One effect of information technology is the increasing need to present information visually. The trend raises intriguing questions. What is the logical status of reasoning that employs visualization? What are the cognitive advantages and pitfalls of this reasoning? What kinds of tools can be developed to aid in the use of visual representation? This newest volume on the Studies in Logic and Computation series addresses the logical aspects of the visualization of information. The authors of these specially commissioned papers explore (...) the properties of diagrams, charts, and maps, and their use in problem solving and teaching basic reasoning skills. As computers make visual representations more commonplace, it is important for professionals, researchers and students in computer science, philosophy, and logic to develop an understanding of these tools; this book can clarify the relationship between visuals and information. (shrink)

In den letzten Jahren hat das theoretische und praktische Interesse an Diagrammen stark zugenommen. Kultur- und Bildwissenschaft, Philosophie, Medientheorie, Gestaltung und Kognitionsforschung sind gleichermaßen am epistemischen Gebrauch diagrammatischer Bild- und Denkformen interessiert. Bislang gibt es jedoch keine gemeinsame Lektürebasis, die die Diskussionen zu diesem Thema bündelt. In Form einer Anthologie bietet dieser Reader klassische und innovative Schlüsseltexte zur Diagrammatik aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven an. Diese enthält Texte zu theoretischen, praktischen und historischen Dimensionen des Denkens und Darstellens mit und von Diagrammen seit (...) der griechischen Antike. Ein kommentierter Bildteil veranschaulicht die reiche Geschichte der Diagrammatik anhand konkreter Beispiele. (shrink)

A collection of exceptionally clever and funny diagrams that break down life's everyday foibles from the creator of the popular Instagram feed @instachaaz. Charles Hutton is the voice behind "Insta-Chaz." Hundreds of thousands follow his very witty takes on the highs and lows of daily life via graphs, charts, and simple illustrations on the ubiquitous yellow, rectangular Post-it note. All his observations are from the point of view of his online alter-ego, Chaz, whose most popular traits with readers are his (...) social awkwardness, vague insecurity, dislike of office Mondays, and regret for boozy Sundays. But his riffs go beyond Dilbert-esque complaints about co-workers and unfortunate alcohol consumption and accurately hit nerves and funny bones regarding a broad range of life's quotidian struggles. It's all there, from the anxiety levels of forgetting names at parties (only slightly less stressful than that of air traffic controllers) to charting the cycles of hope, despair, and willful forgetfulness while using Tinder to the infrequent occurrence of the perfect avocado. Divided into quirky meditations on Work, Home, Entertainment, Food & Drink, and Technology, the book introduces a fresh, appealing new voice that will resonate with countless others who can't help but laugh when they recognize themselves in infographic form. (shrink)

Der aktuelle Diskurs um Diagramme wird nicht zuletzt durch den rasanten konjunkturellen Aufschwung von Schaubildern in der Kunst geprägt. Dieses Buch stellt die Frage nach den historischen Voraussetzungen, die hinter dem großen Interesse an diagrammatischen Formen des Visualisierens und Argumentierens stehen. In facettenreichen Fallstudien und theoretischen Analysen wird das diagrammatische Potenzial für die bildgeleitete Erkenntnis aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven untersucht. Der Band lotet damit nicht zuletzt auch die Zukunftsträchtigkeit der Diagrammatologie als eigenständiges bildwissenschaftliches Forschungsfeld aus.

In his Berlin Lectures of the 1820s, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) used spatial logic diagrams for philosophy of language. These logic diagrams were applied to many areas of semantics and pragmatics, such as theories of concept formation, concept development, translation theory, clarification of conceptual disputes, etc. In this paper we first introduce the basic principles of Schopenhauer’s philosophy of language and his diagrammatic method. Since Schopenhauer often gives little information about how the individual diagrams are to (...) be understood, we then make the attempt to reconstruct, specify and further develop one diagram type for the field of conceptual analysis. (shrink)

In this article, the diagram is used to chart the movement from Deleuze's transcendental empiricism and engagement with structuralism in the 1960s to Deleuze and Guattari's ethico-aesthetic constructivism of the 1970s and 1980s. This is shown to culminate in a biopolitical critique and decoding of philosophy, which is part of the unfolding of a transdisciplinary research programme where art is seen to come ontologically ahead of philosophy.

In his Berlin Lectures of the 1820s, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) used spatial logic diagrams for philosophy of language. These logic diagrams were applied to many areas of semantics and pragmatics, such as theories of concept formation, concept development, translation theory, clarification of conceptual disputes, etc. In this paper we first introduce the basic principles of Schopenhauer’s philosophy of language and his diagrammatic method. Since Schopenhauer often gives little information about how the individual diagrams are to (...) be understood, we then make the attempt to reconstruct, specify and further develop one diagram type for the field of conceptual analysis. (shrink)

Hak San 鶴山 Yi Jeong-ho 李正浩 conceptualized and drew the “Hunminjeongeum-do” 訓民正音圖 (Diagram of Hunminjeongeum) using the basic initial consonants and 11 medial vowels of Hunminjeongeum 訓民正音 (It is the Korean alphabet, also called Hangeul). In the process, he added several strokes that were not part of the 28 letters of Hunminjeongeum to the “Hunminjeongeum-do” to emphasize the shapes of stars. This was intended to demonstrate the similarity between the “ Hunminjeongeum-do” and the “Jeongyeok Eight Trigrams Diagram” (正易八卦圖), thereby suggesting (...) that the Zhouyi 周易 philosophy embedded in the creation of Hunminjeongeum inherently contains the Jeongyeok 正易 (Correct Zhouyi) philosophy. Furthermore, he created the Celestial Diagram of Hunminjeongeum using the 28 Lunar Mansions of the ecliptic, which he referred to as the Jeongeum cheonmun-do 正音天文圖. In this diagram, he included the two central positions, elevated as the Emperor of Heaven and the Great Emperor, and applied a 30- day month calendar using all of these elements. In fact, it is based on the discussion in the Jeongyeok regarding the “Diagram of the 28 Lunar Mansions’ Energy Flow chart” (二十八宿運氣圖). The Jeongeum cheonmun-do can be found to contain similar concepts to those in the records of astronomical calendrical science from the Lüshi chunqiu 呂氏春秋, written during the Warring States period in China, and the “ Yaodian” 堯典 chapter of the Shujing 書經. Moreover, it is closely related to the circular diagram of the Fuxi 64 Hexagrams and also shares commonality with the star illustrations found in the Cheonsang yeolcha bunyajido 天象列次分 野之圖, a celestial map engraved in the early Joseon Dynasty. Haksan sought to demonstrate through the Jeongeum cheonmundo that ‘the intention of King Sejong, the Sage King, to illuminate the Heavenly Way and care for the affairs of the people upon his ascension to the throne is revealed in the creation of the miraculous letters Hunminjeongeum, and that the spirit of its creation embodies the Confucian concept of the Heavenly Way.’. (shrink)

In _Life-Destroying Diagrams_, Eugenie Brinkema brings the insights of her radical formalism to bear on supremely risky terrain: the ethical extremes of horror and love. Through close readings of works of film, literature, and philosophy, she explores how diagrams, grids, charts, lists, abecedaria, toroids, tempos, patterns, colors, negative space, lengths, increments, and thresholds attest to formal logics of torture and cruelty, violence and finitude, friendship and eros, debt and care. Beginning with a wholesale rethinking of the affect of horror, (...) orienting it away from entrenched models of feeling toward impersonal schemes and structures, Brinkema moves outward to consider the relation between objects and affects, humiliation and metaphysics, genre and the general, bodily destruction and aesthetic generation, geometry and scenography, hatred and value, love and measurement, and, ultimately, the tensions, hazards, and speculative promise of formalism itself. Replete with etymological meditations, performative typography, and lyrical digressions, _Life-Destroying Diagrams_ is at once a model of reading without guarantee and a series of generative experiments in the writing of aesthetic theory. (shrink)

In relatively recent years, quite a number of diverse case studies concerning the use of visual displays—such as graphs, diagrams, tables, pictures, drawings, etc.—in both the physical and biological sciences have been offered in the literature of the history and philosophy of science —see, e.g., Miller 1984; Lynch and Woolgar 1990; Baigrie 1996; Pauwels 2006. These case studies have shown that visual representations fulfill important functions in both the theoretical and experimental practices of science, thereby emphasizing the non-verbal dimension (...) of scientific inquiry that had been neglected by the traditional language-based conception of science, which takes the production, justification and... (shrink)

