Original Intuition Research Articles

Implementing Effective Practices

The authors, both participants in Crabapple Middle School's multi-age project, offer nine principles for middle school educators. IN THE EARLY years of the middle school movement, the developmental characteristics of young adolescent learners were front and center. We middle school teachers were asked to look at our students in new ways. Consequently, we wrote thematic, interdisciplinary units and designed minicourses and leadership clubs. We observed our students as they explored a wide range of domains, including art, music, home economics, and physical education. We began to see the whole child, to view our students as multidimensional beings with talents and abilities not addressed in traditional classrooms. We asked ourselves how we could capitalize on each student's strengths and work to improve each student's weaknesses. The two of us began to explore research on learning styles and found that we needed to know more. A supportive principal enabled us to attend learning styles training and to study the 4-MAT model of curriculum writing. Soon we developed a deep interest in the theory of multiple intelligences and in the connections between our students' developing bodies and their brains. All of this study brought us back to our original intuition that learning does not always occur best in rows of desks with stand-and-deliver pedagogy and that effective learning must incorporate art, music, drama, dance, and movement. We were confirmed in our belief that any child's weaknesses can and should be approached through his or her strengths. When we were asked to contribute our thoughts to this special section, we initially found the task overwhelming. But we took a deep breath, reflected on our beliefs, and found that we could offer nine principles that we believe lead to effective practice for middle school educators. Principle 1. Every lesson should include a kinesthetic activity. Only small percentages of any group of learners respond best to purely auditory stimuli. Therefore, every lesson should include a kinesthetic component. Kinesthetic learners make up the largest category of middle school students, and brief moments of activity can help imprint a lesson. Here are a few examples. In learning the marks of punctuation, a class can move in a line as it reads a text. When students come to a comma, they execute a hula movement. As the reading continues, the students perform other preassigned actions for each mark of punctuation. Or in learning the states of matter in a science class, the students can create a dance of the molecules. Or the Cartesian coordinate system can be illustrated by particular arm and leg movements when students refer to each quadrant. Social studies provides rich material for kinesthetic activities. Each student can be assigned to a particular historical character and given a movement to execute or a line of dialogue to speak when his or her character is mentioned. Both animate and inanimate objects may have such dialogue and movements. For example, the Rosetta Stone might say, I am the key, read me. Principle 2. Teachers must believe that every student has the potential to learn. Educators who judge their students by I.Q. or achievement test scores will limit their expectations and so limit opportunities for student growth. But lessons deemed appropriate for gifted students can be equally beneficial for all students. For example, consider the opportunities presented by an archeological dig. In preparation for this unit, students explore the idea of cultural universals - e.g., clothing, economics, government, language, recreation, religion/values, family structures, and so on. In their textbooks, they study the ancient cultures of Egypt, Greece, and Rome and note their cultural universals. Teams of students are then formed for an archeological dig in which one team of students creates and buries its culture's artifacts and a second team digs them up and analyzes them. …

The Role of Alternative Assets in Tax-Efficient Portfolio Construction

The author considers the role alternative assets play in a taxable portfolio and suggests that investors who pay taxes ought to have a greater portion of their wealth, ceteris paribus, invested in alternative asses relative to tax-exempt investors. The analysis starts with the intuition that fix-income assets are relatively tax-inefficient, and the diversification power of alternative assets should lead them to play a greater portfolio role. The author compares the results of pre- and after-tax portfolio optimization. He suggest that, in line with the original intuition, investors who optimize their asset allocation on an after-tax basis will seek a greater exposure to equity and alternative assets than those who ignore the impact of taxes at the asset allocation stage. Furthermore, an analysis that biases the decision process toward minimizing taxes rather than risks shows that the optimizer shifts even more dramatically out of fixed-income investments toward alternative assets.

The Problem of the I

SummaryIn this article a particular approach is presented to the problem of the human I. The startingpoint is an “interdisciplinary” question: I wonder whether nowadays we can - imbued as we are with post-cartesian criticism of the I - still be interested in mystical descriptions of the “way inward”, in particular those of Jan van Ruusbroec. I then try to develop the answer - a positive one, at least in my opinion and to my satisfaction - in three steps.First, it is shown that we do well now to get acquainted with Descartes' original experience of I think, therefore I am. As M. Henry has pointed out, this primary intuition should be taken into account as a fundamental element of modern philosophical reflexion on the I.Secondly, we come to see that this first cartesian insight in the proper reality of the I does not lay itself bare to the usual post-cartesian criticism. The reason for that immunity is rather obvious: the main targets - that the human I is a self-founding reality, that it is a substrat-substance and requires a “robust” dualism - do not appear in Descartes' original self-experience. These three points are being elucidated by regular flash-backs on Augustine's self-analysis: the affinity between the original cartesian intuition and the augustinian view of “interior man” is unmistakable indeed.By so looking back on Augustine we get, in the third place, a foretaste of the “turning inwards”, inkeeren presented by Jan van Ruusbroec. Of course, there are quite some differences between the inner exploration of the Latin thinker and the Flemish mystic's “introversion” - caused by the divine “touch”, gherinen in his “ground” - but that does not alter the fact of their being akin on those points that today embarrass us most. If then we allow ourselves to take some distance from the cartesianism we are acquainted with, Ruusbroec may well - and even more strongly than Augustine - appear as a valuable interlocutor. Maybe this medieval mystic is at least able to question our modern questioning of the reality of the I?

