“Life Is a Verb”: Inflections of Artificial Life in Cultural Context

2007 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Helmreich
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Artificial Life ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
History Of ◽  
Verb Inflections

This review essay surveys recent literature in the history of science, literary theory, anthropology, and art criticism dedicated to exploring how the artificial life enterprise has been inflected by—and might also reshape—existing social, historical, cognitive, and cultural frames of thought and action. The piece works through various possible interpretations of Kevin Kelly's phrase “life is a verb,” in order to track recent shifts in cultural studies of artificial life from an aesthetic of critique to an aesthetic of conversation, discerning in the process different styles of translating between the concerns of the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and sciences of the artificial.

Science and common sense in the study of international politics

1984 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-39
Author(s):  
Roger D. Spegele
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Humean View

The history of recent efforts to establish a science of international politics may be usefully viewed as elaborate glosses on David Hume's powerful philosophical programme for resolving, reconciling or dissolving a variety of perspicuous dualities: the external and the internal, mind and body, reason and experience. Philosophers and historians of ideas still dispute the extent to which Hume succeeded but if one is to judge by the two leading ‘scientific’ research programmes1 for international politics—inductivism and naive falsificationism —these dualities are as unresolved as ever, with fatal consequences for the thesis of the unity of the sciences. For the failure to reconcile or otherwise dissolve such divisions shows that, on the Humean view, there is at least one difference between the physical (or natural) sciences. and the moral (or social) sciences: namely, that while the latter bear on the internal and external, the former are concerned primarily with the external. How much this difference matters and how the issue is avoided by the proponents of inductivism and naïve falsification is the subject matter of this paper.

scholarly journals DORĘCZENIA PISM PROCESOWYCH (UWAGI NA MARGINESIE CTH. 2,4,1 [A. 318/319] = C. 5,4,20)

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 149
Author(s):  
Jacek Wiewiorowski
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Controversial Issue ◽  
Basic Data ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
European Law ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Universal Nature ◽  
The Way

THE NATURAL SCIENCES IN THE SERVICE OF PLEADINGS IN CASES INVOLVING MINORS: REMARKS ON CTH 2.4.1 [A. 318/319] = C. 5.4.20)SummaryThe subject of this article is the status of juvenile persons in Roman law, as exemplified by one of the constitutions of Constantine the Great, CTh 2.4.1 [a. 318/319] = C. 5.40.2, fragments of which are preserved in Theodosius’ Code of 438, and in an abridged version in Justinian’s Code of 534. In the first part of the article the author analyses the extremely controversial issue of the identity of the constitution’s addressee. In the second part he discusses the content of this constitution and the premises for its issue in the light of the Constantinian legislation on family matters and the way it was later interpreted. The article’s third part is an attempt to apply the natural and social sciences to the question of minors and their personality, and the examination of this issue as regards CTh 2.4.1 [a. 318/319] = C. 5.40.2. The author takes into consideration the basic data on the status of minors in Roman law, in the subsequent history of European law, and in non-European cultures. He concludes by making a series of observations on the potential for the application of the natural sciences in the study of Roman law, which could serve to confirm the timeless and universal nature of some of the solutions it prescribed.

LA BIBLIOTECA DI PIETRO OMODEO

Nuncius ◽  
2004 ◽  
pp. 357-373
Author(s):  
STEFANO CASATI
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Experimental Physics ◽  
History Of

Abstracttitle SUMMARY /title The library of the Institute and Museum of the History of Science has recently acquired the library of Pietro Omodeo, an important collection composed of approximately three thousand works, largely devoted to the natural sciences. The collection enriches the library's book holding, traditionally oriented towards the disciplines of experimental physics.