Sociologists, philosophers and historians of science are gradually recognizing the importance of visual representation. This is part of a more general movement away from a theory-centric view of science and towards an interest in practical aspects of observation and experimentation. Rather than treating science as a matter of demonstrating the logical connection between theoretical and empirical statements, an increasing number of investigations are examining how scientists compose and use diagrams, graphs, photographs, micrographs, maps, charts, and related visual displays. This paper (...) focuses on diagrams in biology, and tries to demonstrate how diagrams are an integral part of the production of scientific knowledge. In order to disclose some of the distinctive practical and analytical uses of diagrams, the paper contrasts the way diagrams and photographs are used in biological texts. Both diagrams and photographs are shown to be “constructions” that separately and together mediate the investigation of scientific phenoman. (shrink)

This volume investigates the use of diagrams for the purposes of information. Using key scenes from Euclidian geometry and late medieval physics, it shows how diagrams interconnect space and rules, logic and epistemic surplus, double-meanings and precision, in such a way as to generate new insights. For the first time, the study integrates previously scattered notions into a systematic whole.

You ask if metaphysics is possible after modernity, or after Barth and Wittgenstein and Derrida and the critique of foundationalism? May I invite you, by way of response, to listen in on a conversation? It is a dialogue between what I will call a postcritical philosopher ("P") and a postcritical scriptural theologian —— I'll label the latter a "textualist" ("T"). What I mean by "postcritical" would be displayed as the pattern of inquiry traced by this dialogue. I take the term (...) "postcritical" from George Lindbeck, whose theological work is described by his commentators as more properly "textualist" rather than "philosophic." I believe my usage is, however, true to Lindbeck's discourse. This means that one of the arguments of this essay is that there is a mode of philosophic inquiry proper to the postcritical orientation in theology that we may associate with such Christian theologians as Hans Frei, etc., as well as Lindbeck. A second argument, offered indirectly, is that there is a family of Jewish thinkers whose work may also be labeled "postcritical" on the model of these Christian thinkers, and that this Jewish postcritical theology would also be displayed in dialogues between philosophic and textualist tendencies. A third argument is that, if we listen in on the philosophic side of any of these dialogues, we will hear a postcritical philosophy. By philosophy, I mean primarily logic, defined as an inquiry that examines problematic rules of reasoning and recommends testable ways of correcting them. Secondarily, philosophy includes metaphysics, defined as an inquiry that, for the sake of assuring people about the reliability of a given logic, constructs pictures of the world whose existence would warrant this logic. We need not assume either that logic and metaphysics can be conducted only in the manner of modern and scholastic foundationalism, or that non-foundationalist theology must be "textualist" in a manner that excludes any philosophic generalization. I will argue that there are, indeed, non-foundationalist ways of conceiving of both logical and metaphysical inquiry and that these ways contribute to the dialogic activity of postcritical inquiry. (shrink)

Recent work in the philosophy of science has generated an apparent conflict between theories attempting to explicate the nature of scientific representation. On one side, there are what one might call 'informational' views, which emphasize objective relations (such as similarity, isomorphism, and homomorphism) between representations (theories, models, simulations, diagrams, etc.) and their target systems. On the other side, there are what one might call 'functional' views, which emphasize cognitive activities performed in connection with these targets, such as interpretation and (...) inference. The main sources of the impression of conflict here are arguments by some functionalists to the effect that informational theories are flawed: it is suggested that relations typically championed by informational theories are neither necessary nor sufficient for scientific representation, and that any theory excluding functions is inadequate. In this paper I critically examine these arguments, and contend that, as it turns out, informational and functional theories are importantly complementary. (shrink)

