During the past decade, any questionable and illegal behavior of businesses has received significant attention in the media. Thus, taking a critical discursive approach, we investigate how the media constructs any questionable business as illegitimate. Our data draws upon articles dealing with cartels and cartel agreements in Finnish business media covering a five year period 2002-2007. Based on our findings, we suggest that regardless of the globalized business world, socio-cultural history plays an important role in constructing the illegitimacy of (...) business practices. (shrink)

Marx admirait grandement Aristote. En aurait-il pour autant accepté l'étrange réactualisation de l'ontologie, cette proto-science de "l'être en tant qu'être"? Toute son oeuvre atteste au contraire qu'elle relevait à ses yeux de "l'ancienne philosophie", conçue à une époque où se confondaient encore toutes les branches du savoir et dont il fallait "sortir d'un bond". L'élaboration par lui et ses continuateurs de cette logique supérieure qu'est la dialectique matérialiste offrait désormais la clé d'une connaissance positive d'un monde s'expliquant par lui-même, (...) sans adjonction d'aucune sorte. On peut s'étonner qu'au soir de sa vie, Georges Lukacs (1885-1971), une des figures les plus marquantes du marxisme contemporain, se soit lancé dans l'impossible tentative de réanimer cette antiquité philosophique. Riche en développements sur le travail et l'aliénation, sa monumentale Ontologie de l'être social n'en révèle pas moins un significatif écartèlement entre le penseur marxiste et l'homme de la Mitteleuropa qu'il ne dépouilla sans doute jamais complètement en lui. (shrink)

Along with economic strength, space technology and software expertise, India is also a leading nation in fraudulent scientific research. The problem is worsened by vested interests working in concert for their own benefits. These self-promoting cartels, together with biased evaluation methods and weak penal systems, combine to perpetuate scientific misconduct. Some of these issues are discussed in this commentary, with supporting examples and possible solutions.

