Epistemological Limitations Research Articles

Exploring the Isaiah Scrolls and Their Textual Variants by Donald W. Parry

Reviewed by: Exploring the Isaiah Scrolls and Their Textual Variants by Donald W. Parry Ronald L. Troxel donald w. parry. Exploring the Isaiah Scrolls and Their Textual Variants (Supplements to the Textual History of the Bible 3; Leiden: Brill, 2020). Pp. xiv + 509. €160/$192. It is a truism that study of the Dead Sea Scrolls has revolutionized textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible by affording an unprecedented window into the diversity of readings in Hebrew and the realia of scribal activity during the late Second Temple period. Digesting the evidence, however, has taken time. The first volume of Isaiah in the Hebrew University Bible Project contained the first rigorous review of variants from 1QIsaa, 1QIsab, and pesharim from Cave 4. Readings from other scrolls appeared more frequently in the second and third volumes. The DJD critical editions began placing readings from the scrolls alongside other traditions more explicitly. The advance of Parry’s volume is its cataloging of all variants (to MT) among the [End Page 129] twenty-one Qumran Isaiah scrolls and the one from Murabbaʿat, arranged according to the order of verses and accompanied by explanations proposed by other scholars, together with his own analyses. The first chapter highlights the significance of the Qumran Isaiah scrolls as witnesses to the book and states the objective of collating and assessing all variants. P. reports having directly examined the scrolls, when possible, but also having studied photographs so as to provide exacting paleographic documentation. He collates ortho-graphic variants and utilizes reconstructed readings when physical damage partially obscures a word. Besides reporting all readings from the Isaiah scrolls, he includes direct quotations found in the pesharim, CD, 1QS, 1QM, and 4QTanḥumim. He draws on linguistic data, assessment of the literary context, and analysis of sense and text divisions; and he uses electronic searches to assess variation and distribution of linguistic features within the corpus. It is in his marshaling these analytics and citing proposals from various scholars that P.’s work rises to the level of a commentary on the text, rather than just a collation of variants. Parry’s recognition of the subjectivity of text-critical judgments (p. 11) is apparent in his frequent report of alternative solutions without advocating for one (e.g., pp. 38, 86, 140). Correspondingly, even when he states his judgment of which lemma is primary, he often reports alternative explanations, without launching a defense of his own (e.g., pp. 33, 36–37). In at least one case he concludes that it is “difficult to determine which text—MT or 1QIsaa—is primary” (p. 52), and elsewhere he confesses that a reading “remains a puzzle” (p. 58). Both his caution and his attestation of multiple proffered explanations are exemplary. His comments reflect use of historical grammar (e.g., pp. 35, 41, 93), familiarity with grammatical forms distinctive to the DSS (e.g., pp. 64, 93), and understanding of the effects of phonological change on orthography (e.g., pp. 159, 199). Observations about Qumran scribal practices play a role in his analysis (e.g., pp. 40, 199), as do comparative data from within a scroll, such as the use of the article (p. 31) or hê locale (p. 75) in 1QIsaa. In short, his commentary exemplifies expertise in the tools and practice of textual criticism, while recognizing the discipline’s epistemological limits. In a reviewof this commentary, it seems less helpful to evaluate his solutions to longstanding cruxes than to critique how he articulates explanations. For instance, despite asserting that placing the MT’s reading first in cataloging lemmas does not signal preference for the MT (p. 13), his claim that a two-word plus in 1QIsaa at 1:15 is a scribal harmonization with 59:3 rests on an argument that “MT is supported by another Qumran witness [4QIsaf], as well as the versions” (p. 37). The notion that a minus supports the MT (rather than simply agrees with it) implies that 4QIsaf is significant because of its confirmation of the MT more than its agreement with all witnesses that lack the phrase. A similar issue is his occasional use of language that prejudges a...

Ahab and Ishmael in Antarctica: How Charles Wilkes's White Continent Gave Rise to the White Whale

The U.S. Exploring Expedition (1838–1842) was the first global voyage of exploration launched by the United States government. News of the Expedition's discovery of the Antarctic continent commanded especially intense public interest, setting a precedent for monumental cultural ambitions in the new nation. The Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition (1845)—penned by the Expedition's controversial leader Charles Wilkes—was early identified as a significant source for Melville's novels, with Wilkes as a model for Captain Ahab. Yet the Narrative's Antarctic passages, whose incidents most closely prefigure Moby-Dick, have received almost no attention. An examination of Wilkes's attempt to conquer the indomitable Antarctic reveals resonances with both Ahab and Ishmael, and shows how Antarctic ambiguities helped shape the ontologically mysterious White Whale. By dividing Wilkes's qualities and rhetoric between two complementary characters—Ahab and Ishmael—Melville explores the nonhuman sublime, its power to test human physical and epistemological limits, and the driving ambition it provokes. In the process, Melville extends Wilkes's image of the "icy barrier" around Antarctica. This wall, barrier, or mask becomes an origin point for the ambitions—Ahabian, Ishmaelian, Wilkesian and even Melvillian—that energize epic endeavors, including those of the young republic's nascent expansionist imperialism.