continent. 2.1 (2012): 6–21. The French philosopher and novelist Tristan Garcia was born in Toulouse in 1981. This makes him rather young to have written such an imaginative work of systematic philosophy as Forme et objet , 1 the latest entry in the MétaphysiqueS series at Presses universitaires de France. But this reference to Garcia’s youthfulness is not a form of condescension: by publishing a complete system of philosophy in the grand style, he has already done what none (...) of us in the older generation of speculative realists has done so far. His book is sophisticated, erudite, rigorous, imaginatively rich, and abundant in worldly wisdom– despite the author’s conclusion that wisdom does not exist. The quality and scope of Forme et objet took few observers by surprise, since Garcia has been treated as an emerging philosopher to watch across half a decade of Parisian oral tradition. But Garcia was not just the subject of rumor, being already well known to the French public as a writer of fiction. His debut novel, La meilleure part des hommes , 2 was awarded the 2008 Prix de Flore 3 and has already appeared in English as Hate: A Romance . 4 His follow-up novel, Mémoires de la jungle , 5 made clever use of a chimpanzee narrator. Nor was Garcia only published as a novelist before last November: his philosophical study L’Image 6 had already appeared when the author was just twenty-six, a year before he was crowned by the muses at the historic Café de Flore. And then in 2011, just months before the appearance of Forme et objet , Garcia published a widely distributed work entitled Nous, animaux et humains , 7 with its focus on Jeremy Bentham’s ideas about animals. Given this prolific and versatile track record, an optimistic scenario might envisage the young Garcia as one of those combined literary/philosophical talents who appear intermittently in France across the centuries: Jean-Paul Sartre is merely the most famous recent case. While more time is needed to see how Garcia will channel his impressive mental energies, Forme et objet displays such breadth of insight that its author has a good chance to emerge as one of the leading philosophers of his generation. If we accept Aristotle’s dictum that the peak mental age is fifty-one, then to read Garcia’s massive book is to gain some idea of what European philosophy might look like in the futuristic-sounding 2030’s. The present article is confined to Forme et objet . At 486 pages, the work is obviously daunting in size. Indeed, it is even longer than it sounds, given that many of its early sections are printed in a smaller typeface to designate them as supplemental commentary to the main flow of the argument. But while the length of the book reportedly led to delays in French publication, and will probably slow the inevitable appearance of an English translation, the length of the book should not deter interested readers– much of it results from Garcia’s teacherly writing style. Whereas Quentin Meillassoux’s prose displays an arctic economy of means, Garcia’s style is reminiscent of the repeated lessons of oral classroom proceedings. Rarely is the reader given fewer than three or four chances to master an idea before the author moves on to the next. In practice, the style feels welcoming rather than long-winded. Otherwise, the structure of Forme et objet is surprisingly simple. There is a useful Introduction of less than twenty pages. Then comes Book I: Formally , running to approximately 135 pages. Here Garcia outlines the most basic features of a thing “no matter what it is,” or n’importe quoi , an everyday phrase that Garcia shapes into a technical term. This part of the book feels at times like a more amiable version of Hegel’s Science of Logic , a parallel emphasized further by the threefold articulation of its theme: 1. Thing; 2. Thing and World; 3. Being and Understanding. This is followed by the much longer Book II: Objectively , totaling more than 300 pages. It contains sixteen essay-like meditations on specific kinds of objects—including time, animals, humans, history, gender, and death. Here each chapter rolls smoothly into the next, making this second part of the book feel more like a different work of Hegel: The Phenomenology of Spirit . But these are merely analogies. Garcia is no Hegelian, even if the book contains a few dialectical flourishes that seem to reflect his early enthusiasm for the Frankfurt School. Forme et objet ends with a six-page Coda, followed by the usual page of acknowledgments. In what follows, I will briefly summarize each of these four parts of the book before ending with some more general remarks. Before doing so, it will be useful to situate Garcia biographically (as much as I am able) and philosophically. Though Toulouse is his native city, his formative years were spent largely in Algeria, where his family has deep roots. During our sole private conversation, Garcia mentioned that his parents are professors of literature. 8 As a student of philosopher Garcia flourished so early that many of his current ideas date to his teenaged years: “There are sentences in Forme et objet that I wrote when I was seventeen,” he said in response to a question on that cold night on the Canal St.-Martin. I recalled that remark when reading his brilliant account, late in the book, of the central role of adolescence in contemporary culture. While many prodigies blow through their formal academic training without serious obstruction, Garcia’s student memories are rich in tales of isolation and struggle, though equally rich in gratitude for a half-dozen or so exceptional teachers who provided the intellectual space he needed: Meillassoux and Alain Badiou are simply two of the most prominent figures on that list. Though there are many points of agreement between Garcia’s philosophical position and my own, he not only reached his position years before reading my work, 9 he arrived along a rather different path: not through phenomenology, but via the Frankfurt School, which may be one of the reasons for his profound fascination with aesthetics. Garcia’s cultural background is as broad as one could wish: he is no less informed about punk rock and European football leagues than about the spiritualist roots of Bergson’s philosophy. Curious about everything and contemptuous towards nothing, Garcia can be expected to write insightfully on dozens of topics in the years to come. Given that his philosophy is so personally tantalizing in its agreements and disagreements with my own, and given the great internal richness of Forme et objet itself, the present review is no better than a first effort at coming to terms with the challenges posed by this minstrel from the rising generation. This is especially intriguing for older Generation X’ers like me, since confrontation with the younger generation is one of the many themes treated insightfully in Garcia’s book. 1. Introduction Garcia begins in defense of a so-called “flat ontology,” in which all things are equally things. While Roy Bhaskar 10 used this term pejoratively to refer to anti-realist philosophies that flatten everything onto an epistemic plane of human access, Manuel DeLanda 11 (an admirer of Bhaskar) reversed it into the positive principle that all realities are equally realities. Similar notions can be found in the “absistence” of Alexius Meinong, 12 the “irreduction” of Bruno Latour, 13 and my own critique 14 of the undermining/overmining pair. Also noteworthy is Levi Bryant’s use of the term “flat ontology” throughout The Democracy of Objects 15 and his earlier essay “The Ontic Principle.” 16 But for Garcia, flatness is only one face of the cosmos, and one that he ultimately declares to be rather impoverished. Even so, he always remains an advocate of a flat ontology. Insofar as everything is equally something, no matter what it is ( n’importe qui ), everything is equally a thing, equally solitary in its relation with world. This is why his book abounds in those long lists of random, ontologically equivalent entities that Ian Bogost has playfully termed “Latour Litanies.” 17 The first litany in Garcia’s book runs as follows: “We live in this world of things, where a cutting of acacia, a gene, a computer-generated image, a transplantable hand, a musical sample, a trademarked name, or a sexual service are comparable things.” (7) Yet Garcia is frankly dualistic; his flat ontology only lasts until page 159 and the end of Book I (entitled “Formally”), which deals entirely with things that are equally things. Thereafter Garcia turns his attention from things to objects, which are not flat in the least, but engage in hierarchical relations with one another. In agreement with both DeLanda and the speculative realists, Garcia proclaims that his book “proposes to put to the test a thought about things rather than a thought about our thought about things .” (8) Just as ducklings are “imprinted” (9) after hatching and treat the first creature they see as their mother, philosophers are imprinted by the idea with which they begin. Hence, philosophies that begin with human access will never truly find their way back to things. This makes Garcia rather suspicious of twentieth century philosophy, since “the twentieth century—to which in some way this work proposes to bid adieu—has been a period of theorizing modes of access to things rather than things...” (9) Among other possible benefits of the philosophy of things that Garcia proposes, it is fully able to account for thought as a special variant of things, while the reverse is not possible.(10) In Book I of Forme et objet , Garcia’s “things” are so flat, so de-determined, that he is forced to renounce some of the most basic features ascribed to things by most realists. As he tells us in his foreboding third footnote: “We will maintain that the solitude [of things] is less than unity, less than identity, and that it does not imply acceptance (any more than refusal) of the principle of non-contradiction.” (11) In a contemporary world cluttered with too many things, Garcia’s flat and formal plane provides us with some breathing room: “The formal plan of thought enables or re-enables us to cut short all accumulation—whether of knowing, experience, or action—by a simplicity, an impoverished surface...” (13) As Garcia says elsewhere in responding to a Deleuzian critic of the book, his starting point in flat ontology is designed to obstruct the claims of both analytic philosophy and Hegelianism: “Hence, this work seeks to protect each thing—real, imaginary, inconsistent, contradictory—both against Ockham’s Razor and against the Aufhebung or dialectical process.” 18 Yet contrary to the equalizing spirit of many flat ontologies, “we will add to our formal ontology of the equal, an objective ontology of the unequal.” (13) But initially, Garcia joins all flat ontologists in holding that everything is irreducible: “this irreducibility, which we will term the ‘chance’ of each thing... also marks the refusal of a positive thought that reduces things exclusively to natural things, or social things, or historical things, etc.” (15) This irreducible “chance” of a thing emerges as an important technical term in the book, always paired with its inverted brother, the “price to pay” ( prix à payer ). On pages 17-19, we find the only diagrams in the book. What they illustrate is that Garcia wishes to avoid two equally dangerous extremes. The first is the philosophy of substance, featuring the thing-in-itself as a mighty river fed by attributes as if by subordinate tributary streams. This model can be found in many of the classic thinkers of West and East alike. In it, “there is obviously a hierarchization between that which is dragged towards something other than itself, and this other which serves it as an ontological support while supporting its proper being.” (16) For Garcia, the second extreme worth avoiding is the philosophy of events: “One thus conceives trajectories of being, identified as events, facts, powers, intensities, or intentionality. These vectors of being come first, bearing and supporting being, displacing it, but without ever finding a stopping point, a buffer, an objective consistency.” (17) The first model gives us a thing too wrapped up in itself, too compact . This word “compact” (the French and the English are the same) is another technical term for Garcia. But if the “compact” model of things leads us to something more than things, the philosophy of events gives us less than things, by dissolving them into a play of vectors. Garcia’s alternative lies midway between these two extremes: Being enters the thing, being comes out of it. And a thing is nothing other than the difference between the enters and the being that comes out. Thus, the circuit of being is never halted. In the thing, there is never the thing-in-itself. And the thing is never in-itself, but outside of itself. Nonetheless, being is not eventally “pollinated” by vectors: it possesses an objecting halting-point... (19) This single idea is the key to Garcia’s book: the thing is neither a self-contained durable lump nor some sort of evental flux. Instead, the thing is the difference between its various components and its relations with its environment. Or stated differently: “the price to pay for this disposition is a circulation of being that systematically distinguishes two senses of things: that which is in the thing , and that in which the thing is , or that which encompasses it and that which it encompasses,” (19) translating comprendre here as “encompass.” 19 In a beautiful description of a piece of black slate, Garcia sums up the various minerals, qualities, and shapes that compose [ comprend ] it, and calls them “that which is in the thing,” (20) noting that this tells us nothing about “that in which [the slate] is”—namely, all the various situations in which the black slate can be found. Instead, the slate is the difference between these two: the most characteristic principle of Garcia’s philosophy. 2. Formally Book One of Forme et objet , “Formally,” is concerned with the formal equality of all things in a flat world. “Two questions mark the boundaries of reflection: of what is everything composed [ composé ], and: what do all things compose?” (27) Looking downward, we wish to know what everything is made of; looking upward, we want to know the ultimate result of the combination of all things. Here we must turn our attention to the thing n’importe quoi— no matter what it is. (30) Anything with finite qualities is obviously too specific to be relevant to global ontological questions. To an equal degree, something possessing all qualities (think of Whitehead’s God) 20 would not be n’importe quoi either, since it would still be too definite, even if incredibly vast. The same holds for contradictions, since these all differ from each other. The square circle, the non-white black white, and the non-city city are all too distinct to count as the thing no matter what it is. The n’importe quoi must be devoid of all specific qualities, including contradictory ones. In one of the more intriguing points in his book, so reminiscent of Meinong, Garcia proclaims that “the ‘no matter what it is’ is neither a reality nor an abstract construction, nor both of these at once; the ‘no matter what it is’ is simply the plane of equality of that which is real, that which is possible, that which is inexistent, that which is past, that which is impossible, that which is true, that which is false, that which is bad.”(39-40) Since everything has two faces, it would be a grievous mistake to focus on just one of them at the expense of the other, as physicalism or materialism do when reducing the world to minuscule physical underpinnings. For scientistic materialism, “it is either atoms, particles, or fields of force... which are the things.” (47-48) Moreover, “these more-than-things are accompanied by less-than-things: for example, ideas or facts of consciousness are determined by the state of matter and are not autonomous things, but manifestations reduced to secondary effects of material processes...” (48) On this point, Garcia’s position is in complete accord with my own critique of undermining and overmining. 21 Where we disagree is that Garcia is more deeply suspicious of the notion of substance, which I view as salvageable with a few needed changes, while Garcia sees this operation as hopeless: “A substance, in the history of philosophy, is the more-than-thing par excellence.” (51) Another agreement between our positions is visible when Garcia claims (correctly, in my opinion) “that it is vain to distinguish between things which are material and those which are not.” (52) Yet we also find an even more important disagreement, since for Garcia withdrawal cannot be the quality of a thing. Instead, the absence of a thing is simultaneous with it, embodied in all that is not it– the absence of the sculpture of a woman is to be found in the mold that appears at the same time as it, and thus withdrawal must be viewed as an “event” rather than as something pertaining to an object. For Garcia, nothing withdraws beyond access. Since we must distinguish between “that which is something” and “that which something is,” and since the former is identified with “no matter what it is is” and the latter with “ not no matter what it is,” we can say that “everything is thus a milieu, a fragile link between ‘no matter what it is’ and ‘ not no matter what it is.’” (62) And here we find Garcia’s critique of the thing-in-itself: “A thing is never defined en bloc . We can affirm that a thing is this or that, but that does not suffice. It is still necessary to state precisely that which is this thing .” (62) Stated differently, “something is not in itself : for that which is in the thing is not the thing, and that in which the thing is is not the thing.” (62) And here Garcia and I, facing the same evidence, draw opposite conclusions. For me, the fact that nothing can be identified with either its components or its concrete location means that the thing must be something in-itself distinct from both of these. Yet for Garcia, to be in-itself would mean to be identified with just one of these two extreme terms, and hence the thing can only be the difference between them. Garcia is equally suspicious of the classical tendency to view “unity” as a property of the thing, since in his eyes unity is too relational a property to belong to things. (65) While specific things are situated determinately with respect to other things, we are still speaking here about the thing no matter what it is, and this can be viewed only in terms of solitude, which all things share: a human being, a hand, or a chair or all equally things insofar as they are on their own , not insofar as they are one . (64) A thing is alone, and relates only to the one thing that is not another thing: world. In a striking parallel to my own argument for a partial revival of occasionalism, Garcia tells us that “the things communicate only by their solitude: it is because everything is equally on its own in the world that things can be together, enmeshed in one another.” (67) Alone in their solitude, things all relate to world, which serves as a mediator allowing them to become mixed up in one another. As we have seen, one reason that nothing can be in itself is because everything is in something else. For Garcia, “to be in something and to be something are equivalent.” (69) Stated more broadly, “being is thus the difference between the two aspects of each thing: that which is it, and that which it is.” (70) And even more vividly: “a thing is almost like a sack: there is that which one puts in the sack and that which remains outside the sack.” (70) But not quite like a sack, “since a thing is not a thin skin or film. Instead, a thing is comparable to a sack that is immaterial and without thickness: it is nothing other than the difference between that which is this thing and that which thing is, between content and container.” (71) Nothing can be in-itself because everything is two selves at once. For example, we cannot say that our self is defined by our consciousness: “Everything has a self because nothing is in itself. The self is not the quality of that which is related to itself (which is conscious, for example) or which thinks itself related to itself. Nonetheless, for an entity called ‘conscious’ to be related to itself, it is necessary that this very relation should be another thing than the self to which it is related.” (71) Consciousness cannot be the self, precisely because it is other than that of which it is conscious. Nothing is able to grasp itself. The self is “the function by which being and composition [ compréhension ] are mutually excluded...” (72) The self is “the point of shadow of everything that projects some light...” (72) The in-itself faces two opposite dangers: “For something to be in-itself is to be a self. Something which is a self flies out through one of its two sides... Stated differently, being in-itself is simply the possibility of a double failure.” (73) The in-itself can be termed compact : “There remains to us a means of thinking that which does not fully enter into the world, though without exiting from it. This means is what we call the compact.” (76) In a sense, the compact is the opposite of the world. For in the case of the world, everything enters it and it enters nothing; as for the compact, it enters the world (since it is something, after all) while nothing enters it. (77) The compact marks the presence of the impossible in the world. (78) It is not impossible, but possible only on the condition that it fails. (78) The time has come to speak of where a thing is located. “The sole condition of a thing is that of being in another thing than itself, and thus in another thing than something.” (78) A condition is “that which determines something, that which forms something, that in which something is.” (78) As for humans, “the condition of someone is his situation; my social condition is that which socially determines me, my place and my function...” (79) More generally, “to be conditioned is to find oneself reduced to that in which one is.” (79) Everything is conditioned, but nothing is reducible to this condition. To determine the condition of something is to determine in what it is. A thing is located in that which contradicts it, just as a statue exists in its mold, which is precisely that which it is not. Since the thing is finite and definite, its condition or form must be infinite and indefinite. That in which all things are is the world, which Garcia also terms “the whole.” (81) “To try to be in-itself is to attempt to remain outside the world. And indeed, to try to be in-itself is only a path of entry into the world.” (83) For Garcia, “the world is not the pre-existent container of the things it contains, a priori , nor the construction by the mind of a fictional ensemble of all things, a posteriori .” (85) Instead, the world is simultaneous with all things; the two always go together. The world cannot be a determinate world, such as the physical universe or mathematical space, since these are already too specific and limited. “Every determinate world, which is in fact a universe , is a ‘big thing’ [ grosse chose ]: it is a set, however vast, of composite things which itself embodies a thing.” (85) Every determinate world is really just a “big thing.” Stated differently, “it is nothing other than a balanced milieu between the things that compose it and the thing that it composes.” (85) We generally picture the world as a physical univer. (shrink)

