"I do not think I could have written the book on nationalism which I did write, were I not capable of crying, with the help of a little alcohol, over folk songs . . . " — Professor Ernest Gellner

Ernest André Gellner (December 9, 1925 – November 5, 1995) was a philosopher and social anthropologist, cited as one of the world's "most vigorous intellectuals," [1] whose work famously prompted a leader in The Times, followed by a month-long correspondence on the letters page. The Independent called him a "one-man crusade for critical rationalism." (November 8, 1995). This work is copyrighted. ... This work is copyrighted. ... December 9 is the 343rd day (344th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1925 (MCMXXV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... November 5 is the 309th day of the year (310th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 56 days remaining. ... 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Times is a national newspaper published daily in the United Kingdom. ... The Independent is a British compact newspaper published by Tony OReillys Independent News & Media. ... November 8 is the 312th day of the year (313th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 53 days remaining. ... 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

As the Professor of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics (LSE) for 22 years, the William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge for ten, and finally as head of the new Centre for the Study of Nationalism in Prague, Gellner fought all his life — in his writing, his teaching, and through his political activism — against intellectual tyranny and closed systems of thought, particularly communism, psychoanalysis, linguistic philosophy, relativism, religion, and what he saw as the dictatorship of the free market. The London School of Economics and Political Science, often referred to as the London School of Economics or simply the LSE, is a specialist university in London. ... The University of Cambridge is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world, with one of the most selective sets of entry requirements in the United Kingdom. ... Prague (Czech: Praha, see also other names) is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. ... Communism refers to a theoretical system of social organization and a political movement based on common ownership of the means of production. ... Psychoanalysis is a family of psychological theories and methods within the field of psychotherapy that seeks to elucidate connections among unconscious components of patients mental processes, and to do so in a systematic way through a process of tracing out associations. ... Ordinary language philosophy is less a philosophical doctrine or school than it is a loose network of approaches to traditional philosophical problems. ... Relativism is the view that the meaning and value of human beliefs and behaviors have no absolute reference. ... A free market is an idealized market, where all economic decisions and actions by individuals regarding transfer of money, goods, and services are voluntary, and are therefore devoid of coercion and theft (some definitions of coercion are inclusive of theft). Colloquially and loosely, a free market economy is an economy...

Sociologist David Glass remarked that he wasn't sure whether the next revolution would come from the right or from the left, but he was quite sure that, wherever it came from, the first person to be shot would be Ernest Gellner. [2]

Background

"[Prague] is a stunningly beautiful town, and during the first period of my exile, which was during the war, I constantly used to dream about it, in the literal sense: it was a strong longing."

Gellner's parents, Rudolf, a lawyer, and Anna, née Fantl, were both Jews from the German-speaking region of Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic. The family returned to Prague, and Gellner was sent to the English-language grammar school there. This was Kafka's tricultural Prague, he told John Davis, Warden of All Souls: anti-Semitic but stunningly beautiful, a city he later spent years longing for. [3] This work is copyrighted. ... This work is copyrighted. ... Bohemia This article is about the historical region in central Europe; for other uses, see Bohemia (disambiguation). ... Prague (Czech: Praha, see also other names) is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. ... All Souls College (in full: The College of All Souls of the Faithful Departed, of Oxford) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. ... The Eternal Jew: 1937 German poster. ...

In 1939, when he was 13 years old, the rise of Hitler in Germany persuaded his family to leave central Europe and move to St. Albans, just north of London, England, where Gellner attended St. Albans county grammar school. At the age of 17, Gellner won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford as a result of what he called "Portuguese colonial policy", which involved "[keeping] the natives peaceful by getting able ones from below into Balliol." [4] ▶(?) (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945) was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 and Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Chancellor) of Germany from 1934 to his death. ... St Albans, St. ... Part of the London skyline viewed from the South Bank London is the most populous city in the European Union, with an estimated population on 1 January 2005 of 7,421,328 and a metropolitan area population of between 12 and 14 million. ... Royal motto (French): Dieu et mon droit (Translated: God and my right) Englands location within the UK Official language English de facto Capital London de facto Largest city London Area - Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population - Total (mid-2004) - Density Ranked 1st UK 50. ... A grammar school is a type of school found in some English-speaking countries. ... College name Balliol College Named after John de Balliol Established 1263 Sister College St Johns Master Andrew Graham JCR President Jack Hawkins Undergraduates 403 Graduates 228 Homepage Boatclub Balliol College, founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. ...