Epistemological Approaches and Pluralism in Accounting Research: beyond the dominant paradigm

The dominant scientific knowledge in accounting is reductionist and carries the ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions of the paradigmatic approach in which it was developed, i.e., in the overwhelming majority it does not take into account the conceptual framework, values, beliefs, and subjective understanding moved by the players. Thus, the aim of this article is to provoke a reflection on the dominant theoretical paradigms in accounting research, evidencing the importance of alternative approaches. From the methodological point of view, the “state of the art” of accounting research will be surveyed, fitting this research into the type of theoretical essay or review of the main literature. Therefore, it was assumed as a starting point — how to enrich accounting information, through the contribution of interpretive and critical paradigms, given the recognized epistemological limitations of functionalist approaches. This article, starting from the typology developed by Burrel and Morgan (1979) — two dimensions, four paradigms —, revisits different epistemological possibilities and presents reflections on the contribution of these approaches to research, identifying assumptions, advantages and limitations of each paradigm. In this article, we conclude that it is a mistake to stigmatize the different theoretical paradigms to the extent that all are legitimate; only concrete research, carried out in their respective paradigms, can be considered appropriate or not. This epistemological reflection is relevant to the current debate to the extent that there are editorial policies that refuse the publication, regardless of its intrinsic value, when research does not fit the dominant paradigms (Baker and Bettner, 1997).

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.

Aesthetic Value and Aesthetic Judgment

Contemporary aesthetic naturalism integrates various scientific approaches into the common effort to provide an explanation of the main topics of aesthetics on the basis of empirical methods or in line with available evidence. Although these approaches have recently achieved very relevant empirical and theoretical results, contemporary aesthetic naturalism still does not solve the traditional hard problem of naturalism as such, that is the explanation of value in scientific terms. Firstly, I analyse the possible responses to this hard problem, showing that aesthetic value, particularly in the version of artistic value, remains outside the scope of current empirical approaches to aesthetics. Then I propose that this apparently strong philosophical limitation can be easily reduced to an ordinary epistemological limitation if aesthetic naturalism accepts to improve the interaction with art criticism, the discipline in the humanities characterised by a privileged access to the historical and social reasons that justify aesthetic judgments.

Epistemological limitations of Earth system science to confront the Anthropocene crisis

Our current understanding of the Earth System has significantly improved in recent years. As a result, the Anthropocene is seen as a major planetary emergency not only for humans but for other living organisms too. However, Earth System science lacks a proper integration of the social or human side and the natural side of the Earth System into an organic theoretical corpus. Without such an integration a comprehensive understanding of the Earth System is not possible, and the practical actions undertaken to face the Anthropocene crisis will only alleviate some of its effects but the planetary emergency will keep deepening. The epistemological reason underlying disagreement between natural and social sciences is that Earth System scientists understand the natural side of the Earth System and the Anthropocene from a dialectic and materialist perspective, whereas they understand the social side of the studied object from a positivist and idealist perspective. Such a dualist approach hampers a proper understanding and the practical actions aimed at transcending the planetary crisis. By consciously adopting a dialectic and materialist epistemic paradigm under which both natural and social realms are studied and understood, Earth System scientists would be able to identify the internal contradictions of the studied objects and, accordingly, to address the research in the suitable directions. In this way, structural solutions and not merely conjunctural measures to face the Anthropocene crisis could be formulated.

Baroque Science, Experimental Art? Jusepe de Ribera and other Neapolitan Sceptics.

