A lively and accessible history of Modernism, _The First Moderns_ is filled with portraits of genius, and intellectual breakthroughs, that richly evoke the _fin-de-siècle_ atmosphere of Paris, Vienna, St. Louis, and St. Petersburg. William Everdell offers readers an invigorating look at the unfolding of an age. "This exceptionally wide-ranging history is chock-a-block with anecdotes, factoids, odd juxtapositions, and useful insights. Most impressive.... For anyone interested in learning about late 19th- and early 20th- century imaginative thought, this engagingly written (...) book is a good place to start."—_Washington Post Book World_ "_The First Moderns_ brilliantly maps the beginning of a path at whose end loom as many diasporas as there are men."—Frederic Morton, _The Los Angeles Times Book Review_ "In this truly exciting study of the origins of modernist thought, poet and teacher Everdell roams freely across disciplinary lines.... A brilliant book that will prove useful to scholars and generalists for years to come; enthusiastically recommended."—_Library Journal_, starred review "Everdell has performed a rare service for his readers. Dispelling much of the current nonsense about 'postmodernism,' this book belongs on the very short list of profound works of cultural analysis."—_Booklist_ "Innovative and impressive... [Everdell] has written a marvelous, erudite, and readable study."-Mark Bevir, _Spectator_ "A richly eclectic history of the dawn of a new era in painting, music, literature, mathematics, physics, genetics, neuroscience, psychiatry and philosophy."—Margaret Wertheim, _New Scientist_ "[Everdell] has himself recombined the parts of our era's intellectual history in new and startling ways, shedding light for which the reader of _The First Moderns_ will be eternally grateful."—Hugh Kenner, _The New York Times Book Review_ "Everdell shows how the idea of "modernity" arose before the First World War by telling the stories of heroes such as T. S. Eliot, Max Planck, and Georges Serault with such a lively eye for detail, irony, and ambiance that you feel as if you're reliving those miraculous years."—Jon Spayde, _Utne Reader_. (shrink)

