This book explores the changing tactics, technologies and terrains of 21st century war. It argues that the world in 2049 is unlikely to look like the climate change/AI dystopia depicted in Blade Runner 2049; but nor will it be a world where conflict and war has been transformed by a 'civilizing process' that eradicates violence and conflict from the human condition. 2049 is also the year that the US Department of Defense has suggested China will become a world-shaping military (...) power. All states will be engaged in 'arms races' across a variety of new tools and technologies - from drones, robotics, AI and quantum computing - that will transform politics, economy, society and war. Drawing on thinkers such as Zygmunt Bauman and Paul Virilio, the book suggests that future war will be shaped by three broad tendencies that include a broad range of tactics, technologies and trends; the Impure, the Granular and the Machinic. Through discussions of cybersecurity, urban war, robotics, AI, climate change, science fiction and new strategic concepts, it examines how these tendencies might evolve in the different geopolitical futures and types of war ahead of us. The book provides a thought-provoking and distinctive framework through which to think about the changing character of war. It concludes that for all the novel and dangerous challenges ahead, the futuristic possibilities of warfare will likely continue to be shaped by problems familiar to students of international relations and the history of war - albeit problems that will play out in geopolitical and technological contexts that we have never encountered before. This book will be of much interest to students of critical war studies, security studies, science and technology studies, and International Relations in general. (shrink)

Military affairs have been affected by major changes in the 19902. The bipolar world of two superpowers has gone. The Cold War and the global military confrontation that accompanied it have ended. A new military and political order has emerged, but the world has not become more stable, indeed, wars and armed conflict have become much more common. Forecasting the contours of future armed conflict is the primary object of this work. Focusing on the impact of new (...) technologies, General Gareev considers whether war is still a "continuation of politics by other means" or whether political, ideological and technical transformations have broken that connection. He explores the linkage beween threats to Russian national interests and war as an instrument of policy, and concludes that there is very little prospect either of nuclear war or widespread conventional war. However, he does see local armed conflicts and local wars increasing, with greater emphasis on subversion. He argues that coming decades wil see a shift toward reliance upon indirect means to accomplish limited political ends, and analyzes both information warfare and the revolution in military affairs from this perspective. (shrink)

이 글은 조선 후기에 편찬된 대표적 병서와 지식인들의 논의를 중심으로 병학사상을 살펴본 것이다. 조선은 개국 이래 200여년의 태평성대를 구가하다가 양대 戰亂을 거치면서 지식인들을 중심으로 조선 병학의 한계를 각성하였다. 柳成龍의 『懲毖錄』에 반영된 倭賊에 대한 대비책과 전란의 경험은 후기 병학 사상의 토대가 되었다고 평할 수 있을 것이다. 그러나 안타깝게도 선초의 병서에는 이에 대한 대비책이 별도로 제시된 일이 없었다. 한편 선초의 陣法 논쟁과 마찬가지로 후기 병학의 정립과정은 순탄하지 못하였다. 임란 직후 明나라 군대를 통해서 척계광의 『紀效新書』와 『練兵實紀』가 유입되었는데, 처음에는 원본 내지는 초록본의 형태로 군사훈련에 (...) 활용되다가 후에 『兵學指南』과 『練兵指南』으로서 출간되었다. 이 책들은 중국에서와 마찬가지로 우리나라에서도 왜구와 북방 오랑캐를 대응하는 데 있어서 상당한 효과를 거두었다. 그러나 선초 이래의 오위진법과 상충되기도 하고 중국과 우리나라의 지형이 차이가 있으므로 획일적으로 적용할 수 없다는 지적이 제기되었다. 英朝⋅正祖 때에는 『續兵將圖說』, 『兵學通』, 『兵學指南演義』, 『武藝圖譜通志』 등 조선 후기의 대표적 병서를 출간함으로써 군사훈련의 통일성을 기하고자 하였다. 정조는 당시 논쟁에 대해 적극적으로 참여하여 해명하였으며, 이로써 선조 때부터 200여년 지속된 논쟁은 종료되었다. 조선 전기와 후기의 병학적 특징을 개괄하자면, 선초에는 『武經七書』를 바탕으로 文臣의 주도하에 병학의 倫理化가 진행되었다면, 후기에는 『기효신서』가 계기가 되고 상대적으로 다수의 武臣이 논쟁에 참여하면서 병학의 實學化가 진행되었다고 할 수 있다. 한편 조선 병학의 정립 과정에서 주도적 역할을 한 것은 世祖와 正祖인데, 양자는 모두 왕위계승 과정이 순조롭지 못했다는 공통점을 지니고 있다. 이것은 클라우제비츠의 “전쟁은 정치 행위의 연속이다”라는 명제가 생각나는 대목이다. (shrink)

