Interpretation Of Reduction Research Articles

A Response To Gerstenberger

AbstractProfessor Gerstenberger has now published a reflective summary of his long preoccupation with religious questions in the Old Testament, with particular reference to sociological issues. His five-fold sociological typology that stretches from the family to the state is by now a familiar one that he has developed over time and long championed. But here he works matters out in detail. Gerstenberger has opened up new vistas of interpretive possibility that put to rest the run of monolithic and, therefore, reductionist interpretations that have long dominated the discipline of Old Testament theology. His accent on pluralism and contextualism is enormously important, and my primary response to his work is one of immense appreciation for a publication that is in many respects daringly experimental. What follows is an attempt to raise issues in a collegial way that are in the context of an overriding appreciation, with congratulations to him for what he has written.

Building the Tower of Babel: Communities of Practice and Paradigmatic Pluralism in Organization Studies

In this paper, we argue that the work of Thomas Kuhn lends itself to two conflicting interpretations of the nature of scientific work, and that these have very different implications for debates on paradigmatic pluralism within organization studies. We begin by framing two ideal typical interpretations (a reductionist interpretation and an irreductionist interpretation) of the allegory of the Tower of Babel. We then explore in more depth the irreductionist interpretation of Kuhn that has driven research in the `social studies of science' over the last two decades. In line with irreductionist studies, we examine the concept of boundaries between scientific fields and between science and society and argue for a more fluid and dynamic conception than has been common in previous work. We suggest revisions of more traditional conceptions of paradigm, incommensurability, and mature and immature science. We end by briefly discussing these issues in the context of the debates on paradigmatic pluralism in organization theory and strategic management.

Science, Politics, and the Evolution of Law and Neoclassical Economics

James Hackney's article provocatively points our attention to very important and underexplored issues concerning the interplay of science and politics in the dramatic evolution of law and neoclassical economics since the Second World War. At the heart of his article is his rejection of any reductionist interpretation of the leading developments in this area. Modern law and neoclassical economics, he argues, cannot be accurately viewed either as merely a faithful, nonpoliticized application of modern social science or, alternatively, as simply a convenient vehicle for the promotion of particular contentious political beliefs. Hackney insists that law and neoclassical economics, both in general and in the specific doctrinal area he emphasizes, is about both science and politics. His article seeks to demonstrate this duality and, more broadly, to clarify the general nature and evolution of modern law and economics. Hackney highlights key general characteristics of twentieth-century intellectual thought and examines the influence of those characteristics, as well as the interplay between science and politics, in a series of landmark works on law and economics that have great relevance to recent debates over appropriate products liability standards.

INVESTIGATING CHILDREN'S SPIRITUALITY: THE NEED FOR A FRUITFUL HYPOTHESIS

It is only recently that the spirituality of children as distinct from their religion has appeared as a subject of academic interest. This development permits us to investigate children's spirituality as an aspect of a more general category than that of religion. Spirituality is characterised here as a natural form of human awareness. Research evidence is offered to demonstrate that the ‘natural’ hypothesis is more resilient to scientific testing than other more reductionist interpretations of spirituality. The conceptual underpinning of a study of children's spirituality based on the hypothesis is described. The hypothesis appears to offer a fruitful way forward for research.

The rise of neurogenetic determinism.

Dramatic advances in neuroscience are changing and enriching our understanding of brain and behaviour. But reductionist interpretations of these advances can cause great harm.

Accidents in Ockham's Ontological Project

We know, because Ockham repeatedly says so, that for him, individual substances and a special kind of qualitative (but still individual) inherent are the only res or there are.' The controversial question is how reductionist the resultant scheme is or is meant to be. The answer is relevant to a number of important doctrines in Ockham's writings: perhaps even parts of the theory of supposition, but surely his account of truth conditions (verification for things), universais (and natural kinds), connotative terms (including relations), the categories, and mental language. As it happens, there are both critics and defenders of Ockham who have opted for a strong reductionist interpretation, the former maintaining that he (wittingly or not) must deny that there are any real relations, or that things are essentially the same as or different from one another. While some reductionist defenders of Ockham

Between beanbag genetics and natural selection

The encounter between the Darwinian theory of evolution and Mendelism could be resolved only when reductionist tools could be applied to the analysis of complex systems. The instrumental reductionist interpretation of the hereditary basis of continuously varying traits provided mathematical tools which eventually allowed the construction of the ‘Modern Synthesis’ of the theory of evolution. When genotypic as well as environmental variance allow the isolation of parts of the system, it is possible to apply Mendelian reductionism, that is , to treat the phenotypic trait as if ti causally determined by discrete “genes for” the trait. howeverm such a “beanbag genetics” approach obscures the system's eye-view. The concept of heritability, defined as the proportion of the total phenotypic variance due to (additive) hereditary variation, asserts that genetic elements have discrete effects; but by relating to the genotypic variance, it avoids the trap of reffering to “genes for” characters. Variation in relative reproductive success is the phenotypic “trait” of significance for Darwinian evolution, and fitness is its genotypic component. Most traits that contribute to reproductive success are due to the effects of many loci that causally contribute to the adaptive value of those traits. by establishing a causal relationship between the heritability of traits and reproductive success the apparent tautology of the definition of fitness through reproductive success is avoided, without the need to turn to simplistic and misleading concepts, such as the “genes for” the traits.

