Die Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients / Studies in the History and Culture of the Islamic Orient (STIO) ist die Reihe der "Beihefte" zur Zeitschrift Der Islam. Beide werden von der Abteilung für Geschichte und Kultur des Vorderen Orients, Asien-Afrika-Institut, Universität Hamburg herausgegeben. Die Abteilung wurde im Jahre 1908 noch vor der Universität Hamburg gegründet. Sie war unter ihrem ersten Direktor C. H. Becker das erste wissenschaftliche Zentrum in Deutschland, in dem die Lehre und Forschung sich auf (...) die historischen und kulturwissenschaftlichen und nicht allein die philologischen Aspekte bei der Erforschung der islamischen Welt konzentrierte. Viele führende Experten der deutschen Islamwissenschaft haben hier gelehrt und/oder studiert. Mit dem gleichen hohen Anspruch und der gleichen hohen Qualität wie Der Islamhaben die "Beihefte" zahlreiche Arbeiten über die Geschichte und Kultur der islamischen Welt publiziert, die jeweils Meilensteine in ihrem Feld darstellten. Die seit 2004 erscheinende "Neue Folge" der Beihefte baut auf dieser Tradition auf und bietet eine Plattform für die Publikation von Studien über die Geschichte und Kultur der islamischen Welt vom Beginn des Islams bis in die heutige Zeit. (shrink)

This book seeks to reintroduce the notion of custom in economics by providing a link between market processes, which are much analysed, and customary elements, which have been neglected by economists or at best seen as routines that have been adopted because they were competitively successful. Schlicht draws on philosophy and psychology in addition to economics.

The nature of learning processes as well as evolutionary considerations suggest that aesthetic judgement is of central importance in the formation of custom. Learning and extrapolation rely on evaluations of non-instrumental features like simplicity, analogy, straightforwardness, and clarity. Further, learning is particularly effective if it is driven by an active desire to uncover new regularities, rather than merely gathering information in a passive way.From an evolutionary perspective, learning has evolved as an adaptation to fast and transitory environmental changes which cannot (...) be effectively traced by the slow and long-term evolutionary processes which take place on the genetic level. The evolutionary raison d’être of learning is to enable the individual to incessantly search for upcoming new regularities, and to act appropriately on them. As learning depends on aesthetic judgement, the evolutionary selection for learning implies an evolutionary molding of an aesthetic sense, and a preference for patterns and patterned action which ultimately leads to the formation of custom and social learning. The paper presents, thus, an evolutionary underpinning for the behavioral tendencies underlying my theory of custom. (shrink)

La nature des processus d’apprentissage ainsi que les considérations évolutionaires suggèrent que le jugement esthétique est d’une importance centrale dans la formation des coutumes. L’ apprentissage et l’extrapolation prennent appui sur les évaluations de caractéristiques noninstrumentales telles que la simplicité, l’analogie, la droiture et la clarté. De plus, l’apprentissage est particulièrement efficace s’il est animé par un désir actif de découvrir de nouvelles régularités, plutôt que de rassembler simplement des informations de manière passive.A partir d’une perspective évolutionaire, l’apprentissage a évolué (...) par adaptation aux changements rapides et environnementaux qui ne peuvent être efficacement traduits par les processus évolutifs lents et de long terme qui se situent au niveau génétique. La “raison d’être” évolutionaire de l’apprentissage est de permettre aux individus de chercher sans cesse à découvrir de nouvelles régularités et d’agir sur elles de manière appropriée. De même que l’apprentissage dépend des jugements esthétiques, la sélection évolutionaire pour l’apprentissage implique une matrice évolutionaire du sens esthétique, et une préférence pour des modèles et des actions stéréotypées qui en fin de compte conduisent à la formation de coutumes et d’une compréhension sociale. L’article est, ainsi, une présentation évolutionaire étayée des tendances “behaviorales” sous-tendant ma théorie des coutumes.The nature of learning processes as well as evolutionary considerations suggest that aesthetic judgement is of central importance in the formation of custom. Learning and extrapolation rely on evaluations of non-instrumental features like simplicity, analogy, straightforwardness, and clarity. Further, learning is particularly effective if it is driven by an active desire to uncover new regularities, rather than merely gathering information in a passive way.From an evolutionary perspective, learning has evolved as an adaptation to fast and transitory environmental changes which cannot be effectively traced by the slow and long-term evolutionary processes which take place on the genetic level. The evolutionary raison d’être of learning is to enable the individual to incessantly search for upcoming new regularities, and to act appropriately on them. As learning depends on aesthetic judgement, the evolutionary selection for learning implies an evolutionary molding of an aesthetic sense, and a preference for patterns and patterned action which ultimately leads to the formation of custom and social learning. The paper presents, thus, an evolutionary underpinning for the behavioral tendencies underlying my theory of custom. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the target article “Who Conceives of Society?” by Ernst von Glasersfeld. Excerpt: The fore going is intended to claim a place for a radically social constructivism that does not rely on the metaphysical assumption of ontological givens, avoids on cognitivist abstractions from the communication processes in which we realize ourselves as human beings, but on the embodied and largely linguistic practices of conversing with one another. Languaging is an intrinsically social phenomenon and so are all explanations (...) that are grounded in language. As Ludwig Wittgenstein said about language, everything worth talking about is there, nothing is hidden; there is no private language; to which I would add that the cognition we talk of is not private either. (shrink)

