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A Creation Myth and Origin Story Suitable to our Globalised World? A Friendly Critique of the Big History Storyline about our Place in Cosmos
Abstract
In complex societies, hegemonic struggles abound over constitutive including scientific mythologems, which shape stories about the past and future. I argue that the Big History story is ambiguous. Is the cosmos purposeless and evolutionary processes arbitrary? Or is there coherence, wholeness, and even purpose? By using some pragmatist and critical realist philosophical ideas, and by raising critical questions about theories of physics and cosmology, I analyse the ambiguities of Big History and argue in favour of a storyline that revolves around life and learning, inducing hopefulness. A central idea is that the rational tendential direction of world history is grounded in our collective human learning, making it possible to solve problems, absent ills, and overcome contradictions through collective actions and by building better common institutions.
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The modern scientific cosmic perspective is unique and compelling, but it’s not for everyone. Modern cosmology can be humbling and awe-inspiring, even motivating. It can also be overwhelming, even scary. The extent to which the universe we know today can form the basis of satisfactory worldviews rests largely on human psychology, preferences, and needs, as well as on what we mean by “worldviewWorldviews”. This essay will explore some ways to think about worldviews and the universe, with an emphasis on exploring relationships between cosmic evolution and cultural evolution (Dick and Lupisella), including what might be called “cosmocultural evolution”—the coevolution of cosmos and culture (Lupisella, Cosmos and culture: cultural evolution in a cosmic context. NASA, SP-2009-4802: 321–359, 2009). We will touch on a few cosmocultural evolutionary perspectives as well as broader underlying “cosmological theories of value”. With an eye toward psychology, we will consider if and how such perspectives might inform, or possibly suffice as worldviews, suggesting generally that the universe may suffice for some people some of the time, but probably not for most people most of the time. An earlier version of this chapter was originally published in the Journal of Big History, Vol. III (3), pp. 123-140 (2019).
The question I raise is whether the basic features of mind, social categories, and society are unchanging or changing. Some understandings of ontology would seem to suggest that social ontology is a branch of metaphysics. However, as the history of concepts such as metaphysical and ontology indicate, our concepts and knowledge are historical. It is widely held that society is concept‐ and activity‐dependent. I examine critically two strands of social ontology in terms of their answers to this problematic: (1) John Searle’s theory of the construction of social reality and (2) critical realist theory of mind and society as interlaced emergent layers of reality. Apart from emergence in natural systems, there is also emergence beyond nature as consciousness, agency and society cannot be completely explained in terms of biological realities; but how and when did this emergence occur? We need an account of the emergent order of language, reflectively conscious mind, and institutions not only for its own sake, but also because the process whereby new objects and properties emerge may be on‐going, path‐dependent, diverse, and open‐ended. The main argument is that the object of study of social theorists is geo‐historically specific, liable to diversity within any given world‐historical epoch, and open to further changes and new forms of emergence in the future.
The theory of capitalist peace claims that contractual social relations, free trade and cross-border investments are conducive to peace. In discussing this theory, I first sketch some key paradoxes and contradictions of capitalist market economy. These paradoxes and contradictions have critical implications for the theory of liberal-capitalist peace. Free-market policies and re-regulations have released and strengthened various problematical mechanisms that are typical to capitalist market economy. Second, I explain Piketty's inequality r > g and its wider meaning to democracy and global integration under market globalism. Third, I describe briefly two mechanisms that can explain the move from uncertainty and inequalities to existential insecurity and securitization. Fourth, I summarize how these mechanisms can shape macro-history and why the anticipation of a global military catastrophe by futurologists such as Attali and Wagar is not only relevant but unfortunately also plausible. Finally, I discuss briefly how the contradictions of global political economy could be overcome by collective actions and by building better common institutions.
Ian Crawford summarizes the second of two meetings exploring the relationships between astrobiology, big history and cosmic perspectives.
Positivists have been unsuccessful in finding laws in society and most post-positivists have little to say about causation. Critical Realism (CR) can help to overcome these kinds of aporias of social science by providing better understandings for instance about emergence, open-systemic causation and the role of critical reason in human sciences. However, due to both intrinsic and extrinsic reasons, the promises of CR have been only partially fulfilled. In this paper I argue that CR should be redefined as an open-ended process synthesising scientific realism and critical theories with the purpose of advancing our collective learning and development. Concepts such as emergence, causation and normativity are best understood as open sites of discussions and developments, neither originating nor ending in the philosophy of Roy Bhaskar or anyone else. Thus understood, CR can provide a plausible, rationally evolving framework for politics, political economy and other social sciences.
