Who is Afraid of the Political? A Response to Robert Scharff and Michel Puech

In their respective commentaries to my article “Postphenomenology and the Politics of Sustainable Technology” both Robert Scharff and Michel Puech take issue with my postphenomenological inroad into the politics of technology. In a first step I try to accommodate the suggestions and objections raised by Scharff by making my account of the political more explicit. Consequently, I argue how an antagonistic relational conceptualisation of the political allows me to address head on Puech’s plea to leave politics behind and move towards an ethically informed, post-political approach to sustainability. “But perhaps the question philosophy is confronted with—through the question of the political—might be whether not all reasoning, including a purely theoretical reasoning, can truly only be a political reasoning, resulting in an inevitable, indeed necessary circular structure” (Boehm 2002; author’s translation). In a footnote to my original article ‘Postphenomenology and the Politics of Sustainable Technology’, I wrote that “for the purpose of this paper, it suffices to say that I use the adjective ‘political’ to indicate all aspects of human and non-human agency that are related to ‘shaping the good life’ (Goeminne 2011a).” With hindsight, brought about by the commentaries of Scharff (2011) and Puech (2011), I now see that I could not have been more optimistic. Or should I say naïve? Indeed, although coming from different angles and resulting in very different suggestions, both commentaries precisely target my postphenomenological inroad into the ‘politics’ of technology. In challenging my grounding of the politics of technology in a postphenomenological perspective, Scharff in particular invites me to make my notion of the political more explicit. In what follows, I will therefore first elaborate my take on the political dimension of technology in dialogue with Scharff’s comments and suggestions. Armed with this deepened concept of the political, I will then address Puech’s plea to leave politics behind and move towards an ethically informed, post-political approach to sustainability. Evidently, within the limits of this piece, I can only indicate the broader direction my conceptualisation of the political takes. It suffices perhaps to say that, partly induced by the commentaries of Scharff and Puech, the question of the political has meanwhile taken a much more prominent place in my research as can be seen from a few recent publications [e.g. Goeminne (2012) and Goeminne (forthcoming)]. In saying this, I am also expressing my indebtedness to the commentators for nudging me in this political direction.     

How Can We Teach the Chemical Elements to Make the Memorization Task More Enjoyable?

In this commentary to Leal (2013), we argue that the memorization of the names and symbols of the chemical elements is necessary in the study of that topic because this task is the key for the later understanding of the Periodic Table. We can make the memorization task in an enjoyable, but effective way, using some educational games in chemistry class. Some recent puzzles, card games, mnemonics rules or games based on drawings to learn the chemical elements are addressed in this paper.     

Inference to the Best Manipulation – A Case Study of Qualitative Reasoning in Neuropharmacy

How can new drug lead suggestions beinferred from neurophysiological models? This paperaddresses this question based on a case study ofresearch into Parkinson's disease at the GroningenUniversity Department of Pharmacy. It is argued thatneurophysiological box-and-arrow models can beunderstood as qualitative differential equationmodels. An inference task is defined to helpunderstand and possibly aid the discovery andexplanation of new drug lead suggestions.     

What has Philosophy to Offer to Chemistry?

The paper asks about the reasons for the neglect of chemistry in modern philosophy of science and investigates in how far this science can be the object of an autonomous philosophical reflection. It is argued that from a culturalistic point of view chemistry indeed offers a field of interesting questions ranging from the reconstruction of its epistemological objects to the elucidation of the semantic functions of terms like "atom" or "molecule". It is further argued that the philosophical reflection upon chemistry has important consequences for the didactic, the history and even the ethics of this science, making thus philosophy to a partner of chemistry in fulfilling its purposes in human society. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Citizenship and Voluntarism: A Meaningful Combination or the Basis for Exploitative Relationships?

The author starts from the observation that citizenship and voluntarism are contested terms with diverse meanings. They have also been appropriated by politicians of various persuasions and imbued with meanings associated with ‘feel good’ factors that emphasize serving in a community. Therefore, voluntarism has the potential to continue the exclusion of minority groups, marginalized individuals and collective groupings at the expense of their citizenship rights, particularly those identified by Hannah Arendt as the ‘right to have rights’ that have been endorsed through public policy but today are being undermined by the ‘age of austerity’ in publicly funded welfare states. Against the background of the political context of UK, and the public rhetoric on the ‘Big Society’, the author examines whether citizenship discourses allied with voluntarism support a meaningful endorsement of altruistic solidarity or whether they endorse exploitative relationships under the guise of meeting the public needs.     

