In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Georg Simmel Reappears: “The Aesthetic Significance of the Face”James T. Siegel (bio)Michael Landmann, the editor of Georg Simmel’s collected works, tells this anecdote about him. Simmel had submitted a piece called “Psychological and Ethnological Studies on Music” as his doctoral dissertation. His examining committee refused to accept it. As the American translator of the piece retells Landmann’s anecdote, theyinstead granted the degree for a previously written distinguished (...) study on Kant’s monadology. While Zupitza [the committee’s chair] would have been willing to accept this study on music, if it were first “cleared of the numerous misspellings and stylistic errors,” Helmholtz was more skeptical: “Regardless of my other reservations, Simmel is entirely too confident in his conclusions. And the manner in which he presented the faculty with this piece which is so full of misspellings and stylistic superficialities, which evidently was not proofread, in which sentences which are cited from foreign languages can hardly be deciphered, does not attest to a great deal of reliability. Insofar, however, as he has quite a few illustrious predecessors for what he evidently takes to be the method or lack of method of scientific study, he may let them serve as some kind of personal excuse. I, however, believe that we will be doing him a greater service if we do not encourage him further in this direction.”[Landmann 17]1It seems it is Simmel’s fate to be dismissed yet still to be recognized, if not for the work at hand, for something else. Donald Levine, for instance, notes that in Talcott Parsons’s attempt to recuperate German and French sociology for the English-speaking world, there is no mention of Simmel. He says further that his studies of art “are not well known by art historians and critics” just as his work in the philosophy of history is ignored by historians. Simmel died in 1919, but there are still recurrent “discoveries” of Simmel, as witnessed by the sporadic bursts of translations into English. The Philosophy of Money, for instance, published in 1900, was not translated into English until 1978, the famous essay “The Stranger” in 1950, and so on. Just as Simmel left no students who worked in the way he did and no school of sociology, the revivals of Simmel, which usually are marked by a sense of anticipation (“now we will not only learn something; we will carry it forward”), tend to die away without leaving important (or at least recognizable) effects. [End Page 100]It is difficult to quote Simmel and to carry on his work through the usual modifications of something already in place. There is, instead, the attempt to present him “nonetheless.” Thus Donald Levine, to whom the English-speaking world is much indebted for his translations and presentations of Simmel, says: “[t]he presentation of a coherent account of the whole of Simmel’s social thought is complicated by the fact that coherence is generally not considered to be one of the hallmarks of Simmel’s writing” [11]. Levine writes this sentence in a piece he entitles “The Structure of Simmel’s Social Thought.” There are indeed a number of attempts to say what it is that Simmel was trying to do, as though readers had decided that Simmel is unclear but that “nonetheless” we can discern something of great value—just as his thesis committee in refusing his dissertation decided “nonetheless” that another piece would do. If Simmel did not deserve a degree for a piece on the ethnology and psychology of music, surely he deserved it for a work on Kant’s monadology. It seems to be Simmel’s talent to divert interest from whatever he is saying to something else—and always to something of interest and importance. Hence the fact that his influence is much greater than appears from the relative lack of citations to him and the absence not merely of a school of scholarship but of a style of writing traceable to him. His influence disappears at the moment it is most strongly felt. And just when he seems to be out of sight, forgotten, or used up, he reappears. 2Max Weber gives... (shrink)

Why does one theory "succeed" while another, possibly clearer interpretation, fails? By exploring two observationally equivalent yet conceptually incompatible views of quantum mechanics, James T. Cushing shows how historical contingency can be crucial to determining a theory's construction and its position among competing views. Since the late 1920s, the theory formulated by Niels Bohr and his colleagues at Copenhagen has been the dominant interpretation of quantum mechanics. Yet an alternative interpretation, rooted in the work of Louis de Broglie in (...) the early 1920s and reformulated and extended by David Bohm in the 1950s, equally well explains the observational data. Through a detailed historical and sociological study of the physicists who developed different theories of quantum mechanics, the debates within and between opposing camps, and the receptions given to each theory, Cushing shows that despite the preeminence of the Copenhagen view, the Bohm interpretation cannot be ignored. Cushing contends that the Copenhagen interpretation became widely accepted not because it is a better explanation of subatomic phenomena than is Bohm's, but because it happened to appear first. Focusing on the philosophical, social, and cultural forces that shaped one of the most important developments in modern physics, this provocative book examines the role that timing can play in the establishment of theory and explanation. (shrink)

