This book introduces social scientists to the ideas of George Herbert Mead - one of the most original yet neglected thinkers of early twentieth century sociology. Mead is an exceptional case amongst sociological classics in that, until now, there has been no comprehensive reader of his work. As the first one-volume, comprehensive edited collection of Meadâes published and unpublished writing, this book fills this gap. It is the first to critically assess all of Mead's writings and draw (...) out the aspects that are central to his system of thought. The book is divided into three parts, comprising a total of 30 chapters - a third of which are published here for the first time. G.H. Mead: A Reader provides a unique and timely contribution to the understanding of this key theorist. It is essential reading for both undergraduate and postgraduate students in the fields of sociology, social psychology, philosophy of social science, social and cultural anthropology, and social and political theory. (shrink)

The shift in focus has changed the nature of the Project in a way which we hadn't expected and didn't really notice until this revision. Back in the late 1980s, we started the project as a "work around" for a situation that we found personally frustrating. We believed that widely-held beliefs about Mead's ideas were misinterpretations. But his published statements were often difficult to obtain. It was easier for scholars to rely from the secondary literature about Mead than (...) to consult primary sources. As a result, those frustrating misinterpretations persisted. Our solution: republish as much of Mead as possible in machine-readable form to make distribution, familiarity, and study easier. When the Web was established, we abandon plans for a CD and prepared the documents for the new medium. George's Page was born. (shrink)

In a series of cross-cultural investigations of word meaning, Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka examine key expressions from different domains of the lexicon - concrete, abstract, physical, sensory, emotional, and social. They focus on complex and culturally important words in a range of languages that includes English, Russian, Polish, French, Warlpiri and Malay."--Publishers website.

This paper traces a relatively linear sequence of early research approaches to the formal verification of concurrent programs. It does so forwards and then backwards in time. After briefly outlining the context, the key insights from three distinct approaches from the 1970s are identified (Ashcroft/Manna, Ashcroft (solo) and Owicki). The main technical material in the paper focuses on a specific program taken from the last published of the three pieces of research (Susan Owicki’s): her own verification of her _Findpos_ example (...) is outlined followed by attempts at verifying the same example using the earlier approaches. Reconsidering the prior approaches on the basis of Owicki’s useful example illuminates similarities and differences between the proposals. Along the way, observations about interactions between researchers (and some “blind spots”) are noted. (shrink)

Preface, by Margaret Mead -- Introduction, by Margaret Mead -- The Arapesh of New Guinea, by Margaret Mead -- The Eskimo of Greenland, by Jeannette Mirsky -- The Ojibwa of Canada, by Ruth Landes -- The Bachiga of East Africa, by May M. Edel -- The Ifugao of the Philippine Islands, by I. Goldman -- The Kwakiutl of Vancouver Island, by I. Goldman -- The Manus of the Admiralty Islands, by Margaret Mead -- The Iroquois, by (...) B. Quain -- The Samoans, by Margaret Mead -- The Zuni of New Mexico, by I. Goldman -- The Bathonga of South Africa, by I. Goldman -- The Dakota, by Jeannette Mirsky -- The Maori of New Zealand, by B. Mishkin -- Interpretative statement, by Margaret Mead. (shrink)

Altruistic maximizers face a frustrating dilemma when there is an infinite series of ever-better options, but no best choice.

Every essay in this book is original, often highly original, and they will be of interest to practising scientists as much as they will be to philosophers of science — not least because many of the essays are by leading scientists who are currently creating the emerging new complex systems paradigm. This is no accident. The impact of complex systems on science is a recent, ongoing and profound revolution. But with a few honourable exceptions, it has largely been ignored by (...) scientists and philosophers alike as an object of reflective study. (shrink)

