This book reports recent landmark developments and the state of the art in NDS science in psychological theory and research.

Pragmatism is America's best-known native philosophy. It espouses a practical set of beliefs and principles that focus on the improvement of our lives. Yet the split between classical and contemporary pragmatists has divided the tradition against itself. Classical pragmatists, such as John Dewey and William James, believed we should heed the lessons of experience. Neopragmatists, including Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, and Jürgen Habermas, argue instead from the perspective of a linguistic turn, which makes little use of the idea of experience. (...) Can these two camps be reconciled in a way that revitalizes a critical tradition? -/- Colin Koopman proposes a recovery of pragmatism by way of "transitionalist" themes of temporality and historicity which flourish in the work of the early pragmatists and continue in contemporary neopragmatist thought. "Life is in the transitions," James once wrote, and, in following this assertion, Koopman reveals the continuities uniting both phases of pragmatism. Koopman's framework also draws from other contemporary theorists, including Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Bernard Williams, and Stanley Cavell. By reflecting these voices through the prism of transitionalism, a new understanding of knowledge, ethics, politics, and critique takes root. Koopman concludes with a call for integrating Dewey and Foucault into a model of inquiry he calls genealogical pragmatism, a mutually informative critique that further joins the analytic and continental schools. (shrink)

This article offers an institutional explanation for the conflicting trends in income inequality both across the Eurozone and within its member states. It argues that the euro’s introduction created different economic policy incentives for peripheral and core members. First, the euro’s design was a political choice skewed toward deflationary adjustment policies in hard times, leading to falling incomes and employment in the periphery. Second, the institutional incentives of the Eurozone are the opposite for export-driven coordinated market economies and demand-led mixed (...) market economies during booms and downturns, respectively. During the euro crisis, the Eurozone’s Northern countries gained at the expense of the Southern ones, while at the same time seeing lower domestic inequality compared to increased inequality in the periphery. This diverging pattern of European inequality was exacerbated by EU economic policy drift, the lack of any real national democratic choice in the periphery, and the growing importance of organized financial interests in Brussels. (shrink)

