Given the rapid development and dissemination of various information types within CMC, source evaluation methodology is increasingly difficult and has been complicated further by dominant academic approaches. We trace the reification of book-based evaluation criteria and how its exalted status has been undergirded by a mentality that reinscribes old patterns of credibility onto wholly new entit...

Piaget has su!ered a great deal of criticism that his theory of psychological development neglects the social nature of human development. Much of this criticism has come from researchers following a Vygotskian approach and comparing Piaget's approach unfavorably with that of Vygotsky. Smith (1995) refers us to Piaget's collected articles on sociology (Piaget, 1995) to argue convincingly that i...

Social sciences face a well-known problem, which is an instance of a general problem faced as well by psychological and biological sciences: the problem of establishing their legitimate existence alongside physics. This, as will become clear, is a problem in metaphysics. I will show how a new account of structural explanations, put forward by Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit, which is designed t...

Using multi-agent models to study social systems has attracted criticisms because of the challenges involved in their validation. Common criticisms that we have encountered are described, and for each one we attempt to give a balanced perspective of the criticism. A model of intra-state conflict is used to help demonstrate these points. We conclude that multi-agent models for social systems are...

medical practice; rather in significant part it is engaged in special interest advocacy, pursuing and preserving social power. The concept of excellence is a component of the ideological justification of that role’ [ 3 , p. 11]. Holman identified a decline in intellectual freedom as a major source of the ‘excellence deception’, which perpetuates prevailing practices, deflects criticism and insu...

Gun control legislation is essentially a law enforcement matter and a political device to reduce violent crime; only secondarily a psychiatric concern. It is a volatile issue among citizens and legislators alike. The position of forensic psychiatry toward violent crime has been largely peripheral, since only a minute number of homicides where insanity is pled (about I percent) involves psychiat...

This review essay surveys recent literature in the history of science, literary theory, anthropology, and art criticism dedicated to exploring how the artificial life enterprise has been inflected by--and might also reshape--existing social, historical, cognitive, and cultural frames of thought and action. The piece works through various possible interpretations of Kevin Kelly's phrase "life is...