The Eroding Artificial/Natural Distinction: Some Consequences for Ecology and Economics

Since Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), historians and philosophers of science have paid increasing attention to the implications of disciplinarity. In this chapter we consider restrictions posed to interdisciplinary exchange between ecology and economics that result from a particular kind of commitment to the ideal of disciplinary purity, that is, that each discipline is defined by an appropriate, unique set of objects, methods, theories, and aims. We argue that, when it comes to the objects of study in ecology and economics, ideas of disciplinary purity have been underwritten by the artificial-natural distinction. We then problematize this distinction, and thus disciplinary purity, both conceptually and empirically. Conceptually, the distinction is no longer tenable. Empirically, recent interdisciplinary research has shown the epistemological and policy-oriented benefits of dealing with models which explicitly link anthropogenic (i.e., “artificial”) and non-anthropogenic factors (i.e., “natural”). We conclude that, in the current age of the Anthropocene, it is to be expected that without interdisciplinary exchange, ecology and economics may relinquish global relevance because the distinct and separate systems to which each “pure” science was originally made to apply will only diminish over time

Finite-volume scheme for transonic potential flow about airfoils and bodies in an arbitrarily shaped channel

A conservative finite-volume difference scheme is developed for the potential equation to solve transonic flow about airfoils and bodies in an arbitrarily shaped channel. The scheme employs a mesh which is a nearly conformal O mesh about the airfoil and nearly orthogonal at the channel walls. The mesh extends to infinity upstream and downstream, where the mapping is singular. Special procedures are required to treat the singularities at infinity, including computation of the metrics near those points. Channels with exit areas different from inlet areas are solved; a body with a sting mount is an example of such a case

Low-Intensity Conflict And The Law

The term low-intensity conflict is relatively new in military and political language and is employed more or less synonymously with noninternational conflict, especially when such a conflict becomes of international concern

The Legal Point of View

What is Law? By what criteria do we recognize valid law? These questions have exercised the minds of distinguished jurisprudential thinkers of the past. Every solution that has been propounded, whether in terms of natural law theory, command models, norm or rule models, seems to have been defective in one way or another. The main thesis of this book is that every attempt to find some essence of law - whether in terms of commands, rules or whatever - is bound to fail. The reason given is that there is not one and only one true conception of law. There are different perspectives from which law and near-law can be usefully treated. What is a useful paradigm for lawyers dealing with a sophisticated legal system may not be useful for the anthropologist