In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Wager of Lucien Goldmann: Tragedy, Dialectics and a Hidden GodDavid WetselThe Wager of Lucien Goldmann: Tragedy, Dialectics and a Hidden God, by Mitchell Cohen; xi & 351 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, $35.00.Students of Pascal’s Pensées for the most part know Lucien Goldmann because of his 1959 landmark study, The Hidden God. Still controversial after thirty-five years, Goldmann’s theories concerning the Pensées have (...) never been accepted by mainstream Pascal scholarship. Jean Mesnard, France’s leading expert on Pascal, wrote in 1976 that “Goldmann’s Pascal is perhaps tragic, but he is most certainly a Molinist.” Mesnard, however, went on to acknowledge that no other critic before Goldmann had recognized the extent to which Pascal occupies a permanent place in the history of ideas. “To criticize Goldmann,” Mesnard went so far to say, “risks making Pascal less powerful.”Most pascalisants have erroneously assumed that Goldmann’s reading of Pascal represented nothing more than the imposition of Marxist theory upon the text of the Pensées. Among the revelations of Mitchell Cohen’s new study is that, to the contrary, Pascal represents one of the essential formative influences on Goldmann himself: “By the time he returned to Paris after the war, Goldmann was thoroughly conversant with Pascal’s oeuvre.... The appeal to him of Pascal was natural; Pascal was both a believer and a scientist.... [Goldmann] stated that were he to rewrite [Kant] he would assert that ‘Pascal was the first’ in the history of dialectical thought” (p. 48).Students of Pascal will be particularly fascinated by Cohen’s revealing analysis of Goldmann’s The Hidden God in the first section of chapter six of his study. Cohen’s account of Goldmann’s Towards a Sociology of the Novel (1964) and of his essays on Genet will likewise fascinate students of literature. However, The Wager of Lucien Goldmann goes far beyond those questions with which Goldmann’s name has been most closely associated in literary circles. The product of a painstaking excavation of Goldmann’s philosophical development, Cohen’s book recaptures a period of postwar Parisian intellectual life which drew to an end only with the events of 1968 and which has been obscured in recent years by postmodernism.A critic both of existentialism and of structuralism, Goldmann is portrayed by Cohen as the leading representative of Western Marxist humanism. Rejecting both the doctrine of Marxism’s “scientificity” and the traditional Marxist vision of the proletariat, Goldmann insisted upon Marxism’s need to reinvent itself. Specialists in Marx, Hegel, Heidegger, and particularly Lukács will appreciate Cohen’s careful explanations of Goldmann’s links to these key thinkers. Perhaps most fascinating is his account of the debate between Goldmann and the “anti-humanists”: “When the humanist Goldmann ‘transcended’ liberalism, he did so in the specifically Hegelian sense of negating and preserving at once, absorbing what was vital into socialism, while annulling [End Page 409] its abstractions. After all, he conceived socialist humanism as the culmination and not the annulment of Western culture...” (p. 290).This study, which I recommend to all students of modern France as well as to my fellow pascalisants, is, of course, not essentially meant to be a biography. Yet one sometimes finds oneself yearning for a more intimate portrait of Goldmann the man. Once he leaves his native Romania in the early 1930s, he seems to become the classical Parisian academic intellectual with no real personality of his own. Yet Cohen manages at least to neutralize Julia Kristeva’s parody of Goldmann in The Samurai, her roman à clef about French intellectuals in the 1960s, as quoted by Cohen: “Graying, pot-bellied, smiling, with his shirt open and of course no tie, he addressed everyone by the familiar tu and was always ripping up existentialism and lauding dialectical reason (as overhauled by Pascal), alienation, and the New Novel.”David WetselArizona State UniversityCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

