Veblen and Instrumental Value: A Systems Theory Perspective

أثر استخدام المستودعات التعليمية الرقمية في تنمية المعرفة التکنولوجية لدى طلاب المعهد العالي للدراسات النوعية واتجاهاتهم نحو البرمجة الهيکلية

Maurice Bloch (2012) argues that ethnographers’ animosity toward and ignorance of cognitive science is based on a false dichotomy between ‘nature’ (as in universal human nature) and ‘culture’. Bloch characterises ethnography as evoking and describing culturally and historically specific symbolic systems that ground and enable meaningful lives. He further argues that there is no such thing as ‘super-organic meaning’. All meaning, even culturally constructed meaning, is the product of individual human minds and must be interpreted by individual minds. Cognitive science, including philosophy and linguistics as well as psychology, is the science of mental representations, and thus of the symbols individual minds create, interpret and use in practice, communication and thought. Bloch argues that ignoring the science of mental representation, at the very least, makes the work of ethnographers less nuanced and rich than it might otherwise be and, at worst, leads to theoretical commitments that are deeply counterproductive. Conversely, he argues that cognitive scientists’ refusal or inability to understand the profound lessons of the work of ethnographers from Malinowski through Boas through Evans-Pritchard through Geertz symmetrically makes their work less nuanced and rich thanitmightotherwisebeandsimilarlyleadstoavoidable,theoreticallyimportant,errors. Here I focus on the latter possibility. I respond to two of Bloch’ sw orries concerning where cognitive science has gone wrong by virtue of not properly appreciating the cultural/historical specificity of symbol systems. Although I believe these worries are groundless, I endorse Bloch’s call for rapprochement, and conclude with other reasons cognitive scientists should enlist in the more sustained collaboration Bloch advocates. Bloch’s worries:

How do individual human minds create languages, legal systems, scientific theories, and technologies? From a cognitive science viewpoint, such collective phenomena may be considered a type of distributed computation in which human minds together solve computational problems beyond any individual. This viewpoint may also shift our perspective on individual minds.

The pragmatist tradition in philosophy has left a sound legacy in many contemporary research fields. John Dewey’s continuist and emergentist approach to the nature-or-nurture problem in relation to the individual human mind has been regained lately in evolutionist psychology and related disciplines. For Dewey, language plays a fundamental role in creating and maintaining this continuity between the individual mind and the social and physical environment humans inhabit. The present article will focus on a few contemporary lines of research that identify language as the ‘glue’ that bonds each individual to one another and to society, with a decisive impact on the development of one’s own mind.

460 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:3 JULY 1996 Graeme Hunter, editor. Spinoza: The Enduring Questions. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994. Pp. xi + 182. Cloth, $70.00. This volume of eight essays is dedicated to the memory of the late David Savan, and originated from a conference held in his honor prior to his untimely death. The lead essay is by Savan himself, and most of the other essays acknowledge the influence of his work. The first three essays address not only an "enduring question," but a question about enduring: namely, the nature of eternality and immortality in Spinoza's metaphysics. In a dense and detailed essay that amply rewards close analysis, Savan aims to clarify Spinoza's conception of eternity. That conception, Savan argues, cannot be identified with any of the three main conceptions dominant in previous philosophizing: (1) eternity as sempiternity; (2) eternity as Platonic timelessness; and (3) eternity as necessary existence, following from a thing's own essence. Chief among his reasons is that Spinoza characterizes eternity not as one superlative kind of existence, but rather as "existence itself," conceived in a certain way (i.e., conceived as "following from the definition itself of the eternal thing"). On Savan's interpretation, Spinoza has a strict or absolute sense of "eternity" in which only God can be said to be eternal, and another, qualified sense in which all singular things are eternal (as well as being contingent and durational). Thus, on Savan's interpretation, each individual human mind is itself eternal. His attribution of this latter doctrine to Spinoza is greatly facilitated by three other aspects of his interpretive procedure: (1) his unwillingness to draw a distinction between "eternal" and "conceived under a form of eternity"; his treatment of a thing's formal and actual essences as two "aspects" (eternal and durational, respectively) of what is in reality the same essence; and (3) his nominalizing tendency to read Spinoza as identifying (or nearly identifying) singular things with their essences. The result is that Spinoza's various remarks about the conceivability of the human mind "under a form of eternity" and about the eternality of the formal essence of the human mind can all be recruited as evidence that Spinoza regarded human minds themselves as eternal. Savan goes on to attribute to Spinoza the seemingly un-Spinozistic doctrine that "each distinctive existent is eternally free." In the essay immediately following Savan's, James C. Morrison outlines and reaffirms the strong textual evidence that, for Spinoza, it is only a part of each individual mind, and not the individual human mind itself, that is eternal. Leslie Armour offers a wildly speculative interpretation of Spinoza according to which human minds survive death because they will be re-expressed--complete with sets of distinctive personal memories--at some future time (or perhaps even "in some different world"), so that God and his eternal idea of each human being's essence may be expressed with maximal reality. Armour recommends interpreting Spinoza as holding this doctrine of the "afterlife as a continuing adventure" partly because of the doctrine's alleged capacity to provide emotional comfort--evidently without noticing that Spinoza's psychology involves a claim to demonstrate that the emotions attending adequate understanding are themselves capable of overcoming fear of death, quite without the need for quasiresurrections or quasi-reincarnations. BOOK REVIEWS 461 Edwin Curley's "Notes on a Neglected Masterpiece: Spinoza and the Science of Hermeneutics" takes as its starting point Savan's claim that Spinoza is the "founder of scientific hermeneutics." Rejccting the most extreme interpretation of this claim--i.e., that Spinoza created scientific hermeneutics ex nihilo--Curlcy carefully compares Spinoza 's contributions to Biblical criticism with those of Hobbes and Isaac La Peyr~re, and concludes that Spinoza's work possesses, in addition to a generally higher level of hermeneutical rigor, something quite specific that they do not--namely, "a well worked-out theory of what is required for the interpretation of a text." This theory demands that we begin by applying to textual interpretation the Cartesian strategy of "removing all prejudices" and preconceptions; doing so allows us to interpret a text such as the Bible in...

