essay in this volume, "Time-Space Rather than Space-Time," where he argues, contrary to standard interpretations, that relativity physics does not necessitate a frozen "block universe" that includes preexisting future events.

This chapter of Victor Lowe's Alfred North Whitehead: The Man and His Work, Volume II: 1910-1947 covers the development of Whitehead's philosophy of physics while he was Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Imperial College, London. Under the influence of Einstein's theory of relativity, Whitehead developed a theory of extension that explained the basis of the space-time manifold in terms of an ontology of events. Pan-physics was his term for the unification of the natural sciences as one general science.

Als sich die Denkschulen der anglo-amerikanischen Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts formierten, wurden Whitehead und Russell zu Symbolfiguren der spekulativen Denkrichtung auf der einen und der analytischen Ansätze auf der anderen Seite. Der eine beschäftigte sich mit der Konstruktion einer umfassenden Metaphysik; der andere betonte das Streben nach begrifflicher Klarheit mit den Mitteln präziser logischer und linguistischer Analyse. Die antithetische Beziehung dieser beiden widerstreitenden Parteien ist allerdings weniger offensichtlich, wenn wir die Ziele in den Blick nehmen, die Whitehead und Russell teilten, unmittelbar nachdem sie in ihrem Monumentalwerk Principia Mathematica an den Grundlagen der Mathematik zusammengearbeitet hatten. Beide waren nun mit einem anderen grundlegenden Projekt der Philosophie der Physik befasst. Whitehead und Russell entwickelten, als offensichtlichste Konsequenz aus den revolutionären Fortschritten der modernen Physik, jeder für sich eine Ereignisontologie, doch waren sie unterschiedlicher Ansicht darüber, wie diese Ontologie als metaphysische Grundlage der Physik zu interpretieren sei. Das Ziel meines Essays ist es daher, die Affinitäten und Gegensätze in Whiteheads und Russells Ansichten darüber herauszuarbeiten, wie das ausgedehnte Universum, bestehend aus Materie und „leerem“ Raum, als eine Mannigfaltigkeit von Ereignissen zu denken sei. Ich zeige außerdem, wie viel von Russells Metaphysik von Whiteheads früher Arbeit beeinflusst war. Während Russell selbst diesen Einfluss großzügig anerkannte, wird er von Kommentatoren seiner Philosophie selten zur Kenntnis genommen.