Current attempts by historians of science to revise the narrative of the Scientific Revolution by using the concept of the Baroque have important implications for art history. Correspondences between baroque art and baroque science gain new complexity when the rational, epistemologically optimistic image of the New Science is put in doubt. Rather than a method of objective observation, early seventeenth-century science and art share an acceptance of the constructed nature of reality, of human epistemological limitations and of the role of passions in the observation of the world. While Caravaggio has revolutionised art precisely through his interest in questions of knowledge and sensorial perception and by his subversive transformation of Renaissance epistemological values and ideals, this article concentrates on the work of Jusepe de Ribera, who made the senses and their shortcomings a major theme of his pictorial research. Ribera's epistemology is examined in the context of contemporary Neapolitan philosophy and science. Through the confrontation of some of the Spagnoletto's paintings with the work of figures such as Giovanni Battista della Porta, Federico Cesi and particularly Colantonio Stigliola, it becomes clear that early modern Neapolitan faith in rational knowledge was more ambiguous than is sometimes assumed.

Divine Command, Natural Law, and Redemption in Calvin’s Thought

Calvin formulates an ethical framework in which the idea of natural law is interwoven with divine command ethics in a way that leads to a new awareness of the unique relationship between God’s authority and human autonomy with regards to morality. For Calvin, God’s creational order is the ultimate source of natural law and the natural moral order perceived by natural reason still provides true sources for human morality. He does not underestimate, however, the noetic effect of sin on natural reason. In fact, Calvin takes seriously the epistemological limitation of the created but fallen natural reason with regard to understanding the true intention of creational moral order in its full scope and meaning. So, he argues that the scriptural revelation does not just complement natural morality, but it redeems it. His view thus successfully rules out extreme views of both natural law and divine command ethics that render morality either utterly autonomous or rigidly heteronomous. For Calvin, God’s authority in morality and the natural moral order are reconciled because the heteronomy of revealed laws and the autonomy of natural law are reintegrated in redeemed reason. In this view, humans can acknowledge the God-commanded biblical moral law by their natural reason because the biblical moral law is a written manifestation of natural law. The regenerate can wholly acknowledge it through the renewal of their natural reason while the unregenerate can partly acknowledge it through common grace of God that preserves functionality of natural reason in fallen humanity to a certain degree.

The ontological antinomy

In anthropology, antinomy has generally been conceived negatively, metaphorically, and within the limits of epistemology alone. In presenting the ontology of the Sepik people of Awim, which is drawn from their conceptions of and practices related to food, I engage with Martin Holbraad’s Cuban-based ontological project, due to similarities in its ethnography, but also due to its differences in the approach to antinomy. I show that antinomy is not necessarily an obstacle to the discipline’s progress, but rather offers the possibility of its advancement. By taking antinomy seriously, that is, ontologically, it is shown that a prefigured possibility for such advancement resides dormant within Holbraad’s work itself. In ethnographically giving shape to ontological antinomy, I propose the concepts of surface and resurfacing to rethink the difference between immanence and transcendence as well as the form and site of ontological transformation.

Observing whiteness: the system of whiteness and its religious fantasy of absolute immunity

ABSTRACT This essay engages cultural theorist Sylvia Wynter’s theory of ‘genres of being human’ and sociologist Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social system observation in order to argue that the system of whiteness is a religiously produced, self-referential, and self-reproducing social (sub-) system of what Wynter calls the broader genre of ‘Man,’ the Christian west’s overrepresented and overdetermined model of a singularly proper human subject. Whiteness is observed as a social sub-system held together around self-referential processes of social and political immunization, or self-protective action aimed towards the survival and reproduction of the system. However, because its constituted identity is premised on necessary points of epistemological limits (i.e. the impossibility of an all-seeing range of vision or omnipotence and the impossibility of total self-referential observation), whiteness, like any other social sub-system, can never fully secure itself from the contingency and resistance of its outside environment. As a conclusion, I suggest that whiteness’ inherent vulnerability to its outside environment should be the starting point for white reflection on the possibility of resisting the violent fantasy of white immunity and the making of a democratic form of life.

Un grano de arena en la inmensidad del mar

A partir de una preocupación por los efectos duraderos de experiencias atroces ocurridas en pasados recientes, como la del terrorismo de estado en la Argentina, y por el problema de la transmisión intergeneracional de la historia, el propósito de este trabajo consiste en proponer una conceptualización al mismo tiempo ontológica y epistemológica del problema del trauma. Tomando como punto de partida una polémica propiamente argentina, intentaré abordar de modo trasversal los problemas epistemológicos que se presentan en la historización de pasados traumáticos en un nivel metadiscursivo y al mismo tiempo metodológico. A partir de la intuición de que el problema no resulta de una anomalía ontológica de la experiencia histórica sino de una limitación epistemológica de la disciplina, propondré una indagación con vistas a conceptualizar y al mismo tiempo ubicar históricamente lo traumático. Propondré como hipótesis operativa que el trauma constituye un resto de la historia y no su antítesis. Esta conceptualización me permitirá redefinir el dilema en términos de aporía, lo que constituye una clave para resolver los problemas epistemológicos implícitos involucrados.