This groundbreaking work challenges modernist military science and explores how a more open design epistemology is becoming an attractive alternative to a military staff culture rooted in a monistic scientific paradigm. The author offers fresh sociological avenues to become more institutionally reflexive -- to offer a variety of design frames of reference, beyond those typified by modern military doctrine. Modernist military knowledge has been institutionalized to the point that blinds militaries to alternative designs organizationally and (...) in their interventions. This book seeks to reconstruct strategy and operations in "designing ways" and develops theories of action through multifaceted contextualizations and recontextualizations of situations, showing that military design does not have to rely on set rational-analytic decision-making schemes, but on seeking alternative meanings in- and on-action. (shrink)

A convincing argument as to why the West's military superiority scarcely matters, looking at the lack of decisive use of force in critical situations.

South African Military Professionalism: Some Critical Observations and Threats -- Threats to Professionalism in the United States Military -- Higher Education and the Profession of Arms: Explaining the Logic -- Military Professionalism -- An Organizational Challenge by Itself -- The Challenge of Maintaining Military Professionalism in the Face of Transformation: The Indonesian Army Experience -- Threats and Opportunities for Military Professionalism from Social Media -- The Profession of Arms and the Promotion of Ethics: The profession (...) of Arms and the Challenge of Ethics -- The New Economic Togetherness: Globalization of Economics and Some Implications for Security and the Military Profession -- Displaced Pride: Attacking Cynicism at the United States Air Force Acedemy -- Military Professionalism of the Swedish Armed Forces in the 21st Century -- The Dynamic Five-Factor Model as a Compass for Military Professionalism: A Comparison Between Switzerland and the Netherlands -- Complacency: A Threat to (Canadian) Military Professionalism. (shrink)

Virtually all historical treatments of just war recognize the importance of the account given by Thomas Aquinas in Summa theologiae II-II, q. 40, ?De bello?, where he outlines three conditions ? legitimate authority, just cause, and right intention ? for a justifiable use of armed force. It is, however, less well known that within the same section of the work (q. 50, a. 4) Aquinas extended his reflection on just war into a theory of military prudence. By placing generalship (...) under the category of ?prudence?, rather than ?art? or ?science?, he held that military command involves more than a morally neutral skill with victory as its sole aim. Building on the premise that service to the common good constitutes the overarching purpose of the military profession, Aquinas showed how the virtue of prudence provides an inner compass for decision-making amid the uncertainty and confusion of the battlefield. (shrink)

The question of human control is a key concern in autonomous military systems debates. Our research qualitatively and quantitatively investigates values and concerns of the general public, as they relate to autonomous military systems, with particular attention to the value of human control. Using participatory value evaluation (PVE), we consulted 1980 Australians about which values matter in relation to two specific technologies: an autonomous minesweeping submarine and an autonomous drone that can drop bombs. Based on value sensitive design, (...) participants were tasked to enhance the systems with design features that can realize values. A restriction (limited budget) in each design task forced participants to make trade-offs between design options and the values that these options realize. Our results suggest that the ‘general public’ has diverse and nuanced stances on the question of human control over autonomous military systems. A third of participants that is opposed to autonomous military systems when asked directly, selected different combinations of design features realizing varying degrees of human control. Several contextual factors, technology-specific concerns, and certain values seemed to explain these different choices. Our research shows that a focus on human control might overlook other important values that the general public is concerned about, such as system reliability, verifiability, and retrievability. (shrink)