ABSTRACTResearch Objective: This study focuses on ADs in the Netherlands and introduces a cross‐cultural perspective by comparing it with other countries.Methods: A questionnaire was sent to a panel comprising 1621 people representative of the Dutch population. The response was 86%.Results: 95% of the respondents didn't have an AD, and 24% of these were not familiar with the idea of drawing up an AD. Most of those familiar with ADs knew about the Advanced Euthanasia Directive . Both low education and the (...) presence of a religious conviction that plays an important role in one's life increase the chance of not wanting to draw up an AD. Also not having experienced a request for euthanasia from someone else, and the inconceivability of asking for euthanasia yourself, increase the chance of not wanting to draw up an AD.Discussion: This study shows that the subjects of palliative care and end‐of‐life‐decision‐making were very much dominated by the issue of euthanasia in the Netherlands. The AED was the best known AD; and factors that can be linked to euthanasia play an important role in whether or not people choose to draw up an AD. This differentiates the Netherlands from other countries and, when it comes to ADs, the global differences between countries and cultures are still so large that the highest possible goals, at this moment in time, are observing and possibly learning from other cultural settings. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Europe’s Crisis of Legitimacy: Governing by Rules and Ruling by Numbers in the Eurozone, Vivien Schmidt authoritatively charts how the European Union weathered the crisis of its single currency in the 2010s, gradually moving from fiscal austerity and structural reform to a more systemic solution and flexible interpretation of the euro’s governing rules. Using a discursive institutionalist approach in combination with a “systems theory” understanding of democratic decision making, Schmidt persuasively argues that we need to look at the (...) euro problem as a fundamentally political problem that lacked democratic legitimacy as long as technocrats were in charge of policy solutions. Schmidt argues that the euro crisis needs to be broached from the point of view of the E.U.’s split-level legitimacy as well as the growing politicization of E.U. governance in an era of increasing populism and rising Euroskepticism. Schmidt’s application of discursive institutionalism allows readers to judge for themselves whose and which ideas mattered, why and in what way they were implemented, and how they gradually evolved over time. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.1 (2004) 60-63 [Access article in PDF] Response to Bennett Reimer, "Once More with Feeling: Reconciling Discrepant Accounts of Musical Affect" Constantijn Koopman University of Nijmegen and Royal Conservatory of the Hague, The Netherlands Bennett Reimer has pointed out the crucial distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic meaning or, in his terminology, between inherent and delineated meaning. He has eloquently described how feeling in music (...) can be both of the inherent type and of the delineated type and has argued that both types of meaning can coexist. There is no point in denying the validity of either of them; rather the challenge is to develop a view which allows us to combine both perspectives of musical meaning into a unified musical practice.As far as I am concerned, Reimer has succeeded in his reconciliatory approach. Therefore, rather than providing criticism, I would like further to elaborate on the subject. First, I shall examine the difference between the two types of meaning Reimer has illustrated in his examples: feeling as a part of inherent meaning and feeling as portrayed or represented. Then, I shall briefly discuss the problem of articulating these two types of meaning and its educational implications.When reflecting on inherent and delineated meaning, I find that the dichotomy [End Page 60] goes beyond the opposition between intrinsic and extrinsic. We are also dealing with different versions of the concept of meaning; different meanings of 'meaning' so to speak. In the case of feelings, actions, or objects portrayed in music we have a rather unproblematic use of the meaning concept-meaning as reference. Music functions as a meaning bearer that directs our attention to something beyond itself. Musical structure is used to represent something that exists independently of music. With Charles S. Peirce, we might say that it serves the function of an "icon." The iconic sign has a form which is similar to the thing it denotes.1 Similarity may have the form of direct resemblance but it may also may be based on analogy. I guess that both kinds of portrayal were present in the Chinese swamp battle piece. Battle sounds can easily be imitated by musical instruments and violent movement and feelings can be represented by analogous tonal movement.With inherent meaning, things are different. Feelings are not pointed to and represented by musical structure; instead they are experienced by the person who engages in music. This is in line, I suppose, with Reimer's exposition; not only does he say that feeling is contained and expressed in sounds but also that feeling is undergone by the performer and the listener. What precisely is the place of inherent feeling in music? Feelings are not contained in the sense that they require an act of decoding so that by interpreting the musical structure we can decipher its affective contents. Nor is it appropriate simply to declare that musical feelings are caused by musical perception. Such an explanation suggests that feelings are a secondary phenomenon in music, a sort of byproduct of musical cognition; first the music is conceived in a cognitive act, then feelings are released. But in fact feeling is much more directly and actively involved in musical experience; it is vital to the constitution of the musical object. For example, to appreciate the specific character and import of themes and motifs we have to sense their affective value. We realize the power of rhythms by feeling them in our body. Chords and chord progressions are perceived as subtle qualities of tension and release. Only by feeling the curve of tension and release can we appreciate how the work progresses-whether the music is moving forward or coming to closure, whether a climax is prepared or there is consolidation, whether a case of closure is partial or final. Likewise, the perception of contrasting musical episodes-like soft versus rough, supple versus stubborn, warm versus frigid-involves the participation of feeling. In short, the function of feeling contributes a major part to the constitution of the musical... (shrink)

Onze relatie met het landschap is eigenlijk heel onduidelijk. Er zijn veel vragen daarover, zoals: waarom voelen we ons in sommige landschappen thuis en in andere niet? Of waarom scheiden we natuur en cultuur? En: hoe is de relatie tussen mens en natuur in niet-westerse culturen? Wat heeft muziek met natuur te maken? Waarom zijn ongewervelde dieren zo opwindend? Hoe kunnen we een echt partnerschap met natuur vormgeven?0Ecoloog en filosoof Matthijs Schouten behandelt dit soort vragen in de beschouwingen in (...) dit boek en gaat diep in op onze complexe en ambivalente relatie met natuur en landschap. (shrink)

Contributed articles presented at a conference.

Richard Rorty's pragmatism is a distinctively doubled philosophy formed at the twain of a rigorous antifoun‐dational philosophical perspective and a committed postmetaphysical cultural criticism. Rorty instead rigorously held to the line that no particular politics follows from anti‐foundational philosophy. Rorty's arguments against representationalism, foundationalism, and metaphysics‐first philosophy in Mirror are complex and not always easy to navigate without careful guidance. The risk of the approach in Mirror is that it could implicate Rorty in a foundationalist critique of foundationalism, or a (...) metaphysical critique of metaphysics. For ironism is the studied denial not of metaphysics itself, but only of strong forms of pro‐metaphysical argument. Rorty uses liberalism to avoid the metaphysical forbidding of metaphysics – substituting for it instead a liberal, perhaps even a critical, limiting of metaphysics. The most important insight of Contingency boils down to this: liberalism and ironism together give us something to strive for that the metaphysician would otherwise take as settled. (shrink)

