Journal of Early Modern Studies, Volume 10, issue 1 (Spring 2021)

Journal of Early Modern Studies, Volume 10, issue 1 (Spring 2021)
Author: Vlad ALEXANDRESCU
Publisher: Zeta Books
Total Pages: 137
Release:
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

ARTICLES: Patrick BRISSEY, Reasons for the Method in Descartes’ Discours Abstract: In the practical philosophy of the Discours de la Méthode, before the theoretical metaphysics of Part Four and the Meditationes, Descartes gives us an inductive argument that his method, the procedure and cognitive psychology, is veracious at its inception. His evidence, akin to his Scholastic predecessors, is God, a maximally perfect being, established an ontological foundation for knowledge such that reason and nature are isomorphic. Further, the method, he tells us, is a functional definition of human reason; that is, like other rationalists during this period, he holds the structure of reason maps onto the world. The evidence for this thesis is given in what I call the groundwork to Descartes’ philosophical system, essentially the first half of the Discours, where, through a series of examples in the preamble of Part Two, he, step-by-step, ascends from the perfection of artifacts through the imposition of reason (the Architect Example) to the perfection of a constituent’s use of her cognitive faculties (the Wise-Lawgiver Example), to God perfecting and ordering reality (the Divine Artificer Example). Finally, he descends, establishing the structure of human reason, which undergirds and entails the procedure of the method (the Laws of Sparta Example). Hanoch BEN-YAMI, Word, Sign and Representation in Descartes Abstract: In the first chapter of his The World, Descartes compares light to words and discusses signs and ideas. This made scholars read into that passage our views of language as a representational medium and consider it Descartes’ model for representation in perception. I show, by contrast, that Descartes does not ascribe there any representational role to language; that to be a sign is for him to have a kind of causal role; and that he is concerned there only with the cause’s lack of resemblance to its effect, not with the representation’s lack of resemblance to what it represents. I support this interpretation by comparisons with other places in Descartes’ corpus and with earlier authors, Descartes’ likely sources. This interpretation may shed light both on Descartes’ understanding of the functioning of language and on the development of his theory of representation in perception. Osvaldo OTTAVIANI, The Young Leibniz and the Ontological Argument: from Rejection to Reconsideration Abstract: Leibniz considered the Cartesian version of the ontological argument not as an inconsistent proof but only as an incomplete one: it requires a preliminary proof of possibility to show that the concept of ‘the most perfect being’ involves no contradiction. Leibniz raised this objection to Descartes’s proof already in 1676, then repeated it throughout his entire life. Before 1676, however, he suggested a more substantial objection to the Cartesian argument. I take into account a text written around 1671-72, in which Leibniz considers the Cartesian proof as a paralogism and a petition of principle. I argue that this criticism is modelled on Gassendi’s objections to the Cartesian proof, and that Leibniz’s early rejection of the ontological argument has to be understood in the general context of his early philosophy, which was inspired by nominalist authors, such as Hobbes and Gassendi. Then, I take into account the reconsideration of the ontological argument in a series of texts of 1678, showing how Leibniz implicitly replies to the kind of criticism to the argument he himself shared in his earlier works. Joseph ANDERSON, The ‘Necessity’ of Leibniz’ Rejection of Necessitarianism Abstract: In the Theodicy, Leibniz defends the justice of God from two impious conceptions of God—a God who makes arbitrary choices and a God who doesn’t make choices at all. Many interpret Leibniz as navigating these dangers by positing a kind of non-Spinozistic necessitarianism. I examine passages from the Theodicy which reject not only blind (Spinozistic) necessitarianism but necessitarianism altogether. Leibniz thinks blind necessitarianism is dangerous due to the conception of God it entails and the implications for morality. Non-Spinozistic necessitarianism avoids many of these criticisms. Leibniz finds that even necessary actions should receive certain rewards and punishments as long as they necessarily lead to a change in future behavior. But Leibniz rejects even non-Spinozistic necessitarianism on the grounds that it is inconsistent with punitive justice. Whether Leibniz successfully avoids necessitarianism, it ought to be clear that he sees his own position as significantly distinct from necessitarianism and not just Spinozism. REVIEW ARTICLE: Dana JALOBEANU, Big Books, Small Books, Readers, Riddles and Contexts: The Story of English Mythography [Anna-Maria Hartmann, English Mythography and its European Context. 1500-1650, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, x + 283 pp.] CORPUS REVIEW: Andrea SANGIACOMO, Raluca TANASESCU, Silvia DONKER, Hugo HOGENBIRK: Expanding the Corpus of Early Modern Natural Philosophy: Initial results and a review of available sources BOOK REVIEWS Diego LUCCI Ruth Boeker, Locke on Persons and Personal Identity, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Michael DECKARD Stefano Marino and Pietro Terzi (eds.), Kant’s ‘Critique of Aesthetic Judgment’ in the 20th Century: A Companion to its Main Interpretations, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021. Doina RUSU Jennifer M. Rampling, The Experimental Fire. Inventing English Alchemy 1300-1700, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2020.

