The Middle Way Getting Its Way

The middle way.

Mesoscopic organization in soft, hard, and biological matter is examined in the context of our present understanding of the principles responsible for emergent organized behavior (crystallinity, ferromagnetism, superconductivity, etc.) at long wavelengths in very large aggregations of particles. Particular attention is paid to the possibility that as-yet-undiscovered organizing principles might...

The middle way of evolution

THIS ESSAY PROVIDES A CRITICAL REVIEW OF TWO RECENT BOOKS ON EVOLUTION: Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth, and Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True, as well as a critique of mainstream evolutionary theory and of natural selection. I also suggest a generalization of sexual selection theory that acknowledges mind as pervasive in nature. Natural selection, as the primary theory of how bio...

A Middle Way Way of Emptying Dualism in Social Theory

A variety of theories in the social science, as profound as they may seem, cannot break away from “either-or” dualism. In which, many of them assume dualistic substantialisms in terms of the dichotomies like: methodological individualism vs. methodological collectivism; positivistic sociology vs. intepretivist sociology; agency vs. structure, and so on. In addition to that, there is also anothe...

Getting out of our own way.

This paper, a follow-up from a 2009 panel discussion at ABCT's Annual Convention, focuses on the choices that women make (or don't make) that can affect their careers. Women are particularly prone to feeling guilty about their choices, and while a few decades ago there was a great deal of sexism in the workplace, at this point in time, I believe that we are more likely to make assumptions that ...

On Parmenides' Poem: "The Way of Truth" and "The Way of Opinion"