Cognitive scientists have long used distributional semantic representations of categories. The predominant approach uses distributional representations of category‐denoting nouns, such as “city” for the category city. We propose a novel scheme that represents categories as prototypes over representations of names of its members, such as “Barcelona,” “Mumbai,” and “Wuhan” for the category city. This name‐based representation empirically outperforms the noun‐based representation on two experiments (modeling human judgments of category relatedness and predicting category membership) with particular improvements for ambiguous nouns. We (...) discuss the model complexity of both classes of models and argue that the name‐based model has superior explanatory potential with regard to concept acquisition. (shrink)

This paper proposes and showcases a methodology to develop an observational behavior assessment instrument to assess psychological competencies of police officers. We outline a step-by-step methodology for police organizations to measure and evaluate behavior in a meaningful way to assess these competencies. We illustrate the proposed methodology with a practical example. We posit that direct behavioral observation can be key in measuring the expression of psychological competence in practice, and that psychological competence in practice is what police organizations should care (...) about. We hope this paper offers police organizations a methodology to perform scientifically informed observational behavior assessment of their police officers’ psychological competencies and inspires additional research efforts into this important area. (shrink)

To commemorate 40 years since the founding of the Journal of Business Ethics, the editors-in-chief of the journal have invited the editors to provide commentaries on the future of business ethics. This essay comprises a selection of commentaries aimed at creating dialog around the theme Bringing Excitement to Empirical Business Ethics Research (inspired by the title of the commentary by Babalola and van Gils). These editors, considering the diversity of empirical approaches in business ethics, envisage a future in which quantitative (...) business ethics research is more bold and innovative, as well as reflexive about its techniques, and dialog between quantitative and qualitative research nourishes the enrichment of both. In their commentary, Babalola and van Gils argue that leadership research has stagnated with the use of too narrow a range of perspectives and methods and too many overlapping concepts. They propose that novel insights could be achieved by investigating the lived experience of leadership (through interviews, document analysis, archival data); by focusing on topics of concern to society; by employing different personal, philosophical, or cultural perspectives; and by turning the lens on the heroic leader (through “dark-side” and follower studies). Taking a provocative stance, Bal and Garcia-Lorenzo argue that we need radical voices in current times to enable a better understanding of the psychology underlying ethical transformations. Psychology can support business ethics by not shying away from grander ideas, going beyond the margins of “unethical behaviors harming the organization” and expanding the range of lenses used to studying behavior in context. In the arena of finance and business ethics, Guedhami, Liang, and Shailer emphasize novel data sets and innovative methods. Significantly, they stress that an understanding the intersection of finance and ethics is central to business ethics; financial equality and inclusion are persistent socio-economic and political concerns that are not always framed as ethics issues, yet relevant business policies and practices manifest ethical values. Finally, Charles Cho offers his opinion on the blurry line between the “ethical” versus “social” or “critical” aspects of accounting papers. The Journal of Business Ethics provides fertile ground for innovative, even radical, approaches to quantitative methods (see Zyphur and Pierides in J Bus Ethics 143(1):1–16, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-017-3549-8, 2017), as part of a broad goal of ethically reflecting on empirical research. (shrink)

Over the course of the twentieth century, hydraulic engineering has come to rely primarily on the use of computational models. Disco and van den Ende hint towards the reasons for widespread adoption of computational models by pointing out that such models fulfill a crucial role as management tools in Dutch water management, and meet a more general desire to quantify water-related phenomena. The successful application of computational models implies blackboxing : “[w]hen a machine runs efficiently … one need focus only (...) on its inputs and outputs and not on its internal complexity. Thus, paradoxically, the more science and technology succeed, the more opaque and obscure they become”.. (shrink)

This paper investigates the ascription of a passage in Isidore’s Differentiae to the jurist Modestinus. A collection of philological notes by the humanist scholar Barthius reports the existence of a (now lost) manuscript that credited lemma 1.434 Codoñer to one Orenius, which has ever since usually been emended into Herennius (sc. Modestinus). It is possible to place this witness in the stemma of the Differentiae. Careful study of Barthius’ reported readings from the manuscript not only indicates that it was peripheral (...) to the tradition, but it also allows us to point out the (skilful) hand of an editor/interpolator, who may have been responsible for the addition of the name Orenius. (shrink)

