Daniel W. Graham
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198243151
- eISBN:
- 9780191680649
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198243151.003.0011
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
The Two Systems Theory (TST) is the best interpretive theory of Aristotle. It has important implications both for systematic and for genetic studies of Aristotle. This chapter hopes to provide a ...
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The Two Systems Theory (TST) is the best interpretive theory of Aristotle. It has important implications both for systematic and for genetic studies of Aristotle. This chapter hopes to provide a secure foundation as well as a point of reference for further researches into Aristotle's philosophy. Discussions in this chapter include: a recapitulation; towards a consistent Aristotle; problems of dating such as relative dates of the works of S1, the dating of S1 in relation to S2, and the relation of the dialogues to S1; contextual advantages of TST such as biographical, historical, and philosophical advantages; evidential advantages of TST such as data and evidence, bootstrapping and confirmation for TST, and the dissolution of a problem; and TST and other interpretations such as Aristotle as a philosopher of common sense, biological approaches to Aristotle, the craft analogy as a root metaphor, and Owen and the Platonism of Aristotle.Less
The Two Systems Theory (TST) is the best interpretive theory of Aristotle. It has important implications both for systematic and for genetic studies of Aristotle. This chapter hopes to provide a secure foundation as well as a point of reference for further researches into Aristotle's philosophy. Discussions in this chapter include: a recapitulation; towards a consistent Aristotle; problems of dating such as relative dates of the works of S1, the dating of S1 in relation to S2, and the relation of the dialogues to S1; contextual advantages of TST such as biographical, historical, and philosophical advantages; evidential advantages of TST such as data and evidence, bootstrapping and confirmation for TST, and the dissolution of a problem; and TST and other interpretations such as Aristotle as a philosopher of common sense, biological approaches to Aristotle, the craft analogy as a root metaphor, and Owen and the Platonism of Aristotle.
Anastasia Marinopoulou
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526105370
- eISBN:
- 9781526128157
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526105370.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
In his systems’ theory, Luhmann attempts to redefine communication, and associates it with information. For Luhmann, communication is distinct from action (Handeln), and the rationality of the ...
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In his systems’ theory, Luhmann attempts to redefine communication, and associates it with information. For Luhmann, communication is distinct from action (Handeln), and the rationality of the scientific system resides in the notion of Zweck, or in the ends of the sciences towards action. For the first time in the epistemological history of modernity, rationality is understood as a certain scientific purpose of action and not as the critique of scientific truth and validity of reason. The schism that Luhmann brought about between ‘traditional’ epistemology (reconsidered now as novel) and the ‘critical’ theory of science (seen by Luhmann as ‘traditional’) was irredeemable. In the following pages, I maintain that all evidence to the contrary such a divergence was inherent to modernity.Drawing on the Schützean model of multiple realities, Luhmann manages to blur the distinction between instrumentality and rationality by relativizing both within systemic complexity. According to Luhmann, complexity characterizes a multifaceted social system, such as science itself. However, I argue that where complexity, in Luhmann, interprets the systemic, it also employs presentism and partial situationalism to explain the essence and methodology of science as a system.Less
In his systems’ theory, Luhmann attempts to redefine communication, and associates it with information. For Luhmann, communication is distinct from action (Handeln), and the rationality of the scientific system resides in the notion of Zweck, or in the ends of the sciences towards action. For the first time in the epistemological history of modernity, rationality is understood as a certain scientific purpose of action and not as the critique of scientific truth and validity of reason. The schism that Luhmann brought about between ‘traditional’ epistemology (reconsidered now as novel) and the ‘critical’ theory of science (seen by Luhmann as ‘traditional’) was irredeemable. In the following pages, I maintain that all evidence to the contrary such a divergence was inherent to modernity.Drawing on the Schützean model of multiple realities, Luhmann manages to blur the distinction between instrumentality and rationality by relativizing both within systemic complexity. According to Luhmann, complexity characterizes a multifaceted social system, such as science itself. However, I argue that where complexity, in Luhmann, interprets the systemic, it also employs presentism and partial situationalism to explain the essence and methodology of science as a system.
