scholarly journals Kraft (Force)

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Trop
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiments ◽  
The Other ◽  
Johann Gottfried Herder ◽  
Material Condition ◽  
Karl Philipp Moritz ◽  
Elective Affinities ◽  
The One ◽  
Modes Of Thought ◽  
Differentiation And Dedifferentiation ◽  
And Diffusion

The lexeme Kraft (force) is a foundational concept for Goethe that expresses the dynamism essential to his thought. Its tendency to move between operations of particularity and generality, polarity and intensification, differentiation and dedifferentiation, potentiality and actuality, norm and deviation, rationality and irrationality, and cognition and creativity together lend it a characteristic mobility, multiplicity, and diffusion. The discursive tensions and blendings of the concept during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—which extend between the obscure aesthetic construction of force in Karl Philipp Moritz and Johann Gottfried Herder and its scientific construction in Kant and Newton as the condition of possibility of knowledge—also manifest themselves in Goethe’s concept. As a grounding and ungrounding at one and the same time, Kraft thus serves as a material condition for the genesis of knowledge, on the one hand, and a metaphysical index of something absolutely unconditioned (das Unbedingte), on the other. When Goethe conceptualizes force as unconditioned, rather than as a condition of this or that individual being, he configures it in a number of ways. These include force as movement in processes of transformation and becoming, as potential, as a capacity for trans-discursive drift or blending, and as a non-discursive resistance to integration into normative, cognitive, and representational modes of thought. Certain scenes in Goethe's literary works—including most prominently, Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809; The Elective Affinities), Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1821/29; Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years), Pandora (1807/08), and Faust(1808/32)—can be read as thought experiments that offer ontological conceptions of force in order to explore its informing oppositions of movement and metamorphosis, potentiality and actuality, as well as trans-discursivity and non-discursivity.

ZENO OBJECTS IN CONTEMPORARY DISCUSSIONS

2020 ◽  
pp. 130-135
Author(s):  
Igor Berestov
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiments ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

We analyze contemporary thought experiments with some Zeno objects and infinity machines. On the one hand, we continue to analyze the examples from Hawthorne, 2000, pointing out the incompleteness of our comprehension of the examples from this paper. On the other hand, using a mode of reasoning associated with that of Hawthorne, 2000, we show how Zeno of Elea’s Dichotomy can be made immune to its traditional refutation.

Innovation

2019 ◽  
pp. 438-510
Author(s):  
Sheilagh Ogilvie
Keyword(s):  
Technological Innovation ◽  
Diffusion Of Innovations ◽  
Spatial Clustering ◽  
Technological Knowledge ◽  
The Other ◽  
Market Failures ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
The One ◽  
And Diffusion

This chapter addresses how guilds dealt with technological innovation. Innovation is a final sphere in which market failures are widespread in premodern economies, as in modern ones. On the one hand, contemporaries frequently complained that guilds blocked new techniques and practices. On the other hand, guilds were in a position to generate cartel rents, and this might have encouraged their members to incur the costs of invention. Guilds might also have encouraged diffusion of technological knowledge through compulsory apprenticeship, mandatory travelling by journeymen, or the spatial clustering of practitioners. Guilds could also affect innovation unintentionally by things they did for other reasons. Guilds thus provide a rich context for investigating the role of different institutional mechanisms in encouraging the invention and diffusion of innovations.

Frederick II of Hohenstaufen and Arabic Science

2001 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 289-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Schramm
Keyword(s):  
Biological Sciences ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Unique Role ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Court Life ◽  
The One ◽  
And Diffusion ◽  
Contemporary Approach

The article argues that Frederick II of Hohenstaufen and his court played a unique role in the transfer and diffusion of Arabic science (with its Greek, Hebrew and Christian elements). Scientists at the court translated and elaborated upon it. Moreover, there existed a two-way traffic of scientific knowledge between Frederick and his court scholars, on the one hand, and several oriental courts and their scientists on the other hand. Thus the reader gains a view of Frederick's scientific activities from the Arab perspective, too.Frederick's contribution to the existing biological sciences of his time was his “Book of Falconry”, which was exceptional in the then contemporary approach and methods employed in those fields. Even in this treatise on falconry, Frederick drew upon the fund of knowledge of Arab practitioners. This chain of arguments concerning Arabic science is situated within the setup of Frederick's oriental political practice and sumptuous court life.

scholarly journals Verbal Manifestation of Critical Thought: Transversal Study from Age 10 to 18 in France

