Describing a Mundus Novus was a very singular task in the sixteenth century. It was an effort shaped by a permanent inherent tension between novelty and normality, between the immense variety of new facts and the demand of credibility. How did these inner strains affect the narrative style of the first descriptions of the natural world of ‘the Indies’? How were the first European observers of the nature of America able to simultaneously transmit the idea of immensity and regularity, and (...) that of novelty? How did they attempt to describe new worlds knowing that there was a lot – perhaps too much – to tell? This paper focuses not on the much-discussed epistemological issues related to those questions, but on their narrative and stylistic consequences. We argue that the first Europeans meeting the new realities of the Americas or India had to meet new challenges, and these translated into texts with specific characteristics. Thus, their first descriptions are essentially different from the texts about the natural world that were written before or after the ‘discovery’. We show that they adopted very specific discursive approaches, and were deeply influenced by the credibility strategies of the medical profession in which they had been trained. (shrink)

Scientific instruments are not neutral artefacts; the perception of their value is greatly determined not only by the objects themselves and the function they perform, but also by the context of their use. In the 16th and 17th centuries, scientific instruments – not only nautical ones – acquired a prominent place in European societies that greatly transcended the specific narrow professional circles that used them. This has already been noted as being an important feature in the development of science in (...) early modern Europe. But exactly how did this happen? Following other recent studies, I argue in this paper that in order to understand this phenomenon one has to look carefully at artisanal practices of the period. (shrink)

O Kenkon bensetsu (Tratado e Crítica sobre a Terra e os Céus) é a primeira exposição sistemática sobre os princípios astronómicos e cosmológicos ocidentais que se encontra vertida para japonês. Este texto, composto no Japão por volta de 1650, pelo ex-jesuíta Cristovão Ferreira. consiste na versão japonesa de um Tratado de Esfera ocidental. com abundantes comentários e críticas por um erudito confucionista. No Kenkon bensetsu temos. assim, a circunstância rara de poder analisar, lado a lado, alguns conceitos fundamentais do pensamento (...) ocidental e o modo como foram recebidos pelo pensamento japonês do século XVII. Trata-se portanto de um documento de excepcional valor para se avaliar o intercâmbio cultural e científico entre a Europa e o Extremo Oriente nos séculos XVI-XVII, e é um dos testemunhos mais eloquentes e significativos da influência portuguesa no Japão. /// The Kenhon bensetsu (Treatise and Critic on Earth and Heavens) is the first systematic explanation of the astronomical and cosmological western principles that is translated to japanese. This text was composed in Japan about 1650 by the former Jesuit Cristóvão Ferreira, and is a japanese version of a western Sphere Treatise, including many commentaries and critics by a erudite confucionist. Thus, we have in Kenhon hensetsu the rare possibility to be able to analyse, side by side, both some fundamental concepts of western thought and the way they were received by the XVIIth century japanese thought. This is, therefore, a document of an exceptional relevance in order to evaluate both the scientific and the cultural interchange between Europe and the Far East during the XVIth and the XVIIth centuries. It is also one of the most important and significant testimonies of the portugues influence in Japan. (shrink)

For several decades, historians have realized the limitations of analysing the historical past of science as a mere succession of theories. One of the most stimulating messages that the reinvention of the discipline has launched is that although there are obvious intellectual elements that promote the development and progress of science, there are also social, economic, and institutional aspects to consider. The history of science is no longer just a history of scientific ideas and theories, but also a history of (...) institutions, communities, spaces, objects, and practices as well as a history of the complex interaction among all these dimensions. Accompanying this new panorama is a broad consensus among scholars to accept that major social changes have inexorably some impact on scientific practice and vice versa. This premise, now widespread, is especially relevant to the history of early modern science and the question of its roots because it has allowed the introduction of new agents and spaces previously excluded from the domain of scientific development. In other words, this enriched perspective has multiplied both the processes of knowledge construction and the arenas in which these processes were undertaken. More specifically, historical research is no longer limited to spaces traditionally linked to the construction of science; it now embraces less orthodox ones. Within this broadened field of inquiry, practical knowledge and the objects of material culture have come to occupy a central place. This special issue explores how the new directions in which the history of science has expanded have a direct impact on the study of Iberian science in the Atlantic world. (shrink)

