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The word "philosophy" was born when the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras of Samos (572-497 BC) was asked if he thought he was a wise man. He answered no, he was merely a lover of wisdom – a phileo sophia. The philosophers who came after him were not as humble. Since philosophy was the study of just about everything, they dubbed it the "queen of the sciences". Philosophy reigned supreme until Christian times when the theologian Clement of Alexandria (150–215?AD) demoted philosophy from the "queen" of the sciences to the "handmaid of theology". The Enlightenment philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) also regarded philosophy as a "handmaid" – but to the sciences. He said that the job of philosophy is to clarify assumptions, concepts and definitions, and interpret, analyze and synthesize the results of the sciences (Locke, 1961). Locke clearly describes what it means to do philosophy; however, he did not think that philosophy consisted of a distinctive body of truth. Most philosophers agree that philosophy is a handmaiden, yet there are areas in which it still holds claim to the throne, most notably in logic and (despite the best efforts of theologians) ethics.The other classical divisions of philosophy are metaphysics, which is concerned with the character of reality; epistemology, or the study of the nature, origins, and extent of knowledge; and aesthetics, which is about the assumptions behind our judgments about the arts.

The literature on regulation has typically emphasized the ability of concentrated interest groups to secure the rules they prefer. One view argues that concentrated interests are consistently able to impose diffuse costs across large and unorganized interests. A second, largely compatible, view emphasizes the ability of powerful interest groups to mobilize expertise and to provide informational goods to politicians who adjust their legislative proposals accordingly. This paper shows that the Dodd‐ Frank legislation for financial reregulation in 2010 departs from both versions of this now conventional wisdom. Instead, this paper shows that both political parties adopted what we call a two‐tier political strategy of (1) maintaining good relations with the established financial elite and (2) simultaneously responding to the demands of grass‐roots advocacy groups for more stringent regulation. As a result, Dodd‐Frank Act falls far short of a thorough‐going redesign of the regulatory landscape, but also amounted to considerably more than business as usual. While the Dodd‐Frank Act creates new regulatory instruments and powers that hold the potential for far‐reaching changes, most of the existing agencies and market participants remain intact. This pattern of two‐tier politics is evident through the four primary policy domains treated in the legislation: macroprudential regulation, consumer protection, reestablishment of the partition between deposit banking versus proprietary trading (the Volcker Rule), and the regulation of derivatives trading.

This paper examines certain similarities between Native American beliefs and Zen Buddhist teachings and demonstrates how Gary Snyder fuses these two traditions in his poetry. Through the analysis it has been found that the Native American wisdom of the interrelatedness of humans and nature has an affinity with the fundamental Buddhist principle of the interpenetration and interdependence of all existence or as Thich Nhat Han calls it "the inter being nature of things." Gary Snyder has developed his love of nature concurrently with his respect for Native American traditions and his interest in Zen Buddhism. Snyder draws on the primitive oral traditions of chants, incantations and songs to communicate his experiences. Like the shaman-poet of primitive cultures and in imitation of Buddhist teachings, Snyder seeks to restore reverence for nature and reestablish a harmonious relationship with the universe. Apart from emulating certain Native American beliefs and Zen Buddhist principles, Gary Snyder makes use of Zen Buddhist poetic techniques which bear some resemblance to the oral poetic tradition of the Native Americans that precedes the influence of the white man. The precision of tersely worded images reminiscent of imagistic poetry, conciseness, concreteness, simple and ordinary language, as well as an abundant use of nature and animal imagery, which are common characteristics of both poetic traditions, find their way into the poetry of Gary Snyder.

"The rural base of many Africans implies that their livelihoods are directly supported by natural resources. The availability, access to and control of these resources are critical if these livelihoods are to be sustained. Sustainable livelihoods, however, also involve the relationship between people and nature, and, in most African societies culture and the environment are closely linked. Rivers and the attendant resources that they carry are more that water to the Africans. Almost half the African population suffers from one of six major water related diseases. In 2025, 50% of Africa.s people are predicted to face water stressand scarcity. Freshwater fish provide 21% of protein intake in Africa. Only through integrated river basin management can governments and local people work together to provide the water needed to sustain both people and the environment. This paper identifies the role of culture in sustainable livelihood programme in (Wamburi) Kenya and (Ijaws) Nigeria. The study shows that the community eco-cultural forum consists of council of elders, key resource-user groups (stakeholders), indigenous institutions and experts and representatives of facilitator (development) organisations in both countries. Results show that through culture, the communities are able to create, innovate and develop new knowledge, skills, and techniques within its own riverine environment. It was evident that local communities especially in Kenya are able to take charge of their natural resources by using their indigenous systems, knowledge, wisdom and skills." (author's abstract)

