Late Pragmatism, Logical Positivism, and Their Aftermath
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Vitalism and the Scientific Image: an Introduction
Vitalism and the scientific image: an introduction Sebastian Normandin and Charles T. Wolfe Vitalism and the scientific image in post-Enlightenment life science, 1800-2010 Edited by Sebastian Normandin and Charles T. Wolfe Springer, forthcoming 2013 To undertake a history of vitalism at this stage in the development of the ‘biosciences’, theoretical and other, is a stimulating prospect. We have entered the age of ‘synthetic’ life, and our newfound capacities prompt us to consider new levels of analysis and understanding. At the same time, it is possible to detect a growing level of interest in vitalistic and organismic themes, understood in a broadly naturalistic context and approached, not so much from broader cultural concerns as in the early twentieth century, as from scientific interests – or interests lying at the boundaries or liminal spaces of what counts as ‘science’.1 The challenge of understanding or theorizing vitalism in the era of the synthetic is not unlike that posed by early nineteenth-century successes in chemistry allowing for the synthesis of organic compounds (Wöhler), except that now, whether the motivation is molecular-chemical, embryological or physiological,2 we find ourselves asking fundamental questions anew. What is life? How does it differ from non-living matter? What are the fundamental processes that characterize the living? What philosophical and epistemological considerations are raised by our new understandings?3 We are driven to consider, for example, what metaphors we use to describe living processes as our knowledge of them changes, not least since some of the opprobrium surrounding the term ‘vitalism’ is also a matter of language: of which terms one 1 Gilbert and Sarkar 2000, Laublichler 2000. -
Collisions with Hegel in Bertolt Brecht's Early Materialism DISSERTATIO
“Und das Geistige, das sehen Sie, das ist nichts.” Collisions with Hegel in Bertolt Brecht’s Early Materialism DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Jesse C. Wood, B.A., M.A. Graduate Program in Germanic Languages and Literatures The Ohio State University 2012 Committee Members: John Davidson, Advisor Bernd Fischer Bernhard Malkmus Copyright by Jesse C. Wood 2012 Abstract Bertolt Brecht began an intense engagement with Marxism in 1928 that would permanently shape his own thought and creative production. Brecht himself maintained that important aspects resonating with Marxist theory had been central, if unwittingly so, to his earlier, pre-1928 works. A careful analysis of his early plays, poetry, prose, essays, and journal entries indeed reveals a unique form of materialism that entails essential components of the dialectical materialism he would later develop through his understanding of Marx; it also invites a similar retroactive application of other ideas that Brecht would only encounter in later readings, namely those of the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Initially a direct result of and component of his discovery of Marx, Brecht’s study of Hegel would last throughout the rest of his career, and the influence of Hegel has been explicitly traced in a number Brecht’s post-1928 works. While scholars have discovered proto-Marxist traces in his early work, the possibilities of the young Brecht’s affinities with the idealist philosopher have not been explored. Although ultimately an opposition between the idealist Hegel and the young Bürgerschreck Brecht is to be expected, one finds a surprising number of instances where the two men share an unlikely commonality of imagery. -
The Enlightened Capitalist
A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Bichler, Shimshon; Nitzan, Jonathan Preprint The Enlightened Capitalist Provided in Cooperation with: The Bichler & Nitzan Archives Suggested Citation: Bichler, Shimshon; Nitzan, Jonathan (2014) : The Enlightened Capitalist, The Bichler and Nitzan Archives, Toronto, http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/397/ This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/157839 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ www.econstor.eu The Enlightened Capitalist Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan Jerusalem and Montreal April, 2014 www.bnarchives.net Creative Commons Preamble Over the past few years, we have written a series of articles about the global crisis.1 These papers try to break the conventional constrains of liberalism and Marxism, examining the crisis from the new theoretical viewpoint of capital as power. -
Post-Continental Philosophy: Its Definition, Contours, and Fundamental Sources