El presente artículo recuerda momentos cruciales de una historia del sujeto que va de Jacques Lacan a Alain Badiou. Tras la división y la subversión lacaniana del sujeto, se revisan reacciones que intentan revertirla en varios autores. Estas reacciones se contrastan con la idea badiouana de la escisión del sujeto entre el esplacio y el fuera-de-lugar. La absolutización estructuralista del esplacio estructural se ilustra con la acción de la estructura de Jacques-Alain Miller, se aproxima al argumento de las estructuras que (...) descienden a la calle con el que Lacan defendió la posición estructuralista contra Lucien Goldmann y se explica por la forclusión del sujeto en el estructuralismo, en el sistema capitalista y en la ciencia en general. Con respecto al campo científico, se muestra cómo fue definido primero por la forclusión y luego por la suturación del sujeto en Miller, simultáneamente por la forclusión y la suturación en Lacan, y sólo por la forclusión en Badiou, quien empezará negando y terminará aceptando la existencia de un sujeto de la ciencia, pero diferente del de Lacan y Miller. (shrink)

Michael A. PetersBeijing Normal UniversityMy deepest condolences to Pepe, Dom and Marcus and to Jim’s grandchildren. Tina and I spent a lot of time at the Marshall family home, often attending dinn...

In this book, which thoroughly revises and greatly expands his classic work Sameness and Substance, David Wiggins retrieves and refurbishes in the light of twentieth-century logic and logical theory certain conceptions of identity, of substance and of persistence through change that philosophy inherits from its past. In this new version, he vindicates the absoluteness, necessity, determinateness and all or nothing character of identity against rival conceptions. He defends a form of essentialism that he calls individuative essentialism, and then a (...) form of realism that he calls conceptualist realism. In a final chapter he advocates a human being-based conception of the identity and individuation of persons, arguing that any satisfactory account of personal memory must make reference to the life of the rememberer himself. This important book will appeal to a wide range of readers in metaphysics, philosophical logic, and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

We propose a formal framework for interpretable machine learning. Combining elements from statistical learning, causal interventionism, and decision theory, we design an idealised explanation game in which players collaborate to find the best explanation for a given algorithmic prediction. Through an iterative procedure of questions and answers, the players establish a three-dimensional Pareto frontier that describes the optimal trade-offs between explanatory accuracy, simplicity, and relevance. Multiple rounds are played at different levels of abstraction, allowing the players to explore overlapping causal (...) patterns of variable granularity and scope. We characterise the conditions under which such a game is almost surely guaranteed to converge on a optimal explanation surface in polynomial time, and highlight obstacles that will tend to prevent the players from advancing beyond certain explanatory thresholds. The game serves a descriptive and a normative function, establishing a conceptual space in which to analyse and compare existing proposals, as well as design new and improved solutions. (shrink)

Lipsey and Lancaster's "general theory of second best" is widely thought to have significant implications for applied theorizing about the institutions and policies that most effectively implement abstract normative principles. It is also widely thought to have little significance for theorizing about which abstract normative principles we ought to implement. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, I show how the second-best theorem can be extended to myriad domains beyond applied normative theorizing, and in particular to more abstract theorizing about the normative (...) principles we should aim to implement. I start by separating the mathematical model used to prove the second-best theorem from its familiar economic interpretation. I then develop an alternative normative-theoretic interpretation of the model, which yields a novel second best theorem for idealistic normative theory. My method for developing this interpretation provides a template for developing additional interpretations that can extend the reach of the second-best theorem beyond normative theoretical domains. I also show how, within any domain, the implications of the second-best theorem are more specific than is typically thought. I conclude with some brief remarks on the value of mathematical models for conceptual exploration. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence has historically been conceptualized in anthropomorphic terms. Some algorithms deploy biomimetic designs in a deliberate attempt to effect a sort of digital isomorphism of the human brain. Others leverage more general learning strategies that happen to coincide with popular theories of cognitive science and social epistemology. In this paper, I challenge the anthropomorphic credentials of the neural network algorithm, whose similarities to human cognition I argue are vastly overstated and narrowly construed. I submit that three alternative supervised learning (...) methods—namely lasso penalties, bagging, and boosting—offer subtler, more interesting analogies to human reasoning as both an individual and a social phenomenon. Despite the temptation to fall back on anthropomorphic tropes when discussing AI, however, I conclude that such rhetoric is at best misleading and at worst downright dangerous. The impulse to humanize algorithms is an obstacle to properly conceptualizing the ethical challenges posed by emerging technologies. (shrink)