This article is devoted to the theoretical analysis of the features of the value-semantic sphere of adolescents. Peculiarities of personality formation in adolescence are analyzed. Attention is drawn to the fact that self-awareness of the individual occurs in adolescents in the process of communicating with peers, which is considered at this age one of the leading activities. Due to qualitative changes in the development of self-awareness, the previous relationship between the student and the environment is broken. The central and specific neoplasm in the adolescent’s personality is the emergence of a sense of adulthood, which is manifested in the desire to be and be considered an adult. The development of self-awareness becomes the content of the mental development of the adolescent. If in the early stages of personality formation the level of relationships is dictated by adults, then in adolescence they are determined by the expansion of social responsibilities, learning and the growth of individual self-awareness.During this period, the social status of the adolescent changes significantly, the range of his responsibilities and communication expands. The concept of value-semantic sphere in psychological and pedagogical literature is studied, which at the present stage of development of psychological science is considered as a central, integral phenomenon of personality, which influences its behavior as a whole, in each situation and determines the general direction of its life. Peculiarities of the development of the value-semantic sphere of adolescents are substantiated. It is emphasized that value orientations are the result of internal and external interaction in the process of personality development, a subjective reflection of the objective world in the mind of a particular individual. Being aware, values play an important role in determining the orientation of the individual in the social environment. The main methods of research of features of value-semantic sphere in adolescence are analyzed: value and meaning-life orientations, life goals and values. The sample, stages of research are characterized and the received results of studying of features of value-semantic sphere of teenagers which is still insufficiently formed are analyzed: manifested in the low consistency of the structure of value orientations of adolescents and the simultaneous existence of contradictory, conflicting terminal and instrumental values; in insufficient realism of assessment of oneself and one’s own behavior; lack of confidence in their abilities and ability to influence a certain course of events.

Strategic decisions on knowledge development and diffusion at pilot and demonstration projects: An empirical mapping of actors, projects and strategies in the case of circular forest bioeconomy

Spatial development of technological knowledge and the evolution of international business activity across technological paradigms

