Articles de revues sur le sujet « Bertrand Russell`s »

La pregunta por la naturaleza de las relaciones es de gran importancia en los escritos tempranos de Bentrand Russell, ya que sus desacuerdos con el idealismo británico se centraban en las relaciones, y su filosofía de las matemáticas depende crucialmente de las relaciones. A pesar de esto, no hay una discusión sistemática y extendida sobre las relaciones en el Russell temprano. Después de examinar la definición de relación de Russell, el autor examina crítica y sistemáticamente los puntos de vista de Russell en los Principia Mathematica sobre los siguientes problemas: si una relación existe aparte de sus términos; el carácter intensional de las relaciones; las dificultades en las relaciones reflexivas; y si las relaciones simples pueden relacionar más de dos relatos.

Bertrand Russell converted from ethical cognitivism to ethical non-cognitivism and this was historically important, as it gave rise in part, to meta-ethics. It also clarified the central problem between cognitivism and non-cognitivism. Russell’s view was that defining “good” is the basic problem of ethics. If “good” is not amorphous, the rest of ethics will follow. He did not believe in ethical knowledge per se and asserted that reason is, and must only be, the servant of desire. A factual statement is thus true if there is an equivalent fact, but as ethical statements do not state facts, there is no issue of a corresponding fact or the statement being true or false in the sense in which factual statements are. Ethics has no statement whether true or false, but consists only of desires of a general kind and people know intuitively what is “right” or “wrong”. To Russell critical thinking is entrenched in the structure of philosophy. His epistemological conviction was that knowledge is difficult to attain, while his ethical conviction showed that people should be expected to exercise freedom of inquiry when arriving at conclusions of something being either “good” or “bad”.

Philosophers have substantially considered the key ideas of Neutral Monism, a philosophical view attempting to overcome the Mind/Body problem, as it was initially developed by Ernst Mach and Bertrand Russell. Yet similar ideas are also found in some key considerations of a few prominent physicists who developed quantum mechanics, although philosophers have neglected them. We will show that Niels Bohr?s principle of complementarity (of the particle and wave aspects of microphysical phenomena) is a gradually developed and experimentally motivated account very close to Russell?s and Mach?s key ideas on Neutral Monism.

For over twenty years, Frege tried to find the foundations of arithmetic through logic, and by doing this, he attempted to establish the truth and certainty of the knowledge. However, when he believed his work wasdone, Bertrand Russell sent him a letter pointing out a paradox, known as Russell‟s paradox. It is often considered that Russell identified the paradox in Frege‟s theories. However, as shown in this paper, Russell, Frege and also George Cantor contributedsignificantly to the identification of the paradox. In 1902, Russell encouraged Frege to reconsider a portion of his work based in a paradox built from Cantor‟s theories. Previously, in 1885, Cantor had warned Frege about taking extensions of concepts in the construction of his system. With these considerations, Frege managed to identify the precise law and definitions that allowed the generation of the paradox in his system. The objective of this paper is to present a historical reconstruction of the paradox in Frege‟s publications and discuss it considering the correspondences exchanged between him and Russell. We shall take special attention to the role played by each of these mathematicians in the identification of the paradox and its developments. We also will show how Frege anticipated the solutions and new theories that would arise when dealing with logico-mathematical paradoxes, including but not limited to Russell‟s paradox.

O artigo de Keith S. Donnellan “Reference and Definite Descriptions” (1966) foi escrito com a intenção de mostrar que as teorias de Bertrand Russell e Peter F. Strawson falham por igual em capturar o uso linguístico efetivo das descrições definidas. Contudo, situação se complica para Donnellan à luz do fato de que muitos usos concebíveis de descrições definidas não parecem caber em nenhuma das duas categorias. Há usos que devem ser entendidos antes como motivados pela deferência do que como atributivos, assim como há usos em que variadas falências referenciais cometidas pelos falantes têm como consequência situações em que a descrição simplesmente não dá conta da variedade de possibilidades, vale dizer, casos em que não cabe falar nem em uso referencial nem em uso atributivo. A razão para tanto parece ser a de que dificilmente há um uso atributivo “puro”. As descrições usadas nos exemplos corriqueiros contêm normalmente elementos referenciais, como nomes e indexicais. Quando estes são mal empregados, a insuficiência da distinção de Donnellan é exposta. A segunda tese aqui apresentada é a de que os usos atributivos previstos no artigo clássico de Donnellan se caracterizam por sua natureza inferencial distintiva, com a consequência de que o seu uso atributivo é em geral menos natural e plausível do que o uso referencial

