Last week, at the leading European particle physics laboratory, CERN, an institution straddling the French-Swiss border far from the superhot center of American politics but well within its sphere of influence, the question arose: is it more important to determine who the next American president will be or to discover why all matter in the universe has mass, rather than weighing nothing?
But, since the scale of the job makes it improbable that any one candidate will embody every available sphere of expertise, the pertinent question may not be whether Ms Spielman is the perfect candidate, but whether the bloated Ofsted remit might be beyond the scope of any one individual – or one institution.
When it comes to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint's involvement in the public sphere of social policy, a question I have is this: Why is it OK to disagree with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint's stance and policies on immigration but not on the issue of marriage equality?
From cloning to nanotechnologies or synthetic biology, our increasingly far-reaching attempts at extending the sphere of human influence have thrown up an array of questions about where the "artificial" ends and the "natural" begins.
To count as being a type of integrity, the sphere of action and commitment in question should be a complex and valuable human pursuit that has distinct ways in which integrity is demonstrated.
By opening up legally defined spheres of individual freedom, modern law reduces the burden of questions that require general (society-wide) discursive consensus.
The use of the concept has shifted then from the political, cultural and social sphere to the sphere of values, with regard to liberalism, and questions the "democratic defense of cultural diversity within a universalist perspective".
"It's a question of how far does their sphere of influence go," says Ken Rosevear, executive director of the Yuma County Chamber of Commerce.
There is some evidence that organic growers define for themselves a sphere of expertise like the conventional growers, and they do question consumers' knowledge over agricultural issues.
He questioned Flower's experience in the intensive sphere of international cricket where intimate knowledge of opponents is vital and of your own team worth twice as much.
