bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Collecting Data
Authors: Hedberg Katrina , Maher Julie
Published: August 2019

Epidemiologic data are paramount to targeting and implementing evidence-based control measures to protect the public’s health and safety. A field epidemiologist conducting an investigation to identify the cause of an urgent public health problem must determine quickly what decisions need to be made to implement control measures and what information and data are needed to support these measures. For efficiency, the epidemiologist should assess whether study protocols used in prior investigations, including use of existing data and methods for collecting new data, are available and can be adapted. The epidemiologist should evaluate whether existing data sources (e.g., vital statistics, notifiable disease registries, population-based surveys) are useful for addressing the investigation objectives or whether additional data need to be collected. If primary data collection is undertaken, the epidemiologist must assess the appropriate collection mode (e.g., self-administered, phone, on-line) that will in turn help to dictate the questionnaire format, length, and style of questions (e.g., close-ended, open-ended). Piloting the questionnaire with colleagues and study participants, and making appropriate edits will save time in the long run. Preliminary analyses, even before collection is complete, will ensure that data are high quality and adequate to answer the study objectives. Responding to urgent public health issues requires balancing the speed of response with the need for accurate data and information to support the implementation of control measures. Adapting preexisting protocols and questionnaires facilitates a timely response and consistency across jurisdictions.
Describing Epidemiologic Data
Authors: Fontaine Robert E.
Published: August 2019

Descriptive epidemiology is a systematic organization of reliable data to sharpen understanding of health problems. It addresses the five questions of what (the health condition), how much (counts, rates, and averages), when (time), where (place), and among whom (person). The field epidemiologist organizes these data into tables, graphs, maps, charts, and other displays to reveal patterns of a health problem by these five questions.
Analyzing and Interpreting Data
Authors: Dicker Richard C.
Published: August 2019

A well-planned and carefully executed analysis is essential for any epidemiologic study, even one conducted during the frenzy of a field investigation. An analysis plan, or at least table shells, should be drafted to guide the analysis. To assess the relationship between an exposure and a health outcome, measures of association should be used that are appropriate for the study design—risk ratios for cohort studies, odds ratios for case–control studies, and prevalence ratios for cross-sectional studies. Measures of public health impact can be calculated to reflect the contribution of an exposure, either harmful or beneficial, on occurrence of the outcome among a population. Although tests of statistical significance address the role of chance in an apparent exposure–outcome association, they largely have been replaced by confidence intervals that reflect the range of values of the association that are consistent with the study data. When two or more exposures seem to be associated with the outcome, or when confounding might be present, stratified analysis and logistic regression can be used to clarify the contributions of each exposure. Before accepting that an apparent association is real, consider whether chance, bias, or investigator error might account for the finding. The strength of the evidence, as well as epidemiologic judgment, should guide public health decision-making and action.
Optimizing Epidemiology–Laboratory Collaborations
Authors: Keckler M. Shannon , Salerno Reynolds M. , Shaw Michael W.
Published: August 2019

Whether a field investigation involves a suspected or known infectious disease outbreak or a potential exposure to a toxic chemical or radionuclide, its success often depends on contributions from relevant laboratories; thus, strong collaborations between epidemiologists and laboratory scientists are critical. Outbreak investigators should contact scientists in relevant laboratories as soon as possible, preferably before deployment to the investigation site because early consultations with laboratory experts is often essential to study design. Many local laboratories can perform the more common tests needed, especially those for common infectious agents, whereas laboratories at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can provide backup support or more specialized services when appropriate. Strong collaborations between field epidemiologists and laboratory scientists can enhance the performance of future outbreak investigation teams.
Collecting and Analyzing Qualitative Data
Authors: Wolff Brent , Mahoney Frank , Lohiniva Anna Leena , Corkum Melissa
Published: August 2019

Qualitative research provides an adaptable, open-ended, rigorous method to explore local perceptions of an issue. Qualitative approaches are effective at revealing the subjective logic motivating behavior. They are particularly appropriate for research questions that are exploratory in nature or involve issues of meaning rather than magnitude or frequency. Key advantages of qualitative approaches include speed, flexibility and high internal validity resulting from emphasis on rapport building and ability to probe beneath the surface of initial responses. Given the time-intensive nature of qualitative analysis, samples tend to be small and purposively selected to assure every interview counts. Qualitative studies can be done independently or embedded in mixed-method designs. Qualitative data analysis depends on rigorous reading and rereading texts ideally with more than one analyst to confirm interpretations. Computer software is useful for analyzing large data sets but manual coding is often sufficient for rapid assessments in field settings..
Developing Interventions
Authors: Hadler James L. , Varma Jay K. , Vugia Duc J. , Goodman Richard A.
Published: August 2019