This paper offers a non-representational alternative to semiotic notions of meaning as the designatum of signs, the content of messages, or what a text is about. It derives from considerations of how things—artifacts and objects of nature—could mean something to somebody. Rather than treating things as signs of themselves and thereby undermining the two-world ontology of semiotics, it explores the cultural roles that artifacts acquire in the lives of their users and when questions of their meanings arise and how they (...) are answered in conversation. The paper presents a dialogical conception of meaning, which relies on Bateson’s recognition of the importance of multiple descriptions, Wittgenstein’s “seeing as”, theories of embodied narratives, and bricolages involving technology. (shrink)

Context: Radical constructivism claims that we have no final truth criteria for establishing one ontology over another. This leaves us with the question of how we can come to know anything in a viable manner. According to von Glasersfeld, radical constructivism is a theory of knowledge rather than a philosophy of the world in itself because we do not have access to a human-independent world. He considers knowledge as the ordering of experience to cope with situations in a satisfactory way. (...) Problem: Von Foerster and Krippendorff show that the central goal of a constructivist theory of knowing must be to find a way of putting the knower into a known that is constructed so as to keep the knower, as well as the knowing process, viable in practice. Method: The conceptual and philosophical analysis of present theories and their necessary prerequisites suggests that such foundation for viable knowing can be built on the analysis of what the ontological prerequisites are for establishing viable observing, cognition, communication and observer-communicators, and communication media and vehicles. Results: The moment an observer chooses to accept his/her own embodied conscious presence in this world as well as language, he/she must accept other humans as partly independently existing conversation partners; if knowledge and knowing has to make sense, he/she must also accept as prerequisites for our observation and conversation a pre-linguistic reality from which our bodies come and which our conversation is often about. Furthermore, we can no longer claim that there is a reality that we do not know anything about: From being here in conversation, we know that the world can produce more or less stable embodied consciousnesses that can exchange and construct conceptual meanings through embodied conversations and actions that last over time and exist in space-time and mind, and are correlated to our embodied practices. We can also see that our communication works through signs for all living systems as well as in human language, understood as a structured and progressively developed system of communication. The prerequisite for this social semiotic production of meaning is the fourfold “semiotic star of cybersemiotics,” which includes at least four different worlds: our bodies, the combination of society, culture and language, our consciousness, and also an outer nature. Implications: The semiotic star in cybersemiotics claims that the internal subjective, the intersubjective linguistic, our living bodies, and nature are irreducible and equally necessary as epistemological prerequisites for knowing. The viable reality of any of them cannot be denied without self-refuting paradoxes. There is an obvious connectedness between the four worlds, which Peirce called “synechism.” It also points to Peirce’s conclusion that logic and rationality are part of the process of semiosis, and that meaning in the form of semiosis is a fundamental aspect of reality, not just a construction in our heads. Erratum: The paper erroneously refers to “pleroma.” The correct term is “plemora.” . (shrink)

In this essay we expand the notion of thinking by emphasizing the provocation and urgency to think and by reconceptualizing thinking as an embodied practice. The aim is to expand Lipman and Sharp’s approach to philosophical inquiry with children and show how other ways of thinking can be included. We strive to unfold a way of “thinking” that is both different from rationality (critical thinking) as well as from creative and caring thinking. In the first part of the paper, we (...) discuss the merits of Lipman and Sharp’s critical, creative and caring thinking within the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI). We then expand Lipman/Sharp’s philosophical method through Ekkehart Marten’s Five-finger Model, which allows for different philosophical approaches. In the second half of the paper, we draw on Martin Heidegger’s What is called thinking? to develop his concept of the “call” to think together with its related notions of provocation and urgency. Building on this, we draw on Maurice Merleau-Ponty to show how this call is not an intellectual activity or mere exercise of the “mind” but rather affects our entire existence. As such, thinking becomes a response to an existential urgency that is an embodied practice. Using concepts like embodiment, affect, and sensibility, we try to widen our conception of thinking in a CPI. Finally, we hope this will allow facilitators to hear the unique voice of every child so that no one is left unheard. (shrink)

This state-of-the-art overview reflects the rich variety of approaches and disciplines embraced by contemporary communication studies. The book consists of thirteen original essays by some of the most prominent communication scholars, including Ien Ang, Deidre Boden, David Crowley, James M. Collins, Klaus Krippendorff, William Leiss, Denis McQuail, William Melody, Joshua Meyrowitz, David Mitchell, Mark Poster, Majid Tehranian, John B. Thompson and Teun A. van Dijk.