The Classical Theory of function in the nervous system postulates that the nerve impulse is the result of a sequential reversal of the membrane potential due to an increased permeability of the membrane, first to sodium ions, then to potassium ions. The new theory presents a bio-physical model which depicts the nerve impulse as an event involving the motions of electrons and waves, and their interactions with sodium and potassium atoms and ions. The velocity of the nerve impulse (the most (...) important parameter of nerve function) is determined by the product of two constants: c = the speed of light, which is a constant for all nerves; k =a constant for each nerve and is believed to be a specific property of nerve matter related in some way to the atomic process. The theory proposes that the nerve impulse in the axon is dualistic in nature (particles and waves play equally significant roles). The dualistic nature accounts for the three most fundamental characteristics of conduction of the nerve impulse: periodicity (conduction of a nerve impulse over long distances with constant velocity and form); non-summing (two nerve impulses cannot be in the same place at the same time); quantum nature of each nerve impulse — i.e., the unit message of the nerve impulse is an indivisible unit. (shrink)

Adorno’s commitment to anti-foundationalism generates a concern over how his ethically normative appraisals of social phenomena can be founded. Drawing on both Kohlmann and Bernstein’s account, I produce a new reading which contends somatic impulses are capable of bearing intrinsically normative epistemic and moral content. This entails a new way of understanding Adorno’s contention that Auschwitz produced a new categorical imperative. Working with Bernstein’s account, I claim that Auschwitz makes manifest the hostility of the instrumentalization of reason to the (...) somatic grounds of reason. One’s mimetic identification with the victims of Auschwitz arouses a self-preserving desire to intercede in and re-orient the progress of reason itself, for the sake of one’s own somatic integrity. In closing, I claim – contra Zuidervaart – that this reading allows us to place the ethical as primary in Adorno, without reducing the political to it. (shrink)

Using a new method, we examined whether incidental perception of need-rewarding (positive) objects unintentionally prepares motor action. Participants who varied in their level of need for water were presented with glasses of water (and control objects) that were accompanied by go and no-go cues that required a response (key-press) or withholding a response. Importantly, if need-rewarding objects unintentionally prepare action, presentation of no-go cues should lead to motor inhibition of these prepared motor impulses. Consistent with this hypothesis, results showed (...) that participants relatively high in need for water (and hence, who perceive water as a rewarding, positive object) were slower to react to a successive action probe after withholding a response during perception of water than during perception of the control object, suggesting motor inhibition of unintentionally prepared motor impulses. We propose that incidental perception of need-rewarding objects unintentionally potentiates preparation of motor action to these objects. (shrink)

The thesis of this article is that in Husserlian phenomenology there is no opposition between theory and praxis. On the contrary, he understands the former to serve the latter, so as to usher in a new world. The means for doing is the phenomenological reduction or epoché. It gives the phenomenologist access to the starting point, the “first things,” and orients his/her striving towards reason and the renewal of humanity. Careful attention to the significance of the epoché also sheds light (...) on Husserl’s understanding of the relationship of phenomenology not only to philosophy but also to the other sciences. Though an exposition of the “phenomenology of the philosophical vocation” which Husserl sketched in the 1920s, e.g., in his Kaizo articles and lectures on first philosophy, the author seeks to shore up his thesis. (shrink)

This issue of Ethical Perspectives is strongly illuminated by two themes: moral impulse and critical citizenship. Of course, these themes are related – without a critical faculty, the moral impulse is not possible, and impulse, conversely, can be seen as leading toward critique. This is no vicious circle, nor mere tautology – rather, they are both moments of the truly autonomous individual, where the autonomy of the individual is not seen as isolation, but rather as an individual responsibility to and (...) within a society. Hence, a moral impulse fuelled by the individual critic is not enough; criticism must be framed within critical citizenship.Since our schizophrenic age fears for desensitivity, a fear best expressed in our age’s various flavours of political correctness, while it actively or at least tacitly posits this very desensitivity in its canonization of a purely formal ‘freedom to,’ a canonization best exhibited in the extreme examples of reality television, these intertwined themes are of extreme importance, and thus deserve close explication and discussion.I will let the pieces below provide this discussion, but permit me at least to set the table. As Michael Hauskeller so clearly argues in these pages, moral disgust is the moral impulse towards formal ethics, in the sense that it is the initial and immediate moral reaction that normatively colours our comportment with the outside world. I may know or think I know that something is wrong, or right, without giving this impulse a reason. This is not the ethical certitude of Bradley, but it is close in that both Bradley and Hauskeller would argue that the initial feeling need not be explained away, but rather deserves due respect. Moral disgust can clearly be misplaced, and clearly it can fail to withstand ethical scrutiny, but as impulse, it shakes us out of mere consciousness and moves us toward some sort of normativity. In this sense, it is always morally relevant.Lisa Bortolotti joins this discussion by arguing that no moral justification exists for reserving rights to humans. The moral impulse must be widened. At first, her approach comes across as opting for the typical agenda of preference-satisfaction utilitarianism: she wishes to extend the realm of rights in the name of safeguarding the power of reason and autonomy of individuals, who, she argues, are not always human. But then she offers something atypical in this debate: the very safeguarding of the power of reason and autonomy also applies to those who are often seen as marginal humans and thus excluded from in other strands of preference utilitarianism.Co-authors T. Brian Mooney and Samantha Minett apply the question of moral disgust to the question of life-science art, a new form of expression that merges biotechnology with the aesthetic. Like most forms of art that have emerged in recent generations, life-science art sees its task in the questioning of assumptions, which, of course, is a break from past ideas of aesthetics. Mooney and Minett turn their attention to this nascent field and ask: are there good grounds to translate our putative moral disgust at the fanciful and aesthetic use of biotechnology, such as pigs with wings and glowing rabbits? Turning first to utilitarianism and then to Thomastic virtue ethics, they argue clearly: yes, there are.Christian Arnsperger then kicks off our second related theme by posing a simple but profound question: why do English speakers refer to anti-globalism, whereas French speakers refer to alter-mondalism ? This French viewpoint would seem to call for critical global citizens who do not shirk from the increasing interconnectivity of our world, but who also do not take its current form as the inevitable development of immutable laws. Instead, such critical citizenry is called to see the current capitalist framework as an ideology, and as such, as liable to change, a change that citizens themselves can effect.Moving from theory to practice, Andrew Fiala rounds off this issue by giving us an example of critical citizenry, which he sees in just war pacifism. He argues that citizens must not capitulate to political or military authority in judging the justness of war, either regarding ad bellum judgements, or in bello actions. Moreover, seemingly just ad bellum decisions also deserve close scrutiny, largely because once the fog of war descends, in bello actions quickly eclipse justice. For this reason, he argues, a critical citizen should anticipate war crimes and thus be strongly reluctant to authorize war – an authorization that, in democratic societies, ultimately lies in the hands of the citizens themselves through the electoral process.Thus, this number quite clearly furthers the mission of Ethical Perspectives, which is to promote the international dialogue between fundamental and applied ethics. Providing articles written on three separate continents and addressing three of the most characteristic aspects of our age on top of a background well painted by their companion theoretical pieces, our authors once again invite you to take stock of where our world finds itself today. And then, to take action. (shrink)

