Form Of Reductionism Research Articles

Digital technologies for step counting: between promises of reliability and risks of reductionism.

Step counting is among the fundamental features of wearable technology, as it grounds several uses of wearables in biomedical research and clinical care, is at the center of emerging public health interventions and recommendations, and is gaining increasing scientific and political importance. This paper provides a perspective of step counting in wearable technology, identifying some limitations to the ways in which wearable technology measures steps and indicating caution in current uses of step counting as a proxy for physical activity. Based on an overview of the current state of the art of technologies and approaches to step counting in digital wearable technologies, we discuss limitations that are methodological as well as epistemic and ethical-limitations to the use of step counting as a basis to build scientific knowledge on physical activity (epistemic limitations) as well as limitations to the accessibility and representativity of these tools (ethical limitations). As such, using step counting as a proxy for physical activity should be considered a form of reductionism. This is not per se problematic, but there is a need for critical appreciation and awareness of the limitations of reductionistic approaches. Perspective research should focus on holistic approaches for better representation of physical activity levels and inclusivity of different user populations.

Beyond Autopoiesis

As the notion of biological sex becomes increasingly invested with binary, anti-trans meanings in US discourse, some scholars suggest that “reimagining biology” as diverse and not dichotomous might help affirm trans identities. Instead of ignoring science and emboldening its reductionist forms, it is said that theorists should celebrate trans identities as biological diversity. This essay explores the fraught terrain of this hopeful project. The first section examines how dominant histories of the sex-gender distinction autopoietically flatten trans lives by conflating them with the passive materiality of biological sex. The second section turns to two histories of trans life that challenge this historiographic tendency—Jules Gill-Peterson's Histories of the Transgender Child and C. Riley Snorton's Black on Both Sides. Following Sylvia Wynter's call to forge liminal sciences, the article shows how Gill-Peterson and Snorton reimagine biology by encountering marginalized modes of trans scientific practice. In the margins, gaps, and opacities of the archive, there are encounters with trans experimentation, rearrangements of biology and science that do not “affirm” transness as much as they rebel against the racist order of cis-normativity.

Growth of the Christian Idea: An Application of Bernard Lonergan’s Thought to Discourse on Doctrinal Development

There are three aspects of the problem of development of doctrine with which approaches have had to contend: the historicity of doctrines, the role of reason in development, and the supernatural motion of development. Historically, there has been a tendency to give primacy to one of these aspects at the expense of others, which has led to various forms of reductionism. I propose that Bernard Lonergan’s thought, which is often overlooked in development scholarship, can provide organizing principles for the conversation about doctrinal development so that the historical, rational, and supernatural aspects of the problem can be non-competitively situated. By putting Lonergan into dialogue with different kinds of theorists, I simultaneously advance an interpretation of his thought on development that accentuates the underestimated role of reason in his account.

Rating scales institutionalise a network of logical errors and conceptual problems in research practices: A rigorous analysis showing ways to tackle psychology's crises.

This article explores in-depth the metatheoretical and methodological foundations on which rating scales-by their very conception, design and application-are built and traces their historical origins. It brings together independent lines of critique from different scholars and disciplines to map out the problem landscape, which centres on the failed distinction between psychology's study phenomena (e.g., experiences, everyday constructs) and the means of their exploration (e.g., terms, data, scientific constructs)-psychologists' cardinal error. Rigorous analyses reveal a dense network of 12 complexes of problematic concepts, misconceived assumptions and fallacies that support each other, making it difficult to be identified and recognised by those (unwittingly) relying on them (e.g., various forms of reductionism, logical errors of operationalism, constructification, naïve use of language, quantificationism, statisticism, result-based data generation, misconceived nomotheticism). Through the popularity of rating scales for efficient quantitative data generation, uncritically interpreted as psychological measurement, these problems have become institutionalised in a wide range of research practices and perpetuate psychology's crises (e.g., replication, confidence, validation, generalizability). The article provides an in-depth understanding that is needed to get to the root of these problems, which preclude not just measurement but also the scientific exploration of psychology's study phenomena and thus its development as a science. From each of the 12 problem complexes; specific theoretical concepts, methodologies and methods are derived as well as key directions of development. The analyses-based on three central axioms for transdisciplinary research on individuals, (1) complexity, (2) complementarity and (3) anthropogenicity-highlight that psychologists must (further) develop an explicit metatheory and unambiguous terminology as well as concepts and theories that conceive individuals as living beings, open self-organising systems with complementary phenomena and dynamic interrelations across their multi-layered systemic contexts-thus, theories not simply of elemental properties and structures but of processes, relations, dynamicity, subjectivity, emergence, catalysis and transformation. Philosophical and theoretical foundations of approaches suited for exploring these phenomena must be developed together with methods of data generation and methods of data analysis that are appropriately adapted to the peculiarities of psychologists' study phenomena (e.g., intra-individual variation, momentariness, contextuality). Psychology can profit greatly from its unique position at the intersection of many other disciplines and can learn from their advancements to develop research practices that are suited to tackle its crises holistically.

