Conceptual Revolutions Research Articles

Singlehood as an identity

ABSTRACT Very little attention has been paid in the literature to singlehood as an identity. Existing research can be divided into the reasons for singlehood on one side and the implications of being single on the other side, while mostly leaving singlehood itself a “black box.” Therefore, this article first surveys the two existing scholastic streams. Second, it lays out a growing stream of research where singlehood is found to be a social category and identity in itself. Third, through using social identity theories, this article offers a model of three main categories of singlehood identity: counter-normative, peripheral, and core identity. Fourth, the article demonstrates the far-reaching implications of this identity categorisation for empirical research and topics such as social discrimination, civil rights, and social movements. Thus, the meaning of singlehood is now going through a shift resembling past conceptual revolutions regarding race, gender, and sexual orientation.

Literary Historiography and the Problem of the Author: Mihai Iovănel’s History and Recent Developments in Authorship Studies

"Literary Historiography and the Problem of the Author: Mihai Iovănel’s History and Recent Developments in Authorship Studies. The present paper examines the dynamics between literary historiography and authorship studies and the way in which these problems related to Mihai Iovănel’s recent History. Ciorogar argues that authorship theories have always determined the workings of canonicity. Furthermore, the metamorphoses of literary histories could be viewed, he insists, as a series of conceptual revolutions. Consequently, arguments related to authorship have given rise to both new fields of research and disciplines. Finally, Ciorogar also suggests that the evolution of literary criticism and theory is more or less coeval with the history of auctorial models. Keywords: authorship studies, literary history, criticism and theory, the death and return of the author, research methodologies, Mihai Iovănel"

Immune and Inflammatory Networks in Myocardial Infarction: Current Research and Its Potential Implications for the Clinic.

Despite recent scientific and technological advances, myocardial infarction (MI) still represents a major global health problem, leading to high morbidity and mortality worldwide. During the post-MI wound healing process, dysregulated immune inflammatory pathways and failure to resolve inflammation are associated with maladaptive left ventricular remodeling, progressive heart failure, and eventually poor outcomes. Given the roles of immune cells in the host response against tissue injury, understanding the involved cellular subsets, sources, and functions is essential for discovering novel therapeutic strategies that preserve the protective immune system and promote optimal healing. This review discusses the cellular effectors and molecular signals across multi-organ systems, which regulate the inflammatory and reparative responses after MI. Additionally, we summarize the recent clinical and preclinical data that propel conceptual revolutions in cardiovascular immunotherapy.

Concept Proliferation as an Educational Good: Epistemic Injustice, Conceptual Revolutions, and Human Flourishing

AbstractThis article presents a pedagogical approach for disrupting epistemic injustice. In it, A. C. Nikolaidis first demonstrates that different forms of epistemic injustice — testimonial, hermeneutical, and contributory — are the result of limited or distorted conceptual resources and then argues that concept proliferation can be a promising educational means for overcoming such limitations and distortions. Concept proliferation involves a combination of increasing exposure to diverse, especially marginalized, concepts and providing students with necessary critical tools for questioning harmful and erroneous concepts. Concept proliferation is beneficial for both individual students and society at large. It liberates students from the confines of harmful concepts that limit their self‐understanding, but also provides them with skills necessary to challenge hegemonic concepts that distort collective (social) understanding and contribute to epistemic and systemic injustice.

Commentary on Ambedkar’s Posthumously Published “Philosophy of Hinduism”

This paper offers a critical commentary of Ambedkar's posthumously published "The Philosophy of Hinduism," which was discovered shortly after his death. Given previous, considerable contributions in the fields of law, economics, political and social theory, the work appears to be the beginnings of what remains an incomplete treatise on a new area of investigation for Ambedkar. In this work, Ambedkar tackles the murky and opaque sub-field of philosophy, namely the philosophy of religion. This paper unpacks some of Ambedkar's key insights on the nature of the philosophy of religion to test what elements - considered from a philosophical point view - constitute a religion. Furthermore, given the historical paradigmatic shifts in the nature of religion from antiquity to modernity, Ambedkar identifies two conceptual revolutions from which he will introduce two criteria - utility and justice - to evaluate the nature of Hinduism as a religion. Given his life-long quest to understand Hinduism and caste, ultimately, Ambedkar's goal to overcome what he says is the systemic and structural inequality of caste in the Indian social order leads him to certain negative conclusions: namely whether Hinduism can be characterized as a religion if in fact modern religions must have a foundation in some intrinsic dimension of social justice. This paper constitutes Part I of a longer commentary. The aspiration is that a longer Part II will ultimately extend Ambedkar's philosophical investigation into new domains for which he did not have the opportunity to explore.

