Europe in the nineteenth-century American mind: The literary perspectives

This article evaluates Karl Popper's contribution to analytic philosophy, and outlines some of the contradictions in his work which make it difficult to locate in any particular tradition. In particular, the article investigates Popper's own claims to be a member of the rationalist tradition. Although Popper described himself as a member of this tradition, his definition of it diverged quite radically from that offered by other supporters of rationalism, like, for example, Mach, Carnap, and the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle. The reason for this was that Popper believed the rationalist tradition, if it were to remain coherent and relevant, needed to overcome the dilemma posed by Hume's problem of induction. Popper believed that this problem rendered conventional understandings of rationalism, science, and inductive reasoning incoherent. This article suggests that Popper's principal contribution to modern philosophy was to reconfigure the rationalist tradition in such a way as to circumvent the problem of induction while preserving the rationalist commitment to reason, rational debate, and objective knowledge. Popper's reconfiguration of the epistemological bases of the rationalist tradition challenged dominant understandings of rationalist and analytic philosophy, and may be appropriately understood as part of a wider move among philosophers like Quine and Putnam to challenge conventional understandings of analytic philosophy, and of what philosophy itself could and could not achieve. It also informed a vision of social and political life (and of the social and political sciences) as rooted in principles of freedom, equality, and rational debate, but which cannot be fit within the traditional ideological landscape.     

The anthropologist as historian and as scientist,or the uses of history

Margaret T. Hodgen. Anthropology, History, and Cultural Change. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology No. 52. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1974. vii + 108 pp. Tables, maps, references, and index. $4.50 (paper).

Annemarie deWaal Malefijt. Images of Man: A History of Anthropological Thought. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974. ix + 383 pp. Bibliography and index. $10.00 (cloth); $3.50 (paper).     

Ken Bullough: a scientist and a friend

The contributions made by Ken Bullough (1927–1994) to space physics and conflict research are briefly summarised. This brief obituary and review of his scientific contributions is supplemented by a complete list of his publications.     

The Medieval Colonization of Central Europe as a Problem of World History and Historiography

The author of this article asks two main questions. First, whatwas the nature of the so-called medieval colonization in theeastern half of central Europe? Secondly, which factors decidedthat in the second half of the nineteenth and in the twentiethcentury, during the era of a rising modern nationalism and imperialism,colonization became the—not always conscious—toolof manipulation in the fight for so-called ‘historic rights’in certain territories and the battle for the ‘forgingof nations’. In particular, in German historiography themyth of medieval colonization was born, which had very littlein common with medieval reality. Even German peasants were supposedto have marched East, not in order to seek out better livingconditions, as one Flemish song went, but to subject for Germany‘empty space’ in the barbaric East. At the sametime, the author presents the thesis that several ideas aboutthe topic of medieval colonization developed under the influenceof the colonization of North America, especially in California—contemporaryto many of these German scholars. This found its expressionin the terminology used, in numerous comparisons, and even inthe fundamental suggestion that German law legitimized the Germanclaim for almost the whole of central and eastern Europe. Thebasic conviction among German historians and politicians wasthat these territories should belong to the Empire under thesame conditions as India ‘belonged’ to the English,and Algeria to the French.     

The mind of Baddo: Assassination in Merovingian politics

One of the more repellent aspects of the Merovingian age is the apparent ease with which its society resorted to assassination. Ambition, dissimulation, and cupidity all too often found an outlet in political murder. But such behavior may be more than simply the upwelling of pure barbarism. Assassination in Merovingian politics may be the logical, if unhappy, byproduct of an altered world-view.The people of the Merovingian age were prone to take deeds as an accurate sign of inward intention, which brought the ultimate revelation of right and wrong forward to the present. And if the holiness of an action were readily apparent, even disgusting actions such as assassination may be seen, with proper exegesis of the Books of Judges, to produce right results. An examination of the implied conceptual circumstances surrounding assassination, the ‘mind’ of society to the deed, reveals a mixed attitude to these violent acts.The permissibility of assassination in qualified cases coupled with'the immediate establishment of it as holy or unholy, encouraged attempts on the lives of public figures. Once the full taboo had been broken, assassination became a dangerously routine solution to political grievances, and society's response to it became chillingly casual.     

Traces of a computational mind

The image of writing is singularly frequent in cognitivistic explanations of the functioning of mind, not only as a metaphor but also as a conceptual paradigm: the Turing machine, particularly, displays a complete structural isomorphism with the use of alphabetical writing. The Turing machine performs exactly the same operations carried out by a man writing with pen and paper and this depends on two reasons: 1. it has been conceived in image and likeness of the human concrete practice of writing; 2. it is the typical product of the western rationality, whose development has been made possible only by the specific features of the alphabetical treatment of information. This is useful to understand why the mind started being depicted as a writing machine just when the alphabet began spreading: a genealogical investigation will show how in mnemotechnics treatises and in Plato's and Aristotle's metaphysics we can find the very first foundation of every logico-symbolical model of mind.     

Towards a network of regions: The United States of Europe

Starting from the changing role of governments in planning (physical, environmental, economic, etc.), this paper calls attention to the drastic structural changes taking place in the regional scene after the transition towards market orientation and global competitiveness. The main focus is on European developments. In addition to économie forces, two phenomena will be highlighted, namely, the transition towards a network economy and the profound technological changes taking place at the regional and urban level Particular attention will be devoted to European spatial dynamics in a networked society. Various new geographical configurations and maps of Europe will be shown, followed by some exploratory remarks on future trends. The main message of the paper is that transport planning in Europe needs to be integrated with the emerging new economic networks. The paper ends with some policy conclusions.     

Total security as threat: The blurring of hard and soft security in northern Europe

Part of the rapid change in thinking about security and security policy is occurring in northern Europe. Notions of “hard” and “soft” security are being implemented, most notably in the Visby Process of the Baltic Sea states. These variations of national security also interact with those of the United States and NATO. The direction of US security policy is called “total security” in the paper. The content of US policy is discussed as a contradiction of the basis for identifying hard and soft security. The blurring of these concepts contributes to the threatening character of total security. Implementation of measures to ensure total security involves the creation of pervasive and comprehensive intelligence gathering mechanisms that, because of their lack of sharply defined targets, has the potential for threatening the security of individuals for the sake of preserving national security.