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Can those who appreciate the explanatory power of modern science still believe in traditional religious accounts of the nature and purpose of the universe? This book is intended for those who care about that question and are dissatisfied with the rigid dichotomies that dominate the contemporary debate. The extremists won’t be interested – those who assume that science answers all the questions that matter, and those so certain of their religious faith that dialogue with science, philosophy, or other faith traditions seems unnecessary. But far more people today recognize that matters of faith are complex, that doubt is endemic to belief, and that dialogue is indispensable in our day. In eight probing chapters, the authors of The Predicament of Belief consider the most urgent reasons for doubting that religious claims – in particular, those embedded in the Christian tradition – are likely to be true. They develop a version of Christian faith that preserves the tradition’s core insights but also gauges the varying degrees of certainty with which those insights can still be affirmed. Along the way, they address such questions as the ultimate origin of the universe, the existence of innocent suffering, the challenge of religious plurality, and how to understand the extraordinary claim that an ancient teacher rose from the dead. They end with a discussion of what their conclusions imply about the present state and future structure of churches and other communities in which Christian affirmations are made.

Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu is a hybrid, a novel-essay, a capacious work of fiction containing a commonplace-book. It might, as Roland Barthes has suggested, be thought of as the product of profound and cherished indecision, Proust's indecision between two styles of writing, the moralistic and the fictive/novelistic/romanesque. This book is an exploration of this indecision. The shorter Proust, Proust the moraliste, is a prolific writer of maxims, from the laws of the passions to the aesthetic manifesto of the Temps retrouvé to the rapacious teeming/fertile/spawning/exuberant/luxuriant reflections on sexuality, politics, and society. Yet these maxims, whose grammar lays claim to timelessness, are bound up in narrative, the story of their evolution and disintegration. Proust's moralizing exposes our affective relationship with law statements, with authority, and it is this question that engages A la recherce in an epistemological debate that crosses the boundaries between the two cultures, art and science. What might be called the epistemological alertness of Proust's text is explored at this interface between ‘modernist’ science and literature.

This book reflects on a number of challenges associated with management and social science research — the search for a ‘behavioral science’, the limits of rationality, the unreliability of many research findings, the social shaping of research agendas, cultures, and judgements. The book is chronologically structured and includes discussions of research projects and various methodological debates. This is a feisty argument based on all aspects of research — carrying out research programmes, evaluating research, tirelessly questioning the assumptions and claims of social science research, and never avoiding the awkward theoretical or practical challenges that face organizational researchers.

This book examines the interrelationship between the construction of national identity and the transformation of political thought in Germany before the First World War. During the decade or so before the war, the German Empire was challenged openly by both left and right for the first time since the 1870s. Paradoxically, however, this pre-war crisis of Germany's system of government occurred during a period of increasing nationalism, which created a solid cross-party basis of support for the Empire as a nation-state. The book argues that Wilhelmine debates about the reform of the German Empire can only be understood in the context of a broader discussion and comparison of European and American political regimes which took place in Germany after the turn of the century. In such contemporary debates about a German Sonderwag, France remained a principal point of reference because French-style parliamentarism had come to be viewed as the main alternative to German constitutionalism. By analysing Wilhelmine depictions of the Third Republic, the book revises accepted interpretations of German politics and nationalism.

This book is the first comprehensive description of some of the many kinds of Protestantism that competed for the souls of Cromwellian Ireland. Its principal purpose is to document the period's most important theological debates, arguing that they were both a cause and consequence of protestant experiences in that turbulent period and that they illustrate surprising contests between and within several English, Scottish, and Irish varieties of protestant identity. Cromwellian protestants were sometimes less puritan, and often much less united by religious convictions, than has often been supposed. Even their resolute opposition to Roman Catholicism has, at times, been exaggerated. The military campaign and its aftermath have been associated with eschatological stringency and anti‐Catholic rhetoric, but this rhetoric is largely absent from the treatises that survived the 1650s. In fact, where Antichrist does appear, it is almost always within the community of the godly. His presence marks the constantly shifting boundaries of projected systems of truth. These shifting boundaries reflect a sustained introspection that allows historians to trace the evolution of religious identities throughout this period. That introspection provides a key to our understanding of the period's events, for the Cromwellian regime had an evidently religious base, and its exponents worked self‐consciously for a second reformation. Nevertheless, the state failed to endorse an ecclesiastical ideal, and that failure made sectarian disagreements inevitable. This book documents the tenor and impact of these debates.

In the past thirty years, two fundamental issues have emerged in the philosophy of science. One concerns the appropriate attitude we should take towards scientific theories — whether we should regard them as true or merely empirically adequate, for example. The other concerns the nature of scientific theories and models and how these might best be represented. This book looks at these two issues together by arguing that theories and models should be regarded as partially rather than wholly true. It adopts a framework that sheds new light on issues to do with belief, theory acceptance, and the realism-antirealism debate. The new machinery of “partial structures” that is developed here offers a new perspective from which to view the nature of scientific models and their heuristic development.

This book demonstrates that Japan's postwar Constitution has provided a solid foundation for democracy because, contrary to the conventional view that the American Occupation simply “imposed” it, there was considerable Japanese input in its making.

The first two chapters analyze a sharp clash, during the American planning of the Occupation, over the fate and role of Emperor Hirohito. Papered over in the Potsdam Declaration and never resolved in official Washington, the dispute gave General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), an opportunity to protect the emperor and use his authority to support MacArthur's own objectives.

In the fall of 1945, both American and Japanese officials determined that democratization required constitutional revision and that Japan should take the lead in revising its Constitution. Accordingly, Japanese scholars and officials began advancing their ideas. Meanwhile, both the emperor and the cabinet named commissions (headed by Konoe Fumimaro and Matsumoto Jōji, respectively) to study the need for amendments. However, poor communication from the American side and political chaos among the Japanese doomed these fledgling efforts.

In early February 1946, MacArthur, alarmed by the Moscow Agreement that created the Far Eastern Commission (FEC) and fearing that he might lose control over the political reform of Japan, ordered his Government Section (GS) to draft a model constitution for Japan, then pressured Prime Minister Shidehara's cabinet to present it as a Japanese government draft. Japanese attempts to modify SCAP's draft, an effort that achieved some success in the face of determined American resistance, have been largely ignored by those who slight Japan's contribution to its own postwar democratization.

Chapters 12 through 20 trace the deliberations of the Japanese parliament (called the Diet) during the summer of 1946. It is a mistake to pass over this stage quickly, as most accounts of Japan's postwar democratization do. This was a critical juncture in postwar Japan's commitment to constitutional democracy, affording politicians in the recently elected House of Representatives and in the House of Peers a major opportunity to put their imprint on the document. Intense struggles took place over the role of the emperor, Article 9 (renouncing war and armed forces), the bill of rights and provisions for parliamentary governance.

The Conclusion emphasizes that, as Japan currently deliberates whether to amend its postwar Constitution, it is important to understand that the transformation of Japan into a stable constitutional democracy was a joint achievement, to which both American and Japanese contributions were substantial and crucial.