Positive Science Research Articles

Keats, Myth, and the Science of Sympathy

This essay considers the connections between myth and sympathy in Keats's poetic theory and practice. It argues that the ‘Ode to Psyche’ exemplifies the way in which Keats uses mythological narrative, and the related trope of apostrophe, to promote a restrained form of sympathy, which preserves an objectifying distance between the poet and the feelings that his poetry examines. This model of sympathy is informed by Keats's medical training: the influential surgeon Astley Cooper and The Hospital Pupil's Guide (1816) both identify a sensitive but restrained sympathy for patients' suffering as an essential part of the scientific and professional methods of nineteenth-century medicine. However, while The Hospital Pupil's Guide claims that mythological superstition has been superseded in medicine by positivist science, Keats's ode suggests that myth retains a central role in poetry, as the foundation of a poetic method that mediates between imaginative sympathy and objective impartiality.

What is the Crisis of Western Sciences?

This article is an attempt to formulate a clear definition of the concept of crisis of Western sciences introduced by Husserl in his last work. The attempt will be based on a reading of the Krisis, which will stress its underlying continuity with Husserl’s life-long concerns about the theoretical insufficiency of positive sciences, and downplay the novelty of the idea of crisis itself within Husserl’s work. After insisting on the fact that, according to Husserl, only an account of the shortcomings of the scientificity of Western sciences can justify the claim that they are undergoing a crisis, it will be argued that the common definition of the crisis of the sciences as the loss of their significance for life rests on a misunderstanding. The crisis of Western sciences will be characterized, instead, as the repercussion of the crisis of the scientificity of philosophy (and, specifically, of metaphysics) on the scientificity of positive sciences. The loss of significance of scientific knowledge for our existence will in turn appear as a further, inevitable consequence of the uprooting of the sciences from the soil of a universal philosophy culminating in metaphysics, and thus, as a phenomenon deeply intertwined with the crisis of Western sciences, but not identical to it.

Integrating the normative with the positive dimension of the new science for cities: A geodesign-based framework for Cellular Automata modeling

Cellular Automata (CA) models are powerful simulation tools to study complex urban systems. Although there has been considerable amount of CA-based modeling work reported in the literature, few have been used as actual planning or policy making tools. The goal of this research aims to address the problem of “unapplicable CA models” by combining CA models with the framework of geodesign. Inspired by Batty's new science of cities, we put forward a geodesign-based framework for CA modeling to integrate the positive and normative dimension of the new science of cities as envisioned by Batty. Instead of merely applying CA models to positive urban studies, which typically requires more accurate predictions, we advocate the integration of positive (i.e. urban simulation) and normative (i.e. design) city science via the application of CA modeling to geodesign. By linking CA simulation with the geodesign framework, a geodesign-based CA model is developed and six urban design scenarios are integrated into the model, to test the urban growth impacts of these scenarios and generate a new design scenario accordingly. Using a case study of urban growth in Changping District, Beijing, we demonstrate that the normative and the positive dimension of Batty's new science for cities can be integrated. Geodesign, as a new conceptual framework, is helpful for streamlining the CA modelling process to evaluate different design scenarios and design new scenarios. In return, CA models could also contribute to the geodesign process by offering a tool for simulating and evaluating impacts of different design scenarios on urban growth.

Living well in light of science.

This article discusses some findings of the modern science of happiness in the context of historical understandings of happiness. Comparing teachings of the ancient wisdom traditions to those of modern positive psychology and social science, I argue that there is surprising correspondence between the two. The happy life, both ancients and modern agree, involves training and the development and mastery of particular character traits.

Modernist landscapes of Ankara

Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal and the Kemalist revolutionaries believed that the new Turkey should be a ‘modern’ democracy and also a ‘green’ country in line with positivist science and modernist culture. In this context, the landscapes of Republican Ankara would become an experimental field for this Turkish nation-building and modernization. This article traces the development of modernist landscape ideology during the early Republican Era in Turkey and its translation by planner and architect Hermann Jansen into detailed design ideas for Ankara. It illustrates the interaction between Jansen’s cutting-edge social and landscape architectural ideas and the Anatolian landscapes after the First World War. Finally, it more widely defends the value of the fantasized and partly realized modernist landscapes of Ankara as part of the urban collective memory in Turkey and the modernist cultural heritage.