It is a truism that humans are social animals. Thus, it is no surprise that we understand the world, each other, and ourselves in terms of social kinds such as money and marriage, war and women, capitalists and cartels, races, recessions, and refugees. Social kinds condition our expectations, inform our preferences, and guide our behavior. Despite the prevalence and importance of social kinds, philosophy has historically devoted relatively little attention to them. With few exceptions, philosophers have given pride of (...) place to the kinds studied by the natural sciences, especially physics. However, philosophical interest in social kinds is growing in recent years. I critically examine answers to a cluster of related questions concerning the metaphysics of social kinds. Are social kinds natural kinds? Do social kinds have essences? Are social kinds mind dependent? Are social kinds real? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.3 (2001) 543-564 [Access article in PDF] Eduard Gans and the Crisis of Hegelianism Warren Breckman In a 1834 report on the development of economic associationism in France, Johannes Schön detected an echo in Germany, the stirrings of a debate over the "modern Associationswesen." This discussion, he believed, would be crucial to the future of the "national economy." 1 Schön was an astute (...) observer, for the German discussion of associationism in the early 1830s was indeed but a faint echo of the French; and insofar as the idea of association was addressed by prominent social writers in those years, it was generally greeted with suspicion. This was the case, for instance, with the liberal thinker Robert von Mohl, whose influential 1835 tract on the social question criticized the notion of proletarian associationism. Conversely, by the early 1840s, association was on many tongues as a panacea for the social ills of the age. By 1840 Mohl himself had embraced the "Assoziationsprinzip" as an antidote to the atomized condition of modern social life. 2Among the relatively small number of German writers who did champion association in the 1830s, the claims for its significance were already grandiose. Moses Hess's Die heilige Geschichte der Menschheit (1837) and August von Cieszkowski's Prolegomena zur Historiosophie (1838) both linked social solidarity to millenarian expectations of a new age of humanity. Even before Hess or Cieszkowski, the first German book on Charles Fourier, by one S. R. Schneider, bore the title Das Problem der Zeit und dessen Lösung durch die Assoziation (1834), while another, by Fr. Hr. Tappehorn, was headed Die vollkommene Association, als Vermittlerin der Einheit des Vernunftstaates und der Lehre Jesu (1834). Yet the enormous importance assigned to associationism [End Page 543] in these titles exposes the ambiguity of the idea itself. For if, as one historian has claimed, "free association can be regarded in principle as the central organizational form of modern or industrial society," 3 there was no agreement on its nature. Should the right of association be understood as liberal or socialist, individualistic or collectivist? Is free association the core idea and mode of interaction of a pluralistic and competitive civil society, or is it the principle of unification that will overcome pluralism and competition? These fundamental questions were to preoccupy nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century debates in areas as diverse as revolutionary theory, labor union activism, and the regulation of business cartels. However, in the 1830s, under the pressure of the newly perceived social question, the stirrings of industrialization in Germany, and the revival of democratic politics in the July Revolution, these issues first appeared with a force that drew the attention of intellectuals.Perhaps no German intellectual of the 1830s so perfectly embodies the implicit tensions of the idea of associationism as the Hegelian philosopher of law, Eduard Gans (1797-1839). A student of the Heidelberg legal scholar A. J. Thibaut, Gans later came to be considered by Hegel as one of his most brilliant followers. Once Gans became a professor in the Juristic Faculty at the University of Berlin in the mid-1820s, it was he, not Hegel, who taught a generation of students the intricacies of Hegelian political philosophy. Gans died in 1839 at the age of 42, felled at a luncheon by a stroke while in mid-sentence, a victim, according to the Hallische Jahrbücher, of his own passion for discussion. This volubility is more than evident in his oeuvre, which includes a multi-volume study of inheritance law in world history, dozens of essays on legal philosophy and political and legal issues in his native Prussia and Europe, a popular memoir, and an edition of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. He was instrumental, moreover, in creating the Society for Scientific Critique in 1826, the Hegelian "counter-academy" established in response to the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences' decision to exclude Hegel, and he was a founder of Die Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik, the organization's journal and the main organ of Hegelianism. At... (shrink)

