This multiple-case study sought to understand what ambitious history teachers focus their reflections on throughout a unit of study. Through video-stimulated recall methodology, reflective interviews were conducted with participants in four different schools within the same high-poverty public school district. The study built upon findings from research on ambitious teachers and found that teachers fixated on a range of problems while reflecting, among them: students” historical thinking, cultural relevant pedagogy, and their framing of history through essential (...) questions. That the teachers focused on these issues could be linked to their values and broader educational aims. (shrink)

This book provides a framework for thinking about foundational philosophical questions surrounding machine learning as an approach to artificial intelligence. Specifically, it links recent breakthroughs in deep learning to classical empiricist philosophy of mind. In recent assessments of deep learning's current capabilities and future potential, prominent scientists have cited historical figures from the perennial philosophical debate between nativism and empiricism, which primarily concerns the origins of abstract knowledge. These empiricists were generally faculty psychologists; that is, they argued that the active (...) engagement of general psychological faculties-such as perception, memory, imagination, attention, and empathy-enables rational agents to extract abstract knowledge from sensory experience. This book explains a number of recent attempts to model roles attributed to these faculties in deep neural network based artificial agents by appeal to the faculty psychology of philosophers such as Aristotle, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), John Locke David Hume, William James, and Sophie de Grouchy. It illustrates the utility of this interdisciplinary connection by showing how it can provide benefits to both philosophy and computer science: computer scientists can continue to mine the history of philosophy for ideas and aspirational targets to hit on the way to more robustly rational artificial agents, and philosophers can see how some of the historical empiricists' most ambitious speculations can be realized in specific computational systems. (shrink)

In Nietzsche's Teaching, Laurence Lampert "attempts something that has not been done before. In setting out to follow the new route opened by Nietzsche, I retrace Zarathustra's path serially through all the events and speeches of Thus Spoke Zarathustra". For the most part, Lampert completes this ambitious project in impressive fashion: with a painstaking eye for the detail and nuance of Zarathustra, Lampert has produced a systematic, chapter-by-chapter commentary on Nietzsche's most enigmatic--and hitherto most inaccessible--work. Lampert's greatest achievement (...) here is to salvage Zarathustra from the scrap-heap of popular philosophy and make sense of the book as a coherent and original contribution to moral and political philosophy. Resisting the popular trend toward deconstructing Zarathustra and "exposing" it as radically discontinuous or anti-philosophical, Lampert renders a faithful interpretation of Zarathustra based on his careful explication of the text's unified dramatic structure. Throughout Nietzsche's Teaching, Lampert traces Nietzsche's thematic and metaphorical allusions to Plato and the New Testament, and explains Nietzsche's teaching via illuminating comparisons to the foundational projects of Bacon, Descartes, and Heidegger, thus displaying an enviable knowledge of the history of philosophy. (shrink)

For more than a decade Nina Baym has pioneered in the reexamination of American literature. She has led the way in questioning assumptions about American literary history, in critiquing the standard canon of works we read and teach, and in rediscovering lost texts by American women writers. Feminism and American Literary History collects fourteen of her most important essays published since 1980, which, combining feminist perspectives with original archival research, significantly revise standard American literary history. In Part (...) I, "Rewriting Old American Literary History," the focus is on male writers. Essays range from close readings of individual works to ambitious critiques of the main paradigms by which scholars have conventionally linked disparate texts and authors in a narrative of nationalist literary history: the self-in-the-wilderness myth, the romance-novel distinction, the myth of New England origins. Part II, "Writing New American Literary History," studies examples of women's writing from the Revolution through the Civil War. Stressing much overtly public and political writing that has been overlooked even by feminist scholars, noting public and political themes in supposedly domestic works, the essays substantially modify and historicize the paradigm by which premodern American women's writing is currently understood. The contentious and influential essays in Part III, "Two Feminist Polemics," address feminist literary theory and pedagogy, advocating a pluralist practice as the basis for scholarship, criticism, and humane feminism. No one interested in American literature or in women's writing can afford to ignore Baym's revisionist work. Humorous and gracefully written, this book is enjoyable and indispensable. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:September 27, 2008 (1:09 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2801\russell 28,1 048RED.wpd Reviews 89 MODERNIST HERESIES K.yE. Garay Arts & Science/Research Collections / McMaster U. Hamilton, on, Canada l8s 4m2 [email protected] Damon Franke. Modernist Heresies: British Literary History, 1883–1924. Columbus : Ohio State U. P., 2008. Pp. xx, 258. isbn 978-0-8142-1074-1 (hb). us$47.95. The editor of the Russell journal summed up Modernist Heresies: British Literary History, 1883–1924z with his usual brevity (...) during a recent conversation : “The Wrst part is about Russell and the rest of it isn’t.” In fact the Wrst two chapters are only somewhat concerned with Russell, since he Wgures as part of the Heretical Cambridge scene with which Damon Franke opens this study, but, September 27, 2008 (1:09 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2801\russell 28,1 048RED.wpd 90 Reviews after a Xeeting appearance of both Russells, Bertie and Dora, in the opening pages of Chapter 3, Bertie is not heard from again. Franke, who teaches English at the University of Southern Mississippi, has set himself an ambitious task, the scope of which is not fully captured in this book’s title. The selection of no fewer than ten subject headings in the cataloguing data for this studyz—zheadings ranging from “Modernism (Literature)” through “English Literature”, “Religion and Literature”, “Heresies, Christian”, and “Paganism in Literature”z—zprovides the wary reader withsome forewarning of its breadth. The author’s focus is on nothing less than the emergence and development of modernism in England, using the rise and demise of what Franke terms “heresy” as his barometer. Nor does the ascribed date range, 1883– 1924, prove much more accurate; in one of the most persuasive segments of the book, the After Words, Franke extends his examination, Wrst into the 1930s and then as far as 1949, the year that Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Fourz was published. Selecting as his starting point the 1883 blasphemy trial of G.yW. Foote, the editor of The Freethinker, at which the right to attack “even the fundamentals of religion” was enshrined in English law, providing that “the decencies of controversy” are observed (p. 10), Franke argues that this decision made possible “intellectual and literary forms of heresy which questioned the principles of religion ” (ibid.). His use of the term “heresy” for his wide ranging survey of philosophical and linguistic as well as literary opinion, provoked pause in this reader. The Oxford English Dictionary, the Wrst edition of which appeared the year after Foote’s heresy trial, provides a primary deWnition of heresy as follows: Theological or religious opinion or doctrine maintained in opposition, or held to be contrary, to the “catholic” or orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church, or, by extension, to that of any church, creed, or religious system, considered as orthodox. It is only through an extended deWnition of heresy that the door opens to allow Franke’s highly variable use of the term: “Opinion or doctrine in philosophy, politics, science, art, etc., at variance with those generally accepted as authoritative ” (OED Online, 2008). As will be demonstrated, aspects of thought which the less adventurous might prefer to call agnosticism, paganism or even atheism, are subsumed into the wide-ranging scope of this provocative study. The Cambridge Heretics, the group of which Russell was an Honorary Member, provides Franke with both his heretical cornerstone and his book’s opening chapters. In a skilfully contextualized examination, Franke documents the group’s Michaelmas 1909 genesis in the shadow, or perhaps in the intellectual light, of the Chawner ATairz—zthe Master of Emmanuel’s public expression of his personal loss of religious faith. Its Wrst chairman was C.yM. Picciotto, but it was its Wrst secretary, C.yK. Ogden, a newly arrived Magdalene College under- September 27, 2008 (1:09 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2801\russell 28,1 048RED.wpd Reviews 91 graduate, who was to prove the group’s guiding genius. Franke argues convincingly that the group, which included Bernard Shaw, J.yM. Keynes, I.yA. Richards and G.yE. Moore, as well as Russell, in its membership roster, has suTered puzzling scholarly neglect, particularly when compared with the Apostles, its... (shrink)

Peter Adamson offers an accessible, humorous tour through a period of eight hundred years when some of the most influential of all schools of thought were formed. He introduces us to Cynics and Skeptics, Epicureans and Stoics, emperors and slaves, and traces the development of early Christian philosophy and of ancient science. A major theme of the book is in fact the competition between pagan and Christian philosophy in this period, and the Jewish tradition appears in the shape of Philo (...) of Alexandria. Ancient science is also considered, with chapters on ancient medicine and the interaction between philosophy and astronomy. Considerable attention is paid also to the wider historical context, for instance by looking at the ascetic movement in Christianity and how it drew on ideas from Hellenic philosophy. From the counter-cultural witticisms of Diogenes the Cynic to the subtle skepticism of Sextus Empiricus, from the irreverent atheism of the Epicureans to the ambitious metaphysical speculation of Neoplatonism, from the ethical teachings of Marcus Aurelius to the political philosophy of Augustine, the book gathers together all aspects of later ancient thought in an accessible and entertaining way. (shrink)