Are T. S. Eliot’s notes on The Waste Land a scholarly resource or a literary hoax? This oft-repeated question gets to the heart of the poem, which thrives on its allusions, whether seriously or cynically. However, scholars have largely passed over the notes’ (and the poem’s) numberings, despite their complexity and superabundance—a panoply of quantitative relations running alongside the qualitative references. These numberings, with startling frequency, do not compute, which poses a philosophical dilemma greater than arithmetical errors would seem to imply. As a graduate student at Harvard, Eliot took course notes on mathematical logic and number theory that show him grappling again and again with a concept of numerical irrationality, a dilemma that, for him, seems to threaten the coherence of the world itself, the failures of enumeration auguring broader pandemonium. Under the tutelage of Bertrand Russell, Eliot turns to logic in an attempt to discern a coherent system for numbers (and therefore life), but he grows disenchanted with how logic’s paradoxes of self-reference undermines that very possibility. In turn, these paradoxes inform The Waste Land as an irrational subtext, as small miscalculations in the poem and the notes herald impending physical disasters, psychological hazards, and metaphysical perils. In the end, how we count its numbers turns out to have important implications for how we account for The Waste Land’s puzzling and even deadly subjects.

Sitor Situmorang, Toba na Sae; Sejarah lembaga sosial politik abad XIII-XX (Johann Angerler) Raul Pertierra, Science, technology, and everyday culture in the Philippines (Greg Bankoff) Françoise Gérard and François Ruf (eds), Agriculture in crisis; People, commodities and natural resources in Indonesia, 1996-2000 (Peter Boomgaard) Kennet Sillander, Acting authoritatively; How authority is expressed through social action among the Bentian of Indonesian Borneo (Aurora Donzelli) Kathleen M. Nadeau, Liberation theology in the Philippines; Faith in a revolution (Gareth Fisher) Roy Ellen, On the edge of the Banda Zone; Past and present in the social organization of a Moluccan trading network (Gregory Forth) Roy Ellen, On the edge of the Banda Zone; Past and present in the social organization of a Moluccan trading network (J.M. Gullick) I.H.N. Evans, Bornean diaries, 1938-1942 (Fiona Harris) S. Margana, Kraton Surakarta dan Yogyakarta 1769-1874 (Mason C. Hoadley) Henry Frei, Guns of February; Ordinary Japanese soldiers’ views of the Malayan campaign and the fall of Singapore 1941-42 (Russell Jones) Gerrit Knaap and Heather Sutherland, Monsoon traders; Ships, skippers and commodities in eighteenth-century Makassar (J. Thomas Lindblad) David W. Fraser and Barbara G. Fraser, Mantles of merit; Chin textiles from Myanmar, India and Bangladesh (Sandra A. Niessen) Kees Snoek, E. du Perron; Het leven van een smalle mens (Frank Okker) Arthur J. Dommen, The Indochinese experience of the French and the Americans; Nationalism and communism in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam (Vatthana Pholsena) J.H.M.C. Boelaars and A.C. Blom, Mono Koame; ‘Wij denken ook’ (Anton Ploeg) James J. Fox and Dionisio Babo Soares (eds), Out of the ashes; Destruction and reconstruction of East Timor (Johanna van Reenen) Anke Niehof and Firman Lubis (eds), Two is enough; Family planning in Indonesia under the New Order 1968-1998 (Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill) Andrew MacIntyre, The power of institutions; Political architecture and governance (Henk Schulte Nordholt) Carol Ireson-Doolittle and Geraldine Moreno-Black, The Lao; Gender, power, and livelihood (Guido Sprenger) David L. Gosling (with a foreword by Ninian Smart), Religion and ecology in India and Southeast Asia (Bryan S. Turner) William C. Clarke, Remembering Papua New Guinea; An eccentric ethnography (Donald Tuzin) Review essay Gerben Nooteboom: Competition, collateral damage, or ‘just accidents’? Three explanations of ethnic violence in Indonesia: - Jacques Bertrand, Nationalism and ethnic conflict in Indonesia - Cristina Eghenter, Bernard Sellato, and G. Simon Devung (eds), Social science research and conservation management in the interior of Borneo; Unravelling past and present interactions of people and forests - Nancy Lee Peluso and Michael Watts (eds), Violent environments - Günther Schlee (ed.), Imagined differences; Hatred and the construction of identity