Introduction Paul Boshears The following excerpt from Paul Amitai's In Between States: Field notes and speculations on postwar landscapes (2012) confounds its reader. Presenting an alternate history of the State of Israel as a space station orbiting Earth, the excitement of possibilities crackles across the texts and images. Like Chris Marker's La Jeteé , the accompanying static images distort the viewer's temporality: are these archaeological items, images from a past, or a future? Why isn't this our future? In Between States (...) can also be seen as complementing Larissa Sansour's provocative science fiction works, Space Exodus (2009) which "documents" the Palestinian space program, and her Nation Estate (2012), in which Palestine is relocated into a skyscraper. Amitai's vision opens onto an intergalactic diaspora, wherein the refugees of World War II are given the stars as Western Europe continues to fight over terrestial colonies. —PFB Auditorium, Hoechst AG headquarters, Industriepark-Höchst, 2011. In 1941 an investigation by the US Justice Department exposed a marriage cartel between John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil (now ExxonMobil) and I.G. Farben. The two corporations had formed a joint operation in 1927 called Standard IG Farben. It was revealed that the two had shared patents in order to control prices and markets in their respective regions. Standard was accused of hiding patents from the US Navy and supplying fuel to German submarines, which lead to charges of criminal conspiracy. The Pentagon intervened, requesting that President Roosevelt stop the investigation in order to protect war production and oil supply. Roosevelt agreed, and the Senate committee investigating the matter, headed by Senator Harry Truman, was halted. Standard Oil paid a fine of $5000 and promised to stop supplying fuel to the enemies. Auditorium, Hoechst AG headquarters, Industriepark-Höchst, 2011. Furious at the decision to terminate the investigation of acts he considered treason, Truman initiated a new inquiry into Standard Oil’s war-time practices after succeeding Roosevelt as president in 1945. With the chief executives of I.G Farben simultaneously on trial at Nuremburg, Truman brokered a deal with the Allies that reduced or withdrew criminal charges leveled against both corporations in exchange for Standard Oil and I.G. Farben’s sponsorship of one of Truman’s most ambitious postwar projects—the relocation of the Jewish people. Detail, Sanofi-Aventis advertisement, 2011. The third critical player in this bold experiment was the nascent North Atlantic Space Agency. Formed by Allied forces using the seized assets and engineering expertise of Hitler’s hitherto classified space program (conquer Earth, then the stars), the North Atlantic Space Agency was a pre-NATO foray into interstellar nation building, with orbital occupation as the first point of order. By 1947, NASA was nearly ready to deploy the first manned space station. Standard Oil and I.G. Farben’s advanced fuel refinement capacities and deep, war-enriched financial resources allowed NASA to speed up their launch schedule significantly. Detail, Sanofi-Aventis advertisement, 2011. Diplomatic efforts to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine were failing to gain traction, while post-colonial England held its ground on immigration restrictions and bands of Jews and Arabs battled over territory on the ground. More immediate was the issue of temporarily housing Holocaust survivors and refugees across scorched Europe. Leaders of the continental nations demonstrated, at best, reluctance to accommodate the Jews, who in turn were, at the least, resistant to returning to the same bloody cocktail from which they had fled. Truman used the impasse to advance a plan for NASA’s space station to be put to use as a temporary Jewish outpost, an orbital displaced persons camp, to be operated by the US Army. Detail, Infaserv Höchst advertisement, 2011. Final preparations advanced rapidly. Viewing the orbital displaced persons (ODP) camp as a solution to their immigration problem both at home and abroad, England came on board as a willing partner. Spaceship Exodus was positioned for takeoff on German farmland 20 kilometers southwest of Frankfurt. On December 30, 1947, one month after the UN General Assembly voted down the separation plan for Palestine, Exodus rocketed into the atmosphere hauling the first module of barracks designed to house 1,500 refugees. Transport vehicles arrived shortly thereafter, loaded down with leftover wartime military rations and 3,000 Jews of Russian and Polish origin. Detail, Infaserv Höchst advertisement, 2011. "The camp is the space that is opened when the state of exception begins to become the rule."—Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer , trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 96. Detail, Infaserv Höchst advertisement, 2011. The ODP camp proved to be a longer-term solution than originally envisioned. Additional installations were positioned to form swollen clusters of interlocking units – sleeping quarters, schools, clinics, canteens. The UN was brought in to monitor the camp following two chaotic years of US Army control in which food shortages, pandemic diseases, and rampant black market trade had brought the camp to near total collapse. No less bureaucratic or ineffectual, the UN relief agency at least had prior experience facilitating contexts of a similar magnitude and could potentially predict outcomes. Detail, Infaserv Höchst advertisement, 2011. What had been unexpected was the degree to which the camp would evolve into its own self-regulated, hive-like ecosystem where previously accepted rules of conduct were not applicable. The ODP camp was an exceptional space, a riverboat casino, an offshore research lab of social experimentation and entrepreneurial innovation. No longer Earth-bound, touching soil knotted by prescripts of Talmudic law, the camp residents were able to rationalize loopholes and detonate barriers standing in the way of absolute production. The Jewish archipelago was renamed Israel after the ancient homeland. If the temple couldn’t be rebuilt in the motherland, a post-national rhizome would sprout up in its stead. Eyes everywhere, beyond all borders. More information on the project at the author's site. (shrink)

