In his last writings, Wittgenstein repeatedly addresses the question of how our concepts relate to general facts of nature or human nature and how they are embedded in our lives. In doing so, he uses the term “pattern of life”, characterizing the complicated relationship between concepts and our lives and how our concepts “are connected with what interests us, with what matters to us” (LWPP II, 46). But who is this “us”, and whose interests manifest in the concepts we (...) use to designate patterns of life? What if certain concepts—or their absence—are exclusionary, discriminatory, or otherwise unjust to those who are not “us”? In this paper, I want to discuss Wittgenstein’s notion of “pattern of life” in its interweaving with facts, human life, and concepts, as well as its political implications. To this end, I will first outline the relationship between facts and concept formation as Wittgenstein drew it in his last writings. Based on this, I will argue that he uses the concept of pattern of life to capture the complicated relationship between concepts and human nature or “social facts”. Going beyond Wittgenstein and drawing on recent feminist epistemology, I will raise the question of the political implications of our patterns of life and concomitant social “conceptual injustices”. Finally, I will show how imagining facts otherwise and other conceptual worlds can help us to reveal the prejudices and injustices of our concepts and can lead to conceptual change and new patterns of life that may ultimately even change “things”, i.e., our thinking, judging and acting in the world. (shrink)

This paper aims to distinguish Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘form of life’ from other concepts or expressions that have been confused or conflated with it, such as ‘language-game’, ‘certainty’, ‘patterns of life’, ‘ways of living’ and ‘facts of living’. Competing interpretations of Wittgenstein’s ‘form of life’ are reviewed, and it is concluded that Wittgenstein intended both a singular and a plural use of the concept; with, where the human is concerned, a single human form of life (...) characterized by innumerable forms of human life. (shrink)

Drawing on the vast resources of the biblical-rabbinic tradition and of general philosophic and religious thought, this comprehensive discussions could prove helpful in formulating a personal philosophy and pattern of life constructively integrating one's Jewish, American, and human heritages. (Judiasm).

Stuart Kauffman: Steve is extremely bright, inventive. He thoroughly understands paleontology; he thoroughly understands evolutionary biology. He has performed an enormous service in getting people to think about punctuated equilibrium, because you see the process of stasis/sudden change, which is a puzzle. It's the cessation of change for long periods of time. Since you always have mutations, why don't things continue changing? You either have to say that the particular form is highly adapted, optimal, and exists in a stable environment, (...) or you have to be very puzzled. Steve has been enormously important in that sense. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In this article, it is shown that, following the precedent set in particular by Marinus' "Life of Proclus", Damascius, in his "Life of Isidore", uses biography so as to illustrate philosophical progress through the Neoplatonic scale of virtues. Damascius applies this scale, however, to a wide range of figures belonging to pagan philosophical circles of the fifth century AD: they show different degrees and forms of progress in this scale and thus provide an edificatory panorama of patterns (...) of philosophical perfection. Each level of the scale of virtues is shown to be exemplified in Damascius' biographies. It is suggested that few, in Damascius' opinion, reached the highest levels of virtue and that philosophical decline is intimated in his descriptions of his contemporaries. (shrink)

This article uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth to examine the phenomenon of later life education among women who first give birth as teenagers. The analysis first considers patterns of educational attainment through the middle 30s for all women, disaggregated by age at first birth. This allows for an examination of the amount of education received by teen mothers relative to women who delay giving birth until adulthood. The analysis also considers racial-ethnic differences in (...) class='Hi'>patterns of attainment. Next, the analysis is restricted to teen mothers and focuses on an examination of the composition of educational attainment according to the amount of time that has elapsed since the first birth. The findings suggest that later life education among teen mothers is an important and understudied phenomenon with implications for welfare reform and adult education policies. (shrink)

