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Switch to: References
Citations of:
Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology
Philosophical Quarterly 22 (88):280 (1972)
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How are social and institutional circumstances linked to the knowledge that scientists produce? To answer this question it is necessary to take risks: speculative but testable theories must be proposed. It will be my aim to explain and then apply one such theory. This will enable me to propose an hypothesis about the connexion between social processes and the style and content of mathematical knowledge. |
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This article reviews recent work in socio-historical technology studies. Four problems, frequently mentioned in critical debates, are discussed—relativism, reflexivity, theory, and practice. The main body of the article is devoted to a discussion of the latter two problems. Requirements for a theory on socio-technical change are proposed, and one concrete example of a conceptual framework that meets these requirements is discussed. The second point of the article is to argue that present technology studies are now able to break away from (...) |
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Perspective taking is a critical yet tangled construct that is used to describe a range of psychological processes and that is applied interchangeably with related constructs. The resulting ambiguity is particularly vexing in science education, where although perspective taking is recognized as critical to informed citizens’ ability to negotiate scientifically related societal issues, or socioscientific issues via socioscientific reasoning, the precise nature of perspective taking remains elusive. To operationalize perspective taking, a theoretical conceptual analysis was employed and used to position (...) |
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Margaret Archer has recently provided a persuasive account of the importance of the internal conversation to reflexivity. This raises questions about the shaping of such conversations by involuntary agential positioning. The work of Bourdieu and Bernstein is reviewed to suggest that structural influences can operate by condi-tioning the resources available for the conducting of the internal conversation. Particular emphasis is placed on the transfer of taken for granted ideas from one domain of practice to another. |
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Because the mind is the significance of the brain and God is the significance of the mind, the concept “mind” bridges how the brain works and traditional patterns of belief. The left mind, which utilizes rational vigilance and the imperative instructions of proclamation, names and analyzes the urgently right. The right mind, which discloses the relational responsiveness of numinous presence and natural symbolism, is immersed in and integrates the ultimately real. Together they provide a typology of mind‐states with which to (...) |
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In this paper, the aim is to explore how there can be a role for expression of affect in illocution, drawing upon some ideas about expression put forward by Karl Bühler. In a first part of the paper, I map some active discussions and open questions surrounding phenomena that seem to involve “expression of affect”. Second, I home in on a smaller piece of that larger puzzle; namely, a consideration of how there may be non-conventional expression of affect. I provide (...) |
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This article seeks to challenge the regnant liberal orthodoxy that human rights are the highest and most important of our social virtues. It questions the individualist assumptions of such universa... |
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Globalization, with its undisputed benefits, also presents complex moral challenges that business leaders cannot ignore. Some of this moral complexity is attributable to the scope and nature of specific issues like climate change, intellectual property rights, economic inequity, and human rights. More difficult aspects of moral complexity are the structure and dynamics of human moral judgment and the amplified universe of global stakeholders with competing value claims and value systems whose interests must be considered and often included in the decision-making (...) |
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As the “Sacred Place”—meant as the new space for religions offered by the Internet—demands for continuous investigations on the encounter between traditional narratives and social practices, the rapid growth of Question and Answering websites asks for improving social research about the Authenticity of the religious feeling as well as their responsibility in the construction of a shared knowledge. In this background, the aim of this study is to investigate the role of Q&A websites as additional interpretative resources in accordance with (...) |
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Skin as cover: the discursive effects of 'covering' metaphors on wound care practicesThis paper outlines a Foucauldian analysis of interactions between nurses and patients during wound care procedures in a burns unit. It explores the use of Kristeva's psychoanalytic concepts of abjection and the abject body to illuminate the emotional affects of wounds on nurse and patient. In this process, I identify how cultural metaphoric understandings about skin influence and organise the care of burns patients. Such analysis suggests the import (...) |
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Evolutionary psychology and human sociobiology often reject the mere possibility of symbolic causality. Conversely, theories in which symbolic causality plays a central role tend to be both anti-nativist and anti-evolutionary. This article sketches how these apparent scientific rivals can be reconciled in the study of disgust. First, we argue that there are no good philosophical or evolutionary reasons to assume that symbolic causality is impossible. Then, we examine to what extent symbolic causality can be part of the theoretical toolbox of (...) |
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Taking as its point of departure Leder's phenomenological discussion of the `absent' body, this article explores the nature of human corporeality as a site of transgression. The body, I argue, using a process metaphysic, is first and foremost excessive, driven by human desire rather than animal need: a sensual mode of existence organized around the pleasure/pain axis. To be excessive/transgressive, however, implies the crossing of boundaries or limits which vary according to history and culture, time and place. These issues are (...) |
