Beyond mythology

Context and Mythology

In this thesis, I will survey some philosophically representative approaches to the problem of the relationship between context and meaning. Starting from G.W.F. Hegel’s discussion of the meaninglessness of indexical terms in the Phenomenology of Spirit, I will investigate Gottlob Frege’s notion of context and the legacy of this notion in the formal sciences of language, showing that this appro...

Greek technology or mythology?

The study by Stefanadis et al. in this issue indicates that treatment with a variety of statins reduces the release of heat from atherosclerotic plaques in the human coronary artery. This observation suggests that statins exert a beneficial effect on the inflammatory process that exists in the vascular wall in a variety of acute coronary syndromes. The finding that this effect was most pronounc...

The Philosophy of Mythology

Heavy Weight Training Mythology

The mythological story of the association of lifting maximal amount of weight and muscle mass gain during resistance training has been perpetuated for a very long time. Passed on from gym meatheads, athletes, to coaches, moms, dads, even children can identify and promote this after watching a Saturday morning Incredible Hulk cartoon. Big muscles are made by lifting big weights, right? Not neces...

BRAIN MYTHOLOGY Spanning the rich spectrum of the human brain: slow waves to gamma and beyond

In their recent editorial, Nunez and Srinivasan (2010) assert that gamma band activity and intracranial recordings have been receiving an inordinate amount of attention in recent years. We agree that brain dynamics must be examined at all possible scales and across several frequency bands, and that it would be foolish to restrict our understanding of brain dynamics exclusively to intracranial r...