The Genesis Quest

The Genesis Quest
Author: Michael Marshall
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2020-08-20
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1474611443

'A fascinating and challenging story' New York Review of Books 'This is an incredibly absorbing and insightful book about the most important scientific question of our age' Mark Miodownik, author of Stuff Matters 'The story of the quest to understand life's genesis is a universal one, in which everyone can find pleasure and fascination. By asking how life came to be, we are implicitly asking why we are here, whether life exists on other planets, and what it means to be alive. This book is the story of a group of fragile, flawed humans who chose to wrestle with these questions. By exploring the origin of life, we can catch a glimpse of the infinite.' How did life begin? Why are we here? These are some of the most profound questions we can ask. For almost a century, a small band of eccentric scientists has struggled to answer these questions and explain one of the greatest mysteries of all: how and why life began on Earth. There are many different proposals, and each idea has attracted passionate believers who promote it with an almost religious fervour, as well as detractors who reject it with equal passion. But the quest to unravel life's genesis is not just a story of big ideas. It is also a compelling human story, rich in personalities, conflicts, and surprising twists and turns. Along the way the journey takes in some of the greatest discoveries in modern biology, from evolution and cells to DNA and life's family tree. It is also a search whose end may finally be in sight. In The Genesis Quest, Michael Marshall shows how the quest to understand life's beginning is also a journey to discover the true nature of life, and by extension our place in the universe.

The Hungarian Avant-Garde and Socialism

The Hungarian Avant-Garde and Socialism
Author: Katalin Cseh-Varga
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2022-10-06
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1350211605

The emergence and the activities of a second public sphere in the areas of Soviet influence were intricately linked to the performative and intermedial production and usage of alternative spaces. Applying a multitude of perspectives and networked topography, The Hungarian Avant-Garde and Socialism investigates artistic strategies of spaces – namely those of the artist's studio, exhibitions, installations, clubs, apartments, cellars, event halls, and chapels – all of which existed parallel to or were interwoven with the regulated public sphere in Hungary from the beginning of the 1960s to the era immediately following the Kádár regime. This book captures and discusses the exclusionary and inclusionary mechanisms inscribed into public spheres behind the Iron Curtain in all their paradoxes through the looking glass of an artist generation that was controversially labelled “neo-”, and later, “post-avant-garde”. Cross-referencing the international tendencies in the marginal art worlds that existed between and beyond the Cold War reality of Blocs, The Hungarian Avant-Garde demonstrates how mostly non-conformist artists in Hungary, and by extension the spaces they created, reacted to the conflicting, contradictory nature of public spheres in the post-totalitarian condition.

