Do we determine our actions, or are our actions ruled by the structure of our society? Does our culture create us, or do we create our culture? Within history and social theory there is a fundamental division of opinion between those who explain human action by considering the intentions, reasons and motives of individuals and those who use broader social structures. Structural Idealism presents a theory of social and historical explanation which argues that “idealists” such as Hegel, who champion human (...) agency, and “materialists” such as Marx, who support social structure, have grasped but part of a larger truth. The book contends that we have to explain human actions simultaneously by both the ideas human actors bring to a situation and the way in which previous actions have created social structures that condition those ideas. Through this realization we can see how all forms of knowledge, from the historical roots of modern philosophy to today’s popular culture, both condition and are conditioned by structural ideals. This book challenges our perception of how cultures and ideals are formed, and shows that while structural ideals allow people to co-operate as they work toward goals — their own or those of their community — these images of perfection, so easily accepted as the unalterable structure of our society, can be changed, and are changed, by individuals. Structural Idealism asks us to think beneath the surface of our society, and will be of special interest to philosophers, sociologists, historians and cultural theorists. (shrink)

Classical realism is enjoying a renaissance in the study of international relations. It is well known that the analytical and normative international-political thought of early 20th-century classical realists is based on assumptions about human nature. Yet current knowledge of these assumptions remains limited. This article therefore revisits and examines the nature and intellectual roots of the human nature assumptions of three truly consequential classical realists. The analysis shows — similar to the causa Hans J. Morgenthau — that the human nature (...) assumptions of George F. Kennan, Walter Lippmann and E. H. Carr are — to varying degrees — Freudian. Unless this hitherto neglected dimension is recognized, an understanding of their international-political thought and of the political philosophy of realism remains incomplete. Two conclusions are presented. First, current criticism of classical realism’s human nature assumptions is unjustified. Second, any (re-) engagement with classical realism must recognize its human nature baggage. Realist international-political theorizing is necessarily human nature-based international-political theorizing. (shrink)

The article unveils the intellectual indebtedness of Hans J. Morgenthau's realist theory of international power politics to Freudian meta- and group psychology. It examines an unpublished Morgenthau essay about Freudian anthropology written in 1930, placing this work within the context of Morgenthau's magna opera, the 1946 Scientific Man vs. Power Politics and the 1948 Politics among Nations. The article concludes that Morgenthau's international theory is ultimately based on the early instinct theory of Sigmund Freud. Freud is thus to be seen (...) as one of Morgenthau's intellectual fathers. A second main argument refers to the theoretical tradition that Morgenthau has founded within International Relations (IR), namely: political realism. By investigating its core principles, it is argued that realism also may be rooted in Freudian thought. Throughout, the article calls upon IR, Morgenthau scholarship, and international-political theory to take Freud seriously. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: La pragmatique et la sémantique de l’historiographie révèlent une fragmentation croissante qui s’étend par-delà les écoles jusqu’aux historiens individuels. Alors que les scientifiques normalisent les données pour qu’elles s’ajustent aux théories, les historiens interprètent leurs théories, de manières incompatibles entre elles, pour qu’elles s’ajustent aux différents cas historiques. Les difficultés qui en découlent dans la communication historiographique remettent en cause les philosophies herméneutiques de l’historiographie et redonnent un nouvel intérêt à la question d’une historiographie scientifique. Mais les réponses existantes (...) sont philosophiquement obsolètes. Une façon de reformuler le problème est de partir de la complexité du chaos et de l’unicité de l’histoire. Seule la science peut évaluer si les propriétés d’un domaine donné en interdisent une approche scientifique. Or la science s’étend par réductions méthodologiques explicatives, en ramenant des propriétés d’événements complexes, chaotiques et uniques, qui sont familières, mais d’un niveau plus élevé, à des propriétés ou interrelations non familières et d’un niveau moins élevé. La culture disciplinaire de l’historiographie, cependant, empêche le développement par essais et erreurs de telles tentatives de réductions scientifiques, qui seules permettraient d’évaluer les possibilités d’une historiographie scientifique, laquelle, dans la situation présente, relève de la science-fiction. (shrink)

According to Sir Karl Popper, there is a harmful approach to the social sciences called 'historicism'. This takes their principal aim to be historical prediction of an unconditional sort and the chief means to this the discovery of laws of historical development. The chief exemplar is held to be Marx. This paper distinguishes two possible sorts of laws of historical development. Popper's arguments against each are rejected. Which sort it is most plausible to ascribe to Marx is considered. Four models (...) of historical determinism are distinguished and the question of Marx's view or views on the question is discussed in terms of them. (shrink)

