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Historical Epistemology of Ecological Economics: Essays on the Styles of Economic Reasoning (Contributions to Economics)
by Alberto FragioThis volume uses historical epistemology in order to address several topics in the history of economic thought, with special emphasis on ecological economics, environmental metaphors of scarcity, and mathematical ecology. Using the field of ecological economics as an anchor point, the author reflects on the styles of reasoning in economics with a view towards understanding the nature of disagreement that stems from a failure of communication between rival approaches in economics. A thorough inquiry into issues related to identity, coherence, pluralism, and reception, this volume will appeal to researchers and students interested in history of economic thought, ecological economics, and philosophy of the sciences.
Historical Epistemology of Space
by Matthias SchemmelThis monograph investigates the development of human spatial knowledge by analyzing its elementary structures and studying how it is further shaped by various societal conditions. By taking a thoroughly historical perspective on knowledge and integrating results from various disciplines, this work throws new light on long-standing problems in epistemology such as the relation between experience and preformed structures of cognition. What do the orientation of apes and the theory of relativity have to do with each other? Readers will learn how different forms of spatial thinking are related in a long-term history of knowledge. Scientific concepts of space such as Newton's absolute space or Einstein's curved spacetime are shown to be rooted in pre-scientific structures of knowledge, while at the same time enabling the integration of an ever expanding corpus of experiential knowledge. This work addresses all readers interested in questions of epistemology, in particular philosophers and historians of science. It integrates forms of spatial knowledge from disciplines including anthropology, developmental psychology and cognitive sciences, amongst others.
A Historical Essay on the Neapolitan Revolution of 1799
by Bruce Haddock David Gibbons Vincenzo Cuoco Filippo SabettiDeeply influenced by Enlightenment writers from Naples and France, Vincenzo Cuoco (1770-1823) was forced into exile for his involvement in the failed Neapolitan revolution of 1799. Living in Milan, he wrote what became one of the nineteenth century's most important treatises on political revolution.In his Historical Essay on the Neapolitan Revolution of 1799, Cuoco synthesized the work of Machiavelli, Vico, and Enlightenment philosophers to offer an explanation for why and how revolutions succeed or fail. A major influence on political thought during the unification of Italy, the Historical Essay was also an inspiration to twentieth-century thinkers such as Benedetto Croce and Antonio Gramsci.This critical edition, featuring an authoritative translation, introduction, and annotations, finally makes Cuoco's work fully accessible to an English-speaking audience.
Historical Evolution of the Eastern Mode of Production (China Perspectives)
by Zhao JiaxiangIn the four volumes of The Development Trajectory of Eastern Societies and the Theories and Practices of Socialism, the author re-examines Marx and Engels’ theories on the development trajectory of Eastern societies by integrating theoretical analysis of Marxist theories and a historical investigation of socialist revolution and socialist construction around the world. This second volume focuses on Marx and Engels’ historical materialism, explains the general laws of historical development, and brings this to bear within the context of Eastern societies. The author notes that Marx and Engels’ historical materialism and its derivative theories on Eastern societies are compatible and interconnected. In addition, he reveals how Marx and Engels’ theory of the “Asiatic mode of production” plays an important part in the development trajectory of Eastern societies, and is closely related to their theory of “five social forms.” This volume is a key reference for readers who study and are interested in Marxism, Marxist philosophy, and the history of philosophy.
Historical Experience: Essays on the Phenomenology of History (Routledge Approaches to History)
by David CarrThis volume brings together a collection of recent essays on the philosophy and theory of history. This is a field of lively interdisciplinary discussion and research, to which historians, philosophers and theorists of culture and literature have contributed. The author is a philosopher by training, and his inspiration comes primarily from the continental-phenomenological tradition. Thus the influence of Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur can be discerned here. This background opens up a unique perspective on the issues under discussion. Phenomenology differs from other philosophical approaches, like metaphysics and epistemology. Phenomenology asks, of anything that exists or may exist: how is it given, how does it enter our experience, what is our experience of it like? Very broadly we can say: phenomenology is about experience. At first glance, this approach may seem ill-suited to history. In our language, “history” usually means either 1) what happened, i.e. past events, or 2) our knowledge of what happened. We can’t experience past events, and whatever knowledge we have of them must come from other sources—memory, testimony, physical traces. But the author maintains that we actually do experience historical events, and these essays explain how this is so. Sitting at the intersection of philosophy and history, and divided into three parts—Historicity, Narrative, and Time, Teleology and History, and Embodiment and Experience—this is the ideal volume for those interested in experience from a philosophical and historical perspective.