1. In the paper "Distinguished Desires”, Mark Platts examines three basic, widely spread opinions about desires: (i) Desires are not susceptible of a reasonable evaluation nor can be a product of reason. (ii) Desires are active powers, internal forces which prompt the agents to act. (iii) Desires are not propositional attitudes. 2. Adopting the first opinion has carried along several consequences in all realms of our life, particularly in the socio-political one. But Platts fights that conception of desire as something immune to reasonings: he thinks that there are ways of reasonably supporting judgements about desires. Take the desire of power for example; we can come to notice that in order to satisfy such a desire it is necessary to adopt a "political way of life”, and that this in turn seems to require a lack of sensibility towards genuine moral concerns and a disposition to give up one’sown convictions. These considerations, Platts suggests, might be taken as a support —and indeed a reasonable one— for some judgement about the desire of power. A reasonable evaluation about the desire of power can thus take place. Whether thoseconsiderations could possibly have some bearing on the actions of a person who has the desire is another matter. 3. In order to combat the extended view of desires as active powers, Platts endorses Thomas Reid’s critique of several ideas related to this conception in its philosophical expression. First, Reid notices that one who adopts the view that every intentional action is prompted by a desire —a motive, in Reid’s terms—, and that when there are "contrary motives” the strongest must be the one which determines the agent to act, is comparing motives and actions with ordinary causes and effects. A seriousdifficulty with such a comparison is that, on Reid’s own words, "nothing is left to the agent, but to be acted upon by the motives”. Secondly, he sees that this model of human action is in need of some notion of the comparative intensity of desires,in the light of which the thesis that "when there are contrary motives, the strongest must prevail” is either trivial or empirically false. Thirdly, Reid detects a difficulty with those cases in which there is no motive on the other side and the only one available must dictate the action: this, he claims, would lead us to deny "such thing as willfulness, caprice or obstinacy among mankind”. 4. Platts examines the rejection of the thesis that holds that desires are propositional attitudes. Hume is traditionally interpreted (Kenny is the best example) as maintaining this third conception of desires, for he writes that a passion or desire is "an original existence” which "contains not any representativequality”, and that this is why passions cannot be opposed by reason, since the objects of reason are "ideas, consider’d as copies, with those objects, which they represent”. The targets of our desires, on the other hand, are not any "real relations of ideas” nor "real existences”. As Platts reads Hume, this is so because our desires are directed to the world of realities, even though they do not purport to represent it but to modify it. Nevertheless, Platts does not conclude, as Kenny does, that Hume denies the propositional character of desires. Rather, in Hume’s theory, the object of the attitude of desire shall be, indeed, some "idea” or proposition, whereas the objective of the state of desire shall never be some "real existence”. It may now be inferred (although not in a straightforward way) that Hume should agree with the thesis that desires are isolated from reason. "Given Hume’s ideas on causal relations and rational relations —Platts writes— Hume cannot have any coherent idea of reasonable causation (of the relation of giving rise to).” It will be impossible for him to reconcile the causal role of mental states with the rationalization role of the propositional contents of those states. Thus, Hume has to render as senseless the idea of a process of reasoning taking place within the natural world; consequently, for him there cannot be a process of reasoning directed to evaluate or modify the desires, "original existences”, one happens to have. 5. The last philosopher that Platts takes into consideration is the Bertrand Russell of The Analysis of Mind, who does maintain a non-propositional theory of desires. First of all, Platts considers it convenient to take a look at Russell’s ideas on beliefs. In his analysis, a belief has three elements: the attitude of believing, "an actual experienced feeling”; the content of the belief, which consists in "present occurrences in the believer”; and the objective of the belief, "the particular fact that makes a given belief true or false”. Now, the contents of the beliefs, Russell claims, might be identified with propositions, although from this he does not derive that the objects of desires are not propositions. His argument against the conception of desires as propositional attitudes (which he supposes to be a "common sense” opinion) is of another kind: he invokes the existence of two phenomena which challenge that conception, to wit, the frequency with which human beings act upon unconscious desires, on the one hand, and, on the other, the fact that non-human animals act from mere "impulsion[s] from behind”, not from "attraction[s] from the future”; and if non-human animals do not have purposes, why should we believe, in spite of Darwin, that human beings do have them? Russell thinks that our faith in rationality is inspired by the fact that humans usually have beliefs about their own desires, about which objects would satisfy such desires. He then sketches a theory that tries to prove that attributing a desire does not require attributing beliefs about that same desire (unconscious desires are, by definition, desires lacking any kinds of beliefs about them). Those beliefs are to be separated from the desire itself, which therefore proves to be non-propositional. Even though beliefs about desires do not seem to represent a problem for Russell’s theory, Platts finds that practical deliberation poses a serious difficulty for it. Take the concepts of a reason to act and of an intentional action: if desires do not have objects, the contents of an agent’s belief could never link with the inexistent contents of that agent’s desires. A belief could not give rise to an intentional action directed to satisfy some given desire in the absence of another specific desire with some specific content, i.e., the desire to have the first desire satisfied. Russell is cautious and avoids the use of such problematic concepts, but the truth is that the concept of intentional action is not so easily dispensable. [Laura Lecuona]

The article deals with the poetical legacy of the Ukrainian writer in Exile Ostap Tarnawsky from the point of view of his philosophic vision. The main attention is drawn to the poetic and semantic representation of the artistic image of the Night, which is revealing its evolution from symbolically-allegorical to philosophically universal meaning. Poet’s lyric is analyzed in the key of the hermeneutical methodology with the dominant aspect of the intermedial sphere in the meaning of interrelation of the verbal and musical arts. It is stressed that the theme of night travelling is one of the dominant in the works of Ukrainian writers in Exile at large. A person is viewed in the poetical works of the Ukrainian emigrants as a nomad at the eternal way of life. Thus it touches the problems of human being and reveals them in existential focus (namely in the aspects of the human destiny, suffering, death etc.). Poetic of the lyrics is analyzed at the different text levels such as nigh landscapes, phonic figures (alliteration, as- sonance, and dissonance), personification etc. Imagery level is out viewed from the position of its connection with folk- lore imagery as well as the old Ukrainian literature (“The Tale of Igor`s Campaign”) and world masterpieces (“Hamlet” by William Shakespeare, “The Drunken Boat” by Arthur Rimbaud, poems by T.S.Eliot and others). Much attention is paid to the main colours of the O.Tarnawsky’s artistic world with its subjective understanding where the contrary to the black is blue. The author of the paper comes to conclusion that the lyrics of O.Tarnawsky is deeply philosophic and reveals the main concept of the poet about the Myth of death and immortality of human being. The most vivid this concept is embodied in the poems “Ballad about the Myth of the Death”, “Ballad about the Black Night”, “Ballad about Eternal Guard”, “Universe of the Heart”, “Under the Window of Eternity”, “Phantoms in the Emptiness” and others. Symbolic theme of the night way according to the words of Bertrand Russell “The life of Man is a long march through the night” is extended in O.Tarnawsky’s poetry to the concept of the generation succession as the death march of the whole nation with existential questions (Who will lead us to eternity? Will silent sky speak to us? etc.). Nocturnal world out view was formed by his emigrant destiny and understanding of historical injustice of his nation. And in that aspect O.Tarnawsky is the most representative poet among the Ukrainian writers in Exile in the second half of the 20th century.

Se zaměřením na kapitoly o raném novověku v Loewensteinově Víře v pokrok, autor polemizuje s tématy „nových sil” na prahu procesu evropské modernizace, to jest s disciplinací a svobodou. Umisťuje Loewensteinovu interpretaci do kontextu nedávného socio-historického výzkumu, ale i dřívějších prací (například Freedom and Organization Bertranda Russella z roku 1934), za účelem popisu raně novověkého fenoménu civilizace s jejími proměnami vnějšího i vnitřního nátlaku, prvky soutěže a vzájemné závislosti, homogenizace člověka, disciplinace jako předpokladu občanské společnosti, a otevřené, nebo nadcházející, budoucnosti jako sférami života nejvlastnějšími lidským bytostem.

AbstractGuiding the positive evolution of behavior is an admirable goal. Wilson et al.'s arguments are based largely on studies of problem correction. The methodology is sound, but not the post hoc ergo procter hoc extrapolation. What is required is evidence that it can proactively generate positive change. The evolution of human behavior to date has been affected by many factors that include unmalleable and unpredicted environmental changes.

Příspěvek kriticky reaguje na pojednání o russelliánském monismu v monografii Jaké to je, nebo o čem to je? Tomáše Hříbka. Podle Hříbka russelliánský monismus, přístup k fenomenálnímu vědomí inspirovaný vhledy Bertranda Russella, nepředstavuje skutečnou alternativu vůči materialismu, dualismu a idealismu. Autor příspěvku argumentuje, že russelliánský monismus naopak lze pokládat za svébytné metafyzické stanovisko, jež se navíc vyhýbá hlavním úskalím těchto tradičních přístupů. Nejprve odpovídá na námitku, že fundamentální jsoucna neutrálního monismu jsou ve skutečnosti mentalistická, a tedy nikoli neutrální.V souvislosti s neutrálním monismem rovněž poukazuje na problémy Hříbkovy definice fyzikalismu v duchu via negativa. Autor dále vysvětluje, proč na rozdíl od dualismu nepředstavuje pro russelliánský monismus vážnou obtíž kauzální uzávěra fyzična, a upozorňuje, že russelliánský monismus dokáže lépe než materialismus odpovědět na výzvy, jako jsou argument z myslitelnosti a argument z poznání. Ačkoli tedy russelliánský monismus má s materialismem, dualismem a idealismem jistě styčné plochy, daří se mu vyhnout nejvážnějším obtížím těchto směrů, a máme proto dobrý důvod chápat jej jako svébytný a slibný přístup k fenomenálnímu vědomí.

