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The Einstein Reader

Albert Einstein

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The Einstein Reader 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

The Einstein Reader is a fabulous read if you want to get a layperson's
inside view of a genius' mind. He wrote (mostly) on a level any educated person could understand about his vision of utopia or world peace. He wrote about his faith. Even his explanations of E=MC2 was somewhat
understandable to a non-physicist. I thought his idealism and humanity was extremely inspiring for someone who could have been arrogant. After all, most people when they think genius, think Einstein. He was a real person too.

Fact and Method: Explanation, Confirmation, and Reality in the Natural and the Social Sciences

Richard W. Miller

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 2.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this bold work of broad scope and rich erudition, Richard W. Miller sets out to reorient the philosophy of science. By questioning both positivism and its leading critics, he develops new solutions to the most urgent problems about justification, explanation and truth. Using a wealth of examples from the the natural and the social sciences, "Fact and Method" applies the new account of scientific reason to specific questions of method in virtually every field of inquiry including biology, physics, history, sociology, anthropology, economics, psychology and literary theory. For the past quarter-century, the philosophy of science has been in a crisis brought on by the failure of the positivist project of resolving all basic methodological questions by applying absolutely general rules, valid for all fields at all times. "Fact and Method" presents a new view of science in which what counts as an explanation, a cause, a confirming test or a compelling case for the existence of an unobservable is determined by frameworks of specific substantive principles, rationally adopted in light of the actual history of inquiry.Although the history of science has usually been the material for relativism, Professor Miller uses arguments of Darwin, Newton, Einstein, Galileo and others both to undermine positivist conceptions of rationality and to support the positivists' optimism that important theoretical findings are often justifiable from all reasonable perspectives. "Fact and Method" includes new accounts of causation, explanatory adequacy, approximate truth and confirmation, together with a defense of scientific realism freed from the positivist assumptions that Professor Miller locates on both sides of the realism controversy. Throughout, the new philosophical ideas are applied to specific topics confronting social scientists or natural scientists, for example: value-freedom, methodological individualism, functional explanation, the nature of evolutionary

History and Theory after the Fall: An Essay on Interpretation

Fred Weinstein

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Editorial Review:

In this ambitious work, Fred Weinstein confronts the obstacles that have increasingly frustrated our attempts to explain social and historical reality. Traditionally, we have relied on history and social theory to describe the ways people understand the world they live in. But the ordering explanations we have always used—derived from the classical social theories originally forged by Marx, Tocqueville, Weber, Durkheim, Freud—have collapsed.

In the wake of this collapse or "fall," the rival claims of fiction, psychoanalysis, sociology, anthropology, and history have created the dilemma of radical relativism, the prospect of multiple interpretations of any complex historical event. The basic strategy of social theory and the social sciences—the search for underlying unities—proves so inherently contradictory and has provided so little in the way of reliable knowledge of social and historical relationships that to many critics it seems no longer worth pursuing.

Weinstein enters the debate by rejecting any search for underlying structural unities, dynamic or social, through which historians have attempted to find continuity with the past. He looks instead to ideological processes, to the construction of successive and changing versions of reality that mediate between the power of fantasy on the one side and the power of the social world on the other. He argues further that the need to use ideological constructs in this way accounts for the heterogeneous and changing content of social movements and for the persistent need people have always had for authoritative leaders, even in democratized societies. He suggests that people have historically been able to take a step away from leaders only by substituting the possession of objects such as property or money. This book is a breakthrough in poststructuralist theory that is sure to stimulate considerable discussion, especially about the shape of the social sciences and the future of historical interpretation.

Rhetoric, Sophistry, Pragmatism (Literature, Culture, Theory)

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Before Aristotle were 'the words': after-'the right words' 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

This is a wonderful introduction to critical neo-pragmatic thought which will assist those with interests in critical theory or in critical social literacies.

The range of articles is broad and eclectic with a mixture of literary approaches as well as philosophical ones to grant the reader/learner ' a privileged position' especially in terms of eloquence and elasticity in the negotiation of aesthetic and scientific discourse.

The pre-Socratic 'metron'or sophistic device MAN IS THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS provides an interesting insight into the philosophic and cultural climate of the classical Greek world and the pedagogical requirements for 'logon paideia' or SPEAKING WELL which have been passed down through the last 25 centuries or so.

The metron's duality and ambiguity viz IS MAN THE MEASURE OR THE MEASURER is a revealing introduction to both humanistic approaches to the study of culture as well as an enlivening historical vignette, appropriate to those who seek perspectives from which to appreciate the poststructuralist critique in the field of linguistics.

Editorial Review:

The skeptical relativism and self-conscious rhetoric of the pragmatist tradition, which began with the pre-Socratic Sophists and developed through an American tradition including William James and John Dewey, have attracted new attention in the context of postmodernist thought. At the same time there has been a more general renewal of interest in rhetoric itself. This book explores the various ways in which rhetoric, sophistry, and pragmatism overlap in their current theoretical and political implications, and demonstrates how they contribute both to a rethinking of the human sciences within the academy and to larger debates over cultural politics.

The Search for Society: Quest for a Biosocial Science and Morality

Robin Fox

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Social Science Beware! 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.