The purpose of the contemporary university has been redefined across the world in terms of success in global competition, usefulness for money-making, and efficiency, meaning application of New Public Management ideas. My aim is to sketch an alternative and future-oriented ethico-political conception of the university to serve counterhegemonic purposes. First I discuss briefly the Humboldtian myth and legacy. Second, I summarize Jürgen Habermas’s analysis of the historical and practical limits of the idea of the university. Third, in response to Habermas’s criticism, I outline a non-speculative, scientific realist way of understanding the unity of all sciences and humanities. Fourth, I locate the idea of the university in the twenty-first century global context, understood in part as world risk society. And finally, I argue that the autonomy of the university should be anchored in the rules, principles and institutional arrangements of multi-spatial metagovernance, rather than just those of territorial states. The future of the university calls for new cosmopolitan institutional solutions and world citizenship.
Whether we talk about human learning and unlearning, securitization, or political economy, the forces and mechanisms generating both globalization and disintegration are causally efficacious across the world. Thus, the processes that led to the victory of the ‘Leave’ campaign in the June 2016 referendum on UK European Union membership are not simply confined to the United Kingdom, or even Europe. Similarly, conflict in Ukraine and the presidency of Donald Trump hold implications for a stage much wider than EU-Russia or the United States alone.
Patomäki explores the world-historical mechanisms and processes that have created the conditions for the world’s current predicaments and, arguably, involve potential for better futures. Operationally, he relies on the philosophy of dialectical critical realism and on the methods of contemporary social sciences, exploring how crises, learning and politics are interwoven through uneven wealth-accumulation and problematical growth-dynamics. Seeking to illuminate the causes of the currently prevailing tendencies towards disintegration, antagonism and – ultimately – war, he also shows how these developments are in fact embedded in deeper processes of human learning. The book embraces a Wellsian warning about the increasingly likely possibility of a military disaster, but its central objective is to further enlightenment and holoreflexivity within the current world-historical conjuncture.
Table of Contents
1.Introduction: the world falling apart
2.Brexit and the causes of European disintegration
3.EU, Russia and the conflict in Ukraine
4.Trumponomics and the dynamics of global disintegration
5.Piketty’s fundamental inequality r > g: the key to understanding and overcoming the causes of disintegration
6.Conclusion: holoreflexivity and the shape of things to come
In a world where convincing explanations take narrative form, IR theories, too, resort to the basic plot alternatives of tragedy, romance, comedy and irony/satire. While the tendency to view the human condition as tragic pertains especially to the so-called realist school, romantic IR storytellers dwell, for example, among liberals, Marxists and peace researchers. This paper focuses on the lesser analysed plots of comedy and irony/satire, finding comic traces in normative, constructivist and critical IR research, and the ironic/satiric mood in poststructural studies. Using the criteria of nonviolence, flexibility, self-reflection and innovativeness, the paper evaluates the relative merits and downsides of the different plots, and takes a stand in favour of comic IR theories. The paper argues that comic theories are best equipped to come up with novel solutions to grave world political problems. Mildly hopeful comedies steer clear of tragic despair, exuberant romantic optimism and satiric cynicism.
The current era of neo-liberal globalisation is in some important ways similar to the era of new imperialism from the early 1870s to 1914. In The Political Economy of Global Security (Patomäki, 2008), I suggest that we can learn from the study of the causes of the late nineteenth-century neoimperial competition that led to the Great War — an outcome that was not necessary but possible and likely. However, as history does not repeat itself, only limited aspects of historical processes may prove sufficiently similar to provide insights into future possibilities. The point is not to look for exactly similar episodes or sequences, but for comparable structural liabilities and tendencies that may yield in some ways analogical outcomes, albeit in a non-deterministic way. Moreover, what is needed is a causal analysis of the existing structures and ongoing processes, on which scenarios of possible futures can be built.
