bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Regulating Corruption in International Markets
Authors: Søreide Tina
Published: May 2019

Markets and societies need protection against corruption. Though governments have introduced tougher regulations against the problem, enforcement failure is common. This chapter explains why. The nature of corruption makes the problem difficult to control, enforcement functions are dysfunctional, and political quests for commercial benefits reduce government commitment. Forces that strengthen the effect of anti-corruption regulations nevertheless exist. Across the globe, enforcement agencies are starting to pick up economic ideas on how to break the trust between those who collude and how to incentivize firms to self-report incidents and self-police their operations. Increasingly, firms want returns from their investment in corporate compliance, and major players in the private sector support policy initiatives for predictable and consistent law enforcement. Combined with regulations that target the problem indirectly—such as competition oversight, financial oversight, and anti-money-laundering tools—the costs associated with bribery outweigh the benefits for an increasing share of market players.
Language Comprehension, Inference, and Alternatives
Authors: Skordos Dimitrios , Barner David
Published: May 2019

This chapter discusses the importance of pragmatic inference involving alternatives for language comprehension, reviewing the problem of restricting the inferential hypothesis space. It presents a brief overview of theoretical and empirical work on adults and then turns to developmental evidence from two characteristic case studies: scalar implicature and quantifier spreading, where children struggle when interpreting sentences including quantifiers. The authors argue that in both cases, children’s problems are closely linked to difficulties in reducing the inferential hypothesis space, while matching what is said to what is meant. Children are argued to misidentify the Question Under Discussion (QUD), which leads them to consider irrelevant alternatives and make non-adult-like inferences. When relevant alternatives are made salient and the QUD is appropriately identified, children make inferences in an adult-like manner.
Genericity
Authors: Lazaridou-Chatzigoga Dimitra
Published: May 2019

‘Birds fly’, ‘The fox is a sly animal’, and ‘A cat lands on its feet’ are all generic generalizations that allow speakers to talk about kinds of entities rather than individuals and to refer to their characteristic or essential properties. Their complex yet fundamental nature has attracted the interest of linguists and philosophers of language since the 1970s while they have also recently become the focus of concentrated interest by cognitive and developmental psychologists. The two main approaches to genericity in two different fields, formal semantics and cognitive psychology, are discussed. The review of the experimental research on the topic reveals that while the experimental study of generics is still in its early stages, interdisciplinary work that integrates the tools and perspectives of both strands of investigation can substantially advance our understanding of the topic.
Exhaustivity inIt-Clefts
Authors: Onea Edgar
Published: May 2019

This chapter provides an overview of the most important theoretical positions on the exhaustivity inference often associated with it-clefts in English and comparable structures in other languages alongside with a brief review of the results of a number of experimental studies. There is a surprising discrepancy between the predictions of the theoretical analyses and the empirical findings. While theoretical approaches tend to derive exhaustivity as a necessary semantic inference, most experimental studies suggest that the exhaustivity of it-clefts might be a pragmatic inference. The chapter discusses this discrepancy in some detail and suggests some potential solutions.
Spatial Terms
Authors: Grigoroglou Myrto , Papafragou Anna
Published: May 2019

Across the world’s languages, spatial terms are organized around a set of basic, non-linguistic spatial notions. Nevertheless, there is also considerable cross-linguistic variation in terms of both the kinds of linguistic devices used to express spatial relations and the way these devices carve up the semantic domain of space. This chapter reviews literature on spatial terms cross-linguistically, focusing on three main sub-divisions of the spatial domain: location (i.e. the static position of an object in space); motion (i.e. the dynamic displacement of an object in space); and Frames of Reference (FoR; i.e. abstract spatial-coordinate axes imposed on spatial configurations). The intricate relation between spatial language and non-linguistic spatial cognition is discussed throughout the chapter.
Metaphor
Authors: Pouscoulous Nausicaa , Dulcinati Giulio
Published: May 2019

Metaphors are pervasive in literature and everyday speech. This chapter explores how metaphors are interpreted both by adults and by children. It reviews recent findings and directions of research on four main issues: What is the relation between figurative and literal meaning in metaphor processing? How is the metaphorical meaning arrived at and which factors are at play in the interpretative process? What are the differences and similarities in processing between different types of metaphors and between metaphors and other tropes? How does metaphor comprehension develop through childhood? The chapter concludes with a few fairly clear answers the psycholinguistic literature has provided and a lot of open questions to be investigated in future research.
Verbal Uncertainty
Authors: Juanchich Marie , Sirota Miroslav , Bonnefon Jean-François
Published: May 2019

