Making adaptive choices between solution strategies is a central element of contemporary mathematics education. However, previous studies signal that students make suboptimal choices between mental and written strategies to solve division problems. In particular, some students of a lower math ability level appear inclined to use mental strategies that lead to lower performance. The current study uses a pretest-training-posttest design to investigate the extent to which these students’ choices for written strategies and performance may be increased. Sixth graders of below-average (...) mathematics level (N = 147) participated in one of two training conditions: an explicit-scaffolding training designed to promote writing down calculations or a practice-only training where strategy use was not explicitly targeted. Written strategy choices and performance increased considerably from pretest to posttest for students in both training conditions, but not in different amounts. Exploratory results suggest that students’ strategy choices may also be affected by their attitudes and beliefs and the sociocultural context regarding strategy use. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Johann Georg Hamann fue el primer crítico de la Ilustración y también su primera víctima. Su pensamiento, enormemente complejo y articulado a través de algunas ideas adelantadas a su tiempo, fue rápidamente revestido de “irracionalismo” por la incapacidad hermenéutica de los círculos ilustrados del momento, lo que a posteriori tuvo como consecuencia un notable menosprecio hacia su obra por parte de la Historia de la Filosofía. El presente artículo pretende mostrar que las categorías usadas en su momento para definir el (...) pensamiento de Hamann son inadecuadas. Más concretamente, se intentará mostrar que la revisión de la Ilustración llevada a cabo por Hamann denota una actitud de “ilustrado radical” y no de “irracionalista”. (shrink)

The philosophical foundations of human rights are as complex as they are controversial. For some years, the debate has been dominated by the rather gridlocked opposition between moral and political conceptions of human rights. Moreover, a profound examination of the social and relational dimension of human rights has been lacking. Against this background, this volume brings together contributions which scrutinise the multi-faceted foundations of human rights. It is a valuable collection for philosophers, political scientists and legal scholars interested in fresh (...) insights into the idea and practice of human rights. With contributions by Markus Abraham | Andreas Busen | Johannes Haaf | Christoph Herrler | Justine Lacroix | Franziska Martinsen | Luise Müller | Esther Neuhann | Niklas Plätzer | Ned Richardson-Little | Regina Schidel | Tatjana Noemi Tömmel | Alexander Weiß | Markus Wolf. (shrink)

Though there are significant points of overlap between Michelle Kosch's reading of Fear and Trembling and my own, this paper focuses primarily on a significant difference: the legitimacy or otherwise of looking to paradigmatic exemplars of faith in order to understand faith. I argue that Kosch's reading threatens to underplay the importance of exemplarity in Kierkegaard's thought, and that there is good reason to resist her use of Philosophical Fragments as the key to interpreting the 'hidden message' of Fear and (...) Trembling. Key to both claims is the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. I also briefly sketch an alternative reading of the 'hidden message', one in which Kierkegaard's Christian commitments play a notably different role. (shrink)

The explicit topic of Fear and Trembling's third Problema (the longest single section, accounting for a third of the book's total length), the theme of Abraham's silence stands not far in the background in every other section, and its importance is flagged by the pseudonym—Johannes de silentio—under which Kierkegaard had the book published. Here I aim to defend an interpretation of the meaning of the third Problema's central claim—that Abraham cannot explain himself, 'cannot speak'—and to argue on (...) its basis for an interpretation of the work as a whole. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Johannes de Silentio’s presentation of the faith of Abraham, deriving therefrom a new way of conceiving his notion of faith as a paradoxical co-inhabiting of both the aesthetic and the ethical stages, rather than as a rejection, synthesis, or overcoming of them. Relying largely upon Silentio’s account of Abraham’s faith as anxious but not doubting, I argue that the interpretations of Fear and Trembling by Alastair Hannay and Mark C. Taylor fail to (...) account for some essential aspects of Silentio’s depiction. I conclude that faith, as it is described in Fear and Trembling, cannot be philosophically understood as it is not an object for thought but an existential perspective one lives. (shrink)