History has long been taught in Australian schools with a view to encouraging patriotic citizenship. What has been taught and what is meant by patriotic Australian citizenship has changed markedly over the years. Current national initiatives to stimulate and direct the teaching of 'what we all know' to be Australian history may not meet the requirements of acceptable educational practice. The Commonwealth government may be better advised to pursue initiatives that encourage understanding of and commitment to the (...) common weal. (shrink)

Antibiotic development and usage, and antibiotic resistance in particular, are today considered global concerns, simultaneously mandating local and global perspectives and actions. Yet such global considerations have not always been part of antibiotic policy formation, and those who attempt to formulate a globally coordinated response to antibiotic resistance will need to confront a history of heterogeneous, often uncoordinated, and at times conflicting reform efforts, whose legacies remain apparent today. Historical analysis permits us to highlight such entrenched trends and processes, (...) helping to frame contemporary efforts to improve access, conservation and innovation. (shrink)

Relationships to time through memory or projection form a particular axis along which the post-communist space reshapes, constructs and understands its identity. Caught between a public rejection of the communist past and a need for roots in the recent past, if only for narrative reasons, and cornered by the near future in the name of transition, the postcommunist societies face a dilemma in their search for identity. The weight of this dilemma can be directly measured by the level of consensus (...) around the passing of certain ‘reparation’ laws, such as the restitution of nationalised property or ‘lustration’, however it can also be seen in other public debates. This sheds light on the difficulties that a society may experience in adopting a collectively-accepted narrative, which then forms the basis on which it constructs its identity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXI, Number 2, November 1995, pp. 315-332 Robertson, Hume, and the Balance of Power FREDERICK G. WHELAN William Robertson, like his Scottish Enlightenment colleague David Hume, practiced a kind of philosophic history which, although it appears to consist mainly of narratives of political and military events, is also designed to teach moral and political lessons of general significance and utility. The principal theme of Hume's (...) History of England, for example, is the growth of legal and constitutional government in connection with the emergence of modern society; Hume's narrative implicitly justifies both such a government and the moderate politics on which it depends. A theme of comparable importance in Robertson's History of Charles V (1769) is the emergence of a balance of power and thence a relatively stable international system among European states in the early sixteenth century, when the policy of balance first clearly appeared. As he declares in his Preface: The political principles and maxims then established still continue to operate. The ideas concerning the balance of power, then introduced or rendered general, still influence the councils of nations. (R 307)1 Robertson both describes the relevant policy decisions (especially the alliance between the traditional enemies, England and France, to counter the threat posed by Charles Vs unprecedentedly large empire) and justifies such policies as reasonable and beneficial.2 Frederick G. Whelan is at the Political Science Department, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA 15260 USA. 316 Frederick G. Whelan In treating this theme, Robertson was taking up a topic that was of interest to Hume as well. Hume refers on a number of occasions to the sixteenth century balance of power in his History chapters on the reign of Henry VIII (1759),3 especially in the portion extending through the 1520s, and he treats the topic more systematically in his earlier essay "Of the Balance of Power" (1752).4 Hume like Robertson defends balance of power policies in general, and Hume certainly (Robertson probably) had a more particular reason for doing so: to justify contemporary British (Whig) foreign policy (and several wars), which since the reign of Louis XIV had aimed at maintaining a European counterbalance to France.5 Hume's and Robertson's favorable descriptions of the sixteenth century anti-Habsburg policy provide a useful background for defending the eighteenth century anti-Bourbon policy.6 Indeed, both Hume and Robertson probably exaggerated the prevalence of the balance of power, at least as a conscious policy, in the early sixteenth century; although they were no doubt correct in noting that something like the modern state system first began to take shape at that time, they seem to have projected the eighteenth century emphasis on balance backwards in time as a way of legitimizing it.7 Robertson sums up the fifty year period he covers by observing that the similar stage of development of the states of Europe at that time, together with the policy of balance, permitted the preservation of a fairly stable system of independent states that has lasted until the present: But the advantages possessed by one state were counterbalanced by circumstances favourable to others; and thus prevented any from attaining such superiority as might have been fatal to all. The nations of Europe in that age, as in the present, were like one great family.... There was not among them that wide diversity of character and of genius which, in almost every period of history, hath exalted the Europeans above the inhabitants of the other quarters of the globe, and seems to have destined the one to rule and the others to obey. (R 704) Hume's concern with contemporary policy, and with France, is more conspicuous: Europe has now, for above a century, remained on the defensive against the greatest force that ever, perhaps, was formed by the civil or political combination of mankind. And such is the influence of the maxim here treated of, that tho' that ambitious nation, in the five last general wars, have been victorious in four, and unsuccessful only in one, they have not much enlarged their dominions, nor acquired a total ascendant over EUROPE.... In the last three of these general Hume... (shrink)

This paper presents results from a large-scale study of history teachers in Swedish secondary schools. The study examines perceptions of history, content being taught, teaching methods and use of digital technology. The study uses the Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework to analyse the results together with narrative theory. The main results indicate that knowledge of the past and contemporary perspectives from a canonical tradition are prioritised, together with a content-based lecture-style pedagogy. The use of digital (...) technology does not seem to challenge methods or bring new perspectives to history teaching. However, to fully understand history teaching with technology, a framework that emphasises all parts of history education is needed. This calls for further development of the TPACK model, which is further discussed in this article. (shrink)

Recent economic and financial crises have exposed mainstream economics to severe criticism, bringing present research and teaching styles into question. Building on a solid and vivid tradition of economic thought, this book challenges conventional thinking in the field of economics. The authors turn to the work of Luigi Pasinetti, who proposed a list of nine methodological and theoretical ideas that characterize the Classical Keynesian School. Drawing inspiration from both Keynes and Sraffa, this school has forged a long-standing and (...) class='Hi'>ambitious research programme often advocated as a competing paradigm to mainstream economics. Overall, the Classical Keynesian School provides a comprehensive analytical framework into which most non-mainstream schools of thought can be integrated. In this collection, a group of leading scholars critically assess the nine main ideas that, in Pasinetti's view, characterize the Classical-Keynesian approach, evaluating their relevance for both the history of economics and for present economic research. (shrink)

