Building on an illustrative case of a systemic environmental threat and its multi‐stakeholder response, this paper draws attention to the changing political impacts of corporations in the digital age. Political Corporate Social Responsibility (PCSR) theory suggests an expanded sense of politics and corporations, including impacts that may range from voluntary initiatives to overcome governance gaps, to avoiding state regulation via corporate political activity. Considering digitalization as a stimulus, we explore potential responsibilities of corporations toward public goods in contexts with functioning (...) governments. We show that digitalization—in the form of transparency, surveillance, and data‐sharing—offers corporations’ scope for deliberative public participation. The starry sky beetle infestation endangering public and private goods is thereby used to illustrate the possibility of expanding the political role of corporations in the digital sphere. We offer a contribution by conceptualizing data‐deliberation as a Habermasian variation of PCSR, defined as the (a) voluntary disclosure of corporate data and its transparent, open sharing with the public sector (b) along with the cooperation with governmental institutions on data analytics methods for examining large‐scale datasets (c) thereby complying with existing national and international regulations on data protection, in particular with respect to privacy and personal data. (shrink)

This article proposes a conceptual mapping to outline salient properties and relations that allow for a knowledge transfer from the well-established greenwashing phenomenon to the more recent machinewashing. We account for relevant dissimilarities, indicating where conceptual boundaries may be drawn. Guided by a “reasoning by analogy” approach, the article addresses the structural analogy and machinewashing idiosyncrasies leading to a novel and theoretically informed model of machinewashing. Consequently, machinewashing is defined as a strategy that organizations adopt to engage in misleading behavior (...) about ethical Artificial Intelligence /algorithmic systems. Machinewashing involves misleading information about ethical AI communicated or omitted via words, visuals, or the underlying algorithm of AI itself. Furthermore, and going beyond greenwashing, machinewashing may be used for symbolic actions such as lobbying and prevention of stricter regulation. By outlining diverse theoretical foundations of the established greenwashing domain and their relation to specific research questions, the article proposes a machinewashing model and a set of theory-related research questions on the macro, meso, and micro-level for future machinewashing research. We conclude by stressing limitations and by outlining practical implications for organizations and policymakers. (shrink)

Mit der Digitalisierung geht ein fundamentaler, herausfordernder Wandel einher. Durch eine Begriffsbestimmung und Operationalisierung wird in diesem Beitrag der digitale Wandel aus wirtschaftsphilosophischer Sicht vorgestellt. Zunächst werden wirtschaftsphilosophische Grundlagen der Digitalisierung wie die Informationsethik erläutert, gefolgt von einer Diskussion der digitalen Wertschöpfung, die auf Überwachung aufbaut und von einer Überwachungskultur gespeist wird. Schließlich werden Zukunftsperspektiven zum Internet der Dinge, Pricing, Privatheit und der Digitalen Demokratie skizziert.

Contemporary leaders are increasingly challenged to execute their leadership roles with a higher sense of responsibility. However, only a handful of studies have empirically examined the influence of responsible leadership on employee and organisational outcomes. Using Social Identity Theory and Psychological Contract Theory, this paper reports the findings of the relationship between responsible leadership and organisational commitment through the mediating role of employee turnover intentions. A web-based online survey was administered to collect data targeting a sample of 200 Australian employees (...) working full time. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data. The results reveal that perceived responsible leadership significantly influences employees’ organisational commitment and their turnover intentions. Moreover, the direct relationship between responsible leadership and organisational commitment was found to be partially mediated by employees’ turnover intentions. (shrink)

Dehumanization by algorithms raises important issues for business and society. Yet, these issues remain poorly understood due to the fragmented nature of the evolving dehumanization literature across disciplines, originating from colonialism, industrialization, post-colonialism studies, contemporary ethics, and technology studies. This article systematically reviews the literature on algorithms and dehumanization (n = 180 articles) and maps existing knowledge across several clusters that reveal its underlying characteristics. Based on the review, we find that algorithmic dehumanization is particularly problematic for human resource management (...) and the future of work, managerial decision-making, consumer ethics, hard- and soft-law regulation, and basic values, including privacy and consumer rights. From the literature synthesis, we also derive the following definition of algorithmic dehumanization: the act of using algorithms and data in a way that results in the intentional or unintentional treatment of individuals and/or groups as less than fully human, thereby violating human rights, including liberty, equality, and dignity. Ultimately, we present a dehumanization avoidance model that serves as a structured research agenda and practical guide to address the challenges raised by algorithmic dehumanization. Thus, the model indicates promising pathways for future research at the intersection of AI and society and facilitates reflection on organizational processes that support improving corporate capabilities and managerial decision-making to avoid algorithmic dehumanization. (shrink)

