Review of Wolfgang Metzger, Laws of Seeing, trans. Lothar Spillman, Steven Lehar, Mimsey Stromeyer, and Michael Wertheimer. MIT Press, 2006; paperback, 2009. Pp. xxv+203. £18.95 PB. Original German edition published in 1936.

The present study tests a gestalt explanation for the gambler's fallacy which posits that runs in random events will be expected to reverse only when the run is open or ongoing. This is contrasted with the law of small numbers explanation suggesting that people expect random outcomes to balance out generally. Sixty-one university students placed hypothetical guesses and bets on a series of coin tosses. Either heads or tails were dominant . In a closed run condition the run ended (...) prior to the critical trial , and in an open run condition the run remained open . As hypothesised, participants showed the gambler's fallacy in the open run condition, but not in the closed run condition. This difference is not due to differential memory for the outcomes. Men, and people with more previous experience gambling, were also found to be more prone to the gambler's fallacy. It is argued that the gestalt explanation best explains the results. (shrink)

In his PhD proposal, now published as Seeing Sociological, Garfinkel [2006] formulated action in terms of a mutually constitutive structure—the Noesis-Noema Structures. This structure can be traced to Aaron Gurwitsch’s gestalt psychology and Law of Good Gestalt which theorises how participants prioritise functional Gestalts over other possible meanings of what is perceivable in their surroundings. While Gurwitsch illustrated his theory using images, in this paper we revisit Gurwitsch’s theory in light of the advances in recording real-time interaction to (...) consider Gestalt in spatio-temporality of real-time interaction. We consider the Law of Good Gestalt in terms of the dimensions of time and space, and postulate two analytical principles—the Principle of Good Momentary Gestalt and the Principle of Good Temporal Gestalt—for analysing a multi-angle video segment of a monologue taken from a training event. The analysis examines how the monologue was embedded in a multi-layer projection structure, so that during the time of the monologue, the trainer and trainees can be seen as achieving a transition between one activity to another while sustaining the frame of the training event. Through this, the analysis highlights the multi-layered structure of participants’ field of perception that constitutes their experience of the social activity, and explores a “method” to reconstruct such a structured field of perception through re-coupling meanings to the assemblages of multimodal resources recoverable on video. (shrink)

The aim of psychology is first of all to describe how we think, or the flow of our consciousness, and then to sum up the facts in terms of principles, generalizations, or “laws” which “govern” our thinking. These laws must enable us to foretell what a man will think and how he will act when we know his environment and the state of his thought at any given moment, provided that no unforeseeable exercise of free will intervenes. Psychology has also (...) to inquire whether interventions of “free will” ever do occur and, if they do, what is their nature and scope. (shrink)

Summary In this paper, the author shares his thoughts about the precedents, process, and significance of a series of “digital montage” artworks that he originated during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, he talks about the indebtedness of these works to Gestalt theory, and particularly their use of what is sometimes known as “laws of seeing,” “unit-forming factors,” or inherent “grouping tendencies.”.

The first English translation of a classic work in vision science from 1936 by a leading figure in the Gestalt movement, covering topics that continue to be major issues in vision research today. This classic work in vision science, written by a leading figure in Germany's Gestalt movement in psychology and first published in 1936, addresses topics that remain of major interest to vision researchers today. Wolfgang Metzger's main argument, drawn from Gestalt theory, is that the objects (...) we perceive in visual experience are not the objects themselves but perceptual effigies of those objects constructed by our brain according to natural rules. Gestalt concepts are currently being increasingly integrated into mainstream neuroscience by researchers proposing network processing beyond the classical receptive field. Metzger's discussion of such topics as ambiguous figures, hidden forms, camouflage, shadows and depth, and three-dimensional representations in paintings will interest anyone working in the field of vision and perception, including psychologists, biologists, neurophysiologists, and researchers in computational vision—and artists, designers, and philosophers. Each chapter is accompanied by compelling visual demonstrations of the phenomena described; the book includes 194 illustrations, drawn from visual science, art, and everyday experience, that invite readers to verify Metzger's observations for themselves. Today's researchers may find themselves pondering the intriguing question of what effect Metzger's theories might have had on vision research if Laws of Seeing and its treasure trove of perceptual observations had been available to the English-speaking world at the time of its writing. (shrink)

Situating Lotze in the School of Speculative Theology, I use debates about Schelling’s critique of Hegel—then and now—to understand Lotze’s critique of Hegel. Lotze’s early metaphysics seems to employ a version of Hegel’s dialectical analysis of being, phenomena, and mind emphasizing “the interconnection of things.” One can equally argue that he proceeds in an analytic style of reviewing and testing alternative theories. My tentative conclusion is that he assumes the existence of reality (the Absolute) like Schelling, and makes cognition a (...) process subordinate to that reality. In this respect, he goes beyond his Kantian mentors J. F. Fries and E. F. Apelt. From all these sources came a radically original Gestalt metaphysics. For example, he reverses Kant’s forms of intuition (Anschauung) into “forms of intuitability”(Anschaulichkeit), including the relational categories of space, time, motion, mechanism, organism, law, and event. He then makes the categories into ethical levels of a “teleological idealism.” In this way he overcomes his Herbartian teachers’ separation of metaphysics from ethics, evincing his center Hegelian roots. (shrink)

This classic work in vision science, written by a leading figure in Germany's Gestalt movement in psychology and first published in 1936, addresses topics that remain of major interest to vision researchers today. Wolfgang Metzger's main argument, drawn from Gestalt theory, is that the objects we perceive in visual experience are not the objects themselves but perceptual effigies of those objects constructed by our brain according to natural rules. Gestalt concepts are currently being increasingly integrated into mainstream (...) neuroscience by researchers proposing network processing beyond the classical receptive field. Metzger's discussion of such topics as ambiguous figures, hidden forms, camouflage, shadows and depth, and three-dimensional representations in paintings will interest anyone working in the field of vision and perception, including psychologists, biologists, neurophysiologists, and researchers in computational vision--and artists, designers, and philosophers.Each chapter is accompanied by compelling visual demonstrations of the phenomena described; the book includes 194 illustrations, drawn from visual science, art, and everyday experience, that invite readers to verify Metzger's observations for themselves. Today's researchers may find themselves pondering the intriguing question of what effect Metzger's theories might have had on vision research if Laws of Seeing and its treasure trove of perceptual observations had been available to the English-speaking world at the time of its writing. (shrink)