This paper concerns the inclusion of a "Gladue Report" in Aboriginal child welfare cases in Canada. A Gladue Report is named after a criminal trial in Nanaimo, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, involving a Cree/Métis woman, Jamie Gladue. During the trial, the defence referred the court to Section 718.2(e) of the Criminal Code that allows a judge to take into consideration the historical context pertaining to an accused Aboriginal person. This section was added to the Code in 1996 in response to the gross overrepresentation, as a percentage of the Canadian population, of Aboriginal people in the justice system. Using this section as an additional tool of analysis, the judge and the court can consider the unique experiences, context, and circumstances of the Aboriginal person's life, factors that may have played a role in bringing this person before the court. Providing valuable historical context in the life of a child, family or community, the Gladue Report is quickly evolving into an important assessment tool in criminal sentencing, as well as in child welfare cases. Often, the wisdom keepers – the grandmothers and grandfathers in a community – keep these historical memories and stories. They are proving invaluable in supplying insight, information, and understanding, not only in court cases, but in relating the story of the broader dynamic of human interaction and discourse that has clashed and thundered on this land for the past 300 years.

If social work is to be truly international, it needs to address newly emerging international issues, specifically terrorism and global warming. Both of these raise profound implications for human rights and social justice, and hence social workers have significant contributions to make to addressing such issues. However to do so, social workers in western countries will need also to accept the loss of legitimacy of the western modernity, so that their theory and practice can be influenced by post-colonial writers and alternative knowledges and wisdoms from the global south, and from indigenous people. A number of curriculum proposals are made, with a view to developing more appropriate international social work education programs. Si el trabajo social tiene que ser verdaderamente internacional, necesita dirigirse a los emergentes acontecimientos recientes, específicamente al terrorismo y al calentamiento global. Estos dos temas originan profundas implicaciones para los derechos humanos y la justicia social, y por ello, los trabajadores sociales tienen contribuciones significativas al respecto. Aún así, para poder hacer esto, los trabajadores sociales de los países occidentales necesitan aceptar la pérdida de legitimidad de la modernidad occidental, de forma que su teoría y práctica pueda ser influenciada por escritores postcoloniales y conocimientos y saberse alternativos del sur global y de las personas indígenas. Se realizan un número de propuestas curriculares con la perspectiva de desarrollar programas educativos internacionales en el trabajo social más apropiados

With respect to sentencing, double jeopardy analysis turns on whether Congress clearly expressed its intent to impose multiple punishments on repeat sex offenders. It is questioned whether Brett M. Shockley clearly demonstrated a violation of double jeopardy. While the constitutionality of the current laws remains in doubt, there is less doubt surrounding Shockley's attack on the wisdom of what Congress and the courts have wrought. Solution 1 proposes that life imprisonment be replaced by a maximum punishment of 25 years for repeat offenders. The downside to this pragmatic solution is that the government appears to be saying that it may continue to violate constitutional doctrines so long as it reduces the actual incarceration time of those whose rights have been violated. Solution 2 advocates discarding the supervised release regime and returning to a parole scheme in the federal criminal justice system. Solution 2, however, may unduly exalt form over substance because, regardless of whether the repeat offender faces revocation of parole or revocation of supervised release, he may wind up with very substantial periods of incarceration. Under Solution 3, defendants would be entitled to the same due process protections - specifically the reasonable doubt standard and right to a jury trial - at revocation hearings as they are at full-blown prosecutions. The only downside to Solution 3 is the scope of its effect on the criminal justice system.

Scholars have long argued about why the United States pursued a conventional military strategy during the Vietnam War rather than one based on counterinsurgency principles. A recent article in this journal by Jonathan Caverley presents a bold challenge to the historiography of the Vietnam War. Rejecting the standard historical focus on the organizational culture and strategic perspective of Gen. William Westmoreland and the U.S. Army, Caverley argues that the roots of the United States' strategy in Vietnam can be traced to the direct influence of civilian leaders and the strong constraint of public opinion. Caverley's main arguments are a welcome challenge to the established wisdom, but they are not supported by the historical evidence. Civilian officials in Lyndon Johnson's administration did not instruct the military on how to fight the ground war within the borders of South Vietnam. Westmoreland did not want to change U.S. military strategy to focus on pacification at the expense of search and destroy tactics and the main force war. Both U.S. civilian and military officials were convinced that counterinsurgency was a South Vietnamese responsibility that U.S. ground forces should not assume. Public opinion was a weak, rather than a strong, constraint on the specific decisions of the Johnson administration during the pivotal years of the Vietnam War. Democracies may not be able to win certain counterinsurgency conflicts, but the primary source of this failure is not a civilian aversion to casualties.

