Beyond Weimar Culture – The Significance of the Forman Thesis for a Cultural Approach to the History of Science. The famous ‘Forman thesis’, published in 1971, argued for a historical linkage among the intellectual atmosphere of Weimar Germany, popular revolts against determinism and materialism, and the creation of the revolutionary new theory of quantum mechanics. Paul Forman's long essay on “Weimar Culture” has shaped research agendas in numerous fields, from the history and philosophy of physics to German history to the (...) sociology of scientific knowledge. Despite its status as a classic and its transformative effect, Weimar Culture has always inspired as much critique as assent. In particular in the history of science, cohorts of students and two generations of scholars have debated the Forman thesis as a conceptual tool for linking scientific change with cultural processes. The Forman thesis raises critical questions for both the ongoing debates over cultural approaches to the history of science and the burgeoning newer scholarship on physics in and beyond Weimar Germany. Exploring these implications has been the aim of a transnational project of the three authors of this article which sheds some light on these debates and briefly introduces the following papers of this special issue devoted to Paul Forman and his seminal works in the history of science. (shrink)

ArgumentObjectivity has been constitutive of the modern scientific persona. Its significance has depended on its excision of standpoint, which has legitimated the scientist epistemically and sociopolitically at once. But if the nineteenth century reinforced those paired effects, the twentieth century brought questioning of both. The figure of Werner Heisenberg puts the latter process on display. From the Kaiserreich to the Federal Republic of Germany, between quantum mechanics and interest group politics, his evolution shows an increasing openness to perspectival pluralism, together (...) with an attempt to save some form of objectivity as discursive coherence. Heisenberg’s self-understanding and the reactions of his publics display the transmutation of the persona as objectivity was rethought. By the end of the day, speaking “as a scientist” would mean something different from what it had at the start. (shrink)

The ArgumentTheorists of science and culture, seeking to explicate the implications of chaos theory, quantum mechanics, or special and general relativity, have drawn parallels to the constellation of intellectual and social phenomena collected in the concept of postmodernism. The notion thereby invoked of a postmodern physics is suggestive and worth exploring. But it remains ungrounded so long as the argument moves in the realm of parallels. Moreover, these discussions prove to be tacitly constrained by a preexisting genre of physicists' own (...) literary production, a genre whose argumentative structures have been taken over implicitly into the subsequent exchanges. Attending critically in this way to the intellectual interests of the discussants — asking who it is that wants to constitute a postmodern physics — should open up more productive ways of framing the debate. (shrink)

In modern continental thought, natural science is widely portrayed as an exclusively instrumental mode of reason. The breadth of this consensus has partly preempted the question of how it came to persuade. The process of persuasion, as it played out in Germany, can be explored by reconstructing the intellectual exchanges among three twentieth-century theorists of science, Heidegger, Habermas, and Werner Heisenberg. Taking an iconic Heisenberg as a kind of limiting case of “the scientist,” Heidegger and Habermas each found themselves driven (...) to place new constraints on their previously more capacious assessments of science, especially its capacity to reflect on its method. Tracing how that happened, through archival and historical contextualization and close readings of their texts, lets us make visible Heidegger and Habermas’s intellectual affinities and argumentative parallels, which derived not only from their shared grounding in earlier reactions against positivism, but also from confrontation with contemporary events. The latter included, for Heidegger, the rise of a technically powerful science exemplified by nuclear physics, and for Habermas, post-World War II controversies over science, technology, and their socially critical possibilities. (shrink)

The Deutscher Forschungsrat (GermanResearch Council) attempted to anchor scienceadvising and science policy in West Germanyafter the Second World War. Promoted by acircle of élite scientists, the councilaimed to establish institutions and mechanismscomparable to those in Great Britain, theUnited States, and other scientific powers.After a two-and-a-half year existence, iteventually failed. The reasons for its failure,some local, some global, display thedifficulties facing research policy in theearly years of the Federal Republic.