This article looks at the Global Christian Forum as a new initiative in the historical context of the modern ecumenical movement and from a Catholic point of view. It puts the GCF in three perspectives: as a new stage in ecumenical development, as part of a turning point in ecumenical history and as a new impulse of the Holy Spirit. By bringing in the Evangelicals and Pentecostals, the GCF has widened the range of church families in conversation with one another. (...) The GCF may begin to make a substantial contribution in the situation since Vatican II in which some critical issues between divided Christians have been solved. The beginning convergence of the two movements that have marked the past century — ecumenical and Pentecostal/evangelical — may be the work of the Holy Spirit. (shrink)

A striking fact of our current literary culture is the estrangement between poets and critics and reviewers of contemporary poetry on the one hand, and proponents of that loosely defined set of doctrines, methodologies, and interests that goes by the name of “theory” on the other. There are individual exceptions to this on both sides, and one can find counterexamples to every generalization I shall suggest here. Nevertheless, anyone familiar with the climates of opinion to be found in English and (...) philosophy departments, poetry workshops and critical symposia, creative writing and cultural studies programs, and the ­ nonacademic counterparts of these—especially among people in their twenties and thirties—has to acknowledge the lack of acquaintance and interest—and often even the disdain and contempt—that characterizes the relations between poets and those engaged in the kind of high-level, quasi-philosophical reflective activity that literature, and poetry in particular, used to occasion. Illustrations are easy to come by. References to modern poetry by younger theorists are typically confined to the high modernists and to poets canonized twenty or thirty years ago in books like Donald Allen’s New American Poetry or Richard Howard’s Alone with American; and their rare allusions to the poetry of their contemporaries often betray a striking lack of familiarity and taste. Conversely, the fact that eighty years after Ezra Pound called for the breaking of everything breakable, a poet as intelligent and conceptually ambitious as Jorie Graham should title a book The End of Beauty, and have the theoretical outlook evoked by the title hailed as radical by as informed a critic as Helen Vendler, surely suggests that the level of reflective awareness in the poetry community is not what it might be.2 1. Quoted in Peter Brazeau, Parts of a World: Wallace Stevens Remembered—An Oral Biography , p. 43.2. See Helen Vendler, “Married to Hurry and Grim Song,” The New Yorker, 27 July 1987, pp. 74-77. John Koethe is professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. His most recent book of poetry is The Late Wisconsin Spring. (shrink)

The New Left and the 1960s is the third volume of Herbert Marcuse's collected papers. In 1964, Marcuse published a major study of advanced industrial society, One Dimensional Man , which was an important influence on the young radicals who formed the New Left. Marcuse embodied many of the defining political impulses of the New Left in his thought and politics - hence a younger generation of political activists looked up to him for theoretical and political guidance. The material (...) collected in this volume provides a rich and deep grasp of the era and the role of Marcuse in the theoretical and political dramas of the day. This volume contains articles, letters, talks, and interviews including: "On the New Left," a transcription of the 1968 talk at the Guardian newspaper's twentieth anniversary; "Reflections on the French Revolution," which contains comments on the 1968 French student and worker uprising; "Liberation from the Affluent Society," which presents Marcuse's contribution to the 1967 Dialectics of Liberations conference; and "United States: Questions of Organization and the Revolutionary Subject," a conversation between Marcuse and the German writer Hans Magnus Enzenberger, published here in English for the first time. Edited by Douglas Kellner, this volume will be of interest to all those previously unfamiliar with Herbert Marcuse, generally acknowledged as a major figure in the intellectual and social mileux of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as to specialists, who will here have access to papers and articles collected in one volume for the first time. (shrink)

Ainslie's insightful treatment of dynamically inconsistent choice stands in contrast to traditional views in psychology, economics, and philosophy. We comment on the form of the discounting function and on new findings regarding choice between delayed rewards. Finally, we argue that the positive correlation between temporal and probability discounting is inconsistent with the view that impulsivity represents a unitary trait.

This paper investigates the stochastically exponential stability of reaction-diffusion impulsive stochastic cellular neural networks. The reaction-diffusion pulse stochastic system model characterizes the complexity of practical engineering and brings about mathematical difficulties, too. However, the difficulties have been overcome by constructing a new contraction mapping and an appropriate distance on a product space which is guaranteed to be a complete space. This is the first time to employ the fixed point theorem to derive the stability criterion of reaction-diffusion impulsive stochastic CNN (...) with distributed time delays. Finally, an example is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods. (shrink)

After the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration released in April 2019 the first empirical images of a black hole, an astrophysical object previously thought “unseeable,” much of the public discourse has approached these images as straightforward visual depictions of a black hole. This article challenges this view by showing that the first images of a black hole went beyond merely making an invisible cosmic object visible and that the images published in April 2019 were just the first in a series of (...) black hole images the researchers continue producing. Drawing primarily on Sybille Krämer’s concept of the cartographic impulse, the article demonstrates that the Event Horizon Telescope images are, first and foremost, epistemic tools. These epistemic tools enable researchers to actively explore various physical aspects and dynamic properties of a black hole’s immediate environment and test theoretical predictions about it, thus making this elusive environment empirically knowable. To demonstrate this, the article analyses the mapping operations that combined automated algorithmic procedures with expert human judgment and through which these images were produced, read, and interpreted. It also examines how the different Event Horizon Telescope images relate to one another, which particular epistemic functions they fulfil in the research context, under which conditions, and with which limitations, thus tracing how these images facilitate the production of new scientific knowledge about black holes. (shrink)