Why is gauge symmetry so important in modern physics, given that one must eliminate it when interpreting what the theory represents? In this paper we discuss the sense in which gauge symmetry can be fruitfully applied to constrain the space of possible dynamical models in such a way that forces and charges are appropriately coupled. We review the most well-known application of this kind, known as the 'gauge argument' or 'gauge principle', discuss its difficulties, and then reconstruct the gauge argument (...) as a valid theorem in quantum theory. We then present what we take to be a better and more general gauge argument, based on Noether's second theorem in classical Lagrangian field theory, and argue that this provides a more appropriate framework for understanding how gauge symmetry helps to constrain the dynamics of physical theories. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose Kripke-style models for the logics of evidence and truth LETJ and LETF. These logics extend, respectively, Nelson’s logic N4 and the logic of first-degree entailment with a classicality operator ∘ that recovers classical logic for formulas in its scope. According to the intended interpretation here proposed, these models represent a database that receives information as time passes, and such information can be positive, negative, non-reliable, or reliable, while a formula ∘A means that the information about (...) A, either positive or negative, is reliable. This proposal is in line with the interpretation of N4 and FDE as information-based logics, but adds to the four scenarios expressed by them two new scenarios: reliable information for the truth and for the falsity of a given proposition. (shrink)

The eliminative view of gauge degrees of freedom—the view that they arise solely from descriptive redundancy and are therefore eliminable from the theory—is a lively topic of debate in the philosophy of physics. Recent work attempts to leverage properties of the QCD $$\theta _{\text {YM}}$$ θ YM -term to provide a novel argument against the eliminative view. The argument is based on the claim that the QCD $$\theta _{\text {YM}}$$ θ YM -term changes under “large” gauge transformations. Here we review (...) geometrical propositions about fiber bundles that unequivocally falsify these claims: the $$\theta _{\text {YM}}$$ θ YM -term encodes topological features of the fiber bundle used to represent gauge degrees of freedom, but it is fully gauge-invariant. Nonetheless, within the essentially classical viewpoint pursued here, the physical role of the $$\theta _{\text {YM}}$$ θ YM -term shows the physical importance of bundle topology (or superpositions thereof) and thus counts against (a naive) eliminativism. (shrink)

This text represents our first attempting to offer a Metaphysic model to interpret the late modernity (which emerges in the middle of the 18th century and goes along until the end of the IIWW) through the concept of Teleontology. Thus, Teleontology means the procedure of the spirit of the late modern age to shift its paradigms from ontology (an investigation about the being as being, in which existence means an attribute) to teleology, in which essence must be conquered and revealed (...) in the final of a progressive process. Instead of Being, Man became the main object of this investigation; the question of the being as being has given way as to an enlightened concept of being-man (never reached) as also to the task to achieve this in order to satisfy what reason designed to human species. However, as this project of achieving the concept of Being-Man advanced, its true nature became clear: a unilateral and arbitrary colonial expansion, which forced everyone to follow Teleontological paradigms. Teleontology can demonstrate that Greek-Christian metaphysics means a particular element (never universal) submitted to a specific culture and, in this case, expresses the structure of Eurocentric thought that became global by way of the expanding of capitalism/colonialism. Specifically, in this text, we propose to investigate: 1 - what is Teleontology; 2 - what are its objects; 3 - what are its origins. (shrink)

Not all symmetries are on a par. For instance, within Newtonian mechanics, we seem to have a good grasp on the empirical significance of boosts, by applying it to subsystems. This is exemplified by the thought experiment known as Galileo’s ship: the inertial state of motion of a ship is immaterial to how events unfold in the cabin, but is registered in the values of relational quantities such as the distance and velocity of the ship relative to the shore. But (...) the significance of gauge symmetries seems less clear. For example, can gauge transformations in Yang-Mills theory—taken as mere descriptive redundancy—exhibit a similar relational empirical significance as the boosts of Galileo’s ship? This question has been debated in the last fifteen years in philosophy of physics. I will argue that the answer is ‘yes’, but only for a finite subset of gauge transformations, and under special conditions. Under those conditions, we can mathematically identify empirical significance with a failure of supervenience: the state of the Universe is not uniquely determined by the intrinsic state of its isolated subsystems. Empirical significance is therefore encoded in those relations between subsystems that stand apart from their intrinsic states. (shrink)