Summary Based on Clausius’ phrasing of a “transformational content” and the resulting 2nd law of thermodynamics, I demonstrated that Gilbert Simondon’s On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects is historically situated at the threshold of understanding open systems thermodynamics and the related concepts of balance. Furthermore, I showed that Gestalt theory, as represented by Wolfgang Köhler, at least reproduced, if not partially anticipated or even prepared this development of 20th century thinking. Finally, I gave some short examples of (...) how Simondon applied the figure/ground distinction to human perception, memory, and a general theory of becoming and I introduced his proposal to analyse “the grounds” just as thoroughly as the laws of figuration. (shrink)

"Accessibility" is a crucial concept of possible worlds semantics. The simplest approach to accessibility is the "magical theory" that construes this relation as analogous to spatial or temporal relations. In this paper I give a nonmagical structural account of the accessibility relation that can be used to give a necessitarian account of kinds and laws. Laws are characterized in a structural way as stable invariants of the world's gestalt. Finally, I point out how the structural approach can be embedded (...) in a general representational theory of modality. (shrink)

Although symmetry has been discussed in terms of a major law of perceptual organization since the early conceptual efforts of the Gestalt school (Wertheimer, Metzger, Koffka and others), the first quantitative measurements testing for effects of symmetry on processes of Gestalt formation have seen the day only recently. In this study, a psychophysical rating study and a “foreground”-“background” choice response time experiment were run with human observers to test for effects of bilateral symmetry on the perceived strength of (...) figure-ground in triangular Kanizsa configurations. Displays with and without bilateral symmetry, identical physically-specified-to-total contour ratio, and constant local contrast intensity within and across conditions, but variable local contrast polarity and variable orientation in the plane, were presented in a random order to human observers. Configurations with bilateral symmetry produced significantly stronger figure-ground percepts reflected by greater subjective magnitudes and consistently higher percentages of “foreground” judgments accompanied by significantly shorter response times. These effects of symmetry depend neither on the orientation of the axis of symmetry, nor on the contrast polarity of the physical inducers. It is concluded that bilateral symmetry, irrespective of orientation, significantly contributes to the, largely sign-invariant, visual mechanisms of figure-ground segregation that determine the salience of figure-ground in perceptually ambiguous configurations. (shrink)

Some notices to Thibaut's Science of Pandects. For A. F. J. Thibaut, the main concern was a "philosophical" approach to the interpretation and systematization of the positive Roman Law in his time. In his eyes, the object of a subjective right is an action, not a thing or person. Therefore he was cautious not to use abstractions, definitions, and deductions from "dreamt" postulates. Regarding the logical texture of an institute of private law as a "Gestalt", it follows that the (...) "equity of the reason," of a law, for different cases, is the same thing as that "Gestalt". The "philosophical" interpretation of a law is then an interpretation in respect to its "Gestalt". Although Thibaut's main concern was the interpretation of the positive Roman Law in his time (the "Gemeinrecht") he did not disregard the history of Roman Law before and especially after Justinian. (shrink)

The laws and principles which predict how perceptual qualities can be extracted from the most elementary visual signals were discovered by the Gestalt psychologists(e.g., Wertheimer,1923; Metzger,1930, translated and re-editedbySpillmann in 2009 and2012, respectively). Their seminal work has inspired visual science ever since, andhas led to exciting discoveries which have confirmed the Gestalt idea that the human brain would have an astonishing capacity for selecting and combining critical visual signals to generate output representations for decision making and action. This (...) capacity of selection and integration enables the perception of form and space, and the correct estimation of relative positions, trajectories, and distances of objects represented in planar images. This paper addresses problems of perceptual organization with critical implications for visual interfaces, and the design of surgical simulator platforms in particular. (shrink)

What is cognition? Equivalently, what is cognition good for? Or, what is it that would not be but for human cognition? But for human cognition, there would not be science. Based on this kinship between individual cognition and collective science, here we put forward Isbell conjugacy---the adjointness between objective geometry and subjective algebra---as a scientific method for developing cognitive science. We begin with the correspondence between categorical perception and category theory. Next, we show how the Gestalt maxim is subsumed (...) by the mathematical construct of colimit, a generalization of summation. The universal mapping property definitions of mathematical constructs, by virtue of being the best with respect to the universe of discourse, can be learned using reinforcement learning algorithms, which raises the possibility of abstracting the architecture of mathematics by artificial intelligence. Subsequently, we present naturality (to be contrasted with miracles), understood as 'Becoming consistent with Being', which governs the transformations of both things and their theories, as the zeroth law of change. Furthermore, the contrast---physical [mechanism] vs. biological [organism]---is smoothed via natural transformation, wherein transformations are respectful of the cohesion of the objects transformed. In closing, upon recognizing the scientific value of learning difficult-to-master differential calculus by physicists, of learning a strange four-letter language by biologists, and of learning the grammar of our respective mother tongues, we make a case for learning the theory of naturality / category theory for developing cognitive science. (shrink)

In past and modern psychophysics there are several unresolved methodological and philosophical problems of human and animal perception, including the outstanding question of the relational basis of whole psychophysics. Here the main issue is discussed: if, and to what extent, there are viable bridges between the traditional “gestalt” oriented approaches and the modern perceptual-cognitive perspectives in psychophysics. Thereby the key concept of psychological “frame of reference” is presented by pointing to Hermann Ebbinghaus' geometric-optical illusions, on the one hand, and (...) Max Wertheimer's treatment of the traditional transposition phenomenon, on the other hand. A much-needed theoretical reorientation of future research may help to overcome the philosophical narrowness of present-day human and comparative psychophysics. (shrink)

Info in English (book is in German): The book "Schöpferische Freiheit" ("Creative Freedom") is considered the third major work of Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Metzger (1899-1979) - along with his "Psychology" and the "Laws of Seeing". According to Michael Stadler and Wolfgang Crabus, Metzger's real achievement in the further development of Gestalt theory is expressed in this book: "Metzger develops here, on the basis of Köhler's natural philosophical ideas of 'physical Gestalten' (1920) and incorporating the teachings of Zen Buddhism (...) ... a theory of education for creative thought and action. ... This book perhaps most clearly expresses the ethic of free self-determination of human thought and action inherent in Gestalt theory." "Creative Freedom" has lost none of its relevance since its last edition in 1962. It can be considered a foundational work of a Gestalt theory of the living. Jürgen Kriz writes in his preface to the now new edition: "It is extremely gratifying that this central work not only of Gestalt psychology, but (at least from my point of view) also of humanistic psychology and psychotherapy is being reissued. It is currently available only in (all too few) libraries and single antiquarian copies. Yet the central messages and insights of Wolfgang Metzger's 'Creative Freedom' are more relevant than ever: as a necessary warning against the aberrations of an increasing functionalization, medicalization, and progress-believing optimization (for whatever purposes) of the human being in our time." The new edition is accompanied by comments on the topicality and relevance of the work for education and teaching (Marianne Soff) as well as for psychotherapy (Gerhard Stemberger). Buchinformation: Die „Schöpferische Freiheit“ gilt als das dritte Hauptwerk des Gestaltpsychologen Wolfgang Metzger (1899-1979) – neben seiner „Psychologie“ und den „Gesetzen des Sehens“. Nach Michael Stadler und Wolfgang Crabus kommt in diesem Buch Metzgers eigentliche Leistung der Weiterentwicklung der Gestalttheorie zum Ausdruck: „Metzger entwickelt hier auf der Grundlage von Köhlers naturphilosophischen Ideen der ‚physischen Gestalten‘ (1920) und unter Einbeziehung der Lehren des Zen-Buddhismus … eine Theorie der Erziehung zum schöpferischen Denken und Handeln. … Dieses Buch drückt vielleicht am deutlichsten die der Gestalttheorie inhärente Ethik der freien Selbstbestimmung menschlichen Denkens und Handelns aus.“. (shrink)