Curating is a confounding concept—highly specialized in its technical meaning but wildly ecumenical in colloquial usage. This makes it a good candidate for philosophical attention. Considering how often the boundaries of curating have been redrawn since the 1960s, it is encouraging to see philosophers finally turning their lens on it in the last decade. This is also partly what makes Sue Spaid’s The philosophy of curatorial practice: between work and world a welcome contribution. The book might fall short of (...) a definitive philosophical account of curating, but it charts helpful vectors of interest for future scholarship. On a personal note, as someone who has had the opportunity to debate Spaid on the subject of curating, both at live events and in print, I consider her book a meaningful addition to the conversational momentum the topic has been enjoying. -/- In what follows, I start with some general remarks and then focus on two constitutive aspects of Spaid’s book—her account of what curating is and her description of what curated exhibitions do. These are also two of the central questions philosophy has traditionally asked of art. In this sense, Spaid’s study traverses familiar methodological and thematic terrain. What she adds to the existing scholarship on perennial issues of intentionality, authorship, spectatorship, interpretation, etc. is her keen curiosity about the increasingly rich contributions curated exhibitions make to the life of art. (shrink)

Yet another development of the natural theology of Thomas Aquinas aimed at the undergraduate. The approach is traditional and clearly stated. Each chapter begins with an outline and ends with a list of leading ideas and supplementary readings. Judicious use of charts and diagrams helps to clarify the more difficult terms.--B. P. H.

