Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the works of (...) Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

The author discusses the application of logic to the diverse scientific methods of the several natural and social sciences and to the humanities.

This volume takes a new approach to bridging the cultures of science and the humanities. The editors and contributors formulate how to develop a new shared framework of consilience beyond mere interdisciplinarity, in a way that both sides can accept.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The paideia of modernity is now in crisis. What is needed is a deeper, global understanding of the human being, and a broader determination of its ends and needs. Such a picture of the human being, its life, its real problems and expectations, can be called a paideia, in a sense that is the hard core of the different modulations this concept has received during its long history. It is suggested that this new paideia will be of service to humanity (...) only insofar as it bridges the gap between the sciences and the humanities, between facts and values. (shrink)

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1965.

_Abstract_: As many theoretical psychologists turn to the humanities to construct a psychological science that does not shortchange human subjectivity, many humanities scholars have turned to the sciences to bolster their declining standing in the academy. In juxtaposing these trends, I consider how epistemic and methodological wars in the humanities echo those that have plagued psychology and so call into question their use to remedy an allegedly scientistic “mainstream” psychology. By failing to grapple with this most relevant controversy, theoretical (...) psychologists may be jeopardizing their efforts to put a more human face on scientific psychology. _Keywords_: Epistemic Wars; Scientism; Humanities; Psychology; Psychological Humanities _I conflitti epistemici nelle scienze umanistiche e il loro impiego teorico contro il presunto scientismo della psicologia_ _Riassunto_: Molti teorici della psicologia si rivolgono alle discipline umanistiche per costruire una scienza psicologica che non sottovaluti la soggettività umana, mentre molti studiosi attivi nel campo delle discipline umanistiche si rivolgono alle scienze per puntellare la loro autorità all’interno dell’accademia. Nel porre a confronto queste due linee di tendenza mostrerò come i conflitti epistemici e metodologici all’interno delle discipline umanistiche riecheggino quelli che hanno gravato sulla psicologia. A partire da qui metterò in discussione il loro uso per fare da correttivo a una presunta psicologia dominante che sarebbe troppo “scientistica”. Sottraendosi alla trattazione di questo problema, che è di estrema importanza, i teorici della psicologia rischiano di compromettere i loro sforzi volti a dare un volto più umano alla psicologia scientifica. _Parole chiave_: Conflitti epistemici; Scientismo; Scienze umane; Psicologia; Psychological Humanities. (shrink)

This book explores how physicists, astronomers, chemists, and historians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries employed ‘epistemic virtues’ such as accuracy, objectivity, and intellectual courage. In doing so, it takes the first step in providing an integrated history of the sciences and humanities. It assists in addressing such questions as: What kind of perspective would enable us to compare organic chemists in their labs with paleographers in the Vatican Archives, or anthropologists on a field trip with mathematicians poring (...) over their formulas? While the concept of epistemic virtues has previously been discussed, primarily in the contexts of the history and philosophy of science, this volume is the first to enlist the concept in bridging the gap between the histories of the sciences and the humanities. Chapters research whether epistemic virtues can serve as a tool to transcend the institutional disciplinary boundaries and thus help to attain a ‘post-disciplinary’ historiography of modern knowledge. Readers will gain a contextualization of epistemic virtues in time and space as the book shows that scholars themselves often spoke in terms of virtue and vice about their tasks and accomplishments. This collection of essays opens up new perspectives on questions, discourses, and practices shared across the disciplines, even at a time when the neo-Kantian distinction between sciences and humanities enjoyed its greatest authority. Scholars including historians of science and of the humanities, intellectual historians, virtue epistemologists, and philosophers of science will all find this book of particular interest and value. (shrink)

This is a collection in translation of essays by Paul Ricoeur which presents a comprehensive view of his philosophical hermeneutics, its relation to the views of his predecessors in the tradition and its consequences for the social sciences. The volume has three parts. The studies in the first part examine the history of hermeneutics, its central themes and the outstanding issues it has to confront. In Part II, Ricoeur's own current, constructive position is developed. A concept of the text is (...) formulated as the implications of the theory are pursued into the domains of sociology, psychoanalysis and history. Many of the essays appear here in English for the first time; the editor's introduction brings out their background in Ricoeur's thought and the continuity of his concerns. The volume will be of great importance for those interested in hermeneutics and Ricoeur's contribution to it, and will demonstrate how much his approach offers to a number of disciplines. (shrink)

Charles Taylor has been one of the most original and influential figures in contemporary philosophy: his 'philosophical anthropology' spans an unusually wide range of theoretical interests and draws creatively on both Anglo-American and Continental traditions in philosophy. A selection of his published papers is presented here in two volumes, structured to indicate the direction and essential unity of the work. He starts from a polemical concern with behaviourism and other reductionist theories (particularly in psychology and the philosophy of language) which (...) aim to model the study of man on the natural sciences. This leads to a general critique of naturalism, its historical development and its importance for modern culture and consciousness; and that in turn points, forward to a positive account of human agency and the self, the constitutive role of language and value, and the scope of practical reason. The volumes jointly present some two decades of work on these fundamental themes, and convey strongly the tenacity, verve and versatility of the author in grappling with them. They will interest a very wide range of philosophers and students of the human sciences. (shrink)

