Roald Hoffmann's contributions to chemistry are well known; this Nobel laureate has published more than 500 articles and two books. As an "applied theoretical chemist," he has made significant contributions to our understanding of chemical bonding and reactivity, and taught two generations of chemists how to use molecular orbitals for real chemistry. Less well known, however, are Hoffmann's important and insightful contributions to the areas of scholarship surrounding chemistry. Over a career that spans nearly fifty years, Roald Hoffmann (...) has thought and written copiously about the broader context of chemistry and its relationship to the arts and poetry. This book contains Hoffmann's essays and is organized around several major themes: chemical reasoning and explanation, writing and communicating in science, ethics, art and science, and chemical education. A few are unpublished lectures that are valuable additions to the volume. The editors have the full cooperation of Roald Hoffmann in this project. Most of the published work will be reprinted verbatim, but a few of the essays will be revised to eliminate redundancy. The unpublished lectures will also be edited since they were originally intended to be delivered orally at specific occasions. The editors will provide an introduction to the book, and some introductory material for each section. In introducing the material, they will highlight the intrinsic importance and interest of the ideas, as well as the places where Hoffmann's thought makes novel contributions to cognate areas. (shrink)

This paper argues that the Husserlian notion of “passive synthesis” can make a substantial contribution to the understanding of aesthetic experience. The argument is based on two empirical cases of qualitative interview material obtained from museum visitors and a world-renowned string quartet, which show that aesthetic experience contains an irreducible dimension of passive undergoing and surprise. Analyzing this material through the lens of passive syntheses helps explain these experiences, as well as the sense of subject–object fusion that occurs in some (...) of the most intense forms of aesthetic experience. These analyses are then contrasted with a potentially contradicting take on aesthetic experience from a recent trend in cognitive science, namely enactive aesthetics, which insists on the active subjective construction and sense-making of aesthetic experience. Finally we show that the two positions are in fact compatible. (shrink)

Had more philosophers of science come from chemistry, their thinking would have been different. I begin by looking at a typical chemical paper, in which making something is the leitmotif, and conjecture/refutation is pretty much irrelevant. What in fact might have been, might be, different? The realism of chemists is reinforced by their remarkable ability to transform matter; they buy into reductionism where it serves them, but make no real use of it. Incommensurability is taken without a blink, and actually (...) serves. The preeminence of synthesis in chemistry could have led philosophers of science to take more seriously questions of aesthetics within science, and to find a place in aesthetics for utility. The necessary motion twixt macroscopic and microscopic views of matter in modern chemistry leads to the coexistence of symbolic and iconic representations. And in another way to the deliberate, creative violation of categories. (shrink)

In _The Subject of Aesthetics_ Tone Roald develops a psychology of art based on people’s descriptions of their own engagement with visual art.

KNUTSEN IR, TERRAGNI L and FOSS C. Nursing Inquiry 2011; 18: 348–358 Morbidly obese patients and lifestyle change: constructing ethical selvesIn contemporary societies, bodily size is an important part of individuals’ self‐representation. As the number of persons clinically diagnosed as morbidly obese increases, programmes are developed to make people reduce weight by changing their lifestyle, and for some, by bariatric surgery. This article presents findings from interviews with 12 participants undergoing a prerequisite course prior to bariatric surgery that is (...) intended both as a preparation for further (surgical) treatment and as a tool to empower individuals regarding lifestyle changes. In this study, we investigate how power operates by looking at how the participants position themselves throughout the course. Findings reveal how participants construct their ability to act in line with norms of lifestyle change. They do this by positioning themselves as both included group members and as ‘morally’ acceptable individuals. Despite some resistance, the participants tend to glide into the role of ‘good patients’ acting in compliance with the aims of the course in their hope and striving for new positions as ‘normal‐sized’. The intention in the course is to empower individuals towards lifestyle changes. The findings provide a basis to question whether these kinds of courses create new forms of compliance and dependency. (shrink)

Experiences with art have been of longstanding concern for phenomenologists, yet the psychological question of the appearing of art appreciation has not been addressed. This article attends to this lack, exemplifying the merits of a phenomenological psychological investigation based on three semi-structured interviews conducted with museum visitors. The interviews were subjected to meaning condensation as well as to descriptions of the first aesthetic reception, the retrospective interpretation, and the “horizons of expectations” included in the meeting with art. The findings show (...) that art appreciation appears as variations in experiential forms comprised of gratifying experiences of beauty, challenges to the understanding, and bodily-informed alterations of the emotions. The phenomenological psychology of actual, lived experience can embrace the phenomenological theories of art appreciation by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, yet highlight the psychological importance of experiences with art. (shrink)