The greatest intensity of “live” life is captured from as close as possible in order to be borne as far as possible away. Jacques Derrida. Echographies of Television . Rainer Ganahl has made a study of studying. As part of his extensive autobiographical art practice, he documents and presents many of the ambitious educational activities he undertakes. For example, he has been videotaping hundreds of hours of solitary study that show him struggling to learn Chinese, Arabic and a host (...) of other languages. The stacked boxes of tapes are then presented like minimalist monoliths, dense archives of effort. About fifteen years ago, Ganahl began photographing the lectures that he attends. At the time, he hadn’t seen anyone else doing it, so besides his spare selection of images of the speaker and the audience, much of the time the lectures would just pass into memory, undocumented, or recorded in writing alone. Since then, he has felt the transition to digital cause a significant shift in his process. At the same time, he has seen the habit become ubiquitous as others photograph, record, and videotape the lectures all around him. In keeping with the theme of this inaugural issue of continent. , can we propose each small grouping of photographs that result an isthmus stretching between two disparate bodies of mind? The first being the body of the lecture as spelled out in the title of each work – the experience of the event in all its constituent parts. The second is the body of the recipient, the listener, in this case an artist, who plays a minimal role just beyond the prescripted behavior of sitting and listening. He uses a gesture of documentation to draw a line between himself and the event, creating an artwork. Františka + Tim Gilman: As we mentioned before, the theme of the magazine for this issue is "isthmus." It seems like a very good way into your work, and it leads us to ask what connection you see between your photographs of the lecture and the lecture itself? Rainer Ganahl: The relationship is of course a concrete, pictorial one, or if you want a mimetic one but also an abstract one because the photographs carry the title of the lecture, the names of the lecturers, the site, the institution and the time of the lecture. Photos are fixed moments of time and can reproduce images displayed and reproduce visuals presented at a moment but they don’t come with time based recordings that video or sound takes are offering. What remains of a lecture is usually just the memory, some notes and all the announcements of it. In my case I end up with a visual product I declare as my artwork. It might not differ from any snapshot taken by any other student or member of the audience but I do this in a semi-systematic way with certain rules and procedures I have set up. While I am at a lecture I am mainly focusing on the lecture itself. Last night I went to one of Slavoj Žižek which demanded quite some concentration. I even was asking him a question at the end. I took photos as well but still didn’t lose track of the lecture. I didn’t walk around, I was not preoccupied by where I was sitting and what light I was having like some of the other photographing and filming people in the room who came and left, moved around and tried to capture him from this and that angle, from close and far. I just sat there and concentrated on the lecture and yet managed to take about 30 or so images of him, the public around me and of the film clips he presented. Once the lecture is over the story changes: it all becomes a question of the images, their selection, their visual qualities, their labeling and archiving. The function of the images also change: not only do they stand for an intellectual event in a row of lectures that become part of my intellectual history within many possible such histories but they also have to function as art, something not everybody else with images of lecturers demands of their images. This is my specific claim as an artist to impose them as artworks. And as with all artistic propositions the offer can be accepted or rejected. I basically spend my life trying to do exactly that: making what I declare as art, offering something to anybody interested in it as my art, an offer that is not and will never be accepted as such by all people. F+T: What are your criteria for selection, i.e. how do you choose which lectures to photograph, by lecturer, by topic, or do you photograph any and every lecture you can? RG: As everything in my life, I go by my interest which is the result of many factors. If I am aware of a lecturer, read his books or appreciate his works my interest of attending his much higher than if I am not aware of it. I usually don’t go to lecturers simply based on their subjects—something that can happen of course, if the subject, the title of the lecture is promising or at the heart of my interest. Sometimes I also wait for years to get a change to photograph certain people but I do that in a very low-level “keep your ears up” mentality and not in a systematic scanning of all channels and possibilities. I do not go into philosophy departments and photograph everybody teaching there. I go with the flow—and unfortunately a great deal of great talks I also miss because I hear too late of them. Often, I also stumble into them by traveling, by getting emails from friends and by simply being in the right spot at the right time. Somehow you could look at my lecture par cours as some kind of loose intellectual flâneurism . If you know of interesting lectures and events, please, let me know. F+T: Is your selection of images more of a production or post-production method? That is, do you take a lot of photos and select only a few images from each lecture, or do you take them very selectively? Do you have a particular methodology for the selection of images? RG: This all changed a bit with the arrival of digital photography. In the beginning I had to pay a lot of money for film developing. Hence, I was taking either one role - 36 images - or half a role - 13 images - depending on who talked and whether they projected images. With the unlimited capacity of digital imaging I easily end up between 30 and 150 images of one event still depending of whether images are presented or not. In the first years of that project when I wasn’t fully aware yet of what I was doing, I printed at least 2 images of any lecture and sometimes three or even four, a choice that was also constrained by costs. But again, since I have a web site and since images can easily be selected and presented on my web site without generating remarkable costs I have now more and more pain to reduce them to less than ten or eight images for an event. Now, before I have them printed which really is expensive, I can present them already as artwork on my web site without any immediate costs. Thus the economic factor is at the end of the chain which enables me to be more ‘generous’ and include more images. Over the last years I have been mostly selecting at least four photographs for a lecture unit but recently also as many as ten. But so far only one set above four images has been actually printed and sold. What might sound even more shocking is the likely fact that if a curator or a collector demands me to reduce the number of images due to costs, I might compromise at this current stage if the images have not been yet printed or published outside my own web site. This means that to a certain degree any selection that has only seen publication on my web site and not yet been produced runs the risk to change in numbers of images included. Needless to say, I am the last one that finally makes a decision and I do honor all given earlier decision if those were final. F+T: How do you feel the act of photographing the lecture affects your reception of the contents of the lecture? And your recollection afterwards, do you remember the lecture more having photographed it, or just having sat and listened? RG: As mentioned above, I get very little distraction from photographing since I can multitask well and do not obsess about the quality of the image: I photograph from where I am and listen with my ears and not my eyes. I am not sure whether the images serve as a mnemonic devise to the content of the lecture if there are no images involved but they at least remind me that the lecture existed, the title of the lecture and the name of the people and institutions involved. The titles of the hundreds of lectures I took during the past 15 years can also be read as an essay of theoretical life in that period. This will be come more and more visible as time passes by. These images age much better than I do. F+T: You mentioned at the outset of our discussions that you started this practice some time ago and have seen the practice of photographing lecturers become more commonplace. Why do you think that this shift has taken place? RG: The answer is very simple. Photographing is now free of any charge and hence omnipresent. You buy a phone or any other personal digital assistant and it has a camera integrated in it whether you want it or not. There is no need to develop images and there is no hassle to keep images, to distribute images, to organize images and save them. It is all virtual, not creating any costs and doesn’t require any efforts. You don’t spend twenty dollars for photo-developing anymore, you don’t need to walk anymore to your pharmacy or your photo shop to drop off and return to pick up and pay. You don’t need to go to the post office to send somebody a picture. You have a program like Photoshop already built into your camera. Photographing is now a thing for everybody—with functioning cameras made for two year olds. It is technically now nearly impossible to make bad images. The image quality is virtually guaranteed by cheap, high performing, mini-computers packed into miniscule cameras. With all these technological changes, we are undergoing now a cultural paradigm shift that includes permanent recording (not only still image taking) of everything. I wonder even whether babies are just born to be photographed—at least a process where the first photograph is right there. What is interesting now, is how the law is trying to catch up. I am experiencing and expecting more restrictions on photographing and recording—something already in place in many museums and in certain galleries—as the recording devices become more and more invisible and undetectable. It is an interesting cat and mouse play and will end up with some of us that are photographing the world around us in court. The world has become very transparent and everybody is contributing to it with social networking technologies—like twitter and Facebook—that are designed to monitor and communicate every step we make in our lives. F+T: Why did you start the practice? As a way to remember, or to capture the experience of the lecture and the environment there? RG: A couple of years earlier I started to photograph my own reading seminars as part of my art work with results that surprised me positively. I really liked these images of students and people discussing heavy non-fiction with me. The reading seminars justified this kind of pictorialism. Then in 1995 I had the chance to attend an entire seminar by Edward Said entitled “The Representation of Intellectuals at Columbia University,” which really gave me the idea to start this series. Why not also photograph these lectures I visit all the time since this really is a way of representing intellectuals? F+T: The constellation of images and the title seem like a kind of portrait, do you agree? If so, is it a portrait of the speaker, of yourself, or of the event? RG: Well, to follow up on the previous question the lectures are more than just portraits of lecturers since I include not only the speakers but also the audience, an audience that is not named or specifically highlighted as is the speaker. So if we stick with the metaphor of the portrait we would have to extend it also to the environment, the class room, the lecture hall, the arrangements of seats or benches, tables, lecture stands and other stuff typically seen on my images. Often the walls are decorated or even tagged with graffiti or posters and other stuff. There is a big difference between a small seminar room at the English Department of Columbia University, full with books and cabinets and a lecture room at a Paris or Frankfurt university that accommodates 50 to 150 people. We should, maybe, also distinguish between lectures that are one time events—mostly open to the public, free of charge or paid—and events that are weekly, closed to the public and held mostly in universities that can cost fortunes or be paid by the State as it is still predominantly the case in continental Europe. All this, of course, is not necessarily announced in the title of the lecture and is subject to information that isn’t visible on the images. To a certain degree we see also portraits of a general privilege when it comes to the public of certain institutions that are highly selective and extremely costly without forgetting that most of the lectures are dealing with theory, art, philosophy and other highbrow subjects. In general, I would say we see very little if we don’t know already what’s going on, who the lecturer, the institutions, the context are in which we subsequently can zoom into variants like sexual, racial, or age-related make-up without ignoring clothing fashions, hair styling, body mannerisms, gadgets and stuff. F+T: Do you see a relation between this body of work and your other work, for example your language studies? RG: Everything I do is “unfortunately” related. I say unfortunately because this makes my work not so easy to grasp. The relationship to the language studies is relatively clear since both are originally grounded in the domain of education and knowledge production. Nearly all my work comes across that nexus where knowledge and power are addressed. I was at one point wondering what the relationship was to some of my earlier indexical work where I was happy alone with footnotes from books painted on the walls: I came to understand that both are just different manifestations of knowledge and information. F+T: Do you foresee continuing the series indefinitely, or is there an end to it? RG: I think that I will continue this series indefinitely or to be more precise, as long as I go listen to lectures and want to learn something which brings me to your previous question: What do the reading seminars, language studies, historical research and lecture hopping have in common: I learn something. Further Reading Rainer Ganahl’s website William Kaizen. “ Vulgar Politics .” art&education . April 2009. Web. Smith, Roberta. “ Rainer Ganahl: ‘Language of Emigration & Pictures of Emigration .’” New York Times April 23 2010. Web. (shrink)