This article investigates the role of television on the structure and organization of political parties in the post – communist Albania. The existing literature on political parties links the structure of mass parties with the written press, and the structure of electoral- professional and cartel parties with the increasing influence of television. The mass party is based on the principle of membership. Among many tasks that members had to carry out, the dissemination of party’s declarations, statements, opinions and ideology, through (...) the distribution of party press is one of the most important. The studies on political parties have observed the emergence of the catch-all, electoral-professional and cartel party, in which the party leaders have substituted the membership organizational network with television, and thus minimized the role of intermediate party organs. In difference from their counterparts in Western Europe, in the new established democracies of post-communist countries, political parties were born in a period characterized by a modern and developed media which was accessible to everyone. Therefore, the immediate access to modern means of communication has distanced the parties from the society since the early phases of their inceptions, without giving them the opportunity and necessity to organize territorially. This article analysed the techniques that have used the Albanian political parties to communicate with their electorate, concluding that in the moment of their creation, television could not serve to the opposition parties as a means of information. That is why they had to rely heavily on the written press and their membership. The opening of some broadcasting channels, after 2000, made possible the access on modern techniques of communication, leading to a minor role of the press and membership. As a result we could say that at the early phase of democratic process, the political parties in Albania shared features of the mass party with a strong territorial penetration, features that started to fade out when television gained a more prominent role in the organization of electoral campaigns by influencing thus a more contemporary western alike model of party organization. (shrink)

Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the works of (...) Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

Volume 25, Issue 2, February 2025, Page 80-82.

Proceedings of the First Conference of the International Society for Hermeneutics and Science.

(1994). Annex: The survey questionnaires. World Futures: Vol. 39, The Evolution of European Identity: Surveys of the Growing Edge A Report by the European Culture Impact Research Consortium (EUROCIRCON), pp. 161-164.

Volume 24, Issue 11, November 2024, Page 24-26.

Debunking arguments against both moral and mathematical realism have been pressed, based on the claim that our moral and mathematical beliefs are insensitive to the moral/mathematical facts. In the mathematical case, I argue that the role of Hume’s Principle as a conceptual truth speaks against the debunkers’ claim that it is intelligible to imagine the facts about numbers being otherwise while our evolved responses remain the same. Analogously, I argue, the conceptual supervenience of the moral on the natural speaks presents (...) a difficulty for the debunker’s claim that, had the moral facts been otherwise, our evolved moral beliefs would have remained the same. (shrink)

This text addresses the problems of complex systems in understanding natural phenomena and the behaviour of systems related to human activity, from a science and humanities perspective. It discusses molecular behaviour and structures, and offers examples of ecological and environmental modelling.

Hermann's Weyl Das Kontinuum has inspired several studies in logic and foundations of mathematics over the last century. The book provides a remarkable reconstruction of a large portion of classical mathematics on a predicative basis. However, diverging interpretations of the predicative system formulated by Weyl have been proposed in the literature. In the present work, I analyze an early formalization of Weyl's ideas proposed by [Casari, E. 1964. Questioni di Filosofia Della Matematica, Milano: Feltrinelli] and compare it with other, more (...) well-known, accounts, such as those proposed respectively by Feferman and Avron. In this way, I fill a gap in the literature on Weyl's predicative mathematics by shedding light on an interpretation that has never been studied. Moreover, Casari's work is plausibly the first systematic reconstruction of Weyl's system. In particular, I highlight the different insights about predicativity that can be found in Weyl's work. Casari's reconstruction focuses on the logical and mathematical processes described by Weyl in the first part of his book. Through the analysis of this unexplored perspective, I shed light on fundamental aspects of Weyl's work and elucidate the alleged ambiguities it presents. In particular, in line with Avron's most recent reconstruction of Weyl's ideas, this analysis supports a stronger conception of predicativity than what is commonly attributed to Weyl in the literature. As a result, this work not only provides an analysis of a neglected interpretation of Das Kontinuum, but also contributes to elucidating Weyl's classical conception of predicativity. (shrink)

Philosophy and the fly-bottle -- Physics and the fly-bottle -- Religion and the fly-bottle.