, whereby some causes are deemed more important than others, are ubiquitous in historical studies. Drawing from influential recent work on causation, I develop a definition of causal-explanatory strength. This makes clear exactly which aspects of explanatory weighting are subjective and which objective. It also sheds new light on several traditional issues, showing for instance that: underlying causes need not be more important than proximate ones; several different causes can each be responsible for most of an effect; small causes need (...) not be less important than big ones; and non-additive interactive effects between causes present no particular difficulty. Key Words: causation • explanation • history • interaction • proximate • underlying. (shrink)

Bakla signals “effeminacy” and “homosexuality,” which stigma signifies being “weak,” “fake woman,” and “unreal man.” This historical research interrogates the etymology of bakla, which etymology claims that bakla only became a label for gay identity since the 1960s. A newfound evidence, the Bienvenido N. Santos’ “Recollections” (1932), challenges this etymology; as the document used bakla to signify “effeminate” decades before the 1960s. -/- Mobilizing this newfound evidence alongside theoretical, historiographic, and archival data, this thesis asks: (1) How can the 1932 (...) “Recollections” help explain the crystallization of bakla into a label for “effeminate homosexual male” identity since the 1960s? (2) What can socio-historical processes further reveal about the etymology of bakla, and why the word bears so much stigma? (3) How did “effeminacy” and male “homosexuality” become semantically linked with bakla’s historic senses? At its core, the study argues that sexism and political instability coincide in the social history of the bakla. -/- Contextualizing bakla’s semantic shifts reveals that the word’s stigma comes from its earliest meaning; besides “fearful and weak,” it was bakla as “deceptive.” While tracking bakla’s semantic links with the pre-existing terms for gay identity shows that bakla was forged alongside historical biases against women. These biases rendered gay men and trans women undesirable. And archival data uncover five (5) factors explaining why bakla crystallized into a gender label, which also offer insights on how bakla has been reclaimed and reworked, despite its persisting stigma, in more recent years. -/- The thesis exposes bakla’s status as a “keyword” in the Philippine conceptual, sexual, and social history. It undresses bakla, opens it to critique, and recognizes the importance its etymology can play in undoing bakla’s stigma, and its potential in rethinking Philippine history itself. (shrink)

The past is deeply important to many of us. But our concern about history can seem puzzling and needs justification. After all, the past cannot be changed: we can help the living needy, but the tears we shed for the long dead victims of past tragedies help no one. Attempts to justify our concern about history typically take one of two opposing forms. It is assumed either that such concern must be justified in instrumental or otherwise self-centered and present-centered terms (...) or that our interest in history must be utterly disinterested and pursued for its own sake. But neither approach can fully explain, or justify, our concern about the past. I propose a third approach, on which the past matters because it contains much that is of value—all those past people and the things they did or had endured—and this value calls for our fitting response. In short: the significance of the past is past significance. (shrink)

Within the debate on the inevitability versus contingency of science for which Hacking’s writings have provided the basic terminology, the devising of counterfactual histories of science is widely assumed by champions of the contingency thesis to be an effective way to challenge the inevitability thesis. However, relatively little attention has been devoted to the problem of how to defend counterfactual history of science against the criticism that it is too speculative an endeavor to be worth bothering with—the same critique traditionally (...) levelled against the use of counterfactuals in general history. In this paper, we review the defense of counterfactuals put forward by their advocates within general history. According to such defense—which emphasizes the essential role of counterfactuals within explanations—good counterfactual scenarios need to exhibit the right kind of plausibility, characterized as continuity between said scenarios and what historians know about the world. As our discussion shows, the same requirement needs to be satisfied by good counterfactual histories of science. However, as we mention in the concluding part of the paper, there is at least one concern raised by counterfactual history of science as used to support the contingency thesis for which the defense based on the plausibility of the counterfactual scenarios does not seem to offer easy solutions. (shrink)