Ex interiore ipso exeas. Preface. This book reconstructs the history of a still open dialectics between several ethoi, that is, shared codes of unwritten rules, moral traditions, or self-aware attempts at reforming such codes, and ethical theories discussing the nature and justification of such codes and doctrines. Its main claim is that this history neither amounts to a triumphal march of reason dispelling the mist of myth and bigotry nor to some other one-way process heading to some pre-established (...) goal, but instead to a chain of controversies where the partners’ will to win unintentionally yields a wealth of insights on human existence that has still something to teach us. -/- 1. The Hellenic moral tradition. -/- Two different traditions of morality in vi-v century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. -/- 2. Plato and the Good. -/- Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates rejoinder to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 3. Aristotle and practical philosophy. -/- Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistency in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater families, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics, is illustrated. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexes, or ‘dispositions’. Prudence, or better, practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with boùleusis or deliberation is discussed, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 4. Cynics and Stoics: ethics as therapy. -/- The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place that was given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of the science of well-being aiming, more than pleasure understood as in the popular view, the reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Roman and Imperial Moralists. -/- The chapter is dedicated to the reconstruction of a particular kind of literature, whose specific features have long been under-stressed, namely the Roman and Imperial moral literature. Cicero is treated at some length, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is given pride of place, stressing the novelty of his approach to ethics as cognitive therapy, in this case just following an already existing new wave of interest after nineteenth-century oblivion justified by alleged lack of authentic ‘philosophical’ character. -/- 6. The Hebrew moral tradition. -/- A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torah (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Levitic is stressed as the turning point when the stress on mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, starts being combined with legal tradition yielding the change in the sensibility of the Second Temple time. -/- 7. Second Temple Judaism. -/- This chapter describes the Long March leading from the post-exile Zadokite restoration to the first-century aevi vulgaris. The first topic reconstructed is the Zadokite theology of the double retribution. The second is the alternative Enochic tradition consistently rejecting the central role of the Temple, the Priesthood and worship as atonement for sins and offering as an alternative God’s unlimited mercy and preaching mercy, not sacrifice as the way of behaving requested by God. Wisdom literature, the third subject discusses, is a kind of third way, on the one hand increasingly critical towards the double retribution and ruling theology’s optimism facing the world as it is and on the other mocking at the Enochic current as a band of dreamers and visionaries. The third way consists in disenchantment facing the word as it is combined with a refusal of vain and childish hope of prizes for the righteous, suggesting instead the leading idea of right deeds for righteousness’s sake. Rabbi Hillel, Rabbi Yeshua and Philo of Alexandria are described as the three leading figures at the culminating point of such process of emergence of a new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This starting point consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, whose meaning is, arguably, more consistent than a long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine made us believe. And Christian morality, vis-à-vis allegedly legalist ‘Ancient Testament’ teachings, is less of a novelty than most early Christian writers announced. -/- 8. Talmudic moral doctrines and proto-Christian paraenesis. -/- The first three sections examine the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirke Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deot, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexes and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was "the tool by which the world was built"; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous, but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The last two sections examine first the various Christian currents and then Gnostic para-Christian or non-Christian currents as well as Manicheism. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure, purest Judaism. The last section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manicheism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. -/- 9. Christianity as “philosophy”. -/- The chapter reconstructs the stormy story of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and several rhetorical topics from the Stoic and Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua himself had been influenced by cynical preachers, is a proof of the necessity to translate the original Christian message in a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 10. Ethics in the Arabic-Islamic Philosophy. -/- The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on the retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince, had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries, a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with the disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 11. Ethics in the Jewish philosophy. -/- The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place for the first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed too a few traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Tora and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirke Avot could be translated. -/- 12. The practical philosophy revival in Latin Europe. -/- A reconstruction is carried out of a fresh start of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium rescuing a Platonic and Augustinian legacy, with Anselm and Peter Abelard. In this phase remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions, gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of a full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. -/- 13. Scholastic practical philosophy: Thomas Aquinas. -/- Aquinas’s ethics is theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to the repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave pure nature incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too ambitious, and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Prima Secundae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas was able to solve the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from the knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethics, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of the death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not the Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is no way an ethical ‘absolutism’, as both the traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularists tend to believe, but rather an ethic of prudential judgment on the individual case. Exceptions to this approach – or better the result of logical fallacies – are provided by the thesis of the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of so-called intrinsically evil acts, a thesis that would simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences that Thomas did not live long enough to draw. -/- 14. Scholastic practical philosophy: John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. A reconstruction is carried out of the ethical doctrines by both most authoritative Franciscan doctors. Their continuity with Aquinas is vindicated against prejudice carried by centuries of polemics within the Catholic Church and tendentious disparaging of both as forerunners of execrable Reformation. Besides aspects of continuity, also the important novelties are illustrated, first John’s abandonment of Aquinas’s and Augustine’s eudemonism, asserting righteousness for righteousness’s sake, and then William’s explicit defence of the philosopher’s virtues, that is, natural morality, and his solution to the dilemma of God’s omnipotence and the universal validity of natural law extending to God himself. -/- 15. Aristotelianism interpreted by the Magistri Artium. -/- A reconstruction of the until recently forgotten ethical doctrines by the Parisian Magistri Artium, falsely depicted as ‘Averroists’ and either deprecated as heretics or mistaken for predecessors of modern secularism. In fact, they illustrate a view of ‘natural’ virtue as may be understood by human reason without the assistance by Revelation. -/- Etiamsi daremus Deum non esse. Intermediate considerations. Three considerations may be suggested by the story told in the book. The first one is that intellectual histories have been mounted in the past with the same state of mind as one may mount a war chariot. Such constructions are not very helpful as tools for understanding the past. Wars waged in the past have left the field obstructed by ruins not easy to remove even by those historians who have animated by an impartial academic motivation. They have been influenced too by consequences of past emphasis on some authors and damnatio capitis suffered by others, by stratifications left on sources by secondary literature and translations, by allotment of originally close sources to different literary genres, by the monopolization of religious texts by churches with full cooperation by secular scholars who still fear contamination. The second one is that aware or unaware ethnocentrism has carried various calamities to our comprehension of the past. Their last vestiges have surfaced again in the semi-scholarly discussion on the idea of Europe occasioned by the debate on a project of a European Constitution. Mention of Europe’s Christian roots has been the clumsiest move. Proclamations of such roots were so obvious in what they affirmed as they were totally off-path concerning what they omitted, namely that he modern European moral tradition included legacies from Middle-Eastern wisdom, Hellenic philosophy, Roman Imperial legal literature, and, besides, a Jewish legacy in turn incorporating other more ancient Middle-Eastern legacies and which has been partly conveyed by Christianity. And the Islamic-Arabic philosophy too, in so far it made the Nicomachean Ethics available to Latin Christian scholars, is one more of Europe’s roots. The third is that religious traditionalists and secularist fundamentalists have gone hand in hand for a couple of centuries in either extolling or deprecating the allegedly Modern idea of Ethics without God, first formulated by Hugo Grotius with the claim that natural law would still be valid ‘etiamsi daremus – quod sine summo scelere dari potest – Deum non esse’. The facts are, firstly, that this is not an irreligious claim and Grotius was just a pious and meek Christian and, secondly, that it is not a ‘modern’ claim but rather one more formulation of the claim that there is a natural morality, independent of divine revelation, a claim shared by Moshe ben Maimon, Aquinas and William of Ockham. -/- . (shrink)

This case study explored how a teacher, Mr. Smith, and his students experienced a mandated performance assessment while simultaneously preparing for an end of the year high-stakes, multiple-choice assessment. We employed qualitative research methods to examine how the teacher enacted a mandated performance assessment during a unit on Byzantium and how students described their learning and classroom experiences from the unit. Drawing on Grant's idea of ambitious teaching and learning of history and Ball's work on policy realization, (...) analysis of these data indicated that Mr. Smith interpreted and enacted a performance assessment in ways that differed from how district and state policy makers intended. Despite an assessment that the district designed to promote historical thinking skills, students learned primarily factual knowledge. (shrink)

The 1981 legislation in Arkansas and Louisiana which required "balanced treatment of creation-science and evolution-science" represents the most ambitious effort of the "scientific creationists" to date to gain equal time for the teaching of the book of Genesis as an alternative and viable scientific theory of origins. The trial testing the constitutionality of the Arkansas law culminated in a powerful and unambiguous decision; however, creationists continue to lobby for similar legislation in many other states. Far from an aberration, (...) today's scientific creationists represent a modern manifestation of a deep fundamentalist current in American social history. (shrink)