In discussions of animal ethics, hypothetical scenarios are often used to try to force the clarification of intuitions about the relative value of human and animal life. Tom Regan requests, for example, that we imagine a man and a dog adrift in a lifeboat while Peter Singer explains why the life of one's child ought to be preferred to that of the family dog in the event of a house fire. I argue that such scenarios are not the usefully abstract (...) analytic tools they purport to be, but indirectly reinforce assumptions that are not only anthropocentric, but also tied to racist, sexist and ethnocentric stereotypes. An analysis of some of the cultural and ethical associations of the notion of self-sacrifice proves especially useful in revealing some of the limitations of certain popular Western approaches to animal ethics. (shrink)

A judgement analysis of people's social inferences of attitudes and ability was conducted. University students were asked to infer the liberalness ( N = 60; Study 1) or intelligence ( N = 40; Study 2) of targets seen in pictures. Multiple regression analyses revealed that attractiveness was the most important cue for predicting inferences of liberalness, while an ethnic cue (i.e., being Asian) was the most important cue for judgements about intelligence. Results also showed that a single-cue model was less (...) susceptible to overfitting, but significantly less accurate than a multiple-cue model in predicting participant's intelligence judgements. Although the multiple regression models suffered a degree of overfitting, cross validation showed that they continued to have significant predictive value when applied to new data. Furthermore, a “random partner” method (comparing each participant's own regression equation with that of another, randomly selected, participant) provided evidence of significant idiosyncratic variation in the way intelligence judgements were made. (shrink)

Light has often been privileged as a metaphor for objectivity and truth in Western thought, a status that has been challenged by recent feminist thought as giving entitlement to the masculine. This book presents a compelling new perspective on this metaphor, and explores the role the visual plays in Western philosophy by examining the thought of Irigaray, Levinas and Merleau- Ponty. Textures of Light is one of the first studies to challenge current interpretations by presenting Irigaray as a philosopher of (...) vision rather than touch. (shrink)

This review explores the hypothesis that regulation of nucleocytoplasmic shuttling is a means of driving differentiation, using spermatogenesis as a model. The transition from undifferentiated spermatogonial stem cell to terminally differentiated spermatozoon is, at its most basic, a change in the repertoire of expressed genes. To effect this, the complement of nuclear proteins, such as transcription factors and chromatin remodelling components must change. Current knowledge of the nuclear proteins and nucleocytoplasmic transport machinery relevant to spermatogenesis is consolidated in this review, (...) and their functional linkages are highlighted not only as a means of regulating nuclear protein composition, but also as a key mechanism regulating gene transcription and hence cell fate. Through this, we hypothesize that male germ cell differentiation is mediated through regulation of nuclear transport machinery components, and thereby of the access of critical factors to the nucleus. The importance of nucleocytoplasmic trafficking to male germ cell differentiation is discussed, using the sex-determining factors Sry and SOX9, cell cycle regulators, CREM and cofactors and the Smads as specific examples, together with the roles in gametogenesis for particular nuclear transport factors in Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila. BioEssays 27:1011–1025, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Thomas Carson offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date investigation of moral and conceptual questions about lying and deception. Part I addresses conceptual questions and offers definitions of lying, deception, and related concepts such as withholding information, "keeping someone in the dark," and "half truths." Part II deals with questions in ethical theory. Carson argues that standard debates about lying and deception between act-utilitarians and their critics are inconclusive because they rest on appeals to disputed moral intuitions. He defends (...) a version of the golden rule and a theory of moral reasoning. His theory implies that there is a moral presumption against lying and deception that causes harm — a presumption at least as strong as that endorsed by act-utilitarianism. He uses this theory to justify his claims about the issues he addresses in Part III: deception and withholding information in sales, deception in advertising, bluffing in negotiations, the duties of professionals to inform clients, lying and deception by leaders as a pretext for fighting wars, and lying and deception about history, and cases of distorting the historical record by telling half-truths. The book concludes with a qualified defence of the view that honesty is a virtue.Readership: Scholars and advanced students of philosophy, as well as historians and students of history. (shrink)

