Mass destruction imagery within the science fiction film genre is not a new cinematic development. However, a swell of destruction-centred films has emerged since the proliferation of digital technologies and computer-generated imagery that reflect concerns that extend beyond notions of spectacle. Through illusionistic realism techniques, the aesthetics of mass destruction imagery within science fiction cinema can be seen as appropriating the implied veracity of other film traditions in order to create a baseline of visual credibility, even to the extent of associating its own fantastical fictions with recent historic destruction events. This thesis investigates the representation of mass destruction across the spectrum of contemporary science fiction films emerging from around the world by examining the various methods employed to affect the spectator. The study is divided into four sections: realism, spectacle, sublimity, and correlation. It is structured so as to escalate from the establishment of a baseline of vraisemblance of the spectator’s empirical understanding of the world, to new representations of death and destruction, whereby visual aesthetic correlations emerge between science fiction and historical fact. My study attempts to contribute to the current discourse on science fiction cinema by focusing on the relationship between the aesthetics of realism and spectacle and their impact on spectatorial affect. By re-defining notions of film realism and the cinematic sublime, and through close textual analyses of a number of contemporary science fiction films, the intent of this paper is to present a greater understanding of the complicated inherencies borne by mass destruction spectacle.

This thesis contains a critical discussion of two metaethical theories: expressivism, as developed in the works of Simon Blackburn, and Cornell realism, as presented by Richard Boyd and David Brink. In the introduction, a distinction is made between external and internal accommodation projects for moral discourse and it is argued that the external accommodation project should be guided by acceptance of methodological naturalism. Expressivism and Cornell realism are then subjected to an extended comparative evaluation, and an answer is sought to the question of which of the two should be favoured. The main conclusion of the thesis is that Cornell realism is rationally preferable to expressivism. This conclusion is arrived at by looking at how well the two theories, respectively, explain various deeply embedded features of moral discourse. Explaining such features is what the internal accommodation project for moral discourse consists in. The assertoric surface-form of moral discourse and the supervenience of moral predicates on natural predicates receive special attention in the study. It is argued that expressivism and Cornell realism do equally well on the issue of moral supervenience. But whereas expressivism is still vulnerable to a particular argument from the philosophy of language (the Frege-Geach point), Cornell realism can fend off the criticism that most persistently has been directed at it from this area of philosophy. In a comparative evaluation involving the selected issues, Cornell realism therefore fares better than expressivism.

Everywhere You Look documents the genesis, production process, performance history, and rewrites of a script informed by a concern for social justice issues in contemporary America. In the quest to generate believable, naturalistic dialogue and behavior informed by important questions of religious conviction, civil liberties, and the viability of violence as a political solution, the script is cast as social realism. After a discussion of the critical context in which the play exists, the lessons and pitfalls of collaboration in the production process are charted. A rewritten script is generated from a process of performance, talk-backs sessions, and committee recommendations. The thesis document includes Appendices containing pre-production and post-production versions of the script, as well as images from the program and color photos of the original thesis production.

This study investigates the complex operation of realism in the representational make-up of animated films of the Aardman studio. It focuses on ten early films made in a three-dimensional clay/puppet medium. All the films are based on ‘real’ soundtracks, gathered via secretly recorded conversations of ordinary people in everyday situations or by direct interview. The key argument is that these stop-motion films show a hybrid composition of realist strategies and approaches, in terms of their adaptation of realist aesthetics as well as their subject matter. It is argued that their aesthetic make-up is associated with, or copied, from certain modes of live-action documentary film such as observational style and interviews. The thesis contends that realism in these films is of a complex nature. It studies and illustrates different aspects of realism in the corpus, with particular emphasis on three films chosen for specific case study.

