Marxist Critical Methodology

Marxist critical methods involve the application of a structure of categories against the text, so that the text can be “read.” Categories include such dichotomies as “use value/market value” and “proletariat/bourgoisie,” and the classification scheme of economic substructure, social structure, and cultural superstructure. The critical method sets the context. Critical

Historical Criticism

Historical criticism generally pursues the authentication of the nonfictional text (e.g., diary, letter, governmental report) and the documentary information it provides about persons and events it discusses and their historical context. A good example is provided by V. H. Stanton’s review of the authorship of the gospel of Mark. Literary

Freudian Critical Methods



As a modern philosophical field, phenomenology investigates the organization of conscious experience, dealing with questions, for instance, of how the division between subject (ego) and object (world) arises and how things in the world are classified. Since much historical research concerns the historical actor’s consciousness (and self-consciousness), some historians have

Michel Foucault’s Interpretive Analytics

The provocative and influential French thinker, Michel Foucault (1926-1984), challenged the fundamental Western liberal assumptions, originating in the Enlightenment, that history is the objective story of society in progress and that mankind can be defined in terms of an unchanging human nature. Since science has been the guarantor of progress

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and the Theories of Relativity

Einstein Bibliography Manuscripts Works in English Non-Scientific Works Historiography Historiographical Review: Einstein in His Times Biography Origins of Relativity Theories Reception of Relativity Theories Other Studies Advanced Interpretation Popularizations of the Theories Introduction to the Science Bibliography Boni, Nell, Monique Russ, and Dan H. Lawrence. A Bibliographical Checklist and Index

Immanuel Kant – Transcendental Idealism

Kant’s Description of the Transformation of Sensations into Experience Summarizing the argument presented in: Immanuel Kant. Critique of Pure Reason. Originally published as Kritik der reinen Vernunft. 1781. Trans. by Norman Kemp Smith. London: Macmillan, 1929. Kant defines “transcendental idealism” in the following way: “… Everything intuited in space or

Quantum Theory

What is brighter than a thousand suns ? Bibliography General Studies about Quantum Theory Popular Discussions of Quantum Theory Fission Philosophy by Quantum Physicists Bibliography Kuhn, Thomas S., John L. Heilbron, Paul L. Forman, and Lini Allen. Sources for History of Quantum Physics: An Inventory and Report. Philadelphia; The American