The sociology of theoretical physics

This thesis is centred on the analysis of how the different groups of specialist experts that make up theoretical physics at large communicate and transmit knowledge between themselves. The analysis is carried out using two sociological frameworks: the Studies in Expertise and Experience (SEE) approach Collins and Evans, and mechanisms of sociological and institutional trust in the general sociology of science literature. I argue that the communication process is carried out in two ways: through interactional expertise that is based on deep comprehension when the interaction is between micro-cultures that are sociologically closely connected, and through lower forms of knowledge relying on trust for the micro-cultures that are sociologically far apart. Because the SEE framework is strongly based on the transmission of tacit knowledge, an analysis of the importance of tacit knowledge in theoretical physics is carried out to support the SEE analysis, and specific types of tacit knowledge are closely examined to understand how they shape theoretical physics practice. I argue that `physical intuition', one of the guiding principles of all theoretical activity, is in fact a type of tacit knowledge -somatic tacit knowledge- that is well known within social studies of science. The end result is a description of physics that highlights the importance of sociological mechanisms that hold the discipline together, and that permit knowledge to flow from the empirical to the theoretical poles of physics practice. The thesis is supported by unstructured interview material and by the author's prolonged interaction within theoretical physics professional circle

From Electrical Engineering and Computer Science to Fuzzy Languages and the Linguistic Approach of Meaning: The non-technical Episode: 1950-1975

In this paper we illuminate the first decade of Fuzzy Sets and Systems (FSS) where nobody thought that this theory would be successful in the field of applied sciences and technology. We show that especially Lotfi A. Zadeh, the founder of the theory of FSS, expected that his theory would have a role in the future of computer systems as well as humanities and social sciences. When Mamdani and Assilian picked up the idea of FSS and particularly Fuzzy Algorithms to establish a first Fuzzy Control system for a small steam engine, this was the Kick-off for the “Fuzzy-Boom” in Japan and later in the whole world and Zadeh’s primary intention trailed away for decades. Just in the new millennium a new movement for Fuzzy Sets in Social Sciences and Humanities was launched and, hopefully, will persist

Technology and Film Scholarship: Experience, Study, Theory

This volume brings together a wide range of explorations of the ways in which technological innovations have established new and changing conditions for the experience and study of film. The book offers analyses by such leading figures in film studies as Tom Gunning and Charles Musser, who examine the ways in which technological changes have altered the ways how cinema is conceived and how it is approached as an object of study. Contributors also look at the overlapping stages through which new experience is translated in institutionalized knowledge within the discipline

Surviving our paradoxes : the psychoanalysis and literature of uncertainty

This thesis explores the importance of tolerating and facilitating uncertainty as it is recognised by British Independent and Kfeinian psychoanalysis and contemporary British magic realist fiction. In Part I, I offer some theoretical investigations, arguing that postmodem and some psychoanalytic discourses, namely Lacanian psychostructuralism, remarkably fail to address the challenges facing subjects in late- twentieth, early twenty-first century consumer culture. In their inability to tolerate paradoxes and uncertainty, these discourses objectify the subject, through processes of depersonalisation, derealisation and desubjectification. To redress these problems, I offer the work of British psychoanalysts, specifically, that of D. W. Winnicott and Melanie Klein and her followers. These perspectives, I argue, better serve the contemporary subject by recognising the importance of paradox and helping develop facilitating environments for the realisation of creative experience. In Part II, I examine how the play of paradox is fostered in contemporary British magic realist fiction. Specifically, I look at how these narrative strategies attempt to move away from the vicissitudes of internal and external, certainty and uncertainty, reason and unreason, to negotiate a Winnicottian third, potential space. The conceptualisation of such a space, I believe, offers a place from which we can begin to dialogue, to draw ourselves out of the oppositional dialectics that have plagued the bourgeois subject. I believe that in the novels of writers such as Jeanette Winterson, Joanne Harris, John Fowles, John Murray and, most especially, Angela Carter, we can find alternatives to bourgeois conceptions of reason and rationality, alternatives that are not based on the paranoid-schizoid, primitive processes and depersonalisation necessitated by the Enlightenment and capitalism but instead upon, in Kleinian terms, depressive ambivalence and the recognition of whole-objects

The structure of linguistic behaviour : using evidence from aphasiology to corroborate and develop Merleau-Ponty's theory of language and intersubjectivity

Bibliography: pages 370-373.The theme of this thesis occurred to me while reading Luria's Basic Problems of Neurolinguistics. Many of Luria's patients manifest forms of a disintegration of speech and of the understanding of speech, which resemble the disintegration of movement in space and perception of space of Goldstein's patient, Schneider, the case Merleau-Ponty described in so many of his arguments, particularly those in the chapter of the Phenomenology of Perception entitled "The spatiality of one's own Body and Motility". It seemed to me that I could analyse the speech syndromes Luria reveals, and Luria's explanations, in much the same way that Merleau-Ponty analysed Schneider's syndrome and the explanations offered by Goldstein and others. I felt that in this way I would be able to exhibit certain features of the speaking subject and its relations with others, in the same way that Merleau-Ponty revealed the spatiality of the body and its relations with the world. This seemed to me to be a useful project, firstly because of the central role that the problem of language plays in Merleau-Ponty's later philosophy and because the later reflections on language seem to presuppose such an analysis of pathological forms of speech

Plessner's Philosophical Anthropology. Perspectives and Prospects

Helmuth Plessner (1892-1985) was one of the founders of philosophical anthropology, and his book The Stages of the Organic and Man, first published in 1928, has inspired generations of philosophers, biologists, social scientists, and humanities scholars. This volume offers the first substantial introduction to Plessner’s philosophical anthropology in English, not only setting it in context with such familiar figures as Bergson, Cassirer, and Merleau-Ponty, but also showing Plessner’s relevance to contemporary discussions in a wide variety of fields in the humanities and sciences

Text and Genre in Reconstruction

In this broad-reaching, multi-disciplinary collection, leading scholars investigate how the digital medium has altered the way we read and write text. In doing so, it challenges the very notion of scholarship as it has traditionally been imagined. Incorporating scientific, socio-historical, materialist and theoretical approaches, this rich body of work explores topics ranging from how computers have affected our relationship to language, whether the book has become an obsolete object, the nature of online journalism, and the psychology of authorship. The essays offer a significant contribution to the growing debate on how digitization is shaping our collective identity, for better or worse. Text and Genre in Reconstruction will appeal to scholars in both the humanities and sciences and provides essential reading for anyone interested in the changing relationship between reader and text in the digital age