The Moral and Political Dimension of Economics The Fact-Value Dichotomy

Since the neoclassical school, the separation between facts and values, is and ought, positive and normative, has become a concern in conventional economic analyses. Economics should focus on facts, and present general principles, leaving the choice of various technical alternatives to policy makers. This article addresses the following questions: can economics, seen as a positive science, be separated from the political dimension? Is it possible to separate facts from values or are they necessarily intertwined?After showing how the separation between economics and moral philosophy unfolded throughout the history of economic thought, the article analyses the factvalue dichotomy discussion and concludes that facts and values are necessarily intertwined. Then, the article shows that the premises and theories of conventional economic theories contain hidden values, despite being presented as universal truths on which policies are based, and thus fail to discuss the various perspectives of the problems.Reviving a tradition commenced by Aristotle, the article concludes by arguing that economics is necessarily moral and political. However, the acknowledgement of the normative nature of economics cannot compromise the pursuit of objectivity.

Epistemology applied to conclusions of expert reports

It is believed that to build a robust reasoning logic to make probabilistic inferences in forensic science from a merely mathematical or logistical viewpoint is not enough. Mathematical logic is the positive science of reasoning and as for that it is only interested in the positive calculus of its validity, regardless any prior ontological assumption. But without a determined ontology and epistemology which imply to define the concepts that they will use, it seems difficult that the proposed scientifically correct mathematical solution be successful as a European standard for making conclusions in forensic reports because it has to be based on judicial language.Forensic experts and Courts are not interested in the development of a positive science but in a practical science: in clarifying whether certain known facts are related to a possible crime. Therefore, not only the coherence of the demonstrative logic reasoning used (logic of propositions) is important, but also the precision of the concepts used by language and consistency among them in reasoning (logic of concepts).There is a linguistic level essential for a successful communication between the forensic practitioner and the Court which is mainly related, in our opinion, to semantics and figures of speech. The first one is involved because words used in forensic conclusions often have different meanings – it is said that they are polysemic – and the second one because there is often metonymy as well. Besides, semantic differences among languages regarding words with the same etymological root add another difficulty for a better mutual understanding.The two main European judicial systems inherit a wide and deep culture related to evidence in criminal proceedings and each of them has coined their own terminology but there are other two more abstract levels such as logical and epistemological, where we can find solid arguments by which terms used at legal level on conclusions of forensic reports could be accurate and consistent for all users of an intended EU guideline. An effort has been made to elucidate the following terms: truth, certainty, uncertainty, opinion, conjecture, probability, evidence, belief, credibility, determinism, indeterminacy, cause, principle, condition, and occasion.

MENTALISM VERSUS BEHAVIOURISM IN ECONOMICS: A PHILOSOPHY-OF-SCIENCE PERSPECTIVE

Abstract:Behaviourism is the view that preferences, beliefs and other mental states in social-scientific theories are nothing but constructs re-describing people’s behaviour. Mentalism is the view that they capture real phenomena, on a par with the unobservables in science, such as electrons and electromagnetic fields. While behaviourism has gone out of fashion in psychology, it remains influential in economics, especially in ‘revealed preference’ theory. We defend mentalism in economics, construed as a positive science, and show that it fits best scientific practice. We distinguish mentalism from, and reject, the radical neuroeconomic view that behaviour should be explained in terms of brain processes, as distinct from mental states.

Independência ou Norte: reflexões sobre a influência do estrangeirismo no campo do conhecimento da administração no Brasil

Resumo Este ensaio teórico levanta os principais aspectos da formação da teoria da administração e realiza uma aproximação com a abordagem de Boaventura de Sousa Santos, que advoga uma epistemologia do Sul. Evidencia-se que a ciência positivista demarcou o que é válido como conhecimento e excluiu o que fica além desse "cânone científico". Em síntese, toda e qualquer produção científica fora dos padrões considerados verdadeiros e aceitos pela academia mundial torna-se inválida. Sob essa perspectiva, a obra de Boaventura de Sousa Santos, particularmente a sociologia das ausências e emergências, destaca a hegemonia dos valores notados no processo de interpretação e condução das pessoas em sociedade sob a óptica hegemônica do Norte. Assim, foi traçada uma linha (invisível) abissal, que demarca como válidas somente as experiências do Norte, produzindo ausências epistemológicas nos demais países que, por condições determinantes de sua história como colônias, importaram teorias. Por meio de um ensaio teórico, apresentamos a influência do estrangeirismo na ciência administrativa e as contribuições de Boaventura de Sousa Santos, as quais podem inspirar a construir um conhecimento emancipatório e interdisciplinar, de modo que a administração também utilize sua ecologia de saberes para superar suas ausências epistemológicas.

What IsGlobalin Global Security Studies?