When communicating uncertain facts, about risky outcomes or about the likelihood of future prospects, one may use numerical probabilities (e.g. there is a 20% probability) or verbal probabilities (e.g. there is a small chance). The present chapter provides an overview of the research into verbal probabilities; a survey of the methods used to tackle the meaning of verbal probabilities and unveil their usage; and an overview of the key findings in the field, including how people interpret the degree of certainty conveyed by verbal probabilities, the factors that affect this interpretation, how verbal probabilities are directional and can be used to frame uncertainty and the way speakers use verbal probabilities to make predictions.
Pronouns
Authors: Rohde Hannah
Published: May 2019

When do speakers produce ambiguous expressions? How do comprehenders interpret such expressions to infer a speaker’s intended meaning? This chapter reviews a body of work on pronoun production and interpretation, considering a number of computational, linguistic, and psycholinguistic frameworks and the factors that have been posited to drive pronoun use. These factors include surface structural elements (grammatical role, syntactic parallelism), information structural cues (topichood), lexical semantics and real-world knowledge (thematic roles, causality), as well as aspects of the larger discourse (recency, rhetorical structure, coherence relations). The chapter then turns to a more general model of message production and interpretation that incorporates elements of existing pronoun models using a Bayesian approach.
Presuppositions, Projection, and Accommodation
Authors: Schwarz Florian
Published: May 2019

This chapter reviews experimental work on presupposition, both in terms of methodological developments and the theoretical implications of experimental results. Presuppositions convey information that is typically assumed to already be taken for granted by the discourse participants. Furthermore, they are characteristically unaffected by a variety of linguistic embedding environments, such as negation, conditionals, and questions. After providing a brief background on the topic, and introducing key issues from the current literature, experimental approaches to investigating presuppositions are discussed, covering both unembedded and embedded environments, as well as the relation of presuppositions to the discourse context. The final section concludes and provides an outlook on future directions for the field.
Antecedent-Contained Deletion
Authors: Syrett Kristen
Published: May 2019

This chapter introduces the linguistic phenomenon of Antecedent-Contained Deletion (ACD): a type of construction in which a site of Verb Phrase Ellipsis (VPE) is contained in the antecedent from which it derives its interpretation. The chapter reviews theoretical approaches to resolving interpretation in ACD structures (drawing primarily on the covert movement operation of Quantifier Raising (QR)), and the accessibility of one or more sentential interpretations when the site of ellipsis is embedded in non-finite and finite clauses. Behavioural responses from offline judgement studies with children and adults, as well as online studies with adults, provide data bearing directly on these theoretical accounts.
Scalar Implicatures
Authors: Breheny Richard
Published: May 2019

This chapter reviews recent experimental research into questions about how language and other functions of the mind are integrated when humans communicate. It posits a Gricean system that serves this purpose and discusses how recent developmental and ethological research provides evidence for such a system’s existence. Subsequently it focuses on the much-studied phenomenon of scalar implicature. It first considers the phenomenon of scalar implicature in the broader context of pragmatic effects. A short review of theoretical debates as to the status of various sub-types of scalar phenomenon is followed by sections that discuss experimental research relevant to different interfaces in the Gricean system when it comes to scalars.
Reference and Informativeness
Authors: Davies Catherine , Arnold Jennifer E.
Published: May 2019

How do speakers get other people to understand what they are talking about? Language wouldn’t succeed unless we were able to refer to ideas and things in the world, and get other people to understand them. Yet this human ability is complex, not least because it requires speakers and addressees to pay attention to context. This chapter reviews research on reference and informativeness in communication. It outlines the problem of referential choice, that is, how speakers select from the variety of expressions available to them. It then compares findings from two previously distinct literatures—pragmatic informativeness and discourse-based models of reference—and discusses how each has investigated (i) speakers’ choice of referring expressions; and (ii) how speakers’ choices affect addressees. It also examines processing, by reviewing the constraints affecting referential choice, both those associated with interlocutors themselves and those stemming from the referents under discussion. It concludes by raising some of the outstanding questions in linguistic reference.
Turn-Taking
Authors: de Ruiter Jan P.
Published: May 2019

In their informal verbal exchanges people tend to follow the ‘one speaker at the time’ rule posited by Emanuel Schegloff. The use of the term ‘turn-taking’ to describe the process in which this rule operates in human conversation is relatively recent. Especially since the famous 1974 paper by Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff, & Gail Jefferson in the journal Language, which marks the birth of the sociological discipline now called Conversation Analysis (CA), turn-taking in conversation has attracted attention from a variety of disciplines. This chapter briefly summarizes the main theoretical approaches and controversies regarding turn-taking, followed by some reflections on different ways it can be studied experimentally.
Copyright and Publishing
Authors: Sundara Rajan Mira T.
Published: May 2019

