Sound Common Sense Research Articles

Kant’s ‘Copernican Revolution’: Toward Rehabilitation of a Concept and Provision of a Framework for the Interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason (Translated by M.D. Lakhuti)

Against those commentators who consider Kant’s explicit reference to Copernicus’s heliocentric reversal either grossly misleading or simply irrelevant to the revolution in philosophy carried out in the Critique of Pure Reason, it is argued in this paper that Kant’s transcendental idealist inversion of the familiar standpoint of realism and sound common sense fully justifies the talk of a ‘Copernican revolution,’ even if Kant himself never used the expression. It is not just the dominant ‘moving spectator’ motif (or transcendental turn) of the Preface that has to do with Copernicus; both the immediately following ‘crucial experiment’ motif (on the distinction between appearances and things in themselves) and the ‘critical’ motif (regarding self-knowledge and the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments) confirm the aptness of the Copernican analogy. Still, some commentators have stretched the analogy too far; the final section of the paper attempts to determine just how far it may reasonably be said to go.

‘Like a sweat of things’: familiarity, intertextuality, and Beckett's Bibles

Samuel Beckett's work is persistently concerned with language coming from somewhere else, and among the most sustained critical discourses around it are those that take an interest in its sources, influences, and appropriations. This essay aims to show that a notion of familiarity is either tacitly or explicitly fundamental to many of these discourses, and argues that familiarity is a crucial problem for any critical practice wanting to negotiate ideas of intertextuality. Familiarity is a problem insofar as it runs between demonstrability and non-demonstrability, and between a more-or-less undifferentiated abstract totality and discrete units of language. These are oppositions that Beckett's writing dramatises in its relation to other texts, both in the published work and in the archives. They are also brought out especially clearly in the case of the Bible, which has tended to be regarded as the most familiar of quantities for Beckett. Centred on Malone Dies, the essay offers a reading of the ways in which language and possession are worked over as mutual problems in Beckett's writing, while at the same time looking to account for the sense in which it displays – according to a note by Adorno on The Unnamable – ‘something like sound common sense’.

The book with a silver lining

Although most urgent care of the elderly occurs in primary care, more and more older people are visiting emergency departments (ED) and accessing urgent health and social care services. EDs...

THE WARREN COMMISSION AND THE DONS: AN ANGLO-AMERICAN MICROHISTORY

Distortion in intellectual history is not a direct function of distance from the present. The recent past can create its own problems of perspective. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is a case in point. Is the controversy surrounding the assassination a worthy subject for an intellectual historian? After all, there is now little serious debate as to what happened in Dallas on 22 November 1963. Mainstream historians regard the case as closed, an issue settled by the exhaustive and fair-minded deliberations of the Warren Commission, whose report, issued in the autumn of 1964, concluded that a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, a sad and unsettled individual from a dysfunctional background, had killed the president. However, as we know, the topic remains, almost half a century later, a matter of huge fascination, but only outside the gates of the academy. The study of Kennedy's assassination is now best known to academics as a counterculture, which grossly caricatures the best practices of the academy and where extravagant theories tend to trump sound scholarship, plausibility and common sense. Indeed, this disjunction between the obsessions of amateur historians, known as buffs, and the reluctance of academic historians to lose caste by exploring subjects such as the Kennedy assassination which the wider public—but only the wider public—seems to find worthy of further research and explanation is, as Professor W. D. Rubinstein notes, an interesting sociological and historiographical phenomenon in its own right. Writing in 1994, Max Holland, the journalist and intelligence historian, noted that the history of the Kennedy era was “bifurcated”. For academic historian writing on the Kennedy presidency the assassination is “treated as a footnote or afterthought if it is addressed at all”, while “very few of the more than 450 books and tens of thousands of articles that compose the vast assassination literature published since 1964 have been written by historians.”