Local gauge theories are in a complicated relationship with boundaries. Whereas fixing the gauge can often shave off unwanted redundancies, the coupling of different bounded regions requires the use of gauge-variant elements. Therefore, coupling is inimical to gauge-fixing, as usually understood. This resistance to gauge-fixing has led some to declare the coupling of subsystems to be the \textit{raison d'\^etre} of gauge \cite{RovelliGauge2013}. Indeed, while gauge-fixing is entirely unproblematic for a single region without boundary, it introduces arbitrary boundary conditions on the (...) gauge degrees of freedom themselves---these conditions lack a physical interpretation when they are not functionals of the original fields. Such arbitrary boundary choices creep into the calculation of charges through Noether's second theorem, muddling the assignment of physical charges to local gauge symmetries. The confusion brewn by gauge at boundaries is well-known, and must be contended with both conceptually and technically. It may seem natural to replace the arbitrary boundary choice with new degrees of freedom, for using such a device we resolve some of these confusions while leaving no gauge-dependence on the computation of Noether charges \cite{DonnellyFreidel}. But, concretely, such boundary degrees of freedom are rather arbitrary---they have no relation to the original field-content of the field theory. How should we conceive of them? Here I will explicate the problems mentioned above and illustrate a possible resolution: in a recent series of papers \cite{GomesRiello2016, GomesRiello2018, GomesHopfRiello} the notion of a connection-form was put forward and implemented in the field-space of gauge theories. Using this tool, a modified version of symplectic geometry---here called `horizontal'---is possible. Independently of boundary conditions, this formalism bestows to each region a physically salient, relational notion of charge: the horizontal Noether charge. Meanwhile, as required, the connection-form mediates an irenic composition of regions, one compatible with the attribution of horizontal Noether charges to each region. Thes aims of this paper are to highlight the boundary issues in the treatment of gauge, and to discuss how gauge theory may be conceptually clarified in light of a resolution to these issues. (shrink)

After a brief introduction to issues that plague the realization of a theory of quantum gravity, I suggest that the main one concerns defining superpositions of causal structures. This leads me to a distinction between time and space, to a further degree than that present in the canonical approach to general relativity. With this distinction, one can make sense of superpositions as interference between alternative paths in the relational configuration space of the entire Universe. But the full use of relationalism (...) brings us to a timeless picture of Nature, as it does in the canonical approach. After a discussion of Parmenides and the Eleatics' rejection of time, I show that there is middle ground between their view of absolute timelessness and a view of physics taking place in timeless configuration space. In this middle ground, even though change does not fundamentally exist, the illusion of change can be recovered in a way not permitted by Parmenides. It is recovered through a particular density distribution over configuration space which gives rise to 'records'. Incidentally, this distribution seems to have the potential to dissolve further aspects of the measurement problem that can still be argued to haunt the application of decoherence to Many-Worlds quantum mechanics. I end with a discussion indicating that the conflict between the conclusions of this paper and our view of the continuity of the self may still intuitively bother us. Nonetheless, those conclusions should be no more challenging to our intuition than Derek Parfit's thought experiments on the subject. (shrink)

Since communication and expression are central aspects of music performance it is important to develop a systematic pedagogy of teaching children and teenagers expressiveness. Although research has been growing in this area a comprehensive literature review that unifies the different approaches to teaching young musicians expressiveness has been lacking. Therefore, the aim of this article is to provide an overview of literature related to teaching and learning of expressiveness from music psychology and music education research in order to build a (...) new theoretical framework for teaching and learning expressive music performance in instrumental music lessons with children and teenagers. The article will start with a brief discussion of interpretation and expression in music performance, before providing an overview of studies that investigated teaching and learning of performance expression in instrumental music education with adults and children. On the foundation of this research a theoretical framework for dialogic teaching and learning of expressive music performance will be proposed and the rationale explained. Dialogic teaching can be useful for scaffolding young musicians’ learning of expressivity as open questions can stimulate thinking about the interpretation and may serve to connect musical ideas to the embodied experience of the learner. A “toolkit” for teaching and learning of expressiveness will be presented for practical application in music lessons. In addition, a theoretical model will be proposed to further our understanding of teaching and learning of expressive music performance as a multifaceted and interactive process that is embedded in the context of tutors’ and learners’ experiences and environment. Finally, implications of this framework and suggestions for future research will be discussed. (shrink)

