biological determinism
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Neophilologus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kateřina Valentová

AbstractThe concept of the human beast is assigned to the French novelist, Émile Zola, who is the first to codify principles of Naturalism, against which all future naturalist works would be compared. In his novels, especially in the saga Les Rougon-Macquart, the human beast, «la bête humaine», appears as a literary character embedded in the lower social strata, who, due to harsh working and living conditions in the French capital during the Second Empire, acts according to its most basic instincts. The actions of a human beast are violent and brutal and its behavior conditioned by limited education. In his novels, Zola applies the doctrines of biological determinism as well as the laws of heredity attained from scientific readings that were very popular among the intellectuals of the period. However, the theoretical principles recollected in Le roman expérimental (G. Charpentier et Cie Éditeurs, 1880) were not equally applied in other countries due to different literary precedents as well as diverse socio-historical and philosophical backgrounds. This paper aims to examine the nuances in the aesthetic representation of the human beast in Zola’s L’Assommoir (1877), Galdós’ La Desheredada (1881) and Crane’s Maggie, a Girl of the Streets (1843), delving into the behavioral patterns which shape the unique characteristics of their human beasts.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yekaterina Korotayeva

<div>Throughout the history of Western architecture, the human body has been understood as a complete and singular thing. The collection of rules, texts, and theories that today we inherit as the system of architecture has been developed by mining ideal bodies for formal principles. This work is an attempt at engaging with the ongoing processes of redesign of our bodies and moving away from principles of biological determinism. Through the study of four imaginary and partial bodies this work re-frames the conception of a body as a multiplicity. The imaginary bodies, derived from the study of emerging surveillance technologies, social media, sexual desires, and neurological disorders, become the focus of the speculative design project of a home. As an assemblage of environments that only address imaginary dimensions of human condition, this thesis aims to relate to the emerging ways of being human that are often dismissed by established architectural regimes.</div>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yekaterina Korotayeva

<div>Throughout the history of Western architecture, the human body has been understood as a complete and singular thing. The collection of rules, texts, and theories that today we inherit as the system of architecture has been developed by mining ideal bodies for formal principles. This work is an attempt at engaging with the ongoing processes of redesign of our bodies and moving away from principles of biological determinism. Through the study of four imaginary and partial bodies this work re-frames the conception of a body as a multiplicity. The imaginary bodies, derived from the study of emerging surveillance technologies, social media, sexual desires, and neurological disorders, become the focus of the speculative design project of a home. As an assemblage of environments that only address imaginary dimensions of human condition, this thesis aims to relate to the emerging ways of being human that are often dismissed by established architectural regimes.</div>


Author(s):  
Luca Fiorito ◽  
Massimiliano Vatiero

This article is an attempt to offer an assessment of the main coordinates of Simon Nelson Patten’s views on democracy and biological determinism. This will allow us to better delineate the differences—as well as the affinities—between Patten and the core of progressives discussed by Thomas C. Leonard in a series of path-breaking contributions, culminating in his Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era. It is our contention that even within the persisting intricacies, ambiguities, and contradictions of Patten’s expository style, it is possible to trace a shift in some aspects of his ideas—a gradual evolution that makes his peculiar brand of progressivism different from that of his most “illiberal” counterparts.


2021 ◽  
pp. 095269512110365
Author(s):  
Wendy Sims-Schouten

This article critically analyses correspondence and decisions regarding children/young people who were included in the Canadian child migration schemes that ran between 1883 and 1939, and those who were deemed ‘undeserving’ and outside the scope of the schemes. Drawing on critical realist ontology, a metatheory that centralises the causal non-linear dynamics and generative mechanisms in the individual, the cultural sphere, and wider society, the research starts from the premise that the principle of ‘less or more eligibility’ lies at the heart of the British welfare system, both now and historically. Through analysing case files and correspondence relating to children sent to Canada via the Waifs and Strays Society and Fegan Homes, I shed light on the complex interplay between morality, biological determinism, resistance, and resilience in decisions around which children should be included or excluded. I argue that it was the complex interplay and nuance between the moral/immoral, desirable/undesirable, degenerate, and capable/incapable child that guided practice with vulnerable children in the late 1800s. In judgements around ‘deservedness’, related stigmas around poverty and ‘bad’ behaviour were rife. Within this, the child was punished for his/her ‘immoral tendencies’ and ‘inherited traits’, with little regard for the underlying reasons (e.g. abuse and neglect) for their (abnormal) behaviour and ‘mental deficiencies’.


Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse M. Mulder

AbstractIn her seminal essay ‘Causality and Determination’, Elizabeth Anscombe very decidedly announced that “physical indeterminism” is “indispensable if we are to make anything of the claim to freedom”. But it is clear from that same essay that she extends the scope of that claim beyond freedom–she suggests that indeterminism is required already for animal self-movement (a position recently called ‘agency incompatibilism’ by Helen Steward). Building on Anscombe’s conception of causality and (in)determinism, I will suggest that it extends even further: life as such already requires physical indeterminism. Furthermore, I show that we can, on this basis, arrive at the idea of varieties of (in)determinism, along with a corresponding variety of incompatibilist theses. From this Anscombean vantage point, the free will discussion takes on a quite different outlook. The question whether free agency can coexist with determinism on the level of blind physical forces, which preoccupies the philosopher of free will, turns out to conflate a whole series of compatibility questions: not just whether life is compatible with physical determinism, but also whether animal self-movement is compatible with ‘biological determinism’, and whether free agency is compatible with ‘animal determinism’.


Author(s):  
James M. Bromley

This chapter examines how Thomas Middleton’s Michaelmas Term positions the cloth trade as pivotal to the construction of sexuality and sexual relations in the city. Circulating with cloth in the play is queer urban sexual knowledge. Antitheatricalists feared that the theater was a site of sexual pedagogy and initiation in the early modern period. Michaelmas Term subtly embraces that role for the city comedy, and the chapter draws on queer theories of materiality to demonstrate that the play’s relentless focus on the materiality of selfhood is pertinent in querying the limits of biological determinism and essentialism that characterize mainstream politics around sexuality today. The play can prompt us to consider how alternate forms of queer ontogenesis derived from the past have affordances for the production of queer culture in the present.


Author(s):  
Francois Dépelteau

This chapter addresses determinism, which has been the predominant mode of perceiving the universe in modern sciences. The basic assumption is that any event is the effect of an external cause. Generally speaking, biological determinism focuses on the biological causes of events, whereas social sciences focus on the social causes. This mode of perceiving the social universe is typically associated with positivism and, more specifically, social naturalism — or the idea that there is no significant difference between social phenomena and natural phenomena. In this logic, it is assumed that social scientists can and should discover ‘social laws’ — or universal relations of causality between a social cause and a social effect. However, determinism in the social sciences has been criticized since its very beginning. In response to these critiques, many social scientists have adopted various forms of ‘soft’ determinism. The chapter then considers social predictions and probabilism.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 37-54
Author(s):  
Piotr Rutkowski ◽  
Jacek Ziółkowski

Neuropolityka to interdyscyplinarny obszar badań, znajdujący się na przecięciu nauk, łączący nauki polityczne z neuronaukami. Nie jest to jednak kolejny kierunek, który, zakłada determinizm biologiczny. Opiera się na przekonaniu o przenikaniu się natury i kultury w człowieku, warstwy cielesnej i umysłowej. Celem artykułu jest przybliżenie czytelnikowi historycznych i teoretycznych aspektów tego wciąż rozwijającego się obszaru badawczego. Naszkicowane zostały również narzędzia badawcze oraz główne kierunki badań neuropolitycznych. Autorzy wskazują na pozytywne jak i negatywne, skutki płynące z badań neuropolitycznych, oraz perspektywy stojące przed naukami o polityce i neuronaukami. Neuropolitics – Genesis, Assumptions, Development Prospects Neuropolitcs is an interdisciplinary research area, located at the intersection of various sciences, combining political science with neuroscience. However, it is not another direction that, as it may seem assumes biological determinism. It is based on belief about the interfusion of nature and culture, physical and mental dimensions in man. The aim of article is to familiarize the reader with the historical and theoretical aspects of this still developing research area. Also the research tools and main research directions of neuropolics were outlined. Authors indicate the positive and negative results of neuropolitics research and perspectives for political science and neurosciences.


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