In 1937 Coase explored the ‘nature of the firm’ and concluded economists cannot explain why firms exist, why their boundaries are where they are, why their internal arrangements are as they are, or why their performance is so varied. Without a viable theory of the firm we educators have no sound basis for teaching managing them. Economists have not yet answered Coase’s questions and our discipline seems to ignore the implications. More precisely we have no theories of the firm that (...) can explain profit, yet surely our students are headed into managing profit-seeking? If we follow Knight’s intuition and introduce uncertainty we create great difficulties for those managing business schools, as Simon observed in his 1967 paper on designing them : 1–16, 1967). This essay explores the implications for business schools of seeing a firm as a local language that indicates what must be attended to and how that should be treated if value and profit is to be created. (shrink)

This article explores how one might best understand Herbert Simon’s work. Many know him as a Nobel Prize-winning economist, an administrative theorist, a founder of AI, or as a psychologist—a man of many identities. The discussion suggests that ‘bounded rationality’ was Simon’s metaphor for the dynamic and pragmatic humanism he stood up against, the ‘rational man’, which he saw as a metaphor for today’s infertile anti-humanist ‘rational choice’ theorizing. Simon’s achievements were vast and exemplary, but they are of particular interest (...) to management theorists. Although Simon was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics, his work stood on a devastating critique of neoclassical economics. The main elements of his reputation are as a theorist of organizational decision-making, cognition, and management. Despite the seeming paradox between Simon’s distrust of human computation and his untroubled faith in computers, the article argues that Simon never abandoned his early humanising pluralism and philosophical positions. (shrink)

One of the standard ways of proving the consistency of additional hypotheses with the basic axioms of an axiom system is by the construction of what may be described as ‘inner models.’ By starting with a domain of individuals assumed to satisfy the basic axioms an inner model is constructed whose domain of individuals is a certain subset of the original individual domain. If such an inner model can be constructed which satisfies not only the basic axioms but also the (...) particular additional hypothesis under consideration, then this affords a proof that if the basic axiom system is consistent then so is the system obtained by adding to this system the new hypothesis. This method has been applied to axiom systems for set theory by many authors, including v. Neumann, Mostowski, and more recently Gödel, who has shown by this method that if the basic axioms of a certain axiomatic system of set theory are consistent then so is the system obtained by adding to these axioms a strong form of the axiom of choice and the generalised continuum hypothesis. Having been shown in this striking way the power of this method it is natural to inquire whether it has any limitations or whether by the construction of a sufficiently ingenious inner model one might hope to decide other outstanding consistency questions, such as the consistency of the negations of the axiom of choice and continuum hypothesis. In this and two following papers we prove some general theorems concerning inner models for a certain axiomatic system of set theory which lead to the result that as far as a fairly large family of inner models are concerned this method of proving consistency has been exhausted, that no essentially new consistency results can be obtained by the use of this kind of model. (shrink)

Two problems involving Thucydides and medicine have attracted intense treatment by classical scholars and medical men working separately or in combination. They are, first, the nature of the Athenian Plague which Thucydides describes and, second, the possibility of his having been influenced by the doctrines and outlook of Hippocrates and his followers. It is the purpose of the present paper to reconsider both these problems, to indicate some false assumptions made in the methodology of previous attempts to identify the Plague, (...) and to suggest a somewhat radical revaluation of Thucydides' approach to medical matters compared with that of Hippocrates. (shrink)

For any given society, its particular technology of communication has far-reaching consequences, not merely as regards social organization, but on the epistemic level as well. Plato's name-theory of meaning represents the transition from the age of primary orality to that of literacy; Wittgenstein's use-theory of meaning stands for the transition from the age of literacy to that of a second orality (audiovisual communication, electronic information processing). On the basis of a use-theory of meaning the problem of machine consciousness, to which (...) the later Wittgenstein again and again returned, is capable of a non-essentialist solution: appropriate changes in our form of life might well entail a radically different psychological language-game. (shrink)