Sciences of Observation

Multiple sciences have converged, in the past two decades, on a hitherto mostly unremarked question: what is observation? Here, I examine this evolution, focusing on three sciences: physics, especially quantum information theory, developmental biology, especially its molecular and “evo-devo” branches, and cognitive science, especially perceptual psychology and robotics. I trace the history of this question to the late 19th century, and through the conceptual revolutions of the 20th century. I show how the increasing interdisciplinary focus on the process of extracting information from an environment provides an opportunity for conceptual unification, and sketch an outline of what such a unification might look like.

Giant viruses: update, enigmas, controversies and perspectives

Unlike microbes known in his time, the first virus (that of tobacco mosaic disease) was discovered by Ivanoski in 1892 because it was not retained by Chamberland's porcelain candles. For more than a century afterward, viruses were equated with this simple property that is still extensively used today (using modern 0,2 µm pore filters) as a practical criterion to delineate the "viral fraction" from other microbes in medical or environmental samples. The first documented exception to the simplistic criterion of particle size came with the discovery of Mimivirus, the viral nature of which was eventually recognized in 2003, following ten years during which it was mistaken for an obligate intracellular bacterium. Thirteen more years later, we now realize that non-filtering "giant viruses" are not rare, probably ubiquitous, and come in a large variety of virion shapes, genome sizes, gene contents, and replication strategies. Following a quick description of the 4 giant virus families known today, we discuss the enigmas, controversies and perspectives of conceptual revolutions that are brought about by this new and booming area of virology.

Drift Theory and Plate Tectonics: A Case of Embedding in Geology

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the semantic relation between continental drift and plate tectonics. The numerous attempts to account for this case in either Kuhnian or Lakatosian terms have been convincingly dismissed by Rachel Laudan (PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. Symposia and Invited Papers, 1978), who nevertheless acknowledged that there was not yet a plausible alternative to explain the so called “geological revolution”. Several decades later, the epistemological side of this revolution has received much attention (Ruse in The darwinian paradigm, essays on its history, philosophy and religious implications. London, Routledge, 1981/1989; Thagard in Conceptual revolutions. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1992; Marvin in Metascience 10:208–217, 2001; Oreskes in Plate tectonics: an insiders’ history of the modern theory of the earth. Westview Press, Boulder, 2003), while the semantic relation between drift theory and plate tectonics has remained mainly unexplored. In studying this case under a new light, the notion of embedding, as distinguished from other sorts of intertheoretical relations (Moulines in Cognitio Humana—Dynamik des Wissens und der Werte. XVII, Institut fur Philosophie der Universitat Leipzig, Leipzig, 1996, Time, chance, and reduction: philosophical aspects of statistical mechanics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010, Metatheoria 1(2):11–27, 2011), will have a particular significance. After formally analyzing the relationship between continental drift and plate tectonics, it will become evident that the models of drift theory are part of the models of plate tectonics, thereby fulfilling the conditions for embedding. All theoretical concepts from drift theory are presupposed in some theoretical concepts from plate tectonics, and all empirical concepts of the former are shared by the latter. Furthermore, all the successful paradigmatic applications of continental drift are also successful applications of plate tectonics. As a consequence, under the label “geological revolution”, we actually find a salient historical case of cumulative progress across theory change.

