Philosophy Born of Struggle

IT Service Departments Struggle to Adopt a Service-Oriented Philosophy

Many IT service departments are adopting IT service management best practice frameworks such as the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) to improve the quality of service to customers. This study reports on recent surveys and case studies of organizations which have embarked on IT service management improvement. It highlights specific difficulties experienced by organizations. Six factors were foun...

Philosophy of Philosophy of Religion

Moments of Enduring Struggle

A review of Ben Rampton (2006), Language in late modernity: Interaction in an urban school. Ben Rampton has a gift for identifying subtle discursive patterns that hook into and illuminate broadly relevant social processes. His earlier work on "language crossing" focused on moments when multiethnic British youth inserted forms from other languages into ongoing talk in English (Rampton, 2005). Hi...

The Struggle for Existence

"It is in the nature of things" is surely, today, just as good an explanation of a biological phenomenon as it ever was; and now, as always, it is singularly unilluminating. That some of the problems to which such an explanation is usually given are susceptible to analysis appears obvious; at least an approach can be made toward segregating the many factors which, acting independently ox throug...

A Struggle Against Forgetting

One of the most remarkable characteristics of living organisms is their ability to alter their behavior by learning. Human beings excel at processing new information, retaining it in their memory, and using it to develop new ideas. Studies in the mollusk Aplysia showed that learning involves the strengthening and increased effectiveness of preexisting synapses. Over time, it has become clear th...