At Balliol, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), specializing in philosophy. He interrupted his studies after one year to serve with the Czech Armored Brigade, which took part in the siege of Dunkirk, then returned to Prague to attend university there for half a term. Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) is a degree which is one of the most famous and prestigious at the University of Oxford. ... Location within France For the battleship, see Dunkerque Dunkirk (French: Dunkerque; Dutch: Duinkerke; German: Dünkirchen) is a harbour city and a commune in the northernmost part of France, in the département of Nord, 10 km from the Belgian border. ...

It was during this period that Prague lost its strong hold over him; forseeing the communist takeover, he decided to return to England. One of his recollections of the city in 1945 was a communist poster saying: "Everyone with a clean shield into the Party," meaning that those whose records were good during the occupation were welcome. But in reality, Gellner said, it meant exactly the opposite:

If your shield is absolutely filthy we'll scrub it for you; you are safe with us; we like you the better because the filthier your record the more we have a hold on you." So all the bastards, all the distinctive authoritarian personalities, rapidly went into the Party, and it rapidly acquired this kind of character. So what was coming was totally clear to me, and it cured me of the emotional hold which Prague had previously had over me. I could foresee that a Stalinoid dictatorship was due: it came in '48. The precise date I couldn't foresee, but that it was due to come was absolutely obvious for various reasons ... I wanted no part of it and got out as quickly as I could and forgot about it. [5] patrick has got chocco lips The term authoritarian is used to describe an organization or a state which enforces strong and sometimes oppressive measures against those in its sphere of influence, generally without attempts at gaining their consent and often not allowing feedback on its policies. ... Iosif (usually anglicized as Joseph) Vissarionovich Stalin (Russian: Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин), original name Ioseb Jughashvili (Georgian: იოსებ ჯუღაშვილი; see Other names section) (December 21, 1879[1] – March 5, 1953) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and leader of the Soviet Union. ... Dictatorship, in contemporary usage, refers to absolute rule by a leadership (usually one dictator) unrestricted by law, constitutions, or other social and political factors within the state. ...

He returned to Balliol England in 1945 to finish his degree, winning the John Locke prize and taking first class honours in 1947. That same year, he began his academic career at the University of Edinburgh as an assistant to Professor John MacMurray in the Department of Moral Philosophy. Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John Locke Free, full-text works by John Locke Works by John Locke at Project Gutenberg Works by Locke on the Web John Locke Online Bibliography Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry John Locke Bibliography John Locke Manuscripts Readable versions of the Essay... The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading scheme used to distinguish between the achievements of undergraduate degree holders (such as those gaining bachelors degrees or undergraduate masters degrees) in the United Kingdom. ... The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a renowned centre for teaching and research in Edinburgh, Scotland. ...

He moved to the London School of Economics in 1949, joining the sociology department under Morris Ginsberg. [6] Ginsberg admired philosophy, and believed that philosophy and sociology were very close to each other. The London School of Economics and Political Science, often referred to as the London School of Economics or simply the LSE, is a specialist university in London. ... Social interactions of people and their consequences are the subject of sociology studies. ... Morris Ginsberg (May 14, 1889 - August 31, 1970) was the UK sociologist. ...

He employed me because I was a philosopher. Even though he was technically a professor of sociology, he wouldn't employ his own students, so I benefited from this, and he assumed that anybody in philosophy would be an evolutionary Hobhousean like himself. It took him some time to discover that I wasn't. [7]

T.L. (Leonard) Hobhouse (1864-1929) was a Polish philosopher and journalist with The Guardian, who was Martin White Professor of Sociology at the LSE just before Ginsberg, and who advanced the idea in Mind in Evolution (1901) that society should be regarded as an organism, a product of evolution, with the individual as its basic unit, the subtext being that society would improve over time as it evolved, a teleological view Gellner firmly opposed. The Guardian is a British newspaper owned by the Guardian Media Group. ... Teleology is the supposition that there is design, purpose, directive principle, or finality in the works and processes of nature, and the philosophical study of that purpose. ...