An exploration of the moral and ethical implications of new biotechnologies Many of the ethical issues raised by new technologies have not been widely examined, discussed, or indeed settled. For example, robotics technology challenges the notion of personhood. Should a robot, capable of making what humans would call ethical decisions, be held responsible for those decisions and the resultant actions? Should society reward and punish robots in the same way that it does humans? Likewise, issues of safety, environmental concerns, and (...) distributive justice arise with the increasing acceptance of genetically modified organisms in food production nanotechnology in engineering and medicine, and human gene therapy and enhancement. The problem of dual-use—when a technology can be used both to benefit and to harm—exists with virtually all new technologies but is central in the context of emerging 21st century technologies ranging from artificial intelligence and robotics to human gene-editing and brain-computer interfacing. In Re-Creating Nature: Science, Technology, and Human Values in the Twenty-First Century, James T. Bradley addresses emerging biotechnologies with prodigious potential to benefit humankind but that are also fraught with ethical consequences. Some actually possess the power to directly alter the evolution of life on earth including human. Specifically, these topics include stem cells, synthetic biology, GMOs in agriculture, nanotechnology, bioterrorism, CRISPR gene-editing technology, three-parent babies, robotics and roboethics, artificial intelligence, and human brain research and neurotechnologies. Offering clear explanations of these various technologies, a pragmatic presentation of the conundrums involved, and questions that illuminate hypothetical situations, Bradley guides discussions of these and other thorny issues resulting from the development of new biotechnologies. He also highlights the responsibilities of scientists to conduct research in an ethical manner and the responsibilities of nonscientists to become “science literate” in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Empirical adequacy, formal explanation and understanding are distinct goals of science. While no a priori criterion for understanding should be laid down, there may be inherent limitations on the way we are able to understand explanations of physical phenomena. I examine several recent contributions to the exercise of fashioning an explanatory discourse to mold the formal explanation provided by quantum mechanics to our modes of understanding. The question is whether we are capable of truly understanding (or comprehending) quantum phenomena, as (...) opposed to simply accepting the formalism and certain irreducible quantum correlations. The central issue is that of understanding versus merely redefining terms to paper over our ignorance. (shrink)

The importance of history for religious ethics lies in the fact that, in religious communities existing over time, values are encountered in history, given forms dependent on the historical experience of the believing community, and recalled by the individual moral agent through memory in the context of participation in that community. This paper has to do with the nature of that memory and its implications for moral identity. Specifically, I utilize the concept of "significant history," derived from Gordon Kaufman's notion (...) of the "living past," arguing that moral identity is defined by memory of such history, present to the self in two aspects, individual and communal. The historical task of the religious ethicist, on this view, is to render faithfully both his own significant history and that of his community of faith. With the problem thus defined, I analyze several attempts to solve it, attempting to show how a religious ethical tradition ought to be treated as normative for contemporary analysis and decision-making. (shrink)

A case study of the development of quantum field theory and of S-matrix theory, from their inceptions to the present, is presented. The descriptions of science given by Kuhn and by Lakatos are compared and contrasted as they apply to this case study. The episodes of the developments of these theories are then considered as candidates for competing research programs in Lakatos' methodology of scientific research programs. Lakatos' scheme provides a reasonable overall description and a plausible assessment of the relative (...) value of these two programs in terms of progressive and degenerating problem shifts. Also discussed are the roles of various types of models as they have been used in these areas of theoretical high-energy physics. (shrink)

This book examines a selection of philosophical issues in the context of specific episodes in the development of physical theories. Advances in science are presented against the historical and philosophical backgrounds in which they occurred. A major aim is to impress upon the reader the essential role that philosophical considerations have played in the actual practice of science. The book begins with some necessary introduction to the history of ancient and early modern science, with major emphasis being given to the (...) two great watersheds of twentieth-century physics: relativity and, especially, quantum mechanics. At times the term 'construction' may seem more appropriate than 'discovery' for the way theories have developed and, especially in the later chapters, the question of the influence of historical, philosophical and even social factors on the very form and content of scientific theories is discussed. (shrink)

