Search Results

Conclusion

Andreas Osiander

in Before the State: Systemic Political Change in the West from the Greeks to the French Revolution

The final chapter provides a general overview, in light of the findings of this study, of the manifestations and causes of systemic structural change in the history of western civilization. It argues ... More

The final chapter provides a general overview, in light of the findings of this study, of the manifestations and causes of systemic structural change in the history of western civilization. It argues that since the structural evolution of the western political system at large has consistently shown a path-dependent succession of unrepeatable stages, rather than variations on the underlying theme of the ‘state’, there can be no ‘grand theory’ of international relations or political systems in general: the search for nomothetic political theory, for timeless patterns in the historical record, is doomed to failure. Whatever their worth, present-day theory, such as Realism in International Relations, cannot validly invoke history as corroboration, nor offer predictions about the future.Less

Dethroning Grand Theory

in Desperately Seeking Certainty: The Misguided Quest for Constitutional Foundations

This chapter reviews the six constitutional theorists and concludes that they seek a universal method of interpretation that will serve as a strategy for judges faced with any constitutional issue. ... More

This chapter reviews the six constitutional theorists and concludes that they seek a universal method of interpretation that will serve as a strategy for judges faced with any constitutional issue. Grand theorists believe that the rule of law will suffer if judges lack sure theoretical guidance, apart from their overblown anxiety about democratic legitimacy. These theorists reconcile judicial review and majority rule and respond in very different fashions to Learned Hand's fear that judicial review replaces democracy in the reign of philosopher kings. Grand theory can be useful in helping to understand overlooked aspects of constitutional law. It has been such a dominant feature of constitutional scholarship that constitutional scholars are constantly searching for pieces that might be decisive to current legal disputes.Less

Introduction: Gut and Anti-Gut

VOLOVIK GRIGORY E.

in The Universe in a Helium Droplet

The book studies relations of condensed matter with particle physics and cosmology. The fundamental links between cosmology and particle physics have been well established and is widely exploited in ... More

The book studies relations of condensed matter with particle physics and cosmology. The fundamental links between cosmology and particle physics have been well established and is widely exploited in the description of the physics of the early universe (baryogenesis, cosmological nucleosynthesis, etc.). The connection of these two fields with the third ingredient of modern physics — condensed matter — allows us to simulate the least understood features of high-energy physics and cosmology: the properties of the quantum vacuum (also called aether, spacetime foam, quantum foam, Planck medium, etc.). The new concept inspired by condensed matter physics is opposite to the fundamental concept of broken symmetries used in Grand Unification Theory (GUT). In the anti-GUT scenario, gravity and the relativistic quantum field theory, such as the Standard Model of particle physics and GUT, are effective theories. They are emergent phenomena arising in the low-energy corner of the physical vacuum, where the system acquires physical laws and symmetries, which it did not have at higher energy.Less

Weak Theory

Nick Fotion

in Theory vs. Anti-Theory in Ethics: A Misconceived Conflict

Weak theory is characterized in part by contrasting it to strong theory (and to grand theory). Weak theory, it is claimed, has no use for the criteria of completeness and privileging. Again, this ... More

Weak theory is characterized in part by contrasting it to strong theory (and to grand theory). Weak theory, it is claimed, has no use for the criteria of completeness and privileging. Again, this theory is contrasted to many of the things that Derek Parfit tells us in On What Matters.Less

Taking the Judges Seriously v. Grand Theories

Jane Stapleton

in Three Essays on Torts

Chapter 1 describes the approach of reflexive tort scholarship and how it depends on a clear understanding of the environment of judicial decision-making. Part of that environment is the conception ... More