In International Relations arguments about historical origins provoke theoretical debates, as origins assume an emergent theoretical unit of inquiry - an international order, system, society, etc. - while at the same time defining its core properties and dynamics. By boldly casting the long 19th century as the origin of global modernity and, in turn, the modern international order, Buzan and Lawson's The Global Transformation challenges the romance with Westphalia that undergirds so much of our theorizing. Yet, the contributions to this (...) symposium push deeper than usual, challenging established ways of conceiving change, and suggesting very different models of proper theorizing. While all of the papers ostensibly debate large-scale systems change, three modes of change are in contention: breakpoint, evolutionary, and processual. The further one pushes towards the latter, however, the more elusive the idea of 'system' becomes, eroding the fundamental boundary condition that undergirds the systemic mode of theorizing that dominates the field. Similarly, a persistent theme in these contributions is Buzan and Lawson's purported failure to theorize change. But instead of offering rival theories, contributors advance very different conceptions of theorizing, from pre-observational conceptualization to causal explanation. This not only challenges the field to reflect more systematically on the process of theorizing, but to acknowledge forms of theorizing that it currently brackets. (shrink)

This paper has a twofold purpose. First, it aims at highlighting one difference in how counterfactuals work in general history, on the one hand, and in history of the natural sciences, on the other hand. As we show, both in general history and in history of science good counterfactual narratives need to be plausible, where plausibility is construed as appropriate continuity of both the antecedent and the consequent of the counterfactual with what we know about the world. However, in general (...) history it is often possible to imagine a consequent dramatically different from the actual historical development, and yet plausible; in history of science, due to plausibility concerns, imagining a consequent far removed from the results of actual science seems more complicated. The second aim of the paper is to assess whether and to what degree counterfactual histories of science can advance the cause of the so-called “contingency thesis,” namely, the claim that history of science might have followed a path leading to alternative, non-equivalent theories, as successful as the ones that we currently embrace. We distinguish various versions of the contingency thesis and argue that counterfactual histories of science support weak versions of the thesis. (shrink)

‘Heritage’ is a concept that often carries significant normative weight in moral and political argument. In this article, I present and critique a prevalent conception according to which heritage must have a positive valence. I argue that this view of heritage leads to two moral problems: Disowning Injustice and Embracing Injustice. In response, I argue for an alternative conception of heritage that promises superior moral and political consequences. In particular, this alternative jettisons the traditional focus on heritage as a primarily (...) positive relationship to the past, and thus offers resources for coming to terms with histories of injustice. (shrink)

The relation of man to his environment is the relation of the historian to his theme.The individual apart from society would be both speechless and mindless.In every other European language, the eq...

The non-identity problem is usually considered in the forward-looking direction but a version of it also applies to the past, due to the fact that even minor historical changes would have affected the whole subsequent sequence of births, dramatically changing who comes to exist next. This simple point is routinely overlooked by familiar attitudes and evaluative judgments about the past, even those of sophisticated historians. I shall argue, however, that it means that when we feel sadness about some historical tragedy, (...) or think of one possible course of history as better than another, these judgments and attitudes can be understood in terms of two opposing perspectives on the past: an impersonal standpoint concerned only with how much value each course of history contains, and a person-centred standpoint concerned with harms and benefits to the people who had actually existed. In this paper, I will set out these radically different visions of what matters in history and point out some of their surprising implications. (shrink)

A scholar of Hellenistic and Prussian history, Droysen developed a historical theory that at the time was unprecedented in range and depth, and which remains to the present day a valuable key for understanding history as both an idea and a professional practice. Arthur Alfaix Assis interprets Droysen’s theoretical project as an attempt to redefine the function of historiography within the context of a rising criticism of exemplar theories of history, and focuses on Droysen’s claim that the goal underlying historical (...) writing and reading should be the development of the subjective capacity to think historically. In addition, Assis examines the connections and disconnections between Droysen’s theory of historical thinking, his practice of historical thought, and his political activism. Ultimately, Assis not only shows how Droysen helped reinvent the relationship between historical knowledge and human agency, but also traces some of the contradictions and limitations inherent to that project. (shrink)

Taking as its starting point Carr's view that historical narrative reflects the preoccupations of the time in which it is written and Foucault's concept of consensual historical discourse as the outcome of a social struggle in which the victor suppresses or at least diminishes contrary versions of historical events in favour of their own, this paper traces and discusses the historical narrative of British nursing in the Crimean war and, in particular, three competing narratives that have arisen in the latter (...) half of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st. These are the established narrative surrounding Florence Nightingale, the new narrative surrounding Mary Seacole and an Irish narrative surrounding the role of the Sisters of Mercy. It is argued that the increased vehemence of the debate surrounding these narratives is representative of the changes that have taken place in British society. However, we also argue that the Irish narrative and its critique are reflective of deep‐rooted Anglo‐Protestant attitudes articulated by Nightingale and uncritically accepted by subsequent historians even in modern British historiography. (shrink)