Post-continental Philosophy: Its Definition, Contours, and Fundamental Sources NELSON MALDONADO-TORRES It is no accident that the global geographical framework in use today is essentially a cartographic celebration of European power. After centuries of imperialism, the presumptions of a worldview of a once-dominant metropole has become part of the intellectual furniture of the world…. Metageography matters, and the attempt to engage it critically has only begun. Martin W. Lewis and Kären W. Wigen, The Myth of Continents.1 or several decades now the contours of legitimate philosophy have been drawn by advocates of F so-called analytic and continental philosophies. Analytic philosophy is often referred to as a style of thinking centered on the question of whether something is true, rather than, as continental philosophy, on the multiple factors that constitute meaning.2 Analytic philosophy is also said to be closer to the sciences, while continental philosophy has more affinity with the humanities.3 One of the reasons for this lies in that while analytic philosophy tends to dismiss history from its reflections, continental philosophy typically emphasizes the relevance of time, tradition, lived experience, and/or social context. Fortunately, this situation is slowly but gradually changing today. A variety of intellectuals are defying the rigid boundaries of these fields. Some of the most notable are Afro- American, Afro-Caribbean, and Latina/o scholars using the arsenal of these bodies of thought to analyze and interpret problems related to colonialism, racism, and sexism in the contemporary world.4 These challenges demand a critical analysis of the possibilities and limits of change within the main coordinates of these different styles or forms of philosophizing. -
Part 1 What Is Negative Entropy? from World Views
What is Controlling Life? 21 PART 1 WHAT IS NEGATIVE ENTROPY? FROM WORLD VIEWS TO BIOENERGETICS What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy. Or, to put it less paradoxically, the essential thing in metabolism is that the organism succeeds in freeing itself from all the entropy it cannot help producing while alive. Erwin Schrödinger: What is Life? Modern Trends in BioThermoKinetics 3 1994 BTK Ed. E. Gnaiger et al., Innsbruck Univ. Press 22 What is Controlling Life? Erwin Schrödinger around 1902 What is Controlling Life? 23 ERWIN SCHRÖDINGER'S WORLD VIEW. THE ROLE OF PHYSICS AND BIOLOGY IN HIS PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM Johann Götschela, Werner Leinfellnera,b Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Wissenschaftsforschung und Institut für Philosophie der Universität Graz, Mozartgasse 14, 8010 Graz, Austria; bDepartment of Philosophy, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68588, USA PHYSICS, BIOLOGY AND PHILOSPHY Erwin Schrödinger is well-known as one of the greatest figures of theoretical physics. He became famous for his mathematical formulation of atomic dynamics, known as the Schrödinger equation, and its application to atomic structures. In 1933, he received the Nobel Prize in physics (jointly with Paul Dirac). It therefore comes as no surprise that interpreters of Schrödinger's work, dazzled by his genius and the results he obtained in quantum physics, almost forget the other Schrödinger, the biologist and philosopher. In reality, he not only revolutionized the foundations of modern physics but also made significant contributions to biology and the philosophy of science [1]. The paradigm change he initiated has had great consequences for the natural and social sciences, the humanities, and our present world-view in general [1,2]. -
Taking Holism Seriously: a Reply to Critics
1 Taking Holism Seriously: A Reply to Critics Published in Philosophical Books 42 (2001), 187-195 By Mark Bevir Department of Political Science University of California, Berkeley Berkeley CA 94720 2 Taking Holism Seriously: A Reply to Critics I would like to thanks Professors Dodson, Gendler, and Gracia for their thoughtful responses to my work. I am particularly thankful because their critical comments have prompted me to reflect further on how I would situate the arguments of The Logic of the History of Ideas in relation to trends in both the philosophy of history and (post)analytic philosophy more generally. Indeed, I want to begin now by considering how to situate my arguments since I think doing so will enable me to move swiftly to many of the pertinent issues raised by Dodson, Gendler, and Gracia. When discussing the Logic with historical theorists, I realized that my use of philosophy, especially (post)analytic philosophy, was itself a controversial move.1 The dominant modes of historical theorizing today seem to be an emphasis on rhetoric and poetics associated with Hayden White and one on sociology and power associated with Michel Foucault. (Post)analytic philosophy in comparison occupies a relatively small space. One reason for the marginalization of (post)analytic philosophy is, I suspect, that its practitioners have almost entirely withdrawn from the field. While the concerns and arguments of analytic philosophers have changed quite noticeably over the last twenty to thirty years, these changes have occurred within an increasingly narrow disciplinary focus on questions of mind, language, and epistemology. They have had almost no impact on the philosophy of history. -
3 Holism, Chinese Medicine And
