Grand Synthesis Research Articles

Similarity and dissimilarity: A partial overview

The concept of similarity, and its obverse, dissimilarity, is one of the grand archetypal concepts in all of science. It is ubiquitous within mathematics itself, and equally so in the most remote and far-flung interpretations of mathematics as descriptors of physical reality. Accordingly, it is not easy to grasp in any immediate way all of the ramifications of this concept, and the manifold powerful roles it plays in unification and understanding. We do not therefore attempt any such grand synthesis, but rather a selective illustrated glimpse of similarity manifested in terms of scaling, and dissimilarity in terms of bifurcation between similarity classes. A variety of examples are drawn from biology and technology to illustrate the more formal considerations.

Authoritarianism, Democracy, and Development

During the past decade, Howard J. Wiarda has established himself as a prolific analyst of corporatism, democracy, authoritarianism, and development in Latin America. His views have been influential in shaping and legitimating U.S. policies toward Latin America both before and during the Reagan revolution. While others may have produced theories of democracy and a transition from authoritarianism that unconsciously complement the Reagan administration's practical policies and imperialist interests, Wiarda's contribution has been directly and self-consciously motivated by policy concerns. From his position at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, as director of Latin American programs at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI), and in close personal contacts with contemporary U.S. policymakers (especially in the State Department), Wiarda has become a key intellectual figure in the early and ongoing effort to clothe a decidedly militaristic and hegemonistic policy in the garb of peace and democracy. It is my contention that Wiarda's theories of corporatism, national development, and democracy are inextricably interrelated and together form the intellectual foundation upon which defenders of corporation capitalism attempt to erect their support of bourgeois power and imperialist intervention. Corporatism and National Development (1981) qualifies as Wiarda's theoretical magnum opus: it is a grand synthesis of essays written during the 1970s and provides a theoretical basis for the various articles collected in anthologies dealing with the issues of human rights and democracy (Wiarda, 1980, 1982). Building upon his corporatism model, the essays contained in The Continuing Strugglefor Democracy (1980)

Evolution: The Grand Synthesis

The vision that lies behind this book is disturbing: we live in a period of major discontinuity in world history, a period marked by an explosion of world population, the loss of traditional values, social destabilization, unemployment, obsolescence of institutions and political systems, and the disappearance of traditional ideologies that in the past have given our behavior its bearings. The author, Ervin Laszlo, is a member of the Club of Rome, which, in recent years, has been a meeting place of intellectuals interested in the "world problematique." Laszlo's strategy for dealing with our dilemma is to understand the natural forces that direct physical processes, biology, and social behavior and, through that understanding, master our destiny. His intention is noble, the task itself may be another matter. This is where evolution enters the picture. In the author's view, an expanded evolutionary theory is the best theory available to organize and synthesize

Evolution: The new paradigm

Abstract Evolution in the sense of the new paradigm embraces not only the emergence of biological species but also development in the cosmos and in history. It means “grand synthesis,” or general theory of evolution. Its roots lie in the search for meaning that inspired systematic thought since its inception: its historical antecedents go back to the Ionian natural philosophers. Today the evolutionary paradigm frames invariant scientific concepts that appear in specific transformations in the physical, the biological, and the human and social disciplines. The new general laws of evolution exhibit overarching orders that encompass nature as well as humanity and respond to a perennial search for unity and meaning in experience.

Coevolutionary Agricultural Development

Doubts about the appropriateness of models of economic development-about their ability to predict in advance or describe in retrospect the consequences of their own prescriptions for growth-have been increasing over the past decade.' While much of this discontent has centered on broad issues such as economic and political inequality, agricultural development-whether neglected or not-has rarely followed the path established for it by economic planners. Many of agriculture's detours and dead ends have been explored needlessly, because economic prescriptions have been incongruous with ecological knowledge.2 My own research has recently emphasized development failure and environmental degradation in the Amazon, a manenvironment interaction with analogues in tropical rain forest ecosystems in Central America, Africa, and Asia.3 Other sociosystemecosystem combinations, notably nomadic herding in the vast semidesert regions of Africa and subsistence agriculture in the mountainous regions of South America and South and Southeast Asia, are also temporarily accommodating larger populations through environmental degradation rather than through improved forms of interaction. The coevolutionary perspective outlined in this paper provides a linkage between economic and ecological paradigms. The perspective emphasizes how man's agricultural activities modify the ecosystem and how the ecosystem's responses provide cause for subsequent individual action and social organization. A linkage is quite different from a grand synthesis of previously incongruous paradigms. Through a linkage, each discipline enriches the other because of their differences. Neither discipline must abandon its past. Eventually, however, new emphases and approaches arise because of the enrichment. A similar linkage between anthropology and ecology produced the fertile subdiscipline of cultural ecology. This paper outlines some of the differences in economic and ecological thinking, the advantages of enrichment,