The Greeks have long been regarded as innovators across a wide range of fields in literature, culture, philosophy, politics and science. However, little attention has been paid to how they thought and felt about novelty and innovation itself, and to relating this to the forces of traditionalism and conservatism which were also present across all the various societies within ancient Greece. What inspired the Greeks to embark on their unique and enduring innovations? How did they think and feel about the (...) new? This book represents the first serious attempt to address these issues, and deals with the phenomenon across all periods and areas of classical Greek history and thought. Each chapter concentrates on a different area of culture or thought, while the book as a whole argues that much of the impulse towards innovation came from the life of the polis which provided its setting. (shrink)

Hormonal changes across the menstrual cycle have been shown to influence reward-related motivation and impulsive behaviors. Here, to compare neural mechanisms of cognitive impulse control during the mid-luteal phase (LP) versus during the late follicular phase (FP), we employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with an event-related monetary delay discounting (EMDD) behavioral task (study 1) and then employed resting state (RS)-fMRI (study 2). The imaging data were analyzed and related to behavior-associated neural activation. In study 1, women in the late (...) FP showed a preference for sooner rewards while exhibiting enhanced activity in the dorsal striatum (DS), whereas women in the mid-LP showed a preference for delayed, higher-value rewards with enhanced activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). Discount rate (transformed k) in the EMDD task correlated with functional connectivity (FC) of the DS-dlPFC circuitry, consistent with the possibility that DS-dlPFC circuitry may regulate impulsivity. In study 2, the right dlPFC was significantly more active in mid-LP than in late FP, and this effect was sensitive to estradiol (E2) and relative E2 levels during mid-LP. The magnitude of DS-dlPFC FC correlated negatively with psychometric impulsivity scores during the late FP. These results replicated findings from study 1 and further indicated that relative E2 levels may play an important role in increasing cognitive control during the mid-LP, which provides new insight into the treatment of conditions characterized by hyper-impulsivity, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, Parkinson disease, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. In conclusion, our results suggest that cyclical gonadal hormones affect cognitive control on impulsive behavior periodically, possibility via DS-dlPFC circuitry. (shrink)

Starting point of this article is a tension perceived in postsecular reassessments of religion between a new openness to religion’s meaning and importance and a negative motivation, due to religion’s violent presence. These negative conditions may hinder assessing religion in its fullness and specific character. Further reflection on the right attitude to study religion and a way out of this tension is given by analyzing Paul Ricoeur philosophical approach to religion in The Symbolism of Evil. A detailed investigation of Ricoeur’s (...) text is necessary to find out why he, as a philosopher, turns to religious language for reflecting on what he calls ‘the reality of evil’. The outcome of this study provides a critical perspective for discussing current reassessments of religion, as well as recent debates on the use of the concept of evil. This discussion will focus on the importance of approaching religion as dealing with fundamental existential questions, including when the topic of evil is concerned. Such a deliberate and positive approach to religion does not exclude criticism. A constructive approach to religion like Ricoeur’s seems necessary to really make sense of the ‘postsecular’ perspective as bridging the gap between religious and secular approaches. (shrink)

After Second World War Hans Joachim Iwand reacts upon the experiences during the time of Nazi-Germany with a conception, which deals in a new way with the questions of political ethics. In this conception Iwand criticized the bipolar and traditional pattem of »State and Church« and explores »Society« as a selfcontained and autonomaus theme for political ethics. It is remarkable to see, how lwands approach to »theologia crucis« and the notions of the term »consciene« are now transformed in an pneumaticological (...) way, that opens the ethic for a conception of public responsibility. (shrink)

In this paper I will discuss three areas in which advances in human reproductive technology could occur, their uses and abuses, and their effects on society. First is the potential to drastically increase the success rate and availability of in vitro fertilization and embryo freezing. Second is the ability to perform biopsies on embryos prior to the onset of pregnancy. Finally, I will consider the adding or altering of genes in embryos, commonly referred to as genetic engineering.As new reproductive technologies (...) pass from experimental models into the potential for medical utilization, I believe that it will be important for lawmakers everywhere to avoid the impulse to outlaw procedures that a society believes to be unnatural at a first glance. Rather, I would hope that they can respond thoughtfully with legislation that serves two purposes — to protect the rights of couples to overcome infertility or to reduce the risk of genetic disease in their children-to-be, and more importantly, to protect children-to-be from the abuses that could result from some of the practices that I will discuss. (shrink)

Islam is often associated with anti-consumerism. This study, suggests that a new elite with explicitly Islamist dispositions is being constructed in Turkey and aims to provide evidence that these elites build their identity through consumption that reflects its newfound status which leads to impulsive buying. This paper investigates the relationship of materialism to impulsive buying and the mediating role of status consumption on this association. To analyse whether the new elites differ from the general public in their consumption preferences, two (...) sets of data were collected from a judgmental sample of 267 individuals with explicit Islamist dispositions and a stratified random sample of 413. The results provide empirical evidence to suggest that motivated by materialistic values, the explicitly Islamist individuals with high status consumption tendencies are likely to buy products/services impulsively. (shrink)

The goal of the left has been predominantly libertarian: the realization of equal individual freedom. But now, with the demise of leftist hope for radical change that has followed the collapse of ?really existing?; socialism, the world is converging on a compromise between capitalism and the leftist impulse. This compromise is the democratic, interventionist welfare state, which has gained new legitimacy by virtue of combining a ?realistic?; acceptance of the unfortunate need for the market with an attempt to libertarianize capitalism (...) as much as possible, by intervening in its operation and redistributing the wealth it produces. Since the neoliberal economic critique of socialism seems to have been borne out by the events of 1989, neoliberal economists might now be expected to provide a similar critique of the new interventionist consensus. Yet there are few signs of their interest in doing so. This might be due to their acceptance of an erroneous interpretation of liberty which equates it with capitalist property relations, and which, they believe, provides an overarching moral justification for their opposition to state intervention in the market. Acceptance of this moralistic, ?libertarian?; version of neoliberalism may obscure the need for a synthetic critique of the new consensus which would integrate the many extant consequentialist arguments against it. Before reviewing the libertarian motives behind both socialism and intervention?ism, criticisms of moralistic neoliberal ?libertarianism?; are offered. These are intended to clear the way for a consequentialist critique of the interventionist welfare state. Finally, it is suggested that the problems with such a critique point toward a different project: a critique of the culture that gives rise to interventionism. (shrink)