A lively and accessible history of Modernism, _The First Moderns_ is filled with portraits of genius, and intellectual breakthroughs, that richly evoke the _fin-de-siècle_ atmosphere of Paris, Vienna, St. Louis, and St. Petersburg. William Everdell offers readers an invigorating look at the unfolding of an age. "This exceptionally wide-ranging history is chock-a-block with anecdotes, factoids, odd juxtapositions, and useful insights. Most impressive.... For anyone interested in learning about late 19th- and early 20th- century imaginative thought, this engagingly written (...) book is a good place to start."—_Washington Post Book World_ "_The First Moderns_ brilliantly maps the beginning of a path at whose end loom as many diasporas as there are men."—Frederic Morton, _The Los Angeles Times Book Review_ "In this truly exciting study of the origins of modernist thought, poet and teacher Everdell roams freely across disciplinary lines.... A brilliant book that will prove useful to scholars and generalists for years to come; enthusiastically recommended."—_Library Journal_, starred review "Everdell has performed a rare service for his readers. Dispelling much of the current nonsense about 'postmodernism,' this book belongs on the very short list of profound works of cultural analysis."—_Booklist_ "Innovative and impressive... [Everdell] has written a marvelous, erudite, and readable study."-Mark Bevir, _Spectator_ "A richly eclectic history of the dawn of a new era in painting, music, literature, mathematics, physics, genetics, neuroscience, psychiatry and philosophy."—Margaret Wertheim, _New Scientist_ "[Everdell] has himself recombined the parts of our era's intellectual history in new and startling ways, shedding light for which the reader of _The First Moderns_ will be eternally grateful."—Hugh Kenner, _The New York Times Book Review_ "Everdell shows how the idea of "modernity" arose before the First World War by telling the stories of heroes such as T. S. Eliot, Max Planck, and Georges Serault with such a lively eye for detail, irony, and ambiance that you feel as if you're reliving those miraculous years."—Jon Spayde, _Utne Reader_. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:88 Reviews EPISTEMOLOGY OFMODERNISM WILLIAM R. EVERDELL History/ St. Ann'sSchool Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA EVERDELL@AOL.COM Ann Banfield. The Phantom Table:Woolf,Fry,Russelland the Epistemology of Modernism. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge U.P., 2000. £35.00; US$49.95. In Virginia Woolf's difficult masterpiece, The Waves(1931),each of several separate interior monologues-"streams of consciousness" in the American critical idiom-is separated from the next by an interpolated "Interlude". The interior monologues are assigned co (...) different characters, bur the Interludes are rendered from no perspectiveat all, verymuch like the "Time Passes"chapter of Woolf's earlier and better known novel, Tothe Lighthouse (1927).The passive voice and the demonstrative and indefinite pronotms are essential, removing from the scene not only the characters' points of view, but the author's as well. Numbered among the consequences of the new twentieth-century technique of interior monologue, the Interludes can be accepted today as one more trick of literary "Modernism", but for Woolf it was new, and the task of preventing any of her Interludes from becoming just another report from the rypical "omniscient narrator" of Victorian fiction was one of the most demanding she ever set herself as a writer. Like her friend the Post-Impressionist critic Roger Fry, she wanted to analyze the world outside the self into its smallest sensible elements, then show human selvesasthey formed by accumulating the experience of these myriad, random, discontinuous components, and finally to recombine these components in their two kinds, selvesand sense-able things, into a meaningful whole-a work of art. Rejecting both the idealism of Bradley and the British philosophical generation of the 1890sand the naive positivist materialism coming out of the 1850s, Bertrand Russell eventually settled on an ontology most philosophers call "realist " in that it rejected the view that the world accessible to the senses was no more than a mental construct and considered it naive to assign the origin of subjectivity to matter. The material world was, Russell thought, actually external -"out there". He did think, however,that all we knew of the external world was what wassensed by the sensesand pictured by the mind. He alsoconcluded (in essayslike "The Relation of Sense-data to Physics"written in 1910-17)d1at both that world and what we knew of it was presented in very small parts, and Reviews 89 analyzable down to them, or, in other words, that both ontology and epistemology were atomized. Each mind, with its senses, occupied, he thought, one of an infinite number of occupied and unoccupied "perspectives", each of which Lmiquely focused che "sensibilia"-whatever was perceived in che external world-like a Leibnizian monad. Machemacicallogic, on which Russell set che highest store, would be able, he thought, to bring together perspectives by providing a minimal secof cruchswhich, though abscracc,were objective in che sense chaccheywere noc private and could be agreed to by all. Something similar though rougher mighc be done for chesensibilia in cheworld "ouc chere" by che science of physics. Did Virginia Woolflearn from Bertrand Russell?To a latcer-dayacademic ic sounds too urrerly improbable, for che simple reason (obvious to academics) chat anyone who has made icto the upper levelsof English literature must have chosen cheseparticular heights to scale because the trail was so blessedlyfreeof chosenasry mathematical burrs and logical reazles,and the air so filledwith che pure chatter of French phenomenologisrs, that no hiker would ever have to struggle with analytical philosophy again. Lessmetaphorically, the separation of departments of literature from those of philosophy has come so close to divorce chat few in U.S. English Departments can make head or cail of che graduate thesis that one of Russell's philosophy students wrote on F.H. Bradley, and fewer still can trace the term "objective correlative" used by thac student (who was in fact T. S. Eliot) back to an early work of Husserl. Meanwhile, ic is taken for granted by those in Philosophy that there are no ideas worth discussing in Woolf, or, indeed, in any other novelise,greacthough she may be, Lmlessone is to descend from ontology and epistemology to the foothills of ethics and politics, or worse, aesthetics. (Among... (shrink)