Nucleic Acid Structure Analysis: Mathematics for Local Cartesian and Helical Structure Parameters That Are Truly Comparable Between Structures

Analyzing nucleic acid structures in a comparable manner has become increasingly important as the number of solved structures has increased. This paper presents the concepts, mathematics, theorems, and proofs that form the basis of a new program to analyze three-dimensional DNA and RNA structures. The approach taken here provides numerical data in accordance with guidelines set at a 1988 EMBO workshop. Mathematical definitions are provided for all local structural parameters described in the guidelines. The definitions satisfy the guideline requirements while preserving the original physical intuition of the parameters. In particular, the rotational parameters are true rotations based on a simple physical model (net rotation at constant angular velocity), not Euler angles or angles between vectors and planes as is the case with other approaches. As a result, the mathematical definitions are symmetrical with the property that a 5° tilt is the same as a 5° roll and a 5° twist, except that the rotations take place about different axes. In other approaches, a 5° tilt can mean a different amount of net rotation than a 5° roll or a 5° twist. A second unique feature of the mathematics is that it explicitly incorporates the concept of a pivot point, which is the point about which a base in a base-pair rotates as it buckles, propeller twists, and opens. Pivot points enable one to model the physical motion of bases more accurately. As a result, they greatly reduce and/or eliminate the statistical correlations between rotational and translational parameters that arise as mathematically induced artifacts in other approaches. This paper, together with the statistical analysis in the companion paper for determining the locations of the pivot points, provides everything needed to understand the output of the program as it relates to individual structures.

Reconstruction possibilities for fuzzy sets: Towards a new level of understanding?

Using the methodological approach of ‘rational reconstruction’ some possible explications of the notion of ‘fuzzy set’ are critically discussed with respect to their intuitive meaning, plausibility and consistency. Together with a historical survey we try to provide a better understanding of the development of various concepts within traditional fuzzy set theory. Based on the approaches of [39] and [18] we show that Zadeh's original intuition of a fuzzy set and its formalization as generalized ‘membership’ function can be reinterpreted in a plausible and consistent way, and thus are supported not only on a formal level by mathematical results, but can also be justified in principle on a semantical level. Hence, both the operational as well as the traditional valuational viewpoint have their own rights in their corresponding areas of modeling reality, and it is shown how the latter can be given a sound foundation based upon the former.

INTEGRATING PHYLOGENY AND EXPERIMENTAL ETHOLOGY: FROM PATTERN TO PROCEs.

Phylogenetic systematics offers ethologists a method for uncovering macroevolutionary patterns of behavioral diversity, which can be used to generate predictions for experimental investigation of microevolutionary processes. I used phylogenetic methods to disentangle the contributions of various selection pressures in the evolution of sexually dimorphic nuptial coloration in gasterosteid fishes in general, and Gasterosteus aculeatus in particular. Based upon the phylogenetic relationships between breeding colors and breeding behaviors in the gasterosteids, three predictions relevant to a discussion of nuptial coloration in G. aculeatus were proposed. The origin and elaboration of nuptial coloration was (1) weakly associated with male/male interactions (intrasexual selection), (2) moderately associated with parental care (natural selection) and (3) strongly associated with male/female interactions (intersexual selection). I tested the hypothesized macroevolutionary relationships between male breeding color and behavior in two sets of experiments studying changes in male nuptial coloration across the breeding cycle and female choice based on intensity of male color. The results of these experiments at the microevolutionary level of analysis corroborated the macroevolutionary predictions and confirmed the original intuition of previous researchers: male body color intensity is an important component of female mate choice in G. aculeatus. This study demonstrates that a phylogenetic hypothesis can generate predictions that are experimentally testable and falsifiable.

