In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Whose New American Poetry? Anthologizing in the NinetiesMarjorie Perloff (bio)In the two-year span 1993–94, no fewer than three major poetry anthologies appeared that featured the poetry of what has been called “the other tradition”—the tradition inaugurated thirty-five years ago by Donald M. Allen’s New American Poetry: 1945–1960. These three anthologies are, in order of publication, Eliot Weinberger’s American Poetry since 1950: Innovators and Outsiders, Paul Hoover’s Postmodern American Poetry, (...) and Douglas Messerli’s From the Other Side of the Century. A New American Poetry 1960–1990. 1 In 1994, moreover, there were two other large anthologies of alternate poetries by “younger” poets, 2 these two in the tradition of Ron Silliman’s In The American Tree: Language, Poetry, Realism and Douglas Messerli’s earlier ‘Language’ Poetries: An Anthology. They are Peter Gizzi, Connell McGrath, and Juliana Spahr’s two-volume anthology called Writing from the New Coast, 3 and Dennis Barone and Peter Ganick’s The Art of Practice: 45 Contemporary Poets.Five volumes, then, of the “new” alternate poetries. And a sixth—this time a real blockbuster—is in progress: Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris’s two-volume Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry, which differs from all of the above by covering poetry and poetics of the entire twentieth century and from around the world. The first volume of Poems for the Millennium, From Fin-de-Siècle to Negritude (1995), takes us from such “forerunners” of Modernism as Blake, Hölderlin, Dickinson, and Rimbaud through the Futurisms, Dada, Surrealism, and Objectivism, along with complex “galleries” of individual poets, while the second—and sure to be more controversial—volume (1997) brings us up to the global present.A new avant-garde thus seems to be in the making—indeed, oxymoronic as it may sound, a new avant-garde consensus. Yet the countercanonizing of the recent anthologies is not without its own aporias. What these are is my subject here.The Modest OppositionMy starting point is that of the avant-garde anthologists themselves: Donald Allen’s New American Poetry of 1960. From the vantage point of 1995, the most startling thing about the Allen anthology—still acknowledged by all later anthologists as the fountainhead of radical American poetics—is its modesty. The New American Poetry runs to 454 pages, including statements of poetics, biographical notes, and a short bibliography; it contains forty-four poets, all of them having come to prominence in the period between 1945 (the [End Page 104] end of World War II) and 1960 (the date of publication). The four-page preface opens as follows:In the years since the war American poetry has entered upon a singularly rich period. It is a period that has seen published many of the finest achievements of the older generation: William Carlos Williams’ Paterson, The Desert Music and Other Poems, and Journey to Love; Ezra Pound’s The Pisan Cantos, Section: Rock-Drill, and Thrones; H. D.’s later work culminating in her long poem Helen in Egypt; and the recent verse of E. E. Cummings, Marianne Moore, and the late Wallace Stevens. A wide variety of poets of the second generation, who emerged in the thirties and forties, have achieved their maturity in this period: Elizabeth Bishop, Edwin Denby, Robert Lowell, Kenneth Rexroth, and Louis Zukofsky, to name only a few very diverse talents. And we can now see that a strong third generation, long awaited but only slowly recognized, has at last emerged.[xi]Note that Allen introduces the “new” American poetry, not as an “alternative” to anything else but as the successor of two preceding generations. He does not quarrel about the Moderns: if Eliot isn’t included in the above list, it is because he had stopped writing lyric poetry after Four Quartets and had turned to the theater. The cited second generation, moreover, is more “diverse” (Allen’s word) here than it will ever be again in the anthologies: Bishop and Denby, Lowell and Rexroth and Zukofsky. And the third generation, presumably following in the footsteps of the first and second, is now said to... (shrink)

This collection of essays explores the possibilities of studying educational matters with the tools of narrative and literature. Written over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, these essays trace the literary turn in educational research toward forms of literary journalism, critical storytelling, and postmodern narrative. The articles are presented as biographical evidence of the author's ongoing quest for forms of educational research that are well-suited to the enormously complex nature of educational encounters. This collection includes both theoretical dissertations and (...) actual case studies of schools and school people. (shrink)

The main thesis that is discussed in this article is based on the criticism of the prevalent interpretative models of adolescence developed during the twentieth century. Models that today appear inadequate in grasping the socio-cultural and educational transformations that deeply mark the ways of experiencing adolescents born in the second millennium. The effects of the historical and social practices that shape the adolescent experience in the 2000s represent an essential key to understanding the forms that the adolescent system assumes because (...) of social, cultural, economic, historical, and material changes. (shrink)

