Questioning the Universality of Institutional Transformation Theories in Spatial Planning: Shopping Mall Developments in Palermo

Theories about institutional transformation in spatial planning, although mainly based on the Anglo-Saxon context, have assumed a dominant role in planning research and theory as means to understand the transformations that have been restructuring planning systems in recent decades in the Western world and beyond. The article, looking at transformations of planning practice through the lenses of the concept of planning cultures, debates the utility of building ‘universal’ theories for spatial planning and advocates for the need for a de-provincialization of planning theories. This is done through a case-study approach applied to the history of the transformation of the retail system in a context characterized by the specificities of the Italian planning context and Southern European cities, namely: the planning processes for, and power relationships underlying, the first shopping malls opened in Palermo, Italy, since 2009 — some decades later than most of Western cities.

Cultural universality and specificity of student engagement in school: The results of an international study from 12 countries

The Hong Kong subproject was supported by the Quality Education Fund of the Education Bureau in Hong Kong, whereas the Portuguese subproject was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and by the Institute of Education of the University of Lisbon. The data of this paper were part of the data collected in a multinational project initiated by the International School Psychology Association.

Aristotelian predicables, universality and realism: the logic of comparison in topics as denying the view that Aristotle was a realist

Aristotle is reportedly held to have been a Moderate Realist in that he would maintain that a concept derives from an act of grasping a mind-independent universal object that exists somehow inside of the many different things which the concept is predicated of. As far as a universal is independent of mind, it would stand for the proper object of a concept that subsumes a given number of things as its own instantiations. But we claim that Aristotle rejected such a view and instead did perceive and comprehend universality as a feature of thought rather than as a feature of reality in its own right. As showed in the chapters of Topics regarding the so-called logic of comparison (with the support of Albert the Great’s commentary), each predicate can be more or less consistent with the attribute of the subject of which it may be predicated. Both essential and accidental attributes assume a definite degree of being related to the degree of belonging to substance. Unlike particular things, the universality of a concept is to be understood always in comparison with another concept according to a hierarchy of predicates in terms of universality degree arranged by comparative terms such as ‘more’, ‘less’, and ‘likewise’. What is really mind-independent are the truth conditions which make a universal true when exclusively referring to a set of things identically meant by the same predicate whose universality is given by the place occupied in the hierarchy of predicates.

A luz na pintura de representação : mito, representação e luz na prática pictórica : (1550-1650)

Tese de doutoramento, Belas-Artes (Pintura), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Belas-Artes, 2014

Kandinsky e o espírito. Tempo, liberdade e vida na concepção kandinskyana da «vibração interior»

On the basis of Kandinsky’s article “On the Question of Form” (as well as passages of Concerning the Spiritual in Art), there arises the possibility of reconstructing the specific features of the artist’s concept of “pure inner vibration” in connection with the concept of the “spiritual”. These features include an important articulation of different modalities of time (hastiness, protracted time and suddenness), and a complex gradation of inner experience that starts with abstraction from external finality and ends with a criticism of subjectivity and a conception of inner universality, which – instead of being reducible to a logical procedure – indicates the exact place of singularity (and art) inside the structure of one’s experience.