Charles Raven. Naturalist, historian, theologian

Breaking Barriers in Evolutionary Biology: A Pioneering Woman in Science and Her Early Theory of Plant Chemical Macroevolution.

Plant secondary chemistry is now a paradigmatic example of adaptation. However, more than 120 years ago (70 years before the oft-cited works of Fraenkel or Ehrlich and Raven ignited the field of chemical ecology), a female scientist named Helen Cecilia de Silver Abbott (1857–1904) published an article in The American Naturalist introducing the radical idea that plant chemistry should be conside...

1 Naturalist A

Non-reductive continental naturalism in the contemporary humanities

This article engages with the philosophical reflections of the French historian of science Hélène Metzger (1886-1944) in order to develop a vocabulary for understanding the rise of non-reductive Continental naturalism in the contemporary humanities. The bibliography of current naturalist approaches in the arts and the human sciences is still in the making, but it is altogether clear that the tr...

Ethics in Disorders of Consciousness

The introduction of the mechanical ventilator in the 1950s and the development of intensive care in the 1960s permitted many patients to sustain their vegetative functions and survive severe injuries. Despite such advances, in many cases patients were found to suffer from altered states of consciousness which had never been encountered before as these patients would normally have died from apne...

The New Allies of History

That history must from time to time be rewritten is an oft-repeated commonplace. Why is this ? The past, as ordinarily conceived, seems fixed and settled enough. No theologian has ever conceded to omnipotence itself the power to change it. Why may it not then be described for good and all by any one who has the available information at his disposal? The historian would answer that more and more...