Elkhonon Goldberg's groundbreaking The Executive Brain was a classic of scientific writing, revealing how the frontal lobes command the most human parts of the mind. Now he offers a completely new book, providing fresh, iconoclastic ideas about the relationship between the brain and the mind. In The New Executive Brain, Goldberg paints a sweeping panorama of cutting-edge thinking in cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology, one that ranges far beyond the frontal lobes. Drawing on the latest discoveries, and developing complex scientific ideas (...) and relating them to real life through many fascinating case studies and anecdotes, the author explores how the brain engages in complex decision-making; how it deals with novelty and ambiguity; and how it addresses moral choices. At every step, Goldberg challenges entrenched assumptions. For example, we know that the left hemisphere of the brain is the seat of language--but Goldberg argues that language may not be the central adaptation of the left hemisphere. Apes lack language, yet many also show evidence of asymmetric hemispheric development. Goldberg also finds that a complex interaction between the frontal lobes and the amygdale--between a recently evolved and a much older part of the brain--controls emotion, as conscious thoughts meet automatic impulses. The author illustrates this observation with a personal example: the difficulty he experienced when trying to pick up a baby alligator he knew to be harmless, as his amygdala battled his effort to extend his hand. In the years since the original Executive Brain, Goldberg has remained at the front of his field, constantly challenging orthodoxy. In this revised and expanded edition, he affirms his place as one of our most creative and insightful scientists, offering lucid writing and bold, paradigm-shifting ideas. (shrink)

This paper traces the changing status of the school as a counter culture in the anthropological and historical literature, in particular from the moment when compulsory mass schooling assumed the function of ideological state apparatus in the post-revolutionary 19th century West. It then focuses attention on what may be called the New School, which could be said to represent an evolved, postmodern embodiment of the social archetype of the school as interruption of the status quo. It emerged in the form (...) of schools initially associated with Romanticism and with socialist libertarian or ‘anarchist’ impulses, and moved, if temporarily, into the educational mainstream in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the left sector of the Progressive Education movement, proliferated in the 1960s and 70s in various school reform movements, and is a constant presence today in the theory and practice of those schools that identify themselves as ‘democratic’. It is based on principles of adult–child dialogue and direct democratic practice. Examples that we have of the New School tend to be characterised by material and activity environments that value variety, emergence, choice, emotional safety, self-initiation and self-organisation; that are multi-sensorial and polysymbolic; and that are organised on the principles associated with mastery learning, social learning theory and play theory—that is, moderate complexity and optimal cognitive arousal as exemplary conditions for learning. (shrink)

The Caster Semenya debacle touched off by the 2009 Berlin World Athletics Championships resulted finally in IOC and IAAF abandonment of sex testing, which gave way to procedures that make female competition eligibility dependent upon the level of serum testosterone, which must be below the male range or instrumentally countered by androgen resistance. We argue that the new policy is unsustainable because (i) the testosterone-performance connection it posits is uncompelling; (ii) testosterone-induced female advantage is not ipso facto unfair advantage; (iii) (...) the new policy reflects the gender policing impulses endemic to sport as well as the broader cultural impulses to monstrify women and to doctor women who have nothing wrong with them; (iv) female?male performance disparities are not the only reason for sex-segregated sport, but co-exist with respectable cultural and practical reasons, which (v) provide a powerful case for allowing athletes to compete in the sex category congruent with their gender identity. (shrink)

_The New Left and the 1960s _is the third volume of Herbert Marcuse's collected papers. In 1964, Marcuse published a major study of advanced industrial society, _One Dimensional Man_, which was an important influence on the young radicals who formed the New Left. Marcuse embodied many of the defining political impulses of the New Left in his thought and politics - hence a younger generation of political activists looked up to him for theoretical and political guidance. The material collected (...) in this volume provides a rich and deep grasp of the era and the role of Marcuse in the theoretical and political dramas of the day. This volume contains articles, letters, talks, and interviews including: "On the New Left," a transcription of the 1968 talk at the Guardian newspaper's twentieth anniversary; "Reflections on the French Revolution," which contains comments on the 1968 French student and worker uprising; "Liberation from the Affluent Society," which presents Marcuse's contribution to the 1967 Dialectics of Liberations conference; and "United States: Questions of Organization and the Revolutionary Subject," a conversation between Marcuse and the German writer Hans Magnus Enzenberger, published here in English for the first time. Edited by Douglas Kellner, this volume will be of interest to all those previously unfamiliar with Herbert Marcuse, generally acknowledged as a major figure in the intellectual and social mileux of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as to specialists, who will here have access to papers and articles collected in one volume for the first time. (shrink)

Jürgen Habermas is well known for his scholarly works on the theoretical foundations of the human sciences. The New Conservatism brings to light another side of Habermas's talents, showing him as an incisive commentator on a wide range of contemporary themes.The 1980s have been a crucial decade in the political life of the Federal Republic of Germany. The transformations that accompanied a shift from 13 years of Social Democratic rule to government by the conservative Christian Democrats are captured in this (...) series of insightful, often passionate political and cultural commentaries. The central theme uniting the essays is the German problem of "coming to terms with the past," a problem that has important implications outside Germany as well.Of particular note are the essays on what has come to be known as the Historians' Debate: Habermas's attack on the revisionist German historians who have been trying to trivialize and "normalize" the history of the Nazi period, and his defense of the need for a realistic and discriminating coining to terms with the past in Germany. Habermas also takes up the recent fracas concerning Martin Heidegger's involvement with Nazism and the rise of the neoconservative movement in Europe and America. In particular, the essay on "The New Obscurity" combines Habermas's analysis of the problems of the welfare state with his suggestions for avenues open to utopian impulses today.Jürgen Habermas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt. The New Conservatism is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy. (shrink)

Throughout the twentieth century black economic development strategies have been hampered by a failure to address the basic liberatory impulse of the black community. By that I mean there has been a disjunction between the essential developmental seeds of the community, many of which can be spelled out in fairly precise terms, and the programs and achievements of economic development strategists. This problem is demonstrated in the longstanding wretched conditions faced by the majority of black people1 and in the abundance (...) of marginal programs, projects and institutions that serve more to mollify than to develop. The absence of a truly liberatory strategy is obscured in part by the general cacophony about alternatives and the pervasive opportunism and malaise among would-be strategists and doers. (shrink)

This text lays out the purpose of the current issue on shifting borders and identities. It places this question in the context of the formation of macro-regional blocs and the end of bipolarization. It moves towards showing the repercussions of this context for the functioning of border zones and the identities they have fashioned over the long period of modern history. The article aims to reveal the emergence of the dogmatism of the religion of capital beneath the new faces of (...) a multifaceted anthropological culturalism. As a result of an unprecedented media exposure on a worldwide scale, this seems to be turning into the new model for understanding the great world events, which are being taken over by a number of political actors without any real discernment. One of the chief features of our collection of articles is that they highlight the fact that the contributing authors, while belonging to different schools of thought, have all tried to stand apart from them or at least show they have limits. To conclude, in taking its inspiration from the work of Jacques Derrida, this article would like to provide some keys to reading and understanding. (shrink)

