Philosophy, History and Social Action: Essays in Honor of Lewis Feuer with an autobiographic essay by Lewis Feuer PDF
Preview Philosophy, History and Social Action: Essays in Honor of Lewis Feuer with an autobiographic essay by Lewis Feuer
PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY AND SOCIAL ACTION BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Editor ROBERT S. COHEN, Boston University Editorial Advisory Board ADOLF GRUNBAUM, University of Pittsburgh SYLVAN S. SCHWEBER, Brandeis University JOHN J. STACHEL, Boston University MARX W. WARTOFSKY, Baruch College of the City University of New York VOLUME 107 PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY AND SOCIAL ACTION Essays in Honor of Lewis Feuer With an autobiographical essay by Lewis Feuer Edited by SIDNEY HOOK Dept. of Philosophy, New. York University, and the Hoover Institution WILLIAM L. O'NEILL Dept. of History, Rutgers University and ROGER O'TOOLE Dept. of Sociology, University of Toronto KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS DORDRECHT I BOSTON I LONDON Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Philosophy, history, and social action : essays in honor of Lewis Feuer : with an autobiographical essay by Lewis Feuer 1 edited by Sidney Hook, William L. O'Neill, and Roger O'Toole. p. em. - (Boston studies in the philosophy of science: v. 107) Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN-l3: 978-94-010-7793-4 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-2873-2 DOl: 10.l007/978-94-009-2873-2 1. Philosophy. 2. History - Philosophy. 3. Social sciences -Philosophy. 4. Social action. 5. Feuer, Lewis Samuel, 1912- I. Feuer, Lewis Samuel, 1912- . II. Hook, Sidney, 1902- III. O'Neill, William L. IV. O'Toole, Roger, 1942- . V. Series. Q174.B67 vol. 107 [B29] 320.5--dc19 87-36905 eIP Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Kluwer Academic Publishers incorporates the publishing programmes of D. Reidel, Martinus Nijhoff, Dr. W. Junk and MTP Press Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada by Kluwer Academic Publishers, 101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A. In all other countries, sold and distributed by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands. All Rights Reserved © 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers Softcover reprint of the hardcover 15 t edition 1988 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner TABLE OF CONTENTS Editorial Preface vii Editors' Foreword ix LEWIS S. FEUER / A Narrative of Personal Events and Ideas 1 List of Published Writings of Lewis Feuer 87 WILLIAM J. BAUMOL / On the Reality of Economic Illusion 103 WILLIAM BREIT / Institutional Economics as an Ideological Movement 119 WILLIAM H. DRAY / Generalization, Value-Judgment and Causal Explanation in History 137 ABRAHAM EDEL / Theory and Practice: An Unsteady Dichotomy? 157 ROBERT G. GILPIN / Development and Underdevel- opment: Conflicting Pespectives on the Third World 173 ELI GINZBERG / Occupational Mobility: A Personal Perspective 209 CHARLES HANLY / From Animism to Rationalism 221 SIDNEY HOOK / Toward Greater Equality 235 IRVING LOUIS HOROWITZ / Left-Wing Fascism and Right-Wing Communism: The Fission-Fusion Effect in American Extremist Ideologies 245 MILTON R. KONVITZ / The Nature of Bronson Alcott 267 PAUL KURTZ / Is Marxism a Religion? 275 v vi TABLE OF CONTENTS THELMA Z. LA VINE / Judaism in the Culture of Modernism 297 GEORGE S. N. LUCKYJ / Panteleimon Kulish - A Ukrainian Romantic Conservative 313 CZESLAW MILOSZ / Idea (English and Polish Versions) 323 ROGER O'TOOLE / Organizational Weapons and Political Sects 325 RICHARD H. POPKIN / Millenarianism in England, Holland and America: Jewish and Christian Relations in England, Holland and Newport, Rhode Island 349 SIDNEY RATNER / John Dewey's Philosophy of War and Peace 373 VERA COOPER RUBIN / To L.F. from V.C.R., 1984 391 HAROLD Z. SCHIFFRIN / China Today: Retreat from Mao and Return to Marx? 395 HAROLD ISSADORE SHARLIN / Life and Work: A Biography of Lord Kelvin Reconsidered 405 JOSEPH ~KVORECKY / The Case of Lewis S. Feuer, Crime Writer 419 STEPHEN J. WHITFIELD / After Strange Gods: Radical Jews in Modern America 425 DENNIS H. WRONG / The Concept of Alienation Revisited 461 List of Contributors 475 Index of Names 479 EDITORIAL PREFACE Two articles by Lewis Feuer caught my attention in the '40s when 1 was wondering, asa student physicist, about the relations of physics to philosophy and to the world in turmoil. One was his essay on 'The Development of Logical Empiricism' (1941), and the other his critical review of Philipp Frank's biography of Einstein, 'Philosophy and the Theory of Relativity' (1947). How extraordinary it was to find so intelligent, independent, critical, and humane a mind; and furthermore he went further, as I soon realized when I looked for his name on other publications. I recall arguing with myself over his exploration of 'Indeterminacy and Economic Development' (1948), and even more when I read his 'Dialectical Materialism and Soviet Science' (1949). More papers, and then the fascinating, sometimes irritating, always insightful, books. His monograph on Psychoanalysis and Ethics 1955, the beautiful sociological and humanist study of Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism (1958), his essays on 'The Social Roots of Einstein's Theory of Relativity' (1971) together with the book on Einstein and the Genera tions of Science (1974), the splendid reader from the works of Marx and Engels, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy (1959) which was a major text of