Diane D Turner
Biographic Data
| ID | 652963 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Diane D Turner |
| GIVEN NAMES | Diane D |
| FAMILY NAME | Turner |
| SIGNATURE | TURNER D D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Connecticut College |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7817-0788 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 46 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Leaving traces
The National Park Service and many other federal, state, and local land managers in the US enjoin visitors to "leave no trace" when visiting parks and wilderness areas. At the same time, practices that involve leaving traces-painted rocks, rock cairns, and fairy houses-have become well established on some public lands. Public discussions reveal deep divides in how people view these traces in a time of increased pressures on public lands. This art…
Creativity Without Agency
Common philosophical accounts of creativity align creative products and processes with a particular kind of agency: namely, that deserving of praise or blame. Considering evolutionary examples, we explore two ways of denying that creativity requires forms of agency. First, we argue that decoupling creativity from praiseworthiness comes at little cost: accepting that evolutionary processes are non-agential, they nonetheless exhibit many of the sam…
Historical Contingency
Narrative Explanation and Non-Epistemic Value
Explanations in the natural historical sciences often take the form of stories. This paper examines two accounts of the sources of narrative’s explanatory power: Beatty’s suggestion that narrative explanation is closely connected to historical contingency, and that narratives explain by contrasting what happened with what might have happened; and Ereshefsky and Turner’s view that narratives explain by organizing events around a central subject wi…
De-extinction as Artificial Species Selection
Neo- Naturphilosophie
John Nelson, a cartographer and specialist in data visualization, has used NASA satellite photos of Earth to create animated GIFs in which the planet seems to breathe (Nelson 2013). Seasonal cycles are compressed down to moments, green turns to brown and back to green, and snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere expands and contracts rhythmically, at about the same pace as human breathing. It is hard to watch the animations and not come away with t…
Philosophical Issues in Recent Paleontology
The distinction between idiographic science, which aims to reconstruct sequences of particular events, and nomothetic science, which aims to discover laws and regularities, is crucial for understanding the paleobiological revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. Stephen Jay Gould at times seemed conflicted about whether to say (a) that idiographic science is fine as it is or (b) that paleontology would have more credibility if it were more nomothetic. …
Paleontology
The Topography of Historical Contingency
Starting with Ben-Menahem's definition of historical contingency as sensitivity to variations in initial conditions, we suggest that historical events and processes can be thought of as forming a complex landscape of contingency and necessity. We suggest three different ways of extending and elaborating Ben-Menahem's concepts: (1) By supplementing them with a notion of historical disturbance; (2) by pointing out that contingency and necessity are…
Why Not Nimby
This paper examines a particularly egregious example of a NIMBY ('Not in my backyard') claim and considers three proposals for explaining what about that claim might be ethically problematic: (1) The NIMBY claimant is being selfish or self-serving; (2) The NIMBY claim cannot be morally justified, because respecting everyone's NIMBY claims leaves communities worse off; and (3) if policymakers were to defer to people's NIMBY claims, they would end …
Haile Gerima
The Hollywood industrial complex delivers entertainment to millions of people through the manipulation of images on the silver screen. Hollywood images of Africans in Africa and its Diaspora begin with negative stereotypes and gross misrepresentations about the Black experience. Yet, there are other images of Blacks that are more diverse and realistic. Haile Gerima has been at the forefront of the Black independent film movement to eradicate ster…
Local Underdetermination in Historical Science
David Lewis (1979) defends the thesis of the asymmetry of overdetermination: later affairs are seldom overdetermined by earlier affairs, but earlier affairs are usually overdetermined by later affairs. Recently, Carol Cleland (2002) has argued that since the distinctive methodologies of historical science and experimental science exploit different aspects of this asymmetry, the methodology of historical science is just as good, epistemically spea…
An Oral History Interview
Oral history is empowering because it initiates African agency while creating primary documents for future research and historical interpretation. An oral history interview with Molefi Kete Asante, conducted by historian Diane D. Turner, reveals aspects of his early life with autobiographical sketches about his mother, father, and the community where he was raised. The interview moves from personal accounts of his childhood to his academic career…
The functions of fossils
Local Underdetermination in Historical Science
David Lewis (1979) defends the thesis of the asymmetry of overdetermination: later affairs are seldom overdetermined by earlier affairs, but earlier affairs are usually overdetermined by later affairs. Recently, Carol Cleland (2002) has argued that since the distinctive methodologies of historical science and experimental science exploit different aspects of this asymmetry, the methodology of historical science is just as good, epistemically spea…
The Topography of Historical Contingency
Starting with Ben-Menahem's definition of historical contingency as sensitivity to variations in initial conditions, we suggest that historical events and processes can be thought of as forming a complex landscape of contingency and necessity. We suggest three different ways of extending and elaborating Ben-Menahem's concepts: (1) By supplementing them with a notion of historical disturbance; (2) by pointing out that contingency and necessity are…
Why Not Nimby