Historical Explanation: An Anti-Causalist Approach (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy)
by Gunnar SchumannThis book is concerned with the appropriate form of explanations in historiography and the social sciences. It combines action theory and philosophy of historiography and develops a theory of teleological explanations of human actions based on late-Wittgensteinian and Ordinary Language Philosophy insights. In philosophy of action, many philosophers favor causal theories of human action. Additionally, in current philosophy of historiography the majority view is that historians should explain historical phenomena by their causes. This book pushes back against these mainstream views by reviving an anti-causal view of explanation of current and past human actions. The author argues that disciplines that deal with human actions require a certain form of explanation, namely a teleological or intentional explanation. This means that past human actions and their results will have to be explained by reasons of agents, not by causes. Therefore, historiography employs a method of explanation which is in stark contrast to the sciences. The author thus proposes a Verstehen (understanding) approach in historiography and the social sciences. Historical Explanation will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of action, philosophy of history, and philosophy of the social sciences.
Historical Foundations of Informal Logic (Avebury Series in Philosophy)
by Douglas Walton Alan BrintonIn just the last twenty years there has arisen a strong interest, especially among teachers of logic at the universities, in teaching techniques of applied logical reasoning and critical thinking. Many universities are now stressing these skills at an introductory level, and to meet the need, informal logic has begun to form and grow as a discipline in its own right. Like all subjects, it helps us to understand it if we can situate it in a context of historical development. This collection of essays provides the readings required to understand the development of a subject whose historical origins have been so far little studied. Many of the chapters are written by scholars in philosophy and speech communication who are themselves leading contributors to the subject, and their contemporary views throw light on how these earlier writers have influenced their thinking. This dimension gives an added interest to the essays, and indicates the way informal logic is currently evolving and seeking out its ancient historical origins.
Historical Geography, GIScience and Textual Analysis: Landscapes of Time and Place (Historical Geography and Geosciences)
by Charles Travis Francis Ludlow Ferenc GyurisThis book illustrates how literature, history and geographical analysis complement and enrich each other’s disciplinary endeavors. The Hun-Lenox Globe, constructed in 1510, contains the Latin phrase 'Hic sunt dracones' ('Here be dragons'), warning sailors of the dangers of drifting into uncharted waters. Nearly half a millennium earlier, the practice of ‘earth-writing’ (geographia) emerged from the cloisters of the great library of Alexandria, as a discipline blending the twin pursuits of Strabo’s poetic impression of places, and Herodotus’ chronicles of events and cultures. Eratosthenes, a librarian at Alexandria, and the mathematician Ptolemy employed geometry as another language with which to pursue ‘earth-writing’. From this ancient, East Mediterranean fount, the streams of literary perception, historical record and geographical analysis (phenomenological and Euclidean) found confluence. The aim of this collection is to recover such means and seek the fount of such rich waters, by exploring relations between historical geography, geographic information science (GIS) / geoscience, and textual analysis. The book discusses and illustrates current case studies, trends and discourses in European, American and Asian spheres, where historical geography is practiced in concert with human and physical applications of GIS (and the broader geosciences) and the analysis of text - broadly conceived as archival, literary, historical, cultural, climatic, scientific, digital, cinematic and media. Time as a multi-scaled concept (again, broadly conceived) is the pivot around which the interdisciplinary contributions to this volume revolve. In The Landscape of Time (2002) the historian John Lewis Gaddis posits: “What if we were to think of history as a kind of mapping?” He links the ancient practice of mapmaking with the three-part conception of time (past, present, and future). Gaddis presents the practices of cartography and historical narrative as attempts to manage infinitely complex subjects by imposing abstract grids to frame the phenomena being examined— longitude and latitude to frame landscapes and, occidental and oriental temporal scales to frame timescapes. Gaddis contends that if the past is a landscape and history is the way we represent it, then it follows that pattern recognition constitutes a primary form of human perception, one that can be parsed empirically, statistically and phenomenologically. In turn, this volume reasons that literary, historical, cartographical, scientific, mathematical, and counterfactual narratives create their own spatio-temporal frames of reference. Confluences between the poetic and the positivistic; the empirical and the impressionistic; the epic and the episodic; and the chronologic and the chorologic, can be identified and studied by integrating practices in historical geography, GIScience / geoscience and textual analysis. As a result, new perceptions and insights, facilitating further avenues of scholarship into uncharted waters emerge. The various ways in which geographical, historical and textual perspectives are hermeneutically woven together in this volume illuminates the different methods with which to explore terrae incognitaes of knowledge beyond the shores of their own separate disciplinary islands.