Příspěvek kriticky reaguje na pojednání o russelliánském monismu v monografii Jaké to je, nebo o čem to je? Tomáše Hříbka. Podle Hříbka russelliánský monismus, přístup k fenomenálnímu vědomí inspirovaný vhledy Bertranda Russella, nepředstavuje skutečnou alternativu vůči materialismu, dualismu a idealismu. Autor příspěvku argumentuje, že russelliánský monismus naopak lze pokládat za svébytné metafyzické stanovisko, jež se navíc vyhýbá hlavním úskalím těchto tradičních přístupů. Nejprve odpovídá na námitku, že fundamentální jsoucna neutrálního monismu jsou ve skutečnosti mentalistická, a tedy nikoli neutrální.V souvislosti s neutrálním monismem rovněž poukazuje na problémy Hříbkovy definice fyzikalismu v duchu via negativa. Autor dále vysvětluje, proč na rozdíl od dualismu nepředstavuje pro russelliánský monismus vážnou obtíž kauzální uzávěra fyzična, a upozorňuje, že russelliánský monismus dokáže lépe než materialismus odpovědět na výzvy, jako jsou argument z myslitelnosti a argument z poznání. Ačkoli tedy russelliánský monismus má s materialismem, dualismem a idealismem jistě styčné plochy, daří se mu vyhnout nejvážnějším obtížím těchto směrů, a máme proto dobrý důvod chápat jej jako svébytný a slibný přístup k fenomenálnímu vědomí.

Known as ‘Pope of Russel Square’ in the history of English literature from the 20th century, T. S. Eliot’s, literary ingenuity augmented the modernist writings. ‘The Waste Land’ is one such eventuality that, retrospectively from the publication, permuted worldwide, giving boundless definitions and ceaseless critical appraisals. Contriving the idiom of modern poetry, his career as a part never went over the hill since it was chiselled out of the emotional and intellectual retaliation to a gest which was his life itself. The close-grained, fragmented study of his works, has seemingly been immense and comprehensive. Being portrayed as the literary arbiter, his personal life was lucid and full of drama. The oeuvre hence hollers the zeitgeist of his era. As a philosopher, his happy hunting ground was both religion and the emphasis on conforming to the basic moral values of life. His ethical involvement with life emanates from the underlying desolation and devastation regarding his personal life. When he assiduously carried his position in poetry, politics, and literature, he was tagged as heedless in his personal life. The childhood limitations sprouted out from the complications of inguinal hernia, later when he was at Harvard while studying Sanskrit and Indian philosophy, the commencement of WWI and the escape from Oxford after witnessing a society which was wartorn, a love affair with Emily Hale which closed out in two shakes of a lamb’s tail and the hasty entry into wedlock with Vivienne Haigh-Wood whose alleged adultery with Bertrand Russel and her ailment that followed took a toll on his burgeoning literary career. The shuffling was wilfully implemented, as alluded to by many critics. But for a feeler who, exasperated by the atrocities of war, could not necessarily keep the word restrained to the end and the overscrupulous side of Eliot could not have missed the slightest of the change either.

The subject of this interdisciplinary article is a literary, journalistic and historiographic tradition of Lenin’s perception in Great Britain since early 1920-s up to our time. The main trajectory of this tradition is seen as a movement from myth, impressions, illusions of B. Russell, H. Wells, Gareth Jones, poets W.H. Auden and Hugh MacDiarmid to the revelations of Pamela Travers, Malcolm Muggeridge and later - to contemporary historians and writers Robert Conquest, Robert Service, Orlando Figes, Helen Rappaport, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Catherine Merridale, who base their works on archival research and explore the ambivalent phenomenon of Lenin’s personality: his rationalism, coldness, ruthlessness, cynicism, focus on theory, lack of interest in life, power hunger and propensity to repressions. British scholars convincingly show that this outstanding politician negatively influenced the course of history, he did incredible harm to Russia, which, in their opinion, he didn’t like. And he ended tragically like the majority of dictators: the revolution he spawned consumed him - being ill, he was isolated by his “successor” Stalin in a country house Gorky near Moscow. And then, against his will, he was not interred in Volkovo cemetery, next to his mother, but was doomed, like a vampire, to “eternal immortality” and the remains of his body are still tortured by regular mummification.

