How can we best reconstruct the origin of a notion, its development, and possible spread to multiple fields? We present a pilot study on the spread of the notion of conceptual scheme. Though the notion is philosophically important, its origin, development, and spread are unclear. Several purely qualitative and competing historical hypotheses have been offered, which rely on disconnected disciplinary traditions, and have never been tested all at once in a single comprehensive investigation fitting the scope of its subject matter. (...) As a step toward such an investigation, we trace the use of the bigram “conceptual scheme” in about 42,000 US journal articles in social sciences from 1888-1959 by using a novel method combining a quantitative procedure aided by basic computational techniques with qualitative elements informed by Betti and van den Berg (2014)’s ‘model approach to the history of ideas’. (shrink)

An argument that the major metaphysical theories of facts give us no good reason to accept facts in our catalog of the world. -/- In this book Arianna Betti argues that we have no good reason to accept facts in our catalog of the world, at least as they are described by the two major metaphysical theories of facts. She claims that neither of these theories is tenable—neither the theory according to which facts are special structured building blocks of reality (...) nor the theory according to which facts are whatever is named by certain expressions of the form “the fact that such and such.” There is reality, and there are entities in reality that we are able to name, but, Betti contends, among these entities there are no facts. -/- Drawing on metaphysics, the philosophy of language, and linguistics, Betti examines the main arguments in favor of and against facts of the two major sorts, which she distinguishes as compositional and propositional, giving special attention to methodological presuppositions. She criticizes compositional facts (facts as special structured building blocks of reality) and the central argument for them, Armstrong's truthmaker argument. She then criticizes propositional facts (facts as whatever is named in “the fact that” statements) and what she calls the argument from nominal reference, which draws on Quine's criterion of ontological commitment. Betti argues that metaphysicians should stop worrying about facts, and philosophers in general should stop arguing for or against entities on the basis of how we use language. (shrink)

Le monde occidental s'interroge aujourd'hui sur la passion de la mort qui pousse de jeunes terroristes au suicide et au crime. Le présent essai traite d'une autre fascination, non moins troublante : celle qui travaille sourdement les grands textes de notre modernité. Après Alexandre Kojève, l'écriture de Georges Bataille, de Maurice Blanchot, de Jacques Derrida ou de Jacques Lacan, laisse transparaître un lyrisme de la destruction, un engouement pour l'abîme, qu'il faut savoir reconnaître sous la rigueur de la pensée. D'où (...) vient cette esthétique du malheur? Quels enjeux recouvre-t-elle? Au fil d'une minutieuse lecture, l'auteur s'attache à dénuder un complexe de valeurs et d'affects qui remontent aux origines symboliques de notre civilisation. On entrevoit peu à peu que cette revendication de la mort pourrait bien n'être que le signe inversé de la grande protestation humaine, de sa soif d'infini et de son désir d'être. Betty Rojtman, née à Paris, a dirigé le département de littérature française à l'université hébraïque de Jérusalem. Elle situe sa recherche au carrefour de la pensée contemporaine et de l'exégèse juive traditionnelle. Parmi ses publications : Feu noir sur feu blanc. Essai sur l'herméneutique juive (1986); Une grave distraction (préface de Paul Ricoeur, 1991) ; Une rencontre improbable (2002) et Moïse, prophète des nostalgies (2007). (shrink)

In rhetoric, an orator needs both a large vocabulary and a stock of commonplaces and arguments. Erasmus put them together in his De duplici copia verborum ac rerum . In this sixth volume of the first Ordo of the Amsterdam edition of the Latin texts of Erasmus, Betty Knott has edited the Latin text and added an English introduction and commentary, providing philological and historical information which helps the reader to understand the text and identify its sources.

This is a book about speech and the silencing of speech; about who gets to speak and who does not; about who is listened to and who is ignored. In this down-to-earth analysis of the democratic principle of freedom of speech, Betty McLellan insists that, if this prized democratic principle is to have any continuing credibility, free speech must be free for all.

The History of Ideas is presently enjoying a certain renaissance after a long period of disrepute. Increasing quantities of digitally available historical texts and the availability of computational tools for the exploration of such masses of sources, it is suggested, can be of invaluable help to historians of ideas. The question is: how exactly? In this paper, we argue that a computational history of ideas is possible if the following two conditions are satisfied: (i) Sound Method . A computational history (...) of ideas must be built upon a sound theoretical foundation for its methodology, and the only such foundation is given by the use of models , i.e., fully explicit and revisable interpretive frameworks or networks of concepts developed by the historians of ideas themselves. (ii) Data Organisation. Interpretive models in our sense must be seen as topic-specific knowledge organisation systems (KOS) implementable (i.e. formalisable) as e.g. computer science ontologies. We thus require historians of ideas to provide explicitly structured semantic framing of domain knowledge before investigating texts computationally, and to constantly re-input findings from the interpretive point of view. In this way, a computational history of ideas maximally profits from computer methods while also keeping humanities experts in the loop. We elucidate our proposal with reference to a model of the notion of axiomatic science in 18th -19th century Europe. (shrink)

This book's importance is derived from three sources: careful conceptualization of teacher induction from historical, methodological, and international perspectives; systematic reviews of research literature relevant to various aspects of teacher induction including its social, cultural, and political contexts, program components and forms, and the range of its effects; substantial empirical studies on the important issues of teacher induction with different kinds of methodologies that exemplify future directions and approaches to the research in teacher induction.