Anastasia Marinopoulou
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526105370
- eISBN:
- 9781526128157
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526105370.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
The book makes a critical comparison of fundamental trends in modern epistemology with the epistemological concerns of critical theory of the Frankfurt School. It comprises five chapters, which refer ...
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The book makes a critical comparison of fundamental trends in modern epistemology with the epistemological concerns of critical theory of the Frankfurt School. It comprises five chapters, which refer to phenomenology, structuralism and poststructuralism, modernism and postmodernism, systems’ theory and critical realism.It follows the course of development of modern epistemology, considering basic conceptions such as dialectics, theory and practice in science, and the potential for a political epistemology based on the arguments of critical theory. It can certainly be used as a textbook because each chapter tallies with a major trend in modern epistemology, and provides a concrete analysis of the comparison it draws with the work of leading figures of the Frankfurt School such as Horkheimer, Adorno and Habermas.The present volume addresses the reader of political theory, epistemology, social theory and it also raises key questions on methodology in science and research. Therefore, it can prove beneficial for students, researchers and academics that deal with issues of theory, practice, and method in science. The contents of the volume were meticulously constructed in order to be of practical use both for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and each chapter includes basic graphs that condense the basic argument for each thematic circle on modern epistemology and methodology.The book contains unpublished critique and information provided to the writer in recent interviews she conducted with Jürgen Habermas (providing analysis on systems theory), William Outhwaite and Stefan Müller-Doohm (both the latter clarified issues and contributed valuable information on critical realism and the Frankfurt School, respectively).Less
The book makes a critical comparison of fundamental trends in modern epistemology with the epistemological concerns of critical theory of the Frankfurt School. It comprises five chapters, which refer to phenomenology, structuralism and poststructuralism, modernism and postmodernism, systems’ theory and critical realism.It follows the course of development of modern epistemology, considering basic conceptions such as dialectics, theory and practice in science, and the potential for a political epistemology based on the arguments of critical theory. It can certainly be used as a textbook because each chapter tallies with a major trend in modern epistemology, and provides a concrete analysis of the comparison it draws with the work of leading figures of the Frankfurt School such as Horkheimer, Adorno and Habermas.The present volume addresses the reader of political theory, epistemology, social theory and it also raises key questions on methodology in science and research. Therefore, it can prove beneficial for students, researchers and academics that deal with issues of theory, practice, and method in science. The contents of the volume were meticulously constructed in order to be of practical use both for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and each chapter includes basic graphs that condense the basic argument for each thematic circle on modern epistemology and methodology.The book contains unpublished critique and information provided to the writer in recent interviews she conducted with Jürgen Habermas (providing analysis on systems theory), William Outhwaite and Stefan Müller-Doohm (both the latter clarified issues and contributed valuable information on critical realism and the Frankfurt School, respectively).
Matthew Robinson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781447311409
- eISBN:
- 9781447311430
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781447311409.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Law, Crime and Deviance
Robinson’s discussion on Integrated Systems Theory in Chapter Three provides a highly positivistic account of the causes of crime in a way that challenges notions of free will, choice and ultimately ...
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Robinson’s discussion on Integrated Systems Theory in Chapter Three provides a highly positivistic account of the causes of crime in a way that challenges notions of free will, choice and ultimately personal responsibility. The chapter makes an important link between General Systems Theory and understandings of complexity found in the rest of the book, through an exposition of positivistic and complicated factors that are probabilistic in leading to crime. The chapter also focuses on the most recent developments in theory that relate to these approaches, with the author specifically introducing and summarising what we know about the emerging approach at the cellular level called epigenetics, and recent efforts to integrate such approaches with higher-level factors as potential explanations of aggressive and violent behaviours.Less
Robinson’s discussion on Integrated Systems Theory in Chapter Three provides a highly positivistic account of the causes of crime in a way that challenges notions of free will, choice and ultimately personal responsibility. The chapter makes an important link between General Systems Theory and understandings of complexity found in the rest of the book, through an exposition of positivistic and complicated factors that are probabilistic in leading to crime. The chapter also focuses on the most recent developments in theory that relate to these approaches, with the author specifically introducing and summarising what we know about the emerging approach at the cellular level called epigenetics, and recent efforts to integrate such approaches with higher-level factors as potential explanations of aggressive and violent behaviours.