Recent developments in global business gave rise to innovative forms of digital-exchange, facilitated by a new big data-based infrastructure – the sharing economy platform. SEPs are rapidly expanding, challenging the political-economic order and the classical division of work in society. Against the background of the current sustainability crisis, we discuss the increasingly momentous role of SEPs as a potential driver toward a more sustainable economy and society. Drawing on the theoretical lens of political CSR theory, we first outline how SEPs (...) are applying institutional strategies to gain a competitive advantage, thereby shaping contexts in their favor and triggering an erosion of foundations of social sustainability. However, SEPs also strive for legitimacy by taking over novel social responsibilities via profound digital capacities. Thus SEPs carry the potential to contribute to a more sustainable future economy. Our chapter considers future pathways of platform CSR regimes and a democratization of SEPs building on political CSR theory. (shrink)

Firms increasingly deploy algorithmic pricing approaches to determine what to charge for their goods and services. Algorithmic pricing can discriminate prices both dynamically over time and personally depending on individual consumer information. Although legal, the ethicality of such approaches needs to be examined as often they trigger moral concerns and sometimes outrage. In this research paper, we provide an overview and discussion of the ethical challenges germane to algorithmic pricing. As a basis for our discussion, we perform a systematic interpretative (...) review of 315 related articles on dynamic and personalized pricing as well as pricing algorithms in general. We then use this review to define the term algorithmic pricing and map its key elements at the micro-, meso-, and macro levels from a business and marketing ethics perspective. Thus, we can identify morally ambivalent topics that call for deeper exploration by future research. (shrink)

At almost every election, Americans are inclined to say that this is the most consequential election in American history. 2020 is no exception. However, what is particularly remarkable about the No...

The complex relationships between humans and AI-empowered machines have created and inspired new products and services as well as controversial debates, fiction and entertainment, and last but not least, a striving and vital field of research. The convergence between the two categories of entities has created stimulating concepts and theories in the past, such as the uncanny valley, machinization of humans through datafication, or humanization of machines, known as anthropomorphization. In this article, we identify a new gap in the relational (...) interaction between humans and AI triggered by commercial interests, making use of AI through advertisement, marketing, and corporate communications. Our scope is to broaden the field of AI and society by adding the business-society-nexus. Thus, we build on existing research streams of machinewashing and the analogous phenomenon of greenwashing to theorize about the humanwashing of AI-enabled machines as a specific anthropomorphization notion. In this way, the article offers a contribution to the anthropomorphization literature conceptualizing humanwashing as a deceptive use of AI-enabled machines aimed at intentionally or unintentionally misleading organizational stakeholders and the broader public about the true capabilities that AIEMs possess. (shrink)

About one third of patients with epilepsy have seizures refractory to the medical treatment. Electrical stimulation mapping is the gold standard for the identification of “eloquent” areas prior to resection of epileptogenic tissue. However, it is time-consuming and may cause undesired side effects. Broadband gamma activity recorded with extraoperative electrocorticography during cognitive tasks may be an alternative to ESM but until now has not proven of definitive clinical value. Considering their role in cognition, the alpha and beta bands could further (...) improve the identification of eloquent cortex. We compared gamma, alpha and beta activity, and their combinations for the identification of eloquent cortical areas defined by ESM. Ten patients with intractable focal epilepsy participated in a delayed-match-to-sample task, where syllable sounds were compared to visually presented letters. We used a generalized linear model approach to find the optimal weighting of each band for predicting ESM-defined categories and estimated the diagnostic ability by calculating the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. Gamma activity increased more in eloquent than in non-eloquent areas, whereas alpha and beta power decreased more in eloquent areas. Diagnostic ability of each band was close to 0.7 for all bands but depended on multiple factors including the time period of the cognitive task, the location of the electrodes and the patient’s degree of attention to the stimulus. We show that diagnostic ability can be increased by 3–5% by combining gamma and alpha and by 7.5–11% when gamma and beta were combined. We then show how ECoG power modulation from cognitive testing can be used to map the probability of eloquence in individual patients and how this probability map can be used in clinical settings to optimize ESM planning. We conclude that the combination of gamma and beta power modulation during cognitive testing can contribute to the identification of eloquent areas prior to ESM in patients with refractory focal epilepsy. (shrink)

At almost every election, Americans are inclined to say that this is the most consequential election in American history. 2020 is no exception. However, what is particularly remarkable about the No...