Copyright law grants authors the exclusive right to ‘authorize’ publication of their work. For publication to occur, publisher and author must enter into an agreement where the author either assigns copyright or grants a licence to the publisher to ‘use’ the work for publication purposes. Copyright fundamentally defines the relationship between author and publisher. It is the foundation on which any and all activities undertaken by the publisher must be built. With the development of digital technologies, however, the basic premise that dissemination of a work can be controlled has become increasingly unrealistic. Technology therefore presents a fundamental challenge to the integrity of copyright law. Given the importance of copyright for publishing, the modern copyright landscape has far-reaching implications for publishing. This chapter offers an overview of modern copyright law in the digital environment, and argues that these changes will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of publishing.
Publishing and Corporate Social Responsibility
Authors: Phillips Angus
Published: May 2019

There are vital issues affecting our planet including climate change, inequality, and political freedom, and publishers have produced many books and articles on these topics. Companies are not obliged to consider the externalities of their operations, but most now recognize they cannot be ignored. Who are the stakeholders of a publisher? What responsibility do publishers have towards society? How sustainable for the planet is the business model of publishing? Since publishing is a global business, how broadly should we think about the impact of the operations of companies? Should not publishers produce books that match the interests of a population that is diversified by, for example, gender and ethnicity? Examination of corporate social responsibility clarifies the role of the publisher in an age of open content and self-publishing.
Organizational Structures in Publishing
Authors: Hall Frania
Published: May 2019

The structures of publishing organizations have evolved over considerable time and are continually adapting to changes in the business environment. This chapter looks at the emergence of the traditional structure of a publishing business, including models such as the communications circuit and the value chain, and examines the impact digital change and convergence is having on the organizations we see today. These organizations are becoming more flexible as they try new ways of working which are project-based and often service oriented; applying contemporary management and organizational behaviour theory and introducing research from industry leaders, this chapter will explore the opportunities going forward to design adaptable structures that will allow for new forms of innovation.
Trade Publishing
Authors: Thompson John B.
Published: May 2019

Trade publishing is the world of general-interest books, both fiction and non-fiction, that are written for a non-specialist readership and sold through the general retail trade, including retail chains such as Barnes & Noble in the USA and Waterstones in the UK, independent booksellers, and online retailers such as Amazon. For many people, this is the world they think of first when they think of books and publishing: it is the public face of publishing. This chapter analyses the world of trade publishing in the USA and Britain. It shows how this world has changed since 1960 and it analyses four aspects of trade publishing that are particularly important for understanding it today: the value of author brand; the relation between frontlist and backlist; the role of marketing and publicity; and the challenges and opportunities created by the digital revolution.
Libraries
Authors: Holzman Alex , Lippincott Sarah Kalikman
Published: May 2019

Public and academic libraries have been among the very best customers for publishers. The publisher–library relationship is effectively symbiotic with mutual benefits. However, the digital revolution, changing cost structures, long-term declines in library funding, open access, changes to copyright, fair use, and the first-sale doctrine have unsettled longstanding practices. Perhaps inevitably these transformations have led to libraries experimenting with establishing their own publishing initiatives, helping patrons to publish their own work, or in the academic setting partnering with existing university presses to develop new publishing models. The responsibility for curation, previously largely resting with libraries, has now become a responsibility shared to varying extents with publishers. —However, the way publishers and libraries interact is changing—considerably.
Publishing History
Authors: McCleery Alistair
Published: May 2019

The now established academic field of book history places an orthodox emphasis on the book as a material object, as a focus of diverse transactions, and as a social phenomenon. The role of the publisher has been relegated to the contributions of a few named individuals, often within a narrow eurocentric context, that highlight those individuals’ efficiency in book production and diminish the collective nature of the publishing process. A fresh approach to publishing history instead stresses the movement from the role of skilled reproduction houses, through trading in the copyright inherent in books, to the exploitation of content rights across a range of media. Such an approach provides a keener historical insight into the structures and operations of the contemporary global publishing industry.
Publishing and Culture
Authors: Oakes John
Published: May 2019

How has book publishing shaped and reshaped the modern world? Since the advent of moveable type, books have moved into position as the signal element that defines culture. While this chapter places an emphasis on English-language publishing, it also draws on original discussions with international publishers and editors, providing a brief overview of the history of book publishing in a variety of countries. Starting with the Venetian printers, the chapter moves through the Inquisition to the pre-modern age, briefly discussing the consistent entanglement of book publishing and authority, which perceives books and their publishers as potentially devastating threats or powerful allies.
Publishing and Information
Authors: Eve Martin Paul
Published: May 2019

