The article reviews current historical research on the life and work of Max Weber. The completion of the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works) by the Mohr Siebeck publishing house not only made it possible to put a new textual basis behind the systematization of Weber’s legacy — which is key for a general theoretical grounding and self-explanation of sociology — but also elevated historical and biographical studies devoted to Weber. This has been achieved by introducing many new sources and clarifying (...) old ones. The article is based on an analysis of Weber’s most recent intellectual biography published in 2019. It was written by Gangolf Hübinger, a German academic and a member of the MWG editorial staff since 2004. Hübinger’s book presents Weber’s life as a convergence of some concentric circles that revolve around several major themes. Among them are social and cultural features of “organized modernity” as the turning point era in the history of the West; the formative years of Weber as an individual and a scholar; the intellectualization of modernity and its consequences; Weber’s invention of a new academic discipline, political sociology; the intellectual networks with which Weber was involved as a scholar and politician. An important advantage of this new biography is that it provides a detailed description of the current study of Weber’s theoretical legacy and the prospects for the development of a “Weberian paradigm” in today’s social science and humanities. (shrink)

First comprehensive introduction to information theory explores the work of Shannon, McMillan, Feinstein, and Khinchin. Topics include the entropy concept in probability theory, fundamental theorems, and other subjects. 1957 edition.

T. Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions has repeatedly been the subject of criticism. It is important to note that Kuhn pays very limited attention to the phenomenon of the scientific revolution itself, comparing the revolution either with a religious conversion or with a gestalt switch. Such comparisons, however, are very superficial. This paper outlines a new understanding of the scientific revolution as a result of the resonance of the intellectual trends of the early modern period. It was the quasi-simultaneous action (...) of various factors that led to revolutionary changes in natural philosophy, which, in turn, gave rise to the actual scientific revolution. In addition, the article shows that the Copernican Revolution cannot be described within the model of scientific revolution developed by T. Kuhn. Ptolemy’s theory was mathematically constructed so that it could not make inaccurate predictions of planetary motion, because – as we are now clear – the function characterizing the trajectory of planetary motion was actually represented as a Fourier series. The Copernican revolution was not a Kuhn-type scientific revolution, nor was it caused by the empirical failures of Ptolemaic astronomy. Events unfolded according to a different scheme. Copernicus set out to carry out the principle of the uniform circular motion of the planets more consistently than had been done in Ptolemy’s theory, at the same time presenting to this theory those requirements of an aesthetic and methodological order, which the cognitively fragmented system of Ptolemy, for all its flexibility, could not satisfy and, by the conditions of its creation, could not satisfy. In addition, the article shows that Copernicus, in constructing his heliocentric theory, was essentially seeking answers to the challenges that Alberti’s artificial perspective and Nicholas of Cusa’s theological speculation posed to the visual experience in the sixteenth century. (shrink)

У статті проаналізовано вчення П'єра Абеляра в частині його впливу на виокремлення світської сфери знання з тотально релігійного середньовічного дискурсу. Схоластична теологія, творцем якої є Абеляр, розглядається автором статті як специфічний результат філософського мислення в граничних екзистенційних обставинах та маркер секулярних зрушень у середньовічній християнській культурі.

The article is devoted to Berdyaev's first Italian journey, which had a "tremendous influence" both on his creative destiny and on the development of his aesthetic views. It is significant that one of the defining motives for visiting Italy was his desire to "return to his homeland impressed by the greatest beauty"! Since the first journey of the philosopher was connected with Florence, it seemed appropriate to pay due attention to the achievements of this city and its decisive contribution to (...) the formation and development of the culture of the Renaissance. The formation of revivalist principles in Florentine literature and fine arts is shown; the formation of theory (Alberti) and the history of art (Vasari), as well as a number of cultural phenomena accompanying these processes, which ultimately determined the artistic and aesthetic appearance of Florence and turned it into the capital of the Italian Renaissance. As a result, this makes it possible to fully understand and appreciate Berdyaev’s choice of this particular city, especially since Florence not only made “the strongest impression” on him, but also became the “key” to understanding both Florentine art proper and artistic-aesthetic culture Italian Renaissance. This is the first attempt in Russian literature to consider and analyze Berdyaev's Florentine journey as one of the sources of his creative heritage, which has not yet become the subject of special study. The relevance of topic is also determined by the existing confusion on this issue, which the article is aimed at overcoming. (shrink)

This article contextualizes an old debate about the extent of knowledge of Latin by John Lydus, a state official and an erudite from sixth-century Constantinople, within a broader issue of the role of Latin in early Byzantium. It is argued here that Lydus’ startling etymological explanations had no relation to his level of knowledge of Latin, but reflected the declining official use of Latin in Byzantium by resurrecting the theory about Latin as a dialect of Greek.

