In Neutrality and the Academic Ethic, distinguished philosopher Robert L. Simon explores the claim that universities can and should be politically neutral. He examines conceptual questions about the meaning of neutrality, distinguishes different conceptions of what neutrality involves, and considers in what sense, if any, institutional neutrality is both possible and desirable. In Part II, a collection of original and previously published essays provides different views on these and related issues.

Inductive inference and "experimental error"; A population sample model: local inference; Expansion of the model: inference in the large; Expansion of the model: inference in the large; Interpretation of results; Random variables and distributions; Variance and related topics; Problems of sampling in physical situations; Randomization; Restricted randomization and experimental designs; Regression or curve fitting.

This book addresses the most important questions asked about higher education: What should its content be? What should we educate for, and why? What constitutes a meaningful liberal education, as distinct from mere training for a vocation? These and many other questions are addressed by Reuben Abel, M.H. Abrams, Robert L. Bartley, Ronald Berman, Also S. Bernardo, Wm. Theodore deBary, Gray Dorsey, Joseph Dunner, Nathan Glazer, Feliks Gross, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Gerald Holton, Sidney Hook, Charles Issawi, Montimer R. Kadish, Paul (...) Oscar Krissteller, paul Kurtz, Herbert I. London, Ernest Nagel, Henry R. Novotny, Frederick A. Olafson, Michael Rabin, Howard B. Radest, Joseph J. Schwab, Robert F. Sexton, Thomas Sowell, John B. Stephenson, and Miro M. Todorovich. (shrink)

Pragmatism's ambiguous legacy -- Can democracy be a way of life? -- Peirce, inquiry, and politics -- Pluralism and the Peircean view -- Posner's pragmatic realism -- The case of Sidney Hook -- Epilogue : the eclipse narrative revisited.

The Pragmatism Reader is the essential anthology of this important philosophical movement. Each selection featured here is a key writing by a leading pragmatist thinker, and represents a distinctively pragmatist approach to a core philosophical problem. The collection includes work by pragmatism's founders, Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, as well as seminal writings by mid-twentieth-century pragmatists such as Sidney Hook, C. I. Lewis, Nelson Goodman, Rudolf Carnap, Wilfrid Sellars, and W.V.O. Quine. This reader also includes the most important (...) work in contemporary pragmatism by philosophers like Susan Haack, Cornel West, Hilary Putnam, Richard Rorty, Cheryl Misak, and Robert Brandom. Each selection is a stand-alone piece--not an excerpt or book chapter--and each is presented fully unabridged. The Pragmatism Reader challenges the notion that pragmatism fell into a midcentury decline and was dormant until the advent of "neopragmatism" in the 1980s. This comprehensive anthology reveals a rich and highly influential tradition running unbroken through twentieth-century philosophy and continuing today. It shows how American pragmatist philosophers have contributed to leading philosophical debates about truth, meaning, knowledge, experience, belief, existence, justification, and freedom. Covers pragmatist philosophy from its origins to today Features key writings by the leading pragmatist thinkers Demonstrates the continuity and enduring influence of pragmatism Challenges prevailing notions about pragmatism Includes only stand-alone pieces, completely unabridged Reflects the full range of pragmatist themes, arguments, concerns, and commitments. (shrink)

P.F. Strawson’s account of moral responsibility in “Freedom and Resentment” has been widely influential. In both that paper and in the contemporary literature, much attention has been paid to Strawson’s account of blame in terms of reactive attitudes like resentment and indignation. The Strawsonian view of praise in terms of gratitude has received comparatively little attention. Some, however, have noticed something puzzling about gratitude and accountability. We typically understand accountability in terms of moral demands and expectations. Yet gratitude does not (...) express or enforce moral demands or expectations. So, how is it a way to hold an agent accountable? In a more general manner, we might ask if there is even sense to be made of the idea that agents can be accountable—i.e., “on the hook”—in a positive way. In this paper, I clarify the relationship between gratitude and moral accountability. I suggest that accountability is a matter of engaging with others in a way that is basically concerned with their feelings and attitudes rather than solely a matter of moral demands. Expressions of gratitude are a paradigmatic form of this concerned engagement. I conclude by defending my view from the objection that it leads to an overly generous conception of holding accountable and suggest in reply that moral responsibility skeptics may not help themselves to as many moral emotions as they might have thought. (shrink)

