Realism Books

Author Barbara Gallati has compiled a nice biography of one of America's talented impressionist artists. The story is well written but seeing only 44 color illustrations of the 103 shown is disappointing. Presenting the "Blue Kimono" in color on the cover and in black and white is quite a comparison. I kept looking for information on the number of pieces Chase painted in his career but that was not listed. This 143 page book is a little small for my personal taste.

What is presented however are many portraits of the artist's beautiful family members and well known pictures of Central Park in New York and Prospect Park in Brooklyn. There aren't a lot of books available on William Merrit Chase but this one is good.

Before Modernism, oil painters were interested in developing their abilities to depict real or imagined images. In order to accomplish that goal, they needed 'technique'. Starting with the workshops of the Renaissance, young painters (e.g., Leonardo Da Vinci) learned how to represent the differing textures of objects (viz., silk fabric, satin, Persian carpets, shiny and dull metals, flowers, fruit ,vegetables, animal fur, human skin & hair). Only after gaining such facility in their painting technique were they allowed to join the guild of professional artists in their community.

In this book Joseph Sheppard shows how to paint the textures one sees. This liberates the artist who is willing to put forth the effort. Also, Joseph Sheppard painstakingly illustrates the steps one goes through in building an oil painting, from beginning to end. We see his accomplished paintings being built up layer by layer. He shows the importance of blending and how to attain sfumato. Note: I disagree with his insistance, in the book's introduction, on the use of toxic lead white (e.g., I have found that Old Holland titanium white is both more opaque and lean than lead white).

Sheppard starts with thumbnail sketches on paper to develop and optimize his composition. We are shown the various sketches he makes to reach a successful composition.

Using a toned canvas or panel, Sheppard begins the iterative painting process that follows upon the heals of laying in the drawing (i.e., with burnt umber and turpentine).

Joseph shppard is a comsumate teacher. This book is holds great potential value for the serious oil painter who wants to develop his or her painting skills to a high level.

The reviewer no one is paying attention to is the more correct one. This book is full of small photos taken during the completion of larger works. Accompanying these photos are plenty of comments, but they are NOT detailed instruction or guidance that will help if you are learning - only generalizations, broad concepts, wishy washy artsy fluff. Don't buy this book to learn to paint shiny objects, fur, cloth or folds, or any other specific material or texture. On the other hand, if you like Joseph Sheppard's style of painting and you can learn to paint anything simply by looking at hundreds of 2-3 inch square photos... this is the book for you.

Imagine taking a handful of very busy paintings. Take dozens of photos of each. Now add very generic comments about light, shadows, colors, etc. and you have this book. If you are a skilled artist who lacks formal training then the generic tips in this book might be of some slight benefit to you. However, if you are a beginning or intermediate artist who is looking for solid advice, detailed tutorials, or tips on painting specific textures then you should look elsewhere.

Ostensibly, Miller is interested in the ways in which political biases can and should influence research methodology, and in ways of removing bad, often politically motivated methodology and encouraging methodology that is good, either politics free or (he thinks more often) motivated by correct politics. Certainly the influence of politics is quite pervasive, and those who claim to be "above" politics are more often than not disingenuous.

However, this goal is ill-served by Miller's placing of the discussion in terms of the dispute between old-fashioned positivism and more recent scientific realist philosophy of science. While Miller discusses many, many examples of what he sees as poor (conservative) science, and of what he sees as better (Marxist-leaning) science, in no case does he convincingly show that positivism encourages conservative science or that scientific realism encourages his prefered Marxist-leaning science. Much of the allegedly bad science he criticizes fails to live up to the old positivist standards, so it is unclear how positivism can be to blame for it, and surely the conservatives who lie about whether they're really following the positivists' rules will be just as ready to lie about whether they're following Miller's rules.

It is probably revealing that Miller seems blissfully unaware of the politics of the actual postivists and their scientific realist successors; if the debate between positivism and scientific realism were as thoroughly enmeshed in politics as Miller thinks, with realism providing support for Miller's prefered Marxist politics, it would be a point of data in need of some explanation that Neurath and Carnap, the leaders of the Logical Positivist movement, were openly Marxist in their politics, while scientific realism in the philosophy of science has mostly drawn inspiration from the arch-conservative Quine. Of course, there might be an explanation for this which is consistent with Miller's theses, but it is certainly not to be found in this book.