In this study, we analyse the public perception of military AI in Estonia, a techno-optimistic country with high support for science and technology. This study involved quantitative survey data from 2021 on the public’s attitudes towards AI-based technology in general, and AI in developing and using weaponised unmanned ground systems (UGS) in particular. UGS are a technology that has been tested in militaries in recent years with the expectation of increasing effectiveness and saving manpower in dangerous military (...) tasks. However, developing weaponised systems often raises questions about their safety and accountability. While there have been public debates about the possible outcomes of AI-based civilian technologies like self-driving cars, equivalent discussions have not been held about military technologies. A discourse on potentially sensitive technologies can diminish biased representations and the distribution of worst-case scenarios. The results of this study reveal that an overall positive attitude towards AI-driven technologies is related to a positive perception of military AI systems. However, trustworthiness and human control are the main aspects that are expected from military technologies. (shrink)

This essay introduces this special issue on virtue ethics in relation to military AI. It describes the current situation of military AI ethics as following that of AI ethics in general, caught between consequentialism and deontology. Virtue ethics serves as an alternative that can address some of the weaknesses of these dominant forms of ethics. The essay describes how the articles in the issue exemplify the value of virtue-related approaches for these questions, before ending with thoughts for further (...) research. (shrink)

Volume 1: The ancient to premodern world, 3000 BCE-1815 CE -- Volume 2: The modern world, 1815-present.

The article is devoted to the phenomenon of interstate confrontation known as “hybrid war.” It attempts to consider this phenomenon in relation to pankration, the ancient Greek martial art with minimum limitations. The paper defines the philosophical and historical preconditions for hybrid war, its epistemological and ideological aspects. The author assesses the statement declaring Russia guilty of waging this type of war. Analysis of relevant sources allows us to answer the question of the theoretical prerequisites for the formation of the (...) concept of hybrid wars and to name the authors who first expressed ideas of the transformation of war into a new type of military confrontation. An attempt is made to perform a comparative analysis of various interpretations of the concept of “hybrid war.” The place of this concept among others that are related to the so-called “new wars” is considered. The author questions a negative connotation to the concept of hybrid war and the legitimacy of attempts by Western countries to attribute the conduct of this type of military action exclusively to Russia. A number of countries attempt to use Russia as a “scapegoat,” and this complex has been described by the French philosopher R. Girard. A broader interpretation of this mechanism leads to sacralization of collective aggression, but not in relation to an individual but in relation to a participant in international relations. Comprehension of the essential features of hybrid war, of its tendencies towards eliminating restrictions and regulating forms and methods of achieving military and political goals makes it possible to identify the possibilities of resisting aggressive aspirations of some countries trying to impose their scenarios for resolving international contradictions on other states. (shrink)

Drawing on ancient texts and modern interpretations, this work explores the foundations for war in China’s strategic culture-- Shih , Li , and Tao . Shih theory bases strategy on enemy intent, in contrast to Euro-American Li strategies based on forces. The work uses Shih theory to explain the anomalies that continue to perplex Euro-American observers in modern China’s uses of force.