What Science Offers the Humanities examines some of the deep problems facing the study of culture. It focuses on the excesses of postmodernism, but also acknowledges serious problems with postmodernism's harshest critics. In short, Edward Slingerland argues that in order for the humanities to progress, its scholars need to take seriously contributions from the natural sciences - and particular research on human cognition - which demonstrate that any separation of the mind and the body is entirely untenable. The author (...) provides suggestions for how humanists might begin to utilize these scientific discoveries without conceding that science has the last word on morality, religion, art, and literature. Calling into question such deeply entrenched dogmas as the 'blank slate' theory of nature, strong social constructivism, and the ideal of disembodied reason, What Science Offers the Humanities replaces the human-sciences divide with a more integrated approach to the study of culture. (shrink)

This book discloses a largely unnoticed dialogue between Muslim and Western social thought on the search for meaning and transcendence in the human sciences. The disclosure is accomplished by a comparative reading of contemporary Muslim debates on secular knowledge on the one hand, and of a foundational Western debate on the demise of metaphysics in the human sciences on the other hand. The comparative reading is grounded in a dialogical hermeneutic approach; that is, a hermeneutic approach to texts and cultural (...) traditions that draws upon the work of Hans Georg Gadamer and also upon the insights of inter-religious dialogue. (shrink)

Philosophers of science disagree on the extent to which epistemology transcends the social sphere in mature branches of science. In this paper I suggest a way of vindicating a key aspect of the transcendence thesis without questioning the social nature of science. Such vindication requires epistemological autonomy to prevail along channels having to do with (1) selection of research goals, (2) use of human subjects and public resources in research, (3) social interventions aimed at helping science (...) fulfill its epistemic goals, and (4) social interventions aimed at helping people and the community protect themselves from harmful scientific activity. This paper focuses on type (3), specifically on social pressure to diversify the points of view represented in scientific research. My exploration proceeds by contrasting two case studies involving pluralist enrichment of scientific research. Both encompass epistemological reform. In one (Feminist Biology) reform is pushed largely from outside the scientific sphere; in the other (Einstein's development of Special Relativity) reform originates largely from within. Examination of these cases shows why general pluralist arguments fail and also why social intervention in epistemological matters is a misguided activity - or so I argue. (shrink)

This is a collection in translation of essays by Paul Ricoeur which presents a comprehensive view of his philosophical hermeneutics, its relation to the views of his predecessors in the tradition and its consequences for the social sciences. The volume has three parts. The studies in the first part examine the history of hermeneutics, its central themes and the outstanding issues it has to confront. In Part II, Ricoeur's own current, constructive position is developed. A concept of the text is (...) formulated as the implications of the theory are pursued into the domains of sociology, psychoanalysis and history. Many of the essays appear here in English for the first time; the editor's introduction brings out their background in Ricoeur's thought and the continuity of his concerns. The volume will be of great importance for those interested in hermeneutics and Ricoeur's contribution to it, and will demonstrate how much his approach offers to a number of disciplines. (shrink)

Kant famously identified 'What is man?' as the fundamental question that encompasses the whole of philosophy. Yet surprisingly, there has been no concerted effort amongst Kant scholars to examine Kant's actual philosophy of man. This book, which is inspired by, and part of, the recent movement that focuses on the empirical dimension of Kant's works, is the first sustained attempt to extract from his writings on biology, anthropology and history an account of the human sciences, their underlying unity, their presuppositions (...) as well as their methodology. In exploring his philosophical and epistemological foundation of the human sciences, it reveals an unexpected picture of Kant, a picture of a thinker who is profoundly attentive to the diversity, detail and complexity of the human world. (shrink)

In this paper I make a distinction between some characteristic features of human activity which not only challenge the possibility of being explained (reduced) in terms of cause and effect relationship, or by universal regularities, but which assign an element of interpretation and understanding to every human activity. My aim is to demonstrate that it is not the understanding that is submitted to scientific explanation but that every scientific explanation contains the component of interpretation and is evaluated from the viewpoint (...) of our everyday, pre-reflexive being in the world and commonly (often implicite) accepted contexts and assumptions. In other words, we have to constantly refer to the existing background—a network of unspecifiable beliefs and practices. I would like to point out, after Charles Taylor and Hubert Dreyfus, that the responsible epistemology of the humanities must overcome a series of assumptions of modern and contemporarycognitive theory which appeared to be surprisingly congruent with the classic thinking paradigm concerning natural sciences. Last but not least, I would like to prove, relying upon involved epistemology or hermeneutic proto-epistemology, the possibility of mutual symbiotic relationship between the perspective of natural sciences and the humanities. (shrink)