Interventions are control and prevention measures that public health officials select and implement at one or more points in time after initiating a field investigation in response to an acute public health problem. Regardless of the nature of the problem, an immediate need exists to understand what is happening and to recommend and implement control and prevention measures that are scientifically justified and acceptable to the community. Public health officials must recommend these actions often without incontrovertible epidemiologic proof of a causal association between the putative source or cause of the problem and occurrence of exposure and disease or injury. Under such circumstances, the key question for the field epidemiologist and decision-makers is: “How much epidemiologic certainty is required before initiating action?” This chapter discusses the decision-making process regarding interventions during the course of epidemiologic field investigations and concludes with a summary of actions relating to interventions that should be considered at each progressive stage of the field investigation.
Coordination of Multiple States and Federal Agencies
Authors: Jones Timothy , Hedberg Craig
Published: August 2019

Although most outbreaks are confined to a local jurisdiction, the number of multijurisdictional outbreaks (i.e., involving multiple geographic areas, widely distributed contaminated food or pharmaceutical products, or multiple government agencies) is increasing. In such cases, a clear and effective management system for the response must be established promptly. The roles and expectations of all involved responders should be clearly defined and closely monitored. Partners should be in regular communication throughout the response. Procedures and mechanisms for sharing of appropriate data and protecting sensitive information should be established from the onset of the investigation. Public communication about the investigation and response should be closely coordinated among agencies and preferably handled by a single spokesperson. Following the established procedures of the Incident Command System is often appropriate for large-scale or multijurisdictional outbreak responses.
Healthcare Settings
Authors: Christensen Bryan E. , Fagan Ryan P.
Published: August 2019

Healthcare-associated infections (e.g., bloodstream, respiratory tract, urinary tract, or surgical site) can be common in patients. Patients receiving acute and chronic healthcare across various settings, such as hospitals, dialysis clinics, and nursing homes, tend to have comorbidities that make them more susceptible to infection than their counterparts in the general community. Also, some pathogens may be more likely to cause infection in healthcare settings because of the unique exposures that patients can experience, such as invasive procedures or indwelling medical devices. Similar to community outbreak investigations, the primary purpose of an investigation in a healthcare setting is to determine the source of the outbreak, define mode of transmission, disrupt disease transmission, and prevent further transmission.
Exposures and Conditions of Acute Environmental Origin
Authors: Watkins Sharon M. , Fagliano Jerry
Published: August 2019

Investigations of acute events with suspected environmental associations include unique decision points and action steps. Public health professionals should prepare to respond to these investigations by maintaining expertise in fields including toxicology, environmental epidemiology, environmental and occupational medicine, industrial hygiene, environmental risk assessment, and environmental monitoring. Notification of a disease cluster or of an acute exposure event is often the initial trigger for public health awareness of the situation. Setting case definitions and characterizing exposure can be challenging, and input might be needed from subject matter experts, responders, and partners outside of public health. Quantifying the magnitude and route of exposure, understanding the inherent toxicity and duration of exposure, and other factors are unique steps in environmental investigations. Effective risk communication to affected communities and involved partners is critical and should be carefully planned.
Life Cycle of an Innovation Commons
Authors: Potts Jason
Published: August 2019

Chapter 7 examines a life-cycle view of an innovation trajectory that begins with an innovation commons, and considers what happens after the innovation commons collapses when entrepreneurial firms emerge (i.e., the fundamental transformation). This chapter explores how the governance role of an innovation commons will often reform and reconstitute to provide industry-specific public goods through collective action, usually in the form of an industry association. This governance function is associated with what in evolutionary theory is called niche construction. This evolutionary governance model of an innovation trajectory shows the complexities of innovation policy.
Welcoming the Unexpected
Authors: Garland-Thomson Rosemarie
Published: August 2019

This chapter proposes that recognizing the lived experience of disability as an informing principle of full moral personhood is essential to understanding what is required for human flourishing, which is a concept that ultimately supports a wide spectrum of human embodied existence. An attitude of humility and welcome toward the human experience of disability can serve to guide practice, policy, world building, and technology making in the world, all of which will enable individuals to flourish in their full distinctiveness rather than within narrowly conceived definitions of physical and genetic traits thought to be advantageous. A bioethics that intentionally and ethically shapes society, instead of shaping bodies, can urge us to create a shared world inhabitable by the widest range of human users, thus also a world that promotes the cultural, political, institutional, and material climate in which people with disabilities can most effectively flourish.
Editing the Best of All Possible Worlds
Authors: Hauskeller Michael
Published: August 2019