Chapter 1 describes the approach of reflexive tort scholarship and how it depends on a clear understanding of the environment of judicial decision-making. Part of that environment is the conception that judicial ‘lawmaking’ is ‘retrospective’, by which is usually meant that it is imposed retroactively. Yet retroactivity is in sharp tension with the fundamental principle that situations should be judged according to the law as it was at that time. To resolve this tension, the text offers a conception of the common law as ‘living’, that it evolves in line with changes in society. Later, litigation invites the ultimate court to articulate this evolution and how the law stood at the time that the parties interacted. The descriptive claims of Grand Theories are contrasted with reflexive tort scholarship, which accommodates key aspects of judicial decision-making, such as the heterogeneity of judicial reasons, in ways that those descriptive claims cannot.Less

Post-Cold War International Political Theory: An Emancipatory Ethics for the New Millennium

David Martin Jones

in History's Fools: The Pursuit of Idealism and the Revenge of Politics

The way the Cold War ended and the triumph of market capitalism constituted the global, economic preconditions and the liberal democratic premises for abstract speculation about how the evolving ... More

The way the Cold War ended and the triumph of market capitalism constituted the global, economic preconditions and the liberal democratic premises for abstract speculation about how the evolving world order ought to be governed. Release from the ideological straightjacket of the Cold War stimulated interest in social justice, emancipation, human security, human rights and international law. Ethics and culture replaced economics and historical materialism as subjects of academic inquiry. Human rights and social justice had been cards of low value in the Cold War ideological pack. Now, global values and shared norms trumped everything. The return of Grand Theory in a progressive guise saw otherwise obscure philosophical speculation concerning social justice and communicative reason form the basis for progressive theories of a communitarian, feminist and cosmopolitan character devoted to the ethical transformation of a global society. Political thought, once concerned with liberty and equality within the democratic state, now assumed a radical, emancipatory international dimension. It came to dominate the thought and practice of the western campus as well as form the tacit ideological dimension informing a new progressive, post political and post historicist third way.Less

Beyond the Standard Model

J. Iliopoulos and T.N. Tomaras

in Elementary Particle Physics: The Standard Theory

We review the fundamental physics questions left unanswered by the Standard Model, and we explain why, despite its great successes, the search for physics beyond the Standard Model is a very active ... More

We review the fundamental physics questions left unanswered by the Standard Model, and we explain why, despite its great successes, the search for physics beyond the Standard Model is a very active field of research. We briefly review the theories of Grand Unification which assume that the SU(3) × SU(2) x U(1) group of the Standard Model is the remnant of a larger, simple or semi-simple group, spontaneously broken at very high energies. These theories predict the phenomenon of proton decay and we discuss possible cosmological consequences of such an instability. We end with the theory of supersymmetry which postulates the existence of an approximate fermion-boson symmetry.Less

Introduction: Why an Evolutionary Approach toward IR?

Shiping Tang

in The Social Evolution of International Politics

In the past century, “great debates” among a few grand theories, offensive realism, defensive realism, and neoliberalism/the English school, have shaped, if not defined, the development of ... More

In the past century, “great debates” among a few grand theories, offensive realism, defensive realism, and neoliberalism/the English school, have shaped, if not defined, the development of international relations (IR) as a science. Yet, how can IR scholars arrive at so vastly different readings into the big picture of international politics, when all along they have been looking at roughly the same human history? This book contends that the key cause behind the irresolution of the “great debates” has been that all of the grand theories have been non-evolutionary, if not anti-evolutionary. Because the international system, as part of human society, has been an evolutionary system from the very beginning even if some properties of international politics (e.g. anarchy) have persisted even today, non-evolutionary theories cannot possibly account for the whole history of international politics. We therefore need a social evolutionary approach toward the history of IRLess

Wong Kar-wai and the Poetics of Hong Kong Cinema

Gary Bettinson

in The Sensuous Cinema of Wong Kar-wai: Film Poetics and the Aesthetic of Disturbance

Following a biographical sketch of Wong Kar-wai, the introductory chapter identifies several fallacies about Wong’s cinema that the rest of this book seeks to redress. It explicates the dominant ... More