Purpose This paper aims to outline how destructive communication exemplified by ransomware cyberattacks destroys the process of organization, causes a “state of exception,” and thus constitutes organization. The authors build on Agamben's state of exception and translate it into communicative constitution of organization theory. Design/methodology/approach A significant increase of cyberattacks have impacted organizations in recent times and laid organizations under siege. This conceptual research builds on illustrative cases chosen by positive deviance case selection of ransomware attacks. Findings CCO theory focuses (...) mainly on ordering characteristics of communication. The authors aim to complement this view with a perspective on destructive communication that destroys the process of organization. Based on illustrative cases, the authors conceptualize a process model of destructive CCO. Practical implications The authors expand thoughts about a digital “corporate immune system” to question current offensive cybersecurity strategies of deterrence and promote resilience approaches instead. Originality/value Informed by destructive communication of cyberattacks, this theory advancement supports arguments to include notions of disorder into CCO theory. Furthermore, the paper explains where disruptions like cyberattacks may trigger sensemaking and change to preserve stability. Finally, a novel definition of ‘destructive CCO’ is provided: Destructive Communication Constitutes Organization by disrupting and destroying its site and surface while triggering sensemaking and becoming part of sensemaking itself. (shrink)

The issue of whether the writings of Thomas Aquinas show internal contradictions has not only stirred readers from his earliest, often critical, reception, but also led to the emergence of a literary genre that has crucial relevance to the history of medieval Thomism. Concordances were drawn up which listed Thomas' contradictory statements and, in most cases, tried to disguise the appearance of contradiction by exegesis. But what was at stake in this interpretive endeavor? What role did the concordances play in (...) shaping Thomism? What tensions did they reveal in the works of Thomas? The book aims to investigate these questions and puts the concordance of Peter of Bergamo (1482), which represents the most important example of this type of text, at the center of the investigation. Contributors are Marieke Abram, Kent Emery, Jr., Maarten J.F.M. Hoenen, Isabel Iribarren, Thomas Jeschke, Catherine König-Pralong, Mario Meliadò, Silvia Negri, Zornitsa Radeva, and Peter Walter. (shrink)

Bunge’s writings on the mind-body problem provide a rigorous, analytical antidote to the persistent anti-materialist tendency that has characterized the history of philosophy and science. Bunge suggests that dualism can be neutralized “with a bit of philosophical analysis” but this is clearly too optimistic in view of the recent revival of dualism as a respectable doctrine despite a vast industry of philosophical analysis. The conceivability of zombies leads to the possibility of dualism and thereby to the falsity of materialism. Bunge (...) relies on his general case that “arguably all the factual sciences only study concrete entities, from photons to rocks to organisms to societies”. Bunge’s immunity to philosophical extravagance is to be commended, but he is perhaps like someone who rejects Zeno’s paradoxes as physical absurdities and thereby leaves the puzzle itself untouched. While philosophers need to be cured of their paradoxes, perhaps Bunge’s strategy of just getting on with real scientific inquiry is, after all, the best approach. (shrink)

Una de las características de la transmisión manuscrita de los _Tractatus _ _de Pedro Hispano es el hecho de que el tratado sobre las _Categorías _no siempre ocupa el mismo lugar al interior de la obra. En algunos manuscritos se encuentra en tercer lugar, después del tratado acerca de la _Isagoge _de Porfirio, siguiendo el orden tradicional de la _logica vetus. _Pero en algunos otros, se encuentra en quinto lugar, después del tratado sobre los _Tópicos _y antes del tratado sobre (...) la suposición. En los dos casos, el lugar de las _Categorías _de Aristóteles en la lógica es definido por la noción de “término”. El propósito de este artículo es entender por qué ocurre esta variación, ya que no es teóricamente neutral. Por tanto, para atender al problema del orden de aparición del tratado sobre las _Categorías _dentro de la lógica, se presentarán tres de los más destacados comentaristas de los _Tractatus_: Juan Buridan, Juan Versor y Pedro Tartaret. Este ejercicio proporcionará algunas conclusiones sobre la relación entre las categorías y la teoría de la suposición, y también sobre la _vexata quaestio _acerca del sujeto de las categorías. (shrink)