Machiavelli is popularly known as a teacher of tyrants, a key proponent of the unscrupulous “Machiavellian” politics laid down in his landmark political treatise The Prince. Others cite the Discourses on Livy to argue that Machiavelli is actually a passionate advocate of republican politics who saw the need for occasional harsh measures to maintain political order. Which best characterizes the teachings of the prolific Italian philosopher? With Machiavelli’s Politics, Catherine H. Zuckert turns this question on its head with a major (...) reinterpretation of Machiavelli’s prose works that reveals a surprisingly cohesive view of politics. Starting with Machiavelli’s two major political works, Zuckert persuasively shows that the moral revolution Machiavelli sets out in The Prince lays the foundation for the new form of democratic republic he proposes in the Discourses. Distrusting ambitious politicians to serve the public interest of their own accord, Machiavelli sought to persuade them in The Prince that the best way to achieve their own ambitions was to secure the desires and ambitions of their subjects and fellow citizens. In the Discourses, he then describes the types of laws and institutions that would balance the conflict between the two in a way that would secure the liberty of most, if not all. In the second half of her book, Zuckert places selected later works—La Mandragola, The Art of War, The Life of Castruccio Castracani, Clizia, and Florentine Histories—under scrutiny, showing how Machiavelli further developed certain aspects of his thought in these works. In The Art of War, for example, he explains more concretely how and to what extent the principles of organization he advanced in The Prince and the Discourses ought to be applied in modern circumstances. Because human beings act primarily on passions, Machiavelli attempts to show readers what those passions are and how they can be guided to have productive rather than destructive results. A stunning and ambitious analysis, Machiavelli’s Politics brilliantly shows how many conflicting perspectives do inform Machiavelli’s teachings, but that one needs to consider all of his works in order to understand how they cohere into a unified political view. This is a magisterial work that cannot be ignored if a comprehensive understanding of the philosopher is to be obtained. (shrink)

Interest in esoteric and mystical aspects of Islam in present-day Russia and its Soviet and tsarist predecessors is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. The article starts with a critical discussion of Aleksandr Dugin’s interpretations of Sufism in his ambitious intellectual project Noomachia: Wars of the Intellect [and] Civilizations of Borderlands. The author then compares Dugin’s conceptualizations of Sufism with those of several Russian writers who lived in the second half of the nineteenth century and whose portrayal of Sufism and (...) its followers is similar to Dugin’s in some important respects. These ideologically driven constructions of Sufism stand in sharp contrast to the self-consciously objective scholarly ones that emerged in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century within the Russian academic and teaching institutions specializing in Eastern religions, languages, and cultures. The author argues that Russian academic conceptualizations of Sufism mirrored those of the fin-de-siècle German Islamology and then proceeds to examine the profound changes in Russian attitudes to Sufism, and Islam generally, after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the rise of the Soviet state that based its legitimacy on the Marxist-Leninist concept of history with its pervasive atheism, materialism, and emphasis on class struggle. It shaped Soviet-era academic and nonacademic approaches to Sufism until the mid-1980s, when Soviet scholars began to question the Marxist-Leninist certainties of the previous six decades. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Conversations from the Shin Buddhist-Muslim-Christian Workshops, 2016–2019:IntroductionDennis HirotaIn 2016, members of the Research Center for World Buddhist Cultures at Ryukoku University initiated a project that came to be titled "Conversations in Comparative Theology: Shin Buddhism, Christianity, Islam." The basic plan called for a small number of scholars of the three traditions to meet to present papers on shared themes and discuss vital topics in their own traditions. The hope (...) was that participants would, through the presentations, reflect critically on issues within their own tradition in the light of the theological thinking of other traditions.The first meeting was held at Ryukoku University in 2016. The planning for the project was joined, at various stages, by Perry Schmidt-Leukel of Münster University, Peter Phan of Georgetown University, and David Matsumoto of the Institute of Buddhist Studies, all of whom hosted a meeting at their home institution. In all, four meetings were held in four consecutive years in Kyoto, Münster, Washington, D.C., and Berkeley.For the first three meetings, panels were organized around set themes, with one panelist presenting for each tradition. The themes for all the panels were largely determined at the outset of the project. They were intended to be topics of major significance with broad resonance across the traditions. It was anticipated that each topic would be viewed as harboring issues requiring current deliberation. In this respect, some of the panel topics were more fruitful than others.The panel topics for the first meeting were: (i) Buddha's teaching, revelation, truth; (ii) universality and exclusivism; (iii) myth and history; and (iv) Amida, Allah, Trinity.The panel topics for the second meeting: (i) karmic evil, sin, suffering, and predestination; (ii) practice, prayer, and transformation; (iii) repentance and forgiveness, aspiration, and hope; and (iv) human existence.The topics for the third meeting: (i) wisdom-compassion, divine love/mercy, and transcendence; (ii) shinjin, nembutsu, surrender/faith, remembrance, and the prophetic voice; (iii) Amida's directing of virtue; grace, justice, and moral life; and (iv) naturalness (jinen), fitra, spirit. [End Page 239]At the final meeting, participants presented revised or augmented papers reflecting their experience during the entire project. The eight articles gathered here were originally written as part of the project at various points during the four-year course of its proceedings.Readers will be able to determine the success of the project itself by the merits or limitations of the contributions. It may be useful, however, to offer a reflection on the meetings as a whole. Students of religion experienced in interreligious, intercultural, or comparative theological dialogue will recognize some of the difficulties surrounding the project. I will mention simply that a tension or polarity of concerns quickly emerged that might be characterized as the distance between "comparative" approaches, on the one hand, and more traditional "theological" practices, on the other hand. We learned that students of religion engage in comparison based on diverse hermeneutical presuppositions, and that theological reflection within religious communities of discourse can vary widely as well.Another challenge, at least initially, was limited knowledge of other traditions. This may have inclined presenters to focus on clarifying concepts in their own tradition or highlighting points of convergence with other traditions. This tendency seems heightened when three traditions are involved, although participants were not required to include all three in their research. The basic goal of the project was to foster work in constructive theological treatments of pressing issues in our respective traditions by means of critical engagement with another tradition. This goal may be ambitious, but we learned it is worth the effort. [End Page 240]Dennis HirotaRyukoku UniversityCopyright © 2022 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Theories of Doctrinal Development: An AssessmentAndrew MeszarosMICHAEL SEEWALD’S book Dogma im Wandel1 is in some ways a new attempt at the project of Owen Chadwick’s From Bossuet to Newman.2 Chadwick offered a historical survey of approaches to development punctuated by a final epilogue reflecting on the enduring relevance of Newman. Seewald’s chapters too begin historically and end with a final reflection on where we are headed (or ought to (...) be headed). But the temporal frame that Seewald sets himself is far more ambitious. Whereas Chadwick was satisfied with chapters considering sixteenth-to eighteenth-century theology, ending with a prolonged engagement with Newman, and with Aidan Nichols taking up the baton from Chadwick in his From Newman to Congar, covering Newman again, and proceeding to the Modernists, some neo-Scholastics, and other key twentieth-century theologians (e.g., Rahner, Schillebeeckx, [End Page 653] Congar),3 Seewald’s book of seven chapters4 attempts something more far-reaching (even if his book is of similar length).Its ambitious scope has great potential. There is, to be sure, a great deal of reading that went into this work. And Seewald ought to be commended for not backing away from different historical epochs. As so much discussion about the development of doctrine is presented as a uniquely modern problem, Seewald’s foray into the patristic and medieval periods is most welcome, and invites others to continue this important work. Readers can learn something from each chapter. Interesting and relevant points of theological history and controversy are brought to the reader’s attention. There are, moreover, a number of sources, especially in the German original (whose notes are far more interesting and extensive), which it behooves scholars, especially in the English-speaking world, to engage with. Most importantly, however, we are indebted to Seewald for a sincere presentation of his understanding of development, an understanding which, in its general principles, is undoubtedly shared by many Catholics today, academics and nonacademics alike.Nevertheless, there are problems. Given the importance of development, especially today, it is important to address them in a charitable spirit. In what follows, I will engage with a series of issues brought up in the book. The first two, (i) history and contingency and (ii) the relationship between the Gospel and dogma, are perhaps the most theologically substantive, as they pertain immediately to our understanding of how revealed truth is communicated over time (i.e., doctrinal development). I will subsequently critically examine Seewald’s theological evaluations of particular auctoritates on development, which leads him to dismiss some and misappropriate others. The upshot is that the theological argument and historical scholarship are at times wanting. But first let us survey the book’s argument. [End Page 654]I. Summary of the ArgumentChapter 1 discusses the development of the concept “dogma” and the emergence of development theory, especially as a reaction to Protestant Dogmengeschichten. Chapter 2 highlights the dynamics of development already at play in the formation of Scripture and its theology, such as the emergence of paraclete theology in the New Testament.Chapter 3 discusses patristic approaches to doctrinal development (e.g., Augustine and Vincent). Seewald observes that historical circumstances, such as heresy, can drive development in a defensive way. He notes, however, that development can also be explained more positively as a part of divine pedagogy whereby the Church develops a teaching when it is, as it were, “ready” for it. For example, the pneumatology of Constantinople in 381 can be explained both defensively and positively: having already made progress in Christological doctrine at Nicaea, and in order to combat the pneumatomachians, the Church was ready to unpack the divinity of the Holy Spirit (65–67). Chapter 4 surveys key medieval contributions (e.g., Hugh of St. Victor, Thomas Aquinas) to development theory in, for example, the concept of fides implicita. There is also a brief but helpful discussion of Anselm, whose defense of the filioque put into sharp relief the role of the logically necessary inference in development (86–93). The Reformation is but touched upon, and the Baroque period (where Chadwick’s work begins) is essentially passed over.With the longer... (shrink)