‘'Preparingfor the Duties and Practical Business of Life’ Technological Knowledge and Social Structure in Mid-19th-Century Philadelphia NINA E. LERMAN Industrialization is commonly described as a social as well as a technological transformation. Nonetheless, the tight links between the history of technology and social history suggested by such a phrase have remained largely elusive; the “social” and the “techno­ logical” are most often treated in opposition to one another.1 But scholars discuss both technology and social categories like gender in terms of their “social construction,” suggesting another, more parallel or even interdependent relationship. Indeed, phrases such as “social shaping of technology” invite transgression of traditional boundaries. Exploring the “social and technological transforma­ tion” ofAmerican industrialization in this spirit, I find that techno­ logical knowledge (a topic long since introduced in these pages) provides an ideal approach: the study of technological knowledge places people making and doing things—from cooking to carpentry— at the focus of our scrutiny, and demands integration of the techni­ cal and the social.2 Dr. Lerman teaches U.S. history, women’s history, and the history of technology at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. She is working on a book about technical education and social categories in industrializing Philadelphia. She thanks Lindy Biggs, Christian Gelzer, Mark T. Hamel, Gabrielle Hecht, Michael B. Katz, Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, Helen Longino, Judith McGaw, Arwen Mohun, Ruth Oldenziel , Philip Scranton, John Staudenmaier, and the Technology and Culture referees for their comments on the several incarnations of this article. ‘Studies integrating social and technological change include Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of Change (Ithaca, N.Y., 1977); Anthony Wallace, Rochdale: The Growth of an American Village in the Industrial Revolution (New York, 1972; paperback, 1980); Judith McGaw, Most Wonderful Ma­ chine: Mechanization and Social Change in Berkshire Paper-Making, 1801-1885 (Princeton, N.J., 1987). 2As Walter Vincenti has put it, “emphasis on knowledge . . . brings history of technology into symbiotic relation, not only with intellectual history and philosophy, but with social history and sociology as well.” Walter Vincenti, What Engineers Know© 1997 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/97/3801-0004$01.00 31 32 Nina E. Lerman Industrialization as a process of rapid technological, economic, and social change means, by definition, the great upheaval and over­ haul of technological knowledge as well as of social structures and ideas. By focusing on the acquisition of technological knowledge, or technical education, this article begins to explore the multilayered interconnections between social and technological change, and to study closely the fabric of the industrial transformation. Examining the technical education adults provide children—“preparing for the duties and practical business of life,” as one board of managers described girls’ sewing and boys’ shoemaking3—allows us to explore important questions about technological knowledge: What kinds of choices are made by whom in the acquisition and development of technological knowledge? Who learns how to do what?—and fur­ ther, who is allowed to learn how to do what? What knowledge is ubiquitous, and what is unusual? What does it mean, in a particular context, to say that a particular person possesses a particular skill? These questions draw our attention to the reciprocal shapings of technological knowledge and social ideologies such as gender, race, and class. This article examines the particular case of technical education in mid-19th-century Philadelphia, a city caught up in the whirlwind boom and bustle of changing technologies, changing populations, and the changing social strategies of urban industrialization. Mid­ century Philadelphia was a city in transition—an old social and tech­ nological order was, for many, being replaced with a larger-scale, more bureaucratic and industrial vision. The population of urban Philadelphia had more than tripled since 1820; when the whole of Philadelphia County was consolidated into one municipal jurisdic­ tion in 1854, its twenty-four wards housed more than 400,000 people, and How They Know II: Analytical Studiesfrom Aeronautical History (Baltimore, 1990), p. 5, citing Hugh Aitken, Edwin Layton, and Rachel Laudan. Philosopher Helen Longino has made a related argument about science: “What I urge is a contextualism which understands the cognitive processes...

The technological network formed by the patent citation has a wealth of information on technological knowledge development. That is, the technological network formed by patent citation contains valuable information on knowledge flows. the O-I index compares the number of inflow links with that of outflow links at a single node level, so it cannot offer absolute information about the importance and role of a particular node in the entire network. This problem can be solved by using the betweenness centrality as another indicator. The betweenness centrality is defined as the number of geodesic path that pass through a node. the positions of the knowledge roles at different periods show that although most latecomers play the role of knowledge absorbers, some own important technological knowledge after entering the technology industry, which gives itself a place in the knowledge role. As well, some first comers lose its importance in the knowledge role. Therefore, through the knowledge accumulation and role changing process of thin-film solar photovoltaic technology, technological knowledge development can be more clearly understood, as well as the changing roles of different competitors at different periods, and different positions of the knowledge roles.

