The ambivalent shadow of the pre-Wilsonian rise of international law

The generation of American international lawyers who founded the American Society of International Law in 1906 and nurtured the soil for what has been retrospectively called a “moralistic legalistic approach to international relations” remains little studied. A survey of the rise of international legal literature in the U.S. from the mid-19th century to the eve of the Great War serves as a backdrop to the examination of the boosting effect on international law of the Spanish American War in 1898. An examination of the Insular Cases before the US Supreme Court is then accompanied by the analysis of a number of influential factors behind the pre-war rise of international law in the U.S. The work concludes with an examination of the rise of natural law doctrines in international law during the interwar period and the critiques addressed.by the realist founders of the field of “international relations” to the “moralistic legalistic approach to international relation

Casimir effect due to a single boundary as a manifestation of the Weyl problem

The Casimir self-energy of a boundary is ultraviolet-divergent. In many cases the divergences can be eliminated by methods such as zeta-function regularization or through physical arguments (ultraviolet transparency of the boundary would provide a cutoff). Using the example of a massless scalar field theory with a single Dirichlet boundary we explore the relationship between such approaches, with the goal of better understanding the origin of the divergences. We are guided by the insight due to Dowker and Kennedy (1978) and Deutsch and Candelas (1979), that the divergences represent measurable effects that can be interpreted with the aid of the theory of the asymptotic distribution of eigenvalues of the Laplacian discussed by Weyl. In many cases the Casimir self-energy is the sum of cutoff-dependent (Weyl) terms having geometrical origin, and an "intrinsic" term that is independent of the cutoff. The Weyl terms make a measurable contribution to the physical situation even when regularization methods succeed in isolating the intrinsic part. Regularization methods fail when the Weyl terms and intrinsic parts of the Casimir effect cannot be clearly separated. Specifically, we demonstrate that the Casimir self-energy of a smooth boundary in two dimensions is a sum of two Weyl terms (exhibiting quadratic and logarithmic cutoff dependence), a geometrical term that is independent of cutoff, and a non-geometrical intrinsic term. As by-products we resolve the puzzle of the divergent Casimir force on a ring and correct the sign of the coefficient of linear tension of the Dirichlet line predicted in earlier treatments.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure, minor changes to the text, extra references added, version to be published in J. Phys.

Post-truth and anthropogenic climate change: asking the right questions

The connection between climate skepticism and climate denial and what has become known as post‐truth culture has become the subject of much interest in recent years. This has lead to intense debates among scientists and activists about how to respond to this changed cultural context and the ways in which it is held to obstruct wider acceptance of climate science. Drawing on research in the sociology of scientific knowledge, science and technology studies, social psychology, and philosophical reflections on evidential reasoning, it is argued that these debates are focused on the wrong topic. The idea of post‐truth implies that a once‐straightforward linear relationship between scientific evidence and decision‐making has been eroded. But such an idealized relationship never existed. The proper role of scientific evidence in informing belief and action in response to the prospect of anthropogenic climate change needs reconsideration. A key part of this is to make uncertainties related to processes within the climate system and their potential outcomes into the main focus of public discussion around climate change. Instead of keeping the focus of debate on how to “get the science right,” such a reframing makes precautionary questions about the prospect of unacceptable losses into the main focus. This brings a variety of ethical and political values into the debate, perhaps creating better conditions for a minimal consensus about what to do