A Historical Introduction to Phenomenology (Routledge Library Editions: Phenomenology)
by Matti Kamppinen Seppo SajamaThis book offers a concise exposition of the content theory of intentionality, which lies at the root of Husserl’s phenomenology, for student and scholar. Originally published in 1982. The first part traces the history of phenomenology from its beginnings in Aristotle and Aquinas through Hume, Reid and the Brentano school to its first clear formulation in Frege and Husserl. Part two analyses some special problems involved in two important types of mental phenomena – perception and emotion – without abandoning the historical approach. Husserl’s theory of perception is extensively discussed and a Husserlian analysis of so-called de re acts is attempted.
Historical Introduction to Philosophy
by Albert B. HakimThis text/anthology is designed to lead beginning students to an appreciation of Western philosophy through an exploration of its history, the problems (classical questions) it has dealt with, and the major philosophers and their works within that historical setting.
A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind: Readings with Commentary (2nd edition)
by Peter Alan MortonThe issues introduced in this book are today referred to collectively as "the mind-body problem." The simplest way to describe this problem is to say that it is a search for an answer to the question, 'What is the relationship between the mind and the physical body?' This search raises such issues as whether the mind and body are one thing or two, and whether artificial machines could have minds.
Historical Judgement: The Limits Of Historiographical Choice
by Jonathan GormanThe historical profession is not noted for examining its own methodologies. Indeed, most historians are averse to historical theory. In "Historical Judgement" Jonathan Gorman's response to this state of affairs is to argue that if we want to characterize a discipline, we need to look to persons who successfully occupy the role of being practitioners of that discipline. So to model historiography we must do so from the views of historians. Gorman begins by showing what it is to model a discipline by using recent philosophy of law and philosophy of science. There are different models at work, whose rivalry and resolution are to be historically understood. With this approach in place he is able to develop the history of historiography and explore the character of historiography as presented by historians. He reveals that historians conform to various norms - that historians now and in the past have agreed and disagreed about the same set of interrelated matters: truth-telling, moral judgement and the synthesis of facts - and it is this internal understanding that we need to recover if we are to arrive at a correct characterization of the discipline of historiography. Demonstrating how the practice of historiography requires choices and therefore the exercise of judgement, Gorman is able to show that in their making of judgements historians enjoy the immense benefit of hindsight. He shows how, in reflecting on their own discipline, historians have typically failed to attend adequately to the history of historiography, neglecting to situate previous historians within their historical contexts, or to pay adequate attention to the fact that present historians, too, are within a context that will change. In addition, Gorman's approach, which emphasizes the power and necessity of choice, and which rests on the pragmatic holistic empiricism of Quine, shows postmodernism not to be the threat that some historians feel it to be, indeed, it is shown to be a radical form of empiricism. Gorman shows how the historical enterprise may be established in our factual and moral understanding in the light of our choices and commitments to a shared world. "Historical Judgement" is an original and important contribution to the philosophy of history. By bringing together the ideas of historians and philosophers, Gorman presents a much more practitioner-focused examination of the discipline of history, one that will, hopefully, encourage historians to think more about the nature of what they do.