Through a theoretical examination of the preventive turn in criminal law and justice which has gained momentum in Anglo-American criminal justice systems since the late-twentieth century, The Preventive Turn in Criminal Law demonstrates how recent transformations in criminal law and justiceare intrinsically related to and embedded in the way liberal society and liberal law have been imagined, developed, and conditioned by its social, political, and historical context. Henrique Carvalho identifies a tension between the idea of punishment as an expression (...) of individual justice, andprevention as a manifestation of the need for security and the promotion of welfare. Tracing this tension back to an intrinsic ambivalence within the modern conception of individual liberty, which is both repressed and preserved by liberal conceptions of responsibility and punishment, Carvalhoproves that as long as this ambivalence remains unexamined, liberal law has the potential to both promote and undermine individual justice.Engaging with the dominant contemporary literature on criminal law, prevention, risk, security, and criminalisation, this volume deploys a theoretical perspective developed through a critical analysis of both classical and contemporary works of social and political theory. The book reveals that thepervasiveness of prevention in 21st century criminal justice systems represents not only the consequence of new and unprecedented features of contemporary politics and society, but also the manifestation of essential aspects of the liberal legal and political tradition. (shrink)

A FUNÇÃO SOCIAL DA POSSE COMO PARÂMETRO PARA TRATAMENTO DOS CONFLITOS FUNDIÁRIOS URBANOS.

This article aims to rethink the meaning of “nature” and the human in Plato, more specifically through some examples contained in the _Phaedrus_, a rare dialogue further away from the city. Phaedrus and Socrates leave Athens on a path outside the walls, past the Ilisus stream and the breeze of the woods, and end up sitting in the shadows of trees full of singing cicadas. What is the meaning of this scenario in the construction o the text? Is it possible (...) to learn from oak trees or insects? The philosophizing of this dialogue passes through the coolness of the shadows of the trees in the hot summer noon. This sensuous topography through the text reveals the writer Plato wary of the enveloping meaning of the living drama between Phaedrus and Socrates. The audience and participation of natural elements, trees and cicadas in the dialogue reveals an involvement of the discourse with the surrounding atmosphere, a special concern of Socrates in his palinode and in his final prayer to Pan. In this dialogue, more than distinct and removed from nature, we think the human being (and reason) immersed in it - in an attempt to integrate a mythological and dialogical search between river, rock, plants, animals, humans, gods and demigods. The image of an overly rationalist and humanist Plato finds in this text a perspective of an inspired writer, a hybrid poet and philosopher, with a mission to restore language and the city to animal and cosmic life. (shrink)

We review three broadly geometrodynamical---and in part, Machian or relational---projects, from the perspective of spacetime functionalism. We show how all three are examples of functionalist reduction of the type that was advocated by D. Lewis, and nowadays goes by the label `the Canberra Plan’. The projects are: the recovery of geometrodynamics by Hojman et al. ; the programme of Schuller and collaborators to deduce a metric from the physics of matter fields; the deduction of the ADM Hamiltonian by Gomes and (...) Shyam. We end by drawing a positive corollary about shape dynamics: namely, it has a good rationale for the Hamiltonian it postulates. (shrink)

Barbour’s interpretation of Mach’s principle led him to postulate that gravity should be formulated as a dynamical theory of spatial conformal geometry, or in his terminology, “shapes.” Recently, it was shown that the dynamics of General Relativity can indeed be formulated as the dynamics of shapes. This new Shape Dynamics theory, unlike earlier proposals by Barbour and his collaborators, implements local spatial conformal invariance as a gauge symmetry that replaces refoliation invariance in General Relativity. It is the purpose of this (...) paper to answer frequent questions about (new) Shape Dynamics, such as its relation to Poincaré invariance, General Relativity, Constant Mean (extrinsic) Curvature gauge, earlier Shape Dynamics, and finally the conformal approach to the initial value problem of General Relativity. Some of these relations can be clarified by considering a simple model: free electrodynamics and its dual shift symmetric formulation. This model also serves as an example where symmetry trading is used for usual gauge theories. (shrink)