Karen Campbell, Kylie Hesketh, and Kirsten Krahnstoever Davison
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199571512
- eISBN:
- 9780191595097
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199571512.003.0017
- Subject:
- Public Health and Epidemiology, Public Health, Epidemiology
This chapter reviews the link between parenting and children's obesity risk behaviours. The evidence reviewed and the structure of this chapter is guided by the Ecological Systems Theory, which ...
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This chapter reviews the link between parenting and children's obesity risk behaviours. The evidence reviewed and the structure of this chapter is guided by the Ecological Systems Theory, which embodies the premise that human behaviour cannot be understood without taking into consideration the context in which a person lives. In the case of young children, the family provides the key context in which socialization occurs and behavioural patterns emerge.Less
This chapter reviews the link between parenting and children's obesity risk behaviours. The evidence reviewed and the structure of this chapter is guided by the Ecological Systems Theory, which embodies the premise that human behaviour cannot be understood without taking into consideration the context in which a person lives. In the case of young children, the family provides the key context in which socialization occurs and behavioural patterns emerge.
Christopher Hutton
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748633500
- eISBN:
- 9780748671489
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748633500.003.0003
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Applied Linguistics and Pedagogy
This chapter looks at the concept of ‘system’ as applied to the study of language, and the methodological and theoretical dilemmas that this raises for the study of language and law. The question is ...
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This chapter looks at the concept of ‘system’ as applied to the study of language, and the methodological and theoretical dilemmas that this raises for the study of language and law. The question is whether a system-based model can offer a ‘realistic’ representation of law, the mind, society, and so on. Linguistics is seen as a branch of systems theory, and this raises problems since linguistics is anti-normative, whereas law is inherently normative. The fundamental challenge represented by systems theories is that they tend to marginalise, or completely deny, the relevance of social actors’ subjectivity and of organising control over social meanings. In its extreme form, this implies that social actors ‘do not know what they are doing’, and their lived experience is an ‘epiphenomenal’ or contingent rather than constitutive feature of social interaction. Law seeks a particular answer to a particular question, whereas linguistics offers a general answer to a general question. Theories analyzed include Saussurean linguistics, Chomskyan theory, and ethnomethodology.Less
This chapter looks at the concept of ‘system’ as applied to the study of language, and the methodological and theoretical dilemmas that this raises for the study of language and law. The question is whether a system-based model can offer a ‘realistic’ representation of law, the mind, society, and so on. Linguistics is seen as a branch of systems theory, and this raises problems since linguistics is anti-normative, whereas law is inherently normative. The fundamental challenge represented by systems theories is that they tend to marginalise, or completely deny, the relevance of social actors’ subjectivity and of organising control over social meanings. In its extreme form, this implies that social actors ‘do not know what they are doing’, and their lived experience is an ‘epiphenomenal’ or contingent rather than constitutive feature of social interaction. Law seeks a particular answer to a particular question, whereas linguistics offers a general answer to a general question. Theories analyzed include Saussurean linguistics, Chomskyan theory, and ethnomethodology.
J. Scott Jordan
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199231751
- eISBN:
- 9780191696527
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199231751.003.0003
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Psychology
This chapter proposes the Wild Systems Theory as a potentially integrative perspective on embodied communication. The fundamental assumption here is that organisms need to be understood as systems ...
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This chapter proposes the Wild Systems Theory as a potentially integrative perspective on embodied communication. The fundamental assumption here is that organisms need to be understood as systems that survive through energy transformations. In this perspective, cognition and communication are functions that are enabled by a dynamical control system. Each layer of this hierarchically organised system embodies aspects of the contexts organisms need to survive in, at different scales. Communication is conceptualised as a special case of control where organisms jointly gain control over the environment.Less
This chapter proposes the Wild Systems Theory as a potentially integrative perspective on embodied communication. The fundamental assumption here is that organisms need to be understood as systems that survive through energy transformations. In this perspective, cognition and communication are functions that are enabled by a dynamical control system. Each layer of this hierarchically organised system embodies aspects of the contexts organisms need to survive in, at different scales. Communication is conceptualised as a special case of control where organisms jointly gain control over the environment.