Following a biographical sketch of Wong Kar-wai, the introductory chapter identifies several fallacies about Wong’s cinema that the rest of this book seeks to redress. It explicates the dominant critical mode to which Wong’s films have been subjected – culturalist theory – and indicates some significant shortcomings in this model. At the same time, it advocates a poetics approach to Wong’s cinema, highlighting the relative virtues of a formalist and cognitive analysis. Finally, the chapter defines and discusses Wong’s distinctive “aesthetic of disturbance,” an auteurist trait that unifies Wong’s films at the levels of audio-visual style, plotting, narration, and genre uptake.Less

Fundamental Interactions

Laurent Baulieu, John Iliopoulos, and Roland Sénéor

in From Classical to Quantum Fields

The experimental successes of the standard model. The motivation for going beyond. General discussion of grand unified theories, The models based on SU(5), O(10), and exceptional groups. ... More

The experimental successes of the standard model. The motivation for going beyond. General discussion of grand unified theories, The models based on SU(5), O(10), and exceptional groups. Electric–magnetic duality and magnetic monopoles in grand unified theories.Less

Frontiers of Physics

Nicholas Manton and Nicholas Mee

in The Physical World: An Inspirational Tour of Fundamental Physics

Despite the overwhelming successes of modern physics, there are questions that remain to be answered and these are considered in the final chapter. The interpretation of quantum mechanics is ... More

Despite the overwhelming successes of modern physics, there are questions that remain to be answered and these are considered in the final chapter. The interpretation of quantum mechanics is discussed, including the EPR paradox, the Aspect experiments and quantum entanglement. Next, the question of whether particles are really point-like and the possibility of an alternative description in terms of solitons is considered. The Skyrmion and the Standard Model sphaleron are described. Unexplained features of the universe, such as the matter–antimatter asymmetry, the existence of dark matter and the even more mysterious dark energy, are discussed. There is also a critique of the loose ends of the Standard Model and the need for a quantum theory of gravity. The chapter concludes with a look beyond the Standard Model at the arguments and evidence in favour of Grand Unified Theories and ultimately string theory.Less

R.M. Hare

Nick Fotion

in Theory vs. Anti-Theory in Ethics: A Misconceived Conflict

In contrast to Scanlon, who is almost a grand theorist, Hare is a unapologetically a grand theorist. Hare makes the distinctions of critical and non-critical (for him intuitive) thinking; and the ... More

In contrast to Scanlon, who is almost a grand theorist, Hare is a unapologetically a grand theorist. Hare makes the distinctions of critical and non-critical (for him intuitive) thinking; and the ethics/meta-ethics distinction found in Chapter 2. His ethical theory is a combination of prescriptivism and universalizability. Hare insists that in applying the former concept it is necessary to engage in the process of role reversing.Less

Mississippian Origins: From Emergence to Beginnings

Gregory D. Wilson and Lynne P. Sullivan

in Mississippian Beginnings

Nearly a quarter century has passed since Smith’s (1990) seminal volume The Mississippian Emergence was published. That volume, through a set of collected works, was the first to attempt a ... More

Nearly a quarter century has passed since Smith’s (1990) seminal volume The Mississippian Emergence was published. That volume, through a set of collected works, was the first to attempt a region-wide synthesis of what was known and thought about Mississippian origins. This introductory chapter contextualizes the work of the contributing authors in several ways. We begin by defining some key terms used throughout the chapters and volume, and then we examine the history of grand theory and paradigmatic shifts in the study of Mississippian origins to illuminate the routes that led to today’s thinking. This section includes an assessment of the current status of social theory in Mississippian studies. Special emphasis is placed on a discussion of cultural entanglements, a topic common to most of the contributions and that addresses the ways in which the various regional traditions that archaeologists recognize as Mississippian were negotiated. The final section considers the broad sweep of Mississippianization and its impacts on later developments across the Eastern Woodlands.Less