This article reports the results of marketing research that was undertaken as part of an information technology prototype development project. The project was devoted to the creation of a multimedia-based prototype system to provide timely and accurate information from government geographic information databases to government decision makers and the general public in an easy-to-use interactive visual format. The general public (i.e., private citizens, schools, and businesses—society in general) had to be able to access the product via broadband-to-the-home (-business/-school) technology. Because (...) of significant time and budget constraints, a satisficing approach to the marketing research was adopted. This approach led to the definition of several social categories of the general public whose opinions were thought to be critical to the commercial development of the prototype: (a) elementary and secondary education leaders (both technophiles and technophobes), (b) adults with a record as early adopters of information technologies, (c) adults with no previous interest in (or limited experience with) information technologies, and (d) high school students. Six focus groups were defined based on these social categories. The results of the marketing research devoted to information needs of the focus group participants are reported, and implications related to their expectations regarding emerging technologies are discussed. The research suggests that expectations in the portion of the market on which the success of the technologies depend are often inconsistent with the types of technologies that are being developed for that market. (shrink)

From the beginning, the implications of quantum theory for our most general understanding of the world have been a matter of intense debate. Einstein argues that the theory had to be regarded as fundamentally incomplete. Its inability, for example, to predict the exact time of decay of a single radioactive atom had to be due to a failure of the theory and not due to a permanent inability on our part or a fundamental indeterminism in nature itself. In 1964, John (...) Bell derived a theorem which showed that any deterministic theory which preserved locality would have certain consequences for measurements performed at a distance from one another. An experimental check seems to show that these consequences are not, in fact, realized. The correlation between the sets of events is much stronger than any local deterministic theory could allow. What is more, this stronger correlation is precisely that which is predicted by quantum theory. The astonishing result is that local deterministic theories of the classical sort seem to be permanently excluded. Not only can the individual decay not be predicted, but no future theory can ever predict it. The contributors in this volume wrestle with this conclusion. Some welcome it; others leave open a return to at lease some kind of deterministic world, one which must however allow something like action-at-a distance. How much lit it? And how can one avoid violating relativity theory, which excludes action-at-a-distance? How can a clash between the two fundamental theories of modern physics, relativity and quantum theory, be avoided? What are the consequences for the traditional philosophic issue of causality explanation and objectivity? One thing is certain; we can never return to the comfortable Newtonian world where everything that happened was, in principle, predictable and where what happened at one measurement site could not affect another set of measurements being performed light-years away, at a distance that a light-signal could not bridge. Contributors: James T. Cushing, Abner Shimony, N. David Mermin, Jon P. Jarrett, Linda Wessels, Bas C. van Fraassen, Jeremy Butterfield, Michael L. G. Redhead, Henry P. Stapp, Arthur Fine, R. I. G. Hughes, Paul Teller, Don Howard, Henry J. Folse, and Ernan McMullin. (shrink)

In the philosophy of science, we are to assess critically and on their intrinsic merits various proposals for a consistent interpretation of quantum mechanics, including resolutions of the measurement problem and accounts of the long-range Bell correlations. In this paper I suggest that the terms of debate may have been so severely and unduly constrained by the reigning orthodoxy that we labor unproductively with an unhelpful vocabulary and set of definitions and distinctions. I present an alternative conceptual framework, free of (...) many of the standard conundrums. (shrink)

Intellectual history and the history of political thought are siblings, perhaps even twins. They have similar origins and use similar materials. They attract many of the same friends and make some of the same enemies. Yet like most siblings, they have different temperaments and ambitions. This essay explores the family resemblances and draws out the contrasts by examining two major works by one of the most prominent political theorists of the past half-century, Alan Ryan, who has recently published two big (...) books that intellectual historians will find rewarding and provocative. (shrink)

American intellectual history in the future will be embodied, embedded, and extended. Building on a sturdy foundation of past practices, intellectual historians will consolidate the advances of the last half-century and continue to study ideas articulated in multiple registers, by multiple historical actors, for multiple purposes.

Christian tradition has largely held three affirmations on the resurrection of the physical body. Firstly, that bodily resurrection is not a superfluous hope of afterlife. Secondly, there is immediate post-mortem existence in Paradise. Finally, there is numerical identity between pre-mortem and post-resurrection human beings. The same tradition also largely adheres to a robust doctrine of The Intermediate State, a paradisiacal disembodied state of existence following the biological death of a human being. This book argues that these positions are in fact (...) internally inconsistent, and so a new metaphysics for life after death is required. (shrink)

