Subtraction and Contradiction: China Miéville

Author(s):  
Brian Willems

China Miéville’s second novel Perdido Street Station (2000) addresses the idea of essence from three different perspectives which mirror a number of concepts of speculative realism. The essence being insisted on here is what is most hidden, strange and fluid; as Harman says, ‘“essence” simply means that any object has real properties that are not exhausted by their current appearance in the mind or their current impact on other entities more generally’ . The main issue that the character Lin has in capturing Mr Motley in a sculpture of him she is making is that she cannot think how to represent essence while seeing his parts in motion. This is because she is a figure of +what Harman calls fission and fusion, meaning the separation and joining of an object and qualities.

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter DeScioli

AbstractThe target article by Boyer & Petersen (B&P) contributes a vital message: that people have folk economic theories that shape their thoughts and behavior in the marketplace. This message is all the more important because, in the history of economic thought, Homo economicus was increasingly stripped of mental capacities. Intuitive theories can help restore the mind of Homo economicus.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeannette Littlemore
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
W. T. Singleton
Keyword(s):  

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David R. Olson
Keyword(s):  

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Traunmüller ◽  
Kerstin Gaisbachgrabner ◽  
Helmut Karl Lackner ◽  
Andreas R. Schwerdtfeger

Abstract. In the present paper we investigate whether patients with a clinical diagnosis of burnout show physiological signs of burden across multiple physiological systems referred to as allostatic load (AL). Measures of the sympathetic-adrenergic-medullary (SAM) axis and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis were assessed. We examined patients who had been diagnosed with burnout by their physicians (n = 32) and were also identified as burnout patients based on their score in the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS) and compared them with a nonclinical control group (n = 19) with regard to indicators of allostatic load (i.e., ambulatory ECG, nocturnal urinary catecholamines, salivary morning cortisol secretion, blood pressure, and waist-to-hip ratio [WHR]). Contrary to expectations, a higher AL index suggesting elevated load in several of the parameters of the HPA and SAM axes was found in the control group but not in the burnout group. The control group showed higher norepinephrine values, higher blood pressure, higher WHR, higher sympathovagal balance, and lower percentage of cortisol increase within the first hour after awakening as compared to the patient group. Burnout was not associated with AL. Results seem to indicate a discrepancy between self-reported burnout symptoms and psychobiological load.


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