This article addresses the relationship of toleration and humour as virtues. It argues that our understanding of toleration as a virtue has been captured and shaped by the conception of tolerance as a duty and, through a critique of John Horton’s classic article on toleration as a virtue, seeks to show what a view freed from such captivity would look like. It then turns to argue that humour plays a fundamental role in relation to living a virtuous life. Finally, it (...) attempts to establish the practical necessity of the relationship between tolerance and humour setting out what I take to be significant structural relationships between them and between their formation as settled dispositions of character. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that major elements of Hume’s metaphysics and epistemology are not only directed at the inductive argument from design which seemed to follow from the success of Newton’s system, but also have far larger aims. They are directed against the authority of Newton’s natural philosophy; the claims of natural philosophy are constrained by philosophic considerations. Once one understands this, Hume’s high ambitions for a refashioned ‘true metaphysics’ or ‘first philosophy’, that is, Hume’s ‘Science of Human Nature’, (...) can be seen and evaluated in their proper light. Hume has three motives for his attack on Newton: his work is informed by and gives cover to superstitious beliefs; his project is not useful to the public; and its success generates a challenge to the independent authority of philosophy. This essay consists of five sections. First, I discuss Hume’s attitude toward Newton. Newton claims that natural philosophy should be the foundation for other sciences, while in the ‘Introduction’ to the Treatise Hume asserts the supremacy of the ‘science of man’. For Hume the human sciences can attain the high epistemic status of ‘proof’, while much of the physical sciences must do with lower forms of ‘probability’. Furthermore, Hume’s ‘rules by which to judge of causes and effects’ do not replicate Newton’s fourth Rule; this opens a gap between the ontologies and methodologies of Newton and Hume. Moreover, Hume’s account of causation is designed to undercut the reductionist bias of natural philosophy. According to Hume the parts of natural sciences that go beyond common life can be evaluated from the point of view of the science of man. I end with remarks on the philosophic origins and significance of Hume’s attack on Newton’s natural philosophy. I depart from two independent traditions of interpreting Hume. One tradition makes many references to Newton’s influence on Hume. On a more detailed level, proponents of this view may call attention to Hume’s ‘rules’, his ‘Experiments’ and ‘Anatomy’, his method of investigation, the application of Newtonian metaphors works (e.g., an ‘attraction’ in the ‘mental world’ on a par with that in the ‘natural world’ – the principles of association are, then, analogous to the laws of motion). Hume’s ‘science of man’ is said to be inspired by Newton’s science of nature. Hume wants his readers to feel that he is modeling his project on the successes of natural philosophy, exemplified by Newton. In the ‘Introduction’ to the Treatise and more explicitly in the opening pages of EHU, Hume suggests that his ‘science of man’ can parallel recent achievements in natural philosophy (especially planetary astronomy). Thus, my claim is not that Newton did not figure importantly in Hume’s philosophy, but, instead, that Hume’s project is in many respects more hostile to Newton’s achievements – as available to well-informed eighteenth-century readers – than many recent interpreters have realized. There is a different tradition that argues Hume simply did not understand Newton. Hume’s philosophy, thus, cannot do justice to Newtonian science. Hume’s lack of mathematical competence is said to be a barrier to his understanding of Newton’s mathematical natural philosophy. One finds this attitude behind the cranking of Bayesian machinery in John Earman’s attack on Hume’s treatment ‘Of Miracles’. However, this tradition begs the question; it takes the authority of ‘science’ for granted in Hume. Against this second tradition I argue that Hume did understand salient features of Newton’s methodology and position, although in ways often unappreciated by the first tradition mentioned above. For example, in his comments on Newton in the History of England, Hume discerns the (broad) outlines of Newton’s commitment to the method of analysis and synthesis (see Newton’s Opticks, Query 31) and how it differs from Boyle’s methodology. So, Hume has a subtle understanding of Newton’s methodology – even if one were to grant that he lacks appreciation of the role of mathematics in Newton’s natural philosophy. Leaving open the question whether Hume understood all the details of Newton’s system, Hume’s departures from Newton are best interpreted not as ‘ironic’, but as philosophically motivated. (shrink)

James Clerk Maxwell’s 1865 paper, “A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field,” is usually remembered as replacing the mechanical model that underpins his 1862 publication with abstract mathematics. Up to this point historians have considered Maxwell’s usage of Lagrangian dynamics as the sole important feature that guides Maxwell’s analysis of electromagnetic phenomena in his 1865 publication. This paper offers an account of the often ignored mechanical analogy that Maxwell used to guide him and his readers in the construction of his (...) new electromagnetic equations. The mechanical system consists of a weighted flywheel geared into two independently driven crank wheels in what amounts to a mechanical differential. I will demonstrate how Maxwell made use of the analogy between his flywheel system and electromagnetic induction to ground his study of electromagnetism in clear mechanical conceptions and to structure the derivation of the equations that together are now recognized as Maxwell’s equations for electrodynamics. By reconceiving specific components of his model in electromagnetic terms, while at the same time retaining many of the relations between concepts in the mechanical case, Maxwell gradually assembled increasingly generalized equations for electromotive force. Maxwell thus realized a much sought after balance between physical analogy and abstract mathematics in this, the last of his three seminal papers on electromagnetism. (shrink)