Having been forced to read this book as part of my MA course in Research Methods I was determined to make the best of it. Unfortunately after 2 hours of trying again and again to make sense of each paragraph (and I'm not normally stupid) I had to give up.

A little sample "The requirement of qualitativeness must be dropped. Yet many true generalisations restricted to particular times, places or things do seem incapable of supporting explanations. That every coin in my pocket is made of copper does not explain whey the dirty coin in my pocket is made of copper" p55 - What?

Unfortunately it gets worse and he spends another 5 pages going on about the dirty copper/ not copper coin.

It's not to say that you shouldn't attempt to read the book, but if you suceed in understanding it I truly do salute you.

Annabella

In this book Richard Miller offers an ``adequate'' scientific explanation of phenomena as an alternative to the positivist ``covering law'' model (Hume, Hempel, etc.), which is still dominant among practicing social scientists today despite that it had already been severely criticized and rejected in the field of philosophy. Miller claims that the persistent popularity of positivist methodology is due to the absence of a genuine alternative method to replace good-old positivism.

The first part criticizes of the covering law model (i.e explanation by law-like regularity), which requires any valid law (1) to be universal in its application, (2) to be empirically verifiable, and (3) to reduce causality to mere statistical correlation.

After explaining how these criteria are actually irrelevant to scientific theory, Miller develops his alternative model of ``causal mechanism,'' which, without falling into hermeneutics, adequately explains causal phenomena.

It may not be an easy read for students without the background of philosophy. After all the title of the book is _Fact and Method_; it reminds me of the likes of _Truth and Method_ and _Being and Time_. (^_^; Like the previous reviewer I read this book for Quantitative Method course tpp. We were also assigned Elster's ``Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences'' and other like short articles with it. Elster's should be easier to understand, but if you want to know the more rich, philosophical foundation of their methodology, you've got to read _Fact and Method_.

One ought to be highly skeptical about "systems" that purport to solve or "resolve" wide swaths of philosophical territory, which have remained trenchant for thousands of years. It seems endemic to philosophers of 20th (and 21st) century continental Europe to attempt these long, rambling, somewhat mystical explanations, which rarely address actual philosophical problems, never "explain" anything, but instead bombard the reader with a large number of esoteric references (usually to other continental philosophers -- which when investigated, more often than not turn out to be irrelevant to the supposed point of the discussion). And in the frequent case when these "philosophers" run into self contradiction or plain old incoherence, they simply invent a new term for the supposed phenomenon, which explains why the apparent incoherence is actually perfectly all right -- although they insist that this mysterious newly invented term is not easily expressible or outright "beyond description".

These people are certainly not philosophers, and in my opinion, it is dubious to even refer to them as "people". They are charlatans and phonies, and there isn't a respectable philosophy department in any university outside of continental Europe that takes any of these continental philosophers to be more than witch doctors.

Don't criticize so swiftly Roy Bhaskar's "Plato, Etc." Although it is tempting to jump right in to "Plato, Etc: The Problems of Philosophy and their Resolution"--the subtitle is rather enticing, after all--one should be wary of doing so. This book builds upon the foundation laid by Bhaskar's previous book, "Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom." That book, in turn builds upon his previous major works, in reverse chronological order by date of first publication: "Philosophy and the Idea of Freedom," "Reclaiming Reality," "Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation," "The Possibility of Naturalism," and "A Realist Theory of Science." I list all these only to persuade that "Plato Etc" is not an introductory work for anyone. Before delving into it one should have a firm grasp of Bhaskar's "Dialectic." To have a grasp on "Dialectic" one should have a grasp on the works previous to it.

As for the value of "Plato Etc," I think it is just too early to tell. In his early works, Bhaskar introduces with great success critical realism as a philosophy of science which could benefit science and thus humanity. In building and extending upon critical realism in "Dialectic," Bhaskar delivered what will probably be considered his masterwork. Arriving a short time thereafter, "Plato Etc" seems to be a collection of notes that more thoroughly applies "Dialectic" to western philosophy. It creates new words for new concepts. It thinks big. In no way is "Plato Etc" "his most accessible book to date," as it says on the back cover. Nevertheless, "Plato Etc" is a lively and demanding work that will sustain the interest of even the most inveterate of critical minds. Should Bhaskar have made his case, he will have debunked many of our philosophical assumptions. I'm rating the book 5 stars to indicate my belief in the potential of its contribution.

