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Can Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein be read as an early research ethics text?

Frankenstein is an early and balanced text on the ethics of research upon human subjects and that it provides insights that are as valid today as when the novel was written.

Mary Shelley conceived the idea for and started writing Frankenstein in 1816 and it was first published in 1818.1 In its historical context, the earlier 17th and 18th centuries had seen the early signs of the rise of science and experimentation. Francis Bacon (1561–1626) had laid the theoretical foundations in his “Great Insauration”2 and scientists such as Boyle, Newton, and Hooke developed the experimental methods. Sir Robert Talbor, a 17th century apothecary and one of the key figures in developing the use of quinine to treat fevers, underlined this: “the most plausible reasons unless backed by some demonstrable experiments seem but suppositions or conjectures”.3

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patchwork collection of online courses that's difficult for students to navigate.

they can improve their online-education efforts to help students find streamlined, affordable pathways to a degree.

When students use tool technologies to create content, their engagement is largely based on how successfully teachers craft the learning assignments, rather than on the technology itself. This is different from what happens with other types of technologies, such as tutor technologies (e.g. software for learning). Here, student engagement depends principally on technology, taking teachers almost completely out of the equation.

W. James Popham calls "an assessment informed climate,”

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it.'"An interesting idea, but is it true? Are activities only fun when we get good at them? And, conversely, does that mean that if we're good at something, it must also be&nbsp;fun--at least at some level?

research by Mihaily Csikszentmihalyi (of "Flow" fame) regarding what makes an activity fun. "The place where people are most engaged in an activity," McCann says, "and where they're having the most optimal experience, is where the challenge is about equal to your ability."&nbsp;

"People are motivated by different things," explains Dr. David B. Coppel, a clinical and sport psychologist at the University of Washington. "There are some individuals who are process oriented, and some who are outcome-oriented. Individuals who are absorbed in the experience of being active or competing can have a great experience even if they don't win. But for those who derive their success and pleasure from successful outcomes, winning is more important."

Edge is different from the Algonquin Roundtable or Bloomsbury Group, but it offers the same quality of intellectual adventure. Closer resemblances are the early seventeenth-century Invisible College, a precursor to the Royal Society. Its members consisted of scientists such as Robert Boyle, John Wallis, and Robert Hooke. The Society's common theme was to acquire knowledge through experimental investigation. Another inspiration is The Lunar Society of Birmingham, an informal club of the leading cultural figures of the new industrial age — James Watt, Erasmus Darwin, Josiah Wedgewood, Joseph Priestly, and Benjamin Franklin. The online salon at Edge.org is a living document of millions of words charting the Edge conversation over the past fifteen years wherever it has gone. It is available, gratis, to the general public.

Edge.org offers "open-minded, free ranging, intellectually playful ... an unadorned pleasure in curiosity, a collective expression of wonder at the living and inanimate world ... an ongoing and thrilling colloquium."&nbsp;

encourages people who can take the materials of the culture in the arts, literature, and science and put them together in their own way. We live in a mass-produced culture where many people, even many established cultural arbiters limit themselves to secondhand ideas, thoughts, and opinions. Edge.org consists of individuals who create their own reality and do not accept an ersatz, appropriated reality. The Edge community consists of peole who are out there doing it rather than talking about and analyzing the people who are doing it.