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AbstractThis paper criticizes the role of intuition-based ascriptions of cognition that are closely related to the ascription of mind. This practice hinders the explication of a clear and stable target domain for the cognitive sciences. To move forward, the proposal is to cut the notion of cognition free from such ascriptions and the intuition-based judgments that drive them. Instead, cognition is reinterpreted and developed as a scientific concept that is tied to a material domain of research. In this reading, cognition becomes a changeable theoretical concept that can and must be adapted to the findings within this target domain. Taking humans as the best-established existing example of the relevant material target domain, this central case is extended to include all living systems. To clarify what it is about living systems that warrants their role as cognitive target domain, the new concept of cobolism is introduced as a complement to metabolism. Cobolism refers to the systematic ways in which each living system encompasses structures, processes and external events that maintain the fundamental metabolic processes that constitute the core of each living system. Cobolism is perfectly general, applies to bacterial and human cases alike, and provides a general format to describe wildly different cognitive organizations. It provides a clear target for the cognitive sciences to work on, turning them into what we can call the cognitive life sciences.

Dr. Sherman P. Vinograd fulfilled the roles of Chief of Medical Science and Technology and Director of Biomedical Research at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) from the fall of 1961 until the spring of 1979. In this role he shaped, organized, and directed NASA's program of medical research as a funded program of studies, which was carried out in not only NASA Center laboratories, but also in university, industry, and other government laboratories and hospitals all over the country. It produced a large substrate of information through its bed rest studies, vestibular, bone, neuromuscular, hematology, and cardiovascular researches. It also produced valuable fall-out, such as an accurate bone density measurement technique which is now in common clinical use. ; His major activities during this career were conceptualizing, establishing, and chairing the Space Medicine Advisory Group (SPAMAG) charged with defining the earth-based and space-based research and life-support requirements for a manned orbiting research laboratory. This group designed a carefully planned study utilizing highly qualified, specialized members of the scientific community. They postulated a non-existent orbiting laboratory to be designed according to the needs of future human flight crews and requirements for human spaceflight information. This would result in the creation of Skylab. ; He was also responsible for establishing the In-flight Medical Experiments Program in preparation for the Apollo series of manned space flights. This program was a series of carefully designed flight crew studies derived from proposals by qualified scientists both from within and outside NASA to evaluate human responses to spaceflight. ; In addition, Dr. Vinograd developed a supportive Research and Development Program necessary to provide pertinent ground-based data and to advance state-of-the-art medical measurement technology, a major development of which was the Integrated Medical and Behavioral Laboratory Measurement System (IMBLMS). This consisted of medical experiments and accompanying equipment necessary to perform them that was used from the Gemini through the Skylab manned space flight programs. Carried aboard virtually any post-Apollo space vehicle by virtue of its rack and module design, these designs were used well into the future. He also fostered the continuing ground-based medical research program sponsored and/or conducted by NASA. ; The Dr. Sherman P. Vinograd Aerospace Exploration collection consists of artifacts, books, correspondence, financial materials, newspapers, photographs, plaques, printed materials, and reports relating to Dr. Vinograd's early life, his career as an M. D. prior to joining NASA, his years as a physician and researcher at NASA, and the other professional organizations and projects in which he was involved both during and after these periods. ; Box 9, Folder 9

Any classification rests upon criteria that are used to determine to which class an object belongs, such as morphological characters in the case of biological taxonomy or symptoms in the case of nosology. The workshop will put forward the somewhat neglected question how those criteria are chosen, defined, individuated and represented, with a particular focus on the life sciences. From natural history and medicine to laboratory biology, specific practices have been developed to abstract from particulars to general categories while coping with the intrinsic variability and time dependency of organic beings. The choice of characters can be determined by theoretical, pragmatic or political considerations. Operations that individuate characters can range from descriptive practices and comparative strategies to manipulative procedures. The contributions will focus on practices, representations and conceptual work that are performed in order to obtain and stabilize characters and classes as objects of science. With this focus on characters some general or case specific questions concerning classification can be re-asked, for instance, whether classification constitutes a particular way of knowing, whether it is pragmatic or essentialist, how it modifies identities and power relations and how controversies about classification are settled.Programme 9:30-10:00 Arrival 10:00-11:00 Robert Meunier (ICI Berlin): The Biological Character Concept – Historical Trajectories and Conceptual Distinctions 11:00-12:00 Benjamin Dawson (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar): Hegel and the Rationality of Observation 12:00-13:30 Lunch break 13:30-14:30 Staffan Müller-Wille (University of Exeter, UK): Linnaeus and the Four Corners of the World 14:30-15:30 Mathias Grote (TU Berlin): Microbial Species as Practices – Enrichment Culture, Purification and Microbial Taxonomy Before DNA, c. 1890-1980 15:30-16:00 Coffee Break 16:00-17:00 Lara Keuck (HU Berlin): Disease Classifications as Abstractions in Practice 17:00-18:00 Final discussion ; Characters ...

This volume explores the linkage of the life sciences with policy (biopolicy). It features two points of departure: the implications of the neurosciences for public policy; and the implications of evolutionary theory for policy-making. It includes several case studies of how these points of departure inform our knowledge of policy.