http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification 720 https://escholarship.org/uc/cis_dhal/rss Recent eScholarship items from Distinguished Humanist Achievement Lectures Thu, 25 Jun 2026 14:53:53 +0000 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6k52w8n1 <p>Toxic substances have been of public concern at least since Rachel Carson's The Silent Spring. Yet in many ways we are far short of coping adequately with the problems posed by these invisible, silent, harmful intruders: we are forced to address them “through a glass darkly.” The research described in this paper, reflecting broadly humanistic themes, represents more than a decade's work directed at some of the philosophic, scientific, regulatory and legal problems encountered in trying to assess and ultimately control toxicants in our lives.</p><p>The vanishingly small size of toxicants makes them difficult to address. They are difficult to detect, identify, and understand whether they pose problems for humans. Each new substance often poses a different detective problem. In turn these difficulties are exacerbated by traditional scientific burdens of proof and legal contexts in which the problems must be considered. However, the legal regulation of toxic substances by... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6k52w8n1 Fri, 18 Jul 2003 00:00:00 +0000 Cranor, Carl F. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3r3990dd <p>This is the Humanist Achievement Lecture for 2003. An attempt is made, first, to link the end of the European imperial system and the process of decolonization at the end of the Second World War to the growth of development economics as a separate sub-discipline within economics. Attention then shifts to a second political upheaval, namely, the sudden collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and this is linked to the emergence of the economics of transition as another sub-discipline. As a participant in the two intellectual revolutions, I try to convey the sense of excitement that greeted them and the nature of some of the debates that ensued. At the end of the lecture it is suggested that a third revolution beckons us, a revolution that challenges the sovereignty of states and holds out a promise of global democracy and institutions of global governance.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3r3990dd Fri, 7 Mar 2003 00:00:00 +0000 Griffin, Keith