Dewey, Second Nature, Social Criticism, and the Hegelian Heritage

Dewey’s notion of second nature is strictly connected with that of habit. I reconstruct the Hegelian heritage of this model and argue that habit qua second nature is understood by Dewey as a something which encompasses both the subjective and the objective dimension – individual dispositions and features of the objective natural and social environment.. Secondly, the notion of habit qua second nature is used by Dewey both in a descriptive and in a critical sense and is as such a dialectical concept which connects ‘impulse’ and ‘habit’, ‘original’ or ‘native’ and ‘acquired’ nature, ‘first’ and ‘second nature’. Thirdly, the ethical model of second nature as habituation and the aesthetic model of second nature as art are for Dewey not opposed to one another, since by distinguishing ‘routine’ and ‘art’ as two modes of habit, he makes space for an expressive and creative notion of second nature. Finally, I argue that the expressive dialectics of habit formation plays a crucial role in Dewey’s critical social philosophy and that first and second nature operate as benchmark concepts for his diagnosis of social pathologies

Weak matrix elements and K-meson physics

An overview is presented about old and recent methods to compute the $K\to \pi \pi$ decay amplitude.Comment: 5 pages, talk presented at the XXXth International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP 2000), July 27-August 2, 2000, Osaka, Japa

Boosted Statistical Mechanics

Based on the fundamental principles of Relativistic Quantum Mechanics, we give a rigorous, but completely elementary, proof of the relation between fundamental observables of a statistical system when measured relatively to two inertial reference frames, connected by a Lorentz transformation.Comment: 8 page

The momentum of an electromagnetic wave inside a dielectric

The problem of assigning a momentum to an electromagnetic wave packet propagating inside an insulator has become known under the name of the Abraham-Minkowski controversy. In the present paper we re-examine the question, first through a power expansion in the polarizability of the medium and assuming the simplest and most natural choice for the force exerted on a dielectric material by an electromagnetic field. It is shown that the Abraham expression is highly favoured. We then show the complete generality of these results.Comment: 17 pages, no figure

THE IMAGINATIVE REHEARSAL MODEL – DEWEY, EMBODIED SIMULATION, AND THE NARRATIVE HYPOTHESIS

In this contribution I outline some ideas on what the pragmatist model of habit ontology could offer us as regards the appreciation of the constitutive role that imagery plays for social action and cognition. Accordingly, a Deweyan understanding of habit would allow for an understanding of imagery in terms of embodied cognition rather than in representational terms. I first underline the motor character of imagery, and the role its embodiment in habit plays for the anticipation of action. Secondly, I reconstruct Dewey's notion of imaginative rehearsal in light of contemporary, competing models of intersubjectivity such as embodied simulation theory and the narrative practice hypothesis, and argue that the Deweyan model offers us a more encompassing framework which can be useful for reconciling these approaches. In this text I am mainly concerned with sketching a broad picture of the lines along which such a project could be developed. For this reason not all questions are given equal attention, and I shall concentrate mainly on the basic ideas, without going directly into the details of many of them

Contested meanings: The Italian media and the UltraS

Despite their presence in Italian football stadiums, the UltraS have been the subject of limited empirical research. I use the capital S to identify neo-fascist oriented fans to distinguish them from the wider football supporters ultra’ (Testa and Armstrong 2008; Testa 2009; Testa and Armstrong 2010a). This study is part of a series of publications to fill in this lacuna; it is part of an ethnographic research project carried out from 2003 to 2009. The research aimed to analyze the UltraS social world using as a sample two hardcore subculture of fans at the two main Rome football clubs - AS Roma and SS Lazio. With neo-fascist sympathies, these groups -the Boys at Roma and the Irriducibili at Lazio- are political and well-organized (Testa and Armstrong, 2010a). The present paper focuses on the relationship between the UltraS and the Italian media; the media are often considered by the UltraS as enemies because believed to be biased against them. To complement the ethnographic data, three renowned Italian sports journalists were interviewed in 2008. One was Franco Arturi, deputy director of La Gazzetta dello Sport, which is the most established and popular of the Italian sport newspapers. Another was Giuseppe Tassi, a sport journalist and deputy director of Quotidiano.net (internet edition of the Resto del Carlino, La Nazione and Il Giorno editorial group). The third was Gabriele Marcotti, journalist for the British The Times and the popular Italian daily IL Corriere dello Sport. Analysis stresses the importance of media coverage in influencing the UltraS deviant dynamics and suggests, considering the experiences of other European countries, a reduction of media attention towards the UltraS as a strategy to contain this phenomenon

Some Considerations on Chiral Gauge Theories

Some general considerations on the problem of non-perturbative definition of Chiral Gauge Theories are presented.Comment: 13 pages, Latex, talk given at CHIRAL '99, Taipei, Sep. 13-18, 199

Exploring the Light-Cone through Semi-Inclusive Hadronic Distributions

Light-cone dominance is established for a particular set of semi-inclusive observables in $e^+ e^-$ hadronic annihilation. This allows to deduce, with a certain degree of rigor, the angular distribution of hadronic energy from first principles, without invoking quark-hadron duality.Comment: 11 pages, plain Late