Unfounded—conspiracy and health—beliefs about COVID-19 have accompanied the pandemic worldwide. Here, we examined cross-nationally the structure and correlates of these beliefs with an 8-item scale, using a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. We obtained a two-factor model of unfounded (conspiracy and health) beliefs with good internal structure (average CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.05, SRMR = 0.04), but a high correlation between the two factors (average latent factor correlation = 0.57). This model was replicable across 50 countries (total N = 13,579), (...) as evidenced by metric invariance between countries (CFI = 0.96, RMSEA = 0.06, SRMS = 0.07) as well as scalar invariance across genders (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03) and educational levels (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03). Also, lower levels of education, more fear of COVID-19, and more cynicism were weakly associated with stronger conspiracy and health beliefs. The study contributes to knowledge about the structure of unfounded beliefs, and reveals the potential relevance of affective (i.e., fear of COVID-19) and cognitive (i.e., cynicism) factors along with demographics, in endorsing such beliefs. In summary, we obtained cross-cultural evidence for the distinctiveness of unfounded conspiracy and health beliefs about COVID-19 in terms of their structure and correlates. (shrink)

Mudge, Peter In one of his most significant addresses before he was elected pope, the then Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio stated in his 'Pastoral Letter for the Year of Faith': 'Among the most striking experiences of the last decades is finding doors closed'. This seminal letter fuses many of the themes that have appeared in Pope Francis's later writings and addresses, following his election as the 266th pope, on 13 March 2013.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the function of the aesthetic paradigm of German idealism within Adorno’s thought. In order to do so, I have chosen to focus on the issue of the social significance of the work of art and the role played by the concept of literary material. Adorno’s aesthetics, in fact, can be read as a reinterpretation of the idealist aesthetic model based precisely on a non-idealist notion such as that of aesthetic material.If one is (...) to allow a seemingly brutal simplification, there are two ways to think about the social meaning of literature. One identifies somehow the subject of the text, assesses whether or not this challenges the society from which the literary work stems, and on this ground establishes its social character. According to this perspective, Brecht’s Threepenny Opera and Sciascia’s The Day of the Owl can be seen as socially engaged literature, while Proust’s Recherche cannot, or can only to a lesser extent. The other approach argues instead that any literary work, and in any of its instances, says something about the society in which it takes shape. In this contribution I would like to focus on this latter approach. In particular, I am interested in understanding how literature is connected to society, that is, through which identifiable elements literary works express certain aspects of society. The Hegelian idealistic idea according to which Greek tragedy expresses the constitutive features of Athenian society, and which is found again and again in the authors who in various ways have taken up Hegel’s legacy, is generally accepted as such and valued for the explanatory opportunities it offers. It is my opinion, however, that one notion in particular can be retrieved within the whole inherited baggage of that aesthetic tradition, which may be able to further clarify the relationship between literature and society. This concept is that of material and the author who has most thoroughly investigated it is Adorno. In this paper I will try to outline the main features of a counterintuitive notion such as that of “literary material” and thereby explain why it plays such an important role in Adorno’s rework of the aesthetic paradigm of German idealism. The concept of material, in fact, is key to the definition of another aesthetic category around which, according to Adorno, most of the problems connected to works of art gravitate, that is to say, the notion of form. From Adorno’s aesthetics, in fact, one of his most insightful readers, Peter Szondi, draws the main principle for his study of the historical form of modern drama, namely the idea that form is essentially a precipitation, a sedimentation of contents. The work of art, then, at least according to this definition, is essentially identified by its form. Or, better said, the artwork must be interpreted as the way in which a certain (historical) content sediments in a certain external form. That the form of the work of art is precipitated content means, in simple terms, that no effective disjunction can be assumed between form and content. This is how Adorno reinterprets the concept of “identity of form and content” stressed by classical aesthetics. The content is such only insofar as it is precipitated into a certain form. This amounts to saying that no objective distinction can be established between one and the other. Now, if one were to ask how the form is made, Adorno’s answer is quite straightforward: the form is made by means of organization and, precisely, by means of the organization of the material. As one reads in Aesthetic Theory, in fact, “the substantial element of genres and forms has its locus in the historical needs of their materials,” and the particular form of an artwork is defined as the “organization” of its “materials” (Adorno 1970, transl. 1997: 201). The concept of material, therefore, is key to the definition of the very notion of work of art in its constituent components, namely the relationship between form and content. In this paper I will first of all clarify the notion of artistic material in general and subsequently I will turn to strictly literary material. Finally, and this is the main goal of this essay, I will show to what extent this definition of the material possibly contributes to a better understanding of a widely and variedly debated literary phenomenon of our time, namely the form of the so-called postmodern novel. (shrink)