Based on a condensed historical overview of management as an artifact, the article argues that management is still suffused by an implicit paradigm of value extraction that is ideologically and culturally tinted and that we need to find a new foothold in theory and practice, a more universally valid approach with an encompassing awareness of societal well-being and long-term impact. The radically new approach proposed is based on free energy minimization, a concept from computational neuroscience, as a universally valid principle (...) derived from the biological imperative to survive that holds true for individuals and social systems alike. In order to reduce harmful free energy from entropy and stochastic adversity, an amplified way of perceiving and being aware of reality is required that needs to be cultivated. This is achieved through the guiding principle of Minding, an ongoing process of inner and outer awareness and caring consideration of oneself, others and the world around us, routed in a comprehensive consciousness including awareness of Body sensations, Emotions, Thoughts and Action impulses (BETA). This comprehensive, strategic awareness is proposed as a unifying, contextual framework for individual and collective well-being rather than a categorical imperative, and therefore may, when and where indispensable, include value extraction and value maximization if required for the overall objective of shared, long-term flourishing. The article also presents examples of implementation of the proposed approach for both individuals and organizations and briefly introduces MBSAT-Mindfulness-based Strategic Awareness Training, a training protocol designed specifically to enhance the competence of Minding, the guiding principle. (shrink)

This work introduces a three-dimensional, highly nonlinear quadratic oscillator with no linear terms in its equations. Most of the quadratic ordinary differential equations such as Chen, Rossler, and Lorenz have at least one linear term in their equations. Very few quadratic systems have been introduced and all of their terms are nonlinear. Considering this point, a new quadratic system with no linear term is introduced. This oscillator is analyzed by mathematical tools such as bifurcation and Lyapunov exponent diagrams. It is (...) revealed that this system can generate different behaviors such as limit cycle, torus, and chaos for its different parameters’ sets. Besides, the basins of attractions for this system are investigated. As a result, it is revealed that this system’s attractor is self-excited. In addition, the analog circuit of this oscillator is designed and analyzed to assess the feasibility of the system’s chaotic solution. The PSpice simulations confirm the theoretical analysis. The oscillator’s time series complexity is also investigated using sample entropy. It is revealed that this system can generate dynamics with different sample entropies by changing parameters. Finally, impulsive control is applied to the system to represent a possible solution for stabilizing the system. (shrink)

The most “cheer” spread by this year’s offerings, if we stretch the point, was to be found in anumber of uncertain nods to the persistence and endurance of the human capacity for–beinghuman. Considering No Country For Old Men, Redacted and their anxious ilk, this might havebeen of some consolation if it were not for the way even the more affirmative entriessimultaneously evoked crushing environmental and personal obstacles between us and our finerideals and impulses. The films discussed below whistle in (...) the dark of war, murder, fanaticism,adultery, and/or abandonment. Though they generally made their way with the aid of gorgeouscinematography, editing, sound design, and frame compositions, to achieve their modicum of reassurance, they each get stuck in or play with the implications of painful or questionable philosophical perspectives. (shrink)

Today a natural ball lightning (BL) phenomenon has not yet correct physical and philosophical explanation. This article is directed on a new exotic version of the occurrence and behavior of ball lightning. BL consists of a bulk air mixture—neutral air molecules, negative and positive aero ions. BL arise on linear lightning tracks due to the primary ionization of the atmosphere and the secondary effects of atmospheric light aero ions arisen. The emerging electrostatic surface tension forces form a volumetric gas drop, (...) in which the significant electrical energy of the “ball capacitor” is concentrated. The long lifetime of aero ions provides time stability of gas ball. As a rule, a BL gradually discharges and disappears due to recombination processes, emitting a weak cold glow. The explosion of BL occurs with an external destabilizing effect on its structure. First of all, this is contact with a source of free electrons—any conductive objects and surfaces, including the human body. The impulse powerful discharge of “ball capacitor” is very dangerous for human. Some other properties of BL are also discussing in this philosophical note. (shrink)

In this paper, we first present a generalization of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. As an application of our result, we obtain a new sufficient condition for the stability of a class of nonlinear impulsive control systems. We end up this note with a numerical example which shows the effectiveness of our method.

This book consists of ten chapters, an Introduction, and an Appendix. Of these twelve sections, eight have appeared previously. Although in the Acknowledgments he writes that "the essays have been revised for publication in this volume," the Introduction is more honest when it admits the failure of his "original plan... to rewrite essays in order to relate a coherent narrative". The disdain for coherence and narrative unity is of course part of what Bernstein calls the "'modern/postmodern' Stimmung", and the title's (...) use of composite terms, as well as the guiding concepts of "constellation" and "force-field" borrowed from the Frankfurt School via Martin Jay demonstrate the author's attempts at a sympathetic engagement with a direction of thought that is obviously at odds with his deepest philosophical impulses. Viewed as a whole, the book bears a strong resemblance to the The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity of Habermas, a philosopher with whose work Bernstein has long been identified and who is prominently mentioned in the Acknowledgments. Three introductory chapters precede a chapter on Heidegger in which a lengthy and sympathetic textual discussion is followed by a shorter, harsh judgment of Heidegger's silence concerning the criminality of the National Socialist regime, and of the connection of this ethical failure with his philosophy. Bernstein follows, as does Habermas, with chapters on Foucault and Derrida, in addition to one on the Derrida-Habermas controversy itself which arose from the publication of Habermas's book. Rather than treating Bataille, Bernstein devotes two chapters to the political implications of Richard Rorty's recent writings, and Bernstein also concludes with two chapters on his own position, the first proposing a rehabilitation of determinate negation, and the second outlining his pragmatic "engaged fallibilistic pluralism" based on a "model of dialogical encounter". Nietzsche, for Habermas the "turning point" of modernity, is thematically absent from Bernstein's book. This is emblematic of the collection as a whole, robbing postmodernism of its philosophical point and encouraging treatment of it as a "pervasive, amorphous mood". The thrust of Bernstein's analysis is less theoretical than Habermas's though often dependent on Habermas's conclusions. Replacing his previous focus on praxis with one on ethos, Bernstein is especially concerned with ethical and political implications of the positions he examines. The level of Bernstein's ethical-political "analysis," however, is concrete in what often seems to be an arbitrary way. He is indulgent of Foucault and Derrida, but Rorty is warned about his similarity to "neo-conservatives" and "[Daniel] Bell and his fellow travelers". Nothing is said about Derrida's ambiguous apologias for Heidegger and Paul de Man as exercises in the ethics of deconstruction. Bernstein notes similarities between Rorty's irony and Mussolini's cynicism, but is silent about Foucault's advocacy of Khomeini's Islamic revolution. Perhaps most bizarrely, Bernstein notes at the beginning of chapter 4 that "throughout his writings, Heidegger typically uses masculine forms of speech. To avoid artificiality, I have followed his usage". Needless to say, this "usage" is not "typical" only of Heidegger. The question of the ethical and political implications of postmodernism is certainly a deeply significant one. But this is philosophy that is "political" in a way that many will find repugnant as well as unedifying. Despite all talk of a "new constellation" and "openness to the Other," many--not only those who are familiar with Bernstein's previous publications--who sit down with this book will find themselves faced with the same old thing.--Robert Rethy, Xavier University. (shrink)