Discursos y ensayos sobre estudios universitarios by John Henry Cardinal Newman

Reviewed by: Discursos y ensayos sobre estudios universitarios by John Henry Cardinal Newman Pablo Blanco-Sarto Discursos y ensayos sobre estudios universitarios JOHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN, TRANSLATION AND INTRODUCTION BY PAULA JULLIAN AND ANA MARÍA NEIRA Santiago de Chile: Ediciones UC, 2021. 176 pages. E-book: $20,000.00 COP, $12 USD. ISBN: 9789561427501. The detailed historical and biographical editorial introduction focuses on the figure of John Henry Newman as an educator. It contextualizes the university text with the educational initiatives of the English saint, especially those in Birmingham. In The Idea of a University, Newman speaks of the relationship of the humanities not only with the arts but also with the sciences, especially physics and medicine. The Newmanian adventure in the Catholic University of Ireland aimed to overcome the dominant empiricism and pragmatism of the day, for which he proposed the study of the classics. It thus sought the integral education of the students, which was thought to transcend the education of a mere gentleman, and thus he proposed a liberal education. The editors insist on the idea of the university as sets of knowledge that constitute an organic whole, and so, the introduction focuses on the unity of knowledge, as it occurs in creation, despite the limitations of human intelligence that tend to fragment reality in order to know it in its totality. Newman witnessed the exclusion of theology from the universities, and so he insisted that it should be included in the university curriculum; otherwise, there remained a vacuum of knowledge that could only be filled by philosophy and theology. For this reason, the editors explain the necessary depth of knowledge and the importance of knowledge for its own sake. The absence of the love of knowledge [End Page 105] for its own sake, the editors argue, make the university disappear, turning it into a mere center for the dispensation of degrees. In Discursos y ensayos sobre estudios universitarios Newman alludes to the loss of the unitary dimension of knowledge, which leads to an impoverished fragmentation of knowledge. By leaving theology and philosophy out of the university, the understanding of reality was left without causes or ends, and so it was divided and impoverished. Including theology and philosophy in the overall university curriculum prevented the risk of partiality and many forms of reductionism. On the one hand, there was an excessive prominence given to science to the detriment of other fields, commonly known today as the arts and humanities. There was a risk of indiscriminate growth of one discipline in a unilateral way, which was an important issue when it came to the study of the human being. This vision of the unity was beautifully captured in this quote from the speech “Bearing of Theology on other Knowledge.” The second major theme discussed in the introduction is liberal education, which is found in the first part of Newman’s work, but in fact runs through all the texts of the book. Starting from a Socratic origin and medieval developments, Newman seeks to train the intellect of the student to form him for life. At the same time, for Newman liberal education was not limited to the learning of certain contents of a particular curriculum, as it had been in the medieval university, as well as the nineteenth-century university. Rather, Newman sought to develop the habit of autonomous thinking, or what he called the “culture of the intellect.” This educational proposal applied to students in all schools and faculties of the university, since this intellectual habit was good for the mind, providing it with the necessary skills to seek the good and the truth. Liberality thus referred to not seeking an immediate reward, but seeing the value of knowledge as such, as an end in itself. There is justification for this new translation into Spanish, despite the fact that Eunsa (Pamplona, 2011) and Encuentro (Madrid, 2014) have already published translations. The present edition is a selection of passages that includes speeches about letters and sciences, which were chosen deliberately. In addition, a summary of the most relevant ideas of each chapter is included, and the text has been edited in a way that only content relevant...

