Barry Allen
Biographic Data
| ID | 3597559 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Barry Allen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Barry |
| FAMILY NAME | Allen |
| SIGNATURE | ALLEN B |
| AFFILIATIONS | McMaster University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2779-0060 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 67 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 67 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Native American Spirituality and Eurasian Metaphysics: An Essay in Ceremonial Research
Ideas of spirit and spirituality are obstacles to better appreciation of Indigenous experience and culture among scholars trained in contemporary Euro-American philosophy. Part of the reason is not appreciating philosophy's own concept of spirit, which is a word for anything that endures, develops, or evolves; for instance, songs, stories, dances, aromas, speech, consciousness, feeling, memory, and the vital processes of life. The author's argume…
Nothing: A Philosophical History
From Laozi to Bertrand Russell via Nagarjuna, Lucretius, the nonexistent Saint Katherine of Alexandria, and many more, each of Sorensen's twenty-two chapters pairs a philosopher with an expression of nothing. It may be the nonexistence of the planet Vulcan, which never did exist; of Socrates, who is no more; or the discombobulating, semi-nonexistence of shadows, reflections, vanishing points, borders, and holes. Infinite void surrounds the Stoic …
Samuel Butler's Contributions to Biological Philosophy
Samuel Butler is usually remembered for Erewhon, widely considered among the best English satires. He also contributed to philosophical biology in works that collectively compose the nineteenth century's finest statement of the evolutionary argument associated with the name of Lamarck. In writing on evolution, Butler was not presenting science for a popular audience but deliberately intervening in the scientific argument about Darwinism. Surprise…
Living in Time: The Philosophy of Henri Bergson
Living in Time is a book about the philosophical ideas of Henri Bergson (1859-1941), once the most famous philosopher in the world, though now seldom considered, especially not in Anglophone philosophy. This is regrettable, as Bergson is a great philosopher, and this book explains why. There is a chapter on each of Bergson's four major works, explaining his theories of time, perception, memory, and panpsychic consciousness, his innovative concept…
Indigenous Epistemologies of North America
Indigenous cultures of North America confronted a problem of knowledge different from that of canonical European philosophy. The European problem is to identify and overcome obstacles to the perfection of knowledge as science, while the Indigenous problem is to conserve a legacy of practice fused with a territory. Complicating the difference is that one of these traditions violently colonized the other, and with colonization the Indigenous proble…
The Art of Technology and the Technology of Art
The presented statement is part of the volume it covers a variety of responses from people who interact with art in different ways. The aim is to suggest to the participant of the contemporary world a new, personal perspective to rethink what is this area of our world that we label with art; thoughts with and without theoretical suggestions - reflections by the creators and reflections by the audience, teaching humility and uniqueness, perhaps - …
The Genesis of Living FormsNeofinalism
The work of French philosopher Raymond Ruyer (1902–87) is making a belated appearance in English translation with the publication of these two works. Ruyer is a philosopher of science who continues a French tradition of finding Lamarck neglected and Darwin overrated. Ruyer is also among those who think the best hints for problems of evolutionary biology come from the theory of development. He advances arguments seldom aired in Anglophone philosop…
Interpreting Bergson: Critical EssaysHenri Bergson
Henri Bergson (1859–1941) was for a time the most famous philosopher in the world and is thus far one of the few to receive a Nobel Prize for his work. Among Anglophone philosophers, however, he is mostly forgotten today—which is a loss, since Bergson was a great philosopher, and better understanding of his ideas would enhance Anglophone philosophy with new problems and concepts. Bergsonism became controversial in the early twentieth century, tho…
Introduction: Richard Rorty, Pragmatic Provocateur
This essay introduces a running symposium on the work of Richard Rorty and its legacy fifteen years after his passing. The arc of Rorty's thought defines a trajectory through American pragmatism, tracing a variation unimagined until he expressed it. His work raised Anglophone philosophers' interest in American pragmatism as never before and also focused the interest of the whole world on American pragmatism as never before, even though the result…
Individuation in the Light of Notions of Form and InformationOn the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects
Simondon is scarcely known to English-language philosophers, though with these translations that may begin to change. They have been a long time coming. Simondon writes a complicated academic prose in French and calls on an unusually wide range of expertise, but reading his books is worth the effort. Individuation in the Light of Notions of Form and Information (1964) is a dense and at times technical contribution to the philosophy of biology, th…
The Gestation of German Biology: Philosophy and Physiology from Stahl to Schelling
From Leibniz and Georg Ernst Stahl to Albrecht von Haller, Germans of the eighteenth century calved off an experimental physiology from medicine and made this research a centerpiece of their new model university, first under Haller at Göttingen, then under von Humboldt at Berlin. Haller made Göttingen the most important center for the advancement of Enlightenment science in Germany, but that is not where Johann Herder went looking for new ideas i…