Searching for Agency: Gendering Leadership in European Integration Theory

Gabriele Abels and Heather MacRae

in Women and Leadership in the European Union

Although they are still underrepresented, women are entering the upper echelons of EU institutions in unprecedented numbers. More and more are breaking the glass ceiling and attaining leadership ... More

Although they are still underrepresented, women are entering the upper echelons of EU institutions in unprecedented numbers. More and more are breaking the glass ceiling and attaining leadership positions. Does this have an effect on leadership and on European integration? We still don’t know, nor do we have the theoretical tools ready to investigate. Thus, different strands of literature: integration theories, leadership studies, and gender studies need to be considered and linked. Recently, linkages have been discussed between each of the three pairs among these strands: gendering integration theories, leadership in the EU, and gender and leadership. We search for connections between all three strands and make these productive for investigating gender and leadership in the EU. We contend that integration theories can offer insights into some of these emergent trends, but that these must be expanded through a gender lens. We assume that the conceptualization of agency is vital for exploring such connections.Less

History and Social Science in the West

Kevin Passmore

in The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 5: Historical Writing Since 1945

This chapter analyzes the relationship between history and various disciplines within the social sciences. Historians and social scientists shared two related sets of assumptions. The first ... More

This chapter analyzes the relationship between history and various disciplines within the social sciences. Historians and social scientists shared two related sets of assumptions. The first supposition was of a world-historical shift from a traditional, hierarchical, religious society to a modern egalitarian, rational one. Second, history and social science assumed that progress occurred within nations possessed of unique ‘characters’, and that patriotism provided the social cement without which society could not function. Nevertheless, academic history seemingly differed from social science in that it was untheoretical and predominantly political. Yet historians focused on the nation’s attainment of self-consciousness, homogeneity, and independence through struggle against internal and external enemies—a history in which great men were prominent. Historians and sociologists unwittingly shared versions of grand theory, in which change was an external ‘force’ driven by the functional needs of the system, and in which meaning derived from measurement against theory, rather than from protagonists’ actions and beliefs.Less

Water, Water, Here and There

Steven E. Vigdor

in Signatures of the Artist: The Vital Imperfections That Make Our Universe Habitable

Chapter 4 deals with the stability of the proton, hence of hydrogen, and how to reconcile that stability with the baryon number nonconservation (or baryon conservation) needed to establish a ... More

Chapter 4 deals with the stability of the proton, hence of hydrogen, and how to reconcile that stability with the baryon number nonconservation (or baryon conservation) needed to establish a matter–antimatter imbalance in the infant universe. Sakharov’s three conditions for establishing a matter–antimatter imbalance are presented. Grand unified theories and experimental searches for proton decay are described. The concept of spontaneous symmetry breaking is introduced in describing the electroweak phase transition in the infant universe. That transition is treated as the potential site for introducing the imbalance between quarks and antiquarks, via either baryogenesis or leptogenesis models. The up–down quark mass difference is presented as essential for providing the stability of hydrogen and of the deuteron, which serves as a crucial stepping stone in stellar hydrogen-burning reactions that generate the energy and elements needed for life. Constraints on quark masses from lattice QCD calculations and violations of chiral symmetry are discussed.Less

Indian Nationalism: Narratives and Key Concepts

Rizwana Shamshad

in Bangladeshi Migrants in India: Foreigners, Refugees, or Infiltrators?

This chapter provides the narrative framework within which the nationalist discourses in the three states are analysed. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first section deals with a ... More

This chapter provides the narrative framework within which the nationalist discourses in the three states are analysed. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first section deals with a review of literature on nationalisms that have prevailed in India after Independence, and which are relevant to positioning the Bangladeshi migrants present in the three states. The second section points to some key concepts from the non-Indian literature that invites attention. The last section states the two axiomatic assumptions that underlie the narrative structure and which give the study a unity. The first assumption is that the discourse of nationalism starts with colonialism, the second assumption is that partitions have had defining impact on nationalist thought in India.Less