It has been argued that we have a moral obligation to explore human germline modification in order to create the best possible children. In contrast, this chapter argues that in order to flourish as human beings we need to recognize that there are many different ways of being good and that the pursuit of happiness is most likely to succeed not in the extraordinary, the larger than life and better than human and beyond average, but in the ordinary life, which has enough scope and depth to provide us with all the happiness that a human life can possibly have.
Introduction
Authors: Saunders Jennifer B.
Published: August 2019

This chapter introduces the Gupta family through Satya, a member of the extended family. While his story is exceptional as his parents were Indian citizens living in Nigeria at the time of his birth in the United States, his family’s narrative performances of his birth experience demonstrate the ways that narratives help to create and maintain transnational family connections. Satya’s story and the family’s performances of it introduces readers to larger global and transnational processes and serves as an example of the ways that performance analysis can help uncover the methods by which narratives create transnational experiences. Additionally, this chapter describes the content and organization of the book.
New Opportunities, the Brain Drain, and the Guptas
Authors: Saunders Jennifer B.
Published: August 2019

This chapter provides information about the significant contexts of the Hindu American community’s narrative performances. Reviewing reasons behind why people immigrate, it begins with general theories of immigration and then concentrates on the specific reasons why Indians left India during the period after 1947. The chapter then shifts its focus to the context in the United States as a receiving site for immigrants from India with particular attention to race and religion, two dominant themes in American immigration that have contributed to the Guptas’ experiences and the dynamics of their community-making activities. This leads to a discussion of the significance of religion for migrants in the United States before introducing the more specific religious context of the Guptas’ community. Finally, the chapter expands its lens to their transnational extended family with family trees, a description of their social community, and a specific history of key players in the family.
Neither Black nor White
Authors: Saunders Jennifer B.
Published: August 2019

This chapter considers the unique religious and racial dynamics of Atlanta and its location in the U.S. South. Moving beyond the well-known black-and-white binary, it examines the historic experiences of Asian immigrants in the South and how they negotiated this dynamic. Contemporary immigrants, and particularly Hindu immigrants, have carved out space for themselves religiously and geographically in this historically segregated landscape. The chapter reviews the geography of Hindu Atlanta by looking at residential patterns and the religious institutions and informal groups that Hindus have established in the metropolitan area. While temple-building is important in India, it takes on new significance in the United States, where establishing a Hindu temple announces the community’s presence to the rest of the population and chips away at the Protestant hegemony of the South. Because these sites are the most visible sites of Hindu practice, they have received the most attention from scholarly researchers and local media outlets. This tendency to focus on institutional sites of Hinduism overlooks the central role that domestic practice takes in the tradition. This study of the Guptas’ and their community’s practices helps correct this imbalance in scholarly and popular conceptions of Hinduism in the United States and locates much of the transnational community and its formation within members’ homes.
Conclusion
Authors: Saunders Jennifer B.
Published: August 2019

This chapter reviews the kinds of narratives discussed in the book: immigration narratives, narratives about making home, and a recitation of the Sundarkāṇḍ. These narrative performances together demonstrate the means by which members of the Hindu transnational community imagine and enact their experiences: shaping identities, creating homes, and establishing religious communities and practices. Religion here is shaped in this process—changing and shifting as the narratives are performed. Shifting attention to the second generation, it is hard to predict how transnational Hinduism will continue to change, but it is clear that transnationalism will continue to shape Hinduism in India and abroad for the foreseeable future.
Conclusion
Authors: McLaren Margaret A.
Published: August 2019

This chapter suggests that we use the broader framework of feminist social justice to analyze oppression and exploitation at the global level. Noting that in real life the ethical and the political overlap, the chapter advocates a dual-track approach to problems of injustice, both individual, immediate aid and long-term systemic changes. Emphasizing the connections between local economic institutions, such as cooperatives and Fair Trade organizations, and transnational projects, such as the solidarity economy, the chapter shows how the local work of the Self-Employed Women’s Association and Marketplace India connect to transnational projects for both economic justice and gender equity. Supporting grassroots organizations engaged in transnational work for gender and economic justice is one route for engaging in transnational feminist solidarity. In terms of methodology, the chapter concludes by suggesting a shift from independence to interdependence, from identity to intersectionality, and from political interest to social and political imagination.
Introduction
Authors: Telotte J. P.
Published: August 2019

Abstract: This chapter explores the nature of the science fiction (SF) pulp magazine in the 1910s–1940 period, with a special emphasis on the influence of the most influential editor of the period, Hugo Gernsback. It outlines how the subjects and aims of SF in this period paralleled the larger modernist agenda that was also shaping the development of film, with a special emphasis on the visual impact of early film and early film-viewing practices. The chapter especially emphasizes how cinema’s emphasis on “attractions” or “astonishments,” as film historian Tom Gunning labels them, finds a corollary in the new genre of SF’s concern with “wonders.”
The Pulps in the Consumer’s Republic
Authors: Telotte J. P.
Published: August 2019

