The field of emotion understanding is replete with measures, yet lacks an integrated conceptual organizing structure. To identify and organize skills associated with the recognition and knowledge of emotions, and to highlight the focus of emotion understanding as localized in the self, in specific others, and in generalized others, we introduce the conceptual framework of Emotion Understanding in Recognition and Knowledge Abilities. We then categorize 56 existing methods of emotion understanding within this framework to highlight current gaps and future opportunities (...) in assessing emotion understanding across the lifespan. We hope the EUReKA model provides a systematic and integrated framework for conceptualizing and measuring emotion understanding for future research. (shrink)

In the ancient world, the Greeks believed that all great insights came from one of nine muses, divine sisters who brought inspiration to mere mortals. In the modern world, few people still believe in the muses, but we all still love to hear stories of sudden inspiration. Like Newton and the apple, or Archimedes and the bathtub (both another type of myth), we’re eager to hear and to share stories about flashes of insight. But what does it take to be (...) actually creative? How to have such a flash insight? Turns out, there is real science behind "aha moments." We prefer to call it “intuilytics.”. (shrink)

Abductive heuristics is essential to all interpretative acts, that is, to all acts that require inspired discovery. One of these abductive activities is interlingual translation, because it seeks the possible (yet plausible) hypothesis with the most explanatory power. In this paper Peirce's semiotics are applied to illuminate the phenomenon of translation.

Explores the science and creative process behind Poe’s cosmological treatise. Silver Winner for Philosophy, 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards In 1848, almost a year and a half before Edgar Allan Poe died at the age of forty, his book Eureka was published. In it, he weaved together his scientific speculations about the universe with his own literary theory, theology, and philosophy of science. Although Poe himself considered it to be his magnum opus, Eureka has mostly (...) been overlooked or underappreciated, sometimes even to the point of being thought an elaborate hoax. Remarkably, however, in Eureka Poe anticipated at least nine major theories and developments in twentieth-century science, including the Big Bang theory, multiverse theory, and the solution to Olbers’ paradox. In this book—the first devoted specifically to Poe’s science side—David N. Stamos, a philosopher of science, combines scientific background with analysis of Poe’s life and work to highlight the creative and scientific achievements of this text. He examines Poe’s literary theory, theology, and intellectual development, and then compares Poe’s understanding of science with that of scientists and philosophers from his own time to the present. Next, Stamos pieces together and clarifies Poe’s theory of scientific imagination, which he then attempts to update and defend by providing numerous case studies of eureka moments in modern science and by seeking insights from comparative biography and psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and evolution. David N. Stamos teaches philosophy at York University in Toronto. He is the author of several books, including Darwin and the Nature of Species, also published by SUNY Press. (shrink)

‘Dira’ is a novel experimental paradigm to record combinations of behavioural and metacognitive measures for the creative process. This task allows assessing chronological and chronometric aspects of the creative process directly and without a detour through creative products or proxy phenomena. In a study with 124 participants we show that (a.) people spend more time attending to selected versus rejected potential solutions, (b.) there is a clear connection between behavioural patterns and self-reported measures, (c.) the reported intensity of Eureka (...) experiences is a function of interaction time with potential solutions, and (d.) experiences of emerging solutions can happen immediately after engaging with a problem, before participants explore all potential solutions. The conducted study exemplifies how ‘Dira’ can be used as an instrument to narrow down the moment when solutions emerge. We conclude that the ‘Dira’ experiment is paving the way to study the process, as opposed to the product, of creative problem solving. (shrink)

Human stories lie at the heart of professional practice in the human, social services, though these are often discounted when it comes to researching such services and sharing practice through publication. This article identifies and addresses certain methodological and epistemological biases and consequent challenges in human science research, and discusses the importance of story (autoethnography) and discovery (heuristics) in research which can inform practice, meaningfully and ethically. It considers this by addressing both research and publication, illustrating both the challenges and (...) the solutions from the authors’ own experiences. The article argues for reclaiming the subjective and the subjectivist dimension in human, social science, and, therefore, the experiential, in both research and publication; and addresses four problems with regard to publishing in the human sciences, namely: privilege, quality, anonymity in peer-review, and capital. (shrink)

Teachers in inclusive schools are often faced with the challenge of providing appropriate educational experiences for classes of students with abilities ranging from gifted to severely learning disabled. This challenge can be addressed either by the individual teacher or by a whole school approach. This paper reports on a study of the responses of teachers and parents to a trial of 'cluster grouping', as a model for meeting the educational needs of exceptional students. Data were gathered from teachers and parents (...) by questionnaire. The results remind us that there are factors, other than the strengths and weaknesses of a particular model, that can influence success. (shrink)

