Phenomenological Situation Research Articles

Didactogeny as a factor pathologizing learning ability (elements for a meta-analysis of the phenomenon of school failure)

Didactogeny is an expressive indicator of school maladaptation. As soon as it appears, as a result of communication mistakes committed - voluntarily or involuntarily - by teachers, it puts undesirable pressure on their disciples, disorganizing all their activity and all kinds of relationships. Since, the phenomenon in question disrupts the training process by the pernicious energies which it possesses, calling into question its proper conduct, it is evident that the worries which appear in such a case must concern - first of all and in particular - the learning capacity of the pupils or, more precisely, the manner and extent to which the targeted type of capacity is subjected to erosion. The data we have - we refer both to the fi ndings that we have managed to extract from the specialized literature and to our own observations related to the inappropriate behavior of teachers - show that, ad extremum, the detrimental infl uence that didactogeny, as as a pathological factor, has over the ability to learn is expressed in at least three phenomenological situations: (I) the occurrence of school delays, (II) decreased ability to process information, and (III) disrupted motivation to learn.

The Invisible and the Hidden within the Phenomenological Situation of Appearing

AbstractThis study focuses on various phenomenological conceptions of the invisible in order to consider to what extent and in what way they involve moments of hiddenness. The relationship among phenomenality, invisibility, and hiddenness is examined in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Henry, and Merleau-Ponty. The study explains why phenomenologists prefer speaking about the invisible over a discourse of the hidden. It shows that the phenomenological method does not display the invisibility as a limit of experience but rather as a dynamic component of relational nature of any experience, including the religious one. Special attention is paid to topological moments of the relationship between the visible and the invisible.

Why ‘normal’ feels so bad: violence and vaginal examinations during labour – a (feminist) phenomenology

In this article, I argue that many women lack the epistemic resources that would allow them to recognise the practice of vaginal examinations during childbirth as violent or as unnecessary and potentially declinable. I address vaginal examinations during childbirth as a special case of obstetric violence, in which women frequently lack the epistemic resources necessary to recognise the practice as violent not only because of the inherent difficulty of recognising violence that happens in an ‘essentially benevolent’ setting such as the medical one, but also, and mainly, due to the pervasive sexual reification of women under patriarchy and the pervasive shame to which women are subjected. My argument is that the practice of vaginal examinations is indeed experienced – bodily apprehended – as violent by many women, but that full epistemic recognition of this violence is frequently obstructed because the experience perfectly coincides with the normal phenomenological situation of women within patriarchy and thus cannot really be framed as violent. A phenomenological analysis presenting the embodied experience of women under patriarchy as always already essentially tied to sexual availability and commodification, and to shame, will explain this epistemological impairment. A phenomenological take on Judith Butler’s distinction between ‘recognition’ and ‘apprehension’ informs my analysis: I deploy it to provide a richer, more nuanced response to the question of why vaginal examinations are not fully recognised and expressed as violent – even when they are, frequently, apprehended as such. Furthermore, Butler’s ideas about the epistemic ‘framings’ through which we make sense of different kinds of lives (grievable versus ungrievable) will help me to explain how the patriarchal sexual reification of women in fact already frames sexual violence as not-violence – which ultimately also prevents labouring women (and obstetrics staff) from recognising vaginal examinations during labour as violence.

Pre-energy reasoning in preschool children

The research presented in this paper explores the degree to which preschool children have the ability to use mental representations which constitute precursor energy models. Twenty-five children (10 boys and 15 girls) participated in the study. They were presented with two different phenomenological situations considered as important for the establishment of pre-energy reasoning: the movement of a toy car with the use of batteries and the movement of an identical car with the use of a spring. The children were involved in personal, semi-structured interviews, which aimed at eliciting their explanations about the movement of the two cars. The analysis of children’s explanations reveals that they tend to explain the movement of cars in both phenomenological situations in naturalistic terms. These naturalistic explanations were mainly agentive, that is they regard the batteries and the spring correspondingly as external agents causing the cars’ movement. The major percentage of agentive naturalistic explanations was given in terms of the function of the objects under discussion, while a number of them were formulated in terms of distribution. These findings designate a developing understanding of physical causality and a pre-energy character in children’s reasoning, since they are capable of accounting for the two phenomenological situations in terms of object chains. Therefore, an attempt to introduce the aspect of energy transfer in preschool education could be considered.