Der Aufsatz schildert den platonisierenden Antipsychologismus welchen Bolzano, der junge Brentano, Twardowski, Meinong, der Husserl der Logischen Untersuchungen, Frege, der Russell der Jahrhundertwende und der junge Wittgenstein philosophisch vertraten, und versucht eine soziologische und ideologiekritische Interpretation sowohl dieser Einstellung als auch derjenigen des traditionellen Psychologismus des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts. Der Platonismus des neunzehnten und zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts wird als ein Ausdruck fiir ? oder vielmehr als eine Reaktion gegen ? den Verfall der klassischen burgerlichen Werte aufgefaBt. In Wittgensteins Tractatus spielen Elemente sowohl (...) eines platonisierenden Antipsychologismus wie auch eines relativistischen, verhaltensphanomenologisch orientierten Antipsychologismus eine Rolle: dieses Werk wird also als eine grelle Manifestation des Uberganges von der klassischen zur spatbiirgerlichen Weltanschauung, als ein Obergang vom Glauben an ewige Wahrheiten zur Hinnahme einer Gebrauchs?Theorie der Bedeutung und deren Konsequenzen interpretiert. (shrink)

In the Rhetoric Aristotle frequently illustrates the points he is making with examples drawn both from oratory and from other literary genres. Although some of these citations have been used to date the work, they have never been systematically examined. It is the contention of this article that, when Aristotle gives examples from speeches, he quotes exclusively from epideictic works, and that this fact tells us much both about the circulation of written speeches at Athens and about the preoccupations of (...) Aristotle and his pupils. (shrink)

In his discussion of the ethics of suicide Plato alludes to more than one traditional injunction against it:indicates a fairly general acceptance of its wickedness. Cebes has heard the Pythagorean Philolaus, among others, saying that suicide was immoral, but has gathered no satisfactory explanation as to why this should be so. One reason, impressive, but, Socrates admits, difficult is to be found.

Der ungarische Philosoph Melchior (Menyhert) Palägyi hatte niemals eine unmittelbare Kritik der Meinongschen Philosophie verfaßt; 1902 erwog er sogar die Möglichkeit, sich bei Meinong zu habilitieren. Dennoch ist die Gegenstandstheorie Meinongs durch die von Palägyi aufgebaute, sprachphilosophisch begründete Widerlegung des logischen Objektivismus eines Bolzano oder Husseri an sich zweifellos ebenfalls berührt. Palägyis Kritik an dem modernen Piatonismus, durch Herder, Max Müller und vermutlich Nietzsche beeinflußt, die bezüglichen Argumente des späteren Wittgenstein und von Eric Havelock in gar mancher Hinsicht vorwegnehmend, ist (...) weitgehend unbekannt und unbeachtet geblieben. Indem der Aufsatz die Prinzipien dieser Kritik nun eben auf die Gegenstandstheorie anwendet, sollen gewisse grundsätzliche Züge der Meinongschen Begriffsbildung in einer geschichtlich angemessenen Weise kritisch beleuchtet werden. (shrink)

Der ungarische Philosoph Melchior (Menyhert) Palägyi hatte niemals eine unmittelbare Kritik der Meinongschen Philosophie verfaßt; 1902 erwog er sogar die Möglichkeit, sich bei Meinong zu habilitieren. Dennoch ist die Gegenstandstheorie Meinongs durch die von Palägyi aufgebaute, sprachphilosophisch begründete Widerlegung des logischen Objektivismus eines Bolzano oder Husseri an sich zweifellos ebenfalls berührt. Palägyis Kritik an dem modernen Piatonismus, durch Herder, Max Müller und vermutlich Nietzsche beeinflußt, die bezüglichen Argumente des späteren Wittgenstein und von Eric Havelock in gar mancher Hinsicht vorwegnehmend, ist (...) weitgehend unbekannt und unbeachtet geblieben. Indem der Aufsatz die Prinzipien dieser Kritik nun eben auf die Gegenstandstheorie anwendet, sollen gewisse grundsätzliche Züge der Meinongschen Begriffsbildung in einer geschichtlich angemessenen Weise kritisch beleuchtet werden. (shrink)

Since the publication of our article on Thucydides and the Plague of Athens, Dr Heinrich von Staden of Yale University has kindly drawn our attention to a paper by Eby and Evjen suggesting that the Plague was glanders. We do not think that this diagnosis can possibly be correct, though there are undoubtedly some points in its favour. The authors have argued their case as persuasively as possible, and the proposal has sufficient merit to deserve a serious reply.