Most readings of Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling take its account of the Abraham and Isaac story to imply fairly obviously that duty towards God is absolutely distinct from, and therefore capable of superseding, duty towards neighbor or son. This paper will argue, however, that the Akedah, or ‘binding’ of Isaac, as Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Johannes de Silentio, depicts it, binds Abraham to Isaac in a revitalized neighbor relation that is not at all subordinate, in any simple way, to (...) Abraham’s God-relation. The two relations are defined by an intimate mutual tension, a dynamic of passionate inwardness that responds to the immediate demands of the neighbor as fully as the ethics that Levinas notoriously accuses Kierkegaard of having ignored. It is also the dynamic of time consciousness, which for Levinas is fundamentally ethical. I show that Kierkegaardian faith can be viewed as the dynamic of time-consciousness transformed by passionate inwardness into one’s God-relation—that is, converted into a certain religious mode of life. The ethics corresponding to this—an ethics of neighbor love superseding the ‘social morality’ that Silentio, following Hegel, calls the ‘ethical’—would then be the same dynamic of time-consciousness transformed by passionate inwardness into one’s neighbor-relation. The key to the argument is seeing the need to substitute for the spatial dichotomy ‘interior/exterior,’ which results in so much trouble when comparing Levinas and Kierkegaard, the temporal contraries ‘giving up’ and ‘getting back.’. (shrink)

Temor y Temblor, de Kierkegaard, escrito bajo el seudónimo de Johannesde silentio, nos ofrece una recreaciónpoética de la historia bíblica de Abraham. Johannes alaba a Abraham como el más eminente caballero de la fe, pero nuestro análisis encuentra que las caracterizaciones que hace de Abraham, como decidido y al mismo tiempo angustiado por el sacrificio de Isaac, entran en conflicto y se mantienen sin resolver. Esto, sumado a la reconocida ignorancia de Johannes en cuestiones de (...) fe, hace que la representación de la fe en Temor y Temblor no sea convincente. Sólo en sus obras tardías Kierkegaard concilia estas dificultades introduciendo una condición "metaestable" de la fe. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.2 (2002) 303-321 [Access article in PDF] "The Peak on Which Abraham Stands": The Pregnant Moment of Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling Lasse Horne Kjaeldgaard When Søren Kierkegaard in the 1840s began his one-man crusade against the predominant philosophy of his time and place—the right Hegelianism that was en vogue among his contemporaries in Copenhagen—he chose his weapons with great circumspection. The (...) indirect form of communication, which he later advocated in more direct terms in his "Point of View," 1 was not only a maieutic means that helped the reader conceive of the latent and strictly private messages of the texts; it was also a strategy for Kierkegaard's undercover assaults on the Hegelian turn of the Geistesleben around him. By interweaving many of the Hegelian platitudes and self-confident pronouncements that circulated in the intellectual life of the day into the pseudonymous writings, Kierkegaard contested them with parody rather than argumentation. This is the local background against which these texts are structured and to which they are addressed in multiple and very subtle ways. That also goes for that of the pseudonymous writings which has become the best known but which may also be regarded as the most private and most secretive of them all, Fear and Trembling, published pseudonymously in 1843.Secrecy, silence, and unspeakable messages are abundantly thematized in Fear and Trembling, as one could expect from the name of the narrator, Johannes de Silentio. Silentio is a prominent member of the choir of pseudonymous figures Kierkegaard invented to communicate indirectly with his audience and in [End Page 303] the name of which he published his most celebrated works. The silence that Silentio speaks of is that of Abraham of the Old Testament, who was commanded by God to sacrifice his only son on Mount Moriah. Although Genesis 22 includes fragments of the dialogue between Abraham and Isaac on their way to the mountain, Silentio insists that Abraham remained silent on the essential issue: the command he acts upon. The unmediated message Abraham had received from God could not be conveyed, and he was therefore barred from communication and bereft of his community as he journeyed to the Mountain. Yet Silentio's discourse upon this silence in Fear and Trembling has given impetus to innumerable pages of commentary. The questions and answers he poses in his reflections upon Abraham's ordeal have called for critical attention and controversy since the time of its publication. His obsession with the biblical narrative certainly seems to have been passed on to many readers of Fear and Trembling, which, a recent commentator has remarked, "continues to haunt us like no other of [Kierkegaard's] writings." 2 So far, it would seem, then, that Kierkegaard was right when he predicted, in an undated journal entry, that "Fear and Trembling will be enough to immortalise my name." It has indeed been "read and translated into foreign languages," as he foresaw it would. 3Even so, what has passed unnoticed in its long history of reception is the significance of the titles that the manuscript text bore before it came to be called Fear and Trembling. On the title page the definitive appellation is placed together with two alternatives with less suggestion of pathos: "Movements and Postures" (Bevægelser og Stillinger) and "Between-each-other" (Mellemhver-andre). 4 Not much can be discerned from these unpeculiar phrases in isolation. However, tracing their history and significance through Kierkegaard's writings and beyond, will make it clear that Fear and Trembling was also dispatched to the narrow Hegelian community in Copenhagen for the purpose of questioning their literary and visual aesthetics and philosophy of history. Into the guerrilla warfare against them Fear and Trembling introduces a weapon of such sophistication that it has remained undetected so far: the power of the "pregnant moment." My aim here will be to demonstrate the way in which Fear and Trembling appropriates a principle of selection intended for the... (shrink)

