Books

Routledge has published the edited volume on

Science, Freedom, Democracy
(edited by Péter Hartl and Ádám Tamás Tuboly)

This book addresses the complex relationship between the values of liberal democracy and the values associated with scientific research. The chapters explore how these values mutually reinforce or conflict with one another, in both historical and contemporary contexts.

The contributors utilize various approaches to address this timely subject, including historical studies, philosophical analysis, and sociological case studies. The chapters cover a range of topics including academic freedom and autonomy, public control of science, the relationship between scientific pluralism and deliberative democracy, lay-expert relations in a democracy, and the threat of populism and autocracy to scientific inquiry. Taken together the essays demonstrate how democratic values and the epistemic and non-epistemic values associated with science are interconnected.

Science, Freedom, Democracy will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in philosophy of science, history of philosophy, sociology of science, political philosophy, and epistemology.

Table of contents:

Péter Hartl and Adam Tamas Tuboly: Science, Freedom, Democracy: Introduction

Phil Mullins: Michael Polanyi's Post-Critical Vision of Science and Society

Péter Hartl: The Ethos of Science and Central Planning: Merton and Michael Polanyi on the Autonomy of Science

Heather Douglas: Scientific Freedom and Social Responsibility

Janet Kourany: Bacon’s Promise

Hans Radder: Which Science, Which Democracy, and Which Freedom?

Hugh Lacey: Participatory Democracy and Multi-Strategic Research

Dustin Olson: Public Opinion, Democratic Legitimacy, and Epistemic Compromise

Jeroen Van Bouwel: Are Transparency and Representativeness of Values Hampering Scientific Pluralism?

Lidia Godek: Max Weber’s Value-Judgment and the Problem of Science Policy-making

Springer has published the edited volume on

The Historical and Philosophical Significance of Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic
(edited by Ádám Tamás Tuboly)

This edited collection provides the first comprehensive volume on A. J. Ayer’s 1936 masterpiece, Language, Truth and Logic. With eleven original chapters the volume reconsiders the historical and philosophical significance of Ayer’s work, examining its place in the history of analytic philosophy and its subsequent legacy. Making use of pioneering research in logical empiricism, the contributors explore a wide variety of topics, from ethics, values and religion, to truth, epistemology and philosophy of language. Among the questions discussed are: How did Ayer preserve or distort the views and conceptions of logical empiricists? How are Ayer's arguments different from the ones he aimed at reconstructing? And which aspects of the book were responsible for its immense impact?

The volume expertly places Language, Truth and Logic in the intellectual and socio-cultural history of twentieth-century philosophical thought, providing both introductory and contextual chapters, as well as specific explorations of a variety of topics covering the main themes of the book. Providing important insights of both historical and contemporary significance, this collection is an essential resource for scholars interested in the legacy of the Vienna Circle and its effect on ethics and philosophy of mind.

Table of contents:

Adam Tamas Tuboly: Introduction: From Spying to Canonizing—Ayer and His Language, Truth and Logic

Andreas Vrahimis: Language, Truth and Logic and the Anglophone Reception of the Vienna Circle

Siobhan Chapman: ‘Viennese Bombshells’: Reactions to Language, Truth and Logic from Ayer’s Philosophical Contemporaries

Nicole Rathgeb: Ayer on Analyticity

Sally Parker-Ryan: Linguistic Analysis: Ayer and Early Ordinary Language Philosophy

Gergely Ambrus: The Evolution of Ayer’s Views on the Mind-Body Relation

Thomas Uebel: A Logical Positivist’s Progress: A Puzzle About Other Minds in Early Ayer Resolved

Hans-Johann Glock: Ayer’s Verificationism: Dead as a Dodo?