How should we distinguish between ethical and unethical ways of pursuing profit in a market? The market failures approach (MFA) to business ethics purports to provide an answer to this question. I argue that it fails to do so. The source of this failure is the MFA’s reliance on Pareto efficiency as a core ethical principle. Many ethically “preferred” tactics for seeking profit cannot be justified by appeal to Pareto efficiency. One important reason for this is that Pareto efficiency, as (...) understood by the theory of welfare economics upon which the MFA relies, assumes a static conception of efficiency. This is a problem because many ethically “preferred” tactics can only be justified by appeal to dynamic efficiency considerations. I argue that, instead of Pareto efficiency, we should look to the value of wealth creation to understand the ethical constraints on how market actors may pursue profit. (shrink)

Contemporary moral philosophers have produced an enormous amount of rich and varied published work on virtually all the issues falling within the scope of ethics and moral philosophy. Morality and the Good Life is a comprehensive survey of contemporary ethical theory that collects thirty-four selections on morality and the theory of value. Emphasizing value theory, metaethics, and normative ethics, it is non-technical and accessible to a wide range of readers. Selections are organized under six main topics: Concepts of Goodness What (...) Things are Good? Virtues and Ethics Realism vs. Anti-Realism Value and Obligation The Value and Meaning of Life The text includes both a substantial general introduction featuring explanatory summaries of all the selections and an extensive topical bibliography, which enhance the volume's research and pedagogical utility. The most up-to-date and wide-ranging survey of its kind, Morality and the Good Life is ideal for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in contemporary ethical theory, moral philosophy, and theory of value. (shrink)

I am proposing that when engaging with the narrative of another, there needs to be a conscious consideration, an essential articulation of enquiry; a pause.

In this paper I argue that a newborn child and the Mother, defined as any person who takes up the role of other,1 reflect the ontological connectedness of God and humankind. The relationship between the infant and other is experienced by the child as if the two are one, and in this, life is first experienced by the infant as being ‘not alone’. The human interactions that we experience, or do not in early infancy, have such a profound psychological effect (...) on us that we continue to be impacted by them for our whole lives and to this end I assert that the experience of at-one-ness I will write about, fundamentally establishes the experience of the infant in the context of God, self and the other. (shrink)

Many business ethicists assume that if a type of conduct is illegal, then it is also unethical. This article scrutinizes that assumption, using the rideshare company Uber’s illegal operation in the city of Philadelphia as a case study. I argue that Uber’s unlawful conduct was permissible. I also argue that this position is not an extreme one: it is consistent with a variety of theoretical commitments in the analytic philosophical tradition regarding political obligation. I conclude by showing why business ethicists (...) would have a better rejoinder to the “dominant view” of business ethics associated with Milton Friedman if they dispensed with the assumption that illegal implies unethical. (shrink)

Interpreters are less univocal than one might think in assessing Søren Kierkegaard's attitude toward eudaimonism. Through an analysis of several key texts from across Kierkegaard's authorship, I argue that existing interpretations do not convincingly address the relationship between Kierkegaard's critique of eudaimonism and his mid-nineteenth-century context, which was dominated by post-Kantian idealists. While I am sympathetic to aspects of deontological and aretaic interpretations, a contextual reading shows that his critique centers on what he diagnoses as the enclosure of the modern (...) self. This puts his critique of eudaimonism in the purview of his moral psychology and in continuity with his critique of romanticism. (shrink)

Buying local is a prominent form of ethical consumption. We commonly assume that products that are local are in some respect ethically superior to ones that are not. This article contributes to research on local food by scrutinizing this assumption in light of some central values of the locavore movement. It identifies four central ethical causes from prior literature on locavorism: protecting the environment, promoting community, promoting small business, and contributing to the prosperity of one’s local economy. It then analyzes (...) whether the contribution of buying local to these causes can justify the general perception that buying local is a good way to be an ethical consumer. Its main finding is that these justifications fail to provide a strong positive ethical reason for consumers in general to adopt the practice of buying local. (shrink)

This paper examines the use of case studies in ethics education. While not dismissing their value for specific purposes, the paper shows the limits of their use. While agreeing that case studies are narratives, although rather thin stories, the paper argues that the claim that case studies could represent reality is difficult to sustain. Instead, the paper suggests a way of using stories in ethics teaching that could be more real for students, while also giving them a way of thinking (...) about their own professional practices. The paper shows how the method can be used to develop a more critical and reflective practice for students in the health care professions. Some immediate problems with the method are discussed. (shrink)