In South Africa scholars in the broad field of practical theology are currently faced with a daunting challenge: to rethink the reconciling role of the institutional church in the light of continued challenges facing reconciliation within post-apartheid and post-Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) South Africa. This contribution investigates whether the transdisciplinary, region-centred scientific research approach with a focus on the Hölderlin perspective on reconciliation could assist scholars in practical theology to address reconciliation in a post-apartheid and post-TRC society. The article (...) proposes a contextual and constructive approach to reconciliation in order to assist South African scholars in the field of practical theology and the institutional church to address the challenges of reconciliation in a postapartheid and post-TRC society. The contribution confirms that this approach does indeed assist the field of practical theology to contribute to reconciliation without the risk of speaking a language that nobody beyond theology can understand. (shrink)

A dynamic choice mechanism (e.g. sophisticated choice) is a rule transforming a sequence of orderings into actual choices. The dynamic choice literature analysing such rules is restricted to the case of strict preferences. The present paper allows also for weak preferences. This generalisation is necessary since in dynamic utility models decision makers are typically endowed with orderings which can be represented by continuous utility functions. Such a representation, however, requires the orderings to be a weak ordering. In the presence of (...) weak orderings the classical choice mechanisms have to be re-examined. This paper develops and analyses new choice mechanisms and relates them to the notion of a subgame-perfect equilibrium. (shrink)

« Un coworking sans communauté n’existe pas. » Qu’est-ce qui sépare les nous du tiers-lieu de ceux de la start-up (plus ou moins nationalisée)? Qu’est-ce qui distingue les bretelles (d’un nous relativement dilaté, diffracté ou bifurquant) des autoroutes (du je au cœur du développement personnel comme du nous des team buildings et atelier de we design)? L’auto-affectation d’un soi mis au pluriel tente, par un simple jeu pronominal, de cacher son intention de relier tout le monde. À travers les reflets (...) de ces belles âmes dans leurs variations esthétiques, cet article se propose de penser les réactualisations de la standardisation psychique mondiale en montrant comme elles brouillent de quel entre-nous ça parle. On part d’une série de citations des stars de la république des lettres. Direct, on multiplie les formes de déterritorialisations énonciatives comme autant de traversées d’un nous attaché à son incertitude d’échelle et excité par ses anachronismes : expérience originelle de l’autre comme soi, atelier alter-constructiviste, méditation auto-décentrante, réunion anti-facilitatrice, contre-point sur la situation actuelle. (shrink)

Pars 1. Contemplativa -- Pars 2. Activa.