Reply to Dr. Agarwal’s letter to the Editor “Recurrent laryngeal nerve, phonation and voice preservation—energy devices in thyroid surgery—A note of caution”

Sir, Dr. Brij B. Agarwal’s comments to my letter provide many hints for meditation on the overwhelming aggression of new technologies in general surgery [1]. Moreover, it is a clear invitation for the new generation general surgeons to be judicious and prudent before accepting to use any new technological device so smartly offered by the industry. Otherwise, we all know how difficult it is to propose to a patient to enter a prospective randomized control trial which proposes a new surgical procedure, or any related innovation. Surgery is not medicine, and any procedure “is not like an aspirin”. Nevertheless, the new devices proliferate, and many of them have been recently favorably received by the surgical community. The purpose of my letter to the Editor has been to focus the attention to the fact that ultrasonic coagulating– dissectioning systems (HCDS) and electrothermal bipolar vessel sealing systems (EBVSS)—which are now so widely used in thyroid surgery, either traditional or videoscopic [1]— may be potentially more treacherous due to the restricted space in which possible and unrecognized electrical and thermal effects could damage delicate structures such as the recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) [2, 3]. I perfectly agree with Dr. Agarwal that in thyroid surgery a meticulous technique during the dissection is absolutely essential; however, if the well-trained surgeon feels confident in using HCDS or EBVSS, possible solutions to avoid lesions due to the involuntary spread of invisible energy from these devices at present are a standardized technique (distance between HCDS or EBVSS shears to the RLN more than 5mm) and to have an intraoperative neuromonitoring (NM) of the preserved function of RLN [1]. Invisible RLN insult from thermal spread by HCDS or EBVSS goes undetected by the surgeon eye and only intraoperative electromyography with NM can exclude such an insult [1, 4]. NM is a new functional dimension of RLN intraoperative management during modern thyroid surgery, superior to visual identification for intraoperative RLN injury [1, 4]. The intraoperative (and not postoperative) assessment of RLN function during thyroid surgery is important for different reasons: clarification of RLN anatomy; intraoperative prediction of postoperative function (prognosis); prevention of bilateral RLN injury (“stage thyroidectomy”); identification of where and how the RLN was injured; early differentiation between RLN related and unrelated voice changes [4, 5]. I do not mean to emphasize new technologies over sound common sense and I do recognize that at present standards for recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) management during thyroid surgery are yet extensive knowledge of RLN anatomy, routine visual identification of nerve, cervical exposure of RLN, experience, training, and preand postoperative laryngoscopy [5]. Specific training and caution with NM is essential for optimal use: this modern device requires a senior endocrine surgeon and anesthesiologist with a high level of experience and a standardized approach with routine preand postthyroid resection vagus stimulation [4, 5]. Langenbecks Arch Surg (2009) 394:913–914 DOI 10.1007/s00423-009-0512-x

In Defense of Charity and Philanthropy

Business and Society ReviewVolume 104, Issue 2 p. 179-189 In Defense of Charity and Philanthropy Joseph S. Fulda, Joseph S. Fulda Contributing Editor of The Freeman, Associate Editor of Sexuality & Culture, and Columnist for Computers and SocietySearch for more papers by this author Joseph S. Fulda, Joseph S. Fulda Contributing Editor of The Freeman, Associate Editor of Sexuality & Culture, and Columnist for Computers and SocietySearch for more papers by this author First published: 17 December 2002 https://doi.org/10.1111/0045-3609.00048Citations: 4AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume104, Issue2Summer 1999Pages 179-189 RelatedInformation

Sound Judgment and Common Sense: The Professional Legacy of Fred Waugh

This year marks the initiation of the Frederick V. Waugh lecture program in commemoration of the professional contributions of Frederick V. Waugh. The program is sponsored by the Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture and the American Agricultural Economics Association. The lecture will be presented each year at the annual meeting of the American Agricultural Economics Association and published in the December proceedings issue of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. The following two papers are an introduction to Frederick V. Waugh and review of his professional career by James P. Houck and the inaugural lecture presented by Marc Nerlove.

Regulation of biotechnology in the United States and Canada

The regulation of biotechnology in the United States and Canada is based on principles that reflect respect for the new technology, yet also recognize that most traditional approaches to regulation, employing sound science and common sense, still apply. Four specific principles form the framework on which regulatory schemes are based: (1) the products of biotechnology will not differ fundamentally from unmodified organisms or from conventional products; (2) the product rather than the process shall be regulated; (3) regulation should be based on the end use of the product and will be conducted on a case-by-case basis; and (4) the existing laws provide adequate authority for regulating the products of biotechnology. This report summarizes the regulatory approaches taken in various organisms and products. Special emphasis is given to: (1) issuance of entry permits for genetically-engineered plants and micro-organisms; (2) licensing of genetically-engineered veterinary biological products; and (3) permits for movement and release into the environment. A three-category classification system is described for dealing with hybridomas and recombinant-derived products, based on their biological characteristics and safety concerns. Categories range from relatively simple inactivated recombinant animal vaccines to products using live vectors to carry recombinant-derived foreign genes that code for immunizing antigens and/or other immune stimulants. This paper stresses that few fields of contemporary science and technology hold forth more possibilities and greater expectations than biotechnology. It is therefore of utmost importance that animal health officials and scientists ensure that the products of biotechnology will not cause or transmit infectious disease, adversely affect the environment or adulterate food products.