This chapter addresses some of the conceptual challenges with speaking about publishing and ‘information’ that range from the underlying philosophical distinctions between the various terms through to practical mutations in the non-fiction/scholarly publishing spaces and the growing demands to publish new types of data objects and software. The chapter argues that the true challenges for publishing and information in the era of the Internet and World Wide Web pertain to frames of cultural authority and truth but also to labour scarcity in publishing in a digital world that presents itself as infinitely abundant. This argument is structured across a first section on what we mean by ‘information’, a second on the history of digital reproduction as it emerged in the twentieth century, a third on the challenges for labour and authority in information publishing, and finally a set of case studies and practical observations on preprints, replication studies, and data.
Curation in Publishing
Authors: Bhaskar Michael
Published: May 2019

Editorial departments are critical components of a publishing house. Their core function is curation of the lists: that is commissioning and choosing which books (or content) are to be published by a given publisher. The idea of the curatorial paradigm is introduced to explain this concept. The curatorial paradigm is the set of explicit and implicit guidelines and philosophies by which a publisher selects works. It is both produced by the editors themselves and is also felt as pressure by those editors; it is circumscribed at its widest extent by the permissible set of curatorial paradigms within a society. One of the key factors about such paradigms are their frequently contradictory nature: publishers can, from the outside, have highly divergent lists and yet this will be supported internally by a clear curatorial paradigm. To understand what publishers do, then, we must understand how such paradigms operate.
The Strategy of Publishing
Authors: Greco Albert N.
Published: May 2019

The emergence and wide acceptance of strategic theories in the years after 1945 helped transform the book publishing industry. Companies were able to craft strategies, and the structures needed to implement and execute strategies, to grow domestically and globally. This chapter outlines some of the individuals who played a substantive role in the development of strategies as well as some of the publishers able to use these strategies. But some authors argued that strategies alone will not always work since people and markets are not always predictable; they do not always follow the strategies developed by publishers. In the end, there is always room for managers to use their judgement when confronted with randomness or chaos in the marketplace.
Uncovering Expertise for Safe and Efficient Performance in Railroad Operations
Authors: Roth Emilie M. , Naweed Anjum , Multer Jordan
Published: May 2019

This chapter provides an overview of the literature on expertise in railroad operations and how it contributes to overall safety and productivity. The chapter is informed by research conducted across multiple continents, including Australia, Europe, and the United States. While the primary focus is on locomotive engineers, expertise in other railroad positions (e.g., conductors, dispatchers) is also covered. The chapter begins with an overview of railroad operations and how expertise fits into the railroad enterprise. Methods used to uncover expertise in railroad research are summarized, followed by a review of the types of strategies that railroad workers exhibit. This includes cognitive as well as teamwork strategies that contribute to overall system safety and resilience. This is followed by a discussion of the impact of ongoing technological changes on the requirements for expertise, and the chapter ends with speculation on longer term changes in railroad technologies and the nature of expertise.
Framing and Translating Expertise for Government
Authors: Conway Gareth E. , Gore Julie
Published: May 2019

Expertise is of great value within and for government, which seeks to influence complex situations through the use of complex policy interventions. The framing of expertise in government, however, is not immune to popular narratives that we are all experts now and that all perspectives on an issue are of equal value, irrespective of who proposes them. This chapter describes the nature of government work and its challenges; the overlap between expertise, evidence, and values; how expertise has been considered over time in government, and the difficulty in identifying who the expert is. We then reconsider whether expertise is under threat, and identify research gaps that if addressed would support the further professionalization of the policy function in government.
Descartes and the Passions
Authors: Kambouchner Denis
Published: May 2019

This chapter focuses on the Cartesian account of the passions of the soul, as it is delivered for the most part in the treatise published in 1649. This account includes several aspects which have to be both distinguished and related to each other: 1) the decision to locate the “most proximate cause” of the passions in the body, and its connection with the Cartesian tenet of the indivisibility of the soul; 2) the reconstruction of the cerebral and physiological process which produces passion in the soul; 3) the distinction between the passions and other kinds of perception; 4) the definition of their function or usefulness; and 5) the classification of the passions and the distinction between “simple and primitive” and “particular” passions, with its ethical and practical implications.
Louis de La Forge on Mind, Causality, and Union
Authors: Drieux Philippe
Published: May 2019

La Forge, who is well known for his Remarques on Descartes’s Treatise of Man (1664), is also said to be one of the founders of “occasionalism”, especially because of his argument against real causality in nature in chapter 16 of his Treatise on the Human Mind (1666). This leads one to think that causality is just a word for the order that God goes on creating in the world. But in fact La Forge merely intended to underline the power of Will, through the fact that any action on a mere part of matter is bound to the proper ability of Will to consider the whole of it.
Jacques Rohault and Cartesian Experimentalism
Authors: Dobre Mihnea
Published: May 2019

