Harry Freemantle

University of Western Australia | UWA · School of Humanities

If the conventional position that sociology emerged in the 19th century is accepted, then two 18th- and/or 19th-century rationalist knowledge conditions — `positivism gives way to theory' and `the centrality of modern rational philosophy' — can be accepted as the conventional knowledge conditions for the discipline's emergence. While acknowledging...

An early proponent of the social sciences, Frédéric Le Play, was the occupant of senior positions within the French state in the mid- to late 19th century. He was writing at a time when science was ascending. There was for him no doubt that scientific observation, correctly applied, would allow him unmediated access to the truth. It is significant...

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in 1882, 'for I think it is best to do with profound problems as with a cold bath-quickly in, quickly out'. I will attempt this by first looking at Bruno Latour’s philosophy of science; his critique of modernism and post-modernism and his collapsing of the subject/object divide. I will then examine the human condition, bei...

We live in a beautiful part of the world. It is a place that effortlessly invokes a response termed topophilia, that is, an affective bond between people, place and setting. Topophilia is a two-way relationship between humans and the environment; creating a space for the inhabitants that is worth loving and defending. The coastline, exposed to the...

An introduction to the journal Albany: an antipodean Arcadia