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmanuèle Auriac-Slusarczyk ◽  
Gabriela Fiema ◽  
Julie Pironom ◽  
Karima Belghiti
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
School Context ◽  
Cognitive Activity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Class Groups ◽  
Critical Thought ◽  
Developmental Effect ◽  
The One ◽  
Modes Of Thought ◽  
Transversal Study

The article studies the verbal manifestation of critical thought in a school context. Four modes of thought - logical,creative, responsible, and metacognitive – accompanied by six epistemological perspectives, are studied from 1,730pupils turns to speak analyzed in eight class groups. The pupils dialog about freedom. Quantitatively and gradually thecollective thought gives the lion's share to the manifestation of logical, followed by creative and then responsiblethought, and very little to that of metacognitive thought. The study reveals a significant developmental effect forlogical and responsible thought – to the advantage of the girls. While each mode of thought evolves following its owndevelopmental path, the epistemological congruence that emerges between the logical and responsible modes ofthought on the one hand and responsible and creative on the other seems perhaps debatable. The results lead to apedagogic proposal which consists in proposing to introduce a cognitive activity of doubt, not spontaneously adoptedby the pupils, to favor the advent of a form of critical thinking more balanced as concerns the modes of thoughts ofwhich it composed.

Grice on Irony and Metaphor: Discredited by the Experimental Evidence?

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marga Reimer
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Order Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Figures Of Speech ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

Recent experimental studies appear to discredit Gricean accounts of irony and metaphor. I argue that appearances are decidedly misleading here and that Gricean accounts of these figures of speech are actually confirmed by the studies in question. However, my primary aim is not so much to defend Gricean accounts of irony and metaphor as it is to motivate two related points: one substantive and one methodological. The substantive point concerns something Grice suggests in his brief remarks on irony: that the interpretation of an ironical (vs. metaphorical) utterance requires two distinct applications of second-order theory of mind (ToM). I argue that such a view has considerable explanatory power. It can explain an intuitive contrast between irony and metaphor, some interesting data on the ToM abilities of patients with schizophrenia, and some intuitive similarities between irony on the one hand and hyperbole and meiosis on the other. The methodological point concerns the relationship between the empirical psychologist’s (or experimental philosopher’s) experimental studies and the armchair philosopher’s thought-experiments. I suggest that the credibility of an experimentally supported claim is enhanced when it captures the reflective judgments captured in the armchair philosopher’s thought-experiments.

scholarly journals Crusoe’s Broken Window: A tribute to Frédéric Bastiat

2017 ◽  
pp. 259-288
Author(s):  
Christian Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Terminal Illness ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Human Action ◽  
The Other ◽  
Robinson Crusoe ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
Basic Understanding ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
The One ◽  
Mind's Eye

Frédéric Bastiat was a great economist1 and writer, but most of all, he deserves everlasting fame as an educator. His 1850 essay «The Broken Window»2 teaches an unforgettable lesson. Unforgettable, on the one hand, because it is humiliating: humiliating to realize that one had not grasped an idea so simple yet so crucial for a basic understanding of economics. Unforgettable, on the other hand, be-cause once we have learned to «turn the mind’s eye to those hid-den consequences of human actions, which the bodily eye does not see» (Bastiat [1850] 2011a, 43), an intriguing journey of discovery begins. It has rightly been called «the one lesson»3 to which all economics can be reduced: to think through not only the visible and immediate consequences of human action and interaction, but also the unseen effects: those which are not yet seen, and those which will never be seen because they would follow only from an alternative course of action.4 Another sign of Bastiat’s excellence is that he was the first econ-omist to make extensive use of thought experiments with one or a few actors only, named, and sometimes ridiculed as, «Robinson Crusoe economics». In the imaginary laboratory of the desert is-land, we are free to set arbitrary conditions. In particular, we can construct the simplest version of any problem, where the essential features stand out most clearly. Simple scenarios, as Henry Hazlitt ([1946] 2008, 91) notes, «are ridiculed most by those who most need them, who fail to understand the particular principle illustrated even in this simple form, or who lose track of that principle com-pletely when they come to examine the bewildering complications of a great modern economic society». These complications can be mastered best by extending the analysis step by step from one ac-tor to a higher number, until real-world complexity is sufficiently approximated.5 When Bastiat was writing his last work That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen, he was suffering from a terminal illness closing in on him. We can only speculate what form it might have taken and how much more he could have achieved, had he been granted more time. But what is obvious in the work he did is the importance of Crusoe scenarios and of that which remains unseen. The thought experiments presented in what follows merely com-bine these two ideas. Thus, this essay is deeply inspired by Basti-at’s way of thinking, and hopes to do honor to his inspiration.