Why study notations, diagrams, or more broadly the variety of nonverbal “representations” or “signs” that are used in mathematical practice? This chapter maps out recent work on the topic by distinguishing three main philosophical motivations for doing so. First, some work (like that on diagrammatic reasoning) studies signs to recover norms of informal or historical mathematical practices that would get lost if the particular signs that these practices rely on were translated away; work in this vein has the potential to (...) broaden our view of the specific normativity of mathematics beyond logical proof. Second, some work focuses on signs to highlight the open-ended and “nonrigorous” aspects of mathematical practice, and the role of these aspects in the historical development of mathematics. The third motivation is based on the following observation: the reason differences in signs matter in mathematics is that humans are finite agents, with cognitive and computational limitations. Accordingly, studying signs can be a way to study how human computational constraints shape the mathematics that we do, and to tackle the topic of mathematical understanding. (shrink)

_ Convention_ was immediately recognized as a major contribution to the subject and its significance has remained undiminished since its first publication in 1969. Lewis analyzes social conventions as regularities in the resolution of recurring coordination problems-situations characterized by interdependent decision processes in which common interests are at stake. Conventions are contrasted with other kinds of regularity, and conventions governing systems of communication are given special attention.

According to dispositionalism about modality, a proposition <p> is possible just in case something has, or some things have, a power or disposition for its truth; and <p> is necessary just in case nothing has a power for its falsity. But are there enough powers to go around? In Yates (2015) I argued that in the case of mathematical truths such as <2+2=4>, nothing has the power to bring about their falsity or their truth, which means they come out both (...) necessary and not possible. Combining this with axiom (T), it is easy to derive a contradiction. I suggested that dispositionalists ought to retreat a little and say that <p> is possible just in case either p, or there is a power to bring it about that p, grounding the possibility of mathematical propositions in their truth rather than in powers. Vetter’s (2015) has the resources to provide a response to my argument, and in her (2018) she explicitly addresses it by arguing for a plenitude of powers, based on the idea that dispositions come in degrees, with necessary properties a limiting case of dispositionality. On this view there is a power for <2+2=4>, without there being a power to bring about its truth. In this paper I argue that Vetter’s case for plenitude does not work. However, I suggest, if we are prepared to accept metaphysical causation, a case can be made that there is indeed a power for <2+2=4>. (shrink)

Doctors’ strikes are legally permissible in the UK, with the situation differing in other countries. But are they morally permissible? Doug McConnell and Darren Mann have systematically attempted to dismiss the arguments for the moral impermissibility of doctors’ strikes and creatively attempted to provide further moral justification for them. Unfortunately for striking doctors, they fail to achieve this. Meanwhile, junior doctors’ strikes have continued in the UK through 2023 and have now extended into 2024. In this response, which focuses on (...) the UK situation and specifically junior doctors’ strikes in the National Health Service (NHS) in England, I will demonstrate a central problem with their arguments—namely that they underplay the harms caused by prolonged doctors’ strikes by ignoring the harms to patients with cancer. This weakens their conclusion that strikes are morally permissible in terms of the conditions and thresholds they set. I then provide a psychological critique of their justification for strikes in terms of the interests of the public. It follows that invoking the controversial concept of supererogatory action is ungrounded but also absurd when you consider time-critical cancer care. If those representing striking doctors wish to maintain a modicum of moral respectability, they should mitigate for patients with cancer and negotiate reasonably and with urgency. (shrink)

