That capitalism is a superior economic system because it elicits productive effort from individuals by utilizing the desire for material improvement, is a contention that can be defended if it could be established that this desire is a universal human motive and is to be found in non-capitalist as well as capitalist societies. In addition, it can be argued that within a market economy, if men pursue what is in their own interest, their actions are likely to have the unintended (...) consequence that, many others benefit; for under capitalism, one man's gain is not necessarily another's loss. Both these points are raised in reply to Richard Schmitt's alleged refutation of 'the psychological defence of capitalism” Inquiry, Vol. 16 [1973], No. 2). (shrink)

The aim of this thesis is to discuss the nature of social phenomena, and to determine the appropriate way to explain them. Many of the contentions advanced rest largely upon the fact that social phenomena can be investigated only by methods which respect their distinctive character and status as social phenomena. In chapter I it is argued that the most important difference between the social and the natural sciences is that the former have to employ intentional criteria to identify their (...) explananda-phenomena. Because human and societal phenomena are intrinsically meaningful, the type of causation which prevails in the social realm is fundamentally different from that which prevails in the physical. In chapter II the claim of Popper and Hayek that the task of the social sciences is to trace the unintended consequences of human actions is critically examined. Two examples of economic explanation are given in order to show the importance of unintended consequences, and to illustrate the general form explanations of social phenomena should adopt. In chapter III the contention that the social sciences deal with inherently complex phenomena is examined and defended, and the main implications of this contention for social analysis are drawn. The extent to which social phenomena are in principle predictable is discussed. In chapter IV the structural properties of formal scientific theories are briefly characterised, and then Friedman's famous argument on the testability of economic theories is analysed and rejected. The role within a scientific theory of statements formulated with reference to idealisations of the phenomena being studied, and the role within a social explanation of the 'principle of rationality', are discussed. In chapter V the central questions behind the methodological individualism/methodological holism controversy are brought to light. Provided that methodological individualism is not construed as a reductionist or mechanistic principle, it can successfully avoid the main objections of its detractors. It is argued that the method of functional analysis in sociology is consistent with methodological individualism. Finally, it is claimed that the principle of methodological individualism does indeed recommend the appropriate way to explain societal phenomena. In chapter VI, the various strands of thought running through the five preceding chapters are drawn together in a brief summary of the most important points raised by this thesis. (shrink)

Everything about us today tells us that we live in a world which will be increasingly dominated by empirical and theoretic science. This is the world in which the Church lives and proclaims its message about Jesus Christ. It is not an alien world, for it is in this world of space and time that God has planted us. He made the universe and endowed man with gifts to investigate and understand it. Just as he made life to produce itself, (...) so he has made the universe with man as an essential constituent in it, that it may bring forth and articulate knowledge of itself. Regarded in this light the pursuit of science is one of the ways in which man exercises the dominion in the earth which he was given at his creation. That is how, for example, Francis Bacon understood the work of human science, as man's obedience to God. Science is a religious duty, while man as scientist can be spoken of as the priest of creation , whose task it is to interpret the books of nature, to understand the universe in its wonderful structures and harmonies, and to bring it all into orderly articulation, so that it fulfils its proper end as the vast theatre of glory in which the creator is worshipped and praised. Nature itself is dumb, but it is man's part to bring it to word, to be its mouth through which the whole universe gives voice to the glory and majesty of the living God. (shrink)

THE DOMINATING CONCEPT IN GREEK THOUGHT, SAYS TORRANCE, WAS A RECEPTACLE NOTION OF SPACE. THIS HAD NO PLACE IN THE NICENE THEOLOGY. WITH THE ASCENDANCY OF ARISTOTELIAN PHILOSOPHY THE RECEPTACLE NOTION OF SPACE DOMINATED MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY, AND THIS IS WHAT, DESPITE LUTHER’S INSIGHT INTO THE RELATION BETWEEN THE ONTOLOGICAL AND DYNAMIC WAYS OF THINKING OF THE REAL PRESENCE AND THE INCARNATION, PRODUCED THE SEPARATION BETWEEN THEM. THIS PROBLEM INHERITED BY MODERN THEOLOGY CAN ONLY BE SOLVED IF WE USE THE (...) PATRISTIC UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS CHRIST IN SPACE AND TIME AS GOD’S PLACE IN THIS WORLD WHERE HE IS PRESENT IN OUR PLACE. (BP). (shrink)

In this book, Professor Torrance calls for 'a return to theological rationality': theological thinking must not be a construction of man's making but controlled and conditioned by the nature of its Object, God, the supreme reality. From this approach the author analyses the 'Eclipse of God' and relates his position to the costly grace of God in Christ.

