Introduction

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin E. H. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Racial Categories ◽  
Living World ◽  
Biological Classification ◽  
The Way

This introductory chapter argues that modern racial thinking could not have taken the form it did if it had not been able to piggyback, so to speak, on conceptual innovations in the way science was beginning to approach the diversity of the natural world, and in particular of the living world. It also points out an oft-neglected aspect of the scope and aims of the natural and social sciences: the emergence of racial categories, of categories of kinds of humans, which may in large part be understood as an overextension of the project of biological classification that was proving so successful in the same period.

Anthropocene: the good, the bad, and the inescapable

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
John S. Dryzek ◽  
Jonathan Pickering
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Planetary Boundaries ◽  
Causal Influence ◽  
The Holocene ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Way

The Anthropocene is an emerging epoch in the Earth system that requires a “state shift” in the way we think. The Earth system becomes much more unstable than it was in the last 12,000 years of the Holocene. The “bad Anthropocene” is associated with scientists who have identified “planetary boundaries” that must not be transgressed: so the Anthropocene is mostly something to be fought. The “good Anthropocene” is proposed by technological optimists who welcome humanity asserting benign control over what was the natural world. It is preferable to think of the inescapable Anthropocene: as something that humanity must learn to live with, for it will continue to generate novel challenges and crises in the Earth system. Human activities have a decisive causal influence on the Earth system, but to date the responses of the social sciences to the challenge have been inadequate. It is necessary to do better.

Uncharted Territory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtney Freer
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
Academic Work ◽  
Political Islam ◽  
Original Research ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Detailed Explanation ◽  
Rentier States ◽  
The Way

This introductory chapter outlines where and how this book contributes original research to the existing scholarship on politics of rentier states in the Arabian Peninsula, as well as the academic work on political Islam through a brief literature review. This book will demonstrate that political Islam serves as a prominent voice critiquing social policies, as well as promoting more strictly political, and often populist or reformist, views supported by a great many Gulf citizens. As laid out in this chapter, this book demonstrates that the way that Islamist organizations operate in the unique environment of the super-rentiers is distinct. It also presents information about the methodology and sources used, as well as a detailed explanation for the use of country cases chosen. The chapter closes by describing the format of the book.

Epilogue

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Way

This chapter recalls the way in which landscapes are constructed, both in literary terms and in physical terms by characters within Herodotus’ narrative. It explores some modern parallels, such as the Kerch bridge which will link Crimea to Russia, for the manipulation of landscape through monumental engineering works as a symbol of imperial ambitions. It suggests, therefore, that the narrative of Herodotus, with its subtle and differentiated presentation of man’s interaction with the natural world, especially in the context of imperial projects, and its underlying proposition that the map of empire is constantly evolving, remains of immediate relevance to the modern world.

scholarly journals Plato on Natural Kinds: The Promethean Method of the Philebus

Apeiron ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Proios
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Kind ◽  
Intelligent Design ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Natural World ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Abstract Plato’s invention of the metaphor of carving the world by the joints (Phaedrus 265d–66c) gives him a privileged place in the history of natural kind theory in philosophy and science; he is often understood to present a paradigmatic but antiquated view of natural kinds as possessing eternal, immutable, necessary essences. Yet, I highlight that, as a point of distinction from contemporary views about natural kinds, Plato subscribes to an intelligent-design, teleological framework, in which the natural world is the product of craft and, as a result, is structured such that it is good for it to be that way. In Plato’s Philebus, the character Socrates introduces a method of inquiry whose articulation of natural kinds enables it to confer expert knowledge, such as literacy. My paper contributes to an understanding of Plato’s view of natural kinds by interpreting this method in light of Plato’s teleological conception of nature. I argue that a human inquirer who uses the method identifies kinds with relational essences within a system causally related to the production of some unique craft-object, such as writing. As a result, I recast Plato’s place in the history of philosophy, including Plato’s view of the relation between the kinds according to the natural and social sciences. Whereas some are inclined to separate natural from social kinds, Plato holds the unique view that all naturalness is a social feature of kinds reflecting the role of intelligent agency.

Futures Honed

Futures ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 118-134
Author(s):  
Barbara Adam
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Original Work ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
The Past ◽  
Writing Theory ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Verse Form ◽  
The Way

This chapter comprises an interview between Barbara Adam and the editors, and is followed by Adam’s ‘Honing Futures’, which is presented in four short verses of distilled theory. In the interview Adam reflects on thirty-five years of futures-thinking rooted in her deeply original work on time and temporality, and her innovative response to qualitative and linear definitions of time within the social sciences. The interview continues with a discussion of the way Adam’s thinking on futures intersects in her work with ideas of ethics and collective responsibility politics and concludes with a brief rationale for writing theory in verse form. In ‘Honing Futures’, a piece of futures theory verse form, Adam charts the movements and moments in considerations of the Not Yet and futurity’s active creation: from pluralized imaginings of the future, to an increasingly tangible and narrower anticipated future, to future-making as designing and reality-creating performance. Collectively, the verses identify the varied complex interdependencies of time, space, and matter with the past and future in all iterations of honing and making futures.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Dmitry Shumsky
Keyword(s):  
State Solution ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
National State ◽  
National Group ◽  
National Movement ◽  
Left Base ◽  
The Way

