Logic Of Situation Research Articles

How do Non-Linear Relations of Social Macro-Variables Arise from Aggregation of Individual Decisions?

ABSTRACT There are three different reasons why non-linear functions between social macro-variables (aggregates) may arise. They can be related to three basic steps of a specific model of explanation of social phenomena, defined by Coleman: the logic of situation, the logic of selection and the logic of transition. Starting with a model of one linear difference equation, a change to three different non-linear system equations can generate stable cycles, bifurcations, and chaos. These non-linear system equations can be deduced from simple assumptions about individual or institutional social attributes. It is shown that a) non-linear individual reactions, b) different selection rules for actors having different social attributes and c) institutional constraints resulting in different transition processes are possible causes for non-linearity at the system level. Furthermore it is demonstrated that the assumption of non-linear but homogeneous reactions of all persons have a similar effect on non-linearity, like it is the case for different selection rules. However, despite of being able to show mathematically the possibility of chaos, it has to be said that chaos as a durable state of social systems is very improbable.

A decade of discourse analysis of environmental politics: Achievements, challenges, perspectives

This article assesses the contribution of discourse analysis to the study of environmental politics over the period of the past decade. Defining discourse as a particular linguistic regularity that can be found in conversations distinguishes it from ‘deliberation’ and ‘discussion’. Discourse analysis is seen as focused on situational logics studying ‘language-in-use’. Three strengths of discourse analysis are highlighted: its capacity to reveal the role of language in politics, its capacity to reveal the embeddedness of language in practices and its capacity to answer ‘how’ questions and to illuminate mechanisms. The article concludes by sketching some of the challenges lying ahead of discourse analysis. Given the changing nature of policy making, discourse analysts are supposed to have a task in identifying the new sites of politics and analysing the political dynamics therein.

An OWL-based extensible transcoding system for mobile multi-devices

Due to the rapid Internet development, an answer to the challenging question of how to automatically convert heterogeneous information into the desired XML format that can be accepted by a designated device is urgently requested. In this paper, we propose an OWL-based extensible trans-coding system (OETS) which is based on an extensible transcoding policy infrastructure, with a hierarchical structure of ontologies, and can automatically render an HTML document in mobile devices. In order to create common knowledge of OETS, we develop two top level ontologies: procedural sensor/effector ontology (PSEO) and markup file taxonomy ontology (MFTO). PSEO combines with situated logic to support sensor/effector procedures attached to an ontology class, while MFTO supports the markup file and structural components classification. Developers can exploit the extensible transcoding capability of OETS to satisfy various layout-specific structures of HTML pages by providing dedicated domain ontologies.

The sceptic as an economist's philosopher? Humean utility as a positive principle

Whereas in philosophy David Hume was long regarded as a negative thinker to be criticized rather than read, many thinkers interested in social and economic theory from Adam Smith onwards found key concepts, distinctions and problems as developed by Hume useful and inspiring. This applies not only to his seminal contributions to technical problems in economics. It is argued that the way in which Hume employed ‘utility as a positive principle’ (most notably in his ‘experimental’ moral theory) is of pivotal importance in this context. It allows for: a. distinguishing between internal motifs and external circumstances and constraints; and for b. making explicit the abstract logic of social interaction structures, mechanisms and processes. Both are necessary conditions for employing the logic of social situations and mechanisms in the explanation of social institutions and economic processes. It moreover prepares the ground for the use of simplified or cartoon-like models of individual agency in economic and social theory, but also for its critique. On this basis, Hume's influence on various strands of social and economic thought, but also the specific differences with regard to more ‘rationalistic’ approaches (such as Hobbesianism or important versions of neoclassical economics) can be assessed more clearly.

Poppers Methodologischer Individualismus und die Sozialwissenschaften

Popper's methodological individualism and the social sciences. Popper's philosophy of social sciences poses a dilemma that arises out of the two theses of methodological individualism and situational logic. In order to find a way out of this dilemma, one must raise the question concerning the epistemological and methodological status of the `laws' of the human sciences. There are indeed `rules' from which human actions depart mostly to a negligible extent, but they remain valid or stay in effect without exception only as far as they are not re-evoked or re-emerge in the consciousness of the agents. The element of truth of methodological individualism lies in the person's capacity to revoke, in principle, the validity of the rules concerning oneself. Situational logic and methodological individualism can thus be reconciled.