Using astronomical telescopes and biological microscopes, among a virtual arsenal of other tools of high technology, modern scientists are weaving a thread of understanding spanning the origin, existence, and destiny of all things. Now emerging is a unified scenario of the cosmos, including ourselves as sentient beings, based on the time-honored concept of change. From galaxies to snowflakes, from stars and planets to life itself, we are beginning to identify an underlying, ubiquitous pattern penetrating the fabric of all the natural sciences—a sweepingly encompassing view of the order and structure of every known class of object in our richly endowed Universe. We call this subject "cosmic evolution."
Recent advances throughout the sciences suggest that all organized systems share generic phenomena characterizing their emergence, development and evolution. Whether they are physical, biological or cultural systems, certain similarities and homologies pervade evolving entities throughout an amazingly diverse Universe. How strong are the apparent continuities among Nature's historical epochs and how realistic is the quest for unification? To what extent might we broaden conventional evolutionary thinking, into both the pre-biological and post-biological domains? Is such an extension valid, merely metaphorical, or just plain confusing?
For many years at Harvard University, starting in the 1970s and continuing to the present, I have taught, initially with George B. Field, an introductory course on cosmic evolution that sought to identify common denominators bridging a wide variety of specialized science subjects—physics, astronomy, geology, chemistry, biology, and anthropology, among others. The principal aim of this interdisciplinary course explored a universal framework against which to address some of the most basic issues ever contemplated: the origin of matter and the origin of life, as well as how radiation, matter, and life interact and change with time. Our intention was to help sketch a grand evolutionary synthesis that would better enable us to understand who we are, whence we came, and how we fit into the overall scheme of things. In doing so, my students and I gained a broader, integrated knowledge of stars and galaxies, plants and animals, air, land, and sea. Of paramount import, we learned how the evident order and increasing complexity of the many varied, localized structures within the Universe in no way violate the principles of modern physics, which, prima facie, maintain that the Universe itself, globally and necessarily, becomes irreversibly and increasingly disordered.
Beginning in the late 1980s while on sabbatical leave at MIT, and continuing for several years thereafter while on the faculty of the Space Telescope Science Institute at Johns Hopkins University, I occasionally offered an advanced version of the introductory course. This senior seminar attempted to raise substantially the quantitative aspects of the earlier course, to develop even deeper insights into the nature and role of change in Nature, and thus to elevate the subject of cosmic evolution to a level that colleague scientists and intelligent lay persons alike might better appreciate. This brief and broadly brushed monograph—written mostly in the late 1990s during a stint as Phi Beta Kappa National Lecturer, and polished while resuming the teaching at Harvard of my original course on cosmic evolution--is an intentionally lean synopsis of the salient features of that more advanced effort.
Some will see this work as reductionistic, with its analytical approach to the understanding of all material things. Others will regard it as holistic, with its overarching theme of the whole exceeding the sum of Nature's many fragmented parts. In the spirit of complementarity, I offer this work as an evolutionary synthesis of both these methodologies, integrating the deconstructionism of the former and
the constructivist tendencies of the latter. Openly admitted, my inspiration for writing this book has been Erwin Schroedinger's seminal little tract of a half-century ago, What is Life?, yet herein to straighten and extend the analysis to include all known manifestations of order and complexity in the Universe. No attempt is made to be comprehensive in so far as details are concerned; much meat has been left off the bones. Nor is this work meant to be technically rigorous; that will be addressed in a forthcoming opus. Rather, the intent here is to articulate a skeletal précis—a lengthy essay, really—of a truly voluminous subject in a distilled and readable manner. To bend a hackneyed cliché, although the individual trees are most assuredly an integral part of the forest, in this particular work the forest is of greater import. My aim is to avoid diverting the reader from the main lines of argument, to stay focused on target regarding the grand sweep of change from big bang to humankind.
Of special note, this is not a New Age book with mystical overtones however embraced or vulgarized by past scholars, nor one about the history and philosophy of antiquated views of Nature. It grants no speculation on the pseudo-science fringe about morphic fields or quantum vitalism or interfering dieties all mysteriously affecting the ways and means of evolution; nor do we entertain epistemological discussions about the limits of human knowledge or post-modernist opinions about the sociological implications of science writ large. This is a book about mainstream science, pure and simple, outlining the essence of an ongoing research program admittedly multidisciplinary in character and colored by the modern scientific method's unavoidable mix of short-term subjectivity and long-term objectivity.