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Sugere-se neste trabalho que o irrealismo constitui uma característica marcante da corrente dominante na ciência econômica que explica o desempenho decepcionante das atividades de previsão e explanação realizadas com base nesse paradigma. Após desenvolver o pouco claro conceito de irrealismo na ciência econômica, mostrando quando ele ocorre e quais são suas causas, busca-se relacionar sua presença com aquele desempenho decepcionante. Defende-se que ele pode ser explicado pela negligência da maior parte da corrente dominante em relação ao realismo de suas proposições, negligência traduzida na utilização amplamente difundida nas práticas dessa corrente de modelos irrealistas, que são aqueles que não buscam ou, se o fazem, não são bem-sucedidos em capturar uma parcela relevante da realidade. Sugere-se que o emprego de modelos irrealistas é geralmente - mas não sempre - o resultado da insistência do mainstream na ciência econômica em aderir à abordagem dedutivista em um mundo caracterizado pela não-ubiqüidade de regularidades estritas que ela invariavelmente pressupõe, e se manifesta tipicamente na aplicação generalizada em situações concretas de modelos econômicos fortemente abstratos cujos pressupostos implicam a operação de mecanismos que são inválidos nessas situações específicas. A explicação para esta tendência ao irrealismo do mainstream, por sua vez, se encontra no fato de que a grande maioria dos modelos elaborados a partir dessa perspectiva pressupõe a onipresença de estruturas de mercado competitivas a despeito de que em muitas - e mesmo na maioria das - situações reais elas estão claramente ausentes, o que decorre do viés ideológico que os economistas associados à corrente dominante possuem e que se caracteriza pela crença inequivoca nas insuperáveis virtudes do mecanismo de mercado e da propriedade privada como princípios orientadores centrais da organização da produção e mesmo da vida em sociedade. Essa crença se encontra na origem do liberalismo econômico tradicional e do neoliberalismo, e sua defesa obrigatoriamente requer que os mercados sejam, pelo menos em sua grande maioria, competitivos. Para satisfazer essa hipótese a ideologia neoliberal impõe à realidade a onipresença de estruturas de mercado competitivas, possíveis em abstrato mas geralmente ausentes em situações reais, o que faz com que os modelos construídos a partir da abordagem que a ela adere assim como a própria abordagem sejam freqüentemente irrealistas. / This work suggests that irrealism is a remarkable feature of mainstream in economics and explains the poor performance of both activities of prediction and explanation that heavily draw from this paradigm. After elaborating the unclear concept of irrealism in economics, showing when it occurs and what are its causes, I try to relate its presence to that poor performance. It\"s sustained that this performance can be explained by the negligence of most of mainstream practioners concerning the realism of their propositions, negligence that translates into the widely spread use of unrealistic models, those that do not try or, if they do, they don\"t succeed in capturing a relevant portion of the reality, in their practices. It\"s suggested that the use of such an unrealistic models is mostly - but not always - due to the insistence of mainstream economics in sticking to the deductivistic approach in a world where the strict regularities that it inevitably assumes are extremely scarce, and tipically shows itself in abstract models widely applied to concrete situations where their assumptions imply the operation of mechanisms that happen to be invalid in those specific situations. The account of that tendency to irrealism in mainstream economics should be looked for in the fact that the large majority of models they create assumes the ubiquity of competitive market structures despite in many real situations - probably in most of them - they are clearly absent, what is a result of the ideological bias that mainstream economists have, defined by the strong belief in the insurmountable virtues of the market mechanism and private property as general principles for the organization of production and even for life in society. This belief is found in the origin of traditional economical liberalism and of neoliberalism, and its defense inevitably requires markets to be, at least in their large majority, competitive. In order to satisfy that assumption neoliberal ideology imposes into reality the ubiquity of competitive market structures, possible as an abstraction but generally absent in real situations, what frequently making those models that heavily draw from this paradigm as well as the whole approach totally unrealistic.

Abstract The purpose of this research was to gain a more profound understanding of the emergence of the business opportunities, and to enhance the development of entrepreneurship theory in relation to this context. This research is to understand two issues: How does a business opportunity emerge? What makes it possible? This dissertation builds a conceptual framework of the process of creating the Business Opportunity and concentrates on three interrelated sub-processes emerging in it: Business Ideation Process, Business Modeling Process and Business Planning Process. The Business Ideation is defined as creating an idea of the business opportunity with a clear focus on the customer, consideration, connection, and/or commitment. The Business Modeling Process is the conceptual model of the future business opportunity consisting elements such as: value creation; firm’s internal source of advantage; position in the marketplace; profit making; and entrepreneur’s perspective. Finally, the Business Planning Process is the implementation plan of the conceptual business opportunity. The scientific choices are based on the critical realism that highlights reality simultaneously as existing independently of its observers and acknowledges the role of an actor (the entrepreneur) as being constrained by it as well as being able to change it. Furthermore, this dissertation treats the process of creating the business opportunities as creative process based on the idea of a personal (or everyday) creativity and the method of creative problem solving. The results indicate that the nature of the process of creating the Business Opportunities, the BOC process, allows all people to be treated as entrepreneurs if they play the role of the entrepreneur by interacting (more or less creatively) with business ideating, business modeling and business planning processes. Hence, the creative problem solving method utilized in every sub-process will free the entrepreneur from the restraint of the dominant insight of the opportunity that sees it as a true vision of the future business venture. Here, the business opportunities are created during the process. Furthermore, the results show a keen interplay between the process of creating business opportunities and their exploitation. Hence, the BOC process appears to be an essential part of the overall entrepreneurial process.