Toward a transdisciplinary educational method Draft-visualization: a didactic methodology

The predominance of an epistemological paradigm that remains linked to the linear, cumulative, and reductionist form of science highlights the delay with which transdisciplinarity spreads in the educational world.
 The debate on the need for a global education reform fails to materialize, which, despite its long-term existence, views the same operators/teachers as only partially aware of the need for change; however, they are never sufficiently involved to give force to this change. The system remains paralyzed due to a dead end for which students are paying.
 Therefore, this study proposes a teaching methodology (Draft-Visualization©®). If adopted as a collegiate tool, it is capable of allowing the students to independently work in a transdisciplinary sense regardless of the initial degree of involvement of teachers. Finally, the general operating scheme of a method is proposed (Vetas-Educando©®) as a result of direct experience, which is inspired by the theory of complexity and organized in the principles of transdisciplinarity. The study believes that each educational reality must be capable of conducting its work without renouncing the rigor of a method that enables it to verify and measure results. In this manner, a classic error of the school world is avoided, that is, its self-referentiality.

Mortalidad por accidentes de tránsito: su determinación social. Distrito Metropolitano de Quito, 2013

Introducción: los accidentes de tránsito (AT) constituyen una importante causa de mortalidad en el mundo, y en los últimos años han ocupado los primeros lugares en el Distrito Metropolitano de Quito (DMQ). Los marcos conceptuales clásicos para el abordaje de la mortalidad por AT han sido: el enfoque de salud pública, el modelo sistémico y la matriz de Haddon. Desarrollo: se describen las características de los modelos clásicos y, desde la mirada de la Epidemiología Crítica (EC) y de la teoría crítica del espacio, se analizan cuatro formas de reducción de la realidad: primero, la reducción de su explicación a la acción de una causa externa (fuerza cinética) ejercida sobre el cuerpo humano que supera la resistencia del mismo. Segundo, la mirada del espacio como mero continente físico o unidad administrativa. Tercero, la consideración del carácter social de los eventos de tránsito como sumatoria de los hechos individuales. Cuarto, la organización de los grupos sociales con criterios de estratificación y no con base en la clase social. Además, se describe cómo, mediante un estudio exploratorio de varias fases, que comprendió revisión documental, enlace de archivos, encuesta a un familiar de la persona fallecida y georreferenciación de la residencia de la persona fallecida, se analizó la mortalidad por AT en el DMQ, con base en las categorías de la Epidemiología Crítica: segregación social del espacio, clase social y perfil epidemiológico, en el contexto de la mortalidad por AT en el DMQ. Conclusión: el abordaje desde la EC permite una comprensión más integral de la mortalidad de los AT, como resultado de determinaciones socioeconómicas, de procesos de orden etnocultural y de construcción social del género, propios de los modos de vida de las diferentes clases sociales.

The Fruits of the Unseen: A Jamesian Challenge to Explanatory Reductionism in Accounts of Religious Experience

AbstractIn Religious Experience, Wayne Proudfoot argued that a tout court rejection of reductionism in accounts of religious experience was not viable. According to Proudfoot, it’s possible to distinguish between an illegitimate practice of descriptive reductionism and the legitimate practice of explanatory reductionism. The failure to distinguish between these two forms of reductionism resulted in a protective strategy, or an attempt to protect religious experience from the reach of scientific explanation. Among the theorists whom he accused of deploying this illegitimate strategy Proudfoot included William James and his work in The Varieties of Religious Experience. In this article, I argue that while James does occasionally deploy a protective strategy in Varieties, this is not the only nor most important method of treating religious experience James developed. Implicit in his rejection of medical materialism, James not only deploys the protective strategy Proudfoot criticizes, but the pragmatic method with which he treats all claims. I argue that James’s pragmatic method leads to what James called noetic pluralism, or the view that there is no privileged knowledge practice, but a plurality of knowledge practices, and that this method puts pressure on the explanatory reductionist, who is implicitly committed to noetic monism.