Melissa M. Burnham and Erika and E. Gaylor
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195395754
- eISBN:
- 9780199894468
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395754.003.0009
- Subject:
- Psychology, Developmental Psychology
This chapter delineates the sleep environments found in industrialized nations using the Developmental Systems Theory (DST) as a framework for understanding their variability. It discusses the ...
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This chapter delineates the sleep environments found in industrialized nations using the Developmental Systems Theory (DST) as a framework for understanding their variability. It discusses the environments of both nighttime and daytime sleep, focusing on infants and young children. It argues that sleep environments cannot be understood as unitary constructs, but rather only by examining the characteristics of individuals who choose them and the society, community, and culture within which those individuals are embedded.Less
This chapter delineates the sleep environments found in industrialized nations using the Developmental Systems Theory (DST) as a framework for understanding their variability. It discusses the environments of both nighttime and daytime sleep, focusing on infants and young children. It argues that sleep environments cannot be understood as unitary constructs, but rather only by examining the characteristics of individuals who choose them and the society, community, and culture within which those individuals are embedded.
Ryan White
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231171007
- eISBN:
- 9780231539593
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231171007.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
The Hidden God revisits the origins of American pragmatism and finds a nascent “posthumanist” critique shaping early modern thought. By reaching as far back as the Calvinist arguments of the American ...
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The Hidden God revisits the origins of American pragmatism and finds a nascent “posthumanist” critique shaping early modern thought. By reaching as far back as the Calvinist arguments of the American Puritans and their struggle to know a “hidden God,” this book brings American pragmatism closer to contemporary critical theory. Ryan White reads the writings of key American philosophers, including Jonathan Edwards, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, and Charles Sanders Peirce, against modern theoretical works by Niklas Luhmann, Richard Rorty, Jacques Derrida, Sharon Cameron, Cary Wolfe, and Gregory Bateson. This juxtaposition isolates the distinctly posthumanist form of pragmatism that began to arise in these early texts, challenging the accepted genealogy of pragmatic discourse and common definitions of posthumanist critique. Its rigorously theoretical perspective has wide implications for humanities research, enriching investigations into literature, history, politics, and art.Less
The Hidden God revisits the origins of American pragmatism and finds a nascent “posthumanist” critique shaping early modern thought. By reaching as far back as the Calvinist arguments of the American Puritans and their struggle to know a “hidden God,” this book brings American pragmatism closer to contemporary critical theory. Ryan White reads the writings of key American philosophers, including Jonathan Edwards, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, and Charles Sanders Peirce, against modern theoretical works by Niklas Luhmann, Richard Rorty, Jacques Derrida, Sharon Cameron, Cary Wolfe, and Gregory Bateson. This juxtaposition isolates the distinctly posthumanist form of pragmatism that began to arise in these early texts, challenging the accepted genealogy of pragmatic discourse and common definitions of posthumanist critique. Its rigorously theoretical perspective has wide implications for humanities research, enriching investigations into literature, history, politics, and art.
Ryan White
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231171007
- eISBN:
- 9780231539593
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231171007.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
In many respects the “thesis statement” of the book as a whole, this chapter attempts to theorize the meaning of paradoxical statements in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Sanders ...
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In many respects the “thesis statement” of the book as a whole, this chapter attempts to theorize the meaning of paradoxical statements in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Sanders Peirce. Utilizing and extending Gregory Bateson’s theory of communication, this essay observes a distinction between content and form which then entails a “second-order” observation as articulated in the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann. Form is theorized as radical discontinuity, a concept without identity, the “double consciousness.” This thesis not only allows Emerson and Peirce to be drawn into the purview of systems theory, but it also discovers an unheralded “posthumanist” tradition in American thought.Less
In many respects the “thesis statement” of the book as a whole, this chapter attempts to theorize the meaning of paradoxical statements in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Sanders Peirce. Utilizing and extending Gregory Bateson’s theory of communication, this essay observes a distinction between content and form which then entails a “second-order” observation as articulated in the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann. Form is theorized as radical discontinuity, a concept without identity, the “double consciousness.” This thesis not only allows Emerson and Peirce to be drawn into the purview of systems theory, but it also discovers an unheralded “posthumanist” tradition in American thought.