Background to the Study The research reported in this paper is drawn from a much larger three-year study focused on the 1996 implementation of Problem Solving Through Technology topics in Alberta, Canada elementary science classrooms. In this three year study, we worked to characterize children’s development of technological knowledge and skills during design technology problem solving activities and report on support needed by teachers to present these topics in classrooms. We also examined the Problem Solving Through Technology inquiry model presented in the Alberta Elementary Science Program (1996) and explored whether this model resembled how professionals (e.g., engineers) engaged in technological problem solving described their work. The study commenced in September 1995, one year prior to the mandated implementation of a new Alberta Elementary Science Program (1996). In this preliminary year (Study Year One), 20 engineers were interviewed about their perceptions of technological problem solving (Rowell, Gustafson & Guilbert, 1997). One hundred fifty three children (80 male, 73 female) completed a performance based assessment related to the impending program. Three hundred thirty four children (180 male, 154 female) completed an Awareness of Technology Survey. Data from Study Year One provided insight into children’s technological knowledge and problem solving skills prior to formal classroom instruction and information about how engineers characterized their work. In Study Year Two, six case studies were conducted on the classroom implementation of the Problem Solving Through Technology topics. These case studies allowed insight into the practical problems encountered by teachers and their concerns about support needed to teach design technology in an effective manner (Rowell & Gustafson, 1998). Case studies also provided a context in which we could begin to characterize how children solved design technology problems in classrooms. Study Year Three involved locating children from Study Year One and re-administering the performance based assessment and a ____________________________

We are living in a data-driven society. Big Data and the Internet of Things are popular terms. Governments, universities and the private sector make great investments in collecting and storing data and also extracting new knowledge from these data banks. Technological enthusiasm runs throughout political discourses. “Algorithmic regulation” is defined as a form of data-driven governance. Big Data shall offer brand new opportunities in scientific research. At the same time, political criticism of data storage grows because of a lack of privacy protection and the centralization of data in the hands of governments and corporations. Calls for data-driven dynamic regulation have existed in the past. In Chile, cybernetic development led to the creation of Cybersyn, a computer system that was created to manage the socialist economy under the Allende government 1971–1973. My contribution will present this Cybersyn project created by Stafford Beer. Beer proposed the creation of a “liberty machine” in which expert knowledge would be grounded in data-guided policy. The paper will focus on the human–technological complex in society. The first section of the paper will discuss whether the political and social environment can completely change the attempts of algorithmic regulation. I will deal specifically with the development of technological knowledge in Chile, a postcolonial state, and the relationship between citizens and data storage in a socialist state. In a second section, I will examine the question of which measures can lessen the danger of data storage regarding privacy in a democratic society. Lastly, I will discuss how much data-driven governance is required for democracy and political participation. I will present a second case study: digital participatory budgeting (DPB) in Brazil.

With the increasing needs and human’s creativity, accompanied by the development of technological knowledge from various things, one example is the development of online-based transportation. Transportation is a tool in the form of a vehicle that purpose is to move an item from one place to another. In the current era of globalization, there are several companies that develop their business through online transportation, in addition to the shuttle service there is also a delivery or pick up of food/goods quickly that can provide convenience for the community. This paper describes the redesign of the box that motorcyclists could use in online transportation. The design concept is designed more innovative to design models and materials used are also more practical & efficient in terms of time in use both in terms of installation and dismantling of the box, the aim is to answer the problems of online transportation at this time, which are not only in terms of efficiency but also ergonomics. The research was conducted by observing the existing problems, then brainstorming in ergonomic box design and then making 3D modelling using the inventor’s stress analysis method. to achieved a new innovative and ergonomic design for helping online transportation.

Over time, economics has experienced paradigm shifts, and there is every reason to think this will continue. In economics, as in the development of technological knowledge, paradigms do not emerge from nowhere, but build on precursors, possibly from other fields. Our understanding of current economic thinking can be enhanced by paying greater attention to the role of paradigms and by using concepts such as myth, plot structure, and cultural endowment, which are typically given greater attention by literary analysts than by economists, to study paradigms. Here we argue that together these can help us better understand how ideas from other times and fields may be combined with our own to generate better research and publications, and that a greater awareness of the history of economics may well be an excellent vehicle for enhancing that understanding.

The main objective of the chapter is the development of technological knowledge, based on Matlab/Simulink programming language, related to grid connected power systems for energy production by using Renewable Energy Sources (RES), as clean and efficient sources for meeting both the environment requirements and the technical necessities of the grid connected power inverters. Another objective is to promote the knowledge regarding RES; consequently, it is necessary to bring contribution to the development of some technologies that allow the integration of RES in a power inverter with high energy quality and security. By using these energetic systems, the user is not only a consumer, but also a producer of energy. This fact will have a direct impact from technical, economic and social point of view, and it will contribute to the increasing of life quality.