The mission of the Journal of Global Security Studies is to solicit and publish a variety of methodological, epistemological, theoretical, normative, and empirical studies in the field of global security studies. The emphasis on, and commitment to, diversity of voices and approaches is a welcome addition to the international relations journal landscape and, in particular, to security studies. But, it is a broad and ambitious charge—a charge made all the more ambitious and potentially ambiguous by the identifier “global.” What exactly is global security studies and how is it distinguished from security studies? In this brief comment, I provide some suggested ways to think about, and conceptualize, the term global in global security studies. Before turning to the concept of global security studies, it is worth a quick review of security studies so that we can see the distinction. Twenty-five years ago, at the end of the Cold War, Stephen Walt wrote a thorough state-of-the-field essay on the evolution of security studies up until that point (Walt 1991). Walt championed the “renaissance” that had occurred throughout the 1970s and 1980s in security studies and noted that while the field had always been an “interdisciplinary enterprise,” it was easily definable because of its focus on the “phenomenon of war,” with a particular mission of increasing our collective understanding of the role of military force in international relations (IR). In addition, the “renaissance” of which he wrote was attributable to the surge in positivist social science theorizing (principally realism) of security issues. In the twenty-five years since, security studies has grown well beyond the traditional focus on guns, bombs, and rockets and beyond the issues of conventional warfare, nuclear weapons, and grand strategy. To be sure, the field still focuses on war and conflict, but the nature of war and conflict has …

Marcuse's critique of contemporary culture and art

According to Marcuse, contemporary culture is becoming onedimensional. This means that we are witnessing an abolishment of differences between various cultural strata where everyone becomes a consumer of such (contemporary) art. However, the differences among real economic strata of society remain large. For these reasons Marcuse determinates modern society as irrational. When discussing the question of culture, Marcuse is discussing it in its broader sense where culture incorporates politics, education, art, religion and philosophy. Art, philosophy and religion serve as means to maintain the existing social order, according to Marcuse, where an individual is free to think but only within the confinements of patterns previously set out by society. As a consequence, education is set out to prepare an individual to manage within the confinements set up by the existing free market and it is focused primarily on positive science while leaving the question of social changes aside. As a consequence, an individual is less and less interested in political developments. Thus, Marcuse emphasizes that the criticism of the existing culture must be based on real social and economic processes, approaching the view of German idealism but also the view later expressed by Marx in his criticism of contemporary culture.

The Contributions of Postmodern Narratives to Master’s Degree Students’ Higher-Order Thinking Skills

Literature is a branch of fine arts performed with language, in its most general definition; it reveals people and their surrounding realities (listening, feeling, thinking, memorizing, believing, missing, worrying, rejoicing, hoping, etc.) through different aspects within aesthetic structures that start with history, culture and art.The written culture and art produced by humans since first ages of history teach individuals to understand level of civilization to which they belong and to live and interpret life they live carefully, as well as creating an environment of being open to universal culture and understandings by protecting their national values and making comparisons with them.In this context, literature education aims to train individuals who can express themselves to be able to use Turkish correctly, effectively, and beautifully; to enjoy reading and its culture; to have wide emotional, thoughtful, and imaginative worlds; to develop aesthetic tastes; to have refined tastes; to be virtuous; and to have a stable personality with humanistic and moral behaviors.The literature lesson, which has multiple functions and a rich content due to its nature, opens to students a way to use cognitive processes (higher-order skills) such as problem-solving, discovering, critical and creative thinking, questioning, discussing, synthesizing and evaluating. Post-modern narratives, which give opportunity to restructure a literary text by giving meaning from different dimensions, provide students countless treasures in this sense when compared to traditional narratives. This study will mention contributions of these narratives to literature education.As a 20th century work of art, postmodern compositions are products of a completely different world in terms of content, form, technical style, language, and pronunciation. Taking command of era, postmodernism has made in-depth changes in several scientific fields, most important being positive sciences. It has reflected onto art and literature education, as well.German physicist Max Planck's presentation of the quantum of action (Planck, 1996), Einstein's theory of relativity (Einstein, 2001), Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (Heisenberg, 1987, pp. 19-24), and Stephen Hawking's argument for absolute time that was examined on twin brothers (Hawking, 2013, p. 54) call into question Newtonian physics and are all signs of consequential new developments. These developments in natural sciences have changed perception of chronological time and have brought understanding to relativity and uncertainty of time.Recent Approaches and Theories in Field of PsychologyFreud's subconscious dimension of psychology, Jung's collective unconscious, Adler's individual psychology, and Bergson's attitudes toward intuition are based on observing human's spiritual nature from different points of view. In this regard, a variety of perspectives have been created to reveal its hidden aspects.The rapidly evolving and growing scientific discoveries of modern times have been reflected in technology. The technological revolution surrounds individuals' subjective and social lives and has created different values and perceptions. Advances in transportation, information, and communication technologies have entered into system of life. They have increased consumption and made people nervous, alone, and isolated in a world surrounded by objects.New media is a sector that has been created by these socio-economic conditions. The truth is that in relationship between man and society, media has grown prodigiously, and its power leads contact between a person and public. Hence, income that results has caused a struggle between media bosses. Jean Baudrillard calls this hyper reality (Doltac, 2003, p. 25; Lucy, 2003, p. 70).While Nietzsche was trying to question established judgments that were wellknown, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Levi-Strauss, and Baudrillard approached sciences from a postmodern aspect removed from any kind of dogma or ideology. …