Entrepreneurs as individuals are the main drivers of entrepreneurship and possess distinct personality characteristics. The study focused on entrepreneurial openness and creativity on the entrepreneurial level relative to business growth. Hypotheses were developed and empirically tested in structural equation models using survey data obtained from SMEs’ entrepreneurs in three countries. This study adds to what is known about entrepreneurship and small business management in terms of normative research on firm growth by empirically examining the relationships between the entrepreneurial openness, creative (...) personality, and creativity of the entrepreneur and growth of the company. Moreover, the study develops refined internationally comparable measures of entrepreneurial openness, entrepreneur creativity, and a creative personality. An entrepreneur’s openness and creative personality may be essential for their creativity. The entrepreneur’s creativity may be a vital element of company growth in some countries. (shrink)

This paper offers the concept of “justice failure,” as a counterpart to the familiar idea of market failure, in order to better understand managers’ ethical obligations. This paper takes the “market failures approach” to business ethics as its point of departure. The success of the MFA, I argue, lies in its close proximity with economic theory, particularly in the idea that, within a larger scheme of social cooperation, markets ought to pursue efficiency and leave the pursuit of equality to the (...) welfare state. As a result, the core ethical responsibility of business actors is to avoid profiting off of market failure. After reviewing this approach I challenge its emphasis on efficiency. I argue that just as we note the suboptimal efficiency of actual markets, we should also take seriously the suboptimal equality of actual welfare states. Taking this idea seriously results in a whole other set of ethical responsibilities for businesses to take into account; in addition to market imperfections and regulatory lacunae, managers should also avoid profiting from, and exacerbating, structural inequalities and injustices. I offer an outline of the kinds of injustices and inequalities that would have bearing on business ethics, and the kinds of ethical responsibilities that this approach suggests that business actors should take into account. (shrink)

Given the purpose of this special edition, to consider theologically the implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, in this contribution, the writings of one of the important yet under-appreciated South African figures in thinking from biblical theology on matters of economics, Klaus Nürnberger, are taken into review. The relationship between (1) biblical witness and (2) faith and (3) deeds stands central in Nürnberger’s theological framework. His interdisciplinarity has lasting validity because he takes seriously the disciplines involved, such as historical Bible (...) scholarship, economic theory, social theory and the like. By his own reckoning, it is partly because of this kind of interdisciplinarity that Nürnberger’s contributions on this topic had in a sense been marginalised. For this reason too, it is important in a new era to review sympathetically and appropriate critically the significant contributions of Nürnberger on the biblical witness to economic engagement. Contribution: This research article, as a part of this themed collection, considers theologically the implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution with a review of Nürnberger’s contributions on the biblical witness to economic engagement. Nürnberger’s interdisciplinarity in his contributions helps set the direction for future engagements in the dawning post-secular era. (shrink)

Given the purpose of this special edition, to consider theologically the implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, in this contribution, the writings of one of the important yet under-appreciated South African figures in thinking from biblical theology on matters of economics, Klaus Nürnberger, are taken into review. The relationship between (1) biblical witness and (2) faith and (3) deeds stands central in Nürnberger’s theological framework. His interdisciplinarity has lasting validity because he takes seriously the disciplines involved, such as historical Bible (...) scholarship, economic theory, social theory and the like. By his own reckoning, it is partly because of this kind of interdisciplinarity that Nürnberger’s contributions on this topic had in a sense been marginalised. For this reason too, it is important in a new era to review sympathetically and appropriate critically the significant contributions of Nürnberger on the biblical witness to economic engagement. Contribution: This research article, as a part of this themed collection, considers theologically the implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution with a review of Nürnberger’s contributions on the biblical witness to economic engagement. Nürnberger’s interdisciplinarity in his contributions helps set the direction for future engagements in the dawning post-secular era. (shrink)

In this contribution, the mystagogic engagement with Bible texts is considered. Good and bad reasons for drawing on the Bible are considered, both within personal and cultural frameworks. Different exegetical procedures are taken into review to inform a discussion of particularly the mystagogic engagement with the text. The latter is characterised by seeking faith from the biblical texts. For theological reasons, historical exegesis is proposed as particularly suited to mystagogic facilitation. Contribution: There are good and bad reasons for drawing on (...) the Bible, within personal and cultural frameworks. Different exegetical procedures inform a discussion of mystagogic engagement with the text, seeking faith from the biblical texts. Historical exegesis is proposed as particularly suited to mystagogic facilitation. (shrink)