Studying the last century and a half of Ukrainian linguistic history reveals relentless attempts to stifle the development of Ukrainian as well as to suppress translation activities under both the tsarist and Soviet regimes. Exploring the morphological evolution of the Ukrainian language discloses evidence of terminological inconsistencies due to the lexical russification of Ukrainian during the Soviet regime, leading to inconsistencies between the standard of Ukrainian used in the Soviet Union versus that used in the diaspora. Additional examination of Ukrainian linguistic history discloses political motives for banning translations, refusing the right to translate, censoring translations, and punishing translators who rejected the mandatory Soviet literary norm of Socialist Realism. In order to further understand the implications of translation practices in the Ukrainian SSR, it is important to examine the language policies, political agendas and translation practices prior to and throughout the Soviet regime. This thesis explores and analyses the russification of Ukrainian through translation policies designed to fulfil Soviet political and ideological agendas. It compares power differentials between Russian and Ukrainian, as well as between Russian and other minority languages in translation, and examines the resulting terminological inconsistencies. It shows unequivocally how translation, transliteration, and censorship were used to foster linguicide and assimilate Ukrainian minorities, from the late tsarist era to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Instrumentalism is a philosophy of science which holds that scientific theories are merely useful fictions for making computative predictions. Its pragmatic purpose of 'saving the appearances' downgrades the role of theory in science. Realists, on the other hand, take the implications of theories seriously. This study investigates the attributes of both instrumentalism and realism, taking theory as its point of departure. It is pointed out that constructivism is closely related to instrumentalism, both being forms of pragmatism. Since both tend to concoct and relinquish theories too easily, they tend to be relativist and subjectivist. It is therefore concluded that neither instrumentalism, nor constructivism, nor empiricism is sufficient for a rounded science education. What is needed is a type of realism which acknowledges both the empirical physical world 'out there' and the constructivist nature of scientific knowledge. The naive (empiricist) realism so prevalent in school science textbooks cannot do this. It is contended that critical realism, and especially that of Bernard Lonergan, can meet this requirement. Reality is more than what is given in sensory experience. Therefore, in order to help solve the problem of relativism and subjectivity inherent in constructivism, we need to revise our notion of reality and objectivity. Twenty-three selected British, American, South African, and African Third World high school physical science textbooks were examined in detail to determine the extent of an instrumentalist philosophy in them. They were subjected to several textual analyses, including one especially devised for this study. The results reveal that our high school physical science textbooks do indeed contain a high degree of instrumentalism. This study postulates that this instrumentalism may be used to help pupils move towards realism. However, this needs to be augmented by a full-blooded critical realist approach which takes theoretical entities seriously. One way of doing this is through the use of suitable material in the preface of every textbook. Not only should the dangers of instrumentalism (and naive constructivism) be pointed out, but the role of theory in science should be emphasised. This may be achieved by simulations to encourage growth of models and theories, historical case studies involving theory-development, and additional reading of scientists in action. Some examples of these are provided.

The realist tradition in world politics has long been heralded by statesmen and scholars alike as offering an authentic account of the relations between states. Realists consider self-interest, anarchy, and power politics to guide the behavior of states in the international system. The perception that cooperation and amity are now the norm in the international system has raised the possibility of a theoretical shift of focus in the study of international politics. At present, scholars within the discipline of international politics are debating the relevance of realist thought. In particular, neorealism, or the structural variation of traditional realism, is under attack for not providing a rationale for international cooperation. This project undertakes to expand neorealism's ability to explain state behavior in the area of environmental cooperation. Employing the notion of anarchy as a self-help system, it shall be demonstrated that international environmental agreements appear to be influenced by the distribution of power in the international system. Anarchy mandates the need for state actors to cooperate on certain environmental issues, while that same system dissuades cooperation on a number of other important environmental matters. This thesis critiques the theoretical principles in neorealism and makes moderate changes to them. In keeping with neorealist thought, power, the interests of important states, and the position of the hegemon are considered important factors in understanding environmental cooperation. This project also studies three global environmental issues that provide insight into the rewards and limitations of using neorealism to explain cooperation.