The notion of ‘Gestalt’ plays a prominent role in Ludwik Fleck’s theory of thought styles. This paper scrutinizes how Fleck adopted the concepts and even methods of Gestalt psychology that he sometimes vaguely refers to. Systematically comparing the argumentation and theoretical outlines of Fleck’s social theory of perception and the principles of some Gestalt theories, this article will show and discuss their similarities and fundamental differences. According to Fleck, both science and individual perception rest on social actions (...) and cultural traditions. In particular, Fleck emphasized the relevance of the common language and collective meanings for the shaping of objects according to the thought style of a scientific collective. In contrast to the principles of Gestalt theories, in Fleck’s view not only the perception, but also the constitution of scientific objects and even the ‘laws’ of perception depend on social and cultural constructions of reality. That leads him to a particular theory of Gestalt perception. (shrink)

Kants Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Rechtslehre galten seit ihrem Erscheinen 1797 als mehr oder weniger verunglücktes Alterswerk. Bernd Ludwigs Untersuchung beansprucht dagegen, in ihrem ersten Teil den Nachweis zu führen, daß der problematische Zustand der Schrift nicht etwa den nachlassen den Geisteskräften des Autors zuzuschreiben ist, sondern sich vielmehr einer verunglücken Drucklegung verdankt: Zum Druck gelangte ein Manuskript, in dem nicht nur einzelne Textpassagen falsch angeordnet waren, sondern das auch Vorarbeiten enthielt, die für den Druck gar nicht vorgesehen waren. Anhand von (...) philologischen Indikatoren läßt sich eine Version rekonstruieren, die der von Kant intendierten Textgestalt weitgehend entspricht, ihr zumindest aber wesentlich näher kommt als der Druck von 1797. Im zweiten Teil wird in Gestalt eines analytischen Kommentars feingliedrig die Kantische Argumentation rekonstruiert und auf diesem Wege aufgezeigt, daß das wiederhergestellte Werk tatsächlich die über dreißig Jahre währende Arbeit Kants an seiner Rechtsphilosophie erfolgreich zum Abschluß gebracht hat. Spuren nachlassender Geisteskräfte sind dabei nicht auszumachen. Vielmehr erweist sich Kant als Autor, der traditionelle Lehrstücke des Naturrechts souverän an seine kritische Grundlegung der praktischen Philosophie anschließt. (shrink)

The laws which predict how the perceptual quality of figure-ground can be extracted from the most elementary visual signals were discovered by the Gestaltists, and form an essential part of their movement (see especially Metzger, 1930, and Wertheimer, 1923 translated and re-edited by Lothar Spillmann, 2009 and 2012, respectively). Distinguishing figure from ground is a prerequisite for perception of both form and space (the relative positions, trajectories, and distances of objects in the visual field. The human brain has an astonishing (...) capacity for selecting and combining a few critical visual signals to accurately represent both form and space. (shrink)

Surely since the Enlightenment, if not before, the study of mind has centered principally on how man achieves a “true” knowledge of the world. Emphasis in this pursuit has varied, of course: empiricists have concentrated on the mind’s interplay with an external world of nature, hoping to find the key in the association of sensations and ideas, while rationalists have looked inward to the powers of mind itself for the principles of right reason. The objective, in either case, has been (...) to discover how we achieve “reality,” that is to say, how we get a reliable fix on the world, a world that is, as it were, assumed to be immutable and, as it were, “there to be observed.”This quest has, of course, had a profound effect on the development of psychology, and the empiricist and rationalist traditions have dominated our conceptions of how the mind grows and how it gets its grasp on the “real world.” Indeed, at midcentury Gestalt theory represented the rationalist wing of this enterprise and American learning theory the empiricist. Both gave accounts of mental development as proceeding in some more or less linear and uniform fashion from an initial incompetence in grasping reality to a final competence, in one case attributing it to the work out of internal processes or mental organization, and in the other to some unspecified principle of reflection by which—whether through reinforcement, association, or conditioning—we came to respond to the world “as it is.” There have always been dissidents who challenged these views, but conjectures about human mental development have been influenced far more by majoritarian rationalism and empiricism than by these dissident voices. Jerome Bruner is research professor of psychology at New York University, where he is also serving as Meyer Visiting Professor of Law. His most recent book, Acts of Meaning, appeared in 1990. In 1987 he received the Balzan Prize for “a lifetime contribution to the study of human psychology.”. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that inconsistencies in scientific theories may arise from the type of causality relation they—tacitly or explicitly—embody. All these seemingly different causality relations can be subsumed under a general strategy developed to defeat the paradoxes which inevitably occur in our experience of the real. With respect to this, scientific theories are just a subclass of the larger class of metaphysical theories, construed as theories that attempt to explain a (part of) the world consistently. All metaphysical theories (...) share a common structural backbone specificially designed to defeat paradoxes, their often wildly diverging ontological claims notwithstanding. This common structure shapes the procedures which govern the invention of ideas in the context of such theories, by codifying some onto-logical a priori assumptions regarding the consistency of reality into its bare conceptual framework. Causality plays a key rôle here, because it implies conservation of identity, itself a far from simple notion. It imposes strong demands on the universalising power of the theories concerned. These demands are often met by the introduction of a metalevel which encompasses the notions of ‘system’ and ‘lawful behaviour’. In classical mechanics, the division between universal and particular leaves its traces in the separate treatment of cinematics and dynamics. The fundamental backbone’s specific gestalt thus functions as a theory’s individual signature and paves the way to a comparative historical approach towards their study. An important part of my paper therefore explores the strong connections between paradoxes as they appear and are dealt with in ancient philosophy and their re-appearance in early modern natural philosophy and science. This analysis is applied to the mechanical theories of Newton and Leibniz, with some surprising results. (shrink)