Recent developments in cosmic ray physics

The search for a theory of the origin of cosmic rays that may be considered as a standard, agreeable model is still ongoing. On one hand, much circumstantial evidence exists of the fact that supernovae in our Galaxy play a crucial role in producing the bulk of cosmic rays observed on Earth. On the other hand, important questions about their ability to accelerate particles up to the knee remain unanswered. The common interpretation of the knee as a feature coinciding with the maximum energy of the light component of cosmic rays and a transition to a gradually heavier mass composition is mainly based on KASCADE results. Some recent data appear to question this finding: YAC1 – Tibet Array and ARGO-YBJ find a flux reduction in the light component at ∼ 700 TeV, appreciably below the knee. Whether the maximum energy of light nuclei is as high as 3000 TeV or rather as low as a few hundred TeV has very important consequences on the supernova remnant paradigm for the origin of cosmic rays, as well on the crucial issue of the transition from Galactic to extragalactic cosmic rays. In such a complex phenomenological situation, it is important to have a clear picture of what is really known and what is not. Here I will discuss some solid and less solid aspects of the theory (or theories) for the origin of cosmic rays and the implications for future searches in this field.

Political formations, discourses and actions

The articles in this issue explore a range of political themes connected to discourse, identification and power. The first article (Vardeman-Winter, Tindall and Jiang) considers how the descriptive theory of intersectionality has critical implications for public relations as a discipline and a practice, challenging situational theory and established conceptions of publics. Intersectionality implicitly politicizes public relations since identities are sociopolitical constructions and raises issues for research practices, explored by the authors through critical review of past empirical studies. The authors argue that their approach offers a better understanding of ‘phenomenological situations’ making use of ethnographic insights. The tensions between interpretations that respectively propose organizations or publics (activists) have more power is foregrounded as: ‘Intersectionality illuminates this “crisis of representation” over who has what power in public relations, based on their identities and how these identities are situated in sociological contexts.’ Identities and identity formation and maintenance are seen as central to the understanding of the acquisition, enactment and ‘management’ of power. Power is central to the second article (Place and Vardeman-Winter) where: ‘The public relations industry can be viewed as a site through which power is exercised, and public relations professionals are players in systems of power dynamics and relations.’ The authors discuss hegemonic discourses in public relations where the concept has had purchase in considering the impact of public relations practice in society as well as in paradigm debate within the field itself (L’Etang, 1996: 34; Roper, 2005) blending insights from subaltern and post-colonial theories while adapting Foucault’s concept of

A full face bright red money shot: Incision, wounding and film spectatorship in Marina de Van's Dans ma peau

Through an analysis of Merleau-Ponty's concept of ‘flesh’, I wish to suggest that this term offers a potential site for the reconsideration of the phenomenological situation of the film viewer. I will do this through an analysis of Marina de Van's film Dans ma peau (2002), a film which addresses the individual spectator directly in the intimacy of the viewing experience and, moreover, interrogates that individual relation of embodied viewer to film. Distancing myself from previous scholarship on this film, I suggest that Dans ma peau stages an explicit reflection not (or not only) on the creative process of filmmaking but, rather, on the embodied, fleshy, phenomenological viewing experience of the audience. However, if the onscreen presentation of the body in Dans ma peau seems to offer the body up as an object to be cut open, the wounding that takes place in the film is of a different kind entirely. Drawing on Deleuze's concept of the wound, I will suggest that in the diegesis of the film and the relation instigated between film and spectator, we witness the construction of a relational matrix constituted by the sensations and intensities that flow across a body which is nothing but the embodiment of a wound that pre-exists it. This, I will suggest, has important ramifications for any phenomenological theory of cinematic spectatorship based on the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty in which flesh is coterminous with dehiscence.