Dual Aspectivity and the Expressive Moments of Illumination: Rethinking the Explanatory Gap

In Cognitive science and philosophy of consciousness, the explanatory gap, following Joseph Levine, refers to the unintelligible link between our conscious mental life and its corresponding objective physical explanation; the gap in our understanding of how consciousness is related to a physical or a physiological substrate (Levine in Pac Philos Q 64(4):354–361, 1983). David Chalmers holds the explanatory gap as the evidence for a form of metaphysical dualism between consciousness and physical reality (Chalmers in The conscious mind: in search of a theory of conscious experience. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996). On the other hand, McGinn takes it as an epistemic rather than an ontological gap (McGinn in The problem of consciousness: essays towards a resolution. Blackwell Basil, Oxford, 1991). Considering the recent advances in neuroscience, however, the reductionist approaches have become replete, which attempt to reduce consciousness and subjectivity to neurobiological accounts (Crick in The astonishing hypothesis: the scientific search for the soul. Maxwell Macmillan International, New York, 1994; Metzinger in Being no one: the self-model theory of subjectivity. The MIT Press, London, 2006; Eagleman in The brain the story of you. Canongate, Edimbutgh, 2016). On this view, consciousness mirrors the brain mechanisms, and the self is formulated as an illusory product or construct of neuronal processes. Thomas Fuchs, who is committed to embodied and enactive approaches toward cognition, in Ecology of the Brain, espouses an enactive-ecological perspective concerning the problem of the explanatory gap. He develops an account of human’s life in its dual aspects of the living body and lived body which, on the one hand, defies the ontological dualism and, on the other hand, avoids drifting towards any form of reductionism. Often, the ontologically monistic approaches to the explanatory gap have inclined to a form of reductionism because they conceive consciousness as either identical with its physiological substrate or caused by it, where in both cases, consciousness is claimed to be explainable within the framework of physicalism. Fuchs, however, defends an ontological monism which remains irreconcilable with reductionism. In his account of dual aspects, there is no interaction or impact between the sphere of subjectivity and nature; however, these two aspects imply one another. In this essay, I will develop the philosophical justification of the above reformulation of the mind–body problem and employing the analogy of light will canvass the paradoxical relationship between dual aspects in a phenomenological framework.

Audit professional scepticism and the classics: does pyrrhonism serve the practitioner

This analysis draws on an ancient philosophy to offer how audit regulatory discourse and judicial interpretation come to represent, or fail to represent, the mindset of the philosophical skeptic. Ancient teachings of Pyrrho of Elis, Sextus Empiricus and their modernist peers are brought to bear on concepts formed around what it means to be a 'skeptic'. International auditing standards, ethical codes, personal interviews and a lengthy New Zealand legal judgement reveal professional understandings. Professional discourses are found to be a reductionist form of the skeptical mindset whereby philosophical intent gives way to narrowly-defined and risk-directed interpretations. There is an economy to the professional-sceptic recognising an end-point to enquiry and a less reflexive form of critique. Conclusions reached thus question the authenticity and depth of professional interpretations. Implications for practice offer that a greater commitment to a free-form improvisational enquiry with less dogma-inspiring structures would more closely represent the sceptical pursuit.

Reply to Wilson Mendonça’s “Supervenience arguments against robust moral realism”

In his “Supervenience arguments against robust moral realism”, Wilson Mendonca sets out to defend robust moral realism (the thesis that moral properties are not identical to natural properties) against the Explanatory Argument based on Supervenience. According to this argument, robust realism is unable to account for specific supervenience facts; given that the identification of moral and natural properties allows one to account for such facts, robust realism has an explanatory disadvantage vis-a-vis reductive realism. Mendonca’s answer consists in holding (i) that reductive realism has trouble accounting for the asymmetric character of specific supervenience facts and (ii) that the notion of reduction by analysis, which allows one to properly explain specific supervenience facts, supports only a weak form of reductionism that is compatible with robust realism. I argue that these claims are false and that, therefore, Mendonca fails to show that the Explanatory Argument is not a threat to robust realism. Keywords: robust moral realism, supervenience, moral reductivism, reduction by identity, reduction by analysis.

