In the Quattrocento and Cinquecento the rise of linear perspective caused many polemics which opposed the supporters of an artificial geometrisation of sight to those who were praising the qualities of the drawing according to nature, or were invoking some arguments on a physiological basis. These debates can be grouped according to the four alternatives that form their central concerns: restricted vs. broad field of vision; ocular immobility vs. mobility; curvilinear vs. planar picture; monocular vs. binocular vision. By (...) retaining the first terms of these four alternatives, the history of perspective eliminated many heterodox constructions. From the viewpoint of mathematisation the interest of these debates is that they succeeded, rather than preceded, the adoption of a perspective system defined by the intersection of the visual pyramid. Thus the history of linear perspective constitutes a genuine case of a posteriori justification, or, put differently, it gives us a case of upside down mathematisation. (shrink)

This study presents the results of an empirical analysis of the relationship between managerial thinking style and ethical decision-making. Data from 200 managers across multiple organizations and industries demonstrated that managers predominantly adopt a utilitarian perspective when forming ethical intent across a series of business ethics vignettes. Consistent with expectations, managers utilizing a balanced linear/nonlinear thinking style demonstrated a greater overall willingness to provide ethical decisions across ethics vignettes compared to managers with a predominantly linear thinking style. (...) However, results comparing the ethical decision-making of balanced thinking managers and nonlinear thinking managers were generally inconsistent across the ethics vignettes. Unexpectedly, managers utilizing a balanced linear/nonlinear thinking style were least likely to adopt an act utilitarian rationale for ethical decision-making across the vignettes, suggesting that balanced thinkers may be more likely to produce ethical decisions by considering a wider range of alternatives and ruling out those that are justified solely on the basis of their outcomes. Implications are discussed for future research and practice related to management education and development, and ethical decision-making theory. (shrink)

Linear Syntax makes a case for a critical reassessment of the wide-spread view that syntax can be reduced to tree structures. It argues that a crucial part of the description of German clausal syntax should instead be based on concepts that are defined in terms of linear order. By connecting the descriptive tools of modern phrase-structure grammar with traditional descriptive scholarship, Andreas Kathol offers a new perspective on many long-standing problems in syntactic theory.

The ArgumentRecent studies in the philosophy of mathematics have increasingly stressed the social and historical dimensions of mathematical practice. Although this new emphasis has fathered interesting new perspectives, it has also blurred the distinction between mathematics and other scientific fields. This distinction can be clarified by examining the special interaction of thebodyandimagesof mathematics.Mathematics has an objective, ever-expanding hard core, the growth of which is conditioned by socially and historically determined images of mathematics. Mathematics also has reflexive capacities unlike those of (...) any other exact science. In no other exact science can the standard methodological framework usedwithinthe discipline also be used to study the nature of the discipline itself.Although it has always been present in mathematical research, reflexive thinking has become increasingly central to mathematics over the past century. Many of the images of the discipline have been dictated by the increase in reflexive thinking which has also determined a great portion of the contemporary philosophy and historiography of mathematics. (shrink)

This paper argues that the dominance of linear models has led many sociologists to construe the social world in terms of a "general linear reality." This reality assumes (1) that the social world consists of fixed entities with variable attributes, (2) that cause cannot flow from "small" to "large" attributes/events, (3) that causal attributes have only one causal pattern at once, (4) that the sequence of events does not influence their outcome, (5) that the "careers" of entities are (...) largely independent, and (6) that causal attributes are generally independent of each other. The paper discusses examples of these assumptions in empirical work, consider standard and new methods addressing them, and briefly explores alternative models for reality that employ demographic, sequential, and network perspectives. (shrink)