Insight, by F. H. Parker.--Why be uncritical about the life-world? By H. B. Veatch.--Homage to Saint Anselm, by R. Jordan.--Art and philosophy, by J. M. Anderson.--The phenomenon of world, by R. R. Ehman.--The life-world and its historical horizon, by C. O. Schrag.--The Lebenswelt as ground and as Leib in Husserl: somatology, psychology, sociology, by E. Paci.--Life-world and structures, by C. A. van Peursen.--The miser, by E. W. Straus.--Monetary value and personal value, by G. Schrader.--Individualisms, by W. L. (...) McBride.--Sartre the individualist, by W. Desan.--The nature of social man, by M. Natanson.--The problem of the will and philosophical discourse, by P. Ricoeur.--Structuralism and humanism, by M. Dufrenne.--The illusion of monolinear time, by N. Lawrence.--Can grammar be thought? By J. M. Edie.--The existentialist critique of objectivity, by S. J. Todes and H. L. Dreyfus.--Bibliography (p. 391-400). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sacramental Character and the Pattern of Theological Life:Medieval Context and Early Modern ReceptionReginald M. Lynch O.P.In question 63 of the tertia pars, Thomas Aquinas defines the so-called character that is conferred by certain sacraments (namely baptism, confirmation, and holy orders), as a secondary effect caused by the sacraments, with grace itself identified as the primary effect. As separated instruments of the humanity of Christ, in his mature work (...) in the Summa theologiae Aquinas argues that all Christian sacraments are perfective instrumental causes of the effect of the Incarnation in the human persons who receive them.1 As instrumental means by which these effects are conferred, therefore, for Aquinas the sapiential intelligibility of the sacraments is found in the larger sweep of sacra doctrina and the Incarnation, wherein the ratio and necessity of these larger theological themes contextualize Aquinas's understanding of the necessity of the sacraments themselves as instrumental extensions of the same.2 Taken in itself, aspects of what would later become the question of sacramental character for Scholastics first emerged as a doctrinal topic in the context of patristic debates over the permanence of the sacrament of baptism.3 In the Latin West, the influence of Augustine's distinction between the permanence of the sacramentum received in baptism and its use in charity proved to be a ubiquitous influence [End Page 1337] for later Latin theology.4 Concerning the metaphysical nature of this character, however, in both his Sentences commentary and Summa theologiae, Aquinas joins an ongoing conversation among thirteenth-century Scholastics about the utility of the Aristotelian categories for describing sacramental character. What is sacramental character specifically, and how should this be understood in relation to the wider speculative complexities of grace, the infused virtues and gifts, and beatitude? Because of continued controversy over the role of Aristotelianism in theology during the second half of the thirteenth century, many Scholastics of Aquinas's generation analyzed the quiddity of sacramental character from an Aristotelian perspective, working to describe the doctrine inherited from the Church's tradition using Aristotelian terminology. As will be shown, although some argued that sacramental character should be understood as a habitus, Aquinas argues that character is better understood as a power.The second and third sections of this article will explore the development of Scholastic accounts of the quiddity of sacramental character during the medieval and early modern periods, and the wider theological implications of these conversations. In the final analysis, it is my aim to show not only that Aquinas's account of sacramental character is intrinsically fitting on theological grounds, but that Aquinas's account of sacramental character as a qualitative power conveys and preserves the received theological tradition more effectively than the options proposed by some of his contemporaries. With these larger objectives in mind, the first section of this article serves as a necessary historical prelude—what, precisely, is at stake from the wider perspective of the Church's theological tradition in these medieval and early modern Scholastic debates? Accordingly, the first section will provide an overview of the historical development of the doctrine of sacramental character, focusing specifically on the way in which certain Augustinian doctrinal concepts and linguistic usages developed in later medieval usage and ultimately came to be incorporated into the framework of Peter Lombard's Sentences—the text that would serve as the common backdrop for the Scholastic conversations about the "quiddity" of this same doctrine.In the following, therefore, this article will begin by examining the origins of the doctrine of sacramental character in Latin theology in Augustine's baptismal theology. Building on this foundation, our attention will turn to Peter Lombard's reception of Augustine's as the context in which [End Page 1338] thirteenth-century Scholastic debates about sacramental character would develop. Although the specific metaphysical questions that Scholastics like Aquinas and Bonaventure would entertain do not form part of Augustine's approach to this issue, Lombard's particular articulation of Augustine's sacramental theology would provide the textual and conceptual backdrop against which these later Scholastic conversations would develop. Accordingly, the second section of this article will build on the first, beginning with a consideration of Aquinas... (shrink)