Abstract: Chapter 2 considers the sort of advertising typically found in the SF pulps. During the formative pre-war years, advertising was seldom about the movies, but it frequently implicated and even exploited a developing film consciousness in the pulp readership. And although some have argued that, in comparison to the numerous “slick” magazines of the period, advertising was not very important to the pulps, this chapter argues otherwise, particularly noting the various film-related ads that were common to all the SF magazines, including education in film-related occupations; placement of film scripts; opportunities for screen tests; and films, cameras, and projectors that were already being marketed to the pulp readers. Those readers were seen as part of what Lizabeth Cohen has termed the new “Consumer’s Republic” of America, with its tastes and desires in consumption already being partly shaped by their experience of the new modernist art of the movies.
The Real Thing
Authors: Telotte J. P.
Published: August 2019

Abstract: Chapter Three traces out how film and a filmic consciousness entered into the fiction that was, ostensibly, the SF pulps’ primary reason for existence. It begins by recognizing the extent to which a cinematic rhetoric filtered into SF writing, which readily drew metaphors, similes, and key images or references from the world of the movies. The chapter then considers how film technology—cameras, sound recording devices, screens, etc.—took a place alongside other sorts of fascinating modern technology as proper subjects for SF narratives. Finally, it examines a variety of the stories that focus specifically on the film industry—of the present and the future—with a special emphasis on the work of neglected SF author Henry Kuttner.
Cover Stories
Authors: Telotte J. P.
Published: August 2019

Abstract: One of the most famous aspects of early pulps such as Amazing, Astounding, and Wonder Stories was their visually arresting covers, drawn by popular artists like Frank R. Paul, Howard V. Brown, and Hans Wesso. This chapter examines how those covers, as well as the magazines’ interior illustrations, drew on a kind of cinematic logic, with their style recalling that of movie posters, their images evoking the practices of movie-viewing, their subjects often including elements of film technology, and, late in the period, their designs even imitating specific films or film images. Like the movies, these illustrations drew readers out of their everyday experience, while starkly visualizing the ability of both the SF and cinematic imaginations to let us see other worlds, other beings, and other technologies.
What are species?
Authors: Barraclough Timothy G.
Published: August 2019

This chapter looks at the ideas underpinning the definition of species. After outlining a standard model of species applicable to sexual organisms, it looks more broadly at the multiple forces that cause lineages to diversify into multiple distinct and independently evolving groups. ‘Independently evolving’ is defined and illustrated by reference to different kinds of organisms: sexuals, asexuals, prokaryotes, and hybridizing taxa. It then discusses whether forces of diversification truly act to generate discrete units, as proposed by the ‘species model’, and outlines some possible alternatives for the structure of diversity, such as a continuum of increasingly independent forms. The chapter emphasizes concrete theory that makes testable predictions to distinguish alternative models of the structure of diversity.
Why are there species?
Authors: Barraclough Timothy G.
Published: August 2019

This chapter continues the discussion of evolutionary methods of species delimitation by exploring how multilocus methods can be used to delimit reproductively isolated groups, and how genetic and trait data can be used in concert to delimit groups that experience divergent selection. These methods provide a way to evaluate the different mechanisms leading to cohesion within species and divergence between them. Multilocus data are scarcer at present than single-locus data discussed in chapter 3, and more work is needed to test alternative hypotheses for the pattern of reproductive isolation—does it generally fall into discrete units or are there broader or gradually declining rates of gene exchange? Divergent selection is less commonly used as a metric for delimiting species, and possible new methods are introduced. Possible uses of whole-genome data are discussed for combining these approaches and testing whether reproductive isolation and divergent selection tend to overlap to generate species or whether more complex models of diversity are required.
What causes speciation?
Authors: Barraclough Timothy G.
Published: August 2019

The balance of evidence from earlier chapters is largely consistent with the reality of species units. This chapter therefore moves on to investigate what causes new species to form. This process involves a series of steps involving the origin of new diversifying conditions, the genetic response of the organisms to those conditions, the persistence of the newly diverged species, and the re-establishment of diversifying conditions in one or more of the descendants to restart the process. Distinguishing the role of geographical isolation and divergent selection in this process, the chapter reviews the theory and evidence for the causes of speciation from systematic evidence across whole clades. In particular, it focuses on whether speciation depends more on the extrinsic conditions favouring divergence or the intrinsic responses of the affected organisms. More integrated theory and coordinated efforts to uncover speciation dynamics for whole clades or regions are needed to answer these questions.
Species and speciation without sex
Authors: Barraclough Timothy G.
Published: August 2019