Lincoln and Van Buren in the Steps of the Fathers: Another Look at the Lyceum Address

LINCOLN AND VAN BUREN IN THE STEPS OF THE FATHERS: ANOTHER LOOK AT THE LYCEUM ADDRESS Major L. Wilson On January 27, 1838, Abraham Lincoln delivered an address to the Young Men's Lyceum at Springfield, IUinois, entitled "The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions." Less than a year earlier, on March 4, 1837, President Martin Van Buren dealt with the same matter in his Inaugural Address. Both expressed concerns widely shared at the time and the ambiguous nature of these concerns: they proudly claimed success for the "repubUcan experiment" begun by the fathers, yet warned that it might fail if the present age proved false. "It impresses on my mind a firm beUef," the president observed, "that the perpetuation of our institutions depends upon ourselves."1 To the sons had faUen the solemn duty of preserving the work of the founding fathers. While both expressed a common concern for preserving the republic, Lincoln and Van Buren differed in their assessment of the specific dangers facing it. One was the widespread incidence of mob action. Deploring "the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country ," Lincoln feared thelong-run effectofthe "mobocratic spirit" would be to erode "the attachment of the People" and destroy the basis of self government. "Let reverence for the laws," he urged, "become the pohrical reUgion of the nation." Van Buren likewise saw how the "ardor of public sentiment" often outran "the regular progress ofthe judicial tribunals ." By wounding "the majesty of the law," moreover, mob action might eventually provide the occasion "for abridging the liberties of the people." On balance, however, Van Buren was far less concerned about mob violence than Lincoln. Reaffirmingat this point aJeffersonian trust in the "generous patriotism" and "sound common sense" of the people, he believed they would soon return to the "landmarks of social order."2 1 Roy P. Basler, ed., TheCollectedWorks ofAbraham Lincoln,9vols. (New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1953), 1:108-15; James D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 20 vols. (New York: Bureau of National Literature, 1897), 4:1530-37, 1532; Rush Welter, The Mind of America, 1820-1860 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 276-93. 2 Basier, Works of Lincoln, 1:109, 111, 112; Richardson, Messages, 4:1533. 198CIVIL WAR HISTORY On two other dangers to the republic the differences were much clearer and sharper. Lincoln devoted only two sentences to the rising voice of abolitionist agitation and expressed no personal opinion on the matter. In a lengthy passage, by contrast, Van Buren condemned abolitionism as the greatest threat to the republic. Regarding the menace of Caesarism Van Buren made no explicit references at all, whereas Lincoln placed central emphasis on it in his address. The Lyceum Address has been the subject of a considerable number of studies. Done mainly from the perspective oflater events—mounting sectional controversy and the Civil War—these studies impute to the young Lincoln prophetic powers of one sort or another. Some argue that he was very ambitious and that he identified with the Caesarian figure he predicted would arise. Otherstudies see Lincoln as a prophet of"poUtical reUgion." During the controversy over the expansion of slavery in the 1850s he accordingly held up the principle of equaUty to judge and redeem a divided nation; after war began he invoked divine providence in behalf of a new birth of freedom. Relatively little attention, on the other hand, has been given to Van Buren's views and none to a comparison of them with the views of Lincoln . In taking up the matter this essay focuses particularly on the political context of the 1830s, at a time when the system oftwo-party competition was approaching maturity. If a prophet of some sort, the young Lincoln was also a Whig politician. As a Whig, moreover, his views on the perpetuation of republican institutions surely gained greater clarity and force in dialectical contrast with the party ideology of Democrats. And no other Democrat had contributed more to the organization of his party and its ideological identification than President Van Buren. A closer look at his views will throw further Ught on the Lyceum Address and, in reciprocal fashion...

“Humorous incidents and sound common sense:”; more on the New England mill women

(1978). “Humorous incidents and sound common sense:”; more on the New England mill women. Labor History: Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 280-286.