In writing this book, I have assumed an undergraduate knowledge of natural science, especially statistical and deterministic physics, since as we shall see, much as for classical biological evolution, both chance and necessity have roles to play in all evolving systems. The mathematical level includes that of integral calculus and differential equations, with a smattering of symbolism throughout; the units are those of the centimeter-gram-second (cgs) system, those most widely used by practitioners in the field, editorial conventions notwithstanding. And although a degree of pedagogy has been included when these prerequisites are exceeded, some scientific language has been assumed. "The book of Nature is written in the language of mathematics," said one of my two intellectual heroes, Galileo Galilei, and so are parts of this one. Readers with unalterable math phobia will benefit from the unorthodox design of this work, wherein the "bookends" of Prologue-Introduction and Discussion-Epilogue, comprising more than half of the book, can be mastered without encountering much mathematics at all.
What is presented here, then, is merely a sketch of a developing research agenda, itself evolving, ordering and complexifying—an abstract of scholarship-in-progress incorporating much data and many ideas from the entire spectrum of natural science, yet which attempts to surpass scientific popularizations (including some of my own) that avoid technical lingo, most numbers, and all mathematics. As such, this book should be of interest to most thinking people—active researchers receptive to an uncommonly broad view of science, sagacious students of many disciplines within and beyond science, the erudite public in search of themselves and a credible worldview—in short, anyone having a panoramic, persistent curiosity about the nature of the Universe and of our existence in it.
-- Summary Abstract of This Work --
The essence of this book outlines the grand scenario of cosmic evolution by qualitatively and quantitatively examining the natural changes among radiation, matter, and life within the context of big-bang cosmology. The early Universe is shown to have been flooded with pure energy whose radiation energy density was initially so high as to preclude the existence of any appreciable structure. As the Universe cooled and thinned, a preeminent phase change occurred a few hundred centuries after the origin of all things, at which time matter's energy density overthrew the earlier primacy of radiation. Only with the onset of technologically manipulative beings (on Earth and perhaps elsewhere) has the energy density contained within matter become, in turn, locally dominated by the rate of free energy density flowing through open organic structures.
Using non-equilibrium thermodynamics at the crux, especially energy flow considerations, we argue that it is the contrasting temporal behavior of various energy densities that have given rise to the environments needed for the emergence of galaxies, stars, planets, and life forms. We furthermore maintain that a necessary (though perhaps not sufficient) condition—a veritable prime mover—for the emergence of such ordered structures of rising complexity is the expansion of the Universe itself. Neither demonstrably new science nor appeals to non-science are needed to explain the impressive hierarchy of the cosmic-evolutionary scenario, from quark to quasar, from microbe to mind.
‘Globalization’ is an extraordinary concept. It is a complicated concept that burst upon the world relatively recently, but soon became a household concern. It is a concept that was rarely used until the 1990s, but processes of globalization had been happening for centuries. This article follows the genealogy of the concept from its unlikely beginnings in the 1930s–1950s to the heated scholarly debates across the end of the twentieth century to the present. Before it became a buzz word, the concept of ‘globalization’ began to be used in the most unlikely fields: in education to describe the global life of the mind; in international relations to describe the extension of the European Common Market; and in journalism to describe how the ‘American Negro and his problem are taking on a global significance’. The article begins to answer the question ‘Through what lineages and processes did the concept of globalization become so important?’ Drawing on textual research and interviews with key originating figures in the field of global studies, the article attempts to get past the usual anecdotes about the formation and etymology of the concept that center on alleged inventors of the term or references to first use of ‘globalization’ various dictionaries. The article tracks the careers of major scholars in relation to the career of the concept.
The search for life in the Universe, once the domain of science fiction, is now a robust research program with a well-defined roadmap, from studying the extremes of life on Earth to exploring the possible niches for life in the Solar System and discovering thousands of planets far beyond it. In addition to constituting a major scientific endeavor, astrobiology is one of the most popular topics in astronomy, and is of growing interest to a broad community of thinkers from across the academic spectrum. In this volume, distinguished philosophers, theologians, anthropologists, historians and scientists discuss the big questions about how the discovery of extraterrestrial life, whether intelligent or microbial, would impact society. Their remarkable and often surprising findings challenge our foundational concepts of what the discovery of alien life may hold for humankind. Written in easily accessible language, this thought-provoking collection engages a wide audience of readers from all backgrounds.
