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Unintended Consequences
In the social sciences, unintended consequences (sometimes unanticipated consequences or unforeseen consequences, more colloquially called knock-on effects) are outcomes of a purposeful action that are not intended or foreseen. The term was popularized in the 20th century by American sociologist Robert K. Merton. and later used to prevent erosion in earthworks, has become a major problem in the Southeastern United States. Kudzu has displaced native plants and has effectively taken over significant portions of land. The protection of the steel industry in the United States reduced production of steel in the United States, increased costs to users, and increased unemployment in associated industries. Perverse results In 2003, Barbra Streisand unsuccessfully sued Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com for posting a photograph of her home online. Before the lawsuit had been filed, only 6 people had downloaded the file, two of them Streisand's attorneys. The lawsuit drew attention to t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Invisible Hand
The invisible hand is a metaphor inspired by the Scottish economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith that describes the incentives which free markets sometimes create for self-interested people to accidentally act in the public interest, even when this is not something they intended. Smith originally mentioned the term in two specific, but different, economic examples. It is used once in his '' Theory of Moral Sentiments'' when discussing a hypothetical example of wealth being concentrated in the hands of one person, who wastes his wealth, but thereby employs others. More famously, it is also used once in his '' Wealth of Nations'', when arguing that governments do not normally need to force international traders to invest in their own home country. In both cases, Adam Smith speaks of ''an'' invisible hand, never of ''the'' invisible hand. Going far beyond the original intent of Smith's metaphor, twentieth-century economists, especially Paul Samuelson, popularized the use of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Methodological Individualism
In the social sciences, methodological individualism is a method for explaining social phenomena strictly in terms of the decisions of individuals, each being moved by their own personal motivations. In contrast, explanations of social phenomena which assume that cause and effect acts upon whole classes or groups are deemed illusory, and thus rejected according to this approach. Or to put it another way, only group dynamics which can be explained in terms of individual subjective motivations are considered valid. With its bottom-up micro-level approach, methodological individualism is often contrasted with methodological holism, a top-down macro-level approach, and methodological pluralism. History within the Social Sciences This framework was introduced as a foundational assumption within the social sciences by Max Weber, and discussed in his book '' Economy and Society''. Within later schools of economic thought, such as the Austrian School, strict adherence to methodologic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Austrian School Of Economics
The Austrian school is a heterodox school of economic thought that advocates strict adherence to methodological individualism, the concept that social phenomena result primarily from the motivations and actions of individuals along with their self interest. Austrian-school theorists hold that economic theory should be exclusively derived from basic principles of human action.Ludwig von Mises. Human Action, p. 11, "Purposeful Action and Animal Reaction". Referenced 2011-11-23. The Austrian school originated in 1871 in Vienna with the work of Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Friedrich von Wieser, and others. It was methodologically opposed to the Historical school, in a dispute known as '' Methodenstreit'', or methodology quarrel. Current-day economists working in this tradition are located in many countries, but their work is still referred to as Austrian economics. Among the theoretical contributions of the early years of the Austrian school are the subjective theory ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karl Marx
Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels), and his three-volume (1867–1894), a critique of classical political economy which employs his theory of historical materialism in an analysis of capitalism, in the culmination of his life's work. Marx's ideas and their subsequent development, collectively known as Marxism, have had enormous influence. Born in Trier in the Kingdom of Prussia, Marx studied at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, and received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Jena in 1841. A Young Hegelian, he was influenced by the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and both critiqued and developed Hegel's ideas in works such as '' The German Ideology'' (written 1846) and the '' Grundrisse'' (written 1857–1858). While in Paris, Marx wrote ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ludwig Feuerbach And The End Of Classical German Philosophy
''Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy'' (German: ''Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie'') is a book published by Friedrich Engels in 1886. According to Engels, the seed for this book was planted 40 years before, in ''The German Ideology'' written by Karl Marx and Engels, but unpublished in their lifetimes. The undertaking is performed to deal critically with German philosophy from a Dialectical materialism, dialectical materialist position. Here Engels emphasized the importance of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach for their own theories. Hegel's idealist, conservative system must be distinguished from his materialist, revolutionary method of Dialectic, dialectics. Feuerbach had turned to law against Hegel's idealistic system and "the fundamental question of philosophy": the relation of thinking and being. But Feuerbach rejected Hegelian dialectic, Hegel's dialectical method, which is why his view of man ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels ( ;"Engels" ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; 28 November 1820 – 5 August 1895) was a German philosopher, political theorist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He was also a businessman and Karl Marx's lifelong friend and closest collaborator, serving as the co-founder of Marxism. Born in Barmen in the Kingdom of Prussia, Engels was the son of a wealthy textile manufacturer. Despite his Bourgeoisie, bourgeois background, he became a staunch critic of capitalism, influenced by his observations of industrial working conditions in Manchester, England, as published in his early work ''The Condition of the Working Class in England'' (1845). He met Marx in 1844, after which they jointly authored works including ''The Holy Family (book), The Holy Family'' (1844), ''The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ludwig Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (; ; 28 July 1804 – 13 September 1872) was a German anthropologist and philosopher, best known for his book '' The Essence of Christianity'', which provided a critique of Christianity that strongly influenced generations of later thinkers, including Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Engels, Mikhail Bakunin, Richard Wagner, Frederick Douglass, and Friedrich Nietzsche. An associate of Young Hegelian circles, Feuerbach advocated anthropological materialism. Many of his philosophical writings offered a critical analysis of religion. His thought was influential in the development of historical materialism,Nicholas Churchich, ''Marxism and Alienation'', Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990, p. 57: "Although Marx has rejected Feuerbach's abstract materialism," Lenin says that Feuerbach's views "are consistently materialist," implying that Feuerbach's conception of causality is entirely in line with dialectical materialism." w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theory Of Evolution
Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more or less common within a population over successive generations. The process of evolution has given rise to biodiversity at every level of biological organisation. The scientific theory of evolution by natural selection was conceived independently by two British naturalists, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, in the mid-19th century as an explanation for why organisms are adapted to their physical and biological environments. The theory was first set out in detail in Darwin's book ''On the Origin of Species''. Evolution by natural selection is established by observable facts about living organisms: (1) more offspring are often produced than can possibly survive; (2) traits vary among individuals with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a Common descent, common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental scientific concept. In a joint presentation with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this Phylogenetics, branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding.. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and was honoured by Burials and memorials in Westminster Abbey, burial in Westminster Abbey. Darwin's early interest in nature led him to neglect his medical education at the University of Edinburgh Medical Schoo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Positivism
Positivism is a philosophical school that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positivemeaning '' a posteriori'' facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience.John J. Macionis, Linda M. Gerber, ''Sociology'', Seventh Canadian Edition, Pearson Canada. Other ways of knowing, such as intuition, introspection, or religious faith, are rejected or considered meaningless. Although the positivist approach has been a recurrent theme in the history of Western thought, modern positivism was first articulated in the early 19th century by Auguste Comte. His school of sociological positivism holds that society, like the physical world, operates according to scientific laws. After Comte, positivist schools arose in logic, psychology, economics, historiography, and other fields of thought. Generally, positivists attempted to introduce scientific methods to their respective fields. Since the turn of the 20th century, positivism, although still ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Economic Growth
In economics, economic growth is an increase in the quantity and quality of the economic goods and Service (economics), services that a society Production (economics), produces. It can be measured as the increase in the inflation-adjusted Output (economics), output of an economy in a given year or over a period of time. The rate of growth is typically calculated as List of countries by real GDP growth rate, real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate, List of countries by real GDP per capita growth, real GDP per capita growth rate or List of countries by GNI per capita growth, GNI per capita growth. The "rate" of economic growth refers to the Exponential growth, geometric annual rate of growth in GDP or GDP per capita between the first and the last year over a period of time. This growth rate represents the trend in the average level of GDP over the period, and ignores any fluctuations in the GDP around this trend. Growth is usually calculated in "real" value, which is real v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