To underpin the importance of knowledge, the European commissioner for science and research Janez Potocnic confirms that in today’s global world, generating new knowledge and turning it into new products and services is crucial to enhance competitiveness. (Potocnic, 2007) In distinguishing between the linear notion of knowledge transfer and the business success attached to knowledge functionality, this thesis argues that whilst knowledge and knowledge transfer in a business success context is understood from a Aristotelian, Anglo American and perhaps Secular (...) perspective, the way knowledge is interpreted in relation to business success via other perspectives has been largely ignored. Similarly, the interpretation of information into meaningful knowledge prior to transfer which is mediated by actors personal experiential and cultural models, both of which are created from cognitive dispositions and socio-cultural interaction, has not been understood well enough to attribute it to an alternative perspective or view. Moreover, the degree to which perceptive dispositions influence knowledge transfer, either subjectively or objectively, in relation to a business context surrounding personal demands and criticisms, has not been fully identified. (shrink)

In this essay I revisit The Prince and the Discourses and argue that across the design of these two texts on the theme of conspiracy Machiavelli constructs an ambush on Medici princes. I reconsider Mary Dietz's (1986), and Langton's and Dietz's (1987) suggestion that Machiavelli's The Prince was a deceptive political act through an exploration of the link Dietz and Sheldon Wolin (2004) draw between Machiavelli's method and Renaissance artistry. I suggest that Machiavelli applied a one-point linear perspective (...) – a scientific and visual method of pictorial representation and geometrical modelling that emerged for the first time in the Renaissance – to the political field. I test this hypothesis on the theme of conspiracy in Machiavelli’s work by arguing that The Prince ultimately presents one vantage point – that of the prince – while the Discourses offers another – that of the conspirators. I argue that a blind spot is created by these two texts when they are jointly considered: conspirators seduced, recruited, and trained by the Discourses eliminate a prince caught off guard for having followed the advice on conspiracy in The Prince. (shrink)

BackgroundDepression and alcohol dependence are among the most prevalent psychiatric disorders that commonly co-occur. Therefore, gaining a better grasp of factors related to this comorbidity is particularly interesting for clinicians. Past research has highlighted the significant role that time perspective and family history of alcohol dependence play in the occurrence of depression and AD. However, much remains unexplored in the understanding of the association between them. This study explored how temporal profile and other sociodemographic characteristics of patients diagnosed with (...) AD impact the severity of depression and AD in them.MethodsThis study was multi-centered, including 381 patients. Cross-sectional information was collected from both inpatient and outpatient psychiatric clinics in China. Data were acquired using validated self-report scales, including Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test, Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale, and Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory-Chinese version. Multiple linear regression analyzes were conducted to control social demographic variables and construct prediction models to inspect the influence factors of variables. Moderation models were constructed to inspect further interplay between variables using hierarchical regression and PROCESS Macro.ResultsResults showed that of all the patients in Chinese psychiatry clinics diagnosed with AD according to the International Classification of Diseases-10, 59.9% met the criteria of depression according to the questionnaire, and time perspective was correlated with the severity of depression. Furthermore, using regression analysis, we found that time perspective and depression could predict AD severity. The moderating role of a past negative time perspective and FH was confirmed between depression and AD. We found that, in our study, only in patients with FH and relatively moderate to high scores of past negative time perspective could the severity of depression predict the severity of AD. Therefore, during the treatment and care of patients with AD, their depression level, time perspective score, and FH should be considered. (shrink)

We discuss the main results of Linear Stochastic Electrodynamics, starting from a reformulation of its basic assumptions. This theory shares with Stochastic Electrodynamics the core assumption that quantization comes about from the permanent interaction between matter and the vacuum radiation field, but it departs from it when it comes to considering the effect that this interaction has on the statistical properties of the nearby field. In the transition to the quantum regime, correlations between field modes of well-defined characteristic frequencies (...) arise, which coincide with the transition frequencies of quantum mechanics and are therefore directly related with the energy quantization. The Heisenberg equations of motion of (non-relativistic) quantum electrodynamics are thus obtained. After a detailed consideration of the significance of the approximations made, we present a discussion on some of the most delicate or controversial features of quantum mechanics from the perspective provided by the present theory. (shrink)