The discussion begins with a familiar and defensible characterization of the eureka moment, according to which it is the unexpected product of separate and often seemingly incompatible perspectives. The principal aim of the discussion is to explain how, so characterized, vision-related eureka moments can occur. To fulfill this aim, the discussion employs a notion of crosstalk, in which cognitive interference slightly increases as a result of the creative thinker's considerable, albeit only partly successful, pre-eureka cognitive effort. Such (...) crosstalk, it is suggested, is likely to occur when top-down visual imaging repeatedly stimulates pyramidal cells closely apposed to others that, although simultaneously active, are part of bottom-up visual perception that is initially cognitively unrelated to such imaging. It is further suggested that local circuitry, in the form of inhibitory interneurons, can synchronize cells associated with these initially separate processes, thus causing subsequent perceptual patterns to be subtly modified by pre-eureka problem-solving imagery. This modification, it is claimed, may help explain the unexpected shift in visual perception that accompanies the creative thinker's eureka moment, a shift that can improve the thinker's subsequent understanding of the relevance of information to a problem's solution. (shrink)

This article has interrogated the prophetic role of musicians in Zimbabwe’s political discourse with Winky D’s latest album Eureka Eureka (which was launched on 31 December 2022) being the case study. Two tracks (Dzimba Dzemabwe and Ibotso) have been singled out for analysis. The message of John the Baptist in Luke 3:7–14 has been used as the framework for understanding the prophetic phenomenon of the 1st century AD Palestinian environment. The article has employed the comparative methodology in comparing (...) these two distant figures. The fivefold process of selection, description, juxtaposition, redescription, and rectification and theory formation has been employed as steps in doing a comparative study. The study identified some notable similarities as well as some differences in the messages of Winky D and John the Baptist and concluded that Winky D’s message played a prophetic role in the Zimbabwean political discourse in a similar way that the message of John the Baptist in Luke 3:7–14 played in the 1st century AD Palestinian context. Contribution: The article concluded that Winky D in his album Eureka Eureka played well the prophetic role in the political landscape of Zimbabwe. (shrink)

For long time, especially in the West, there is old paradigm that is strong separation between science and theology/religion matters. Especially, such a diverging path started from Galileo persecution, and also other patterns where religious authority seem to hold the last word on scientific issues. Other area of this World, seems to not hold such a diverging path, for instance it can be read in the works of physicist turned to religious philosopher, for instance Pavel Florensky and Nesteruk. That is (...) why we also discuss shortly about those scientists in this book. In the last chapter, we discuss about eureka, an experience which for a long time was attributed to divine spark or “God’s favor to an artist or to a scientist, such luminaries like Newton, Pascal, Leibniz etc.” Nonetheless, new methodology appears to be able to be generated once we accept balanced brain approach, where left brain and right brain hemispheres of humans can work together. (shrink)

The eureka moment is a myth. It is an altogether naïve and fanciful account of human progress. Innovations emerge from a much less mysterious combination of historical, circumstantial, and accidental influences. This book explores the origin and evolution of several important behavioral innovations including the high five, the Heimlich maneuver, the butterfly stroke, the moonwalk, and the Iowa caucus. Such creations' striking suitability to the situation and the moment appear ingeniously designed with foresight. However, more often than not, they (...) actually arise 'as if by design.' Based on investigations into the histories of a wide range of innovations, Edward A. Wasserman reveals the nature of behavioral creativity. What surfaces is a fascinating web of causation involving three main factors: context, consequence, and coincidence. Focusing on the process rather than the product of innovation elevates behavior to the very center of the creative human endeavor. (shrink)

Jan G. Michel argues that we need a philosophy of scientific discovery. Before turning to the question of what such a philosophy might look like, he addresses two questions: Don’t we have a philosophy of scientific discovery yet? And do we need one at all? To answer the first question, he takes a closer look at history and finds that we have not had a systematic philosophy of scientific discovery worthy of the name for over 150 years. To answer the (...) second question, Michel puts forward three arguments that show the importance of a philosophy of scientific discovery. Briefly, he arrives at the following answers: No, we don’t yet have a philosophy of scientific discovery, and yes, we definitely need one. To remedy this shortcoming, Michel analyzes the concept of discovery, leading him to the insight that scientific discoveries have an underlying structure with certain structural features. Some of these features may be important but not indispensable to scientific discovery processes; these include eureka moments, serendipities, joint discoveries, special science funding, and others. In addition, Michel identifies three indispensable structural features which he examines in detail and which he places in a picture with a certain dynamics according to which the process of making scientific discoveries can be seen as a path, leading us from finding and acceptance to knowledge. (shrink)

