Jews,Economic Metaphors,and the Healthy Body Politic: The Jewish Role in Christian Economic Narratives and the Birth of Modern Economics

Jewish History - The linguistic structure of the Western Christian discourse about economics as resembling and symbolizing the entire logic of earthly government and order was closely connected to...     

Narratives,culture, and folk psychology

In this paper, I aim to determine to what extent contemporary cross-cultural and developmental research can shed light on the role that narrative practices might play in the development of folk psychology. In particular, I focus on the role of narrative practices in the development of false belief understanding, which has been regarded as a milestone in the development of folk psychology. Second, I aim to discuss possible cognitive procedures that may underlie successful performance in false belief tasks. Methodologically, I distinguish between two kinds of narrative practices: ‘mentalistic narrative practice’ (which involves an explicit reference to another person’s mental states), and ‘behavioral-contextual narrative practice’ (which involves an explicit reference to the (normative) behavior of another person in a specific socio-situational context). Whereas the former is more prevalent in Western cultures than in Eastern cultures, the latter is predominantly used by members of Eastern cultures. Mentalistic narrative practices correlate with cultural divergences in the development of false belief understanding throughout ontogeny but do not seem to play the key role. The analysis shows that (i) conceptual change and the acquisition of mental state terms is essential for passing the false belief task, and that (ii) theory is likely to be the cognitive mechanism involved here such as proposed by Theory Theory. However, Hutto’s Narrative Practice Hypothesis trumps over Theory Theory to account for the varieties and ambiguities people typically meet when understanding each other in everyday life.     

Paradigms and possibilities

This paper is a excursus into a philosophy of science for deployment in the study of sport. It argues for the virtues of Thomas Kuhn's account of the philosophy of science, an argument conducted strategically by contrasting that account with one derived from views of Karl Popper. In particular, it stresses, first, that Kuhn's views have been widely misunderstood; second, that a rectified Kuhnianism can give due weight to truth in science, while recognising that social sciences differ in crucial ways from natural sciences. For, as Kuhn recognised, social sciences do not function in the paradigm-relative way characteristic of natural sciences. Yet there Kuhn's jargon, and especially misguided talk of ‘paradigms’, is almost ubiquitous.

These thoughts have relevance for three groups. First, as both sports scientists and exercise scientists come to grips with the claims to scientificity of their work, they will need increasingly to locate it within an epistemological framework provided by philosophy of science. So they must begin to take Kuhn's view seriously. Second, social scientists of sport – faced with the predominant scientism of colleagues in sport and exercise science – must also recognise alternatives to a postmodernist rejection of the concept of truth, where Kuhn's picture of natural science clarifies one such. Finally, philosophers writing on sport must not let antipathy to scientism close off the options they present or the terms in which they (we!) present them. And that may require debate among ourselves on abstract issues not immediately connected with sport.     

Bohm's Metaphors, Causality, and the Quantum Potential

David Bohm's interpretation of quantum mechanics yields a quantum potential, Q. In his early work, the effects of Q are understood in causal terms as acting through a real (quantum) field which pushes particles around. In his later work (with Basil Hiley), the causal understanding of Q appears to have been abandoned. The purpose of this paper is to understand how the use of certain metaphors leads Bohm away from a causal treatment of Q, and to evaluate the use of those metaphors.     

Narratives and References

In this article, I will argue that the presentation of Greek ontology as a dichotomy between the intelligible and the material is an oversimplification. Combined with a tendency to place too much stress on the distinction between creator and creation within Christian theology, this oversimplification seems to have led to a overestimation of the dichotomous relationship between Greek philosophy and Christian theology, whereby too much weight is placed on Christian theology as the driving force behind the development of a pessimistic and voluntaristic anthropology. To illustrate this point, I will compare the theology of Origen and Augustine and thereby hope to show the important role of the Roman rhetorical and legal tradition when it comes to the development of Christian theology in Western Europe.     

Narratives,mechanisms and progress in historical science

Geologists, Paleontologists and other historical scientists are frequently concerned with narrative explanations targeting single cases. I show that two distinct explanatory strategies are employed in narratives, simple and complex. A simple narrative has minimal causal detail and is embedded in a regularity, whereas a complex narrative is more detailed and not embedded. The distinction is illustrated through two case studies: the ‘snowball earth’ explanation of Neoproterozoic glaciation and recent attempts to explain gigantism in Sauropods. This distinction is revelatory of historical science. I argue that at least sometimes which strategy is appropriate is not a pragmatic issue, but turns on the nature of the target. Moreover, the distinction reveals a counterintuitive pattern of progress in some historical explanation: shifting from simple to complex. Sometimes, historical scientists rightly abandon simple, unified explanations in favour of disunified, complex narratives. Finally I compare narrative and mechanistic explanation, arguing that mechanistic approaches are inappropriate for complex narrative explanations.     

Evidence,Defeasibility, and Metaphors in Diagnosis and Diagnosis Communication

Topoi - The paper investigates the epistemological and communicative competences the experts need to use and communicate evidence in the reasoning process leading to diagnosis. The diagnosis and...     

Metaphors and creativity: Direct,moderating, and mediating effects

Through five experiments, this research advances knowledge about the influence of metaphors on creative cognition by showing that perceiving images that carry metaphoric meaning can alter consumers' creativity. While the results of Experiment 1 reveal that positive metaphors representing ideas like “Thinking outside the box” increase creative output, Experiment 2 uncovers that a negative metaphor conveying “I am burnt out” decreases it. Experiment 3 shows that the metaphor–creativity link is moderated by analogical reasoning skills, and Experiments 4a and 4b reveal the mediating role of creative intent. In addition to implying that marketers can use metaphors to enhance consumers' creative feedback in areas like new product development, this research also makes important theoretical contributions by showing (1) that metaphors that are visually conveyed (in addition to tangible objects or physical exercises) can not only raise but also lower creative output, (2) that a unique cognitive skill alters the metaphor–creativity link, and (3) that consumers' creative intent contributes to that relationship.     

Life Stages, Paradigms, and Patterns in the Twentieth Century

In response to John Wortley's article, Four-Stage Systems of Human Development, that appears in this issue, Stephanie Moss provides an overview of the theories that inform postmodern paradigms of aging. She demonstrates how in contrast to the rigidity of the ancient systems of aging that Wortley discusses, twentieth-century ideas provide flexible models that may be used to discuss the phenomenon of aging without imposing deterministic strictures. Through the yoking of feminist, Marxist, and psychoanalytical theories, Moss delivers a conceptualization of aging that begins to dissolve the binary oppositions that have permeated Western thought through the greater part of the twentieth century.