Species and speciation have been called phenomena of sexual organisms, and many of the concepts developed with sexuals in mind. It is clear theoretically, however, that asexuals should be affected in similar ways by the diversifying processes that cause speciation in sexuals. This chapter investigates evidence for species and speciation in organisms with alternative lifestyles. Bdelloid rotifers are presented as a putative case of asexual species, before the theory and evidence for species in bacteria is discussed. Both theoretically and empirically, the notion that bacteria do not diversify into species can be dismissed. There are interesting differences from eukaryotes, including lower rates of recombination and greater frequency of gene transfer between distant relatives, but neither of these seems to prevent divergence into independently evolving species, at least at core genome regions. Experimental evolution is a useful but neglected avenue to test these ideas further.
Species interactions and contemporary evolution
Authors: Barraclough Timothy G.
Published: August 2019

All organisms live within a diverse assemblage of many other species. Even with strict boundaries to gene flow, species interact in ways that shape their evolutionary dynamics. This chapter outlines how species interactions affect evolution of constituent species within a community. Models of competitive communities illustrate how interactions can constrain evolution, as species shift to occupy new regions with conditions similar to those they were previously adapted to. In contrast, coevolutionary interactions can stimulate evolution and amplify responses to environmental change. Experimental evolution on bacteria isolated from tree-holes formed by the roots of beech trees shows how species adapt to the presence of other species, leading to a decline in the strength of competition. Much more work is needed to investigate these effects in model assemblages of interacting species.
Predicting evolution in diverse communities
Authors: Barraclough Timothy G.
Published: August 2019

Following the outline of basic theory and evidence in chapters 7 and 8, this chapter sets the challenge of attempting to predict evolutionary dynamics in realistically diverse communities. Many challenges and opportunities facing human populations rely on being able to predict living systems. Even when a single focal species such as a pest or disease agent is of particular concern, its dynamics and responses to control measures always depend on interactions with a diverse set of other species. Even when the focus is on whole-ecosystem functioning, that depends on trait responses of constituent species. The chapter outlines several case studies where a multispecies evolutionary approach is required, including managing marine fisheries, controlling crop pests, and managing human microbiomes for improved health. To illustrate possible ways forwards, a model of evolution in a microbial community is presented, and possible methods for tracking evolution in diverse communities are discussed.
Plague, Civil War, and Epochal Evolution in Vergil’s Georgics
Authors: Gardner Hunter H.
Published: August 2019

Vergil’s Noric cattle plague in Georgics 3 develops a more direct correlation between contagious disease and civil discord. In Vergil’s account, the initially conflicting symptoms of the disease (e.g. excessive heat and cold) collapse bodies into liquefied homogeneity, indicating plague’s power to create uniformity among a population and ultimately offer a clean slate upon which to rewrite the body politic. But in that process, the eradication of individual identities—expressed through Vergil’s anthropomorphized cattle—and the open-ended spread of the disease that concludes Book 3 suggest the poet’s ambivalence toward prospects of recovery from contagion as civil war. Through heaps of undistinguishable cadavera and Golden-Age imagery that neutralizes old enmities, as well as through verbal echoes of passages indicting fraternal strife elsewhere in the Georgics, the poet acknowledges the excesses of individual ambition. But he qualifies Lucretian polemic against desire and ambition as markers of personal identity: when pestilence strikes Aristaeus’ beehive in Book 4, its remedy—a violent ritual (the bougonia) that produces homogenous, loyal offspring—fails to offer an adequate model for human existence. The final section of the chapter looks to the failed attempt at settling Crete in the Aeneid as a coda to disease in the Georgics: the episode recalls depictions of epidemic disease in Georgics 3 and 4, clarifying the meaning of Aristaeus’ new hive as a caveat for Aeneas’ attempt to restore the Trojan race.
A Theory of Conditionals
Authors: Stalnaker Robert C.
Published: August 2019

This chapter was the first exposition and defense of an axiom system and model theory for a conditional logic in the possible worlds framework, a theory designed to model counterfactual propositions. It is argued, using a version of the Ramsey test, that the truth-conditions for conditionals that are provided can explain why we assess counterfactuals in the way we do. Counterexamples are given for various principles that are often taken to be valid for conditionals, but that are invalid on the semantics provided. It is argued that the theory helps to explain how propositions that are ostensibly about counterfactual possible situations can be confirmed or disconfirmed by evidence about the actual world.
The Testimony of Sense
Authors: Milnes Tim
Published: August 2019