The Contribution of Empathy to Ethics

ABSTRACTEmpathy has been taken to play a crucial role in ethics at least since the Scottish Enlightenment. More recently, a revival of moral sentimentalism and empirical research on moral behavior has prompted a renewed interest in empathy and related concepts and on their contribution to moral reasoning and to moral behavior. Furthermore, empathy has recently entered our public discourse as having the power to ameliorate our social and political interactions with others.The aim of this paper is to investigate the extent to which such a role can be actually granted. Before focusing on a positive assessment, I will delve into a few problems our ordinary concept of empathy and our commonsensical way of conceiving its connection to ethics will need to face. Specifically, I will show how an exaggerated reliance on the ordinary concept of empathy could lead to an underestimation of its biases and potential limitations (§ 2), how a naïve conception of its connection to morality can overlook relevant counterexamples (§ 3) and lead to forms of reductionism (§ 4). Overcoming this possible shortsightedness would pave the way for arguing in favor of an important – though not sufficient and possible neither necessary – role for empathy in ethics (§ 5).

The Non-Systemic Usages of Systems as Reductionism: Quasi-Systems and Quasi-Systemics

Usual reductionism considers systemic, acquired properties as non-systemic, possessed properties. We consider here the non-systemic usages of systems, misunderstood as non-interacting virtual objects or devices, and the misunderstanding between non-complex (first Systemics) and complex systems (second Systemics) as another form of reductionism. This reductionism leads to inappropriate and ineffective approaches, particularly dealing with complex systems such as socioeconomic systems, whose complexity is often misunderstood and neglected. However, this reductionism should be distinguished from mixed usages of systemic approaches suitable to deal with multiple, dynamic, temporary, and partial systemic natures of phenomena related to complex systems. We consider that we should move from the well-defined, often simplistic, world of Systemics to Quasi-Systemics, which is intended as constructionist Systemics, always in progress, non-ideological, multiple, contradiction-tolerant, incomplete, and in its turn emergent. Rather than recommending a pragmatic attitude, we mention two approaches, one methodological approach called Logical Openness and another, the Meta-Structure approach, which is suitable to more formally deal with such multiple aspects and—based on mesoscopic representations—suitable to represent quasiness.

Spectral Depth

Abstract Deep ecology holds that profound inner transformation is a necessary part of entering an ecological age and building a society that includes nonhuman lifeforms in meaningful ways. I am going to argue that this is definitely the case, and that the shock of realizing the truth of the Anthropocene amounts to a first step on a pathway that one might accurately see as ‘spiritual,’ if only for its profundity—though certainly not for any disengagement with the political. What this transformation amounts to in part is a new way of experiencing ‘selfhood’ or the ‘inner self’ (or whatever we want to call it). This new mode sees existence to contain a necessarily spectral dimension. While it obviously makes reductionist forms of materialism untenable, such a dimension also troubles some of the ideas we might have about spirituality. I seek to show how the spectral is a vital element of being an ecological being, and argue that this spectrality affects how we conceptualize all kinds of other domains, such as ethics, politics and art.

