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While Darwin’s grand view of evolution has undergone many changes and shown up in many facets, there remains one outstanding common feature in its 150-year history: since the very beginning, branching trees have been the dominant scheme for representing evolutionary processes. Only recently, network models have gained ground reflecting contact-induced mixing or hybridization in evolutionary scenarios. In biology, research on prokaryote evolution indicates that lateral gene transfer is a major feature in the evolution of bacteria. In the field of linguistics, the mutual lexical and morphosyntactic borrowing between languages seems to be much more central for language evolution than the family tree model is likely to concede. In the humanities, networks are employed as an alternative to established phylogenetic models, to express the hybridization of cultural phenomena, concepts or the social structure of science. However, an interdisciplinary display of network analyses for evolutionary processes remains lacking. Therefore, this volume includes approaches studying the evolutionary dynamics of science, languages and genomes, all of which were based on methods incorporating network approaches.

Medical Imaging plays a prominent role in contemporary medical research and practice. At the same time imaging in its broadest sense, including illustration, diagramming, model-making, photography and other forms of image rendering, has a long tradition in medicine. Imaging has served different purposes ranging from depicting to backing concepts or creating convincing evidence. Thus, imaging the human body has different aspects not only related to techniques or current interpretations of visual representations through medical imaging technologies. The way the human body was and is displayed in medicine also reflects a range of cultural, historical, artistic and scientific concerns. Therefore, the editors of this book organized an international interdisciplinary conference in 2010 to bring together perspectives on Medical Imaging from medicine, philosophy, history and arts. This book summarizes the results of this interdisciplinary conference including representative examples of what was presented and discussed. It offers stimulating papers addressing readers interested in the status of medical images and their interpretation by different disciplines.

Intracerebral interventions raise particular ethical issues. For instance, attempts at replacing lost or altered brain cells with the help of stem cells or the therapeutic application of Deep Brain Stimulation would have morally relevant implications. Many medically relevant questions and ethical concerns need to be clarified before these intracerebral interventions can become routine procedure: If the brain is conceived as the carrier of an individual's personality or of the self then operations on the brain can be seen as intrusions upon one's personality. The book addresses historical, philosophical, social and legal implications of these new developments in the neurosciences and aims at resolving some of the dilemmas that go hand in hand with »implanted minds«.

Das Altern ist nicht nur eine biologische, sondern auch eine kulturelle Tatsache. Als Objekt der Verhandlungen zwischen Wissensdiskursen erscheint Alter(n) als ein ebenso heterogenes wie problematisches Phänomen, das von Werturteilen und Weltanschauungen bestimmt wird. Des Weiteren sind Alter(n) und Medizin in der öffentlichen Meinung moderner Gesellschaften eng miteinander verbunden. Das interdisziplinäre Forschungsprojekt „Kulturelle Variationen und Repräsentationen des Alter(n)s“ geht von einem erweiterten, die geistes-, sozial- und medizinwissenschaftlichen Diskurse integrierenden Konzept von Alterskulturen und Potentialen des Alter(n)s aus. Dies bedeutet, Alter(n) als Gegenstand des Wissens und als Konzept zu begreifen. Alterskonzepte, das heißt Vorstellungen, Wertungen und , Bilder‘ des Alter(n)s, sind Deutungsmuster für elementare Bedürfnisse an der Schnittstelle von individuellem und kollektivem Leben. Mit Beiträgen von David Blane und Gopalakrishnan Netuveli, Johannes Siegrist und Morten Wahrendorf, Peter Rusterholz, Anouk Janssen, Hiltrud Westermann-Angerhausen, Stefanie Knöll, Jean-Claude Schmitt, Gerd Göckenjan, Giovanna Pinna, Hans-Georg Pott, Monika Gomille, Miriam Seidler, Pat Thane, Simone Moses, Heiner Fangerau und Jörg Vögele, Anja Schonlau, Thomas Küpper