Ginsberg ... was totally unoriginal and lacked any sharpness. He simply reproduced the kind of evolutionary rationalistic vision which had already been formulated by Hobhouse and which incidentally was a kind of extrapolation of his own personal life: starting in Poland and ending up as a fairly influential professor at LSE. He evolved, he had an idea of a great chain of being where the lowest form of life was the drunk, Polish, anti-Semitic peasant and the next stage was the Polish gentry, a bit better, or the Staedtl, better still. And then he came to England, first to University College under Dawes Hicks, who was quite rational (not all that rational — he still had some anti-Semitic prejudices, it seems) and finally ended up at LSE with Hobhouse, who was so rational that rationality came out of his ears. And so Ginsberg extrapolated this, and on his view the whole of humanity moved to ever greater rationality, from drunk Polish peasant to T.L. Hobhouse and a Hampstead garden. Rationalism, also known as the rationalist movement, is a philosophical doctrine that asserts that the truth can best be discovered by reason and factual analysis, rather than faith, dogma or religious teaching. ... 1579 drawing of the great chain of being from Didacus Valades, Rhetorica Christiana The Great Chain of Being is a classical and western medieval conception of the order of the universe, whose chief characteristic is a strict hierarchal system. ... In a detail of Brueghels Land of Cockaigne (1567) a soft-boiled egg has little feet to rush to the luxuriating peasant who catches drops of honey on his tongue, while roast pigs roam wild: the 16th century was a good time for European peasants A peasant, from 15th... Before the Industrial Revolution, the gentry was located between the yeomanry and the nobility. ... The Front Quad University College London, commonly known as UCL, is one of the colleges that make up the University of London. ... In philosophy, the word rationality has been used to describe numerous religious and philosophical theories, especially those concerned with truth, reason, and knowledge. ... Hampstead is a place in the London Borough of Camden and near to Hampstead Heath. ...

Gellner's critique of linguistic philosophy in Words and Things (1959) focused on J.L. Austin and the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, criticizing them for failing to question their own methods. The book brought Gellner critical aclaim. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1961 with a thesis on "Organization and the Role of a Berber Zawiya", and became Professor of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method just one year later. Thought and Change was published in 1965, and in State and Society in Soviet Thought (1978), he examined whether Marxist regimes could be liberalized. Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (IPA: ) (April 26, 1889 – April 29, 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who contributed several ground-breaking works to modern philosophy, primarily on the foundations of logic, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind. ...

He was elected to the British Academy in 1974. He moved to Cambridge in 1984 to head the Department of Anthropology, becoming a fellow of King's College, which provided him with a relaxed atmosphere where he enjoyed drinking beer and playing chess with the students. Described by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as "brilliant, forceful, irreverent, mischievous, sometimes perverse, with a biting wit and love of irony," he was famously popular with his students, willing to spend many extra hours a day tutoring them, and was regarded as a superb public speaker and gifted teacher. [8] There are a number of institutions known as Kings College: Kings College, Hong Kong, Kings College in Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong Kings College, Uganda, Kings College in Wakiso district, Uganda Kings College, Cambridge, a constituent college of the University of Cambridge Kings College... A chess table is a table with a chessboard painted or engraved on it. ...

His Plough, Sword and Book (1988) investigated the philosophy of history, and Conditions of Liberty (1994) sought to explain the collapse of socialism. The color red and particularly the red flag are traditional symbols of Socialism. ...

In 1993, he returned to Prague, now free of communism, and to the new Central European University, where he became head of the Center for the Study of Nationalism, a program funded by George Soros, the American billionaire philanthropist, to study the rise of nationalism in the post-communist countries of eastern and central Europe. [9] It was at Prague airport on November 5, 1995, as he returned from a conference, that he suffered a heart attack and died, one month short of his 70th birthday. Central European University is a university in Budapest, Hungary. ... George Soros George Soros (born August 12, 1930 in Budapest, Hungary as Schwartz György) is a Hungarian-born financial speculator, stock investor, philanthropist, and political activist. ... // Nationalism is an ideology which holds that the nation, ethnicity or national identity is a fundamental unit of human social life, and makes certain political claims based upon that belief; above all, the claim that the nation is the only legitimate basis for the state, and that each nation is... A satellite composite image of Europe Europe is the worlds second-smallest continent in terms of area, with an area of 10,600,000 km² (4,140,625 square miles), making it larger than Australia only. ... November 5 is the 309th day of the year (310th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 56 days remaining. ... 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Words and Things

Gellner first encountered the strong hold of linguistic philosophy while at Balliol.