Summary Prägnanz was suggested by Max Wertheimer in the 1920s as subsuming all “Laws of Gestalt” as they apply to visual awareness. Thus, it assumes a prominent position in any account of Gestalt phenomena. From a phenomenological perspective, some visual stimuli evidently “have more Prägnanz” than others, so Prägnanz seems to be an intensive quality. Here, we investigate the intricacies that need to be faced on the way to a definition of formal scales. Such measures naturally depend both (...) upon the stimulus and upon the observer. Structural complexity bottlenecks of visual systems play a role, as well as the relevance to biological fitness, that is the affinity to the optical user interface. This positions the notion of Prägnanz squarely within the realm of biology. Indeed, the familiar “releasers” of ethology are singular cases of extremely high Prägnanz. (shrink)

In the early Sixties, the Sicilian jurist Vittorio Frosini was the first to attempt an historicization of Hans Kelsen’s Italian inheritance. Frosini asserts that we cannot disregard the extreme outcomes of the reine Rechtslehre and in a lucid criticism of Kelsenism, he points out that the law is not an empty form of Kantian purity, but instead, structure, social praxis, and “morphology of the praxis”.

Introduction. The book is a study in Adam Smith's system of ideas; its aim is to reconstruct the peculiar framework that Adam Smith’s work provided for the shaping of a semi-autonomous new discipline, political economy; the approach adopted lies somewhere in-between the history of ideas and the history of economic analysis. My two claims are: i) The Wealth of Nations has a twofold structure, including a `natural history' of opulence and an `imaginary machine' of wealth. The imaginary machine is a (...) kind of Newtonian theory, whose connecting links are principles; provided either by `partial' characteristics of human nature or by analoga of physical mechanisms transferred to the social world; ii) a domain of the economic, understood as a self-standing social sub-system, was discovered first by Adam Smith. His `discovery' of the new continent of the economic was an `unintended result' of a deviation in his voyage to the never-found archipelago of natural jurisprudence. -/- 1. Imaginary machines and invisible chains: natural philosophy and method. The first chapter reconstructs Smith's views on the method in natural philosophy, presented primarily in the History of Astronomy (HA). The peculiar kind of semi-sceptical Newtonianism which permeates the essay is highlighted. Its reconstruction of the history of one natural science is shown to be based on the assumptions of Hume’s epistemology, and to lead to a self-aware deadlock. Smith's dilemma is between an essentialist realism and sceptical instrumentalism; the Cartesian presuppositions he shares with Hume and with the 18th century as a whole make it impossible for him to overcome his dilemma. The following chapters will show how, on the one hand, Smith's skeptical methodology encourages him in the enterprise to `carve off' a new self-contained discipline and how, on the other hand, his epistemological dilemma is reflected in the inner tensions of his moral and political theory as well as in a number of basic oscillations concerning the status of the new discipline. -/- 2. Chessboards and clocks: moral philosophy and method. -/- The second chapter reconstructs Smith's views on the method in the parallel field of moral philosophy, including the theory of moral sentiments and natural jurisprudence. I argue that The Theory of Moral Sentiments, when considered together with with the Lectures on Jurisprudence, where Smith's peculiar version of a `weaker' form of natural law is presented, wins special interest, not only for the history of ethics but even more for the history of political theory and the social sciences. The two most striking features of Smith's work in this area are highlighted. First, his effort at reformulating the `practical science' is a methodologically self-aware attempt at applying the Newtonian method to moral subjects. Secondly, this attempt ends in a stalemate as two distinguished kinds of normative order are introduced: one ultimate order of Reason, ultimately justifiable but inaccessible, and one weaker order of our `natural sentiments', to which we have empirical access, but which is so variable as to lack any ultimate value as a basis for grounding our normative claims. These two parallel conundrums may arguably account for the author's inability to publish during his lifetime both The History of Astronomy and the projected history and theory of law and government. -/- 3. Wheels, dams, and gravitation: the structure of scientific argument in The Wealth of Nations. -/- The third chapter provides the core of the book, dealing with the structure of the argument in WN. I argue that the main presupposition that makes the shift possible from a `natural history' to a `system' approach is the Newtonian contrast of `mathematical' with `physical' explanation; that is, Smith drops any discussion of the "original qualities" of human nature that could account for economic behaviour, while introducing, as `principles' for the system, a set of `hypothetical' statements of `observed' regularities in human behaviour and of `observed' super-individual self-regulating mechanisms. In bringing this presupposition to light, the coexistence of a teleological with a mechanistic approach is clarified; fresh light is shed on the notion of the invisible hand by a comparison of its occurrence in Smith with the occurrence of the same expression (until now overlooked) in the correspondence between Newton and Cotes. Finally, the peculiar semi-prescriptive and semi-descriptive character of political economy are highlighted, and the consistency of Smith's `impure' semi-prescriptive social science, when understood in his own terms, is defended against familiar charges with inconsistency and against even more familiar strained modernizations. -/- 4. Apples, deer, and frivolous trinkets: the construction of the economic. -/- The fourth chapter draws consequences from the third, examining how Smith's achievement in political economy, marking its transition to scientific status, carried a re-description of the phenomena, creating the comparatively independent and unified field of the economic. Smith's achievement is interpreted not as the `discovery' of an autonomous character already possessed by the economy out there, so much as a Gestalt-switch by which our perception of social phenomena is modified making us `see' the partial order of the economy as an isolated system. To sum up, the autonomy of the economic in social reality and the autonomy of the economic in social consciousness are shown to be two sides of one process. -/- 5. Concluding considerations: Political economy and the Enlightenment halved. -/- A few suggestions on the status of economic theory two centuries after The Wealth of Nations in its relationship to ‘practical philosophy’ are illustrated. (shrink)

Summary In 1919 Nicolai Hartmann convincingly justified that there cannot exist a “general law of causation” as A. Meinong had in mind. For him Meinong’s understanding of causation was bound on the region of the physical layer of being, simultaneously postulating it as the only possible causation there. This is the starting point of the comparison between N. Hartmann‘s understanding of causation and that of the Gestalt Theory, for which neither in psychic nor in natural context linear-successive causality plays (...) a part. Therefore NH’s conception of 1919 was still completely incompatible with that of the Gestalt Theory despite the fact that he was distancing himself from the “general law of causation” sensu Meinong. 20 years later he changed this by adding the “Wechselwirkung” to the linear successive causation in the physical layer. In doing so he approached the Gestalt theoretical position but failed it insofar as for it his linear-successive understanding of causation generally has had its day with regard to natural processes, also consequently for the physical. Thus the term “causation“ had become free for a dynamic concept of causation which is equally appropriate for the physical and the psychic. NH makes this move not until 1949, shortly before his death, by writing:.... It is the opinion of the author of this work that the ingenious systematics of NH‘s Critical Ontology should make it possible to execute the necessary corrections in some details of his theory of layers without questioning the structure of his systematics, thus carrying out what NH was not able to do himself due to his death. (shrink)

