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What are the relationships between philosophy and the history of
philosophy, the history of science and the philosophy of science?
This selection of essays by Lorenz Kruger (1932-1994) presents
exemplary studies on the philosophy of John Locke and Immanuel
Kant, on the history of physics and on the scope and limitations of
scientific explanation, and a realistic understanding of science
and truth. In his treatment of leading currents in 20th century
philosophy, Kruger presents new and original arguments for a deeper
understanding of the continuity and dynamics of the development of
scientific theory. These result in significant consequences for the
claim of the sciences that they understand reality in a rational
manner. The case studies are complemented by fundamental thoughts
on the relationship between philosophy, science, and their common
history.
The goal of the present volume is to discuss the notion of a
'conceptual framework' or 'conceptual scheme', which has been
dominating much work in the analysis and justification of knowledge
in recent years. More specifi cally, this volume is designed to
clarify the contrast between two competing approaches in the area
of problems indicated by this notion: On the one hand, we have the
conviction, underlying much present-day work in the philosophy of
science, that the best we can hope for in the justifi cation of
empirical knowledge is to reconstruct the conceptual means actually
employed by science, and to develop suitable models for analyzing
conceptual change involved in the progress of science. This view
involves the assumption that we should stop taking foundational
questions of epistemology seriously and discard once and for all
the quest for uncontrovertible truth. The result ing program of
justifying epistemic claims by subsequently describing patterns of
inferentially connected concepts as they are at work in actual
science is closely connected with the idea of naturalizing
epistemology, with concep tual relativism, and with a pragmatic
interpretation of knowledge. On the other hand, recent epistemology
tends to claim that no subsequent reconstruction of actually
employed conceptual frameworks is sufficient for providing
epistemic justification for our beliefs about the world. This
second claim tries to resist the naturalistic and pragmatic
approach to epistemology and insists on taking the epistemological
sceptic seriously."
Western culture has a long and fraught history of cultural
appropriation, a history that has particular resonance within
performance practice. Patrice Pavis asks what is at stake
politically and aesthetically when cultures meet at the crossroads
of theatre.? A series of major recent productions are analysed,
including Peter Brook's Mahabharata, Cixous/Mnouchkine's Indiande,
and Barba's Faust. These focus discussions on translation,
appropriation, adaptation, cultural misunderstanding, and
theatrical exploration. Never losing sight of the theatrical
experience, Pavis confronts problems of colonialism, anthropology,
and ethnography. This signals a radical movement away from the
director and the word, towards the complex relationship between
performance, performer, and spectator. Despite the problematic
politics of cultural exchange in the theatre, interculturalism is
not a one-sided process. Using the metaphor of the hourglass to
discuss the transfer between source and target culture, Pavis asks
what happens when the hourglass is turned upside down, when the
`foreign' culture speaks for itself.
This text chronicles the development of dramatic writing and
performance in South Africa from 1910, when the country came into
official existence as a partially post-colonial Union, to the
advent of post-apartheid. It discusses well-known figures and
famous phenomena, and lesser known actors, directors and
impressarios that have enriched the theatre of South Africa. As
well as discussing conventional dramatic texts, the book
investigates the impact of sketches and manifestos, and the oral
preservation of scripts that for various reasons, political and
otherwise, could not be written down.;This text challenges the
familiar binary oppositions that have defined the field -
black/white, imported/indigenous, purist/hybrid, and
text/performance. and shows how the contributions of America and
African-American influences complicate oppositions between European
and African. It also highlights the contribution of women, South
Asians and other minorities, and concludes with a discussion of the
post-apartheid character of South Africa at the end of the 20th
century.
The Drama of South Africa comprehensively chronicles the development of dramatic writing and performance from 1910, when the country came into official existence, to the advent of post-apartheid. Eminent theatre historian Loren Kruger discusses well-known figures, as well as lesser-known performers and directors who have enriched the theatre of South Africa. She also highlights the contribution of women and other minorities, concluding with a discussion of the post-apartheid character of South Africa at the end of the twentieth century.
This book tells how quantitative ideas of chance have transformed the natural and social sciences as well as everyday life over the past three centuries. A continuous narrative connects the earliest application of probability and statistics in gambling and insurance to the most recent forays into law, medicine, polling, and baseball. Separate chapters explore the theoretical and methodological impact on biology, physics, and psychology. In contrast to the literature on the mathematical development of probability and statistics, this book centers on how these technical innovations recreated our conceptions of nature, mind, and society.