This research evaluates the production of three dimensional (3D) clouds for geospatial viewing programs such as Google Earth, NASA World Wind, and X3D Earth. This thesis took advantage of iso-standard X3D graphics and X3D Edit in conjunction with manually produced image textures to represent 3D clouds. While a 3D geospatial viewing might never completely characterize the current state of the atmosphere, a sufficiently realistic virtual 3D rendering can be created to present current sky coverage given adequate satellite and model data. (...) Various visualization demonstration results are presented that can be rendered and navigated in real time. Further research and development is needed to match a cloud typing model output with a particular method of 3D cloud production. Data-driven adaptation and production of cloud models for web-based delivery is an achievable capability given continued research and development. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn's _Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ has sold over a million copies in more than twenty languages and has remained one of the ten most cited academic works for the past half century. In contrast, Karl Popper's seminal book _The Logic of Scientific Discovery_ has lapsed into relative obscurity. Although the two men debated the nature of science only once, the legacy of this encounter has dominated intellectual and public discussions on the topic ever since. Almost universally recognized as (...) the modern watershed in the philosophy of science, Kuhn's relativistic vision of shifting paradigms -- which asserted that science was just another human activity, like art or philosophy, only more specialized -- triumphed over Popper's more positivistic belief in science's revolutionary potential to falsify society's dogmas. But has this victory been beneficial for science? Steve Fuller argues that not only has Kuhn's dominance had an adverse impact on the field but both thinkers have been radically misinterpreted in the process. This debate raises a vital question: Can science remain an independent, progressive force in society, or is it destined to continue as the technical wing of the military-industrial complex? Drawing on original research -- including the Kuhn archives at MIT -- Fuller offers a clear account of "Kuhn vs. Popper" and what it will mean for the future of scientific inquiry. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.3 (2002) 371-397 [Access article in PDF] How the "New Science" of Cannons Shook up the Aristotelian Cosmos Mary J. Henninger-Voss [Figures]Approximately halfway through the "Second Day" of Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems Galileo's mouthpiece, the mathematician Salviati, scoffs at his Aristotelian colleague Simplicio: "I see that you have hitherto been of that herd who, in order to learn (...) how matters such as this [motion] take place, and in order to acquire a knowledge of natural effects, do not betake themselves to ships or crossbows or cannons, but retire to their studies... to see whether Aristotle has said anything about them."1 Silly, simple Simplicio! He has been searching for natural philosophical wisdom in the books of natural philosophers rather than in the world of docks and arsenals. Indeed this quotation appears near the outset of Day Two wherein Salviati offers cannonshot as proof for the opposing Aristotelian position that the experience of projectiles proves the motionless state of the earth. Obviously, if the earth rotates toward the east, cannonballs shot point-blank to the west ought to travel much further than to the east. And clearly this is not so. Simplicio agrees that the new arguments offered by the cannon are excellent, "and now I see with how many elegant experiments nature graciously wishes to aid us in coming to the recognition of the truth," Simplicio enthusiastically enjoins. "What a shame there were no cannons in Aristotle's time!" exclaims the third interlocutor, Sagredo. "With them he would indeed have battered down ignorance, and spoken without [End Page 371] [Begin Page 373] the least hesitation concerning the universe."2 The irony here is not only that Aristotle might have used cannons in order to explain the workings of the universe but also that Galileo does so in the following pages. His demonstrations with reference to artillery demolish the Aristotelian position, but he has had Simplicio open the door for him by recognizing this most violent of artifices as an elegant experiment provided by nature.3The cannon provides a primary referent for Galileo's new mathematical physics of motion from his very first dialogue to his very last. The early De Motu culminated in a series of questions about the shot of cannons, while the conversation in his final masterwork, Discourses Concerning Two New Sciences, was set in the Venetian arsenal, and to it Galileo appended a table of the parabolic paths that could be expected from cannons shot at various elevations.4 In some sense Galileo turned inside-out a much older problem, one that had haunted military engineers of sixteenth-century Italy—and Galileo had been trained, and trained others, in military engineering.5 State organizers of war and captain generals were less interested in the implications the arts of fortifications and artillery held for the existing science of natural motion than in the necessity to reduce to a science, that is, a coherent body of knowledge, the rules for manufacturing cannons, planting artillery battery, aiming guns, and fortifying camps, cities, and castles.What Galileo gives us is recognizable as early physics, as a sophisticated mechanical science, a neat triumph of mathematical method in natural philosophy. But the ways and means by which mathematics came together with natural philosophy to address problems of both technology and nature are by no means neat. My claim is that attention to the military sphere will help us sort out some of those ways and means. The curious thing about the historiography on the relationship between early modern science and warfare is that the fact of a connection seems to have been taken for granted, while the implications have seldom been investigated.6 This essay is an attempt to trace those implications by [End Page 373] looking at a mathematician who specifically tried to reduce to a mathematical science the military arts, Niccolò Tartaglia.7 Tartaglia's story shows how the minutia of Aristotelian philosophy was transmuted in early attempts to understand cannonshot... (shrink)