This chapter explores the intellectual development of Jacques Rohault—although not considered one of the leading figures of the early modern period, well known among historians of science. It attempts to evaluate Rohault’s Cartesianism and to present it in a more nuanced manner than it is usually illustrated in the literature. Focusing on his mature work, published only one year before his death in 1672, but also referring to his earlier activities in Paris and to the publication of his posthumous works, the chapter argues that his “Cartesianism” came rather late in his thinking, while his early activity concerns mathematics and mechanics. The reading endorsed in this chapter opens a fresh perspective on Rohault’s experimentalism, suggesting a transition from practical mathematics to Cartesian natural philosophy.
Robert Desgabets and the Supplement to Descartes’s Philosophy
Authors: Schmaltz Tad M.
Published: May 2019

This chapter is devoted to the distinctive form of Cartesianism in the work of the French Benedictine Robert Desgabets (1610–78). After a consideration of Desgabets’s defense of Descartes in controversies over the Eucharist that led to the first French condemnations of Cartesianism, there is a discussion of three “radical” doctrines in Desgabets. The first, the “creation doctrine”, involves an original development of Descartes’s doctrine of the creation of eternal truths; the second, “intentionality doctrine”, is taken by Desgabets to reveal the deficiencies of Descartes’s methodical doubt; and the third, the “union doctrine”, is directed against the claim in Descartes that we have purely intellectual thought. Finally, there is a brief evaluation of the claim in the literature that Desgabets’s system constitutes a kind of “Cartesian empiricism”.
The Early Dutch Reception of Cartesianism
Authors: van Bunge Wiep
Published: May 2019

Descartes spent the final two decades of his life in the Dutch Republic, where he turned into a publishing author and where he soon gathered a considerable following, in particular among academics. Of course, his views also met with opposition and were censured both at Leiden and at Utrecht universities. One motive for him joining the court of the Queen Christina of Sweden in 1649 may well have been his bitterness over the early Dutch reception of his views, and exasperation with the quarrels his philosophy had provoked. However, Descartes may well have underestimated the impact his writings had on Dutch scientists and philosophers ready to abandon Peripateticism.
Johannes Clauberg and the Search for the Initium Philosophiae
Authors: Ragni Alice
Published: May 2019

This chapter examines how the philosophy of Descartes contributed to Clauberg’s philosophical system. In this system it is metaphysics that imposes itself on the other sciences, as its contents impose themselves according to the order of knowledge. The core of Clauberg’s adherence to Cartesianism is thus linked to his conviction that Descartes’s philosophy is, above all, the discovery of the true “beginning” (initium) of philosophy, that is, the discovery of a principle that guarantees the primacy of metaphysics, established according to the order of knowledge. Clauberg aims to identify the first science, according to the order of knowledge of things (ordo cognitionis) as well as the order of teaching (ordo doctrinae), and consequently to establish the organization of all knowledge.
What is Cartesianism?
Authors: Rioux-Beaulne Mitia
Published: May 2019

Although Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle has often been treated as merely a “popularizer” of Descartes’s philosophy, it is shown here that Fontenelle’s Cartesianism is a peculiar one. Cartesianism is mainly treated by Fontenelle as an exemplary modern “way of reasoning”, and absolutely not as a coherent “system” that one should adhere to. This has two consequences: first, this way of reasoning, the “geometrical spirit”, can be applied to domains that the Cartesian system would have forbidden (poetic, politics, etc.); and second, this way of reasoning, supposedly relying on higher norms of clarity, is used by Fontenelle to oppose the Newtonian system of attraction at a time when all his contemporaries are adopting it.
Cartesianism in Britain
Authors: Hutton Sarah
Published: May 2019

This chapter provides a broad picture of the reception of Descartes’s philosophy in England and Scotland, from the 1630s through to the post-Newtonian attacks on Cartesian physics and cosmology at the end of the seventeenth century. It starts with an overview of the earliest encounters between Britons and Descartes, the reception of Cartesianism in British universities, translations into English, and British editions of Cartesian works. It then discusses some of the individual responses to Cartesianism which are not discussed elsewhere in this Handbook, among them the Cavendish circle (including Margaret Cavendish), Le Grand, Barrow, Boyle, Charleton, Conway, Cudworth, and Clarke.
“Italy Did Not Want to Be Cartesian”
Authors: Belgioioso Giulia
Published: May 2019

At the end of the eighteenth century, Appiano Buonafede (i.e. Agatopisto Cromaziano) had no doubt: Italy did not want to be Cartesian—just as it had not wanted to be Baconian—and this was “much better for Italy”. While Buonafede exaggerated, Cartesianism did not have an easy life in the peninsula. The first to experience this was Mersenne, who also on two occasions tried, with little luck, to promote its circulation among a Galilean circle in Florence and Rome by bringing Descartes’s books with him to Italy. And Galileo was not very welcoming, complaining about the indecipherable writings of the Minim. This chapter reconstructs the varied life of Cartesianism in Italy, starting from the discussions generated by the writings of the French philosopher.
The Creation of Eternal Truths
Authors: Arbib Dan
Published: May 2019