A guide, intended for students, to the usage of some 1600 Scholastic philosophical terms, clearly presented and nicely arranged. There is no attempt at translating into "ordinary language," but the use of Latin is sparing. Textual references and diagrams and charts increase the book's usefulness.--V. C. C.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Readymades, Monochromes, Etc.:Nominalism and the Paradox of ModernismJ. M. Bernstein (bio)If Schopenhauer's thesis of art as an image of the world once over bears a kernel of truth, then it does so only insofar as this second world is composed out of elements that have been transposed out of the empirical world in accord with Jewish descriptions of the messianic order as an order just like the habitual order (...) but changed in the slightest degree.—T. W. Adorno, Aesthetic TheoryAdorno's philosophy as a whole, and his aesthetic theory in particular, is irrevocably bound to the tradition and achievements of high modernism. Although Adorno himself did not recognize American Abstract Expression as the apotheosis of high modernism in painting, that judgment now hardly seems contentious.1 And that raises a problem: it is the problem of R. Mutt, again, the problem of the porcelain urinal called Fountain, which was refused admittance to the Society of Independent Artists' Exhibition in April 1917 in spite of the Society's proclaimed democratic slogan "No jury, no prizes"—the work whose life or after-life begins with the beautiful photograph of it by Stieglitz set against the background of Marsden Hartley's The Warriors and that appeared shortly thereafter in the new avant-garde journal The Blind Man. Whatever the immediate repercussions of Fountain, there can be little doubt that much of what is most vital in art in the second half of this century is unthinkable without it; Duchamp's readymade offers an exemplary alternative to the tradition of high modernist painting that has continued to be generative. For a modernist like Adorno, for whom authentic art is that which best rises to the demands and necessities of artistic materials, for whom internal consistency and rigor would appear to be everything, for whom, finally, aesthetic form is the "objective organization within each artwork of what appears as bindingly eloquent" [AT 143; emphasis mine], Duchamp's gesture of simply naming or claiming artistic status for an ordinary bathroom fixture must be anathema. In this respect, Adorno's aesthetic theory would seem to be in the same predicament as Clement Greenberg's modernism: inextricably bound to a tradition that history has left behind. And while the option of refuting the claim of Fountain is certainly possible, and should not be too quickly suppressed (there is something in the claim that will forever be skeptically self-defeating), nonetheless there does appear to be an exemplariness to Fountain that exceeds the narrow provocation of Duchamp's nominalist gesture; something in the readymade, in fact, seems (art historically? aesthetically? conceptually?) irresistible. If so, then modernist [End Page 83] formalism must either find a way of accommodating the readymade without departing from its internal logic or find its claim to our attention forfeited.After laying out the bold outlines of Adorno's formalism, the remainder of this essay will seek to uncover an account of the readymade in the context of what I will eventually call "the paradox of modernism" in order to locate in what way the readymade can be accommodated to a defense of Adorno's late modernism. For the purposes of this argument, I am going to assume that the best overall defense of Duchamp's gesture, which makes it foundational for the understanding of modern art, is that offered by Thierry de Duve in his Kant after Duchamp. My elaboration of Adorno's late modernism will hence proceed, in part, through a charting of some of the fault lines in de Duve's Duchamp. My contention shall be that the generativity of Fountain as readymade not only belongs within modernism, but is only intelligible within a wholly modernist and formalist frame of reference.Adorno's Formalism and the Material MotiveAdorno opens the section of Aesthetic Theory entitled "Coherence and Meaning" with the drastic sounding thesis that "Although artworks are neither conceptual nor judgmental, they are logical" [AT 136]. He continues:In them nothing would be enigmatic if their immanent logicality did not accommodate discursive thought, which criteria they nevertheless regularly disappoint. They most resemble the form of a syllogism and its prototype in empirical thought. That in the temporal... (shrink)

A textbook intended to play the role of the Socratic midwife, by introducing the student-reader to the philosophy of being through contact with the great minds which first struggled with the puzzle of the one and the many. It is thorough and detailed. The author takes the reader from Thales to Aristotle in search of an understanding of being and becoming. The text is replete with charts and diagrams. There is a useful lexicon of Aristotelian metaphysical terms and a (...) fine annotated bibliography.--V. G. P. (shrink)

First published in 1921, and originally intended as a textbook for students entering secondary school, this book gives an overview of the human and physical geography of the occupied areas of the earth's surface. The text is richly illustrated with diagrams, tables, and contemporary photographs of places of interest. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of education.

The Intellectual Powers is a philosophical investigation into the cognitive and cogitative powers of mankind. It develops a connective analysis of our powers of consciousness, intentionality, mastery of language, knowledge, belief, certainty, sensation, perception, memory, thought, and imagination, by one of Britain’s leading philosophers. It is an essential guide and handbook for philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive neuroscientists. The culmination of 45 years of reflection on the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and the nature of the human person No other book (...) in epistemology or philosophy of psychology provides such extensive overviews of consciousness, self–consciousness, intentionality, mastery of a language, knowledge, belief, memory, sensation and perception, thought and imagination Illustrated with tables, tree–diagrams, and charts to provide overviews of the conceptual relationships disclosed by analysis Written by one of Britain’s best philosophical minds A sequel to Hacker’s Human Nature: The Categorial Framework An essential guide and handbook for all who are working in philosophy of mind, epistemology, psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience. (shrink)

Intended to give "a graphic picture of the development, relationship and relative importance of Chinese philosophical schools," this booklet contains 7 charts outlining the Ancient, the Middle, the Modern, the Sung, the Yuan and Ming, the Ch'ing, and the contemporary periods.--C. M.

" Biosemantics " was the title of a paper on mental representation originally printed in The Journal of Philosophy in 1989. It contained a much abbreviated version of the work on mental representation in Language Thought and Other Biological Categories. There I had presented a naturalist theory of intentional signs generally, including linguistic representations, graphs, charts and diagrams, road sign symbols, animal communications, the "chemical signals" that regulate the function of glands, and so forth. But the term " biosemantics (...) " has usually been applied only to the theory of mental representation. Let me first characterize a more general class of theories called "teleological theories of mental content" of which biosemantics is an example. Then I will discuss the details that distinguish biosemantics from other naturalistic teleological theories. (shrink)

Most of us create and use a panoply of non-sentential representations throughout our ordinary lives: we regularly use maps to navigate, charts to keep track of complex patterns of data, and diagrams to visualize logical and causal relations among states of affairs. But philosophers typically pay little attention to such representations, focusing almost exclusively on language instead. In particular, when theorizing about the mind, many philosophers assume that there is a very tight mapping between language and thought. Some analyze utterances (...) as the outer vocalizations of inner thoughts (e.g. Grice 1957, Devitt 2005), while others treat thought as a form of inner speech (e.g. Sellars 1956/1997, Carruthers 2002). But even philosophers who take no stand on the relative priority of language and thought still tend to individuate mental states in terms of the sentences we use to ascribe them. Indeed, Dummett (1993) claims that it is constitutive of analytic philosophy that it approaches the mind by way of language. In many ways, this linguistic model is salutary. Our thoughts are often intimately intertwined with their linguistic expression, and public language does provide a comparatively tractable proxy for, and a window into, the messier realm of thought. However, an exclusive focus on thought as it is expressed in language threatens to leave other sorts of thought unexplained, or even to blind us to their possibility. In particular, many cognitive ethologists and psychologists find it useful to talk about humans, chimpanzees, birds, rats, and even bees as employing cognitive maps. We need to make sense of this way of talking about minds as well as more familiar sentential descriptions. In what follows, I investigate the theoretical and practical possibility of non-sentential thought. Ultimately, I am most interested in the contours of distinctively human thought: what forms does human thought take, and how do those different forms interact? How does human thought compare with that of other animals? In this essay, however, I focus on a narrower and more basic theoretical question: could thought occur in maps? Many philosophers are convinced that in some important sense, thought per se must be language-like.. (shrink)

The rapid development of physics, the result of observations made and ideas introduced within the last few decades, has brought about a change in the whole system of physical concepts. This fact is common knowledge, and has already attracted the attention of philosophers. It is less well known that geometry too has had its crises, and undergone a reconstruction. For centuries, so-called “geometrical intuition” was used as a method of proof. In geometrical demonstrations, certain steps were allowed because they were (...) “self-evident,” because the correctness of the conclusion was “shown by the adjoined diagram,” etc. A crisis occurred in geometry because such intuition proved to be untrustworthy. Many of the propositions regarded as self-evident or based upon the consideration of diagrams turned out to be false. And so Euclidean geometry was reconstructed by methods free from all intuitive elements and strictly logical in nature. Moreover, for more than a century, various other geometries have been devised purely as logical constructions. Since they start with assumptions different from those of Euclid, and lead to conclusions partly in contradiction with his theorems, they are called “non-Euclidean.” Nevertheless, each one of these geometries is a closed system of propositions exempt from contradiction. Recently, some of them have even found application in physics. (shrink)