Paperback reissue of a book first published in 1991. The authors demonstrate how the materialistic and mechanistic world-view that has dominated western culture and science during the last few centuries is being challenged by the findings of modern physics, ranging from relativity to quantum physics. Includes a bibliography and an index. British-born, Davies is a well-known physicist and has written many other books including 'The Mind of God', winner of the 1992 Eureka Science Book Prize. He is currently professor (...) of mathematical physics at the University of Adelaide. Gribbin trained as an astrophysicist and is now a full-time science writer in Britain. (shrink)

Imagination allows us to step out of the ordinary but also to transform it through our sense of wonder and play, artistic inspiration and innovation, or the eureka moment of a scientific breakthrough. In this book, Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei offers a groundbreaking new understanding of its place in everyday experience as well as the heights of creative achievement. -/- The Life of Imagination delivers a new conception of imagination that places it at the heart of our engagement with the (...) world—thinking, acting, feeling, making, and being. Gosetti-Ferencei reveals imagination’s roots in embodied human cognition and its role in shaping our cognitive ecology. She demonstrates how imagination arises from our material engagements with the world and at the same time endows us with the sense of an inner life, how it both allows us to escape from reality and aids us in better understanding it. Drawing from philosophy, cognitive science, evolutionary anthropology, developmental psychology, literary theory, and aesthetics, Gosetti-Ferencei engages a spectacular range of examples from ordinary thought processes and actions to artistic, scientific, and literary feats to argue that, like consciousness itself, imagination resists reductive explanation. The Life of Imagination offers a vital account of transformative thinking that shows how imagination will be essential in cultivating a future conducive to human flourishing and to that of the life around us. (shrink)

This short article is a “conversation” in which an android, Mort, replies to Richard Marc Rubin’s android named Sol in “The Robot Sol Explains Laughter to His Android Brethren” (The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook, 2022). There Sol offers an explanation for how androids can laugh--largely a reaction to frustration and unmet expectations: “my account says that laughter is one of four ways of dealing with frustration, difficulties, and insults. It is a way of getting by. If you need to label (...) my conception of humor, you might call it an adjustment theory, or perhaps an accommodation theory” (Rubin 256). Mort is intrigued but has his doubts. Mort contends that synesthesia likely has something to do with how humans develop humor. Perhaps, he considers, human designers crossed the androids' sensory wires, allowing them to be able to smash up concepts that do not otherwise seem to fit together, reconstruct incongruities in a manner that is not nonsensical, express the aha-eureka moment of a serendipitous discovery, and even feel blue when they fail at a given task that we were expected to complete. (shrink)

Edgar Allan Poe’s standing as a literary figure, who drew on (and sometimes dabbled in) the scientific debates of his time, makes him an intriguing character for any exploration of the historical interrelationship between science, literature and philosophy. His sprawling ‘prose-poem’ Eureka (1848), in particular, has sometimes been scrutinized for anticipations of later scientific developments. By contrast, the present paper argues that it should be understood as a contribution to the raging debates about scientific methodology at the time. This (...) methodological interest, which is echoed in Poe’s ‘tales of ratiocination’, gives rise to a proposed new mode of—broadly abductive—inference, which Poe attributes to the hybrid figure of the ‘poet-mathematician’. Without creative imagination and intuition, Science would necessarily remain incomplete, evenby its own standards. This concern with imaginative (abductive) inference ties in nicely with his coherentism, which grants pride of place to the twin virtues of Simplicity and Consistency, which must constrain imagination lest it degenerate into mere fancy. (shrink)

Abstract“Show, don't tell” is a maxim basic to literary craft. It enjoins avoidance of abstract, cliché‐ridden summaries and use of rich, vividly rendered details. Anyone who has attended an introductory creative writing course will have encountered it. Practised literary writers know it is true. Why is showing so fundamental to good literature? Why is it more effective than telling? Showing constellates details, placing facets of a larger shape before the reader's mind, a shape that cannot be adequately encompassed by a (...) summary, whose power lies in the simultaneous integration of multiple, superficially discontinuous aspects. This sounds like the eureka effect, the “Aha!” of sudden discovery in mathematics and the sciences. I argue that grasping what is being shown in a literary context is indeed related to insight in theoretical fields. Telling the reader “what happened” makes the mind's eye glaze over in just the way that it glazes over when it is forced to memorize formulae that it does not understand. Showing is like offering an elegant proof; the mind reaches to understand what is going on. When it succeeds, it feels the satisfaction of having grasped meaning. (shrink)