What is Sustainable Theory? A Luhmannian Perspective on the Science of Conceptual Systems

Sustainability is an important topic for understanding and developing our society (including business, government, and NGOs). For scholars who want their academic contributions to have an impact, sustainability is important for our conceptual systems (including theories, models, and policies). Because our conceptual systems share similarities with our social systems, we may investigate their characteristics to gain insight into how both may be achieved or at least understood. Theories of the humanities as well as the social/behavioral sciences are changing very rapidly. They are fragile and few seem to have any longevity. At the same time, the theoretical base does not seem to be “advancing.” They are not supporting highly effective results in the real world, so we continue to have seemingly insolvable problems such as crime, war, and poverty. This may be because academia has become inward-focused or, in Luhmann’s terminology, autonomous from the outside world. In seeking to understand how to develop more sustainable theories we found that the concept of sustainability is contested. And, in the process of comparing the sustainability of social systems to the sustainability of theories, we came to realize that neither perspective is viable. Drawing on Luhmann’s insights on the interdependence of theories and society, we came to realize that the two exist in a coevolutionary relationship. Importantly, we present an approach for measuring that evolution and suggest directions for accelerating the coevolutionary advance of society and science.     

Meaningfulness: Civic or Political? A Response to Erik Claes’s ‘Civic Meaningfulness’

This reply examines to what extent Claes’s qualitative research on volunteers, meaningfulness and citizenship mirrors dimensions of republican citizenship. Republican citizenship brings together the idea of freedom as membership of a self-governing community and the ideal of commitment of those members to the common good of the community. According to the author, the idea of republican citizenship that emerges from the interviews is connected with (1) An experience of meaningfulness that is self-fulfilling, but at the same time places life in a larger context, (2) A deeper inner side of civic engagement, (3) A notion of civic virtue that is not too demanding due to its inner link with self-discovery through active citizenship, (4) A strong awareness of the plurality of ways of living a human life, and not a passive identification with an abstract, homogeneous social whole.     

On Indivisibles and Infinitesimals: A Response to David Sherry, “The Jesuits and the Method of Indivisibles”

In “The Jesuits and the Method of Indivisibles” David Sherry criticizes a central thesis of my book Infinitesimal: that in the seventeenth century the Jesuits sought to suppress the method of indivisibles because it undermined their efforts to establish a perfect rational and hierarchical order in the world, modeled on Euclidean Geometry. Sherry accepts that the Jesuits did indeed suppress the method, but offers two objections. First, that the book does not distinguish between indivisibles and infinitesimals, and that whereas the Jesuits might have reason to object to the first, the second posed no problem for them. Second, seeking an alternative explanation for the Jesuits’ hostility to the method, he proposes that its implicit atomism conflicted with the Catholic doctrine of the sacrament of the Eucharist, and was therefore heretical. In response to Sherry’s first criticism I point out that the Jesuits objected to all forms of the method of indivisibles, and that the distinction between indivisibles and infinitesimals consequently cannot explain the fight over the method in the seventeenth century. With regards to the Eucharist, I agree with Sherry that the Jesuits were indeed concerned about the method’s affinity to atomism and materialism, though for a different reason: these doctrines were antithetical to their efforts to impose divine hierarchy and order on the world. In as much as the technical details of the miracle of the Eucharist mattered, they provided no grounds for objecting to a mathematical (rather than physical) doctrine.     

Why Do Informal Proofs Conform to Formal Norms?

Kant discovered a philosophical problem with mathematical proof. Despite being a priori, its methodology involves more than analytic truth. But what else is involved? This problem is widely taken to have been solved by Frege’s extension of logic beyond its restricted (and largely Aristotelian) form. Nevertheless, a successor problem remains: both traditional and contemporary (classical) mathematical proofs, although conforming to the norms of contemporary (classical) logic, never were, and still aren’t, executed by mathematicians in a way that transparently reveals why these proofs—written in the vernacular to this very day—succeed in conforming to those norms.     

Which Wisdom Can Change the World?

The thoughts that Michel Puech formulates on wisdom, technology and the art of living are timely at a moment when social, ecological and economic problems are pressing upon our societies and the speed of technological development seems to overwhelm our ability to integrate and adapt new technologies in our lives and societies. However, he restricts his concept of wisdom too much to a personal endeavor and overestimates the relevance of non-confrontation. I argue that his project can only be of value when it is embedded in a broader societal and political strategy for change.     

Civic Meaningfulness: The Political Dimension—A Reply to Lena Dominelli

This article argues, firstly, that voluntary civic practices are not doomed to fall prey to a Big Society rhetoric and a cynical politics of cuts in social spending. It all depends on how these civic practices are promoted and what kind of civic discourse is communicated through the channels of social media and public opinion. Secondly, the author highlights the political importance of connecting meaningfulness with citizenship.     

Can the Causal Paradoxes of QM be Explained in the Framework of QED?