British intellectual culture witnessed a sharp reduction in the volume of epistemological debate between the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This change coincided with a relocation of philosophical discourse from the treatise to the informal writing of the essayist. This study argues that these two phenomena are related. Around the middle of the eighteenth century, the idea of intersubjectivity emerged as a counterdiscourse to scientific empiricism. Exemplified by Hume’s ‘easy’ philosophy, it sought to reground epistemological correspondence in social correspondence, in the circulation of trusting conversation. Contemporaneously, the rise of the essay, like the concern with trust, reveals the period’s preoccupation with the ways in which intellectual life was being shaped by economic change. The essay genre sought to effect a performative critique of instrumental reason which, while essentially nostalgic in its desire for unsystematic accomplishment, presented a pragmatic counterthrust to Enlightenment rationality. For David Hume and Samuel Johnson, the performance of virtue represents and enacts the social solidarity that either underpins norms or reflects moral truths. For later essayists, however, the fiction of familiarity was both more tenuous and more urgent. In the Romantic period, the essayist’s primary burden became one of establishing social and epistemological norms through the exercise of imaginative power. In the essays of Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt, the enactment of familiar conversation created an experience of singularity and enchantment that was linked to idealized and nostalgic forms of sociability. Thus, while the eighteenth-century essay consolidated ‘truth’, the Romantic essay produced it.
Introduction
Authors: Milnes Tim
Published: August 2019

The introductory chapter begins by offering a reading of Hume’s unsent 1734 letter to Dr Arbuthnot, which recalls how his youthful enthusiasm for philosophy became pathological, leading him into the ‘Disease of the Learned’. The letter marks the point at which Hume consciously abandons the foundational idea of philosophy as the science of knowledge in favour of a holistic and ‘easy’ philosophy based upon the ‘science of man’, which encompasses moral, sentimental, and aesthetic concerns. This new science conceives experience according to the model of experimental thought evident in Hume’s own writing, a model based on the ‘essayistic’, trial-and-error method of intersubjective communication. The chapter explores the consequences of this fundamentally pragmatic reorientation for later eighteenth-century thought. While providing a breakdown and description of subsequent chapters, the Introduction also draws attention to the importance of this reorientation of notions of trust, language, virtue, performance, and the essay genre itself.
Metaphysics
Authors: Berto Francesco , Jago Mark
Published: August 2019

The metaphysics of possible and impossible worlds revolves around a number of questions. Should we treat worlds as genuine entities, which represent something as being F by having an F as a part? This is a hard position to maintain in the case of impossible worlds. Should we treat (non-actual) worlds as non-existent beings? Or should we think of them as abstract entities? Should we give the same answer to these questions for possible and impossible worlds? Yet a further option is to distinguish two senses of ‘is’—encoding vs exemplifying some property—and claim that impossible worlds encode without exemplifying impossibilities. All of these approaches face difficulties. If one thinks these difficulties are insuperable, one can always adopt the approach that worlds are primitive entities. Another fallback position is fictionalism about world, on which truths about worlds are always given ‘in the fiction’.
Eloquent Citations
Authors: Waddell Nathan
Published: August 2019

This chapter examines the legends and stories associated with Beethoven’s so-called ‘Moonlight’ Sonata. Musico-modernist scholarship has not found much to do with the references to Beethoven’s music in E. M. Forster’s ‘A View without a Room’ (1958), a pseudo-epilogue to A Room with a View (1908); Wyndham Lewis’s Tarr (1918); and Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room (1922). Each work, respectively, tells us something about how the terms of Beethovenian convention could enrich depictions of Anglo-German anxiety; bourgeois dullness; and the lure of associativity. In using convention as they do, these texts show how, even if only in passing, convention can prompt a certain kind of cleverness; how convention can channel abstract ideas of despair into articulate, eloquent form—and in channelling them, complicate them.
The Confines of Habit
Authors: Waddell Nathan
Published: August 2019

The focus of this chapter is on how certain modernist writers, principally E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, and Dorothy Richardson, dramatized the Beethoven-focused experiences of piano-playing young women. Concentrating above all on Richardson’s Pilgrimage, the chapter suggests that the depictions of Beethoven’s music in Richardson’s ‘mega-novel’ represent an attempt to fly by the nets of a musicological tradition—the three-period model of dividing up Beethoven’s career—which had long since defined the terms of how that music is supposedly meant to be categorized and, in being categorized, valued. Whereas the emphasis in Forster’s and Woolf’s work is on what those not playing Beethoven’s music make of the player, the emphasis in Richardson’s is on what the player (and listener) makes of Beethoven. This shift indicates an attempt to get inside and therefore authorize the mind of the young woman pianist, to account for her experiences in a prose that substantiates her moments of being through extended sequences of musical impressions.
The Politics of Value
Authors: Waddell Nathan
Published: August 2019