With the publication in 1959 of Words and Things, his first book, Gellner achieved fame and even notoriety among his fellow philosophers, as well as outside the discipline, for his fierce attack on linguistic philosophy as practised at Oxbridge at the time. He first encountered the strong ideological hold of linguistic philosophy while at Balliol: Image File history File links Download high resolution version (2588x1911, 1675 KB) A photograph of the facade of Balliol College, Oxford. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (2588x1911, 1675 KB) A photograph of the facade of Balliol College, Oxford. ... Ordinary language philosophy is less a philosophical doctrine or school than it is a loose network of approaches to traditional philosophical problems. ... Oxbridge is a portmanteau name for the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the two oldest in the United Kingdom and the English-speaking universe. ...

[A]t that time the orthodoxy best described as linguistic philosophy, inspired by Wittgenstein, was crystallizing and seemed to me totally and utterly misguided. Wittgenstein's basic idea was that there is no general solution to issues other than the custom of the community. Communities are ultimate. He didn't put it this way, but that was what it amounted to. And this doesn't make sense in a world in which communities are not stable and are not clearly isolated from each other. Nevertheless, Wittgenstein managed to sell this idea, and it was enthusiastically adopted as an unquestionable revelation. It is very hard nowadays for people to understand what the atmosphere was like then. This was the Revelation. It wasn't doubted. But it was quite obvious to me it was wrong. It was obvious to me the moment I came across it, although initially, if your entire environment, and all the bright people in it, hold something to be true, you assume you must be wrong, not understanding it properly, and they must be right. And so I explored it further and finally came to the conclusion that I did understand it right, and it was rubbish, which indeed it is. [10]

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), pictured here in 1930, made influential contributions to Logic and the philosophy of language, critically examining the task of conventional philosophy and its relation to the nature of language. ...

The move to anthropology

It was in the 60s that Gellner discovered his great love of social anthropology. Chris Hann, Professor of Anthropology and Dean of Social Sciences at the University of Kent, writes that, following the hard-nosed empiricism of Bronislaw Malinowski, Gellner made major contributions to the subject over the next 40 years, ranging from "conceptual critiques in the analysis of kinship to frameworks for understanding political order outside the state in tribal Morocco ( Saints of the Atlas, 1969); from sympathetic exposition of the works of Soviet marxist anthropologists to elegant syntheses of the Durkheimian and Weberian traditions in western social theory; and from grand elaboration of 'the structure of human history' to path-breaking analyses of ethnicity and nationalism (Thought and Change, 1964; Nations and Nationalism, 1983), {The Independent, 8 November 1995) Cultural anthropology, also called social anthropology or socio-cultural anthropology, is one of four commonly recognized fields of anthropology, the holistic study of humanity. ... The University of Kent (originally titled University of Kent at Canterbury and still often referred to as UKC) is a plate glass university in the United Kingdom. ... For the Olympic champion athlete see Bronislaw Malinowski (athlete). ... November 8 is the 312th day of the year (313th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 53 days remaining. ... 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Nationalism

For Gellner, "nationalism is primarily a political principle that holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent". Nationalism only appeared, and, Gellner argues, became a sociological necessity in the modern world. In previous times ("the agro-literate" stage of history) rulers had little incentive to impose cultural homogeneity on the ruled. But in modern society, work becomes technical. One must operate a machine, and as such one must learn. There is a need for impersonal, context-free communication and a high degree of cultural standardisation. // Nationalism is an ideology which holds that the nation, ethnicity or national identity is a fundamental unit of human social life, and makes certain political claims based upon that belief; above all, the claim that the nation is the only legitimate basis for the state, and that each nation is...