Foreword: Synchronicity is more than a happy accident by Brian Tart -- The quest -- Cycles of history and the law of one -- What is synchronicity? -- Understanding the sociopath -- The global adversary -- Karma is real -- Reincarnation -- Mapping out the afterlife -- The hero and his story -- The first and second acts of the hero -- Facing your fear and completing the quest -- Joan of arc rises again -- The 2,160-year cycle between rome (...) and the usa -- Vietnam, watergate and the fall of the iron curtain -- The sky is not falling-only our blindfolds -- September 11th-from both sides of the veil -- The thirteen years' war repeats in america -- 9/11 and the defeat of the cabal-the cycle perspective -- History gets a wicked case of deja vu -- Fomenko's cycles of history-and the Book of Daniel -- Explaining the cycles and the fourth-density shift. (shrink)

Epistemologists have recently proposed a number of norms governing rational inquiry. My aim in this paper is to unify and explain recently proposed norms of inquiry by developing a general account of the conditions under which inquiries are rational, analogous to theories such as evidentialism and reliabilism for rational belief. I begin with a reason-responsiveness conception of rationality as responding correctly to possessed normative reasons. I extend this account with a series of claims about the normative reasons for inquiry that (...) we possess. I apply the account to shed light on two classes of norms that have featured prominently in recent discussions: norms of clutter avoidance forbidding agents from engaging in trivial inquiries, and norms of logical non-omniscience governing properties such as the deductive closure and consistency of an agent's belief state. I conclude with a discussion of the sense in which norms of inquiry should be regarded as epistemic norms. (shrink)

Longtermism is the thesis that in a large class of decision situations, the best thing we can do is what is best for the long-term future. The scope question for longtermism asks: how large is the class of decision situations for which this is true? In this paper, I suggest that the scope of longtermism may be narrower than many longtermists suppose. I identify a restricted version of longtermism: swamping axiological strong longtermism (swamping ASL). I identify three scope-limiting factors - (...) probabilistic and decision-theoretic phenomena which, when present, tend to reduce the prospects for swamping ASL. I argue that these scope-limiting factors are often present in human decision problems, then use two case studies from recent discussions of longtermism to show how the scope-limiting factors lead to a restricted, if perhaps nonempty, scope for swamping ASL. (shrink)

As business and society is an inherently multi-disciplinary scholarly area, the book will draw from work in areas outside of business and management, such as psychology, sociology, philosophy, religious studies, economics and other related fields, as well as the natural sciences, education, and other professional areas of study.

In the twenty-first century, the debate about life on other worlds is quickly changing from the realm of speculation to the domain of hard science. Within a few years, as a consequence of the rapid discovery by astronomers of planets around other stars, astronomers very likely will have discovered clear evidence of life beyond the Earth. Such a discovery of extraterrestrial life will change everything. Knowing the answer as to whether humanity has company in the universe will trigger one of (...) the greatest intellectual revolutions in history, not the least of which will be a challenge for at least some terrestrial religions. Which religions will handle the discovery of extraterrestrial life with ease and which will struggle to assimilate this new knowledge about our place in the universe? Some religions as currently practiced appear to only be viable on Earth. Other religions could be practiced on distant worlds but nevertheless identify both Earth as a place and humankind as a species of singular spiritual religious importance, while some religions could be practiced equally well anywhere in the universe by any sentient beings. Weintraub guides readers on an invigorating tour of the world's most widely practiced religions. It reveals what, if anything, each religion has to say about the possibility that extraterrestrial life exists and how, or if, a particular religion would work on other planets in distant parts of the universe. (shrink)

Our aim in this entry is to articulate the state of the art in the moral psychology of personal identity. We begin by discussing the major philosophical theories of personal identity, including their shortcomings. We then turn to recent psychological work on personal identity and the self, investigations that often illuminate our person-related normative concerns. We conclude by discussing the implications of this psychological work for some contemporary philosophical theories and suggesting fruitful areas for future work on personal identity.

