Time is a fact of life time in social theory - destiny, necessity, enigma from the measure of motion of entropy rhythmicity - source of life and form human time studied industrial time and power time transcended time for social theory - points of departure.

Time and Social Theory

Sovereignty is one of the foremost institutions of our world: it has given political life a distinctive constitutional shape that virtually de®nes the modern era and sets it apart from previous eras. As A. P. d'Entreves puts it: `The importance of the doctrine of sovereignty can hardly be overrated. It was a formidable tool in the hands of lawyers and politicians, and a decisive factor in the making of modern Europe.' And not only Europe: in the past century or two sovereignty has become a cornerstone of modern politics around the world. Sovereignty expresses some core ideas of political modernity including the fundamentally important notion of political independence. It was originally an institution of escape from rule by outsiders and to this day it remains a legal barrier to foreign interference in the jurisdiction of states. The basic norm of the UN Charter (Article 2) enshrines the principle of equal sovereignty and its corollary, the doctrine of non-intervention. The institution is, shall we say, a basic element of the grammar of politics. It exists as a normative postulate or premise or working hypothesis of modern political life. It may not always be explicitly acknowledged as such and may, like an iceberg, be mostly hidden from view. But it silently frames the conduct of much of modern politics nevertheless. Sovereignty is like Lego: it is a relatively simple idea but you can build almost anything with it, large or small, as long as you follow the rules. The British (English) used sovereignty to separate themselves from the medieval Catholic world (Latin Christendom). Then they used it to build an empire that encircled the globe. Then they used it to decolonize and thereby created a multitude of new states. It has other uses besides these. My purpose is to investigate sovereignty in international relations in basic outline. Limitations of space dictate that this essay can only be an abridgement of a large historical subject. The main questions, although by no means the only ones, that can and I believe should be asked of sovereignty are the following: What is sovereignty? What is its character and modus operandi ? Who are the principals and agents of sovereignty? Who are the subjects of sovereignty? What would be involved in going beyond sovereignty in world politics? What are the values that sovereignty can be seen to uphold and defend? The remainder of the essay is devoted to suggesting some responses to these questions, starting with the ®rst and ending with the last.

Sovereignty in World Politics: A Glance at the Conceptual and Historical Landscape:

ing verifiable conclusions concerning indigenous peoples in North America. According to Jefferson, a proper theorization always requires more collection of data, more facts that can be aided in the proper examination of a specific condition. Eschewing theoretical determinism, Jefferson writes, “I wish that the persons who go thither would make very exact descriptions of what they see of that kind, without forming any theories.” He continues, “The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the tracts which favor that theory.”114 Jefferson’s own words are apropos here as well. For this reason, it is necessary to move beyond the axis of his writings on indigenous societies, primarily comprised in his Notes on Virginia and the batch of letters pertaining to the correlation between form and happiness, and explore a fresh perspective. By this, I suggest that a secondary route of analysis is needed within his epistolary catalogue. Although this path will only tease out a fractional viewpoint, it will, nevertheless, expose a terrain of his thought that has been 114 Thomas Jefferson to Charles Thomson, 20 September 1787, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 12, 159161. 256 uncharted. To be clear, this mode of inquiry will not unlock a missing piece or uncover a central premise that will facilitate a construction of a theory to commence; instead, it will further complicate the image of Jefferson, calling into question – from both a normative and empirical position – the optimal type of society for the pursuit of political freedom and equality. To present this angle, I turn to a set of correspondences that showcase Jefferson’s response to inquiries concerning a vastly different vision of

The Radical Democratic Thought of Thomas Jefferson: Politics, Space, & Action

We compared how 8 religious believers (historians and clergy) and 8 skeptics (historians and scientists) read a series of documents on 2 topics: the Biblical Exodus and the origins of the first (American) Thanksgiving. Readings by religiously committed historians differed from those of their non-religious peers. Navigating between the competing commitments of their faith communities on the one hand and an academic guild on the other, religious historians engaged in epistemic switching, varying epistemological criteria to align with the allegiances triggered by the document under review. To explain these findings, we propose that historical understanding be conceived not as a unitary construct but as a form of coordination between multiple axes: a vertical axis of increasing intellectual sophistication as defined by the discipline; and a horizontal axis of identification and commitment, along which individuals move between a variety of allegiances and affiliations as they engage the epistemological criteri...

Between Veritas and Communitas: Epistemic Switching in the Reading of Academic and Sacred History

Lists of Tables, Figures and Boxes - Acknowledgements - Introduction - Poland's Ecological Crisis - A History of Environmental Law in Poland - The 'Enforceability' of Poland's Environmental Laws - Enforcement Problems I: Party Politics - Enforcement Problems II: Socialist Economics - The Ideological Dimension: Marxism and the Environment - Environmental Protection in Transition - Institutional Implications - Bibliography - Index

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Instituting Environmental Protection: From Red to Green in Poland

On History, and Other Essays

To beg the question means to propose a valid immediate inference dressed up by addition of premises to look mediate, and to offer this in proof of some disputed point, where mediate inference is acceptable and immediate is not. A question-begging inference is valid, for its conclusion must be as true as its premises. It is hardly an argument, however, for one premise does all the work and the others have nothing left to do. Several accounts have been given of this matter recently, differing in their delineation of the fallacy involved, and on its relation to the sin of Circularity.1 It has proved difficult to frame a definition picking out all and only those inferences felt to be fallacious in this way (an impossible task, if our pre-theoretic intuitions of fallacy should happen not to coincide but only overlap). Some see question-begging as a formal defect in the structure of arguments, others as a disease of debate, diagnosed from the debater's position 'before and after'. In our view, question-begging arguments are valid and share distinctive though not quite peculiar structural features which make them objectionable in debate. To show this we must first say something of redundancy.

Do Circular Arguments Beg the Question

People used to think that the items referred to by one word, e.g. 'triangle', should all have certain features in common, which would jointly constitute 'triangularity': and that this 'essence' should enable us to decide whether any given item is a triangle or not. More recently this view has been denied and even ridiculed. Granted, some resemblances will usually appear between one and another thing called 'triangle', but there need be no single essence, no one set of common features running through them all. They are just linked in a family, by stray resemblances. The new view, if correct, should save us from various conclusions and needless mysteries generated by the old, false theory. It may also offer us new insights in several areas of life or of philosophy-if it is true, a point on which there has naturally been a vigorous and continuing debate.1 It has been generally assumed, in this debate, that the two theories are alternatives, that they answer the same question differently, so that their answers cannot both be right. Without that assumption, this inference could not be drawn, and the 'debate' might be transformed into co-operative research. Could it be that both parties describe correctly what they see, while inspecting different things? We need to explore this possibility. I. For words and phrases in natural languages the newer theory seems correct: the items referred to by some word must indeed be linked together in some way, but there need be no 'single essence'

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/3750541

Humphrey Palmer

Papers

On History, and Other Essays

Do Circular Arguments Beg the Question

Words and Terms

The Expression of Historical Knowledge.

Historical Explanation Reconsidered