During dialog, references are presented, accepted, and potentially reused. Two experiments were conducted to examine reuse in a naturalistic setting. In Experiment 1, where the participants interacted face to face, self-presented references and references accepted through verbatim repetition were reused more. Such biases persisted after the end of the interaction. In Experiment 2, where the participants interacted over the phone, reference reuse mainly depended on whether the participant could see the landmarks being referred to, although this bias seemed to be (...) only transient. Consistent with the memory-based approach to dialog, these results shed light on how differences in accessibility in memory affect the unfolding of the interaction. (shrink)

The issue to be discussed here is how society’s views of the Laestadian revival has changed over the course of the revival movement’s first 100 years. The article claims that society’s emerging view of the revival is characterized by two different positions. The first period is typical of the last part of the nineteenth century and is characterized by the fact that the evaluation of the revival took as its point of departure the instigator of the revival, Lars Levi Laestadius. (...) The characteristic of Laestadius himself would, it was thought, be characteristic of the movement he had instigated. During this first period, the revival was sharply criticized. This negative attitude gradually changed from the turn of the century onwards. The second period is characterized by greater openness towards understanding the revival on its own premises. This openness showed itself at first in Swedish publications that treated the revival in an exotic fashion with the aim to arouse greater interest in the Swedish cultural life in the north. This interest in the distinctive qualities of the revival was later also expressed in Norway, thus contributing to a change of view in how society viewed Laestadianism. Typical of the second period is that it was primarily in the ecclesiastical environment that a new interest in the revival established itself. (shrink)

Rousseau’s influence on Kant in the realm of ethical theory is well established. Just as Kant credits Hume with inspiring his critique of metaphysics, Kant admits a debt to Rousseau as an inspiration for his egalitarian approach to ethics. There is reason to suspect, however, that Rousseau’s influence extends beyond the realm of ethics, and into Kant’s Critique of Judgment. While ostensibly a work about aesthetic and teleological judgment stemming from the line of aesthetic thought that includes the Earl of (...) Shaftsbury, some commentators, most notably Hannah Arendt, have read the third Critique as a political treatise. In doing so, she attributes to Kant the first truly democratic political theory by heralding the egalitarianism within his theory of judgment as a true revolution in the realm of political philosophy. Unfortunately, such politically minded commentators have failed to spot the Rousseauian heritage of the concepts that permeate the book. This heritage is especially problematic for Arendt who understands Rousseau’s philosophy as justifying the kind of tyranny found in modern day despotism. In neglecting to explore the link between Rousseau and Kant’s theory of judgment, Arendt’s analysis of Kant overreaches. This paper seeks to temper her championing of Kant by demonstrating the extent of Rousseauian influence on the third Critique in order to better understand Kant’s place in the history of political theory. (shrink)

Art has the capacity to shape and alter our identities. It can influence who and what we are. Those who have had aesthetic experiences know this intimately, and yet the study of art’s impact on the mind struggles to be recognized as a centrally important field within the discipline of psychology. The main thesis of Art and Identity is that aesthetic experience represents a prototype for meaningful experience, warranting intense philosophical and psychological investigation. Currently psychology remains too closed-off from the (...) rich reflection of philosophical aesthetics, while philosophy continues to be sceptical of the psychological reduction of art to its potential for Subjective experience. At the same time, philosophical aesthetics cannot escape making certain assumptions about the psyche and benefits from entering into a dialogue with psychology. Art and Identity brings together philosophical and psychological perspectives on aesthetics in order to explore how art creates minds. (shrink)

Emotions are essential for human existence, both lighting the way toward the brightest of achievements and setting the course into the darkness of suffering. Not surprisingly, then, emotion research is currently one of the hottest topics in the field of psychology. Yet to divine the nature of emotion is a complex and extensive task. In this book emotions are approached thought an exploration of the nature of cognition in emotion; the nature of thoughts in feelings. Different approaches to emotions are (...) explored, from brain research to research at the level of experience, and it is argued that all approaches must seriously take into account the experiential dimension. A qualitative study of experiences with art is therefore presented, as emotions and cognition are often expressed in experiences with art. It is the first study of its kind. Descriptions of various affective phenomena are then given which have significant implications for contemporary debates about emotions, resolving several contemporary controversies. ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroductionChapter 1: Describing EmotionChapter 2: Describing CognitionChapter 3: Theories about the Emotion-Cognition RelationshipChapter 4: Experiences with ArtChapter 5: A Phenomenological Study of Art AppreciationChapter 6: DiscussionBibliographyIndex. (shrink)

In 1979, Audre Lorde delivered a paper at a conference celebrating feminism that proceeded to undermine the self-congratulatory tone of the participants by alerting them to the ways that they too were in need of radical critique. In this paper I explore the nature and importance of what it means to be radical by analyzing Lorde’s place within the broader trend of philosophical self-criticism as it specifically relates to the feminist movement. My goal is to argue that while radical theory (...) must always stretch out toward the world, it must always turn back on itself in order to avoid the very injustices it seeks to correct. (shrink)