Anti-cognitivism is best understood as a challenge to explain how works of fictional narrative can add to our worldly knowledge. One way to respond to this challenge is to argue that works of fictional narrative add to our knowledge by inviting us to explore, in the imagination, the perspectives or points of view of others. In the present paper, I distinguish two readings of this thesis that reflect two very different conceptions of “perspective”: a first understanding focuses on what (...) the world looks like from a subjective point of view. Within this framework, we can distinguish approaches that focus on the subjective character of experience from others that explore the nature of subjectivity. I will argue that both strands can be successful only if they acknowledge the de se character of imagining. The second conception understands perspective as a method of representing. To illustrate it, I will look back to the invention of linear perspective in Renaissance painting. I will argue that the definition of perspective as a rule-guided method or technique can shed new light on the thesis that works of narrative fiction are particularly suited to display other perspectives. (shrink)

Abstract:When teaching the use of perspective, art teachers usually begin with the linear perspective of the Italian Renaissance with the intent of providing pupils with practical tools to create spatial illusion in their drawings. Perspective, however, is and can be much more than a technique for constructing pictures. Given that perspective-taking is one of the central aspects of empathy, the teaching of this topic can serve as a tool for improving openness and empathy among school (...) children. The transformative power of art education makes this possible. The current article suggests a method of using photographic works of art to encourage children to see the world from the perspective of the other. Complementing the teaching of one-point perspective, the teacher introduces the children to the idea of multiple points of view to engage them in imagining things as if they could be otherwise, leading eventually to increased social sensitivity. (shrink)

From a perceptual psychology and philosophy conference on linear perspective: points out standard fallacies about perspective, then challenges psychology's and philosophy's widespread assumption that a satisfactory understanding of depiction in any medium can be reached via theories of spatial--or any other kind of--visual perception.

To students and practitioners of anamorphic art, the name of Jean-François Niceron is more than preeminent; it has become iconic. La Perspective Curieuse was first published in 1638. An augmented version was then translated into Latin by Mersenne in 1646. A newly amended and augmented version was retranslated into French by Roberval in 1652. This book is an English translation of the 1652 text, with reference to the 1638 and 1646 versions. Considering the continued high reputation of the book, (...) the mathematics have been checked for correctness and consistency, and the authors have provided a full commentary, pointing out the most difficult turns of the 17th-century French, the respective contributions of Niceron, Mersenne and Roberval, and explaining Niceron's greatest insights and weaknesses. (shrink)

Every linear perspective image has a center of the perspective construction. Only when observed from that location does a 2D image provide the same stimulus as the original 3D scene. Geometric analyses indicate that observing the image from other vantage points should affect the perceived spatial structure of the scene conveyed by the image, involving transformations such as shear, compression, and dilation. Based on previous research, this paper presents a detailed account of these transformations. The analyses are (...) presented in a uniform manner, illustrated with special 3D diagrams, and embedded in a wider framework of related perspective paradigms. Such analyses provide the potential theoretical basis for empirical work on the effects of changes of observer vantage points on the perception of spatial structure in perspective images. (shrink)

This book explores the interrelationships between optics, vision and perspective before the Classical Age, examining binocularity in particular. The author shows how binocular vision was one of the key juncture points between the three concepts and readers will see how important it is to understand the approach that scholars once took. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the concept of Perspectiva – the Latin word for optics – encompassed many areas of enquiry that had been viewed since antiquity (...) as interconnected, but which a erwards were separated: optics was incorporated into the field of physics (i.e., physical and geometrical optics), vision came to be regarded as the sum of various psycho-physiological mechanisms involved in the way the eye operates (i.e., physiological optics and psychology of vision) and the word ‘perspective’ was reserved for the mathematical representation of the external world (i.e., linear perspective). The author shows how this division, which emerged as a result of the spread of the sciences in classical Europe, turns out to be an anachronism if we confront certain facts from the immediately preceding periods. It is essential to take into account the way medieval scholars posed the problem – which included all facets of the Latin word perspectiva – when exploring the events of this period. (shrink)

