Recounts the works of Immanuel Velikovsky and the controversies surrounding it, discussing his influence on the counterculture and debates with such luminaries as Carl Sagan.

This paper takes three distinct passes through the history of Machine Translation (MT) in the Soviet Union, which is typically understood as concentrating in a single boom period that lasted from roughly 1955 to 1965. In both the Soviet Union and the United States—in explicit competition with each other—there was a tremendous wave of investment in adapting computers to nonnumerical tasks that has only recently drawn the attention of historians, primarily focusing on the American example. The Soviet Union, however, quickly (...) came to assume prominence in the field both in terms of scale and diversity of approaches. At the same moment, Soviet linguists excavated a forgotten precursor, P. P. Smirnov-Troianskii, who had designed a translating machine in the early 1930s. Juxtaposing the multiple contexts in which Smirnov-Troianskii’s machine was reconceptualized and reappropriated for various ends, the article demonstrates the fundamental embodying of the algorithm in the early days of MT and also how the proliferation of narratives about Soviet MT exposes fault lines in contemporary historiography. (shrink)

Much of the scholarship in the history of science has undervalued the significance of the debates around language choice and language use. After surveying various historiographical trends characterizing the relationship of science to language, this introduction explores the role of language-choice in nation-building, education, publication and transnational exchanges. It concludes with a brief summary of the four case studies in this special issue, which explore the German, Greek, English and Russian languages in the context of the sciences in nineteenth-century Europe.

This paper explores the significant – albeit little-known – impact that physicist Albert Einstein's theory of relativity had on the development of the science of linguistics. Both Max Talmey, a physician who played a key role in the development of early twentieth-century constructed-language movements, and Benjamin Lee Whorf, who is closely associated with the notion of ‘linguistic relativity’, drew on their understanding of relativity to develop their ideas (and, in Talmey's case, also on his personal relationship with Einstein). Linguistic relativity, (...) which posits that humans’ linguistic categories shape their perceptions of nature, has often been tied to ‘relativism’ in the social sciences and humanities. In contrast, Talmey's commitment to reformulating the language of Einsteinian relativity – especially through a constructed language he built in the 1920s and 1930s – emphasized the significance of ‘invariance’ simultaneously in the scientific doctrine and in the language in which it was discussed. The semiotic flexibility of Einstein's ‘relativity theory’ as it was widely (and wildly) appropriated outside the small community of theoretical physicists enabled the two opposing moves, while obscuring the historical linkage between physics and linguistics for both. (shrink)

Until the 1860s, science in Russia was principally conducted in Latin, French, and German. In the years leading up to and following the creation of the Russian Chemical Society in 1868, Russian chemists – treated in this article as both a representative sample of Russian scientists and also practitioners of the flagship science of the period – debated both the merits of developing a nomenclature that would enable Russian to “hold” modern inorganic and organic chemistry, and the practicability of doing (...) so. The article explores debates over whether Russian syntax could be adapted to represent chemical compounds according to emerging western conventions or in a sui generis manner, as well as the struggles of Russian scientists to use French and German to communicate with their foreign counterparts, arguing that the details of these debates highlight both the fruitfulness and the limits of using “standardization” as a framework for linguistic codification. (shrink)

SUMMARYMachine Translation is now ubiquitous in discussions of translation. The roots of this phenomenon — first publicly unveiled in the so-called ‘Georgetown-IBM Experiment’ on 9 January 1954 — displayed not only the technological utopianism still associated with dreams of a universal computer translator, but was deeply enmeshed in the political pressures of the Cold War and a dominating conception of scientific writing as both the goal of machine translation as well as its method. Machine translation was created, in part, as (...) a solution to a perceived crisis sparked by the massive expansion of Soviet science. Scientific prose was also perceived as linguistically simpler, and so served as the model for how to turn a language into a series of algorithms. This paper follows the rise of the Georgetown program — the largest single program in the world — from 1954 to the collapse of MT in 1964. (shrink)