Thinking and Being by Irad Kimhi
Book Review| January 01 2021 Thinking and Being by Irad Kimhi Kimhi, Irad, Thinking and Being (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 166 pp. Barry Allen Barry Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2021) 27 (1): 108. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-8723117 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Barry Allen; Thinking and Being by Irad Kimhi. Common Knowledge 1…
Dewey for a New Age of Fascism: Teaching Democratic Habits by Nathan Crick
Review Article| August 01 2020 Dewey for a New Age of Fascism: Teaching Democratic Habits by Nathan Crick Crick, Nathan, Dewey for a New Age of Fascism: Teaching Democratic Habits (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019), 234 pp. Barry Allen Barry Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2020) 26 (3): 434. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-8525973 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Faceboo…
Shanzhai: Deconstruction in Chinese by Byung-Chul Han
Review Article| January 01 2020 Shanzhai: Deconstruction in Chinese by Byung-Chul Han Han, Byung-Chul, Shanzhai: Deconstruction in Chinese, trans. Hurd, Philippa (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017), 91 pp. Barry Allen Barry Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2020) 26 (1): 186. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-7899868 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Barry Allen; …
Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto by Bryan W. Van Norden
Book Review| April 01 2020 Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto by Bryan W. Van Norden Van Norden, Bryan W., Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 216 pp. Barry Allen Barry Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2020) 26 (2): 354–355. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-8196813 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Ma…
Living data
We see new technologies changing how we live, and seemingly set to do so at a rising pace. How should we describe these changes, and what exactly is changing? I discuss the theory of technical change in Simondon, On the Modes of Existence of the Technical Object . Once we understand precisely what sort of change qualifies as “technical,” we see that the changes in question today have little to do with technology as such, more with a new infrastru…
Truth and Predication by Donald Davidson
Research Article| April 01 2019 Truth and Predication by Donald Davidson Davidson, Donald, Truth and Predication (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 180 pp. Barry Allen Barry Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2019) 25 (1-3): 423. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-7312321 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Barry Allen; Truth …
Are There Rationally Undecidable Arguments
Frank in this article treats the disagreement between François Lyotard and Jürgen Habermas over whether there are arguments that cannot be decided rationally. Lyotard identifies rational undecidability as the "postmodern condition." Habermas objects that reasonable procedures do exist that are adequate for the resolution of any argument among reasonable participants. Frank judges Lyotard's argument as unpersuasive yet blames Habermas for dismissi…
Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture, and World Politics ed. by Ban Wang
Book Review| August 01 2018 Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture, and World Politics ed. by Ban Wang Wang, Ban, ed., Chinese Visions of World Order: Tianxia, Culture, and World Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 330 pp. Barry Allen Barry Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2018) 24 (3): 443. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-6940318 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook…
Modes of Margin in Philosophy
Marginality in philosophy can be active or reactive. Marginality is reactive when it is a reaction to domination, imposed by force, and resented. Reactive marginality chases the legitimacy of the center. It would happily reconstitute as a tolerated specialization. Active marginality flees normalization. When a paradigm approaches, it moves elsewhere. Active marginality colonizes the margins, which for it are a position of strength or at least cre…
A Cool Experiment
This Common Knowledge guest column examines Richard Feynman’s tabletop experiment, performed during the inquiry into the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, as a means of demonstrating some of the fundamental qualities of a scientific experiment. Experiments have been interpreted in two different ways, which (adapting terminology from Euclid) are described here as theorematic and problematic. Some think that Feynman’s experiment was a theo…
Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia
Book Review| January 01 2017 Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia Jemielniak, Dariusz, Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 293 pp. Barry Allen Barry Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2017) 23 (1): 104. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-3692492 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site …
Asian Martial Arts: The Anarchic Legacy of the War Machine
The renaissance of Asian martial arts is a conspicuous example of cultural hybridity in a global setting. Globalization brings these arts under the dual sway of cinema and sport to a degree unprecedented in their history. This pull, which I describe in terms from Deleuze and Guattari as deterritorialization, creates new challenges for Asian martial arts practice. To explore these challenges and their stakes, I demonstrate the relevance of the con…
The Book of Beginnings
Book Review| September 01 2016 The Book of Beginnings Jullien, François, The Book of Beginnings, trans. Gladding, Jody. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015), 152 pp. Barry Allen Barry Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2016) 22 (3): 500. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-3622385 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Barry Allen; The …