This contribution to the global history of ideas uses biographical profiles of 18th-century contemporaries to find what Salafist and Sufi Islam, Evangelical Protestant and Jansenist Catholic Christianity, and Hasidic Judaism have in common. Such figures include Muḥammad Ibn abd al-Waḥhab, Count Nikolaus Zinzendorf, Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Israel Ba’al Shem Tov. The book is a unique and comprehensive study of the conflicted relationship between the “evangelical” movements in all three Abrahamic religions and the ideas of the Enlightenment (...) and Counter-Enlightenment. Centered on the 18th century, the book reaches back to the third century for precedents and context, and forward to the 21st for the legacy of these movements. This text appeals to students and researchers in many fields, including Philosophy and Religion, their histories, and World History, while also appealing to the interested lay reader. (shrink)

The endowment of religious, charitable, and educational enterprises by the establishment of trusts in land, the income from which could be devoted to such uses, was an immensely popular form of pious expression in both medieval Christendom and the Islamic world. The motives for, and applications of such endowments differed markedly, however, between the two religious cultures. The endowment of prayers and masses for beneficiaries, living and dead, exemplified the sacramental and sacerdotal quality of pre-Reformation Christianity. This ritualistic and ecclesiastical (...) use of endowments in Latin Christian Europe and the Orthodox East, a use dependent on the existence of a sacramental system and an institutional church, contrasted sharply with the broader application of the Muslim waqf, by means of which pious individuals and groups sponsored a wide variety of charities, explicitly life-oriented and quite unconnected with a corporate clerical establishment. The infinite multiplication of private acts of charity by devout Muslims manifested the moralistic bent of Islam, which aspired to recast society according to the norms of the Qur'an and sacred law. The contrasting uses to which the two religious systems put the gifts and legacies of the faithful reflected the operation of fundamentally different religious premises, whereas the institutionalization of these premises in a shared legal fiction, the trust, assured their enforcement in society and life. (shrink)

In this volume Loader examines three substantial and historically important sets of documents the writings of Philo of Alexandria, the histories of Josephus, ...

The different ways in which the three medieval societies of Byzantium, Latin Christendom, and Islam institutionalized the charitable impulse present in their respective faiths reflected the fundamentally different religious values which motivated these civilizations as well as their different levels of material and intellectual development. All three societies exalted the relief of human suffering, especially the care of the sick, as a religiously sanctioned gesture; and all three invented or adopted institutional means for attaining this pious objective. The various medieval (...) counterparts of the modern “hospital”—the Byzantine nosocomeion or xenodocheion, the European hospitale, and the Islamic maristan—differed significantly, however, with respect to their organization and operation, the clientele which they served, and the ultimate intent of their charitable efforts. Accordingly, a comparison of these social welfare institutions reveals the contrasting ways in which the two Christendoms and Islam defined and applied the ideals of “piety” and “charity” during the middle ages. (shrink)

Paracelsus is an extraordinarily difficult author to interpret, in part because of the seemingly elusive boundary between literal and metaphorical levels of meaning in his work. The present paper argues for a literal reading of Paracelsus, based on comments that he makes in his late Philosophia de divinis operibus & factis & de secretis naturae. The article also includes a translated chapter from one of the treatises in that work, De lunaticis.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

William Uttal is concerned that in an effort to prove itself a hard science, psychology may have thrown away one of its most important methodological tools—a critical analysis of the fundamental assumptions that underlie day-to-day empirical research. In this book Uttal addresses the question of localization: whether psychological processes can be defined and isolated in a way that permits them to be associated with particular brain regions. New, noninvasive imaging technologies allow us to observe the brain while it is (...) actively engaged in mental activities. Uttal cautions, however, that the excitement of these new research tools can lead to a neuroreductionist wild goose chase. With more and more cognitive neuroscientific data forthcoming, it becomes critical to question their limitations as well as their potential. Uttal reviews the history of localization theory, presents the difficulties of defining cognitive processes, and examines the conceptual and technical difficulties that should make us cautious about falling victim to what may be a "neo-phrenological" fad. (shrink)