Managing transitions, building bridges

Purpose This paper aims to highlight the potential of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) summer bridge programs to promote college persistence by fostering a positive science identity among participants that is culturally consistent with the values and experiences of African American students. Design/methodology/approach This case study included demographic data, journals, a focus-group interview and program evaluation reports. Carlone and Johnson’s (2007) grounded model of science identity provided a culturally sensitive framework for examining science experiences of minority students. Findings In a program that emphasized the academic readiness of students pursing bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering programs, the salience of students’ science identity was intricately related to their commitment to STEM. Research limitations/implications Understanding the program’s cultural components was not a specific objective of the study, but emerged as an important feature of students’ experiences and commitment to degree completion. Practical implications The program could assist students’ development of a science identity through the deliberate inclusion of activities and experiences that are culturally congruent with the students’ racial/ethnic identity. Originality/value Little empirical research is available to assess bridge programs for African Americans pursuing STEM degrees. Analyzing students’ transition from high school to college, within the context of a summer bridge program, affords a better understanding of how students navigate the early social and academic aspects of college and how participation in bridge helps plug the leaky pipeline to careers in STEM.

THE TRANSPARENCY TROPE: DECONSTRUCTING ENGLISH ACADEMIC DISCOURSE

English Academic Discourse has always presented itself as a neutral vehicle of objective fact. Through the use of clearly defi ned terms and straightforward syntax, and the studied avoidance of forms of overt manipulation of the reader, it claims to offer a transparent window onto some pre-existing external reality. Today, however, most linguists agree that objectivity is a linguistic construct, achieved by the systematic use of grammatical forms such as nominalizations and the passive voice which mask human agency. Similarly, it is now generally understood that even the most positivistic science texts contain a certain amount of rhetorical manoeuvring designed to convince the reader of the truth value and utility of the claims made. This paper draws upon a range of linguistic, historical and philosophical sources to question this discourse’s status as the hegemonic vehicle of knowledge in the modern world.

Perspektif Zakî Najîb Mahmûd tentang Ilmu dan Agama dalam Logika Positivisme

<p>This article aims at comprehensively examining Zakî Najîb Mahmûd’s thought on the logic of positivism on the relationship between religion and science. The study employs literature interpretation method. The study encompasses the logic of positivism of Zakî Najîb Mahmûd, confirmation map of knowledge on areas of science and religion, and the dichotomy of science and religion. The study finds that the logic of positivism formulated by Zakî Najîb Mahmûd has accommodated religious knowledge as a scientific matter just like positive science in which its references can be mapped out through accountable epistemological aspect.</p>

HADİSLERİ ANLAMA VE YORUMLAMADA BİLİMSEL VERİLERİN KULLANIMI

Understanding and explicating the Hadith that contains some scientific informations has been one of the most important agenda on Muslims from the beginning until now. In this article, understanding and explicating methots of these informations which mentioned in the hadiths since the early generations, was discussed. While we were analyzing the approaches of the Islamic scholars to the hadith, the development process of the positive sciences has been taken into consideration and this historical process are classified as classical period and modern times. There are a lot of information on the understanding and explicating the hadiths, particularly in commentaries, works of Prophetic Medicine, books, periodicals , articles, and in social networking sites on the internet.These informations was examined by sampling method. The methodologies about using the scientific informations to understand and explicate the hadiths were detected and these metodologies evaluated by descriptive method

