15.207 a book on POWER?

From: by way of Willard McCarty (willard@lists.village.Virginia.EDU)
Date: Fri Aug 31 2001 - 03:32:11 EDT

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                   Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 15, No. 207.
           Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   <http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
                  <http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>

             Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 08:26:28 +0100
             From: "Stephanie Stauffer" <stephanie@cal.org>
             Subject: FW: book project invitation

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Subhash Durlabhji [mailto:durlabhji@NSULA.EDU]
    Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2001 3:35 PM

    Hello friends:

    Would you like to be involved in an interesting book project that could
    be path-breaking and revolutionary? Would you (or interested colleague)
    be willing to write an essay on the role the concept of POWER plays in
    your field?

    For centuries the physical and social sciences have followed the course
    of differentiation into finer and finer specializations. This division
    of labor has been phenomenally successful, producing startling insights
    and breathtaking scientific and social achievements.

    But many scholars believe that we are now in a new phase of knowledge
    generation, that this is the century of integration. Interesting
    parallels and crossover problems and issues are being discovered daily
    by scientists in different fields. Boundaries between various
    disciplines are become fuzzier. Scientific progress in the 21st century
    will come more, and more usefully, from interactions among the separate
    disciplines than from deeper penetration into narrow specializations.

    The scholarly effort I am suggesting here is based on this premise.
    There are a number of concepts -- power, value, hierarchy, energy, to
    name a few -- that occupy a central place in almost all the physical
    and social sciences. My proposal is simple: bring together in one volume
    essays on the subject of POWER by scientists from a range of disciplines
    -- Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Psychology, Sociology,
    Political Science, Economics, Organization Studies, Anthropology,
    International Studies. These essays will focus on the role the concept
    of POWER plays in the central problems of each discipline. Written in
    simple language with as little technical detail as possible, they would
    seek to highlight especially the connections and commonalties among the
    basic sciences. The essays will not be concerned with the latest
    research and recent citations, but more with the "big picture". My role
    as editor will be to write the introduction and an integrative
    narrative, and a concluding chapter, and arrange for publication.

    If you find this idea interesting and would like to explore it in more
    depth, please contact me for a more detailed proposal, including some
    suggestions for style, substance, length, and so on. Please comment on
    the outline of the proposal given above and your own take on it -- how
    you would approach the task.

    Please join me on this venture, or pass on this message to a colleague
    who may be interested. At the least it will be fun; my hope is that it
    will be a runaway success and open the path to similar efforts for other
    concepts.

    Thank you.

    durlabhji@nsula.edu

    Dr. Subhash Durlabhji
    College of Business
    Northwestern State University
    Natchitoches, LA 71497

    318-357-5692
    Fax: 509-272-2692



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