Comparative Study and the Scholarly Conscience

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QCD and strongly coupled gauge theories : challenges and perspectives

We highlight the progress, current status, and open challenges of QCD-driven physics, in theory and in experiment. We discuss how the strong interaction is intimately connected to a broad sweep of physical problems, in settings ranging from astrophysics and cosmology to strongly coupled, complex systems in particle and condensed-matter physics, as well as to searches for physics beyond the Standard Model. We also discuss how success in describing the strong interaction impacts other fields, and, in turn, how such subjects can impact studies of the strong interaction. In the course of the work we offer a perspective on the many research streams which flow into and out of QCD, as well as a vision for future developments.Peer reviewe

Translation: The relative native

Translation by Julia Sauma and Martin Holbraad of: Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo (2002) "O Nativo Relativo." Mana, vol. 8, no. 1, p. 113-14

Is Modern Mythology Ancient?

For folklorists, anthropologists, and other scholars of oral tradition, “mythology” typically refers to a genre of narratives whose actions are set in the ancient or primordial past. In his Mythologies, Barthes seems to depart from this scholarly convention by invoking this term and its associated rhetoric to categorize and characterize events and images drawn from the modern world of French and American politics, popular culture, and middle-class values. I argue that despite the nominal modernity of his topics, Barthes almost invariably conjures the power and appeal of ancientness (or eternality, or eternal return) through a variety of subtle strategies that I attempt to lay bare. </jats:p

The possibility of life

In a 2012 critique of John D. Barrow’s The artful universe, I explored the problems inherent in attempting to predict what can andcannothappen—what is and is not possible—in the universe, with special reference to the emergence of life, consciousness, andculture. In the present essay, I revisit my arguments in light of new works that have appeared on this topic. I also argue that such cosmic debates have counterparts in familiar anthropological dilemmas, such as those that developed around the idea of “totemism.

Copernican kinship: an origin myth for the category

In many traditional mythologies, kinship constitutes the privileged idiom of both unity and diversity in the cosmos. In "post-mythological" thought, categories logically conceived attempt to take over the cosmic role of kinship. I compare two accounts of the nature and genesis of categories—those by Durkheim and Mauss on one hand, and by Lakoff and Johnson on the other. Neither account severs ties with mythology or kinship; moreover, the structure of the category, like kinship, offers a mode of projecting the human as the cosmic. To the long-standing anthropological concern with the ways in which humans impose their diverse categories on the world, we should add a concern with the ways category-theorists impose their diverse worlds on the category

Science, bread, and circuses: folkloristic essays on science for the masses

Includes bibliographical references and index.In Science, Bread, and Circuses, Gregory Schrempp brings a folkloristic slant to the topic of popular science, calling attention to the persistence of folkloric form, idiom, and worldview within the increasingly important dimension of popular consciousness defined by the impact of science. Schrempp considers specific examples of texts in which science writers employ folkloric tropes--myths, legends, proverbs, or a variety of gestures from religious tradition--to lend authority or credibility to their message. In each essay he explores an instance of science popularization rooted in the quotidian round: variations of folkloric formulae in monumental measurements, invocations of science-heroes like saints or other inspirational figures, the battle of mythos and logo in parenting and academe how the meme has become embroiled in quasi-religious treatments of the problem of evil, and a range of other tropes of folklore drafted into the service of exposition of scientific topics. Science, Bread, and Circuses places the relationship of science and folklore is at the very center of folkloristic inquiry in an attempt to rephrase and thus domesticate scientific findings and claims in folklorically-imbued popular forms.--Provided by publisher