Susan oyama
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781479833498
- eISBN:
- 9781479842308
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479833498.003.0006
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
For all their advances, the life sciences remain tied to the contrast of form to matter that pervades most other areas of contemporary thought. Immaterial “information” in the genes, for instance, is ...
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For all their advances, the life sciences remain tied to the contrast of form to matter that pervades most other areas of contemporary thought. Immaterial “information” in the genes, for instance, is said to impart form to inert stuff. Apart from being anachronistic, this set of assumptions and tropes--“Biologos”-- detracts from the very material interactions by which life processes proceed. A comparison of several religious stances toward evolution with biology’s discourse of genetic information reveals that their shared conceptual underpinnings are at odds with what is actually known and implemented in scientific biology. The writings of certain aggressively secular neo-Darwinists, furthermore, are in significant tension with their authors’s own antireligious public stances. Recasting infocentric understandings of heredity, development, and evolution in terms of Developmental Systems Theory eliminates the vitalist, essentialist, and preformationist implications of Biologos while restoring to us the living material world.Less
For all their advances, the life sciences remain tied to the contrast of form to matter that pervades most other areas of contemporary thought. Immaterial “information” in the genes, for instance, is said to impart form to inert stuff. Apart from being anachronistic, this set of assumptions and tropes--“Biologos”-- detracts from the very material interactions by which life processes proceed. A comparison of several religious stances toward evolution with biology’s discourse of genetic information reveals that their shared conceptual underpinnings are at odds with what is actually known and implemented in scientific biology. The writings of certain aggressively secular neo-Darwinists, furthermore, are in significant tension with their authors’s own antireligious public stances. Recasting infocentric understandings of heredity, development, and evolution in terms of Developmental Systems Theory eliminates the vitalist, essentialist, and preformationist implications of Biologos while restoring to us the living material world.
Amanda Jo Goldstein
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226458441
- eISBN:
- 9780226458588
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226458588.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter introduces readers to the key problem of “epigenesis” in both Romantic biopoetics and the history of biology in general. Romantic aesthetics and biology are frequently said to converge ...
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This chapter introduces readers to the key problem of “epigenesis” in both Romantic biopoetics and the history of biology in general. Romantic aesthetics and biology are frequently said to converge in the ideal of “organic form”: the organism or artwork as autonomous, self-organizing whole. But William Blake’s The First Book of Urizen, for instance, satirically demolishes this vitalist depiction of life as the power to self-organize. Putting Blake into dialogue with contemporary zoologists Erasmus Darwin and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the chapter reconstructs an unfamiliar, materialist theory of epigenesis that is rooted in embryonic receptivity, rather than vital power. Here viable morphology is an archive of a being’s successive con-formations with its material and social surround – a notion of living form that ultimately challenges vitalism’s ongoing tendency to cast the life of the body as that which resists or evades symbolic structuration. “Epigenesis, an epilogue” sketches how these formerly heretical Romantic and “Lamarckian” ideas are enjoying a revival in the “epigenetic” corrective to the genetic determinism of twentieth-century evolutionary biology.Less
This chapter introduces readers to the key problem of “epigenesis” in both Romantic biopoetics and the history of biology in general. Romantic aesthetics and biology are frequently said to converge in the ideal of “organic form”: the organism or artwork as autonomous, self-organizing whole. But William Blake’s The First Book of Urizen, for instance, satirically demolishes this vitalist depiction of life as the power to self-organize. Putting Blake into dialogue with contemporary zoologists Erasmus Darwin and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the chapter reconstructs an unfamiliar, materialist theory of epigenesis that is rooted in embryonic receptivity, rather than vital power. Here viable morphology is an archive of a being’s successive con-formations with its material and social surround – a notion of living form that ultimately challenges vitalism’s ongoing tendency to cast the life of the body as that which resists or evades symbolic structuration. “Epigenesis, an epilogue” sketches how these formerly heretical Romantic and “Lamarckian” ideas are enjoying a revival in the “epigenetic” corrective to the genetic determinism of twentieth-century evolutionary biology.