Were it one's purpose to set rolling in scornful impatience the eyes of those who currently animate the discipline of personality psychology, one could scarcely do better than to initiate some discussion of the so-called "nomothetic vs. idiographic" controversy, a dispute that has nagged the field for at least the past 50 years. The author has been persuaded that the need for such an analysis will prevail for just so long as it takes the legion but, alas, ersatz "nomotheticists' of (...) personality psychology to finally get it right: The knowledge yielded by conventional' 'nomothetic' personality research has never been, is not now, and will never be nomothetic in any sense of the term to which a personality theorist would be compelled to bow. When all is said and done, it is only this dogma, as fallacious as it is resilient, that has nourished some six decades of "nomothetic" hegemony and, in the process, served repeatedly as the grounds for summarily banishing to their collective corner dispirited critics such as Allport . But while the intimidating hubris of psychometric sophisticates may heretofore have muted many who, in their alleged "romanticism" dared to challenge conventional "nomothetic" wisdom, such browbeating does not dispel ghosts—Teutonic or otherwise. There are certain essentially epistemological problems with which apologists for traditional "nomotheticism" simply must come to grips, and if prior critics of the dominant paradigm failed to articulate those problems adequately , then the struggle must be joined anew, because the problems are genuine and they are not just going to evaporate. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

The question of the causality exercised by active mind cannot be dismissed as an attempt to go beyond what Aristotle explicitly says. One cannot say that Aristotle proves the existence of active mind but leaves the kind of causality it exercises an open question. Rather, if one accepts that Aristotle proves the existence of active mind, one must have an answer for the kind of causality it exercises. The analysis of De Anima, 3.5 shows that the principle on which the (...) argument for the existence of active mind rests cannot be read as arguing coherently for the existence of active mind as an efficient cause, but that the text is open to an interpretation along the lines of final causality. (shrink)

Up to the present time the science of physics has given us no purely physical theory by which the characteristic formal properties of sensation can be derived. No explanation of the sense world purely in terms of the postulated physical world has been forthcoming, so that the psychologist has had either to ignore sensations or consider them as at least partially unaccountable additions to the entities of physics.That there is, nevertheless, a purely physical explanation of the sense world we hope (...) the following pages will make clear. We will present a theory in which the characteristic properties of sensation are derived from postulated physical entities. (shrink)

I argue that historical contingency, in the sense of the order in which events take place, can be an essential factor in determining which of two equally adequate and fruitful, but observationally indistinguishable, scientific theories is accepted by the scientific community. This type of actual underdetermination poses questions for scientific realism and for rational reconstruction in theory evaluation. To illustrate this, I discuss the complete observational equivalence of two radically different, conceptually incompatible interpretations of quantum mechanics and argue that an (...) entirely plausible reordering of historical factors could reasonably have resulted in the causal program having been chosen over the "Copenhagen" one. (shrink)

Meaning systems and psychological suffering -- Conceptualizations of meaning system -- Meaning systems and mental health culture -- Contemporary culture and objectification -- Training for talk therapists.

An effort to recover and explicate the idea of just war in Christian terms spans Paul Ramsey's career for almost four decades, from his earliest book to his last. His writings on this subject constitute one of the most important thematic and substantive contributions of his thought. This essay begins with a summary of classical just war tradition and assesses the relation of Ramsey's conception of just war to it. Then it examines that conception in detail, focusing on three topics: (...) the core idea of Christian love as an absolute moral norm expressed in the principle of discrimination, Ramsey's conversionist understanding of history and of politics that undergirds his argument from both discrimination and proportionality in conversation with the secular policy community, and the imbalance between treatment of the "jus in hello and the jus ad helium" in Ramsey's just war thought. Emphasis throughout is given to the influence of the contexts of debate in which Ramsey developed his ideas. (shrink)

In his book Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—and What It Means to Be Human (2005), author-journalist Joel Garreau identifies four technologies whose synergistic activity may transform humankind into a state transcending present human nature: genetic, robotic, information, and nano (GRIN) technologies. If the GRIN technologies follow Moore's Law, as information technology has done for the past four decades, Homo sapiens and human society may be unimaginably different before the middle of this century. But (...) among scientists, futurists, and other pundits there is no agreement on the nature and ramifications of this transformation. Based on dozens of interviews, Garreau sees three possible scenarios for our species. The Heaven Scenario foresees enhanced bodies and minds in a disease-free world, perhaps even immortality; the Hell Scenario warns of losing our identity as a biological entity and perhaps the demise of liberal democracy; the Prevail Scenario predicts that we will muddle through the GRIN technology revolution basically intact, as we have prevailed during past technological upheavals. In this review, these scenarios are examined in the context of Kuhn's “normal” versus “extraordinary” science and in the context of current understanding about gene function. (shrink)