RESUMENLa historia del cristianismo no se entiende sin el complejo fenómeno mariano. El culto mariano ha afianzado la construcción de identidades colectivas, pero también individuales. La figura de la Virgen María estableció un modelo de conducta desde cada contexto histórico-cultural, remarcando especialmente los ideales de maternidad y virginidad. Dentro del imaginario católico, la Europa contemporánea ha estado marcada por la formación de una cultura aparicionista que se ha generadoa partir de diversas apariciones marianas que han establecido un canon y un marco de interpretación que ha alimentado las guerras culturales entre secularismo y catolicismo.PALABRAS CLAVE: catolicismo, Virgen María, cultura aparicionista, Lourdes, guerras culturales.ABSTRACTThe history of Christianity cannot be understood without the complex Marian phenomenon. Marian devotion has reinforced the construction of collective, but also of individual identities. 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Hermann Weyl published a brief survey as preface to a review of The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell in 1946. In this survey he used the phrase, “The Fall and Original Sin of Set Theory.” Investigating the background of this remark will require that we pay attention to a number of issues within the foundations of mathematics. For example: Did God make the integers—as Kronecker alleged? Is mathematics set theory? Attention will also be given to axiomatic set theory and relevant ontic pre-conditions, such as the difference between number and number symbols, to number as “an aspect of objective reality” (Gödel), integers and induction (Skolem) as well as to the question if infinity—as endlessness—could be completed. In 1831 Gauss objected to viewing the infinite as something completed, which is not allowed in mathematics. It will be argued that the actual infinite is rather connected to what is present “at once,” as an infinite totality. By the year 1900 mathematicians believed that mathematics had reached absolute rigour, but unfortunately the rest of the twentieth century witnessed the opposite. The axiom of infinity ruined the expectations of logicism—mathematics cannot be reduced to logic. The intuitionism of Brouwer, Weyl and others launched a devastating attack on classical analysis, further inspired by the outcome of Gödel’s famous proof of 1931, in which he has shown that a formal mathematical system is inconsistent or incomplete. Intuitionism created a whole new mathematics, which finds no counter-part in classical mathematics. Slater remarked that within this logical paradise of Russell lurked a serpent, hidden behind the unjustified employment of the at once infinite. According to Weyl, “This is the Fall and original sin of set theory for which it is justly punished by the antinomies.” In conclusion, a few systematic distinctions are introduced.