Pseudoscalar meson transition form factors

Present-day experimental and phenomenological situation about pseudoscalar ($\pi^0$, $\eta$, $\eta'$) meson transition form factors is briefly reviewed. Necessity of more sophisticated behaviours in time-like region of these form factors is emphasized. Four-resonance unitary and analytic model of the pseudoscalar meson transition form factors is constructed, which describes well all existing experimental information.

Schrödinger's interpolating dynamics and burgers' flows

We discuss a connection (and a proper place in this framework) of the unforced and deterministically forced Burgers equation for local velocity fields of certain flows, with probabilistic solutions of the so-called Schrödinger interpolation problem. The latter allows us to reconstruct the microscopic dynamics of the system from the available probability density data, or the input-output statistics in the phenomenological situations. An issue of deducing the most likely dynamics (and matter transport) scenario from the given initial and terminal probability density data, appropriate e.g. for studying chaos in terms of density, is here exemplified in conjunction with Born's statistical interpretation postulate in quantum theory, that yields stochastic processes which are compatible with the Schrödinger picture of free quantum evolution.

Partial possible models: An approach to interpret students' physical representation

This paper shows the construction of conceptual models on pressure and flotation, using high school students' previous ideas on these concepts. The previous ideas were analyzed from answers coming from a questionnaire. We named those models as Partial Possible Models; their construction is based on students' ideas which determine the Constrictor Concepts (concepts that guide the construction of students' inferences) and their Correspondence Rules (relations between concepts) in an inferential semiformalism. These models allow the analysis of students' ideas about physical phenomena and recognize the inferential structure used by them. Partial Possible Models offer a very useful semiformalism to understand the different students' interpretations on phenomena related with pressure and flotation concepts. The use of these models allowed to determine two students' Possible Partial Models: one for liquids and another for gases. To prove the model's possibilities on representation and prediction of possible students' inferences in front of specific phenomenological situations, students' interviews on related physical phenomena were analyzed. The students' answers corresponded to the same inferences constructed with the models. Some considerations around the possible use of models in education are addressed. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons,Inc. Sci Ed 82:15–29, 1998.

Partial possible models: An approach to interpret students' physical representation

This paper shows the construction of conceptual models on pressure and flotation, using high school students' previous ideas on these concepts. The previous ideas were analyzed from answers coming from a questionnaire. We named those models as Partial Possible Models; their construction is based on students' ideas which determine the Constrictor Concepts (concepts that guide the construction of students' inferences) and their Correspondence Rules (relations between concepts) in an inferential semiformalism. These models allow the analysis of students' ideas about physical phenomena and recognize the inferential structure used by them. Partial Possible Models offer a very useful semiformalism to understand the different students' interpretations on phenomena related with pressure and flotation concepts. The use of these models allowed to determine two students' Possible Partial Models: one for liquids and another for gases. To prove the model's possibilities on representation and prediction of possible students' inferences in front of specific phenomenological situations, students' interviews on related physical phenomena were analyzed. The students' answers corresponded to the same inferences constructed with the models. Some considerations around the possible use of models in education are addressed. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons,Inc. Sci Ed82:15–29, 1998.

Feynman–Kac kernels in Markovian representations of the Schrödinger interpolating dynamics

Probabilistic solutions of the so-called Schrödinger boundary data problem provide for a unique Markovian interpolation between any two strictly positive probability densities designed to form the input–output statistics data for the process taking place in a finite-time interval. The key issue is to select the jointly continuous in all variables positive Feynman–Kac kernel, appropriate for the phenomenological (physical) situation. We extend the existing formulations of the problem to cases when the kernel is not a fundamental solution of a parabolic equation, and prove the existence of a continuous Markovian interpolation in this case. Next, we analyze the compatibility of this stochastic evolution with the original parabolic dynamics, which is assumed to be governed by the temporally adjoint pair of (parabolic) partial differential equations, and prove that the pertinent random motion is a diffusion process. In particular, in conjunction with Born’s statistical interpretation postulate in quantum theory, we consider stochastic processes which are compatible with the Schrödinger picture quantum evolution.