Drawing on Isaiah Berlin's celebrated essay on Tolstoy, this paper poses the question should James Turner Johnson be deemed a hedgehog or a fox? That is, it considers whether Johnson should be regarded as a monist (hedgehog) or a pluralist (fox) in his contribution to the just war tradition. It contends that his commitment to history, while superficially indicative of a hedgehog, serves to conceal a deep-lying pluralism ? or at least the possibility of such ? in his views on (...) the meaning of history. Contrary to initial appearances, then, Johnson's commitment to history is not univocal: it does not speak with one voice, and to one purpose. Rather it suggests a variety of voices or positions, and is amenable to multiple interpretations, not all of which are of a piece with one another. This paper seeks to uncover these various voices or positions, with a view to raising some searching questions pertaining to how we should properly understand the just war tradition today. (shrink)

Understanding is not of the same kind in all contexts. Children learn the kind of understanding that is appropriate in particular contexts largely through a process of enculturation. This study examines some aspects of 10-year-old children's conceptions of understanding. There was evidence that they had admissible conceptions of understanding in general but may be unable to distinguish unaided between the kinds of understanding that are relevant in different disciplines. An explicit attention to enculturation in lesson plans may be of benefit (...) to such children. (shrink)

The basic framework of Roman policy towards the Jews and Judaism, initiated at the time of Julius Caesar, until before the time of Claudius, was quite permissive, allowing the Jews considerable religious freedom and privileges. There were of course occasional different applications of the policy depending on the Emperors or procurators in the regions. Nonetheless, Judaism in the first half of the first century to some degree infiltrated into the Roman Empire and the range of the social status of the (...) constituents was wide, from low class to high. There were considerable numbers of gentile adherents to Judaism and also of proselytes: among them were Roman adherents and proselytes and some of them were even members of the royal house. The pragmatic policy of Rome towards the Jews and their religion, the wide range of Jewish infiltration into various classes of people, and in particular the numerous cases of conversion among the Romans do not exclude the possibility of the conversion of a Roman officer, despatched to the province in approximately AD 39, to a sect of the Jewish religion. (shrink)

Carl Becker's classic 1931 address "Everyman his own historian" holds lessons for historians of science today. Like the professional historians he spoke to, we are content to display the Ivory- Tower Syndrome, writing scholarly treatises only for one another, disdaining both the general reader and our natural readership, scientists. Following his rhetoric, I argue that scientists are well aware of their own historicity, and would be interested in lively and balanced histories of science. It is ironic that the very professionalism (...) that ought to equip us to write such histories has imposed on us a powerful taboo that renders us unable to do so. We who count ourselves sophisticated in describing the effects of social forces upon past scientists have been remarkably unconscious of the ways our own practices are being shaped by our need to distinguish ourselves from scientists who write history. Our fear of presentism in general and Whig history in particular is really a taboo, that is, an excessive avoidance enforced by social pressure. It succeeds at making our work distinct from histories written by scientists, but at the awful cost of blotting out the great fact of scientific progress. Scientists may be misguided in expecting us to celebrate great men, but they are right to demand from historians an analysis of the process of testing and improvement that is central to science. If progress in general is a problematic term, we could label the process "emendation.". (shrink)

In some of the papers in which she develops and defends the mental modelview of thought experiments in physics, Nersessian expresses the belief that her account has implications for thought experiments in other domains as well. In this paper, I argue, firstly, that counterfactual reasoning has a legitimate place in historical inquiry, and secondly, that the mental model view can account for such "alternative histories". I proceed as follows. Firstly, I review the main accounts of thought experiments in physics and (...) point at some explanatory advantages of the mental model view. Subsequently, I argue that historians cannot dispense with counterfactual reasoning altogether and qualify a number of principled objections against the explicit use of alternative histories for theoretical purposes. Finally, I show that the mental model view can account for such thought experiments in history. (shrink)

