Although the importance of weak protein‐protein interactions has been understood since the 1980s, scant attention has been paid to this “quinary structure”. The transient nature of quinary structure facilitates dynamic sub‐cellular organization through loose grouping of proteins with multiple binding partners. Despite our growing appreciation of the quinary structure paradigm in cell biology, we do not yet understand how the many forces inside the cell – the excluded volume effect, the “stickiness” of the cytoplasm, and hydrodynamic interactions – perturb the (...) weakest functional protein interactions. We discuss the unresolved problem of how the forces in the cell modulate quinary structure, and to what extent the cell has evolved to exert control over the weakest biomolecular interactions. We conclude by highlighting the new experimental and computational tools coming on‐line for in vivo studies, which are a critical next step if we are to understand quinary structure in its native environment. (shrink)

This is not a work of mine. For some reason, I am unable to remove it from my page. It is a list of Dr. Reiner Schürmann's lecture notes for courses that he taught at the New School for Social Research (aka The New School).

This paper puts forward a theoretical framework for the analysis of expertise and experts in contemporary societies. It argues that while prevailing approaches have come to see expertise in various forms and functions, they tend to neglect the broader historical and societal context, and importantly the relational aspect of expertise. This will be discussed with regard to influential theoretical frameworks, such as laboratory studies, regulatory science, lay expertise, post-normal science, and honest brokers. An alternative framework of expertise is introduced, showing (...) the limitations of existing frameworks and emphasizing one crucial element of all expertise, which is their role in guiding action. (shrink)

"... elegant and provocative... Exhibit[s] a subtle mastery of Heidegger's works." —Review of Metaphysics "... splendidly precise study of Heidegger... to be recommended not only to Heidegger scholars but also to those interested in the question of what philosophical thinking has as its task in the modern technological world." —Religious Studies Review "... indispensable to understanding the later Heidegger." —Choice.

« La déconstruction, c’est la pulvérisation d’un socle spéculatif où la vie trouverait son assise, sa légitimation, sa paix. » Autrefois son élève, Reiner Schürmann identifie dans l’oeuvre de Heidegger un impensé, le principe d’anarchie. Contre cette métaphysique occidentale qu'il s'applique à déconstruire, le penseur de la présence aurait fait de l'être et de l'agir une seule et même question. Et sapé ainsi toute possibilité de définir un fondement rationnel sur lequel construire une philosophie pratique. Que l'agir humain, à (...) l'époque technologique, se trouve privé d'arché : voilà ce que cette étude majeure, lisant Heidegger à rebours, a permis de dévoiler. (shrink)

In der Reihe werden herausragende monographische Untersuchungen und Sammelb nde zu allen Aspekten der Philosophie Kants ver ffentlicht, ebenso zum systematischen Verh ltnis seiner Philosophie zu anderen philosophischen Ans tzen in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Ver ffentlicht werden Studien, die einen innovativen Charakter haben und ausdr ckliche Desiderate der Forschung erf llen. Die Publikationen repr sentieren damit den aktuellsten Stand der Forschung.

As Laudan and Fine show, and Boyd concedes, the attempt to infer the truth of scientific realism from the fact that it putatively provides the best explanation of the instrumental success of science is circular, since what is to be shown is precisely the legitimacy of such abductive inferences. Hacking's "experimental argument for scientific realism about entities" is one of the few arguments for scientific realism that purports to avoid this circularity. We argue that Hacking's argument is as dependent on (...) inference to the best explanation (IBE), and therefore as weak, as the other realist arguments. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Reflexion und Gefühl" verfügbar.

The article presents the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse (SKAD). SKAD, which has been in the process of development since the middle of the 1990s, is now a widely used framework among social scientists in discourse research in the German-speaking area. It links arguments from the social constructionist tradition, following Berger and Luckmann, with assumptions based in symbolic interactionism, hermeneutic sociology of knowledge, and the concepts of Michel Foucault. It argues thereby for a consistent theoretical and methodological grounding of (...) a genuine social sciences perspective on discourse interested in the social production, circulation and transformation of knowledge, that is in social relations and politics of knowledge in the so-called ‘knowledge societies’. Distancing itself from Critical Discourse Analysis, Linguistics, Ethnomethodology inspired discourse analysis and the Analysis of Hegemonies, following Laclau and Mouffe, SKAD’s framework has been built up around research questions and concerns located in the social sciences, referring to public discourse and arenas as well as to more specific fields of (scientific, religious, etc.) discursive struggles and controversies around problematizations (Foucault). (shrink)

Michael Walzer is one of the world's most important political thinkers. In this book, Toby J. Reiner provides the most wide-ranging and up-to-date introduction to his work available. Examining Walzer's multivarious writings and work, Reiner develops an illuminating new interpretation of his thought that no political theorist can afford to miss.

