Epistemological Limitations Research Articles

The Science of Learning and Development: A Commentary

Transforming difficulties into opportunities for thriving is at the heart of this volume on the science of learning and development. This chapter brings the perspective of European research and the Global North and South and discusses some of the challenges included in the call to create the conditions for promoting sustainable and equitable futures for all. Among others, globalizing transformative knowledge by recreating, replicating, and scaling up success stories in education research can overcome methodological or epistemological limitations. Examples of cocreation and interdisciplinary work are included to produce socially relevant knowledge and be effective in tackling the real problems affecting children and youth. Dialogic learning and successful educational actions illustrate how educational success and transformation can happen.

Let This Sentence Be Your Guide

Tom Lavazzi’s ‘Let This Sentence Be Your Guide: Diagrammatic alterity and performative de(X)-touring of urban cityscapes,’ as hybrid performance and socio-cultural critique, is a pilot/trial run for group or individual actions that interrogate the limits of a schematic epistemology. Notwithstanding the site-specific orientation of the piece, it can serve as a template for historically-torqued reappropriations of commercialized appropriations of urbanscapes generally. The piece semi-arbitrarily overlays a tourist map of Savannah, GA, with a Reed-Kellogg formatted diagram of a tourist brochure’s place-branding sentence; the diagram is then deployed as an alternate ‘tour’ route, the nodes of the diagram corresponding to ‘stops’ on the tour. ‘Tourist’/performers are cast, or repositioned, as critically-conscious Situationist flâneurs, finding themselves at junctures which may or may not correspond to conventional tourist ‘sites’, hence dialogically deforming them, with the aid of virtual historical texts haptically accessed (i.e., via mobile devices) in real time, as sites for critical intervention. Given the Old South ideological mise en scène implied by the brochure’s branding rhetoric, and featured in many of the city’s ‘historical’ markers, the piece also detours an 18th century dance form, the quadrille, as imaginative leitmotif for the critical movement. Informed by Situationist flâneurisme, Actor Network Theory’s (ANT) materialist semiosis, letterist graphemic elaborations of language (between letter and graph, drawing and text), and antebellum ballroom etiquette, the piece imaginatively reconfigures and hence reconceives the branded cityscape. Once a sentence is diagrammed, and the words removed, the empty from of syntax as spatialized design becomes a path of the subject through ideologically sutured space; the words remain, however, a contested, shadow rhetoric hovering above their syntactic lineation. ‘Let This Sentence Be Your Guide’ is the textual trace/reenactment – re-composition – of a literal walking (imaginative ‘dancing’ –diachronic/dialogic writing through--) the lines …

Digital Curricular Transformation and Fourth Industrial Revolution 4.0 (4IR): Deepening Divides or Building Bridges

As the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill, many traditional contact higher education institutions, such as the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), embraced the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) to pursue their mandates. Such transitions necessitate transforming existing curricula into digitised versions that infuse digital technologies into programme delivery and embed digital learning experiences students need to thrive in the 4IR workplace. However, two years into online education, the extent to which the Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) curriculum in the School of Education (SoE) at UKZN integrates digital technologies in programme offerings remain largely uncertain. This article therefore aims to ascertain how the B.Ed curriculum of the SoE has been digitally transformed to support the production of teachers who are prepared for the 4IR classroom. It further explores whether or not the digital curriculum transformation of the B.Ed curriculum deepens the existing digital divide amongst students or builds bridges for digital learning. Stufflebeam’s context, input, process, and product (CIPP) model was relied upon to appreciate students’ digital learning experiences through a qualitative content review of twelve curriculum templates and moderation reports. The findings suggested varied learning experiences of content and digital skills for students who engaged with the digital B.Ed curriculum while pointing to a possible epistemological limitation for some students due the contextual digital divide. Insights from this article will be helpful to academics and the institution in their quest to produce graduates for the 4IR classroom while making a timeous contribution to the scholarship of teaching and learning to enhance sustainable post-COVID-19 pedagogical practices. Keywords: Digital transformation, 4IR classroom, Digitalised curriculum, Digital divide.

Knowing dissent: the Enlightenment subject within contemporary politics of subjectivity

ABSTRACT This article takes as a starting point journalistic and scholarly commentaries that diagnose new forms of subjectivity emerging through the global protest events of 2009–2013: a plural subject, a networked subject, or a newly autonomous subject. I juxtapose Michel Foucault’s problematization of the form of the modern Enlightenment subject with these commentaries to argue that their diagnoses pay insufficient attention to the epistemological frameworks through which understandings of subjectivity are produced. While commentators view shifts of consciousness as significant to the expression of new forms of subjectivity, I suggest that this view is indicative of a modern tradition of emancipation that requires the modern subject. I conclude that a closer engagement with the work of Foucault and Ashis Nandy on the relationship between epistemology and practices of dissent reveals the epistemological limits through which subjectivity is produced, emphasizing the adaptability and persistence of the modern subject as an epistemological category.

