PHILOSOPHY AS PERPETUAL MOTION: PRAGMATISM MOVES ON

Two new books about the Pragmatist tradition, Richard Bernstein's The Pragmatic Turn and Colin Koopman's Pragmatism as Transition, represent respectively a summing up of the past half‐century of the tradition's history and a possible program for its future development. Bernstein ecumenically considers the achievements of a wide range of thinkers from Peirce, Dewey, and James to Brandom, Putnam, and Rorty, drawing valuable lessons from each, while not sparing criticism of their flaws. Koopman also tries to bridge the gap between what he calls “classicopragmatism” and “neopragmatism,” although he finds more to admire in Rorty than in his predecessors. Whereas Bernstein attempts to supplement the pragmatist tradition by turning to Habermas, Koopman finds his inspiration in Foucault. Both authors emphasize the historicist, evolutionary, and transitionalist implications of pragmatism, paying as a result insufficient attention to the historical possibilities of repetition, rupture, discontinuity, and the unexpected event. In terms of the political implications they draw, Koopman advocates a meliorist incrementalism that lacks any real bite, while Bernstein expresses dissatisfaction with the democratic pieties of Rorty's final work, but doesn't really provide a sustained alternative.     

Comments on the flint daggers of Denmark

The transition to settled farming communities in northern Europe was a far more gradual process than elsewhere in Europe: this makes it possible to study the transition to farming archaeologically at a finer level of resolution. In this paper we trace the shift to cultivation in two areas: Denmark and Finland. Despite the difference in the time scale of agricultural evolution, and despite other chronological and environmental differences, we can, in both cases, isolate three distinct stages in the transition to fanning, thus extending the process well beyond the conventional date for the shift to cultivation. Both the case studies emphasize the long continuation of foraging adaptations, and the long delay before the appearance of a predominantly agricultural economy. This delay has been caused by the development of successful maritime adaptations, which acted as a viable alternative to farming until a specific trigger—a decline in marine resources—occurred and initiated the substitution phase of the transition.     

Hume's oscillating civilization theory

Hume's repeated mentions of the vicissitudes of civilization have thus far been neglected, overlooked, or misinterpreted by Hume scholars. Although his references to the “death” or “ruin” of a nation are somewhat hyperbolic, his cyclical view of history was neither mere rhetoric nor necessarily pessimistic. This paper aims to show that Hume's notion of historical fluctuations was deeply connected with his understanding of the universality of human nature. It also placed Hume in a strategic position from which he could criticize both those who believed in the possibility of perpetual progress and those who forecast the successive decline of the human world. To explore Hume's position in more detail, we must first examine the reasons his argument was often misunderstood, especially in the context of the “rich country–poor country” debate. We also need to examine how Hume's view of the cyclical nature of history, consistently held, can be reconciled with his status as one of the champions of modern civilization.     

Early European Experience in Marine Spatial Planning: Planning the German Exclusive Economic Zone

Marine spatial planning is emerging as an integrated, resource management-led approach to governing the use of the seas. Recent initiatives include those of some north European countries, including Germany, which has now completed a plan for its federal offshore territory. In this article, an analysis is presented of this pioneering plan and the consultation process behind its production, with a particular emphasis on the treatment of different sectoral interests around which the plan was structured. This revealed the attempts to coordinate not only the different demands at sea by means of allocation of areas and cross-sectoral considerations, but also the uneven representation of activities with certain interests gaining strongly and others effectively marginalized. This study provides early empirical evidence of the tensions involved in the attempt to adopt a spatial approach to marine governance. This new domain for planning is situated in the overlapping, but distinct domains of marine management and spatial planning. The conceptual backgrounds of both are drawn upon in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the plan and in suggesting how marine plans might gain by giving close attention to the broader principles of marine and strategic planning.     

Stratigraphy and geochronology of La Playa archaeological site,Sonora, Mexico

La Playa archaeological site in northern Sonora, Mexico contains a long record of human activity that includes the Paleoindian period (terminal Pleistocene) and much of the Holocene. The size and complexity of La Playa has discouraged a systematic characterization of its stratigraphy and geochronology, a deficiency we redress in the study. We distinguished seven stratigraphic units ranging in age from >44,570 to 400 cal yr B.P. using ¹⁴C dates from charcoal and terrestrial gastropods found mostly in archaeological features. All of the buried (in situ) cultural remains are contained in Units B (4690–1580 cal yr B.P.) and C (1010–400 cal yr B.P.) and represent overbank deposition from the nearby Rio Boquillas. Occupation at the site peaks in Units B₄ and B₅, corresponding to the Cienega phase (2800–1800 cal yr B.P.) of the Early Agricultural period. This period coincides with the growth of early agricultural villages in the region and is marked at La Playa by thousands of archaeological features including roasting pits, human burials, and extensive canal irrigation systems. The presence of semi-aquatic and aquatic snails demonstrates that water was present year round in the canal systems constructed during this period. Stable and radiometric isotopic evidence suggests that early agriculturalists diverted ground water over several kilometers from the nearby Rio Boquillas. The extensive Cienega phase occupation ended after about 1700 cal yr B.P. with deep erosion of the site, an event also visible in alluvial records in southern Arizona that marked the end of the Early Agricultural period and significant changes in settlement organization in the region.