In section 308 of Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein talks of the first step in philosophizing being ‘the one that altogether escapes notice ... that’s just what commits us to a particular way of looking at the matter’. In this essay, Michael Beaney explores some of the connections between conceptual creativity and the kind of first steps of which Wittgenstein spoke. Beaney argues that a good example of such a first step is Frege’s use of function–argument analysis and the associated conception of (...) concepts as functions, which led to almost all his characteristic doctrines. And Beaney shows that, while it is tempting to see the conceptual creativity involved in this case—that is, in Frege’s reconceiving concepts as functions—as originating in some ‘Eureka!’ moment and as catching on when others can exclaim ‘Now I can go on!’, all this needs careful description to avoid mythologization. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop an account of appreciation. I argue that appreciation is an epistemic emotion in which the subject grasps the object in an affective way. The “grasping” and “feeling” components implies that in appreciation, we make sense of the object by having cognitive control over it, are motivated to maintain the valuable epistemic state of understanding, and experience the “aha” or “eureka” moment. This account offers a unified account of the many types of appreciation, including the (...) aesthetic, the moral, and the epistemic. In all these cases, appreciation requires some other first-order emotions as prerequisite. (shrink)

Elijah Chudnoff’s case for irreducible cognitive phenomenology hinges on seeming to see the truth of a mathematical proposition (Chudnoff 2015). In the following, I develop an augmented version of Chudnoff’s case, not based on seeming to see, or intuition, but based on being in a state with presentational phenomenology of high-level content. In contrast to other cases for cognitive phenomenology, those based on Strawson’s case (Strawson 2011), I argue that the case presented here is able to withstand counterarguments, which attempt (...) to reduce cognitive phenomenology to sensory phenomenology. To support my argument, I present findings from Bowden and Jung-Beeman’s experiments with the Aha! Experience (Bowden & Jung-Beeman 2004), and argue that the Aha! Experience is a species of the experience of understanding presented here. I interpret the results of these experiments to provide further evidence for irreducible cognitive phenomenology. (shrink)

This research presents a computer model called EUREKA that begins with novice‐like strategies and knowledge organizations for solving physics word problems and acquires features of knowledge organizations and basic approaches that characterize experts in this domain. EUREKA learns a highly interrelated network of problem‐type schemas with associated solution methodologies. Initially, superficial features of the problem statement form the basis for both the problem‐type schemas and the discriminating features that organize them in the P‐MOP (Problem Memory Organization Packet) network. (...) As EUREKA solves more problems, the content of the schemas and the discriminating features change to reflect more fundamental physics principles. This changing network allows EUREKA to shift from a novicelike means‐ends strategy to a more expertlike “knowledge development” strategy in which the presence of abstract concepts are triggered by problem features. In this model, the strategy shift emerges as a natural consequence of the evolving expertlike organization of problem‐type schemos. EUREKA captures many of the descriptive models of novice expert differences, and also suggests a number of empirically testable assumptions regarding problem‐solving strategies and the representation of problem‐solving knowledge. (shrink)

The Greeks had a ready answer for what happens when the mind suddenly finds the answer to a question for which it had been searching: insight was regarded as a gift of the Muses, its origins were divine. It served to highlight the Greeks'' belief that there are some things which are not meant to be scientifically explained. The essence of insight is that it comes from some supernatural source: unpredicted and unfettered. In other words, the origins of insight are (...) unconscious, and hence, unexplainable. Wittgenstein felt that, as long as there continues to be a noun expression like to have a moment of insight which functions in the same way as the expression to have a hunger pang, thereby inducing us to treat moment of insight as the name of an experience, then people will keep stumbling over the same puzzling difficulties and find themselves staring at something which no explanation seems capable of clearing up. To the founders of AI, this argument reeked of obscurantism. The moment of insight, they felt, is indeed a mystery, but it is one that begs to be explained in causal terms. Indeed, the problem of insight served as one of the leading problems in the evolution of AI. Hence anyone interested in the foundations of AI is compelled to examine the manner in which the early pioneers of the field sought to explain the eureka experience. In this paper I will look at some of the key conceptual developments which paved the way for Newell and Simon''s theory of GPS: the fundamental changes in the notion of the unconscious — the emergence of the cognitive unconscious — which took place in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century. In so doing, I hope to clarify what Wittgenstein may have had in mind in his strictures against mechanist attempts to analyse the nature of insight. (shrink)

