The Clock Paradox: Luise Lange's Discussion

In her articles on the clock paradox and the relativity of time Luise Lange (1891–1978) defends the theory of relativity against philosophical refutations, by showing that the apparent clock paradox is not a paradox, but merely conflicts with common sense and is based on a misunderstanding of the theory. The following study explores, contextualizes and analyzes Lange’s clear and sophisticated contribution to the debate on the clock paradox for the first time

Common sense philosophy and politics in America: John Witherspoon, James McCosh, and William James

This dissertation examines the political significance of the two leading strains of common sense thought in the history of American philosophy—Scottish Common Sense and Pragmatism—as suggested in the writings of John Witherspoon and James McCosh in the Scottish Common Sense line, and of the more famous co-founder of Pragmatism, William James. These two strains of American common sense are placed in context of the larger Western common sense tradition. Each is shown to aim at finding a solid middle ground epistemologically between skeptical doubt and idealistic certitude that could serve as a stable basis for moral and political life. Witherspoon, the first great advocate and popularizer of Scottish Common Sense in America, gave the United States its first coherent, systematic common sense political theory, and that theory is here traced out as a common sense theory of politics for the first time. The first systematic text-based treatment of the moral and social thought of McCosh, the last great proponent of Scottish Common Sense in the American setting, is also provided. In James’ case, the first systematic treatment of the place of common sense in his philosophic worldview is rendered, and it is argued in the process that he is rightly understood as a kind of common sense philosopher. Together, Witherspoon, McCosh, and James offer a vision of man and society that avoids the rigidity of dogmatic foundationalism, on the one hand, and the slackness of foundationless ethics and politics, on the other

Economic Decision-making in Poverty Depletes Behavioral Control

Economic theory and common sense suggest that time preference can cause or per- petuate poverty. Might poverty also or instead cause impatient or impulsive behavior? This paper reports a randomized lab experiment and a partially randomized field ex- periment, both in India, and analysis of the American Time Use Survey. In all three studies, poverty is associated with diminished behavioral control. The primary contri- bution is to isolate the direction of causality from poverty to behavior; three theoretical mechanisms from psychology cannot be deffinitively separated. One supported expla- nation is that poverty, by making economic decision-making more difficult for the poor, depletes cognitive control.impatient, impulsive behavior, poverty, psychology, cognative control

The smell of God: scent trails from Ficino to Baudelaire

God has a smell. Or rather, our sense of smell can bring us to a deeper knowledge of God. This is one aspect of a theory which runs through much of European history from the Renaissance onwards, with fluctuating intensity and with fundamental variations. It has been referred to, principally, as the theory of signatures, the theory of universal analogy, and the theory of correspondences, and is originally derived from Plato's philosophy of Ideas. The most common thread of the doctrine is that there are correspondences between the material and the spiritual worlds and that the material world can therefore be read like a book, revealing the secrets of the spiritual world. Another common thread of the doctrine is that the senses, which diffusely allow us to experience the material world, can be united as one, enabling our complete grasp of spiritual harmony, of the ideal world. The senses have usually figured highly in the doctrine of correspondences in general, as enabling this leap from the material to the spiritual. But individual senses have enjoyed varying degrees of attention throughout time. Smell has not been the most popular of them, but it is markedly emphasised by two users of the doctrine, the eighteenth-century Swedish scientist, theologian and mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg, and the French Symbolist poet Charles Baudelaire. What Nathalie Wourm attempts here is a short history of the idea of a spiritual scent, from the Neoplatonist thinkers of the fifteenth century to the present day

Generating scale-invariant tensor perturbations in the non-inflationary universe

It is believed that the recent detection of large tensor perturbations strongly favors the inflation scenario in the early universe. This common sense depends on the assumption that Einstein's general relativity is valid at the early universe. In this paper we show that nearly scale-invariant primordial tensor perturbations can be generated during a contracting phase before the radiation dominated epoch if the theory of gravity is modified by the scalar-tensor theory at that time. The scale-invariance protects the tensor perturbations from suppressing at large scales and they may have significant amplitudes to fit BICEP2's result. We construct a model to achieve this purpose and show that the universe can bounce to the hot big bang after long time contraction, and at almost the same time the theory of gravity approaches to general relativity through stabilizing the scalar field. Theoretically, such models are dual to inflation models if we change to the frame in which the theory of gravity is general relativity. Dual models are related by the conformal transformations. With this study we reinforce the point that only the conformal invariant quantities such as the scalar and tensor perturbations are physical. How did the background evolve before the radiation time depends on the frame and has no physical meaning. It is impossible to distinguish different pictures by later time cosmological probes.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures. An error in the numerical results and some typos in the text were corrected, but general conclusions are unchange

Reconceptualizing College Impact Studies Through a Fractal Assemblage Theory

College impact studies have formed the common sense of understanding institutional relationships to student growth and change for decades. In this time, they have become entangled with the production of the neoliberal university. This paper1 presents an alternative theorization of student change on campus, a fractal assemblage theory. Assemblage theory is discussed through a single common language of major assemblage theory concepts across four authors. After exploring these concepts in depth, this paper returns to the stakes of assemblage theory: higher education research not to channel student to predetermined outcomes, but to create student futures in excess of our imaginations