This is the first sustained, whole-Bible treatment on the theme of meeting God face to face. Starting with Genesis and ending with Revelation, the author systematically covers the major events in salvation history, all of which reveal the beauty of encountering God's grace in abundance.

This is a corrected version of the final proofs. I've fixed a number of typos, and corrected a blunder in chapter 4. In chapter 4 I say that 'this is this' is analytic, and 'this is not this' is antonymous. This is inconsistent with what I say in chapter 5, and not what I actually think. Rather, 'this is this' is taugologous, and 'this is not this' is contradictory. Analyticity and autnonmy are sense properties while tautologousness and contradictoriness are formal (...) logical properties. Heading, ToC and Index updated accordingly. (Oxford will make these corrections in their online version and in future print runs.). (shrink)

We apply a familiar distinction from philosophy of language to a class of material artifacts that are sometimes said to “speak”: statues. By distinguishing how statues speak at the locutionary level versus at the illocutionary level, or what they say versus what they do, we obtain the resource for addressing two topics. First, we can explain what makes statues distinct from street art. Second, we can explain why it is mistaken to criticize—or to defend—the continuing presence of statues based only (...) on what they represent. Both explanations are driven by the same core idea: the significance of statues arises primarily from what they do, and not what they say. (shrink)

20世纪初是德语世界正式出版关于中国哲学史著作的起点。1909—1924年之间德语世界出版了若干关于中国哲学史的论文和专著，通过调查作者们的教育背景和研究成果，以及其代表作的写作背景、内容框架及其影响 ，可以勾勒出这一时期德语学界中国哲学研究的概况。从分析当时德语学界对中国哲学的认识范围和中国哲学史框架构建的一般情况，可以看出欧洲对中国哲学和哲学史研究的一些核心问题所在。前现代中国哲学史在德语地区接 纳和传播的过程与方式，这一至今德国与中国学界尚未涉足的空白领域，值得研究并填补。[The beginning of the twentieth century was the starting point for the production of works on the history of Chinese philosophy in the German-speaking world. Between 1909 and 1924, a number of essays and monographs on the history of Chinese philosophy were published in the German-speaking contexts, and by investigating the educational backgrounds and research results of the authors, as well as the backgrounds of the authors, the frameworks for presenting the content, and the influence of these works, an overview (...) of the study of Chinese philosophy in in the German language during that period can be outlined. By analyzing the scope of knowledge of Chinese philosophy and the general construction of the framework for the history of Chinese philosophy in German-speaking academia at that time, it is possible to discern some of the core issues at stake in the study of Chinese philosophy and the history of philosophy in Europe. The process and manner of the reception and dissemination of the history of pre-modern Chinese philosophy in the German-speaking region, a field that has not yet been addressed sufficiently by German and Chinese academics, deserves to be studied and completed.]. (shrink)

People are often offended by beliefs, expect apologies for beliefs, apologize for their own beliefs. In many mundane cases, people are morally criticized for their beliefs. Intuitively, then, beliefs seem to sometimes wrong people. Recently, the philosophical literature has picked up on this theme, and has started to discuss it under the heading of doxastic wrongdoing. In this paper we argue that despite the strength of such initial intuitions, at the end of the day they have to be rejected. If (...) it can be ever truthfully asserted that beliefs wrong, this is always derivative – beliefs wrong only in virtue of other things (like evidence-gathering actions) wronging. We distinguish between modest and ambitious doxastic wrongdoing theories (the former deny, while the latter accept, the possibility of a morally wrong yet epistemically permissible belief); we argue that each of these options faces insurmountable problems; and we offer partly debunking explanations of the intuitions purportedly supporting doxastic wrongdoing. (shrink)