The limitations of investigating appetite through circuit manipulations: are we biting off more than we can chew?

Disordered eating can underpin a number of debilitating and prevalent chronic diseases, such as obesity. Broader advances in psychopharmacology and biology havemotivated some neuroscientists to address diet-induced obesity through reductionist, pre-clinical eating investigations on the rodent brain. Specifically, chemogenetic and optogenetic methods developed in the 21st century allow neuroscientists to perform in vivo, region-specific/projection-specific/promoter-specific circuit manipulations and immediately assess the impact of these manipulations on rodent feeding. These studies are able to rigorously conclude whether a specific neuronal population regulates feeding behaviour in the hope of eventually developing a mechanistic neuroanatomical map of appetite regulation. However, an artificially stimulated/inhibited rodent neuronal population that changes feeding behaviour does not necessarily represent a pharmacological target for treating eating disorders in humans. Chemogenetic/optogenetic findings must therefore be triangulated with the array of theories that contribute to our understanding of appetite. The objective of this review is to provide a wide-ranging discussion of the limitations of chemogenetic/optogenetic circuit manipulation experiments in rodents that are used to investigate appetite. Stepping into and outside of medical science epistemologies, this paper draws on philosophy of science, nutrition, addiction biology and neurophilosophy to prompt more integrative, transdisciplinary interpretations of chemogenetic/optogenetic appetite data. Through discussing the various technical and epistemological limitations of these data, we provide both an overview ofchemogenetics and optogenetics accessible to non-neuroscientist obesity researchers, as well as a resource for neuroscientists to expand the number of lenses through which they interpret their circuit manipulation findings.

Entrepreneurial Renewal through Corporate Moonshot Design and Acceleration

Using an action-research case study of a prominent telecom incumbent that established a moonshot factory, whose one of three missions was to explore distant and uncertain transformational bets to re-think digitally-enabled massive mental healthcare provision, we uncover and ad-dress the epistemological limitations of the lean startup heuristic in addressing such ‘wicked problems’ and related bets, involving heterogeneous, multiple stakeholders, operating at different time scales. We derived a novel epistemologically grounded and design-led framework for entrepreneurial renewal through corporate moonshot design and acceleration, i.e., wicked acceleration that might be applicable in different industrial contexts. In so doing, we extend the design science-based lean startup heuristic and contribute to the streams on design and entrepreneurship, experimentation vs. transformation, and corporate innovation acceleration to address wicked challenges.

The Anthropocene as a historical hyperobject

ABSTRACT The notion of the Anthropocene has gained momentum in many academic disciplines in the last couple of decades. Yet it seems that history, both as a human science and a political frame, fails to come to terms with this new geological epoch in which the distinction between humanity and nature blurs. Employing the concept of ‘hyperobject’, this article argues that such collision is not an accident or the result of historiography lagging behind. Rather, it is linked to both epistemological limits (related to time-scale, documentary and field autonomy issues) and political questions (related to human agency and universality). In conclusion, potential alternatives to posthuman anthropocenism are considered as a way to both maintain the foundations of the discipline and build post-anthropocentric approaches.

Ontology and Closeness in Human–Nature Relationships: Beyond Dualisms, Materialism and Posthumanism, by Neil H. Kessler

<i>Ontology and Closeness in Human–Nature Relationships: Beyond Dualisms, Materialism and Posthumanism</i>, by Neil H. Kessler

Modernity from Elsewhere: Psychoanalysis, Ethnography, and Speculative Horizons of Self-Assertion

Modernity from Elsewhere: Psychoanalysis, Ethnography, and Speculative Horizons of Self-Assertion

Les limites épistémologiques des techniques numériques actuelles de l’intelligence artificielle en traduction

Abstract The aim of this article is to analyze in detail the concepts underlying the digital techniques of artificial intelligence currently used in various fields, including translation. Based on this analysis, the epistemological limits of these techniques are examined, especially those resulting from the difficulty of modeling mechanisms of human rationality such as abduction or selection.In addition, the article explores the risks induced by the mass use of these techniques in translation, including their nature, extent and effects, and illustrates them with practical examples.