Scientific realism and social science

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Keat
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Scientific Realism ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Central Issue ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Realist Conception

A central issue in the philosophy of the social sciences is the possibility of naturalism: whether disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, economics and psychology can be ‘scientific’ in broadly the same sense in which this term is applied to physics, chemistry, biology and so on. In the long history of debates about this issue, both naturalists and anti-naturalists have tended to accept a particular view of the natural sciences – the ‘positivist’ conception of science. But the challenges to this previously dominant position in the philosophy of science from around the 1960s made this shared assumption increasingly problematic. It was no longer clear what would be implied by the naturalist requirement that the social sciences should be modelled on the natural sciences. It also became necessary to reconsider the arguments previously employed by anti-naturalists, to see whether these held only on the assumption of a positivist conception of science. If so, a non-positivist naturalism might be defended: a methodological unity of the social and natural sciences based on some alternative to positivism. That this is possible has been argued by scientific realists in the social sciences, drawing on a particular alternative to positivism: the realist conception of science developed in the 1970s by Harré and others.

scholarly journals emil wohlwill, galileo and his battle for the copernican system

2001 ◽  
Vol 14 (s1) ◽  
pp. 371-373
Author(s):  
hans-werner schütt
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Galileo Galilei ◽  
Human Interest ◽  
Great Physicist ◽  
Copernican System ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Right

galileo galilei is one of the few figures in the history of science who has attracted the imagination even of laymen to the natural sciences. the battle of this great physicist against the domination of his church, a battle which he ultimately lost, manifests fundamental human interest that extends beyond the individual. galileo pits the right of the thinking individual against the right of an institution that defends its claim to set norms for individual thinking because it posseses superhuman truths.

Marx in the Anthropocene: Value, Metabolic Rift, and the Non-Cartesian Dualism

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kohei Saito
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
Cartesian Dualism ◽  
Metabolic Rift ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Radical Critique ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractCharacteristic to the Anthropocene is global ecological crisis that humans have created without knowing any effective solution. Beyond the division of humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, there thus emerged a series of serious attempts to figure out an adequate theoretical framework for comprehending the formation, development and future of the Anthropocene. Ecological Marxists also actively participate in this discussion to problematize the relationship between the Anthropocene and capitalism, which results in a new debate. While second-stage ecosocialists such as John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett are trying to connect the general issues of the Anthropocene to the concept of the ‘metabolic rift’, Jason W. Moore not only replaces the concept of the Anthropocene with the ‘Capitalocene’ and rejects the metabolic rift approach as falling into the ‘Cartesian division’, which cannot aptly theorize the nature of today’s crisis. Critically analyzing Moore’s ‘monist’ understanding of the history of capitalist development, this paper examines why Marx used apparently ‘dualist’ terminologies in his analysis. Moore claims that his post-Cartesian approach is the correct interpretation of Marx’s political economy, but a closer examination of Marx’s method reveals his non-Cartesian dualism, which functions as a basis for a radical critique of today’s ecological crisis. Furthermore, this paper argues that Marx’s theory of metabolism must be understood in relation to his intensive research on natural sciences and non-Western societies to envision possibilities of the revolutionary subjectivity.

scholarly journals Constructionist Perspective of Organizational Data Mining

2005 ◽  
pp. 535-539
Author(s):  
Isabel Ramos ◽  
João Álvaro Carvalho
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Data Mining ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Knowledge Creation ◽  
Organizational Knowledge ◽  
Cultural Root ◽  
Organizational Knowledge Creation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Selection Of

Scientific or organizational knowledge creation has been addressed from different perspectives along the history of science and, in particular, of social sciences. The process is guided by the set of values, beliefs and norms shared by the members of the community to which the creator of this knowledge belongs, that is, it is guided by the adopted paradigm (Lincoln & Guba, 2000). The adopted paradigm determines how the nature of the studied reality is understood, the criteria that will be used to assess the validity of the created knowledge, and the construction and selection of methods, techniques and tools to structure and support the creation of knowledge. This set of ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions that characterize the paradigm one implicitly or explicitly uses to make sense of the surrounding reality is the cultural root of the intellectual enterprises. Those assumptions constrain the accomplishment of activities such as construction of theories, definition of inquiry strategies, interpretation of perceived phenomena, and dissemination of knowledge (Schwandt, 2000).

scholarly journals Geography and Teaching of Programming

Geografie ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-53
Author(s):  
Václav Bezvoda
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Mathematical Programming ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Computer Art ◽  
Universities And Colleges ◽  
History Of

The urgent need of computers in natural and social sciences will strongly influence the modification of the curricula at our universities and colleges. On the basis of an analysis of the history of application of computers at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the Charles University, Prague and the situation in teaching mathematical programming and computer art, the paper formulates one of the most probable variants of teaching the above-mentioned subjects in geographical sciences. A special attention is paid to the role of microcomputers as the basic yet still problematic device in the computer art.

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