This truly is a stunning book. All throughout, the reader can sense Fox's frustration with his colleagues and with humanity's view of itself in general. This is a plea for the longest kind of perspective, one that recognizes the horrifically-disturbing blip that history represents on the 5-million year timeline that is the human story. Fox makes it unabashedly clear that if we do not embrace an evolutionary view of ourselves, we are destined to live in out-of-control, frustrating, dehumanizing societies. The closest thinker that I have found to Fox is Paul Shepard, another brilliant scholar who shreds the boundaries of disciplines. But Fox is even bolder in his challenge to the academy and it's Enlightenment heritage, dismissing as useless much of the classic thought, as well as the current drivel -- since neither considers the full ethical implications of a Darwinian worldview. Great stuff!

The Final Foucault

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Editorial Review:

Michel Foucault left a rich legacy of ideas and approaches, many of which still await exposition and analysis. The Final Foucault is devoted to his last published (and some as yet unpublished) work and includes a translation of one of his last interviews, a comprehensive bibliography of his publications, and a biographical chronology.

Foucault was still working on his history of sexuality when he died in 1984, but his main concern remained, as throughout his career, a deeper understanding of the nature of truth. His final set of lectures at the College de France, described here by Thomas Flynn, focused on the concept of truth-telling as a moral virtue in the ancient world.

In the other essays, Karlis Racevskis examines the questions of identity at the core of Foucault's work; Garth Gillan takes up the problems inherent in any attempt to characterize Foucault's philosophy; James Bernauer explores the ethical basis of Foucault's work and offers a context for understanding his late interest in the Christian experience; and Diane Rubenstein offers a Lacanian interpretation of the last work.

James Bernauer is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. The Final Foucault is based on a special issue of the Journal Philosophy and Social Criticism, edited by David Rasmussen and published at Boston College.

The Expanded Social Scientist's Bestiary

D. C. Phillips

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Editorial Review:

The (Expanded) Social Scientist's Bestiary addresses a number of important theoretical and philosophical issues in the social sciences from the perspective of contemporary philosophy of science. This expanded and revised edition contains four new chapters tackling such contemporary beasts as Popperian rules, narrative research, and various forms of constructivism. The chapters presented in this volume are, as far as possible, self-contained so that each chapter can be consulted without the necessity of having read the others, thus making this volume an invaluable guide for faculty members and graduate students in the whole of the social sciences and related applied fields.

Microfoundations, Methods, and Causation: On the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (Science and Technology Series)

Daniel Little

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This text focuses on the theory of popular politics constructed within the context of analytical Marxism, and asks if rational choice theory provides an adequate basis for explaining patterns of social, political and economic behaviour in traditional China.

Critical Reasoning in Contemporary Culture (S U N Y Series in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences)

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Marx, Hayek, and Utopia (S U N Y Series in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences)

Chris Matthew Sciabarra

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Recommended; a very nice study of a useful subject. 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Utopianism is a term which conjures up many thoughts. It is most often used to mean the designing of plans for society which are unrealizable according to their own standards of value. While this is certainly a sound general usage, a more specific set of illustrations are useful to show the *roots* of utopianism. The roots of utopianism, the qualities that constitute utopian thought throughout history (from Plato to Rawls), are the specific fallacies of thought that show in utopianism - reification, dualism, constructivism, etc.

Sciabarra gives a sound exposition of the original critiques of utopianism by Karl Marx and F.A. Hayek and thus proceeds to show how two unique and radical thinkers were able to legitimately separate their radicalism from utopianism.

Beyond the issue of radicalism vs. utopianism Sciabarra's book is also a useful auxilliary to a comparison of historical similarities between radical thought of Hayek, Marx, and the theorists influenced by them.

Sciabarra's main original thesis here is that Marx and Hayek are related by their (implicit or explicit) commitment to a doctrine of internal relations which is also called dialectic. Dialectical analysis rejects many of the traditional ontological dualisms of political science - holism (organicism) vs. atomism, criticism vs. action and commits itself to examining the dynamic relationships that define the thought and action; therefore the being of things. Relationships are not external to agents, dialectically speaking, but they are internal to and inseparable from what it means to be an agent - a socially constituted being with realms of choice, consent, resistance, and emancipation available. Thus we can begin to eliminate the aforementioned haunting dualisms.

This book is also useful beyond presenting an original thesis. It offers some very accessible explanations of Marx and Hayek's thought on economics, psychology, and humanity's capability to collectively construct its own future. The last chapter also offers a discussion of the radical psychology of Habermas and Wainwright and it's applicability to radical projects - of the left or right.

Editorial Review:

This book develops a critique of utopianism through a provocative comparison of the works of Karl Marx and F. A. Hayek, thus engaging two vastly different traditions in critical dialogue. By emphasizing the methodological and substantive similarities between Marxian and Hayekian perspectives, it challenges each tradition's most precious assumptions about the other. Through this comparative analysis, the book articulates the crucial distinctions between utopian and radical theorizing.

Sciabarra examines the dialectical method of social inquiry common to both Marxian and Hayekian thought and argues that both Marx and Hayek rejected utopian theorizing because it internalizes an abstract, ahistorical, exaggerated sense of human possibility. The chief disagreement between Marx and Hayek, he shows, is not political but epistemological, reflecting their differing assumptions about the limits of reason.