This essay critically examines the so-called ‘unnaturalness’ of historical thinking. I identify and analyse three lines of argument frequently invoked by historians to defend the validity of historical inquiry in response to scepticism, which is often couched in postmodern terms. In doing so, I highlight that these lines of argument are predicated upon historians’ thought processes and concepts being domain general. This idea of historical thinking as part of our ordinary thinking could help us develop a history curriculum in which (...) students are required to employ those processes and concepts to solve both everyday and historical questions. With such a curriculum, students could more easily see the relevance of history education to their daily lives. (shrink)

This article discusses the relationship between Eleanor Antin’s Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (1973) and Elizabeth Manchester’s All My Dresses With All My Shoes (2002) in terms of the differently structured temporalities of making and viewing through which the concept of femininity materializes in each work. Diachronic understandings of post-feminism, as a concept emptied of a former moment of political consciousness, are contested through my readings of artworks that call forth a complexity of tenses. The article argues that the connections and (...) tensions between the two works, which are generationally distinct in terms of the political and cultural climate of their production, require a critical apparatus that suggests the simultaneity of differently valued temporal experiences. The notion of temporal play is further explored in relation to Vanessa Beecroft’s performance and film works VB29 (1997) and VB35 (1998). Here the traces of earlier feminist strategy, in which femininity is cast in relation to loss, are reconfigured in the failure to achieve the stasis of the photographic moment. (shrink)

The article develops and justifies, on the basis of the epistemological argumentation theory, two central pieces of the theory of evaluative argumentation interpretation: 1. criteria for recognizing argument types and 2. rules for adding reasons to create ideal arguments. Ad 1: The criteria for identifying argument types are a selection of essential elements from the definitions of the respective argument types. Ad 2: After presenting the general principles for adding reasons (benevolence, authenticity, immanence, optimization), heuristics are proposed for finding missing (...) reasons, for deductive arguments, e.g., semantic tableaux are suggested. (shrink)

There have been periodic claims that evolutionary biology needs urgent reform, and this article tries to account for the volume and persistence of this discontent. It is argued that a few inescapable properties of the field make it prone to criticisms of predictable kinds, whether or not the criticisms have any merit. For example, the variety of living things and the complexity of evolution make it easy to generate data that seem revolutionary, and lead to disappointment with existing explanatory frameworks. (...) It is then argued that special discontent stems from misunderstandings and dislike of one well-known but atypical research programme: the study of adaptive function, in the tradition of behavioural ecology. To achieve its goals, this research needs distinct tools, often including imaginary agency, and a partial description of the evolutionary process. This invites mistaken charges of narrowness and oversimplification, and these chime with anxieties about human agency and overall purpose. The article ends by discussing several ways in which calls to reform evolutionary biology actively hinder progress in the field. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 10, Issue 3, pp 370 - 381 The argument of this paper is that counterfactuals are indispensable in reasoning in general and historical reasoning in particular. It illustrates the role of counterfactuals in the study of history and explores the connection between counterfactuals and the notions of historical necessity and contingency. Entertaining alternatives to the actual course of events is conducive to the assessment of the relative weight and impact of the various factors that combine to bring (...) about a certain result. Counterfactuals are essentially involved in understanding what it means for an event, an action, or an individual to make a difference. Making a difference, in turn, is shown to be a central category of historical reasoning. Counterfactuals, though sensitive to the description they use, make objective claims that can be confirmed or disconfirmed by evidence. (shrink)

This paper examines some of the problems of periodisation that arise in attempts to compare historical developments in the education systems of two or more countries.