This essay provides a framework of concepts and principles suitable for systematic discussion of issues surrounding expertise. Expertise creates inequality. Its multiple benefits and the creativity of technology lead to a society replete with expertises. The basic binds of expertise derive from the desire of non-experts to be able to both enjoy what expertise offers and insure that it is exercised in the social interest. This involves trusting the exercise of expertise, involuntarily or voluntarily. A healthy society provides various means (...) to move trust from involuntary to voluntary. The social means for achieving this are laid out. The purpose of this short essay is to briefly lay out a conceptual framework within which to construct, clarify, evaluate and apply expertises. It is not to promote some particular notion of expertise over others, or to review the vast literatures, such as that on trust in science, that make up the domain. A few notes on one work towards this essay’s close may indicate what a major, and expert, process this would be. (shrink)

In an Isis 2008 review of research in History and Philosophy of Science (HPS), Galison opened discussion on ten on-going HPS problems. It is however unclear to what extent these problems, and constraints on their solutions, are of HPS’s own making. Recent research provides a basic resolution of these issues. In a recent paper Hooker (Perspect Sci 26(2): 266–291, 2018b) proposed that the discipline(s) of HPS should themselves also be understood to employ paradigms in HPS to understand science, analogously to (...) those employed in science to understand scientific domains. The paper argued for recognising at least two paradigms, one based on logic, and analytic forms more generally, the other based on deliberative judgement making. The present paper aims to use paradigmatic responses to Galison’s problems to explore the differing natures, merits and limitations of these two paradigms. This exploration also reveals the basic inadequacy of the analytic paradigm to illuminate the conduct of science, thereby permitting many of his problems to be dissolved rather than solved. (shrink)

The, Police Executive Research Forum is completing a major initiative that encourages police chiefs to formalize working relationships with emergency medical personnel. The effort is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance as a demonstration with the goal of preventing recurring violence that eventually leads to homicide. The initiative originally involved a consortium of emergency room clinicians, emergency medical service personnel, as well as police executives. The collaboration initially focused on arguably preventable dimensions of domestic violence (...) and homicide. However, after “9/11” and the ensuing anthrax crisis, the project developed into a three-step draft interactive protocol for earlier police intervention in situations involving possible deaths and mass casualties. With this shift in the project, Police Executive Research Forum’s principal collaborators shifted from emergency clinicians to public health practitioners. (shrink)

In “How Molecules Became Signs”, Prof. Deacon outlines a plausible mechanism whereby biochemical systems could be understood to fulfill the conditions of being “alive” in the context of the two broad families of requirements, namely the energetics of metabolism and the informatics of coding. In so doing, he addresses head-on how to account for the origin and the action of coding in physical systems, and thereby the necessary and sufficient conditions for life. I review some of the relevant issues around (...) the interlocking potential necessary and sufficient conditions whereby these two phenomena are included within systems of interpretation in organisms. (shrink)

This chapter describes the application of reduction concepts in emergence and self organization of complex dynamical system. Condition-dependent laws compress and dynamical equation sets provide implicit compressed representations even when most of that information is not explicitly available without decompression. And, paradoxically, there is still the determined march of fundamental analytical dynamics expanding its compression reach toward a Theory of Everything—even while the more rapidly expanding domain of complex systems dynamics confronts its assumptions and its monolithicity. Nor does science fall (...) apart into a disunified aggregate of particular cases since, with fundamental dynamics as a backbone, complex matching up of models across theoretical and empirical domains then articulates its model-structured skeleton. Discussion provides the delicately entwined dance of emergence and reduction providing constraints on compression that also permit its expansion. However, while the vision is not dead, it is currently substantially more complexly structured through model similarities and differences than that initially envisaged and individuals are left with deep questions about compression unresolved. (shrink)