History, Philosophy and Science Teaching argues that science teaching and science teacher education can be improved if teachers know something of the history and philosophy of science and if these topics are included in the science curriculum. The history and philosophy of science have important roles in many of the theoretical issues that science educators need to address: the goals of science education; what constitutes an appropriate science curriculum for all students; how science should be (...) taught in traditional cultures; what integrated science is; how scientific literacy can be promoted; and the conflict which can occur between science curriculum and deep-seated religious or cultural values and knowledge. In part, answers to these questions hinge on views about the nature of science, views that are best informed by historical and philosophical study. Outlining the history of liberal, or contextual, approaches to the teaching of science, Michael Matthews elaborates contemporary curriculum developments that explicitly address questions about the nature and the history of science. He provides examples of classroom teaching and develops useful arguments on constructivism, multicultural science education and teacher education. The book will appeal to school and university science teachers, educators of science teachers, and historians and philosophers of science. (shrink)

Presenting U.S. history as contested interpretations of compelling problems, this text offers a clear set of principles and strategies, together with case studies and "Mystery Packets" of documentary materials from key periods in American history, that teachers can use with their students to promote and sustain problem-finding and problem-solving in history and social studies classrooms. Structured to encourage new attitudes toward history as hands-on inquiry, conflicting interpretation, and myriad uncertainties, the whole point is to create a (...) user-friendly way of teaching history "as it really is" - with all its problems, issues, unknowns, and value clashes. Students and teachers are invited to think anew as active participants in learning history rather than as passive sponges soaking up pre-arranged and often misrepresented people and events. New in the Second Edition: New chapters on Moundbuilders, and the Origins of Slavery; expanded Gulf of Tonkin chapter now covering the Vietnam and Iraq wars; teaching tips in this edition draw on years of teacher experience in using mysteries in their classrooms since the publication of the first edition. (shrink)

We reflect on our experience co-teaching a medical humanities elective, “Pandemics and Plagues,” which was offered to undergraduates during the Spring 2021 semester, and discuss student reactions to studying epidemic disease from multidisciplinary medical humanities perspectives while living through the world Covid-19 pandemic. The course incorporated basic microbiology and epidemiology into discussions of how epidemics from the Black Death to HIV/AIDS have been portrayed in history, literature, art, music, and journalism. Students self-assessed their learning gains and offered their (...) insights using the SALG, describing how the course enhanced their understanding of the current pandemic. In class discussions and written assignments, students paid particular attention to issues of social justice, political context, and connections between past pandemics and Covid-19. Student responses indicate enhanced understanding of the scientific and medical aspects of epidemics and also increased appreciation of the insights to be gained from the medical humanities. We discuss co-teaching the class during a real-time, twenty-four-hour-news-cycle pandemic, and the ways in which that experience underlines the value of a “critical medical humanities” approach for undergraduates. (shrink)

Although macroevolution has been the subject of sustained attention in the history and philosophy of science (HPS) community, only in recent years have science educators begun to more fully engage with the topic. This chapter first explores how science educators have conceptualized macroevolution and how their perspectives align with the views from HPS. Second, it illustrates how science educators’ limited engagement with HPS scholarship on macroevolution has influenced construct delineation, measurement instrument development, and educational arguments about which aspects of (...) macroevolution are most important for students to learn. Third, it discusses how scientific debates about the causal factors responsible for macroevolutionary patterns have been exploited by creationists and have impacted the teaching of evolution. Finally, it emphasizes that the rich perspectives that HPS has to offer on the important topic of macroevolution have yet to be integrated into science education scholarship. (shrink)

The beginning of the twentieth century saw the emergence of the discipline of genetics. It is striking how many female scientists were contributing to this new field at the time. At least three female pioneers succeeded in becoming professors: Kristine Bonnevie (Norway), Elisabeth Schiemann (Germany) and the Tine Tammes (The Netherlands). The question is which factors contributed to the success of these women's careers? At the time women were gaining access to university education it had become quite the norm for (...) universities to be sites for teaching and research. They were still expanding: new laboratories were being built and new disciplines were being established. All three women benefited from the fact that genetics was considered a new field promising in terms of its utility to society; in the case of Tammes and Schiemann in agriculture and in the case of Bonnevie in eugenics. On the other hand, the field of genetics also benefited from the fact that these first female researchers were eager for the chance to work in science and wanted to make active contributions. They all worked and studied in environments which, although different from one another, were positive towards them, at least at the start. Having a patron was generally a prerequisite. Tammes profited from her teacher's contacts and status. Bonnevie made herself indispensable through her success as a teacher and eventually made her position so strong that she was no longer dependent on a single patron. The case of Schiemann adds something new; it shows the vulnerability of such dependency. Initially, Schiemann's teacher had to rely on the first generation of university women simply because he was unable to attract ambitious young men to his institute. In those early, uncertain years of the new discipline, male scientists tended to choose other, better established, and more prestigious disciplines. However, when genetics itself had become an established field, it also became more attractive to men. Our case studies also demonstrate that a new field at first relatively open to women closes its doors to them once it becomes established. (shrink)

Peter Adamson offers an accessible, humorous tour through a period of eight hundred years when some of the most influential of all schools of thought were formed: from the third century BC to the sixth century AD. He introduces us to Cynics and Skeptics, Epicureans and Stoics, emperors and slaves, and traces the development of Christian and Jewish philosophy and of ancient science. Chapters are devoted to such major figures as Epicurus, Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca, Plotinus, and Augustine. But in keeping (...) with the motto of the series, the story is told 'without any gaps, ' providing an in-depth look at less familiar topics that remains suitable for the general reader. For instance, there are chapters on the fascinating but relatively obscure Cyrenaic philosophical school, on pagan philosophical figures like Porphyry and Iamblichus, and extensive coverage of the Greek and Latin Christian Fathers who are at best peripheral in most surveys of ancient philosophy. A major theme of the book is in fact the competition between pagan and Christian philosophy in this period, and the Jewish tradition also appears in the shape of Philo of Alexandria. Ancient science is also considered, with chapters on ancient medicine and the interaction between philosophy and astronomy. Considerable attention is paid also to the wider historical context, for instance by looking at the ascetic movement in Christianity and how it drew on ideas from Hellenic philosophy. From the counter-cultural witticisms of Diogenes the Cynic to the subtle skepticism of Sextus Empiricus, from the irreverent atheism of the Epicureans to the ambitious metaphysical speculation of Neoplatonism, from the ethical teachings of Marcus Aurelius to the political philosophy of Augustine, the book gathers together all aspects of later ancient thought in an accessible and entertaining way. (shrink)

This anthology opens new perspectives in the domain of history, philosophy, and science teaching research. Its four sections are: first, science, culture and education; second, the teaching and learning of science; third, curriculum development and justification; and fourth, indoctrination. The first group of essays deal with the neglected topic of science education and the Enlightenment tradition. These essays show that many core commitments of modern science education have their roots in this tradition, and consequently all can benefit (...) from a more informed awareness of its strengths and weaknesses. Other essays address research on leaning and teaching from the perspectives of social epistemology and educational psychology. Included here is the first ever English translation of Ernst Mach’s most influential 1890 paper on ‘The Psychological and Logical Moment in Natural Science Teaching’. This paper launched the influential Machian tradition in education. Other essays address concrete cases of the utilisation of history and philosophy in the development and justification of school science curricula. These are instances of the supportive relation of HPS&ST research to curriculum theorising. Finally, two essays address the topic of Indoctrination in science education; a subject long-discussed in philosophy of education, but inadequately in science education. This book is a timely reminder of why history and philosophy of science are urgently needed to support understanding of science. From major traditions such as the Enlightenment to the tensions around cultural studies of science, the book provides a comprehensive context for the scientific endeavour, drawing on curriculum and instructional examples. Sibel Erduran, University of Oxford, UK The scholarship that each of the authors in this volume offers deepens our understanding of what we teach in science and why that understanding matters. This is an important book exploring a wide set of issues and should be read by anyone with an interest in science or science education. Jonathan Osborne, Stanford University, USA This volume presents new and updated perspectives in the field, such as the Enlightenment Tradition, Cultural Studies, Indoctrination in Science Education, and Nature of Science. Highly recommended. Mansoor Niaz, Universidad de Oriente, Venezuela This volume provides an extremely valuable set of insights into educational issues related to the history and philosophy of science. Michael J Reiss, University College London, UK. (shrink)