In my paper, I attempt a phenomenological analysis of the lived experience of intersexuality, which I view from the perspective of the problem of indeterminacy concerning the horizon of the givenness of homeworld founded on the broader basis of the pre-givenness of lifeworld. These horizons define the structure of the sedimentation of subjective experience, as well as the layers of cultural meanings sedimented in the lifeworld. The sedimented layers of self-experience and of the shared lifeworld function as a sphere of (...) indeterminacy, that is the horizons of constituted phenomena. In this sense all intentional acts have the nature of horizontal indeterminacy, the layers of which are revealed in the genetic question (Rückfrage) directed toward them. Horizontal indeterminacy also accounts for the distinction between homeworld and alienworld, which appears as something unobvious and unexpected against the obviousness of the homeworld, at the same time thematizing the latter. One of the elements of the sedimented conceptual system, functioning as the horizon of indeterminacy of both self-experience and the pre-reflective life-world, is the notion of human corporeality as given in the binary sexuality/gender. A unique opportunity for phenomenological insight into the constitution of the phenomenon of sex/gender is provided by Hida Viloria's lived experience of intersexuality. Her lived body, originally experienced pre-reflectively as a transparent medium and a perfectly handy tool of undisturbed intentionality, unproblematized also in the sexual activities, gradually undergoes alienation under the objectifying gaze determined by the binary pattern of sexuality. Becoming an alienated object, her body loses its transparency. Viloria begins to experience her corporeality and identity in a way determined by the sedimented "ideology" of sex and gender, trying on the "constructs" of masculine and feminine identities, eventually overcoming alienation and, in a process of secondary self-identification, reclaiming her lived body in its intersexuality and her identity in its non-binary gender fluidity. (shrink)

This volume has four parts; in Part I, dealing with the philosophical tradition, Francis M. Parker examines various senses of insight and discusses its goodness as an activity. Henry B. Veatch questions Wild's acceptance of the life-world and asks for a critical, explicitly transcendental justification of it. Robert Jordan reviews Anselm's ontological argument and its place in other proofs for God's existence, and in religious experience. John M. Anderson examines "Art and Philosophy" with the help of Plato and Hegel. (...) Part II examines the life-world; Robert R. Ehman writes on the phenomenon of world, and Calvin O. Schrag situates Husserl's notion of life-world within the tradition of Hegel, Dilthey and Heidegger as a theme in the problem of history. Enzo Paci has an essay relating the life-world to the Husserlian analysis of the body as a locus of mobility, life, sensation, and, ultimately thought. C. A. van Peursen's contribution examines the nature of structure in the life-world. Part III deals with the individual and society and includes a picturesque, sensitive and profound essay by Erwin Straus on "The Miser." George Schrader writes on "Monetary Value and Personal Value," W. L. McBride on "Individualisms," and Wilfrid Desan on "Sartre the Individualist." Part IV, "Subjectivity and Objectivity," includes Paul Ric£ur distinguishing three types of philosophical discourse about the will, and claiming that a hermeneutic of symbols must supplement both discourse which is phenomenological and that which proposes meaningful action. Mikel Dufrenne writes on "Structuralism and Humanism," Nathaniel Lawrence on "The Illusion of Monolinear Time," and Samuel J. Todes and Hubert L. Dreyfus on "The Existentialist Critique of Objectivity." James Edie has an important essay on Husserl's notion of "the grammatical" and the a priori in grammar; he relates it to Chomsky's theory of grammatical structures. The volume ends with a bibliography of Wild's works, reviews of them, and essays devoted to his thought.--R. S. (shrink)