BackgroundBurnout is a major societal issue adversely affecting employees’ health and performance, which over time results in high sick leave costs for organizations. Traditional rehabilitation therapies show suboptimal effects on reducing burnout and the return-to-work process. Based on the health-promoting effects of nature, taking clients outdoors into nature is increasingly being used as a complementary approach to traditional therapies, and evidence of their effectiveness is growing. Theories explaining how the combination of general psychological support and outdoor-specific elements can trigger the (...) rehabilitation process in outdoor therapy are often lacking, however, impeding its systematic research.AimThe study aims to develop an intervention and evaluation model for outdoor therapy to understand and empirically evaluate whether and how such an outdoor intervention may work for rehabilitation after burnout.Methodological ApproachWe build on the exemplary case of an outdoor intervention for rehabilitation after burnout, developed by outdoor clinical psychologists in Netherlands. We combined the generic context, process, and outcome evaluation model and the burnout recovery model as an overarching deductive frame. We then inductively specified the intervention and evaluation model of outdoor therapy, building on the following qualitative data: semi-structured interviews with outdoor clinical psychologists and former clients; a content analysis of the intervention protocol; and reflective meetings with the intervention developers and health promotion experts.ResultsWe identified six key outdoor intervention elements: physical activity; reconnecting body and mind; nature metaphors; creating relationships; observing natural interactions; and experiential learning. The results further showed that the implementation of these elements may facilitate the rehabilitation process after burnout in which proximal, intermediate, and distal outcomes emerge. Finally, the results suggested that this implementation process depends on the context of the therapist, therapy, and of the clients.ConclusionThe intervention and evaluation model for outdoor therapy shows how key outdoor intervention elements may contribute to the rehabilitation process after burnout. However, our model needs to be further tested among a larger group of clients to empirically evaluate whether and how outdoor therapy can support rehabilitation. (shrink)

We begin by presenting William of Ockham's various formulations of his principle of parsimony, Ockham's Razor. We then define a reaction mechanism and tell a personal story of how Ockham's Razor entered the study of one such mechanism. A small history of methodologies related to Ockham's Razor, least action and least motion, follows. This is all done in the context of the chemical (and scientific) community's almost unthinking acceptance of the principle as heuristically valuable. Which is not matched, to put (...) it mildly, by current philosophical attitudes toward Ockham's Razor. What ensues is a dialogue, pro and con. We first present a context for questioning, within chemistry, the fundamental assumption that underlies Ockham's Razor, namely that the world is simple. Then we argue that in more than one pragmatic way the Razor proves useful, without at all assuming a simple world. Ockham's Razor is an instruction in an operating manual, not a world view. Continuing the argument, we look at the multiplicity and continuity of concerted reaction mechanisms, and at principal component and Bayesian analysis (two ways in which Ockham's Razor is embedded into modern statistics). The dangers to the chemical imagination from a rigid adherence to an Ockham's Razor perspective, and the benefits of the use of this venerable and practical principle are given, we hope, their due. (shrink)

A configuration of infantile attributes including a large head, large eyes, with a small nose and mouth low on the head comprise the visual baby schema or Kindchenschema that English speakers call “cute.” In contrast to the stimulus gestalt that evokes it, the evoked emotional response to cuteness has been little studied, perhaps because the emotion has no specific name in English, Norwegian, or German. We hypothesize that cuteness typically evokes kama muta, a social-relational emotion that in other contexts is (...) often labeled in English as being moved or touched, heartwarming, nostalgia, patriotic feeling, being touched by the Spirit, the feels, etcetera. What evokes kama muta is sudden intensification of a communal sharing relationship, either communal sharing between the person and another, or communal sharing between observed others. In accord with kama muta theory, we hypothesize that a kama muta response to cuteness results from a sudden feeling of communal sharing with the cute target. In colloquial terms, the perceiver adores the cute kittens and their heart goes out to them. When a person perceives cute targets interacting affectionately - that is, intensifying communal sharing between them - this should strengthen a kama muta response. We experimentally investigated these predictions in two studies (N = 356). Study 1 revealed that videos of cute targets evoked significantly more kama muta than videos of targets that were not particularly cute. Study 2, pre-registered, found that, as hypothesized, when cute targets interacted affectionately they evoked more kama muta and were humanized more than when they were not interacting. We measured the level of kama muta by self-reports of sensations and signs and of feelings labelled heartwarming, being moved, and being touched. Participants' ratings of kama muta were positively correlated with reported cuteness. In addition, as in our previous research on kama muta elicited by other types of stimuli, trait empathic concern predicted kama muta responses and perceived cuteness. The studies thus provide first evidence that cute stimuli evoke the heartwarming emotion of kama muta. (shrink)