The plan for this volume emerged during the international Leipzig conference commemorating the centenary of the death of Gustav Fechner.

Production of Presence is a comprehensive version of the thinking of Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, one of the most consistently original literary scholars writing today. It offers a personalized account of some of the central theoretical movements in literary studies and in the humanities over the past thirty years, together with an equally personal view of a possible future. Based on this assessment of the past and the future of literary studies and the humanities, the book develops the provocative thesis (...) that, through their exclusive dedication to interpretation, i.e. to the reconstruction and attribution of meaning, the humanities have become incapable of addressing a dimension in all cultural phenomena that is as important as the dimension of meaning. Interpretation alone cannot do justice to the dimension of "presence," a dimension in which cultural phenomena and cultural events become tangible and have an impact on our senses and our bodies. Production of Presence is a passionate plea for a rethinking and a reshaping of the intellectual practice within the humanities. (shrink)

What I intend to show is that the Leibnizian language studies—the formal ones as well as those on natural languages—from his early plans for academies and language societies on up to his studies of etymology and to his interest in foreign languages and in logical, geometrical, arithmetical, and other formal calculi, has to be seen as an important contribution to the idea of enlightenment. Their importance was such that Christian Wolff was able to transform the Leibnizian ideas into the mighty (...) movement of Leibniz-Wolffian metaphysics, a movement paralleled to the tradition of Thomasius. Both tradiions later found their unification in Kant’s critical philosophy. (shrink)

Comparative biological morphology, incorporating the study of active reaction, is contrasted with genetics as the study of passive mutation. Geneticists investigate anatomical characters, never anatomical constructions, which are capable of reorganization when the biological-morphological equilibrium of the organism has been disturbed. The anatomy of Opisthocomus cristatus and Stringops habroptilus demonstrate that three successive disturbances in the bio-morphological equilibrium are reacted to purposively by anatomical reconstruction. These reactions are no accidental mutations, but are anatomical reactions, related to, and affecting, the organism (...) as a whole. In sharp contrast to such anatomical reaction, resulting, during phylogeny, in reorganization, are the “technics” [i.e., mechanistic bases] of individual development. The hereditary process is, like every physiological or embryological process, a fixed mechanism, which remains constant until an active reaction leads to reconstruction and at the same time an appropriate change of the mechanisms. The remolding of species is therefore no passive, “technical” process, but a creative act of the organisms themselves. [Original English abstract; not translated.]. (shrink)

Beyond what Colman is suggesting, some residual indeterminacy of Nash equilibrium may remain even after individual rationality is amended. Although alternative solution concepts can expand the positive scope of game theory, they tend to reduce its accuracy of predictions. Moreover, the appeal of alternative solutions may be context-specific, as illustrated by the Stackelberg solution.

Einleitung.--Die Materie.--Form, Bewirkende und gestaltende Ursache.--Der Zweck.--Zusammenhang des aristotelischen Denkens mit dem der Vorzeit. Bestimmung des Verhältnisses Gottes zur Welt.

Reichenbachs Logik unterscheidet sich betrAchtlich von anderen gAngigen LogikbA1/4chern. Es ist ein sehr lebendiges Buch, voll interessanter Beispiele und stets mit dem Blick auf die Anwendungen der Logik in der Philosophie und Linguistik. Ein Beispiel fA1/4r Reichenbachs didaktisches Geschick ist die Ausdehnung der Wahrheitstafelmethode auf spiezielle Formeln und PrAdikatenlogik. Von besonderem Wert sind die beiden letzten Kapitel, in denen Reichenbach im Jahre 1947 wohl eine der ersten bedeutenden logischen Analysen der Umgangssprache vorlegte, die auch heute noch von Linguisten sorgfAltig studiert (...) wird. (shrink)