Peter Harries-Jones
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823270347
- eISBN:
- 9780823270385
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823270347.003.0009
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
The embodiment of difference in patterns of relationship between the organism and its environment is the means through which living forms create their own organization. Morphogenesis, like other ...
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The embodiment of difference in patterns of relationship between the organism and its environment is the means through which living forms create their own organization. Morphogenesis, like other developmental processes, is self-organizing and its study demonstrates how the whole enters into the parts of the whole and why its own general rules and properties bump against molecular biology’s genetic determinism. Bateson follows Developmental Systems Theory, supporting its view that genes do not control that and neither DNA, nor the cell are sole contributors to complex differentiation, for both develop within a higher context. Recursions are probably the only way a truly complex (organic system) can be created—through an exponential geometry of information (K. S. Thompson)—while timing is of particular interest as it links developmental processes to evolution and also to ecosystem development. In the recycling process, biota respond not only to the immediate presence of mineral nutrients, but also to the context of their timing and frequency of particular entries into the recycling process and by developing sensitivity to frequency of return time ‘stacks’ the order of events in an ecological system (Allen and Hoekstra). The heterarchical stacking is best depicted in bagel-like toruses (D. H. McNeil).Less
The embodiment of difference in patterns of relationship between the organism and its environment is the means through which living forms create their own organization. Morphogenesis, like other developmental processes, is self-organizing and its study demonstrates how the whole enters into the parts of the whole and why its own general rules and properties bump against molecular biology’s genetic determinism. Bateson follows Developmental Systems Theory, supporting its view that genes do not control that and neither DNA, nor the cell are sole contributors to complex differentiation, for both develop within a higher context. Recursions are probably the only way a truly complex (organic system) can be created—through an exponential geometry of information (K. S. Thompson)—while timing is of particular interest as it links developmental processes to evolution and also to ecosystem development. In the recycling process, biota respond not only to the immediate presence of mineral nutrients, but also to the context of their timing and frequency of particular entries into the recycling process and by developing sensitivity to frequency of return time ‘stacks’ the order of events in an ecological system (Allen and Hoekstra). The heterarchical stacking is best depicted in bagel-like toruses (D. H. McNeil).
Paul Morris and Bob Adamson
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9789888028016
- eISBN:
- 9789888180257
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888028016.003.0002
- Subject:
- Education, Educational Policy and Politics
Drawing on the notions of rational and conflict perspectives, this chapter focuses on how curriculum decisions are made and who the key agencies are, which have a role in the formal process of ...
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Drawing on the notions of rational and conflict perspectives, this chapter focuses on how curriculum decisions are made and who the key agencies are, which have a role in the formal process of educational policymaking in Hong Kong.Less
Drawing on the notions of rational and conflict perspectives, this chapter focuses on how curriculum decisions are made and who the key agencies are, which have a role in the formal process of educational policymaking in Hong Kong.
Daniel D. Hutto and Erik Myin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036115
- eISBN:
- 9780262339773
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036115.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
Chapter 2 introduces REC’s Equal Partner Principle, according to which invoking neural, bodily, and environmental factors all make equally important contributions when it comes to explaining ...
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Chapter 2 introduces REC’s Equal Partner Principle, according to which invoking neural, bodily, and environmental factors all make equally important contributions when it comes to explaining cognitive activity. In line with that principle, it is made clear how REC can accept that cognitive capacities depend on structural changes that occur inside organisms and their brains, without understanding such changes in information processing and representationalist terms.
This chapter explicates the Hard Problem of Content, aka the HPC, as basis for a compelling argument for REC. The HPC is a seemingly intractable theoretical puzzle for defenders of unrestricted CIC. A straight solution to the HPC requires explaining how it is possible to get from informational foundations that are noncontentful to a theory of mental content using only the resources of a respectable explanatory naturalism that calls on the resources of the hard sciences.
It is revealed how the need to deal with the HPC can be avoided by adopting REC’s revolutionary take on basic cognition, and why going this way has advantages over other possible ways of handling the HPC.Less
Chapter 2 introduces REC’s Equal Partner Principle, according to which invoking neural, bodily, and environmental factors all make equally important contributions when it comes to explaining cognitive activity. In line with that principle, it is made clear how REC can accept that cognitive capacities depend on structural changes that occur inside organisms and their brains, without understanding such changes in information processing and representationalist terms.
