Randall G. Styers
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195151077
- eISBN:
- 9780199835263
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195151070.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter examines the scholarly literature in which magic is defined as faulty or inchoate science. The chapter begins by examining early theoretical constructions of the “primitive”; irrational ...
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This chapter examines the scholarly literature in which magic is defined as faulty or inchoate science. The chapter begins by examining early theoretical constructions of the “primitive”; irrational (or pre-rational) magical thought was seen by numerous early anthropologists and sociologists as a definitive index of the superstitious primitive mind. While the notion of the “primitive” has become intellectually untenable, magic nonetheless retains a central role in subsequent discussions of the nature and limits of modern rationality (often standing as shorthand for non-modern mental and social processes). Finally, the chapter moves to explore recent disputes among historians over the role of medieval natural magic in the emergence of early modern science. Positioned at (or beyond) the boundary of rationality, magic serves both as the foil against which distinctive forms of Western science are defined and as the decisive test of scientific rationality's ability to explain the irrational.Less
This chapter examines the scholarly literature in which magic is defined as faulty or inchoate science. The chapter begins by examining early theoretical constructions of the “primitive”; irrational (or pre-rational) magical thought was seen by numerous early anthropologists and sociologists as a definitive index of the superstitious primitive mind. While the notion of the “primitive” has become intellectually untenable, magic nonetheless retains a central role in subsequent discussions of the nature and limits of modern rationality (often standing as shorthand for non-modern mental and social processes). Finally, the chapter moves to explore recent disputes among historians over the role of medieval natural magic in the emergence of early modern science. Positioned at (or beyond) the boundary of rationality, magic serves both as the foil against which distinctive forms of Western science are defined and as the decisive test of scientific rationality's ability to explain the irrational.
Randall G. Styers
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195151077
- eISBN:
- 9780199835263
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195151070.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter offers an account of the social and intellectual contexts within which definitions of magic emerged in the modern West, beginning with various early modern philosophical responses to the ...
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This chapter offers an account of the social and intellectual contexts within which definitions of magic emerged in the modern West, beginning with various early modern philosophical responses to the European witchcraft persecutions. Following the Reformation and the Enlightenment, intellectualized and privatized notions of religion gained prominence, particularly in Protestant anti-Catholic polemics. Coupled with this development was the proliferation of capitalism and Western science, both of which assert distinctive forms of mechanistic and rational manipulation of nature. Finally, with the European conquest of much of the non-Western world, the discourse on “primitive” culture came to play a significant role in legitimating colonial conquests and exploitation. In this context, magic came to serve as a particularly pliable tool in efforts to prescribe norms for liberal religious piety, modern scientific rationality, and capitalist social relations.Less
This chapter offers an account of the social and intellectual contexts within which definitions of magic emerged in the modern West, beginning with various early modern philosophical responses to the European witchcraft persecutions. Following the Reformation and the Enlightenment, intellectualized and privatized notions of religion gained prominence, particularly in Protestant anti-Catholic polemics. Coupled with this development was the proliferation of capitalism and Western science, both of which assert distinctive forms of mechanistic and rational manipulation of nature. Finally, with the European conquest of much of the non-Western world, the discourse on “primitive” culture came to play a significant role in legitimating colonial conquests and exploitation. In this context, magic came to serve as a particularly pliable tool in efforts to prescribe norms for liberal religious piety, modern scientific rationality, and capitalist social relations.
Emma E. A. Cohen
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195323351
- eISBN:
- 9780199785575
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195323351.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, World Religions
The Mind Possessed examines spirit concepts and mediumistic practices from a cognitive scientific perspective. Drawing primarily, but not exclusively, from ethnographic data collected ...
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The Mind Possessed examines spirit concepts and mediumistic practices from a cognitive scientific perspective. Drawing primarily, but not exclusively, from ethnographic data collected during eighteen months of fieldwork in Belém, northern Brazil, this book combines fine‐grained description and analysis of mediumistic activities in an Afro‐Brazilian cult house with a scientific account of the emergence and the spread of the tradition's core concepts. The book develops a novel theoretical approach to questions that are of central importance to the scientific study of transmission of culture, particularly concepts of spirits, spirit healing, and spirit possession. Making a radical departure from established anthropological, medicalist, and sociological analyses of spirit phenomena, the book looks instead to instructive insights from the cognitive sciences and offers a set of testable hypotheses concerning the spread and appeal of spirit concepts and possession activities. Predictions and claims are grounded in the data collected and sourced in specific ethnographic contexts. The data presented open new lines of enquiry for the cognitive science of religion (a rapidly growing field of interdisciplinary scholarship) and challenge the existing but outdated theoretical frameworks within which spirit possession practices have traditionally been understood.Less
The Mind Possessed examines spirit concepts and mediumistic practices from a cognitive scientific perspective. Drawing primarily, but not exclusively, from ethnographic data collected during eighteen months of fieldwork in Belém, northern Brazil, this book combines fine‐grained description and analysis of mediumistic activities in an Afro‐Brazilian cult house with a scientific account of the emergence and the spread of the tradition's core concepts. The book develops a novel theoretical approach to questions that are of central importance to the scientific study of transmission of culture, particularly concepts of spirits, spirit healing, and spirit possession. Making a radical departure from established anthropological, medicalist, and sociological analyses of spirit phenomena, the book looks instead to instructive insights from the cognitive sciences and offers a set of testable hypotheses concerning the spread and appeal of spirit concepts and possession activities. Predictions and claims are grounded in the data collected and sourced in specific ethnographic contexts. The data presented open new lines of enquiry for the cognitive science of religion (a rapidly growing field of interdisciplinary scholarship) and challenge the existing but outdated theoretical frameworks within which spirit possession practices have traditionally been understood.