Why does the practice of the siesta vary across human cultures? One explanation is that it is a form of energy conservation in environments with high temperatures and/or agricultural labor. Disease palliation and prevention represents another area where the siesta might be beneficial. A preliminary study used the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) to examine the characteristics associated with siesta occurrence. Siestas were not statistically associated with high temperatures or agricultural labor (p>.05). They were, however, statistically associated with the occurrence (...) of malaria (p<.05) and marginally associated with parasitic and chronic infectious disease. Preliminary results suggest that siestas could be adaptive in environments with chronic infectious disease. (shrink)

By using algebraic properties of (commutative unital) indecomposable polynomial rings we achieve results concerning their first-order theory, namely: interpretability of arithmetic and a uniform proof of undecidability of their full theory, both in the language of rings without parameters. This vastly extends the scope of a method due to Raphael Robinson, which deals with a restricted class of polynomial integral domains.

Extreme narcissistic organizations are unable to behave ethically because they lack a moral identity. While such organizations are not necessarily unethical intentionally, they become self-obsessed and use a sense of entitlement, self-aggrandizement, denial, and rationalizations to justify anything they do. Extreme narcissistic organizations might develop formal ethics programs, but such programs will have little effect on behavior.

It has often been remarked that Bohr's writings on the interpretation of quantum mechanics make scant reference to the mathematical formalism of quantum theory; and it has not infrequently been suggested that this is another symptom of the general vagueness, obscurity and perhaps even incoherence of Bohr's ideas. Recent years have seen a reappreciation of Bohr, however. In this article we broadly follow this "rehabilitation program". We offer what we think is a simple and coherent reading of Bohr's statements about (...) the interpretation of quantum mechanics, basing ourselves on primary sources and making use of and filling lacunas in|recent secondary literature. We argue that Bohr's views on quantum mechanics are more firmly connected to the structure of the quantum formalism than usually acknowledged, even though Bohr's explicit use of this formalism remains on a rather global and qualitative level. In our reading, Bohr's pronouncements on the meaning of quantum mechanics should first of all be seen as responses to concrete physical problems, rather than as expressions of a preconceived philosophical doctrine. In our final section we attempt a more detailed comparison with the formalism and conclude that Bohr's interpretation is not far removed from present-day non-collapse interpretations of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

I argue that there is natural relationist interpretation of Newtonian and relativistic non-quantum physics. Although relationist, this interpretation does not fall prey to the traditional objections based on the existence of inertial effects.

This paper proposes an intermediate account of personhood, based on the capacity to participate in intersubjective interactions. We articulate our proposal as a reply to liberal and restrictive accounts, taking Mark Rowlands’ and Stephen Darwall’s proposals as contemporary representatives of each view, respectively. We argue that both accounts fall short of dealing with borderline cases and defend our intermediate view: The criteria of personhood based on the second-person perspective of mental state attribution. According to it, a person should be able (...) to participate in intersubjective interactions. We apply our proposal to the borderline cases of non-human primates and human infants. (shrink)

In a most interesting recent essay on Derrida and French philosophy, written by Peter Salmon, a well-known contemporary critique of Enlightenment conceptions of subjectivity was rehearsed, namely as being biased towards a Eurocentric male perspective, which presumes to present a ‘neutral’ view of subjective identity, valid for everyone, always, and universally, without regard for particular personalities, histories, cultural backgrounds, sex or privilege. I criticize this view, in particular with respect to Kant.

1. Da Leibniz a Kant.--2. L'algebra della logica.

A study of the tradition of ethical socialism, its successes, its failures, and its relevance to contemporary Britain. It focuses on a group of writers who, although separated by time, all promoted this brand of socialism. It chronicles their thoughts and theories, and examines their intentions.

Textbooks present classical particle and field physics as theories of physical systems situated in Newtonian absolute space. This absolute space has an influence on the evolution of physical processes, and can therefore be seen as a physical system itself; it is substantival. It turns out to be possible, however, to interpret the classical theories in another way. According to this rival interpretation, spatiotemporal position is a property of physical systems, and there is no substantival spacetime. The traditional objection that such (...) a relationist view could not cope with the existence of inertial effects and other manifestations of the causal efficacy of spacetime can be answered successfully. According to the new point of view, the spacetime manifold of classical physics is a purely representational device. It represents possible locations of physical objects or events; but these locations are physical properties inherent in the physical objects or events themselves and having no existence independently of them. In relativistic quantum field theory the physical meaning of the spacetime manifold becomes even less tangible. Not only does the manifold lose its status as a substantival container, but also its function as a representation of spacetime properties possessed by physical systems becomes problematic. 'Space and time' become ordering parameters in the web of properties of physical systems. They seem to regain their traditional meaning only in the non-relativistic limit in which the classical particle concept becomes approximately applicable. (shrink)