I, NEURON: the neuron as the collective

PurposeIn the last half-century, individual sensory neurons have been bestowed with characteristics of the whole human being, such as behavior and its oft-presumed precursor, consciousness. This anthropomorphization is pervasive in the literature. It is also absurd, given what we know about neurons, and it needs to be abolished. This study aims to first understand how it happened, and hence why it persists.Design/methodology/approachThe peer-reviewed sensory-neurophysiology literature extends to hundreds (perhaps thousands) of papers. Here, more than 90 mainstream papers were scrutinized.FindingsAnthropomorphization arose because single neurons were cast as “observers” who “identify”, “categorize”, “recognize”, “distinguish” or “discriminate” the stimuli, using math-based algorithms that reduce (“decode”) the stimulus-evoked spike trains to the particular stimuli inferred to elicit them. Without “decoding”, there is supposedly no perception. However, “decoding” is both unnecessary and unconfirmed. The neuronal “observer” in fact consists of the laboratory staff and the greater society that supports them. In anthropomorphization, the neuron becomes the collective.Research limitations/implicationsAnthropomorphization underlies the widespread application to neurons Information Theory and Signal Detection Theory, making both approaches incorrect.Practical implicationsA great deal of time, money and effort has been wasted on anthropomorphic Reductionist approaches to understanding perception and consciousness. Those resources should be diverted into more-fruitful approaches.Originality/valueA long-overdue scrutiny of sensory-neuroscience literature reveals that anthropomorphization, a form of Reductionism that involves the presumption of single-neuron consciousness, has run amok in neuroscience. Consciousness is more likely to be an emergent property of the brain.

Персоналізм та інновації. Філософські коментарі щодо виховання та освіти

The reflections discussed in this paper address the main determinants of innovation in education and upbringing in the context of the personalistic concept of man. The presented analyzes are of a philosophical and pedagogical character. According to the author of the article, an innovation is therefore its first determinant, and it is the good of man and the contemporary pedagogy needs a personalistic understanding of man. The author warns against the reductive conception of innovation, where it is merely a means of making a living. In the context of the discussion presented in the paper, a number of important questions have arisen, including the question whether the grounding of public life on concepts and ideas (subjective factors associated with consciousness, which are not real) does not reduce social life to ideologies and some forms of reductionism? It seems that is the case. To prevent this, the entire Western culture needs realist philosophy, referring to the reality of human nature and the rights rooted in it. Modern man can thus gain cognitive support to create a truly human order in the domain of public life. The article has the following parts:1. What is the innovation?2. Innovative creativity and its relationship with man.3.Conditions of innovative creativity.4. Moral intellectualism and the way to overcome it.5. Summary.

Duchowość ekologiczna jako nowe ujęcie relacji z Bogiem, człowiekiem i przyrodą

An article presents environmental issues of spirituality in their relationship to God, man and the environment on the basis of the encyclical of Pope Francis Laudato Si' . The Pope took up the current and complicated issue, analysis of which is exposed to various forms of reductionism or ideologies. His view of ecological spirituality is based on the foundation of God the Creator, who gave the world the natural order and also created and shaped the hierarchy of beings. This premise protects against reductionist looking at the man and at the same time—before usurp his absolute power. On this foundation, the Holy Father could develop postulate of the contemplative perception of the world in which he discovers the creatures as objects to use, but above all he sees in them a gift and value given to the man. Such a deep vision can rediscover anew God as Creator and Father for the love of establishing the human world into existence. Thanks to the origin of coming from one Father, Christian sees in others, especially in the weakest and defenceless a brother with whom he has ties of solidarity and love. Finally, the world is seen not as a place of exploitation and prey, but as a mystery that leads to God and God is the full explanation of it. The deeper the mind enlightened by faith contemplates the world, the more he sees beauty and infinity of God. And at the same time more closely connects with God, the more the world reveals to him its beauty and close relationship with the Creator.

Reductionist Moral Realism and the Contingency of Moral Evolution

Reductionist forms of moral realism, such as naturalist realism, are often thought immune to epistemological objections that have been raised against nonnaturalist realism in the form of reliability worries or evolutionary debunking arguments. This article establishes that reductionist realist views can only explain the reliability of our moral beliefs at the cost of incurring repugnant first-order conclusions.

The mechanistic property cluster view of mental disorder: A tenable form of non-reductionist realism?