A solvable model for irreversible quantum phenomena

In a recent paper,Ellis,Hagelin,Nanopoulos andSrednicki, motivated by Hawking’s analysis of the breakdown of predictability in gravitational collapse, have proposed a modified equation of motion for density matrices and checked it against upper bounds for the violation of quantum mechanics in various phenomenological situations. Difficulties arising in this model have been pointed out by Banks, Susskind and Peskin. A general feature of this approachi s that the correspondence between symmetries and quantum-mechanical conservation laws is lost. On the other hand, in the case of a specific model, in which rotational invariance is preserved, but conservation of quantum-mechanical angular momentum is released, we show that the modified evolution equation exhibits irreversible evolution of pure states into mixed states of maximal entropy. Consequences of our approach concerning some views about Bell’s theorem are also discussed.

Search for violations of quantum mechanics

The treatment of quantum effects in gravitational fields indicates that pure states may evolve into mixed states, and Hawking has proposed modification of the axioms of field theory which incorporate the corresponding violation of quantum mechanics. In this paper we propose a modified hamiltonian equation of motion for density matrices and use it to interpret upper bounds on the violation of quantum mechanics in different phenomenological situations. We apply our formalism to the K 0- K 0 system and to long baseline neutron interferometry experiments. In both cases we find upper bounds of about 2 × 10 −21 GeV on contributions to the single particle “hamiltonian” which violate quantum mechanical coherence. We discuss how these limits might be improved in the future, and consider the relative significance of other successful tests of quantum mechanics. An appendix contains model estimates of the magnitude of effects violating quantum mechanics.

A Numerical Study of Chemical Flooding—Comparison With Experiments

Abstract This paper describes an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) model involving use of chemical additives. The model is as general as possible in light of present phenomenological knowledge. It takes into consideration diffusion, exchanges between fluid phases, exchanges between fluids and solids, and convection (including gravity, relative permeabilities, viscosities, interfacial tensions (IFT's), and mobility reduction by polymers). Its main properties are (1) three-phase flow (aqueous, oleic, and microemulsion); (2) that each phase can be represented by a mixture of seven components; (3) overall flow is one dimensional (1D), but the sections of space considered may be constant or variable; and the porous medium may be heterogeneous. In addition to its compositional nature, which is required for describing changes in phase properties, the model must also account for ionic environment, loss of chemicals, and capillary number distribution. For these reasons, it differs from conventional multicomponent models. It is designed for simulating any EOR problem involving the addition of suitable chemicals to fluids to be injected continuously or in successive slugs. The model has been tested successfully by two-phase flow, four components (water, oil, polymer, and surfactant plus alcohol), and Winsor Type I environment experiments. It can be adapted to more and more complex phenomenological situations, depending on availability of data.

Coastal boundary layers in ocean modelling: an application to the Adriatic Sea

Boundary layers play an important role in modelling geophysical fluid-dynamical flows, in as much as they constitute regions of ageostrophic dynamics in which the physical balances characterizing the main interior of the water mass break down. A short synopsis is given of important boundary layers in ocean circulation modelling with specific emphasis drawn upon side wall boundary layers, namely those adjacent to the coastlines of the considered basin. Application of boundary layer analysis is thereafter made for one specific phenomenological situation, namely the Northern Adriatic Sea and the problem posed by its wintertime seasonal circulation. The analysis furnishes a mathematical model for the coastal strip adjacent to the Italian shoreline, treated as a boundary layer in the density field, starting from general model equations valid throughout the interior of the northern Adriatic. The boundary layer model is consequently used to modify the side wall boundary condition for the interior density field. Related numerical experiments are shown and compared with previous standard experiments in which the boundary layer contribution to the density field has not been considered.

Is a q-number δ required in (8,8) chiral symmetry breaking?