Experimental studies indicate that nonhuman animals and infants represent numerosities above three or four approximately and that their mental number line is logarithmic rather than linear. In contrast, human children from most cultures gradually acquire the capacity to denote exact cardinal values. To explain this difference, I take an extended mind perspective, arguing that the distinctly human ability to use external representations as a complement for internal cognitive operations enables us to represent natural numbers. Reviewing neuroscientific, developmental, and (...) anthropological evidence, I argue that the use of external media that represent natural numbers (like number words, body parts, tokens or numerals) influences the functional architecture of the brain, which suggests a two-way traffic between the brain and cultural public representations. (shrink)

Various attempts at demarcating logic were undertaken, many of them based on specific understanding of how logical knowledge is formal and not material. MacFarlane has persuasively shown that general idea of formality of logic can be understood in various ways. I take two of the accounts of formality, namely the requirement of conservativity and the requirement of schematicity of logical vocabulary, into consideration as promising candidates to make the all too unclear notion of formality more precise and study to what (...) degree they could be considered as either necessary or sufficient conditions for logicality of some piece of vocabulary. Finding both notion unsatisfactory, as they stand, I propose combining them and envisage a hierarchy of logicality of expressions of a given language. Such a hierarchy is complicated and not linear, yet still offers a valuable explication of both the range and pragmatic significance of logic, if we combine it with logical expressivism. (shrink)

L'essor de la perspective linéaire a suscité de nombreuses polémiques tout au long du Quattrocento et du Cinquecento, opposant les partisans d'une géométrisation artificialiste de la vision à ceux qui vantaient les qualités du dessin d'après nature ou invoquaient des arguments de nature physiologique. Ces débats peuvent être retracés à partir des quatre alternatives qui en constituent le noyau dur : champ de vision restreint vs. large ; immobilité vs. mobilité oculaire ; tableau plan vs. curviligne ; vision monoculaire (...) vs. binoculaire. En retenant les premiers termes de ces quatre alternatives, l'histoire de la perspective a rejeté de nombreux systèmes hétérodoxes. Du point de vue de la mathématisation, l'intérêt de ces débats tient à ce qu'ils ont succédé, et non précédé, l'adoption du dispositif perspectif comme intersection de la pyramide visuelle. L'histoire de la perspective linéaire offre ainsi un authentique cas de justification a posteriori des fondements ou, pour ainsi dire, de mathématisation à rebours. (shrink)

This collaborative volume offers the first historical reconstruction of the concept of popular sovereignty from antiquity to the twentieth century. First formulated between the late sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries, the various early modern conceptions of the doctrine were heavily indebted to Roman reflection on forms of government and Athenian ideas of popular power. This study, edited by Richard Bourke and Quentin Skinner, traces successive transformations of the doctrine, rather than narrating a linear development. It examines critical moments in the (...) career of popular sovereignty, spanning antiquity, medieval Europe, the early modern wars of religion, the revolutions of the eighteenth century and their aftermath, decolonisation and mass democracy. Featuring original work by an international team of scholars, the book offers a reconsideration of one of the formative principles of contemporary politics by exploring its descent from classical city-states to the advent of the modern state. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide an original account of the distinction between the spheres of Sitten that goes beyond the traditional one based on the nature of incentives, since this underestimates some of their characteristics. First, the paper identifies in obligatio a common source between Ethics and Right. Then, it explores how in the Metaphysics of Morals the connection between law and incentive constitutes a more relevant criterion to distinguish ethical lawgiving from juridical lawgiving. Specifically, it demonstrates (...) that such connection: to be ethical should be linear, understood as a necessary self-determined process of connecting law to incentive; to be juridical should be mediated, namely it comprises an inclusive disjunction between two modalities of connecting law to incentive: a non-necessary linear and a divergent one. It concludes by exploring the implications of such perspective on the notions of internalisation and externalisation associated to each lawgiving. (shrink)