The neutrality of the art and architecture of courtrooms and courthouses has dominated the public perception in the Indian context. The courtroom design and the visual artistic elements present within these judicial places have very often been considered to be insignificant to the notions of law and justice that they reflect. As art and architecture present certain historical narratives, reflect political allegories and have significant impact on the perceptions of their viewers, they have critical socio-political ramifications. This makes it pertinent (...) to explore them and investigate the paradox of their deployment and interpretation in today’s increasingly mediatized world. Through an ethnographic study of the Supreme Court of India, this paper interprets its art and architecture, and, the symbolism and semiotics reflected through them. Arguing against their neutrality and insignificance, the paper demonstrates how they reflect nationalism, certain ideologies and power-space dynamics. It further argues that they act as evidence of political metaphors related to justice, power and democracy. With a conversation between law, architecture and semiotics, the paper investigates the historical and spatial dimensions of its architecture and artistic elements. Mapping the Court’s architectural elements, I examine how the visual representation of ‘justice as virtue’ finds translation in its design through transfer of certain images, including the image of the ‘scales of justice’, into it, while absenting the notion of ‘justice as struggle’—to contemplate on how legal architecture gives evidence to the vexed relationship between law and justice and also of the break from the colonial past. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre's argument, that teaching is not a social practice, has been extensively criticised, and indeed teaching is normally understood more generally to be a form of generic activity that is a practice in its own right. His associated proposition, that teachers are practitioners of the discipline they teach, has, however, received considerably less attention. MacIntyre himself recognised that for teachers to be understood as being part of the discipline they teach, a broader definition of what is meant by ‘discipline’ (...) would be required. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to make a distinction between a ‘discipline’ and a ‘profession’ and not to conflate the practice of the discipline with the practice of professional academics. Such a distinction makes it possible to argue that teachers are engaged in the practice of the discipline they teach. As recent developments in social epistemology and the sociology of knowledge have suggested, it is indeed not just possible, but arguably necessary, to understand teachers in these terms. In seeking to understand what it means to be a teacher, there is thus much to be gained from further reflection as to the relationship between a teacher and his or her academic discipline. The reconsideration of this relationship might well cause us to challenge the idea that teaching is a form of generic activity. (shrink)

The ArgumentIn this paper three canonical studies of the scientific revolution are subjected to narratological analysis. Underlying this analysis is the assumption that in any single product of historical writing it is possible to distinguish, for analytical purposes, between three levels of reference: the object of the text — the events; the representation of the events — the narrative; and the text in which a story is represented by means of narrative. Through texts one learns about historical events, but also (...) about the process of producing the texts. Techniques of representation are means of production of texts that represent, in addition to the events, also the producer and his or her authority. The distinction made for any specific text allows the reader to play the two levels against each other in order to create a space within which historical writing should be criticized. Such criticism may draw attention to the difficulty of controlling the meaning of historical stories, and to the need to analyze narrative structures in order to appreciate the ideological changes of historical texts. (shrink)

Psychologists have often been criticized for their reluctance to engage with history, so it is interesting to find that historical accounts play an important role in the recovered memory/false memory syndrome debate. Using techniques of rhetorical and discursive analysis, we examined accounts of the historical origins of repression and of battlefield trauma in popular texts. The flexible and selective nature of these accounts was highlighted, and was discussed in terms of the rhetorical practice of ontological gerrymandering. Also, the employment of (...) discursive practices similar to Gilbert and Mulkay's (1984) `empiricist' and `contingent' repertoires was noted. We also comment upon how different understandings of the nature of history (as linear, cyclical, or geographical) were rhetorically employed by participants, and suggest that historical contexts are constructed for rhetorical effect. (shrink)

Examples of historical writing are analysed in detail, and it is demonstrated that, with respect to the statements which appear in historical accounts, their truth and value-freedom are neither necessary nor sufficient for the relative acceptability of historical accounts. What is both necessary and sufficient is the acceptability of the selection of statements involved, and it is shown that history can be objective only if the acceptability of selection can be made on the basis of a rational criterion of relevance. (...) 'Relevance' and 'significance 1 are distinguished. The conditions of rationality of a criterion of acceptability are examined with special reference to Popper's criterion of 'falsifiability', which is shown to fail to apply to historical writing. General conclusions are drawn about the implications of the argument for the possibility of the 'unity of science', and about the conditions which need to be met if history is to be objective. (shrink)

In part because “imagination” is a slippery notion, its exact role in the production of scientific knowledge remains unclear. There is, however, one often explicit and deliberate use of imagination by scientists that can be (and has been) studied intensively by epistemologists and historians of science: thought experiments. The main goal of this article is to document the varieties of thought experimentation, not so much in terms of the different sciences in which they occur but rather in terms of the (...) different functions they fulfil. I argue that thought experimentation (and hence imagination) plays a role not only in theory choice but in singular causal analysis and scientific discovery as well. I pinpoint, moreover, some of the rules governing the use of thought experiments in theory choice and in singular causal analysis, that is, some of the criteria they should meet in order to fulfil those functions successfully. (shrink)