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Collective effervescence plays a foundational role in the generation of society. Both the canonical explication of this concept, Émile Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of Religious Life, and current literature on the topic, are unable to distinguish between two plausible causes of effervescence: shared affiliation or collective action. This study reports a case of collective effervescence in which much of the assembled group had no prior affiliation. This finding proves that shared affiliation is not a necessary condition for effervescence, and supplies evidence (...) |
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The Multidimensional Religious Ideology (MRI) scale is a new 43-item measure that quantifies conservative versus liberal aspects of religious ideology. The MRI focuses on recurring features of ideology rooted in innate moral instincts while capturing salient differences in the ideological profiles of distinct groups and individuals. The MRI highlights how religious ideology differs from political ideology while maintaining a robust grounding in the social psychology of ideology generally. Featuring three major dimensions (religious beliefs, religious practices, and religious morality) and eight (...) |
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Evolutionary psychology and human sociobiology often reject the mere possibility of symbolic causality. Conversely, theories in which symbolic causality plays a central role tend to be both anti-nativist and anti-evolutionary. This article sketches how these apparent scientific rivals can be reconciled in the study of disgust. First, we argue that there are no good philosophical or evolutionary reasons to assume that symbolic causality is impossible. Then, we examine to what extent symbolic causality can be part of the theoretical toolbox of (...) |
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This article has a dual purpose. First, it looks at the transfer of the methodology of systems analysis from the RAND Corporation to the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in the wake of an East–West bridge-building effort during the Cold War. Second, it draws out a more general argument about how the institutional structures of these research organizations condition their methodological orientations. Acknowledging the complexity of factors influencing methodological choices at RAND and IIASA, the article concentrates on the (...) |
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This paper reports on a particular aspect of a larger ethnographic study of nursing culture in an intensive therapy unit (ITU), accomplished through participant observation over a 12‐month period, followed by interviews with 15 nurses. The paper suggests that the ITU environment is perceived as ‘dangerous’, its dangerousness stemming from the ambiguity of its patients’ conditions. Drawing on anthropological concepts of liminality, pollution, anomaly and breaching of boundaries, the paper identifies various ambiguities inherent in ITU patients’ conditions. It then explores (...) |
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The ArgumentErnst Cassirer's fundamental conception of symbolism (symbolic pregnance) derives from what may be called a bio-medical model of semiotics, not a linguistic one. He employs both models in his philosophy of symbolic forms, but his notion of the “prototype and model of symbolism” was not derived from linguistics. The sources for his conception of symbolism include the ethnographic and anthropological literature he discovered in Aby Warburg's (1866–1929) Hamburg research library, findings of medical research on aphasia and related conditions, particularly (...) |
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This paper proposes an interdisciplinary explanation of the cross-cultural similarities and evolutionary patterns of witchcraft beliefs. It argues that human social dilemmas have led to the evolution of a fear system that is sensitive to signs of deceit and envy. This was adapted in the evolutionary environment of small foraging bands but became overstimulated by the consequences of the Agricultural Revolution, leading to witch paranoia. State formation, civilization, and economic development abated the fear of witches and replaced it in part (...) |
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Little attention has been paid to the role of strangers in the social division of labor that is otherwise a key concept in sociological theory. Partly drawing upon Simmel, this article develops a general framework for analyzing the "uses" of "the stranger" throughout history. Four major domains in which strangers have often been employed are identified: (1) circulation (of goods, money, and information); (2) arbitration; (3) management of secret/sacred domains; and (4) "dirty jobs." The article also explores how these activities (...) |
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Taking account of local culture: limits to the development of a professional ethos The need to extend the discussion of culture in the study of nursing, combined with an enthusiasm for the possibility of viewing nursing from a new perspective, provides the impetus for this study. Based on fieldwork undertaken in the intensive care unit (RICU) of a major public hospital in Rome (Italy), this paper explores some of the key aspects of the social relations and local staff culture of (...) |
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The rapid spread of electronic fingerprinting not only creates new regimes of surveillance but compels users to adopt novel ways of performing their bodies to suit the new technology. This ethnography uses two Indian case studies – of a welfare office and a workplace – to unpack the processes by which biometric devices become effective tools for determining identity. While in the popular imaginary biometric technology is often associated with providing disinterested and thus objective evaluation of identity, in practice ‘failures (...) |
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Blood is now essential for a widening repertoire of therapies and with this comes new forms of regulation and governmentality focused on the collection, use and storage of blood. Here blood begins to lose its `natural' underpinnings as it is drawn into the realms of the synthetic and the scientific. However, this change in theoretical lens obscures the ways that, in practice, constructing a `modern' blood compatible with the demands of the global biopolis is elided with prosaic uses of blood (...) |
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This article argues that the modern world is not only produced by, and is promoting, processes of rationalization and disenchantment, but is also the site of `enchanting' influences that are genuinely `charming' or `magical'. Such modes of influencing rely increasingly on the power of images, and on theatre-like performances of words or discourses. The impact takes place under conditions that, following Victor Turner's work, could be called `liminal', and which can be turned through `imagemagic' into a state of `permanent liminality'. (...) |