How do we understand the sciences and discourses about them? Aspects of philosophical dialogue are highlighted and considered in ways that reveal distinct domains of enquiry relating to culture, science and mathematics. This analysis serves to contextualize the nature and content of the papers selected for the collection.

In a series of related essays, Dr Parkinson argues that both science and religion are at a crossroads, because in both cases their current paradigms are breaking down. In science, Einstein’s General Relativity has left an unbridgeable gap between quantum physics and the new cosmology and, in the West, the gap between the story told by modern scholarship and “gospel truth” has become equally wide. What for two millennia has been considered to be historical fact is now seen (...) often to be not only pious myth but deliberate falsification. The author adds something new and positive – but controversial- to the debate, in arguing that a future science and religion must be symbiotic. That is to say, in being true to their most basic principles of truth-seeking, both will find themselves to be not merely harmonious but mutually supporting and illuminating. When the evidence for this is fully, and honestly, assessed, the “phoney war” between science and religion can be seen for what it is. The question under all the questions is this: if simple honesty is an essential part of both science and religion, can either continue to survive with what J. K. Galbraith called “institutional truth?”. (shrink)

Those seeking to lead a spiritual life may naturally become inspired to live in peace and non violence. To learn spiritual practices and develop the values, one may turn to spiritual teachers or religion. In the book "Science Of Speech," Gnani Purush Dada Bhagwan offers understanding about non violent communication, especially while resolving conflict and dealing with difficult people.

The objective of the present essay is to show that the traditional dilemma of philosophy, namely, does science think or does not think, has today become the problem that science itself has to solve. To assert that science thinks means first that science, when it thinks, constructs its object in an always specific manner; second, in construing its object, it adds to it the real, i.e., a reference, external to the scientific construction itself, which science (...) then discovers as the basis and source of its construction. This article argues that it is for strictly scientific reasons that science is today faced with the task of affirming itself as a domain of thought in both aforementioned meanings. Affirming the view that science thinks is a scientific struggle for the existence of politics of emancipation. (shrink)

As we can see, the side effects caused by the continuous development of science and economy have gradually brought human society into a risk society. While currently, the power of globalization is unceasingly forming a world risk society. German renowned philosopher and sociologist Ulrich Beck has opened a unique and novel researching angle to review science difficulty and abuse of modern world risk society, and has made comprehensive and profound analysis. World risk society has three main characters: First, (...) the emergence of the world risk society is linked to the two fundamental changes still influencing our lives, which is the so-called “end of nature” and “end of tradition”. Second, in world risk society, mankind lose their dependence on “expert system”. The religion is replaced by the concept uncertainty and uncontrollable. In addition, there are other series of problems and abuses between world risk society and traditional society. The prime mover of social changes in world risk society exists in the side effects instead of the instrumental ration in traditional times, etc. The problem in world risk society’s science ethics are as follows: First, expansion of ration. It is mankind’s extreme confidence in ration that causing unlimited development of technology and exploitation of resources. Thus almost everywhere in nature becomes man‐made nature. Second, rupture of knowledge. From “knowledge is virtue and virtue isknowledge” (Socrates) to “knowledge is power” (Bacon), now “knowledge is money” (Bacon). Third, displacement of science value. In traditional society, science research is scientists’ personal interests. Now science research turns its target to meeting social needs, and scientists gain more profits from the technologicalproducts directly. Beck has raised the theory of risk society, and attempted to use “reflexive modernity” as the strategic plan to respond the global consequence of modern science crisis, and expressed revelatory viewpoint on diagnosis of the essential of “reflexive modernity”. Similarly, Lash emphasizes risk culture toremind human to pay attention to the ecological threat and risk. In addition, Bauman and Habermas also have some statements, etc. So my conclusion is, we should consider the autonomy of science development and its inherent relationship with economic interests. In addition, what we concern is the science dual identity of both defendant and expert. Also, the public’s understanding of the uncertainty provides a space for democratization. (shrink)