This piece, included in the drift special issue of continent. , was created as one step in a thread of inquiry. While each of the contributions to drift stand on their own, the project was an attempt to follow a line of theoretical inquiry as it passed through time and the postal service(s) from October 2012 until May 2013. This issue hosts two threads: between space & place and between intention & attention . The editors recommend that to experience the (...) drifiting thought that attention be paid to the contributions as they entered into conversation one after another. This particular piece is from the BETWEEN SPACE & PLACE thread: April Vannini, Those Between the Common * Laura Dean & Jesse McClelland, Ballard: A Portrait of Placemaking * Amara Hark Weber, Crossroad * Isaac Linder & Berit Soli-Holt, The Call of the Wild: Terro(i)r Modulations * Ashley D. Hairston, Momma taught us to keep a clean house * Sean Smith, The Garage (Take One) * * * * Preface: Variations of Archiving the Anarchive Through Editorial Witnessing by April Vannini “a diagram is a map, or rather several superimposed maps.” 1 What do we do with essays, art, artefacts, and practices that go against, resist, challenge and reject archival capture or documentation since they do not fit within the screen or manage to move beyond conventional scales? What do we do with an essay or artefact that is the event of the event becoming-event itself, or how do we move from volumetric space to two-dimensional space? How do editors, curators, participants, etc. become witness to an anarchive? And most importantly, what are the potential and unanticipated ways in which a volumetric submission can be diagrammed within a two- dimensional space? In short, how do we archive the anarchive? These are questions that have emerged and have been consciously and purposely activated by Sean Smith’s thinkpiece for this issue, The Garage (Take One) . Sean, as part of his contribution to the special issue of drift within the thread in between space and place , created an artefact that emerged out of an event held during May 2013, titled Cottage University: Topology and Immanence . The visual documentation of The Garage (Take One) is not an archive but an anarchive due to its multimodal form, non-representational diagramming, and its reactivation of non-representational folding which animates its non-representational or more-than -representational condition. In short, The Garage (Take One) stymies attempts to be translated into digital text, representationally. As a reader of Sean’s submission you will only have access to a portion of the original submitted contribution (see “Take One”). At this time, I remain the only witness of The Garage (Take One) in its entirety: I was present at the original event, Cottage University: Topology and Immanence , and I was the sole receiver of the original package because of my role as editor for the thread, in between space and place . However, I would like to stress that I was unaware of what Sean would submit as his contribution to the special issue. What is presented here is an emergent rippling of the event that was not predetermined or arranged in advance ... a drifting of sorts! As for now, the artefact sits here on my desk next to a pile of books—folded, creased and somewhat lost in its translation into digital form. Questions of transcribing, translating and converting volumetric space to two-dimensional space have been considered throughout this process. And more importantly this artefact and its processes raise the issue of not what has been saved and included but what has been left out in each conversion of the original into the academic publication. What follows this preface are various “cuts” or “takes” from The Garage: Take One . Each take or cut is merely an interpretive and representational rendering of the original volumetric submission. Although with that said I would like to propose they are more than just representations or interpretations: each take or cut works as rippling variations of the event itself . It is important to acknowledge that much has been lost in the creases and much still lingers which will never be archived within an academic journal. Hence, a discussion of how to archive the anarchive is so crucial to para-academic “scholarship”. I will sum up the process that has emerged from The Garage (Take One) with a final word from Brian Massumi, written in his foreword to Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus : Each 'plateau' is an orchestration of crashing bricks extracted from a variety of disciplinary edifices. They carry traces of their former emplacement, which give them a spin defining the arc of their vector. The vectors are meant to converge at a volatile juncture, but one that is sustained, as an open equilibrium of moving parts each with its own trajectory. The word 'plateau' comes from an essay by Gregory Bateson on Balinese culture, in which he found a libidinal economy quite different from the West's orgasmic orientation. In Deleuze and Guattari, a plateau is reached when circumstances combine to bring an activity to a pitch of intensity that is not automatically dissipated in a climax. The heightening of energies is sustained long enough to leave a kind of afterimage of its dynamism that can be reactivated or injected into other activities, creating a fabric of intensive states between which any number of connecting routes could exist. 2 The Garage (Take One) Double Take 2:31pm/5:31pm Sean Smith You there? I just wanted to emphasize a couple of things about the process of the submission: 2:31pm/5:31pm April Warn-Vannini Yes, listening. 2:36pm/5:36pm Sean Smith 1.When you describe feeding forward from the CU (Cottage University) event, it is a WALKING ACTIVITY that reinvests/reactivates the intensive energies of the event. that is what my photos are in Take One......it connects the intensive state of CU to my "one-take" writing on construction paper experience. i'm not sure if i adequately conveyed that or not, or if you did, or how important that is. 2. In doing so, it ruptures open the "space" and "place" of material practice ...and how these may enter into the mediated production of academic journal work...and its flattened two-dimensional experience. 3. the abstract machines of CU (i.e.coming out of silence) are invested with a new diagramming practice (the photo walk) to produce a new text that is neither-nor: "spaced" as a content of that walk (garages), but "placed" as a technical question (coming out of silence to language). 4. the new text is precisely diagrammatic, non-representational, anarchival. ....multimodal. ok, that's all that comes to mind right now. appreciating your efforts. 5. oh, finally, i think you might need a better definition of "anarchive" here..... it was hard to pin them down in montreal on what this is, so you wouldn't be wrong, per se, but more require a working definition for the reader. obviously, as you say, without getting too academic/citations, etc. know what i am saying? 2:46pm/5:46pm April Warn-Vannini 1. Totally got it but I think I did because of our many past conversations about how to archive the event 2. Yes this is what I love about this. And I think you speak to this very carefully in your writing on the Garage. Now whether others pick up on this I don't know. This is why I wanted to see what it would look like if I flattened it (take 3). 5. I agree that a better definition is needed. This is where I've been stumbling because I have not found anything that clearly defines what is meant by anarchive. 2:47pm/5:47pm Sean Smith "with take one being the only remainder of the original submission left to reveal...." precisely because of its digitality!!! yeah, i would probably just append an edited version of what we are saying here, as if the editing process was still a ripple of the event. me "adding" new text later i think defeats the purpose, but if you were to take snippets of this dialogue as part of the anarachive/ 2:48pm/5:48pm April Warn-Vannini Totally! 2:49pm/5:49pm Sean Smith and just *use them*, i think that's fair game. that way i won't be crafting my words with intent. you can even use this profile pic. 2:50pm/5:50pm April Warn-Vannini Okay perfect. With that said, do you think I should just discuss your process further in the preface or include an introduction that would be in take one? 2:51pm/5:51pm Sean Smith could it be Take Two in its own right, like an atemporal ripple that coexists with the others and bumps them to Three, Four and Five? Or could it be called "Double Take" and leave the others as Two, Three, Four? 2:53pm/5:53pm April Warn-Vannini Perfect. I like double take 2:53pm/5:53pm Sean Smith and it's us hashing through this discussion 2:53pm/5:53pm April Warn-Vannini Double take will follow take one. i like this. The Garage (Take Two) Folded, taped (scotch and duct), folded recycled chart paper previous emergent thoughts: performed, inscribed and made anew Red jiffy, black jiffy, blue ink pen cursive writing/block writing diagramming amplification dilated » » » » directional arrows « « « « Moistened, torn, crinkled Ruptures Anarchive of thought events Deciphering language/writing Exchanged as a volumetrics of new spaces Performing tactics of “writing off the page” on the page Enclosed [OPEN THE DOORS, MOVE FROM SURFACE TO VOLUME…AND THE CONVERSATION JUST MIGHT BEGIN ANEW. *stamped* SEAN SMITH] Drifting Drifting Drifting The Garage (Take Three) 6 Sean Smith video from April Vannini on Vimeo . The Garage (Take Four) The Garage (Take Five). (shrink)