Holography exploded on the scientific world in 1964, but its slow fuse had been burning much longer. Over the next four decades, the echoes of that explosion reached scientists, engineers, artists and popular culture. Emerging from classified military research, holography evolved to represent the power of post-war physics, an aesthetic union of art and science, the countercultural meanderings of holism, a cottage industry for waves of would-be entrepreneurs and a fertile plot device for science fiction. New working (...) cultures sprang up to mutate holography, redefining its products, reshaping its audiences and reconceiving its applications. The outcomes included ever more sublime holograms and exquisitely sensitive measuring techniques - but also priority disputes, prurience and poisonous business rivalries. New subjects cross intellectual borders, and so do their explanations. This book draws on the history and philosophy of science and technology, social studies, politics and cultural history to trace the trajectory of holography. The result is an in-depth account of how new science emerges. Based on unprecedented interviews with pioneer holographers and extensive archival research, it reveals how science, technology, art and wider culture are entwined in the modern world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 451-453 [Access article in PDF] Ernst Cassirer. The Logic of the Cultural Sciences: Five Studies. Translated by S. G. Lofts. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Pp. xliii + 134. Cloth, $30.00. Paper, $15.00. This is a new translation of Cassirer's Zur Logik der Kulturwissenschaften: Fünf Studien. It replaces the earlier one by Clarence Smith Howe with the title The Logic (...) of the Humanities (Yale University Press, 1961) that has been out of print for many years. Howe's volume includes a translation of Cassirer's essay "Naturalistic and Humanistic Philosophies of Culture" which does not appear in the new volume.Considered as part of his system of symbolic forms, this volume is the counterpart to Cassirer's conception of mathematical and scientific thought of the third volume of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. The pivotal study in Cassirer's five closely related analyses of the cultural sciences is that concerning "Naturbegriffe und Kulturbegriffe." [End Page 451] Cassirer contrasts the way in which concepts function in natural scientific thought with the way in which concepts function in cultural thought. In the natural sciences all of the individual "properties" of a thing can be reduced to numerical determinations. The particular can be subordinated to the universal. Thus gold as a specific metal is gold if and only if it exhibits specific numerically expressed properties, e.g., possesses a specific weight, electrical conductivity, coefficient of expansion, etc.Cultural concepts do not subordinate the particular to the universal in this determinate manner. Rather, they coordinate the particular with the universal. Thus it is possible to arrange the various figures of the Renaissance such as Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, and Cesare Borgia under Jakob Burckhardt's conception of "Man of the Renaissance," but each only approximates this standard. Although each is not given a determinate place in relation to the others, they all can be comprehended in a meaningful set of interrelationships.There is a problem of how to render Cassirer's key terms, Naturbegriffe and Kulturbegriffe. Howe expresses them literally as "nature-concepts" and "culture-concepts." Lofts states them as "concepts of nature" and "concepts of culture." Lofts's rendering has the difficulty of suggesting that Cassirer's discussion concerns a comparison or criticism of various concepts of nature and culture rather than a theory of concept-formation showing the type of thinking distinctive to the natural sciences in contrast to the cultural sciences.The last study in the volume concerns "The Tragedy of Culture" in which Cassirer criticizes Georg Simmel's conception of culture as alienation of the human spirit from itself. Against Simmel's negative view, Cassirer advances his view of culture as a positive achievement of the development of spirit (Geist) from life (Leben). Cassirer's position in this study forecasts his view as developed later in An Essay on Man (1944) that human culture as it arises through its various symbolic forms of myth and religion, language, art, history, and science is a process of "progressive self-liberation." Culture for Cassirer is not alienation, but self-knowledge.Central to this last study is Cassirer's discussion of how the "I" does not originally exist in a fixed state of separation between "I" and "world" and between "I" and other human beings. The Ich, Cassirer says, develops itself in relation to the Du in the formation of culture. The difference between the two is not simply given. Lofts follows Howe in translating Ich and Du as "I" and "you" (Howe, 188-90; Lofts, 107-8). Cassirer's use of the second person familiar (Du) is intended to emphasize the "I-thou" relationship, the sense in which the other in this development of the self is originally an alter ego, not an impersonal other (Sie). Cassirer's discussion here echoes his discussion of the "thou" in the chapter on the "Phenomenon of Expression" (Ausdrucksphänomen) in the third volume of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. The translation of Du as "you" rather than "thou" which reflects the... (shrink)