Competing through Meaning

Overcrowded ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Verganti
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Business Value ◽  
The Other ◽  
Know How ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
New Vision ◽  
The One ◽  
And Diffusion ◽  
The Web

This chapter explores why innovation of meaning is relevant for businesses. Why it is a major differentiator. How does innovation of meaning create business value? Why is it relevant in current competition? And especially when is it relevant? What are the contextual drivers that lead to new meaning? When it is likely to occur? (I.e., when is it likely that in an industry a new vision succeeds, hopefully proposed by you rather than by a competitor?) This is due to two converging phenomena. On the one hand customers search for it (see above). On the other hand, only a few organizations know how to do it effectively. Firms have become extremely productive in generating ideas of solutions, especially thanks to the web and to creative methods such as design thinking. But the more ideas they create, the more they see a confused landscape in which they struggle to find a meaningful direction. In a way, the success and diffusion of problem solving is one of the major causes of its own loss of relevance, and of the prominence of innovation of meaning. Ideas are abundant. Meanings are rare. And value, in business, is in what’s rare.

Mosaics of Knowledge

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Riggsby
Keyword(s):  
Information Technologies ◽  
The Other ◽  
Shared Knowledge ◽  
Weights And Measures ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Actual Use ◽  
Use Context ◽  
The One ◽  
Cognitive Perspectives ◽  
And Diffusion

The book examines the invention, use, and diffusion of ancient Roman information technologies. In particular, it looks at technologies defined in conceptual terms—lists, tables, weights and measures, perspective and related artistic devices, and cartography—rather than mechanical ones (e.g., “tablet” or “scroll”). Each is viewed from both social and cognitive perspectives, as well as with attention to the interaction between the conceptual and its material instantiation. The study is particularly focused on the most powerful technologies, whose uptakes are in most cases sporadic across time, space, and use context. These systems display a tolerance for error and/or omission remarkable unless they are considered in the narrowest possible use-context. Similarly, they often presuppose shared knowledge (both of form and of content) that could only have existed in highly localized contexts. Further constraints on the use of these devices arise from preferences for facts that are constituted by the record, rather than recorded, and (at least in elite circles) for linear exposition on the model of oral discourse. As a consequence, on the one hand, Romans lived in a balkanized informational world. Persons in different “locations”—whether geographical, social, or occupational—would have had access to quite different informational resources, and the overall situation is thus not controlled by the needs of any particular class or group. On the other hand, seeming technological weakness often turn out to be illusory if we set them in their actual use-contexts.

scholarly journals Thought Experiments and Philosophy in Organizational Research

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 263178772094252
Author(s):  
Martin Kornberger ◽  
Saku Mantere
Keyword(s):  
Organization Theory ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
The Other ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Organizational Research ◽  
The One ◽  
Conceptual Work ◽  
Hard Place

Organization theory seems to be caught between a rock and a hard place: on the one hand, there are arguments that the field is too preoccupied with theory, leaving its work abstract and practically irrelevant. On the other hand, there are arguments that the field is overly empirical and too methods-driven, which hampers the creation of ideas that resonate with constituencies beyond the organization studies community. How to resolve this apparent conundrum? In this essay we argue that neither more theorizing nor more forensic data-driven work might address the problem; rather, and perhaps surprisingly, we propose that a philosophical stance might offer a remedy. The aim of this essay is (1) to explore thought experiments as a genuine philosophical method that is designed to develop promising ideas and concepts and (2) to reflect on how such conceptual work can help shape organization theory to be conceptually more stimulating and practically more relevant. We argue that this particular kind of conceptual work has been and should continue to be one of the hallmarks of organization theory. Thus thought experiments represent a valuable methodological extension of our toolkit as they provide crucial devices triggering transformations in thought and practice.

Race and Its Discontents in the Enlightenment

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin E. H. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Johann Gottfried Herder ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Difference ◽  
The One

This chapter surveys some of the more important developments in the history of the concept of race in eighteenth-century Germany. It reveals an inconsistency between the desire to make taxonomic distinctions and a hesitance to posit any real ontological divisions within the human species. This inconsistency was well represented in the physical-anthropological work of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who was, in many respects, the most important eighteenth-century theorist of human difference. Johann Gottfried Herder, a contemporary of Blumenbach's, was intensely interested in human diversity, but saw this diversity as entirely based in culture rather than biology, and saw cultural difference as an entirely neutral matter, rather than as a continuum of higher and lower. Herder constitutes an important link between early modern universalism, on the one hand, and on the other the ideally value-neutral project of cultural anthropology as it would begin to emerge in the nineteenth century.

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