Amongst intellectuals and activists, neoliberalism has become a potent signifier for the kind of free-market thinking that has dominated politics for the past three decades. Forever associated with the conviction politics of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the free-market project has since become synonymous with the 'Washington consensus' on international development policy and the phenomenon of corporate globalization, where it has come to mean privatization, deregulation, and the opening up of new markets. But beyond its utility as a protest slogan (...) or buzzword as shorthand for the political-economic Zeitgeist, what do we know about where neoliberalism came from and how it spread? Who are the neoliberals, and why do they studiously avoid the label? Constructions of Neoliberal Reason presents a radical critique of the free-market project, from its origins in the first half of the 20th Century through to the recent global economic crisis, from the utopian dreams of Friedrich von Hayek through the dogmatic theories of the Chicago School to the hope and hubris of Obamanomics. The book traces how neoliberalism went from crank science to common sense in the period between the Great Depression and the age of Obama. Constructions of Neoliberal Reason dramatizes the rise of neoliberalism and its uneven spread as an intellectual, political, and cultural project, combining genealogical analysis with situated case studies of formative moments throughout the world, like New York City's bankruptcy, Hurricane Katrina, and the Wall Street crisis of 2008. The book names and tracks some of neoliberalism's key protagonists, as well as some of the less visible bit-part players. It explores how this adaptive regime of market rule was produced and reproduced, its logics and limits, its faults and its fate. (shrink)

The calcium signals regulate the production and secretion of many signaling molecules like inositol trisphosphate ( $$IP_{3}$$ ) and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in various cells including pancreatic $$\beta$$ -cells. The calcium signaling mechanisms regulating $$IP_{3}$$, ATP and insulin responsible for various functions of $$\beta$$ -cells are still not well understood. Any disturbance in these mechanisms can alter the functions of $$\beta$$ -cells leading to diabetes and metabolic disorders. Therefore, a mathematical model is proposed by incorporating the reaction-diffusion equation for calcium (...) dynamics and a system of first-order differential equations for $$IP_{3}$$, ATP-production and insulin secretion with initial and boundary conditions. The model incorporates the temporal dependence of $$IP_{3}$$ -production and degradation, ATP production and insulin secretion on calcium dynamics in a $$\beta$$ -cell. The piecewise linear finite element method has been used for the spatial dimension and the Crank-Nicolson scheme for the temporal dimension to obtain numerical results. The effect of changes in source influxes and buffers on calcium dynamics and production of $$IP_{3}$$, ATP and insulin levels in a $$\beta$$ -cell has been analyzed. It is concluded that the dysfunction of source influx and buffers can cause significant variations in calcium levels and dysregulation of $$IP_{3}$$, ATP and insulin production, which can lead to various metabolic disorders, diabetes, obesity, etc. The proposed model provides crucial information about the changes in mechanisms of calcium dynamics causing proportionate disturbances in $$IP_3$$, ATP and insulin levels in pancreatic cells, which can be helpful for devising protocols for diagnosis and treatment of various metabolic diseases. (shrink)

This article considers the implications for film analysis of the presence or absence of a manual crank. More specifically, it looks at the 16 mm Time and Motion Study Projector as used in behavioral research in the 1960s and 1970s. The controversial concept of ‘interactional synchrony’, or the dance-like coordination of people in conversation, emerged from the use of this hand-turned projector. William S. Condon developed the concept along with the technique of microanalysis. Starting with the projector manufactured by Bell (...) & Howell, he made numerous improvements to facilitate observation—‘sweeping’ over segments of very short duration to discover the rhythmic synchrony of all filmed participants. It led him to a theory of ‘process’ in communication, and in the reception of speech in particular. People always ‘danced’ to the tune of their own voice, and their listeners ‘danced’ to the tune of the speaker—at intervals of one-sixth or one-eighth of a second. This also led Condon to an epistemology of discovery derived partly from philosophy but mostly from his machinery. The universe, he said, is a ‘continuum of order’ whose structures are preserved through translations of order: of thought into speech, speech into vibrations, vibrations into neurons, and back into behavior. The only exceptions are people with disabilities, like the autistics Condon studied from the 1970s onward. But the very distinction of normal and pathological was epiphenomenal to his scanning technique; it was rooted in material and formal qualities of film and of the projector whose crank he turned often. (shrink)

Twenty years ago, people thought only cranks or sentimentalists could be seriously concerned about the treatment of non-human animals. However, since then philosophers, scientists and welfarists have raised public awareness of the issue; and they have begun to lay the foundations for an enormous change in human practice. This book is a record of the development of 'animal rights' through the eyes of one highly-respected and well-known thinker. This book brings together for the first time Stephen R.L. Clark's major (...) essays in one volume. Written with characteristic clarity and persuasion, Animals and Their Moral Standing will be essential reading for both philosophers and scientists, as well as the general reader concerned by the debates over animal rights and treatment. (shrink)

War of Ideas: On Feyerabend’s Epistemic Pluralism and the Polarising Effect of Alternative Truths Paul Feyerabend is generally known as one of science’s greatest advocates of (epistemic) pluralism. Throughout his work, Feyerabend rejects the notion of a monistic epistemology and defends various forms of pluralism. Consequently, he is sometimes reproached for being responsible for the emergence of alternative truths – a radical form of pluralism – in the current post-truth era. This paper discusses the negative effects of alternative truths and (...) the extent to which a solution for these effects is provided by Feyerabend’s theory of science. After narrowly defining alternative truths, it is concluded that alternative truths can have a polarising effect that may impede the progress of knowledge. At first glance, Feyerabend’s pluralistic theory does not acknowledge this downside of alternative truths. However, this paper argues that Feyerabend’s exclusion of cranks, as well as his (critical) view on reason, can be seen as possible limitations of his (epistemic) pluralism. The problem of alternative truths, therefore, is not necessarily an argument against Feyerabend’s theory of science. (shrink)