Autochthonous oralities and coral islands: imagining “the people” in the poetry of William Carlos Williams and the Southern Fugitives

ABSTRACT This paper returns to early twentieth-century America’s concern with democracy and “the local” in order to frame the populist parameters of poetic appeals to “the people” in the work of the Southern Fugitive poets on the one hand, and William Carlos Williams on the other. It argues that the Southern Fugitives’ commitment to what Chantal Mouffe identifies as a populist politics of antagonism runs counter to Williams’s very different attempt to grapple with the idea of “the people.” The Fugitives’ claims to a form of constitutional autochthony depended upon the violent exclusion of Native and African-American “uninhabitants”: the negative requirement for the decidedly populist continuation and preservation of what Allen Tate explicitly called “White rule.” By contrast, Williams’s more self-reflexive lyrical voice foregrounds the epistemological limitations of the poetic imagination and hence the problematic maneuvers by which a “people” may be conscripted into the service of populist national allegories.

Remittances and morality: family obligations, development, and the ethical demands of migration

ABSTRACT Remittances have moral dimensions that, albeit implicitly addressed in migration literature, have not yet been the focus of explicit attention and analysis by social scientists. Building on recent developments in the anthropology of ethics and morality, this article proposes theoretical and analytical pathways to address this important but often neglected aspect of remittances. It does so mainly via a critical analysis of existing scholarship on remittances, and ethnographic data drawn from research among Cuban migrants in Cuba and Spain. The reflexive scrutiny of scholars’ moral assumptions about remittances opens the way for the study of the moral dilemmas and ethical demands articulated by remittance senders and recipients. Family roles and obligations, and the uses of the money sent by migrants, are identified as key areas of moral difficulty. Their analysis shows how remittances inform moral reassessments of family relations, individual responsibility, economic practice, and development. The notion of ‘moral remittances’ is proposed as a heuristic comparative tool that serves to illuminate the moral aspects of remittances. This notion is put into perspective to complement and reconsider more metaphorical takes on remittances, notably the concept of ‘social remittances’, of which it helps reveal some epistemological limitations while opening future research avenues.

Beyond populism and technocracy: The challenges and limits of democratic epistemology

Beyond populism and technocracy: The challenges and limits of democratic epistemology

Evaluation of dialysis centres: values and criteria of the stakeholders

BackgroundEvaluation of renal replacement therapy with haemodialysis is essential for its improvement. Remarkably, outcomes vary across centres. In addition, the methods used have important epistemological limitations, such as ignoring significant features (e.g., quality of life) or no relevance given to the patient’s perspective in the indicator’s selection. The present study aimed to determine the opinions and preferences of stakeholders (patients, clinicians, and managers) and establish their relative importance, considering the complexity of their interactions, to facilitate a comprehensive evaluation of haemodialysis centres.MethodsSuccessive working groups (WGs) were established using a multicriteria methodology. WG1 created a draft of criteria and sub-criteria, WG2 agreed, using a qualitative structured analysis with pre-established criteria, and WG3 was composed of three face-to-face subgroups (WG3-A, WG3-B, and WG3-C) that weighted them using two methodologies: weighted sum (WS) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Subsequently, they determined a preference for the WS or AHP results. Finally, via the Internet, WG4 weighted the criteria and sub-criteria by the method preferred by WG3, and WG5 analysed the results.ResultsWG1 and WG2 identified and agreed on the following evaluation criteria: evidence-based variables (EBVs), annual morbidity, annual mortality, patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), and patient-reported experience measures (PREMs). The EBVs consisted of five sub-criteria: type of vascular access, dialysis dose, haemoglobin concentration, ratio of catheter bacteraemia, and bone mineral disease. The patients rated the PROMs with greater weight than the other stakeholders in both face-to-face WG3 (WS and AHP) and WG4 via the Internet. The type of vascular access was the most valued sub-criterion. A performance matrix of each criterion and sub-criterion is presented as a reference for assessing the results based on the preferences of the stakeholders.ConclusionsThe use of a multicriteria methodology allows the relative importance of the indicators to be determined, reflecting the values of the different stakeholders. In a performance matrix, the inclusion of values and intangible aspects in the evaluation could help in making clinical and organizational decisions.