For over a century we have attempted to understand human aesthetic experience using scientific methods. A typical experiment could be described as reductive and quasi-psychophysical. We vary some aspect of the stimulus and systematically measure some aspect of the aesthetic response. The limitations of this approach can be categorized as problems on the Y axis and the X axis. The most enigmatic components of aesthetic experience include inclination to cry, aesthetic rapture, a sense of the sublime, and intense fascination. However, (...) we cannot evoke these 'hot' aesthetic emotions in the lab, at least not with well controlled stimuli on multiple trials. We thus resort to measuring cold, cognitive preference ratings. There are also problems on the X axis. The reductive psychophysical approach explicitly assumes that there are lawful relations between different stimulus dimensions and preferences. It also tacitly assumes that these dimensions are independent and orthogonal. The second assumption is implausible. Whatever stimulus-preference laws we discover are likely to be twisted and modulated when another dimension is added to the stimuli. This 'gestalt nightmare' has long been recognized, but never resolved. This matters, because human aesthetic faculties are probably tuned to the balance and relationship of parts which make up a whole and are indifferent to the parts presented in isolation. I conclude that the future of scientific aesthetics depends on how successfully we can transcend reductive, quasi-psychophysical approaches. (shrink)

My aim is to extend and complement the arguments that others have already made for the claim that women who are citizens of economically disadvantaged states and who have been trafficked into sex work in economically advantaged states should be considered candidates for asylum. Familiar arguments cite the sexual violence and forced labor that trafficked women are subjected to along with their well-founded fear of persecution if they’re repatriated. What hasn’t been considered is that reproductive rights are also at stake. (...) I explain how reproductive rights are implicated in sex trafficking. Moreover, I contend that sex traffickers’ abuse of women’s reproductive rights is persecutory and that that this persecutory abuse obliges destination states to offer asylum to transnational sex trafficking victims. I start by sketching reproductive human rights doctrine. I then examine studies of women who are in post-trafficking recovery programs in order to ascertain the impact of their past experience of forced sex work on their reproductive freedom and health. On the basis of these findings, I maintain that, among other outrages, sex trafficking systematically violates victims’ reproductive human rights. In view of this abuse, women trafficked into sex work might seem to be prime candidates for asylum in destination states. Yet, economically well-off destination states are not particularly receptive to this idea, and international law provides some justification for their chilliness. Preliminary to challenging them, I explicate four ways in which international anti-trafficking law and international refugee law interfere with viewing women trafficked into sex work as refugees and approving their applications for asylum. The second half of my paper aims to overcome those legal obstacles. In the interest of parsimony and because there are many continuities between U.S. refugee law and anti-trafficking law and the policies of similar destination states, I focus mainly on the U.S. in this part of the paper. To anchor my argument, I spotlight two precedents in refugee law for taking reproductive human rights seriously and several precedents for treating trafficked women as members of a distinct social group as required by refugee law. I then urge that a law enforcement gestalt has gained undue influence over U.S. legal practices where anti-trafficking law intersects with refugee protection law. A human rights gestalt is needed as a counterweight, for otherwise victims of sex trafficking and the reproductive abuse they’ve suffered are erased. Taking up a human rights perspective and mobilizing the precedents I’ve identified, I show that respecting the reproductive human rights of women who have been trafficked into sex work entails that affluent destination states must recognize their right to asylum. (shrink)

Summary Covert encoding is one of the strategies available to languages for the encoding of motion, in which, in accordance with the laws of Gestalt, the meaning of an expression encoding motion is not coincident with the mere sum of the meanings of each of its constitutive units, relying on the mediation of grammatical and co(n)text­established knowledge for its interpretability. Moving on from a data set gathered for a previous study and adopting a holistic, constructional approach, several strategies were (...) found in a diachronic corpus of Italian, French and Spanish for the covert encoding of motion in such languages, based on whether the motion­interpretation attributed to the covert construction is mediated by either linguistic or extralinguistic knowledge. The diachronic investigation also showed that the use of such patterns is diachronically consistent in frequency, thus proving that such patterns of interaction between language and cognition may be regarded as functional for speakers of all languages and time stages, also confirming that a holistic, constructional approach to language study can help shed light on linguistic–cognitive phenomena on the basis of language variation and change. (shrink)

Über die Ideen der theoretischen Vernunft hinaus kennt die Ideenlehre Kants eine Reihe von Ideen reflektierender Urteilskraft und praktischer Vernunft, deren Status, ob konstitutiv oder regulativ, deren systematischer Zusammenhang und deren Legitimation nicht offensichtlich sind. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes stellen Versuche einer Klärung dar, etwa hinsichtlich der Modifikationen der Idee der Zweckmäßigkeit, die die Kritik der Urteilskraft als ästhetische, organologische und ethiko-theologische Zweckmäßigkeit entfaltet. Außerdem wird Zweckmäßigkeit auch in Gestalt der Frage nach dem Fortschritt zum Besseren in der Geschichte (...) thematisiert. Weitere Beiträge diskutieren Ideen der moralisch-praktischen Vernunft, die Freiheitsidee, die personifizierte Idee des Guten, und der Rechtsvernunft, etwa die Staats- und die Völkerrechtsidee. *** In addition to theoretical reason, Kant s theory of ideas recognises a number of ideas of reflective judgment and of practical reason. Their status, systematic coherence and legitimation are not obvious. The essays in this volume seek to offer clarification, for example by modifying the idea of purposiveness which the Critique of Judgement develops as aesthetic, organological and ethico-theological purposiveness. Purposiveness is also thematised as the question of historical progress towards improvement. Other contributions discuss ideas of moral and practical reason, the idea of freedom, the personified idea of goodness, and legal reason, e.g. the forms of national and international law. (shrink)