This introductory chapter discusses the unquestioned identification between “Zionism” as a national movement that sought to realize the Jewish nation's self-determination in Palestine, and “the Jewish nation-state,” which has no room for the national collective existence of any particular national group other than the Jews and which represents the ultimate and teleological realization of the Zionist project. The vast majority of those who support the two-state solution, who are known as the “Zionist left,” base their position on the need to avoid the formation of a binational state in which the Jewish demographic majority would be endangered. They argue that this is the way to rescue what they consider to be the political core of the Zionist idea: a mono-national state for the Jewish political collective.

scholarly journals The Ethical Experience of Nature: Aristotle and the Roots of Ecological Phenomenology

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dylan B. Van der Schyff
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Deep Ecology ◽  
Scientific Culture ◽  
Environmental Challenges ◽  
Moral Meaning ◽  
Ethical Experience ◽  
The Way

I demonstrate here how Aristotle's teleological conception of nature has been largely misunderstood in the scientific age and I consider what his view might offer us with regard to the environmental challenges we face in the 21st century. I suggest that in terms of coming to an ethical understanding of the creatures and things that constitute the ecosystem, Aristotle offers a welcome alternative to the rather instrumental conception of the natural world and low estimation of subjective experience our contemporary techno-scientific culture espouses. Among other things, I consider how his conception of orexis and eudaimonia (happiness or, as I prefer here, "the flourishing life") might be extended to include the eco-system itself, thus allowing us to better understand the moral meaning of nature. I conclude with a look at the way in which modern phenomenology re-addresses the fundamental Greek concern with ontology, meaning and human authenticity. I consider the ways in which phenomenology reasserts the value of direct human experience that was so important to Aristotle; and I consider how this view, and that of Deep ecology, may help us to experience nature - and all of Being for that matter - in a more authentic, meaningful and altogether ethical light.

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.

scholarly journals We Need to Talk about Impact: Why Social Policy Academics need to Engage with the UK's Research Impact Agenda

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATHERINE E. SMITH ◽  
ELLEN STEWART
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Health Inequalities ◽  
Research Impact ◽  
Policy Response ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Policy Relevance ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

AbstractOf all the social sciences, social policy is one of the most obviously policy-orientated. One might, therefore, expect a research and funding agenda which prioritises and rewards policy relevance to garner an enthusiastic response among social policy scholars. Yet, the social policy response to the way in which major funders and the Research Excellence Framework (REF) are now prioritising ‘impact’ has been remarkably muted. Elsewhere in the social sciences, ‘research impact’ is being widely debated and a wealth of concerns about the way in which this agenda is being pursued are being articulated. Here, we argue there is an urgent need for social policy academics to join this debate. First, we employ interviews with academics involved in health inequalities research, undertaken between 2004 and 2015, to explore perceptions, and experiences, of the ‘impact agenda’ (an analysis which is informed by a review of guidelines for assessing ‘impact’ and relevant academic literature). Next, we analyse high- and low-scoring REF2014 impact case studies to assess whether these concerns appear justified. We conclude by outlining how social policy expertise might usefully contribute to efforts to encourage, measure and reward research ‘impact’.

Benjamin Franklin

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. G. Hart
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Benjamin Franklin ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
Worship Services ◽  
Church And Society ◽  
The Way

Benjamin Franklin grew up in a devout Protestant family with limited prospects for wealth and fame. By hard work, limitless curiosity, native intelligence, and luck (what he called “providence”), Franklin became one of Philadelphia’s most prominent leaders, a world-recognized scientist, and the United States’ leading diplomat during the War for Independence. Along the way, Franklin embodied the Protestant ethics and cultural habits he learned and observed as a youth in Puritan Boston. This book follows Franklin’s remarkable career through the lens of the trends and innovations that the Protestant Reformation started (both directly and indirectly) almost two centuries earlier. The Philadelphian’s work as a printer, civic reformer, institution builder, scientist, inventor, writer, self-help dispenser, politician, and statesman was deeply rooted in the culture and outlook that Protestantism nurtured. Through the alternatives to medieval church and society, Protestants built societies and instilled habits of character and mind that allowed figures such as Franklin to build the life that he did. Through it all, Franklin could not assent to all of Protestantism’s doctrines or observe its worship. But for most of his life, he acknowledged his debt to his creator, reveled in the natural world guided by providence, and conducted himself in a way (imperfectly) to merit divine approval. This biography recognizes Franklin as a cultural or non-observant Protestant, someone who thought of himself as a Presbyterian, ordered his life as other Protestants did, sometimes went to worship services, read his Bible, and prayed, but could not go all the way and join a church.

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