Post-Imperial Brecht challenges prevailing views of Brecht's
theatre and politics. Most political theatre critics place Brecht
between West and East in the Cold War, and a few have recently
explored Brecht's impact as a Northern writer on the global South.
Loren Kruger is the first to argue that Brecht's impact as a
political dramatist, director and theoretical writer makes full
sense only when seen in a post-imperial framework that links the
East/West axis between US capitalism and Soviet communism with the
North/South axis of postcolonial resistance to imperialism. This
framework highlights Brecht's arguments with theorists like
Benjamin, Bloch, and Lukacs. It also shows surprising connections
between socialist East Germany, where Brecht's 1950s projects
impressed the emerging Heiner Muller, and apartheid-era South
Africa, where his work appeared on the apartheid as well as
anti-apartheid stage.
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Six Plays (Paperback)
Mickle Maher; Foreword by Loren Kruger
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This anthology features six plays by celebrated Chicago playwright
Mickle Maher, who has been described by the Houston Chronicle as
"one of the most original voices in American theater today," and by
the Chicago Reader as "a master at creating complex, paradoxical
works that encompass their own contradictions." Maher's plays
engage classic literature as a jumping off point for seriously
unusual comedic dramas, often dealing with the absurdity,
difficulties, and rewards of artistic endeavor. His work has been
influenced by or compared to Eugene Ionesco, Maria Irene Fornes,
Kenneth Koch, and Edward Albee, among others. This edition is
designed to be useful for schools and other organizations that wish
to mount productions of Maher's plays, which generally feature
small casts and simple scenery and stagings, and thus can be easy
to produce. Production rights for any of these six plays can be
requested from the publisher. The anthology includes: An Apology
for the Course and Outcome of Certain Events Delivered by Doctor
John Faustus on This His Final Evening On the night Faustus
concludes his bargain with Mephistopheles, he apologizes to a group
of random people for his failure to keep a diary of his fabulous
life. The Hunchback Variations Ludwig von Beethoven and Quasimodo
present a panel discussion on their failure to create an impossible
sound called for in a stage direction in Chekhov's The Cherry
Orchard. Spirits to Enforce Twelve telefundraisers with secret
identities work to raise money for a superheroic production of The
Tempest in a bid to save Fathomtown from Professor Cannibal and his
band of evil doers. There Is a Happiness That Morning Is Having
engaged the evening before in a highly inappropriate display of
public affection on the main lawn of their rural New England
campus, two lecturers on the poems of William Blake must now, in
class, either apologize for their behavior or effectively justify
it to keep their jobs. Song About Himself In a dystopian future, a
woman made extraordinary by her ability to speak relatively clearly
tries to connect with others on a mysterious social media site
created by a rogue artificial intelligence. It Is Magic Deb and
Sandy are auditioning Tim for the role of the Wolf in a production
of The Three Little Pigs, but there's a mysterious haze in the
basement of the Mortier Civic Playhouse and that, in addition to
interruptions from the director of the Scottish play that's going
on upstairs, is making things difficult. Then, Liz shows up and
throws the whole room into (further) chaos. It Is Magic reveals the
deep, ancient evil at the heart of the community theater audition
process.
The goal of the present volume is to discuss the notion of a
'conceptual framework' or 'conceptual scheme', which has been
dominating much work in the analysis and justification of knowledge
in recent years. More specifi cally, this volume is designed to
clarify the contrast between two competing approaches in the area
of problems indicated by this notion: On the one hand, we have the
conviction, underlying much present-day work in the philosophy of
science, that the best we can hope for in the justifi cation of
empirical knowledge is to reconstruct the conceptual means actually
employed by science, and to develop suitable models for analyzing
conceptual change involved in the progress of science. This view
involves the assumption that we should stop taking foundational
questions of epistemology seriously and discard once and for all
the quest for uncontrovertible truth. The result ing program of
justifying epistemic claims by subsequently describing patterns of
inferentially connected concepts as they are at work in actual
science is closely connected with the idea of naturalizing
epistemology, with concep tual relativism, and with a pragmatic
interpretation of knowledge. On the other hand, recent epistemology
tends to claim that no subsequent reconstruction of actually
employed conceptual frameworks is sufficient for providing
epistemic justification for our beliefs about the world. This
second claim tries to resist the naturalistic and pragmatic
approach to epistemology and insists on taking the epistemological
sceptic seriously."