Small State Foreign Policy in Contemporary World

Small State Foreign Policy in Contemporary World
Author: Rovshan Ibrahimov
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2024-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 364391444X

This book explained the position, behavior, and role of the Small Powers (states) in the international system since Westphalia Treaty via historical prospect. By analyzing European Small Powers, there have been attempting to generalize and optimize within the theoretical framework possible ways for foreign policy activities of the former Soviet Union republics on the examples of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. This book is the first attempt to explain former Soviet states foreign policy as Small Power theoretically and to propose the most possible optimal behavior for them.

Israel’s Mediterranean Gas

Israel’s Mediterranean Gas
Author: Sujata Ashwarya
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2019-05-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0429536232

This book examines the internal and external implications of Israel’s natural gas discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean. The nation’s changed status from being an importer of coal and oil to that of an exporter of natural gas has consequences not only for the energy sector but also for the fragile geopolitics of the region. The book: Explores the challenges and issues of energy economics and governance; Analyses Israel’s gas diplomacy with its neighbours in the Middle East and North Africa and its potential positive impact on the amelioration of the Arab-Israeli conflict; Studies how Israel can avoid the deleterious impact of the Dutch disease once the government’s share of the export revenues start flowing. The author traces a consummate picture of history, politics, and conflicts that shape the economics of energy in Israel and its future trajectories. A major intervention in Middle East studies, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of energy studies, development studies, strategic studies, politics, diplomacy, and international relations. It will also be of interest to government agencies, think-tanks, and risk management firms.

Lucky Luke - Volume 1 - The Complete Collection

Lucky Luke - Volume 1 - The Complete Collection
Author: Morris
Publisher: Cinebook
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2019-09-20T00:00:00+02:00
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 184918626X

At last Lucky Luke is getting a hardback collected edition, with the first adventures of the Lonesome Cowboy. After 70 years of life and almost 70 translated volumes, it was high time English-speaking readers were offered a hardback collected edition. This first volume contains the first seven adventures of Lucky Luke, previously published as volumes Arizona, Rodeo and Dick Digger’s Gold Mine, and offers an unrivalled insight into the evolution of the character in terms of design as well as personality. The extras available make up a whooping 48 pages of illustrations, photographs, biographies, essays and anecdotes on Morris and the origins of Luke. A must read for any true fan of this legend of the West!

Iran Nuclear Accord and the Remaking of the Middle East

Iran Nuclear Accord and the Remaking of the Middle East
Author: Nader Entessar
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2017-12-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1442271280

Entessar & Afrasiabi’s Iran Nuclear Negotiations (Rowman & Littlefied, October 2015) offered a thorough analysis of the negotiation process between Iran and the 5+1 great powers about its nuclear program. This book essentially builds upon it, focusing this time on the final nuclear agreement, the ensuing debates around it, and its global and regional ramifications especially in the Middle East. The first section analyzes the agreement through the prism of international relations theories, using a constructivist-critical theory approach. This is followed by an overview of the intense debates in Iran, the West, and other parts of the world, on the nuclear agreement and its various pros and cons, not to mention the connected, yet separate Iran-IAEA agreement. The second section covers Iran’s foreign policy and its various priorities, looking in particular at the impact of the nuclear deal on the country’s external relations and orientations, contextualized in terms of pre-existing issues and concerns and the profound influence of the nuclear agreement on the perceptions of Iranian power in the region and beyond. Iran’s relations with its Arab, Turkish, Russian, and other neighbors are discussed, focusing on both the direct and indirect impact of the nuclear agreement on these relations, especially the paradoxical implications of the nuclear deal with respect to the non-nuclear crises in the Middle East, such as the Syria-Iraq crisis, and the re-alignments that have put Iran at the crossroads of East and West. Other issues covered include energy security, regional economic cooperation, the endemic sectarianism highlighted by Iran-Saudi competition, and the deadlock on the Middle East peace process. The third section then examines the issue of a Middle East nuclear weapons-free zone and the likely consequences of the Iran nuclear deal on this prospect, which, in turn, raises the issue of regional proliferation and counterproliferation. The last section explores some possible various scenarios and the challenges of implementation as a relatively long-term agreement, providing specific policy recommendations for the regional actors and the external powers that are stakeholders in the volatile Middle East.