Las emociones fueron estudiadas por la psicología desde un enfoque primariamente fisiológico como una estrategia para validar empíricamente sus producciones. Esto fue una consecuencia del conductismo metodológico y su impronta en el campo de la investigación psicológica. En dicha tarea se tendió a disociar las emociones de las cogniciones y a presentarlas como resultados de meros procesos fisiológicos. En la década del 70 surgió la appraisal theory (Magda B. Arnold) proponiendo un enfoque distinto que rescata una dimensión cognitiva en las (...) emociones. Pero este enfoque ¿es realmente inédito? Aquí sostenemos que, si bien sus aportes son científicamente consistentes y novedosos, desde el contexto en que se formulan, abrevan en algunos elementos de la filosofía clásica de Aristóteles y santo Tomás de Aquino. Aquí nos circunscribiremos a revisar dos ensayos (Peters y Lazarus) a fin de vincular y ponderar una teoría psicológica con una filosofía subyacente. (shrink)

While ancient civilizations worshipped strong, active emotions, modern societies have favored more peaceful attitudes, especially within the democratic process. We have largely forgotten the struggle to make use of _thymos_, the part of the soul that, following Plato, contains spirit, pride, and indignation. Rather, Christianity and psychoanalysis have promoted mutual understanding to overcome conflict. Through unique examples, Peter Sloterdijk, the preeminent posthumanist, argues exactly the opposite, showing how the history of Western civilization can be read as a suppression and (...) return of rage. By way of reinterpreting the _Iliad_, Alexandre Dumas's _Count of Monte Cristo_, and recent Islamic political riots in Paris, Sloterdijk proves the fallacy that rage is an emotion capable of control. Global terrorism and economic frustrations have rendered strong emotions visibly resurgent, and the consequences of violent outbursts will determine international relations for decades to come. To better respond to rage and its complexity, Sloterdijk daringly breaks with entrenched dogma and contructs a new theory for confronting conflict. His approach acknowledges and respects the proper place of rage and channels it into productive political struggle. (shrink)

