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THE BHP WIRE —
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Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
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Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
Katherine Johnson’s mathematical calculations helped guide some of America’s most important early space missions while she confronted the racial and gender barriers faced by Black women in twentieth-century America.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
Entity realism (sometimes equated with referential realism[1]) is a philosophical position within the debate about scientific realism. It is a variation of realism (originally proposed by Stanford School philosophers Nancy Cartwright and Ian Hacking in 1983) that restricts warranted belief to only certain entities.[2]
Whereas traditional scientific realism argues that our best scientific theories are true, approximately true, or closer to the truth than their predecessors, entity realism does not commit itself to judgments about scientific theories' truth. Instead, it holds that the theoretical entities in scientific theories, e.g. 'electrons', should be regarded as real if and only if they can be routinely used to create effects in domains that can be investigated independently. 'Manipulative success' thus becomes the criterion by which to judge the reality of (typically unobservable) scientific entities. As Ian Hacking, the main proponent of this formulation of entity realism, puts it (referring to an experiment he observed in a Stanford laboratory, where electrons and positrons were sprayed, one after the other, onto a superconducting metal sphere), "if you can spray them, then they are real."[3]
Entity realism has been an influential position partly because it coincided with a general trend in philosophy of science, and science studies more generally, to highlight the role of experimentation, instrumentation, and scientific practice. Thus, entity realism sometimes is also called instrumental realism[4] or experimental realism.[5]
While many philosophers acknowledge the intuitive pull of entity realism, it has also been strongly criticised, both as too restrictive (in that it ignores entities that are observable yet do not lend themselves to manipulation)[6] and as too permissive (to the extent that seemingly successful instances of manipulation may turn out to be spurious).[7]
Entity realism is indeed a realist position (since it defends the reality of unobservable entities), but it is selectively realist (a form of selective realism according to critics), since "it restricts warranted belief to entities only, and suggests to fellow realists that they are wrong in claiming that the theoretical descriptions of these entities are approximately true".[2] It has also been argued that to a certain extent "this scepticism about theories is motivated by none other than the argument from the pessimistic induction".[2]
Entity realism is strongly supported in Harre (1986) under the name 'referential realism'
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Gestus ([ˈɡɛstʊs], from Latin meaning "gesture, attitude, carriage") is an acting technique developed by the German theatre practitioner Bertold Brecht. It carries the sense of a combination of physical gestures and "gist" or attitude. It is a means by which "an attitude or single aspect of an attitude" is revealed, insofar as it is "expressible in words or actions." Gestus, as the embodiment of an attitude, carries at least two distinct meanings in Brecht's theatre: first, the uncovering or revealing of the motivations and transactions that underpin a dramatic exchange between the characters; and second, the "epic" narration of that character by the actor (whether explicitly or implicitly). In the first sense, that of anatomizing the character, a Gestus reveals a specific aspect of a character: rather than his metaphysical, subconscious or other psychological dimensions, a Gestus makes visible a character's social relations and the causality of his behaviour, as interpreted from an historical materialist perspective. "Every emotion" when treated under the rubric of Gestus, Elizabeth Wright comments, "manifests itself as a set of social relations." "For it is what happens between people", Brecht says, "that provides them with all the material that they can discuss, criticize, alter." In the second sense, the actor's attitude is embodied in acting as an act of epic narration (the 'showing' that is 'shown' in the 'showing', in Brecht's turn of phrase), Brecht refers to the "political" basis from which an actor interprets his role and its place within the storytelling scheme of the production as a whole. "[T]he choice of viewpoint is also a major element of the actor's art, and it has to be decided outside the theatre" Brecht writes in his "A Short Organum." In this sense of the clarification and embodiment of a particular interpretative perspective, Gestus is related to Brecht's other important practical tool, the Fabel. A Gestus is not a cliché or "rubber stamp"; the actor develops a character's Gestus through a process of exploration of concrete physical behaviour and according to a principle of selective realism. The post-Brechtian German theatre practitioner Heiner Müller (who ran Brecht's Berliner Ensemble for a short while) argues that "[r]eflecting the actions through the figures, mentally as well as emotionally, also has the character of citation. The citation geste (Gestus) must not diminish the intensity and spontaneity of reactions. Identification in the details with estrangement of the whole."
Scientific realism is the philosophical view that the universe described by science (including both observable and unobservable aspects) exists independently of perception, and that verified scientific theories are at least approximately true descriptions of what is real. Scientific realists typically assert that science, when successful, uncovers true (or approximately true) knowledge about nature, including aspects of reality that are not directly observable. Within philosophy of science, this view is often an answer to the question "how is the success of science to be explained?" The discussion on the success of science in this context centers primarily on the status of unobservable entities apparently talked about by scientific theories. Generally, those who are scientific realists assert that one can make valid claims about unobservables (viz., that they have the same ontological status) as observables, as opposed to instrumentalism. In a 2020 PhilPapers Survey 72% of academic philosophers favored scientific realism vs only 15% favoring antirealism.
Depressive realism is the hypothesis developed by Lauren Alloy and Lyn Yvonne Abramson that depressed individuals make more realistic inferences than non-depressed individuals. Although depressed individuals are thought to have a negative cognitive bias that results in recurrent, negative automatic thoughts, maladaptive behaviors, and dysfunctional world beliefs, depressive realism argues not only that this negativity may reflect a more accurate appraisal of the world but also that non-depressed individuals' appraisals are positively biased.
Entity realism (sometimes equated with referential realism) is a philosophical position within the debate about scientific realism. It is a variation of realism (originally proposed by Stanford School philosophers Nancy Cartwright and Ian Hacking in 1983) that restricts warranted belief to only certain entities.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
