Every living science, especially in its early stages, is compelled to devise fresh terms, either by coining new words or by giving new meanings to old ones. Unless and until these fresh terms become absorbed in the vocabulary of everyday speech, their unfamiliarity makes them a target for the shafts of the humourist. There can be no doubt that in the late fifth century B.C. literary criticism was still a new science. We can trace its beginnings in the treatises of (...) the Sophists, many titles of which have been handed down to us. Strepsiades' lesson in metric, though of itself amusing enough, would certainly gain in topical appropriateness if enacted at a time when such investigations were not only much in the air, but were still novel. And the whole ‘Agon’ of the Frogs, the character of which is forecasted in lines 796–802, depicts in the strongest colours the contrasted views of technician and inspirationist. We should therefore naturally expect a play of such a kind, written at such a time, to be full of technical jargon, barely understood by the ‘man in the street,’ and forming the object of his half-contemptuous amusement. That is, I believe, exactly what we do find, to an extent insufficiently recognized. Professor Radermacher, in his recent edition of the Frogs, has rendered valuable service by pointing out the frequent occurrence in that play of technical terms which meet us later in Dionysius of Halicarnassus and other critics. But I believe that technical language lurks unsuspected in many other passages, though the precise meaning may often be beyond recovery. (shrink)

nature of personality and the structure of personality are distinguished, and the thesis that mainstream personality theories in psychology debate structure but not nature is illustrated with definitions. Mainstream theories assume that person ality is an inner determinant of behavior, but according to views in psychiatry, phenomenology and radical behaviorism the nature of personality is transactional. The theory of reinforcement schedules proposes general mechanisms of transac tions, and phenomenology gives particular transactions meaning. Interactionism, which locates personality in the person and (...) the situation, contributes measurement to transactionalism but its paradigmatic status is ambiguous because it implies an internal storage system for behavior. (shrink)

Professor Linsay has called my attention to the need for an examination of these compounds, with a view to ascertaining whether they are ever used in the Singular by Latin writers, or always in the Plural. From a scholium, probably by Donatus, on Aen. X. 173: insula inexhaustis Chalybum generosa metallis, has come a gloss which appears in the Ansileubus Glossary in two forms: FR 205 Frofra : insula Tirreno mari in quo ferrifodina exercentur, RU 77 Rufa: insula Tirreni maris (...) in qua ferrifodina exercetur. (shrink)

All Talked Out is an exercise in applied philosophy. It is a study of what the examination of knowledge, explanation, and well-being would look like if freed from the peculiar tools and outlook of modern philosophy and handed over to scientists - or scientifically-trained philosophers - who had a reflective aim.

Open peer commentary on the target article “Who Conceives of Society?” by Ernst von Glasersfeld. Excerpt: Von Glasersfeld’s presupposition that all organisms are isolated subjective knowers can thus remain viable within a framework that sees the personal and social as mutually informing. Implying that isolated knowers coordinate the ways in which they “bump” into one another – and that this coordination impacts the kinds of perturbations that arise within them – constitutes a perfectly rational variation on von Glasersfeld’s theory of (...) rational knowing. (shrink)