Europe's end (among other things) is kept up not just by Catullus, Boccaccio, Huysmans, and Mirbeau, but also by the editor of the collection, who ties everything together with introductions and potted bios that have certainly made me look at pornography in new ways. It isn't just about one hand clapping, and it isn't just about pleasure -- though anyone who's familiar with the Nexus imprint will already know that. Porn has always commented on society, and S&M porn comments particularly on power. It subverts and satirizes it too, and readers who fail to recognize the humour in de Sade or Swinburne or Sacher-Masoch are going to be missing a lot of the point.

Not many readers of this book will, though: the Saturnalia were the December festivals in ancient Rome that put the licence into licentiousness, but the editor doesn't actually say so and doesn't bandy words like "Dionysiac" and "bacchantic". He knows Nexus readers won't need to be told: this is intelligent, literate writing for intelligent, literate readers. The translations from French, Italian, German, and Chinese are all excellent, flavored with period and setting without being overwhelmed by them, and the biggest disappointment I had was with something that hadn't been translated: the title of the Swinburne section -- "Swish Fulfilment" -- isn't matched by the selections from the mad flagellist that follow. Flogging schoolboys' bottoms was never my thing, but fortunately there are a lot of things elsewhere that are. The S&M seam -- and scene -- is by no means worked out with this volume, of course, and it isn't only lips that will be licked in anticipation of a further volume promising such treats as the eighteenth century inspiration behind the _Vagina Monologues_. Literary wanderlust or lubricious Wanda-lust: it's all satisfied here.

Weiss, in this book asaults the usual genetic determinism idea with a full frontal attack laying out good arguments against a one way gene to organism determinism. In fact he states there may be macro-determinism without necessarily having to have micro-determinism, ie the genes themselves do not necessarily have to act in a strict mechanical way but rather are allowed freedom of action which on the whole results in determinism. By this is meant the development of the organism as it grows from an embryo and this is shown plainly through observations by the fact that cells which are present in one particular configuration at the start of development do not necessarily have to be in the same place or acting in the same way after a little time. Weiss proposes interaction between the environment<->organism<->tissue<->cytoplasm->nucleas<->chromosome<->gene, a chain of intercation which goes both ways.

Weiss leaves systems open to some degree allowing plasticity which is still controlled in the large allowing the organism to adapt to its environment in a more fluid way. He notes, as have others, since his time that the science of life does not possess the same kinds of order as does say physics and thereby anticipates Robert Rosen who went much further in this direction. He then notes that in order to change this standard view which is confined to extreme ends of a spectrum great changes must be imposed in education reform.

A worthy book with many points made which can lead further.

I found it a most useful collection, with a number of good, well-written (a rarity for philosophers) and thoughtful pieces on patenting and property rights, the relationship between economics and research, political (mis-)direction, and the protection of the weak in areas of genetic-related counselling. I especilly liked the critique of the utilitarian model of patenting.

Churchland is a U Pitt veteran, so this book is relevant to current Sellars-McDowell-Brandom discussions in the philosophy of mind. I would not say that this book presents his main arguments in favor of eliminative materialism (which is good).

The most important material here, in my opinion, is in Ch 2: "The Plasticity of Perception" (section 3--the conceptual exploitation of sensory information) and Ch 3: "The Plasticity of Understanding" (section 8--meaning and understanding; section 11--intertheoretic reduction and conceptual progress).

I also recommend: Rosenthal, The Nature of the Mind (Oxford UP); Searle, Rediscovery of the Mind; as well as Sellars and Bas Van Frassen; Lance-O'Hawthorne, Language of Grammar (Cambridge UP).