The human sciences, says Foucault, are those inquiries about 'man' as the two-faced one. The 'object and knower of knowledge, ' refers to 'man' whose heads look in and out rather than left and right at past and future. Although Foucault is primarily concerned with relations of abstract power rather than human interpersonal relations, the idea of the human sciences - the 'immature sciences' - do provide an intellectual position recast as a target to hit against. A legal system which (...) interprets and represents the value of freedom can do so only if it grows out of the free reciprocity of communicative exchange between free people. Here law functions as a link and as a pivot between possible and ideal, between physical and metaphysical. This volume of the papers presented at the Fifth Round Table on Law and Semiotics is, as is all of Legal semiotics, an investigatory tool: a discovery of legal meaning, and a means of discovery, i.e., a way of producing such evidence that may be further evaluated in judgments of Law's acts and transactions with other sign-systems in the whole sphere of social organization. (shrink)

Cybernetics saturates the humanities. Norbert Wiener’s movement gave vocabulary and hardware to developments all across the early digital era, and still does so today to those who seek to interpret it. Even while the Macy Conferences were still taking place in the early 1950s, talk of feedback and information and pattern had spread to popular culture – and to Europe. The new science created a shared language and culture for surpassing political and intellectual ideas that could be relegated to (...) a pre-computing tradition, and it refracted or channelled currents developing in fields from manufacturing to human physiology. It produced conceptions of the political world, as well as new forms of historical consciousness. It offered frameworks for structuralist thought, but also for policies regarding manufacturing and technology, international relations, and governmental decision-making. But the rising sense of the breadth, importance, and even shock of cybernetics long remained understudied, even as its intellectual assemblages continued to, well, relay. In devices and the so-called ‘digital humanities’, a refracted legacy of cybernetics is also visible. From mainframes to category-frameworks, cybernetics is everywhere in our material and intellectual worlds, even as the name and its meaning have faded. To the extent that cybernetics permeates the human sciences and our culture at large, it remains opaque – an only partially visible legacy often deemed too complex to form a simple object of historical narrative. This special issue on cybernetics in the human sciences outlines the history and stakes of cybernetics, as well as the possibilities of returning to it today. (shrink)

Politicians, pundits, and Pentagon officials are singing the praises of a kinder, gentler American counterinsurgency. Some claim that counterinsurgency is so sophisticated and effective that it is the “graduate level of war.” Private military contracting firms have jumped on the bandwagon, and many have begun employing anthropologists, political scientists, psychologists, and sociologists to help meet the Department of Defense’s new demand. The $60 million Human Terrain System, an intelligence gathering program that embeds social scientists with combat brigades in Iraq and (...) Afghanistan, dramatically illustrates the approach. But when the military, transnational corporations, and the human sciences become obsessed with controlling the “human terrain”—the civilian populations of Iraq and Afghanistan—what are the consequences? In this timely pamphlet, Roberto González offers a searing critique of HTS, showing how the history of anthropology can be used to illuminate the problems of turning “culture” into a military tool. (shrink)

In response to Willem Drees's What Are the Humanities For?, this article compares the ways in which, historically, the humanities and natural sciences have established their relevance and social legitimacy. Initially, from the period of the scientific revolution, the sciences had usually sought to justify themselves in terms of the moral and religious goals characteristic of the humanities. During the nineteenth century, however, considerations of practical utility came to displace the more traditional forms of justification. These new criteria have made (...) it increasingly difficult for humanities disciplines to establish their legitimacy. This situation is related to patterns of secularization and also has implications for science-religion relations. Along with the secularization of the humanities, their increasing pluralization has also weakened their capacity to present a united front. The humanities are perhaps not as coherent as Drees suggests, although a rhetoric of coherence might well be crucial for establishing their contemporary relevance. (shrink)

This is a collection in translation of essays by Paul Ricoeur which presents a comprehensive view of his philosophical hermeneutics, its relation to the views of his predecessors in the tradition and its consequences for the social sciences. The volume has three parts. The studies in the first part examine the history of hermeneutics, its central themes and the outstanding issues it has to confront. In Part II, Ricoeur's own current, constructive position is developed. A concept of the text is (...) formulated as the implications of the theory are pursued into the domains of sociology, psychoanalysis and history. Many of the essays appear here in English for the first time; the editor's introduction brings out their background in Ricoeur's thought and the continuity of his concerns. The volume will be of great importance for those interested in hermeneutics and Ricoeur's contribution to it, and will demonstrate how much his approach offers to a number of disciplines. (shrink)

Philosophy of science is still, in the minds of many, identified with positivism. This is understandable since twentieth century philosophy of science originates with the work of the Vienna Circle. Positivism is most famous for the verification theory of meaning, the doctrine that the meaning of any proposition is the method by which it is verified, and that any nonanalytic locution which cannot be proven or disproven by some empirical test has no cognitive significance. Positivism is an attempt (...) to construct a “scientific philosophy” in the worst sense: it is maintained that (with the exception of propositions which are analytic and thus vacuous) only those propositions which occur in the sciences are meaningful, all other discourse having at best some emotive value, but no cognitive content, and all of this is maintained within the confines of an exceedingly narrow notion of scientific knowledge. This notion is so narrow that its advocates found themselves in danger of having to relegate most of physics to the realm of nonsense since physics contains many statements which are strictly universal and thus cannot be conclusively verified. (shrink)