Furthermore, industrial society is underlined by the fact that there is perpetual growth - employment types vary and new skills must be learnt. Thus, generic employment training precedes specialised job training. On a territorial level, there is competition for the overlapping catchment areas (e.g. Alsace-Lorraine). To maintain its grip on resources, and its survival and progress, the state and culture must for these reasons be congruent. Nationalism therefore is a necessity. For the song by the California punk band Pennywise, see Society (song). ... For the term related to television programmes, see watershed (television). ... Imperial Province of Elsass-Lothringen (497 Kb) Alsace-Lorraine (French: Alsace-Lorraine; German: Elsass-Lothringen) was the territory originally of the German empire, ceded to Louis XIV by the peace of Westphalia in 1648, but returned by France to the newly-unified Germany under the 1871 Treaty of Frankfurt (which...

Criticisms of Gellner's theory:

• It is too functionalist. Critics charge that Gellner explains the phenomenon with reference to the eventual historical outcome - industrial society could not 'function' without nationalism.
• It misreads the relationship between nationalism and industrialisation.
• It fails to account for nationalism in non-industrial society and resurgences of nationalism in post-industrial societies.
• It cannot explain the passions generated by nationalism. Why should anyone fight and die for their country?

Quotes from Gellner

• Just as every girl should have a husband, preferably her own, so every culture must have its state, preferably its own. (The Coming of Nationalism and Its Interpretation: The Myths of Nation and Class in Mapping the Nation)

• Dr J. O. Wisdom once observed to me that he knew people who thought there was no philosophy after Hegel, and others who thought there was none before Wittgenstein; and he saw no reason for excluding the possibility that both were right. (Spectacles & Predicaments, 1979)

• [K]nowledge which ... transcends the bounds, the prejudices and prejudgements of any one society and culture is not an illusion but, on the contrary, a glorious and luminous reality. Just how it was achieved remains subject to debate. (Reason and Culture, 1992)

• Civil Society is a cluster of institutions and associations strong enough to prevent tyranny, but which are, none the less, entered and left freely, rather than imposed by birth or sustained by awesome ritual. You can join the Labour Party without slaughtering a sheep ... (Conditions of Liberty, 1994)

• When knowledge is the slave of social considerations, it defines a special class; when it serves its own ends only, it no longer does so. There is of course a profound logic in this paradox: genuine knowledge is egalitarian in that it allows no privileged source, testers, messengers of Truth. It tolerates no privileged and circumscribed data. The autonomy of knowledge is a leveller. (Plough, Sword and Book, 1988)

• It is nationalism which engenders nations, and not the other way round. (Nations and Nationalism, 1983)

• I do not recommend any legislative action against hermeneutics. I am a liberal person opposed to all unnecessary state limitation of individual liberties. Hermeneutics between consenting adults should not, in my view, be the object of any statutory restrictions. I know, only too well, what it would entail. Hermeneutic speakeasies would spring up all over the place, smuggled Thick Descriptions would be brought in by the lorry-load from Canada by the Mafia, blood and thick meaning would clot in the gutter as rival gangs of semiotic bootleggers slugged it out in a series of bloody shoot-outs and ambushes. Addicts would be subject to blackmail. Consumption of deep meanings and its attendant psychic consequences would in no way diminsh, but the criminal world would benefit, and the whole fabric of civil society would be put under severe strain. Never! (Anthropology and Politics, 1995)

• It is this which explains nationalism: the principle — so strange and eccentric in the age of agrarian cultural diversity and the 'ethnic' division of labour — that homogeneity of culture is the political bond, that mastery of (and, one should add, acceptability in) a given high culture ... is the precondition of political, economic and social citizenship. (Nationalism, 1997)

• I am deeply sensitive to the spell of nationalism. I can play about thirty Bohemian folk songs ... on my mouth-organ. My oldest friend, who is Czech and a patriot, cannot bear to hear me play them because he says I do it in such a schmalzy way, 'crying into the mouth organ'. I do not think I could have written the book on nationalism which I did write, were I not capable of crying, with the help of a little alcohol, over folk songs, which happen to be my favourite form of music. ("Reply to Critics" in The Social Philosophy of Ernest Gellner)

• The new perspective also manifested itself in other ways: the shift of attention to sociologists such as Max Weber who were primarily concerned, not with overall 'development', but with the one specific development, that of modern society; the tendency to be concerned with those aspects of Marxism relevant to this one transition, and to ignore its Evolutionist aspects; and, recently and most characteristically, the concern with the notion of industrial society, and its antithesis, to the detriment of other classifications, oppositions and alternatives. (Thought and Change, 1964)