Christian pro-lifers often respond to Thomson’s defense of abortion that the violinist is allowed to die while the embryo is killed. Boonin and McMahan counter that this distinction does not provide an objection to extraction abortions that disconnect embryos and allow them to die. I disagree. I first argue that letting die and killing are not to be distinguished by differences between acts and omissions, moral and immoral motives, intentional or unintentional deaths, and causing or not causing a pathology. I (...) offer a taxonomy in which hysterotomies turn out to be killings. I then argue that if either the placenta is considered an organ of the embryo or the embryo is construed as a part of the pregnant woman, then abortion pills kill rather than allow death. So, assuming that killing people is morally worse than letting them die, extraction abortions can be condemned to the same degree as other abortions. (shrink)

According to the Principle of Sufficient Reason, every fact has an explanation. An important challenge to this principle is that it risks being a counterexample to itself. What explains why everything needs to be explained? My first goal is to distinguish two broad kinds of answers to this question, which I call “Humean Rationalism” and “Non-Humean Rationalism”. My second goal will be to defend the prospects of Humean Rationalism.

Calling is a very important concept in Christianity. In the medieval era, calling was restricted to ecclesiastical work alone, a devotion to the life of contemplation. Ordinary work or physical labour was not considered qualified to be a calling. Martin Luther was the one who taught that the ordinary work of the ordinary people was also God’s calling and equally spiritual as the ecclesiastical work. However, Miroslav Volf, a Croatian theologian, criticised Luther that his view of calling was too static (...) and irrelevant to the modern context where people often choose to quit a job because of its negative effects and some people have to do multiple jobs in order to make ends meet. While recognising the validity of Volf’s critique, this article seeks to demonstrate that even in the modern context, calling is still a very important theological concept to reflect upon work. Luther’s vocational view of work could be retrieved in discussing the theology of work by putting it in dialogue with Calvin, Kuyper, and other theologians.Contribution: This article seeks to show that the concept of calling is indispensable in constructing a sound theology of work for the modern context. By understanding work as calling, Christian workers are enabled to see how they are participating in God’s redemptive work through their jobs. (shrink)

Between 1873 and 1876, Felix Klein published a series of papers that he later placed under the rubric anschauliche Geometrie in the second volume of his collected works (1922). The present study attempts not only to follow the course of this work, but also to place it in a larger historical context. Methodologically, Klein’s approach had roots in Poncelet’s principle of continuity, though the more immediate influences on him came from his teachers, Plücker and Clebsch. In the 1860s, Clebsch reworked (...) some of the central ideas in Riemann’s theory of Abelian functions to obtain complicated results for systems of algebraic curves, most published earlier by Hesse and Steiner. These findings played a major role in enumerative geometry, whereas Plücker’s work had a strongly qualitative character that imbued Klein’s early studies. A leitmotif in these works can be seen in the interplay between real curves and surfaces as reflected by their transformational properties. During the early 1870s, Klein and Zeuthen began to explore the possibility of deriving all possible forms for real cubic surfaces as well as quartic curves. They did so using continuity methods reminiscent of Poncelet’s earlier approach. Both authors also relied on visual arguments, which Klein would later advance under the banner of intuitive geometry (anschauliche Geometrie). (shrink)

According to a popular idea, freedom is grounded in orthonomy – the ability to be responsive to normative demands. But how exactly must an agent’s action relate to their reasons in order for this orthonomous relationship to hold? In this paper, I propose a novel explanationist answer to this question. I argue that extant answers – causalism and modalism about orthonomy – fail because they fail to account for the fact that intuitions about freedom and orthonomy track facts about explanation. (...) And these facts cannot be reduced to either causal or modal facts. Instead, I propose that we should understand freedom as grounded in special accidentality-dispersing explanations in terms of normative reasons. The resultant view is to be understood as following a Frankfurtian intuition: only factors that explain action can be relevant to whether the action is free. (shrink)