“The intellect must not only desire surreptitious delights; it must become completely free and celebrate Saturnalia.” (Nietzsche 6) Theory-jamming suggests an array of eclectic methods, deployed in response to emerging conditions, using traditional patterns to generate innovative moves, seeking harmony and syncopation, transparent about purpose and power, aiming for demonstrable certainties while aware of their own provisional fragility. In this paper, theory-jamming is suggested as an antidote for the confusion and disarray that typifies communication theory. Communication theory as the means to conceptualise the transmission of information and the negotiation of meaning has never been a stable entity. Entrenched divisions between ‘administrative’ and ‘critical’ tendencies are played out within schools and emerging disciplines and across a range of scientific/humanist, quantitative/qualitative and political/cultural paradigms. “Of course, this is only the beginning of the mischief for there are many other polarities at play and a host of variations within polar contrasts” (Dervin, Shields and Song). This paper argues that the play of contending schools with little purchase on each other, or anything much, has turned meta-discourse about communication into an ontological spiral. Perhaps the only way to ride out this storm is to look towards communication practices that confront these issues and appreciate their theoretical underpinnings. From its roots in jazz and blues to its contemporary manifestations in rap and hip-hop and throughout the communication industries, the jam (or improvised reorganisation of traditional themes into new and striking patterns) confronts the ontological spiral in music, and life, by taking the flotsam flung out of the spiral to piece together the means to transcend the downward pull into the abyss. Many pretenders have a theory. Theory abounds: language theory, number theory, game theory, quantum theory, string theory, chaos theory, cyber-theory, queer theory, even conspiracy theory and, most poignantly, the putative theory of everything. But since Bertrand Russell’s unsustainable class of all classes, Gödel’s systemically unprovable propositions and Heisenberger’s uncertainty principle, the propensity for theories to fall into holes in themselves has been apparent. Nowhere is this more obvious than in communication theory where many schools contend without actually connecting to each other. From the 1930s, as the mass media formed, there have been administrative and critical tendencies at war in the communication arena. Some point to the origins of the split in the Institute of Social Research’s Radio Project where pragmatic sociologist, Paul Lazarsfeld broke with Frankfurt School critical theorist, Theodor Adorno over the quality of data. Lazarsfeld was keen to produce results while Adorno complained the data over-simplified the relationship between mass media and audiences (Rogers). From this split grew the twin disciplines of mass communication (quantitative, liberal, commercial and lost in its obsession with the measurement of minor media effects) and cultural/media studies (qualitative, post-Marxist, radical and lost in simulacra of their own devising). The complexity of interactions between these two disciplines, with the same subject matter but very different ways of thinking about it, is the foundation of the ontological black hole in communication theory. As the disciplines have spread out across universities, professional organizations and publishers, they have been used and abused for ideological, institutional and personal purposes. By the summer of 1983, the split was documented in a special issue of the Journal of Communication titled “Ferment in the Field”. Further, professional courses in journalism, public relations, marketing, advertising and media production have complex relations with both theoretical wings, which need the student numbers and are adept at constructing and defending new boundaries. The 90s saw any number ‘wars’: Journalism vs Cultural Studies, Cultural Studies vs Cultural Policy Studies, Cultural Studies vs Public Relations, Public Relations vs Journalism. More recently, the study of new communication technologies has led to a profusion of nascent, neo-disciplines shadowing, mimicking and reacting with old communication studies: “Internet studies; New media studies; Digital media studies; Digital arts and culture studies; Cyberculture studies; Critical cyberculture studies; Networked culture studies; Informatics; Information science; Information society studies; Contemporary media studies” (Silver & Massanari 1). As this shower of cyberstudies spirals by, it is further warped by the split between the hard science of communication infrastructure in engineering and information technology and what the liberal arts have to offer. The early, heroic attempt to bridge this gap by Claude Shannon and, particularly, Warren Weaver was met with disdain by both sides. Weaver’s philosophical interpretation of Shannon’s mathematics, accommodating the interests of technology and of human communication together, is a useful example of how disparate ideas can connect productively. But how does a communications scholar find such connections? How can we find purchase amongst this avalanche of ideas and agendas? Where can we get the traction to move beyond twentieth century Balkanisation of communications theory to embrace the whole? An answer came to me while watching the Discovery Channel. A documentary on apes showed them leaping from branch to branch, settling on a swaying platform of leaves, eating and preening, then leaping into the void until they make another landing, settling again… until the next leap. They are looking for what is viable and never come to ground. Why are we concerned to ground theory which can only prove its own impossibility while disregarding the certainty of what is viable for now? I carried this uneasy insight for almost five years, until I read Nietzsche on the methods of the pre-Platonic philosophers: “Two wanderers stand in a wild forest brook flowing over rocks; the one leaps across using the stones of the brook, moving to and fro ever further… The other stands there helplessly at each moment. At first he must construct the footing that can support his heavy steps; when this does not work, no god helps him across the brook. Is it only boundless rash flight across great spaces? Is it only greater acceleration? No, it is with flights of fantasy, in continuous leaps from possibility to possibility taken as certainties; an ingenious notion shows them to him, and he conjectures that there are formally demonstrable certainties” (Nietzsche 26). Nietzsche’s advice to take the leap is salutary but theory must be more than jumping from one good idea to the next. What guidance do the practices of communication offer? Considering new forms that have developed since the 1930s, as communication theory went into meltdown, the significance of the jam is unavoidable. While the jam session began as improvised jazz and blues music for practice, fellowship and fun, it quickly became the forum for exploring new kinds of music arising from the deconstruction of the old and experimentation with technical, and ontological, possibilities. The jam arose as a spin-off of the dance music circuit in the 1930s. After the main, professional show was over, small groups would gather together in all-night dives for informal, spontaneous sessions of unrehearsed improvisation, playing for their own pleasure, “in accordance with their own esthetic [sic] standards” (Cameron 177). But the jam is much more than