It no longer is true in a metaphorical sense only that a person can have a change of heart. We might grant this much — allow that a person may have one heart at one time and have another heart at still another time — and also resist the idea that a person can have a change of mind in anything other than a qualitative sense. In the discussion that follows, this standard view of the matter is called into question. (...) If the argument presented here is sound, it can happen both that one person has numerically different minds at different times and that different people have the same mind at different times. These possibilities, as I take them to be, call for reassessment of some well entrenched assumptions concerning personal identity and responsibility. In particular, they suggest that it may not be true that person A bears responsibility for making decisions person B previously made only on the condition that A is the same person as B. (shrink)

Sections include: experiments and generalised causal inference; statistical conclusion validity and internal validity; construct validity and external validity; quasi-experimental designs that either lack a control group or lack pretest observations on the outcome; quasi-experimental designs that use both control groups and pretests; quasi-experiments: interrupted time-series designs; regresssion discontinuity designs; randomised experiments: rationale, designs, and conditions conducive to doing them; practical problems 1: ethics, participation recruitment and random assignment; practical problems 2: treatment implementation and attrition; generalised causal inference: a grounded theory; (...) generalised causal inference: methods for single studies; generalised causal inference: methods for multiple studies; a critical assessment of our assumptions. (shrink)

During the past few decades a growing interest in what is often called the ‘Kyoto School’ of philosophy has evidenced itself here and there in the West, especially in discussions of comparative religious thought and in the pages of journals which are sensitive, in the post-colonial world, to the value of giving attention to contemporary thought that originates outside the Anglo-American and continental contexts. What has made the so-called Kyoto School especially interesting is the fact that those thinkers identified with (...) it obviously possess a wide acquaintance with Western thought but also have a programme of clarifying points at which they, as Japanese philosophers, find Western philosophy either in sum or in its parts inadequate or objectionable. Moreover, inasmuch as the philosophers of the Kyoto School have deliberately reached back into the Mahayana Buddhist component in Japanese civilization in order to find terms, perspectives, and even foundations for their own analyses and constructions, Western students of comparative religion and comparative thought have in the study of this school a unique aperture for observing how a group of thinkers, while sharing modernity and its problems with us, reates both of these to a religious tradition which is in many ways strikingly different from that of the West. (shrink)

Despite the fact that psychedelics were proscribed from medical research half a century ago, recent, early-phase trials on psychedelics have suggested that they bring novel benefits to patients in the treatment of several mental and substance use disorders. When beneficial, the psychedelic experience is characterized by features unlike those of other psychiatric and medical treatments. These include senses of losing self-importance, ineffable knowledge, feelings of unity and connection with others and encountering ‘deep’ reality or God. In addition to symptom relief, (...) psychedelic experiences often lead to significant changes in a patient’s personality and worldview. Focusing on the case of psilocybin, we argue that the peculiar features of psychedelics pose certain novel risks, which warrant an enhanced informed consent process–one that is more comprehensive than what may be typical for other psychiatric medications. We highlight key issues that should be focused on during the consent process and suggest discussion prompts for enhanced consent in psychedelic psychiatry. Finally, we respond to potential objections before concluding with a discussion of ethical considerations that will arise as psychedelics proceed from highly controlled research environments into mainstream clinical psychiatry. (shrink)

Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim (1493–1541), colloquially known as Paracelsus, emerges as a pivotal figure in the transition from medieval to early modern scientific paradigms. Within the realm...

Why would a country strongly influenced by Buddhism's reverence for life allow legalized, widely used abortion? Equally puzzling to many Westerners is the Japanese practice of mizuko rites, in which the parents of aborted fetuses pray for the well-being of these rejected "lives." In this provocative investigation, William LaFleur examines abortion as a window on the culture and ethics of Japan. At the same time he contributes to the Western debate on abortion, exploring how the Japanese resolve their conflicting (...) emotions privately and avoid the pro-life/pro-choice politics that sharply divide Americans on the issue. (shrink)

William R. Caspary makes the case for Dewey as a more discerning and challenging political theorist than this.