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Business ethics (BE) professors play a crucial role in sensitizing business students toward their future ethical responsibilities. Yet, there are few papers exploring the ethical challenges these professors themselves face while teaching BE. In this qualitative paper, we rely on the lenses of ethical sensemaking and dramaturgical performance, and draw from 29 semi-structured interview conducted with BE professors from various countries and field notes from 17 h of observation of BE classes. We identify four kinds of rationalities that professors rely (...) |
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This commentary introduces a section of the journal titled ‘Notes on Structuralism’. It centres around two interviews. The first, from 1987, is with the structural anthropologist Mary Douglas (who speaks on various aspects of her work, including on Purity and Danger). The second is an interview with Roland Barthes, who, speaking in 1965, was at the height of his structuralist phase. The interview focuses upon the structural analysis of narrative and prefigures the well-known volume of Communications on the subject. The (...) |
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Historically, market regulation has played an important role in shaping the trajectory of scientific and technological innovation in food and agriculture. However, regulators’ traditional focus on safety and efficacy may be insufficient to address more complex ethical, legal, and social implications of novel products, such as the use of nanotechnology and nanomaterials in food and agriculture. One solution might be to implement the principles of responsible innovation to challenge innovators and policymakers to better anticipate risks further upstream and be responsive (...) |
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This interview with Mary Douglas took place at Lancaster University in the Religious Studies Department. The main focus of the interview was her recently published book, Purity and Danger, which had already become a classic of British anthropology. The questions and answers ranged mainly over the differences between the physical body, representations of the body, the body as a classificatory system, and social constructivism. Douglas’s early academic years and the influences on her work, such as the role of Roman Catholicism (...) |
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En este artículo se evalúa el tratamiento de lo corporal en la historia desde un reciente pasado foucaultiano hasta el presente. El “giro somático”, se argumenta, no sólo puso de moda el cuerpo en los textos de historia sino que cuestionó de manera fundamental la naturaleza misma de la historia como forma de investigación. En este trabajo resumimos primero la concepción anti-esencialista del cuerpo que Foucault desarrolla a través de sus conceptos de “biopoder” y “biopolítica”, para después discutir el impacto (...) |
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: This study investigates the changes in the body image that occurred in the crucial cultural transformations that took place at the outset of Western rational thought in the transition from Archaic age to Classical age Greece. It does so from the delimited perspective that is offered by the group of medical writings known as the Hippocratic Corpus (specifically works on prognostics, dietetics, and surgery) that were contemporary with the early Classical age, but it also suggests parallel changes occurring in (...) |
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This article explores the way in which certain theoretical frameworks and analytical procedures combine to present stories about experience as objects of no depth, confusing this artefact with the phenomenon studied. By pointing out abusive potentials in a constructivist approach, it is argued that critical realism is needed in the field of narrative analysis. The creation of life stories as well as the project of analysing them involve interaction with a material world, and elaboration on it. We meet the Other, (...) |
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Previous studies of corporate environmental and social action identify exactly three similar patterns of activity. They provide divergent structural explanations for these patterns, as networks of institutional constraint, and networks of local inter-dependence, respectively. A theory of sociocultural viability, known in anthropology and policy science as Cultural Theory, explains that social systems consist of four patterns of social interaction, shaped by two distinct structural factors. Our own analysis of 45 items of environmental, social, and governance factors reconcile extant studies’ findings (...) |
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ArgumentKuhnian phases of paradigmatic development correspond to characteristic variations of citation measures. These correlations can in turn be predicted from a simple model of human information processing when applied to the common environments of scientists. By combining a scientometric and a human information processing approach to the history of scientific thought, structures of disciplinary development, and in particular paradigmatic cycles, can be more reliably assessed than before. Consequently, the quantitative historian of science is liberated to some extent from the vagaries (...) |
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This paper examines the emergence and trajectory of a vernacular femicide memorial tree at Mount Gravatt (Meanjin/Brisbane) which is juxtaposed with established and regulated official commemorative placemaking practices in this social geography. The paper explores the implicit rules about marking gender in official publics of commemoration, arguing that they perform or conversely risk a doubling of women’s invisibility through assimilation into symbols and aesthetic conventions of seemingly settled history and settled subjects. They can become barely noticeable for the kinds of (...) |
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Although we are not aware of many spontaneous sensual experiences, we learn about the surrounding world through our senses. One of the objects of sensual experience is smell. It influences our decisions, shapes social interactions and is also a carrier of social meanings. Unfortunately, long-term conviction about the domination of sight over smell led to a belief in the pictorial character of our contemporary culture. Moreover, constant fluctuations between the promotion and ignoring of olfactory data have played a role in (...) |
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This article addresses the cultural commodification of the dress sign of the sacred body from contexts of `God' to its recontextualization within contexts of consumer capitalism or `Mammon'. The concept of religious dress `commodification' is employed heuristically to help make sociological sense of the seepage of dress sacra from religious contexts of origin to secular contexts of use. While other readings of the late modern career of the religious dress `text' are indeed possible, the suggestion here is that it can (...) |
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