Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Nero's tutor and advisor, wrote philosophical essays, some of them in the form of letters, and dramas on Greek mythological topics, which since the early Renaissance have exercised a powerful influence on the European theater. Because in his essays Seneca, in his own eclectic way, subscribes to the philosophy of the Stoic school, scholars and critics have long been asking the question whether the plays, also, could be regarded as transmitters of Stoic thought. Various answers, ranging from (...) a categorical no to an uneasy yes, have been given. With few exceptions, the students who have concerned themselves with this question have looked for their enlightenment in Stoic psychology and Stoic ethics. In this book, Thomas G. Rosenmeyer proposes instead to look at the Stoic science of nature, of the world and human beings in the world, as a more plausible grounding for the difference between Senecan drama and its Greek predecessors. In the process of looking at what the Stoics, especially the early Stoics, had to say about the forces determining natural phenomena, the author uncovers a deeply pessimistic strain in Stoic cosmology, and an interest in physicality and environmental tension, that he finds replicated in the theater, not only of Seneca, but also of the later European tradition indebted to him. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Nero's tutor and advisor, wrote philosophical essays, some of them in the form of letters, and dramas on Greek mythological topics, which since the early Renaissance have exercised a powerful influence on the European theater. Because in his essays Seneca, in his own eclectic way, subscribes to the philosophy of the Stoic school, scholars and critics have long been asking the question whether the plays, also, could be regarded as transmitters of Stoic thought. Various answers, ranging from a categorical no to an uneasy yes, have been given. With few exceptions, the students who have concerned themselves with this question have looked for their enlightenment in Stoic psychology and Stoic ethics. In this book, Thomas G. Rosenmeyer proposes instead to look at the Stoic science of nature, of the world and human beings in the world, as a more plausible grounding for the difference between Senecan drama and its Greek predecessors. In the process of looking at what the Stoics, especially the early Stoics, had to say about the forces determining natural phenomena, the author uncovers a deeply pessimistic strain in Stoic cosmology, and an interest in physicality and environmental tension, that he finds replicated in the theater, not only of Seneca, but also of the later European tradition indebted to him. (shrink)

SummaryThe establishment of the discipline of architectural acoustics is generally attributed to the physicist Wallace Clement Sabine, who developed the formula for reverberation time around 1900, and with it the possibility of making calculated prognoses about the acoustic potential of a particular design. If, however, we shift the perspective from the history of this discipline to the history of architectural knowledge and praxis, it becomes apparent that the topos of ‘good sound’ had already entered the discourse much earlier. This paper (...) traces the Europe-wide discussion on theatre architecture between 1750 and 1830. It will be shown that the period of investigation is marked by an increasing interest in auditorium acoustics, one linked to the emergence of a bourgeois theatre culture and the growing socio-political importance of the spoken word. In the wake of this development the search among architects for new methods of acoustic research started to differ fundamentally from an analogical reasoning on the nature of sound propagation and reflection, which in part dated back to antiquity. Through their attempts to find new ways of visualising the behaviour of sound in enclosed spaces and to rethink both the materiality and the mediality of theatre auditoria, architects helped pave the way for the establishment of architectural acoustics as an academic discipline around 1900. (shrink)

As Louisiana and Cuba emerged from slavery in the late nineteenth century, each faced the question of what rights former slaves could claim. Degrees of Freedom compares and contrasts these two societies in which slavery was destroyed by war, and citizenship was redefined through social and political upheaval. Both Louisiana and Cuba were rich in sugar plantations that depended on an enslaved labor force. After abolition, on both sides of the Gulf of Mexico, ordinary people-cane cutters and cigar workers, laundresses (...) and labor organizers-forged alliances to protect and expand the freedoms they had won. But by the beginning of the twentieth century, Louisiana and Cuba diverged sharply in the meanings attributed to race and color in public life, and in the boundaries placed on citizenship. Louisiana had taken the path of disenfranchisement and state-mandated racial segregation; Cuba had enacted universal manhood suffrage and had seen the emergence of a transracial conception of the nation. What might explain these differences? Moving through the cane fields, small farms, and cities of Louisiana and Cuba, Rebecca Scott skillfully observes the people, places, legislation, and leadership that shaped how these societies adjusted to the abolition of slavery. The two distinctive worlds also come together, as Cuban exiles take refuge in New Orleans in the 1880s, and black soldiers from Louisiana garrison small towns in eastern Cuba during the 1899 U.S. military occupation. Crafting her narrative from the words and deeds of the actors themselves, Scott brings to life the historical drama of race and citizenship in postemancipation societies. (shrink)