At some point in America in the 1940s, T. D. Lysenko's neo-Lamarckian hereditary theories transformed from a set of disputed doctrines into a prime exemplar of "pseudoscience." This paper explores the context in which this theory acquired this pejorative status by examining American efforts to refute Lysenkoism both before and after the famous August 1948 endorsement of Lysenko's doctrines by the Stalinist state, with particular attention to the translation efforts of Theodosius Dobzhansky. After enumerating numerous tactics for combating perceived pseudoscience, (...) the Lysenko case is then juxtaposed with another American case of alleged pseudoscience: the notorious 1950 scandal surrounding Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision (1950, Worlds in Collision. New York: Macmillan). On several levels, the characterization of Lysenkoism as pseudoscientific served as a template for casting other rejected theories, including Velikovsky's, in the same light. (shrink)

Contingencies of the early nuclear arms race Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-23 DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9495-z Authors S. S. Schweber, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, Science Center 371, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA Alex Wellerstein, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, Science Center 371, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA Ethan Pollock, Department of History, Box N, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA Barton J. Bernstein, History Department, Building 200, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-2024, USA Michael D. (...) class='Hi'>Gordin, History Department, 305 Dickinson Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796. (shrink)

In this paper I explore Phyllis Rooney’s 2003 chapter, “Feminist Epistemology and Naturalized Epistemology: An Uneasy Alliance,” taking guidance from her critique of naturalized epistemology in pursuing my own analysis of another uneasy alliance: that between feminist epistemology and social epistemology. Investigating some of the background assumptions at work in prominent conceptions of social epistemology, I consider recent analyses of "epistemic bubbles" to ask how closely such analyses are aligned with ongoing research in feminist epistemology. I argue that critical feminist (...) insights in political philosophy are called for here, especially those that focus on multiple politically salient relationships and also emphasize practices of personal transformation as inseparably bound up with broader movements for social transformation. Insofar as feminist epistemology continues to carry another world in its heart, I argue that it will continue to rest uneasily with any effort to align it with—let alone subsume it within—the still emerging field of social epistemology. (shrink)

Disagreement has garnered attention in a variety of academic disciplines, but its counterpart agreement is deserving of much more attention than it has received. This paper begins by reviewing some of the existing literature directly discussing agreement. Inspired by these conversations, I then provide a typology of basic types of agreement followed by a more general discussion of its nature. The aim of the paper is to provide conceptual clarifications and a framework for discussing and analyzing agreement wherever it may (...) be found. (shrink)

The evidence is overwhelming that members of particularly wealthy and industry-owning segments of Western societies have much larger carbon footprints than most other humans, and thereby contribute far more than their “fair share” to the enormous problem of climate change. Nonetheless, in this paper we shall counsel against a strategy focused primarily on blaming and shaming and propose, instead, a change in the ethical conversation about climate change. We recommend a shift in the ethical framework from a focus on the (...) role of individual agents and a conversation about guilt; in its place, we propose a relational approach to public health ethics that is centered around the idea of relational solidarity. We begin by briefly reviewing the most common—and woefully inadequate—approach in the West to reducing emissions and responding to the health-related impacts of climate change. We then go on to propose a relational approach to public health ethics as an alternative ethical framework that better fits the moral problems associated with climate change and holds promise for a more meaningful response. (shrink)

Verbs of mental states or activity constitute a subject of considerable interest to both Cognitive Linguistics and Linguistic Typology. They promise to open a window on the invisible workings of the mind, while at the same time displaying a wide variety of historical sources across languages. In this book Michael Fortescue presents an innovative approach to the semantics and diachronic source of cognitive verbs across a representative array of the world's languages. The relationship among the cognitive verbs of individual (...) languages is essentially one of metonymy, and the book investigates in detail the specific metonymic relationships involved, as revealed largely by the polysemous spread of word meanings. The data is projected against a circular 'map' of interrelated cognitive categories. (shrink)