Several writers have tried to describe the foundations of an egalitarian moral view. Their aim is to explain the way of thinking on which distinctively egalitarian conclusions depend. Egalitarianism is frequently located by reference to utilitarianism. The basic features of the utilitarian view are reasonably well understood and most of us find it at least plausible. Egalitarians want to show that their own view differs from the utilitarian view in some fundamental respect. They hope to convince us that the egalitarian (...) stand on that fundamental matter is at least as plausible as that of utilitarianism. (shrink)

The story of the greatest of all philosophical friendships—and how it influenced modern thought David Hume is widely regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English, but during his lifetime he was attacked as “the Great Infidel” for his skeptical religious views and deemed unfit to teach the young. In contrast, Adam Smith was a revered professor of moral philosophy, and is now often hailed as the founding father of capitalism. Remarkably, the two were best friends for (...) most of their adult lives, sharing what Dennis Rasmussen calls the greatest of all philosophical friendships. The Infidel and the Professor is the first book to tell the fascinating story of the friendship of these towering Enlightenment thinkers—and how it influenced their world-changing ideas. The book follows Hume and Smith’s relationship from their first meeting in 1749 until Hume’s death in 1776. It describes how they commented on each other’s writings, supported each other’s careers and literary ambitions, and advised each other on personal matters, most notably after Hume’s quarrel with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Members of a vibrant intellectual scene in Enlightenment Scotland, Hume and Smith made many of the same friends, joined the same clubs, and were interested in many of the same subjects well beyond philosophy and economics—from psychology and history to politics and Britain’s conflict with the American colonies. The book reveals that Smith’s private religious views were considerably closer to Hume’s public ones than is usually believed. It also shows that Hume contributed more to economics—and Smith contributed more to philosophy—than is generally recognized. Vividly written, The Infidel and the Professor is a compelling account of a great friendship that had great consequences for modern thought. (shrink)

Informed consent is the gateway to research participation. We report on the results of the formative evaluation that follows the electronic informed consent process for the All of Us Research Program. Of the nearly 250,000 participants included in this analysis, more than 95% could correctly answer questions distinguishing the program from medical care, the voluntary nature of participation, and the right to withdraw; comparatively, participants were less sure of privacy risk of the program. We also report on a small mixed-methods (...) study of the experience of persons of very low health literacy with All of Us informed consent materials. Of note, many of the words commonly employed in the consent process were unfamiliar to or differently defined by informants. In combination, these analyses may inform participant-centered development and highlight areas for refinement of informed consent materials for the All of Us Research Program and similar studies. (shrink)

One of the characteristics of Big Data is that it often involves “imperfect” information. This paper examines the work of John Graunt in the tabulation of diseases in London and the development of a life table using the “imperfect data” contained in London’s Bills of Mortality in the 1600s. London’s Bills of Mortality were Big Data for the 1600s, as they included information collected over time, the depth and accuracy of which improved gradually. The main shortcoming of the data available (...) at the time was its nonuniform upkeep and the lack of depth of variables included at its outset. Due to these characteristics, it provides a perfect model for the examination of imperfect Big Data, as it has been analyzed, criticized, and interpreted repeatedly since the 1600s. (shrink)

This book offers an array of important perspectives on Kant and nonconceptualism from some of the leading scholars in current Kant studies. As well as discussing the various arguments surrounding Kantian nonconceptualism, the book provides broad insight into the theory of perception, philosophy of mind, philosophy of mathematics, epistemology, and aesthetics. His idealism aside, Kantian nonconceptualism is the most topical contemporary issue in Kant’s theoretical philosophy. In this collection of specially commissioned essays, major players in the current debate, including Robert (...) Hanna and Lucy Allais, engage with each other and with the broader literature in the field addressing all the important aspects of Kantian nonconceptualism. Among other topics, the authors analyse the notion of intuition and the conditions of its generation, Kant’s theory of space, including his pre-Critical view of space, the relation between nonconceptualism and the Transcendental Deduction, and various challenges to both conceptualist and nonconceptualist interpretations of Kant. Two further chapters explore a prominent Hegelian conceptualist reading of Kant and Kant’s nonconceptualist position in the Third Critique. The volume also contains a helpful survey of the recent literature on Kant and nonconceptual content. Kantian Nonconceptualism provides a comprehensive overview of recent perspectives on Kant and nonconceptual content, and will be a key resource for Kant scholars and philosophers interested in the topic of nonconceptualism. (shrink)