This book examines cultural recognition and the struggle for identity in America's schools. In particular, the contributing authors focus on the recognition and misrecognition as antagonistic cultural forces that work to shape, and at times distort identity.

Betty Powell; XII*—Descartes' Machines, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 71, Issue 1, 1 June 1971, Pages 209–222, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristot.

Leśniewski’s systems deviate greatly from standard logic in some basic features. The deviant aspects are rather well known, and often cited among the reasons why Leśniewski’s work enjoys little recognition. This paper is an attempt to explain why those aspects should be there at all. Leśniewski built his systems inspired by a dream close to Leibniz’s characteristica universalis: a perfect system of deductive theories encoding our knowledge of the world, based on a perfect language. My main claim is that Leśniewski (...) built his characteristica universalis following the conditions of de Jong and Betti’s Classical Model of Science (2008) to an astounding degree. While showing this I give an overview of the architecture of Leśniewski’s systems and of their fundamental characteristics. I suggest among others that the aesthetic constraints Leśniewski put on axioms and primitive terms have epistemological relevance. (shrink)

Résumé Et toi, quel est ton genre? Les Betty, intellectuelles précaires, partageant un désir militant, critiques tant vis-à-vis des groupes féministes historiques, que des pratiques politiques au sein du mouvement des mouvements, nous racontent leur création d’un espace, le "sexishock" au cœur même d’un centre social à Bologne.

While it is widely assumed that greater diversity in corporate governance will enhance a firm’s corporate social performance, this study considers an alternative thesis which relates managerial control to corporate philanthropy. The study empirically evaluates both board diversity and managerial control of the board as possible predictors of corporate philanthropy. The demonstration of a positive relationship between managerial control and corporate philanthropy contributes to our understanding that corporate social performance results from a complex set of economic and social motives. Possible (...) future research and managerial implications are discussed. (shrink)

INDIAN AND WESTERN PHILOSOPHY- A Study in Contrasts By BETTY HEIMANN. Originally published in I937. Contents include: 1. INTRODUCTION 13 2. THEOLOGY 2Q 3. ONTOLOGY AND ESCHATOLOGY 46 4. ETHICS 63 5. LOGIC 79 6. AESTHETICS 98 7. HISTORY AND APPLIED SCIENCE Il6 8. THE APPARENT RAPPROCHEMENT BETWEEN WEST AND EAST 131 EPILOGUE 147 INDEX OF PROBLEMS TREATED 149. INDIAN AND WESTERN PHILOSOPHY. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION: ONE ceuvre dart est un coin de la creation vu d travers un temperament, (...) says Zola and we may be justified in applying this aphorism when we venture on a some what similar survey and attempt an artificial selection from World-Philosophy throughout the ages. My aim, however, is not to elaborate any finished outline of all the philosophical conceptions that have arisen in East and West up to the present day, but merely to indicate the essential and fundamental tendencies and principles. In tracing the sources of Western Philosophy to Plato and Aristotle, and still earlier to the pre-Socratics of ancient Greece, I became convinced that all translations are, to a greater or less degree, modes of interpretation. I studied the Classics, therefore, from the linguistic standpoint, and this procedure ultimately developed into a philosophical method intimately associated with the psychological aspects of Philology. In pursuing this task I discovered at the same time the specifically material basis of all Western thought. In other words in my regress from the history of modern Philosophy to the dawn of Greek speculation, or to repeat to the pre-Socratics, I found myself able to trace the main trends of Western Philosophy to the prior era of the Greek Sophists, whose outstanding role as the actual founders of Western thought is, in my opinion, too frequently underestimated. Their basic dogma which has held good in the West ever since was, Man is the Measure of all things. At this point an equally important feature must be emphasized for throughout this age of the Sophists there persists the profound contrast between the typically Western, and the equally distinctive Eastern, intellectual and spiritual atmospheres. In this connection, still further, I was deeply impressed by the far-reaching divergence of the Western anthropological tendency from the older cosmic out look upon Man as being part and parcel of the Universe And this radical antithesis is to be dis cerned in contemporary Greek drama. For Aeschylus, the Marathonomaches, creates all his immortal tragedies in the genuinely cosmic mood. Every in fraction of cosmic order, with no single exception, must generate its own inevitable reaction, and also its punishment, in order that the primal cosmic harmony may once more be restored... (shrink)

A new study entitled “Normal gut microbiota modulates brain development and behavior”, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, requires that we reconsider the notion that the brain is an immune‐privileged site. The authors demonstrate that intestinal microbiota must be present within a set time‐frame for normal synaptogenesis to occur in the brain. In the absence of intestinal microbiota, histopathological and behavioral abnormalities arise. These observations necessitate a new look at the many interconnections of the immune system (...) and the brain, suggesting new frontiers for research and new therapeutic strategies for neurodevelopmental diseases. (shrink)

Dans la dernière partie de son livre sur L’Homme Moïse et la religion monothéiste1, alors qu’il cherche à fonder l’analogie entre les mécanismes des névroses et le développement du sentiment religieux, Freud rappelle de façon schématique les grandes étapes du circuit des pulsions : en dépit de son refoulement par le moi, qui se refuse à la satisfaire, la revendication pulsionnelle..