Robert Cox's writings have had a profound influence on recent developments in thinking in world politics and political economy in many countries. This book brings together for the first time his most important essays, grouped around the theme of world order. The volume is divided into sections dealing respectively with theory; with the application of Cox's approach to recent changes in world political economy; and with multilateralism and the problem of global governance. The book also includes a critical review of Cox's work by Timothy Sinclair, and an essay by Cox tracing his own intellectual journey. This volume will be an essential guide to Robert Cox's critical approach to world politics for students and teachers of international relations, international political economy, and international organisation.
This book provides a distinctive and rich conception of methodology within international studies. From a rereading of the works of leading Western thinkers about international studies, Hayward Alker rediscovers a 'neo-Classical' conception of international relations which is both humanistic and scientific. He draws on the work of classical authors such as Aristotle and Thucydides; modern writers like Machiavelli, Vico, Marx, Weber, Deutsch and Bull; and post-modern writers like Havel, Connolly and Toulmin. The central challenge addressed is how to integrate 'positivist' or 'falsificationist' research styles within humanistic or interpretive ones. The author argues that appropriate, philosophically informed reformulations of conventional statistical and game-theoretic analyses are possible, and describes a number of humanistic methodologies for international relations, including argumentation analysis, narrative modeling, computational models of political understanding and reconstructive analysis.
Dark Skies is the first work to assess the full impacts of space expansion, past, present, and future. Thinking about space, and the visions fervently promoted by the global space movement, is dominated by geographic misperceptions and utopian illusions. The parts of space where almost all activity has occurred are part of the planet Earth, its astrosphere, and, in practical terms, are smaller than the atmosphere. Contrary to frontier visions, orbital space is already congested and degraded with dangerous space debris. The largest impact of actual space activities is an increased likelihood of catastrophic nuclear war stemming from the use of orbital space and space technology to lob nuclear weapons at intercontinental distances. Building large-scale orbital infrastructures will probably require or produce world government. The ultimate goal of space advocates, the colonization of Mars and asteroids, is promoted to guarantee the survival of humanity if major catastrophes strike Earth. But the spread of humanity into a multiplanet species will likely produce an interstate anarchy highly prone to total war, with Earth having many disadvantages. Altering the orbits of asteroids, a readily achievable technology vital for space colonization, also makes possible “planetoid bombs” with destructive potentials millions of times greater than all nuclear weapons. The biological diversification of humanity into multiple species, anticipated by space advocates, will further stoke interworld wars. Astrocide—the extinction of humanity resulting from significant space expansion—must join the lengthening list of potential threats to human survival. Large-scale space expansion should be relinquished in favor of an Earth-oriented space program of arms control and planetary security.
Cambridge Core - Planetary Science and Astrobiology - Astrobiology, Discovery, and Societal Impact - by Steven J. Dick
This text offers insight into one of the classic questions of history: why did sustained industrial growth begin in Northwest Europe, despite surprising similarities between advanced areas of Europe and East Asia? As the author shows, as recently as 1750, parallels between these two parts of the world were very high in life expectancy, consumption, product and factor markets, and the strategies of households. Perhaps most surprisingly, he demonstrates that the Chinese and Japanese cores were no worse off ecologically than Western Europe. Core areas throughout the eighteenth-century Old World faced comparable local shortages of land-intensive products, shortages that were only partly resolved by trade. The author argues that Europe's nineteenth-century divergence from the Old World owes much to the fortunate location of coal, which substituted for timber. This made Europe's failure to use its land intensively much less of a problem, while allowing growth in energy-intensive industries. Another crucial difference that he notes has to do with trade. Fortuitous global conjunctures made the Americas a greater source of needed primary products for Europe than any Asian periphery. This allowed Northwest Europe to grow dramatically in population, specialize further in manufactures, and remove labor from the land, using increased imports rather than maximizing yields. Together, coal and the New World allowed Europe to grow along resource-intensive, labor-saving paths. Meanwhile, Asia hit a cul-de-sac. Although the East Asian hinterlands boomed after 1750, both in population and in manufacturing, this growth prevented these peripheral regions from exporting vital resources to the cloth-producing Yangzi Delta. As a result, growth in the core of East Asia's economy essentially stopped, and what growth did exist was forced along labor-intensive, resource-saving paths, paths Europe could have been forced down, too, had it not been for favorable resource stocks from underground and overseas.
