Harsh Poetry and Art's Address: Romare Bearden and Hans-Georg Gadamer in Conversation

In this essay, I analyze Romare Bearden’s art, methodology, and thinking about art, as well as his attempt to harmonize his personal aesthetic goals with his sociopolitical concerns. I then turn to Hans-Georg Gadamer’s reflections on art and our experience (Erfahrung) of art. I show how Bearden’s approach to art and the artworks themselves resonate with Gadamer’s critique of aesthetic consciousness and his contention that artworks address us, make claims upon us, and even reveal truth. Lastly, I discuss Gadamer’s emphasis on the spectator’s active yet non-mastering role in the event of art’s address—an event that implicates the spectator and has the potential to transform him or her. This leads to a discussion of Gadamer’s notion of the type of self-(and world) understanding that occurs through aesthetic experience. I close by returning to Bearden in order to discuss how his art unearths a crucial feature of our being-in-the-world. I call this feature “world-unmasking” and show how it expands and enriches Gadamer’s account

Interstitial Soundings: Philosophical Reflections on Improvisation, Practice, and Self-Making

In Interstitial Soundings, Cynthia R. Nielsen brings music and philosophy into a fruitful and mutually illuminating dialogue. Topics discussed include the following: music's dynamic ontology, performers and improvisers as co-composers, the communal character of music, jazz as hybrid and socially constructed, the sociopolitical import of bebop, Afro-modernism and its strategic deployments, jazz and racialized practices, continuities between Michel Foucault's discussion of self-making and creating one's musical voice, Alasdair MacIntyre on practice, and how one might harmonize MacIntyre's notion of virtue development with Foucauldian resistance strategies

Strategic Afro-Modernism, Dynamic Hybridity, and Bebop's Socio-Political Significance

In this chapter, I argue that one can articulate a historically attuned and analytically rich model for understanding jazz in its various inflections. That is, on the one hand, such a model permits us to affirm jazz as a historically conditioned, dynamic hybridity. On the other hand, to acknowledge jazz’s open and multiple character in no way negates our ability to identify discernible features of various styles and aesthetic traditions. Additionally, my model affirms the sociopolitical, legal (Jim Crow and copyright laws), and economic structures that shaped jazz. Consequently, my articulation of bebop as an inflection of Afromodernism highlights the sociopolitical, and highly racialized context in which this music was created. Without a recognition of the sociopolitical import of bebop, one’s understanding of the music is impoverished, as one fails to grasp the strategic uses to which the music and discourses about the music were put

Law Behind Second Law of Thermodynamics --Unification with Cosmology--

In an abstract setting of a general classical mechanical system as a model for the universe we set up a general formalism for a law behind the second law of thermodynamics, i.e. really for "initial conditions". We propose a unification with the other laws by requiring similar symmetry and locality properties.Comment: 17 page

Erratum: QCD sum rules study of the JPC=1−−J^{PC}=1^{--} charmonium YY mesons

We correct a mistake in the analytical expression given in Nucl. Phys. {\bf A} 815, 53 (2009) [arXiv:0804.4817] for the $D_{s0}\bar{D}_s^*$ and $D_{0}\bar{D}^*$ molecular currents. As a consequence, the mass obtained for the $D_{0}\bar{D}^*$ molecular current: $m_{D_{0}\bar{D}^*}=(4.96\pm 0.11)$ GeV is no longer compatible with the experimental mass of the meson Y(4260).Comment: 1 pag

A model for J/ψJ/\psi - kaon cross section

We calculate the cross section for the dissociation of $J/\psi$ by kaons within the framework of a meson exchange model. We find that, depending on the values of the coupling constants used, the cross section can vary from 5 mb to 30 mb at $\sqrt{s}\sim5$ GeV.Comment: 4 pages, 3 eps figure

William James and the Evolution of Consciousness

Despite having been relegated to the realm of superstition during the dominant years of behaviourism, the investigation and discussion of consciousness has again become scientifically defensible. However, attempts at describing animal consciousness continue to be criticised for lacking independent criteria that identify the presence or absence of the phenomenon. Over one hundred years ago William James recognised that mental traits are subject to the same evolutionary processes as are physical characteristics and must therefore be represented in differing levels of complexity throughout the animal kingdom. James's proposals with regard to animal consciousness are outlined and followed by a discussion of three classes of animal consciousness derived from empirical research. These classes are presented to defend both James's proposals and the position that a theory of animal consciousness can be scientifically supported. It is argued that by using particular behavioural expressions to index consciousness and by providing empirical tests by which to elicit these behavioural expressions a scientifically defensible theory of animal consciousness can be developed