George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) had a powerful influence on the development of American pragmatism in the twentieth century. He also had a strong impact on the social sciences. This classic book represents Mead's philosophy of experience, so central to his outlook. The present as unique experience is the focus of this deep analysis of the basic structure of temporality and consciousness. Mead emphasizes the novel character of both the present and the past. Though science is predicated on (...) the assumption that the present is predictable based on a thorough knowledge of the past, the experience of the present, says Mead, is an utterly unique moment comparable to no other, and when it is past the novel character of that unique experience is irrevocable. The emergence of novelty within the perceived rational order of reality is the crux of the problem that Mead explores. The present, in his words, is "the emergent event . . . something which is more than the processes that have led up to it and which by its change, continuance, or disappearance, adds to later passages a content they would not otherwise have possessed." The present as "the seat of reality" heavily conditions our retrospective view of the past as much as it helps to shape the future. The novelty of every present experience causes us to reconstruct our preceding experiences to make sense of the past, which is naturally assumed to be the main cause of what we presently experience. Our perspective on reality is thus relative to the conditioning of each new event and it changes continuously as the effects of the present shift our view of the past and future. This emphasis on the integrative, holistic nature of reality, in which everything past, present, and future is a condition of everything else, makes Mead's philosophy highly relevant to today's scientific picture of a quantum universe, where chance and probability play a role in the emergence of reality. Also of great interest is the way in which he extends his basic analysis of temporal-spatial reality to the emergence of mind and consciousness as a natural development of the evolutionary process. This stimulating and provocative work attests to John Dewey's praise of Mead as "the most original mind in philosophy in America" of his generation. (shrink)

From Leibniz to Wierzbicka: The history and philosophy of nsm -- Semantic primes and their grammar -- Explicating emotion concepts across languages and cultures -- Wonderful, terrific, fabulous: English evaluational adjectives -- Semantic molecules and semantic complexity -- Words as carriers of cultural meaning -- English verb semantics: verbs of doing and saying -- English verb alternations and constructions -- Applications of NSM: minimal English, cultural scripts and language -- Teaching retrospect: nsm compared with other approaches to semantic analysis.

James Edward Meade was a renowned British economist who, alongside Bertil Ohlin, was joint winner of the 1977 Nobel Prize in Economics. Originally published in 1958, this book contains the transcription of Meade's inaugural lecture as Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University, delivered during the same year. Concise and highly readable, it will be of value to anyone with an interest in economic history, theories regarding inflation, and macroeconomic theory in general.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.1 (2003) 64-76 [Access article in PDF] The Sign System in Chinese Landscape Paintings Cliff G. Mcmahon Paintings emerge from a culture field and must be interpreted in relation to the net of culture. A given culture will be implicated by the sign system used by the painter. Everyone agrees that in Chinese landscape paintings, the most important cultural bond is to ancient (...) Chinese Taoism, and to a lesser degree, to Confucianism. Obviously, then, the key for these landscapes is an alert understanding of Taoism, and the primary source is the book the Tao Tê Ching.Some of the most crucial elements in Taoist beliefs are often ignored in the analysis of the Taoist landscapes, and this deserves more attention. The core of Taoism lies in a philosophic and religious guess, and the guess is made as an effort to reach a high-order explanatory theory of the origin of the universe, the structure of the universe, and the best path for human life. The guess of the ancient Chinese sages goes something like this: The universe is created by an Ultimate One whose nature remains mysterious, beyond the power of words, an Absolute pervaded by the spirit of motherhood, and thus moved to the acts of creation, using two agents of creation. These two agents are invisible but real forces that operate by the tension of polarity, the dynamic interplay of negative and positive energies, much like male and female forces. The female power is called Yin, the male power Yang. The female power is seen wherever there is fluidity, softness, openness, receiving, emptiness, or darkness. The male power is at work in hardness, assertiveness, force, and light. Everything that is made is a blending of the Yin and Yang polarities, and the dynamism and flux of reality is based on the tendency of Yin and Yang to advance and retreat, the tendency of one to become the other, just as summer changes into winter, and day changes into night. In order for a man to be complete, he must learn to put on the way of woman, to be receptive. This is a very intelligent principle. [End Page 64] When we take in all our impressions of nature, and take in all the books we have read, we are in the receptive mode. The Yin female principle of emptiness has a priority over Yang in that there must be an empty space before any concrete thing comes to occupy the space. The Yin female force is seen in the low and quiet valley, and in the fluid receptivity of water. Yang is in the bold assertive mountains and in the hardness of stone. Yin appears in the graceful and flexible bending of bamboo, while Yang is in the hardness and strength of bamboo. Since Yin is associated with water, all forms of cloud and mist are symbols of Yin. Yang is action, Yin is wisdom.One of the most important aspects of Taoism is the principle that the mysterious Absolute One has permeated all of reality and serves the good of all creatures in every passing minute, asking nothing in return and offering no favoritism to any age or any group. This is obviously a sophisticated and intelligent principle for a theology. On this point, Taoism is superior to Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. Christianity might have taken a similar stand in that the gospel of John declares that the eternal logos dwells in all created things in a timeless manner, and was fully embedded in the world before the coming of the historical Jesus, but so far, Christians have almost totally ignored the opening lines of John.This philosophic core of Taoist belief compares to the great Western idea that Godhead creates by the use of cosmic agents. In the gospel of John, the logos is the agent. In chapter eight of Proverbs, Wisdom is the agent. In Plotinus, Nous is the agent. In Heraclitus, the polarities of love and hate are this agent. Sometimes the idea of cosmic agent is used to protect... (shrink)