Objectivity has a history, and it is full of surprises. In Objectivity, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison chart the emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences--and show how the concept differs from its alternatives, truth-to-nature and trained judgment. This is a story of lofty epistemic ideals fused with workaday practices in the making of scientific images. From the eighteenth through the early twenty-first centuries, the images that reveal the deepest commitments of the empirical sciences--from anatomy to crystallography--are those featured in (...) scientific atlases, the compendia that teach practitioners what is worth looking at and how to look at it. Galison and Daston use atlas images to uncover a hidden history of scientific objectivity and its rivals. Whether an atlas maker idealizes an image to capture the essentials in the name of truth-to-nature or refuses to erase even the most incidental detail in the name of objectivity or highlights patterns in the name of trained judgment is a decision enforced by an ethos as well as by an epistemology. As Daston and Galison argue, atlases shape the subjects as well as the objects of science. To pursue objectivity--or truth-to-nature or trained judgment--is simultaneously to cultivate a distinctive scientific self wherein knowing and knower converge. Moreover, the very point at which they visibly converge is in the very act of seeing not as a separate individual but as a member of a particular scientific community. Embedded in the atlas image, therefore, are the traces of consequential choices about knowledge, persona, and collective sight. Objectivity is a book addressed to anyone interested in the elusive and crucial notion of objectivity-- and in what it means to peer into the world scientifically. Lorraine Daston is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany. She is the coauthor of Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 and the editor of Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science. Peter Galison is Pellegrino University Professor of the History of Science and of Physics at Harvard University. He is the author of Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps: Empires of Time, How Experiments End, and Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics, and other books, and coeditor of The Architecture of Science. (shrink)

This book constitutes a major advancement in the study of Hegelian philosophy by offering the first full commentary on the monumental The Science of Logic , Hegel's principal work which informs every other project Hegel ever undertook. The author has devised a system for diagramming every single logical transition that Hegel makes, many of which have never before been explored in English. This reveals a startling organizational subtlety in Hegel's work which heretofore has gone unnoticed. In the course of (...) charting Hegel's logical progress, the author provides a vigorous defence and thorough explication of unparalleled scale and scope. The book covers the entire range of subjects connected with The Science of Logic such as Being, Essence, Measure, Subjectivity and God, showing how Hegel used logic to make transitions from one category to the next. The book also mediates Hegel's confrontation with Kant, whose Critique of Pure Reason is Hegel's major competition in metaphysical systemization. Any student encountering The Science of Logic , perhaps the most difficult and by far the most rewarding of Hegel's philosophical works, will find in Carlson's book an invaluable companion to their study. (shrink)

Business ethics courses have been launched with professors from business pulling on one oar, and professors of philosophy pulling on the other, but they lack a sense of direction. Let's begin with the basics: What is an ehtical decision? More fundamentally, why the interest in professional ethics in the first place?There are over 300 centers for the study of appIied ethics in this country-why? The events which face our society today are outside the business-oriented collection of shared beIiefs that (...) set our pubIic policy agenda. Cur beIiefs are too narrow, thus we see, understand, and control small slices of life.Business ethics should be the study of the structure and impact on us of what we call "business science," e.g., accounting, marketing, economics, law, etc., and the corresponding study of the process of what Carl Jung called individuation: learning to become one's own uniqueself in the face of these bodies of professional knowledge which have structured our lives and charted the direction for our sensibilities for too long. (shrink)

In modern philosophy acquires relevance a problem of confrontation of linguistic and visual practices of philosophical knowledge. Since Antiquity, ways of contemplation are formed as ways of recognition characterized as “ocularcentrism”. In the historical and philosophical prospective “sight” and “vision” are metaphors of thinking. They are considered as internal contemplation, and as a means of establishing human cognitive abilities. It is shown that technology and models of representation in Western culture of thinking are based on practices that appeal to (...) “visualization”. The create a “videological matrix” and make certain common stratagems of visual discourse like metaphors, diagrams, representation, etc. The article emphasizes that “the ocular dictionary” of philosophy represents a wide range of options for visual metaphors that occupy an important place in a number of key philosophical concepts. On the one hand, there are metaphors that appeal to visual perception, visual experience. But on the other hand there is a traditional interpretation of philosophical activity through the prism of visual metaphors. These includes a metaphor of vision, metaphor of light, metaphor of mirror and others. The author highlights a metaphor of vision as a key metaphor of philosophical activity, in which the philosopher is a spectator, contemplating the truth, just as the spectator of a play, sport event or religious mysteries. In antiquity this kind of contemplation was a specific activity, called “theory”. Contemporary studies show that a term “theory” can establish an association between theory as specific activity in social life and a theory as a specific activity of a philosopher. Philosophical theory is an act of “contemplation”, as evidenced by the writings of Plato and Aristotle. “Theory” was also associated with a certain contemplative work, public instruction, pilgrimage. The “theory” was the action, which took place in three steps: leaving home, contemplation, returning home. A contemplation was in the center of theory as an activity. Consequently, the philosophical theory, the article says, is born with cultural practices, the origins of which are located primarily in the social life of ancient Greek. Thus, contemplation as a “theory” is understood as the process of getting information about images, ideas which is transformed into something new in the processes if intellectual activity. Consequently, the visibility immanently contained in the philosophy and describes the philosophical activity, as a way of philosophical research and is associated with philosophical thinking. Activity of a philosopher in the contest of contemplation is essentially a “metaphor of vision”, which acts as a certain type of philosophical activity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Way of Music Education: Classic Chinese Wisdoms by C. Victor FungJui-Ching WangC. Victor Fung, A Way of Music Education: Classic Chinese Wisdoms (New York, Oxford University Press, 2018)The philosophical inquiry of music and music education has traditionally been limited to a Western lineage, primarily Greek civilization. Many prominent scholars of music education philosophy in the English-speaking world have long restricted their quests to the offspring of (...) this Western philosophy. Although music education scholars have urged a need for more than one "single philosophical foundation" for the field,1 not much has been done systematically to make up for this shortcoming until most recently when scholars such as Wayne Bowman, Ana Luciá Frega, Victor Fung, and Leonard Tan started to call for a more inclusive way of thinking to accommodate the "complexity, plurality, and change" in twenty-first century music education settings.2 To respond to this call, the primary contribution of A Way of Music Education: Classic Chinese Wisdoms is to provide an alternative for examining the phenomena of music teaching and learning by introducing classic Chinese philosophies, Yijing (the Book of Change), Confucianism, and Daoism to bridge the philosophical gap between the West and the East.This book is organized in three parts. Part I, Classical Chinese Philosophies and Music Educational Interpretations, consists of four chapters with the [End Page 116] fundamental background of each philosophy Fung adopts and its interpretation and application in music and music education. Part II, Complementarity and a Trilogy, contains four chapters that help explain how Yijing, Confucianism, and Daoism complement each other as a "harmonious triad," not only in their original context but also in the philosophical frame of contemporary music and music education. The two chapters in Part III, A New Way of Thinking and Practical Implications, discuss practical implications of these classic philosophical ideologies in music education. An epilogue calls for future research on more Chinese classics in both music education and other non-music fields as Fung believes that these rich classic wisdoms are transcendental in time and space, and thus can be experienced as a way of life that "champions the human spirit in relation to the ever-changing natural environment, material life, and social system."3 Lastly, to help readers unfamiliar with Chinese philosophy, a glossary defines the key Chinese terms in each chapter with original Chinese characters and English translations. In addition, flow charts and diagrams help readers visualize the application of complex classic Chinese principles to music education.Attempting to develop "a new way of thinking in music education,"4 Fung situates his inquiry in an "organismic worldview,"5 a way of examining oneself and his/her relation to all elements of the world, a common philosophical thread derived from ancient classic Chinese philosophies of Yijing, Confucianism, and Daoism. Transcending the long debate about the praxial philosophy and aesthetic philosophy of music education, Fung uses these Chinese philosophical principles to explain human musical behaviors first with an ontological lens. He then moves on to examine from a utilitarian perspective the significance of these musical behaviors as inseparable parts of the 'humanly human.' Carefully framing interpretations within the three Chinese classic philosophies, Fung uses a comparative method to scrutinize the meaning of music for human beings who practice it, to their social network (small or large), and to their natural environment. Fung's comparison of the similarities and differences of ancient Chinese principles concludes that "music and music education [are] part of the larger entities and phenomena that cut across time and space."6 Such comparison exemplifies the value of comparative philosophy in "acknowledging and appreciating differences in a realization of the complementarity of perspectives."7 As a result, Fung is able to complement ideas from the seeming contradiction between Confucianism's "human-centric" ideology and Daoism's "dao-centric" ideology to cleverly picture a more comprehensive way of music in education: because "these two schools are addressing different human needs…, they influence each other and provide momentum for each other."8Moreover, going beyond the "minor varieties of comparisons" within the Chinese classics, Fung challenges himself to a higher level of inquiry stretching [End Page 117] out to... (shrink)

Diagrams are ubiquitous in mathematics. From the most elementary class to the most advanced seminar, in both introductory textbooks and professional journals, diagrams are present, to introduce concepts, increase understanding, and prove results. They thus fulfill a variety of important roles in mathematical practice. Long overlooked by philosophers focused on foundational and ontological issues, these roles have come to receive attention in the past two decades, a trend in line with the growing philosophical interest in actual mathematical practice.