In pre-democratic – also pre-modern – times, religion had been at the centre of much of human life, filling the private as well as the public realm of people’s daily existence. However, with the change to democratic rule in major countries in the modern world (see, most influentially, Article 1 of the French Constitution after the French Revolution and the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, influencing all other democracies in their wake), religion has for the most (...) part reflexively been sidelined from public life. Or has it? Does religion not still hold a special place in law in democratic societies, but now in reverse? Firstly, whereas matters of religious faith had throughout the greater part of human history been included in matters of politics, it is now as a matter of course of law excluded, purposely so. Religion is thus still a ‘special case’, a unique aspect of humanity when compared to all other matters, in law as much as in politics and other aspects of public life. Secondly, in the post-secular cultural climate dawning across the world, matters of faith (religion, spirituality) are no longer as stringently excluded from public life, which impacts directly on how religion is touched upon in law, sociology, philosophy, music and other academic disciplines too. Our dawning post-secular age is bringing something new. Two scholars, who have been doing foundational work in this regard, have done so fully in parallel, not taking cognisance of the mutualities in their academic contributions. Otto in Munich, Germany, has been combining his two areas of expertise, the Pentateuch in the Hebrew Bible and the sociologist Max Weber, to indicate the trajectory through history of democratic impulses from Ancient Near Eastern founding documents into the current era. Benson in Sydney, Australia, has on his part been drawing on his expertise in law as practised in Canada and taught in Europe, South Africa and Australia to indicate how, in inclusively liberal democracies, law cannot justifiably be used to exclude religion from the public domain, as has been the usual modern case. Drawing together these parallel contributions, Lombaard places these initiatives within the emerging post-secular climate, which augurs a different way of being religious or non-religious, publicly as much as privately, in democratic societies in our time. (shrink)

This contribution is part of a series on Methodology and Biblical Spirituality. In this, the fourth contribution, the scope is widened; more practical-analytically oriented, three thoroughly different but nevertheless all unusual kinds of interpretations of the Bible are described, characterised and contextualised. Namely:• In order to explain what are perceived as textual anomalies, some Old Testament authors have been described by US-based medical practitioners as having suffered psychiatric dysfunctions.• The Garden of Eden from Genesis 2 and further has been located (...) by a recently diseased Nigerian scholar as having been in her home country, with a Nigerian race having been the predecessors of biblical Adam and Eve.• Rastafarians, primarily Jamaica-based, regard marijuana as a holy herb and find direct support for their religious use of this plant in the Bible.However strange such ‘mystifying’ interpretations may seem within the theological mainstreams of Judeo-Christianity, there is more to these kinds of interpretations than simple whim. Certain cultural conditions along with personal, particularly spiritual, commitments enable these interpretations, which must be taken seriously in order to come to a fuller understanding of the text–interpreter dynamic. These then can cast at least some form of reflective light on the more usual current biblical-interpretative mainstreams within Judeo-Christianity, posing in a new light the question of what constitutes legitimate interpretations, also within mainstream interpretations, as religiously inclined people try to live their lives in the light of Scripture. (shrink)

Dieses R-Arbeitsbuch bietet seinen Leserinnen und Lesern ökonometrische Übungsaufgaben, die eigenständig am Computer bearbeitet werden können. Die notwendigen Kenntnisse des kostenlosen Programmpakets R werden in,,R-Boxen" quasi nebenbei Schritt für Schritt vermittelt. Den Auftakt bildet dabei eine einfache Installationsanleitung. Auch alle Lösungen der Übungsaufgaben sind sorgfältig dokumentiert. Das R-Arbeitsbuch lässt sich zwar mit jedem einführenden Ökonometrie-Lehrbuch kombinieren, die optimale Verzahnung besteht jedoch mit dem Lehrbuch Ökonometrie - Eine Einführung (von Auer, 8. Auflage, 2023). Die Zielgruppe dieser Lehrbuch-Arbeitsbuch-Kombination besitzt weder statistische (...) oder ökonometrische Kenntnisse noch Erfahrung in der Anwendung statistischer Programme. Für die 2. Auflage wurde das R-Arbeitsbuch gründlich überarbeitet und um zusätzliche Aufgaben ergänzt. Der Inhalt Ökonometrische Übungsaufgaben zur eigenständigen Bearbeitung Detaillierte Lösungen zu den Übungsaufgaben Systematische Anleitung für den Umgang mit dem Programmpaket R Die Autoren Ludwig von Auer ist Professor für Volkswirtschaftslehre an der Universität Trier. Er wurde von der Studentenschaft mit zahlreichen Preisen für herausragende Lehre ausgezeichnet und erhielt 2014 den Lehrpreis der Universität Trier. Sönke Hoffmann ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter an der Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaft der Otto-von-Guericke Universität Magdeburg, sowie selbständig tätiger Dozent an der Otto-von-Guericke Business School Magdeburg. Seit 2013 unterrichtet er Ökonometrie in Verbindung mit Statistiksoftware und entwickelte in diesem Zusammenhang das R-Paket desk. Tobias Kranz ist Dozent im Fach Volkswirtschaftslehre an der Universität Trier. Die Ökonometrie gehört seit 2016 zu seinem Lehrportfolio. Im Jahr 2021 erhielt er den Lehrpreis der Universität Trier. Seit 2022 ist er Mitautor des R-Pakets desk. (shrink)