If you are interested in Bhaskar or critical realism, I suggest a start with "A Realist Theory of Science." Alternatively, Andrew Collier has a solid introduction to critical realism.

Addendum: "critical realism" has been used by other thinkers and philosophers. Apparently, Bhaskar initiated his "critical realism" without building upon pre-existing bodies of thought which bore the same name.

It is temptingly easy to secure the respect of others simply by confusing them

Let the author speak for himself: " Indeed dialectical critical realism may be seen under the aspect of Foucauldian strategic reversal - of the unholy trinity of Parmenidean/ Platonic/ Aristotelian provenance;of the Cartesian-Lockean-Humean-Kantian paradigm, of foundationalisms (in practice, fideistic foundationalisms) and irrationalisms (in practice, capricious exercises of the will-to-power or some other ideologically and/or psychosomatically buried source) new and old alike; of the primordial failing of Western philosophy, ontological monovalence, and its close ally, the epistemic fallacy with its ontic dual; of the analytic problematic laid down by Plato, which Hegel served only to replicate in his actualist monovalent analytic reinstatement in transfigurative reconciling dialectical connection, while in his hubristic claims for absolute idealism he inaugurated the Comtean, Kierkegaardian and Nietzschean eclipses of reason, replicating the fundaments positivism through its transmutation route to the superidealism of a Baudrillard".

Ah the brilliance! :)))

Realist social theory, like much modern social thought, is defined by Judeo-Christian anthropocentrism which was reconfigured as a secular model during the enlightenment. This model places humans at the centre of the universe. Archer's theorising in this text is an example of the modern social scientific version of monotheistic anthropocentrism. This may seem paradoxical as Archer promulgates the notion of social structures as real entities that shape human behaviour. However, with Judeo-Christian folklore man [sic] is created and constrained by a transcendental deity; in Archer's ontology the reified object replacing god is society.

In both cases humans would seemingly be all-powerful were it not for the constraining input of a reified entity. In the case of realist social theory it is claimed that we would live in a context-less world and be completely free omnipotent agents were it not for an overarching societal level keeping us in check. As a previous reviewer has noted, sociological theory is a biology-free domain. Archer is always searching for the constraints over and above the individual, but no mention is made of biological constraints which underpin human activity. Humans are not separate from the natural world, despite the claims of monotheistic religions and social science. Structured patterns and regularities of human activity are not evidence for the causal influence of social structures; they are an outcome of the fact that we are subject to the algorithms of nature like every other creature on the planet.

The image of social theory presented in this book suggests that this sub-discipline provides rigorous underpinnings for sociology and that it incrementally advances in symbiosis with sociology's evolution. The actual aim of social theory, however, is the attempt to define and defend an academic niche which is exclusive to sociology. Real social structures are required as otherwise there are no separable and distinct phenomena in the social world that provide exclusive items of enquiry for sociology. Without these referents, sociology cannot be separated from psychology, which in turn cannot be separated from biology. Therefore, if sociological theory is to progress, it needs to be reconciled with biological theories: however, protection of parochial disciplinary boundaries is perhaps of greater concern to sociologists than genuine intellectual progress.

I'm currently doing a Social Work degree: I studied a Policy Analysis module and decided to undertake an essay on social theory, which sounded interesting. By golly, was I wrong: Realist Social Theory is one of the books I got out from the library and I was I left thinking 'what's the point?' It's a classic case of academics quibbling over terms and dangling proverbial carrots for each other. If 'Agency/structure' has any applicability to the real world then it's been buried in a large mound of wordy bunkum. I can't see how it is of any use to people trying to understand or study the world. It's just a parochial, intra-disciplinary, conceptual and linguistic wrangle designed to keep academics in their offices. There's so much written on the topic - produce a theory, chop it up, put it back together again, then repeat the process.

With regard to understanding the social world: the sum-total of literature on agency/structure doesn't provide as much insight as spending half an hour in the pub.