" --John Sallis In Broken Hegemonies, the late distinguished philosopher Reiner Schürmann offers a radical rethinking of the history of Western philosophy from the Greeks through Heidegger.

On Heidegger's Being and Time is an outstanding exploration of Heidegger's most important work by two major philosophers. Simon Critchley argues that we must see Being and Time as a radicalization of Husserl's phenomenology, particularly his theories of intentionality, categorial intuition, and the phenomenological concept of the a priori. This leads to a reappraisal and defense of Heidegger's conception of phenomenology. In contrast, Reiner Schürmann urges us to read Heidegger 'backward', arguing that his later work is the key to (...) unravelling Being and Time . Through a close reading of Being and Time Schürmann demonstrates that this work is ultimately aporetic because the notion of Being elaborated in his later work is already at play within it. This is the first time that Schürmann's renowned lectures on Heidegger have been published. The book concludes with Critchley's reinterpretation of the importance of authenticity in Being and Time . Arguing for what he calls an 'originary inauthenticity', Critchley proposes a relational understanding of the key concepts of the second part of Being and Time : death, conscience and temporality. (shrink)

The text presented here is an edited transcription of a thirteen-page unpublished typescript titled “Heidegger and the Mystical Tradition” by Reiner Schürmann. It dates back to the time following the completion of Schürmann’s book on Meister Eckhart and exhibits the preliminary conception of the former’s famous ‘practical a priori.’ Focusing on the relation between Heidegger’s meditative thinking and a mystical tradition inaugurated by Meister Eckhart, the text retrieves the steps of the latter’s path to Releasement as a practical transformation (...) of existence (Part I). In so doing, it provides a detailed account of Releasement as the condition for a peculiar experience of thinking “in which one fundamental attitude manifests itself throughout an itinerary of human existence and which tends to make this itinerary the very condition for the understanding of truth.” By hinging on Heidegger’s different acceptations of ‘letting-be’—as well as on his verbal understanding of Being as Anwesen (presencing) and Ereignis (appropriation-event)—the text indicates Releasement as the coincidence of Being’s and man’s ways to be and shows how it is in the very “urgency of a new existence and thought” that the proximity between Heidegger and Meister Eckahrt’s mystical tradition comes to the fore. (shrink)

Often denied scientific status, Völkerpsychologie was set forth as a psychological program endeavoring to find insights into the structure and content of the ‘mind’ of social groups, especially ‘peoples’, which were regarded as the prototypical manifestation of those groups. This article examines how Moritz Lazarus and Heymann Steinthal’s nineteenth-century Völkerpsychologie came to be regarded as having the status of a science, by analyzing its scientific program. I claim that these founders of Völkerpsychologie developed a moderate methodological materialism by embracing a (...) historical turn in psychology, which—to a degree—enabled a synthesis of the methodologies of the social and the natural sciences. This approach is correlated with their modus operandi, collaboration through the medium of a journal. (shrink)

Ecologists use a remarkable range of methods and techniques to understand complex, inherently variable, and functionally diverse entities and processes across a staggering range of spatial, temporal and interactive scales. These multiple perspectives make ecology very different to the exemplar of science often presented by philosophers. In Philosophical Foundations for the Practices of Ecology, designed for graduate students and researchers, ecology is put into a new philosophical framework that engages with this inherent pluralism while still placing constraints on the ways (...) that we can investigate and understand nature. The authors begin by exploring the sources of variety in the practice of ecology and how these have led to the current conceptual confusion. They argue that the solution is to adopt the approach of constrained perspectivism and go on to explore the ontological, metaphysical, and epistemological aspects of this position and how it can be used in ecological research and teaching"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

ABSTRACTExpertise has come under attack not least since the Brexit vote in the UK and Donald Trump’s election as President of the United States. In this contribution, I will provide some conceptual clarification and suggest a new topology of expertise. I will also examine the historical roots of this challenge to expertise and its social context using a comparative lens. I will ask what it could mean to speak of the rightful place of expertise. I will try to provide an (...) answer by looking more closely at different types of expertise. Expertise, it seems, has been used as an umbrella term for a variety of different knowledge-related activities. I will show that the role of the expert has to be differentiated from the role of the scientist, but also from the role of the specialist. Specialists have different tasks in comparison to experts which need to be emphasized. My argument will draw on the social and historical context of the critique of expertise, and discuss the challenge to the social sciences, espec... (shrink)