The application of group technology at the production planning phase of a new product

This paper presents a novel application of the principles of Group Technology to the establishment of a machine shop facility for the production of a range of components which would not conform to any of the well established GT procedures.The number of workpiece types involved in the production was small and it was thought initially that a coding and classification approach to the problem would suffice. However none of the standard macro-coding systems provided sufficient information for the establishment of families based on geometric characteristics. This being due mainly to the specialised nature of the components comprising the final product.As production planning became more established for the various components making up the product, the formation of families based on the principles of Production Flow Analysis was attempted. This however again proved ineffective as few workpieces existed with similar process routes.A proposed solution was eventually obtained through the combined use of material flow simplification based on PFA and the exercise of some sound common sense and Judgement.

The Wineland Voyages

THE problem of the Norse discoveries in America is one of the most fascinating in all history. Although in the past some people have, like Nansen, dismissed the reports in the saga of Eric the Red and the Flatey book as myths, there can be few students to-day who doubt that the Norsemen visited Americaon at least two occasions. The present volume is the work of an author who has had experience in unravelling the conflicting accounts left by other expeditions of discovery, and he uses the technique which he had evolved for such rasearch work on the solution of this old and thorny problem. The result is, to my mind, the most successful of all the numerous books so far produced on the subject. He holds that even the most careless report of an expedition must contain some accurate information, and, with this most reasonable assumption, is not prepared to reject any account as valueless. This is sound common sense and completely praiseworthy. Although he admits that the old accounts are too sketchy for absolute certainty in the identification of any particular camp site or anchorage, yet he contends that the general areas visited by Karlsefni‘s early eleventh century expedition can be deduced with some reasonable probability of success. He follows Steensby in equating Helluland with northern Labrador and Markland with southern Labrador. He places the Wonderstrands on the Labrador coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and suggests that Streamfirth lay somewhere in the region of the Mingan River in the St. Lawrence estuary. As to the exact location of Wineland itself, he is much less certain and wavers between Nova Scotia and New England with a bias towards the latter. The Wineland Voyages By John R. Swanton. (Smithsonian Miscsllaneous Collections, Vol. 107, No. 12: Publication 3906.) Pp. ii+81. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1947.) n.p.

Obituaries

BY the death of F. H. S. Curd the science of chemotherapy has lost an outstanding contributor. In the years he devoted to the chemotheraphy of the parasitic diseases, Curd and his co-workers achieved results the scientific and practical importance of which have not been surpassed in this field. That the investigations in which he was engaged proceeded with smoothness and certainty was largely due to Curd‘s personal qualities. His sound common sense, well-developed critical faculties, and an unassuming wealth of knowledge allied to remarkable technical ability ensured the hearty co-operation of his associates, chemical, biological and medical, and promoted the directional stability of the investigations in which he played so prominent a part. His place will indeed be difficult to fill.

Redbrick and These Vital Days

"REDBRICK and These Vital Days" lacks nothing of the charm and vivacity which characterized "Redbrick University". Once again Mr. Truscot moves with the ease of long familiarity and experience among the problems of the modern university, asking searching questions and suggesting persuasive answers, inspired by a vision of the greatness of the university ideal and by much sound common sense. Here, however, his mordant wit is kept in rather firmer check. He replies indeed with spirit to the criticism of some of the strictures in his earlier book; but the present volume has more coherence and plan. There is less straying into side-issues and irrelevancies, and as a result Mr. Truscot presents us with a survey of the university as a part of the educational system as a whole that none should ignore who are concerned that the community should get the fullest value from that great increase in expenditure on the universities to which we are already committed. Redbrick and These Vital Days By Bruce Truscot. Pp. 216. (London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1945.) 10s. 6d. net.

Photo‐Elasticity and Design Problems

PHOTO‐ELASTICITY is not a new subject. In recent years much progress has been made towards a simplified technique, so that this method of stress analysis is now becoming popular in industry, and is giving valuable information about the failure of engineering parts. There is no mystery about the method; the application of photo‐elasticity is found to require not so much the learned scientist for its satisfactory execution, but rather the man with a sound common sense and a knowledge of the fundamental principles underlying engineering problems. It is found, too, that if the method is intelligently applied it is comparatively cheap and can well repay itself by saving thousands of pounds worth of damage caused by failures under service conditions. To the practical designer photo‐elasticity provides him with one of the most powerful weapons by which he may analyse the stresses existing in complicated engineering parts. In effect the responsibility of a design is passed from the intuitive thought within a designer's mind to the certainty of facts.