THE CRISIS AS A BANK RUPTCY OF TRUST: THE FIDUCIARY ATTITUDE, HUMAN NATURE AND ETHICAL SCIENCE

Edmund Husserl's Crisis of the European Sciences prompts the search for an alternative to the development of nihilistic social systems which arise out of this situation. The breadth of the crisis problem manifesting itself in all realms of culture, including not only the natural sciences, but even art and music is first outlined, followed by a general definition which includes those found in Georg Simmel, Max Weber and Florian Znaniecki. Husserl's phenomenological and first depth analyses of the crisis, theoretically and historically tracing it back to its mathematical-natural scientific origins, are briefly considered until they break off around the problem of intersubjectivity, which he first discovered around the turn of the century. Bertrand Russell and Rudolf Carnap are then seen to attempt to dissolve this problem into a logical mystical intersubjectivity so as to maintain that there was never really a scientific crisis of the sciences and never one calling for such a notion. Finally, the works of Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch, as an extension of the original Husserlian intuition with their consideration of intersubjectivity now as `a mundane problem of the natural attitude' of the everyday social group, are taken up as a guide in this search for the non-nihilistic ( aliquid). Through an independent description of a `fiduciary attitude' (i.e. a trustful and not necessarily practical attitude), new light is thrown on the crisis as essentially a `bankruptcy of trust', and a brief attempt is then made to describe our most profound and foundational fiduciary engagement in that primordial `something' which is seen to be in the end a very ` human nature'. Upon this basis, and more specifically upon a fiduciary familiar milieu of social nature, I must simply have faith carrying hopes and fears in the world. This is the basis for a trustfully grounded science in everyday life. It may be developed by `well-informed actors' into a modern higher reflection involving a supreme respect for the unknown in the other and in nature, so as to give rise to an ethical science guided by faith in the future advancement of our one single international world.

Godel's "Incompleteness Theorem" and Barbey: Raising Story to a Higher Power

A story, according to conventional wisdom, is the composite of two elements, a hero and his observer, the storyteller; that is, the paradigm for is made up of one who performs significant actions and one who relates that person's exploits. A fiction always entails at least this sequence of two since there is no such thing as a heroic storyteller. But, of course, there is no story without its audience. A message does not exist by reason of its having an addressor; it must have an addressee to come into existence. A story is only constituted when there is someone to hear about the exploits of the hero. The briefest reflection makes us aware that there are more than two steps in the sequence which creates a story: there has to be a third entry in the chain, the receiver who assembles and gives a design to what is dispatched by the sender. That is, the receiver is not merely acted upon; the story assumes a configuration and a meaning insofar as it responds to the values and experience of its audience, the mold into which it must flow in order to take form. The story takes to the extent that the receiver (reader or listener) has the shock of recognition at some level; that is, the addressee of the narrative message is the model as well as the spectator, the observed as well as the observer. He is, in fact, both figure and ground ground, indeed, because he is in some sense the figure. Framed stories dramatize this circularity, making it evident that the addressee plays two kinds of roles in the creation of every narrative, and thus compelling us to move beyond the original intuition that a story is the representation of successive steps in a sequence. If we are accustomed to imagining that the diagram for story-qua-story would take the form of an arrow's path, moving along a horizontal axis from left to right, framed narrative, in projecting the listener as protagonist, substitutes a circle for that path. In Le Dessous de cartes d'unepartie de whist, Barbey d'Aurevilly's explicit, rhetorical demonstration of a story which loops back on itself illuminates the profound shift in world view--and thus in concept of narrative implicit in this passage from depiction of arrow to

Money and Growth: Some Old Theorems from a New Perspective*

This paper reconsiders the effect of the rate of monetary expansion on the real growth path of the economy. The analysis uses an overlapping‐generations model with production and intergenerational bequests. The first objective is to define the set of necessary conditions under which money will be superneutral. These conditions are shown to be very restrictive. The second objective is to show that, if money is not superneutral, Tobin's original intuition on the subject, namely that a rise in the rate of monetary expansion raises the capital intensity, can be derived from an optimizing model under certain conditions.

Trends in the Development of Criminology in Britain

AT THE BEGINNING of the twentieth century criminology ;\was at a crossroads. In so far as it was an accepted scientific £ Xdiscipline it owed much to Lombroso and his followers, who starting as anthropometrists, had begun to elaborate sociological and psychological theories of causation which took them far from measurement of bodily characteristics and comparisons with other races or animals. Lombrosianism was already becoming an elaborate complex of theorizing, partly based upon clinical observations; and, in numerous forms, was spreading rapidly over the continent of Europe. It was, however, an approach alien to English modes of thought. While Lombroso was elaborately proving the correctness of his original intuition regarding the atavistic nature of crime, and at the same time nibbling away at its base by adding new classes of offenders based on environmental classifications, Galton was noticing the consequences of the patterns of whorls and junctions upon people's fingers and suggesting their possible use for identification. The tradition of British criminology was founded upon the statistical techniques which Galton began to elaborate, and the long history of agitation for reform, rather than upon the biosocial theories of Havelock Ellisl and continental Lombrosianism. Of great importance to the social sciences were the development by Karl Pearson in the I890'S of the techniques of correlation and of chi-square2. They were, of course, invented primarily to further the cause of eugenics, and this has particular relevance to the nascent science of criminology, since the period was much dominated by discussion about the inheritance of various traits. Amongst these was criminality, or, to be more precise, 'the criminal diathesis' or tendency to criminality; and closely associated with it, feeblemindedness. Important in this connection are the various, now well-known family trees the Jukes in particular and the work of H. H. Goddard in America.