The article formulates some aspects concerning the nature and structure of scientific revolutions. As a reference example, the scientific (more precisely, natural-philosophical) revolution of the 16th-17th centuries (SR1) was taken, which in turn became part of the intellectual revolution of the Early Modern period. It is shown that SR1 is not at all monodirectional and not predetermined in its milestones process, when the break with the Aristotelian tradition automatically cleared the way to the new science and philosophy. In reality, there (...) was an intellectual war, the outcome of which was by no means known to any of the opposing sides in advance. In the article eight factors are noted that contributed to the SR1: 1) weakening ideological control on the part of the Church; 2) chaotization and fragmentation of intellectual space; 3) the redundancy of the intellectual resource for the emergence of innovative theories and practices; 4) the presence of intellectual reserve (the legacy of classical Antiquity and the Hellenistic era, as well as the scholastic method); 5) the flow of new information not embedded in traditional world picture and practices; 6) weakening the requirements for the validity of the hypotheses put forward and the rigor of reasoning, declining (delution) the rationality of cognitive activity and behavior; 7) local breakthrough (as seed impulse) in one of the areas of knowledge (heliocentric theory); 8) the possibility of developments a nd tendencies of the proper natural-philosophical revolution to develop in the tideway (in a shell) of innovative concepts, methodologies and practices that have arisen in unscientific spheres (culture, politics, economics, theology, etc.). (shrink)

Against the backdrop of the fate of the generation that peaked between the 1970s and 1990s, this article discusses the possibility of linking times of disintegration even when the machine of a powe...

Recently, we have faced the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 in the world, which has attracted the attention of all people. Stress has become a word familiar to all people. The stressors of life are relatively clear and some of them cannot be eliminated by humans. One of the stressors in the life of humans is the COVID-19 pandemic. Doctors believe that the virus is controllable but its prevalence is quicker and deadlier than other viruses. In addition, the virus (...) puts the elderly and those with underlying diseases at extreme risk. Therefore, more care is seriously required to protect members of society. However, this psychological imbalance caused by the virus is associated with stress and anxiety. Lack of proper management of this stress will be associated with emotional impacts, physiological impacts, cognitive impacts and behavioural impact.Contribution: Given the importance of this topic, this study aimed to evaluate the relationship between religious beliefs and coping with COVID-19-related stress amongst Muslim students in three cities of Russia – Ingushetia, Chechnya and the Republic of Dagestan – in 2020. Data were collected using questionnaires, the validity and reliability of which were previously confirmed. According to the results, religious beliefs had an impact on stress coping by p = 0.657. In other words, students’ ability to cope with stress improved by 0.657 units, with each unit of enhancement in their religious beliefs. (shrink)

Following the idea first expressed by Heinrich Swoboda, there is a general perception that the meaning of ἀτιμία in Athens eventually evolved from the original ‘outlawry’, when an ἄτιμος was liable to being deprived of his property and slayed with impunity if he returned to the land from which he had been banished, into a certain limitation on civic status, which has often been rendered as a ‘disfranchisement’. Specific outcomes of this later form of ἀτιμία varied depending on the dating (...) and circumstances of individual cases, thereby giving rise to theories of a so-called full – or ‘total’ – and partial ἀτιμία. Still, whether it was viewed as ‘full’ or ‘partial’, this ἀτιμία did not inflict the death penalty. The precise dating of the transformation of ἀτιμία has also been debated, with opinions ranging from pre-Solonian times (L'Homme-Wéry) to the late sixth (Swoboda, Hansen, Manville) or the late fifth century (Scafuro). While the exact dating is unknown, this transformation was definitely over in the fifth century, when inscriptions and literary texts mentioned punishment by ἀτιμία alongside the death penalty and the confiscation of property. Thus, according to Raphael Sealey, ἀτιμία evolved ‘from a more severe to a milder sense’, and Alick R.W. Harrison pointed to the evidence that, by the fourth century, any willing Athenian could seize an ἄτιμος who happened to be in Athenian territory and surrender him to the θεσμοθέται, instead of killing him. (shrink)

The author conducts a comparative analysis of the Russian Revolution developed by two prominent social-political thinkers of Germany and Russia in the early twentieth century—Max Weber and Peter Struve. The article focuses on their respective interpretations of the causes, course, and consequences of the Revolution as determined by their political ideals, i.e. a specific combination of nationalism and liberalism. The author pays special attention to Weber’s and Struve’s perception of the Russian Revolution, which, albeit for different reasons, was rejected by (...) both thinkers. (shrink)