Popper’s Ontology of Situated Human Action

Popper's version of situational analysis, with its focus on the logic of situations and the rationality principle, fails to provide cogent explanations of the human decisions and actions underpinning social phenomena. It so fails because where he demanded objectivism and formalism in the social sciences, his substantive arguments lost contact with the psychological and subjectivist realities of the human realm. But Popper also devised some key elements of a social ontology. It is argued that although there are crucial gaps in his ontology, it can be augmented to give situational analysis the potential to reach beyond pure logic and rationality and to bring social theory closer to grasping the real world of human action.

Cooperation and the Logic of Action

This study has two purposes. As a social-psychological contribution to the theory of translation, it points to some of the advantages and drawbacks of the researcher's participation in the translation of scientific texts. As a contribution to social-psychological theory, it wishes to demonstrate that forms of cooperation cannot be planned in abstracto, without taking the overall social activity of the actors into account, of which participation in cooperation is only one part. One of the most original and ingenious inventions in the social sciences dates back to the early 1950's: the game known as the Prisoner's Dilemma (see Rapoport 1982). With perplexing accuracy, it puts it quite plainly that, first, action taken by individuals upon perfectly rational deliberation does not necessarily lead to collective rationality. Also, showing how a social structure may produce forces motivating the individual, the Prisoner's Dilemma has something to give to social psychologists. Even in the event that the prisoners have had the opportunity to discuss different strategies and jointly decide on adopting one, each is tempted to betray the other - and both are afraid that they will be betrayed. Psychological motives, the temptation and the fear, arise out of the logic of the social situation. Our intention has been to show that translation as a social activity involves motivating forces, assumptions to do with competence, and restrictive factors that all shape the scientist-translator cooperation irrespective of their deliberate pursuits. Therefore, rather than planning it oh an abstract basis, the working method has to be deduced from the logic of action. In doing so, we will see that cooperation cannot be symmetric; the weight is necessarily on the translator's role. The scientist, then, comes into the picture when the translator needs help; he does not have to be prepared for regular and face-to-face interaction with the translator, but only to make sure that the message of his text is conveyed (provided that he has the competence in the target language). Cooperation between translator and editor, in turn, is much more dependent on face-to-face interaction.

War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity and German Occupation in World War One by Vejas Gabriel s> Liulevicius (review)