Reiner Schürmann a été appelé « l’un des philosophes majeurs du xx e siècle » et « le continuateur peut-être le plus important d’une pensée de la mystique dans la lignée d’Eckhart et de Heidegger ». Nombre des chercheurs qui connurent Schürmann ou s’intéressent aujourd’hui à son œuvre souscriraient volontiers à de tels jugements, dans la mesure où cette œuvre déploie, comme nulle autre, les conséquences philosophiques et politiques de ce que Maître Eckhart et Heidegger appellent le délaissement ou (...) le laisser être ( Gelassenheit ). Pourtant, presque rien n’a été dévoilé des deux bornes entre lesquelles s’inscrit le cheminement personnel de Schürmann quant au délaissement : sa découverte de ce concept – ou, plus exactement, de ce mode de vie – lors de ses études auprès des dominicains du Saulchoir, et la manière dont le délaissement a pu façonner sa mort trois décennies plus tard. Ces parties précoce et tardive de son œuvre, consacrées au délaissement et à sa mise en acte, sont toutefois cruciales pour comprendre le parcours de Schürmann et donc pour apprécier ce qu’il peut aujourd’hui offrir à la pensée et à l’existence. Si, dans ses œuvres publiées, Schürmann minimise l’importance de l’expérience chrétienne du délaissement, voire critique en elle une figure dérivée et même trompeuse de la Gelassenheit, c’est bien elle qui lui a permis de s’engager sur son chemin de pensée. C’est elle aussi qui, à plus d’un titre, l’attendait au terme de son parcours, lequel apparaît alors comme un cercle faisant retour en soi. (shrink)

It is often said that knowledge is power, but more often than not relevant knowledge is not used when political decisions are made. This book examines how political decisions relate to scientific knowledge and what factors determine the success of scientific research in influencing policy. The authors take a comparative and historical perspective and refer to well-known theoretical frameworks, but the focus of the book is on three case studies: the discourse of racism, Keynesianism, and climate change. These cases cover (...) a number of countries and different time periods. In all three the authors see a close link between 'knowledge producers' and political decision makers, but show that the effectiveness of the policies varies dramatically. This book will be of interest to scientists, decision makers and scholars alike. (shrink)

Neuroscience has substantially advanced the understanding of how changes in brain biochemistry contribute to mechanisms of tolerance and physical dependence via exposure to addictive drugs. Many scientists and mental health advocates scaffold this emerging knowledge by adding the imprimatur of disease, arguing that conceptualizing addiction as a brain disease will reduce stigma amongst the folk. Promoting a brain disease concept is grounded in beneficent and utilitarian thinking: the language makes room for individuals living with addiction to receive the same level (...) of compassion and access to healthcare services as individuals living with other medical diseases, and promotes enlightened social and legal policies. However such claims may yield unintended consequences by fostering discrimination commonly associated with pathology. Specifically, the language of neuroscience used to describe addiction may reduce attitudes such as blame and responsibility while inadvertently identifying addicted persons as neurobiological others. In this paper, we examine the merits and limitations of adopting the language of neuroscience to describe addiction. We argue that the reframing of addiction in the language of neuroscience provides benefits such as the creation of empowered biosocial communities, but also creates a new set of risks, as descriptive neuroscience concepts are inseparable from historical attitudes and intuitions towards addiction and addicted persons. In particular, placing emphasis on the diseased brain may foster unintended harm by paradoxically increasing social distance towards the vulnerable group the term is intended to benefit. (shrink)

In late 2009, e-mails from a server at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia were released that showed some climate scientists in an unfavorable light. Soon this scandal was known as “Climategate” and a highly charged debate started to rage on blogs and in the mass media. Much of the debate has been about the question whether anthropogenic global warming was undermined by the revelations. But ethical issues, too, became part and parcel of the debate. This (...) article aims to contribute to this debate, assessing the e-mail affair in the light of two normative analyses of science, one proposed by Robert Merton, the second by a recent suggestion to use the concept of honest brokering in science policy interactions. On the basis of these analyses, different aspects of malpractice will be discussed and possible solutions will be suggested. (shrink)

Der Autor: Reiner Ruffing ist promovierter Philosoph, gibt in der Erwachsenenbildung und an Universitäten Lehrveranstaltungen und ist seit mehr als 20 Jahren Lehrer.