When Archimedes, while bathing, suddenly hit upon the principle of buoyancy, he ran wildly through the streets of Syracuse, stark naked, crying "eureka!" In The Moment of Proof, Donald Benson attempts to convey to general readers the feeling of eureka--the joy of discovery--that mathematicians feel when they first encounter an elegant proof. This is not an introduction to mathematics so much as an introduction to the pleasures of mathematical thinking. And indeed the delights of this book are many (...) and varied. The book is packed with intriguing conundrums--Loyd's Fifteen Puzzle, the Petersburg Paradox, the Chaos Game, the Monty Hall Problem, the Prisoners' Dilemma--as well as many mathematical curiosities. We learn how to perform the arithmetical proof called "casting out nines" and are introduced to Russian peasant multiplication, a bizarre way to multiply numbers that actually works. The book shows us how to calculate the number of ways a chef can combine ten or fewer spices to flavor his soup (1,024) and how many people we would have to gather in a room to have a 50-50 chance of two having the same birthday (23 people). But most important, Benson takes us step by step through these many mathematical wonders, so that we arrive at the solution much the way a working scientist would--and with much the same feeling of surprise. Every fan of mathematical puzzles will be enthralled by The Moment of Proof. Indeed, anyone interested in mathematics or in scientific discovery in general will want to own this book. (shrink)

This book places thermodynamics on a system-theoretic foundation so as to harmonize it with classical mechanics. Using the highest standards of exposition and rigor, the authors develop a novel formulation of thermodynamics that can be viewed as a moderate-sized system theory as compared to statistical thermodynamics. This middle-ground theory involves deterministic large-scale dynamical system models that bridge the gap between classical and statistical thermodynamics. The authors' theory is motivated by the fact that a discipline as cardinal as thermodynamics--entrusted with some (...) of the most perplexing secrets of our universe--demands far more than physical mathematics as its underpinning. Even though many great physicists, such as Archimedes, Newton, and Lagrange, have humbled us with their mathematically seamless eurekas over the centuries, this book suggests that a great many physicists and engineers who have developed the theory of thermodynamics seem to have forgotten that mathematics, when used rigorously, is the irrefutable pathway to truth. This book uses system theoretic ideas to bring coherence, clarity, and precision to an extremely important and poorly understood classical area of science. (shrink)

Under the term »cosmology« different projects are hidden. Following Hans Blumenberg it is shown that in thinking about the world one can distinguish between producing meaning and giving explanations. Both projects make monopolistic demands and are often not distinguished clearly enough from another even by their authors. That leads to confusions like the one in which the biblical story about the creation of the world is confronted with the big bang theory of physics. In this essay I analyse the difference (...) between meaning producing and explaining thinking by looking at Poe’s ›Eureka‹ and Alexander von Humboldt’s ›Kosmos‹. (shrink)