Sociobiology in perspective

The branch of biology nowadays called “sociobiology” is often presented as a grand synthesis. If it is a synthesis at all, it is a very biased one. Firstly, it accentuates ultimate explanations in terms of evolution in such a way that the relevance of proximate explanations is obscured. Secondly, it has uncritically assimilated theories about evolution which are now widely disputed both for factual and for methodological reasons. Current disputes about the possible implications of sociobiology for social science are mostly off the mark. An evaluation of the biological theories involved should precede both attempts to amalgamate and attempts to separate biology and the social sciences.

A HISTORY OF BIOLOGY: DIVERSITY, EVOLUTION, INHERITANCE

EvolutionVolume 37, Issue 4 p. 868-872 Book ReviewFree Access A HISTORY OF BIOLOGY: DIVERSITY, EVOLUTION, INHERITANCE† Malcolm Jay Kottler, Malcolm Jay Kottler Bell Museum of Natural History, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55455Search for more papers by this author Malcolm Jay Kottler, Malcolm Jay Kottler Bell Museum of Natural History, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55455Search for more papers by this author First published: July 1983 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1558-5646.1983.tb05614.xCitations: 1 †The Growth of Biological Thought. Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance. Ernst Mayr. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1982. xiv + 974 pp. $30.00. AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume37, Issue4July 1983Pages 868-872 RelatedInformation

“Good Try, Mr. Paul”: Populism and the Politics of African Land Use

These people and movements, then, are populist and have much in common: the Levellers, the Diggers, the Chartists, the Narodniki, the US populists … Gandi… Nyerere. The list is very long but still very incomplete.Reading Paul Richards's excellent paper and, most particularly, the set of international commentaries has been something of a salutary experience and, as I have now discovered, has made my task wholly unenviable. There is, of course, something here for everyone as one might anticipate in any state of the art paper of this scope. The respondents' remarks alone cover a huge intellectual terrain from epistemology to animal traction, from bibliographic style to Shakespearean metaphor, and a good deal more. It is difficult to know what to make of all this let alone to weave these heterogeneous threads into a pleasing, coherent tapestry. Yet, beneath this patina of diversity, lie much more deep seated interpretative and theoretical differences that are intriguing in their own right. For example, Richards's plea for the “honest face” of particularism in relation to what he posits as a congenital drift toward arid and sterile global abstractions and grand universal theory was lent wildly different interpretations by his erstwhile critics. For some this was a glorious new mandate to return to Gluckman and some forms of nineteenth century anthropology; for others it was a disastrous slide into the primal cess-poll of crude empiricism, Boasian salmon recipes, and rampant particularism. For others it represented a healthy appraisal of “the great range of specificities that one should be prepared to confront within a (Marxist) framework” (Henry Bernstein). And all this is wrapped in the almost inevitable empirical provincialism of “my village” or “my region” which provide the basis of individual scepticism and conceptual disproof. Because this is the case, my remarks make no pretense to be either a grand synthesis of highly contradictory contributions or a Herculean effort to locate a "common ground" as some of the comments at the panel discussion opined. In my opinion neither are possible.

