rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (William J. Rapaport) (02/23/89)
PARTICULARISM CONFERENCE
March 2-5, 1989
280 Park Hall
SUNY Buffalo
The purpose of this conference is to bring together a group of scholars
in various disciplines who practice an approach which may be defined as
particularist, in order to consider is implications for contemporary
thought.
"Particularism" characterizes a rapidly developing area of research
strategies in which emphasis falls on observations and experiences
rather than on systems and generalizations. In literary sutdies, this
has taken form as an expressly anti-theoretical movement; concern has
shifted towards the immediate experience of a work and the uniqueness or
_quidditas_ of the aesthetic event.
Particularist emphasis can also be seen in the biological and medical
sciences. Reading Oliver Sacks, one realizes that some physicians
regard the individual case as being in some degree inaccessible to any
general diagnosis. In zoology, Stephen Jay Gould has argued for the
importance of variety and exception in the survival of species.
Mathematics is concerned with discontinutities and singularities.
In social science, the "Annales" shcool, the Princeton school, and the
New Historicists have establishede a powerful tradition in micro-
history. Clifford Geertz has done the same for anthropology.
In ethics, a borad plea for the priority of the particular case over the
general principle has been entered by thinkers as various as Lyotard and
Bernard Williams.
Speakers:
Naomi Schor (Romance Languages, Brown)
David Hull (Philosophy of Science, Northwestern)
Lawrence B. McCullough (Baylor College of Medicine)
Paul Fry (English, Yale)
Roland Kany (Tuebingen)
Martha Nussbaum (Philosophy, Brown)
Lawrence Blum (Philosophy, UMass/Boston)
Rene Thom (Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques)
For further information, contact Irving Massey, Dept. of English, SUNY
Buffalo, 716-636-2575, 882-7652