A famous essay by Wigner is reexamined in view of more recent developments around its topic, together with some remarks on the metaphysical character of its main question about mathematics and natural sciences.

In this book physicist Roland Omnès addresses some big questions in philosophy of mathematics. Anyone who reflects on the history and practice of mathematics and the sciences, especially physics, will naturally be struck by some remarkable coincidences. First, often newly developed mathematics was not well understood. But its successful applications and its agreement with intuitive representations of reality promoted confidence in its correctness even absent clear foundations . Later, this confidence is vindicated when a proper setting for the concepts (...) and techniques is discovered . Second, often mathematical concepts designed for one purpose later turn out to have pervasive applications that could not have been imagined by the original practitioners. Third, many of the most important results obtained in physics since the late nineteenth century were driven by the search for precise, comprehensive, consistent theoretical frameworks: the sequence special relativity, general relativity, relativistic quantum mechanics, string theory can be seen as one that increases comprehensiveness by consistent unification. The fundamental theoretical work has little to do with empirical investigation and a lot to do with mathematical and conceptual investigation of invariances and symmetries. Fourth, mathematical principles guarantee existence principles needed by physics . Such coincidences naturally invite questions: Why is confidence in the consistency of a successful piece of mathematics so often vindicated? Why does mathematics turn out to be so comprehensive and fruitful in unexpected …. (shrink)

This paper discusses various apostolic principles of indigenization located within the missiological writings of Roland Allen. It argues for a relevant application of these first principles within global Christian mission today. Attention will be given to aspects of ‘The Ministry of Expansion: the Priesthood of the Laity’, an unpublished work by Allen who in his day challenged certain western missionary methods which he believed were not apostolic in origin.

With the advent of quantum theory, the philosophical distinction between “what appears to be” and “what is reasoned to be” has once again, after several centuries of easy dismissal by classical mechanistic materialism, become an important feature of physics. In recent well-regarded interpretations of quantum physics, including those proposed by Robert Griffiths, Roland Omn s, and Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann, we have seen careful investigations into the physical (i.e., not “merely philosophical”) distinction between the order of contingent causal relation (...) and the order of necessary logical implication . I argue that a careful philosophical exploration of the function of the logical order in modern interpretations of quantum physics compels the abandonment of derivative classical, dualistic understandings of “determinism versus indeterminism,” “logical necessity versus causal contingency,” “subject versus object,” “epistemic versus ontological,” among other fundamental dualisms. The incoherence underlying this classical understanding of these principle-pairs as mutually exclusive features of reality can be relieved if they are instead understood as mutually implicative features of fundamental units of relation or “quantum praxes.”. (shrink)

The impetus toward an indigenous Church missiology in the 20th century was defined and defended within Roland Allen’s missionary ecclesiology. This paper attempts to understand Roland Allen’s missionary ecclesiology which emerged from his apostolic ecclesiology and evangelical faith.

In thinking of Derrida's notion of deconstruction as an attitude in understanding logocentrism, one might find it necessary to pre-empt this discourse by taking into serious consideration three words: center, consciousness, and difference. These words offer the key towards the problem of logocentrism within Derrida's deconstruction and, as far as these words seem to contextualize themselves within Derrida's texts, they also offer an explanation of how meaning becomes possible. Derrida's deconstruction is a form of writing in which the "I-ness" of (...) the self is given emphasis as both the limitation and possibility of appropriation in so far as context is concerned. Reading for him is already considered as an act of writing, the text, being polysemic in its inscription, already implies that the repetition of the syntax of words will always be rendered by the consciousness with a relative amount of impurity. Every instance of reading then is a form of writing, each time an Other tries to read the singularity of the construction of the text, it is already altered as another occurrence within another consciousness. (shrink)

In the advent of communication, Derrida finds that meaning through signification carries with it the possibility of mis-communication in which the intended meaning behind the text becomes undecidable and inevitably polysemic in its transference. In a short, yet fecund essay “Signature Event Context,” Derrida tackles the problem of communication and the supposed claim of the classical notion of writing’s conception of virtual permanence within the text. The classical notion of writing claims that writing as a medium or a species of (...) communication implies that the transference of meaning is conducted in a homogenous fashion. In the absence, of the author who has abandoned the fleeting singular instance of inscription, the text, according to the classical notion of writing, must be able to transfer meaning within the interplay of the text itself, for if it fails to do so, writing would cease to become useful in its intention to transfer meaning. (shrink)

This piece aims to provide a synoptic introduction to Boer’s claims in the five volumes of Marxism and Theology. Obviously, such an account must miss many important nuances across the host of critical readings Boer assembles, guided by his broadly Jamesonian manner of reading the texts with a view to their biblical and theological claims. Nevertheless, by aiming at a synoptic view of a truly compendious contribution to scholarship, it is hoped that the piece will provide assistance to readers, and (...) encourage them to test their own intuitions and thoughts against the original texts. The final part of the article stands back from this “standing back”: and asks questions concerning Boer’s treatments of biblical criticism, with and/or against theology; and concerning the role of what might be called a kind of “secularised” Calvinism in Boer’s work and its interest in a post-Marxian politics of grace. (shrink)

An essential guide to an essential book, this first anthology on Camera Lucida offers critical perspectives on Barthes's influential text. Roland Barthes's 1980 book Camera Lucida is perhaps the most influential book ever published on photography. The terms studium and punctum, coined by Barthes for two different ways of responding to photographs, are part of the standard lexicon for discussions of photography; Barthes's understanding of photographic time and the relationship he forges between photography and death have been invoked countless (...) times in photographic discourse; and the current interest in vernacular photographs and the ubiquity of subjective, even novelistic, ways of writing about photography both owe something to Barthes. Photography Degree Zero, the first anthology of writings on Camera Lucida, goes beyond the usual critical orthodoxies to offer a range of perspectives on Barthes's important book. Photography Degree Zero includes essays written soon after Barthes's book appeared as well as more recent rereadings of it, some previously unpublished. The contributors' approaches range from psychoanalytical to Buddhist ; they include a history of Barthes's writings on photography and an account of Camera Lucida and its reception; two views of the book through the lens of race; and a provocative essay by Michael Fried and two responses to it. The variety of perspectives included in Photography Degree Zero, and the focus on Camera Lucida in the context of photography rather than literature or philosophy, serve to reopen a vital conversation on Barthes's influential work. (shrink)

The philosophical relationship between mathematics and the natural sciences is the subject of Converging Realities, the latest work by one of the leading thinkers on the subject.

The possibility of consistency between the basic quantum principles of quantum mechanics and wave function collapse is reexamined. A specific interpretation of environment is proposed for this aim and is applied to decoherence. When the organization of a measuring apparatus is taken into account, this approach leads also to an interpretation of wave function collapse, which would result in principle from the same interactions with environment as decoherence. This proposal is shown consistent with the non-separable character of quantum mechanics.

By considering S/Z as an early example of the romanesque in Roland Barthes's oeuvre, this article considers the generic and thematic anticipation of La Préparation du roman in Barthes's seminars of the late 1960s. It suggests that his seminar notes on Balzac's Sarrasine written in 1968 and 1969 are a form of proto-essayism, albeit given as seminars in the institutional context of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris. This essayism is traced through the notion of perte de (...) soi evident in two aspects of the seminar notes: firstly, in the ‘drugged reading’ that Barthes proposes, and then through his ambivalence to the literary character. Working ‘retroactively’, the article concludes that La Préparation du roman can help us to explain S/Z and its genesis, that is proactively, by applying this perte de soi to the act of one about to write a novel. (shrink)

When a quantum system is macroscopic and becomes entangled with a microscopic one, entanglement is not immediately total, but gradual and local. A study of this locality is the starting point of the present work and shows unexpected and detailed properties in the generation and propagation of entanglement between a measuring apparatus and a microscopic measured system. Of special importance is the propagation of entanglement in nonlinear waves with a finite velocity. When applied to the entanglement between a macroscopic system (...) and its environment, this study yields also new results about the resulting disordered state. Finally, a mechanism of wave function collapse is proposed as an effect of perturbation in the growth of local entanglement between a measuring system and the measured one by waves of entanglement with the environment. (shrink)

This paper discusses Juri Lotman’s concept of autocommunication and explores its applicability by referring to Roland Barthes’s representations of Self and Other. The texts to be discussed include Barthes’s writings on Japan and China, an excerpt from his rewriting of Balzac’s “Sarrasine” in S/Z, and his autobiography and Rousseau’s Confessions. The paper contrasts two cultural communication cases in terms of analysing two kinds of a-semantic codes: the positive a-semantic code of Japan, and the negative a-semantic code of China. With (...) reference to “Sarrasine” and S/Z, the paper discusses two specific codes, cultural memory and imagination, which lead to the addressee’s reformulations. Finally, the paper examines how different modes of autocommunication are put into practice in Barthes’s autobiographical and Rousseau’s confessional writings. (shrink)

A rather recent interpretation of quantum mechanics, known under the various names of consistent histories, decohering histories, or logical interpretation, has brought interpretation into a standard deductive theory and is now investigated in many places. A key difference with the Copenhagen interpretation is the status of classical physics, now derived completely from quantum principles in both its dynamical and logical aspects. After describing briefly this new interpretation in its essentials, leaving aside technical details, it is shown how its consequences in (...) epistemology differ drastically from the familiar outcomes of the Copenhagen interpretation, leading in particular to a well-defined theory of knowledge. Some more speculative philosophical consequences associated with the unsolved problem of actuality are also mentioned. (shrink)

Philosophers of religion divide neatly into two camps on the problem of evil: those who think it fatal to the concept of a loving God and those who do not. The latter have established a wide array of defensive positions down through the centuries, but none that has proved impregnable to sceptical attack. In his new book Mr Hick wisely abandons these older fortifications and falls back on highly mobile reserves. Not for him the ‘Fall of Man’ thesis, with its (...) unexplained choice to give up finite perfection; nor the Plotinian principle of plenitude, evil being an inevitable petering out of God's goodness; nor the ‘aesthetic’ gambit where the horrors of life constitute mere ‘shadows’ designed to highlight the beauty of creation; nor the ‘cosmic Toryism’, as someone called it, of Leibniz's ‘best of all possible worlds’; nor even, one might say gratefully, the gaseous obscurantism of Karl Barth's ‘das Nichtige’. All of these defences, and others besides, Mr Hick lumps together under what he calls ‘the majority report’ in Christian theodicy: the Augustinian tradition or type. In place of these venerable ramparts Hick elects the more fluid defence afforded, he thinks, by Irenaeus, Eastern Christianity and, in modern times, by Schleiermacher and a few contemporary thinkers. (shrink)

The consistent histories reformulation of quantum mechanics was developed by Robert Griffiths, given a formal logical systematization by Roland Omn\`{e}s, and under the label `decoherent histories', was independently developed by Murray Gell-Mann and James Hartle and extended to quantum cosmology. Criticisms of CH involve issues of meaning, truth, objectivity, and coherence, a mixture of philosophy and physics. We will briefly consider the original formulation of CH and some basic objections. The reply to these objections, like the objections themselves, involves (...) a mixture of physics and philosophy. These replies support an evaluation of the CH formulation as a replacement for the measurement, or orthodox, interpretation. (shrink)

When Barthes starts to conceptualize his courses at the Collège de France, he envisions a methodology which he actually considers to be an ‘anti-method’, that is to say, an ‘unscientific’ method which goes against the grain of traditional education. He pursues the method of his seminars at the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes, especially the seminar that ended up with the publication of A Lover's Discourse. In the conclusion to the seminar, Barthes turns to Nietzsche to ground this ‘anti-method’ and (...) to substantiate his claim that literature is a vital dimension of his research and teaching. In the introductory session of Comment vivre ensemble, Barthes labels this ‘anti-method’ – once more with the help of Nietzsche – ‘paideia’. This article aims to scrutinize the scope, the potentialities and the risks of this Greek word to Barthes's theory and ideas on life, criticism and literature. (shrink)

El artículo recorre la obra de Rodolfo Kusch posicionando sus principales propuestas en la construcción de tres enfoques convergentes en su filosofía. El primer enfoque está relacionado con la fenomenología y la cultura. El segundo enfoque se refiere a la influencia de la antropología y el cuestionamiento por el símbolo. El tercer enfoque despliega una aproximación filosófico-política. Estos enfoques permiten introducir tres “horizontes de pregunta” principalmente relacionados con el método, con lo popular y con lo indígena, que son expuestos como (...) asuntos centrales en toda su obra. Estos “horizontes de pregunta” buscan comprender los alcances de la filosofía de Kusch y su contribución al pensamiento filosófico americano. This paper analyses the work of Rodolfo Kusch remarking his main philosophical proposals through three correlated perspectives. The first perspective refers to phenomenology and culture. The second focuses on the influence of anthropology and the problem of symbols. The third posits a political-philosophical approximation. These perspectives operate interdependently as the background for Kusch’s philosophy and allow us to introduce three “questioning horizons” related to the method, the popular and the indigenous as the central issues of his philosophical work. Thus, these “questioning horizons” build a platform to understand Kusch’s philosophy and his contribution to the Latin American philosophy. (shrink)

Though explicit references to music are infrequent in Barthes's Collège de France lectures, Barthes's use of music in other work from the 1970s makes it clear that music can act as a fruitful analogy in consideration of the text. This article uses the serialist or atonal analogy, as set up by Barthes in ‘From Work to Text’ and elsewhere, to examine the structuring of Comment vivre ensemble and The Neutral. In viewing these courses as serial or open works we can, (...) it is hoped, arrive at a fuller understanding of their methodology and the role they ascribe to the listener or reader. The atonal analogy, however, is left behind in 1978, as Barthes's major projects employ more conventional, developmental structuring. It is here, then, that the analogy with tonality, again suggested by Barthes, can be usefully employed. (shrink)

This volume describes the current "main contenders," including neo-Piagetian, neo-connectionist, neo-innatist and sociocultural models.

In his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France, Barthes introduced the fantasy as an important epistemological tool for the reading strategy he would try to develop in his lecture courses. The notion of fantasy oscillates between two important, but apparently irreconcilable intertexts: Lacanian psychoanalysis and Nietzschean philosophy. True to his desire for the Neutral, Barthes refused to choose between them and instead searched for a third term which would outplay the opposition. I argue that Barthes finally found this term (...) in a revaluation of the imaginary and a plea for a return of the repressed ‘ego’ in literary theory, a ‘romanesque’ ego, which ‘writes’ itself in the search for a readable oeuvre. (shrink)

Vigorous debate over the moral propriety of cognitive enhancement exists, but the views of the public have been largely absent from the discussion. To address this gap in our knowledge, four experiments were carried out with contrastive vignettes in order to obtain quantitative data on public attitudes towards cognitive enhancement. The data collected suggest that the public is sensitive to and capable of understanding the four cardinal concerns identified by neuroethicists, and tend to cautiously accept cognitive enhancement even as they (...) recognize its potential perils. The public is biopolitically moderate, endorses both meritocratic principles and the intrinsic value of hard work, and appears to be sensitive to the salient moral issues raised in the debate. Taken together, these data suggest that public attitudes toward enhancement are sufficiently sophisticated to merit inclusion in policy deliberations, especially if we seek to align public sentiment and policy. (shrink)

In The Transcendence of the Ego Sartre deals with the idea of the self and of its relation to what he calls 'pure consciousness'. Pure consciousness is an impersonal transcendental field, in which the self is produced in such a way that consciousness thereby disguises its 'monstrous spontaneity'. I want to explore to what extent the ego is to be understood as a result of absolute consciousness. I also claim that the idea of the self Sartre has in mind is (...) Bergson's 'moi profond'. Since this 'deeper self' has to be understood as a result of an impersonal transcendental field, it loses its central position in consciousness. Sartre claims that the ego is not transcendental, as Husserl had claimed, but transcendent to consciousness. But can the role of Husserl's transcendental ego be reduced to that transcendent Bergsonian 'deeper self'? Isn't there something irreducible in Husserl's transcendental ego? (shrink)

Revered by some as the most important twentieth century theorist of free society, Friedrich A. Hayek has been reviled by others as a mere reactionary. Impartial throughout, the author offers a clear exposition and balanced assessment that judges Hayek's theory by its own lights. The author argues that the key to understanding Hayek lies in an appreciation of the proper link between descriptive social science and normative political theory. He probes the idea of a spontaneous order and other notions central (...) to Hayek's thought, and concludes that they are unable to provide the "scientific" foundation Hayek seeks for his liberalism. By drawing out the distinctive character of Hayek's thought, the author presents a new and more accurate picture of this important social and political theorist. (shrink)