Debates about the ethics of health care and medical research in contemporary pluralistic democracies often arise partly from competing religious and secular values. Such disagreements raise challenges of balancing claims of religious liberty with claims to equal treatment in health care. This paper proposes several mid-level principles to help in framing sound policies for resolving such disputes. We develop and illustrate these principles, exploring their application to conscientious objection by religious providers and religious institutions, accommodation of religious priorities in biomedical (...) research, and treatment of patients’ religious views in doctor–patient encounters. Given that no sound set of guiding principles yields precise solutions for every policy dispute, we explore how morally sound democracies might deliberatively resolve such policy issues, following our proposed principles. Taken together and carefully interpreted, these principles may help in guiding difficult decision making in the indefinitely large realm where government, medical providers, and patients encounter problems concerning religion and medicine. (shrink)

This paper re-examines the idea of political vanguardism—long consigned to the dustbin of defunct scientific socialist ideology—to shed light on the theory of democratic representation. The discussion connects the use of the term “vanguard” by two prominent early socialist thinkers to what it terms the “cosmological” dimension of their writings. It shows how each author figured vanguard agency as fomenting different visions of the intellectual progress required for representative government, and that these visions were sustained by analogies to the origin (...) and development of astronomical objects. The “utopian” socialist Henri Saint-Simon (1770–1825) first invoked the vanguard metaphor to describe a way of thinking about scientific progress that would naturalize a new governing elite. The revolutionary communist Auguste Blanqui (1805–1881) then appropriated the vanguard idea to reimagine scientific authority in a way that would preserve and expand citizens’ capacities to hold their representatives accountable. The article pursues three goals. First, it provides a revisionist history of well-known scientistic attempts to stabilize mass democracy in the nineteenth century, revealing how claims to scientific authority were contested from within a socialist republican tradition usually seen as complicit in such agency-inhibiting ideologies. Second, the concept of vanguardism it reconstructs from this history, as a response to the “usurpation” of a vigilant attitude between citizens and office holders, offers new resources for theorizing democratic representation. Finally, it draws attention to the importance of cosmological rhetoric in the history of modern republican and socialist political thought. (shrink)

Addresses many issues including the nature of mind, matter, ideas, and substance; the debate between those who believe human beings have free will and those who subscribe to determinism; fatalism, realism, and personal identity; and ...

We investigate the role of personal values in an investment decision in a controlled experimental setting. Participants were asked to choose an investment in a bond issued by a tobacco company or a bond issued by a non-tobacco company that offered an equal or sometimes lower yield. We then surveyed the participants regarding their feelings toward tobacco use to determine whether these values influenced their investment decision. Using factor analysis, we identified investment- and tobacco-related dimensions on which participants’ responses tended (...) to load. Two of these factors, relating to the societal impact of investment decisions and the health effects of tobacco, were highly significant in determining whether participants selected a tobacco or non-tobacco related investment. More importantly, we found that when the rate of return on a tobacco-related investment exceeds the rate of return on an investment not involving tobacco by 1%, the intensity of participant concerns about the societal effects of their investment decisions was especially important in determining investment choices. This finding indicates that traditional wealth-maximization approaches, which do not consider the personal values of the investor, omit an important factor that affects investment decisions. (shrink)

The article investigates a system of polymorphically typed combinatory logic which is equivalent to Gödel’s T. A notion of (strong) reduction is defined over terms of this system and it is proved that the class of well-formed terms is closed under both bracket abstraction and reduction. The main new result is that the number of contractions needed to reduce a term to normal form is computed by an ε 0-recursive function. The ordinal assignments used to obtain this result are also (...) used to prove that the system under consideration is indeed equivalent to Gödel’s T. It is hoped that the methods used here can be extended so as to obtain similar results for stronger systems of polymorphically typed combinatory terms. An interesting corollary of such results is that they yield ordinally informative proofs of normalizability for sub-systems of second-order intuitionist logic, in natural deduction style. (shrink)