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Full-Text Articles in Science and Technology Studies

The Net Result: Enthusiasm For Exploring The Internet, Connie Foster, Cynthia Etkin, Sandra L. Staebell, Mary Margaret (Peggy) Wright Dec 1993

The Net Result: Enthusiasm For Exploring The Internet, Connie Foster, Cynthia Etkin, Sandra L. Staebell, Mary Margaret (Peggy) Wright

DLTS Faculty Publications

What began as a vision and committee charge from the dean of libraries at Western Kentucky University (WKU) ended as a successful faculty retreat focusing on the Internet. For the third year all University Libraries faculty from public and technical services, special collections, and the Kentucky Museum set aside one day before the beginning of the fall semester to retreat from their normal library responsibilities and environment to explore, in-depth, a single topic, and in 1993 the retreat focused on the Internet.


Functional Explanation And Metaphysical Individualism, Justin Schwartz Jan 1993

Functional Explanation And Metaphysical Individualism, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A number of (present or former) analytical Marxists, such as Jon Elster, have argued that functional explanation has almost no place in the social sciences. (Although the discussion is framed in terms of a debate among analytical Marxists, the point is quite general, and Marxism is used for illustrative purposes.) Functional explanation accounts for what is to be explained by reference to its function; thus, sighted organism have eyes because eyes enable them to see. Elster and other critics of functional explanation argue that this pattern of explanation is inconsistent with "methodological individualism," the idea, as they understand it, that …