While psychotherapists are trained to improve their clients’ quality of life, little work has examined the quality of life experienced by psychotherapist trainees themselves. Yet their life satisfactions and stresses would plausibly affect both their ability to learn new skills and conduct psychotherapy. Therefore, in the Society for Psychotherapy Research Interest Section on Psychotherapist Development and Training study, we investigated the patterns of self-reported life quality and their correlates in a multinational sample of 1,214 psychotherapist (...) trainees. A comprehensive questionnaire was used at the outset of trainings to assess trainees’ professional background, current life situation, personal characteristics, family background, and social and national origin. The findings indicated 54.3% of trainees’ lives could be characterized as fortunate or happy, whereas 14.3% could be characterized as clearly distressed or troubled. The strongest correlates of high life stress, a contributor to poor life quality, were economic insecurity, self-protectiveness, and attachment-related anxiety in relationships, and economic or psychological hardship in childhood. In turn, greater wellbeing was most strongly associated with a warm and open interpersonal style, being married, having sufficient economic means, and material and emotional security in childhood. While the results indicate the majority of therapists experience a relatively good quality of life, the findings also suggest potential targets for increasing trainees’ life quality when it may be deficient, such as those on a societal level, training program level, and individual level, in order to promote effective learning and therapy practice. (shrink)

Larmore aims to recover three forms of moral complexity that have often been neglected by moral and political philosophers. First, he argues that virtue is not simply the conscientious adherence to principle. Rather, the exercise of virtue apply. He argues - and this is the second pattern of complexity - that recognizing the value of constitutive ties with shared forms of life does not undermine the liberal ideal of political neutrality toward differing ideals of the good life. Finally (...) Larmore agrues for what he calls the heterogeneity of morality. Moral thinking need not be exclusively deontological or consequentialist, and we should recognize that the ultimate sources of moral value are diverse. The arguments presented here do not attack the possibility of moral theory. But in addressing some of the central issues of moral and political thinking today thay attempt to restore to that thinking greater flexibility and a necessary sensitivity to our common experience. (shrink)

Modern medicine provides unprecedented opportunities in diagnostics and treatment. However, in some situations at the end of a patient’s life, many physicians refrain from using all possible measures to prolong life. We studied the incidence of different types of treatment withheld or withdrawn in 6 European countries and analyzed the main background characteristics.

ABSTRACT In this article I will first reconstruct a Deweyan model of social ontology, based on the process of habituation. Habit ontology leads to a social philosophy that is not merely descriptive, since it involves a critical redescription of the social world. I will argue that a habit-modeled social ontology is critical insofar as it includes an account of social transformation and of the inevitability of social conflict. Such an understanding is based on a diagnosis of social pathologies of our (...) form of life and includes an account of the experience of domination. Accordingly, it is described as a matter of an imbalance of recognition that embodies subjugating patterns and is seen from the critical perspective of freedom understood as emancipation from oppression. This leads to a reconstruction of the genesis of critical attitudes from life's processes of habituation, which leads to an extended naturalist account of social authority. (shrink)

(1994). Young people and life in the city. The lessons of political sociology and of the patterns of socialization of young people. World Futures: Vol. 41, No. 1-3, pp. 110-114.

Fritjof Capra, scientist, educator, activist, and accomplished author, presents the evolution of his thought over five decades in Patterns of Connection. First introduced in the late 1950s to the work of Werner Heisenberg, a founder of quantum mechanics, Capra quickly intuited the connections between the discoveries of quantum physics and the traditions of Eastern philosophy--resulting in his first book, the bestselling The Tao of Physics. This synthesis, representative of the change from the mechanistic worldview of Descartes and Newton to (...) a systemic, ecological one, went on to inform Capra's thinking about the life sciences, ecology, and environmental policy. (shrink)

This commentary explores the reproductive strategies and attachment patterns among homeless youths. Del Giudice's integrated evolutionary model is applied to a homeless youth population that must function in ecological settings of constant high risk and stress. Different reproductive needs result in different patterns of high-risk behaviors. Intervention considering the sex differences, life history, and early caregiver–child relationships is suggested.