In this paper, I will introduce you to a new theory of mental representation, emphasizing two important features. First, the theory coheres very well with folk psychology; better, I believe, than its competitors (e.g. Cummins, 1996; Dretske, 1988; Fodor, 1987 and Millikan, 1989, with which it has the most in common), though I will do little by way of direct comparison in this paper. Second, it receives support from current neuroscience. While other theories may be consistent with current neuroscience, none (...) that I know of actually receives some degree of confirmation from it. There are many different kinds of representations. Some examples are maps, words, meter and gauge readings, diagrams, pictures, scale models, computer simulations, blueprints, charts, musical notation, smoke signals, semaphore, and computer data structures. Qua representations, they all possess intentionality, or aboutness: maps are about places, most words are about the entities they refer to, meters and gauges are about the quantities they measure, etc. However, it seems they have little in common beyond this aboutness (Millikan, 1984, p. 85). Therefore we should be open to the possibility that the aboutness of different representations is ultimately to be explained in different ways. It is becoming increasingly popular to understand the aboutness of a large class of these representations in terms of function.1 For example, a tire gauge represents one of the properties that it indicates or carries information about, namely air pressure. However, it also carries information about other quantities. If the pressure and volume of the tire are kept constant, the tire gauge will indicate the temperature of the air inside the tire, and if the temperature and pressure are kept constant, the gauge will indicate the tire volume. However, although the tire gauge indicates these things, it does not represent them. It only.. (shrink)

When originally published in 1952, this book filled a gap in the history of philosophy and science and remains an important work today, because it puts the main mathematical and physical discoveries of Descartes in an accessible form, for the benefit of English readers. Descartes is acknowledged to be the founder of modern mathematics, through his invention of analytical geometry and this volume charts Descartes’ role in bringing a unity into algebra and geometry and the development of mathematics into (...) a discipline which could be properly analysed. Carefully paraphrasing the Géométrie, this volume retains much of Descartes’ original notation as well as the original diagrams. The volume also discusses the considerable contribution that Descartes made to the physical sciences which involved accurate work in optics, light, sight and colour. (shrink)

The original Dutch version of this book, whose translator is Herbert D. Morton, was a 1979 doctoral dissertation in philosophy at the Free University of Amsterdam. J. van der Hoeven of the Free University and G. Nuchelmans of the University of Leiden were supervisors of the dissertation. Undoubtedly this monograph was an excellent dissertation which showed its author to be capable of making significant contributions to the history and philosophy of logic. In his commentary on a fragment of (...) John Stuart Mill's logical theory, de Jong shows that he is capable of selecting relevant material from several medieval and early modern logicians and of using interpretations and criticisms of contemporaries. For instance, the concluding chapter, "Appraisal," compares Mill and Kripke on naming. The historical and contemporary sources are relevant for establishing significant theses about Mill's logical theory. He exhibits a talent for portraying logical and semantical theories on charts and diagrams. These several charts and diagrams are some of the most valuable parts of the book. His numerous critical comments on the many views and doctrines summarized indicate an awareness of crucial philosophical problems. Unfortunately, features which fulfill the dissertation function of showing the author capable of making significant contributions may hinder readers from appreciating this book itself as being a significant contribution to the history or philosophy of logic or to the interpretation of John Stuart Mill. The display of so many themes from so many historical figures becomes confusing. The need in a dissertation to show critical awareness leads, in my judgment, to frequent use of the correct but superficial criticism that a writer used concepts in an unclear way. We are led to fear this type of unsympathetic criticism when we read on the first page of the introduction the phrase: "Mill's outrageously sloppy manner of formulating." We should hope that de Jong exploits his dissertation to develop more narrowly focused and more penetrating analyses in papers and in monographs whose significance can be more readily appreciated. (shrink)

In a multi-study naturalistic quasi-experiment involving 269 students in a semester-long introductory philosophy course, we investigated the effect of teaching argument diagramming on students’ scores on argument analysis tasks. An argument diagram is a visual representation of the content and structure of an argument. In each study, all of the students completed pre- and posttests containing argument analysis tasks. During the semester, the treatment group was taught AD, while the control group was not. The results were that among the (...) different pretest achievement levels, the scores of low-achieving students who were taught AD increased significantly more than the scores of low-achieving students who were not taught AD, while the scores of the intermediate- and high-achieving students did not differ significantly between the treatment and control groups. The implication of these studies is that learning AD significantly improves low-achieving students’ ability to analyze arguments. (shrink)

Logic diagrams have seen a resurgence in their application in a range of fields, including logic, biology, media science, computer science and philosophy. Consequently, understanding the history and philosophy of these diagrams has become crucial. As many current diagrammatic systems in logic are based on ideas that originated in the 18th and 19th centuries, it is important to consider what motivated the use of logic diagrams in the past and whether these reasons are still valid today. This paper (...) proposes that transcendental philosophy was a key inspiration for the development of logic diagrams and that such diagrams can be employed in transcendental arguments, even after the linguistic turn. (shrink)

This paper concerns the role of intuitions in mathematics, where intuitions are meant in the Kantian sense, i.e. the “seeing” of mathematical ideas by means of pictures, diagrams, thought experiments, etc.. The main problem discussed here is whether Platonistic argumentation, according to which some pictures can be considered as proofs (or parts of proofs) of some mathematical facts, is convincing and consistent. As a starting point, I discuss James Robert Brown’s recent book Philosophy of Mathematics, in particular, his primarily (...) examples and analogies. I then consider some alternatives and counterarguments, namely John Norton’s opposite view, that intuitions are just pictorially represented logical arguments and are superfluous; and the Kantian transcendental theory of construction in imagination, as it is developed in the works of Marcus Giaquinto and Michael Friedman. Although I support the claim that some intuitions are essential in mathematical justification, I argue that a Platonistic approach to intuitions is partial and one should go further than a Platonist in explaining how some intuitions can deliver new mathematical knowledge. (shrink)

Trained at UCLA and at NYU respectively, Laura Desfor Edles and Scott Appelrouth were frustrated by their inability to find a sociological theory text that could inspire enthusiasm in undergraduate students while providing them with analytical tools for understanding theory and exposing them to original writings from pivotal theorists. They developed this widely used text/reader to fill that need. Sociological Theory in the Classical Era introduces students to original major writings from sociology's key classical theorists. It also provides a thorough (...) framework for understanding these challenging readings. For each theorist, the authors give a biographical sketch, discuss intellectual influences and core ideas, and offer contemporary examples and applications of those ideas. Introductions to every reading provide additional background on their structure and significance. This book also makes frequent use of photos, diagrams, tables, and charts to help illustrate important concepts. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine how trends in the use of images in modern life science journals have changed since the spread of computer-based visual and imaging technology. To this end, a new classification system was constructed to analyze how the graphics of a scientific journal have changed over the years. The focus was on one international peer-reviewed journal in life sciences, Cell, which was founded in 1974, whereby 1725 figures and 160 tables from the research articles (...) in Cell were sampled. The unit of classification was defined as a graphic and the figures and tables were divided into 5952 graphics. These graphics were further classified into hierarchical categories, and the data in each category were aggregated every five years. The following categories were observed: data graphics, explanation graphics, and hybrid graphics. Data graphics increased by more than sixfold between 1974 and 2014, and some types of data graphics including mechanical reproduction images and bar charts displayed notable changes. The representation of explanatory graphics changed from hand-painted illustrations to diagrams of Bezier-curves. It is suggested that in addition to the development of experimental technologies such as fluorescent microscopy and big data analysis, continuously evolving application software for image creation and researchers’ motivation to convince reviewers and editors have influenced these changes. (shrink)