Randall G. Styers
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195151077
- eISBN:
- 9780199835263
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195151070.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
The introduction opens with an exploration of the prominence of magic in the scholarly literature of numerous modern academic disciplines and then offers a broad outline of the distinctive roles ...
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The introduction opens with an exploration of the prominence of magic in the scholarly literature of numerous modern academic disciplines and then offers a broad outline of the distinctive roles magic plays in this literature. Modern debates over magic turn on competing views of the nature of human subjectivity and the relation of the individual to society and to the material world. Scholars have used these debates as a site at which to articulate--and to challenge--norms for life in modernity.Less
The introduction opens with an exploration of the prominence of magic in the scholarly literature of numerous modern academic disciplines and then offers a broad outline of the distinctive roles magic plays in this literature. Modern debates over magic turn on competing views of the nature of human subjectivity and the relation of the individual to society and to the material world. Scholars have used these debates as a site at which to articulate--and to challenge--norms for life in modernity.
Peter Adamson
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195181425
- eISBN:
- 9780199785087
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195181425.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
This monograph is a comprehensive study of the thought of al-Kindī, the first self-described philosopher in Islam, and the first to write original treatises in Arabic. Al-Kindī’s writings are closely ...
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This monograph is a comprehensive study of the thought of al-Kindī, the first self-described philosopher in Islam, and the first to write original treatises in Arabic. Al-Kindī’s writings are closely engaged with Greek philosophical and scientific texts, whose translation into Arabic he oversaw. Some of the philosophical views for which al-Kindī is known are reactions to Greek thinkers. For instance, he used ideas from Philoponus in arguing against the eternity of the world, and his discussion of divine attributes is based on Neoplatonic texts. However, the book also places al-Kindī’s thought within the context of 9th century Islamic culture, especially contemporary theological developments. The book covers every aspect of al-Kindī’s extant philosophical corpus, including not only his philosophical theology but also his theory of soul, his epistemology, and his ethics. Two chapters are devoted to al-Kindī’s works on the natural sciences (in particular pharmacology, optics, music, and cosmology). The book concludes by discussing how al-Kindī used Greek cosmological ideas in his account of divine providence.Less
This monograph is a comprehensive study of the thought of al-Kindī, the first self-described philosopher in Islam, and the first to write original treatises in Arabic. Al-Kindī’s writings are closely engaged with Greek philosophical and scientific texts, whose translation into Arabic he oversaw. Some of the philosophical views for which al-Kindī is known are reactions to Greek thinkers. For instance, he used ideas from Philoponus in arguing against the eternity of the world, and his discussion of divine attributes is based on Neoplatonic texts. However, the book also places al-Kindī’s thought within the context of 9th century Islamic culture, especially contemporary theological developments. The book covers every aspect of al-Kindī’s extant philosophical corpus, including not only his philosophical theology but also his theory of soul, his epistemology, and his ethics. Two chapters are devoted to al-Kindī’s works on the natural sciences (in particular pharmacology, optics, music, and cosmology). The book concludes by discussing how al-Kindī used Greek cosmological ideas in his account of divine providence.
Robert Stainton
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199250387
- eISBN:
- 9780191719523
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199250387.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Language
It is a near truism of philosophy of language that sentences are prior to words. Sentences, it is said, are what we believe, assert, and argue for; uses of them constitute our evidence in semantics; ...