This ground-breaking synthesis of evolutionary and cultural theory draws on theories of complex adaptive systems and biosemiotics in order to argue that - far from being opposed to nature - culture is the way that nature has evolved in human beings. Wendy Wheeler's argument is that these evolutionary processes reveal the fundamental sociality of human creatures - she rejects the selfish individualism that is implied both in the biological reductionism of much recent evolutionary psychology, and in the philosophies of neoliberalism. Instead she shows that the complex structures of biosemiotic evolution have always involved a creativity which is born from the difficult but productive phenomenological encounter between the Self and its Others; and she argues that this creativity, in both the sciences and the humanities, is fundamental to human progress. In this major contribution to both cultural studies and eco-criticism, Wheeler shows how complexity and biosemiotics forge the link between nature and culture, and provide a new and better understanding of how 'the whole human creature' operates as both social and biological being.
This paper explores Pragmatism?s potential for transcending the antagonism between positivism and post-positivism, through the work of Morton Kaplan, who combines a Pragmatist theory of knowledge with a systems theory of world politics. A reconstruction of Kaplan?s synoptic philosophy shows how Pragmatism can help us move beyond the dual fallacy of truth as correspondence and truth as self-consciousness, to a non-foundationalist epistemology that acknowledges the historicity of knowing without annihilating the realism of the common world we live in. Moving from the realm of knowledge to the realm of judgment, this paper also reconstructs Kaplan?s moral analysis, thereby revealing its significance for the discipline?s renewed concern for the problems of values and reflexivity.
In this book, Chiara Bottici argues for a philosophical understanding of political myth. Bottici shows that myth is a process, one of continuous work on a basic narrative pattern that responds to a need for significance. Human beings need meaning in order to master the world they live in, but they also need significance in order to live in a world that is less indifferent to them. This is particularly true in the realm of politics. Political myths are narratives through which we orient ourselves, and act and feel about our political world. Bottici shows that in order to come to terms with contemporary phenomena, such as the clash between civilizations, we need a Copernican revolution in political philosophy. If we want to save reason, we need to look at it from the standpoint of myth.
What are the possibilities for and conditions of global security in the 21st century? This book provides an innovative study of future wars, crises and transformations of the global political economy. It brings together economic theory, political economy, peace and conflict research, philosophy and historical analogy to explore alternatives for the future. Patomäki develops a bold, original and thought provoking political economy analysis of the late 20th century neo-liberalisation and globalisation and their real effects, which he describes as a 21st century version imperialism. In order for us to understand global security and to anticipate the potential threats and crises, he argues that a holistic understanding and explanation of history is necessary and demonstrates that a systematic causal analysis of structures and processes is required. Putting this theory into practice, Patomäki constructs a comparative explanatory model which traces the rise of imperialism in the late 19th century and culminated in the First World War. He argues that even a partial return to the 19th century ideals and practices is very likely to be highly counterproductive in the 21st century world and could become a recipe for a major global catastrophe. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, globalization studies, politics, economics and security studies.
John Hobson challenges the ethnocentric bias of mainstream accounts of the “Rise of the West” that assume that Europeans have pioneered their own development, and that the East has been a passive by-stander. Describing the rise of what he calls the “Oriental West”, Hobson argues that Europe first assimilated many Eastern inventions, and then appropriated Eastern resources through imperialism. Hobson's book thus propels the hitherto marginalized Eastern peoples to the forefront of the story of progressive world history. © Cambridge University Press, 2009 and John M. Hobson 2004. All rights reserved.