To mathematicians, mathematics is a happy game, to scientists a mere tool and to philosophers a Platonic mystery - or so the caricature runs. The caricature reflects the alleged 'cultural gap' between the disciplines a gap for which there too often has been, sadly, sound historical evidence. In many minds the lack of communication between philosophy and the exact disciplines is especially prominent. Yet in the past there was no separation - exact knowledge, covering both scientists and mathemati cians, was (...) known as natural philosophy and the business of providing a critical view of the nature of reality and an accurate mathematical de scription of it constituted a single task from the glorious tradition begun by the early Greek philosophers even up until Newton's day (but I am thinking of Descartes and Leibniz I). The lack of communication between these professional groups has been particularly unfortunate, for the past half century has seen the most ex citing developments in mathematical physics since Newton. These devel opments hinged on the introduction of vast new reaches of mathematics into physics (non-Euclidean geometries, covariant formulations, non commutative algebras, functional analysis and so on) and conversely have challenged mathematicians to develop the appropriate mathematical fields. Equally, these developments have posed profound philosophical problems to do with the rejection of traditional conceptions concerning the nature of physical reality and physical theorising. (shrink)

Complexity arises from interaction dynamics, but its forms are co-determined by the operative constraints within which the dynamics are expressed. The basic interaction dynamics underlying complex systems is mostly well understood. The formation and operation of constraints is often not, and oftener under appreciated. The attempt to reduce constraints to basic interaction fails in key cases. The overall aim of this paper is to highlight the key role played by constraints in shaping the field of complex systems. Following an introduction (...) to constraints, the paper develops the roles of constraints in specifying forms of complexity and illustrates the roles of constraints in formulating the fundamental challenges to understanding posed by complex systems. (shrink)

Semantic Analysis is a lively and clearly written introduction to the study of meaning in language and to the language-culture connection. Goddard covers traditional and contemporary issues and approaches with the relationship between semantics, conceptualization, and culture as a key theme. He also details a number of case studies that draw on a wide range of material from non-Indo-European languages, particularly Australian Aboriginal languages and Malay, on which the author is an authority.

In the fast-growing fields of happiness studies and pain research, which have attracted scholars from diverse disciplines including psychology, philosophy, medicine, and economics, this volume provides a much-needed cross-linguistic perspective. It centres on the question of how much ways of talking and thinking about happiness and pain vary across cultures, and seeks to answer this question by empirically examining the core vocabulary pertaining to âeoehappinessâe and âeoepainâe in many languages and in different religious and cultural traditions. The authors not only (...) probe the precise meanings of the expressions in question, but also provide extensive cultural contextualization, showing how these meanings are truly cultural. Methodologically, while in full agreement with the view of many social scientists and economists that self-reports are the bedrock of happiness research, the volume presents a body of evidence highlighting the problem of translation and showing how local concepts of âeoehappinessâe and âeoepainâe can be understood without an Anglo bias. The languages examined include (Mandarin) Chinese, Danish, English, French, German, Japanese, Koromu (a Papua New Guinean language), and Latin American Spanish. Originally published in International Journal of Language and Culture Vol. 1:2 (2014). (shrink)