REVIEWS 355 others for its allegiance. Its relative weakness plainly helped spur Czechsponsored Czechoslovak propaganda, but Czechs failed to understand that phenomena like the speakingof Magyar could denote Slovakidentityvis-a-vis themselvesratherthan treasonto the new state. Czech insensitivityat a crucial moment in Slovak national evolution was thus to have significant consequences . Nurmi inclines to a sharp view of 'Czechoslovak' motives, operating not so much to bolster a Slovak identity seen as weak but as exploiting this purported weakness in the interests of the new state's internationalposition, which requiredthe incorporationof Slovakia. The judgement on the Czechs may be a little harsh, given the logic of the international situation. The theme of Slovak national consciousness and the Slovak-Magyar relationship might benefit from a fuller picture of the demographic and sociological inheritance from Dualist Hungary, given the large literature on magyarization in that state. A more rounded study might add a section on attitudesof the smalleducated classof I9 I8, including its Protestant and Catholic wings. Ismo Nurmi concerns himself explicitly, however, with the theme of popular consciousness and on this topic he has provided an interestingand helpfulmonograph. History Department ROBIN OKEY University of Wanwick Liulevicius,VejasGabriel. WarLandontheEastern Front.Culture, National Identity andGerman Occupation in World WarOne.Studiesin the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare,9. CambridgeUniversityPress,Cambridge, 2000. viii + 309 pp. Notes. Bibliography.Index. $59.95: ?37.50. DR LIULEVICIUS's readable volume evaluates the experience of ordinary German soldiersfightingon the EasternFrontduringthe FirstWorldWar.He is correct to underline that the frenzy of researchunleashedby FritzFischer's seminal Griff nachderWeltmacht (Dtisseldorf, I96I) barely touched on the dayto -day life and work of troops in the East, although the intractable constitutional challenges thrown up for the Imperial German government in planning to annex the Baltic provinces have in fact been studied at some length in otherworks. The present book offersa valuable and carefullyresearcheddescriptionof what was going on in the military administration known as OberOst, encompassing Courland, Lithuania and Bialystok-Grodno.The area was, as the author affirms, 'essentially the feudal fief' (p. 2 I) of the Supreme Commander in the East, General von Hindenburg, aided and abetted by his chief of staffErichLudendorff.The sheerdetailof how the Germanauthorities went about establishingwhat Liuleviciusdescribes as 'the militaryutopia' the attemptsto control the flow of population movements, the development of Germanization policies to inculcate in the native populations the proper respect for the Reich's cultural weight is both impressive and useful for reference purposes. So too is the chapter entitled 'Crisis' which analyses how the German High Command triedto get round the politicalpressuresfor greaterself-determinationfor the majorityof Balticpeoples in the wake of the 356 SEER, 8o, 2, 2002 Russian revolution. At the same time the author would have benefited here from studying earlier works analysing constitutional issues raised by BrestLitovsk ,notably by H-E. Volkmann (Diedeutsche Baltikumpolitik zwischen BrestLitovsk undCompiegne, Cologne-Vienna, I970) or BernhardMann (DieBaltischen Ldnder in derdeutschen Kriegszielpublizistik I9I4-I9I8, Ttibingen, I965). These and other key texts in German do not appearin the bibliography. In general,however, thisentertainingbook isveryfarfroma drydescription of events and aspiresto convey the moods, impressionsand atmospherewhich assailedthe occupying forces. It does this well, if there is too much repetition. As far as the author is concerned, the overridingexperience for troops in the East was one of alienation induced by sensations of being in a remote, strange and hostile environment. 'There, with widened eyes, the German soldier faced vistas of strange lands, unknown peoples and new horizons' (p. 2). Fairenough, but it is sometimes difficultto realize that the author is in fact also consideringa partof Europewhich generationsof travellershad long recognized as 'European' in every sense of the word. How profound and widespreadcould the 'alienation'of the soldiersenmasse have been? The book raisessome interestingideas about what the Ober Ostexperience meant for subsequent generations of Germans, but it is difficultto resist the feeling that Liuleviciuspushes a ratherinterestingcase fractionallytoo farfor comfort, as when he concludes that the 'lessons' of the Eastern Front 'were eventuallytaken up by the Nazi movement and fusedwith the vile energies of their anti-Semitism,to produce a terriblenew plan for the East' (p. 279). Like many historians of such 'continuity' in German foreign policy, he gives insufficient attention to the not insignificant...

Slovakia: A Playground for Nationalism and National Identity. Manifestations of the National Identity of Slovaks 1918-1920 by Ismo s> Nurmi (review)