IntroductionThe question what mental disorders are lies at the heart of the philosophy of psychiatry. In search of a valid taxonomy of mental disorders, it is a question that needs a proper answer. In recent work, Kenneth Kendler et al. (2011) have put forward the “mechanistic property cluster” (MPC) model of mental disorder. On this view, mental disorders are mechanistically mediated clusters of multi-level (bio-psycho-social) properties. Kendler et al. present the MPC-model as a non-reductionist form of realism – realist because it tries to account for mental disorders in terms of the causal structure of the natural world, non-reductionist because it views mental disorders as clusters of multi-level properties. For the project of psychiatric nosology, such non-reductionist realism would be a great step forward and indeed preferable to pragmatist and constructionist models of mental disorder.ObjectiveTo critically assess the MPC-model in light of arguments against realism about mental disorders presented in the philosophical literature.AimsTo achieve a proper understanding of the ontology of mental disorders that can inform future psychiatric nosology.MethodsLiterature study and conceptual analysis.ResultsDespite appearances, the MPC-view fails to take into account the various (societal, practical, scientific) values that determine the delineation of mental disorders. It ultimately faces philosophical problems similar to those of more reductionist forms of realism.ConclusionsThe MPC-model fails as a realist model of mental disorders. Its non-reductionism, however, is an important contribution to theories of explanation in psychiatry.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

How Unnatural Does It Get?

* Richardson, Brian. Unnatural Narrative: Theory, History, and Practice. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 20x5.197 pp. ISBN: 978-0-8142-1279-0. * Alber, Jan. Unnatural Narrative: Impossible Worlds in Fiction and Drama. Lincoln and London: U of Nebraska P, 2016. 294 pp. ISBN: 978-0-8032-7868-4. Unnatural has become one of the most prominent recent developments in narrative theory. It started around the year 2000 with the work of Brian Richardson, who collected his explorations of narratives in his 2006 study Unnatural Voices. The approach quickly attracted a group of young scholars, focusing on unusual fictional texts and questioning the usual narratological concepts. Among them were Jan Alber, Stefan Iversen, Maria Makela, and Henrik Skov Nielsen. The term unnatural obviously alluded to Monika Fludernik's narratology (1996). Fludernik was inspired by Jonathan Culler's idea of naturalization, stressing the ways in which readers try to turn alienating texts into something they can understand. Richardson, on the other hand, took his cue from postmodernist fiction and poststructuralist theories, stressing the irreducibility of the alien and the exceptional. Culler's is a strategy that turns the peculiar and the unknown into the known. It depends upon and literary supposedly present in readers' heads (138). These models range from general cultural patterns of signification, such as intentionality, to specific literary knowledge of periods and genres. The application of the models normalizes the abnormal: 'Naturalization' emphasizes the fact that the strange or deviant is brought within a discursive order and thus made to seem (137). Fludernik elaborates on and updates Culler's study of these models via cognitive linguistics and discourse analysis. From William Labov she borrows the term narrative--oral, everyday stories people tell each other. Fludernik develops Culler's concept of models into her concept of frames; she uses the term experientiality to describe the central process of normalization (as soon as a reader recognizes a center of experience in a narrative, he or she can come to grips with the text); and she replaces the term with narrativation. Although Fludernik's basic idea is that people tend to normalize the abnormal, she does realize that some texts cannot be fully normalized. such as James Joyce's Finnegans Wake remain unreadable (Towards 293). They result in collapse: When narrativization breaks down, whether incipiently or in full measure, it does so where the consciousness factor can no longer be utilized to tide over radical inconsistency, and this happens first and foremost where overall textual coherence or micro-level linguistic coherence (and cohesion) are at risk. (317) The preference for consistency and narrativization that seems to underlie formulations like these is precisely what Richardson's rejects. Simply put, he sees the process of naturalization as a form of reductionism, which smooths over the problematic aspects of narrative texts and which reformulates the new into something old. In this way, the complex, literary, and disruptive nature of the narrative is disregarded. Unnatural narratology, on the other hand, holds this complex nature in high regard and wants to respect it in its interpretation. The fundamental differences between the two narratological views were formulated clearly in a joint 2010 essay by Alber et al. They claimed that natural and classical are guilty of mimetic reductionism (Unnatural Narratives 115) as they reduce the sophistication of literary narrative to everyday storytelling. The theorists point to three levels of literary unnaturalness (116): storyworlds (in which impossible things happen), minds (e.g., a character that knows he is being narrated by someone else, or an omniscient character), and acts of narration (e. …