Life is all around us, abundant and diverse, it is extraordinary. But what does it actually mean to be alive? Nobel prize-winner Paul Nurse has spent his career revealing how living cells work. In this book, he takes up the challenge of defining life in a way that every reader can understand. It is a shared journey of discovery; step by step he illuminates five great ideas that underpin biology. He traces the roots of his own curiosity and knowledge to (...) reveal how science works, both now and in the past. Using his personal experiences, in and out of the lab, he shares with us the challenges, the lucky breaks, and the thrilling eureka moments of discovery. To survive the challenges that face the human race today - from climate change, to pandemics, loss of biodiversity and food security - it is vital that we all understand what life is. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 129-135. Introduction Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei Successions of words are so agreeable. It is about this. —Gertrude Stein Nachoem Wijnberg (1961) is a Dutch poet and novelist. He also a professor of cultural entrepreneurship and management at the Business School of the University of Amsterdam. Since 1989, he has published thirteen volumes of poetry and four novels, which, in my opinion mark a high point in Dutch contemporary literature. His novels even more than his poetry are (...) criticized for being inaccessible, which I generally take to be a compliment. It would be like saying that Fernando Pessoa is inaccessible, which he is not. Neither is Wijnberg. When we think of the combination economist-poet we are immediately reminded of the American poet Wallace Stevens, who, as the story goes, had two stacks of paper on his desk, one for contracts, one for poems. We also know that Stevens wrote on the economy and that questions of economy and insurance surface at multiple points in his poems. The following text is a very preliminary attempt to point at the intersections between poems, novels, business, and poetry in Wijnberg’s work. On the back cover of his novel De opvolging ( The Succession , 2005), Wijnberg states the following: “[This is] a novel for whomever is interested in the workings of a company as much as in the workings of a poem.” Wijnberg thus claims that the way in which a company “works” may be similar to the way in which a poem “works.” The question is the obvious one, what does this similarity consist in? De opvolging tells the story of company in which bosses and company doctors, secretaries, children, clowns, and beggars have tons of meetings, recite poems, perform plays, tell jokes, and succeed each other, climbing up and down in the company’s hierarchy. De opvolging is a novel in which the career of people follows the career of words. It resonates with Gertrude Stein's sentences, "Grammar. What is it. Who was it" (1975, 50). The words in Wijnberg's poems are like he characters in his novel. And if we keep in mind this allegorical reading of De opvolging , which is obviously only one of the possible readings, we may be able to understand some aspects of Wijnberg’s poetry. A repetition is already a pun. Look, that word is trying it again, as if it is afraid that by not doing it it would give up the hope that it will ever be able to do something. A pun is the opposite of the first word coming to the mind of someone who shouts it when he suddenly discovers something. (104) The repetition, the succession of the same word, is already a pun, a joke. The succession of the father by the son after the revolution is a joke. "Look he's trying it again!" The essence of a joke is a repetition. Archimedes’ “Eureka!” is its opposite. Poems can easily become jokes, depending on the way the words follow and repeat each other. In De opvolging , the careers of the bosses, good and bad secretaries, and company doctors easily become jokes, as they are “afraid that by not doing it [they] would give up the hope that [they] will ever be able to do something.” Not only the repetition, but also the distance and difference between the words in a poem, their cause and effect relations can be read as company relations. This becomes clear when we, for example, read the first lines of the poem “Cause, sign” from Het leven van ( The Life Of , 2009). A sign lets know what is going to happen, a cause lets it happen. If the sign also lets happen there is no reason to isolate it, because then I would isolate some- thing only because it’s different for me. If I didn’t have to write this myself, but would have secretaries to whom I could dictate it, I would be able to say more about it. (49) Upon reading the first two lines we can already conclude that any word may be cause or sign or both. If a sign is also a cause there is no reason to discriminate it, yet to the poet they are still different. This difference only becomes expressible the moment he would have a secretary. Just like in De opvolging , the secretary introduces a distance; not in a company but in a poem. Hence the difference between “good” and “bad” secretaries in a company, where the good secretary of one boss may be the bad secretary of another one. The more we can say about the bosses of the company, or signifiers of the poem, the greater the distance we introduce between them and us. We should take serious the relation between Wijnberg’s novels and poems. Although they operate on different scales, they explain and converse with each other. Another example may be the novel Politiek en liefde ( Politics and Love , 2002), which deals with the relation, precisely, between politics and love. In the novel, Nicolai, a lieutenant in the Dutch army, is sent to Africa on a military mission. Upon leaving a receives a letter from his father. Dear son, Don’t do anything stupid before your father has advised you to do so. Your mother asked me to write a wise letter. I have been looking for wisdom for half a day and haven’t found much. If you borrow a small amount from a bank you become the bank’s slave, but if you borrow a couple of millions and spend them as quickly as possible the bank becomes your slave. What I want to say is that you have to return from Africa in good health, and before you know it the world will be your slave [....] Signed with a kiss from your father. (88) The line, “If you borrow a small amount from a bank you become the bank’s slave, but if you borrow a couple of millions and spend them as quickly as possible the bank becomes your slave,” returns as the title of poem in Het leven van: “If I borrow enough money the bank becomes my slave” (12-3), which elaborates this theme. So both in the way that these poems are structured and in their subject matter, they refer to the structures of our economy, to the ever-continuing line of CEOs succeeding each other like words, to the distance between them introduced by bureaucracy, and giving and receiving as economical and poetical acts. Poem and economy map onto each other, as in another episode from De opvolging : Edward reads two of the beggar’s poems about presents. Of a holiday nothing remains, except for memories, and if some of them are bad I’d rather forget them all; if I get a present I’d rather get something that’s useful to me for a long time. If I may choose, I choose what I can use longest, long enough to partially forget that this was the present, because it feels bad when nothing is left of it. […] Giving away becomes destruction in the stock destruction economy [ voorraadvernie -tigings-economie ], that is a gift economy [ geschenkeneconomie ], encountering for the first time an economy in which there’s selling and buying on markets. Instead of destroying supplies someone can also quickly say that they aren’t worth anything anymore; if someone wants to take them I’d gladly give him something extra. In a stock destruction economy he is someone who each day wants to work more hours than his colleagues. If around a company there is a gift economy in which someone’s rank is determined and made visible by the gifts someone can give someone else, a company will be more often character- ized by an invisible or unclear system of ranks. (152) Two poems about gifts present two different