Potential Realities Research Articles

Seeing the Potential of Realism in Economics

In this article, I clarify some of the key concepts and commitments of realist social ontology in economics. To do so, I make use of a recent critique of Lawson’s Reorienting Economics by Mohun and Veneziani. Their article provides a useful foil because responding to their critique allows us to emphasize that realism’s claims are more conditional and less controversial than one might otherwise anticipate. The basic claim is that ontology matters and that explicit recognition and consideration of ontological issues can be beneficial. However, developing a focus on ontology can create problems of interpretation among economists regarding what is being claimed and offered. I discuss some of these with reference to an adaption of Maki’s concept of economics imperialism and also with reference to Mary Morgan’s recent typology of experiments.

Imperfecting the Illusion: Belief and the Aesthetic Destruction of Reality

IntroductionRealism, as an form, has long been indicted for its complicity with ideological conservatism. In this essay, I argue for reconsideration of realism as critical tool in formation of contemporary politics. In developing this claim, I draw upon Jacques Ranciere's insights regarding potential for formations to take on political dimension by introducing into [our sense of community] new subjects and objects, . . . render [ing] visible what had not been, and ... mak[ing] heard as speakers those who had been perceived as mere noisy animals.1 Such shifts in our capacity to envision new realities can change the landscape of by rupturing anticipated correlations between images and their meanings and images and their effects.2An politics, in Ranciere's sense, requires shift from of art to what he calls aesthetic regime.''For Ranciere, this transition must no longerbe understood as simple break with mimetic realism in favor of nonfigurative art. As he puts it, the break with [the representational regime] does not consist in painting white squares rather than . . . warriors.3 Rather than discarding figurative art, this break requires giving up idea that representational form carries what he calls an expressive complement, such at that between a lion and courage.4 More specifically, break from representative to regime involves for Ranciere recognition that an image can no longer be simply understood as expression of thought or feeling.5 Such codified meanings, he argues, reproduce status quo by limiting ability of things to exist in ways that have not yet been thought and thus suppress potential to bring to life possible new ways of being.This essay follows Ranciere in refusing to claim that realist forms of art are inconsistent with political aesthetics. I consider range of art and media examples with aim of teasing out particular relationships between realism and deception that may maximize realism's potential to disrupt given ideological formations. My main contention will be that realism's potential political power lies not in its ability to guide spectator toward previously unseen truths or to see through deception. Rather, its potential emerges by staging deceptions that imperil any recourse to metalanguage that sustains very categories of true and false, thereby undermining possibility of belief and system of authority that secures it. To put this more generally in Rancierian terms, realism's charge in project of politics is to conspire with deception in order to dispute established regime of representation and generate what he calls new of sensible, through which new organizations of perception may emerge.6 In what follows, I consider series of examples that, in increasingly complex ways, address political question of how to create new distribution of sensible by undermining structure of belief and system of authority (the big Other, in Lacanian parlance) that sustain given arrangement.7 I illustrate this politics through sculptural figures created by Ron Mueck, which, I argue, innovatively harness potentially transformative moment when established perceptual framework begins to fray. In particular, Mueck's use of scale to disrupt illusion of reality illuminates ways in which realist forms of art carry political potential to open up opportunities for new ways of seeing, understanding, and being in world. His sculptures do this by inaugurating new twist on conventional trompe l'oeil by reproducing, at level of context, deception that traditionally occurs only at level of form.Belief, Doubt, and Big OtherAt first sight, sculptural figures produced by Australian artist Ron Mueck appear as unimpeachable examples of perfected mimetic form. …

REALISM AND RESERVE: CHARLOTTE YONGE AND TRACTARIAN AESTHETICS

Reserve was absolutely central to the Tractarian theological and aesthetic programme, and Yonge's position as a leading practitioner of Tractarian aesthetics demands that we understand the relationship of reserve to her realism. Some critics have assumed that realism is simply incommensurate with reserve, while others have reduced reserve to its psychological dimension. However, while John Keble's and Isaac Williams' complex discussions of reserve are well understood, it is clear that realism has distinct value for reserve both theologically and aesthetically. Yonge cannily exploited realism's potential both to practise and preach reserve. This essay reads The Pillars of the House (1873), especially the scene of the cathedral choral festival, to explore the unique power of Yonge's realism to instruct readers in the doctrine of reserve without violating reserve in doing so.

A new paradigm for nursing: the potential of realism

Realism has been the dominant approach in the philosophy of science for the last 20 years. Realist philosophy has also been widely employed across a range of social sciences. Unfortunately, these powerful intellectual currents have not reached the shores of nursing which appears trapped in a time-warped debate about ‘qualitative’ (constructivist) and ‘quantitative’ (positivist) approaches. This paper argues that both positivism and constructionism are seriously flawed as philosophies of social and natural science. This is in marked contrast with realism which is a philosophy of both the natural and social sciences. I therefore propose that realism should be adopted as a radically different new paradigm for a unified biopsychosocial nursing.

A new paradigm for nursing: the potential of realism.

Realism has been the dominant approach in the philosophy of science for the last 20 years. Realist philosophy has also been widely employed across a range of social sciences. Unfortunately, these powerful intellectual currents have not reached the shores of nursing which appears trapped in a time-warped debate about 'qualitative' (constructivist) and 'quantitative' (positivist) approaches. This paper argues that both positivism and constructionism are seriously flawed as philosophies of social and natural science. This is in marked contrast with realism which is a philosophy of both the natural and social sciences. I therefore propose that realism should be adopted as a radically different new paradigm for a unified biopsychosocial nursing.