Historical Justice and History Education
by Henrik Åström Elmersjö Daniel Lindmark Björn Norlin Mati KeynesThis book explores how the expectations of historical justice movements and processes are understood within educational contexts, particularly history education. In recent years, movements for historical justice have gained global momentum and prominence as the focus on righting wrongs from the past has become a feature of contemporary politics. This imperative has manifested in globally diverse contexts including societies emerging from recent, violent conflict, but also established democracies which are increasingly compelled to address the legacies of colonialism, slavery, genocides, and war crimes, as well as other forms of protracted discord. This book examines historical justice from an educational perspective, exploring the myriad ways that education is understood as a site of historical injustice, as well as a mechanism for redress. The editors and contributors analyse the role of history education in processes of historical justice broadly, exploring educational sites, policies, media, and materials. This edited collection is a unique and important touchstone volume for scholars, policy-makers, practitioners, and teachers that can guide future research, policy, and practice in the fields of historical justice, human rights and history education.
The Historical Mind: Humanistic Renewal in a Post-Constitutional Age
by Justin D. Garrison Ryan R. HolstonAmerica is increasingly defined not only by routine disregard for its fundamental laws, but also by the decadent character of its political leaders and citizens—widespread consumerism and self-indulgent behavior, cultural hedonism and anarchy, the coarsening of moral and political discourse, and a reckless interventionism in international relations. In The Historical Mind, various scholars argue that America's problems are rooted in its people's refusal to heed the lessons of historical experience and to adopt "constitutional" checks or self-imposed restraints on their cultural, moral, and political lives. Drawing inspiration from the humanism of Irving Babbitt and Claes G. Ryn, the contributors offer a timely and provocative assessment of the American present and contend that only a humanistic order guided by the wisdom of historical consciousness has genuine promise for facilitating fresh thinking about the renewal of American culture, morality, and politics.
Historical Mosques in Indonesia and the Malay World: Roots, Transformations, and Developments
by Bagoes WiryomartonoThe book is an interdisciplinary study on the relationship between Muslims and their mosques in Indonesia and Malaysia. It presents selected historic mosques that demonstrate local interpretations and sociocultural assimilation, as well as a geographical syncretism, of Islam in local societies. The book unveils the contestations, synchronizations, assimilations, and integrations of local and foreign elements into the contextual architecture and sociologically institutionalized system that is the mosque: the Islamic place of worship. The author excavates the mosque’s historical origins and traces the iconic elements, features, and designs from their earliest historical settings and contexts. He then identifies, analyzes, and theorizes the outcomes of the interaction between Islam and local traditions through Malaysian and Indonesian case studies. The book proposes that Islam, at its philosophical level, can be culturally acceptable anywhere because it contains universal virtues of humanity for equality, fraternity, and social justice. The book unfolds how a dialectical contestation and acculturation of Dutch colonialism, Middle Eastern elements of culture, and local customs and traditions, might then come into dialogue, peacefully. Finally, the book considers the relationship between Malay and Indonesian architecture within their respective political cultures, shedding light on Islam and its practice within rich multicultural contexts. Relevant to students and researchers in Islamic studies, architecture, and Southeast Asian studies more broadly, the book uncovers the issues, constraints, and opportunities relating to the meaning of mosques for Muslims in Malaysia and Indonesia.
Historical Ontology
by Ian HackingWith the unusual clarity, distinctive and engaging style, and penetrating insight that have drawn such a wide range of readers to his work, Ian Hacking here offers his reflections on the philosophical uses of history. The focus of this volume, which collects both recent and now-classic essays, is the historical emergence of concepts and objects, through new uses of words and sentences in specific settings, and new patterns or styles of reasoning within those sentences. In its lucid and thoroughgoing look at the historical dimension of concepts, the book is at once a systematic formulation of Hacking's approach and its relation to other types of intellectual history, and a valuable contribution to philosophical understanding. Hacking opens the volume with an extended meditation on the philosophical significance of history. The importance of Michel Foucault--for the development of this theme, and for Hacking's own work in intellectual history--emerges in the following chapters, which place Hacking's classic essays on Foucault within the wider context of general reflections on historical methodology. Against this background, Hacking then develops ideas about how language, styles of reasoning, and "psychological" phenomena figure in the articulation of concepts--and in the very prospect of doing philosophy as historical ontology.