This book presents a survey of approaches to dealing with 'rival histories' in the classroom, arguing that approaching this problem requires great sensitivity to differing national, educational and narrative contexts. Contested narratives and disputed histories have long been an important issue in history-teaching all over the world, and have even been described as the 'history' or 'culture' wars. In this book, authors from across the globe ponder the question "what can teachers do (and what are they doing) (...) to address conflicting narratives of the same past?", and puts an epistemological issue at the heart of the discussion: what does it mean for the epistemology of history, if it is possible to teach more than one narrative? Divided into three sections that deal with historical cultures, multicultural societies and multiperspectivity, the chapters of the book showcase that dealing with rival histories is very much dependent on context, and that diverse teaching traditions and societal debates mean that teachers' abilities in engaging with the teaching of rival narratives are very different. The volume will be compelling reading for students and researchers in the fields of education, history, sociology and philosophy, as well as practising teachers. (shrink)

History, Geography and Civics provides an in-depth and engaging introduction to teaching and learning socio-environmental education from F-6 in Australia and New Zealand. It explores the centrality of socio-environmental issues to all aspects of life and education and makes explicit links between pedagogical theories and classroom activities. Part I introduces readers to teaching and learning history, geography and environmental studies, and civics and citizenship, as well as issues in intercultural and global education. Part II explores the (...) use of media and sources, values and attitudes, assessment and creative teaching. Each chapter provides links to the Australian Curriculum, including cross-curriculum priorities: sustainability, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education, and Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia. History, Geography and Civics encourages the reader to consider their own beliefs, values and attitudes in relation to their teaching and includes provocations and reflective questions to foster discussion and engagement. (shrink)

Is there truth in history? Historians are commonly expected to produce ‘facts’ and to be ‘objective’. If they teach the history of Christianity, their audience sees in them the depositors of the ‘truth’ on the history of church. Showing the contradictions of the church’s discourse in the past and highlighting the essentially transient nature of church doctrine are perceived as a threat. Yet, our knowledge of the Christian past is provisional and limited. It depends on the quality (...) of the historical sources at our disposal. Consciously or not, it is always the result of a process of knowledge construction. The aim of this article is to explore the triple challenge – pedagogical, pastoral and intellectual – that researchers in history of Christianity face in the exercise of their profession. Historians trained in the tradition of historical criticism consider that an historical narrative can claim a certain degree of approximation of the truth if the documents on which it is based pass the test of authenticity, reliability and validity. Without necessarily denying that truth exists somehow and somewhere, postmodern historians – and this also applies to Christian history – insist that any form of historical knowledge is constructed and that all approaches to truth are situated in terms of period, geographical location, social environment, class, gender, age and race. The study of history of Christianity brings discomfort. But in the end, one gains from confronting the critical challenges of the discipline. Faith will come out stronger if it faces the reality of the human condition. (shrink)

This paper describes an attempt to introduce philosophy and history of science to pre-service science teachers. I argue briefly for the view that science in the schools cannot be taught without implicitly assuming a particular philosophy of science. Therefore, both philosophy and history of science are necessary components of undergraduate science education courses.

This chapter relates a broadly chronological story of the developments over the last 50 years that have sought to reshape the science curriculum in English schools by introducing aspects of the history of science and nature of science. The chapter highlights key curriculum projects by outlining the contexts in which they developed and summarising their rationales as set out in their publications. It also provides signposts to some of the reports of research and scholarship that have evaluated these initiatives. (...) The chapter shows how the first national curriculum in 1989 was influenced by earlier initiatives as it made teaching about the nature of science mandatory for all. This requirement faded into the background after a few years and then re-emerged with a new rationale as ‘how science works’ in 2004. The chapter ends by looking to the future with a discussion of a new course which contrasts with earlier traditions by focussing the teaching and learning on the history and philosophy of science rather than using ideas from these disciplines to teach about science. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Handbook of Research and Policy in Art EducationCharles M. DornHandbook of Research and Policy in Art Education, edited by Elliot Eisner and Michael Day. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004, 879 pp., $90.00 paper.The Handbook of Research and Policy in Art Education is an 875-page compendium of articles addressing nearly every conceivable issue in the field and is, if nothing else, a valuable tour de force for any reader (...) who wants to come up to speed on issues in the field. It is not, however, either strictly a handbook or a complete exploration of either art education policy or research. This in no way diminishes its potential value as a source for policy issues and research that are of significant concern to the field.The publication presents 36 individual or joint authored chapters on (1) historical currents in art education, (2) policy perspectives impacting the teaching of art, (3) learning in the visual arts, (4) teaching and teacher education, (5) forms of assessment in art education, and (6) emerging visions of the field. Each of the six sections begins with a short introductory statement by the researcher responsible for reviewing the essays in that session. These section editors include F. Graeme-Chalmers, Ralph Smith, Anna Kindler, Enid Zimmerman, Elisabeth Soep, and Arthur Efland. Forty-one authors contributed to the book's contents, all of which have nationally recognized expertise in handling the topic discussed.Editors Elliot Eisner and Michael Day view the book as an effort to bring together research and theory, policy, and concepts that guide and give shape to what people in art education try to accomplish—which is, of course, a rather ambitious goal. Even the editors admit the Handbook meets some but not all of these competing orientations. They also claim that the Handbook serves as an assertion that art education is a scholarly field, perhaps even to a fault through mostly ignoring qualitative issues regarding goals, expressive art form, and aesthetics. Also, the editors admit that the Handbook will be a disappointment, which is true, especially with respect to its emphasis on rationales rather than policy problems, on assessment appreciation rather than policy and research, on assessment in art education history as a record of events rather than as policy windows, and on emerging visions as older forms of social and political discourse rather than policy issues, implementation, and evaluation.Nevertheless, the Handbook addresses a number of important policy issues, providing well-developed and valuable views of the field by a variety of important authors and, in some cases, with some rarely seen insights into the nature of the field. I will only review the most salient ideas of the chapter authors in each of the six sections and then comment on what I believe are promising, and sometimes somewhat troubling, directions pointed out in the chapters, including what promises have not been fulfilled. [End Page 111]Section I, on historical currents, includes chapters by F. Graeme Chalmers; Mary Ann Stankiewicz, Pat Amburgy, and Paul Bolin; and John Howell White. Chalmers provides a very thorough overview of the literature on the history of art education, including what he calls the broad perspectives on art education, history, and research interests of art education historians. Overall, he references nearly 300 publications. Stankiewicz, Amburgy, and Bolin then address specific movements in nineteenth-century art education and art, including a brief history of the social function of art, drawing instruction in schools, industrial drawing, manual training, the arts and crafts movement picture study, and progressive education with over 120 references. White, who follows, provides a similar review of major forces, focusing mainly on art education influences in the twentieth century, addressing the contributions of various art educators, arts organizational leaders, artists, government initiatives, and the critical and divergent influences of key post–WW II art education writers. He also documents his work with nearly 300 sources.Section II, on policy perspectives, contains seven chapters, including ones by Ralph Smith; Samuel Hope; Constance Bumgarner Gee; Lois Hetland and Ellen Winner; H. Gene Blocker; and E. Louis Langford and Kelly Scheffer. In Section II, Sam Hope outlines the power of policy and its effect... (shrink)