The quest for an all-encompassing theory, finally intended to give a solution to the problem of the unification of all natural forces, is seen today as one of the most important objectives of theoretical high-energy physics. This so-called 'Theory of Everything' is, actually, identified by some theoretical physicists with superstring theory. But superstring theory is in a crucial way incomplete. And, above all, it has fundamental problems with empirical testability – problems that make questionable its status as a physical theory (...) at all. (shrink)

The mutual conceptual incompatibility between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics / Quantum Field Theory is generally seen as the most essential motivation for the development of a theory of Quantum Gravity. It leads to the insight that, if gravity is a fundamental interaction and Quantum Mechanics is universally valid, the gravitational field will have to be quantized, not at least because of the inconsistency of semi-classical theories of gravity. The objective of a theory of Quantum Gravity would then be to (...) identify the quantum properties and the quantum dynamics of the gravitational field. If this means to quantize General Relativity, the general-relativistic identification of the gravitational field with the spacetime metric has to be taken into account. The quantization has to be conceptually adequate, which means in particular that the resulting quantum theory has to be background-independent. This can not be achieved by means of quantum field theoretical procedures. More sophisticated strategies, like those of Loop Quantum Gravity, have to be applied. One of the basic requirements for such a quantization strategy is that the resulting quantum theory has a classical limit that is (at least approximately, and up to the known phenomenology) identical to General Relativity. However, should gravity not be a fundamental, but an induced, residual, emergent interaction, it could very well be an intrinsically classical phenomenon. Should Quantum Mechanics be nonetheless universally valid, we had to assume a quantum substrate from which gravity would result as an emergent classical phenomenon. And there would be no conflict with the arguments against semi-classical theories, because there would be no gravity at all on the substrate level. The gravitational field would not have any quantum properties to be captured by a theory of Quantum Gravity, and a quantization of General Relativity would not lead to any fundamental theory. The objective of a theory of 'Quantum Gravity' would instead be the identification of the quantum substrate from which gravity results. The requirement that the substrate theory has General Relativity as a classical limit – that it reproduces at least the known phenomenology – would remain. The paper tries to give an overview over the main options for theory construction in the field of Quantum Gravity. Because of the still unclear status of gravity and spacetime, it pleads for the necessity of a plurality of conceptually different approaches to Quantum Gravity. (shrink)

Never-before-published writing from a key twentieth-century philosopher. In 1962, Reiner Schürmann began studying at the Dominican school of theology Le Saulchoir, outside Paris. That experience radically shaped his life and work, enabling him to begin to develop many of the ideas for which he would later be known: letting be, life without why, ontological anarchy, and the tragic double bind. Ways of Releasement contains never-before-published material from Schürmann's early period as well as a report Schürmann wrote about his encounter (...) with Heidegger; a précis of his autobiographical novel, Origins; and translations and new editions of later groundbreaking essays. Ways of Releasement concludes with an extensive afterword setting Schürmann's writings in the context of his thinking and life. (shrink)

Currently, string theory represents the only advanced approach to a unification of all interactions, including gravity. In spite of the more than thirty years of its existence, the sequence of metamorphosis it ran through, and the ever more increasing number of involved physicists, until now, it did not make any empirically testable predictions. Because there are no empirical data incompatible with the quantum field theoretical standard model of elementary particle physics and with general relativity, the only motivations for string theory (...) rest in the mutual incompatibility of the standard model and of general relativity as well as in the metaphysics of the unification program of physics, aimed at a final unified theory of all interactions including gravity. But actually, it is completely unknown which physically interpretable principles could form the basis of string theory. At the moment, "string theory" is no theory at all, but rather a labyrinthic structure of mathematical procedures and intuitions which get their justification from the fact that they, at least formally, reproduce general relativity and the standard model of elementary particle physics as low energy approximations. However, there are now strong indications that string theory does not only reproduce the dynamics and symmetries of our standard model, but a plethora of different scenarios with different low energy nomologies and symmetries. String theory seems to describe not only our world, but an immense landscape of possible worlds. So far, all attempts to find a selection principle which could be motivated intratheoretically remained without success. So, recently the idea that the low energy nomology of our world, and therefore also the observable phenomenology, could be the result of an anthropic selection from a vast arena of nomologically different scenarios entered string theory. Although multiverse scenarios and anthropic selection are not only motivated by string theory, but lead also to a possible explanation for the fine tuning of the universe, they are concepts which transcend the framework defined by the epistemological and methodological rules which conventionally form the basis of physics as an empirical science. (shrink)