Introduction: Urban revolutions in the age of global urbanism

This special issue, papers presented at an Urban Studies Foundation-funded conference in Jakarta (March 2011), examines the current ‘urban century’ in terms of three revolutions. Revolutions from above index the logics and norms of mainstream global urbanism, particularly the form they have taken as policymakers work with municipal officials worldwide to organise urban development around neoliberal norms. Revolutions from below refer to the multifaceted contestations of global urbanism that take place in and around cities, ranging from urban street demonstrations and occupations (such as those riveting the world in early 2011 when these papers were written) to the quotidian actions of those pursuing politics and livelihoods that subvert the norms of mainstream global urbanism. It also highlights conceptual revolutions, referencing the ongoing challenge of reconceptualising urban theory from the South – not simply as a hemispheric location or geopolitical category but an epistemological stance, staged from many different locations but always fraught with the differentials of power and the weight of historical geographies. Drawing on the insights of scholars writing from, and not just about, such locations, a further iteration in this ‘southern’ turn of urban theorising is proposed. This spatio-temporal conjunctural approach emphasises how the specificity of cities – their existence as entities that are at once singular and universal – emerges from spatio-temporal dynamics, connectivities and horizontal and vertical relations. Practically, such scholarship entails taking the field seriously through collaborative work that is multi-sited, engages people along the spectrum of academics and activists, and is presented before and scrutinised by multiple publics.

When Reason Fails Us: How We Act and What We Do When We Do Not Know What to Do

An important feature of so-called rational decision making, at least in times of crisis, is arational: that is, our ability to decide manifests features of our characters or the values we hold rather than our reasoning abilities.1 Such a position stands in obvious opposition to the Western philosophical tradition. Consider, by comparison, the view of Immanuel Kant, who held that reason could, and perhaps sometimes ought to, operate independently of (and in opposition to) our sentiments. Contrary to Kant, William James argues in “The Sentiment of Rationality” that arational mental states and phenomena—such as feelings, emotions, values, and attitudes—are indispensable to practical rationality (317). The attempt to characterize decision making, particularly in times of ethical crises, as rational is a long-standing practice in philosophy that has begun to receive challenges both from inside and outside of philosophy. Experimental ethicists have shown a willingness to break from a strictly rationalist conception of ethics, and social psychologists have argued that there is very little evidence to support the contention, common amongst philosophers, that people form judgments, especially ethical judgments, solely on the basis of rational justifications.2 It may well be that the best guide for understanding the operation of practical reason when considering different ethical frameworks is to be found in the discipline of philosophy of science. This article argues that this approach is, in fact, the best guide and, therefore, starts with a discussion of Bas van Fraassen’s stance on scientific revolutions. In The Empirical Stance, Bas van Fraassen gives an answer to the following question: “How are we to understand scientific and conceptual revolutions?” (100). The answer he provides, interestingly, is perspective-dependent. And, more interestingly, it also helps to answer a seemingly very different question:

Application Holy Wars or a New Reformation: A Fugue on the Theory of Knowledge

Application Holy Wars or a New Reformation: A Fugue on the Theory of Knowledge

Comparative ecology of desert small mammals: a selective review of the past 30 years

Rooted in the conceptual revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s, contemporary research on the ecology of desert small mammals has progressed markedly in recent decades. Areas of particular emphasis include the role of extrinsic (e.g., climate) compared with intrinsic (e.g., density-dependence) factors on population growth and associated metrics, the role of competition compared with predation in influencing foraging decisions and habitat selection, the influence of small mammals on community structure and composition via consumption and redistribution of plant materials, and as ecological engineers and keystone species (or guilds). Recent emphasis on the energetic basis of assemblage composition is intriguing and warrants further work, and the generality of zero-sum dynamics requires further assessment. Desert systems continue to be the focus of much ecological research, and small mammals remain central figures in understanding the interplay between biotic and abiotic factors and between intrinsic and extrinsic drivers. Small mammals in deserts worldwide exemplify the importance of diverse approaches to ecological research, including local manipulative field experiments, long-term demographic monitoring, and both laboratory and field-based studies on behavioral and foraging ecology.

Living Religion as Vanishing Mediator: Schleiermacher, Early Romanticism, and Idealism1

Religion was fundamental to the conceptual revolutions of Early Romanticism and Idealism. Schleiermacher linked the divine to the new philosophies of life and served as a productive “vanishing mediator” for Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, Schelling, and Hegel. They all strove to “vitalize” the Spinozan identity of deus and natura and thereby made a crucial turn from the philosophies of Kant and Fichte. The idea of a living religion laid the foundation for a new dialectic of unity‐in‐difference and difference‐in‐unity. This vitalistic religious dimension becomes visible for us as we come to recognize the interweaving of faith and secular reason in modernity.