As the frequent use of metaphors like friendship or relationship in academic and colloquial discourse on serial television suggests, long-term narratives seem to add something to the spectator's engagement with fictional characters that is not fully captured by terms such as empathy and sympathy. Drawing on philosophical accounts of friendship and psychological theories on the formation of close relationships, this article clarifies in what respect the friendship metaphor is warranted. The article proposes several hypotheses that will enhance cognitive theories of (...) character engagement. Spectators tend to like what they have been exposed to more, and the feeling of familiarity is pleasurable. Familiar characters are powerful tools to get the spectator hooked. Furthermore, by generating an impression of a shared history, television series activate mental mechanisms similar to those activated by friendship in real life. These factors, and several others, create a bond with characters in television series that tends to be described in everyday language as a sort of friendship. (shrink)

Rogers, C. R. and Skinner, B. F. Some issues concerning the control of human behavior.--Broudy, H. S. Didactics, heuristics, and philetics.--Craig, R. An analysis of the psychology of moral development of Lawrence Kohlberg.--Scudder, J. R., Jr. Freedom with authority: a Buber model for teaching.--Hook, S. Some educational attitudes and poses.--Strike, K. A. Freedom, autonomy, and teaching.--Elkind, D. Piaget and Montessori.--Raywid, M. A. Irrationalism and the new reformism.--Doll, W. E., Jr. A methodology of experience: the process of inquiry.--Neff, F. C. Competency-based (...) teaching and trained fleas.--Brown, A. "What could be bad?" Some reflections on the accountability movement. (shrink)

Over the last 300 years science has been quite successful at revealing the nature of physical reality. In so doing it has provided an epistemological basis for scientific discovery and technological innovation. But science has been decidedly less successful at guiding political debate. How do we conceive of the science-society relation in the 21st century? How does scientific research hook onto the world in a multi-faceted, pluralistic, and global age? This essay seeks to reframe our thinking about the broader impacts (...) of science by awakening an appreciation of the inescapably political and dimension of all knowledge, scientific or otherwise. (shrink)

Through staged photographs in which she herself is often the lead actor or through appropriation of historical photographs, contemporary African American artist Carrie Mae Weems deconstructs the shaming of the black female body in American visual culture and offers counter-hegemonic images of black female beauty. The mirror has been foundational in Western theories of subjectivity and discussions of beauty. In the artworks I analyze in this article, Weems tactically employs the mirror to engage the topos of shame in order to (...) reject it as a way of seeing the self and to offer a new way of lovingly seeing the self. I use the work of Kelly Oliver, Helen Block Lewis, and bell hooks to articulate the relationships among the mirror, shame, and black female subjectivity in Weems's work. Weems's subjects often reckon with what Oliver calls “social melancholy” as they experience shame while standing before the mirror. However, Weems also shows that by looking again—a critical strategy I explain using Oliver's model of “the loving eye”—her subjects can use the mirror as a corrective to the social shaming gaze and make it a stage for establishing black female subjectivity, a gaze of self-love, and beauty. (shrink)

This article documents our collaborative ongoing struggle to disrupt the reproduction of the coloniality of knowledge in the teaching of Gender Studies. We document how our decolonial feminist activism is actualised in our pedagogy, which is guided by feminist interpretations of ‘wonder’ (Irigaray, 1999; Ahmed, 2004; hooks, 2010) read alongside decolonial theory, including that of Ramón Grosfoguel, Walter D. Mignolo and María Lugones. Using notions of wonder as pedagogy, we attempt to create spaces in our classrooms where critical self-reflection and (...) critical intellectual and embodied engagement can emerge. Our attempts to create these spaces include multiple aspects or threads that, when woven together, might enable other ways of knowing-being-doing that works towards disrupting feminist complicity with coloniality in the Australian context. (shrink)

How does a complex organism develop from a relatively simple, homogeneous mass? The usual answer is: through the execution of species-specific genetic instructions specifying the development of that organism. Commentators are sometimes sceptical of this usual answer, but of course not all commentators. Some biologists refer to master control genes responsible for the activation of all the genes responsible for every aspect of organismal development; and some philosophers, most notoriously Rosenberg, buy this claim hook, line, and sinker. Here I explore (...) both the seeming plausibility of the usual position, and also its ultimate inadequacy. (shrink)