The preceding Preface, which Professor William Frankena had the great kindness to write as an introduction for the readers of the present English translation of my major work, still requires several supplementary com­ ments on my part. Professor Frankena rightly considered it to be an advan­ tage to introduce the English-speaking world to my moral philosophy through its presentation in this book. As an introduction to my moral philosophy, Professor Frankena provided a concise formulation of the fun­ damental ideas of (...) my ethics by quoting from an article I had just recently published. Several points worth mentioning remain. Firstly, it is necessary to distinguish the two editions of the text here translated. The first edition was published in 1951 by Anton Hain in Meisenheim am Glan, under the title Pflicht und Neigung (Duty and In­ clination), with the subtitle Die Grundlagen der Sittlichkeit, erOrtert und neu bestimmt mit besonderem Bezug auf Kant und Schiller (The Fun­ damentals of Morality, Discussed and Redefined with Special Regard to Kant and Schiller). In 1974, a revised and enlarged second edition was published by the same publisher and was entitled Die Grundlagen der Sitt­ Iichkeit (The Fundamentals of Morality). Of this second edition, the first four chapters have been translated in the present volume, along with four more recent essays. (shrink)

Sollen und Sein klaffen bei uns weiter auseinander als bei anderen, weil eben das Sollen sehr hoch gesetzt ist. Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus.

We provide tools for a concise axiomatization of a broad class of quantifiers in many-valued logic, so-called distribution quantifiers. Although sound and complete axiomatizations for such quantifiers exist, their size renders them virtually useless for practical purposes. We show that for quantifiers based on finite distributive lattices compact axiomatizations can be obtained schematically. This is achieved by providing a link between skolemized signed formulas and filters/ideals in Boolean set lattices. Then lattice theoretic tools such as Birkhoff's representation theorem for finite (...) distributive lattices are used to derive tableau-style axiomatizations of distribution quantifiers. (shrink)

Obwohl der Stringansatz als Versuch einer nomologisch vereinheitlichten Erfassung aller Wechselwirkungen, inklusive der Gravitation, schon über drei Jahrzehnte existiert, sind die ihm zugrundeliegenden physikalischen Prinzipien noch völlig unklar; und es gibt nicht die geringste empirisch überprüfbare, quantitative Vorhersage. Ohne empirische Daten, die mit den etablierten Theorien - quantenfeldtheoretischem Standardmodell und Allgemeiner Relativitätstheorie - unvereinbar wären, liefert nur die konzeptionelle Inkompatibilität beider, gemeinsam mit der Vereinheitlichungsidee, eine Motivation für den Stringansatz. Mit diesem droht jedoch die Physik, unter konsequenter Weiterführung ihrer bisher (...) erfolgreichen Strategien, den methodologischen Rahmen der empirischen Wissenschaften zu überschreiten. (shrink)

In most everyday instances of reasoning, reasoners can gain, lose, and reacquire entitlement to (or justification for) a possible commitment (or belief) as a result of their consecutively acquiring new commitments. For example, we might initially conclude that ‘Tweety can fly’ from ‘Tweety is a bird,’ but later have to reject this conclusion as a result of our coming to learn that Tweety is a penguin. We could, even later, reacquire entitlement to ‘Tweety can fly’ if we became committed (and (...) presumably entitled) to the claim ‘Tweety has a jetpack.’ I will call this very common feature of reasoning entitlement recovery. In this paper I will argue that the types of inferential relations that are central to Brandom’s entire account of language and reasoning make entitlement recovery impossible. I will then briefly attempt to diagnose why this problem arises for Brandom and suggest how his account should be modified so that it will successfully allow entitlement recovery. (shrink)

This article compares the cases of ozone layer protection and climate change. In both cases, scientific expertise has played a comparatively important role in the policy process. The author argues that against conventional assumptions, scientific consensus is not necessary to achieve ambitious political goals. However, the architects of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change operated under such assumptions. The author argues that this is problematic both from a theoretical viewpoint and from empirical evidence. Contrary to conventional assumptions, ambitious political regulations (...) in the ozone case were agreed under scientific uncertainty, whereas the negotiations on climate change were much more modest albeit based on a large scientific consensus. On the basis of a media analysis, the author shows that the creation of a climate of expectation plus pressure from leader countries is crucial for success. (shrink)