Translation abstractSummary: Risks in the Making: The Mediating Role of Models in Water Management and Civil Engineering in the Netherlands. Reliance on models can make technological cultures susceptible to risks through the assumptions, uncertainties, and blind spots that may accompany modeling practices. Historian of science Peter Galison has described computer modeling practices as “trading zones”, conceptual spaces in which a shared language is hammered out in an attempt to facilitate collaboration between different social groups, such as engineers and policymakers. Although (...) such a shared language may enable collaboration between diverse groups, it may also make the relation between modeling practices and knowledge of risks less visible, since the shared language does not necessarily acknowledge how models produce knowledge about their world. In that respect, models have a ‘mediating’ role, since they are not straightforward representations of the world, but involve a process of translating phenomena into formalized representations that enable experimentation. Drawing on insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and empirical work in the domains of hydrology, hydrodynamics, geotechnical engineering, and ecology, this paper emphasizes the importance of understanding the mediating role of models in shaping the understanding that various actors hold with regard to water‐related risks. Failing to appreciate the mediating role of models hampers the ability of actors to understand the assumptions, uncertainties, and blind spots that accompany simulation practices, and may put technological cultures at risk. (shrink)

The purpose of this research is to empirically test the salmon bias hypothesis, which states that the “healthy migrant” effect—referring to a situation in which migrants enjoy lower mortality risks than natives—is caused by selective return-migration of the weak, sick, and elderly. Using a unique longitudinal micro-level database—the Historical Sample of the Netherlands—we tracked the life courses of internal migrants after they had left the city of Rotterdam, which allowed us to compare mortality risks of stayers, returnees, and movers using (...) survival analysis for the study group as a whole, and also for men and women separately. Although migrants who stayed in the receiving society had significantly higher mortality risks than natives, no significant difference was found for migrants who returned to their municipality of birth. By contrast, migrants who left for another destination had much lower mortality risks than natives. Natives who left Rotterdam also had significantly lower mortality risks than natives who stayed in Rotterdam. Female migrants, in particular, who stayed in the receiving urban society paid a long-term health price. In the case of Rotterdam, the salmon bias hypothesis can be rejected because the lower mortality effect among migrants was not caused by selective return-migration. The healthy migrant effect is real and due to a positive selection effect: Healthier people are more likely to migrate. (shrink)

Viewing Foucault in the light of work by Continental and American philosophers, most notably Nietzsche, Habermas, Deleuze, Richard Rorty, Bernard Williams, and Ian Hacking, Genealogy as Critique shows that philosophical genealogy involves not only the critique of modernity but also its transformation. Colin Koopman engages genealogy as a philosophical tradition and a method for understanding the complex histories of our present social and cultural conditions. He explains how our understanding of Foucault can benefit from productive dialogue with philosophical allies to (...) push Foucaultian genealogy a step further and elaborate a means of addressing our most intractable contemporary problems. (shrink)

Although living conditions have improved throughout history, protest, at least in the last few decades, seems to have increased to the point of becoming a normal phenomenon in modern societies. Contributors to this volume examine how and why this is the case and argue that although problems such as poverty, hunger, and violations of democratic rights may have been reduced in advanced Western societies, a variety of other problems and opportunities have emerged and multiplied the reasons and possibilities for protest.

We are now acutely aware, as if all of the sudden, that data matters enormously to how we live. How did information come to be so integral to what we can do? How did we become people who effortlessly present our lives in social media profiles and who are meticulously recorded in state surveillance dossiers and online marketing databases? What is the story behind data coming to matter so much to who we are? -/- In How We Became Our Data, (...) Colin Koopman excavates early moments of our rapidly accelerating data-tracking technologies and their consequences for how we think of and express our selfhood today. Koopman explores the emergence of mass-scale record keeping systems like birth certificates and social security numbers, as well as new data techniques for categorizing personality traits, measuring intelligence, and even racializing subjects. This all culminates in what Koopman calls the “informational person” and the “informational power” we are now subject to. The recent explosion of digital technologies that are turning us into a series of algorithmic data points is shown to have a deeper and more turbulent past than we commonly think. Blending philosophy, history, political theory, and media theory in conversation with thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas, and Friedrich Kittler, Koopman presents an illuminating perspective on how we have come to think of our personhood—and how we can resist its erosion. (shrink)