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It is a near truism of philosophy of language that sentences are prior to words. Sentences, it is said, are what we believe, assert, and argue for; uses of them constitute our evidence in semantics; only they stand in inferential relations, and are true or false. Sentences are, indeed, the only things that fundamentally have meaning. Does this near truism really hold of human languages? This book, drawing on a wide body of evidence, argues forcefully that speakers can and do use mere words, not sentences, to communicate complete thoughts. It considers the implications of this empirical result for language-thought relations, various doctrines of sentence primacy, and the semantics-pragmatics boundary. The book is important both for its philosophical and empirical claims, and for the methodology employed. Stainton illustrates how the methods and detailed results of the various cognitive sciences can bear on central issues in philosophy of language. At the same time, he applies philosophical distinctions to show that arguments which seemingly support the primacy of sentences do not really do so.Less
It is a near truism of philosophy of language that sentences are prior to words. Sentences, it is said, are what we believe, assert, and argue for; uses of them constitute our evidence in semantics; only they stand in inferential relations, and are true or false. Sentences are, indeed, the only things that fundamentally have meaning. Does this near truism really hold of human languages? This book, drawing on a wide body of evidence, argues forcefully that speakers can and do use mere words, not sentences, to communicate complete thoughts. It considers the implications of this empirical result for language-thought relations, various doctrines of sentence primacy, and the semantics-pragmatics boundary. The book is important both for its philosophical and empirical claims, and for the methodology employed. Stainton illustrates how the methods and detailed results of the various cognitive sciences can bear on central issues in philosophy of language. At the same time, he applies philosophical distinctions to show that arguments which seemingly support the primacy of sentences do not really do so.
Rein Taagepera
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199534661
- eISBN:
- 9780191715921
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199534661.003.0018
- Subject:
- Political Science, Comparative Politics, Political Economy
Society needs more from social sciences than they have delivered, and this book offers openings. To the society at large, quantitative social scientists presently seem no better at prediction than ...
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Society needs more from social sciences than they have delivered, and this book offers openings. To the society at large, quantitative social scientists presently seem no better at prediction than qualitative historians, philosophers, and journalists — they just look more boring. computers could be a boon to social sciences, but they have turned out a curse in disguise, by enabling people with insufficient understanding of scientific process to use canned computer programs and grind out reams of numbers parading as “results,” to be printed — and hardly ever used again. One may discard this book on the basis of errors of detail, but the problems it points out will still be there. Unless corrected, they will lead to a Ptolemaic dead end.Less
Society needs more from social sciences than they have delivered, and this book offers openings. To the society at large, quantitative social scientists presently seem no better at prediction than qualitative historians, philosophers, and journalists — they just look more boring. computers could be a boon to social sciences, but they have turned out a curse in disguise, by enabling people with insufficient understanding of scientific process to use canned computer programs and grind out reams of numbers parading as “results,” to be printed — and hardly ever used again. One may discard this book on the basis of errors of detail, but the problems it points out will still be there. Unless corrected, they will lead to a Ptolemaic dead end.
David L. McMahan
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195183276
- eISBN:
- 9780199870882
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195183276.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism
This book elucidates the complex cross-cultural genealogy of themes, ideas, and practices crucial to the creation of a new hybrid form of Buddhism that has emerged within the last 150 years. Buddhism ...
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This book elucidates the complex cross-cultural genealogy of themes, ideas, and practices crucial to the creation of a new hybrid form of Buddhism that has emerged within the last 150 years. Buddhism modernism is not just Buddhism that happens to exist in the modern world but a distinct form of Buddhism constituted by cross-fertilization with western ideas and practices. Using primarily examples that have shaped western articulations of Buddhism, the book shows how modern representations of Buddhism have not only changed the way the tradition is understood, but have also generated new forms of demythologized, detraditionalized, and deinstitutionalized Buddhism. The book creates a lineage of Buddhist modernism that includes liberal borrowing from scientific vocabulary in reformulations of Buddhist concepts of causality, interdependence, and meditation. It also draws upon Romantic and Transcendentalist conceptions of cosmology, creativity, spontaneity, and the interior depths of the human being. Additionally, Buddhist modernism reconfigures Buddhism as a kind of psychology or interior science, drawing both upon analytic psychology and current trends in neurobiology. In its novel approaches to meditation and mindfulness, as well as political activism, it draws heavily from western individualism, distinctively modern modes of world-affirmation, liberal political sensibilities, and modernist literary sources. The book also examines this uniquely modern Buddhism as it moves into postmodern iterations and enters the currents of global communication, media, and commerce.Less
This book elucidates the complex cross-cultural genealogy of themes, ideas, and practices crucial to the creation of a new hybrid form of Buddhism that has emerged within the last 150 years. Buddhism modernism is not just Buddhism that happens to exist in the modern world but a distinct form of Buddhism constituted by cross-fertilization with western ideas and practices. Using primarily examples that have shaped western articulations of Buddhism, the book shows how modern representations of Buddhism have not only changed the way the tradition is understood, but have also generated new forms of demythologized, detraditionalized, and deinstitutionalized Buddhism. The book creates a lineage of Buddhist modernism that includes liberal borrowing from scientific vocabulary in reformulations of Buddhist concepts of causality, interdependence, and meditation. It also draws upon Romantic and Transcendentalist conceptions of cosmology, creativity, spontaneity, and the interior depths of the human being. Additionally, Buddhist modernism reconfigures Buddhism as a kind of psychology or interior science, drawing both upon analytic psychology and current trends in neurobiology. In its novel approaches to meditation and mindfulness, as well as political activism, it draws heavily from western individualism, distinctively modern modes of world-affirmation, liberal political sensibilities, and modernist literary sources. The book also examines this uniquely modern Buddhism as it moves into postmodern iterations and enters the currents of global communication, media, and commerce.