I once wrote to Imré Lakatos that if he had not already established himself as an accomplished philosopher and provocateur, he could have made a successful career as a Hollywood script writer. I had in mind, at that time, a beautifully written paper he had constructed by pasting together the cuttings from other papers. I had forgotten that his reputation as a dramatist was already established, with the production of his Proofs and Refutations [9]. For that work, it seems to (...) me, is simply a play within a play. The main character, whose part is written in the footnotes, delivers a monologue which is a commentary on the drama, between teacher and students, that occupies center stage. This main character is not named in the play, so for ease of reference I shall call him “Imré”. What Imré points out is that the drama on center stage imitates life, in showing us the essential features of the methodology by virtue of which mathematical science grows. (shrink)

Explores some steps toward non-assimilative encounters in the "global village.".

Proceedings of the First Conference of the International Society for Hermeneutics and Science.

This paper challenges the first Gettier counterexample to the tripartite account of knowledge. Noting that 'the man who will get the job' is a description and invoking Donnellan's distinction between their 'referential' and 'attributive' uses, I argue that Smith does not actually believe that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Smith's ignorance about who will get the job shows that the belief cannot be understood referentially, his ignorance of the coins in his pocket (...) shows that it cannot be understood attributively. An explanation for why Smith appeared to have justified true belief is given by distinguishing between 'belief' and 'belief in truth'. Smith believes the sentence 'the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket' to be true (he mistakenly believes that Jones will get the job, of whom he knows that he has ten coins in his pocket) (hence his 'belief'), the sentence is true (hence 'truth'), and he has sufficient reason to assent to it (hence his 'justification'). But he does not believe the proposition expressed. Hence he does not know it either. (shrink)

Comparative political theory is at best an embryonic and marginalized endeavor. As practiced in most Western universities, the study of political theory generally involves a rehearsal of the canon of Western political thought from Plato to Marx. Only rarely are practitioners of political thought willing (and professionally encouraged) to transgress the canon and thereby the cultural boundaries of North America and Europe in the direction of genuine comparative investigation. Border Crossings presents an effort to remedy this situation, fully launching a (...) new era in political theory. Thirteen scholars from around the world examine the various political traditions of West, South, and East Asia and engage in a reflective cross-cultural discussion that belies the assumptions of an Asian "essence" and of an unbridgeable gulf between West and non-West. The denial of essential differences does not, however, amount to an endorsement of essential sameness. As viewed and as practiced by contributors to this ground-breaking volume, comparative political theorizing must steer a course between uniformity and radical separation--this is the path of "border crossings.". (shrink)

Indeed, this is the first serious book-length study of the subject by a philosopher of science.

The rapidly changing field of genetics affects society through advances in health-care and through implications of genetic research. This study addresses the impacts of new genetic discoveries and technologies on different segments of today's society. The book begins with a chapter on genetic complexity, and subsequent chapters discuss moral and ethical questions arising from today's genetics from the perspectives of health care professionals, the media, the general public, special interest groups and commercial interests.

How does science work? Does it tell us what the world is "really" like? What makes it different from other ways of understanding the universe? In Theory and Reality , Peter Godfrey-Smith addresses these questions by taking the reader on a grand tour of one hundred years of debate about science. The result is a completely accessible introduction to the main themes of the philosophy of science. Intended for undergraduates and general readers with no prior background in (...) philosophy, Theory and Reality covers logical positivism the problems of induction and confirmation Karl Popper's theory of science Thomas Kuhn and "scientific revolutions" the views of Imre Lakatos, Larry Laudan, and Paul Feyerabend and challenges to the field from sociology of science, feminism, and science studies. The book then looks in more detail at some specific problems and theories, including scientific realism, the theory-ladeness of observation, scientific explanation, and Bayesianism. Finally, Godfrey-Smith defends a form of philosophical naturalism as the best way to solve the main problems in the field. Throughout the text he points out connections between philosophical debates and wider discussions about science in recent decades, such as the infamous "science wars." Examples and asides engage the beginning student a glossary of terms explains key concepts and suggestions for further reading are included at the end of each chapter. However, this is a textbook that doesn't feel like a textbook because it captures the historical drama of changes in how science has been conceived over the last one hundred years. Like no other text in this field, Theory and Reality combines a survey of recent history of the philosophy of science with current key debates in language that any beginning scholar or critical reader can follow. (shrink)