354 SEER, 8o, 2, 2002 the historiography of Imperial Russia and this essay provides an important corrective to the standardcliches of the Church and the clergy as unthinking supportersof the regime. What ismissingfromthe book, however, is any attemptto locate the diverse essaysin a widercontext. A specialistwillhave no troublefittingthe individual essays into such a context, but this is not the audience for whom the work is primarily intended. An introduction giving a broader background to the institutions, personalities and events would surely have been helpful in this respect.As it is, it is hard to see how someone lackingthe specialistknowledge could 'develop their own informed opinions on controversial topics' (p. 2). The choice of essaysand the divisionof the book appearssomewhat arbitrary. Partsone and three dealingwith the revolutionaryand constitutionalpolitical partiesarefinein the breadthand coherence of theirscope. Parttwo, however, labelled 'The Other Adversaries'consistsof two essays,one on the anarchists and one on national minorities. Both essaysare importantin themselves,but they make rather uneasy bedfellows. The final section of the book, 'The Establishment' has essays on the security police, the church and the State Council. The firsttwo are obviouslyimportantsubjects,but is a knowledge of the arcaneworkingsof the StateCouncil reallynecessaryforan undergraduate audience seekinga broadunderstandingof the politicsof late ImperialRussia? In conclusion this book is a useful guide to recent research, but its sum is ratherless than itsparts. Department ofHistory SHANE O'ROURKE University ofYork Nurmi, Ismo. Slovakia.A Playground for Nationalismand National Identity. Manifestations of theNational Identity of Slovaks I9I8-I920. Bibliotheca Historica, 42. Suomen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Helsinki, I999. 202 pp. Notes. Price unknown. IN a thoughtfulstudyIsmoNurmi seeksto show that a Slovaknationalidentity already existed among the common ranks of Slovaks in i 9I8, before the consolidationof an inter-warSlovakintelligentsia:Czechoslovakismremained a formal idea to Slovaks at this time, particularlyfor the masses but also for the educated, who subscribedto the Martin declaration of October I9I8 in recognition of the international situation. The exposition is based mainly on records of the short-lived local councils set up on the model of the Slovak National Council and of the Czechoslovak Propaganda Department from March I9 I9 which among other things organized lecturesby soldiers(mainly officers)in nearlya thousandplaces. Issuescovered concern the looting in the immediate aftermath of war, which Nurmi is reluctant to give an ethnic motivation but whose exclusive direction at Magyars and Jews he notes, the work of the 344 national councils as civic organs, the Slovak rejection of Hungarian irredentism, Czechoslovak propaganda and growing rifts in Czech-Slovak relations, the role of the clergy and the Polish propaganda in Spis and Orava. The Slovak identity is presented as an existing fact rather than a dynamic one, which was helped to furtherdefinition by the rivalryof REVIEWS 355 others for its allegiance. Its relative weakness plainly helped spur Czechsponsored Czechoslovak propaganda, but Czechs failed to understand that phenomena like the speakingof Magyar could denote Slovakidentityvis-a-vis themselvesratherthan treasonto the new state. Czech insensitivityat a crucial moment in Slovak national evolution was thus to have significant consequences . Nurmi inclines to a sharp view of 'Czechoslovak' motives, operating not so much to bolster a Slovak identity seen as weak but as exploiting this purported weakness in the interests of the new state's internationalposition, which requiredthe incorporationof Slovakia. The judgement on the Czechs may be a little harsh, given the logic of the international situation. The theme of Slovak national consciousness and the Slovak-Magyar relationship might benefit from a fuller picture of the demographic and sociological inheritance from Dualist Hungary, given the large literature on magyarization in that state. A more rounded study might add a section on attitudesof the smalleducated classof I9 I8, including its Protestant and Catholic wings. Ismo Nurmi concerns himself explicitly, however, with the theme of popular consciousness and on this topic he has provided an interestingand helpfulmonograph. History Department ROBIN OKEY University of Wanwick Liulevicius,VejasGabriel. WarLandontheEastern Front.Culture, National Identity andGerman Occupation in World WarOne.Studiesin the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare,9. CambridgeUniversityPress,Cambridge, 2000. viii + 309 pp. Notes. Bibliography.Index. $59.95: ?37.50. DR LIULEVICIUS's readable volume evaluates the experience of ordinary German soldiersfightingon the EasternFrontduringthe FirstWorldWar.He is correct to underline that the frenzy of...

A communication model of conceptual innovation in science

This essay exploring the nature of scientific communication begins with the premise that conceptual innovation is both a fundamental scientific activity and essentially a communication phenomenon. Conceptual innovation is fundamental as a scientific practice in that science as an institution is predicated on the development of new knowledge. It is essentially communicative in that it is the public character of science that relies on the consensual and communal evaluation of knowledge claims that determines the fate of new ideas. Science comprises a number of overlapping discursive formations whose nature is determined by the positions of (and relationships among) actors and ideas within communication and ideational networks, and which are characterized by a particular situational logic. The nature of these situational logics is such as to give rise to some of the characteristic communication dynamics of science, including consensus, problemshift, branching, and demarcation.

The Normalization of Economic Life: Representations of the Economy in Golden-Age Buenos Aires, 1890-1913

This essay examines the cultural impact of the market transition in Buenos Aires during the so-called golden age (ca. 1890–1913), when Argentina experienced a process of export-led growth, centered on agriculture and livestock. The international mobility of labor and capital resources, in a context of an expanding frontier, facilitated rapid and important gains in productivity. By the turn of the century, a model of accumulation based on mass immigration, foreign capital, and the redistribution and use of land taken from indigenous peoples was firmly established. Important changes in technology (breed selection and threshing machines) and social relations (tenancy and sharecropping) modified the landscape of the pampas. The city experienced more directly the turmoil of “progress,” receiving massive inflows of immigrants from Europe and rapidly absorbing modern means of transportation and distribution. Soon, a large consumer market developed, underscoring the modernity of the city’s economy. Some scholars view this period as a turning point in the history of Argentina. Social and urban historians have noted two fundamental changes: the revolution of wheat that transformed the social landscape of the pampas; and the modernization of the city that ultimately allowed some improvement in the living conditions of immigrant workers. Labor historians found in this period a deepening of class confrontations: the transition from artisan-based and ethnically divided working-class communities to a politically active and organized working-class movement under socialist and anarchist leadership. The very success of capital accumulation made the disparities in the distribution of income and wealth all the more evident, facilitating the diffusion of radical ideologies. Anarchist-dominated labor unions, mutual-aid societies, socialist cultural centers, and renewed activism within the workshops signaled the emergence of class politics.

