The Chimenti controversy

Jacopo Chimenti (c 1551-1640), an artist from Empoli, made two sketches of a young man holding a compass and a plumb line. When these were seen, mounted next to one another, by Alexander Crum Brown in 1859, he combined them by overconvergence and described the stereoscopic depth he saw. Brown's informal observation was conveyed to David Brewster, who suggested that the drawings were produced for a stereoscope, possibly made by Giovanni Battista della Porta. There followed a bitter debate about the supposed stereoscopic effects that could be seen when the pictures combined. Brewster's claims were finally dispelled when precise measurements were made of the drawings: some parts were stereoscopic and others were pseudoscopic. Brewster's attempts to wrest the invention of the stereoscope from Wheatstone were unsuccessful.     

The significance test controversy

Summary The pre-designationist, anti-inductivist and operationalist tenor of Neyman-Pearson theory give that theory an obvious affinity to several currently influential philosophies of science, most particularly, the Popperian. In fact, one might fairly regard Neyman-Pearson theory as the statistical embodiment of Popperian methodology. The difficulties raised in this paper have, then, wider purport, and should serve as something of a touchstone for those who would construct a theory of evidence adequate to statistics without recourse to the notion of inductive probability.     

The controversy over retrospective moral judgment

The mandate of the U.S. Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments required that the Committee take a position on the validity of retrospective moral judgments. However, throughout its period of operation, the Committee remained divided on the question of whether sound judgments of individual culpability and wrongdoing should be included in its Final Report. This essay examines the arguments that various committee members marshalled to support their opposing views on retrospective moral judgment and explains the significance of the controversy.     

The controversy around the concept of archetypes

The paper reviews the course of the controversy surrounding Jung's theory of archetypes beginning in the mid 1990s and continuing to the present. Much of this controversy was concerned with the debate between the essentialism of the evolutionary position of Anthony Stevens as found in his 1983 book Archetypes: A Natural History of the Self, and the emergence model of the archetypes proposed in various publications by Hogenson, Knox and Merchant, among others. The paper then moves on to a consideration of more recent developments in theory, particularly as derived from an examination of the philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who introduces Bergson's somnambulistic unconscious into the discussion of Jung's theories. It is suggested that this largely unexamined influence on Jung may provide answers to some of the unanswered questions surrounding his theorizing. The paper concludes by suggesting that the notion of the somnambulistic unconscious may resemble Atmanspacher's argument for a dual‐aspect monism interpretation of Jung.     

Croatian controversy

A History of Soviet Atheism in Theory and Practice, and the Believer Vol. 3. Soviet Studies on the Church and the Believer's Response to A theism, by Dmitry V. Pospìelovsky. London: Macmillan Press, 1988. Paperback, 325pp. £14.95

Symbols of Power: The Esthetics of Political Legitimation in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe edited by Clars Arvidsson and Lars Eric Blomqvist. Almqkvist and Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1987, 185pp.

Fear no Evil by Natan Sharansky. London: George Weidenfeld and Nicholson Ltd, 1988. 468 pp., £16.95     

The implicit theories approach to the self-monitoring controversy

In the face of uncertainty and disagreement about the meaning and measurement of the self-monitoring construct, the author proposes an implicit theories approach to shed light on what self-monitoring scales may be tapping. The first study explored people's notions of what high and low self-monitors are like, based on the statements in the 18-item Self-Monitoring Scale (Gangestad and Snyder, 1985). The second study compared that measure with Lennox and Wolfe's (1984) Revised Self-Monitoring Scale and examined defensive motivation within the scales. The third study consisted of two experiments to determine whether subjects perceived the items of Gangestad and Snyder's Self-Monitoring Scale as reflecting a unitary latent entity or separate, contradictory variables. It was concluded that the implicit theories approach appears to be a useful complement to traditional factor analytic studies, providing new ways of looking at a personality construct, clarifying some theoretical issues, and generating hypotheses for future research.     

The controversy of defining serial murder: Revisited

Over the years, researchers and law enforcement professionals have tried to achieve uniformity in the use of the term “serial murder,” but such efforts have rather proved futile. Endeavors aimed at achieving a consensus on the definition of serial murder have potentiated its precarious applications. Though the term continues to remain elusive, ambiguous and amorphous in the literature, recent efforts are suggestive of a trend towards the attainment of a standardized definition of serial murder. However, a review of both current research and legal definitions of serial murder revealed some discrepancies in how the term is defined. Built upon Skrapec's (2001) definition, the current article aims to revisit several key definitional issues and to propose a more comprehensive serial murder definition with three key elements: (1) Two or more forensic linked murders with or without a revealed intention of committing additional murder, (2) the murders are committed as discrete event(s) by the same person(s) over a period of time, and (3) where the primary motive is personal gratification.