In this book, Professor Torrance calls for 'a return to theological rationality': theological thinking must not be a construction of man's making but controlled and conditioned by the nature of its Object, God, the supreme reality. From this approach the author analyses the 'Eclipse of God' and relates his position to the costly grace of God in Christ.

Intrinsic to rigorous knowledge of God is the recognition that positive theological concepts and statements about God arising under the compelling claims of God's reality upon the human mind must have an open revisable structure. A similar combination of critical realism and ontological openness is apparent in the profound change that has taken place in the rational structure of rigorous science from the radical dualism and closed causal system of classical mechanics to the unifying world view and open dynamic field‐theories (...) of modern physics. It is argued that the intersection of theological and natural science in their epis‐temological foundations can enhance their ontological commitment and heuristic thrust. (shrink)

Through faith we understand that the worlds were made by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear By faith we understand that the universe was framed by God's command, so that the visible came forth from the invisible.

Through faith we understand that the worlds were made by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear (Hebrews 11:3, AV)By faith we understand that the universe was framed by God's command, so that the visible came forth from the invisible (Hebrews 11:3, NEB).

Thomas S. Kuhn's classic book is now available with a new index.

The significance of the plurality of the Copernican Revolution is the main thrust of this undergraduate text In this study of the Copernican Revolution, the ...

This book contains the text of Thomas Kuhn's unfinished book, The Plurality of Worlds: An Evolutionary Theory of Scientific Development, which Kuhn himself described as "a return to the central claims of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and the problems that it raised but did not resolve." The Plurality of Worlds is preceded by two related texts that Kuhn publicly delivered but never published in English: his paper "Scientific Knowledge as a Historical Product" and his Shearman Memorial Lectures, "The (...) Presence of Past Science." The book opens with an introduction by the editor that describes the origins and structure of The Plurality of Worlds, and sheds light on its central philosophical problems. Kuhn's aims in his last writings are bold. He sets out to develop an empirically grounded theory of meaning that would allow him to make sense of both the possibility of historical understanding and the inevitability of incommensurability between past and present science. Moreover, he intends to show that incommensurability is fully compatible with a robust notion of a real world that science investigates, with the rationality of scientific belief change, and with the idea that scientific development is progressive. This is a must-read follow-up to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, one of the most important books of the twentieth century. (shrink)

The author's concept of incommensurability is explicated by elaborating the claim that some terms essential to the formulation of older theories defy translation into the language of more recent ones. Defense of this claim rests on the distinction between interpreting a theory in a later language and translating the theory into it. The former is both possible and essential, the latter neither. The interpretation/translation distinction is then applied to Kitcher's critique of incommensurability and Quine's conception of a translation manual, both (...) of which take reference-preservation as the sole semantic criterion of translational adequacy. The paper concludes by enquiring about the additional criteria a successful translation must satisfy. (shrink)

A highly condensed account of the author's present view of some philosophical problems unresolved in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The concept of incommensurability, now considerably developed, remains at center stage, but the evolutionary metaphor, introduced in the final pages of the book, now also plays a principal role.

A highly condensed account of the author's present view of some philosophical problems unresolved in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The concept of incommensurability, now considerably developed, remains at center stage, but the evolutionary metaphor, introduced in the final pages of the book, now also plays a principal role.

Divided into three parts, this work is a record of the direction Kuhn was taking during the last two decades of his life. It consists of essays in which he refines the basic concepts set forth in "Structure"--Paradigm shifts, incommensurability, and the nature of scientific progress.