Ensuring that European food imports are safe presents special challenges, as production takes place in third countries outside the direct control of the member states. Yet, contrary to conventional wisdom, besides a few exceptions regarding high-risk products (such as animals and animal products), the regulation of food import safety in the European Union (EU) is not the focus of direct legislative attention. As a result, the safety of food imports in Europe is pursued not through the application of special conditions governing the import of third-country products, which would impose systematic and Herculean checks at the external borders, but rather through the decentralised enforcement by member states' market surveillance authorities of a harmonised set of product safety regulations: the European food safety acquis. This article provides a critical analysis of this regime by choosing as a case study the recent melamine dairy scandal. Although representing one of the most challenging food contaminations the world has ever faced, the melamine dairy scandal did not produce any tangible negative health effects on the European population. By examining in detail the main features and mechanisms of the EU food safety regime, with a particular focus on the rapid alert system (RASFF), this article assesses to what extent this outcome can be ascribed to the European regulatory framework or to other factors.

None of Pakistan's 50+ public universities comes even close to
being a university in the real sense of the word. Compared to
universities in India and Iran, the quality of both teaching and
research is far poorer. Most university "teaching" amounts to a mere
dictation of notes which the teacher had copied down when he was a
student in the same department, examinations are tests of memory,
student indiscipline is rampant, and a large number of teachers commit
academic fraud without ever getting punished. In some universities the
actual number of teaching days in a year adds up to less than half the
officially required number. Some campuses are run by gangs of hoodlums
and harbour known criminals, while others have had Rangers with machine
guns on continuous patrol for years on end. Common wisdom has always
been that increased funding can solve all, or at least most, of the
systemic problems that bedevil higher education in Pakistan. But
Pakistan offers an instructive counterexample: a many-fold increase in
university funding from 2002-2008 resulted in, at best, only marginal
improvements in a few parts of the higher education sector. This
violation of "commonsense" points to the need for some fresh thinking.
The analysis of Pakistan's higher education system divides naturally
into three parts: consideration of the necessary background;
understanding the meaning of university quality in the Pakistani
context; and exploring the space of solutions.

There is much support from the UK government for the development and implementation of policy and practice that is based on evidence. For over a decade, Research in Practice (RiP) has developed a web of interconnected strategies for delivering evidence-informed practice to professionals at all levels in children's services. This article examines why the RiP model has proved sustainable and has grown in size and influence over the past 12 years. The article starts with a brief outline and illustrative examples of RiP's mechanisms of delivery. Delivery is then explored in relation to the concepts of the individual, the champion, the agency and the network to enable analysis of need and impact at these levels.
Cross-cutting this framework is the argument that an essential factor in RiP's success has been a move away from traditional evidence-based practice towards the adoption of a pluralistic notion of 'evidence' (Blewett, 2007). Furthermore, the use of the term 'informed' deliberately places human agency at the heart of decision making. In RiP's approach, research is a key but not sole determinant of decision making and evidence is inclusive of practice wisdom and service user views. In particular, the development of RiP's Change Project method is described as a response to deepening engagement with practice. It is argued that engagement with research as a process, rather than the pure transfer of research knowledge, is essential in delivering effective methods of evidence-informed practice.

On 1 December 2005, the EU deployed its Border Assistance Mission to Moldova and Ukraine (EUBAM), an innovative concept merging border monitoring and capacity–building. The improvised launch of the mission reflected the urge to put it in place against all odds and despite the presence of many practical obstacles. The hectic beginnings of the mission similarly reflected the impromptu character of the enterprise. Yet at present EUBAM has come to be seen as a fully fledged success story and a showcase for the EU's constructive engagement with its Eastern neighbours. The mission exceeded the expectations placed upon it at the time of the inception. To such an extent are the mission's achievements taken for granted that it is no longer an eligible case for routine inventories of successful project implementation used as public relations material by the EU and EC: it is simply too obvious. This contribution seeks to trace and unpack this 'path to glory'. It enquires into the pre–history of the mission and follows its ambiguous institutional background. Through analysis of the mission's development so far it tries to map EUBAM's role in, and impact on, the regional situation. Grasping the mission's position and positioning, it also aims to put the project in context and pinpoint lessons, if not necessarily learned, then at least identified at this point. Some of them may question the received wisdom of EUBAM as immaculate in conception and implementation.