The female reproductive axis in mammals is a highly complex dynamic system which goes through different transient or absorbent states during the course of a life-time. Little is known about the mechanisms controlling this system during fetal life and at birth, although it has been shown in numerous species, including primates, that the whole machinery is already functioning . After a delay ranging from a few days to a few weeks, according to the species, the reproductive axis becomes quiescent and (...) activity apparently resumes only at the time of puberty. Here again understanding of the phenomenon is still limited. (shrink)

A great deal of modern Protestant theology looks very much like an attempt to conduct a salvage operation which is designed to make clear how it is possible to retain belief in Jesus Christ, and at the same time remain intellectually honest. For the same sceptical challenge which faces the secular historian also faces the theologian. If Christians are correct in arguing that the locus of God's revelation to man is in Jesus of Nazareth, then in order to know about (...) this supposed revelation, it is necessary to know about a period of time in the past; it is necessary to know the history of the man's life and actions. Theologians are therefore faced with the question: how, if at all, is it possible to bridge the logical gap between statements describing what Jesus of Nazareth said and did, and statements describing the evidence for what Jesus of Nazareth said and did. The solution found to this question by theologians tends to be determined by their conscious and unconscious philosophical presuppositions; just as it did in the examples discussed above of secular critical philosophies of history. (shrink)

Many in academic bioethics worry that robust theological traditions, when articulated in the public square, damage the prospect of serious reflection about tough cases. Here we challenge that prevailing exclusion-by-default methodological impulse by correcting prevalent stereotypes about one particular Christian tradition that may offer relevant conceptual resources for bioethics. We briefly examine the man, John Calvin, and the Calvinist/Reformed Protestant tradition to show how it has been misconstrued in academic bioethics but can be reconstrued as a constructive, substantive theological starting (...) point for tough bioethical questions of our age. Core Calvinist doctrines about the nature of an all-sovereign God and human beings’ relation to that God, as well as related prominent themes from elements of the broader Reformed tradition, including the glory/sovereignty/majesty of God; the created goodness of the world; human beings as desiring/worshiping/image-bearing creatures; the pervasive influence of sin; the limitations of humanity for self-improvement; the completely gratuitous nature of redemption; the comprehensiveness of God’s redemptive purposes; and the pending final completion of his redemptive work could and should influence the tone and content of moral deliberation that can be a positive influence on twenty-first-century bioethics. (shrink)

At the Seventh Congress of German Historians held at Heidelberg in April, 1903, Prof. Eduard Meyer delivered an address on the subject of Augustus, in which he expressed his view that the restitution of the republic was a genuine act of renunciation. ‘Augustus desired to dwell among his fellow-citizens not as a ruler but as a citizen, of course as the first among them all, as the princeps, like Camillus and the Scipios of old.’ If with Mommsen you described the (...) dual control of Caesar and Senate as a Dyarchy you ought not to forget that’ of the two the Senate in theory held complete predominance,1 the Emperor was ‘its executive, or as Tiberius expressed it, its servant, the Senate was the master .’. (shrink)

We know a lot more about the epistemology of the net at the time the present summary is being written than we did two years ago when the topic of this collaboration was decided upon. In part, this increase in knowledge is a consequence of the tremendous development of the net itself; in part, however, it is a consequence of our own series of exchanges. I would like, therefore, to say that the project had a positive outcome; but to say (...) this would be misleading. (shrink)