Based on the assumption that the long-term value of a venture capital satisfies the algebraic Brownian motion, we develop a continuous-time exit model of venture capital under different exit modes, namely, initial public offering and mergers and acquisitions. The employee incentive problem is analyzed jointly with the exit decision of the firm in terms of the exit timing and the exit mode. Further, the problem of capital exit is considered from two perspectives, namely, optimal venture capital and social welfare maximization, (...) and the differences between these exit decisions are compared. Our model predicts that the timing of an IPO, the purpose of which is to maximize the utility of the capitalists, lags behind the exit timing, whose purpose is to maximize social welfare. Using a numerical analysis, this paper also proves that increasing the production efficiency, lowering the interest rates, and improving risk management can make the exit decision of venture capitalists converge with that of maximizing social welfare. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:From Children's Perspectives:A Model of Aesthetic Processing in TheatreJeanne Klein (bio)Since the children's theatre movement began, producers have sought to create artistic theatre experiences that best correspond to the adult-constructed aesthetic "needs" of young audiences by categorizing common differences according to age groups. For decades, directors simply chose plays on the basis of dramatic genres (e.g., fairy tales), as defined by children's presupposed interests or "tastes," by subscribing to (...) Winifred Ward's broad descriptions of the "imaginative period" (ages six to nine), the "heroic period" (ages nine to twelve), and the "romantic period" (over age thirteen).1 Years later, Moses Goldberg elaborated upon these generalized divisions while cautioning that "no individual fits exactly into any set of categories."2 In his position paper on aesthetic development, he argued for individual access to aesthetic techniques, processes, and products for all ages, paralleled by four stages of cognitive capabilities, based on exposure to (1) arena-style participation theatre (for ages five to eight), which emphasizes story enactments; (2) a wide range of proscenium-style theatrical conventions; (3) relevant play content that directly relates characters' problems to spectators' lives and growing self-awareness; and (4) social issue plays that pose ethical dilemmas as cultural reflections.3 Meanwhile, Jed Davis compiled Age Group Profiles, organized by cognitive, spatial, emotional, and moral/ethical development, from his review of Piagetian literature; and Johnny Saldaña summarized stages of young interpretations of theatre from his seven-year longitudinal study.4Suffice it to say, the field of developmental psychology has come a long way since Piaget formulated his four constructivist stages. Since the mid-1950s, the cognitive revolution has spurred more integrated theories of information processing and depth-of-processing models that explain and predict how people construct schematic frameworks of knowledge and [End Page 40] assimilate and accommodate new information as a function of perception, attention, emotion, comprehension, memory, and social and moral behaviors. Although masculinist metaphors of hierarchical "staircases" and linear networks of associative learning still dominate computational models, feminist perspectives, which engender social cognitive, co-relational negotiations of narratives in situated contexts, have gained more widespread acceptance—by including theatre as an apt metaphor for development.5 Over the past twenty years or more, cognitive psychologists have finally discovered what dramatic theorists have known about narrative structures since Aristotle's Poetics: Powerful stories contain universal themes about the human condition through characters' conflicting actions. The most successful dramas are those that allow spectators to enter into a protagonist's psychological consciousness or "inner" vision in order to empathize with her "outer" reality.6While several developmental models of aesthetic understanding, experience, and appreciation exist in the realms of visual art and music education, few examples have been proposed in regard to theatre, particularly for child audiences.7 Instead, producers of Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) tend to romanticize its social and moral "effects" upon youth by believing passionately that viewing one remarkable performance has the potential (the operative word) to "cause" positive, social changes in children's minds, hearts, and behaviors, given the presumed "power of human imagination."8 This obsession with progressive change foregrounds adults' desires to control human destiny by predicting "causes and effects" located in children's responses to live performances. However, this "folk theory" fails to explain how young imaginations actually function aesthetically from the contextual evidence of reception studies with child audiences. Just as feminists have argued for a distinctive "feminist aesthetics," based on women's alternative ways of knowing,9 I argue that children gaze upon theatre in differential ways by including age as a variable factor. "Children's aesthetics," their perceived interpretations of theatre, differ from that of adults' theorized postulations, based in part on their shorter life experiences with this medium. To this end, over the course of my career, I have sought to understand theatre from children's perspectives by focusing my research in the social cognitive theories and social science methods of child development, primarily through the vast literature of television and mass media studies conducted with young people over the past forty years. In particular, medium-specific studies that parse theatrical forms from dramatic content... (shrink)