Elaine Howard Ecklund
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195392982
- eISBN:
- 9780199777105
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195392982.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Americans support science as well as religion—but these two things are often at odds. In the wake of recent controversies about teaching intelligent design and the ethics of embryonic-stem- cell ...
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Americans support science as well as religion—but these two things are often at odds. In the wake of recent controversies about teaching intelligent design and the ethics of embryonic-stem- cell research, greater understanding between scientists and the general religious public is critical. What is needed is a balanced assessment of the middle ground that can exist between science and religion. Science vs. Religion: What Do Scientists Really Think? is the definitive statement on this timely, politically charged subject. After thousands of hours spent talking to the nation’s leading scientists, Elaine Howard Ecklund argues that the American public has widespread misconceptions about scientists’ views of religion. Few scientists are committed secularists. Only a small minority actively reject and work against religion. And many are themselves religious. The majority are whom she calls spiritual pioneers, who desire to link their spirituality with a greater mission for the work they do as scientists. In the current climate, even scientists who are not religious recognize that they must engage with religion as they are pressed by their students to respond to faith in the classroom—what Ecklund calls environmental push. Based on a survey and interviews with scientists at more than 20 elite U.S. universities, Ecklund’s book argues that other scientists must step up to the table of dialogue and that American believers must embrace science again. Both science and religion are at stake if any less is done.Less
Americans support science as well as religion—but these two things are often at odds. In the wake of recent controversies about teaching intelligent design and the ethics of embryonic-stem- cell research, greater understanding between scientists and the general religious public is critical. What is needed is a balanced assessment of the middle ground that can exist between science and religion. Science vs. Religion: What Do Scientists Really Think? is the definitive statement on this timely, politically charged subject. After thousands of hours spent talking to the nation’s leading scientists, Elaine Howard Ecklund argues that the American public has widespread misconceptions about scientists’ views of religion. Few scientists are committed secularists. Only a small minority actively reject and work against religion. And many are themselves religious. The majority are whom she calls spiritual pioneers, who desire to link their spirituality with a greater mission for the work they do as scientists. In the current climate, even scientists who are not religious recognize that they must engage with religion as they are pressed by their students to respond to faith in the classroom—what Ecklund calls environmental push. Based on a survey and interviews with scientists at more than 20 elite U.S. universities, Ecklund’s book argues that other scientists must step up to the table of dialogue and that American believers must embrace science again. Both science and religion are at stake if any less is done.
Steven Horst
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195317114
- eISBN:
- 9780199871520
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195317114.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
Contemporary debates in philosophy of mind‐between reductionists, dualists, nonreductive materialists, and eliminativists‐have been based upon the perception that mental phenomena like consciousness ...
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Contemporary debates in philosophy of mind‐between reductionists, dualists, nonreductive materialists, and eliminativists‐have been based upon the perception that mental phenomena like consciousness and intentionality are uniquely irreducible. The “explanatory gap” between mind and body seems to be an urgent and fascinating problem if one assumes that intertheoretic reductions are the rule in the special sciences, with the mind as the lone exception. While this debate was going on in philosophy of mind, however, philosophers of science were rejecting this very sort of reductionism: intertheoretic reductions are not ubiquitous but rare. This book argues that post‐reductionist philosophy of science poses problems for all the familiar positions in philosophy of mind and calls for a deep rethinking of the problematic. To this end, a new perspective, Cognitive Pluralism, is urged.Less
Contemporary debates in philosophy of mind‐between reductionists, dualists, nonreductive materialists, and eliminativists‐have been based upon the perception that mental phenomena like consciousness and intentionality are uniquely irreducible. The “explanatory gap” between mind and body seems to be an urgent and fascinating problem if one assumes that intertheoretic reductions are the rule in the special sciences, with the mind as the lone exception. While this debate was going on in philosophy of mind, however, philosophers of science were rejecting this very sort of reductionism: intertheoretic reductions are not ubiquitous but rare. This book argues that post‐reductionist philosophy of science poses problems for all the familiar positions in philosophy of mind and calls for a deep rethinking of the problematic. To this end, a new perspective, Cognitive Pluralism, is urged.