Resumen El presente artículo discute un estilo comunicativo típico de muchos hispanohablantes, que a menudo ha sido caracterizado en la literatura sobre pragmática y comunicación intercultural como de cercanía interpersonal y de confianza. El punto de partida teórico y metodológico es la teoría de la Metalengua Semántica Natural (NSM, por sus siglas en inglés), que propone el uso de un minivocabulario de conceptos básicos para explicar otros más complejos. En este caso, presentamos descripciones (que en la teoría se denominan guiones (...) culturales) de distintos aspectos de este estilo comunicativo de cercanía y de palabras claves culturales y rasgos gramaticales relacionados con este modo de comunicar al que, consciente o inconscientemente, adhieren muchos hispanohablantes. Nos basamos en trabajos ya realizados por otros autores dentro de la NSM y proponemos también nuevas descripciones. (shrink)

Systems and synthetic biology promise to revolutionize our understanding of biology, blur the boundaries between the living and the engineered in a vital new bioengineering, and transform our daily relationship to the living world. Their emergence thus deserves to be understood in a wider intellectual perspective. Close attention to their relationship to the larger scientific intellectual frameworks within which they function reveals that systems and synthetic biology raise fundamental challenges to scientific orthodoxy, but stand in the vanguard of an emerging (...) new complex dynamical systems paradigm now sweeping across science. (shrink)

Elster contends that much of Marx's most important work was characterized by methodological individualism. I argue that this is untrue, and that to assert it results, at least in part, from a misunderstanding of Marx's writings on the individual's relation to his society. Central to Marx's writings is the rejection of an abstract ?society?. Instead we find analysis of a particular social formation, with a historically specific relation between individual and society, and between ends and means. This is demonstrated from (...) Capital and from earlier writings by Marx. In Elster's critique of Marx's political economy, the same essentially historical content of Marx's categories is not seen. The natural (or general) and the historical are confused in Elster's argument on the theory of value. Elster's reconstruction of Marx's concepts of class and class struggle is critically examined, from the standpoint that class is a relation of exploitation, resting on property in the means of production. In supposing that Marx was in some sense a functionalist, Elster must once again be ignoring the historical core of Marx's thinking. (shrink)

The only collection of Mead's writings published during his lifetime, these essays have heretofore been virtually inaccessible. Reck has collected twenty-five essays representing the full range and depth of Mead's thought. This penetrating volume will be of interest to those in philosophy, sociology, and social psychology. "The editor's well-organized introduction supplies an excellent outline of this system in its development. In view of the scattered sources from which these writings are gathered, it is a great service that this (...) volume renders not only to students of Mead, but to historians."--H. W. Schneider, Journal of the History of Philosophy. (shrink)

This book focuses on showing how the ideas central to the new wave oj dynamic systems studies may also form the basis for a new and distinctive theory of human development where both global order and local variability in behaviour emerge together from the same organising dynamical interactions. This also sharpens our understanding of the weaknesses of the traditional formal, structuralist theories. Conversely, dynamical models have their own matching set of problems, many of which are consiously explored here. Less readily (...) acknowledged, the youthfulness of this field means that many of the studies presented here struggle to pass beyond speculative metaphor. Nonetheless, the field is shown to be one of vigour, intelligence and great promise. (shrink)

In 1895 sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel published a paper: ‘On a connection of selection theory to epistemology’. It was focussed on the question of how behavioural success and the evolution of the cognitive capacities that underlie it are to be related to knowing and truth. Subsequently, Simmel’s ideas were largely lost, but recently an English translation was published by Coleman in this journal. While Coleman’s contextual remarks are solely concerned with a preceding evolutionary epistemology, it will be argued here (...) that Simmel pursues a more unorthodox, more radically biologically based and pragmatist, approach to epistemology in which the presumption of a wholly interests-independent truth is abandoned, concepts are accepted as species-specific and truth tied intimately to practical success. Moreover, Simmel’s position, shorn of one too-radical commitment, shares its key commitments with the recently developed interactivist–constructivist framework for understanding biological cognition and naturalistic epistemology. There Simmel’s position can be given a natural, integrated, three-fold elaboration in interactivist re-analysis, unified evolutionary epistemology and learnable normativity. (shrink)