Drawing on past and current research in continental philosophy, Measures of Science: Theological and Technological Impulses in Early Modern Thought examines the development of certain founding issues of early modern science. Focusing on three key seventeenth-century figures--Descartes, Bacon, and Newton--and locating his argument explicitly within the approach of Alexandre Koyre, James Barry Jr. explores the philosophical, theological, and technological priorities that established the frame for the full emergence of the new science. In showing how the work of these and (...) other seventeenth-century figures led to the appearance of a dominant new view of nature and perception, Barry's book makes an important contribution to our understanding of the formative period of modern science. (shrink)

Previous chapter The notion of rhuthmos slowly reappeared in the second half of the 19th century through various and sometimes very complicated paths. In the 1850s and 1860s Baudelaire and Wagner explicitly belittled “rhythm” they asso­ciated with “meter” and “architecture” and preferred to cele­brate “har­mo­ny” and “melody” considered as more fit to grasp the “lyrical impulses of the soul.” In The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music though, Nietzsche equally praised “rhythm” and “harmony” - Sur le concept (...) de rythme – Nouvel article. (shrink)

The source of the following considerations is the observation that academic philosophy at universities does not fit well with philosophy education processes, e.g., those at school. Both sides seem to be separate from each other. I assume that the two areas rely on two very different concepts of philosophy. To work out a concept of philosophy more appropriate to the educational context, I methodically apply the practical turn to our philosophising in very different contexts. Moreover, I elaborate that it is (...) precisely the modern scientific paradigm that underlies philosophy as scientific practice and that the former represents a problematic con-striction of philosophising in educational contexts. For where the ideal is objective scientific knowledge — from which everything subjective has been removed — there can be no deeper transformation of the subject through philosophy. My thesis is that philosophy is better suited to the educational context as transformative and not as scientific practice. As a consequence, the question arises as to whether the study of philosophy on teacher training courses needs a new impulse in the direction of philosophy as transformative practice. (shrink)

I argue that the absence of some of the ‘greatest hits’ of Western philosophy in Classical China can be explained by a Wittgensteinian take on the role of language in philosophy. One is the ‘Idea Theory’ of meaning which anchors Western Mind-Body dualism. Its attraction is removed when the writing reminds us that a picture does not by itself ‘give life to’ our language even while it plays a role of cross-linguistic communication. Another is the centrality of a law-command theory (...) of normativity which combines with mind-body dualism to give a natural push toward monotheistic supernaturalism. Western attempts to make the ‘God’ impulse logical (e.g., the Ontological Argument) fail because of differences in Chinese syntax. The upshot is we need not deny Chinese thinkers the status of philosophers for their failure to share our philosophical presuppositions and resultant agenda. (shrink)

In 1825, Johann Theodor Voemel published Nicholas of Methone’s Refutatio institutionis theologicae Procli Platonici. Thus, for the first time an important document of Byzantine philosophy became accessible to researchers, which also allowed important insights into the medieval history of the reception of Proclus’ Institutio theologica in the Byzantine Empire. The essay reconstructs the genesis of this edition and the history of its early reception. While it focuses on Creuzer’s contribution to the publication of Refutatio, it also takes the achievements of (...) Johann Theodor Voemel and Carl Ullmann into consideration. In so doing, the essay provides new findings concerning the study of Neoplatonism during the classical period of German philosophy. (shrink)

A look at history showed that theology always has to face contemporary demands in terms of its scientific character. At present, processes of pluralisation and secularisation challenge the existence of theology at universities not only against the background of religious studies, which are independent of the churches, but also, for example, in relation to innovative life sciences or cognitive sciences. In this context, an essential point to consider was that theology – like social systems in general and science in particular (...) – is characterised by an increasing differentiation. This differentiation of science implied an increasing specialisation of research, which could also be observed in the field of theology and its sub-disciplines. This article accordingly addressed the question of how, in the face of increasingly specialised research studies, the unity of theology can be justified beyond abstract and sweeping determinations. The present contribution suggested that in this respect a model of research designs developed in religious didactics might prove useful. This model of research design could essentially be understood as consisting of three research dimensions that define a research space, in which the research study on the didactics of religion can be located in the three-dimensional space by the research goal as a formatting factor. The three dimensions of this model, including the research goal, seemed to be broad enough to be tested in other sub-disciplines of theology as well to see whether their research can be more closely defined with them.Contribution: Accordingly, the contribution of this article was to raise the question, in view of an increasing specialisation of theological research, to what extent a model of research designs developed in the didactics of religion could be transferred to other sub-disciplines of theology. Should this succeed a new approach to justifying the unity of theology could become available, which is able to take into account the current differentiation of theology. (shrink)

We study the dynamical behavior of multiple quasi-synchronization of a type of fractional-order coupled neural networks with delay and uncertain parameters. By utilizing the pinned pulse control strategy technique, we establish a new pulse controller, which realizes the multiple quasisynchronization of the system. Furthermore, we derive some new criteria of multiple quasisynchronization by using the comparison principle and mathematical analysis. Eventually, simulations are carried out with two examples to explicate the effectiveness of the conclusions.