O texto visa mostrar, a partir das análises do Roberto Schwarz e Georg Lukács, como a análise de lastro marxista autêntico é divergente da leitura meramente sociológica, procurando superar a dualidade “esteticismo x sociologismo”, dois reducionismos anti-dialéticos. Em outros termos, trata-se de expor, dentro de nossos limites, como o autor brasileiro ao buscar a inflexão realista de algumas obras não deixa de debater problemas da especificidade estética, portanto, sem que a vida social explique absolutamente a arte, mas ao mesmo tempo, (...) seja seu substrato indispensável. Para tanto, faremos uma primeira reflexão sobre o decurso lukacsiano (Georg Lukács) onde o autor, referência importante para Schwarz, deslinda a arte através, primeiramente, de posições Idealistas (arte em-si-mesmada) e, logo após, a partir da emergência e redescoberta gradual da ontologia marxiana. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an extensive examination of the political theory of Thomas Hobbes in order to discuss its relevance to an understanding of contemporary issues and challenges faced by criminal law and criminal justice theory. I start by proposing that a critical analysis of Hobbes’s account of punishment reveals a paradox that not only is fundamental to understanding his model of political society, but also can offer important insights into the preventive turn experienced by advanced liberal legal systems. (...) I then suggest that the main importance of an analysis of Hobbes’s theoretical framework lies in how it reveals an inextricable and problematic link between individual autonomy and political authority in the normative conception of the modern liberal state, grounded on the notion of insecurity. By exploring how legal scholars have recently engaged with aspects of this problematic in criminal law and punishment posed by Hobbes’s work, I argue that the paradox found in punishment is such that it both legitimates the criminal law and undermines its normative aspirations, particularly the possibility of securing individual liberty against the power of the liberal state. (shrink)

This article aims to make public part of the research on the concept of ‘light’ in the theological and, above all, liturgical tradition of the Greek Orthodox Church, based on its representation of the concept of ‘hypostasis’. Taking as a point of departure the interpretation of the expression ‘light of light’ [φῶς ἐκ φωτός (phôs ek phōtos)] of the text of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Symbol, the article presents a proposal for the interpretation of the concept of ‘representation’ for this specific case, (...) based on the idea of apomímesis, and applies this concept to a reading of the place of ‘light’ in the Holy Scripture, in the Patrology and in the Greek Eastern Liturgies. (shrink)

In an accompanying paper Gomes, we have put forward an interpretation of quantum mechanics based on a non-relativistic, Lagrangian 3+1 formalism of a closed Universe M, existing on timeless configuration space \ of some field over M. However, not much was said there about the role of locality, which was not assumed. This paper is an attempt to fill that gap. Locality in full can only emerge dynamically, and is not postulated. This new understanding of locality is based solely on (...) the properties of extremal paths in configuration space. I do not demand locality from the start, as it is usually done, but showed conditions under which certain systems exhibit it spontaneously. In this way we recover semi-classical local behavior when regions dynamically decouple from each other, a notion more appropriate for extension into quantum mechanics. The dynamics of a sub-region O within the closed manifold M is independent of its complement, \, if the projection of extremal curves on \ onto the space of extremal curves intrinsic to O is a surjective map. This roughly corresponds to \, where \ is a linear projection. This criterion for locality can be made approximate—an impossible feat had it been already postulated—and it can be applied for theories which do not have hyperbolic equations of motion, and/or no fixed causal structure. When two regions are mutually independent according to the criterion proposed here, the semi-classical path integral kernel factorizes, showing cluster decomposition which is the ultimate aim of a definition of locality. (shrink)

Resumo: Na digressão da Carta Sétima (341c-d – 344d-e) Platão faz uma descrição do caminho filosófico e do limite dos discursos, sejam escritos ou falados, para se alcançar e comunicar o conhecimento dos seres e da virtude. A digressão critica a produção, por parte de Dionísio, jovem tirano de Siracusa, de um tratado sobre a filosofia platônica, visando suas ‘doutrinas’, como se já soubesse tudo sobre os princípios supremos da realidade. Nesse artigo pretendo ler a digressão acerca do conhecimento filosófico (...) e sua transmissão, não como um desvio do curso da Carta, mas como parte central para entender sua mensagem a filosofia platônica em geral– evidenciando através do texto suas múltiplas e importantes ligações com os diálogos. Palavras-chave: Escrita; Metafísica; Platão; Carta Sétima; Digressão. The digression on knowledge in the platonic Seventh Letter Abstract: In the digression of the Seventh Letter (341c-d–344d-e) Plato describes the philosophical path and the limits of discourses, whether written or spoken, to reach and communicate the knowledge of beings and virtue. The digression criticizes the production, by Dionysius, a young tyrant of Syracuse, of a treatise on Platonic philosophy, aiming at its 'doctrines', as if he already knew everything about the supreme principles of reality. In this article I intend to read the digression about philosophical knowledge and its transmission, not as a deviation from the course of the letter, but as a central part to understand the message of the letter and of Platonic philosophy in general – evidencing through the text its multiple and important connections with the dialogues. Keywords: Writing, Metaphysics, Plato, Seventh Letter, digression. La digression sobre el saber en la Séptima Carta platonica. Resumen: En la digresión de la Carta Séptima (341c-d – 344d-e) Platón describe el camino filosófico y los límites de los discursos, sean escritos o hablados, para alcanzar y comunicar el conocimiento de los seres y de la virtud. La digresión critica la producción, por parte de Dionisio, un joven tirano de Siracusa, de un tratado sobre la filosofía platónica, apuntando a sus 'doctrinas', como si ya supiera todo acerca de los principios supremos de la realidad. En este artículo pretendo leer la digresión sobre el conocimiento filosófico y su transmisión, no como una desviación del curso de la Carta, sino como parte central para comprender el mensaje de la carta y de la filosofía platónica en general – evidenciando a través del texto sus múltiples e importantes conexiones con los diálogos. Palabras clave: Escritura, Metafísica, Platón, Séptima Carta, digresión. Data de registro: 04/09/2022 Data de aceite: 27/02/2023. (shrink)