economical models, described by Wijnberg with the terms “stock destruction economy” and “gift economy.” Here we immediately recall the opposition introduced by George Bataille’s work on the concept of expenditure in The Accursed Share , where a “general economy” would surpass the stock destruction economy based on scarcity (capitalism) and become a gift economy (potlatch) and an egalitarian (communist) society. These claims are made both on the level of the poems and in their discursive explanation. They follow each other and on each other. I would like to finish this introduction to Wijnberg’s writing with a translation from his novel De joden ( The Jews , 1999), which develops the story of Hitler abdicating as chancellor of the Third Reich, appointing philosopher Martin Heidegger as his successor. In a conversation with two Russian actor-spies, sent by Stalin to figure out the situation, philosopher Walter Benjamin describes the abdication scene. Maimon: You were there when Hitler resigned? Benjamin: In the room we’re right now. The desk and the chairs are new. After his resignation Hitler would like to take his furniture to his new house. Martin naturally agrees. It is a sunny day. Martin is very nervous and complains about the heat. Martin is wearing his best dark blue suit, not his professor’s robe. Hitler is wearing his uniform. We enter the room and Hitler gets up and embraces Martin. Martin is not very good at embracing. Hitler shakes his hand. Hitler’s cap is on the desk. The cap has a metal lining. Hitler has strong neck muscles. Hitler says: A man is unclean. He takes a bath. Does he make the bath water unclean? I say: a man is unclean. He steps into a river. A little further a man steps into the river; does he become unclean? Hitler nods. I say: a man is standing in music. Another man hears the music but also sees the first man moving on the beat of the music in a way that he is certain that the music would excite different feelings in him if he wouldn’t to see the first man. Hitler says: a man is clean, listens to music, is suddenly touched and he doesn’t know by what. The conversation ends in the way you know it ends. Hitler picks up his cap from the desk and puts it on Martin’s head. (73-4) Aware of the never ending debate on the question of Heidegger’s involvement in the Nazi regime, Wijnberg has the audacity to present the arguments of complicity in the religious terminology of cleanliness and uncleanliness, while at the same time recalling overtones of Hitler’s supposed love for Wagner, suggesting a relation between Benjamin and Hitler, and so on. The space of this introduction is to small to treat a novel like De joden , a reading of which together with passages from Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's Heidegger, Art, and Politics: The Fiction of the Political , Jacques Derrida's Of Spirit , Christopher Fynsk's Heidegger: Thought and Historicity , and Avital Ronell's The Telephone Book would be extremely elucidating and potentially open new avenues in thinking Heidegger's emphasis on poetry after the fall of the Nazi empire. But at this point we will have to curb our curiosity and follow the poet himself. The themes of the relation between business and poetry, but also Chinese landscape painting, love, Indian and Japanese poetry, and Western philosophy are analyzed and assimilated in Wijnberg’s work without ever losing the clarity of expression. It may be that, according to Alain Badiou, the “Age of the Poets” is over, but its end (Paul Celan) has exactly brought a new balance between philosophy and poetry, and it is this playful, but nonetheless serious balance that makes one hope that one day Wijnberg’s complete oeuvre might become available to readers across the planet. Tiranë, Albania February 15, 2011 English translations (all of them translated by David Colmer, who is preparing an English collection of Wijnberg’s poems entitled Advanced Payment ): Poetry International Words Without Borders Green Integer Review from Het leven van ( The Life of ) THE LIFE OF KANT, OF HEGEL As if every day he takes a decision that is as good as when he’d been able to think about it all his life. The life of Kant, of Hegel, the days of the life of, select three or four of them. Tell what he has discovered during those days as if he were the last one who knew so little. Give me something that I can cancel against then I can prepare myself for it. The reward is that I may continue with what I’m doing, it doesn’t matter how long it takes. This has nothing to do with everything remaining the same if I say that I no longer want anything else. I wouldn’t be able to say in which one and the other occur in a way that I if I knew something to cancel that one against it wouldn’t be possible now. The stars above my head and being able to say what belongs to what if I’ve let them in. FOLLOWING MY HEART WITHOUT BREAKING THE RULES Observing the rules without observing the rules by going where the rules no longer apply. I could also observe the rules there by applying them to what at great distance may resemble what the rules are about. But why would I do that, not to confuse someone who is seeing me from a great distance? Behind this morning the morning prepares itself when the rules are everything I have. IF I BORROW ENOUGH MONEY THE BANK BECOMES MY SLAVE A bank lends me money, if I don’t pay it back they tell my boss that he has to pay them my salary. But they have to leave me enough to eat and sleep and an umbrella when it’s raining. They can also empty my house, the furniture isn’t worth a lot, but every little helps. Each morning I leave for work, if I don’t start early they’ll soon get someone else, no bank will lend me money when the sun is shining. My boss has given me a cat to raise as a dog. Of course I know that it won’t work out, but I’ve asked for a week—maybe the cat gets lucky, maybe I get lucky. My hands around a cup of coffee, before I leave for work, warm-empty, cold-empty, as if hidden in the mist over a lawn. What I make when there’s no work left for me, I’m ashamed to say how little it is. Once I’m outside I check it, if they watch out of the window they can see me doing it. Suppose it is so much that I’d stay counting for hours, it’s getting dark and I’m still there. They stay watching for a while once they’ve finished their work, but have to go home, I get that, sure, I could also go home and continue counting there. If it’s too little running back immediately won’t help, because nobody’s there anymore, and if I come back tomorrow I may have spent what’s missing tonight. Going somewhere where it’s warm enough to walk around without clothes during daytime, it helps me to know that something’s more there than here. For someone like me there’s work anywhere, it shouldn’t take a week to find work for me there. Three times work and a home close to work, I may choose one and try for a week whether I want to stay there. If at the end of the week I don’t want to stay I’m back on the next day, then it was a week’s holiday. RULES If that’s against a rule, it’s yet another one that I cannot observe, or only so briefly that I cannot re- member it later. Anyways the rules are only there to help me remember what I need in order to do better what I do. In that respect there’s no difference between the rules that I find in a book and the rules that I think of early in the morning. I know that because I’ve made a rule just now nothing has yet to observe it. CAUSE, SIGN A sign lets know what is going to happen, a cause lets it happen. If the sign also lets happen there is no reason to isolate it, because then I would isolate something only because it’s different for me. If I didn’t have to write this down myself, but would have secretaries to whom I could dictate it, I could to say more about it. If something is taken away from me I consider how it would be if the opposite had been taken from me. That is what causes or signifies what is farthest away from what is caused or signified by what has been taken away from me. note: For the translations of “The life of Kant, of Hegel” and “If I borrow enough money the bank becomes my slave” I was able to consult David Colmer’s wonderful translations. (shrink)