Post-Imperial Brecht challenges prevailing views of Brecht's
theatre and politics. Most political theatre critics place Brecht
between West and East in the Cold War, and a few have recently
explored Brecht's impact as a Northern writer on the global South.
Loren Kruger is the first to argue that Brecht's impact as a
political dramatist, director and theoretical writer makes full
sense only when seen in a post-imperial framework that links the
East/West axis between US capitalism and Soviet communism with the
North/South axis of postcolonial resistance to imperialism. This
framework highlights Brecht's arguments with theorists like
Benjamin, Bloch, and Lukacs. It also shows surprising connections
between socialist East Germany, where Brecht's 1950s projects
impressed the emerging Heiner Muller, and apartheid-era South
Africa, where his work appeared on the apartheid as well as
anti-apartheid stage.
"Theatre is not part of our vocabulary": Sipho Sepamla's
provocation in 1981, the year of famous anti-apartheid play Woza
Albert!, prompts the response, yes indeed, it is. A Century of
South African Theatre demonstrates the impact of theatre and other
performances-pageants, concerts, sketches, workshops, and
performance art-over the last hundred years. Its coverage includes
African responses to pro-British pageants celebrating white Union
in 1910, such as the Emancipation Centenary of the abolition of
British colonial slavery in 1934 organized by Griffiths Motsieloa
and HIE Dhlomo, through anti-apartheid testimonial theatre by Athol
Fugard, Maishe Maponya, Gcina Mhlophe, and many others, right up to
the present dramatization of state capture, inequality and state
violence in today's unevenly democratic society, where government
has promised much but delivered little. Building on Loren Kruger's
personal observations of forty years as well as her published
research, A Century of South African Theatre provides theoretical
coordinates from institution to public sphere to syncretism in
performance in order to highlight South Africa's changing
engagement with the world from the days of Empire, through the
apartheid era to the multi-lateral and multi-lingual networks of
the 21st century. The final chapters use the Constitution's
injunction to improve wellbeing as a prompt to examine the
dramaturgy of new problems, especially AIDS and domestic violence,
as well as the better known performances in and around the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission. Kruger critically evaluates
internationally known theatre makers, including the signature
collaborations between animator/designer William Kentridge, and
Handspring Puppet Company, and highlights the local and
transnational impact of major post-apartheid companies such as
Magnet Theatre.
All roads lead to Johannesburg, remarks the narrator of Alan
Paton's novel Cry, The Beloved Country. Taking this quote as her
impetus, Loren Kruger guides readers into the heart of South
Africa's largest city. Exploring a wide range of fiction, film,
architecture, performance, and urban practices from trading to
parades, Imagining the Edgy City traverses Johannesburg's rich
cultural terrain over the last century. The "edgy city" in Kruger's
exploration refers not only to persistent boundaries between the
haves and have-nots but also to the cosmopolitan diversity and
innovation that has emerged from Johannesburg. The book begins with
the building boom, performances and uneven but noteworthy
inter-racial exchange that marked the city's fiftieth-anniversary
celebration at the Empire Exhibition in 1936. This celebration
rapidly gave way to the political repression and civil unrest that
characterized South Africa from 1950 to 1990. Yet poetry, drama,
fiction, and photography continued to thrive, bearing witness not
only against apartheid but to alternatives beyond it. In the late
twentieth century, the not quite post-apartheid condition fired the
artistic imaginations of film makers as well as novelists. Urban
neglect, rising crime, and the influx of migrants inspired noir
cinema-like Michael Hammon's Wheels and Deals-and fiction about
migration from Achmat Dangor to Phaswane Mpe, and in the
twenty-first, urban renewal has produced public art that
incorporates the desire lines of newcomers as well as natives.
Alongside well-known artists such as Nadine Gordimer, William
Kentridge, and David Goldblatt, the book introduces many artists,
architects, writers, and other chroniclers who have hitherto
received little attention abroad. Ultimately, Johannesburg emerges
as a city whose negotiation of the tensions between incivility and
innovation invites comparisons with modern conurbations across the
world, not only African cities such as Dakar, or other cities of
the "south" such as Bogota, but also with major metropolises in
North America and Europe from Chicago to Paris. A multi-faceted
work that speaks to scholars in urban studies, literature, and
history, Imagining the Edgy City is a rich example of
interdisciplinary scholarship at its best.