We investigate the assumption that δ (the chiral-invariant scale-breaking part of the Hamiltonian density) has a dimension in the (8,8) model of chiral symmetry breaking. Using a spectral function sum rule for the vacuum expectation value of the chiral symmetry breaking Hamiltonian density u( x), restrictions for the mass m ϵ and the width Γ ϵ of η 0+(700–1000) are derived from this assumption. They imply that a q-number δ with dimension l δ ⩾ 1 is incompatible with Γ ϵ ⩽ m ϵ and m ϵ ⩾ 600 MeV. On the other hand, if δ is a c-number ( l δ = 0) it is shown that Γ ϵ ⩽ m ϵ is incompatible with m ϵ ⩾ 690 MeV while if Γ ϵ is below m ϵ (e.g. Γ ϵ ⩽ 0.9 m ϵ ) only an ϵ with a lower mass ( m ϵ ⩽ 670 MeV) is allowed. The present phenomenological situation concerning ϵ makes impossible a definite conclusion on the dimensional content of δ in the (8,8) model. However, experiments favor values of m ϵ and Γ ϵ which imply that δ is a q-number consisting of at least two terms with different dimensions and nonvanishing vacuum expectation values. Quite generally, our results may be used to check if a particular theoretical prediction for m ϵ and for Γ ϵ is compatible with a c-number δ in the (8,8) model. We assume in the paper that u has a dimension and that conventional ϵ-saturation is valid. However, independent of the latter assumption it is shown here that in the (8,8) chiral symmetry breaking scheme the dimension of u is between 0 and 4 if δ is a c-number (this may also be seen in the ( 3,3) ⊗ (3, 3) model from the analogous sum rule).

Doubled ρ Regge trajectory and positivity of the ππ partial widths in a dual-resonance model

A single-term nonunitarized Veneziano formula reproduces many features of the physical =~ scattering amplitude (L2), but implies the existence of a cut-off ~p(0) for the intercept of the p trajectory (%(0) > 5~(0) ~ 0.496) in order to obtain a positive width for ~' (the je ~ 0 + daughter of the f) (~). However, the present phenomenological situation cannot say if ap(0) should or should not be greater than ~p(0). In the present letter we use a Veneziano-type formula derived in the framework of the Appell-Pochhamme r polynomial formalism (3), and we make the supplementary hypothesis of the doubling of the p trajectory. The isospin ~= amplitudes in the s-channel can be written as (~)

Broken symmetries and leptonic weak interactions

The currents involved in lepton-lepton couplings generate the algebra of U(4). Corresponding U(4)-algebras can be constructed from the hadron currents; they may be considered as subalgebras of higher symmetries like U(6) × U(6), etc. The U(4)-algebras are used for the construction of two models of a universal weak coupling. One model is based upon the U(4)-algebra generated by the total hadron current involved in semileptonic interactions, and a second one is obtained by considering strangeness-changing and nonchanging currents separately. The first model involves the Cabibbo angle as a parameter and it requires this angle to be the same for all currents. The second model has no such parameter; it depends upon a possible larger manifestation of the symmetry breaking interactions to account for the damping of ΔS = 1 transitions. In both cases the neutral generators of U(4) are identified with the 1 + γ 5)-projections of electromagnetic currents and of lepton number or triplet-number currents. For triplets with charges z + 1, z, z, the first model gives preference to z = 0 and the second one to z = −1. The two models are discussed briefly in connection with the phenomenological situation and with the assumption of broken SU(3)-symmetry for the hadrons. Renormalization effects are considered in detail, especially in view of the damping factor required in the second model mentioned above. The commutation relations of the hadron currents, together with the hypothesis of partially conserved axial-vector currents, give a reasonable universal damping factor λ A ∼ m π m K for axial vector matrix elements. For vector currents one obtains an analogous result only under rather restrictive assumptions. Otherwise, commutation relations, partially conserved currents, and λ V ∼ m π m K are not consistent as long as other manifestations of the symmetry breaker are considered to be small.