Si Vernant est célèbre pour avoir appliqué aux mythes grecs la méthode structurale élaborée par Lévi-Strauss, on essaiera ici de montrer que l’absence de la notion de transformation dans ses travaux révèle la distance qui sépare sa psychologie historique de l’anthropologie structurale. Au lieu d’analyser les relations qui unissent les variantes d’un mythe, Vernant cherche à appréhender la cohérence interne d’une œuvre, afin de reconstituer la mentalité qu’elle exprime. Cette démarche s’oppose profondément à celle de Lévi-Strauss, qui soutient pour sa (...) part que le fonctionnement de la pensée sauvage n’apparaît qu’à travers les opérations qui permettent de traduire les uns dans les autres des mythes issus de cultures différentes. (shrink)

This is an intellectual biography of Benjamin Kidd, a leading Social Darwinist in the years before World War I, and a social prophet in the tradition of Comte and Spencer. His first book Social Evolution, published in 1894, was an immediate and enormous success around the world. In it, Kidd developed a collectivist form of Social Darwinism in tune with the values of Progressivism in America and the 'new liberalism' in Britain. By many it was regarded as the basis for (...) a properly scientific sociology, and the combination of its claims to scientific methodology, with an emphasis on non-rational forces as the agents of progress accurately caught the temper of its times. Launched on his career as a writer, Kidd's subsequent books and journalism continued to exercise extraordinary influence. His 'social imperialism', linking a bio-political defence of empire with a programme of social reform, won currency in the Anglo-American world at a time of expansionary fervour. (shrink)

I will take David Hall and Roger Ames’s idea of “field and focus”—each unique individual is a unique focus in the communal field—as a central theme of the East Asian way of dealing with the relationship between the community and its constituent members. The pairing of these two concepts suggests the essential mutuality of the communal involvement of every person and the “insistent particularity” of each person. The worth of each individual becomes manifest only if the “egocentered” self yields to (...) the “selfless” self. An East Asian sense of justice thereby acquires the sense of attention to each unique focus (particular individual) in the field (community). Liberty and human rights are thus ineluctably bound up with a sense of communal responsibility. (shrink)

To define knowledge in terms of (i) belief, (ii) justification, and (iii) truth is primarily epistemological and therefore seems to be untenable. What is wrong with the ontological view of knowledge? If objects like dream and shadow could be said to be real and worth investigating, why should knowledge itself not be treated as a knowable reality? Knowability suggests its possibility-like, pursuit-like, gradual disclosive—as distinguished from enclosed or complete—character. Disclosure isself-revealing or, as Indians say, svaprakasa. That is, its justification arises (...) from within. (shrink)

In 1885, during initial discussions of J. C. Maxwell's celebrated thermodynamic demon, Whiting (1) observed that the demon-like velocity selection of molecules can occur in a gravitationally bound gas. Recently, a gravitational Maxwell demon has been proposed which makes use of this observation [D. P. Sheehan, J. Glick, and J. D. Means, Found. Phys. 30, 1227 (2000)]. Here we report on numerical simulations that detail its microscopic phase space structure. Results verify the previously hypothesized mechanism of its paradoxical behavior. This (...) system appears to be the only example of a fully classical mechanical Maxwell demon that has not been resolved in favor of the second law of thermodynamics. (shrink)

A brief statement of medieval linguistic analysis as found chiefly in the works of Thomas Aquinas. A thin survey of contemporary analysis is offered in order to contrast the purported acceptance of analysis as the end of philosophy with Thomas' use of analysis as method. Unfortunately, most of the constructive work in language analysis during the past ten years is not considered. The brevity of the text precludes persuasive treatment; yet the book succeeds in its expressed purpose of sketching some (...) chief differences between the medieval and contemporary approaches in the hope that the confrontation of these currents will bring to the fore the analytic work of Aquinas himself.--D. P. B. (shrink)