Eugen Weber
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 116717 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Eugen Weber |
| PRENOMES | Eugen |
| SOBRENOME | Weber |
| ASSINATURA | WEBER E |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Ghent University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0339-3810 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 127 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 662 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 127 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1953 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
Behind the Screen
ChatGPT is notorious for its untransparent behavior. This paper tries to shed light on this, providing an in‐depth analysis of the dark personality traits and conspiracy beliefs of GPT‐3.5 and GPT‐4. Different psychological tests and questionnaires were employed, including the Dark Factor Test, the MACH‐IV Scale, the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale, and the Conspiracy Mentality Scale. The responses were analyzed computing average scores, stand…
Distinctively generic explanations of physical facts
The Nationalist Revival in France, 1905-1914
The structure of analogical reasoning in bioethics
Six Theses on Mechanisms and Mechanistic Science
In this paper we identify six theses that constitute core results of philosophical investigation into the nature of mechanisms, and of the role that the search for and identification of mechanisms play in the sciences. These theses represent the fruits of the body of research that is now often called New Mechanism. We concisely present the main arguments for these theses. In the literature, these arguments are scattered and often implicit. Our an…
On Laws of Politics and How to Establish Them
Alfred Cuzán proposed five “laws of politics” that allegedly govern elections in democracies. Drawing from insights in the general philosophy of science and the philosophy of the social sciences, I argue that—although his empirical evidence is impressive—he failed to develop a convincing argument for calling the five theses “laws.” This article discusses other examples that often are claimed to be “laws of politics” and describes the global pictu…
Quantum mechanical atom models, legitimate explanations and mechanisms
Assessing Function Modeling Frameworks
While function modeling has been around in engineering design research since the 1960s, there have been no systematic, comparative studies devoted to assessing the adequacy of function modeling frameworks in light of engineering design objectives. This systematic assessment and comparison – called benchmarking – is now recognized as a central research issue in current function modeling research, but insight into how this benchmarking can be done …
Thinking about laws in political science (and beyond)
There are several theses in political science that are usually explicitly called ‘laws’. Other theses are generally thought of as laws, but often without being explicitly labelled as such. Still other claims are well‐supported and arguably interesting, while no one would be tempted to call them laws. This situation raises philosophical questions: which theses deserve to be called laws and which not? And how should we decide about this? In this pa…
In Defence of Rationalist Accounts of the Continental Drift Debate
Causation, lawhood and determinism in electoral systems research
Unification, the answer to resemblance questions
The ICE-theory of technical functions
Inferential explanations in biology
De-Ontologizing the Debate on Social Explanations
Counterfactual Causality, Empirical Research, and the Role of Theory in the Social Sciences
(2008). Counterfactual Causality, Empirical Research, and the Role of Theory in the Social Sciences. Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History: Vol. 41, No. 4, pp. 197-201
Reply to Daniel Steel's “With or Without Mechanisms”
In this discussion note I clarify the motivation behind my original paper “Social Mechanisms, Causal Inference and the Policy Relevance of Social Science.” I argue that one of the tasks of philosophers of social science is to draw attention to methodological problems that are often forgotten or overlooked. Then I show that my original paper does not make the mistake or fallacy that Daniel Steel suggests in his comment on it
A Pragmatist Defense of Non-relativistic Explanatory Pluralism in History and Social Science
Explanatory pluralism has been defended by several philosophers of history and social science, recently, for example, by Tor Egil Førland in this journal. In this article, we provide a better argument for explanatory pluralism, based on the pragmatist idea of epistemic interests. Second, we show that there are three quite different senses in which one can be an explanatory pluralist: one can be a pluralist about questions, a pluralist about answe…
Social Mechanisms, Causal Inference, and the Policy Relevance of Social Science