• In the twentieth century, the essence of man is not that he is a rational, or a political, or a sinful, or a thinking animal, but that he is an industrial animal. It is not his moral or intellectual or social or aesthetic ... attributes which make man what he is. His essence resides in his capacity to contribute to, and to profit from, industrial society. The emergence of industiral society is the prime concern of sociology. (Thought and Change, 1964)

• America was born modern; it did not have to achieve modernity, nor did it have modernity thrust upon it. (Anthropology and Politics, 1995)

• This is indeed one of the most important general traits of a modern society: cultural homogeneity, the capacity for context-free communication, the standardization of expression and comprehension. (Conditions of Liberty 1996)

• The model that can be drawn up, of a plural society in which the multiplicity of forces and institutions prevent any one of their number dominating the rest, and which function on the basis of a broad and non-doctrinaire consensus — this picture does not warm the blood like wine. To appreciate and savour its appeal, one needs a rather sophisticated taste, perhaps. (Contemporary Thought and Politics, 1974)

• Looking at the contemporary world, two things are obvious: democracy is doing rather badly, and democracy is doing very well. New states are born free, yet everywhere they are in chains. Democracy is doing very badly in that democratic institutions have fallen by the wayside in very many of the newly independent 'transitional' societies, and they are precarious elsewhere. Democracy, on the other hand, is doing extremely well in so far as it is almost (though not quite) universally accepted as a valid norm. (Contemporary Thought and Politics, 1974)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 - November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher born in Stuttgart, Württemberg, in present-day southwest Germany. ... Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (IPA: ) (April 26, 1889 – April 29, 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who contributed several ground-breaking works to modern philosophy, primarily on the foundations of logic, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind. ... A tyrant (from Greek τυραννος) is a usurper of rightful power, possessing absolute power and ruling by tyranny. ... The name Labour Party or Labor Party is used by several political parties around the world. ... // Nationalism is an ideology which holds that the nation, ethnicity or national identity is a fundamental unit of human social life, and makes certain political claims based upon that belief; above all, the claim that the nation is the only legitimate basis for the state, and that each nation is... Hermeneutics may be described as the theory of interpretation and understanding of a text through empirical means. ... The Mafia, also referred to in Italian as La Cosa Nostra (variously translated as This Thing Of Ours or Our Thing), is the name for a secret criminal organization which evolved in mid-19th century Sicily, and led to an offshoot on the East Coast of the United States, emerging... Blackmail is the crime of threatening to reveal substantially true information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates unless a monetary demand is met. ... Bohemia This article is about the historical region in central Europe; for other uses, see Bohemia (disambiguation). ... Maximilian Weber (April 21, 1864 – June 14, 1920) was a German political economist and sociologist who is considered one of the founders of the modern, antipositivistic study of sociology and public administration. ... Marxism is the social theory and political practice based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century German philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ... Homogeneity in physics In physics, homogeneity is the quality of having all properties independent of the position. ...

References

• An interview with Ernest Gellner conducted by John Davis of Oxford University for Current Anthropology (Vol 32, No. I, Feb. 1991 pp.63-65).
• Lukes, S. "Gellner, Ernest André (1925-1995)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 retrieved September 23, 2005 (requires subscription)

Books by Gellner

• (1959), Words and Things, A Critical Account of Linguistic Philosophy and a Study in Ideology, London: Gollancz; Boston: Beacon. Also see correspondence in The Times, 10 November to 23 November 1959.
• Thought and Change (1964)
• Saints of the Atlas
• Contemporary Thought and Politics
• The Devil in Modern Philosophy
• Legitimation of Belief
• Spectacles and Predicaments
• Muslim Society
• Nations and Nationalism (1983)
• The Concept of Kinship and Other Essays
• Relativism and the Social Sciences
• The Psychoanalytic Movement
• Culture, Identity and Politics
• State and Society in Soviet Thought
• Plough, Sword and Book 1988
• "Postmodernism, Reason and Religion" 1992

November 10 is the 314th day of the year (315th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 51 days remaining. ... November 23 is the 327th day of the year (328th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 38 days remaining. ... 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

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Ernest Gellner