We have been particularly interested in the demonstrable unremovability of machinery, which is a theme that can be pursued systematically starting at the most elementary level - the use of binary notation to represent integers; the use of rational numbers to solve linear equations; the use of real and complex numbers to solve polynomial equations; and the use of transcendental functions to solve differential equations.

A political act is a typical self-serving behavior that works to promote or protect self-interest. However, limited research explores its relationship with daily downstream behavior. Based on the ego depletion theory, the present study attempts to clarify when and how daily political acts will be transformed into interpersonal deviance. We collected 760 cases nested in 152 full time workers in mainland China through the experience sampling method. Via a multilevel structural equation model and hierarchical linear model, we tested the (...) mediated moderation model. The results showed that political acts correlated with interpersonal deviance on a daily basis. Moral self-efficacy buffers the relationship between political acts and interpersonal deviance, whereas chronic job strain amplifies the relationship. Furthermore, moral self-efficacy can mediate the moderating role of chronic job strain. (shrink)

"Thinking about thinking", the topic of this section of our volume, leads us into an Escherian web of self-referential interconnections — which nevertheless make sense, at least if we do not shy away at once in the face of paradox, for fear of inconsistency. How do our critical faculties enter the picture? Adding a few conceptual dimensions to the merely linearly causal one may help us to shed light on the issue, and may help us also to understand some of (...) the basic strategies "Western" thought has developed throughout its historical pathway in its conscious dealings with the 'real'. Of course, in a few pages it is impossible to do justice to this complicated subject. But I'll try to give the reader an as clear as possible description of the, in my view, crucial issues, pointing out the ways they resonate into the many fields of interest represented in the intended readership, and leave it to the reader to dig deeper through the given references. (shrink)

The question motivating my investigation is: Are the basic philosophical principles underlying the "core" system of contemporary logic exhausted by the standard version? In particular, is the accepted narrow construal of the notion "logical term" justified? ;As a point of comparison I refer to systems of 1st-order logic with generalized quantifiers developed by mathematicians and linguists . Based on an analysis of the Tarskian conception of the role of logic I show that the standard division of terms into logical and (...) extra-logical is partly arbitrary. I argue that the semantic principles of Tarskian logic allow any higher order mathematical predicate or relation to function as a logical term in a 1st-order system, provided it is introduced in the right way into the syntactic-semantic apparatus. ;Formally, I propose a new, "constructive", semantic characterization of logical terms. A logical term is defined by a function which, given a model, "shows" how to construct relations, sets, or n-tuples of individuals which satisfy it. I discuss the linguistic applicability of the extended logic and bring numerous examples. ;One chapter is devoted to branching quantification--a non-standard logico-linguistic construction obtained by affixing a non-linear, partially-ordered quantifier-prefix to a well-formed formula. Although standard branching quantifiers were given a complete account by Henkin and Walkoe, it is not altogether clear what the meaning of branching generalized quantifiers is. I propose a new analysis of the generalized branching prefix which extends the existent, partial, definitions due to Barwise, and I develop a generalization leading to a "family" of branching structures. ;In conclusion I discuss the philosophical impact of the generalized conception of logic on such issues as the logicist thesis, the interaction between mathematics and logic, ontological commitment via logic, metaphysics and logical semantics. (shrink)