Human civilization, in its continuous evolution, remoulded itself from a biological organism to a biological and technological mixed being. Intensely developed technologies help human beings to make their bodily existence more powerful. Through body enhancement technology, human beings transform themselves into a transhuman and then to a posthuman, in an evolutionary manner. Whereas transhumanism depicts cultural, social, and mainly technological movements, posthumanism is popularized as a philosophical interpretation. Posthuman researchers make a new form of life through the amalgamation of (...) human biology and mechanical technology and portrayed it by the name ‘cyborg’. However, through such inventions, there arise some questions regarding the morality of cyborgs and its effects in the domain of human moral life. The main question addressed towards the enhancement of technology is, ‘Do cyborgs downgrade human values?’. Thus, the article focuses on how posthumanism creates its place in the recent world among other philosophical views. It is crucially important to give proper attention to posthumanism now, not only because of its recent and ongoing rise as a political and cultural force but because of the major breakthroughs that posthumanism emphasizes. Morality always stands as a firm discussion in the field of philosophy. Technological enhancements in human life bring a lot of moral questions about human life and sociocultural activity. In doing so, this article tries to light up on some ethical issues regarding posthumanism and at the same time tries to show how and why posthumanism and its morality are different from the modern or humanist approach and its ethical concepts. (shrink)

I investigate two issues that divided philosophers on how to teach philosophy to non-philosophers in East-European countries, specifically in Romania. First, should we focus on respectable philosophical ideas like Being, Truth, God, and Reason, or spend our time in classes discussing topics one faces in everyday life, like equity, famine, abortion, or pornography? The former alternative enforces the significant cultural role philosophy (and some philosophers) enjoyed in the last decades of socialism, while the second means a dramatic change in (...) the way philosophy relates to real life. Second, should we support the idea that great values like goodness, justice, and freedom have an enduring, non-contextual, even absolute, character, or center on tolerance, our fallibility and the social context of life? I discuss background factors that make philosophers bound to choose between such alternatives, and argue that answers are independent of our own philosophical opinions on these topics. (shrink)

In spite of extensive research on theory of mind, lay theories about the unconscious have scarcely been investigated. Three questionnaire studies totaling 689 participants, examined to what extent they thought that a range of psychological processes could be unconscious. It was found that people are less willing to countenance unconscious processes in themselves than in others, regardless of the time period considered – present, past or future. This is especially true when specific experience-like situations are envisioned, as opposed to considering (...) the question in abstract or generic terms. In addition, the notion of unconscious psychological processes is resisted for certain domains in particular: intending, sensing, believing, and thinking. We interpret this pattern by positing the existence of two conceptions about the unconscious that are differentially applied according to circumstances: one originating in prevalent social representations about the unconscious, the other based on self-model of the person as an intentional actor. (shrink)

Sitting in the office of a distinguished philosopher of language recently, I watched him lean back (somewhat precariously) in his chair, look at the ceiling, and sigh: “Johan, we both write all this stuff about information, context, and communication – but is not the only time you really feel that you are making progress, when you resolutely close your eyes, and shut out the world and the others?” I appreciated his point, and indeed, in most spheres of life on (...) this planet, “l’Enfer” is most definitely “Les Autres”. (shrink)

The shift of interest from community to individuality and freedom brought by modernity challenged the central place once occupied by religion, pushing it to the outskirts of human life. All these led to an increased indifference towards any transcendental guarantor that could act in a neutral reason-governed space. In the case of Islam, such a situation is impossible to tolerate, because it would mean God’s desecration by reducing the Qur’an to the statute of a simple book like many others (...) that offer an opinion on a Supreme Being who does not decide the destiny of humanity any more, but becomes a simple matter of opinion. While Western Christianity adjusted to modernity reaching even to justify the developments which led to a dissolution of sacred, stating that they were consistent with its essence, Islam accepted modernity only to the extent of this one’s capacity to verify the realities stated by the Qur’an. (shrink)

If the history of civilization is to be an instrument for the advancement of civilization, historians must break new paths toward a wider and deeper understanding of human affairs. Despite the achievements of those who have explored the influence of technics, the power of nationalism, the rôle of mass-psychology, the economic factors in political and social life, our analyses of history are from a scientific standpoint still all too primitive. As John Dewey has said, “It is possible to study (...) a multitude of histories, and yet permit history, the record of the transitions and transformations of human activities, to escape us. Taking history in separate doses of this country and that, we take it as a succession of isolated finalities, each one in due season giving way to another, as supernumeraries succeed one another in a march across the stage. We thus miss the fact of history and also its lesson; the diversity of institutional forms and customs which the same human nature may produce and employ.“. (shrink)