Collective action, or the large-scale cooperation in the pursuit of public goods, has been suggested to have evolved through cultural group selection. Previous research suggests that the costly punishment of group members who do not contribute to public goods plays an important role in the resolution of collective action dilemmas. If large-scale cooperation sustained by the punishment of defectors has evolved through the mechanism of cultural group selection, two implications regarding costly punishment follow: (1) that people are more willing to (...) punish defecting group members in a situation of intergroup competition than in a single-group social dilemma game and (2) that levels of “perverse” punishment of cooperators are not affected by intergroup competition. We find confirmation for these hypotheses. However, we find that the effect of intergroup competition on the punishment of defectors is fully explained by the stronger conditionality of punishment on expected punishment levels in the competition condition. (shrink)

Despite the wealth of research showing that psychological contract breach (PCB) has negative outcomes for individuals, knowledge about the influence of the social context in which breaches are experienced is still scarce. This is surprising, as scholars have argued that work climates, such as when unit members are generally highly committed, could buffer an individual’s negative experiences at work. Yet, to date, the unit climate and PCB literatures have largely remained separated and our main goal is to integrate these fields. (...) This is especially timely and relevant, because recent work in the unit climate literature indicates that merely looking at the average climate level might not be enough, because the climate’s strength (i.e., the agreement or homogeneity within the unit) could also provide important social cues. Building on these recent advances, we develop and test a theoretical framework which links both climate concepts to PCB. More specifically, we hypothesized that especially when all unit members are highly and homogeneously committed, an employee would reframe their PCB in such a way that it would less adversely affect work engagement and turnover intentions. Using data from 1,272 employees across 36 healthcare units, multilevel structural path analyses supported this three-way interaction. By answering recent calls for more ‘social PCB research’ and integrating the unit climate and PCB literatures, we aim to provide guidance to scholars and practitioners who want to understand in more depth the social context’s influence on PCB. (shrink)

Throughout the text, the reader is reminded of the contribution of the Christian faith to matters of development and ethics.

The design of democratic institutions includes a variety of barriers to protect against the tyranny of the majority, including international human rights, cultural minority rights, and multiculturalism. In the twenty-first century, majorities have re-asserted themselves, sometimes reasonably, referring to social cohesion and national identity, at other times in the form of populist movements challenging core foundations of liberal democracy. This volume intervenes in this debate by examining the legitimacy of conflicting majority and minority claims. Are majorities a legal concept, holding (...) rights and subject to limitations? How can we define a sense of nationhood that brings groups together rather than tears them apart? In this volume, world-leading experts are brought together for the first time to debate the rights of both majorities and minorities. The outcome is a fascinating exchange on one of the greatest challenges facing liberal democracies today. (shrink)

ABSTRACTOn September 4, 2015, the Political Epistemology/ideas, Knowledge, and Politics section of the American Political Science Association sponsored a roundtable on ideational turns in the four subdisciplines of political science as part of its annual meetings. Chairing the roundtable was Jeffrey Friedman, Department of Government, University of Texas, Austin. The other participants were Jeffrey Checkel, Department of Political Science, Simon Fraser University; Matthias Matthijs, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; and Rogers Smith, Department of Political Science, University (...) of Pennsylvania. We thank the participants for permission to republish their remarks, which they were offered the opportunity to edit after the fact. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to formalize long-term trajectories of human civilization as a scientific and ethical field of study. The long-term trajectory of human civilization can be defined as the path that human civilization takes during the entire future time period in which human civilization could continue to exist. -/- Design/methodology/approach This paper focuses on four types of trajectories: status quo trajectories, in which human civilization persists in a state broadly similar to its current state into the distant future; catastrophe (...) trajectories, in which one or more events cause significant harm to human civilization; technological transformation trajectories, in which radical technological breakthroughs put human civilization on a fundamentally different course; and astronomical trajectories, in which human civilization expands beyond its home planet and into the accessible portions of the cosmos. -/- Findings Status quo trajectories appear unlikely to persist into the distant future, especially in light of long-term astronomical processes. Several catastrophe, technological transformation and astronomical trajectories appear possible. -/- Originality/value Some current actions may be able to affect the long-term trajectory. Whether these actions should be pursued depends on a mix of empirical and ethical factors. For some ethical frameworks, these actions may be especially important to pursue. (shrink)