Erwin Straus nourished his spirit on "Act psychology", "Gestalt psychology" and "Husserlian phenomenology" in Berlin and Göttingen, and has renewed his engagement with these problems in Lexington without renouncing his commitment to a tradition to which he has remained always faithful. It is in the realm of the psychology of perception that Erwin Straus - as did the analyses of Bergson, Gestalt psychology, and the phenomenology of Husserl - made his point of departure for his critique of sensationistic (...) empiricism and of the sensory psychophysiology from Johannes Miller to Wundt... The guiding idea of Erwin Straus, as Merleau-Ponty has so profoundly made explicit, is that the sphere of sensing, the sense of the senses, is discovered to be the constitution of the very corporeity of experience, the latter being capable of being lived only in and by a living body. As abstract an sophisticated as this primordial description of the phisical body might be insofar as it is the object and subject of phenomenology, it appears to me to be the only possible, or more simply, the only one which allows us to formulate a general law of the temporal organization of the existent, that is to say, of the human being in the proper constitution of his own becoming. The phenomenology that I have just outlined founds the system of reality as the very form of conscious being, and the organization of the psychical body as the constitution of the ego. Four theses within this framework relating perceptual and hallucinatory activity are : hallucination is virtual in perception, and that it is, as Ernest Hartman recently stated, an "ubiquitous capacity" immanent to this "psychical apparatus" of which Freud spoke, and which I prefer to call "the psychical body". That hallucinatory difficulties are real difficulties and not a simple difference of intensity between the image and sensation. The pathogenesis of hallucinations can only be theorized according to the Jacksonian model of negative and positive ; and There is a fundamental distinction between the diverse forms and levels of delirious or psychotic hallucinatory activity and hallucinatory images. (shrink)

Following ideas elaborated by Hering in his celebrated analysis of color, the psychologist and gestalt theorist Otto Selz developed in the 1930s a theory of “natural space”, i.e., space as it is conceived by us. Selz’s thesis is that the geometric laws of natural space describe how the points of this space are related to each other by directions which are ordered in the same way as the points on a sphere. At the end of one of his articles, (...) Selz tries to derive within his framework two of Hilbert’s axioms for Euclidean geometry. Such derivations would, according to Selz, disclose the psychological origin and meaning of the geometric axioms and would thus contribute to a clarification of their epistemological status. In the present article Selz’s theory is explained and analyzed, his basic principles are amended, and implicit assumptions are made explicit. It is shown that the resulting system is one of ordered affine geometry in which all of Hilbert’s axioms except the axioms of congruence and those of continuity are derivable. The primary aim of the present paper is to make explicit the basic principles behind Selz’s geometry of natural space. The question of the logical independence of these principle is not investigated. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Guided Rapid Unconscious Reconfiguration in Poetry and ArtRoger SeamonThe idea that literary works are designed to give pleasure does not get much exercise these days. So I would like to take it out for a walk. We’ll see where it takes us, how much ground it covers, and what friends it makes along the way. Perhaps if we take it off the leash of theory, it will roam far (...) enough afield.... By this time you are bored with my metaphor, and thus have made a judgment about the use of a trope that is often said to be at the heart of poetry. 1 What I want to do is give an account of the principle that led to that judgment, for it is the same principle, I shall argue, that governs judgments about the aesthetic dimension of literary works.I first encountered the idea in F. W. Bateson’s English Poetry: An Introduction, where he labels it the “The Principle of the Semantic Gap.” Poetry, Bateson says, does not consist of the transference of feeling from poet to reader (the Romantic and expressive view which he opposes), but of “the successful collocation of contrasted or conflicting ‘meanings,’” 2 and he traces the theory back to Coleridge’s idea that poetry consists in the “balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities” (Biographia Literaria, chap. xiv). Contrasted meanings defeat normal expectations, so the reader is forced to bridge (apparent) gaps in order to make sense of the words, and it is that collaboration between author and reader that constitutes poetic activity. The theory is, though Bateson does not present it as such, a reworking of the ancient notion that in a successful work of art we perceive unity in variety. This essay is an effort to extend and defend that theory in its modern form, particularly as it relates to literary works.The modern theory came into being because of a change in the [End Page 412] object of aesthetic analysis from the work and what it imitated to the psychology of the audience:Up to the eighteenth century the theory of art in the Western world was dominated by ancient philosophy. It was most of all Plato’s metaphysics which, in a number of variations and even distortions, attributed to the artist the capacity of perceiving the divine ideals of beauty beyond the world of the senses and embodying them in his creations. The rejection of this mystical view of art in the course of the eighteenth century... was bound to make theorists turn to psychology. 3It is within this psychological tradition that the modern version of unity and variety has been developed.Re-castings of the ancient formula for aesthetic value have been done by (at least) five recent theorists. Given that one can probably trace the twentieth-century revival back to Gestalt psychology, it is not surprising that the earliest of the four is Rudolph Arnheim. In an essay on “Order and Complexity in Landscape Design” he defines order as “the degree and kind of lawfulness governing the relations among the parts of an entity,” and complexity as “the multiplicity of the relationships among the parts of an entity.” 4 Arnheim then psychologizes (rather than “cosmologizes”) these concepts by grounding them in the propensity to be perceptually satisfied by a balance between the two: “Complexity without order produces confusion; order without complexity produces boredom” (p. 124). Similarly, in The Act of Reading Wolfgang Iser says:The reader’s enjoyment begins when he himself becomes productive, i.e., when the text allows him to bring his own faculties into play. There are, of course, limits to the reader’s willingness to participate, and these will be exceeded if the text makes things too clear or, on the other hand, too obscure: boredom and overstrain represent the two poles of tolerance, and in either case the reader is likely to opt out of the game. 5In the same vein, Francis Sparshott asserts in The Theory of the Arts that “Beauty occupies the ground between cliché and chaos,” with variety protecting against the former, unity protecting against the latter, 6 and in The Sense of... (shrink)