§1. Introduction. I dedicate this essay to the two-dozen-odd people whose refutations of Cantor's diagonal argument have come to me either as referee or as editor in the last twenty years or so. Sadly these submissions were all quite unpublishable; I sent them back with what I hope were helpful comments. A few years ago it occurred to me to wonder why so many people devote so much energy to refuting this harmless little argument—what had it done to make them (...) angry with it? So I started to keep notes of these papers, in the hope that some pattern would emerge.These pages report the results. They might be useful for editors faced with similar problem papers, or even for the authors of the papers themselves. But the main message to reach me is that there are several points of basic elementary logic that we usually teach and explain very badly, or not at all.In 1995 an engineer named William Dilworth, who had published a refutation of Cantor's argument in the Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, sued for libel a mathematician named Underwood Dudley who had called him a crank. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Vagaries and Vicissitudes of WarRichard W Sams III remember standing in the kitchen of our home on Camp Pendleton—a United States Marine Corps base in Southern California—listening to National Public Radio (NPR) and doing dishes in the fall of 2002. President Bush announced to the world that he was considering a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq on the pretext of Saddam Hussein harboring weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Three (...) months later, as a Navy Family Physician, I deployed with a surgical company in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Reflecting on the situation with a like-minded close friend, I was not sure— would this be a just war? A necessary war? In my mind, it did not rise to the level of conscientious objection, yet the rightness of invading another country with all the anticipated death and destruction was not clear.En route to Kuwait, we laid over in Spain. While fixed to a TV in a holding area, I watched the Secretary of State make a case to the United Nations (UN) and the world that removing Hussein from power would protect us from mobile anthrax labs that could kill tens of thousands. I thought to myself, Either he is absolutely right, and we are protecting our country and the rest of the free world, or he is terribly mistaken and we are embarking on a disaster.As we trained, prepared, and waited in our tents to invade, we listened to the news on “Voice of America” with a hand crank radio. Thousands of citizens from nations around the world protested. Pope John Paul II, a man well acquainted with the tragedy of war, even spoke out about the planned invasion. “War is not inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity.” He admonished our leaders that war needed to be the very last option. As a man of faith, I was troubled by his resolute, thoughtful opposition to the crusade I was embarking on. As the day of the invasion approached, scud missiles flew over our camp and we scurried into bunkers, day and night, with our gas masks donned to protect us from possible WMD attacks. In March, with the announcement of a “shock and awe” missile attack on Hussein’s palace, the invasion commenced.Within a day of flying by helicopter into enemy territory to set up a surgical company, the fog of war set in. A series of mass casualties streamed in from nearby Nasiriya. We received dozens of injured enemy combatants and American soldiers. Most troubling were the civilians. An entire extended family fleeing for their lives stumbled into an Iraqi minefield meant for us: a mother dead, the men with shrapnel wounds, and an aunt lost both of her legs. Then there was the little boy. By doctrine, our leaders reassured us we would not care for children. Yet, out of instinct, the field corpsmen scooped up all injured, including children, and [End Page 170] brought them to us. The five-year-old’s legs were blown to bits. We had no pediatric supplies. The anesthesiologist heroically intubated the child’s tiny airway with a urinary catheter and placed an adult IV. The surgeons corrected the wounds the best they could. Hours later, in futility, we performed chest compressions on his tiny mangled body.A day later, the worst sandstorm in a decade struck the area. We struggled to keep the patient-filled tents erect. A Marine appeared on the scene out of the darkness (you could not see beyond your nose in the storm) exclaiming we were going to condition one—lock and load our weapons due to an imminent threat. As healthcare professionals, Geneva Conventions dictated we were to use weapons only in self-defense. We chambered our 9-millimeter pistols to defend our patients and ourselves while Marines formed a defensive perimeter. I thought to myself, Great I’m gonna be shot up and die during a freaking sandstorm in Iraq. Hours later, we were told to stand down. The threat was not from approaching enemy combatants but from shepherds running from the crossfire. I had a small nervous breakdown, sleep deprived and under duress... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Place of Imagination: Wendell Berry and the Poetics of Community, Affection, and Identity by Joseph R. WiebeJacob Alan CookThe Place of Imagination: Wendell Berry and the Poetics of Community, Affection, and Identity Joseph R. Wiebe waco, tx: baylor university press, 2017. 272 pp. $49.95The Place of Imagination is an artful narration of Wendell Berry's poetics focused distinctively on his works of fiction. Moralists concerned about issues of (...) land use or racialization could commend or criticize "what" they assume Berry's stories (re)present—nostalgia or some abstract, principial program. But Joseph Wiebe ventures a thesis about "how" Berry's imaginary Port William community discloses the nature of good, real-world community. Understanding how Berry's poetics reflect his real-world moral imagination clarifies what we may learn from his fiction. So, in part 1, Wiebe traces Berry's journey of local adaptation, through which he developed a moral imagination and discovered the agonizing details of his entanglement in his place's history and his neighbors' problems.Berry's poetics starts with imagination opening itself to the genius of a place and the other (friend and foe alike) as a living soul. Such imagination engages our sympathy to see others as complex subjects without controlling their stories, objectifying them to realize some idealist worldview. In sympathy, we [End Page 203] perceive the other as a neighbor and develop affection for them in their difference. This affection is no mere sentiment but a Humean moral sentiment that motivates behavior and, when properly nurtured, makes moral reasoning subservient to itself. Affection "disrupts habits of pity" that reduce others to mental objects and inspires a kenotic movement toward concrete neighbors (37). Problems felt at the societal level are habituated in local communities. While idealist solutions may satisfy the white, Western mind's impulse for complete knowledge, their resources prove incompetent before these problems as such. We must affectionately open ourselves to others who disrupt our mental worlds and draw us into real-world habits that change underlying communal dynamics. Relinquishing control of our storied identities (or idealist worldviews) to the others in our place, we might truly locate ourselves in those problems—and start undoing them.In part 2, Wiebe offers glimpses of "what" Berry's poetics teach us about a placed life together through select members of a quaint Kentucky farming community: Jack Beechum, Jayber Crow, and Hannah Coulter. His imaginative attentiveness to each character exemplifies the art of discovering the virtues of place-based identity. The way through Port William offers no shortcuts. Its imaginary community does not merely stand in for some universal idea of community. Neither potential solution nor nostalgic phantasm, Port William is the setting for parables that reveal something true about good community. "If there is something to imitate, it is the underlying processes that generate the particulars of Berry's narratives rather than the characters that furnish them" (152). In Port William, one can practice relinquishing control and patiently "imagining" the contours of a place; in the real world, one can deploy that imagination to develop fidelity to their place.Wiebe aptly follows Berry's method, yielding control over Berry's biography and work by taking a third-person narrator's perspective. He focuses on what Berry's life and writing reveal parabolically to the patient reader. The book beckons readers to hold Berry and his stories as a mirror—to engage in introspection and self-interrogation—that we might learn something about sympathy and affection needed for engaging our places non-imperialistically. Wiebe's adept style may appear to some as a flaw; the narrator gives no academic cues (e.g., "I will argue") for rapidly consuming principial content. There are only Berry's life and work and the reader, hopefully changed. The Place of Imagination will be of greatest interest to those who already have some affection for that "artful crank from Kentucky" (10). Beyond the agrarian crowd and its auditors, this book holds appeal for a range of explorations, from the fecundity of poetics in ethics to the disruptiveness of Christian imagination vis-à-vis whiteness. [End Page 204]Jacob Alan CookFriends UniversityCopyright © 2018 Society... (shrink)