On the Use and Abuse of Thorstein Veblen in Modern American Sociology, I: David Riesman's Reductionist Interpretation and Talcott Parsons' Pluralist Critique

Abstract. The analyses and applications of Thorstein Vehlen's social theory by David Riesman and Talcott Parsons are found to be deficient. Riesman's study of Veblen lacks viability because the reductionist methodology he uses psychologizes and sociologizes Veblen rather than examines the theoretical import of his work. Parsons is wrong in denying the originality of Veblen's work and in treating him as an eccentric Utopian. Thus the paradigmatic and ideological bias of both Riesman and Parsons preclude a proper understanding and use of such Veblenian concepts as status emulation and conflict.

Marxism, Ideology and Literature (review)

Shorter Reviews119 emotion concepts. Finally, it is argued that literature is not to be understood as informative discourse; the latter is constituted by "the existence of a practice involving a series of utterances related to each other in a dialectical process of challenge and support" (p. 54), but this forms no part of literary practice. The second half presents the preferred model of literary understanding. In treating a work as literary we attribute to the author certain aesthetic intentions; these are conventionally determined, and the author has no "special authority when it comes to interpreting" them (p. 118). These conventions allow us to single out passages as segments, and explore their interrelations under descriptions of gradually increasing generality until "all the segments are interrelated in a network of descriptions which articulates the 'meaning' of the work" (p. 83); the familiar criteria for interpretative validity are then fascinatingly integrated into the overall structure. Evaluation is secondary, for "evaluative terms characterize how far an element contributes to, or frustrates, an interpretation" (p. 161). To the radical sceptic it is replied that the institution of literature is a partial criterion for the existence of faculties which are themselves criteria for a society having a highly developed culture; the only final defense, however, is that "literature is the kind of activity which arouses devotion" (p. 223). How long it will continue to do so if the above account is generally accepted remains to be seen, for the resulting vision of literature is remarkably austere. It excludes any text which "enters into the goal-directed normal functions of language" (p. 165), and any attempt to allow a work to "change one's way of seeing the world" is non-literary (p. 206), for "it is a category mistake to let judgements about the truth of a piece of discourse interfere with" one's reading of it as literature (p. 58). But the account of literary practice which leads to this aestheticist conclusion is highly selective. Leavis is far from being the only critic to compare texts in order to explore the relative powers of different sensibilities , at least partly with an eye to lived experience; and literary practice contains much dialectical "challenge and support" of types ruled out by Olsen, providing analogues to the dialectic of more centrally informative discourse. The relation of truth to dialogue, and the relevance of both to literature, has been a leading topic in recent European hermeneutics; Olsen's model might well be enriched by recourse to other "currently fashionable" philosophical theses. University of WarwickMartin Warner Marxism, Ideology and Literature, by Cliff Slaughter; ix & 228 pp. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1980, $20.00. Slaughter's book constitutes an effort to rescue Marxism from sterile and reductionist interpretations. He contends that "it is necessary to emphasize 120Philosophy and Literature Marx's theory of knowledge, and the fact that labour, practice, working on nature, makes the world of men and produces real knowledge" (p. 19) in order to prevent art and literature from being reduced to ideology. While laboring to produce a dialectical reading of Marx and his interpreters in the field of literary criticism, Slaughter fails to avoid a tendentious critique of those interpreters who go against the grain of his own brand of Marxist orthodoxy. Thus, the rescue effort proves abortive. Almost a third of the book is devoted to an explication of Marx. Much of that explication captures the dynamic methodology which Marx used to investigate the totality of how "social being determines consciousness." Against the more mechanistic and crude interpretations of Marx, Slaughter attempts to demonstrate how his rendering of Marxism can unveil "the necessary laws of the production of the actual conditions for . . . artistic creation" (p. 73). However, in pursuing his quest for the real legacy of Marx, Slaughter not only neglects the fetishizing of a productivist model which is inherent in Marx, but he also overlooks some of the more critical contributions to Marxism. In particular, Gramsci's important work on hegemony is completely ignored. This, in turn, diminishes an understanding of the subtle grounding of ideology and consciousness. (The significance of Gramsci's work is not lost on Slaughter's fellow countryman, Raymond Williams...