The Contract-Tort Boundary and the Economics of Insurance

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Contract-Tort Boundary and the Economics of InsuranceWilliam BishopWilliam Bishop Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Legal Studies Volume 12, Number 2Jun., 1983 Sponsored by The University of Chicago Law School Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/467723 Views: 38Total views on this site Citations: 14Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1983 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Jef De Mot, Louis Visscher Custodian Liability, (Apr 2019): 510–514.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7753-2_541Jef De Mot, Louis Visscher Efficient Court Decisions and Limiting Insurers’ Right of Recourse: The Case of Custodian Liability in the Netherlands and Belgium, The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice 39, no.33 (Jul 2014): 527–544.https://doi.org/10.1057/gpp.2014.18Jef De Mot, Louis Visscher Custodian Liability, (Sep 2014): 1–6.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7883-6_541-1Michael Faure, Hui Wang Financial caps for oil pollution damage: A historical mistake?, Marine Policy 32, no.44 (Jul 2008): 592–606.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2007.10.008MICHAEL G. FAURE Financial Compensation for Victims of Catastrophes: A Law and Economics Perspective, Law & Policy 29, no.33 (Jul 2007): 339–367.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9930.2007.00258.xMichael G Faure Economic Criteria for Compulsory Insurance, The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice 31, no.11 (Jan 2006): 149–168.https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.gpp.2510063Michael G. Faure Economic Criteria for Compulsory Insurance, SSRN Electronic Journal (Jan 2005).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.977463Lucas Bergkamp Environmental Risk Spreading and Insurance, Review of European Community and International Environmental Law 12, no.33 (Nov 2003): 269–283.https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9388.00369Lucian Arye Bebchuk, Steven Shavell Information and the Scope of Liability for Breach of Contract: The Rule of Hadley v. Baxendale, SSRN Electronic Journal (Jan 2003).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.471883Johannes Köndgen, Philipp von Randow Sanktionen bei Vertragsverletzung, (Jan 1989): 122–140.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-74726-7_11Brian W. Semkow Social insurance and tort liability, International Review of Law and Economics 5, no.22 (Dec 1985): 153–171.https://doi.org/10.1016/0144-8188(85)90003-1Michael Faure The View from Law and Economics, (): 239–273.https://doi.org/10.1007/3-211-30631-5_10Michael Faure Financial Compensation in Case of Catastrophes: A European Law and Economics Perspective, (): 2–27.https://doi.org/10.1007/3-211-30875-X_1Michael Faure Comparative and Policy Conclusions, (): 389–452.https://doi.org/10.1007/3-211-33775-X_12

American Workers/Workers America: A Review of Recent Works by David Brody and James Green

The emerging historiography at the beginning of the twentieth century took it for granted that the future belonged to labor. Our preeminent materialist historian Frederick Jackson Turner believed that with the closing of the frontier, the nation's destiny had passed from farmers to workers and industrialists. Charles Beard was patron of workers' education in this country and at Ruskin College, while Mary Beard wrote valuable history of The American Labor Movement that depicted labor as a great social force akin to titanic forces in the natural world. She spoke for her generation in saying, Anything so fundamental, so impressive, so fraught with possibilities for the future surely deserves an intensive study by those outside the labor movement as well as by those who work within it.l Her own volume was based on the intensive study by John Commons and his associates in the Bureau of Industrial Research. Commons' magificent Documen tary History and the exhaustive four volume History of Labor in the United States were monument to the centrality of labor in Progressive thought, as were works by Abbott, Brissenden, Hoxie, and others. Later generations returned again and again to this monument, most to honor, some to worship. And no one has yet come forth with structure of rival scope and influence. Now, however, the publication of books by David Brody and James Green on labor in the twentieth century gives some reason to believe the labor question is again moving to the forefront of our historical memory.2 It is not that Brody's Workers in Industrial America and Greens' World of the Worker proffer new grand synthesis. Brody himself has called attention to the absence of such synthesis in an essay prepared for the American Historical Association.3 Nor is it to disparage these books in any way to say they are not the latter-day equivalent of the Com mons project. They have no such pretension. Rather, they show that the study of working people is essential to understanding the main lines of twentieth-century American development, not just the collateral branch of labor history (important as that is). It is clear from their work that neither the distribution of power nor the lived experience of the American people as whole can be understood apart from the struggles and experiences of workers. Both authors treat American workers in their

Geology in and of China: A tale of two maps

Two tectonic maps of China published in 1976 and 1980 respectively reflect the different geological philosophies of two leading geologists in that big country. J.S. Lee's geomechanical theory, like Maoism, was an indigenous product valued as a ‘bible’ during the years of the Cultural Revolution in China. T.K. Huang, a student of Emil Argand's, managed to apply his teacher's grand synthesis to interprete the tectonics of his homeland. We are still awaiting a third map, which may show plate‐tectonic elements as map units.

Needs versus means in high-energy physics

Some physicists have recently begun to voice their expectations that the “grand synthesis” of all physics is almost within our grasp. If only we had a little more of this or that, and if only some of the remaining nagging difficulties would go away… Here, however, I would like to turn from this sublime ambition to more down-to-earth considerations. Physics remains a science based on experience. How do we acquire that experience to determine whether or not particle physics is indeed on the right track to the “grand synthesis?”

