Logical positivism is widely associated with an illiberal technocratic view of politics. This view is a caricature. Some members of the left Vienna circle were explicit in their criticism of this conception of politics. In particular, Neurath's work attempted to link the internal epistemological pluralism and tolerance of logical empiricism with political pluralism and the rejection of a technocratic politics. This paper examines the role that unified science played in Neurath's defence of political and social pluralism. Neurath's project of unified (...) science addressed problems that lie at the centre of recent debates around liberalism concerning the possibility of social co-operation in conditions of pluralism. His response is distinctive in calling upon an empiricist tradition that differs from Kantian proceduralist approaches that have predominated in recent liberalism. While Neurath's position has problems, it deserves reconsideration, especially in so far as it questions the Kantian assumption that a thin language of abstract rights provides the best basis for the cosmopolital lingua franca required by conditions of social pluralism. An investigation of the role that unified science plays in Neurath's politics also gives reasons for revising common misconceptions about the nature of the unity of science programme itself. (shrink)

Existentialism is compatible with a broadly biological vision of who we are. This thesis is grounded in an analysis of “concrete” or “individual” possibility, which differs from standard conceptions of possibility in that it allows for possibilities to come into being or disappear through time. Concrete possibilities are introduced both in individual life and by major transitions in evolution. In particular, the advent of ultrasociality and of language has enabled human goals to be formulated in partial independence from the vestigial (...) “goal” of biological replication. The existentialist stance is validated by the necessity of choice grounded in emotion, in a way that does not require a commitment to a Kantian Will. (shrink)

: In the face of disunification and incommensurability, how can the scientific community maintain itself and establish commensurability? According to Peter Galison's investigations of twentieth-century microphysics, commensurability is achieved through local coordination even in the absence of global meaning: The "strength and coherence" of science is due to diverse, yet coordinated action in trading zones between theorists and experimenters, experimenters and instrument builders, etc. Galison's claim is confronted with Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's establishment of commensurability between unitarians and dualists in the (...) eighteenth century dispute about electrical fluids. The contrast of cases suggests an alternative account: Commensurability may be established through the global coordination of local meaning. And where Galison reifies the disunification of science, this account suggests a dynamic interplay between de facto disunification and an intended unity. This interplay is manifested in the pervasive and ongoing practical concern for the conditions of successful communication in a science that is constantly in-the-making. (shrink)

A major theme in René Girard’s work involves the role of the Bible in exposing the scapegoating practices at the basis of culture. The God of the Bible is understood to be a God who takes the side of victims. The God of the Qur’an is also a defender of victims, an idea that recurs throughout the text in the stories of messengers and prophets. In a number of ways, Jesus is unique among the prophets mentioned in the Qur’an. It (...) is argued here that while the Quranic Jesus is distinctly Islamic, and not a Christian derivative, he functions in the Qur’an in a way analogous to the role Jesus plays in the gospels. In its depiction of Jesus, the Qur’an is acutely aware of mimetic rivalry, scapegoating, and the God who comes to the aid of the persecuted. Despite the significant differences between the Christian understanding of Jesus as savior and the way he is understood in the Qur’an, a Girardian interpretation of the Qur’anic Jesus will suggest ways in which Jesus can be a bridge rather than an obstacle in Christian/Muslim dialogue. (shrink)

This paper examines the meanings of the daguerreotype for the astronomer and physicist who introduced it to the world, François Arago. The regime of knowledge production which held sway at the birth of photography implied an alternative view of the moral and political implications of machines from that usually suggested by discussions of ‘mechanization’. Instead of celebrating detachment, instantaneity, transparency and abstraction, Arago understood instruments and human citizens as dynamic mediators which necessarily modify the forces they transmit. His moral economy (...) of instruments also implied specific aesthetic and political commitments. Arago’s republican convictions and expressive personal style, as well as his identification with revolutionary scientist–statesmen including Lazare Carnot and Condorcet, present a strong contrast with the imperial science of Laplace and the image of disengaged, impersonal ‘mechanism’ often associated with the physical science of this time.Keywords: Daguerreotype; Photography; François Arago; Romanticism; Mechanism; Pierre-Simon. (shrink)