Factor Varieties and Symbolic Computation

We propose an algebraization of classical and non-classical logics, based on factor varieties and decomposition operators. In particular, we provide a new method for determining whether a propositional formula is a tautology or a contradiction. This method can be autom-atized by defining a term rewriting system that enjoys confluence and strong normalization. This also suggests an original notion of logical gate and circuit, where propositional variables becomes logical gates and logical operations are implemented by substitution. Concerning formulas with quantifiers, we present a simple algorithm based on factor varieties for reducing first-order classical logic to equational logic. We achieve a completeness result for first-order classical logic without requiring any additional structure

Organizing Engineering Work - A Comparative-Analysis

This article analyzes the organization of engineering work in six industrial capitalist countries. It identifies four major models for the organization of engineering work; the engineering profession did not succeed in achieving professional “closure” in any of the six countries under review. A review of the historical evolution of the organization of engineering work in each of the six countries reveals that engineering has been shaped by a complex interaction among the profession itself, employers, the state, labor, and preindustrial forces. However, none of the national variations on the four models for organizing engineering labor is stable or without internal contradiction because of the ambiguous “intermediate” position of engineers

Telling histories or accounting for aspects of the past: A historiographical choice in a European historical perspective

The article departs from the difference between two types of historical writings, one narrating stories about actors and the other trying to bring about evidence that justify claims to know certain things about specific aspects of the past. From the Iliad and the Odyssey, telling stories have been a common way of presenting past events. Inscriptions and annals, as well as graves and monuments, urged to present posterity with evidence for acts and occurrences. Storytelling was always more popular than searching for evidence. In the 19th century, historians began to systematise their doubts about the truth of many stories. This source criticism has been refuted by many “historical theorists” in the late 20th and the early 21st centuries with the argument that claims that it is impossible to bring truth about the past and that all history is to be regarded as a kind of literature with, at best, symbolic “truth”. I want to reject this standpoint as based only on an internal “theory of history”-discourse and ask for analyses of actual historical research, which claims to produce new historical knowledge

Gender, the state and the audit profession: evidence from Spain (1942-88)

Extant knowledge on gender and auditing overwhelmingly relies on evidence gathered from a limited group of Anglo-Saxon countries. It is widely admitted, however, that gender issues are affected by the institutional contexts of the investigation. The Anglo-Saxon settings, we contend, embrace a number of idiosyncratic, institutional characteristics that advise caution in the generalizability of results. Our study addresses the role of gender in Spanish audit practice during the period 1942 to 1988. The environment of the Spanish audit profession witnessed the peaceful transition from a dictatorship to a full-fledged democracy as well as the emergence of a free market economy from a system characterized by stiff economic autarchy and an overriding intervention of the state in the economy. We found that the dominant role of the state in Spanish society affected the structure of the audit profession and made impossible the emergence of an autonomous project. In particular, our findings reveal that the audit profession did not have an independent strategy about the role of women at work, but mimicked the attitudes deployed by the state during our observation period.