Are demands for equality motivated by envy? Nietzsche, Freud, Hayek, and Nozick all thought so. Call this the Envy Objection. For egalitarians, the Envy Objection is meant to sting. Many egalitarians have tried to evade the Envy Objection.. But should egalitarians be worried about envy? In this paper, I argue that egalitarians should stop worrying and learn to love envy. I argue that the persistent unwillingness to embrace the Envy Objection is rooted in a common misunderstanding of the nature of (...) the charge, what it reveals, and what can be said in response to it. I develop what Bernard Williams might call a vindicatory genealogy of envy, thereby allowing us to see that envy, rather than undermining egalitarian intuitions, can in fact play a distinct justificatory role (when it is fitting), which undermines the Envy Objection. (shrink)

This chapter explores the intersection of experimental philosophy and philosophical logic. It considers a distinction between pure and applied logic. It sketches some ways in which experimental results and empirical results more broadly, can inform and have informed debates within philosophical logic. The chapter lays out a way of looking at the situation that makes plain at least one way in which people should expect experimental and logical concerns to overlap. It turns to the phenomenon of vagueness, where people can (...) see this overlap explored and developed from multiple angles, showing just how intimately related experiment and logic can be. Logic is not only useful for exploring hypotheses about truth conditions and entailments but also for exploring hypotheses about reasoning. Logical and experiment can fruitfully interact in a variety of applications, and that is all people need for experimental philosophical logic to be worthwhile. (shrink)

This paper explores the human experience of game-playing and its implications for artificial intelligence. The author uses phenomenology to examine game-playing from a human-centered perspective and applies it to language games played by artificial intelligences and humans. The paper argues that AI cannot truly play games because it lacks the intentionality, embodied experience, and social interaction that are fundamental to human game-playing. Furthermore, current AI lacks the ability to converse, which is argued to be equivalent to Wittgenstein’s view of engaging (...) in “language games.” The author presents a formal ontology of game playing, agents, and their intentional states, and contrasts human agents playing games with artificial agents “playing games.” The paper concludes that while artificial intelligence can simulate some aspects of human language games, it lacks the essential capacities for game playing, such as cognition, creativity, will, intentionality, understanding, and personhood. (shrink)

[114 pages] This special issue “Understanding Chinese Culture in the World” represents contributions to the Young Experts Symposium 2022 (YES 2022). The event was held online at Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai (China) and provided a platform for topics related to classical, modern, futuristic, and comparative perspectives on Chinese culture—across generations, cultures, and disciplines.

In this transdisciplinary investigation, we focus on the invention and development of gunpowder. We aim to answer the questions regarding (1) the inspiration behind the invention, including historical, mythological, and intellectual backgrounds, (2) how it came about in concreto, and (3) its impact on the history of science in China. We argue that the invention has to be viewed in a broader context and that various factors come into play with regard to the above questions. The discussion starts by examining (...) the preconditions of the invention of gunpowder in ancient Chinese mythology, natural philosophy, and the idea of life extension. After that, the invention, its direct contexts, and historical developments during the first millennium CE are investigated. To complement the former analysis of historical worldviews, the modern perspective of chemistry is applied in this context. From the angle of the additional question of “open individuals,” namely as agents of progress, this is also taken into consideration from the perspective of personality analysis. Finally, we investigate how the development of scientific understanding was embedded in the innovative philosophical developments of Song dynasty Neo-Confucianism. In our view, the early Chinese gunpowder research exemplifies the preceding and contemporary development of the scientific stratum that is part of the concept of the “investigation of things” (gewu) in the sense of the teachings of Zhu Xi (1130–1200). (shrink)

This first contribution to the special issue “Understanding Chinese Culture in the World” represents a philosophical proem regarding the format and general aim of the Young Experts Symposium 2022 (YES 2022), which was held online at Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai (China) and provided a platform for topics related to classical, modern, futuristic, and comparative perspectives on Chinese culture—across generations, cultures, and disciplines. Furthermore, it outlines the basic content of the six papers in this special issue that resulted from this event, (...) including some basic information about the contributors. (shrink)

Notes on the text and interpretation of passages in Plutarch's Life of Alexander.