3 HOLISM, CHINESE MEDICINE AND SYSTEMS IDEOLOGIES: REWRITING THE PAST TO IMAGINE THE FUTURE Volker Scheid Int roduction his chapter explores the articulations that have emerged over the last half- Tcentury between various types of holism, Chinese medicine and systems biol- ogy. Given the discipline’s historical attachments to a defi nition of ‘medicine’ that rather narrowly refers to biomedicine as developed in Europe and the US from the eighteenth century onwards, the medical humanities are not the most obvious start- ing point for such an inquiry. At the same time, they do offer one advantage over neighbouring disciplines like medical history, anthropology or science and technol- ogy studies for someone like myself, a clinician as well as a historian and anthro- pologist: their strong commitment to the objective of facilitating better medical practice.1 This promise furthermore links to the wider project of critique, which, in Max Horkheimer’s defi nition of the term, aims at change and emancipation in order ‘to lib erate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them’.2 If we take the critical medical humanities as explicitly affi rming this shared objective and respon- sibility, extending the discipline’s traditional gaze is not a burden but becomes, in fact, an obligation. With that in mind, this chapter seeks to accomplish three inter-related goals. It is fi rst an inquiry into the historical processes whereby Chinese medicine, holism and systems biology have come to be entangled with each other in the present. The term holism is not originally Chinese and was only applied to Chinese medicine from the 1950s onward. -
Why National Ehealth Programs Need Dead Philosophers: Wittgensteinian Reflections on Policymakers’ Reluctance to Learn from History
Why National eHealth Programs Need Dead Philosophers: Wittgensteinian Reflections on Policymakers’ Reluctance to Learn from History TRISHA GREENHALGH, JILL RUSSELL, RICHARD E. ASHCROFT, and WAYNE PARSONS Queen Mary University of London Context: Policymakers seeking to introduce expensive national eHealth pro- grams would be advised to study lessons from elsewhere. But these lessons are unclear, partly because a paradigm war (controlled experiment versus inter- pretive case study) is raging. England’s $20.6 billion National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT) ran from 2003 to 2010, but its overall success was limited. Although case study evaluations were published, policymakers appeared to overlook many of their recommendations and persisted with some of the NPfIT’s most criticized components and implementation methods. Methods: In this reflective analysis, illustrated by a case fragment from the NPfIT, we apply ideas from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s postanalytic philosophy to justify the place of the “n of 1” case study and consider why those in charge of national eHealth programs appear reluctant to learn from such studies. Findings: National eHealth programs unfold as they do partly because no one fully understands what is going on. They fail when this lack of understanding becomes critical to the programs’ mission. Detailed analyses of the fortunes of individual programs, articulated in such a way as to illuminate the con- textualized talk and action (“language games”) of multiple stakeholders, offer unique and important insights. Such accounts, portrayals rather than models, deliver neither statistical generalization (as with experiments) nor theoretical generalization (as with multisite case comparisons or realist evaluations). But they do provide the facility for heuristic generalization (i.e., to achieve a clearer understanding of what is going on), thereby enabling more productive debate about eHealth programs’ complex, interdependent social practices. -
Philosophy 1
Philosophy 1 PHILOSOPHY VISITING FACULTY Doing philosophy means reasoning about questions that are of basic importance to the human experience—questions like, What is a good life? What is reality? Aileen Baek How are knowledge and understanding possible? What should we believe? BA, Yonsei University; MA, Yonsei University; PHD, Yonsei University What norms should govern our societies, our relationships, and our activities? Visiting Associate Professor of Philosophy; Visiting Scholar in Philosophy Philosophers critically analyze ideas and practices that often are assumed without reflection. Wesleyan’s philosophy faculty draws on multiple traditions of Alessandra Buccella inquiry, offering a wide variety of perspectives and methods for addressing these BA, Universitagrave; degli Studi di Milano; MA, Universitagrave; degli Studi di questions. Milano; MA, Universidad de Barcelona; PHD, University of Pittsburgh Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy William Paris BA, Susquehanna University; MA, New York University; PHD, Pennsylvania State FACULTY University Stephen Angle Frank B. Weeks Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy BA, Yale University; PHD, University of Michigan Mansfield Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies; Professor of Philosophy; Director, Center for Global Studies; Professor, East Asian Studies EMERITI Lori Gruen Brian C. Fay BA, University of Colorado Boulder; PHD, University of Colorado Boulder BA, Loyola Marymount University; DPHIL, Oxford University; MA, Oxford William Griffin Professor of Philosophy; Professor -