László Kocsis: Definition Versus Criterion: Ayer on the Problem of Truth and Validation

Krisztián Pete: Ayer and Berkeley on the Meaning of Ethical and Religious Language

Aaron Preston: Ayer’s Book of Errors and the Crises of Contemporary Western Culture

Brill has published the edited volume on

Intellectuals, Inequalities and Transitions
Prospects for a Critical Sociology
(edited by Tamás Demeter)

This volume is devoted to the central themes in Iván Szelényi’s sociological oeuvre comprising of empirical explorations and their theoretical refinement in the last 50 years. The contributors have been asked to take interpretive and critical stances on his work, and to clarify the relevance of his insights. Iván Szelényi has been asked to write a concluding chapter, and respond to the present reflections on his work. The ensuing volume discusses Szelényi’s captivating scholarship as being grounded in a complex program for the political economy of socialisms and post-socialist capitalisms, and introduces him as a neoclassical sociologist whose research projects continue to investigate inequalities created by the interaction of markets and redistributive structures in various societies.

Table of contents:

Gil Eyal: Futures Present: On the Concepts of “Intellectuals” and “Intelligentsia” in Iván Szelényi’s Oeuvre

Michael D. Kennedy: Normative Frames and Systemic Imperatives: Gouldner, Szelényi and New Class Fracture

Tamás Demeter: New Class Theory as Sociology of Knowledge

Karmo Kroos: How to Become a Dominant or Even Iconic Central and East European Sociologist

Bruce Western: Inequality and Transitions: Human Frailty in a Sample of Prisoners

Dorothee Bohle and Béla Greskovits: Neoclassical Sociology Meets Polanyian Political Economy

Victor Nee: Mechanisms of Institutional Change

Tamás Kolosi: Transitions and Structural Distortions

David Ost: The Ouvrierist Szelényi and the Missing Sociology of Labor

Iván Szelényi: Auto-critical Reflection on Intellectuals, Inequalities and Transitions

Springer has published the edited volume on

Neurath Reconsidered - New Sources and Perspectives
(edited by Jordi Cat and Adam Tamas Tuboly)

The book includes papers by Adam Tamas Tuboly ("United by Action: Neurath in England") and Gábor Zemplén ("Neurath's Theory of Theory Classification: History, Optics & Epistemology").

Table of contents:

01. Jordi Cat (et al.): Introduction

02. Don Howard: Otto Neurath: The Philosopher in the Cave

03. Günther Sandner: Science and Socialism: Otto Neurath as a Political Writer

04. Adam Tamas Tuboly: United by Action: Neurath in England

05. Elisabeth Nemeth: Visualizing Relations in Society and Economics: Otto Neurath’s Isotype-Method Against the Background of his Economic Thought

06. Sophie Hochhäusl: Traveling Exhibitions in the Field: Settlements, War-Economy, and the Collaborative Practice of Seeing, 1919–1925

07. Angélique Groß: Generating Cognitive Tools: Neurath’s Educational Ideal and the Concept of ISOTYPE

08. Thomas Uebel: Rationality and Pseudo-Rationality in Political Economy: Neurath, Mises, Weber

09. Gábor Á. Zemplén: Neurath’s Theory of Theory Classification: History, Optics & Epistemology

10. Jordi Cat: Neurath and the Legacy of Algebraic Logic

11. A. W. Carus: Neurath and Carnap on Semantics

12. Derek Anderson: Rejecting Semantic Truth: On the Significance of Neurath’s Syntacticism

13. George A. Reisch: What a Difference a Decade Makes: The Planning Debates and the Fate of the Unity of Science Movement

14. Michelle Henning: Of Tennis Courts and Fireplaces: Neurath’s Internment on the Isle of Man and his Politics of Design

15. Antonia Soulez: Does Understanding Mean Forgiveness? Otto Neurath and Plato’s “Republic” in 1944–45

16. Silke Körber: Thinking About the “Common Reader:” Otto Neurath, L. Susan Stebbing and the (Modern) Picture-Text Style

17. Hans-Joachim Dahms: Logical Empiricism and Art: The Correspondence Otto Neurath/Meyer Schapiro