This study explores preservice and practicing teachers’ conceptions of historical significance generally and for the history classroom. Using think-aloud interviews and card-sorting data, we engaged in qualitative analysis of how four preservice and five practicing teachers answered two questions related to determining significance: what events are most significant in world history and what events are most important for students to learn? Results showed that (a) participants answered the two questions differently, and (b) both practicing and preservice teachers added (...) considerations when responding to the question about what events are most important for students to learn. Through these analyses, we developed the term instructional significance to describe an aspect of pedagogical content knowledge that serves as a lens through which teachers view the content they teach, and think about that content in preparing to teach students. We use these findings and research on student and teacher conceptions of historical significance to propose a preliminary framework for instructional significance for teaching history. We conclude by suggesting the utility of the framework to history classrooms and to future research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Kant’s Wake: Philosophy in the Twentieth CenturyRobert HannaTom Rockmore. In Kant’s Wake: Philosophy in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. Pp. 213. Paper, $24.95.In In Kant's Wake, Tom Rockmore sets himself the almost impossibly ambitious task of telling a coherent story about the sprawling set of thinkers, doctrines, arguments, journal articles, books, social institutions, teachings, and other intellectual practices that make up philosophy in the twentieth (...) century. His highly plausible unifying hypothesis is that twentieth-century philosophy is a series of creative and reactive footnotes to Kant's Critical Philosophy as encapsulated in the Critique of Pure Reason, and in particular, to Kant's transcendental idealism. Of course the same unifying hypothesis is equally plausible of the nineteenth century. In this sense, the history of philosophy since Kant is just the history of post-Kantian philosophy.Rather than telling a single long story, Rockmore tells five shorter stories. He begins his narrative with a chapter on Kant's metaphysics and immediate responses to the Critique of Pure Reason (ch. 2). Then he focuses, in turn, on the diachronic developments of Marxism (ch. 3), pragmatism, (ch. 4), phenomenology (ch. 5), and analytic philosophy (ch. 6). The five stories are framed by a methodological chapter on the problem of interpreting twentieth-century philosophy (ch. 1), and a concluding chapter on the relation between Kant and the overall shape of philosophy in the twentieth century (ch. 7).Three more or less explicitly-stated interpretive principles run through each of Rockmore's historical narratives. The first, as I have already mentioned, is the grand unifying hypothesis of the essentially protean character of Kant's first Critique and the metaphysics of transcendental idealism. The second is that each distinct philosophical movement is [End Page 676] fundamentally organized around the teachings and writings of a few "master" or "strong" thinkers (14). And the third is that the history of philosophy is nothing but a multi-voiced Socratic conversation (13). Everyone knows how even the most intensely animated intellectual conversation can end with an inconclusive whimper instead of a conclusive bang. According to Rockmore, that is basically what happened to the great philosophical conversation of the twentieth century.In the chapter on Kant, Rockmore usefully distinguishes between two strands of transcendental idealism that Kant regarded as fully complementary, but which tended to run and pull in sharply opposite directions in post-Kantian philosophy: (1) the representationalist strand, and (2) the constructivist strand (36). Now Kant's transcendental idealism says four things. First, cognition is the mental representation of objects. Second, the objects we cognize are nothing but appearances or phenomena and never things-in-themselves or noumena. Third, the generic structure of the objects and the world we cognize is identical to the non-empirical or a priori generic structure of the innate cognitive capacities or faculties of our minds. And fourth, the human mind is spontaneously active in producing the specific structures of the very objects we cognize when our faculties are triggered by particular sensory inputs. The first and second theses of transcendental idealism constitute its representationalist strand, and the third and fourth theses constitute its constructivist strand.The decomposition of the orginal Kantian vector into its representationalist and constructivist components helps Rockmore in his interpretation of the four main sub-movements of twentieth-century philosophy. Marxism or dialectical materialism, organized of course around the teachings and writings of Karl Marx, is an economic, social, and political version of post-Kantian constructivism focused on the concrete struggles of alienated individuals and groups to achieve liberation and self-realization in collective action. So too pragmatism, organized around the teachings and writings of C. S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, is another version of post-Kantian constructivism, this time focused on the idea that the meaning and truth of concepts and propositions is strictly determined by the practical pay-offs of applying those concepts and propositions.By contrast, phenomenology and analytic philosophy are both versions of representationalism. Phenomenology is organized around the teaching and writings of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and focuses on the structures of consciousness and object-directedness... (shrink)

Part of the educational system in England has been geared towards the preparation of particular professions, while the identity and status of members of some professions have depended significantly on the general education they have received. Originally published in 1973, this volume explores the interaction between education and the professions. It also looks at the education of the main professions in sixteenth century England and at how twentieth century university teaching is a key profession for the training of new (...) recruits to other professions. (shrink)

A case-study, small-group-discussion (“focal problem”) exercise in the history of medicine was designed, piloted, and evaluated in an overseas course and an on-campus elective course for medical students. Results suggest that this is a feasible approach to teaching history of medicine which can overcome some of the problems often encountered in teaching this subject in the medical curriculum.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Emergence of Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1210–1685Helen HattabStephen Gaukroger. The Emergence of Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1210–1685. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007. Pp. ix + 563. Cloth, $65.00.The sheer variety of both cognitive and non-cognitive contributions to the emergence of a scientific culture in the West and the complex relations to pre-modern developments that scholars have brought to light over (...) the past decades have put into question both the Enlightenment and Kuhnian accounts of the scientific revolution. Gaukroger’s work performs the ambitious but indispensable task of beginning to formulate an alternative way of understanding this momentous transition, one based on recent scholarship. Gaukroger treats science as both “a particular kind of cognitive product, and as a particular kind of cultural product” (3). His overarching goal is to show that examining the interrelations between the two can teach us something about modernity that focusing on one, to the exclusion of the other, cannot. He argues that the enduring success of Western science was not due to its advances (there were previous advances in other cultures), but due to its ability to consolidate. Successful consolidation promotes the cognitive claims of science and builds a scientific culture to legitimate them. Hence, throughout this book, Gaukroger explores how particular advances (e.g., in astronomy and natural philosophy) were legitimated by their ability to reinforce revelation, unify different disciplines, and exemplify the scientific persona. Since these means of consolidation, unlike methods of scientific discovery, rely on both cultural forces and intellectual advances, Gaukroger makes good on his promise to teach us something that intellectual and cultural histories taken separately cannot.Gaukroger characterizes Western modernity in terms of the eventual assimilation of all cognitive values to scientific ones. He targets the Enlightenment view which, as a result of this assimilation, reinterprets the success of scientific practices over others in ahistorical terms. On this view, the longstanding success of science results solely from cognitive advances, such as the commitment to objectivity (science was assumed to have dissociated itself from religion), the employment of adversarial, non-dogmatic arguments, and the development of quantitative and empirical methods. Gaukroger shows instead that: (1) early modern Epicurean and mechanist natural philosophies forged a closer connection to religious doctrine in response to the ultimate failure to maintain the Thomist reconciliation of theology with Aristotelian natural philosophy; (2) the threat posed by the naturalism of Renaissance philosophers like Pomponazzi led to a privileging of systematization over innovation in late Scholasticism, as well as a renewed interest in natural history, which later spawned the enterprise of physico-theology; (3) the adversarial character of ancient means of cultivating wisdom was rejected in favor of gentlemanly cooperation. This went hand-in-hand with a gradual reassignment of the aims of enquiry from the attainment of a transcendent truth to a productive truth, and the corresponding construction, by Bacon and others, of the scientific persona, which embodied the cognitive virtue of objectivity rather than the ethical virtue of ancient and medieval wisdom. Finally, (4) Beeckman and Descartes failed to achieve the quantification of natural philosophy they aimed for, in large part due to their conflicting commitment to corpuscularian matter theory. The successful replacement of Aristotelian causal explanations in natural philosophy by mechanistic explanations lay in mechanism’s ability to unify all causal explanation, rather than its ability to offer quantitative [End Page 640] explanations of various natural phenomena. Similarly, the experimental methods of Gilbert and Boyle were at first hotly contested, the eventual success of non-foundationalist, empirical approaches owing more to the unifying role played by the experiments of Gilbert, Boyle, and Newton. Although Boyle’s experimental philosophy included a mechanistic matter theory, unlike strict mechanists, experimentalists used experiments to focus and unify heterogeneous phenomena rather than grounding explanations in matter theory.Gaukroger presents the relevant cultural developments and theoretical advances with an impressive degree of detail and accuracy. Readers will gain insights about everything from the differences between early medieval Augustinianism and late medieval Aristotelianism, to Spinozism versus its late seventeenth-century alternatives. Scholars with expertise in specific areas will no doubt take issue with individual claims... (shrink)

Nursing history has been a much debated subject with a wide range of work from many countries discussing the profession’s identity and questioning the nature of nursing and professional practice. Building upon a review of the recent developments in nursing history worldwide and on primary research that examined the structure of mandated nursing history courses in 14 nursing schools in the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil, this paper analyzes both the content and the pedagogical style applied. We (...) postulate that the study of history offers an important opportunity for the development of student learning, and propose that more creative and dynamic teaching strategies be applied. We argue the need for professors to be active historical researchers, so they may meaningfully contribute to the development of local histories and enrich the professional identities of both nursing students and the profession. We conclude that historical education in nursing is limited by a traditional and universalist approach to nursing history, by the lack of relevant local sources or examples, and by the failure of historical education to be used as a vehicle to provide students with the intellectual tools for the development of professional understanding and self‐identity. (shrink)

The narrative about the nineteenth century favored by many philosophers of mathematics strongly influenced by either logic or algebra, is that geometric intuition led real and complex analysis astray until Cauchy and Kronecker in one sense and Dedekind in another guided mathematicians out of the labyrinth through the arithmetization of analysis. Yet the use of geometry in most cases in nineteenth century mathematics was not misleading and was often key to important developments. Thus the geometrization of complex numbers was essential (...) to their acceptance and to the development of complex analysis; geometry provided the canonical examples that led to the formulation of group theory; and geometry, transformed by Riemann, lay at the heart of topology, which in turn transformed much of modern mathematics. Using complex numbers as my case study, I argue that the best way to teach students mathematics is through a repertoire of modes of representation, which is also the best way to make mathematical discoveries. (shrink)

Originally published in 1920 as part of a series of handbooks for teachers, this book of advice to history teachers is still full of practical information on the use of historical sources and possible classroom exercises designed to engage children with the study of the past. This book will be useful to anyone with an interest in the history of education, historical education in particular.