The variety and complexity of the eight papers in this Symposium issue are evidence that immigration is a tough nut to crack both as a matter of policy and application. There is no way that any short summary can do justice to these papers, which take a variety of moral, economic, historical, and empirical approaches to some of the recurrent issues in the field, so it is best in this short issue to try to situate the problem in a general (...) classical liberal context, to show where the pressure points are most likely to appear.The initial way to approach this problem is to start with the simple proposition that the world today is divided into national territories where the practical norm is well-nigh universal: That each sovereign state has exclusive control over its own territory, which, among other things, allows it to decide which individuals are members of that state. These citizens have privileges that may be exercised, no questions asked, on such key matters as entering labor markets, owning property, voting, and otherwise participating in political affairs. All these activities may be denied or granted, at will, to any and all outsiders by the territorial sovereign.No one doubts the need for having some form of territorial control. The need to have some monopoly of force could not be achieved if the entire world, with its infinite diversity of locations and populations, were under a single sovereign. Indeed, in many cases, the divisions within a given country may be so pronounced that separation rather than aggregation is the norm. Thus, at the end of the British Raj, India split into India and Pakistan, and later Pakistan split into Pakistan and Bangladesh. Less dramatically, Czechoslovakia split into two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, while the former Yugoslavia split into five nations, starting from the northwest: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Macedonia. Clearly, these ethic differences, be they large or small, are a major obstacle to the expansion of the size of the state. And today, the territorial instinct reasserts itself as the member states of the European Union impose more restrictions on immigration.Yet at the same time, the normative foundations of this system seem elusive. There is the following deep skepticism about the importance of these borders, expressed in these essays by Jeremy Waldron and Ilya Somin, that these national boundary lines should have such a pronounced role in political economy. Michael Blake pursues this theme further by asking the extent to which classical liberals can justify exclusion through the use of violence—or is it force? The inquiry into the dominant role of territoriality can then be expanded, as by Peter Margulies, to examine all sorts of negative externalities that could be created both by easy and strict rules of admission.Taken as a whole, there is no doubt that these national barriers are a serious obstacle to the free trade in goods and services between two individuals, one inside the boundary and one outside. The general view is that these barriers block the gains from trade, which is what drives economic progress, so that ideally all tariffs and quantitative restrictions should give way to a system of free trade in which petty objections by domestic competitors of foreign firms should not dictate local policies.It should, of course, be evident that powerful conflicting forces on free trade and protectionism ebb and flow over time. It should therefore come as no surprise that the stakes are even higher where what is at stake is the movement of people across national boundaries. The loss to any given country from keeping out potential citizens can be enormous, and we see powerful political forces clamp down on open immigration, so many of these gains from trade are lost. The situation can be even more heartbreaking when the ability to leave a country exposes innocent people to imprisonment or death.So what is the explanation for so many nations closing their borders? Much of the explanation comes from old-fashioned protectionism. Your computer programmers will take the jobs of our specialists. There is all sorts of occupational licensing and other barriers to entry within a domestic economy, so there is no reason to expect that these forces will not exert even greater influence against outsiders who do not, after all, have a voice in the local economy and who, therefore, as Alex Nowrasteh, Michael Howard, and Andrew Forrester observe, have little ability to influence domestic policy even after they enter a country. In addition, as Gabriel Chin discusses, strong racial prejudices also lead to exclusions from the domestic economy. Not only are there objections in, say, the United States and much of Western Europe, of exclusion on straight racial grounds, as exemplified by Chinese exclusion acts. The force of these exclusions are also subject to political change. Thus, the Immigration Act of 1924 (the Johnson-Reed Act) was part of a white supremacist program, which gave way two decades later to a very different legal regime with the Immigration Act of 1965, which put an end to the venerable system of national-origin quotas.Yet two other reasons for exclusion are constantly at issue. Immigrants not only bring in their labor but also their families, cultures, and traditions that, in public spaces, may clash with local norms and cultures on such elementary and critical matters as to whether women should dress modestly and wear head coverings. Will freewheeling Danes and Swedes feel comfortable if large numbers of Muslims continue their traditional practices with strong barriers between men and women? There are no obvious market mechanisms that will mitigate these issues, and the situation becomes even more fraught if there are large welfare or educational costs that fall, at least in the short run, on local citizens. These are compounded by the fact that immigrants will typically gain political rights that could easily skew the balance of political power between established and newly arrived ethnic groups by altering the outcome of national and local elections. And letting people in is not just done on a simple open-borders policy. Thus, in many countries, as Lance Pritchett discusses, there is the controversial option of letting foreigners in on short-term labor visas that require them to leave after a certain period. And there are further questions about whether people should be deported if they lied on their entry applications or committed some crime while in the new country, as has occurred in the United States. The numbers of cases can be high and their complexity great, so it is fair to ask, along with Jill Family, whether some self-conscious exceptions to the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, analogous statutes elsewhere, should be regarded as part of the new normal.It is therefore necessary to deal with the thrust and counterthrust on all these issues. It is also fair to ask whether classical liberalism has a distinctive view on these issues, or whether the combination of private gains and multidirectional externalities gives rise to empirical questions that, as always, require further reflection, even when certain situations—the major influx of illegal immigrants on the US southern border—will generate such powerful emotions that detached intellectual inquiry is ever more difficult. We cannot answer these questions, and thus offer to you a set of essays that take a stab at these difficult topics. (shrink)

'A breath-taking panorama.' The Sunday Times 'Those seeking a grand overview of science's greatest hits over the past century will find it here.' The Washington Post 'Convincing... A provocative history probes the connections that are helping to unify scientific disciplines.... Watson examines an impressive array of connections... Whether you identify as a biologist, an astrophysicist, or a mathematician, one thing's for certain: We're all ultimately working with the same fabric.' Science 'Anyone interested in science will enjoy this fascinating, fast-paced, intellectual (...) journey through the history of scientific ideas. Watson masterfully weaves the concept of convergence through covering an astonishing breadth of scientific and cultural domains.' Mario Livio, astrophysicist, author of Brilliant Blunders and Why? Convergence is a history of modern science with an original and significant twist. Various scientific disciplines, despite their very different beginnings, and disparate areas of interest have been coming together over the past 150 years, converging and coalescing, to identify one extraordinary master narrative, one overwhelming interlocking coherent story: the history of the universe. Intimate connections between physics and chemistry have been revealed as have the links between quantum chemistry and molecular biology. Astronomy has been augmented by particle physics, psychology has been increasingly aligned with physics, with chemistry and even with economics. Genetics has been harmonised with linguistics, botany with archaeology, climatology with myth. This is a simple insight but one with profound consequences. Convergence is, as Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg has put it, 'The deepest thing about the universe.' This book does not, however, tell the story by beginning at the beginning and ending at the end. It is much more revealing, more convincing, and altogether more thrilling to tell the story as it emerged, as it began to fall into place, piece by piece, converging tentatively at first, but then with increasing speed, vigour and confidence. The overlaps and interdependence of the sciences, the emerging orderthat they are gradually uncovering, is without question the most enthralling aspect of twenty-first-century science. (shrink)

