Several stages can be identified in Darwin's effort to formulate natural selection. The first stage corresponded, roughly speaking, to the period up to 1844. It was characterized by Darwin's attempt to base his model of geographic speciation on an individualistic dynamics, with species understood as reproductively isolated populations. Toward the end of this period, Darwin's ignorance of the laws of variations and heredity led him to adopt varieties and species as the units of variations. This had the extremely important effect (...) of stimulating him to consider the process of speciation as involving populations. At the end of this period, Darwin also began to regard adaptation as being exclusively toward places in the economy of nature. Thus he faced the problem of integrating the process of natural selection with the process of speciation. Individual variants were the units that fueled the first process, whereas varieties produced new speices. There was no link between adaptation and speciation, except whatever could be supplied by a quasi-historical, developmental idea of optimizing the amount of life.In the second stage, I contend, Darwin's reading of Milne-Edwards crystallized his previous insights into a coherent whole. Milne-Edwards' comments on the advantage of functional specialization could readily be understood in terms of the advantage accruing to the individual, relative to other members of its species, from occupying a different niche. Milne-Edwards' discussion of the division of labor suggested that organisms which moved into unoccupied niches would enjoy reduced competition, and hence a differential advantage in survival and reproduction; thus they would induce the species to do likewise. Rather than base his explanation on an analogy with the artificial economy, Darwin chose the principle of the optimalization of the amount of life per unit area as the overall explanatory principle. The difficulties connected with integrating different levels of description were therefore circumvented, insofar as the problem of diversity and speciation was concerned. Although natural selection considered individuals as the units of selection, and the units of variations were varieties and species, the dynamics of the process understood in terms of natural selection, competition, division of labor and niches could give a plausible account of how individual advantage could be transferred to the species, and how diversity resulted from this mechanism. The problem of the different levels of descriptions was confined to how the properties of variations in individuals (in particular, the frequency of variations and their transmission) were responsible for the assumed variability characteristic of varieties and species. This problem Darwin never solved.A third stage occurred in 1858 with the amalgamation of the tree-of-life vizualization of the process of speciation. Speciation, geographic distribution, and systematics were all then embedded in a conceptual matrix with vast explanatory powers. (shrink)

We show that the theory of the partial order of computably enumerable equivalence relations (ceers) under computable reduction is 1-equivalent to true arithmetic. We show the same result for the structure comprised of the dark ceers and the structure comprised of the light ceers. We also show the same for the structure of L-degrees in the dark, light, or complete structure. In each case, we show that there is an interpretable copy of (N, +, \times) .

Ecology, Community and Lifestyle is a revised and expanded translation of Naess' book Okologi, Samfunn og Livsstil, which sets out the author's thinking on the relevance of philosophy to the problems of environmental degradation and the rethinking of the relationship between mankind and nature. The text has been thoroughly updated by Naess and revised and translated by David Rothenberg.

Kritik af tidens fremherskende funktionalistiske, historieløse kultur, der fratager os evnen til at koncentrere og fordybe os, og efterlader et samfund uden rødder og retning.

This is the compelling story of one of the most fascinating thinkers of the twentieth century- a richly toned portrait of a modern-day Thoreau.

This paper considers the possibility of prediction in land use planning, and the use of statistical research methods in analyses of relationships between urban form and travel behaviour. Influential writers within the tradition of critical realism reject the possibility of predicting social phenomena. This position is fundamentally problematic to public planning. Without at least some ability to predict the likely consequences of different proposals, the justification for public sector intervention into market mechanisms will be frail. Statistical methods like regression analyses (...) are commonly seen as necessary in order to identify aggregate-level effects of policy measures, but are questioned by many advocates of critical realist ontology. Using research into the relationship between urban structure and travel as an example, the paper discusses relevant research methods and the kinds of prediction necessary and possible in spatial planning of urban development. Finally, the political implications of positions within theory of science rejecting the possibility of predictions about social phenomena are addressed. (shrink)

The approaches currently dominating sustainable urban planning are based on a paradigm which assumes that economic growth can be decoupled from economic degradation through smarter technological so...

Volume 18, Issue 5, October 2019, Page 475-486.