Risk, the mass media and personal biography

Ulrich Beck’s formulation of the ‘risk society’ stresses the central importance of the media, yet is surprisingly reticent about analysing it. This article begins with Beck’s positioning of the media within risk modernity, and argues that in two major dimensions – the different media narrativizations of risk and expertise, and the mutability and mobility of people’s risk identities in their everyday experience – his analysis is significantly lacking. In the Australian research on which this article is based, the authors draw on long interviews as a methodological device, and the ‘border crossings’ contained in risk biographies as a central concept, in examining people’s construction and reconstruction of risk. Rather then Beck’s somewhat universalizing notion of ‘blind citoyens’ facing the catastrophic democracy of environmental risk, we find here a public which draws on a number of circuits of communication in facing a wide range of risks via very specific biographical and social histories. The article examines these situated logics and temporally articulated biographies of everyday life via case studies.

AAAI-98 Presidential Address: The Importance of Importance

Human intelligence is shaped by what is most important to us -- the things that cause ecstasy, despair, pleasure, pain, and other intense emotions. The ability to separate the important from the unimportant underlies such faculties as attention, focusing, situation and outcome assessment, priority setting, judgment, taste, goal selection, credit assignment, the selection of relevant memories and precedents, and learning from experience. AI has for the most part focused on logic and reasoning in artificial situations where only relevant variables and operators are specified and has paid insufficient attention to processes of reducing the richness and disorganization of the real world to a form where logical reasoning can be applied. This article discusses the role of importance judgment in intelligence; provides some examples of research that make use of importance judgments; and offers suggestions for new mechanisms, architectures, applications, and research directions for AI.

Bioeconomics as economics from a Darwinian perspective

Bioeconomics—the merging of views from biology and economics—on the one hand invites the 'export' of situational logic and sophisticated optimization developed in economics into biology. On the other hand, human economic activity and its evolution, not least over the past few centuries, may be considered an instance for fruitfully applying ideas from evolutionary biology and Darwinian theory. The latter perspective is taken in the present paper. Three different aspects are discussed in detail. First, the Darwinian revolution provides an example of a paradigm shift which contrasts most significantly with the 'subjectivist revolution' that took place at about the same time in economics. Since many of the features of the paradigmatic change that were introduced into the sciences by Darwinism may be desirable for economics as well, the question is explored whether the Darwinian revolution can be a model for introducing a new paradigm in economic theory. Second, the success of Darwinism and its view of evolution have induced economists who are interested in an evolutionary approach in economics to borrow, more or less extensively, concepts and tools from Darwinian theory. Particularly prominent are constructions based on analogies to the theory of natural selection. Because several objections to such analogy constructions can be raised, generalization rather than analogy is advocated here as a research strategy. This means to search for abstract features which all evolutionary theories have in common. Third, the question of what a Darwinian world view might mean for assessing long term economic evolution is discussed. Such a view, it is argued, can provide a point of departure for reinterpreting the hedonistic approach to economic change and development. On the basis of such an interpretation bioeconomics may not only go beyond the optimization-cum-equilibrium paradigm currently prevailing in economics. It may also mean adding substantial qualifications to the subjectivism the neoclassical economists, at the turn of the century, were proud to establish in the course of their scientific revolution.

Knowledge Personal or Social

Karl Popper's methodology can be seen as the situational logic of research. Popper called his method "Epistemology without a Knowing Subject." It was dismissed as metaphysical by those who refuse to give up an ideal knowing subject (a perfect human inductive processor). This article surveys the failure of modem discussions of this ideal, from the earliest (the writings of Sir Francis Bacon) to the latest (Kripke). The knowing subject exits at last, but leaves behind interesting results. The ideal knowing subject embodied ideal rationality, outside culture and history. Giving up this ideal invites us to integrate science with its background, to grade rationality (from magic to science), and to integrate different degrees of rationality under one rule.