La 4ème de couv. indique : "Comment fonder en raison une science de la guerre? Sur quel point d'appui objectif construire une polémologie? Comment rendre intelligible un objet rendu énigmatique par la diversité de ses expressions dans la matière historique? La réflexion menée ici part du constat suivant : les représentants d'une même espèce se sont livrés depuis des temps immémoriaux à des massacres entre congénères. Le règne vivant repose certes sur une chaîne alimentaire dont le chaînons imposent qu'ils (...) se tuent entre eux pour survivre. Mais cette contrainte biologique s'exerce entre espèces avant tout, et très marginalement entre individus de la même espèce. L'homme est de ce point de vue une exception criante : si les hommes s'entretuent très peu, en temps normal, entre membres de la même société, le meurtre est en revanche largement perpétré entre sociétés. Pourquoi ce contraste fondamental? Pourquoi les humains ne se contentent-ils pas, comme tous les autres vivants, de prendre la vie d'autrui seulement si cela leur est nécessaire pour survivre et perpétuer leur espèce?". (shrink)

This article will argue that there is a science of scenario planning; or at least a logos, a logic, a scenariology. Scenario planning is not predictive. But a good set of scenarios, scientifically developed, can reliably and predictably change minds. Scenario planning is both art and science. In joining the club of the sciences, scenario planning calls for a new kind of membership, or a new kind of science, one that, following Stuart Kauffman, relies on the importance (...) of story. Hegel tells us that all stories, all narratives include a conflict between desire and the law, intention, and necessity. Scenarios provide a way for communities to frame their intentions. They thereby effect "downward causality" on the present in order to project the present toward a preferred future. In fulfilling the promise of this new kind of science, scenario planning breaks with positivistic science, but without falling into a postmodern nihilism. Without setting out to do so, the discipline of scenario planning introduces us to a new epistemology, a new way of knowing the truth. Drawing on pragmatism, Wittgenstein, and Richard Rorty, this article reaches the conclusion that, for scenario planners, the future replaces objectivity as the horizon for justification. What is true? We'll see. (shrink)

本书收录作者研究中国古近代军事思想、毛泽东军事思想、邓小平新时期军队建设思想,及现代战役理论中重要问题的24篇相关文章。.

兵家文化是以战争为研究对象的科学文化,本书深入浅出地阐述军事文化中的精华,并分解为上百个问题,如为什么说牧野之战体现了姜太公卓越的军事指挥才能?姜太公为什么被称为兵家始祖?“曹刿论战”发生在什么时候? 等。.

This book constitutes the strictly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Computer Science Logic, CSL '97, held as the 1997 Annual Conference of the European Association on Computer Science Logic, EACSL, in Aarhus, Denmark, in August 1997. The volume presents 26 revised full papers selected after two rounds of refereeing from initially 92 submissions; also included are four invited papers. The book addresses all current aspects of computer science logics and its applications and thus (...) presents the state of the art in the area. (shrink)

Personalized medicine plays an important role in the development of current medicine. Among the numerous statements regarding the future of personalized medicine, some can be found that accord medicine a new scientific status. Medicine will be transformed from an art to a science due to personalized medicine. This prognosis is supported by references to models of historical developments. The article examines what is meant by this prognosis, what consequences it entails, and how feasible it is. It refers to the (...) long tradition of epistemological thinking in medicine and the use of historical models for the development of medicine. The possible answers to the question “art or science” are systematized with respect to the core question about the relationship between knowledge and action. The prediction for medicine to develop from an ‘empirical healing art’ to a ‘rational, molecular science’ is nonsensical from an epistemological point of view. The historical models employed to substantiate the development of personalized medicine are questionable. (shrink)

