In a rich blend of intellectual hisory and philosophy, the authors present the major themes and personages that figure in both the theory of and history of history. They survey the questions and problems, concerns and motivations that have been the lot of the historian from the beginning. --.

For courses in European Intellectual History. An exploration of the major issues in thought -- from the French Revolution to Structuralism and beyond.

The disenchantment of 1848 -- The pessimistic view -- Science, the new god -- The bourgeois world -- The realism of Flaubert -- Optimistic realism -- Russian realism -- Social realism -- Social realism and socialist realism -- The continuing march of science -- The book of despair -- Life in the raw -- The natural history of morality -- Naturalism and moralism -- Painting: the impressionists -- A critique of naturalism -- Human nature in politics -- The natural history (...) of the soul -- The poet as seer -- The mystery of poetry -- A critique of symbolism -- Against the Grain -- The aesthetic ideal -- The decadence -- Some Wilde epigrams -- The influence of Richard Wagner -- Just before the war. (shrink)

This paper addresses the doubts voiced by Wigner about the physical relevance of the concept of geometrical points by exploiting some facts known to all but honored by none: Almost all real numbers are transcendental; the explicit representation of any one will require an infinite amount of physical resources. An instrument devised to measure a continuous real variable will need a continuum of internal states to achieve perfect resolution. Consequently, a laboratory instrument for measuring a continuous variable in a finite (...) time can report only a finite number of values, each of which is constrained to be a rational number. It does not matter whether the variable is classical or quantum-mechanical. Now, in von Neumann’s measurement theory (von Neumann, Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton University Press, Princeton, [1955]), an operator A with a continuous spectrum—which has no eigenvectors—cannot be measured, but it can be approximated by operators with discrete spectra which are measurable. The measurable approximant F(A) is not canonically determined; it has to be chosen by the experimentalist. It is argued that this operator can always be chosen in such a way that Sewell’s results (Sewell in Rep. Math. Phys. 56: 271, [2005]; Sewell, Lecture given at the J.T. Lewis Memorial Conference, Dublin, [2005]) on the measurement of a hermitian operator on a finite-dimensional vector space (described in Sect. 3.2) constitute an adequate resolution of the measurement problem in this theory. From this follows our major conclusion, which is that the notion of a geometrical point is as meaningful in nonrelativistic quantum mechanics as it is in classical physics. It is necessary to be sensitive to the fact that there is a gap between theoretical and experimental physics, which reveals itself tellingly as an error inherent in the measurement of a continuous variable. (shrink)

The purpose of this brief paper is to show that the primary problem of technology, like all problems related to possibilities and actions, is the conceptualiadequacyof the intentions and values it implies, and not, as many critics have suggested, its social effects. Presupposed for this statement and evaluation is an interpretation of experience called here experiential idealism. On the basis of this position some suggestions are made about the meaning of technology and its correlative possibilities and constraints.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The immediate motive occasioning this letter was the worker E. Kopanitsyn's letter to the newspaper Izvestiia in which he eloquently recounts his difficulties with a new machine manufactured in a factory in the city of Cheliabinsk. After telling what effort it had cost him to get this machine going, Kopanitsyn in a fit of temper exclaims: "I am completely unable to understand one simple thing: How could such a machine come into being at all? The hands of many workers touched (...) it, except that these were not working hands. Can it really be true that no one, not a single person, was aroused enough to say: Just what are we doing here, brothers?". (shrink)

This article highlights the distinction between the ‘art of nursing’ and ‘fine art’. While something in the nature of nursing can be described as ‘the art of nursing’, it is not to be misunderstood as ‘fine art’ or craft. Therefore, the term ‘aesthetic’ in relation to nursing should not be linked to the aesthetic of modern art, but instead to a broader and more general meaning of the word. The paper's main focus is the aesthetic experience, which is treated in (...) a hermeneutic way and elucidated from classical sources and the philosophy of nursing and from Art. The paper argues that the pioneers used the term ‘art of nursing’ in a metaphorical way to say something more specific on the nature of nursing. The term illustrates the nurse's ability to practise at the highest possible level of excellence. (shrink)

It is a safe prediction that, especially now with cultural contacts freely flowing between East and West in both directions, the Hungarian thinker Istvan Bibo will soon be given full accolade as one of the most outstanding political theorists of this century, in stature equal to the �greats� in the entire European tradition of political thought. Bibo's significance far exceeds local, parochial interests. While profoundly original and organically stemming from Hungarian culture, Bibo belongs also to the �West�. If his political (...) thought is to be epitomized in one succinct phrase, it is �the realism of moralism�, or the almost flawless synthesis of a deeply radical, morally infused vision and value-system with the hard-nosed, unsentimental realist-s insight into enduring problems of politics and society. This synthesis is �almost� flawless: in the closing section of this article I will advance a few constructively critical remarks concerning some questionable points in the trajectory of Bibo's thought. (shrink)