The browser wars case is a useful springboard for considering the principle of positive competition and the proper regulation of platform technologies. There are lessons to be culled about policy, the application of antitrust law, and the parameters of fair competition. We argue that despite Microsofts opportunistic exploitation of its proprietary code, policy makers should resist the temptation to mandate an open source code model. Vigilant anti-trust enforcement is a preferable alternative. But courts must refrain from using antitrust law to (...) favor small innovators or to constrain the economic protections inherent in intellectual property rights, since those rights are still needed to encourage innovation. On the other hand, despite the exigencies of competition, platform leaders should respect the norm of fair competition and refrain from the impulse to tilt the platform in their favor. Preservation of robust intellectual property rights, deft application of antitrust statutes, and principled competition represent the best prescription for social wealth in the New Economy. (shrink)

Understanding how people behave when facing hazardous situations, how intrinsic and extrinsic factors influence the risk taking (RT) decision making process and to what extent it is possible to modify their reactions externally, are questions that have long interested academics and society in general. In the spheres of Occupational Safety and Health (OSH), the military, finance and sociology, this topic has multidisciplinary implications because we all constantly face risk taking situations. Researchers have hitherto assessed risk taking profiles by conducting questionnaires (...) prior to and after the presentation of stimuli; however, this can lead to the production of biased, non-realistic, risk taking profiles. This is due to the reflexive nature of choosing an answer in a questionnaire, which is remote from the reactive, emotional and impulsive decision making processes inherent to real, risky situations. One way to address this question is to exploit VR capabilities to generate immersive environments that recreate realistic seeming but simulated hazardous situations. We propose VR as the next-generation tool to study risk taking processes, taking advantage of the big four families of metrics which can provide objective assessment methods with high ecological validity: the real-world risks approach (high presence VR environments triggering real-world reactions), embodied interactions (more natural interactions eliciting natural behaviours), stealth assessment (unnoticed real-time assessments offering efficient behavioural metrics) and physiological real-time measurement (physiological signals avoiding subjective bias). Additionally, VR can provide an invaluable tool, after the assessment phase, to train in skills related to risk taking due to its transferability to real-world situations. (shrink)

The decade after the attacks of 9/11 and the fall of the World Trade Center saw a proliferation of New York-themed literary anthologies from a wide range of publishers. With titles like Poetry After 9/11, Manhattan Sonnet, Poems of New York, Writing New York, and I Speak of the City, these texts variously reflect upon their own post-9/11 plurivocality as preservative, regenerative, and reconstructive. However, the work of such anthologies is more complex than filling with plurivocality the physical and emotional (...) hole of Ground Zero. These regional collections operate on the dilemma of all anthologies: that between collecting and editing. Every anthology, and every anthologist, negotiates the relationship between what is present and what is missing. In light of some of the emerging and established scholarship on the history of the English-language anthology, this article reads closely the declarative paratexts and the silent but equally powerful canonical choices of several different post-9/11 poetry anthologies. In so doing, the article comes to suggest the ways the anthology’s necessary formal incorporation of absence and presence, rather than its plurivocality alone, connects collections of New York’s literature to the fraught discourse of memorialization and rebuilding at the site of the World Trade Center. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Valerius Maximus and the Rhetoric of the New NobilityPatrick SinclairW. Martin Bloomer. Valerius Maximus and the Rhetoric of the New Nobility. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992. viii + 287 pp. Cloth, $39.95.A new book on an imperfectly understood and neglected author is always welcome, and without a doubt this one makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of Valerius within the cultural and social conditions (...) in which he lived. The virtue of Bloomer’s work over earlier studies lies in his impulse to view Valerius’ collection of exempla as conditioned by the needs of its readers. Bloomer correctly emphasizes that Valerius’ stories largely derive from a common stock of episodes and anecdotes that was cultivated throughout the education system and especially by the declaimers. Bloomer scrutinizes the rhetorical structure Valerius gives to his individual exempla and his work as a whole, since it is in this structure that one sees the authentic stamp of Valerius’ own interests and, presumably, those of his readership. Bloomer sets out to use the evidence for Valerius’ method of organization, his handling of politically sensitive subjects, and his overt statements of his purpose to interpret Valerius’ work within its cultural context. But there are signs that Bloomer’s methodology may be at odds with itself—a conflict, moreover, that arises from and reflects the current rift among professional classicists about the relationship of traditional philological methods of analysis to the newer criteria of cultural studies (a subject much too large to address in this review).Bloomer has organized his book into six chapters with titled subdivisions, a bibliography, and an index. The first two introductory chapters are the most successful in reconciling methodologies. In chapter 1 Bloomer sketches what we know of the life of Valerius, describes his work, and characterizes the milieu in and for which Facta et Dicta Memorabilia was composed. Bloomer’s initial description of Valerius’ endeavor as one of “culling 967 stories from various authors and arranging them under categorical headings” (1) catches the ancient author in what is his most significant activity for Bloomer: excerpting, abstracting, shaping, and labeling exemplary anecdotes for the uses of declaimers. Bloomer discusses the scanty autobiographical information Valerius supplies at 2.6.8, but he is more interested in discerning the type of audience which must have been interested in Valerius’ collection of exempla. Bloomer’s view is that Valerius [End Page 151] wrote for “students and practitioners of declamation” (1), for whom he “provided a stock of rhetorical illustrations” and whom he taught by the example of his text how to “introduce, join and conclude such stories” (2). One might well have compared the no less exemplary habits of M. Porcius Latro, the elder Seneca’s paragon of declaimers in his generation. Latro (“Pilferer”?) controlled in his memory a prodigious cache of rhetorical structuring devices, including epiphonemata, enthymemes, commonplaces, and sententiae, and he regularly rehearsed these for deployment in his declamations (Controv. 1 praef. 23). More mention of Valerius’ relation to “flesh and blood” declaimers like Latro would give a fuller picture of his historical context.Bloomer identifies Valerius’ subject as the “classical past,” through which he conveys “the sensation of human nature observed, condensed, and communicated, all in an elevated if at times abstract Latin prose style.” Valerius’ work attests to the success of declamation at Rome, and it serves the practical needs of its readers in its attempt to alleviate the burden of acquiring a compendious knowledge of classical texts by serving as an abbreviated “vehicle of instruction and acculturation into the elite of Tiberian Rome” (4). Now tailoring oneself to the political and cultural climate of Tiberian Rome could involve a certain amount of risk and require a large measure of compromise, to judge by the accounts of the ancient historians. Tacitus documents several declaimers who rose socially through Sejanus’ sponsorship (e.g., Junius Otho and Bruttedius Niger, Ann. 3.66). After the fall of Sejanus, an eques Romanus named M. Terentius drew the conclusion that “tibi [sc. Tiberio] summum rerum iudicium di dedere, nobis obsequii gloria relicta est” (Tac. Ann. 6.8.4; Dio 58.19). This was the lesson of those... (shrink)