This paper develops analogies concerning the evolution of dissipative structures in nonequilibrium thermodynamics to interpret irrational human behavior in which one finds a lack of correspondence between the invested means and the consequences observed. In an attempt to positively explain the process of cooperation between the free human person and interacting God, I use philosophical categories of Whitehead's process philosophy in an aesthetic model that opposes composition and performance in a musical symphony. Certainly, the essence of human freedom can be (...) expressed in neither thermodynamical nor aesthetic terms. The models proposed can, however, facilitate our understanding of the mutual relations between God's action in the world and the drama of human free choice of moral evil. (shrink)

Science as Salvation discusses the high spiritual ambitions which tend to gather round the notion of science. Officially, science claims only the modest function of establishing facts. Yet people still hope for something much grander from it--namely, the myths by which to shape and support life in an increasingly confusing age. Our faith in science is abused by some scientists whose adolescent fantasies have spilled over into their professional lives. Salvation, immortality, mastery of the universe, humans (...) without bodies, and intelligent self-reproducing computers are just some of the notions and speculations that are now found--not on the pages of science fiction--but on the pages of science itself. The danger is that these concepts are given to a myth-hungry public who turn to science now that religion has lost its ability to create myth. Science as Salvation discusses the function and meaning of such fantasies. Midgley examines the need for and the use of myth in science, and how science and religion are related. She argues that we need to develop a realistic understanding of scientific imagination and its importance. Taking them seriously as symptoms of a genuine myth-hunger, it suggests that the proper function of science may need to include wider perspectives, which would make it plain that such desperate, compensatory dramas are unnecessary. (shrink)

This article argues that the quantitative and quasi-experimental approach to evaluating public participation exercises is deficient in at least two respects. First, casting participants in instrumental terms excludes that participants have an experience and that this may be dramatic and emotional. If people are to be invited, even obliged, to participate, then this experience should be considered in event evaluation. Second, current evaluation frameworks tend not to be sensitive to what actually happened in terms of the actions of participants and (...) how these influenced the proceedings and outcome, thus ignoring that such events are fora where positions, values, decisions, and so forth are constructed and constrained rather than simply reported. This article considers the possible contribution of dramaturgical, discourse and conversation analytic, and ethnographic and phenomenological approaches to evaluating participation exercises and illustrates their potential with data gathered during the U.K. “GM Nation?” public debate. (shrink)

On Nietzsche, science, the oral tradition -- or the troubadours and ancient Greek music drama.

This grounded study investigated the negotiation of authorship by faculty members, graduate student mentors, and their undergraduate protégés in undergraduate research experiences at a private research university in the northeastern United States. Semi-structured interviews using complementary scripts were conducted separately with 42 participants over a 3 year period to probe their knowledge and understanding of responsible authorship and publication practices and learn how faculty and students entered into authorship decision-making intended to lead to the publication of peer-reviewed technical papers. Herein (...) the theoretical model for the negotiation of authorship developed through the analysis of these interviews is reported. The model identifies critical causal and intervening conditions responsible for the coping strategies faculty and students employ, which, in our study, appear to often produce unfortunate consequences for all involved. The undergraduate student researchers and their graduate student mentors interviewed in this study exhibited a limited understanding of authorship and the requirements for authorship in their research groups. The power differential between faculty and students, the students’ limited epistemic development, the busy-ness of the faculty, and the faculty’s failure to prioritize authorship have been identified as key factors inhibiting both undergraduate and graduate students from developing a deeper understanding of responsible authorship and publication practices. Implications for graduate education and undergraduate research are discussed, and strategies for helping all students to develop a deeper understanding of authorship are identified. (shrink)