This chapter discusses the music of Beethoven’s so-called ‘late’ period and its representation in the work of Aldous Huxley, among others. Beethoven’s music may or may not embody values over which the politics of authoritarianism arguably can never fully or finally triumph, but it is hard to see what that music can do, practically speaking, when faced with the violent realities of authoritarianism ‘on the ground’: vitriol, fists, weapons, bombs, and tanks. Huxley managed to bring these emphases into a distinctive dialogue with the idea of Beethovenian conventionality. This chapter considers how his most modernist novel, Point Counter Point (1928), affirms the value of Beethoven’s late music; questions the terms of the inter-war musicological consensus which did so much to put that music on a high-cultural pedestal; and uses the implied background of the Beethoven centenary celebrations to dispute the redemptive power of Beethovenolatry in an age of authoritarian entrenchment.
Calvino at a Crossroads
Authors: Duncan Dennis
Published: August 2019

The movement described in Chapter 3—from anti-authorial procedures to a new accommodation with the author-subject—should not be seen purely as a division between one generation of writers and another. During the late 1960s, the structuralist climate was thawing in Paris, and it was natural that individual writers and thinkers should modulate their positions. This chapter charts a shift in the thinking of Italo Calvino, around the time that he first meets and then joins the group. It finds him first of all thrilling to the idea of writing machines, where humans are no longer required in the act of literary creation. Within a couple of years, however, he is softening, insisting that the clinamen—the swerve, the deviation from the rules: a concept he takes from Lucretius—is a necessary feature in great literature, and one that can only be provided by a conscious writer.
Semantics for Reasons
Authors: Weaver Bryan R. , Scharp Kevin
Published: August 2019

The focus of the book is the semantics of reasons locutions, for example reasons for someone to do something or believe something or be a certain way. Given the leading role that talk of reasons plays in many different kinds of philosophy, the book addresses issues in the theory of reasons, metaethics, epistemology, the philosophies of language and perception, and linguistics. The primary aim of the book is to present and defend a contextualist semantics of reasons locutions. the book’s contextualism for reasons locutions is based on the idea that conversations have a particular question under discussion (QUD). The QUD in a conversation determines which meaning the word ‘reason’ has in that context. The book shows why reasons contextualism is preferable to four competing views on the topic: Simon Blackburn’s expressivism, Stephen Finlay’s conceptual analysis, Tim Henning’s alternative contextualism, and Niko Kolodny’s relativism. In addition, the work pursues secondary aims of consolidating insights about the nature of reasons from different philosophical subfields and establishing results about reasons in several debates ranging across philosophy. In particular, the book draws the implications of reasons contextualism for the ontology of reasons, indexical facts, whether there are reasons to be rational, the nature of moral reasons, and the idea that reasons have a special place in the realm of normative phenomena in general.
Reasons
Authors: Weaver Bryan R. , Scharp Kevin
Published: August 2019

Chapter 1 clarifies, organizes, and in some case corrects the extensive literature on the different kinds of reasons. We focus in particular on (i) contributory, conclusive, and sufficient reasons, (ii) adaptive, evaluative, and practical reasons, (iii) normative, motivating, and explanatory reasons, (iv) permissive and obligatory reasons, (v) internal and external reasons, and (vi) agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons. In each case, the chapter traces the history of these terms involved and establish the best way to understand them. The result is the most systematic and comprehensive reasons lexicon to date.
Logical Form
Authors: Weaver Bryan R. , Scharp Kevin
Published: August 2019

Chapter 2 presents the particular reasons locutions on which the book focuses, and argue that one of them is fundamental. The chapter identifies the logical form of this fundamental reasons locution by introducing the idea that ‘reason’ is a predicate/operator hybrid. It then shows why ‘reason’ as a count noun is not ambiguous in any way (contra Mark Schroeder and John Broome), and offer arguments against Justin Snedegar’s claim that reasons locutions are contrastive and John Skorupski’s claim that reasons locutions have an epistemic parameter and/or a weight parameter.
The Consumer’s Decade
Authors: Garavini Giuliano
Published: August 2019

Chapter 3 describes the impact of increasing oil revenues of petrostates in the Middle East, as well as the difficulties OPEC had in succeeding during the first negotiations with the oil companies on the so-called royalty-expensing. Even though oil market prices still remained low and the oil market still favored consumers, OPEC managed to approve in 1968 the “Petroleum Policy Statement”; one of its more important documents with which OPEC members for the first time outlined a common policy to control oil production in their countries.
The Energy Crisis
Authors: Garavini Giuliano
Published: August 2019

Chapter 4 describes the rapid shift from a “consumer” to a “producer” market at the end of the 1960s. This shift was characterized by the radicalization of the political and social climate in most petrostates, by the emergence “peak” oil production in two crucial producers such as the US and Venezuela, and generally by the passage from the era of “cheap oil” to that of “expensive oil.” The chapter will also explain the cultural context of this passage with the rise of environmentalist movements and criticism towards overconsumption that had characterized the societies in industrialized countries. All of these factors led to the first two major victories of OPEC during the Tehran and Tripoli negotiation with the international oil companies in 1971.
The Oil Revolution
Authors: Garavini Giuliano
Published: August 2019