Among the most original of the features of Cartesian thought is the thesis of the “creation of eternal truths”. From the outset this thesis confronts a paradox: although Descartes’s immediate successors considered it fundamental, historians of philosophy have long ignored it, and it was not until the works of Alquié and Rodis-Lewis, and then Marion, that this thesis was given the importance it deserves. In fact—and Descartes’s immediate successors were not deceived—if this thesis is crucial, it is because it points to the heart of Cartesian thought, so the whole of Descartes’s thought can be evaluated in its light. The challenge it poses is the relation between the infinite (God) and the finite (human reason), and it concerns the status of truths and rationality, the question of the equivocity or analogy of being and knowledge, and therefore the status of the possible in the face of divine omnipotence. In order to appreciate the theoretical breadth of this thesis, this chapter attempts to put it in its historical context: among Descartes’s predecessors we find possible opposition to this doctrine as well as anticipations of it, even if these are only partial. Finally, it considers the reception of the doctrine among post-Cartesians.
Optics, First Philosophy, and Natural Philosophy in Hobbes and Descartes
Authors: Jesseph Douglas M.
Published: May 2019

This chapter concerns the contrasting approaches of Descartes and Hobbes to optics, first philosophy, and natural philosophy. In all three areas of inquiry both thinkers embraced the mechanistic “new philosophy”, according to which the phenomena of nature can be explained in terms of the motions and impacts of material bodies, yet they held radically different conceptions of what principles were essential to that philosophical program, the extent to which mechanism could be applied, and the role of God in both first philosophy and natural philosophy. Ultimately, even though they both aimed to offer an alternative to Aristotelianism, their differences were more significant than their similarities.
Descartes on the Method of Analysis
Authors: Newman Lex
Published: May 2019

This chapter proposes an interpretation of Descartes’ distinction between two methods of demonstration—analysis and synthesis. A number of interpretive difficulties arise from his Second Replies account of the distinction, itself the most detailed treatment of his writings. Prima facie, that account fails to illuminate any substantive basis for distinguishing the demonstrative method employed in the Meditations and the demonstrative method employed in the geometric exposition (coming at the end of the Second Replies); yet Descartes represents the former as a model of analytic method, and the latter as a model of synthetic method. This is just the beginning of the prima facie interpretive puzzles arising from the Second Replies account. On the interpretation this chapter defends, the core of the analysis/synthesis distinction concerns the treatment of first principles: analytic demonstrations motivate their first principles, while synthetic demonstrations merely clarify them. As argued here, this rendering of the distinction explains everything written in the Second Replies passage, including six points of contrast between analysis and synthesis. Further, the paper develops the explanatory power of the interpretation for Descartes’ various metaphysical writings. A consequence of the account is that Descartes employs analysis in each of his major works treating metaphysics—an outcome consistent with his claim that analysis is better suited to metaphysical inquiry, than is synthesis.
Spinoza, Descartes, and the “Stupid Cartesians”
Authors: Nadler Steven
Published: May 2019

Spinoza’s relationship to Descartes and his followers is complex. On the one hand, he was clearly inspired and influenced by the metaphysical and epistemological principles of Cartesian philosophy. On the other hand, his system represents a significant departure from some of that philosophy’s most fundamental principles. In this chapter, I consider those aspects of Descartes’s thought that Spinoza, over the course of his philosophical career, accepted, modified, and rejected, as well as his tense relations with later Cartesians who sought to distance themselves from a “heretic” perceived by ecclesiastic, academic, and civil authorities as one of their own.
Anne Conway’s Response to Cartesianism
Authors: Mercer Christia
Published: May 2019

Anne Conway (1631–79) was an English philosopher whose only work, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, was published posthumously in 1690. Conway’s arguments against Descartes’s account of matter constitute a cutting criticism of his views and offer significant insight into an important and under-studied anti-Cartesian trend in the second half of the seventeenth century. Conway’s response to Descartes helps us discern some of the more original and radical ideas in her philosophy. Like so many other significant early modern women, Conway was left out of the history of philosophy by later thinkers.
Leibniz and Descartes
Authors: Anfray Jean-Pascal
Published: May 2019

This chapter examines Leibniz’s complex relations to Descartes. These relations are deeply influenced by the evolution of the intellectual context from the beginning of the 1670s to the early eighteenth century. Beyond Leibniz’s overall appraisal of Descartes’s philosophy, there are three areas that stand out in which the discussion and criticism of Descartes’s ideas played a decisive role in the development of Leibniz’s thought: epistemology, natural philosophy, and philosophy of mind. There are three central issues at stake between the two philosophers: the nature and role of evidence, the use of final causes, and the Law of Continuity.
The Condemnations of Cartesian Natural Philosophy Under Louis XIV (1661–91)
Authors: Roux Sophie
Published: May 2019