Historical Perspectives on Democracies and their Adversaries (Palgrave Studies in Political History)
by Joost Augusteijn Constant Hijzen Mark Leon de VriesThis book historicizes the debate over how democratic regimes deal with anti-democratic groupings in society. Democracies across the world increasingly find themselves under threat from enemies, ranging from terrorists to parties and movements that undermine democratic institutions from within. This compilation of essays provides the first historical exploration of how democracies have dealt with such anti-democratic forces in their midst and how this impacted upon what democracy meant to all involved. From its inception in the nineteenth century, modern democratic politics has included fundamental debates over whether it is undemocratic and dangerous to ban parties with anti-democratic objectives and whether democracies should defend themselves, if necessary with violence, against perceived anti-democratic forces. This volume shows that implicit conceptions of democracy and democratic repertoires become explicit, fluid, and contested throughout these confrontations, not only within democratic parties, but also among their adversaries. Both sides have, at times, used force or limited the expression of ideas, thus blurring the lines between who is democratic and who is not.
Historical Perspectives on Erklären and Verstehen
by Uljana FeestThe conceptual pair of "Erklären" and "Verstehen" (explanation and understanding) has been an object of philosophical and methodological debates for well over a century. Discussions - to this day - are centered around the question of whether certain objects or issues, such as those dealing with humans or society, require a special approach, different from that of the physical sciences. In the course of such philosophical discussions, we frequently find references to historical predecessors, such as Dilthey's discussion of the relationship between "Geisteswissenschaft" and "Naturwissenschaft", Windelband's distinction between nomothetic and idiographic methods, or Weber's conception of an interpretative sociology. However, these concepts are rarely placed in the historical contexts of their emergence. Nor have the shifting meanings of these terms been analyzed. The present volume considers a variety of intellectual, social, and material factors that contributed to the debate. Far from reducing the debates to their cultural and institutional contexts, however, the volume also offers careful systematic reconstructions of the arguments at hand, thereby enabling the reader to not only appreciate the situatedness of this exciting period of intellectual history, but also to reflect upon the current relevance of the various interpretations of the dichotomy between explanation and understanding.
Historical Reenactment: New Ways of Experiencing History (Making Sense of History #44)
by Mario Carretero, Brady Wagoner, and Everardo Perez-ManjarrezLong dismissed as the domain of hobbyists and obsessives, historical reenactment—the dramatization of past events using costumed actors and historical props—has only in recent years attracted serious attention from scholars. Drawing on examples from around the world, Historical Reenactment offers a fascinating, interdisciplinary exploration of this cultural phenomenon. With particular attention to reenactment’s social and pedagogical dimensions, it develops a robust definition of what the practice constitutes, considers what methodological approaches are most appropriate, and places it alongside museums and memorial sites as an object of analysis.
The Historical Roots of Elementary Mathematics
by Lucas N. Bunt Jack D. Bedient Phillip S. Jones"Will delight a broad spectrum of readers." -- American Mathematical MonthlyDo long division as the ancient Egyptians did! Solve quadratic equations like the Babylonians! Study geometry just as students did in Euclid's day! This unique text offers students of mathematics an exciting and enjoyable approach to geometry and number systems. Written in a fresh and thoroughly diverting style, the text -- while designed chiefly for classroom use -- will appeal to anyone curious about mathematical inscriptions on Egyptian papyri, Babylonian cuneiform tablets, and other ancient records.The authors have produced an illuminated volume that traces the history of mathematics -- beginning with the Egyptians and ending with abstract foundations laid at the end of the 19th century. By focusing on the actual operations and processes outlined in the text, students become involved in the same problems and situations that once confronted the ancient pioneers of mathematics. The text encourages readers to carry out fundamental algebraic and geometric operations used by the Egyptians and Babylonians, to examine the roots of Greek mathematics and philosophy, and to tackle still-famous problems such as squaring the circle and various trisectorizations.Unique in its detailed discussion of these topics, this book is sure to be welcomed by a broad range of interested readers. The subject matter is suitable for prospective elementary and secondary school teachers, as enrichment material for high school students, and for enlightening the general reader. No specialized or advanced background beyond high school mathematics is required.