Attemts to explain causal paradoxes of Quantum Mechanics (QM) have tried to solve the problems within the framework of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED). We will show, that this is impossible. The original theory of QED by Dirac (Proc Roy Soc A117:610, 1928) formulated in its preamble four preliminary requirements that the new theory should meet. The first of these requirements was that the theory must be causal. Causality is not to be derived as a consequence of the theory since it was a precondition for the formulation of the theory; it has been constructed so that it be causal. Therefore, causal paradoxes logically cannot be explained within the framework of QED. To transcend this problem we should consider the following points: Dirac himself stated in his original paper (1928) that his theory was only an approximation. When he returned to improve the theory later (Proc Roy Soc A209, 1951), he noted that the new theory “involves only the ratio e/m, not e and m separately”. This is a sign that although the electromagnetic effects (whose source is e) are magnitudes stronger than the gravitational effects (whose source is m), the two are coupled. Already in 1919, Einstein noted that “the elementary formations which go to make up the atom” are influenced by gravitational forces. Although in that form the statement proved not to be exactly correct, the effects of gravitation on QM phenomena have been established. The conclusion is that we should seek a resolution for the causal paradoxes in the framework of the General Theory of Relativity (GTR)—in contrast to QED, which involves only the Special Theory of Relativity (STR). We show that causality is necessarily violated in GTR. This follows from the curvature of the space-time. Although those effects are very small, one cannot ignore their influence in the case of the so-called “paradox phenomena”.     

To Explain or to Predict: Which One is Mandatory?

Recently, Luk mentioned that scientific knowledge both explains and predicts. Do these two functions of scientific knowledge have equal significance, or is one of the two functions more important than the other? This commentary explains why prediction may be mandatory but explanation (based intuitively on our everyday experience) may be only desirable and optional.     

Civic Meaningfulness ‘Revisited’: A Final Reply to Honohan and Dekker

This final reply responds to Honohan’s invitation to articulate the Arendtian tone of the key-note paper. It spells out the philosophical intuition that the political life of citizens, at least potentially, is capable of making visible what makes human life worthwhile and fully meaningful, and the philosophical curiosity to see whether traces of this deep political awareness can be retrieved in dialogues with volunteers. In response to Dekker’s critical doubts, this final reply clarifies the central stakes of Claes’s paper. The core argument was not to show that the biographical model of meaningfulness is the prevailing approach of meaning in/of volunteering, but to assess the potentials and limits of the model’s interpretive power. Moreover, the paper argues for an alternative, existential model of meaningfulness. This approach refers to deep experiences of meaning that emerge from the practice of volunteering and that shift into powerful political experiences of hope, and a lived sense of equality.     

A Query on the Term “等离子体” (dengliziti)

Plasma一词目前译作"等离子体".根据<物理学词典>(等离子体物理分册)(1985年,科学出版社)所述:"一般来说,等离子体概念可作如下定义:它是由大量的接近于自由运动的带电粒子所组成的体系,在整体上是准中性的,粒子的运动主要由粒子间电磁相互作用所决定,由于这是长程的相互作用,因而使它显示出集体行为(例如各种振荡与波、不稳定性等)".     

Constructivism: A ‘Next’ Area of Scientific Development?

Radical Constructivism has been defined as an‘unconventional approach to the problem ofknowledge and knowing’. Its unconventionalityis summarised by its claim that it isimpossible to attribute unique meaning toexperience – as no mind-independent yardstick canbe assumed to exist against which to identifyuniqueness, and hence to produce knowledge andknowing. In other words, it is claimed thatthere is no ‘reality’ that is knowable to allindividual knowers. This claim appearsindefensible by itself, as it does not explainwhy the successes of traditional science appearas such. However, it is defensible in thecontext of numerous failures to achieve uniqueattributions, or of the history of science.Even so, what is missing are concrete methodsand research designs. This often leaves RadicalConstructivism to be critical only, toconcentrate on justifying the impossibility ofsuccess without contributing itself.Where this is the case it reduces scientiststo individuals considered unable to communicatewith others on public (and unique)attributions-who may do so only by borrowingmethods from previous approaches. It is arguedthat a more valuable contribution is possibleif Radical Constructivism is seen as a responseto the challenge defined by frequent failuresof traditional approaches. The latter may beextended such that the extensions converge toRadical Constructivism. Such extensions arebased on reported observations, rather than onexperiences in general, and are to beattributed meanings – uniquely as well asnon-uniquely – by way of a collective. The lattershould allow its ‘actors’ to restrict whatmaintains the collective to what is observableto others, as well as use the collective torestrict their own observations. The study ofcollectives thus allows for the study ofrestrictions or values, and hence for includingsubjective or constructivist experiences beyond(reportable) observations.