By Emily R. Grosholz (NHC Fellow, 1985–86) The Cartesian method, construed as a way of organizing domains of knowledge according to the "order of reasons," was a powerful reductive tool. Descartes made significant strides in mathematics, physics, and metaphysics by relating certain complex items and problems back to more simple elements that served as starting … Continued
By Edmund L. Pincoffs (NHC Fellow, 1981–82) Attuned to the revival of moral concern in public and private life, Edmund Pincoffs argues in Quandaries and Virtues that the "structures known as ethical theories are more threats to moral sanity and balance than instruments for their attainment because ethical theories are, by nature, reductive." Pincoffs's is … Continued
Edited by Bruce Kapferer (NHC Fellow, 2004–05) The powerful individualist and subjectivist turn in anthropology – a turn that cannot be easily separated from larger political processes of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism – is one factor resulting in notions of the social and of society as becoming little else than empty shells of small or no … Continued