Chapter 5 describes the OAPEC oil embargo and then explains the reasons for the “oil shock”, with its fourfold increase in the price of crude oil by December 1973. After the price increases of 1973 the governments of consuming countries now entered directly the arena of international energy politics with the convening of the Washington Energy Conference of 1974 and then the creation of the International Energy Agency (IEA) by the end of the same year. This chapter also explains why OPEC strived to present itself as the “spearhead” for Third World countries, hoping to establish a New International Economic Order that would reform international economic institutions and promote a kind of globalization more in line with the needs of raw materials producers and developing countries. The apex of this effort by OPEC was achieved in March 1975 with the convening of the OPEC summit of Algiers.
Prologue
Authors: Garavini Giuliano
Published: August 2019

The Prologue describes the rise of Anglo-American “petrocapital” after WWII and the formation of the “concessions system” in the Middle East in the 1920s and 1930s. The chapter concentrates on the formation of the first “petrostate”, Venezuela, that by the end of the 1920s had become totally dependent on oil rent, as well as being the largest petroleum exporter in the world up to the end of the 1960s. The chapter also describes the first nationalist reactions in Latin America as well as in the Middle East to the dominant role of the oligopoly of international oil companies.
Diplomatic Pathos
Authors: Watkins John
Published: August 2019

Chapter 4 explores the cultural resonances of the sixteenth-century realization that the greatest diplomatic achievements, even treaties ending a half-century of war between major powers, are vulnerable to ongoing historical experience. A conflict between extravagant hope that lasting peace might be achieved—expressed in the wake of peace settlements—and disillusioning experience—found in dispatches, speeches, legal treatises, and literary works by diplomats—repeatedly manifested itself in a pathos, sometime even a despair, that haunted diplomatic culture throughout the early modern period. The chapter traces the wider dissemination of this diplomatic pathos in works by the legal theorist Alberico Gentili and the Elizabethan writer-diplomat Sir Philip Sidney. The two men were closely enough associated that their understandings and critiques of the law of nations probably developed through mutual dialogue. Sidney was at least as interested in abstract questions of legal and diplomatic principle as he was in contemporary politics. In the Arcadia, his fantasy Mediterranean turns out to be a laboratory for experimenting with legal and strategic problems, with his two heroes, Pyrocles and Musidorus, providing military and diplomatic solutions. Nevertheless, the endpoint of both Gentili’s and Sidney’s anatomies of the emergent international system was Protestant despair over the possibility of lasting diplomatic achievements in a fallen world.
Translation and Communication
Authors: Pérez Fernández José María
Published: August 2019

Based on a survey of how the tropes of community, commerce, and communication pervaded the rhetoric of political theory and also of certain forms of prose fiction, Chapter 5 suggests a new approach to some of the agents and networks that wove the early modern international community. It focuses in particular on works written or translated by Edward Hoby, James Mabbe, Bernardino de Mendoza, and Justus Lipsius. Its approach to these works, which is founded upon a communicative (and not merely linguistic) turn, reveals the existence of diplomatic third spaces in which ritual, symbolic, or written conventions and semantics converged, despite particular oppositions and differences. Translation, for instance, was used both to consolidate diplomatic alliances and for competitive, international self-fashioning. Translations of political treatises were communicative strategies within the general pragmatics of self-representation—and even more so in an international context dominated by conflict. Literary translation both created diplomatic communities and formed a means of articulating difference within and between those communities. As tokens of exchange between different communities, the texts that this chapter surveys helped to build up symbolic capital for self-representation vis-à-vis the originals whose materials they were appropriating, constructing a common identity (political, religious, linguistic, or otherwise) that relied on the dialectical confrontation with an ‘other’.
The Politics of Translation
Authors: Fouto Catarina
Published: August 2019

The significance of Camões’s The Lusiads (pub. 1572) as a symbol of Portuguese imperialism was such that between 1580 and 1660 the epic was printed at important moments of political change, rendered in different languages, and made available to different European audiences. This European chain of reception and translation, and its contextualization within the European diplomatic circles of this period, illustrates the role played by translation and diplomacy in cultural exchange, but also, crucially, in the very evolution of the political imagination of Europe at a time of conflict and shifting political balance. Diplomats were instrumental in the translation of the epic for the various political ends of Portugal, Spain, Italy, and England, while the political gestures associated with these translations demonstrate how the translation of a single text could be used to further either political conflict or cultural convergence, depending upon the allegiances, tastes, networks, and professional status of the translators.