If one were to prioritise the most important contributions of John Wesley, within that list would be the contribution of his Doctrine of Christian Perfection. The development of this doctrine was a life-long project for Wesley, who always held the core belief that the telos of perfection was love for God and one's neighbour. Wesley's Doctrine of Christian Perfection found its most comprehensive outline in his 1743 manuscript, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection. This article will argue that Wesley's ethics, (...) as found in his teaching and the work of the Methodist movement, are built on the view that the life of the Christian should be a journey of an ever-growing love for God and love for neighbour. This article will explore Thoughts upon Slavery as a critical text in the Wesley corpus to see how the Doctrine of Christian Perfection influenced Wesley's thoughts on slavery. Finally, this article offers a way of doing Wesleyan ethics today. Wesleyan ethics are communally understood in that all holiness is social holiness, and Wesleyan ethics have as their primary concern Wesley's charge to do no harm, do good, and stay in love with God. (shrink)

Public philosophy is diverse in orientation, methodology, and practice. This chapter addresses challenges to supporting and sustaining public philosophy initiatives as professional philosophers. It also addresses institutional challenges that public philosophers face as they develop, lead, and expand public‐facing projects. Many of us discovered philosophy through a public philosophy program or resource, in a K–12 classroom, or through the philosophically minded mentorship of someone who took our questioning seriously. Far from a supererogatory good, public engagement is necessary for sustaining the (...) practice of philosophy both inside and outside the academy. The chapter considers strategies for sustaining public philosophy in and beyond the academy. It focuses on two key areas: reframing evaluation and organizational collaboration. (shrink)

Methods of ethical reasoning in psychiatry -- Psychiatric professional ethics and the social -- Communitarian ethics and the social -- Moral agency in psychiatry -- Involuntary psychiatric treatment -- Psychiatry across cultures -- Neoliberalism -- Psychiatry and popular culture -- Psychiatric ethics in the light of neuroscience -- Reappraisals -- Power and knowledge in psychiatry.

The subject matter of this book is the mental lexicon, that is, the way in which the form and meaning of words is stored by speakers of specific languages. This book attempts to narrow the gap between the results of experimental neurology and the concerns of theoretical linguistics in the area of lexical semantics. The prime goal as regards linguistic theory is to show how matters of lexical organization can be analysed and discussed within a neurologically informed framework that is (...) both adaptable and constrained. It combines the perspectives of distributed network modelling and linguistic semantics, and draws upon the accruing evidence from neuroimaging studies as regards the cortical regions involved. It engages with a number of controversial current issues in both disciplines. The book is intended as a tool for linguists interested in psychological adequacy and the latest advances in cognitive science. It provides a principled means of distinguishing those semantic features required by a mental lexicon that have a direct bearing on grammar from those that do not. It will appeal to researchers in neurolinguistics and lexical semantics."--p. 4 of cover. (shrink)

The emotion of anger, when chronic, is especially problematic. Frequent and intense experiences of anger predict quite a few adverse health outcomes and are especially implicated in cardiovascular...

On May 16, 2012, RAND brought together a group of public company directors and executives, chief ethics and compliance officers, and stakeholders from the government, academic, and nonprofit sectors for a series of conversations about organizational culture, as well as to explore the business and policy ramifications of efforts to build better ethical cultures in corporations.

The main thesis of this book is that abstraction, far from being confined to higher forms of cognition, language and logical reasoning, has actually been a major driving force throughout the evolution of creatures with brains. It is manifest in emotive as well as rational thought. Wending its way through the various facets of abstraction, the book attempts to clarify - and relate - the often confusing meanings of the word 'abstract' that one may encounter even within the same discipline. (...) The unusual synoptic approach, which draws upon research in psychology, neural network theory, child language acquisition, philosophy and consciousness studies, as well as a variety of linguistic disciplines, cannot be compared directly to other books on the market that touch upon just one particular aspect of abstraction. It is aimed at a wide readership - anyone interested in the nature of abstraction and the cognitive processing and purpose behind it. (shrink)