In the `Preface' to the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel outlines the dialectical method and contrasts it with two other approaches. On the one hand, there is `material thinking' (das materielles Denken): `a contingent consciousness that is absorbed only in material stuff', a form of thought which is rooted in existing conditions and cannot see beyond them. At the `opposite extreme' is the transcendent critical method of `argumentation' (das Räsonieren), which involves `freedom from all content and a sense of vanity towards (...) it'. The dialectical method must `give up this freedom'. It refuses `to intrude into the immanent rhythm of the Notion, either arbitrarily or with wisdom obtained from elsewhere'. Instead, it `sink[s] this freedom in the content, letting it move spontaneously of its own nature ... and then ... contemplate[s] this movement'. (shrink)

I would say that syntax is a significant, if shifty, index of a writer's perspective on his subject-matter. In this light, please consider the syntax of my title. It is two nouns connected by a logical term, ‘as’. On one version of the programme for this lecture series, the word ‘as’ is misprinted as ‘and’; this makes a big difference. A simple conjunction of two nouns, ‘Literature and Discourse’, would suggest that I accept the meanings of the two words as (...) stable, unanalysed. The connective ‘as’, however, is intended to announce that this juxtaposition of the two noun terms is an analysis of the two nouns, particularly the first – an examination of the nature of the first term in the light of the meaning of the second. (shrink)

Niche construction theory (NCT) can be applied to examine the influence of culturally constructed learning environments on the acquisition and retention of beliefs, values, role expectations, and skills. Thus, NCT provides a quantitative framework to account for cultural-historical contingency affecting development and cultural evolution. Learning in a culturally constructed environment is of central concern to many sociologists, cognitive scientists, and sociocultural anthropologists, albeit often from different perspectives. This article summarizes four pertinent theories from these fields—situated learning, activity theory, practice theory, (...) and distributed cognition. As a basis for interdisciplinary investigation, the article considers how these theories may be addressed using a cultural niche-construction framework, including the utility of an embedded model that explicitly accounts for effects of the constructed learning environment on within-individual learning dynamics in an evolutionary framework. (shrink)

Based on a full reading of the Plautine corpus in light of theories of class resistance, this essay argues that the palliata grew up in the 200s bce under conditions of endemic warfare and mass enslavement, and responded to those conditions. Itinerant troupes of slaves and lower-class men performed for mostly humble audiences, themselves familiar with war and hunger; the best of these troupes were then hired to perform at ludi in the cities of central Italy. The first sections of (...) the essay look at types of speech and action in the plays in which slave or poor characters make use of these shared experiences: jokes about flogging and hunger, fantasies of revenge and escape, double speech. The latter sections examine the evidence for lower-class constituencies in the 200s bce and for actors, writers, and venues to match, arguing that none of these categories can be treated monolithically. (shrink)

This book is a collection of essays, dealing with one of the most interesting topics in the history of ideas, particularly in the history of theories of visual perception: the question posed by Wil...

On November 19, 2017, the eighth annual Analytic Theology Lecture was delivered in Boston, Massachusetts by N.T. Wright before the American Academy of Religion. His lecture, titled “The Meanings of History: Event and Interpretation in the Bible and Theology,” is printed here for the first time.

Recent books, articles and plays about the ‘immortal’ HeLa cell line have prompted renewed interest in the history of tissue culture methods that were first employed in 1907 and became common experimental tools during the twentieth century. Many of these sources claim tissue cultures like HeLa had a “troubled past” because medical researchers did not seek informed consent before using tissues in research, contravening a long held desire for self-determination on the part of patients and the public. In this article, (...) I argue these claims are unfair and misleading. No professional guidelines required informed consent for tissue culture during the early and mid twentieth century, and popular sources expressed no concern at the widespread use of human tissues in research. When calls for informed consent did emerge in the 1970s and 1980s, moreover, they reflected specific political changes and often emanated from medical researchers themselves. I conclude by arguing that more balanced histories of tissue culture can make a decisive contribution to public debates today: by refuting a false dichotomy between science and its publics, and showing how ethical concepts such as informed consent arise from a historically specific engagement between professional and social groups. (shrink)

The postwar period has been marked by a problematization of nations and nationalism: these phenomena, which were previously assumed to be natural products of evolution, have received a growing amount of attention from social theory. First an attempt was made to debunk nationalist constructions, and then a `primordialist' reaction defended the nation. Explanatory theory has however been held back due to vagueness regarding key categories such as culture, agency, rationality and motivations. Nationalism studies must be clearer in its use of (...) these categories, and separate normative and explanatory questions if it is to yield more useful generalizations in the future. (shrink)