The sociomaterial force theory of identity

Foundational theories in social psychology tend to focus on the individual’s phenomenological experience, and to conceive of the environment and the individual as discrete entities. To overcome the ontological and epistemological limitations of such perspectives, we propose a theory rooted in culturally oriented existential philosophy. This sociomaterial force theory of identity emphasizes the reciprocal, historically contingent relationship between broad social and material forces on one hand, and processes of social and individual identity on the other. To concretize the framework, we compare it to current theories (social identity theory and social representations theory) and apply it to a qualitative case study of differences in how religious group members narrate the suffering brought on by natural disaster. We propose the theory can contribute to a more historical, dynamic, and truly interdisciplinary psychology, and would be especially useful for integrating multilevel data on the experience of a particular social group at a specified historical period.

Пандемия COVID-19: конспирология и антиконспирология

Today the world faces not only a biogenic challenge, but also a challenge in the media sphere, which has a direct impact on the situation with the spread of the COVID-19. Despite the fact that conspiracy became one of the most discussed topics in the public discourse long before 2020, conspiracy as a phenomenon in the humanities and social sciences is studied primarily in anthropology, sociology and psychology. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic clearly demonstrates that conspiracy theory (CT) has become one of the main political factor. Western political science discourse reacted to the request faster. At the turn of the 2010s–2020s, there was an intensification in this direction, the research field of conspiracy in political science began to form. Russian research discourse about it is still small and fragmented. The aim of the paper is to fill this gap. The text attempts to answer the research question: why have COVID conspiracy theories managed to gain such popularity and how do they prolong the pandemic by influencing political processes? For this purpose, the author analyzes conspiracy prerequisites (evolutionary atavism, information storm, non-transparent policy, epistemological limitations of human being, popular culture); gives the typology of CT (1.&nbsp;Does the virus really exist? 2. COVID-19 is no more dangerous than the flu. 3.&nbsp;Who is guilty? 4.&nbsp;Who is the beneficiary of the pandemic? 5.&nbsp;Is vaccination a microchipping?); and proposes measures to neutralize the harmful effects of CT on public consciousness. At the same time, the author opposes prohibitive measures as the least effective ways to combat conspiracy.

Introduction

Introduction

Towards a new science for autonomous manned space exploration

Long duration human exploration of the solar system calls for a stable contribution from different communities. of organized expertise and singular emerging know-how. The challenge of such a project appears to be technological, but designing a reliable socio-technical system for international astronaut explorers is a problem of integrating validated heterogeneous knowledge into an open interdisciplinary civilizational repository guided by humanizing value. In our paper, we will show that the human species can develop a form of collective intelligence using a paradigm that reintegrates a phenomenology of the living which is relatively different from the traditional process of scientific objectification. To support this hypothesis we will show the epistemological limits of constituted science and more particularly of modern physics. We will draw the relationship that exists between the evolution of theories in the human sciences and quantum physics while insisting on the role of culture as a catalyst for a always possible evolution of the Human being (conscious and free). Going beyond the previous science and reintegrating the living observer could allow to increase the horizon of human and technological possibilities in response to the new challenges that are emerging present on a global scale. We will focus on the need to activate natural intelligence with a methodological cycle that develops and maintains a continuous process between the subjective and objective poles of the human being in gestation. As a prerequisite, this process requires recognizing the human species qualities as well as its potential. Operationally this path requires mutual listening and shared responsibility of partners with a focused on the delegation process centered on the human being in the making in an extra-planetary perspective.

The Hitherto Unknown: Toward a Theory of Synthetic Sound

In the 1920s and 1930s, filmmakers in Germany, the Soviet Union, and the United States created synthetic sounds by printing photographic or drawn patterns directly onto a filmstrip's optical soundtrack. This essay examines these practices alongside the radical film theories of Dziga Vertov and Jean Epstein in order to test the limits of sonic epistemology—and, ultimately, to imagine what it might mean to conceive of synthetic sound as documentary sound.

Decolonising the Curriculum in International Law: Entrapments in Praxis and Critical Thought

Calls to decolonise the curriculum gain traction across the academe. To a great extent, the movement echoes demands of the decolonisation era itself, a period from which academics draw both impetus and legitimacy. In this article, we examine the movement’s purchase when applied to the teaching of international law. We argue that the movement reinvigorates debates about the origins of international law, centring its violent foundations as well as its Eurocentric episteme. Yet, like many critical approaches toward international law, the movement is smitten with itself and with the regime. As a consequence, the outcome of its activism and critique is predetermined: both must redeem the Eurocentrism of international law and its associated pedagogy. Calls to decolonise the curriculum ultimately validate the epistemological limitations inherent to a stratified, international order, failing to offer a genuine alternative framework or epistemology.