The interdiction of the teaching of Descartes’s natural philosophy pronounced by Louis XIV in 1671 was followed by a wave of official condemnations. The first part of this chapter gathers together the facts that led some historians to speak of the persecution of Cartesianism. In the second part, it is argued that various causes explain these condemnations, first by relativizing the importance of the doctrinal question of the Eucharist, second by placing the question in the context of the Jesuit wars, and third by showing that Cartesians appeared as a party threatening the unity of the kingdom.
Pierre-Daniel Huet, Skeptic Critic of Cartesianism and Defender of Religion
Authors: Lennon Thomas M.
Published: May 2019

Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630–1721) was Cartesianism’s most implacable critic ever. And more than any other critic, he raised the Cartesian issues that have been of perennial interest: the method of doubt, the cogito, clarity and distinctness as criteria of truth, the natural light, the circularity of the Meditations, proofs of God’s existence, etc. Moreover, under the term Cartesianism his Censura Philosophiae Cartesianae (1689) attacks both Descartes’s own texts and those of his followers, most notably Malebranche. Pretty clearly, Huet’s perspective was a strong sort of skepticism; but, unlike some later skeptical critics, his aim was not to subvert religion, but to defend religion against what he saw as the Cartesian subversion of it.
Gabriel Daniel
Authors: Smith Justin E. H.
Published: May 2019

This chapter considers the life and work of the French Jesuit Gabriel Daniel (1649–1728), as well as the impact his critique of Descartes had on the legacy of Cartesianism. It pays particular attention to Daniel’s use of satire as a means of philosophical critique, and to the long tradition of using satire, which extends back to Lucian of Samosata in the first century ce, as a form of philosophical engagement. The principal focus of the chapter is on the arguments in Daniel’s Voyage du Monde de Descartes (1690) against dualism, vortex theory, and the uniformity of the physical world.
Descartes’s Mathematics
Authors: Maronne Sébastien
Published: May 2019

This chapter points out some issues about Cartesian geometry and Descartes’s program of solving geometrical problems by means of algebraic analysis. With this aim, it extends the corpus to Descartes’s mathematical correspondence and takes into account recent interpretations. The chapter first concentrates on Descartes’s methodological reflections on the algebraic resolution of geometrical problems like Pappus’s problem or Apollonius’s problem of the three circles, and compares Descartes’s classifications of mathematical problems of 1619 and 1637. It then addresses problems tackled by Descartes in his mathematical Correspondence that question the boundaries set in the Géométrie for the application of method. Finally, the method of indeterminate coefficients and its use in Descartes’s method of normals are briefly studied in order to underscore an Ariadne’s thread in Cartesian geometry: the elimination of equations. In conclusion, it is claimed that Cartesian geometry is neither the single Géométrie of 1637, nor a mere anticipation or deduction of this classic by Descartes, but the collection of somewhat different geometries, which are to be found in the mathematical Correspondence or the Latin editions of 1649 and 1659–61.
Comparative Law: Study of Similarities or Differences?
Authors: Dannemann Gerhard
Published: May 2019

Comparing legal systems involves, at least to some degree, exploring both similarities and differences. For some writers, this forms part of the definition of comparative law. Some comparative lawyers have generally emphasized differences, while others see similarities, particularly in problems and their results, and a third group has sought to strike a balance between observing and analyzing similarities and differences. Drawing on a debate in comparative history, this article argues that the proper balance between looking for similarities and for differences depends on the purpose of the comparative enquiry. Furthermore, it links the issue of difference or similarity to the various steps which are involved in a comparative legal enquiry, suggesting that some steps require more focus on similarity, others on difference, and many call for a balance of both.
Comparative Law and its Influence on National Legal Systems
Authors: Smits Jan M.
Published: May 2019

This article assesses the scholarly state of affairs regarding the influence of comparative law in national systems. In so doing, emphasis is put on private law and constitutional law, as these are the two areas where comparative inspiration is discussed most vigorously. The second and third section distinguishes several types of use of comparative law by national legislatures and courts, providing the background for a critical evaluation of this influence in the subsequent sections. The fourth section discusses the legitimacy question and the question of how to categorize the different uses of foreign law. The fifth section addresses why a legislature or court actually refers to foreign law and is how to explain the different extent to which countries are open to foreign influence. The last section considers the exact influence of comparative law arguments on the legislature’s or court’s reasoning.
Globalization and Comparative Law
Authors: Watt Horatia Muir
Published: May 2019