Trans New Wave Cinema

Trans New Wave Cinema
Author: Akkadia Ford
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2021-04-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000379132

This book presents a critical cultural study of the Trans New Wave as a cinematic genre and explores its emergence in the twenty-first century. Drawing on a diverse range of texts, the cultural, social, aesthetic and ethical implications of the genre are placed within the context of rapidly changing understandings of gender diversity. From the cinematic borderlands of independent film festivals to wider public recognition via digital technologies, the genre encompasses a diverse range of texts from short films, documentaries, experimental films, to feature films and narratives that range across life histories, narratives and themes. The book presents transliteracy as an original theoretical approach to reading film representations of the Trans New Wave, and combines it with a new theoretical concept of cinematic ethnogenesis to investigate how the genre emerged from specific communities and the reciprocal interaction of audiences and texts. This interdisciplinary volume engages with contemporary issues of gender diversity, transgender studies, screen and media studies and film festival studies, and as such will be of great interest to scholars working in these fields and in media and cultural studies more generally.

Next Generation HALT and HASS

Next Generation HALT and HASS
Author: Kirk A. Gray
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2016-05-23
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1118700236

NEXT GENERATION HALT AND HASS ROBUST DESIGN OF ELECTRONICS AND SYSTEMS A NEW APPROACH TO DISCOVERING AND CORRECTING SYSTEMS RELIABILITY RISKS Next Generation HALT and HASS presents a major paradigm shift from reliability prediction-based methods to discovery of electronic systems reliability risks. This is achieved by integrating highly accelerated life test (HALT) and highly accelerated stress screen (HASS) into a physics of failure based robust product and process development methodology. The new methodologies challenge misleading and sometimes costly misapplication of probabilistic failure prediction methods (FPM) and provide a new deterministic map for reliability development. The authors clearly explain the new approach with a logical progression of problem statement and solutions. The book helps engineers employ HALT and HASS by demonstrating why the misleading assumptions used for FPM are invalid. Next, the application of HALT and HASS empirical discovery methods to quickly find unreliable elements in electronics systems gives readers practical insight into the techniques. The physics of HALT and HASS methodologies are highlighted, illustrating how they uncover and isolate software failures due to hardware–software interactions in digital systems. The use of empirical operational stress limits for the development of future tools and reliability discriminators is described. Key features: Provides a clear basis for moving from statistical reliability prediction models to practical methods of insuring and improving reliability. Challenges existing failure prediction methodologies by highlighting their limitations using real field data. Explains a practical approach to why and how HALT and HASS are applied to electronics and electromechanical systems. Presents opportunities to develop reliability test discriminators for prognostics using empirical stress limits. Guides engineers and managers on the benefits of the deterministic and more efficient methods of HALT and HASS. Integrates the empirical limit discovery methods of HALT and HASS into a physics of failure based robust product and process development process.

Policymaking for Citizen Behavior Change

Policymaking for Citizen Behavior Change
Author: Nancy R. Lee
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2017-08-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1315525631

Social marketing is a discipline unfamiliar to many policymakers, often confused with the more frequently applied and studied fields of social media, behavioral economics, or social change. Social marketing is a growing field and methodology, however, that has been successfully applied to improve public health, prevent injuries, protect the environment, engage communities, and improve financial well-being. Policymaking for Citizen Behavior Change is designed to demonstrate the ways in which social marketing can be an effective and efficient tool to change citizens’ behavior, and how to advocate for and support its appropriate application. Providing a 10-Step Planning Model and examining a variety of social marketing cases and tools, including more than 40 success stories, Policymaking for Citizen Behavior Change is core reading for current policymakers, as well as all those studying and practicing social marketing, particularly in the public sector. It’s also worthwhile supplementary reading for those studying public policy, public administration, environmental justice, public health, and other programs on how to effect social change.