Robert C. Fuller
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195369175
- eISBN:
- 9780199871186
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195369175.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This book examines the biological underpinnings of religion. We can only experience, the book argues, what our bodies allow us to experience. As a consequence, religious thought and feeling are ...
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This book examines the biological underpinnings of religion. We can only experience, the book argues, what our bodies allow us to experience. As a consequence, religious thought and feeling are heavily influenced by our sensory organs, emotional programs, sexual sensibilities, and the neural structure of our brains. Studying “spirituality in the flesh” opens up new and exciting agendas for understanding the nature and value of human religiosity. This exploration of embodied spirituality establishes middle ground between the explanations of religion typically made by either scientists or humanists. The book takes most scientific interpreters to task for failing to understand the inherently cultural aspects of embodied experience, even as he chides most religion scholars for ignoring new knowledge about the biological substrates of human thought and behavior. Each chapter takes up a different facet of embodied experience and shows the ways it helps us understand just how and why humans reconstruct their worlds in religious ways. Emotional programs such as fear or wonder, altered consciousness, sexuality, pain, and spatial orientation to the environment provide critical categories that are used to interpret selected episodes in American religious history. Topics as diverse as apocalypticism, nature religion, Native American peyotism, and the sexual experimentalism found in 19th‐century communal societies illustrate how the study of spirituality in the flesh enriches our appreciation of religion.Less
This book examines the biological underpinnings of religion. We can only experience, the book argues, what our bodies allow us to experience. As a consequence, religious thought and feeling are heavily influenced by our sensory organs, emotional programs, sexual sensibilities, and the neural structure of our brains. Studying “spirituality in the flesh” opens up new and exciting agendas for understanding the nature and value of human religiosity. This exploration of embodied spirituality establishes middle ground between the explanations of religion typically made by either scientists or humanists. The book takes most scientific interpreters to task for failing to understand the inherently cultural aspects of embodied experience, even as he chides most religion scholars for ignoring new knowledge about the biological substrates of human thought and behavior. Each chapter takes up a different facet of embodied experience and shows the ways it helps us understand just how and why humans reconstruct their worlds in religious ways. Emotional programs such as fear or wonder, altered consciousness, sexuality, pain, and spatial orientation to the environment provide critical categories that are used to interpret selected episodes in American religious history. Topics as diverse as apocalypticism, nature religion, Native American peyotism, and the sexual experimentalism found in 19th‐century communal societies illustrate how the study of spirituality in the flesh enriches our appreciation of religion.
Ivana Markova (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197263136
- eISBN:
- 9780191734922
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197263136.001.0001
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
The ten chapters in this book are concerned with theoretical and empirical analyses of trust and distrust in post-Communist Europe after the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989. The contributors come ...
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The ten chapters in this book are concerned with theoretical and empirical analyses of trust and distrust in post-Communist Europe after the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989. The contributors come from different disciplines, ranging from history, economics, and political science to social psychology and sociology, and they show, above all, that the Soviet ‘bloc’ was in fact a rich spectrum of different countries with diverse histories, cultures, and traditions, and–not surprisingly–with different expectations for the future. Like other social concepts, trust never makes sense in isolation but only within the network of other concepts–in this case, social capital, faith, belief, solidarity, reciprocity, and security. ‘Trust’ is a highly polysemic term. Differences between meanings of trust in countries with democratic traditions and in post-totalitarian countries raise questions about the ways in which history, culture, and social psychology shape the nature and development of political phenomena. These questions include: antinomies such as trust versus risk, and trust versus fear; the co-existence of rural and urban systems; legitimacy of different political regimes; and the arbitrariness of decisions and the abuse of common sense in totalitarianism. The transition period in many post-Communist countries has now been completed and in others it is likely to be completed in the near future. Yet the chapters show that while political and economic changes can have rapid effects, cultural and psychological changes may linger and influence the quality of political trust and representations of democracy.Less
The ten chapters in this book are concerned with theoretical and empirical analyses of trust and distrust in post-Communist Europe after the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989. The contributors come from different disciplines, ranging from history, economics, and political science to social psychology and sociology, and they show, above all, that the Soviet ‘bloc’ was in fact a rich spectrum of different countries with diverse histories, cultures, and traditions, and–not surprisingly–with different expectations for the future. Like other social concepts, trust never makes sense in isolation but only within the network of other concepts–in this case, social capital, faith, belief, solidarity, reciprocity, and security. ‘Trust’ is a highly polysemic term. Differences between meanings of trust in countries with democratic traditions and in post-totalitarian countries raise questions about the ways in which history, culture, and social psychology shape the nature and development of political phenomena. These questions include: antinomies such as trust versus risk, and trust versus fear; the co-existence of rural and urban systems; legitimacy of different political regimes; and the arbitrariness of decisions and the abuse of common sense in totalitarianism. The transition period in many post-Communist countries has now been completed and in others it is likely to be completed in the near future. Yet the chapters show that while political and economic changes can have rapid effects, cultural and psychological changes may linger and influence the quality of political trust and representations of democracy.
Jon McGinnis
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195331479
- eISBN:
- 9780199868032
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331479.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
The aim of the present work is threefold. One, it intends to place the thought of Avicenna within its proper historical context, whether the philosophical-scientific tradition inherited from the ...
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The aim of the present work is threefold. One, it intends to place the thought of Avicenna within its proper historical context, whether the philosophical-scientific tradition inherited from the Greeks or the indigenous influences coming from the medieval Islamic world. Thus, in addition to a substantive introductory chapter on the Greek and Arabic sources and influences to which Avicenna was heir, the historical and philosophical context central to Avicenna’s own thought is provided in order to assess and appreciate his achievement in the specific fields treated in that chapter. Two, the present volume aims to offer a philosophical survey of Avicenna’s entire system of thought ranging from his understanding of the interrelation of logic, physics, psychology, metaphysics, ethics, politics, and medicine. The emphasis here is on how, using a relatively small handful of novel insights, Avicenna was not only able to address a whole series of issues that had troubled earlier philosophers working in both the ancient Hellenistic and medieval Islamic world, but also how those insights fundamentally changed the direction philosophy took, certainly in the Islamic East, but even in the Jewish and Christian milieus. Three, the present volume will provide philosophers, historians of science, and students of medieval thought with a starting point from which to assess the place, significance, and influence of Avicenna and his philosophy within the history of ideas.Less
The aim of the present work is threefold. One, it intends to place the thought of Avicenna within its proper historical context, whether the philosophical-scientific tradition inherited from the Greeks or the indigenous influences coming from the medieval Islamic world. Thus, in addition to a substantive introductory chapter on the Greek and Arabic sources and influences to which Avicenna was heir, the historical and philosophical context central to Avicenna’s own thought is provided in order to assess and appreciate his achievement in the specific fields treated in that chapter. Two, the present volume aims to offer a philosophical survey of Avicenna’s entire system of thought ranging from his understanding of the interrelation of logic, physics, psychology, metaphysics, ethics, politics, and medicine. The emphasis here is on how, using a relatively small handful of novel insights, Avicenna was not only able to address a whole series of issues that had troubled earlier philosophers working in both the ancient Hellenistic and medieval Islamic world, but also how those insights fundamentally changed the direction philosophy took, certainly in the Islamic East, but even in the Jewish and Christian milieus. Three, the present volume will provide philosophers, historians of science, and students of medieval thought with a starting point from which to assess the place, significance, and influence of Avicenna and his philosophy within the history of ideas.
Steffen L. Lauritzen
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780198509721
- eISBN:
- 9780191709197
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198509721.001.0001
- Subject:
- Mathematics, Probability / Statistics
Thorvald Nicolai Thiele was a brilliant Danish researcher of the 19th century. He was a professor of Astronomy at the University of Copenhagen and the founder of Hafnia, the first Danish private ...
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Thorvald Nicolai Thiele was a brilliant Danish researcher of the 19th century. He was a professor of Astronomy at the University of Copenhagen and the founder of Hafnia, the first Danish private insurance company. Thiele worked in astronomy, mathematics, actuarial science, and statistics, his most spectacular contributions were in the latter two areas, where his published work was far ahead of his time. This book is concerned with his statistical work. It evolves around his three main statistical masterpieces, which are now translated into English for the first time: 1) his article from 1880 where he derives the Kalman filter; 2) his book from 1889, where he lays out the subject of statistics in a highly original way, derives the half-invariants (today known as cumulants), the notion of likelihood in the case of binomial experiments, the canonical form of the linear normal model, and develops model criticism via analysis of residuals; and 3) an article from 1899 where he completes the theory of the half-invariants. This book also contains three chapters, written by A. Hald and S. L. Lauritzen, which describe Thiele's statistical work in modern terms and puts it into an historical perspective.Less
Thorvald Nicolai Thiele was a brilliant Danish researcher of the 19th century. He was a professor of Astronomy at the University of Copenhagen and the founder of Hafnia, the first Danish private insurance company. Thiele worked in astronomy, mathematics, actuarial science, and statistics, his most spectacular contributions were in the latter two areas, where his published work was far ahead of his time. This book is concerned with his statistical work. It evolves around his three main statistical masterpieces, which are now translated into English for the first time: 1) his article from 1880 where he derives the Kalman filter; 2) his book from 1889, where he lays out the subject of statistics in a highly original way, derives the half-invariants (today known as cumulants), the notion of likelihood in the case of binomial experiments, the canonical form of the linear normal model, and develops model criticism via analysis of residuals; and 3) an article from 1899 where he completes the theory of the half-invariants. This book also contains three chapters, written by A. Hald and S. L. Lauritzen, which describe Thiele's statistical work in modern terms and puts it into an historical perspective.