In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Karl Marx outlined his idea of a material 'base' and politico-cultural 'superstructure'. According to this formula, a material reality - wealth, income, occupation - determined your politics, leisure habits, tastes, and how you made sense of the world. Today, the importance of material deprivation, in terms of threats to life, health and prosperity, are as acute as ever. Despite the continued importance of inequality and disadvantage, the identities apparently generated by these (...) realities are increasingly detached from material circumstances. In many casesthe identity has become a powerful signifier in its own right, and is now instrumentalised, idealised and imitated. People attempt to police the boundaries and determine the significance of the identity, so that the identity matters more than the lives of the individuals concerned. These powerful identities can be used for various purposes, from the commercial to the aesthetic to the political. This trend has accelerated in recent years, with increasing precarity and increasingly obvious inequality fuelling anger, and the internet acting as a perfect mechanism for identity theft. Identity Theft covers four different kinds of identity most susceptible to these trends - class, race, sex and age - considering how the boundaries of different identities are policed, and how different versions of the same identity can be deployed to different ends. Ultimately, the argument is not just that 'identities are more complex' than they appear, but rather that there are more important commonalities. Many totemic 'culture war' issues are not particularly contested, but have broad appeal, or little concern for most people. In the UK at least, what might be called a 'culture war' is waged largely on the periphery by crank politicians, social media groups and newspaper columnists. If there is one argument to be taken from this book, it is a call for conscientious objection in the culture wars.,. (shrink)

Wittgenstein is often thought to have challenged the view that assertion is an important theoretical category in a philosophical view of language. One of Wittgenstein’s main themes in the early sections of the Investigations is that philosophy misses important distinctions about the uses of language, distinctions hidden from us by ‘the uniform appearances of words.’ (1968, #11) As Wittgenstein goes on to say: It is like looking into the cabin of a locomotive. We see handles all looking more or less (...) alike. (Naturally, since they are all supposed to be handled.) But one is the handle of a crank which can be moved continuously (it regulates the opening of a valve); another is the handle of a switch, which has only two effective positions, it is either off or on; a third is the handle of a brake-lever, the harder one pulls on it, the harder it brakes; a fourth, the handle of a pump: it has an effect only so long as it is moved to and fro. (1968, #12) Few contemporary philosophers share Wittgenstein’s evident familiarity with cabin of a steam locomotive, and in general, most of us are increasingly remote from all but the most superficial understanding of the underlying functions of the tools on which we rely. So we are perhaps even more prone to the mistake that Wittgenstein thinks that philosophy makes with respect to language, that of regarding it as one tool rather than many: ‘Think of the tools in a tool-box: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screw-driver, a rule, a glue-pot, glue, nails and screws.—The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects.’1 (1968, #11). (shrink)