"Theatre is not part of our vocabulary": Sipho Sepamla's
provocation in 1981, the year of famous anti-apartheid play Woza
Albert!, prompts the response, yes indeed, it is. A Century of
South African Theatre demonstrates the impact of theatre and other
performances-pageants, concerts, sketches, workshops, and
performance art-over the last hundred years. Its coverage includes
African responses to pro-British pageants celebrating white Union
in 1910, such as the Emancipation Centenary of the abolition of
British colonial slavery in 1934 organized by Griffiths Motsieloa
and HIE Dhlomo, through anti-apartheid testimonial theatre by Athol
Fugard, Maishe Maponya, Gcina Mhlophe, and many others, right up to
the present dramatization of state capture, inequality and state
violence in today's unevenly democratic society, where government
has promised much but delivered little. Building on Loren Kruger's
personal observations of forty years as well as her published
research, A Century of South African Theatre provides theoretical
coordinates from institution to public sphere to syncretism in
performance in order to highlight South Africa's changing
engagement with the world from the days of Empire, through the
apartheid era to the multi-lateral and multi-lingual networks of
the 21st century. The final chapters use the Constitution's
injunction to improve wellbeing as a prompt to examine the
dramaturgy of new problems, especially AIDS and domestic violence,
as well as the better known performances in and around the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission. Kruger critically evaluates
internationally known theatre makers, including the signature
collaborations between animator/designer William Kentridge, and
Handspring Puppet Company, and highlights the local and
transnational impact of major post-apartheid companies such as
Magnet Theatre.
Probability ideas are the success story common to the growth of
the modern natural and social sciences. Chance, indeterminism, and
statistical inference have radically and globally transformed the
sciences in a "probabilistic revolution."This monumental work
traces the rise, the transformation, and the diffusion of
probabilistic and statistical thinking in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. It is less concerned with specific technical
discoveries than with locating the probability revolution
historically within a larger framework of ideas. There is no
comparable study that treats the rise of probability and statistics
in such scope and depth.The contributors - scientists, historians
and philosophers from eight countries - make it possible for
readers trained in many disciplines to see why the probabilistic
revolution has been so complete and so successful, and how the
rejection of uniform causality by quantum physics, the stochastic
nature of evolutionary biology, the indeterminisms of human
psychology, and the random processes of many economic activities
are all manifestations of an underlying unifying concept.Volume 1
opens with provocative essays on scientific revolutions in general
and the probabilistic revolution in particular by Thomas S. Kuhn,
I. Bernard Cohen, and Ian Hacking. Other authors discuss the
evolution of philosophical ideas about probability and their
articulation and elaboration in the mathematics of the nineteenth
century and describe the first applications of techniques of
statistical inference during that century: Topics include the uses
and abuses of official statistics by the bureaucrats of France,
England, and Prussia; the use - or neglect - of statistics by
nascent sociologists, demographers, and insurance actuaries; and
the emergence of statistical methodologies in fields ranging from
social reform to agricultural production.The emphasis in volume 2
is on the more recent scientific advances of the probabilistic
approach in various natural and social sciences, from "random
walks" in the stock market to random drift in natural selection,
and from indeterminate events at the atomic level to unpredictable
actions at the human level.Lorenz Kruger and Michael Heidelberger
are philosophers of science at Gottingen University, Lorraine J.
Daston is a historian at Brandeis University, Gerd Gigerenzer is a
psychologist at the University of Constance, and Mary S. Morgan is
an economist at York University. A Bradford Book."
The idea of staging a nation dates from the Enlightenment, but the
full force of the idea emerges only with the rise of mass politics.
Comparing English, French, and American attempts to establish
national theatres at moments of political crisis--from the
challenge of socialism in late nineteenth-century Europe to the
struggle to "salvage democracy" in Depression America--Kruger poses
a fundamental question: in the formation of nationhood, is the
citizen-audience spectator or participant?
"The National Stage" answers this question by tracing the relation
between theatre institution and public sphere in the discourses of
national identity in Britain, France, and the United States.
Exploring the boundaries between history and theory, text and
performance, this book speaks to theatre and social historians as
well as those interested in the theoretical range of cultural
studies.
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