The perception of time shifts as patients enter hospice care. As a complex, socially determined construct, time plays a significant role in end‐of‐life care. Drawing on Buddhist and Western perspectives, conceptualizations of linear and cyclical time are discussed alongside notions of time as interplay of embodied experience and concept. Buddhist understandings of self as patterns of relating and the theory of ‘dependent origination’ are introduced. Implications for understanding death, dying and end‐of‐life care within these differing perspectives are considered. These (...) explorations contribute to the growing dialogue in nursing between Buddhist and Western traditions. (shrink)

The article reveals the use of postmodernism as a style of thinking and a special view of contemporaneity as an interpretive basis for understanding present-day university education and understanding the prospects for its development in new conditions. The emphasis is based on three characteristics of the postmodern paradigm: change in the status of knowledge in society; non-structural, non-linear way of organizing integrity, excluding rigid centralization, orderliness and symmetry; a special model of contemporaneity, which does not allow the imposition of (...) life guidelines and values on a person. It is shown that the situation of postmodernism has led to new phenomena in university education, which have changed the traditional status and mission of the university. There was a tendency towards the mass character of university education, which, by expanding accessibility, contributed to a decrease in its quality. The change in the status of knowledge in society has led to the commercialization of education, which puts on threat the academic freedom and autonomy of the university, which becomes dependent on the “order” for educational services. Teaching strategies and educational strategies of students are changing; the level of their interconnection and interdependence is decreasing. It is noted that the modernization of higher education determines the formation of a new university – the university at risk and actualizes the task of predicting systematically emerging risks and dangers and developing measures to level or limit their negative impacts. (shrink)

Using an articulatory model we show that locus equations make special use of the phonetic space of possible locus patterns. There is nothing articulatorily inevitable about their linearity or slope- intercept characteristics. Nonetheless, articulatory factors do play an important role in the origin of simulated locus equations, but they cannot, by themselves, provide complete explanations for the observed facts. As in other domains, there is interaction between perceptual and motor factors.

We provide a critical assessment of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) “broader impacts criterion” for peer review, which has met with resistance from the scientific community and been characterized as unlikely to have much positive effect due to poor implementation and adherence to the linear model heuristic for innovation. In our view, the weakness of NSF's approach owes less to these issues than to the misguided assumption that the peer review process can be used to leverage more societal value (...) from research. This idea, although undoubtedly well-meaning, is fundamentally flawed. Retooling or refining the Broader Impacts Criterion does not alter the fact that conventional peer review, based on specialized scientific and technical expertise, is not up to the task of ensuring adequate judgements about social impact. We consider some possible alternative approaches to providing greater social impact in science and include in our assessment past and current efforts at NSF and throughout the federal research establishment that address, in some cases having addressed for decades, the intentions and goals of the Broader Impacts Criterion, albeit using alternate mechanisms. We conclude that institution-building and explicit and targeted policy-making are more useful and democratically legitimate approaches to ensuring broad social impacts. (shrink)

We provide a critical assessment of the National Science Foundation's “broader impacts criterion” for peer review, which has met with resistance from the scientific community and been characterized as unlikely to have much positive effect due to poor implementation and adherence to the linear model heuristic for innovation. In our view, the weakness of NSF's approach owes less to these issues than to the misguided assumption that the peer review process can be used to leverage more societal value from (...) research. This idea, although undoubtedly well-meaning, is fundamentally flawed. Retooling or refining the Broader Impacts Criterion does not alter the fact that conventional peer review, based on specialized scientific and technical expertise, is not up to the task of ensuring adequate judgements about social impact. We consider some possible alternative approaches to providing greater social impact in science and include in our assessment past and current efforts at NSF and throughout the federal research establishment that address, in some cases having addressed for decades, the intentions and goals of the Broader Impacts Criterion, albeit using alternate mechanisms. We conclude that institution-building and explicit and targeted policy-making are more useful and democratically legitimate approaches to ensuring broad social impacts. (shrink)