ArgumentJ. Robert Oppenheimer was a complex person. His work in physics during the 1930s, at Los Alamos during the 1940s, and as governmental advisor in the immediate postwar period, gave him a deep sense of connection with communities that had distinctive purposes. But he found it difficult to conceive an overall creative vision for himself or to devise a compelling objective for the community he belonged to if one had not been formulated at the time he assumed its leadership. I (...) analyze the reasons for his successes: the vision and demands of physics during the 1930s, the make-up of Los Alamos, and the challenges of the postwar atomic world. In each of these enterprises he assumed a distinctive role and came to represent a distinctive persona – but he could not integrate his activities into a coherent whole that might be a model for the intellectual in the new world he had helped to shape. (shrink)

This paper discusses the practice of cost-benefit analyses of transportation infrastructure investment projects from the meta-theoretical perspective of critical realism. Such analyses are based on a number of untenable ontological assumptions about social value, human nature and the natural environment. In addition, main input data are based on transport modelling analyses based on a misleading `local ontology' among the model makers. The ontological misconceptions translate into erroneous epistemological assumptions about the possibility of precise predictions and the validity of willingness-to-pay investigations. (...) Accepting the ontological and epistemological assumptions of cost-benefit analysis involves an implicit acceptance of the ethical and political values favoured by these assumptions. Cost-benefit analyses of transportation investment projects tend to neglect long-term environmental consequences and needs among population groups with a low ability to pay. Instead of cost-benefit analyses, impact analyses evaluating the likely effects of project alternatives against a wide range of societal goals is recommended, with quantification and economic valorisation only for impact categories where this can be done in an ontologically and epistemologically defensible way. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The approaches currently dominating sustainable urban planning are based on a paradigm which assumes that economic growth can be decoupled from economic degradation through smarter technological solutions and institutional reform within existing social structures. However, decoupling can only be partial. Environmental sustainability, therefore, requires that, sooner or later, growth in consumption and production must cease. Policies for combining environmental and social sustainability would be sharply at odds with key mechanisms inherent in the capitalist economy. Urban sustainability thus requires profound (...) changes. On the ontological plane, planning theory must move away from anti-realist constructivism and hermeneuticism, towards realism. On the empirical plane, it is necessary to move away from disciplinary tunnel vision towards a critical realist version of interdisciplinarity, within key research fields such as housing research and transportation research. On the political plane, urban sustainability must move from growth to degrowth, from inequality to equality, and from capitalism to eco-socialism. (shrink)

This article argues that there is a fundamental contradiction between a profit-oriented economic system and long-term environmental sustainability. The ‘solutions’ that are proposed by mainstream environmental economists as well as their ‘ecological economy’ colleagues do not solve the central problems, but serve to further highlight the difficulties of changing capitalism towards sustainability. In a profit-oriented economy, capital accumulation is a prime driving force, and non-growth for the economy at large tends to result in serious economic and social crises. On the (...) other hand, a de-coupling of economic growth from resource depletion and environmental degradation is possible only within certain sectors or product types and within relatively short time perspectives. The assumptions of mainstream economists about infinite economic growth (and infinite dematerialisation) represent a false ontology according to which the powers and mechanisms of the natural world are considered totally controllable by humans as if they were mere epiphenomena of the human world. On the other hand, the assumptions of certain ecological economists about the possibility of steady-state capitalism disregard the relation between capital and surplus value, which constitutes a strong mechanism driving the capitalist economy toward limitless growth. (shrink)

Contingencies of the early nuclear arms race Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-23 DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9495-z Authors S. S. Schweber, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, Science Center 371, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA Alex Wellerstein, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, Science Center 371, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA Ethan Pollock, Department of History, Box N, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA Barton J. Bernstein, History Department, Building 200, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-2024, USA Michael D. Gordin, (...) History Department, 305 Dickinson Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796. (shrink)

This book explores two basic questions regarding constitutional theory. First, in view of a commitment to democratic self-rule and widespread disagreement on questions of value, how is the creation of a legitimate constitutional regime possible? Second, what must be true about a constitution if the regime that it supports is to retain its claim to legitimacy? Howard Schweber shows that the answers to these questions appear in a theory of constitutional language that combines democratic theory with constitutional philosophy. The (...) creation of a legitimate constitutional regime depends on a shared commitment to a particular and specialized form of language. Out of this simple observation, Schweber develops arguments about the characteristics of constitutional language, the necessary differences between constitutional language and the language of ordinary law or morality, as well as the authority of officials such as judges to engage in constitutional review of laws. (shrink)