The paper has two aims. First, to show that we need social mechanisms to establish the policy relevance of causal claims, even if it is possible to build a good argument for those claims without knowledge of mechanisms. Second, to show that although social scientists can, in principle, do without social mechanisms when they argue for causal claims, in reality scientific practice contexts where they do not need mechanisms are very rare
A Shifting Shore
A Shifting Shore: Locals, Outsiders, and the Transformation of a French Fishing Town, 1823–2000, by Alice Garner (Ithaca: Cornell U.P., 2005; pp. 286 £20.50). ‘Arcachon, 15,755 inhabitants, well-known beach and health resort...’ reads my old Guide Bleu, listing dozens of hotels in and around it. Less than 200 years ago, when Alice Garner's well-told tale begins, it was a tiny hamlet huddled around a chapel that overlooked the Bassin of that name,…
The myth of the nation and the creation of the “other
The nation is a mythic construct whose primary component is a shared language (often one that has been manufactured for the purpose). In the context of popular sovereignty, shared language, like other shared traits, brings with it a seemingly irresistible capacity to demonize those who do not share it. This capacity is faithfully enlisted by politicians looking for means of mass mobilization. The democratic nation‐state therefore displays xenopho…
Explanation And Thought Experiments In History
Although interest in them is clearly growing, most professional historians do not accept thought experiments as appropriate tools. Advocates of the deliberate use of thought experiments in history argue that without counterfactuals, causal attributions in history do not make sense. Whereas such arguments play upon the meaning of causation in history, this article focuses on the reasoning processes by which historians arrive at causal explanations…
The Living Apart Together Relationship of Causation and Explanation
En reponse a un article de J. Lachapelle consacre a «l'evolution culturelle, (au) reductionnisme dans les sciences sociales, et (au) pluralisme explicatif», l'A. critique la notion de reductionnisme ontologique, ainsi que les concepts de causalite et explication, definis par l'auteur, d'une part, mais reconnait partager avec lui la these du pluralisme explicatif, d'autre part
Unification And Explanation
Remote Causes, Bad Explanations
Peasants into Frenchmen
Eugen Weber's *Peasants into Frenchmen* examines the processes by which a peasant society and culture were transformed into a relatively homogeneous nation with shared values and loyalties. Focusing on the period between 1870 and 1914, Weber argues that French national identity was not a natural or inevitable development, but rather the result of deliberate efforts by the state and other institutions to modernize and homogenize the rural populati…
France
Introduction 1. Decadence? 2. Transgressions 3. How They Lived 4. Affections and Disaffections 5. Endless Crisis 6. A Wolf to All 7. Old Arts and the New 8. Theater 9. Curists and Tourists 10. La Petite Reine 11. Faster, Higher, Stronger 12.
The Hollow Years
Caught between the memory of a brutal war won at frightful cost and fear of another cataclysm, France in the 1930s suffered a failure of nerve. Brilliantly chronicled here by a master historian, this fateful era could neither solve insoluble problems nor escape from them
The European Right. A Historical Profile
Remote Causes, Bad Explanations
Pierre de Coubertin and the introduction of organised sport in France
Watching the Olympic Games of I968, remembering that they had been reinvented by a Frenchman three-quarters of a century before, I found it odd that the chief sporting manifestation of our time should be attributed to a nation not overly given to sport, one whose athletic tradition hardly compares with those of her English or German neighbours, one in which games of every kind were beginning to spread only as the nineteenth century ended. An earl…
A Pragmatist Defense of Non-relativistic Explanatory Pluralism in History and Social Science
Explanatory pluralism has been defended by several philosophers of history and social science, recently, for example, by Tor Egil Førland in this journal. In this article, we provide a better argument for explanatory pluralism, based on the pragmatist idea of epistemic interests. Second, we show that there are three quite different senses in which one can be an explanatory pluralist: one can be a pluralist about questions, a pluralist about answe…
Unification
Revolution? Counterrevolution? What revolution
Almost any discussion of fascism is bound to involve consideration, explicit or not, of its revolutionary or counterrevolutionary nature. Fascists claimed to engage in a revolution. Their opponents denounced them as counterrevolutionaries. Most students divide unevenly about this: many consider the fascists' counterrevolutionary role self-evident, a few prefer to begin by taking the fascists at their word, some still judge the charges unproven. A…