Despite widespread recognition of an emergent politics of data in our midst, we strikingly lack a political theory of data. We readily acknowledge the presence of data across our political lives, but we often do not know how to conceptualize the politics of all those data points—the forms of power they constitute and the kinds of political subjects they implicate. Recent work in numerous academic disciplines is evidence of the first steps toward a political theory of data. This article maps (...) some limits of this emergent literature with an eye to enriching its theoretical range. The literature on data politics, both within political theory and elsewhere, has thus far focused almost exclusively on the algorithm. This article locates a further dimension of data politics in the work of formatting technology or, more simply, formats. Formats are simultaneously conceptual and technical in the ways they define what can even count as data, and by extension who can count as data and how they can count. A focus on formats is of theoretical value because it provides a bridge between work on the conceptual contours of categories and the technology-centric literature on algorithms that tends to ignore the more conceptual dimensions of data technology. The political insight enabled by format theory is shown in the context of an extended interrogation of the politics of racialized redlining. (shrink)

The forceful impact of Michel Foucault’s work in the humanities and social sciences is apparent from the sheer abundance of its uses, appropriations, and refigurations. This article calls for greater self-conscious reflexivity about the relationship between our uses of Foucault and the opportunities afforded by his work. We argue for a clearer distinction between analytics and concepts in Foucault-inspired work. In so doing we draw on key moments of methodological self-reflection in Foucault’s Collège de France lectures and elsewhere. This distinction (...) helps identify different ways that Foucault might be put to productive use today as well as what can go wrong therein, a concern we develop with reference to Giorgio Agamben’s post-Foucaultian contributions to political theory. We are eager to open up a possibility that has been infrequently explored despite Foucault’s contemporary influence—-the idea that critique in and through Foucault is empirical critique. This idea can help facilitate a gain in reflexivity in the broader landscapes of contemporary theory, inquiry, and critique. (shrink)

The linguistic turn is a central aspect of Richard Rorty’s philosophy, informing his early critiques of foundationalism in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and subsequent critiques of authoritarianism in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. It is argued that we should interpret the linguistic turn as a methodological suggestion for how philosophy can take a non-foundational perspective on normativity. It is then argued that although Rorty did not succeed in explicating normativity without foundations (or authority without authoritarianism), we should take seriously (...) the ambition motivating his project. But taking that ambition seriously may require reconsidering the linguistic turn. (shrink)

This article compares three models for conceptualizing the political and ethical challenges of contemporary genetics, genomics, and postgenomics. The three analytical approaches are referred to as the state-politics model, the biopolitical model, and the infopolitical model. Each of these models is valuable for different purposes. But comparing these models in terms of their influence in contemporary discussions, the first is by far the dominant approach, the second is gaining in importance, and the third is almost entirely neglected. The widespread neglect (...) of the infopolitical dimensions of genetic sciences focused by the third model is puzzling in light of the fact that genetics, genomics, and postgenomics are all pre-eminent information sciences. The infopolitical model thus aims to bring into clearer view the specific political and ethical problems engendered by this informational nature of the genetic sciences. This model offers a way of understanding how ethically-salient and politically-fraught conceptual assumptions can be embedded in informational architectures such as algorithms and the formats (or data structures) upon which they rely. (shrink)

Matthijs van Boxsel believes that no one is intelligent enough to understand their own stupidity. In The Encyclopædia of Stupidity he shows how stupidity manifests itself in all areas, in everyone, at all times, proposing that stupidity is the foundation of our civilization. In short sections with such titles as ‘The Blunderers’ Club’, ‘Fools in Hell’, ‘Genealogy of Idiots’, and ‘The Aesthetics of the Empty Gesture’, stupidity is analysed on the basis of fairy tales, cartoons, triumphal arches, garden architecture, (...) Baroque ceilings, jokes, flimsy excuses and science fiction. But Van Boxsel wants to do more than just assemble a ‘shadow cabinet’ of wisdom; he tries to fathom the logic of this opposite world. Where do understanding and intelligence begin and end? He examines mythic fools such as Cyclops and King Midas, cities such as Gotham, archetypes including the dumb blonde, and traditionally stupid animals such as the goose, the donkey and the headless chicken. Van Boxsel posits that stupidity is a condition for intelligence, that blunders stimulate progress, that failure is the basis for success. In this erudite and witty book he maintains that our culture is the product of a series of failed attempts to comprehend stupidity. (shrink)