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Review of Philip McShane, The Future: Core Precepts in Supramolecular Method and Nanochemistry
Get PDFAn audience for this book will be graduate students, faculty and independent scholars who have ever complained that their academic disciplines “can’t go on like this.” But diagnosing existing deficits and inventing remedies are not simple matters, and the author is upfront: “The real ascent and its fantasy culture belong to a later period of history.” Still, the ascent to a base camp and an envisioning of further climbing are possible, and this book offers some climbing tip
Effective Dialectical Analysis
Get PDFThe common description of science as ‘an organized body of knowledge’ possesses more than merely metaphorical significance. Like any self-organizing body—be it a tadpole, a giraffe fetus, an animal species, or humanity in its space-time solidarity—science develops. It develops through cumulative discoveries, especially significant discoveries, which often enough involve “a series of emergent leaps from the logic of one position to the logic of the next.” The displacement of one logic by another raises the question of method. Is there a logic of leaping
Schelling’s Late Political Philosophy: Lectures 22-24 of the Presentation of the Purely Rational Philosophy
No full textFrom approximately 1847 until the end of his life in 1854, Schelling wrote on a range of philosophical topics with the ultimate goal of explicating a purely rational philosophy, particularly as it relates to mythology, religion and revelation. The notes and fragments from this period were assembled by Schelling’s son, K.F.A. Schelling, in a collection of 24 lectures known as the Presentation of the Purely Rational Philosophy. While the importance of this work for the development of Schelling’s negative and positive philosophy is well-known, the significance of the political content which appears near the end of the lecture series has been largely ignored. This could be in part attributable to the heavy hand that K.F.A had in composing the final lecture of the series. Specifically, Lecture 24, in which Schelling gives his final word on the state and the monarchy, was written based on fragments but also on conversations that K.F.A. and his brother Hermann had had with their father
From Sugarcane To Ethanol: The Historical Process That Transformed Brazil Into A Biofuel Superpower
Get PDFBrazil is a biofuel superpower and a pioneer in the large-scale production and use of sugarcane ethanol. The country has plans to replace 10 percent of the world's fossil fuels by 2025 with biofuels (Novo et al., 2010). Brazil is also part of a multilateral agreement signed at the Paris Climate Conference (COP-21) in 2015 and has committed to reducing its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 43% until 2030 compared to 2005 levels (Brazilian Government, 2015). The proposal for GHG reductions is mostly based on the increase of biofuels in the Brazilian energy mix. With historical institutionalism as its theoretical framework, this paper looks at how Brazil grew from a sugar exporter into a global ethanol powerhouse. This research’s main question looks at the key historical processes and national actors behind ethanol development in Brazil. Analyzing the historical process behind how sugarcane-based fuels evolved is central to understand how past energy transformations have occurred and will offer insights into future energy transformations concerning Brazil’s increasing reliance on ethanol
The More General and Difficult Fields of Speculation
Get PDFFor society to progress towards that or any other goal it must fulfill one condition. It cannot be a titanothore, a beast with a three-ton body and a ten-ounce brain. It must not direct its main effort to the ordinary final product of standard of living but to the overhead final product of cultural implements. It must not glory in its widening, in adding industry to industry, and feeding the soul of man with an abundant demand for labor. It must glory in its deepening, in the pure deepening that adds to aggregate leisure, to liberate many entirely and all increasingly to the field of cultural activities. It must not boast of science on the ground that science fills its belly. It must not glue its nose to the single track of this or that department. It must lift its eyes more and ever more to the more general and more difficult fields of speculation, for it is from them that it has to derive the delicate compound of unity and freedom in which alone progress can be born, struggle, and win through
The Productive Nature of Landscape in Schelling’s Philosophy of Art
No full textWhen we see a painting, we grasp a material painted on a canvas, but also something spiritual. A landscape painting, depicting nature and scenery, represents not only existing natural things but also the enormous power of nature independent of human beings; it represents, also, the productivity of nature. Schelling uses productive nature as his model, and as the spring of an artist’s creativity, in his Munich speech titled On the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature (1807). According to Schelling, artists should represent productive nature, the “spirit of nature” (Naturgeist), in their artworks (SW VII: 301). This speech was influential in making landscape paintings a significant genre of art by clarifying the relationship between art and nature
Schelling’s Naturalism: Motion, Space and the Volition of Thought, by Ben Woodard, Glasgow, Edinburgh University Press, 2019, 256 pp.
No full textThe argument weaved throughout Schelling’s Naturalism, as stated in the introduction, is Woodard’s claim that nature is a species of “nested physical systems” that are potentiated in Schelling by means of the Potenzen which indicate the openly constructive and non-restrictive character of both nature and philosophy. This argument develops into Woodard’s claim that Schelling is ontologically minimalist whilst creatively expansive due to the ubiquity of the Potenzen throughout nature. This claim grounds the project’s ambition to navigate through the dimensionality of thought and nature by means of algebra, diagram, and geometry, in terms of both metaphysics and epistemology. Woodard shares Schelling’s conviction of a union of philosophy and the physical sciences and attempts to grasp throughout the project how “thought is part of nature’s spatiality and temporally expanding continuum.” Thus Woodard shares a commitment to the continuity thesis expressed by Iain Hamilton Grant and Daniel Whistler that Schelling’s philosophy is naturalistic and ought not to be periodized. Problematised throughout the book is how to navigate the constructive activity of thought with the activities of construction in nature: That is, how can thought and ‘nature’ be both a created system and a creative one
Dialectic and the Emergence of Explicit Metaphysics
Get PDFI am going to sketch the personal role of dialectic in the emergence of explicit metaphysics. Of necessity, it is a sketch since a full account would require more than an essay. If we consider the full sweep of Lonergan’s views on dialectic and your own personal appropriation of dialectic and metaphysics, it is also a sketch because I account for, but do not provide an account of, either one of those. You are responsible for the latter. Other philosophers and theologians are responsible for the former. I will provide a very brief indication of the former which will help me situate the questions I am pursuing here
Editor’s Introduction
Get PDFThis is the second volume of dialectic exercises implementing a specific three-step procedure. The eleven individuals who participated in these exercises, like those who did the exercises published in volume 13, consented to doing the three objectifications as best we could, given time limitations and other commitments