Understanding Cognitive Holistic Theory of Language and Its Public Utility
COGNITIVE HOLISM: UNDERSTANDING COGNITIVE HOLISTIC THEORY OF LANGUAGE AND ITS PUBLIC UTILITY Devendra Nath Tiwari Abstract: Understanding an indivisible cognition through the analytic part has its own beauty that we can call analytic skill, but that must aim at clarity and conception of the cognition which is a whole approached through individual steps. Composite forms have their own beauty, imposition of the cognition on our different allegiance has a different beauty but if one does not understand clearly the different roles the indivisible cognition plays in causing the pleasure in some and pain in others, amusing in some and an obsession in others, illuminating in some and deviating in others, one cannot enjoy wisdom and bliss. Holism talks about language as power, the potency that works differently in wise and in ignorant in causing different effects that veils and deviates from the indivisible cognition. Interpretation of the cognition needs cognitive holistic approach to realize wisdom. Consciousness, at human level, is channelized for flashings of concepts/thoughts that are determinate because language infuses them. All that consciousness flashes is a concept that serves as incentive for action including producing verbal noises and is analyzed and interpreted variously to make it understandable to beginners and ignorant. The language that infuses cognition is intelligible being and so is the thought we directly know them when they flash. In order to articulate the intelligible being of language, we use verbal noises (dhvaniyān), gestures and written marks (lipiyān) which differ from one to the other language speaking communities. Cognition is indivisible whole and language only determinates it. -
Hume's Problem of Induction and the Universalization Of
In Defense of Newtonian Induction: Hume's Problem of Induction and the Universalization of Primary Qualities Ori Belkind November 1, 2018 Abstract This paper aims to advance two claims. First, it aims to show that Hume's argument against the rationality of induction is sound. However, I claim that the conclusion does not follow merely from the self-defeating attempts to justify the rule of induction, unlike traditional readings of the argument. Rather, the skeptical conclusion must also take into account Hume's argument that the secret powers that are present in bodies and give rise to sensible qualities are unknowable. The paper's second aim is to show that Newtonian induction escapes Hume's secret powers argument, given that it includes a transductive inference, from observable phenomena to the powers present in the ultimate parts of matter. Consequently Hume's argument against the rationality of induction does not demonstrate the non-rational nature of Newtonian induction. 1 Introduction This paper articulates a certain reading of Hume's argument against the rationality of induction. Unlike traditional interpretations of Hume's argument, mine takes his argument to involve two distinct sub-arguments; the first is that inductive inferences lack rational support. I term this sub-argument the No Rational Support Argument (NRSA) (Section 2). I also argue that Hume uses a second sub- argument, one I term the Secret Powers Argument, or SPA, to undermine our belief in the rationality of induction. According to the SPA (examined in Section 3), we do not have access to the secret powers of bodies. -
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Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 283 International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Ecological Studies (CESSES 2018) Phenomenology, Existentialism and Postanalytic Philosophy in Modern Social Cognition: Attitude Positions* Anna Ivanova Bauman Moscow State Technical University 5/1, 2nd Baumankaya Str. Moscow, Russia 105005 E-mail: [email protected] Abstract—The article considers the phenomenological phenomenological sociology is the basic philosophical theory interrelation with some other directions of modern principles, which seem to differ significantly. We will socio-philosophical discourse, primarily - with existentialism. explain. We formulated the difference between the phenomenology of M. Heidegger and existentialism J.-P. Sartre. Considered existential sociology of E. Tiryakian. Specificity of the social II. SOCIAL PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM: phenomenology of A. Schütz was determined.As a result, we COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS come to a conclusion about the illegalityof uncritical Existentialism is a truly anthropological version of convergenceof social phenomenology and existentialism but philosophizing. The problem of Sense for existentialists there also exists a conceptual connection between becomes the problem of the meaning of life. For phenomenological sociology and postanalytic philosophy. phenomenologists, this is by no means the case. Both E. Husserl and M. Heidegger rejected philosophizing «on Keywords—social phenomenology; existentialism; social anthropological