Foundations of Set Theory discusses the reconstruction undergone by set theory in the hands of Brouwer, Russell, and Zermelo. Only in the axiomatic foundations, however, have there been such extensive, almost revolutionary, developments. This book tries to avoid a detailed discussion of those topics which would have required heavy technical machinery, while describing the major results obtained in their treatment if these results could be stated in relatively non-technical terms. This book comprises five chapters and begins with a discussion of (...) the antinomies that led to the reconstruction of set theory as it was known before. It then moves to the axiomatic foundations of set theory, including a discussion of the basic notions of equality and extensionality and axioms of comprehension and infinity. The next chapters discuss type-theoretical approaches, including the ideal calculus, the theory of types, and Quine's mathematical logic and new foundations; intuitionistic conceptions of mathematics and its constructive character; and metamathematical and semantical approaches, such as the Hilbert program. This book will be of interest to mathematicians, logicians, and statisticians. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought by Thomas C. BehrPatrick Auer JonesSocial Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought by Thomas C. Behr (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2019), ix + 259 pp.The status of Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum as the origin point of what has come to be called Catholic (...) Social Teaching (CST), or Catholic social doctrine, has been reinforced on the magisterial level by the commemorations of the encyclical by Pius XI, Paul VI, and John Paul II. It should be noted, then, that the tradition of CST is comparatively recent. Indeed, it is nearly coextensive with the twentieth-century. Nevertheless, this short tradition already calls for a ressourcement. As Russell Hittinger has pointed out, reflections on CST often move swiftly to the particulars of social issues without an adequate grasp even of its basic concepts: subsidiarity, solidarity, the common good, and the dignity of the person. Further, historical [End Page 1101] developments have had dramatic impact upon the ways in which these principles have been received and developed in the course of this young tradition.In his book Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought, Thomas C. Behr provides a major contribution to just such a ressourcement. He does this by presenting an introduction to the thought of the Jesuit scholar whose revival of Thomistic thought in a modern register formed the basis for Leonine social teaching. As Behr explains, Taparelli has remained a somewhat hidden figure in accounts of the genesis and development of CST. He goes unmentioned in the major social encyclicals of Leo and Pius, despite the fact that Leo himself was Taparelli's student. Because of his rhetorically and philosophically potent critique of Enlightenment thought and its effect on mid-nineteenth-century Europe, available to a popular audience through his frequent contributions to the Jesuit periodical La Civiltà Cattolica, Taparelli's name carried baggage for a Church that sought to move beyond the posture of reaction to liberal political orders.However, as Behr shows in the introduction, Taparelli hardly rejected the methods and insights of modern political thought tout court. Behr describes Taparelli's system as a "realist social science." This terminology speaks to the promise which Taparelli found in the sociological analysis of Montesquieu in particular. Though Taparelli judged that Montesquieu held a questionable preference for a republican political form, he greatly admired Montesquieu's ability to, as Behr puts it, "bring political theory into relationship with social theory and historical contingency" (8). Though Taparelli was not familiar with the work of Alexis De Tocqueville, Behr also notes the resonances between Taparelli's work and Tocqueville's political sociology and defense of "intermediary institutions." Yet Taparelli makes up for what the sociological approaches of Montesquieu and Tocqueville lack in the way of natural, teleological principles of politics. Behr alerts the reader from the very beginning of his work that, in approaching Taparelli, he will not find a simple recapitulation of Thomas, but rather a creative approach to political thought which aims to set what is worthy in the modern empirical methodologies on firmer foundations through the recovery of Thomistic-Aristotelian principles.In chapter 1, "Taparelli and the Age of Ideology," Behr situates Taparelli within the political conflicts of the early nineteenth century. Behr sets the scene for Taparelli's renovated Scholasticism by explaining the opposition between Catholic traditionalism (represented especially by Joseph De Maistre and Donoso Cortés) and Catholic liberalism (represented especially by Henri Dominique Lacordaire and his more radical associate Felicité de Lammenais). While the Catholic liberals aimed to convince both [End Page 1102] the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the anticlerical, postrevolutionary governments of Europe that Christianity upheld liberal and republican ideals, the traditionalists argued that Europe's moral and political derangement was the result of a rejection of the norms of tradition—especially of papal and monarchical authority. Remarkably, Taparelli entered neither of these camps. In the opening chapter, Behr stimulates the contemporary reader's interest by showing how Taparelli responded to a crisis of ideologies—progressive and... (shrink)