This memoir consists of two parts, of which the first deals with the foundations of the theory of the struggle for existence, and begins with the introduction of the important concept of quantity of life, besides that of population. The fundamental equations are then established for the case where the individuals of a biological association mutually devour each other, the reasoning being based on the principle of encounters and on the fundamental hypothesis of the existence of equivalents of the individuals (...) constituting the different species which form the association.Having now obtained the equations which determine the rates of change of the numbers of individuals and of the quantities of life of the species, the memoir proceeds to find the equations relating to the stationary state, by establishing theorems which are afterwards applied for the purpose of obtaining the three general laws of the fluctuations. This investigation of the equilibrium state is then followed by the determination of the integrals of the fluctuation equations, and the deduction from these of their most important consequences.The second part of the memoir contains the enumeration and demonstration of the general laws of the struggle for existence, which flow from the discussion of the principles and the integrals obtained in the first part. In this way there is established a new sort of dynamics, demographic dynamics, which, though substantially different from the dynamics of material systems, is developed from an analogous point of view.The second part begins with the principle of the conservation of demographic energy, according to which there are two sorts of energy, one actual and one potential, which transform mutually the one into the other. This principle is the analogue of the principle of conservation of mechanical energy. It is followed by the enunciation of the three laws relating to the biological fluctuations, the experimental verification of which has been investigated by several naturalists. The success which has attended their efforts is well known.Everybody knows the importance ofHamilton's principle in mechanics and in all the domains of physical science. An analogous variation principle can be found in biology, and from it one can deduce the fluctuation equations in the canonical Hamiltonian form and also in the form of a Jacobian partial differential equation. Their integrals in involution from the subject next studied, and in this way are found cases where the integration is reducible to quadratures.Hamilton's principle leads to the principle of least action . There exists also in biology a closely related principle, which may be called the principle of least vital action. Its analytical form is such that it requires the existence of a true minimum, a state of affairs which does not always hold good in the analogous case in mechanics.Die Abhandlung besteht aus zwei Teilen: Der erste ist den Grundlagen der Theorie des Kampfes ums Dasein gewidmet. Man beginnt damit, neben der Bevölkerung die Menge des Lebens einzuführen, welche eine sehr wichtige Rolle spielt. Man geht dann dazu über, die Grundgleichungen für den Fall aufzustellen, in welchem die Individuen einer biologischen Assoziation sich gegenseitig auffressen. Man wendet das Prinzip der Begegnungen an und stützt sich auf die Grundhypothese der Existenz von Individuenäquivalenten der verschiedenen Arten, welche die Assoziation bilden.Wenn man die Gleichungen, welche die Variationen der Individuenzahlen und der Lebensmengen der Arten liefern, gefunden hat, so schreitet man zu den statischen oder Gleichgewichtsgleichungen fort und findet so die Theoreme, die man alsdann benutzt, um die drei allgemeinen Gesetze der Fluktuationen zu erhalten.Nach dem Studium des Gleichgewichtes geht man dazu über, die verschiedenen Integrale der Fluktuationengleichungen zu finden und zieht endlich aus ihnen die wichtigsten Folgerungen.Im zweiten Teile werden die allgemeinen Gesetze des Kampfes ums Dasein, welche aus der Diskussion der Prinzipien und der im ersten Teil gewonnenen Integrale stammen, ausgesprochen und bewiesen. Man baut so eine neue Dynamik auf: die demographische Dynamik, welche, obschon sie wesentlich verschieden von derjenigen der materiellen Systeme ist, sich nach einem analogen Gesichtspunkt entwickelt.Man beginnt in diesem zweiten Teil mit dem Prinzip der Erhaltung der demographischen Energie, nach welchem zwei Energien, die aktuelle und die potentielle, sich ineinander verwandeln. Wir haben hier eine Analogie zum Prinzip der Erhaltung der mechanischen Energie. Dann werden die drei Gesetze der biologischen Fluktuationen formuliert. Für sie haben verschiedene Naturforscher experimentelle Bestätigungen gesucht. Man kennt den Erfolg ihrer Bemühungen.Alle Welt kennt die Bedeutung des Prinzips vonHamilton in der Mechanik und in allen Gebieten der Physik. Man kann ein dem Variationskalkül analoges Prinzip in der Biologie finden. Aus ihm kann man die Fluktuationsgleichungen in der kanonischen Form vonHamilton und in der Gestalt einer Gleichung mit partiellen Differentialquotienten vonJacobi herleiten. Ihre Integrale bilden den Gegenstand der folgenden Studien. Man findet Fälle, in denen die Integration sich auf Quadraturen reduziert.Das Prinzip vonHamilton zieht das Prinzip der kleinsten Wirkung oder das Prinzip vonMaupertuis nach sich. Auch in der Biologie gibt es ein mit dem vorgenannten zusammenhängendes Prinzip, welches man das Prinzip der kleinsten vitalen Wirkung nennen kann. Seine analytische Form ist derart, dass es sich um ein wahres Minimum handelt, das im analogen Fall in der Mechanik nicht immer zutrifft. (shrink)

It has been contended that we can never be truly responsible for anything we do: we do what we do because of the way we are, so we cannot be responsible for what we do unless we are responsible for the way we are; and we cannot be responsible for the way we are when we first make decisions in life, so we can never become responsible for the way we are later in life. This article argues that in our (...) consciously chosen actions we respond rationally to whole ‘gestalt’ experiences in ways that cannot be pre determined by pre choice circumstances and laws of nature and/or computational rules; and that this means we are partly responsible for what we do, even if we are not responsible for the way we are. (shrink)

This book is not what one might expect from either the title or the author. It is not about the sociological or philosophical doctrines which are associated with the title, and although Piaget's long work in human development is the basis for the views of this book, it is not the subject matter. The book is a reflective essay on structuralism as a method, and a call for a comprehensive science of man using that method. Traditionally, "Structuralism" had both positive (...) and negative meanings: positively it stood for the ideal of intelligibility; as a critical position it is allied with specific oppositions to a wide variety of atomisms and compartmentalizations. Piaget's characterization of "Structuralism" is deliberately broad, in order to capture the notion common to linguistic structuralism, Gestalt psychology, and the concepts of structures employed by logic, mathematics, physics, biology, and the social sciences. Minimally, a structure is a totality involving a system of laws for transformations; it is self-regulating, preserving and enriching itself through the exercise of its transformations without losing its unity or appealing to external elements. A living organism, the prototype of a structure, is simultaneously one physico-chemical system among others, and the source of its own activities. A structure can be formalized, and is adaptable to models of various sorts, logico-mathematical, cybernetic, etc., but it is independent of the theoretician's choice of the formal system in which it is expressed. When we can reduce a field of knowledge to a formalization of a self-regulating structure we will feel we are nearing the inner motive force of the system; this is what is important about structuralism, and what raises our hopes. But we are not nearly at that point. An authentic biologically-based structuralism is only beginning to take shape after centuries of either a simplifying reductionism or a vitalism more verbal than really explanatory. Piaget tells us that the comprehensive science of man which we need, based on structuralist ideals, and not recognizing separated disciplines, can only be achieved via thoroughgoing structuralist method.--M. B. M. (shrink)

Christian von Ehrenfels was a student of both Franz Brentano and Carl Menger and his thinking on value theory was inspired both by Brentano’s descriptive psychology and by the subjective theory of economic value advanced by Menger, the founder of the Austrian school of economics. Value, for Ehrenfels, is a function of desire, and we ascribe value to those things which we either do in fact desire, or would desire if we were not convinced of their existence. He asserts that (...) the needed theoretical understanding of values is to be achieved by generalizing economic laws of valuation to apply to value in general. The law of marginal utility, for example, is a law to the effect that the n+1st sample of a good which I receive is ceteris paribus less valuable than the nth sample (imagine that the samples in question are, for example, a series of identical ham sandwiches). The essay describes how Ehrenfels provides on this basis an account of the different types of values, both intrinsic and non-intrinsic. It outlines also Ehrenfels views on the problem of interpersonal value-comparisons and on the struggle for survival between different values of different types. (shrink)