Realist Social Theory presents a sophisticated and meticulous attempt to address the key theoretical underpinnings of sociology - structure and agency. Archer provides a comprehensive overview of the realist perspective, which sets out to incorporate conceptualisations of individual action and broader social structures within a single theoretical framework. However, it is hard to conceive of a more fruitless task than the painstaking attempt to reconcile these social phenomena. The insular structure-agency debate is unheard of outside of the sociological discipline; in fact, its utility within the social sciences is seriously questionable. The somewhat banal recognition that society contains both individuals and social contexts has generated a polysyllabic edifice of self-referential debate: Realist Social Theory is essentially just another component of this edifice.

The central goal of the book is to convince the reader that social structures are real entities which transcend individuals and shape their behaviour. The notion of social structures as emergent and causally efficacious is a hangover from the 19th century when Durkheim attempted to establish sociology as a distinct discipline. Sociology thus promotes a reified 'reality' in which an ethereal societal superorganism shapes individual behaviour. The difficulty of asserting that society has a supra-individual level is pinpointing exactly what this level consists of - what is society if not the accumulated activity of interacting people and resultant material and ideational products? We encounter constraints in life as a result of our embodied anthropomorphic limitations, but this is a stark truism, not evidence for a separable societal level that exists over and above flesh and blood individuals.

Realist Social Theory is one of the most credible attempts to broach contemporary issues in sociological theory - it is recommended reading for advanced sociology students taking theoretical modules. However, as the biological sciences progress, and we further understand how causal dynamics exist at a sub-individual level, I predict that the structure-agency debate will be pushed from its current marginal status to that of historical curio.

This book was originally put out by a cult called The Aesthetic Realism Foundation in their heyday of the mid-70's, but has long been out of print since the cult leader died and since the AR people finally realized that their depiction of homosexuality as mental illness wasn't winning them many friends -- except for the religious right who are desperate for any non-secular confirmation that homosexuality is wrong.

Significantly, AR no longer promotes its anti-homosexual view, but that doesn't mean they don't still believe it. I found this on another website:
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"This article has been removed because of a request from the Aesthetic Realism Foundation. Their statement is reproduced below."

"STATEMENT: Aesthetic Realism is about how a person sees the whole world--not about homosexuality. The Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel is education in the largest sense possible--more comprehensive than has ever been before. It is a true description of the world.

"As is well known, there is now intense anger on the subject of homosexuality and how it is seen. The Aesthetic Realism Foundation does not want to be involved in this atmosphere of anger. Therefore, the Foundation has discontinued its public presentation of the fact that through Aesthetic Realism people have changed from homosexuality. And consultations to change from homosexuality are not being given. We do not want this matter, which is not central to Aesthetic Realism, to be used to obscure what Aesthetic Realism, in its largeness and beauty, truly is.
Since it's a personal hobby of mine to translate spin into plain English, here's my translation: "Aesthetic Realism still believes that homosexuality is a mental illness but since that idea is growing less and less popular we're no longer being up front about our prejudices."
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AR members' talents are being wasted in their little cult, since they could have fine careers as public relations spinmasters for large corporations. The example above can hold its own with the best of them.

Just from the title of this book we can see it merits careful consideration--not an angry attack.

And so it is disappointing to see a "review" of the book which really is nothing but such an attack. As to the contents of the book, there is only one idea which the reviewer discusses: an idea which really is NOT in the book! Mr. Blujay states that homosexuality is "depicted...as mental illness." But that is untrue. He made it up.

And more: the Aesthetic Realism Foundation is not a cult. Nor is it anti-gay. In fact, it is for civil rights for everyone. (See the Web site "Friends of Aesthetic Realism--Countering the Lies.")

Mr. Bluejay's review states that this foundation (and he quotes a statement they wrote) does not want to be "involved in [the] atmosphere of anger" around homosexuality. I think this is very sensible. Obviously his review itself shows the "atmosphere of anger."

Really, there should be a thoughtful, precise atmosphere when dealing with important issues!

"Aesthetic Realism," quotes Mr. Bluejay, "is about how a person sees the whole world--not about homosexuality." This is the truth and I think we should go by it.

--Jack Ruschardt

If one is interested in the latest nonsense from the academy, this time dressed up in New Historicist colors, buy this book. If one is interested in either American literary realism or contract law, however, one is better off actually reading those texts and trying to understand them.