Accumulation as eternal recurrence: theology of the bad infinity

The paper re-evaluates Schmitt’s (Political theology: four chapters on the concept of sovereignty, trans. George Schwab. Chicago University Press, Chicago, 2005: 36, 48, 65) claim that although all “significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts”; the theological was replaced in the nineteenth century by “exclusively scientific thinking”; leading in the twentieth, to “the onslaught against the political,” in which it “vanishes into the economic or technical-organizational”. Some modern political concepts, especially sovereignty, have theological origins; and economics claims to be pure positive science. Nonetheless, the political is necessarily worldly, whereas economics is theological in its origins and remains so. The political is worldly in accepting the principle of plurality as “the law of the earth,” taking worldly freedom as its aim (Arendt 1968: 146–50, Arendt in The life of the mind. Harcourt Brace and Company, New York, 1978: 19). Economics is theological first, because, like the one god, it is essentially singular and postulates an order beyond human knowledge and agency. Three stages of economic theology are sketched: the primitive theology of Adam Smith; the pseudo-theology of neoclassical economics; and the true theology of Marx’s account of capitalist accumulation. The paper uses Eliade’s (The myth of the eternal return or, cosmos and history, trans. Willard R. Trask, Bollingen Series XLVI. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1965) account of the “archaic ontology” of pre-modern societies in which order is beyond human knowledge and agency; realizes itself through the eternal recurrence of archetypal agents and acts; and abolishes history. It also uses Agamben’s (The kingdom and the glory: for a theological genealogy of economy and government, trans. Lorenzo Chiesa. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2011) description of the development of the word oikonomia. It argues that the line of modern political thought based on sovereignty and regarded as central by Schmitt, is a politics that has been colonized by economics, and must be a form of domination. Liberation from economic theology can only come from a revival of a true politics that aims at freedom. It is true that such a politics has never yet succeeded in separating itself from domination (Clastres in Society against the state, trans. Robert Hurley. Urizen Books, New York, 1977); but that is the subject of another discussion.

Eye, head, and foot tracking during locomation over real-world complex terrain

Successful locomotion over complex terrain such as a rocky trail requires walkers to place each step on a safe foothold with high spatiotemporal precision while also taking the future terrain into account. We have previously shown that humans guide foot placement using a visual control strategy that exploits the physical dynamics of the bipedal gait cycle (e.g. Matthis, Barton & Fajen, 2014). However, this work was limited to locomotion over virtual terrain projected onto flat surfaces within the laboratory. In the current project, we develop a research protocol to allow accurate and integrated tracking of the eye, head, and feet during locomotion over real-world complex and rocky terrain, a protocol that has been previously limited by numerous technical challenges. This protocol allows us to test predictions derived from the results of previous lab-based studies on the visual control of foot placement in real-world terrains, and opens new opportunities to study the visual control of locomotion outside a laboratory setting. Our protocol utilizes a Positive Science mobile eye tracker with a GoPro scene camera and inertial measurement units (IMUs) attached to the head, trunk, and feet. Each IMU integrates the output of temperature-calibrated, tri-axial accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers to determine the sensor's orientation within a world-centered reference frame. The orientation quaternions produced by the head and trunk-mounted IMUs were used to rotate the gaze vectors recorded by the eye tracker in order to specify gaze fixations within a body-centered reference frame and relate gaze location to foot placement. In a pilot study, subjects walked across different types of real-world terrain while performing different distraction tasks. Preliminary results reveal that foot placement in complex terrain is highly demanding of attentional resources, and that the control strategies used to guide foot placement vary dramatically according to the difficulty of the terrain being traversed. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015. Language: en

English

Eye movement is one of the most important mechanisms that function to collect the information from the environment to stimulate the motor action and thus enable a person to perform daily activities. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether eye movement parameters when performing activities of daily living (ADL) is affected by learning effect when the ADL were repeated. Thirteen school children aged between 15 and 19 years old (mean 16.31±1.89 years) participated in this study. They undergone two evaluations, baseline and follow up, separated by at least 10 weeks. The evaluation included assessment of visual acuity at near and distance using Lighthouse reduced ETDRS chart and Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy (ETDRS) chart, respectively; eye movement parameters (task duration, saccade latency and number of saccades) while performing ADL (identifying colours, coins and food) were recorded using Positive Science Portable LLC eye tracker. The mean value for the visual acuity at distance and near for baseline and follow up were logMAR -0.05±0.05 and logMAR -0.05±0.05, respectively. The results showed that comparison of eye movement parameters for performance of ADL at baseline and follow up were not statistically significant. Therefore, the findings of this study suggested that learning effect is not a factor that will influence change in eye movement parameters when performing ADL. These findings implied some benefit in using eye movement parameters for example to evaluate performance of ADL when given intervention in persons with nystagmus.

World Fitness: US Army Family Humanism and the Positive Science of Persistent War

This article theorizes ongoing US-led global warfare as a “positive science” based in communal, familial, and humanistic values manifest in outreach practices conducted by the US Army. Analyzing the history of recruitment and recently developed resilience training and civil-military recreational programs, the article explores new concepts of humanism and global order being produced and disseminated as a praxis of persistent war.