O processo de contínua conversação nas redes sociais aponta para transformações na consciência, no agir coletivo e na sociabilidade. Entretanto muitos se preocupam com a impossibilidade destas mudanças resultarem em transformações substantivas na representação política e na forma do Estado. Procurar avaliar criticamente o caráter da transformação é uma necessidade atual.

Priest, argues that classical reasoning can be made compatible with his preferred logical theory by proposing a methodological maxim authorizing the use of classical logic in consistent situations. Although Priest has abandoned this proposal in favour of the one in G. Priest, I shall argue that due to the fact that the derivability adjustment theorem holds for several logics of formal consistency, these paraconsistent logics are particularly well suited to accommodate classical reasoning by means of a version of that maxim, (...) yielding thus an enthymematic account of classical recapture. (shrink)

Bergson e a sociologia.--Problemas de filosofía do direito.--Direito e evolucionismo.--Código de Hamurabi e codificac̦ões anteriores.--Ideais jurídicos.--Problemas da planificac̦ão através do direito.--Aspectos da sociologia juridíca de Gurvitch.--A problemática da sociologia política.

This article aims to interpret an annual initiation ritual celebrated in Hellenistic Phaistos , at a festival known as the Ekdusia, in which young men had to put on women's clothes and swear an oath of citizenship before they could graduate from the civic youth corps and enter the society of adult male citizens. It begins by reconstructing the ritual and situating it within its historical and social context. It then reviews the two major theories which have been used to (...) explain transvestism in Greek initiation-structuralist and psychological-and attempts to expose their shortcomings. The author remedies the difficulty with the structuralist approach-its focus on abstract symbols divorced from their social context-by understanding the ritual change of clothes at the Ekdusia in terms of the radical gender segregation in Cretan society and the gradual transition Cretan boys made from feminine spaces to masculine spaces in both city and home. The author remedies the main problem with the psychological approach-its focus on the psychological dynamic between mother and son rather than the motivations of the rite's adult male sponsors-by looking at how adult men, particularly in modern non-Greek societies which hold initiation rites, understand male adolescent development and create rituals in accordance therewith. This comparative model shows how men in gender-segregated societies think of boys as feminine themselves and believe that their masculine development is at risk if they are not rescued from the dangerous feminine realm, and forced to undergo a combination of defeminization and masculinization rituals. Although there is no direct evidence to suggest that Greek men thought of boys' transition rites in this way, the myths told about three different figures named Leukippos, related directly and indirectly to the Ekdusia, reveal this pattern of thought in its full form. (shrink)

Volume 10, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 103-109.