This chapter explicates the Hard Problem of Content, aka the HPC, as basis for a compelling argument for REC. The HPC is a seemingly intractable theoretical puzzle for defenders of unrestricted CIC. A straight solution to the HPC requires explaining how it is possible to get from informational foundations that are noncontentful to a theory of mental content using only the resources of a respectable explanatory naturalism that calls on the resources of the hard sciences.
It is revealed how the need to deal with the HPC can be avoided by adopting REC’s revolutionary take on basic cognition, and why going this way has advantages over other possible ways of handling the HPC.
Benjamin H. Bratton
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262029575
- eISBN:
- 9780262330183
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262029575.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter introduces The Stack model in detail. The Stack is a platform, and despite our familiarity with that word, we do not have sufficient understanding of platforms as technical and ...
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This chapter introduces The Stack model in detail. The Stack is a platform, and despite our familiarity with that word, we do not have sufficient understanding of platforms as technical and institutional systems. Comparing them to States and Markets, we can appreciate how they enable unique kinds of sovereignty, both geographic and subjective. This chapter considers some key historical examples of computing platforms used to model and reform entire societies and economies, and considers these as precedent lessons our Stack model. It discusses the technical structure of software and hardware stacks, and abstracts them as a general model for complex systems architectures. The chapter also introduces the six layers of The Stack, Earth layer, Cloud layer, City layer, Address layer, Interface layer, and User layer.Less
This chapter introduces The Stack model in detail. The Stack is a platform, and despite our familiarity with that word, we do not have sufficient understanding of platforms as technical and institutional systems. Comparing them to States and Markets, we can appreciate how they enable unique kinds of sovereignty, both geographic and subjective. This chapter considers some key historical examples of computing platforms used to model and reform entire societies and economies, and considers these as precedent lessons our Stack model. It discusses the technical structure of software and hardware stacks, and abstracts them as a general model for complex systems architectures. The chapter also introduces the six layers of The Stack, Earth layer, Cloud layer, City layer, Address layer, Interface layer, and User layer.
Russell K. Skowronek, M. James Blackman, and Ronald L. Bishop
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780813049816
- eISBN:
- 9780813050232
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813049816.001.0001
- Subject:
- Archaeology, Historical Archaeology
This volume contains a wealth of new information on the production, supply, and exchange of pottery in Alta California, which will be useful for years to come. Using the framework of World Systems ...
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This volume contains a wealth of new information on the production, supply, and exchange of pottery in Alta California, which will be useful for years to come. Using the framework of World Systems Theory and Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis, the authors have demonstrated the widespread production of both plain and glazed ceramics in Spanish California and the supply of other ceramic tablewares from Mexico. When situated with the other contributions to this book, the nuanced story of ceramics, the people who made them, and the nuclear and other scientists who studied them reveals a sophistication that far surpasses the wildest dreams of mission-era archaeology.Less
This volume contains a wealth of new information on the production, supply, and exchange of pottery in Alta California, which will be useful for years to come. Using the framework of World Systems Theory and Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis, the authors have demonstrated the widespread production of both plain and glazed ceramics in Spanish California and the supply of other ceramic tablewares from Mexico. When situated with the other contributions to this book, the nuanced story of ceramics, the people who made them, and the nuclear and other scientists who studied them reveals a sophistication that far surpasses the wildest dreams of mission-era archaeology.
Dennis M. Gorman
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262037426
- eISBN:
- 9780262344814
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262037426.003.0011
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Psychology
Many of the subject matters discussed under the topic of pseudoscience can be readily distinguished from science proper, and there are few individuals with any serious scientific training who would ...