U Maki,the editor of this volume of collected essays,has included far too many essays which are long on fiction and very short on the facts.Two of the essays essentially provide fictional accounts of what John Maynard Keynes accomplished in the General Theory(GT).These essays are essay number 3,written by P. Dasgupta and essay number 8,written by M.Morgan.On pp.74-76,the reader is informed that Keynes had no mathematical model that analyzed the role played by involuntary unemployment in his theory of effective demand.On pp.187-195,which covers section 3,titled"Modeling Keynes's General Theory",the reader is told that Keynes had no model of his general theory in the GT.Morgan starts out as if she intends to cover Meade's 1937 model which is in fact very similar to the model presented by Keynes in chapters 10,20 and 21 of the GT,the major differences being (1)that Keynes did not include a variable to represent interest rates and (2)that Keynes incorporates expectational effects by shifting curves while Meade incorporates expectational effects by changing the elasticity(shapes) of the curves themselves.Meade's paper derives results which are very close to the results derived by Keynes,i.e.,an unemployment equilibrium representing the amount of involuntary unemployment qualitatively in a formal mathematical model.Keynes's comment on Meade's paper was that there was nothing with which he disagreed.Morgan NEVER attempts to analyze either Meade's model or Meade's results.Instead,she starts talking about the basic assumptions of Meade's model,which are the standard assumptions of the perfect/pure competition model.Meade left out the word "pure" and wrote "perfect" only.However,this is of no major consequence as far as the mathematical modeling of either Keynes or Meade was concerned.The results of Morgan's paper are incoherent.There is a very simple way ,for either P.Dasgupta or M.Morgan ,to obtain the original mathematical model of the general theory presented by Keynes in the GT.The reader of the GT needs to be able to integrate(take the antiderivative of) the derivatives that Keynes presented in his formal analysis on pp.55-56,ft.2,pp.280-286,pp.304-306 and pp.271-278.These last mentioned pages refer to Keynes 's explicit discussion of the mathematical differences that existed between his model and the mathematical model of A.C. Pigou,presented in chapters 8-10 of PartII of The Theory of Unemployment(1933).To understand this comparison-contrast,the reader would have had to have already covered these chapters from Pigou's book.The following results can be easily duplicated by any reader or economist who understands differentiation and integration.Keynes's model consists of three functions.The expected aggregate demand function is D =D1+D2=f(N)=pO,where p is an expected price level and O,real output, is a function of N.The expected aggregate supply function is Z= Z1+Z2=g(N)=P+wN,where P is the expected profit,w is the money wage and N represents aggregate employment.The actual or current aggregate demand function is Y =Y(N)=C+I=PO,where C=bY (or C= a+bY)and P denotes the actual price level.(See p.209 of the GT).Solving this system of equations on the assumption that Say's Law holds yields the following solution:w/p= MPL/(MPC +MPI),where MPL equals the marginal product of labor,MPC equals tne marginal propensity to spend on consumption goods,C,and MPI equals the marginal propensity to spend on investment goods,I.The special classical and neoclassical theories(monetarism,supply side,rational expectations,real business cycle,etc.)all require that MPC+MPI=1.This gives the special result that w/p=MPL,where w/p equals the real wage.This condition,which represents the optimality condition for labor market clearing(NO INVOLUNTARY UNEMPLOYMENT)in all classical and neoclassical theories, is identical to the statement thar the macroeconomy is operating on the boundaries of BOTH the dynamic and the static production possibilities frontiers(PPF's).The reader should note that Keynes's general theory of employment is easily generalized to include a government sector,import sector,and export sector.Letting MPG,MPE,and MPM represent the marginal propensities for government spending(public goods),exports,and imports,we obtain w/p=MPL/(MPC+MPI+MPG+MPE-MPM).

I believe Murphy is trying to develop an important critique of narrative theology, i.e., that in centering on narrative there is a tendency to treat narrative itself as an abstraction and for that abstraction to swallow God. Her style, however, makes her book very hard to follow.

Some of the entries are helpful; some show their authors to be five or ten years behind the best research on their topics. John Heil's entry, for example, repeats well-known criticisms of functionalism by Ned Block (1990) as if they were novel.

My main complaint, though, is the editing. It is shameful that a book that costs this much should be so full of solecisms and inaccuracies. One can't read a page without coming across a mistake, and the bibliography is almost useless with all its errors. (E.g., Rorty's article 'Putnam and the Relativist Menace' is cited as 'Philosophy and the Relativist Menace.') This would be nit-picking if there weren't so many nits to pick.