It was a novel, among other things, which originated the atomic bomb. H. G. Wells dedicated The World Set Free, published in 1913, to Frederick Soddy, a pioneer in the exploration of radioactivity. Using Soddy’s research as a base, Wells predicted the advent of artificial radioactivity in 1933, the year in which it actually took place; and he foresaw its use for what he named the “atomic bomb.” In Wells’ novel these bombs are used in a world war that erupts (...) in mid-century and is so catastrophic that a world government is formed, initiating a new age powered by the peaceful use of the atom. The physicist Leo Szilard, a long-time admirer of Wells, read this novel in 1932, the year before he first intuited the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction. The novel seems to have become part of his own mental chain reaction. One that took place at an almost unconscious level during the spring that Szilard spent at the Strand Palace Hotel in London, by his own admission doing nothing. He would only monopolize the bath from around nine to twelve in the morning, since “there is no place as good to think as a bathtub.”1 The theories that resulted from this prolonged immersion were introduced by references to Wells; and Szilard, having realized the atomic bomb, spent the rest of his life trying to realize the world government which, in the Wells novel, was its consequence.Literature, which was part of the genesis of nuclear weaponry, continues to be an inextricable aspect of its nature. For Derrida, in fact, we are facinga phenomenon whose essential feature is that of being fabulously textual, through and through. Nuclear weaponry depends, more than any weaponry in the past, it seems, upon structures of information and communication, structures of language, including non-vocalizable language, structures of codes and graphic decoding. But the phenomenon if fabulously textual also to the extent that, at the moment, a nuclear war has not taken place: one can only talk and write about it.2The linguistic nature of the arms race, of peace talks and negotiations, has been thoroughly analyzed. Likewise there is a growing number of books on the nature of nuclear war. But there is also a growing body of novels, poems, and plays making up a literature of nuclear holocaust. As the example of Wells’ novel shows, this is not altogether unprecedented; nuclear literature predates Hiroshima. But the subject of nuclear war has, up till now, mainly served the purposes of science fiction; only rarely—as in the cases of A Canticle for Leibowitz and On the Beach—have science fiction authors risen above the lowest common denominator of that genre. In the 1980s, every year sees the publication of works which demand serious attention both as literature and as fictive strategies for comprehending a subject that is commonly called “unthinkable.” Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker, Bernard Malamud’s God’s Grace, Maggie Gee’s The Burning Book, Tim O’Brien’s Nuclear Age—these works explicitly preoccupied with nuclear holocaust may be supplemented by other works of the eighties with a persistent apocalyptic undertone, works such as Doris Lessing’s Canopus in Argos series, Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose, and Mario Vargas Llosa’s War of the End of the World. And these are only the literary manifestations of a widespread movement in all the arts aimed at expressing the dominant condition of our time.3 1. Leo Szilard, Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts: Selected Recollections and Correspondence, ed. Spencer R. Weart and Gertrud Weiss Szilard , p. 19.2. Jacques Derrida, “No Apocalypse, Not Now ,” Diacritics 14 , p. 23.3. Examples can be found in painting , mixed media , opera , oratorio , dance , film , television , and popular music . Peter Schwenger is associate professor of English at Mount St. Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The author of Phallic Critiques: Masculinity and Twentieth-Century Literature, he is working on a book-length study of nuclear holocaust literature. (shrink)