Resumen: En este trabajo se ofrece una salida a la paradoja del placer trágico desde la concepción de la experiencia estética que defiende Jean-Marie Schaeffer. La idea es mostrar que ya en Aristóteles se encuentra la solución a la paradoja, y que eso depende de hacer una clara distinción entre los niveles en los que discurre la implicación afectiva y la valencia hedónica. Esa distinción permite separar el contenido disfórico propio de las tragedias, el cual provoca emociones con un componente (...) hedónico negativo, del resultado final e integral del proceso atencional propiamente estético, que es vivido como positivo por los espectadores. Asimismo, se sugiere que la experiencia estética nunca es meramente autorreferencial y que las creencias y convicciones morales tienen cierta injerencia en el encuentro con las tragedias. (shrink)

Both “optimists” and “sceptics” in regard to extraterrestrial intelligence tend to hold the view that we are entitled to an epistemically clear position: either there will be a signal, in the sufficiently general sense, proving the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, or no such signal is forthcoming. The distinction, I wish to argue here, is not at all so clear-cut. On the contrary, there are arguments, intrinsic to the subject matter, to the effect that the detection of ETI will be a (...) protracted affair characterized by uncertainty at every step. Such view of SETI discovery mandates different policies from those conventionally discussed in the literature. We should not gear our expectations and publicly promote the view that the Contact will be a clear-cut, Archimedean “Eureka!”-style discovery. In contrast, the tempo and mode of the process of discovery might significantly influence societal and political reactions to the discovery. We should be prepared for such a protracted unfolding of events. (shrink)

"Why did Archimedes jump from his bath and run naked through the streets shouting 'Eureka!'? What is a quantum and where does it leap? Do you know your id from your ego? Does God play dice? his books answers all those questions and more, taking the revolutionary and perplexing ideas of Western thought and extracting their essence. From Greek philosophy to contemporary economics, physics and architecture, A Little Knowledge covers some of the most often heard but least understood theories (...) and explains them simply and entertainingly, including: Existentialism The Oedipus Complex Original Sin 'I think, therefore I am' Fuzzy Logic The Big Bang 'Religion is the Opium of the People'. (shrink)

The word heuristic came from the greek and means “I found it!”; it has the same semantical roof than the expression eureka from Newton. For understanding the function of heuristic in art, it is necessary to realize that every creative need some principles, ideas and convictions more and less systematic as a starting point of her/his work. But this principles, ideas and convictions are not true or false. We say they are appropriate or not for the purpose that the (...) artist intends or not. In this sense, assumptions, theories and fictions could belong to the heuristic of an artist whether they allow the artist to reach the artistic goal she/he is looking for. Between theory and practice, heuristic is the pretext the artist found to explain plausibly and credible the production of art. (shrink)

This article gives a personal perception of the author, of what scientific research means. Citing examples from the lives of all time greats like Newton, Kelvin and Maxwell he stresses the agonies of thinking up new ideas, the urge for creativity and the pleasure one derives from the process when it is completed. He then narrates instances from his own life that proved inspirational towards his research career. In his early studenthood, his parents and maternal uncle had widened his intellectual (...) horizons while in later life his interaction with Fred Hoyle made him take up research challenges away from the beaten path. He concludes that taking up an anti-Establishment stand in research can create many logistical difficulties, but the rewards of success are all the more pleasing. (shrink)