Mr. C. H. Turner

MR. CHRISTOPHER HATTON TURNOR, whose death occurred on August 19 at the age of sixty-six, was well known for his active interest in the science and practice of agriculture. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and then specialized in agriculture at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, where he was one of a remarkable group of students that included also Lord Bledisloe; afterwards he proceeded to organize and develop the considerable estates he inherited from his uncle. Throughout his life he was indefatigable in studying the possibilities of using more science in agriculture, and his sound common sense and instinct for practicability helped him to select those methods most likely to be of value and to concentrate on them. Early in his career he became greatly impressed with the possibility of lucerne growing and he introduced this crop with great success into his system of farming. He also studied in detail the Danish methods of agriculture and engaged the services of an expert Danish farmer to run one of his farms on Danish lines so that he and other agriculturists might be able to see how far they embodied improvements likely to be useful in English conditions.

FELIX WÜRTZ 1518-1574 OR 1576

Felix Wurtz, of Basel, a surgeon of more than ordinary gifts, worthy of mention with Ambroise Pare, friend of Conrad Gesner, the Pliny of Germany and Paracelsus the iconoclast, wrote the most remarkable treatise on children that appeared in the sixteenth century. It is, indeed, the best book of its kind up to that time, and few pediatric writings of even later date compare with it in charm and simplicity of diction or in sound common sense. His father was a surgeon and young Felix was sent to Nuremberg to study; after that he returned to devote his days to the people of his native city. He is best known for his book on surgery, which he called Practica der Wundartzney, darin allerlei schadliche Missbrauche des Wundartzes abgeschaft wurden, etc. This appeared in 1563 and had a deservedly marked success. There were numerous editions in German and it was translated

From Immigrant to Inventor

THIS autobiography of Michael Pupin is of great human interest, and well deserves study by educationists. It gives one the impression of a boy of strong physique and sound common sense who made his way through the world with little fear of the future and with a profound reverence for the past. It will be read with special interest by those who knew Cambridge in 1884-85 and Berlin in 1885-86, when Hertz's discoveries first began to be discussed. It will also be of interest to those who know the Isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde, as this island and its inhabitants made a great impression on one who as a boy had herded cattle at Idvor, a small village in Serbia. The main object of the book, as the author says in chapter xi., is to describe “the rise of idealism in American science,” but from the point of view of dwellers on the east side of the Atlantic, this question is not of such interest as the story of his early life. From Immigrant to Inventor. By Prof. Michael Pupin. Pp. vii + 396 + 16 plates. (New York and London: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923.) 18s.

F. B. Bryant

WE regret to record the death, on November 28, at the age of sixty-three, of Mr. Frederick Beadon Bryant, formerly Inspector-General of Forests to the Government of India. Mr. Bryant received his professional training at Nancy, joined the Indian Forest Service in 1881, and was posted to the North-West Provinces and Oudh. Some of the earlier years of his service were spent in the preparation of working plans for the important sub-Himalayan forests lying between the Ganges and the Sarda rivers. This early training, together with some years of successful executive work in his province, marked him out subsequently for the post of Assistant Inspector-General of Forests and Superintendent of Forest Working Plans, which he held for three years from 1896. After holding successively the posts of Conservator of Forests in the Punjab and Burma and Chief Conservator of Forests in Burma, he became Inspector-General of Forests to the Government of India, an, appointment which he held from 1908 till 1913, when he retired from the service of Government. Mr. Bryant succeeded to this post at an important period in the history of his department. The Forest Research Institute at Debra Dun had been established two years previously on the initiative of his predecessor, Mr. (now Sir Sainthill) Eardley-Wilmot. It fell to Mr. Bryant to guide the destinies of the Institute in its earlier years, and his handling of this task was marked by sound common sense and careful judgment. A man of cheerful personality, he made a popular chief, and enjoyed to an unusual extent the goodwill of his department. In recognition of his services to Government he was awarded the C.S.I. in I9ii. He is survived by a widow and grown-up family, to whom we extend our sympathy. He had the misfortune to lose one of his sons on active service during the war.

Trajan on the Quinquennium Neronis

English scholars, loyal in their homage to Trajan's sound common sense in all matters of administration, never weary of quoting and approving, though not always without reserve, a verdict which that emperor is said to have passed on the first five years of Nero's principate. Abroad this verdict seems to have received comparatively little attention, but in England it is so constantly repeated in histories, large and small, and in reviews, long and short, that it has obtained the currency of a proverb, and its truth has almost become an article of faith. Trajan, we are told, often declared that the first five years of Nero's rule far excelled the government of all other emperors. There is a notable unanimity in the form of the statement.