HISTORICAL NARRATIVE, DECOLONIALITY, AND POLYPHONY IN MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION STUDIES: A THEORETIC-METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH

This article aims to propose a polyphonic decolonial historical approach to Management and Organization Studies (MOS), relating the theoretical methodological aspects of the historical perspective with the decolonial option. We suggest a conceptual dialogue between the historiographical approach and MOS. We aimed to reflect on the possibilities for improving the organization theory, emphasizing the methodological concern with polyphony in historical studies. As a result, epistemological limitations in the use of history are presented when associated with MOS that is necessary to be overcome. We assume a position of understanding the history composed of narratives as fragmented representations of the past. Also, we articulate the ethical-political option of decoloniality for the co-construction of historical narratives about translocal practical-knowledge in management - towards pluriversal transmodernity. The article contributes to epistemic and methodological (re)orientations engaged in the context of (1) local/regional research-teaching (2) through the theory and practice of management in (3) rescuing the sociocultural identity.

The Chinese Exclusion Act and The Late Qing Chinese Cosmopolitanism

Abstract This article examines a specific set of literary texts, both in English and Chinese, produced by a few Chinatown leaders and some Chinese writers as they protested against the anti-Chinese sentiments and the Chinese Exclusion Act in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century. Those Chinese-authored texts resisted the homogenizing view of the Chinese people by the Westerners, advocating a cosmopolitan class above race, and used commercial amity to assert the Chinese people's cosmopolitan right. The moral compass of the Chinese merchants in those literary stories also puts forward an alternative model of global capitalism that evolved from the traditional Chinese idea of tianxia. Reading these texts can help us build a more historicized view of Chineseness and the Chinese worldview prior to the rise of state-centered nationalisms in modern China, on the one hand, and understand the epistemological framework and limit of modern nationalisms, on the other.

Beyond 'drinking occasions': Examining complex changes in drinking practices during COVID-19.

Introduction‘Drinking occasions’ are commonly used to capture quantities of alcohol consumed. Yet this standardised terminology brings with it numerous assumptions and epistemological limitations. We suggest that social changes brought on by COVID‐19 restrictions have influenced routines, patterns of time use and drinking practices, highlighting the need to re‐examine how we conceptualise drinking and ‘drinking occasions’ in alcohol research.MethodsThis analysis draws on data gathered from 59 qualitative interviews conducted during the second half of 2020 with Australian drinkers aged 18 and over. The interviews explored how COVID‐19 restrictions impacted daily practices and alcohol consumption patterns.FindingsParticipants spoke about their work, study and social routines changing, which influenced the times, timing and contexts of their drinking practices. We separated these shifts into four overarching themes: shifting of structures shaping drinking; the permeability of drinking boundaries; the extension of drinking occasions; and new contexts for drinking.Discussion and ConclusionCOVID‐19 restrictions have led to shifts in the temporal boundaries and contexts that would otherwise shape people's drinking, meaning drinking practices may be less bound by structures, norms, settings and rituals. The drinking occasions concept, although a simple tool for measuring how much people drink, has not been able to capture these complex developments. This is a timely consideration given that COVID‐19 may have enduring effects on people's lifestyles, work and drinking practices. It may be useful to examine drinking as practice, rather than just an occasion, in order to better contextualise epidemiological studies going forward.

Polar contagion. Ecogothic anxiety across media in the twenty-first century

Concerns about climate change have seen increased attention across virtually all media after 2000. In addition to raising ecological awareness, these concerns have inspired numerous gothic fictions, in which the polar thaw consequent on global warming becomes a source of paranoia, fear and horror. This article explores a specific group of twenty-first-century cultural products that associate polar melting with epidemics triggered by pathogens or infectious insects released after lying dormant in the ice. Often called “zombie” viruses or bacteria, these pathogens appear in a wide range of fictions as well as in sensational articles that use gothic paraphernalia to describe the spread of terrible diseases. Like spectres, these agents of contagion return from the past to haunt the present; they also cast a dark shadow upon the future, as they become the invisible protagonists of “dystopian ecological visions” in which humankind and other species are at risk of annihilation. Four types of products are analysed to demonstrate that they convey similar anxieties by combining images of environmental disaster with pandemics. Different though they are in genre and medium, novels like Thaw’s Hammer (2010), films like The Thaw (2009) and TV series like Fortitude (2015-18) not only interrogate the epistemological limits of science; they also shed light onto dangerous socioeconomic dynamics while posing ethical dilemmas about the human meddling with nature. Mostly produced before the spread of coronavirus, these fictions are made more appealing by the current pandemic, which has encouraged speculation over new potential sources of contagion. Their appeal is confirmed by the 2020 proliferation of newspaper/magazine articles focusing on “zombie” pathogens. By merging objectivity with sensationalism, these articles turn pathogens into spectral agents that seek revenge for human crimes against nature.