Abraham Pais's Subtle Is the Lord was a publishing phenomenon: a mathematically sophisticated exposition of the science and the life of Albert Einstein that reached a huge audience and won an American Book Award. Reviewers hailed the book as "a monument to sound scholarship and graceful style", "an extraordinary biography of an extraordinary man", and "a fine book". In this groundbreaking new volume, Pais undertakes a history of the physics of matter and of physical forces since the discovery of (...) x-rays. The book attempts to relate not only what has happened over the last hundred years but why it happened the way it did, what it was like for those scientists involved, and how what at the time may have seemed a series of bizarre or unrelated events, now with hindsight emerges as a logical sequence of events. Pais, a noted physicist, was personally involved in many of the developments he describes, and thus Inward Bound, like his earlier book, is filled with unique insights into the world of big and small physics. Between 1895 and 1983, the period he covers, the smallest distances explored have shrunk a hundred millionfold, Pais notes. Along this incompletely traveled "road inward," scientists have established markers that later generations will rank among the principal monuments of the twentieth century. In alternating technical and nontechnical sections, this magisterial survey richly conveys what has been discovered about the constituents of matter, the laws to which they are subject, and the forces that act on them. But the advances have certainly not come smoothly. The book shows that these have been times of progress and stagnation, of order and chaos, of clarity and confusion, of belief and incredulity, of the conventional and the bizarre; also of revolutionaries and conservatives, of science by individuals and by consortia, of little gadgets and big machines, and of modest funds and big money. About the Author: Abraham Pais is Detlev W. Bronk Professor of Physics at the Rockefeller University. The author of the prizewinning biography of Einstein now undertakes a history of modern physics. (shrink)

Since its inception in 1988, the SAREprogram has sponsored hundreds of projects to exploreand apply economically viable, environmentally sound,and socially acceptable farming systems. Recognizingthat researchers often collaborated with producers andthat producer interest in sustainable agriculture wasincreasing, SARE's North-Central Region began directlyfunding farmers and ranchers in 1992 to test their ownideas on sustainable agriculture. The present articleis based on data from the formative evaluation of thefirst five years (1992 to 1996) of the NCR-SAREProducer Grant Program. The evaluation used acombination of mail (...) surveys, non-response telephoneinterviews, and personal interviews.The evaluation revealed that the Program hassucceeded in showing that sustainable agriculturaltechnologies and practices can be viable andprofitable alternatives to conventional ways ofproducing crops and animals while simultaneously beingless environmentally damaging. On the other hand, thecontributions of the Producer Grant Program to thesocial and institutional spheres in which agricultureis embedded are less clear. Changes in these spheresare imperative for the success of sustainableagriculture, and for it to become more mainstream.Such changes cannot occur overnight, but they willremain the main challenge for SARE to tackle in thenear future. (shrink)