This article examines some of the contributions to the contemporary debate over the question of whether there is an important distinction to be made between the natural and the human sciences. In particular, the article looks at the arguments that Charles Taylor has put forward for the recognition of a radical discontinuity between these forms of science and then examines Richard Rorty's objections to Taylor's distinction and argues that Rorty misunderstands the reasons for this distinction and thereby misses the (...) political implications of failing to make such a distinction. In this regard, some arguments made by Anthony Giddens and John O'Neill, respectively, around Alfred Schutz's "postulate of adequacy" are used to show how the social sciences must be conceived so as to avoid consequences inimical to the reproduction and maintenance of participatory, democratic institutions. Additionally, the article uses O'Neill's argument that the Schutzian conceptualization of interpretive sciences can be critical in a way that Giddens and Jürgen Habermas require, while including a translation and accountability principle, to demonstrate how we ought to respect participatory, democratic forms. (shrink)

This two-volume collection of cutting edge thinking about science and religion shows how scientific and religious practices of inquiry can be viewed as logically compatible, complementary, and mutually supportive. Features submissions by world-leading scientists and philosophers Discusses a wide range of hotly debated issues, including Big Bang cosmology, evolution, intelligent design, dinosaurs and creation, general and special theories of relativity, dark energy, the Multiverse Hypothesis, and Super String Theory Includes articles on stem cell research and Bioethics by William Hurlbut, (...) who served on President Bush's Bioethics Committee. (shrink)

This essay is a critical investigation of Heidegger’s insistence on the absolute difference between philosophy, defined as fundamental ontology, and theology, understood as the “ontic” “science of faith.” Focusing primarily on two important works from 1927, “Phenomenology and Theology” and Being and Time, I argue that the distinction between the two disciplines begins to blur in light of the circular character of hermeneutical understanding as Heidegger himself describes it. Ontology, he concedes, has ontic roots in the authentic self-understanding of (...) Dasein. I maintain that this understanding involves an interpretive decision that, lacking the pure phenomenological rationality Heidegger attributes to it, looks much like the faith he would banish from philosophy. (shrink)

In his many contributions to the history of science and the history of philosophy, the late Charles Schmitt demonstrated the interdependence of these two spheres of thought in early modern Europe. Schmitt was particularly insistent on a large and positive role for Aristotelian philosophy in the development of early modern science.

Abstract Stephen Jay Gould's NOMA (nonoverlapping magisteria) theory was meant to be an alternative to the traditional “conflict model” regarding the relationship between science and religion. But NOMA has been plagued with problems from the beginning. The problem most acutely felt was that of demarcating the disciplines of science and theology. This paper is an attempt to retain the insights of NOMA and the conflict model, while eliminating their shortcomings. It acknowledges with the conflict model that the conflict (...) is real, but not necessarily a fight unto death. It agrees with the NOMA that the two are different kinds of disciplines, and it goes on to spell out the difference in some detail. They turn out to be so radically different that the two cannot be reconciled by keeping one away from the other's turf, as NOMA suggests, but may be reconciled through a fusion of horizons in the Gadamerian sense. (shrink)

This study considers three noblewomen – Lady Amelia Hume, Jane Barrington, and Mary Watson-Wentworth, Marchioness of Rockingham – whose contributions to plant studies were so important that Linnean Society President James Edward Smith dedicated three books to them. Their skills in cultivating newly imported exotic plants rivaled those of elite nurserymen, and taxonomists of the highest caliber came to depend on them to unlock information encoded within flowers to enable classification and publication. Eventually, the women played strategic roles within national (...) scientific studies of the world’s plants orchestrated by Smith, Joseph Banks, and William Roxburgh. The stories of Hume, Barrington, and Rockingham complicate our understandings of the gendered, professional, and disciplinary hierarchies of knowledge that constituted British science in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They also resituate the domestic hothouse as a publicly engaged laboratory and museum. (shrink)