We count apples and divide a cake so that each guest gets an equal piece; we weigh galaxies and use Hilbert spaces to make amazingly accurate predictions about spectral lines. It would seem that we have no difficulty in applying mathematics to the world; yet the role of mathematics in its various applications is surprisingly elusive. Eugene Wigner has gone so far as to say that “the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious (...) and that there is no rational explanation for it” (1960, p. 223). The issue is not much discussed under the heading “applied mathematics,” yet it is pivotal to several philosophical debates. In recent years three rather general questions have been central: (1) Just how does mathematics “hook onto” the world? This is the main concern of a rather technical branch of philosophy of science known as measurement theory (see measurement). (2) Are some of the objects referred to in various theories merely mathematical objects, or do they have some other status? This problem often comes up in the philosophy of the special sciences. For example, do space‐time and the quantum state exist in their own right, separate from their mathematical representations; or are they nothing but mathematical entities? (3) Is mathematics essential for science? Following Hartry Field's work, this has become a focal point in the debate between realists and nominalists in the philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

A number of issues connected with the nature of applied mathematics are discussed. Among the claims are these: mathematics "hooks onto" the world by providing models or representations, not by describing the world; classic platonism is to be preferred to structuralism; and several issues in the philosophy of science are intimately connected to the nature of applied mathematics.

The Hooks et al. review of microbiota-gut-brain literature provides a constructive criticism of the general approaches encompassing MGB research. This commentary extends their review by: highlighting capabilities of advanced systems-biology “-omics” techniques for microbiome research and recommending that combining these high-resolution techniques with intervention-based experimental design may be the path forward for future MGB research.

A number of authors have drawn attention to the contributions to geology of Robert Hooke, and it has been pointed out that in several ways his ideas were more advanced than those of Steno, who is sometimes taken to be the founder of geology as a scientific discipline. Moreover, it has been argued that in a number of instances Hooke should receive the credit for ideas which are usually believed to have originated in the work of James (...) Hutton. This recognition of the significance of Hooke's work is regarded by the present writer as being well founded. But, by contrast, the relationship between Hooke's geological ideas and his views on the proper methods for conducting scientific enquiries has been largely overlooked, and his views on the methodology of science, as revealed in his Posthumous works, have received little discussion. Moreover, on one of the few occasions on which they were discussed, by William Whewell, they were belittled. Whewell regarded Hooke's methodological contribution as merely ‘an attempt to adapt the Novum organon to the age which succeeded its publication’, 5 and he implied that the ‘same imperfections’ were to be found in the writings of both Hooke and Bacon. The influence of Bacon is, to be sure, most obvious in Hooke's general philosophy. Nevertheless, it will be argued that Hooke had a much clearer idea than did Bacon of the importance of so-called ‘hypothetico-deductive’ methods in science, and that in many ways his methodological views represent a significant advance on those of Bacon. (shrink)

(1983). Robert Hooke's Trinity College ‘Musick Scripts’, his music theory and the role of music in his cosmology. Annals of Science: Vol. 40, No. 6, pp. 559-595.

The organ of the memory was of crucial importance for Robert Hooke in his aim to improve natural history and the study of nature in general. As a mechanist he was careful to avoid the confident analogizing of his contemporaries, and he described his model in hypothetical form. However, he saw it as amenable to improvement—just as mechanically as the senses were augmented by the use of instruments. The close connection he made between a better memory mechanism and (...) the task of ‘perfecting’ the study of natural philosophy can be seen in a whole range of his activities. These included his discussion of the memory as an epistemological tool, his frequent use of devices such as lists and schemata for ordering aspects of nature and his personal memoranda. His diary, by acting as a stimulant to memory, should be seen as an integral part of his attempt to become a better natural philosopher. Both the act of daily inscription and the ordering of occurrences for effective later recall would improve his memory and his performance of his life's task as a philosopher of nature. (shrink)

English instrument-maker, experimentalist, and natural philosopher who made key contributions in a wide range of areas including physiology, geology, and mechanics. Born on the Isle of Wight, Hooke showed early aptitude with the design of mechanical toys. At Westminster School he learnt mathematics and geometry, and at Christ Church, Oxford, he joined a remarkable group of natural philosophers working before the Restoration on physiological and physical topics (Frank 1980). Much of Hooke’s career was driven by financial uncertainty. As (...) an employee, working firstly with Robert Boyle and then as curator of experiments at the new Royal Society from 1662 to 1677, Hooke’s status as a professional in a society of gentlemen natural philosophers was problematic. He was continually concerned to establish his credibility, and his defences of ownership of his ideas were often vitriolic. (shrink)

It is impossible for us to understand the character of Newton or the state of the physical sciences in the seventeenth century, without referring at length to the life and work of Robert Hooke.’ So writes the author of a recent biography of Newton. Well might we ask with him ‘What manner of man was he whose personal opposition delayed the publication of Newton's Optics for thirty years and almost prevented the completion of the Principia; whose bitter tongue (...) confirmed Newton's tendency to secrecy and isolation, destroyed his early enthusiasm for the Royal Society, and disgusted him with science?’ It is not surprising that a man, capable of all this, should play a conspicuous rôle in the history of natural philosophy. Indeed a study of Hooke's career throws much light on the origins of modern science and, in particular, it helps to determine the much disputed status of mathematics in the development of physical theory. (shrink)