Historians of economic thought have long recognized the possibility that the "science" of economics owes more to cultural influences than we are usually prepare to admit. Econ Art offers the first detailed study of this contradiction, highlighting the cultural and aesthetic influences of surrealism, cubism and abstract art on both economic theory and method in the twentieth century.Arguing that economics has developed more as an art form than as a science, the author looks not only at what economists (...) have produced but how they have produced it, uncovering the cultural preconceptions which have shaped economic theory and method in the last one hundred years. At a time of increasing dissatisfaction with the discipline and the practice of economics, Szostak argues that the time is now ripe —- and right —- to embarrass the profession into a whole-sale reconsideration of what economics is for, how it should be done and what might make it better and more useful to the academy and to the world at large. (shrink)

There is growing recognition of the need to understand societal impacts of nanotechnology. Global interest in nanotechnology implies many nations will see a need to seek out advantages for military use. Militarization will inevitably include consideration of both offensive and defensive goals. This presents emerging implications for military forces in the near future, and will greatly influence the nature of warfare and peacekeeping in the distant future. The development of nanotechnology creates possibilities for both beneficial opportunities and adverse (...) consequences as a result of application to the military strategies of both large and small nations.The promise of nanotechnology for military and security roles derives from several innate characteristics. For example, further improvements in sensors are expected and already there are numerous reports of successful developments in research and development. Material properties can be tailored on a fine scale through nanomachining, scanning force microscopy, molecular self-assembly, and other techniques. (shrink)

Dieses Handbuch bietet erstmals einen umfassenden und systematischen Zugang zu den Theorien des Krieges. Der erste Teil des Werkes ist interdisziplinär angelegt und es werden verschiedene Kriegstheorien dargestellt – von anthropologischen bis hin zu religiösen Ansätzen. Der zweite Teil stellt zentrale Theoretiker des Krieges vor. Der dritte Teil enthält empirische Fallstudien vom Mittelalter bis in die Gegenwart zu Teilaspekten der Kriegstheorien. Insgesamt stellt der Band die Dynamik der theoretischen Entwicklung dar. Dabei berücksichtigt er die jeweiligen politischen, sozioökonomischen und technologischen Faktoren.

Commissions of experts regularly meet to reply to questions such as: What will be the population of the country, or even of our planet, in ten, fifteen or twenty-five years? In what proportion will production have increased, what modifications will its composition and utilizations have undergone? The attraction of efforts to forecast the future continues. That is a fact. How does it proceed? That is a problem, one on which de Jouvenel focuses on in this book. The Art of Conjecture (...) clearly explains what the "study of the future" can mean. De Jouvenel emphasizes the logical and political problems of forecasting and discusses methods in economics, sociology, and political science by which the future can be studied. More importantly, he discusses the fallacies to which the "study of the future" is peculiarly likely to give rise. The author argues that it is natural and necessary for the population to have visions of the future. Without this, he states, we would only be able to set one opinion of the future against another. If the origins and meanings of these predictions remained obscure, only the event could decide among the opinions. If any man can be said to have created the serious "study of the future" in our time, it is Bertrand de Jouvenel. Futuribles, a periodical he created, continues to represent a major turning point in contemporary social science. Jouvenel aimed to show how "the art of conjecture" could inform prudential judgment and allow citizens and statesmen to detect troubles before they arise. (shrink)

Developed from two reports to seminars organized by the Congress of Cultural Freedom, in 1962 and 1963, The Art of Conjecture constitues a programmatic document for the work of Futuribles, a team of intellectuals collecting materials on the role of the social sciences. The intellectual fabric of this work are woven with a fine mixture of hard-nosed mathematical analysis, derived from demographic and economic forecast, and less accurate, more imaginative, modelings for short and long term social forecast. Much of the (...) book is devoted to an analysis of common and special conceptions of the future. Here lies the greatest philosophical interest of this work. The method pivots around techniques of long term economic forecasting. The political and human aspects are ever present in the course of the study. Toward the end the author asks himself, and us, the question: should forecast be based on technological sources alone? The question has already been answered in such brilliant chapters as, "The Conditions of Political Foreseeability," "The Ecology of Social Ideas," "The Social Career of Ideas," "The Force of Moral Ideas," and "Empirical Relations between Ideas."—A. M. (shrink)