Segundo as descobertas da Física Moderna (Física Quántica), Realidade (Wirklichkeit em Alemão) não é mais o real que nos é familiar e tangível (cousal), mas algo bem diferente, tanto espacial como temporalmente, algo claramente mais aberto. Trata-se de algo holístico, uma Gestalt de carácter a-material, uma relação depura inter-conexão ("a-dvaita"), uma potencialidade inseparável, similar ao amor espiritual e omnicompreensivo. Ou seja, segundo o autor, a realidade está possuída por uma tonalidade processual, uma inspiração holística e intimamente conectada, uma transformação, (...) um processo contínuo de criação e aniquilamento, com o potencial de se manifestar a si mesma de um modo em que predomina uma essencial complementaridade dual energético-material. Assim, para o autor do artigo, o mundo em que vivemos, Wirklichkeit, não pode ser propriamente compreendido em termos puramente ontológicos. Segundo o autor, a questão : O que é, o que é que existe? torna-se uma questão desprovida de sentido. Em sua opinião, admissíveis seriam apenas questões acerca do que propriamente actua (wirkt), do que acontece, do que conecta, ou, por outras palavras, a questão do "entre". Consequentemente, a evolução no tempo e no espaço não procede mais de leis causais estritamente determinadas, pois o que existe são apenas tendências gerais intrínsecas (expectações), caracterizadas por probabilidades relativas a uma infinidade de realizações possíveis, as quais em média, pelo processo de sobreposições descoerentes, nos fazem voltar à nossa concepção comum do mundo como sendo uma realidade tangível dominada por leis naturais rigorosa e universalmente válidas. /// According to the findings of modern physics (quantum physics) Reality (in German more appropriate: Wirklichkeitj is basically no more the familiar, tangible (thing-like) reality but quite different and, spatially and temporally, more open. It is a holistic a-material "Gestalt", a pure connectedness ("a-dvaita"), an inseparable potentiality, similar to the spiritual and to all-embracing love. It relates to a processlike holistic and intimately connected inspiration and transformation, a continuous creation and annihilation, with the potential manifesting itself with some vagueness in complementary dual and essentially energetic/material diversified fashion. Hence, for the author, the world in which we are living, Wirklichkeit, cannot be understood strictly in an ontological way. The question: What is, what exists? becomes meaningless. Questions still admissible are: What acts (wirkt), happens, binds?, the question for the "in-between". The evolution in time does not follow anymore from strictly determined causal laws but there are only general intrinsic tendencies ("expectations"), characterised by probabilities for infinitely many possible realizations, which on average (decoherent superpositions) lead back to our familiar conception of the world as an objective tangible reality with its rigorously valid natural laws. (shrink)

In this challenging book, David Hodgson takes a fresh approach to the question of free will, contending that close consideration of human rationality and human consciousness shows that together they give us free will, in a robust and indeterministic sense, and in a way that is consistent with what science tells us about the world.

There is a narrow thread in the vast literature on Kafka which pertains to Kafka’s knowledge of philosophy, and more precisely to Kafka’s use in his fictional writings of some of the main ideas of Franz Brentano. Kafka attended courses in philosophy at the Charles University given by Brentano’s students Anton Marty and Christian von Ehrenfels, and was for several years a member of a discussion-group organized by orthodox adherents of the Brentanian philosophy in Prague. The present essay summarizes what (...) is known about Kafka’s relations to the Brentanist movement. It draws on Brentanian ideas on the evidence of inner perception, on oblique consciousness, on active introspection, on correct and incorrect judgment, and on consciousness as a species of inner tribunal, in order to throw light on central features of Kafka’s writings, including stylistic features. Special attention is directed towards Die Verwandlung and Der Prozess, and a reading of the latter is offered according to which the trial of Joseph K. occurs entirely within the mind of K. himself. The revisions in the 1997 version of the paper relate especially to the treatment of Kafka and Brentano in Arnold Heidsieck’s book The Intellectual Contexts of Kafka’s Fiction: Philosophy, Law, Religion of 1994. (shrink)

Each contributor to this volume, collected in conjunction with St. Louis University's sesquicentennial celebrations, addresses himself to the title topic in terms of his own field. The first part of the book contains essays grouped loosely under the theme "The Environment of Learning." This section is introduced by Ong with a thumbnail portrait of the knowledge explosion, its history, its technological apparatus, its social implications, and its undergirding presupposition: a faith in the intelligibility of the universe. Other essays in the (...) section cover university education, education in Africa, international politics, urban problems, and architecture. In his essay, McLuhan moves from a discussion of architecture to an explanation of a certain art form which integrates separate environmental fragments into a gestalt fusion of artist, art form, and art work. This art form, this "happening," for post-mechanical man is the environment itself plus the programmed structuring of its elements. John Macquarrie builds a doctrine of human responsibility using the creation myth and a little Heidegger to portray man not as the sovereign over creation but as its steward and guardian. The second section deals with specific areas of knowledge. J. R. Zacharias leads off with a superficial account of how scientific training, with its emphasis on objectivity, can lead to moral sureness and of how scientists make moral decisions. This ethical emphasis is maintained as other contributors in biology, law, and business discuss the impact of technology in their area and the "way out" possibilities of the future. The final three essays are moderate by comparison. J. D. Collins, speaking for philosophy, points out that philosophers are characteristically more concerned with their past than with their future, that they delay in order to reflect when others barge ahead, and that consequently for them the knowledge explosion has also been a knowledge implosion. However, he does manage a discussion of philosophy's new "developing patterns," the most significant for him being the convergence of phenomenology and language analysis. M. Eliade gives a short account of the history of religions, and Karl Rahner ends the book with a crisp essay relating Christian eschatology to secular ideologies of the future.--S. O. H. (shrink)

The question of whether there are laws in ecology is important for a number of reasons. If, as some have suggested, there are no ecological laws, this would seem to distinguish ecology from other branches of science, such as physics. It could also make a difference to the methodology of ecology. If there are no laws to be discovered, ecologists would seem to be in the business of merely supplying a suite of useful models. These models would need to be (...) assessed for their empirical adequacy but not for their ability to capture fundamental truths, or the like. If, on the other hand, ecology does have laws, this prompts further questions about what these laws are and why even the best candidates for ecological laws fall short of what might be expected of laws. (shrink)

"What is a military aircraft? John Law shows in his beautiful analysis that it is a constant oscillation between multiplicity and singularity.

Thinking tools is a regular feature that offers tips and pointers on thinking clearly and rigorously.