the '60s, the stimulating essays on the social formation which seems to have been required for a modern scientific movement to develop, set forth most convincingly in The Scientific Intellectual (1963). These are my choices; the reader will want to read and meditate on many others from the impressive bibliography in this book. Lewis Feuer has never avoided controversy nor abandoned either intelligence or courage. Agree with him or not, every reader will find his writings not only pungent but also powerful, critical but also admirably steeped in humane values. As one of his admirers, Sidney Hook, has written of Feuer's article 'Noumenalism and Einstein's Argument for the Existence of God' (1983): "1 believe Einstein would have welcomed Feuer's argument which will impress even those who like myself remain unconvinced by it but in consequence are less sure of their own negations". Centre for Philosophy and History of Science ROBERT S. COHEN Boston University April 1988 LEWIS S. FEUER EDITORS' FOREWORD For more than half a century the writings of Lewis S. Feuer have made a unique and provocative contribution to many branches of scholarship. Resistant to the tides of academic over-specialization and disciplinary isolation, Feuer has been an intrepid, astute, and often iconoclastic explorer of such topics as intellectual authoritarianism, the ideas of Spinoza and Dewey, the life and work of Karl Marx, the religious context of seventeenth century science, the generational basis of student revolt, the social roots of Einstein's theories, Jewish contributions to American life, and the social psychology of imperialism. Writing with verve, simplicity and impeccable scholarship, he has sought to relate and properly delimit the psychological and sociological components of discovery in a broad range of intellectual enterprises. The contributions assembled in this volume have been especially written by many distinguished scholars in order to pay tribute to the life of thought and action recounted by Professor Feuer in his autobio graphical essay. The collection honors Feuer both by exemplifying qualities characteristic of his work and by reflecting the immense variety of his scientific and literary interests. Besides admiring Lewis Feuer, most of the contributors are his friends too and have welcomed this opportunity to acknowledge his warmth, generosity and many acts of kindness rendered by him over the years. We are grateful to Kathryn Feuer for generously responding to all our requests for information. In addition to writing articles some contribu tors assisted us in other ways, and we wish especially to thank Irving Louis Horowitz, Paul Kurtz and Sidney Ratner for their aid and counsel. This book would not exist save for the efforts of Robert Cohen, to whom we extend our gratitude, as also to Mrs. J. C. Kuipers of Kluwer Academic Publishers for her editorial support. Most of all we would like to thank the contributors for what has been an impressive display of patience on their part. SIDNEY HOOK WILLIAM L. O'NEILL ROGER O'TOOLE lX LEWIS S. FEUER A NARRATIVE OF PERSONAL EVENTS AND IDEAS I was born in New York City's Lower East Side in December 1912, in a tenement house on 5th Street off Avenue C; until I was almost thirteen years of age, my family lived longest in a house on that Avenue between 8th and 9th Streets. I still remember riding on the horse drawn street car through 3rd Street toward Avenue C. Several cultures competed and commingled in the setting of my formative years; the earliest was the Orthodox Jewish. At home, we observed strictly the dietary laws; our mother lit and blessed the Friday night candles; we knew Saturday's taboo against writing, we were happy at Passover feasts, and gloomy on the Day of Atonement. For seven years I attended classes during the late afternoon or evening at the Downtown Talmud Torah at Houston Street, and later the Hebrew High School. The peddler's push carts lined our avenue, and five days a week I woke to the sounds of peddlers screeching their wares in Yiddish, beseeching, supplicating, uttering challenges, insults, flatteries; on wintry days, they would burn wood and oil lamps to keep warm, and they feared the policemen's clubs; they were mostly bearded, and wore strange hats. This Yiddish culture was quite different from the Hebraic one that I received at the Downtown Talmud Torah, where a group of young gifted teachers, in their early twenties, and working their way through college, read with us the books of the Bible; several of them later became noted scholars and public personalities: Oscar Janowsky, Fre deric Ewen, Simon Rifkind. During the days, however, I was a cheerful pupil at Public School 64, a school famed for its principals who encouraged some daring exper imentation in education (Irwin and Marks, 1924). At P.S. 64, an experiment had been inaugurated, the 'Terman classes' they were called, thus named after the famous Stanford psychologist. Through psychological and physical tests, given throughout the East Side's schools, several small groups of boys and girls were selected to enjoy special curricula with specially chosen able teachers. That is how it happened that I was advanced rapidly, so that I entered college at the age of fourteen. The 'skippings', however, were an ordeal especially when I was jumped past a year of arithmetic; also there was a later social 1 S. Hook, W.L. O'Neill and R. OToole (eds.), Philosophy, History and Social Action, 1-85. © 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers. All rights reserved.
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