having a go. The improvisation occurs on standard melodies: “Theoretically …certain introductions, cadenzas, clichés and ensemble obbligati assume traditional associations (as) ‘folkways’… that are rarely written down but rather learned from hearing (“head jobs”)” (Cameron 178-9). From this platform of tradition, the artist must “imagine in advance the pattern which unfolds… select a part in the pattern appropriate to the occasion, instrument and personal abilities (then) produce startlingly distinctive sound patterns (that) rationalise the impossible.” The jam is founded on its very impossibility: “the jazz aesthetic is basically a paradox… traditionalism and the radical originality are irreconcilable” (Cameron 181). So how do we escape from this paradox, the same paradox that catches all communication theorists between the demands of the past and the impossibility of the future? “Experimentation is mandatory and formal rules become suspect because they too quickly stereotype and ossify” (Cameron 181). The jam seems to work because it offers the possibility of the impossible made real by the act of communication. This play between the possible and the impossible, the rumbling engine of narrative, is the dynamo of the jam. Theory-jamming seeks to activate just such a dynamo. Rather than having a group of players on their instruments, the communication theorist has access a range of theoretical riffs and moves that can be orchestrated to respond to the question in focus, to latest developments, to contradictions or blank spaces within theoretical terrains. The theory-jammer works to their own standards, turning ideas learned from others (‘head jobs’) into their own distinctive patterns, still reliant on traditional melody, harmony and syncopation but now bent, twisted and reorganised into an entirely new story. The practice of following old pathways to new destinations has a long tradition in the West as eclecticism, a Graeco-Roman, particularly Alexandrian, philosophical tradition from the first century BC to the end of the classical period. Typified by Potamo who “encouraged his pupils instead to learn from a variety of masters”, eclecticism sought the best from each school, “all that teaches righteousness combined, the complete eclectic unity” (Kelley 578). By selecting the best, most reasonable, most useful elements from existing philosophical beliefs, polymaths such as Cicero sought the harmonious solution of particular problems. We see something similar to eclecticism in the East in the practices of ‘wild fox zen’ which teaches liberation from conceptual fixation (Heine). The 20th century’s most interesting eclectic was probably Walter Benjamin whose method owes something to both scientific Marxism and the Jewish Kabbalah. His hero was the rag-picker who had the cunning to create life from refuse and detritus. Benjamin’s greatest work, the unfinished Arcades Project, sought to create history from the same. It is a collection of photos, ephemera and transcriptions from books and newspapers (Benjamin). The particularity of eclecticism may be contrasted with the claim to universality of syncretism, the reconciliation of disparate or opposing beliefs by melding together various schools of thought into a new orthodoxy. Theory-jammers are not looking for a final solution but rather they seek what will work on this problem now, to come to a provisional solution, always aware that other, better, further solutions may be ahead. Elements of the jam are apparent in other contemporary forms of communication. For example bricolage, the practice from art, culture and information systems, involves tinkering elements together by trial and error, in ways not originally planned. Pastiche, from literature to the movies, mimics style while creating a new message. In theatre and TV comedy, improvisation has become a style in itself. Theory-jamming has direct connections with brainstorming, the practice that originated in the advertising industry to generate new ideas and solutions by kicking around possibilities. Against the hyper-administration of modern life, as the disintegration of grand theory immobilises thinkers, theory-jamming provides the means to think new thoughts. As a political activist and communications practitioner in Australia over the last thirty years, I have always been bemused by the human propensity to factionalise. Rather than getting bogged down by positions, I have sought to use administrative structures to explore critical ideas, to marshal critical approaches into administrative apparatus, to weld together critical and administrative formations in ways useful to both sides, bust most importantly, in ways useful to human society and a healthy environment. I've been accused of selling-out by the critical camp and of being unrealistic by the administrative side. My response is that we have much more to learn by listening and adapting than we do by self-satisfied stasis. Five Theses on Theory-Jamming Eclecticism requires Ethnography: the eclectic is the ethnographer loose in their own mind. “The free spirit surveys things, and now for the first time mundane existence appears to it worthy of contemplation…” (Nietzsche 6). Enculturation and Enumeration need each other: qualitative and quantitative research work best when they work off each other. “Beginners learned how to establish parallels, by means of the Game’s symbols, between a piece of classical music and the formula for some law of nature. Experts and Masters of the Game freely wove the initial theme into unlimited combinations.” (Hesse) Ephemera and Esoterica tell us the most: the back-story is the real story as we stumble on the greatest truths as if by accident. “…the mind’s deeper currents often need to be surprised by indirection, sometimes, indeed, by treachery and ruse, as when you steer away from a goal in order to reach it more directly…” (Jameson 71). Experimentation beyond Empiricism: more than testing our sense of our sense data of the world. Communication theory extends from infra-red to ultraviolet, from silent to ultrasonic, from absolute zero to complete heat, from the sub-atomic to the inter-galactic. “That is the true characteristic of the philosophical drive: wonderment at that which lies before everyone.” (Nietzsche 6). Extravagance and Exuberance: don’t stop until you’ve got enough. Theory-jamming opens the possibility for a unified theory of communication that starts, not with a false narrative certainty, but with the gaps in communication: the distance between what we know and what we say, between what we say and what we write, between what we write and what others read back, between what others say and what we hear. References Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 2002. Cameron, W. B. “Sociological Notes on the Jam Session.” Social Forces 33 (Dec. 1954): 177–82. Dervin, B., P. Shields and M. 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M. “The Empirical and the Critical Schools of Communication Research.” Communication Yearbook 5 (1982): 125-144. Shannon, C.E., and W. Weaver. The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949. Silver, David, Adrienne Massanari. Critical Cyberculture Studies. New York: NYU P, 2006. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Stockwell, Stephen. "Theory-Jamming: Uses of Eclectic Method in an Ontological Spiral." M/C Journal 9.6 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0612/09-stockwell.php>. APA Style Stockwell, S. (Dec. 2006) "Theory-Jamming: Uses of Eclectic Method in an Ontological Spiral," M/C Journal, 9(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0612/09-stockwell.php>.