The Philosophical Challenge from China
Book Review| January 01 2016 The Philosophical Challenge from China Bruya, Brian, ed., The Philosophical Challenge from China. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015), 393 pp. Barry Allen Barry Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2016) 22 (1): 133. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-3323193 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook …
Asian Martial Arts: The Anarchic Legacy of the War Machine
The renaissance of Asian martial arts is a conspicuous example of cultural hybridity in a global setting. Globalization brings these arts under the dual sway of cinema and sport to a degree unprecedented in their history. This pull, which I describe in terms from Deleuze and Guattari as deterritorialization, creates new challenges for Asian martial arts practice. To explore these challenges and their stakes, I demonstrate the relevance of the con…
Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking
Book Review| August 01 2003 Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking Walter D. Mignolo, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 371 pp. Barry Allen Barry Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2003) 9 (3): 551. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-9-3-551 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Barry Allen; Local Histo…
Indigenous Epistemologies of North America
Indigenous cultures of North America confronted a problem of knowledge different from that of canonical European philosophy. The European problem is to identify and overcome obstacles to the perfection of knowledge as science, while the Indigenous problem is to conserve a legacy of practice fused with a territory. Complicating the difference is that one of these traditions violently colonized the other, and with colonization the Indigenous proble…
Introduction: Richard Rorty, Pragmatic Provocateur
This essay introduces a running symposium on the work of Richard Rorty and its legacy fifteen years after his passing. The arc of Rorty's thought defines a trajectory through American pragmatism, tracing a variation unimagined until he expressed it. His work raised Anglophone philosophers' interest in American pragmatism as never before and also focused the interest of the whole world on American pragmatism as never before, even though the result…
Experiments In Democracy
I take skeptical view of experimentalism Dorf and Sabel advocate. I discuss doubts of three kinds: Doubt about idea of best practices; doubt about their understanding of scientific experimentation; and doubt about value of Constitutional reform they envision. Their program reduces to competitive rituals and managerial predation. imperative of comparison threatens practices with destruction. Benchmarking machine to destroy divergence. To compel su…
Fuzzy Studies
In this introduction to Part 1 of the Common Knowledge symposium, "Fuzzy Studies," the journal's editor discusses four essays from the 1980s by Richard Rorty, in which Rorty chose to associate himself with various neopragmatists, Continental thinkers, and "left-wing Kuhnians" under the rubric of the "new fuzziness." The term had been introduced as an insult by a philosopher of science with positivist leanings, but Rorty took it up as an "endearin…
Turning Back the Linguistic Turn in the Theory of Knowledge
The so-called linguistic turn in philosophy intensified (rather than overcame) the rationalism that has haunted Western ideas about knowledge since antiquity. Orthodox accounts continue to present knowledge as a linguistic, logical quality, expressed in statements or theories that are well justified by evidence and actually true. Restating themes from the author's Knowledge and Civilization (2004a), I introduce an alternative conception of knowle…
Gruesome Arithmetic: Kripke's Sceptic Replies
Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language has enlivened recent discussion of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. Yet it is quite possible to disengage his interpretive thesis from its supporting argumentation. Doing so leaves one with an intriguing sceptical argument which Kripke first powerfully advances, then tries to halt. But contrary to the impression his argument may leave, Kripke's solution and the position it concedes to the Scepti…
Government in Foucault
The forms and specific situations of the government of men by one another in a given society are multiple; they are superimposed, they cross, impose their own limits, sometimes cancel one another out, sometimes reinforce one another. (Foucault [SP, 224]) According to a commonplace in the critical discussion of Foucault's later work, he is supposed to have decided to take up Nietzsche's interpretation of power as Wille zur Macht , ‘will to power.’…
Foundations of transcendental philosophy ( Wissenschaftslehre ) Nova Methodo (1796/99)
Atheism, relativism, Enlightenment and truth
Apres avoir defini l'atheisme tel qu'il fut entendu et pratique en Europe aux XVII et surtout XVIII siecles, l'A. le compare au relativisme des philosophes du XIX e siecle
Truth's Debt to Value
Truth in philosophy
Truth in Philosophy
Truth in Philosophy
The Soul of Knowledge
Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory. By Ian Hacking
Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism
Book Review| August 01 2002 Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism Barry Allen Barry Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2002) 8 (3): 549–550. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-8-3-549-a Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Barry Allen; Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism. Common Knowledge 1 August 2002; 8 (3): 549–550. doi: http…
Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy
Book Review| April 01 2002 Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy Barry Allen Barry Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2002) 8 (2): 422. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-8-2-422 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Barry Allen; Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Common Knowledge 1 April 2002; 8 (2): 422. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-8-2-422 Download citation fil…
Deconstruction as Analytic Philosophy
Book Review| January 01 2002 Deconstruction as Analytic Philosophy Barry Allen Barry Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2002) 8 (1): 208. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-8-1-208 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Barry Allen; Deconstruction as Analytic Philosophy. Common Knowledge 1 January 2002; 8 (1): 208. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-8-1-208 Downloa…
Another New Nietzsche
Book reviewed in this article: Bernard Williams, Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy
Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking
Book Review| August 01 2003 Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking Walter D. Mignolo, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 371 pp. Barry Allen Barry Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2003) 9 (3): 551. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-9-3-551 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Barry Allen; Local Histo…
A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot
Book Review| August 01 2003 A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot Peter Burke, (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2000), 268 pp. Barry Allen Barry Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2003) 9 (3): 550. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-9-3-550 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Barry Allen; A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot. C…
The Dawn of Human Culture
Book Review| April 01 2003 The Dawn of Human Culture Richard G. Klein, with Blake Edgar, (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002), 288 pp. Barry Allen Barry Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2003) 9 (2): 353. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-9-2-353 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Barry Allen; The Dawn of Human Culture. Common Knowledge 1 April 2003; 9 (2): 353. …
Extreme Virtue: Truth and Leadership in Five Great American Lives (review)
Infinity and Perspective
The Ubiquitous Artifact: On Coherence
Most of the terms that might seem to be necessary or sufficient conditions on coherence turn out to be no more than styles or modes of coherence, never the thing itself. This is true even of logical consistency. We can no more capture the possibilities of coherence in a timeless definition than we can capture the possibilities of games or works of art. Coherence is made and not found, invented and not discovered, and an artifact of embodied, hist…
Evil and Enmity
Research Article| April 01 2004 EVIL AND ENMITY Barry Allen Barry Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2004) 10 (2): 185–197. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-10-2-185 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Barry Allen; EVIL AND ENMITY. Common Knowledge 1 April 2004; 10 (2): 185–197. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-10-2-185 Download cita…
What is Knowledge
Book Review| April 01 2004 What is Knowledge? Barry Allen Barry Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2004) 10 (2): 365. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-10-2-365-a Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Barry Allen; What is Knowledge?. Common Knowledge 1 April 2004; 10 (2): 365. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-10-2-365-a Download citation file: Zotero Reference …
Seeing Double: Shared Identities in Physics, Philosophy, and Literature
Book Review| August 01 2005 Seeing Double: Shared Identities in Physics, Philosophy, and Literature Peter Pesic, (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2002), 184 pp. Barry Allen Barry Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2005) 11 (3): 501. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-11-3-501 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Barry Allen; Seeing Double: Shared Identities in Physics, Philosop…
A History Without the History
In some remote corner of the universe, flickering in the light of the countless solar systems into which it had been poured, there was once a planet on which clever animals invented cognition. It was the most arrogant and most mendacious minute in the "history of the world"; but a minute was all it was. After nature had drawn just a few more breaths the planet froze and the clever animals had to die.-Friedrich Nietzsche The History of Human Reaso…
Prometheus and the Muses
Research Article| August 01 2006 Prometheus and the Muses: On Art and Technology Barry Allen Barry Allen Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Common Knowledge (2006) 12 (3): 354–378. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-2006-002 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Barry Allen; Prometheus and the Muses: On Art and Technology. Common Knowledge 1 August 2006; 12 (3): 354–378. doi: https://doi.or…
Turning Back the Linguistic Turn in the Theory of Knowledge
The so-called linguistic turn in philosophy intensified (rather than overcame) the rationalism that has haunted Western ideas about knowledge since antiquity. Orthodox accounts continue to present knowledge as a linguistic, logical quality, expressed in statements or theories that are well justified by evidence and actually true. Restating themes from the author's Knowledge and Civilization (2004a), I introduce an alternative conception of knowle…
Computer Science (40 works) · Philosophy (37 works) · Epistemology (32 works) · Citation (31 works) · Icon (31 works) · World Wide Web (30 works) · Download (29 works) · Information retrieval (20 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Library science (17 works)