No background in biology is assumed

No background in biology is assumed

Towards the Sociologization of Laziness – Conceptual Clarifications and Preliminary Empirical Insights

The basic intention of this paper is to examine “laziness” as an essentially social phenomenon. Laziness is generally considered to be an attribute of a person as an individual and is, as such, discussed in psychology and medical science primarily through the concept of procrastination. The main argument developed in this article is that laziness is an inherently social phenomenon, because its definition and, consequently, the categorization of an individual as “lazy”, also depends on the socio-cultural context, which places the label of laziness on a particular form of individual’s social action, i.e. lack thereof, while at the same time implying predominantly negative connotations. In this paper, the cultural background of defining laziness is presented, by looking at its religious roots and the relation between the concept of laziness and a particular perception of time. Particular focus is placed on capitalist societies, whose socio-cultural matrix has proven to be suitable for categorizing certain behaviours as lazy. The relation of media and specific lifestyles toward the category of laziness is also problematized. On the conceptual level, the relationship between the concepts of laziness and procrastination, on the one side, but also of laziness and leisure, on the other side, is dissolved. In the second part of the paper, the results of empirical research are presented. The research was conducted in 2018 using semi-structured interviews on a convenient sample (N=15) of male and female students at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Zagreb. Despite some epistemological limitations, the research findings indicate different notions on the aspects and dimensions of laziness among interviewed students, representing a robust basis for further necessary and detailed (theoretical and empirical) sociological research of this important socio-cultural phenomenon.

Enhanced "I"s: Omniscience and Third-Person Features in Contemporary First-Person Narrative Fiction

This article investigates narrators in recent narrative fiction who display features at odds both with our "natural" way of experiencing the world and with what is generally considered the prototypical form of first-person narratives, namely the pseudo-autobiographical account of events experienced by a character in the past. Such narrators question this prototype by acting as if they were omniscient, and in so doing they raise a number of questions concerning their presumed epistemological limits, the mimetic paradigms whereby narrative fiction is usually framed, and the role of authors in literary communication. The aim of this essay is to address these questions, starting from the assumption that the increasing use of these paradoxical narrators testifies to an ongoing process of conventionalization. After considering the classical and postclassical takes on this topic, I highlight the limits of these approaches through an analysis of Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex and Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Finally, drawing on Paul Dawson's idea of first-person narrators as writers rather than reporters, I argue that one possible way to describe the narrative dynamics of recent texts featuring first-person narrators "equipped" with third-person features is to consider the influence of cinema and television on literature as well as on the reader's cognitive and experiential background.

Possibilities and limits of physical and mathematical interpretation in landscape science

Physical reductionism and mathematical formalization in landscape science have their fundamental limitations. Reductionism is limited because it is impossible to fully explain complex phenomena and reduce them to simpler ones (this has been discussed and demonstrated in philosophical and methodological literature repeatedly). Mathematical formalizations are fundamentally limited by the irrational, emotional, symbolic aspects of human existence, which is an organic component of the landscape. This follows from the very nature of mathematical discourse in its closest to landscape and geographical form in the form of the theory of sets. This is the basic idea of the article. Ontological and epistemological limits of physical and mathematical formalization in landscape studies do not allow to say that the latter can be fully represented and interpreted within the framework of the so-called geophysical paradigm, which is the subject of the article of V. V. Sysuev. (Izvestiya RGO, 2019, vyp. 4, p. 6183).

Should we fund research randomly? An epistemological criticism of the lottery model as an alternative to peer review for the funding of science

Abstract The way research is, and should be, funded by the public sphere is the subject of renewed interest for sociology, economics, management sciences, and more recently, for the philosophy of science. In this contribution, I propose a qualitative, epistemological criticism of the funding by lottery model, which is advocated by a growing number of scholars as an alternative to peer review. This lottery scheme draws on the lack of efficiency and of robustness of the peer-review-based evaluation to argue that the majority of public resources for basic science should be allocated randomly. I first differentiate between two distinct arguments used to defend this alternative funding scheme based on considerations about the logic of scientific research. To assess their epistemological limits, I then present and develop a conceptual frame, grounded on the notion of ‘system of practice’, which can be used to understand what precisely it means, for a research project, to be interesting or significant. I use this epistemological analysis to show that the lottery model is not theoretically optimal, since it underestimates the integration of all scientific projects in densely interconnected systems of conceptual, experimental, or technical practices which confer their proper interest to them. I also apply these arguments in order to criticize the classical peer-review process. I finally suggest, as a discussion, that some recently proposed models that bring to the fore a principle of decentralization of the evaluation and selection process may constitute a better alternative, if the practical conditions of their implementation are adequately settled.