We are all physicalists now. It was not always so. A hundred years ago most educated thinkers had no doubt that non-physical processes occurred within living bodies and intelligent minds. Nor was this an anti-scientific stance: the point would have been happily agreed by most practicing scientists of the time. Yet nowadays anybody who says that minds and bodies involve non-physical processes is regarded as a crank. This is a profound intellectual shift. In this essay I want to explore its (...) methodological implications for the human sciences. I do not think that these have been adequately appreciated. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Stumbling Block its IndexBrian Catling (bio)The Stumbling Block is a graphic font. This black plinth was once a brush or similar terminal that was the lips of an intense electrical arc. Industries proud and violent need spoke through it to turn the wheel or smelt and cast the constructed challenge. Now abandoned it finds benediction in seclusion. It has softened its mouth to hold water, so that small (...) animals and disjointed humans may drink or sign themselves in their passage. [End Page 218]The Stumbling Block has been used like an entrance step to sharpen knives on. Its fossil bristle of bright stone forcing the heavy blades down to a hiss along one edge. These are knives of gleaming hubris, long intentions honed for malice. They are magnetized and have been placed to construct a lectern. Each blade holding the next to form the platform. It may hold this index at its centre, hovering, placed outside in the aorta of streets. The removal of any of the blades from the assembled cluster will spill their fish bodies to the ground. The paper will drink any of the stains of their usage. [End Page 219]The Stumbling Block is an ark of extinction. A bouillon hive of the murdered past, frozen dry to a mass. Something has warmed its corner, the oxoed grit bleeds a vein of contagion, virulent in its passion to embrace and swim in human tides. [End Page 220]The Stumbling Block is unfound to the stained and unclear eye. But its nest, its negative hollow can be discovered in the mounds of waste and detritus that choke the streets. Its possible wedge, sphere or beam form is there; a vacant socket, easily trampled, destroyed or cleared away. It is watching. Its obstinate grace squinting across the demonstrations of power. It is the light in the eye of the needle grown solid with anger, a fat sugar that clogs the passage to any kind of paradise. [End Page 221]The Stumbling Block is a bell that sounds a deeper voice than the throats of men. Their image and cry shrinks the world.The communication of global gossip becomes a barbed wind of trivial penning; television enclosures of wired indifference, the reduction of memory removes the open field and causes blurred shivers to be understood as the same thing. The bell hums as acceleration eradicates silence, the foundation for stillness is removed. The speed of language clones its own restless manic hunger. The portable telephone, miniature televisions, satellites and their collection dishes are the cutlery for this gluttony.The inedible thinness they devour is obvious. To feed this addiction soapy fictions are boiled from the skin and bone of poverty. Tribes, villages, jungles and the very air itself can be wasted or burnt to secure a dry armpit in puppeted dramas of nightmare lives. Condensation is sweating inside the bell; a human modes sound that is unwelcome. It drips from the rim in whispers and pools beneath its limited protection. [End Page 222]The Stumbling Block is a shape shifter, a spirit bench that dwells in the cuffs of the expanding city. Over its warn layers of woven scars many forms have been stretched, clamped and tasted, licked and cut; reshaped. Anointed by abstraction, they are put back on the blinking streets, patted and set loose. In the deep pocketed burrows of the bench, termite-size clones dream white directions to colour the tiredness of their somnambulistic donors. [End Page 223]The Stumbling Block is a barrel organ dragged to the site of a crime. Its tin cup catching rain as it judders on the pounding box. The moon is caught between its throat and the water, and in the black gleam of its varnished vibration. It spills dance into the causeways, sucking revelers along the spindle of its cranked tune. They will spin and curl their lumpen massed centrifuge around the bellowing thing. The laughter is momentary but has soaked away the blood, only the scuffs of shoes and the scratched cobbles sing on. [End Page 224]The Stumbling Block is not a coffer, disguised by a wig of artifice. It cannot offer erudition or... (shrink)

Most books defending the position now know as “libertarianism”, the thesis that government ought to confine itself only to the most minimal functions of preventing or punishing force and fraud, can be dismissed with little scruple as the work of cranks. And some have already done so with this one as well: but wrongly. It is clearly the work of a person of extraordinary brilliance, penetration, and learning, possessed of a pungent style and an uncommon flair for paradox and (...) counterexample. Those who are inclined to reject it out of hand because its conclusions will seem incredible might also bear in mind that its author is a man to whom his colleague John Rawls has expressed gratitude and indebtedness. At any rate, I propose to take the work with complete seriousness. And after all, should there not be considerable attraction i n the view that the only enforceable duty is that of respecting the freedom of our fellows as completely as possible? Surely it behooves us to see just why this will not do, if it won't; and no better opportunity for examining the view has arisen than that provided by the publication of this book. (shrink)

First published in Latin in 1699, John Craige’s _Theology _represents a rare early attempt to introduce mathematical reasoning into moral and theological dispute. Craige’s effort to determine the earliest possible date of the Apocalypse earned him ridicule as an eccentric and a crank. Yet, Richard Nash argues, the intensity of the response to Craige’s work testifies to how widely felt the conflict was between the old and newly emergent notions of probability.

Who gets to contribute to knowledge production of an epistemic community? Scholarship has focussed on unjustified forms of exclusion. Here I study justified forms of exclusion by investigating the phenomenon of so-called ‘cranks’ in mathematics. I argue that workload-management concerns justify the exclusion of these outsiders from mathematical knowledge-making practices. My discussion reveals three insights. There are reasons other than incorrect mathematical argument that justify exclusions from mathematical practices. There are instances in which mathematicians are justified in rejecting even (...) correct mathematical arguments. Finally, the way mathematicians spot mathematical crankery does not support the pejorative connotations of the ‘crank’ terminology. (shrink)

High-spin states in the odd-odd N = Z nucleus Co-54 have been investigated by the fusion-evaporation reaction Si-28(S-32,1 alpha 1p1n)Co-54. Gamma-ray information gathered with the Ge detector array Gammasphere was correlated with evaporated particles detected in the charged particle detector system Microball and a 1 pi neutron detector array. A significantly extended excitation scheme of Co-54 is presented, which includes a candidate for the isospin T = 1, 6(+) state of the 1f(7/2)(-2) multiplet. The results are compared to large-scale shell-model (...) calculations in the fp shell. Effective interactions with and without isospin-breaking terms have been used to probe isospin symmetry and isospin mixing. A quest for deformed high-spin rotational cascades proved negative. This feature is discussed by means of cranking calculations. (shrink)