Historical Roots of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking: Steps Towards an Analogy (SpringerBriefs in History of Science and Technology)
by Rocco GaudenziWhat are the thinking processes and knowledge resources involved in a complex discovery? How can the physics of solids, the physics of nuclei, and elementary particle physics cross-fertilise in spite of the widely differing domains and energy scales they deal with? This book addresses the questions by reconstructing and examining from the historical epistemological perspective the fascinating heuristic path to the concept of spontaneous symmetry breaking. This analysis especially brings to light the role that analogical reasoning and mathematical reformulations played in the discovery process, as well as the influence of the Japanese milieu and approach to physical problems.
Historical Studies in Computing, Information, and Society: Insights from the Flatiron Lectures (History of Computing)
by William AsprayThis is a volume of chapters on the historical study of information, computing, and society written by seven of the most senior, distinguished members of the History of Computing field. These are edited, expanded versions of papers presented in a distinguished lecture series in 2018 at the University of Colorado Boulder – in the shadow of the Flatirons, the front range of the Rocky Mountains. Topics range widely across the history of computing. They include the digitalization of computer and communication technologies, gender history of computing, the history of data science, incentives for innovation in the computing field, labor history of computing, and the process of standardization. Authors were given wide latitude to write on a topic of their own choice, so long as the result is an exemplary article that represents the highest level of scholarship in the field, producing articles that scholars in the field will still look to read twenty years from now. The intention is to publish articles of general interest, well situated in the research literature, well grounded in source material, and well-polished pieces of writing. The volume is primarily of interest to historians of computing, but individual articles will be of interest to scholars in media studies, communication, computer science, cognitive science, general and technology history, and business.
Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics
by Gavin Rae Emma IngalaThis volume brings together an international array of scholars to reconsider the meaning and place of poststructuralism historically and demonstrate some of the ways in which it continues to be relevant, especially for debates in aesthetics, ethics, and politics. The book’s chapters focus on the works of Butler, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Irigaray, Kristeva, Lacan, and Lyotard—in combination with those of Agamben, Luhman, Nancy, and Nietzsche—and examine issues including biopolitics, culture, embodiment, epistemology, history, music, temporality, political resistance, psychoanalysis, revolt, and the visual arts. The contributors use poststructuralism as a hermeneutical strategy that rejects the traditional affirmation of unity, totality, transparency, and representation to instead focus on the foundational importance of open-ended becoming, difference, the unknowable, and expression. This approach allows for a more expansive definition of poststructuralism and helps demonstrate how it has contributed to debates across philosophy and other disciplines. Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism will be of particular interest to researchers in philosophy, politics, political theory, critical theory, aesthetics, feminist theory, cultural studies, intellectual history, psychoanalysis, and sociology.
The Historical Turn in Analytic Philosophy
by Erich H. ReckDuring the last 25 years, a large number of publications on the history of analytic philosophy have appeared, significantly more than in the preceding period. As most of these works are by analytically trained authors, it is tempting to speak of a 'historical turn' in analytic philosophy. The present volume constitutes both a contribution to this body of work and a reflection on what is, or might be, achieved in it. The twelve new essays, by an international group of contributors, range from case studies on individual philosophers (Russell, Carnap, Quine, and Ryle) through discussions of broader themes in the history of analytic philosophy (in logic and philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, epistemology, philosophy of mind and psychology) to related methodological reflections (on the relationship between doing analytic philosophy and studying the history of philosophy, on various forms of philosophical history, and on their respective benefits).
The Historical Value of Myths
by John KarabelasThis book explores the connection between history and mythology by engaging with myths not as allegories or falsehoods, but as representations of historical experience. Historical approaches to myth are often absent from discussions of mythology, which favour symbolic and psychological interpretations. This analysis traces certain episodes of myths’ complex ancestries, from when their relationship with history could not so easily be severed, to subsequent attempts, which misunderstood myths as confused, undeveloped lenses for humanity to view the world. Drawing on the works of English philosopher R.G. Collingwood and the Romanticism movement, the book argues for the expansion of methodological approaches to myths. It explores the ways in which myths have served as clues for the history of civilization and humanity’s ever-changing complexities. The Historical Value of Myths is an illuminating read for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers in the fields of mythology, the philosophy of history, and anthropology.