The Men of the Archangel
We are often told that fascist movements recruit most heavily among the middle or lower middle classes, a point which is supposed to show their essentially conservative or reactionary nature. This raises several questions. First: is the assertion factually correct? Do fascist or fascist-type movements actually draw their leaders and followers in significantly high proportions from the middle sections of society ? Second: is the concept of middle …
Social Mechanisms, Causal Inference, and the Policy Relevance of Social Science
The paper has two aims. First, to show that we need social mechanisms to establish the policy relevance of causal claims, even if it is possible to build a good argument for those claims without knowledge of mechanisms. Second, to show that although social scientists can, in principle, do without social mechanisms when they argue for causal claims, in reality scientific practice contexts where they do not need mechanisms are very rare
Explanation And Thought Experiments In History
Although interest in them is clearly growing, most professional historians do not accept thought experiments as appropriate tools. Advocates of the deliberate use of thought experiments in history argue that without counterfactuals, causal attributions in history do not make sense. Whereas such arguments play upon the meaning of causation in history, this article focuses on the reasoning processes by which historians arrive at causal explanations…
What rough beast
Eric Hobsbawm's Nations and Nationalism since 1780 effectively describes the novelty and artificiality of the modern nation and nation‐state, emphasizing the role that cultural and political elites have played in constructing nations, especially through nationally homogeneous schools and partly invented national traditions and histories. By defining nationalism as the congruence between nation and state, however, Hobsbawm gives insufficient atten…
Of Stereotypes and of the French
A stereotype is a cliche. Both are typographical terms for printing plates, soon applied to ready-made opinions, repetitive, hackneyed phrases, and also to something which is turned out of the same mould. The word is modern, the reality it describes is ageless. Equally so the tendency to attribute particular characteristics to places, or to animal groups, including groups of humans. Greeks had stereotyped views about Persians and Egyptians, Roman…
Counterfactual Causality, Empirical Research, and the Role of Theory in the Social Sciences
(2008). Counterfactual Causality, Empirical Research, and the Role of Theory in the Social Sciences. Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History: Vol. 41, No. 4, pp. 197-201
Vie et mort de l'honneur
Fairies and Hard Facts
Near a large forest lived a poor woodcutter with his wife and two children. The boy's name was Hansel and girl's Gretel. The woodcutter had little to eat, and once when a great famine swept country, he was no longer able to earn even their daily bread. One evening when he was lying in his bed and tossing about and worrying, he sighed and said to his What's to become of us? How can we feed our poor children when we've nothing left for ourselves? D…
The Appeal of Fascism
Nationalism, Socialism, and National-Socialism in France
Distinctively generic explanations of physical facts
On Laws of Politics and How to Establish Them
Alfred Cuzán proposed five “laws of politics” that allegedly govern elections in democracies. Drawing from insights in the general philosophy of science and the philosophy of the social sciences, I argue that—although his empirical evidence is impressive—he failed to develop a convincing argument for calling the five theses “laws.” This article discusses other examples that often are claimed to be “laws of politics” and describes the global pictu…
Thinking about laws in political science (and beyond)
There are several theses in political science that are usually explicitly called ‘laws’. Other theses are generally thought of as laws, but often without being explicitly labelled as such. Still other claims are well‐supported and arguably interesting, while no one would be tempted to call them laws. This situation raises philosophical questions: which theses deserve to be called laws and which not? And how should we decide about this? In this pa…
Causation, lawhood and determinism in electoral systems research
Unification, the answer to resemblance questions
De-Ontologizing the Debate on Social Explanations
Psichari and God
The Wilhelmstrasse
European Reactions to American Policies
time when agonizing reappraisals are no longer in vogue is not, perhaps, the best for undertaking one. But ceaseless reports of European to American have led too many people to lose sight of the woods for the trees, of the great realities underlying European behaviour and atmosphere for their everyday manifestations. We should consider these realities for a better understanding of moods and which seem vacillating, inconsistent, and sometimes hard…