Two rotational bands have been identified and characterized in the proton-magic N = Z + 1 nucleus Ni-57. These bands complete the systematics of well-and superdeformed rotational bands in the light nickel isotopes starting from doubly magic Ni-56 to Ni-60. High-spin states in Ni-57 have been produced in the fusion-evaporation reaction Si-28(S-32, 2p1n)Ni-57 and studied with the gamma-ray detection array GAMMASPHERE operated in conjunction with detectors for evaporated light charged particles and neutrons. The features of the rotational bands in Ni-57 (...) are compared to those of neighbouring isotopes and interpreted by means of configuration-dependent cranked Nilsson-Strutinsky calculations. The two observed high-spin bands are considered signature partners and assigned to configurations with one 1g(9/2) proton and one 1g(9/2) neutron, resulting in an unambiguous understanding of the energetically favoured signature alpha = -1/2 band but a somewhat less satisfactory description of the signature alpha = +1/2 band. (shrink)

into complex society and experienced tremendous economic development and high cultural achievement through the use of money. It has foundered or even been destroyed when money has been undermined. Ignorance of the nature of money should therefore be the central economic issue for society. Frédéric Bastiat was a French businessman who lived during the first half of the nineteenth century (1801–1850). In the last few years of his life he was elected to the national assembly and began a prolific career (...) as a writer on topics of economics, public policy, and political issues of the day. His highly effective writing style includes the use of humor, ridicule, dialogue, irony, exaggeration and, most important, logical deduction and the process of elimination. He is like a mystery sleuth in search of economic truth and this style has made him the undisputed champion in economic polemics. He continues to earn high praise from journalists, economists, and most important, from educated readers more than 150 years after his death.1 In contrast to the universal respect and admiration for his literary skills, Bastiat has not been admired as an economic theorist. His efforts at economic theory have been roundly criticized and characterized as the efforts of an amateur or even a crank. We can list the eminent economist Joseph Schumpeter and Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek, two outstanding economists, among the critics of Bastiat as an economic theorist. I have re-examined Bastiat’s contributions to economic theory and have found the charges against him to be unsubstantiated. In terms of economic theory, Bastiat is widely knowledgeable, keenly discerning, highly competent, and very creative. Furthermore, I have concluded that the central criticisms of.. (shrink)

Medium- and high-spin states of Pr-134 were populated using the Cd-116(Na-23, 5n) reaction and studied with the GAMMASPHERE spectrometer. Several new bands have been found in this nucleus, one of them being linked to the previously observed chiral-candidate twin-band structure. The ground state of Pr-134 could be determined through establishing a level structure that connects the two previously known long-lived isomeric states. Unambiguous spin-parity assignments for the excited states could be performed based on the known 2(-) spin-parity of the ground (...) state combined with the present experimental data. Intrinsic single-particle configurations have been assigned to the newly observed bands on the basis of the measured B(M1)/B(E2) ratios, alignments, band-crossing frequencies, bandhead spins, the observed single-particle configurations in the neighboring nuclei, and taking into account the predictions of total Routhian surface and tilted-axis cranking calculations. (shrink)

High-spin states have been studied in Pr-135(59), populated through the Cd-116(Na-23,4n) reaction at 115 MeV, using the Gammasphere gamma-ray spectrometer. The negative-parity yrast band has been significantly extended to spin similar to 45 (h) over bar and excitation energy 21.5 MeV, showing evidence for several rotational alignments. The positive-parity yrast band of Ce-135(58), populated through the p4n channel of this reaction, was also populated to spin similar to 38 (h) over bar and excitation energy 18 MeV. Cranking calculations indicate that (...) these nuclei are soft with respect to the triaxiality parameter gamma and that several competing nuclear shapes occur at high spin. (shrink)

Before the so-called 'bill Moureaux ', the health insurance policy in Belgium was contracted out by the government to the health workers and the health funds. Also in other sectors, government contracted out. This subsidiarity has advantages and disadvantages. Especially because of the unbearable budgetary excesses, this situation started to change since the beginning of the eighties, starting with the hospital sector. In the early nineties, the management of the sickness insurance also went through some radical changes. The budgetary envelope (...) is now mainly established by those who finance the system, e.g. the government and the social partners, who must take their responsibilities. In this new perception, all partners must be made truly accountable.Government must pass on statistic material in order to be able to pursue a well-informed policy. It must also crank up some social debates, namely about the demographic ageing.Health funds and organisations of physicians need a further democratization. The health funds must accomplish at the same time several functions: pressure group, service and consumer defence. (shrink)

§1. Introduction. I dedicate this essay to the two-dozen-odd people whose refutations of Cantor's diagonal argument have come to me either as referee or as editor in the last twenty years or so. Sadly these submissions were all quite unpublishable; I sent them back with what I hope were helpful comments. A few years ago it occurred to me to wonder why so many people devote so much energy to refuting this harmless little argument—what had it done to make them (...) angry with it? So I started to keep notes of these papers, in the hope that some pattern would emerge.These pages report the results. They might be useful for editors faced with similar problem papers, or even for the authors of the papers themselves. But the main message to reach me is that there are several points of basic elementary logic that we usually teach and explain very badly, or not at all.In 1995 an engineer named William Dilworth, who had published a refutation of Cantor's argument in the Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, sued for libel a mathematician named Underwood Dudley who had called him a crank. (shrink)

In Making Sense of Nietzsche, Richard Schacht articulates an interpretative approach to Nietzsche's work that, in his view, defends it from various forms of intellectual misuse and misunderstanding. As Schacht sees it, the latter stem from an overreaction to the apocalyptic tone of Nietzsche's attack on traditional religion, morality, and philosophy. Against such readings, he demands that Nietzsche be taken seriously as a philosopher with defensible views on a variety of matters of the first importance: the nature and history of (...) philosophy, the theory of value, epistemology and the philosophy of science, art, and philosophical anthropology. Obviously, we cannot appreciate Nietzsche's views on these topics if we dismiss him as a crank. Nor can we do so if we embrace him as a purely destructive thinker who seeks to undermine our confidence in the very possibility of rational inquiry. Schacht's Nietzsche therefore defends the viability of philosophical investigation by reinterpreting its character. He understands the conviction that the rationality of such investigation demands our utter detachment from the actual conditions of meaningful inquiry as the expression of our human, all too human hatred of the perspectival nature of experience. His rejection of the traditional ideal of rational detachment, however, does not entail the rejection of the possibility of inquiry per se. On the contrary. According to Schacht, Nietzsche believes we are only now in a position finally to understand how real investigation of the subjects that matter to us is possible at all. (shrink)