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Many of the subject matters discussed under the topic of pseudoscience can be readily distinguished from science proper, and there are few individuals with any serious scientific training who would mistake these for science-based disciplines. Harder to identify and distinguish are those disciplines that may have begun as a genuine science but have transformed into pseudosciences primarily through their pursuit of positive results. This chapter discusses one such example, drug prevention research, and contends that the adoption of so-called “evidence-based practice” by this field of study has been a key driver of its decent into pseudoscience. It discusses this process using a systems approach and focusses specifically on two negative feedback loops, one entailing flexible data analysis and selective reporting and one entailing minimal adherence to study design criteria. These lops are illustrated using examples of prevention and treatment programs that have been deemed “model” intervention by the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP).Less
Many of the subject matters discussed under the topic of pseudoscience can be readily distinguished from science proper, and there are few individuals with any serious scientific training who would mistake these for science-based disciplines. Harder to identify and distinguish are those disciplines that may have begun as a genuine science but have transformed into pseudosciences primarily through their pursuit of positive results. This chapter discusses one such example, drug prevention research, and contends that the adoption of so-called “evidence-based practice” by this field of study has been a key driver of its decent into pseudoscience. It discusses this process using a systems approach and focusses specifically on two negative feedback loops, one entailing flexible data analysis and selective reporting and one entailing minimal adherence to study design criteria. These lops are illustrated using examples of prevention and treatment programs that have been deemed “model” intervention by the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP).
Benjamin H. Bratton
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262029575
- eISBN:
- 9780262330183
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262029575.003.0011
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
The concluding chapter, The Black Stack, draws out the tangled implications of The Stack as a challenge to design and to geopolitical thought, one to be achieved and/or resisted. The figure of “The ...
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The concluding chapter, The Black Stack, draws out the tangled implications of The Stack as a challenge to design and to geopolitical thought, one to be achieved and/or resisted. The figure of “The Black Stack” stands for the Stack-to-come that we know will arrive but which we cannot possibly recognize in advance. As a global platform, The Stack may represent an epochal closure of the planet under an absolutist regime of algorithmic capital, and/or the fragility of its totality may also bring radical breaks, as its universalism produces unexpected new cosmopolitan positions. What may at first appear as the apotheosis of The Stack’s worst tendencies may, in the long run, prove to be the basis of a far-better geopolitics. Design must be attentive to the role that these reversals play in how new technologies produce new accidents, and how accidents in turn produce new technologies.Less
The concluding chapter, The Black Stack, draws out the tangled implications of The Stack as a challenge to design and to geopolitical thought, one to be achieved and/or resisted. The figure of “The Black Stack” stands for the Stack-to-come that we know will arrive but which we cannot possibly recognize in advance. As a global platform, The Stack may represent an epochal closure of the planet under an absolutist regime of algorithmic capital, and/or the fragility of its totality may also bring radical breaks, as its universalism produces unexpected new cosmopolitan positions. What may at first appear as the apotheosis of The Stack’s worst tendencies may, in the long run, prove to be the basis of a far-better geopolitics. Design must be attentive to the role that these reversals play in how new technologies produce new accidents, and how accidents in turn produce new technologies.
Corey Tazzara
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198791584
- eISBN:
- 9780191833946
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198791584.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History, Cultural History
Chapter 6 offers a quantitative examination of the commercial development of Livorno, showing how it plugged local and regional exchange networks into the currents of global commerce. Livorno was at ...
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Chapter 6 offers a quantitative examination of the commercial development of Livorno, showing how it plugged local and regional exchange networks into the currents of global commerce. Livorno was at the epicenter of the reorganization of maritime trade in the Tyrrhenian and throughout the Mediterranean. Despite dense connections between north-central Italy and the free port, however, international commerce did not substantially affect productive relations in the hinterland. North-central Italy remained an autonomous region; rather than a colonial outpost subservient to northern capitalism, Livorno was a large marketplace connecting otherwise distinct economies. The Tuscan city’s success in organizing trade eventually provoked a competitive response by neighboring ports.Less
Chapter 6 offers a quantitative examination of the commercial development of Livorno, showing how it plugged local and regional exchange networks into the currents of global commerce. Livorno was at the epicenter of the reorganization of maritime trade in the Tyrrhenian and throughout the Mediterranean. Despite dense connections between north-central Italy and the free port, however, international commerce did not substantially affect productive relations in the hinterland. North-central Italy remained an autonomous region; rather than a colonial outpost subservient to northern capitalism, Livorno was a large marketplace connecting otherwise distinct economies. The Tuscan city’s success in organizing trade eventually provoked a competitive response by neighboring ports.