This book, in language accessible to the general reader, investigates twelve of the most notorious, most interesting, and most instructive episodes involving the interaction between science and Christianity, aiming to tell each story in its historical specificity and local particularity. Among the events treated in When Science and Christianity Meet are the Galileo affair, the seventeenth-century clockwork universe, Noah's ark and flood in the development of natural history, struggles over Darwinian evolution, debates about the origin of the human (...) species, and the Scopes trial. Readers will be introduced to St. Augustine, Roger Bacon, Pope Urban VIII, Isaac Newton, Pierre-Simon de Laplace, Carl Linnaeus, Charles Darwin, T. H. Huxley, Sigmund Freud, and many other participants in the historical drama of science and Christianity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:FEYERABEND'S EPISTEMOLOGY AND BRECHTS THEORY OF THE DRAMA by S. G. Couvalis In his early paper, "On the Improvement of the Sciences and the Arts," Feyerabend argues that, just as rival hypotheses show the shortcomings of entrenched scientific hypotheses, so theatre which presents hypotheses contrary to common beliefs about human beings shows the shortcomings of these beliefs. It develops understanding of human relations more effectively than intellectual debate (...) because it is a more complex medium whose elements can "represent the contrary hypotheses at the same time."1 He takes Brecht to be the first theorist of such a theatre. I shall argue that Brecht's epistemology is similar to Feyerabend's early epistemology and that his dramatic theory is a consequence of it.2 1 shall also argue, however, that Feyerabend is wrong in saying that Brechtian theatre presents contrary hypotheses at the same time, because plays, like descriptions, are theory-laden and Brecht, in any case, intends to show on stage that tragedies have social origins and not to present contrary hypotheses about human beings. According to Brecht, most people improperly assume that human behavior and social relations follow fixed patterns inherent in nature because they have been unable to compare the human behavior they know with that in other societies. They take what they experience to be typically human. Moreover, they interpret their social world as they have been taught: "A child, living in a world of old men... knows the run of things before he can walk."3 Feyerabend brings out the effect of such training very vividly: "The teaching procedures both shape the 'appearance,' or 'phenomenon' and establish a firm connection with words, so that finally the phenomena seem to speak for themselves...."4 Because these interpretations of the social world which children are taught are descriptive, explanatory, and prescriptive, they are more 117 118Philosophy and Literature complex and more dangerous than the interpretations of physical objects they are taught. For example, children learn different evaluations of precisely the same behavior in males and females through being taught how to describe it. In being taught to describe certain behavior as "manly" they are taught both that it arises from a male's nature and that it is laudable behavior for boys but not for girls. "Manly" behavior in a woman is not "confident" or "forthright," but "aggressive" or "pushy." In order to stop us from regarding traditional behavior patterns and social relations as unchangeable, and to enable us to question our descriptions of them, Brecht argues that the dramatist must cause us to cease to regard such patterns and social relations as familiar givens that can only be described in one way. To achieve this, he must not structure his plays on the Aristotelian model. The Aristotelian model makes audiences incapable of criticizing the dramatic message, imparts the view that the sources of tragedy lie in an inexplicable human essence, and presents social rules as if they were unquestionable natural laws. Instead, he should structure his plays to induce in audiences a scientific attitude to social relations and patterns of behavior. Like Feyerabend, Brecht realizes that a scientific attitude is not displayed by collecting descriptions of experience without considering whether the interpretations contained in the descriptions are correct. In Galileo, his view of those who mechanically describe experience in traditional terms is shown in Galileo's replies to the Aristotelian arguments of Andrea. When Andrea argues, "I can see that the sun's not in the same place in the evening and morning. So it can't stand still. It just can't," Galileo replies, "You 'W! What do you see? You see nothing at all. You're just gaping. Gaping isn't seeing." He then demonstrates to Andrea that the apparent motions of objects need not be their real motions because an apparent motion can be caused in more than one way. 5 Brecht shows that the central question for the scientist is not "How shall I collect descriptions of appearances?" but "What is it that I really perceive and how is it caused?" He argues elsewhere that "there's a vast difference between experiment and experience" because experiments are set up to test... (shrink)

The only complete study of Buber as a political thinker. Shed new light upon Buber's I Thou, while also attempting to understand Buber's Zionist thought and activity in a new and fresh manner.

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 20 Heft: 1 Seiten: 293-302.

Science as Salvationdiscusses the high spiritual ambitions which tend to gather round the notion of science. Officially, science claims only the modest function of establishing facts. Yet people still hope for something much grander from it--namely, the myths by which to shape and support life in an increasingly confusing age. Our faith in science is abused by some scientists whose adolescent fantasies have spilled over into their professional lives. Salvation, immortality, mastery of the universe, humans without (...) bodies, and intelligent self-reproducing computers are just some of the notions and speculations that are now found--not on the pages of science fiction--but on the pages of science itself. The danger is that these concepts are given to a myth-hungry public who turn to science now that religion has lost its ability to create myth. Science as Salvationdiscusses the function and meaning of such fantasies. Midgley examines the need for and the use of myth in science, and how science and religion are related. She argues that we need to develop a realistic understanding of scientific imagination and its importance. Taking them seriously as symptoms of a genuine myth-hunger, it suggests that the proper function of science may need to include wider perspectives, which would make it plain that such desperate, compensatory dramas are unnecessary. (shrink)