The Form of the Good in Plato's Republic

Author(s): Santas, Gerasimos | Abstract: The theory of the Form of the Good in the Republic is truly and coherently the centerpiece of the canonical Platonism of the middle dialogues, the centerpiece of Plato's metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics, and even his theory of love and art. In this theory of the Form of the Good Plato was truly the first grand philosophical synthesiser. If to achieve such a grand synthesis he had to employ a few unholy combinations, such as the combination of reality, goodness, and self-predication, he may perhaps be forgiven - at least if he is understood.

Notes On the Nomenclature of Winds and Directions in the Early Han

The Huai-nan-tzu M M (hereafter HNT), an eclectic Taoist work presented to the court of Han Wu-ti around I39 B.C., is an important source of information concerning Warring States and Han conceptions of the size, shape, and operations of the cosmos. The doctrines incorporated in HNT represent one of the final steps in the development of Chinese cosmology anterior to Tung Chungshu's K Tff grand synthesis of natural and social philosophy, political theory, and public policy that established the ruling ideology of Confucian government for the remainder of the Han and beyond. In HNT, as would no longer be the case a few decades after HNT was written, natural philosophy could be presented as a set of issues largely independent of political theory and public policy. Nevertheless, in HNT and certain related texts, one can in some cases see the beginnings of an integration of those two sets of issues. One such case is found in the names of the eight winds and eight directions, their symbolic connotations, their correlations with the seasons, and the definition of social and political activities appropriate to each. This article will discuss some problems of the nomenclature of winds and directions encountered in HNT and certain other closely associated texts. The names of the eight winds seem not to have been fully standardized at the time that the Huai-nan-tzu was written. The names for the winds given in HNT 4:2a do not agree with the names given in 3:4a and in 4: i6a, nor do they agree with the names given in Li-shih ch'un-ch'iu g .EMkWA (hereafter LSCC) I3: 2b, in a passage that was closely copied in the opening pages of HNT 4 1). That the names were at that time in the process of becoming standardized can be seen in the fact that the (identical) names of the winds in HNT 3:4a and 4: i6a are also the names given in Shih chi 9 E 25 and in the chapter on the eight winds (Chapter 24)

Social Policy Analysis as the Interpretation of Beliefs

Abstract Social policy is concerned with the integration of values, the principles by which these values are translated into policies and programs, assessments of the outcomes of implementing these principles in terms of the values asserted, and the search for strategies of feasible change which promise a better fit between values, principles, and outcomes. One aspect without the others is not policy analysis. Yet, current efforts have failed to integrate effectively these tasks, thus raising questions about whether social policy is a legitimate discipline. Rather than prematurely forcing a grand synthesis, this article tries to extend our understanding of the often partisan nature of policy analysis. Specifically, it illustrates how beliefs intrude at each level of analysis—in definitions of the purposes of policy, in the priorities assigned, in the institutional forms which translate beliefs to programs, in the evaluation of outcomes, and in assessments of what changes are politically feasible. The conc...

Comment: The Interaction of Technology and Society

Professor Daniels's paper demonstrates the originality, vigor of presentation, and willingness to challenge traditional views that his previous works have led us to expect. Its greatest contribution is that it poses fundamental questions. What is the relation of technology to society? What do we really know about our field? That we ask such questions at all is itself significant, for they suggest that the history of technology has reached a certain level of self-awareness, a new maturity. The time is now ripe for a critical examination of the foundations of our discipline. If Daniels forces us to think about the big questions, he will have rendered an important service to all of us, whether we agree with his conclusions or not. Daniels begins his paper with a critique of Roger Burlingame's work. He notes, correctly, that Burlingame adopted a rather naive technological determinism. But Daniels further assumes that subsequent historians of technology have adopted Burlingame's pattern of historical explanation. I simply do not think this is the case. Burlingame deserves our highest praise as a pioneer and for calling attention to the importance of technology for the understanding of American history. But he was not a professional historian, and at the time he wrote there were no professional historians in this field. If Burlingame has been accepted as an authority, it is because no one has as yet attempted a grand synthesis of the history of technology and society in America. But a number of partial syntheses have appeared -by people like Brooke Hindle, Carl Condit, Eugene Ferguson, Louis C. Hunter, W. Paul Strassman, Carroll Pursell, Melvin Kranzberg, and John Kouwenhoven.1 None of these men and, indeed, virtually

A New View of the Evolution of Man

THE ACCUMULATION in recent years of new fossil hominid remains dating from the Lower Pleistocene, especially the rich material from Olduvai Gorge, has led to renewed discussions on the evolution of man. fragments originally described as habilis have contributed to our knowledge but also have raised a number of new questions, most of them leading ultimately to the main question of a monophyletic evolution from Australopithecus by way of the Middle Pleistocene erectus-type to the modern Homo sapiens. Somewhat resignedly, Tobias (1967: 47) states: The list of questions is endless: the grand synthesis is not yet in sight. problem, raised also by Thoma (1967) at the same time, is stated by Tobias (p. 46) as follows:

Herbert Spencer and the Spectre of Comte

“It is very interesting to compare Spencer and Comte,” wrote George Sarton in an essay lauding their efforts to embrace all knowledge in a grand synthesis. The comparison, indeed, was tempting for contemporaries, as it has been for students of ideas. Both Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer were authors of new philosophic systems which, they believed, had been built on the firm foundations of science, and both were convinced that society should be reconstructed in accordance with the truths of their philosophies. The insistence of Positivists and some who were not Positivists that Spencer, consciously or not, had been influenced by Comte, and Spencer's repeated and fervent denials, made for a series of controversies that extended over half a century and ranged from the minutiae of priority to the more important issues of the classification of the sciences and the nature of religion.The eclipse of both the Positive Philosophy of Comte and the Synthetic Philosophy of Spencer in the twentieth century hardly suggests the interest they aroused in the nineteenth. The unification of knowledge and the discovery of the laws of man and society were dreams which nineteenth-century science and philosophy hoped to realize. Comte and Spencer made their contribution in this area; and while both were attacked for erecting systems on questionable assumptions, and for their weakness in details, their extraordinary ability to amass quantities of information and to come up with penetrating generalizations attracted admirers and disciples. Few of their critics thought that what they had set out to do was not worth doing, or could not be done.

On Philosophical Synthesis

THE PROBLEM of philosophical synthesis may be considered in a general way or in a specific form. In the former case, one would like to put different philosophical views together and reconstruct a whole view, which would reconcile all partial views. This is a process which is difficult of accomplishment. It is open to question whether there can be any such thing as a whole or complete view which can accommodate all so-called partial views. It is quite possible that no formula or view, however comprehensive, can do justice to reality, and that ultimate metaphysical truth is above all views. A view naturally presupposes a standpoint; and a standpoint naturally excludes some other standpoint or standpoints. How can the process of synthesis be completed? We contend, therefore, that philosophical truth is no view at all. It is not any intellectual formulation. It coincides with reality and is reality. It alone is known; a formula is not literally known. A formula is only formulated. The distinction between the two is the distinction between knowledge and imagination. We therefore prefer to consider the problem of synthesis in a more specific form. There is such a thing as Western philosophy, and there is such a thing as Eastern, or, more particularly, Indian, philosophy. There are philosophers who are interested in bringing them together or reconciling their divergent standpoints and their divergent tendencies. They hope thereby to achieve a grand synthesis of Eastern and Western philosophies. This is an interesting adventure, even if we are unable to carry it to complete success. There are persons who are strong advocates of the East, and there are persons who are enamoured of the Western way of doing philosophy. We may not be able to reconcile these opposite viewpoints, but we may at least succeed in better understanding and in appreciating their respective claims and counterclaims; and that will be no small achievement in the world of philosophy. It is possible to argue that the whole problem as stated above is artificial and uncalled for. Indian philosophy is not a simple thing. It comprises all kinds of methods, attitudes, and views. The same is true about Western philosophy. Western philosophy is a product of several currents of thought, scientific, religious, socio-economic, etc. Different influences shape different systems of thought. How is it possible to make a fruitful comparison

Strength and Structure of the Earth

THOSE who have some acquaintance with Prof. Daly's researches and writings will expect both pleasure and profit from his latest book; nor will they be disappointed. Geophysics demands the co–operation of workers in a number of different sciences, and with the modern tendency of research to run along narrow paths there are few who have the wide knowledge required for a grand synthesis. Thus, there has from time to time been a cleavage of opinion on various vital matters between, say, geologists and mathematical physicists, although each had much to learn from the other. Happily, there has arisen in recent years a spirit of close co–operation, and some of the fruits of it are seen in the volume under review. Prof. Daly combines the wide knowledge of the geologist with a clear grasp of the modern advances in geodesy and seismology—no mean achievement. His exposition is attractive, and is illuminated by a wealth of suggestions, many of them frankly speculative, many indicating possible quantitative tests, and all of them worth recording. Strength and Structure of the Earth By Prof. Reginald Aldworth Daly. (Prentice-Hall Geology Series.) Pp. x + 434. (New York: Prentice–Hall, Inc., 1940.) 3.50 dollars.