John Levi Martin
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199773312
- eISBN:
- 9780199897223
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199773312.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Theory
The social sciences have increasingly placed all their bets on a notion of explanation that turns on linking abstractions through causal relations. This explanatory vocabulary is, if analysts deem it ...
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The social sciences have increasingly placed all their bets on a notion of explanation that turns on linking abstractions through causal relations. This explanatory vocabulary is, if analysts deem it necessary, set against that developed by actors, and we justify this by pointing to everyday people’s limited abilities to survive destructive interrogation of their motives. We are wronger than they; it is possible to produce a rigorous social science that systematizes and organizes actors’ experiences as opposed to negating them. Such an approach would partake of the formal characteristics of an aesthetics, and this book attempts to make a sustained plausibility argument for such a social aesthetics.Less
The social sciences have increasingly placed all their bets on a notion of explanation that turns on linking abstractions through causal relations. This explanatory vocabulary is, if analysts deem it necessary, set against that developed by actors, and we justify this by pointing to everyday people’s limited abilities to survive destructive interrogation of their motives. We are wronger than they; it is possible to produce a rigorous social science that systematizes and organizes actors’ experiences as opposed to negating them. Such an approach would partake of the formal characteristics of an aesthetics, and this book attempts to make a sustained plausibility argument for such a social aesthetics.
Fred Lerdahl
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195178296
- eISBN:
- 9780199870370
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195178296.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This book builds on and in many ways completes the project of Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff's influential A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. Like the earlier volume, this book is both a ...
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This book builds on and in many ways completes the project of Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff's influential A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. Like the earlier volume, this book is both a music-theoretic treatise and a contribution to the cognitive science of music. After presenting some modifications to Lerdahl and Jackendoff's original framework, the book develops a quantitative model of listeners' intuitions of the relative distances of pitches, chords, and regions from a given tonic. The model is used to derive prolongational structure, trace paths through pitch space at multiple prolongational levels, and compute patterns of tonal tension and attraction as musical events unfold. The consideration of pitch-space paths illuminates issues of musical narrative, and the treatment of tonal tension and attraction provides a technical basis for studies of musical expectation and expression. These investigations lead to a fresh theory of tonal function and reveal an underlying parallel between tonal and metrical structures. Later portions of the book apply these ideas to highly chromatic tonal as well as atonal music. In response to stylistic differences, the shape of pitch space changes and psychoacoustic features become increasingly important, while underlying features of the theory remain constant, reflecting unvarying features of the musical mind. The theory is illustrated throughout by analyses of music from Bach to Schoenberg, and frequent connections are made to the music-theoretic and psychological literature.Less
This book builds on and in many ways completes the project of Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff's influential A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. Like the earlier volume, this book is both a music-theoretic treatise and a contribution to the cognitive science of music. After presenting some modifications to Lerdahl and Jackendoff's original framework, the book develops a quantitative model of listeners' intuitions of the relative distances of pitches, chords, and regions from a given tonic. The model is used to derive prolongational structure, trace paths through pitch space at multiple prolongational levels, and compute patterns of tonal tension and attraction as musical events unfold. The consideration of pitch-space paths illuminates issues of musical narrative, and the treatment of tonal tension and attraction provides a technical basis for studies of musical expectation and expression. These investigations lead to a fresh theory of tonal function and reveal an underlying parallel between tonal and metrical structures. Later portions of the book apply these ideas to highly chromatic tonal as well as atonal music. In response to stylistic differences, the shape of pitch space changes and psychoacoustic features become increasingly important, while underlying features of the theory remain constant, reflecting unvarying features of the musical mind. The theory is illustrated throughout by analyses of music from Bach to Schoenberg, and frequent connections are made to the music-theoretic and psychological literature.
Janet A. Kourany
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199732623
- eISBN:
- 9780199866403
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199732623.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
The goal of Philosophy of Science after Feminism is not only a (descriptively and normatively) more adequate philosophy of science than what we have now, but also a more socially engaged and socially ...