"The Subject of the Controversy "The Shirt of Nessus
The Shirt of Nessus
Some Comments on the Nature of the Nationalist Revival in France before 1914
It is frequently asserted by students of the history of the Third French Republic that the years before 1914, and especially from 1911 to 1914, were a period of nationalist revival, a somewhat exceptional period when politics were dominated by a novel concern for national unity, prestige, and power; by calls for order, tradition, and discipline; and by catchwords connected with all these things. I propose to inquire first into the social aspect o…
La Fièvre de la Raison
An epigram coined under the Third Republic presents the political Frenchman as torn between the claims of his heart on the Left and of his pocketbook on the Right. At a time when a nationalistic policy in Algeria draws heavily on all pocketbooks this idea seems out of date: today a good section of the French public is trying to reconcile accepted attitudes with a new policy, and the old phraseology of the Left conceals less and less successfully …
The Nationalist Revival in France, 1905-1914
An Anxious Pride
Essay| May 01 1959 An Anxious Pride: French Policy, 1959 Eugen Weber Eugen Weber Assistant Professor of History, University of California at Los Angeles Eugen Weber, Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles, a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, studied and taught in Paris for several years after the war. Particularly interested in the doctrines and the fortunes of the Right-wing parties, he is the author o…
New Wine in Old Bottles
The Anti-Utopia of the Twentieth Century
Research Article| July 01 1959 The Anti-Utopia of the Twentieth Century Eugen Weber Eugen Weber Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1959) 58 (3): 440–447. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-58-3-440 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Eugen Weber; The Anti-Utopia of the Twentieth Century. South Atlantic Quarterly 1 July 1959; 58 (3): 440–4…
Un Demi-Siècle de Glissement à Droite
Une des formules les plus généralement admises par les interprètes et les exégètes de la politique française a été celle d'un progrès vers la gauche, progrès plus ou moins continu, inscrit dans des pages d'histoire où les fastes de la Grande Révolution ouvraient toute une perspective de révolutions et de réformes amenant le pays à des attitudes et à des institutions toujours plus démocratiques, et où chaque pas en arrière serait recompensé par de…
Central Control of French Education
Essay| June 01 1961 Central Control of French Education Eugen Weber Eugen Weber Associate Professor of History, University of California at Los Angeles Eugen Weber, a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, studied and taught in Paris for several years after the war. He is the author of The Nationalist Revival in France, The Western Tradition, Paths to the Present as well as numerous articles on French affairs. He has just returned from Paris wh…
The French View of Europe
Essay| January 01 1961 The French View of Europe Eugen Weber Eugen Weber Associate Professor of History, University of California at I.os Angeles Eugen Weber, a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, studied and taught in Paris for several years after the war. He is the author of The Nationalist Revival in France, numerous articles on French affairs, The Western Tradition and Paths to the Present. He is currently in Paris, preparing a study of …
La Vie à Paris sous l'Occupation 1940-44. Gérard Walter
Nationalism, Socialism, and National-Socialism in France
Action Francaise
A Short History of Sociology. Heinz Maus
The European Right. A Historical Survey
The Men of the Archangel
We are often told that fascist movements recruit most heavily among the middle or lower middle classes, a point which is supposed to show their essentially conservative or reactionary nature. This raises several questions. First: is the assertion factually correct? Do fascist or fascist-type movements actually draw their leaders and followers in significantly high proportions from the middle sections of society ? Second: is the concept of middle …
The European Right. A Historical Profile
Books reviewed
The Labor Revolution. By Gus. Tyler. New York: The Viking Press, 1967. History of the Chicago Urban League. By Arvarh E. Strickland. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 1966. 286 pp. $7.50. Socialism and the Workers in Massachusetts, 1886–1912. By Henry F. Bedford. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press. 1966. 315 pp. 16.50. Profiles of Eleven. By Melech Epstein. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. 1965. 379 pp. $8.95. Labor and Libe…
The Nationalist Revival in France, 1905–1914
Roger Martin du Gard
The Resistance Versus Vichy
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