As is evident from the other articles in this special issue, end-of-life treatment has engendered a vigorous dialogue in the United States over the past few decades because decision making at the end of life raises broad and difficult ethical issues that touch on health professionals, patients, and their families. This concern is exacerbated by the high cost related to the end of life in the U.S. Moreover, in light of demographic patterns, progressively scarce health care (...) resources, and an expanding array of life-saving technologies, decisions at the end of life are becoming problematic matters of public and, thus, scholarly concern in most countries. Issues at the end of life are central not only to bioethics but also raise important ancillary policy dimensions. (shrink)

"All art should become science and all science art; poetry and philosophy should be made one." Friedrich Schlegel's words perfectly capture the project of the German Romantics, who believed that the aesthetic approaches of art and literature could reveal patterns and meaning in nature that couldn't be uncovered through rationalistic philosophy and science alone. In this wide-ranging work, Robert J. Richards shows how the Romantic conception of the world influenced (and was influenced by) both the lives of the people (...) who held it and the development of nineteenth-century science. Integrating Romantic literature, science, and philosophy with an intimate knowledge of the individuals involved—from Goethe and the brothers Schlegel to Humboldt and Friedrich and Caroline Schelling—Richards demonstrates how their tempestuous lives shaped their ideas as profoundly as their intellectual and cultural heritage. He focuses especially on how Romantic concepts of the self, as well as aesthetic and moral considerations—all tempered by personal relationships—altered scientific representations of nature. Although historians have long considered Romanticism at best a minor tributary to scientific thought, Richards moves it to the center of the main currents of nineteenth-century biology, culminating in the conception of nature that underlies Darwin's evolutionary theory. Uniting the personal and poetic aspects of philosophy and science in a way that the German Romantics themselves would have honored, The Romantic Conception of Life alters how we look at Romanticism and nineteenth-century biology. (shrink)

Over the course of the 20th century the sex differential in life expectancy at birth in the industrialized countries has widened considerably in favour of women. Starting in the early 1970s, the beginning of a reversal in the long-term pattern of this differential has been noted in some high-income countries. This study documents a sustained pattern of narrowing of this measure into the later part of the 1990s for six of the populations that comprise the G7 countries: Canada, France, (...) Germany, Italy, England and Wales (as representative of the United Kingdom) and USA. For Japan, a persistence of widening sex differences in survival is noted. The sex differences in life expectancy are decomposed over roughly three decades (early 1970s to late 1990s) from the point of view of four major cause-of-death categories: circulatory diseases, cancers, accidents/violence/suicide, and (residual) causes. In the six countries where the sex gap has narrowed, this has resulted primarily from reduced sex differences in circulatory disease mortality, and secondarily from reduced differences in male and female death rates due to accidents, violence and suicide combined. In some of the countries sex differentials in cancer mortality have been converging lately, and this has also contributed to a narrowing of the difference in life expectancy. In Japan, males have been less successful in reducing their survival disadvantage in relation to Japanese women with regard to circulatory disease and cancer; and in the case of accidents/violence/suicide, male death rates increased during the 1990s. These trends explain the divergent pattern of the sex difference in life expectation in Japan as compared with the other G7 nations. (shrink)

Voluntary active euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide remain technically illegal in the Netherlands, but the practices are openly tolerated provided that physicians adhere to carefully constructed guidelines. Harsh criticism of the Dutch practice by authors in the United States and Great Britain has made achieving a balanced understanding of its clinical, moral, and policy implications very difficult. Similar practice patterns probably exist in the United States, but they are conducted in secret because of a more uncertain legal and ethical climate. (...) In this manuscript, we plan to compare end-of-life care in the United States and the Netherlands with regard to underlying values, justifications, and practices. We will explore the risks and benefits of each system for a real patient who was faced with a common end-of-life clinical dilemma, and close with challenges for public policies in both countries. (shrink)