If comparative legal studies are to retain their relevance in understanding the impact of global changes on existing local traditions, their modes of interaction and influence, and their strategies for survival, then, the article concludes, their focus certainly needs adjusting. This article attempts to examine the ways in which comparative law as a discipline is affected by the changes wrought by globalization, and in particular the challenges which such changes imply for the methodological agenda of comparative legal studies and for its ideological commitments. More pragmatically, it may also be useful to envisage the impact of increased access to information on foreign laws, and the growth of trans- or international sources of uniform law, on the practical usefulness of comparative law.
Comparative Law and African Customary Law
Authors: Bennett T. W.
Published: May 2019

Customary law grows out of the social practices which a given jural community has come to accept as obligatory. It is a pervasive normative order, providing the regulatory framework for spheres of human activity as diverse as the family, the neighbourhood, the business of merchant banking, or international diplomacy. This article looks at the indigenous customary laws of sub-Saharan Africa. It deals with the preservation of the law in an oral tradition and how it has been influenced by certain social, economic, and political structures. This focus requires, in turn, that particular attention be paid to factors influencing the production of texts on customary law. Because textual information on the subject is limited, often outdated, and somewhat subjective, readers must be made aware of how changes in the theories of jurisprudence and anthropology have affected ideas and preconceptions.
Comparative Law and Religion
Authors: Whitman James Q.
Published: May 2019

This chapter discusses the historical relationship between comparative law and religion. After a brief review of the literature, it considers some of the ancient connections between law and religion. In particular, it examines how the world religions emerged in what scholars of comparative religion call the ‘axial age’ of the first millennium BCE. It then describes the relationship between law and ritual, noting that the role of ritual in the law lies at the heart of the differences between the various religion/legal traditions of the Eurasian landmass. It also highlights the definitional problems in distinguishing ‘law’ from ‘religion’ that are exacerbated by contrasts in concepts of ‘religion’ itself, along with Wolfgang Fikentscher’s work on the axial age transformations. Finally, it analyzes two other institutional developments associated with axial age religion that have shaped the comparative development of the law: the centrality of written texts and and monasticism.
Comparative Law and Socio-Legal Studies
Authors: Riles Annelise
Published: May 2019

The article begins by describing some shared ancestral figures of both comparative law and socio-legal studies, and the conundrums they have left to both fields. It then turns to the divisions between socio-legal studies and comparative law. It qualifies this account of disciplinary division with a description of two important areas of research—non-European comparative law and legal pluralism. The discussion describes the new rapprochement between the fields, and outlines a series of foci of active debate. These include the nature of legal pluralism under conditions of globalization, the character of legal culture, the causes and prospects of legal transplants, and the consequences of legal harmonization. From this point of view, the article outlines a number of points of general agreement between comparative lawyers and socio-legal scholars in hopes that the debate on these particular points can now be put to rest.
Comparative Law and Critical Legal Studies
Authors: Mattei Ugo
Published: May 2019

The contribution of Critical Legal Studies to comparative law is a matter of considerable international interest, not only in light of the remarkable presence of the movement in several leading US-American academic institutions but also in view of the rather desperate need for comparative law as an academic discipline for theoretical revision and reorientation. This article examines the contributions Critical Legal Studies has really made to comparative law, and how original they are. First, it describes the emergence, as well as some of the work, of Critical Legal Studies in terms of comparative law. Second, it pursues to what extent the Critical Legal Studies approach breaks with, or rather continues, the agenda of the discipline’s mainstream. Third, it presents a sympathetic analysis of the critique, evaluating the actual political and scholarly contribution of the Critical Legal Studies approach to comparative law.
Sources Of Law and Legal Method in Comparative Law
Authors: Vogenauer Stefan
Published: May 2019

Sources of law serve to separate the province of law from the realm of non-law. Only propositions that are derived from a valid source of law are genuinely legal propositions. This article outlines the role of sources of law and legal method in the study of comparative law. The second section explains why these topics have been central to comparative legal scholarship from its very beginnings. The third section attempts to clarify their ambit for the purposes of comparative study, and identifies the pitfalls lurking for the comparative lawyer who wants to determine another system’s sources of law and the methodological approach prevailing there. The fourth section gives an overview of the most important comparative studies specifically dedicated to these matters. The fifth section maps out some areas which merit further research.
Development of Comparative Law in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria
Authors: Schwenzer Ingeborg
Published: May 2019

This article provides an overview both of the development of comparative law as a field of research, and of its impact on legal changes in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. It focuses on the development of comparative law in the field of the law of obligations. The second section deals with the long nineteenth century. The third section considers the golden age of comparative law, which covers the period of the Weimar Republic. The fourth section discusses the ‘dark age’ of the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s. The fifth section describes recovery and post-war developments until the end of the cold war. The final section focuses on attempts to unify the law and on new approaches to comparative law which have gained in importance in the course of the Europeanization of private law.