The perception of the Weimar Republic as the high-point of ‘classical modernity’ in which all areas of society were permeated by a fatal sense of crisis has been revised as an explanatory model in recent historiography. Historians have returned to this period with a new sense of the openness of the crisis environment, particularly in areas of social and cultural history. Male homosexuality emerged as a central theme of Weimar social and cultural crisis as it became possible for homosexual men (...) to imagine an identity and a ‘life’ for the first time. These men began to understand their lives as a continuum in terms of their sexuality and to express their lives in writing. The discourse of masculinist homosexuality, which emerged during the first decades of the 20th century, was used by some homosexuals as a means to self-identification and self-validation in the open environment of post-war early Weimar. However, this speculative framework of masculine comradeship and warrior ethos became less and less tenable as the internal contradictions as well as the socio-political pressures of the Republic increased. The paper explores the internal tensions between homosexuality and masculinist identity in two literary works from the Weimar Republic, Max René Hesse’s Partenau and Thomas Mann’s ‘Mario and the Magician’. (shrink)

Book review: no abstract needed, despite what this program might demand.

The recent republication of David Bloor's Knowledge and Social Imagery in a second edition provides an occasion to reappraise the celebrated work which launched the so-called Strong Programme in the sociology of scientific knowledge. This work embodies the general outlook and foundational principles in a way that is still characteristic of its descendents. Above all, the recent republication of Bloor's original book is evidence of the continuing interest and importance of the work, but it also provides the clearest evidence of (...) the shortcomings of the enterprise. The arguments presented in the bulk of the book have received relatively little attention by comparison with the principal tenets enunciated in the first few pages. Accordingly, a detailed examination is made of these original arguments which were so influential in establishing the sociology of scientific knowledge. A close analysis reveals their seemingly unnoticed vacuity, as well as a vast discrepancy between the radical tenets of the Strong Programme and the theses that are actually defended in the body of Bloor's text. In this sense, this article serves to complement and reinforce Mario Bunge's recent masterful survey of the field, which he describes as "a grotesque cartoon of scientific research.". (shrink)

En este artículo se analizan críticamente tanto la postura teórica de Rosi Braidotti en su libro Lo posthumano, como el texto de Peter Sloterdijk, “El hombre operable”, desde dos perspectivas. Una de ellas es propiamente filosófica, que toma en cuenta, discutiéndolos, el concepto de “inmanencia vitalista” de Braidotti y la concepción homeotecnológica que Sloterdijk contrapone a las viejas tecnologías bajo la rúbrica de alotecnología. La reflexión también mantiene una deriva teológica en el sentido de comprender lo que significa para (...) el creyente la tendencia antiescatológica presente en este tipo de discurso o, más bien, una inmanentización de la vida escatológica. Hay en ambos pensadores lo que podríamos llamar, sin originalidad ninguna, una nueva religión de la razón, en este caso de la razón tecnocrática, pero también, paradójicamente, elementos que asociarían el materialismo vitalista con concepciones ontológicas supuestamente superadas (esencia, metafísica, binarismo). (shrink)

Sob o tema da filosofia do Espírito em Mestre Eckhart, o presente artigo revitaliza alguns escritos anteriores do autor sobre aquele filósofo, agora atendendo sobretudo ao Sermão do Homem Nobre e no contexto epocal de um intelectualismo ético enquanto pretexto de discussão de conflitos epistémicos. Alguns textos inseríveis nessa corrente são apresentados e confrontados, de seguida, com a expressão tomista com que dialogaram, mas da qual se distinguiram. Sob a dominante matricial da "vida segundo o espírito", de Pseudo-Dionísio a Eckhart, (...) convidar-se-á à superação de uma metafísica do espírito por uma filosofia da liberdade. Em termos disciplinares tradicionais, embora na esteira pensante de Eckhart, isto equivale, contra Feuerbach, justamente, a dizer que o verdadeiro sentido da antropologia é a teologia. /// 'Living in accordance with the spirit' is the theoretical underlying motive of this paper. It resumes previous articles of the author on Eckhart, now stressing the theme of the Noble Man focused on the following historical horizon: the ethical intellectualism of Siger, Boethius and Peter of Auvergne is confronted with the anthropology of beatitude of Thomas Aquinas and mainly with the anthropology of the Portuguese Jesuits of the 16th Century, being the reason for this Duns Scotus' criticism of the former while the latter tried to respond to that criticism. The above-mentioned historical and hermeneutical horizon invites to surpass a permanent metaphysics of the spirit by a philosophy of freedom, thus allowing one to defend that the true meaning of anthropology lies in theology. (shrink)