The History of Political Ideas by the German-American philosopher Eric Voegelin is a monumental work of around 2,600 pages. It remained unpublished during his lifetime, and it came to light through the American edition and the now completed Portuguese edition. Being the author of the first world edition of an abridged version of the History of Political Ideas ; the translator of the first three volumes of the 2012-2018 Portuguese edition; and the author of The civil philosophy of Eric Voegelin (...) I consider that the History of Political Ideas challenges the present climate of opinion: it subverts the dominant corrosive forces of moral relativism, intolerant neo-positivism, end-of-history obsessions, postmodernist deconstructions, agnosticism, nihilism, new age religions, and the all-pervasive ideology of money. Eric Voegelin achieves all this leading his readers from Antiquity to Modern Age. His monumental work begins with the “spiritual disintegration” of the Greek world, after the peak of Plato and Aristotle, a disintegration that ushered a long process of transition in the self-understanding of man in the Mediterranean world. The series goes through Middle Ages, R enaissance and Reformation as Voegelin analyzes the collapse of imperial Christianity, which led to the rise of autonomous reason and sectarian revolts that reached full development in later centuries. A new form of modern human consciousness replaced the Christian understanding of a divinely created closed cosmos. The collection ends - in a suspensive way - with “The Crisis and the Apocalypse of Man” focused on thinkers such as Comte, Bakunine and Marx; although they experienced true epiphanies, they become self-obsessed to the detriment of the world to which they refer. Such “Apocalypse of Man” must now be challenged, albeit with methodologies and hermeneutic principles other than those that Voegelin himself abandoned some decades ago. (shrink)

The inherent difficulty in talking about quantum decoherence in the context of quantum cosmology is that decoherence requires subsystems, and cosmology is the study of the whole Universe. Consistent histories gave a possible answer to this conundrum, by phrasing decoherence as loss of interference between alternative histories of closed systems. When one can apply Boolean logic to a set of histories, it is deemed ‘consistent’. However, the vast majority of the sets of histories that are merely consistent are blatantly nonclassical (...) in other respects, and further constraints than just consistency need to be invoked. In this paper, I attempt to give an alternative answer to the issues faced by consistent histories, by exploring a timeless interpretation of quantum mechanics of closed systems. This is done solely in terms of path integrals in non-relativistic, timeless, configuration space. What prompts a fresh look at such foundational problems in this context is the advent of multiple gravitational models in which Lorentz symmetry is not fundamental, but only emergent. And what allows this approach to overcome previous barriers to a timeless, conditional probabilities interpretation of quantum mechanics is the new notion of records—made possible by an inherent asymmetry of configuration space. I outline and explore consequences of this approach for foundational issues of quantum mechanics, such as the natural emergence of the Born rule, conservation of probabilities, and the Sleeping Beauty paradox. (shrink)

Este artigo busca expor a sutileza da diferença entre o antigo e o novo, entre o arcaico e o moderno, a fim de questionar o caráter emancipatório da política na modernidade. A existência e a conjectura de um contrato sexual nas variadas formas da teoria do contrato social é o contexto no qual Carole Pateman desenvolve sua obra para expor a subversiva maneira com que as mulheres têm sido estimadas desde os primórdios da modernidade. O que é posto em questão, (...) contudo, é o fato de que a crítica de Pateman, embora de maneira exitosa rejeite o contratualismo, por outro lado não supera a estrutura discursiva da própria tradição jusnaturalista. Tal insuficiência crítica motivará, a partir de Luce Irigaray, que se ponha à prova o próprio modelo falogocêntrico da filosofia e da psicanálise, os quais se reinscreverão quando as mulheres repensarem a história do pensamento sob uma normativa feminista. (shrink)

El artículo reflexiona sobre el papel de los científicos y trabajadores en investigaciones tecnológicas en la sociedad contemporánea, y realiza un balance crítico del avance de las ciencias. Postula el fracaso de la ciencia en su promesa de llevar progreso, racionalidad y armonía a la convivencia humana, y a tornarse en factor de emancipación de la humanidad. Cuestiona el rol de la ciencia al servicio del poder y conecta crisis de la ciencia con crisis del sistema, para proponer luego una (...) visión sistémica e interdisciplinar, que contribuya al cuidado ambiental y a la sustentabilidad desde una dimensión humana. (shrink)

La globalización que barre el planeta ha resultado en una serie de paradojas e incertidumbres para las personas. Aunque haya impulsado poderosamente la producción de bienes y servicios y del comercio internacional, su expansión para todos los bordes del mundo deterioró el estado del medio ambiente y destruyó las comunidades tradicionales rurales e indígenas. La desestabilización de los lazos de cooperación y de solidaridad tradicionales dejó a millones de seres humanos aislados y, sin perspectiva de romper el “círculo vicioso” de (...) pobreza, ignorancia y violencia. Sartre nos enseñó que los hombres nacen para ser libres, pero libertad significa también responsabilidad. Actuando y pensando sobre la realidad, los hombres la transforman y se transforman a sí mismos, encontrando el sentido para sus vidas, en conjunto, mediante una cultura de cooperación y solidaridad. (shrink)