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The goal of Philosophy of Science after Feminism is not only a (descriptively and normatively) more adequate philosophy of science than what we have now, but also a more socially engaged and socially responsible philosophy of science, one that can help to promote a more socially engaged and socially responsible science. Its main message is that philosophy of science needs to locate science within its wider societal context, ceasing to analyze science as if it existed in a social/political/economic vacuum; and correlatively, that philosophy of science needs to aim for a more comprehensive understanding of scientific rationality, one that integrates the ethical with the epistemic. Since feminists—feminist scientists and historians of science as well as feminist philosophers of science—have been pursuing this kind of philosophy of science in gender-related areas for three decades now, two chapters reflect on their contributions and derive from these reflections an “ideal of socially responsible science” that is further developed and defended in other chapters. The articulation of this ideal, it is made clear, is a central project of socially responsible philosophy of science. Other projects are also spelled out.Less
The goal of Philosophy of Science after Feminism is not only a (descriptively and normatively) more adequate philosophy of science than what we have now, but also a more socially engaged and socially responsible philosophy of science, one that can help to promote a more socially engaged and socially responsible science. Its main message is that philosophy of science needs to locate science within its wider societal context, ceasing to analyze science as if it existed in a social/political/economic vacuum; and correlatively, that philosophy of science needs to aim for a more comprehensive understanding of scientific rationality, one that integrates the ethical with the epistemic. Since feminists—feminist scientists and historians of science as well as feminist philosophers of science—have been pursuing this kind of philosophy of science in gender-related areas for three decades now, two chapters reflect on their contributions and derive from these reflections an “ideal of socially responsible science” that is further developed and defended in other chapters. The articulation of this ideal, it is made clear, is a central project of socially responsible philosophy of science. Other projects are also spelled out.
Lev Ginzburg and Mark Colyvan
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195168167
- eISBN:
- 9780199790159
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195168167.001.0001
- Subject:
- Biology, Ecology
The main focus of the book is the presentation of the inertial view of population growth. This view provides a rather simple model for complex population dynamics, and is achieved at the level of the ...
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The main focus of the book is the presentation of the inertial view of population growth. This view provides a rather simple model for complex population dynamics, and is achieved at the level of the single species without invoking species interactions. An important part of the account is the maternal effect. Investment of mothers in the quality of their daughters makes the rate of reproduction of the current generation depend not only on the current environment, but also on the environment experienced by the previous generation.Less
The main focus of the book is the presentation of the inertial view of population growth. This view provides a rather simple model for complex population dynamics, and is achieved at the level of the single species without invoking species interactions. An important part of the account is the maternal effect. Investment of mothers in the quality of their daughters makes the rate of reproduction of the current generation depend not only on the current environment, but also on the environment experienced by the previous generation.
T. N. Thiele
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780198509721
- eISBN:
- 9780191709197
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198509721.003.0006
- Subject:
- Mathematics, Probability / Statistics
This chapter presents a reprint of part of Hald (2000a), which was read before the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, where Thiele concludes the mathematical theory of his halfinvariants. ...
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This chapter presents a reprint of part of Hald (2000a), which was read before the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, where Thiele concludes the mathematical theory of his halfinvariants. The paper also concludes a selection of translations of Thiele's original work.Less
This chapter presents a reprint of part of Hald (2000a), which was read before the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, where Thiele concludes the mathematical theory of his halfinvariants. The paper also concludes a selection of translations of Thiele's original work.
Wolfram Hinzen
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199289257
- eISBN:
- 9780191706424
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199289257.001.0001
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Syntax and Morphology
This book introduces generative grammar as an area of study, asking what it tells us about the human mind. It lays the foundation for the unification of modern generative linguistics with the ...
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This book introduces generative grammar as an area of study, asking what it tells us about the human mind. It lays the foundation for the unification of modern generative linguistics with the philosophies of mind and language. It introduces Chomsky's program of a ‘minimalist’ syntax as a novel explanatory vision of the human mind. It explains how the Minimalist Program originated from work in cognitive science, biology, linguistics, and philosophy, and examines its implications for work in these fields. It also considers the way the human mind is designed when seen as an arrangement of structural patterns in nature, and argues that its design is the product not so much of adaptive evolutionary history as of principles and processes that are historical and internalist in character. The book suggests that linguistic meaning arises in the mind as a consequence of structures emerging on formal rather than functional grounds. From this, the book substantiates an unexpected and deeply unfashionable notion of human nature. It also provides an insight into the nature and aims of Chomsky's Minimalist Program.Less
This book introduces generative grammar as an area of study, asking what it tells us about the human mind. It lays the foundation for the unification of modern generative linguistics with the philosophies of mind and language. It introduces Chomsky's program of a ‘minimalist’ syntax as a novel explanatory vision of the human mind. It explains how the Minimalist Program originated from work in cognitive science, biology, linguistics, and philosophy, and examines its implications for work in these fields. It also considers the way the human mind is designed when seen as an arrangement of structural patterns in nature, and argues that its design is the product not so much of adaptive evolutionary history as of principles and processes that are historical and internalist in character. The book suggests that linguistic meaning arises in the mind as a consequence of structures emerging on formal rather than functional grounds. From this, the book substantiates an unexpected and deeply unfashionable notion of human nature. It also provides an insight into the nature and aims of Chomsky's Minimalist Program.