This paper discusses ethnomethodology's program in relation to the phenomenological life-world analysis of Alfred Schutz. A recent publication of Garfinkel's early writings sheds new light on how he made use of phenomenological reflections in order to create a new sociological approach. Garfinkel used Schutz's life-world analysis as a source of inspiration, called for 'misreading' in the sense of an alternate reading and developed a new, empirical approach to the analysis of social order which he called 'ethnomethodology'. Ethnomethodologists usually acknowledge the (...) historical importance of Schutz but emphasize that Garfinkel succeeded to overcome the limitations of phenomenological analyses and moved beyond. This view has spread above all in the Anglosaxon countries. In German sociology, Schutz's life-world analysis still has a much stronger standing than ethnomethodology and is interpreted as a systematic whole. Following Luckmann, it is discussed as a protosociological foundation of the methodology of social sciences or, following Srubar, as a philosophical anthropology with two poles: a subjective and a social, pragmatic pole. Both versions claim to analyze the meaningful constitution of the social world, to serve as a foundation of sociological methodology and to provide guidelines for an `adequate' sociology. While Garfinkel used phenomenological concepts for sociological analysis, Luckmann clearly distinguishes the two: you either do phenomenology (protosociology) or you do sociology (a theoretically guided, empirical sociology of knowledge). This paper describes the present-day debate in German sociology and compares ethnomethodology's program with these interpretations of Schutz's life-world analysis. (shrink)

A good book may have the power to change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once were—and still are. _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions _is that kind of book. When it was first published in 1962, it was a landmark event in the history and philosophy of science. Fifty (...) years later, it still has many lessons to teach. With _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, _Kuhn challenged long-standing linear notions of scientific progress, arguing that transformative ideas don’t arise from the day-to-day, gradual process of experimentation and data accumulation but that the revolutions in science, those breakthrough moments that disrupt accepted thinking and offer unanticipated ideas, occur outside of “normal science,” as he called it. Though Kuhn was writing when physics ruled the sciences, his ideas on how scientific revolutions bring order to the anomalies that amass over time in research experiments are still instructive in our biotech age. This new edition of Kuhn’s essential work in the history of science includes an insightful introduction by Ian Hacking, which clarifies terms popularized by Kuhn, including paradigm and incommensurability, and applies Kuhn’s ideas to the science of today. Usefully keyed to the separate sections of the book, Hacking’s introduction provides important background information as well as a contemporary context. Newly designed, with an expanded index, this edition will be eagerly welcomed by the next generation of readers seeking to understand the history of our perspectives on science. (shrink)

This Alfred Schutz Memorial Lecture discusses the relationship between the phenomenological life-world analysis and the methodology of the social sciences, which was the central motive of Schutz’s work. I have set two major goals in this lecture. The first is to scrutinize the postulate of adequacy, as this postulate is the most crucial of Schutz’s methodological postulates. Max Weber devised the postulate ‘adequacy of meaning’ in analogy to the postulate of ‘causal adequacy’ (a concept used in jurisprudence) and regarded both (...) as complementary and, in the context of sociological analysis, critical. Schutz extracted the two postulates from the Neokantian epistemology, dismissed the concept of causality, and reduced Weber’s two postulates of adequacy into one, namely, the adequacy of meaning. I discuss the benefits and shortcomings of this reduction. A major problem, in my view, is that Schutz’s reformulation lost the empirical concern that was inherent in Weber’s ‘causal adequacy’. As a result, the models of economics (which shaped Schutz’s conception of social science) are considered to be adequate if they are ‘understandable’ to an everyday actor, even when they are based on the most unrealistic assumptions. To recapture Weber’s empirical orientation I recommend a more restrictive interpretation of the postulate of adequacy that links it to qualitative research and unfolds the critical potential of Schutz’s phenomenological life-world analysis. My second goal is to report on some current developments in German sociology in which a number of approaches explicitly refer to Schutz’s analysis of the life-world and attempt to pursue ‘adequate’ empirical research. This lecture focuses on three approaches: ethnophenomenology, life-world analytic ethnography, and social scientific hermeneutics. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to provide a systematic reconstruction and critique of what is taken to be a central ethical concern against the use of non-medical egg freezing. The concern can be captured in what we can call the individualisation argument. The argument states, very roughly, that women should not use NMEF as it is an individualistic and morally problematic solution to the social problems that women face, for instance, in the labour market. Instead of allowing or expecting (...) women to deal with them on an individual level, we should address them by challenging the patriarchal structures of the labour market—for example, by securing equal pay, or paid maternal leave, or ‘paid paternal [partner] leave and sick leave and affordable child care’. It will be made clear that there are several versions of this argument. The author will try to elaborate this claim, and it will be explained that the differences depend on the way in which bioethicists believe that individuals use of NMEF is morally problematic, compared with the alternative of securing social change for women in, say, the labour market. Finally, a critical discussion of three versions of the individualisation argument will follow, and it will be shown why all versions are on rather thin ice, or in other words, that they are implausible. (shrink)