The EU referendum was gerrymandered

In an extract from his new book, Democracy and Its Crisis, AC Grayling (New College of the Humanities) argues that MPs were made fully aware the referendum result was non-binding. In addition, the franchise deliberately excluded groups with a direct interest in the result. Only 37 of those eligible to vote in the referendum backed Brexit. The EU referendum, he ..

Primordialists and Constructionists: a typology of theories of religion

This article adopts categories from nationalism theory to classify theories of religion. Primordialist explanations are grounded in evolutionary psychology and emphasize the innate human demand for religion. Primordialists predict that religion does not decline in the modern era but will endure in perpetuity. Constructionist theories argue that religious demand is a human construct. Modernity initially energizes religion, but subsequently undermines it. Unpacking these ideal types is necessary in order to describe actual theorists of religion. Three distinctions within primordialism and constructionism are relevant. Namely those distinguishing: a) materialist from symbolist forms of constructionism; b) theories of origins from those pertaining to the reproduction of religion; and c) within reproduction, between theories of religious persistence and secularization. This typology helps to make sense of theories of religion by classifying them on the basis of their causal mechanisms, chronology and effects. In so doing, it opens up new sightlines for theory and research

`What is a Thing?': Topos Theory in the Foundations of Physics

The goal of this paper is to summarise the first steps in developing a fundamentally new way of constructing theories of physics. The motivation comes from a desire to address certain deep issues that arise when contemplating quantum theories of space and time. In doing so we provide a new answer to Heidegger's timeless question ``What is a thing?''. Our basic contention is that constructing a theory of physics is equivalent to finding a representation in a topos of a certain formal language that is attached to the system. Classical physics uses the topos of sets. Other theories involve a different topos. For the types of theory discussed in this paper, a key goal is to represent any physical quantity $A$ with an arrow \breve{A}_\phi:\Si_\phi\map\R_\phi where \Si_\phi and $\R_\phi$ are two special objects (the `state-object' and `quantity-value object') in the appropriate topos, $\tau_\phi$. We discuss two different types of language that can be attached to a system, $S$. The first, \PL{S}, is a propositional language; the second, \L{S}, is a higher-order, typed language. Both languages provide deductive systems with an intuitionistic logic. With the aid of \PL{S} we expand and develop some of the earlier work (By CJI and collaborators.) on topos theory and quantum physics. A key step is a process we term `daseinisation' by which a projection operator is mapped to a sub-object of the spectral presheaf \Sig--the topos quantum analogue of a classical state space. The topos concerned is \SetH{}: the category of contravariant set-valued functors on the category (partially ordered set) \V{} of commutative sub-algebras of the algebra of bounded operators on the quantum Hilbert space \Hi.Comment: To appear in ``New Structures in Physics'' ed R. Coeck

The physics of traffic

Traffic jams are a fact of life for many car drivers. Every morning millions of drivers around the world sit motionless in their vehicles for long periods of time as they try to get to work, and then repeat the experience on their journeys home in the evening. The same thing often happens when they are driving to the coast for the weekend or to the airport to go on their holidays. They blame other drivers, increasing volumes of traffic and, inevitably, roadworks. So what has any of this got to do with physics? Document type: Boo

Epistemological scepticism and transcendental arguments

Available from British Library Lending Division - LD:D53828/85 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo