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The philosophy of quantum gravity - lessons from Nicolai Hartmann
No full textAn astonishing thesis in the philosophy of quantum gravity is that spacetime ”disappears” at the fundamental level of reality, and that the geometrical notions of ”length” and ”duration” are derived from the dynamics of the basic non–geometrical building blocks of the theory. Unveiling here the analysis of the concepts of spacetime, measure, and magnitude, given by the philosopher Nicolai Hartmann, I argue that the ”disappearance” thesis is too strong. The fundamental geometrical notions are, on the contrary, primitive and cannot be derived from the fundamental building blocks; they must be presupposed ab initio not only for epistemological, but also for methodological reasons
Problems of time in Nicolai Hartmann's philosophy: Time, spacetime and their elimination
No full textA remarkable character of Nicolai Hartmann's philosophy consists in refusing an easy simplification of the conceptual framework in order to produce more manageable theories. This character explains the attention he constantly gave to the aporetic elements in philosophy. However, the idea that philosophy should be aporetic, rather than systemic, has never been so popular among philosophers of any time. Consequently, a plethora of examples of conceptual reductionism can be found in every philosophical area. One of the most astonishing cases in the modern philosophy of physics is the idea that time and spacetime “disappear” from the fundamental physical reality, i.e., the domain of quantum gravity. Recently, some philosophers argued for the untenability of that "disappearance thesis". My aim is to show that, analyzing Hartmann's categories of space, time, dimension, measure, and magnitude in his Philosophie der Natur (1950), one can recognize the same and even more arguments against any thesis sustaining the elimination of time or spacetime from the fundamental level of reality
Past and Future Determinacy According to Nicolai Hartmann
Get PDFNicolai Hartmann’s thesis of the equal determinacy of past and future is explained in the context of the theory of time appearing in his ontological tetralogy. In particular, the notions of past and future are treated as aspects of real time in its opposition to time as an ideality. Also, the relation of time and modality in the real sphere is analyzed assuming that it is of complementarity. In all of this, Hartmann’s view is synthetically compared to other theories of time in contemporary philosophy
Time in Nicolai Hartmann's philosophy
Get PDFThe present work is divided into two parts. The first (only in Italian) is an analysis of some texts
about time in Nicolai Hartmann's works, and especially in Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit (1938) and
Philosophie der Natur (1950). The second part is a theoretical discussion of one of the main
problems concerning time in the contemporary philosophy (and in the philosophy of physics in
particular), i.e., the problem of the unreality of time. Some recent theses will be compared and
analyzed in the light of Hartmann's critical ontology.
The scope of Part II is to evaluate whether and how Hartmannian arguments and theses may have
a role in the present debate. In order to introduce those positions, Part I is not thought to be an
exhaustive dissertation about time in Hartmann's philosophy, but only an attempt to interpret some
aspects of his view about this issue in the wider contest of his analysis of the Realsein.
Thus, ch. 1 treats the basic notion of "category" in Hartmann's critical ontology and in particular
in the third volume of his tetralogy, Der Aufbau der realen Welt (1940). There is also a brief account
of his position about realism. Ch. 2 faces the relation between time and reality, which is defined in a
double manner, namely, as the sphere of the individual being and as the kingdom of becoming. The
latter definition depends on Hartmann's modal analysis (in Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit) and
derives from the connection of modality with temporality. Ch. 3 consists in an exposition of the
main theses about the Realzeit (real time), exposed in Philosophie der Natur. In ch. 4 I try to make a
brief survey of some important problems in the contemporary philosophy of time. In ch. 5 I discuss
the problem of the "disappearance of spacetime", emerged in the current debate around the
theoretical results of the quantum gravity research program. I present, moreover, the objections that
Hartmann would have raised against that thesis. In ch. 6, finally, I try to do the same with the socalled
"problem of frozen time" in quantum gravity and general relativity
Issues in the Ontological Determination of Populism
Get PDFPopulism is currently one of the most studied socio-political topics. However, no shared definition is present at the moment. Fortunately, common features are emerging in recent studies, so that the possibility to devise a comprehensive concept of populism does not seem illusory anymore. In this article I evaluate whether an ontological determination of the concept is conceivable, according to a critical and dynamical perspective. This means that epistemological questions are considered as fundamental, and ontology looks at dynamical systems theories in order to conceptually organize the outcomes of scientific researches. Taking advantage of ontological and system theoretic categories, I try to delineate some not obvious issues in the current approaches to populis
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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