User:KYPark/2003

Michael Barkun

 * A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America
 * first published 1986?
 * University of California Press, Berkeley.
 * http://books.google.com/books?id=LiwjVsNBw-cC

The essence of conspiracy beliefs lies in attempts to delineate and explain evil. At their broadest, conspiracy theories "view history as controlled by massive, demonic forces." The locus of this evil lies outside the true community, in some "Other, defined as foreign or barbarian, though often ... disguised as innocent and upright." The result is a worldview characterized by a sharp division between the realms of good and evil.2

For our purposes, a conspiracy belief is the belief that an organization made up of individuals or groups was or is acting covertly to achieve some malevolent end. As I indicate later ..., such a definition has implications both for the role of secrecy and for the activities a conspiracy is believed to undertake.

A conspiracist worldview implies a universe governed by design rather than by randomness. The emphasis on design manifests itself in three principles found in virtually every conspiracy theory:
 * Nothing happens by accident. Conspiracy implies a world based on intentionality, from which accident and coincidence have been removed. Anything that happens occurs because it has been willed. At its most extreme, the result is a "fantasy [world] . . . far more coherent than the real world."3
 * Nothing is as it seems. Appearances are deceptive, because conspirators wish to deceive in order to disguise their identities or their activities. Thus the appearance of innocence is deemed to be no guarantee that an individual or group is benign.
 * Everything is connected. Because the conspiracists' world has no room for accident, pattern is believed to be everywhere, albeit hidden from plain view. Hence the conspiracy theorist must engage in a constant process of linkage and correlation in order to map the hidden connections.

In an odd way, the conspiracy theorist's view is both frightening and reassuring. It is frightening because it magnifies the power of evil, leading in some cases to an outright dualism in which light and darkness struggle for cosmic supremacy. At the same time, however, it is reassuring, for it promises a world that is meaningful rather than arbitrary. Not only are events nonrandom, but the clear identification of evil gives the conspiracist a definable enemy against which to struggle, endowing life with purpose. (pp. 3-4)


 * Paul S. Boyer (2004) "The Strange World of Conspiracy Theories," The Christian Century, July 27, 2004, pp. 32-35. html
 * ``... he characterizes conspiracy belief as an attempt "to delineate and explain evil," guided by three basic principles: Nothing happens by accident; nothing is as it seems; and everything is connected. Insisting on the cultural importance of "stigmatized knowledge," he looks at the history of this tradition, going back to the Order of Illuminists founded in 1776 by Bavarian law professor Adam Weishaupt to free mankind "from all established religious and political authority." The "Bavarian Illuminati" soon disappeared, but their ideas have enjoyed a rich afterlife among conspiracy theorists, in works often marked by anti-Semitic overtones.``

George Miller

 * The Cognitive Revolution&#58; A Historical Perspective
 * TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences, Vol.7, No.3 (March 2003) pp. 141-144. PDF

Norwegian Government

 * Holberg International Memorial Prize
 * established in 2003 by the government of Norway with the objective of increasing awareness of the value of academic scholarship within the arts, humanities, social sciences, law and theology, either within one of these fields or through interdisciplinary work. The prize was established in honour of Ludvig Holberg and complements the Abel Prize in mathematics established in 2002.


 * Recipients
 * 2008: Fredric Jameson, William A. Lane Professor in The Program in Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University.
 * 2007: Ronald Dworkin, professor of law and philosophy at New York University, USA and at University College London in the United Kingdom.
 * 2006: Shmuel Eisenstadt, Professor emeritus in sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem
 * 2005: Jürgen Habermas, Professor emeritus, University of Frankfurt
 * 2004: Julia Kristeva, Director of the Sciences des textes et documents Department, University of Paris 7 (Jussieu)

Elliot Perlman

 * Seven Types of Ambiguity
 * A novel


 * Seven Types of Ambiguity (Empson)
 * Richard Harland (1999)

Martin Rees

 * Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind's Future In This Century -- On Earth and Beyond
 * UK title: Our Final Century: Will the Human Race Survive the Twenty-first Century?


 * ``In order to avoid Human extinction, Rees advocates control of scientific research worldwide, and control of open access to such research (such as Wikipedia). He states that in the 1990s Aum Shinrikyo tried unsuccessfully to obtain an Ebola virus sample, which they could now create in their Mount Fuji lab, using ingredients and instructions from the Internet.``

Warren Samuels

 * A Companion to the History of Economic Thought
 * Warren J. Samuels, Jeff E. Biddle and John B. Davis, eds., Blackwell.
 * http://books.google.com/books?id=3H8gBQv5MysC
 * /Samuels

Ross Todd

 * Humanizing Information Technology&#58; From Ideas to Bits and Back
 * Proceedings of the 66th ASIST Annual Meeting. Volume 40.  Medford, NJ: Information Today, 2003. (ed.)


 * Ross J. Todd's Bibliography
 * http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~rtodd/publications.htm
 * Cognitive bibliography c. 1996

Stuart Umpleby

 * Transforming the Global University System into a Resource for Social Improvement
 * http://www.gwu.edu/~umpleby/recent_papers/2003_GIGP_Shandruk_GUS.pdf


 * A Global University for A Global Village (2007)
 * http://www.gwu.edu/~umpleby/recent_papers/2006_GUS.pdf


 * See also
 * The index of Academic Globalization