Voluntary active euthanasia (VAE) and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) remain technically illegal in the Netherlands, but the practices are openly tolerated provided that physicians adhere to carefully constructed guidelines. Harsh criticism of the Dutch practice by authors in the United States and Great Britain has made achieving a balanced understanding of its clinical, moral, and policy implications very difficult. Similar practice patterns probably exist in the United States, but they are conducted in secret because of a more uncertain legal and (...) ethical climate. In this manuscript, we plan to compare end-of-life care in the United States and the Netherlands with regard to underlying values, justifications, and practices. We will explore the risks and benefits of each system for a real patient who was faced with a common end-of-life clinical dilemma, and close with challenges for public policies in both countries. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Painting Outside the Lines: Patterns of Creativity in Modern ArtMatthew ZiffPainting Outside the Lines: Patterns of Creativity in Modern Art, by David W. Galenson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001, 272 pp., $29.95.The relationship between the market value of paintings and the chronological point in an artist's working life when the paintings were produced is the driving mechanism for exploring creativity and innovation in David W. (...) Galenson's book "Painting Outside the Lines: Patterns of Creativity in Modern Art. The working thesis of this book is that Modern artists have worked creatively and innovatively in one of two distinctly different manners. The terminology Galenson uses to describe these distinct ways of working are "finders" and "seekers." Finders are artists like Pablo Picasso, who at age 26, make startling and important innovations with little advance indication that such a burst is about to take place. Seekers are artists like Paul Cezanne, whospend their entire working lives engaged in the pursuit of a singular approach or achievement. The differences between these methodologies are carefully presented through the details of the working lives of a variety of Modern artists. French nineteenth century and early twentieth-century artists and mid-twentieth-century American artists are used as the source data for these comparisons.Early in the book Galenson presents lists of chronological events within the lives of artists and market valuation of their work within this chronology. The dramatic clarity of the relationships presented in this data sets the stage for the detailed information that follows. Factors that in some cases only partly, and in others nearly completely, explain an artist's way of working are offered through biographic information, information about the aesthetic and cultural milieu, and about the economic and educational structures that are predominant during the relevant time in the life of the artist.The relationship between the aesthetic and cultural milieu surrounding an artist and the capacity or inclination of an artist to be innovative is an important aspect of the book's analysis. The scope of the book is limited to Modern artists because of the shift that took place at the outset of Modern art, during the mid 1860s, that brought a strong emphasis on innovation and change for their own sake as an important characteristic within a work of art. This emphasis "created incentives for painters to produce new approaches to art" (p. 111). Prior to the time of Modern art, innovation and change were often unnecessary for an artist to be successful. Modern art introduced the demand that innovation and change be necessary ingredients in art, and therefore the search for innovation became a significant element within the work of many artists. The manner in which this search took place, as presented through the data at hand, reveals how individual artists viewed the need for innovation and change within their own [End Page 123] work. Paul Cezanne, for example, was aware of the impact that his painting was having on the art world, but he insisted that he was not yet finished with discoveries that would reveal the truest expression of his beliefs about aesthetic expression.In the American movement, "Abstract Expressionism," Galenson finds a useful counter example to the art scene in Paris. In the United States, especially during the 1940s and 1950s — the peak years of creative output by Abstract Expressionist artists — the demand for their work was quite low. There were few economically viable outlets for the work of de Kooning, Pollack, Rothko, and the others of this group. Consequently there is a shift in the chronological point at which these artists achieve market value success. Nearly all of these artists receivedrecognition at an older age than the French artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.The thesis of the book, that there are two fundamentally different ways of working to produce works of art, is directly applicable to, and useful in, exploring issues of teaching and learning in design education. As a teacher of interior architecture I was interested to follow the details that Galenson presented in support of his analysis of the careers of numerous Modern artists. The methodological differences between seeking and... (shrink)

As a consequence of industrialization, we face unprecedented pressures on the carrying capacity of the earth. Desertification, pollution and global climate changes can only increase these pressures, and will cause vast increases in the number of refugees and widespread risks to human health. Increasing inequalities between rich and poor nations are potential causes of conflict. Since the industrial countries are mainly responsible for our economic problems, they must give a lead in global arrangements to alleviate them. A major change in (...) our habitual patterns of thought is essential, in which we reassess how we perceive values, and how we measure wealth and well-being. This must be accompanied by governmental action: on population numbers and the refugee problem; on the efficient use of energy; on new methods of land use, and on regulation of damaging industrial activities. To act in these ways, governments must reorganize their domestic policies and increase international co-operation. (shrink)