In previous decades, a regrettable divorce has arisen between two currents of theorizing and research about knowledge and science: the Mannheimian and Wittgensteinian traditions. The radical impulse of the new social studies of science in the early 1970s was initiated not by followers of Mannheim, but by Wittgensteinians such as Kuhn, Bloor, and Collins. This paper inquires whether this Wittgensteinian program is not presently running into difficulties that might be resolved to some extent by reverting to a more traditional and (...) broader agenda of research. A social theory of knowledge (or social epistemology) along Mannheimian lines would not only reinstate the "magic triangle" of epistemology, sociology, and ethics, and hence revive the vexed problem of "ideology critique," but would also need to reincorporate the social analysis of science into a broader macrosocial theory about the "knowledge society.". (shrink)

The field of study we call Classics is an ideological construction. It assumes that the Greece and Rome of antiquity belong to the modern West in some singular, privileged way, as our antiquity, their works our classics, and that these civilizations were largely self-invented. In this antiquity there are no diaspora, no hybrids, no minorities, often no women or slaves. Democratic, philosophical Athens is the antitype of a cosmopolis: hermetic, autochthonous, owing nothing to the civilizations of Africa, India, or the (...) Near East. But the classical lines of demarcation and exclusion have eroded under globalization. We are beginning to understand how antiquity was everywhere mixed and riven by difference. DuBois envisions a new classical studies, less insular, engaged with larger debates in the humanities. She brings a classical scholar’s expert knowledge on Alexander, Epimenides, Oedipus, Sparticus, and St. Paul to bear on questions in the work of Agamben, Badiou, Butler, Negri, and Rancière. She reads Sapho, and exposes the impulse of scholarship to efface the traces of the past, transfixed by an imaginary original. They might better study the forces of fragmentation and the genealogy of canons. She studies the politics and religion of dramatic tragedy in Athens, and finds resources to undermine a neoconservative account of the stability, superiority, and homogeneity of Western civilization. (shrink)

A fetish is a specific emotionally loaded object, body part, or situation that draws our attention and desire, and sexual fetishism is the sexual arousal that a person experiences when in contact with such a loaded object. Until now, psychology has had trouble understanding the distinctive lust objects and the orchestration of urges in the world of fetishism, so fetishism has therefore fallen into the category of perversions and abnormal behavior. In this study, fetishism is moved to the field of (...) aesthetics, and a new theory is presented: Fetishism is the attraction to certain species-specific key stimuli that are perceived as especially beautiful and exciting. A topic or an object that contains important key stimuli automatically becomes a power object or a fetish. Therefore, we have to look into the innate sensibilities on which our aesthetics are based and into the micro-processes of the aesthetic impulse to understand why something captivates and fascinates us in a fetishist way. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 34.3 (2001) 207-224 [Access article in PDF] Virtual Witnessing and the Role of the Reader in a New Natural Philosophy Richard Cunningham [Figures]How did the self-described new natural philosophies of the early modern period displace other philosophic (moral, ethical, legal), and specifically religious, discourses as the locus of truth in our culture? Natural philosophy's rejection of disputation and of revelation as means of producing truth in (...) favor of the "discovery" of truth was more accurately an introduction of the invention of truth than of its discovery, and this invention demanded the creation of and participation of a certain kind of reader. Rhetorical examination of the early modern magnetic philosopher William Gilbert's most influential work, De Magnete, 1 will help us understand the "paradigm change," to use Thomas Kuhn's oft-misquoted term, 2 from a culture that accepted probabilistic truth in the natural realm to one that expected moral certainty, from a culture that accepted revelation as a legitimate means of access to truth to one that increasingly recognized only the "discovery" of truth through sensual experience disciplined through experiment.One way this paradigm change was effected was through the inclusion of the reader as an active participant in the new natural philosophies. The reader was included in the new natural philosophies by engendering in him desires for particular forms of knowledge and particular ways of attaining that knowledge. Peter Dear notes that "in the seventeenth century old practices changed and new ones appeared. Those changing practices represent shifts in the meaning of experience itself" (12-13), and he then asks the question that might well have been on the tongues of many as the old practices gave way to the new: "how can a universal knowledge-claim about the natural world be justified on the basis of singular items of individual experience?" (13). A crucially important way to justify the universal knowledge-claim on singular items of individual experience [End Page 207] was through the employment of a technique Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer have labeled "virtual witnessing" (60-65). Briefly, "virtual witnessing" describes the use of linguistic resources to produce a vicarious experience enabling a reader to confer agreement as though she had actually been present when an experiment was conducted. Virtual witnessing alone, however, cannot explain how the scientific became the dominant truth-producing paradigm in our culture. Virtual witnessing intermingled with a variety of other elements in early modern natural philosophy to encourage readers to participate in the invention of "true" accounts of the world in which we live. In this article I will apply the tools of rhetorical analysis as I use the example of De Magnete to elaborate on how a Foucauldian form of disciplinary impulse combined in the early modern period with the technology of virtual witnessing to create an audience inculcated with desire, interest, and belief in the new natural philosophy, which had to precede and accompany expansion of the scientific into the dominant truth-producing paradigm it has long since become.For the sake of clarity I should expound upon the two key elements of my argument, "discipline," in the Foucauldian sense in which I use the term, and "virtual witnessing." According to Michel Foucault, "discipline" is "a political anatomy of detail... situated on the axis that links the singular and the multiple" (139-49), and I argue that this point, on the "axis that links the singular and the multiple," is exactly the point that enables modern science. William Gilbert's De Magnete can help us understand how knowledge and power--or epistemê and technê, to use another, perhaps more rhetorically inflected, vocabulary--combined in the early modern period to produce the effects that would become those of modern science. Gilbert provides an excellent example of the movement from the production of truth through revelation to the production of truth through discovery and the experimental method. De Magnete persuades its reader by rendering visible a formerly invisible "universal nature," 3 so that truth is no longer warranted by the invisible workings... (shrink)

Cultural Writing. This classic of alternative art theory is available again in this second edition. Dick Higgins was co-founder of Happenings and later Fluxus. He was active in music, studying with John Cage and Henry Cowell and is the author of many books of poetry including Buster Keaton Enters Into Paradise (Left Hand) and Book About Love And Death (Something Else), also available from SPD. From his early (1964) essay on Intermedia, which gave the term to the language, up through (...) the his influential essay on the concept of an allusive referential, the impulse of his work was to describe rather than to prescribe. These essays continue to offer tools which may be useful in developing theories and opinions for the next generation of artists, writers and critics. A Dialectic Of Centuries is book to work within the new century. (shrink)