Modernizing the Mind

Modernizing the Mind
Author: Steven C. Ward
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2002-09-30
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0313012202

When did fidgety children begin to suffer from attention deficit disorder? How did frightened people come to be called paranoid? Why are we considered to have emotional intelligence and not simply caring personalities? While psychological knowledge began in the relative isolation of laboratories and universities, it has since permeated various professions, institutions, and everyday life. Society and our conceptions of self have fundamentally changed with psychology's modernization of the mind. Ward provides a social and cultural history of the spread of psychological knowledge, assessing the way this proliferation has reconfigured society's meaning, and the way people view themselves and others. Using ideas borrowed from science and technology studies, the sociology of culture, and the sociology of organizations, Ward examines how American psychology established itself as the central purveyor of truth about the mind and self in the 20th century. He examines how psychology has essentially become common knowledge, and his innovative account offers a novel theory about the growth and influence of numerous different knowledge forms.

Modernizing Aristotle's Ethics

Modernizing Aristotle's Ethics
Author: Roger Bissell
Publisher: Ethics International Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2023-11-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1804411639

Over 2,300 years ago, the Ancient Greeks gave us philosophy—the love of wisdom. From Socrates and Epicurus to Plato and Aristotle, they grappled with the big questions—who are we? Why are we here? What is a good life? How should we lead our life? Later, the natural sciences split away from philosophy, and then the humanities did as well, and fragmented into separate disciplines, all of which tell us something about human nature—the universal, the culture-specific, and the individuated. This ongoing process was also forwarded by supporters of Aristotle’s worldview, most notably, Thomas Aquinas and Ayn Rand, and we see much value in their neo-Aristotelian philosophies, too. In the light of all that that the new sciences and more recent philosophers tell us about human nature and ethics, is there a case for modernizing Aristotle (and thinkers like Aquinas and Rand, as well), as against starting afresh? We think so. The theme of this book is to arrive at a highly practical, “neo-Aristotelian” framework to facilitate creating a meaningful life and self-actualization (and thereby flourishing and happiness) by linking ethics (as an “ought”) with the empirical sciences (that provide the “is”). A modernized ethic can be created using current scientific knowledge, and is also made easier in application, by specifying the psychological nature of the human (the internal, or the ontology of the modern human), and delineating that which is universal, from that which can be individualized.

Modernizing Minds in El Salvador

Modernizing Minds in El Salvador
Author: Héctor Lindo-Fuentes
Publisher: UNM Press
Total Pages: 493
Release: 2012-04-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 0826350828

In the 1960s and 1970s, El Salvador's reigning military regime instituted a series of reforms that sought to modernize the country and undermine ideological radicalism, the most ambitious of which was an education initiative. It was multifaceted, but its most controversial component was the use of televisions in classrooms. Launched in 1968 and lasting until the eve of civil war in the late 1970s, the reform resulted in students receiving instruction through programs broadcast from the capital city of San Salvador. The Salvadoran teachers' union opposed the content and the method of the reform and launched two massive strikes. The military regime answered with repressive violence, further alienating educators and pushing many of them into guerrilla fronts. In this thoughtful collaborative study, the authors examine the processes by which education reform became entwined in debates over theories of modernization and the politics of anticommunism. Further analysis examines how the movement pushed the country into the type of brutal infighting that was taking place throughout the third world as the U.S. and U.S.S.R. struggled to impose their political philosophies on developing countries.

Modernizing China

Modernizing China
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 134
Release: 2021-12-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004474935

This volume of ten essays on Modernizing China discusses crucial issues on: China's economic policies, State-Church relationship, environmental problems, the Four Modernizations, the role of new economic zones, China's perception of external threats, the role of intellectuals, the status of art policy, and the rights of women in society. These essays examine changes taking place in modern China. Will these changes lead to a pluralistic, less-oppressive open society or will they strengthen the hardliners in consolidating their power? What about the future of China after Deng? The volume attempts to generate intellectual debate on these issues. Contributors are Cheryl L. Brown, Paul Chao, Chu-Yuan Cheng, NarNarayan Das, Steven Haverkamp, Ouyang Kang, Arthur Mu-sen Kao, James T. Myers, Dhirendra K. Vajpeyi, Ranbir Vohra, and Taifa Yu.

Taiwan's Modernization: Americanization And Modernizing Confucian Manifestations

Taiwan's Modernization: Americanization And Modernizing Confucian Manifestations
Author: Wei-bin Zhang
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2003-07-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9814486132

This book is part of a broad examination of Confucianism and its implications for modernization of the Confucian regions (covering mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, and Singapore). It is mainly concerned with the industrialization and modernization of Taiwan. To help readers understand the process of modernization, the book provides an introduction to the history of Taiwan and to Confucianism and its modern implications. As far as social and economic principles are concerned, Taiwan's modernization is, according to the author, characterized by Americanization and modernizing Confucian manifestations. The book demonstrates that Taiwan has actually provided an important case study not only for the capitalist spirit of overseas Chinese, but also for possible implications of Confucianism for modernization. The unique character of this book is that in explaining Taiwan's modernization, it deals not only with economic and social issues, but also examines the philosophical foundations, an endeavor which no other author has systematically made before.

Modernizing George Eliot

Modernizing George Eliot
Author: K.M. Newton
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2011-12-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1849664986

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. George Eliot's work has been subject to a wide range of critical questioning, most of which relates her substantially to a Victorian context and intellectual framework. This book examines the ways in which her work anticipates significant aspects of writing in the twentieth and indeed twenty first century in regard to both art and philosophy. This new book presents a series of linked essays exploring Eliot's credentials as a radical thinker. Opening with her relationship to the Romantic tradition, Newton goes on to discuss her reading of Darwinism, her radical critique of Victorian values and her affiliation with the modernists. The final essays discuss her work in relation to Derridean themes and to Bernard Williams' concept of moral luck. What emerges is a very different Eliot from the conservative figure portrayed in much critical literature.