Originally published in 1989, Reclaiming Reality still provides the most accessible introduction to the increasingly influential multi-disciplinary and international body of thought, known as critical realism. It is designed to "underlabour" both for the sciences, especially the human sciences, and for the projects of human emancipation which such sciences may come to inform; and provides an enlightening intervention in current debates about realism and relativism, positivism and poststucturalism, modernism and postmodernism, etc. Elaborating his critical realist perspective on society, nature, science and philosophy itself, Roy Bhaskar shows how this perspective can be used to undermine currently fashionable ideologies of the Right, and at the same time, to clear the ground for a reinvigorated Left. Reclaiming Reality contains powerful critiques of some of the most important schools of thought and thinkers of recent years-from Bachelard and Feyerabend to Rorty and Habermas; and it advances novel and convincing resolutions of many traditional philosophical problems. Now with a new introduction from Mervyn Hartwig, this book continues to provide a straightforward and stimulating introduction to current debates in philosophy and social theory for the interested lay reader and student alike. Reclaiming Reality will be of particular value not only for critical realists but for all those concerned with the revitalization of the socialist emancipatory project and the renaissance of the Marxist theoretical tradition. Roy Bhaskar is the originator of the philosophy of critical realism, and the author of many acclaimed and influential works including A Realist Theory of Science, The Possibility of Naturalism, Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation and Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom. He is an editor of the recently published Critical Realism: Essential Readings and is currently chair of the Centre for Critical Realism.
The intelligence failures surrounding the invasion of Iraq dramatically illustrate the necessity of developing standards for evaluating expert opinion. This book fills that need. Here, Philip E. Tetlock explores what constitutes good judgment in predicting future events, and looks at why experts are often wrong in their forecasts. Tetlock first discusses arguments about whether the world is too complex for people to find the tools to understand political phenomena, let alone predict the future. He evaluates predictions from experts in different fields, comparing them to predictions by well-informed laity or those based on simple extrapolation from current trends. He goes on to analyze which styles of thinking are more successful in forecasting. Classifying thinking styles using Isaiah Berlin's prototypes of the fox and the hedgehog, Tetlock contends that the fox--the thinker who knows many little things, draws from an eclectic array of traditions, and is better able to improvise in response to changing events--is more successful in predicting the future than the hedgehog, who knows one big thing, toils devotedly within one tradition, and imposes formulaic solutions on ill-defined problems. He notes a perversely inverse relationship between the best scientific indicators of good judgement and the qualities that the media most prizes in pundits--the single-minded determination required to prevail in ideological combat. Clearly written and impeccably researched, the book fills a huge void in the literature on evaluating expert opinion. It will appeal across many academic disciplines as well as to corporations seeking to develop standards for judging expert decision-making.
Informal Logic is an introductory guidebook to the basic principles of constructing sound arguments and criticizing bad ones. Non-technical in approach, it is based on 186 examples, which Douglas Walton, a leading authority in the field of informal logic, discusses and evaluates in clear, illustrative detail. Walton explains how errors, fallacies, and other key failures of argument occur. He shows how correct uses of argument are based on sound strategies for reasoned persuasion and critical responses. Among the many subjects covered are: forms of valid argument, defeasible arguments, relevance, appeals to emotion, personal attack, straw man argument, jumping to a conclusion, uses and abuses of expert opinion, problems in drawing conclusions from polls and statistics, loaded terms, equivocation, arguments from analogy, and techniques of posing, replying to, and criticizing questions. This new edition takes into account many new developments in the field of argumentation study that have occurred since 1989, many created by the author. Drawing on these developments, Walton includes and analyzes 36 new topical examples and also brings in recent work on argumentation schemes. Ideally suited for use in courses in informal logic and introduction to philosophy, this book will also be valuable to students of pragmatics, rhetoric, and speech communication.
Cognitive theories predict that even experts cope with the complexities and ambiguities of world politics by resorting to theory-driven heuristics that allow them: (a) to make confident counterfactual inferences about what would have happened had history gone down a different path (plausible pasts); (b) to generate predictions about what might yet happen (probable futures); (c) to defend both counterfactual beliefs and conditional forecasts from potentially disconfirming data. An interrelated series of studies test these predictions by assessing correlations between ideological world view and beliefs about counterfactual histories (Studies 1 and 2), experimentally manipulating the results of hypothetical archival discoveries bearing on those counterfactual beliefs (Studies 3-5), and by exploring experts' reactions to the confirmation or disconfirmation of conditional forecasts (Studies 6-12). The results revealed that experts neutralize dissonant data and preserve confidence in their prior assessments by resorting to a complex battery of belief-system defenses that, epistemologically defensible or not, make learning from history a slow process and defections from theoretical camps a rarity.