This article argues that despite individual Fellows’ interest in artistic practices, and similarities between a philosophical and a connoisseurial appreciation of art, the Royal Society as an institution may have been wary of image-making as a way of conveying knowledge because of the power of images to stir the passions and sway the intellect. Using Robert Hooke as a case study it explores some of the connections between philosophers and makers in Restoration London. It goes on to suggest (...) that some epistemic images were in fact designed to elicit an emotional response in their viewers in order to force them to re-evaluate the subject-matter by presenting it in a new and surprising way. (shrink)

Résumé En 1665, Robert Hooke fait paraître son grand ouvrage de microscopie, _Micrographia_, véritable défense et illustration de la philosophie expérimentale. L’année suivante, Margaret Cavendish, duchesse de Newcastle, publie à compte d’auteur un traité et un roman qui attaquent les fondements mêmes de cette science nouvelle. La dispute qui s’engage à l’initiative de la duchesse s’inscrit dans le contexte d’une plus vaste controverse sur la légitimité et l’efficacité des instruments optiques en philosophie naturelle. Toutes les figures de la (...) controverse scientifique y sont déployées. Toutes, sauf une : la riposte. Car Margaret Cavendish est seule dans l’arène. Peut-on parler de duel lorsque seule l’une des deux parties attaque? C’est ce cas particulier de dispute qui s’achève faute de combattant que cet article propose d’étudier. (shrink)

Résumé En 1665, Robert Hooke fait paraître son grand ouvrage de microscopie, _Micrographia_, véritable défense et illustration de la philosophie expérimentale. L’année suivante, Margaret Cavendish, duchesse de Newcastle, publie à compte d’auteur un traité et un roman qui attaquent les fondements mêmes de cette science nouvelle. La dispute qui s’engage à l’initiative de la duchesse s’inscrit dans le contexte d’une plus vaste controverse sur la légitimité et l’efficacité des instruments optiques en philosophie naturelle. Toutes les figures de la (...) controverse scientifique y sont déployées. Toutes, sauf une : la riposte. Car Margaret Cavendish est seule dans l’arène. Peut-on parler de duel lorsque seule l’une des deux parties attaque? C’est ce cas particulier de dispute qui s’achève faute de combattant que cet article propose d’étudier. (shrink)

This work is an argument for the notion of knowledge production. It is an attempt at an epistemological and historiographic position which treats all facets and modes of knowledge as products of human practices, a position developed and demonstrated through a reconstruction of two defining episodes in the scientific career of Robert Hooke : the composition of his Programme for explaining planetary orbits as inertial motion bent by centripetal force, and his development of the spring law in relation (...) to his invention of the spring watch. ;The revival of interest in the history of experimental and technological knowledge has accorded Hooke much more attention than before. However, dependent on the conception of knowledge as a representation of reality, this scholarship is bound to the categories of influence and competition, and concentrates mainly on Hooke's numerous passionate exchanges with Isaac Newton and Christiaan Huygens. I favourably explore the neo-pragmatist criticism of representation epistemology in the writing of Richard Rorty and Ian Hacking. This criticism exposes the conventional portrayal of Hooke as "a mechanic of genius, rather than a scientist" as a reification of the social hierarchy between Hooke's Royal Society employers and his artisan-experimenters employees. ;However, Rorty and Hacking's efforts to do away with the image of the human knower as an enclosed realm of 'ideas' have not been completed. Undertaking this unfinished philosophical task, my main strategy is to erase the false gap between knowledge which is clearly produced--practical, technological and experimental, 'know how', and knowledge which we still think of as representation--theoretical 'knowing that'. I present Hooke, Newton and Huygens as craftsmen, who, employing various resources, labor to manufacture material and theoretical artifacts. Eschewing the category of independent facts awaiting discovery, I attempt to compare practices and techniques rather than to adjudicate priority claims, replacing ideas which 'develop', 'inspire', and 'influence', with tools and skills which are borrowed, appropriated and modified for new uses. ;This approach enables tracing Hooke's creation of his Programme from his microscopy, and reconstructing his use of springs to structure a theory of matter. With his unique combination of technical and speculative talents Hooke comes to personify the relations between the theoretical-linguistic and the experimental-technological in their full complexity. (shrink)