Language and Reality

The article investigates the way in which Peter Mittelstaedt has been contributing to the philosophy of physics for half a century. It is shown that he pursues a path between rationalism and empiricism in the sense of Erhard Scheibe’s philosophy of the physicists. Starting from Kant’s a priori he gives a rational reconstruction of the conceptual revolutions of 20th century physics. The central topic of his philosophy of physics is the quest for semantic self-consistency, which for quantum mechanics is a hard nut to crack.

David Galenson, Conceptual revolutions in twentieth-century art

David Galenson, Conceptual revolutions in twentieth-century art

Conceptual revolutions in twentieth-century art

From Picasso's Cubism and Duchamp's readymades to Warhol's silkscreens and Smithson's earthworks, the art of the twentieth century broke completely with earlier artistic traditions. A basic change in the market for advanced art produced a heightened demand for innovation, and young conceptual innovators – from Picasso and Duchamp to Rauschenberg and Warhol to Cindy Sherman and Damien Hirst – responded not only by creating dozens of new forms of art, but also by behaving in ways that would have been incomprehensible to their predecessors. Conceptual Revolutions in Twentieth-Century Art presents the first systematic analysis of the reasons for this discontinuity. David W. Galenson, whose earlier research has changed our understanding of creativity, combines social scientific methods with qualitative analysis to produce a fundamentally new interpretation of modern art that will give readers a far deeper appreciation of the art of the past century, and of today, than is available elsewhere.

Uncertainties

In contemporary science uncertainty is often represented as an intrinsic feature of natural and of human phenomena. As an example we need only think of two important conceptual revolutions that occurred in physics and logic during the first half of the twentieth century: (1) the discovery of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics; (2) the emergence of many-valued logical reasoning, which gave rise to so-called 'fuzzy thinking'. I discuss the possibility of applying the notions of uncertainty, developed in the framework of quantum mechanics, quantum information and fuzzy logics, to some problems of political and social sciences.

Ribosome's mode of function: myths, facts and recent results

Ribosomes translate the genetic code into proteins in all living cells with extremely high efficiency, owing to their inherent flexibility and to their spectacular architecture. During the last 6 decades, extensive effort has been made to elucidate the molecular mechanisms associated with their function, and a quantum jump has been made in recent years, once the three dimensional structures of ribosomes and their functional complexes have been determined. These illuminated key issues in ribosome function, confirmed various biochemical, genetic, and medical findings, and revealed mechanistic details beyond previous expectation, thus leading to conceptual revolutions, and turning old myths into actual facts.

The Next Forty‐Nine Years

This article is expanded from a commencement address delivered by author Wes Jackson to graduating seniors at Washington College, Chestertown, Maryland, May 20, 2007. It adds detail to his longstanding argument that the environmental majority is mendaciously optimistic in suggesting that new—and sometimes still uninvented—technology will solve the world's food and energy problems. Jackson lays out statistics on how fast the world is using up its energy sources, noting that biofuels such as agriculture‐based ethanol will provide insufficient energy to power U.S. cars and trucks even if we use all of the food in the world to produce motive power. Jackson's previous article, “Conceptual Revolutions: Who Needs Them? Why?” was published in Public Library Quarterly 24‐3 (2005). The two articles form an intertwined statement on world resource limitations and opportunities. These articles were selected for inclusion in PLQ for the fundamentally different view they offer library professionals on the biofuels‐and‐ecology debate, in the hopes of balancing competing points of view in library collections. A shorter version of this paper was delivered by the author as a commencement address at Washington College. Chestertown, Maryland, on May 20, 2007. The current version of the paper, except for a few changes, appeared as an occasional paper, “The Next Fourty‐Nine Years,” in The Land Report, A Publication of the Land Institute No. 88 (September 2007), pp.18‐20. Jackson is President of The Land Institute. The article is reprinted with permission of the author.

Strategies for Affecting the Necessary Course of Cognitive Growth as an Integral Part of Curricular and Instructional Planning

This paper explores the public awareness that there presently exists a crisis in mathematics education and a “dumbingdown" of the curriculum, examines the nature of this crisis and argues that there has been a lowering of cultural, pedagogical and cognitive expectations with respect to most learners. The notion of cognitive development in mathematics education is re-examined and a model of how the concepts of learners can be transformed in the very process of engaging with the conceptual revolutions that defined geometry is proposed. The importance of cultivating a meta-narrative in support of metacognition and the development of cognitive growth are stressed.