Situational Logic and Its Reception

Popper holds to the unity of scientific method: any differences between natural and social science are a product of theory, not a pretheoretical premise. Distin guishing instead pure and applied generalizing sciences, Popper focuses on the different role of laws in each. In generalizing social science, our tools are the logic of the situation, including the rationality principle, and unintended conse quences. Situations contain individuals, but also social entities not reducible to individuals: conspiracy theory is the extreme form of individualism. Action in situations has unintended consequences. Both social and natural laws may be required to explain outcomes. The fate of Popper's ideas is a case study in the logic of the situation. Professional philosophers of social science lean toward individualism and a priorism (either intuitionist or rational choice). There are social and political explanations of this outcome, but little critical engagement with Popper's ideas.

The Origin of Life and its Methodological Challenge

The problem of the origin of life is discussed from a methodological point of view as an encounter between the teleological thinking of the historian and the mechanistic thinking of the chemist; and as the Kantian task of replacing teleology by mechanism. It is shown how the Popperian situational logic of historic understanding and the Popperian principle of explanatory power of scientific theories, when jointly applied to biochemistry, lead to a methodology of biochemical retrodiction, whereby common precursor functions are constructed for disparate successor functions. This methodology is exemplified by central tenets of the theory of the chemo-autotrophic origin of life: the proposal of a surface metabolism with a two-dimensional order; the basic polarity of life with negatively charged constituents on positively charged mineral surfaces; the surface-metabolic origin of phosphorylated sugar metabolism and nucleic acids; the origin of membrane lipids and of chemi-osmosis on pyrite surfaces; and the principles of the origin of the genetic machinery. The theory presents the early evolution of life as a process that begins with chemical necessity and winds up in genetic chance.

Rationality Explanations

The article distinguishes between deductive rationality models which explain the behaviour of large numbers of people placed in similar external circumstances, and explanations of a single action by one individual, individual rationality. The traditional justification for rationality models is that they offer good predictions. The main argument in this article is that individual rationality is testable and can serve to assess the empirical accuracy of the assumption of rationality in models. Three strategies to judge whether an individual action is rational — situational logic, motivational analysis and process-tracing — are used to analyse Henry Kissinger's decision in July 1975 to provide arms to Angola, an act which was intended to increase the value of the American reputation for toughness. The discussion is informed by Barry Nalebuff's game-theoretic analysis of rational beliefs concerning the value of reputation in deterrence. Finally, the article draws the implications of the empirical analysis of Kissinger's decision for the model of rational beliefs, concluding that such models can and should be evaluated on their assumptions rather than their predictions.

Situation Theory and Its Applications

Preface Part I. Situation Theory: 1. Constraints, channels, and the flow of information Jon Barwise 2. Extended Kamp notation: a graphical notation for situation theory Jon Barwise and Robin Cooper 3. States of affairs without parameters Mark Crimmins Part II. Logical Applications: 4. Labelled deductive systems and situation theory D. M. Gabbay 5. Events and processes in situation semantics Michael Georgeff, David Morley and Anand Rao 6. Nonmonotonic projection, causation and induction Robert C. Koons 7. Modal situation theory Stephen M. Schulz Part III. Linguistic Applications: 8. Generalized quantifiers and resource situations Robin Cooper 9. Situation theory and cooperative action Keith Devlin and Duska Rosenberg 10. Propositional and non-propositional attitudes Jonathan Ginzburg 11. Episodic logic: a situational logic for natural language processing Chung Hee Hwang and Lenhart K. Schubert 12. A situation-theoric formalization of definite description interpretation in plan elaboration dialogues Massimo Poessio 13. A situation-theoretic representation of text meaning anaphora, quantification, and negation Dag Westerstahl, Bjorn Haglund and Torbjorn Lager Name index Subject index.

The politics of situating knowledge: An exercise in social epistemology

This essay forges links between Popperians and feminists by considering the connections between Donna Haraway's “situated knowledge” and Karl R. Popper's “situational logic.” It is concerned with the political commitments behind methodological issues, with the degree to which there can be a Popperian contribution to the feminist vision of a successor science, and with ways of dealing with, while not resolving, the political differences between socialist feminists and libertarian Popperians.