Playing simplicity: polemical stupidity in the writing of the French Enlightenment

Polemical stupidity - a critical concept drawn from Bakhtin – denotes the strategic refusal to understand. It appears most familiarly in the character of the Fool (like Candide), who genuinely does not understand the world, thus unmasking its incoherence. But in literature it can cover too the stance of the narrator or author (who pretends to misunderstand). It also functions at the levels of genre and style, embracing parody and rewriting in general. It is a dialogic or open form of critical engagement. Though it can be found throughout Western literature, polemical stupidity is most richly characteristic of the writing of the French Enlightenment. This book suggests why, and traces its rise and fall as a discursive practice in the century from Pascal to Rousseau. Early chapters consider the concept itself, its emergence in Pascal's ‘Lettres provinciales’, worldliness and unworldliness, and the new writing of 1660-1700 (critical history to fairy tales). The main part of the book, on the age of Enlightenment itself, contains successive chapters on Regency theatre, Montesquieu's ‘Lettres persanes’, Marivaux, Voltaire, Diderot, and finally Rousseau who will not play

Mme de Graffigny’s story

This article argues that Graffigny's "Lettres d'une Péruvienne" and "Cénie" tell essentially the same story, that of a woman sundered from her high estate and her betrothed. The pattern of interpersonal relations is present already in Graffigny's "Nouvelle espagnole" and "La Princesse Azerolle". Graffigny's correspondence shows that this is a mythical version of her own story. Crises in 1743–44 involving her lover, her confidant, and her niece immediately precede the creation of her principal works. Her discovery in 1743 of Garcilaso's "Histoire des Incas" is associated with ‘amitié’ and with ‘amour’

Developing music abilities in young children / 1071

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On Some Slippery Slopes: Horizontalists, Structuralists and Diagrams

Since Basil Moore published Horizontalists and Verticalists in 1988, there have been numerous attempts to model an endogenous money supply within a graphical framework which would also facilitate discussion of some of the controversial issues surrounding it. These have not generally been very successful until Fontana’s recent (2003, 2006) adoption of a pure flow of funds framework. More recently, the ‘New Keynesian consensus’ in macroeconomics has finally forced a rejection of the exogenous money paradigm and the LM part of the familiar IS/LM/AS model. In this paper we show how, with some modification, Fontana’s approach can be combined with ‘mainstream’ replacements of IS/LM (Carlin and Soskice, 2006; Bofinger, Mayer and Wollmerhäuser, 2006) to produce a model of the monetary sector which illustrates both the current wisdom about monetary policy (e.g. Woodford, 2003) and the post-Keynesian insights that have been developed over the last twenty years.Macroeconomics; Post Keynesian;

The Endogeneity of Money: Empirical Evidence

For many years, the endogenous nature of the money supply has been a cornerstone of post-Keynesian economics. In this paper we survey the empirical work which has been done on both the ‘core’ thesis – that loans create deposits – and on peripheral questions such as the origin of the demand for loans, the reconciliation of the demand for money with the loan-created supply and the accommodationist/structuralist debate. The originality of the paper lies in its demonstration that while post-Keynesians may have thought they were fighting in heroic isolation, most economists involved with the real world of monetary policy-making in practice took much the same view. The consequence is that we can find empirical investigations of issues relating to the endogeneity in a wide range of locations.Money; endogeneity;

A decade of studies at Loch Fleet, Galloway (Scotland): A catchment liming project and restoration of a brown trout fishery

Loch Fleet is a small upland lake in the hills of Galloway in southwest Scotland. In the 1970s the waters of the loch became more acidic and a brown trout fishery failed. This account summarises an experimental project, the "Loch Fleet Project" initiated in 1984, designed to reverse acidification of the loch by liming parts of the catchment. Liming about 40% of the catchment in 1986 and 1987 raised the pH and calcium levels, and reduced toxic aluminium concentrations. The improved conditions had been maintained up to 1994, but water in the loch, and its principal inflow stream, is now falling close to the desired threshold of quality. After liming, restocking with local strains of trout in 1987 was successful, and a self-recruiting population became established within 2 years. Recruitment is highly variable, however, and was attributed to severe spring conditions and the limited spawning capacity of the nursery stream, rather than to water quality

Getting one step closer to deduction: Introducing an alternative paradigm for transitive inference

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2008 Psychology Press.Transitive inference is claimed to be “deductive”. Yet every group/species ever reported apparently uses it. We asked 58 adults to solve five-term transitive tasks, requiring neither training nor premise learning. A computer-based procedure ensured all premises were continually visible. Response accuracy and RT (non-discriminative nRT) were measured as is typically done. We also measured RT confined to correct responses (cRT). Overall, very few typical transitive phenomena emerged. The symbolic distance effect never extended to premise recall and was not at all evident for nRT; suggesting the use of non-deductive end-anchor strategies. For overall performance, and particularly the critical B?D inference, our findings indicate that deductive transitive inference is far more intellectually challenging than previously thought. Contrasts of our present findings against previous findings suggest at least two distinct transitive inference modes, with most research and most computational models to date targeting an associative mode rather than their desired deductive mode. This conclusion fits well with the growing number of theories embracing a “dual process” conception of reasoning. Finally, our differing findings for nRT versus cRT suggest that researchers should give closer consideration to matching the RT measure they use to the particular conception of transitive inference they pre-held

Butterflies, Magic Carpets, and Scary Wild Animals: An Intervention with a Young Gymnast

This article presents a reflective case example of a sport psychology consultation carried out with a 9-year-old gymnast during the final year of the consultant’s training to become a British Psychological Society (BPS) chartered sport psychologist. During this period of time, the author was under the supervision of an experienced applied sport psychologist. The article draws on the published research in applied sport psychology and the wider child development literature to inform and negotiate the challenges of a neophyte practitioner working in a relatively unfamiliar sport with a very young gymnast. The intervention, which took place over six months, involved a focus on psychological skills training (PST). This paper reflects on the intervention experience and makes observations that may be of benefit to both neophyte and practiced consultants working with very young children. Although the consultancy involved goal setting, relaxation, and commitment, the focus of this paper is on those activities and skills which are specific to such a young athlete and which may be of interest to other practitioners in similar scenarios