A century ago Henri Bergson was a world-wide celebrity. However, after the world wars his philosophy had already fallen into disfavor, disdain and oblivion. Prominent molecular biologists claimed to have hammered the final nail in the coffin of vitalism. Francis Crick himself, with prophetic hubris, called any future vitalist a crank. Things were not much different amongst analytic philosophers who, more concerned with clarity than precision, saw in Bergson’s works hardly more than poetry and mysticism. In fact, ‘vitalism’ became a (...) one-word argument against itself. And yet, ironically, vitalism refused to die. Half a century ago, Gilles Deleuze wrote a seminal interpretation of Bergson’s philosophy. After providing a concrete articulation of Bergson’s method of intuition, Deleuze studied the progression of Bergson’s concepts of duration, memory, and the élan, and paired them with his own concepts of multiplicity, the virtual and differentiation. Now, in a lucid and crisp book, Craig Lundy unpacks Deleuze’s Bergsonism. Not only does the book afford a better grasp of Bergson’s genius, but it also allows us to trace the origin of some key notions in Deleuze’s philosophy. Moreover, Lundy’s effort is particularly opportune in the context of the current revival of Bergson’s thought. In a time when it is becoming increasingly strenuous to cash the promissory notes of scientific materialism, reductionism and mechanicism, Lundy’s Deleuze’s Bergsonism represents an invaluable opportunity to better understand the philosopher of time and life par excellence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:270 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The Prophets of Paris. By Frank E. Manuel. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962.) This perceptive and sophisticated contribution to the history of ideas is organized around the intellectual biographies of Turgot, Condorcet, Saint-Simon, the Saint-Simoniarts, Charles Fourier, and Auguste Comte. Professor Manuel's prophets were all Frenchmen and all, he believes, can be placed in a common tradition marked by their conviction that Paris was the (...) mount from which the new gospel had to be delivered, that love was the key to social organization, and that social and religious relationships were more significant than political forms. He presents them as prophets in the Old Testament sense--as unsparing moral critics, teachers and the "revealers of a divine historical design." They were philosophers of an age of crisis, convinced that theirs was the instant of a great human divide and therefore victims "of the anguish of futurity." The future they so confidently foretold to anyone who cared to listen, and to many who did not, has found many of their prophetic visions to be poor predictions, but for Manuel they cannot be dismissed as utopian cranks or frustrated totalitarians. Many of the issues they raised and problems they sensed have yet to be adequately confronted, and it is this prescience, particularly with regard to the psychological conditions of social existence, that Manuel wishes to emphasize. This treatment, as its author admits, is a "frank attempt at rehabilitation, to right the balance of historical judgement and bestow new worth upon thinkers who have often been treated with superficiality" (pp. 1-10). Manuel's approach to the history of ideas lends itself quite effectively to this purpose. He admits to a "romantic view of history-writing" which entails an effort to establish an intimacy with his subjects through an immersion in their manuscripts, in the "scribbled brouillons, the casual notes, the personal letters," as well as in the identity presented through their published works. His writing of history is romantic not only in this regard but much more profoundly in his historicism, which attempts an immediate empathetic confrontation with the total organic complex of his subject's life, ideas, and environment. Manuel's evident sympathy occasionally tempts him into apologetics, but essentially he is not arguing a brief for the defense but trying to understand what it was that made these men see so far, and yet with such myopic arrogance, and what it was they saw. It seemed to me that his approach is most successful with Fourier, and least so with Turgot. Charles Fourier, the self-taught travelling salesman from Besan~on, is often summarily dismissed as a cosmic crank with easy reference to his fantastic aberrations --his seas of lemonade and the copulation of the planets. Manuel helps us to understand not only the aberrations but the prescient insights by establishing the relationship between Fourier's personality and his ideas, as well as by tracing the connections between apparently contradictory conceptions. He does not misuse this technique of intellectual biography by patronizing or justifying a system of thought with reference to its psychological antecedents, but rather helps to illuminate a philosophy by examining the reasons for its expression. This works particularly well with Fourier, an obsessed and deprived personality, whose great contribution, according to Manuel, was the assimilation into a social doctrine of the fundamental needs and drives of mankind--its "manifold wants, its secret desires, and its obstinate fixations" (p. 203). Both Fourier and the SaintSimonians believe that it was pointless to tinker with the social environment without regard for permanent psychological realities, but the latter hoped to sublimate human passions through a social organization that redefined them, while Fourier wanted a social system that would provide for their total gratification (p. 226). Occasionally Manuel rather triumphantly unearths striking parallels with our present BOOK REVIEWS 271 concerns that do not demonstrate the vision of his seers into the future so much as his discovery of analogues in the past. Fourier's case is not particularly strengthened by the observation that his vision of a climate so benign under the regime of phalansteries as to render tire very poles inhabitable is "no longer as... (shrink)

If you expect a nobel prize winner being a crank who can think of nothing but his subject, then read Roald Hoffmann's The Same and Not the Same and test your hypothesis. This book is about chemistry, to be sure - but in the broadest scope including sociology, psychology, ethics and philosophy of chemistry.

Without question, UFOs are part of popular culture; indeed, one might even talk of them as a popular culture. Without question, Roswell is part of the UFO scene; but it is far from the whole thing, nor is it even the central issue. Still less did the Roswell “culture” spawn humankind's preoccupation with possible alien visitors from outer space or the literary genre of science fiction. Yet if this book is to be believed, Roswell has been the center from which (...) these and yet more matters arose: “through the early years, the single event of Roswell, even without a crumb of proof, augmented every image, word, and sound produced by the mass media” . To call this an enormous overstatement would be a large understatement.Little Gray Men is unfortunately full of such sweeping assertions, so broad as to be implausible on their face and yet unsupported by argument or evidence. Toby Smith even defines popular culture as “communication that may be informative but that principally provides pleasure for the participants” , a description that many scholars of culture or communication might find arguable. Some assertions are not only sweeping but puzzling as well—for example, reference to “the Pavlovian nature of popular culture” or a “rhomboidal, zinc‐tinted” television set . Many more examples can be found without venturing beyond the book's introduction.Chapter 1 asserts that Roswell is “a touchstone for our times.” Chapter 2 is about the rocket pioneer Robert Goddard, who does have a connection to Roswell “the Place” but a most tenuous connection to Roswell “the Incident,” which is supposedly the theme of the book. The UFO Encounter gathering at Roswell in 1997 is described in Chapter 3, and the allegation that Roswellian aliens were transported to Wright‐Patterson Air Force Base constitutes Chapter 4. Books about the Incident are mentioned in Chapter 5, films in Chapter 7, science fiction on television in Chapter 8; in between, Chapter 6 is about the science fiction writer Jack Williamson, whose connection to the Incident is less than noteworthy.The book has no formal bibliography or specific notes, though there is a short chapter entitled “Sources.” Thus, when one reads on page 2 “A book came out, in 1980,” there is no quick or easy way to find out what that book is. So Little Gray Men is not a scholarly book. It is in fact a grab bag of trivia connected, not substantively, but only semantically, through the name “Roswell.”As a piece of journalism, one might describe the book as impressionistic, were it not so misleading. No one could gather from Little Gray Men that the popular culture of ufology has a serious side to it, that competent scientists and social scientists have concerned themselves with issues arising from claims about UFOs in general and, in some small part, from claims about the Roswell incident. It is as though one chose to write about the popular culture of cancer by gathering trivia about cranks, quacks, and survivors while saying nothing about mainstream treatments or the underlying scientific knowledge.Ufology has a vast literature, some of it the give‐and‐take of quite disciplined controversy among competent and informed people. That this book has been entirely ignored by ufologists illustrates that it is, in Wolfgang Pauli's phrase, “not even wrong.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 279 Epicureanlsm, Stoicism, Hermetism, Copernicanism, and sheer fantasy. "Heretic" was obviously a mild term for this belligerent prophet, sage, and magus. HF.aBERT W. SCHNEIDER Claremont, California Bernard Lamy (1640-1715), dtude biographique et bibliographique. Textes in~dits. By Francois Girbal. Vol. II of the series Lemouvement des idges au XVII ~ 8i$cle, Collection dirig~e par Andr~ Robinet. (Paris: 1964. Pp. 194. NF 12.) The Reverend Father, Bernard Lamy, of (...) the Oratory, one of the minor figures of the late seventeenth century who played an important role in the diffusion of Cartesianism and Malebranchism, is hardly known or studied today (and if he is, he is usually confused with, or identified with, his namesake, Dom Franqois Lami, the Benedictine). Dr. Girbal's short biography, based on a great deal of new archival research, gives us a picture of Lamy's career and influence. This work, though very episodic and discontinuous, except chronologically, presents the essential facts of Lamy's activities as a teacher and writer; he set forth major Cartesian, Jansenist, and Malebranchian themes, and was the center of several controversies. His writings, especially his L'Art de Parler, his Entretiens sur les Sciences, and his works on mathematics, were widely read and used until the late eighteenth century. (The list of editions given by Dr. Girbal in his excellent bibliography is most impressive.) Though hardly an original or seminal thinker, Lamy was responsible for popularizing many new themes in pedagogy, science, mathematics, and philosophy, and it is his version of the Cartesian and Malebranchian innovations that was the one known to many of the savants during the century 1675-1775. Since Dr. Girbal's book is basically a bio-bibliography, he, unfortunately, devotes little time or space to analyzing or evaluating Lamy's own ideas. Much of Lamy's career from the 1680's onward was devoted to his theological works and the controversies they started. He seems to have been a mixture of Cartesian in theological method and a crank in interpretation. The long battles about whether Jesus celebrated the Jewish Passover just before his death (which Lamy denied) and the identification of the various Magdelenes in the Biblical literature are described in detail in this study, but little attempt is made to evaluate Lamy as a scholar or exegete for his time. lie hardly appears the equal of his once brother Oratorian, Richard Simon, or his contemporary, Pierre-Daniel Huet, in either his knowledge of the sources or his sense of critical scholarship. In view of the highly sophisticated and learned arguments Simon was carrying on at the time, it is hard to take Lamy seriously in his own context. The appended documents, the texts inddits, included in the volume, are much more interesting. They deal with the crisis at the University of Angers in 1673-76, when Lamy and other Oratorians were forbidden to teach Cartesianism and certain moral and political theories (quite similar in some cases to themes to appear in Malebranche's Traite de Morale.) The documents indicate both the philosophical Cartesian themes that were taught, their applications to theology, especially to the problem of transubstantiation, and the way the struggle went on. It is hardly a case of the war of science versus theology, since both sides, the traditional Aristotelians, and the avant-garde Jansenist and Cartesian oriented Oratorians, were Christian theologians. The Oraterians appear as the apostles of the "new philosophy" as the rationale of Augustinian Christianity, in much the way Malebranche presented the view in his Recherche and later works. The Aristotelians were trying to make the philosophical and scientific past the vested interest of both the Church and State. And, although Lamy was dismissed, and a good, reliable old time Aristotelian was brought back, and although various edicts of both Church and State were used to drive the nefarious new influences out of the University of Angers, the documents also indicate both how the Oratorians continued to carry on their good works for both the "new science and philosophy" and the "true religion" and the kind of support they had in high places in the State. Lamy might not have been able 280 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY to... (shrink)