This paper examines a particularly egregious example of a NIMBY ('Not in my backyard') claim and considers three proposals for explaining what about that claim might be ethically problematic: (1) The NIMBY claimant is being selfish or self-serving; (2) The NIMBY claim cannot be morally justified, because respecting everyone's NIMBY claims leaves communities worse off; and (3) if policymakers were to defer to people's NIMBY claims, they would end …
Philosophical Issues in Recent Paleontology
The distinction between idiographic science, which aims to reconstruct sequences of particular events, and nomothetic science, which aims to discover laws and regularities, is crucial for understanding the paleobiological revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. Stephen Jay Gould at times seemed conflicted about whether to say (a) that idiographic science is fine as it is or (b) that paleontology would have more credibility if it were more nomothetic. …
The functions of fossils
Leaving traces
The National Park Service and many other federal, state, and local land managers in the US enjoin visitors to "leave no trace" when visiting parks and wilderness areas. At the same time, practices that involve leaving traces-painted rocks, rock cairns, and fairy houses-have become well established on some public lands. Public discussions reveal deep divides in how people view these traces in a time of increased pressures on public lands. This art…
The functions of fossils
An Oral History Interview
Oral history is empowering because it initiates African agency while creating primary documents for future research and historical interpretation. An oral history interview with Molefi Kete Asante, conducted by historian Diane D. Turner, reveals aspects of his early life with autobiographical sketches about his mother, father, and the community where he was raised. The interview moves from personal accounts of his childhood to his academic career…
Local Underdetermination in Historical Science
David Lewis (1979) defends the thesis of the asymmetry of overdetermination: later affairs are seldom overdetermined by earlier affairs, but earlier affairs are usually overdetermined by later affairs. Recently, Carol Cleland (2002) has argued that since the distinctive methodologies of historical science and experimental science exploit different aspects of this asymmetry, the methodology of historical science is just as good, epistemically spea…
Haile Gerima
The Hollywood industrial complex delivers entertainment to millions of people through the manipulation of images on the silver screen. Hollywood images of Africans in Africa and its Diaspora begin with negative stereotypes and gross misrepresentations about the Black experience. Yet, there are other images of Blacks that are more diverse and realistic. Haile Gerima has been at the forefront of the Black independent film movement to eradicate ster…
Why Not Nimby
This paper examines a particularly egregious example of a NIMBY ('Not in my backyard') claim and considers three proposals for explaining what about that claim might be ethically problematic: (1) The NIMBY claimant is being selfish or self-serving; (2) The NIMBY claim cannot be morally justified, because respecting everyone's NIMBY claims leaves communities worse off; and (3) if policymakers were to defer to people's NIMBY claims, they would end …
Paleontology
The Topography of Historical Contingency
Starting with Ben-Menahem's definition of historical contingency as sensitivity to variations in initial conditions, we suggest that historical events and processes can be thought of as forming a complex landscape of contingency and necessity. We suggest three different ways of extending and elaborating Ben-Menahem's concepts: (1) By supplementing them with a notion of historical disturbance; (2) by pointing out that contingency and necessity are…
Neo- Naturphilosophie
John Nelson, a cartographer and specialist in data visualization, has used NASA satellite photos of Earth to create animated GIFs in which the planet seems to breathe (Nelson 2013). Seasonal cycles are compressed down to moments, green turns to brown and back to green, and snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere expands and contracts rhythmically, at about the same pace as human breathing. It is hard to watch the animations and not come away with t…
Philosophical Issues in Recent Paleontology
The distinction between idiographic science, which aims to reconstruct sequences of particular events, and nomothetic science, which aims to discover laws and regularities, is crucial for understanding the paleobiological revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. Stephen Jay Gould at times seemed conflicted about whether to say (a) that idiographic science is fine as it is or (b) that paleontology would have more credibility if it were more nomothetic. …
De-extinction as Artificial Species Selection
Creativity Without Agency
Common philosophical accounts of creativity align creative products and processes with a particular kind of agency: namely, that deserving of praise or blame. Considering evolutionary examples, we explore two ways of denying that creativity requires forms of agency. First, we argue that decoupling creativity from praiseworthiness comes at little cost: accepting that evolutionary processes are non-agential, they nonetheless exhibit many of the sam…
Historical Contingency
Narrative Explanation and Non-Epistemic Value
Explanations in the natural historical sciences often take the form of stories. This paper examines two accounts of the sources of narrative’s explanatory power: Beatty’s suggestion that narrative explanation is closely connected to historical contingency, and that narratives explain by contrasting what happened with what might have happened; and Ereshefsky and Turner’s view that narratives explain by organizing events around a central subject wi…
Leaving traces
The National Park Service and many other federal, state, and local land managers in the US enjoin visitors to "leave no trace" when visiting parks and wilderness areas. At the same time, practices that involve leaving traces-painted rocks, rock cairns, and fairy houses-have become well established on some public lands. Public discussions reveal deep divides in how people view these traces in a time of increased pressures on public lands. This art…
Philosophy (11 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · History (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Philosophy and History of Science (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Biology (4 works) · History (4 works) · Contingency (3 works)