The term ‘nurse’ (hushi—’caring scholar’) did not enter the Chinese language until the early 20th century. Modern nursing—a fundamentally Western notion popularized by Nightingale and introduced to China in 1884—profoundly changed the way care of the sick was practiced. For 65 years, until 1949, nursing developed in China as a transnational project, with Western and Chinese influences shaping the profession of nursing in ways that linger today. Co‐authored by Chinese, Canadian, and American nurses, this paper examines the early stages of (...) nursing in one province of China as an exemplar of the transnational nature of nursing development. By identifying sociopolitical influences on the early development of nursing in Shandong, the authors aimed not only to contribute to the nascent body of knowledge on China nursing history, but also to heighten readers’ sensitivity to the existence of historical echoes, residue, and resonances in their own nursing practices. Tracing current issues, values, or practices back to their roots provides context and helps us to better understand the present. Whether we are aware of the details or not, the gestalt of nursing practice in a particular place has been shaped by its history—including in Shandong province in China. (shrink)

The river Portoviejo crosses four cantons of the province of Manabí and is the main source of water for the inhabitants of the area to be used in various uses. The objective of this bibliographic review article is to carry out a historical analysis of the water pollution of the Portoviejo River. The qualitative and descriptive documentary research methodology was used. The authors conclude that the factors that influence the pollution of the Portoviejo River are the constant direct (...) discharges of wastewater and solid waste along its route by the residents of the area and the contribution of the water treatment plant waste from the area. (shrink)

The Apostle Paul exercised his ministry in the Roman provinces of Galatia and Asia. An unknown presbyter of the second century wrote the Acts of Paul. An important part of this text consists of the Acts of Paul and Thecla. Although sometimes these Acts circulated as a separate text, they recount the vicissitudes of the virgin Thecla, native of the city of Iconium. The events take place mainly in the cities of Iconium of Licaonia and of Antioch of Pisidia, two (...) neighboring regions in the heart of Anatolia in the Roman province of southern Galatia. The article intends to offer the historical, geographical, linguistic and cultural background of the Acts of Paul and Thecla of the second half of the second century. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to identify and investigate the first attempts to institutionalize non-state communities of engineers and technicians in the Russian Empire, and to determine whether the Russian Technical Society was the first center to unify the engineering community. The period covered in this study (1850s–1860s) refers to the initial period of the emergence of scientific and technical societies in the Russian Empire, which are considered as a new type of a structural organization of science and technology. (...) The article reveals that the first attempts to institutionalize non-state engineering and technical communities were successful in Livland and Kherson provinces. It has been confirmed that the preferred hypothesis in the matter of the Russian Technical Society does not correspond to historical reality. Two scientific and technical societies of Livland and Kherson provinces were analyzed in the article: the Society of Technicians in Riga and Odessa Society of Engineers and Architects. It was found that the mentioned societies, established in Riga and Odessa, can be considered almost the first scientific and technical societies in the Russian Empire, created even before the Russian Technical Society commenced its activities. For the first time, a detailed study of the process of their organization and activity was carried out. The article also highlights the legislative principles of the activities of the mentioned societies. A comparative analysis of their statutes was carried out, identifying the common and distinctive features. The study proved the polytechnic nature of their activity and determined its priorities. Despite the fact that the Russian Technical Society turned out to be the most powerful scientific and technical society of the Russian Empire, attention is focused on the fact that the Society of Technicians in Riga continued its activities as an independent scientific and technical association. The article highlights the inaccuracies and some false statements about the studied societies. The attempt of marine engineers in the city of Mykolaiv to establish an independent public scientific and technical society in 1864 is also discussed. (shrink)

In a radio broadcast from 1933, Martin Heidegger explains his decision to refuse a professorship at the University of Berlin by defending a philosophy that he says is rooted in the ‘provinces’. The broadcast - entitled ‘Creative Landscape’ - sees Heidegger on the cusp of the ‘turn’ in his thought from the existentialism of Being and Time (1927) to the ‘poetic thinking’ of his work from the mid-1930s onwards. It is a fascinating yet neglected snapshot of his thought at a (...) crucial historical moment, and also reveals some of the deeper problems raised by his philosophy - his rejection of epistemology, his anti-modernism, and the contradictions of fundamental ontology itself. The present paper argues that Heidegger’s refusal of the professorship reveals a deep antagonism between his philosophy of Being and the public sphere of the city, and highlights the weakness of Heidegger’s thinking when faced with some of the central problems of modernity. Key Words: alienation • city • Heidegger • modernity • provinces • public sphere • reification • sociology • Tönnies. (shrink)

Traditional healing and the use of traditional medicines were historically banned by the South African apartheid government. The dawn of democracy saw a change in the laws, which gave freedom to the traditional African practices. Nevertheless, many South Africans are still divided between Western- and traditional African philosophies. This qualitative study, therefore, employed the hermeneutic phenomenological method to investigate the status of traditional healing in the Limpopo province of South Africa. Data collection was done through interviews, and data were (...) analysed thematically. The results suggest that the work done by traditional healers remains marginalised and undermined despite them contributing to the country’s healthcare system. Traditional healers remain unregulated and often left to work on their own under difficult conditions. It is recommended that government play an active role in ensuring that healers are formally incorporated into the country’s healthcare system, which will benefit both the healers and the communities they serve.Contribution: The study investigates the current status of traditional healing in South Africa and highlights that despite having laws that support traditional healing in the country, the practice remains marginalised and healers are working on their own and not within the country’s healthcare system as it is supposed to be. The study is linked to the scope of the journal because it investigates a topic that borders on oral history and indigenous religious practices of South Africans. (shrink)

Premodern Financial Systems: A Historical Comparative sStudy describes the financial superstructure, such as the method of financing the government, and links it to the essential characteristics of the infrastructure of nearly a dozen societies ranging from Athens in the late fifth century BC to the United Provinces in the mid-seventeenth century. The main features of the financial superstructures discussed are the monetary system, the types of financial instruments and institutions, interest rates, and the methods of financing agriculture, non-agricultural business, (...) households, foreign trade, and government. Aspects of the infrastructures covered include population, urbanization, prices, national output, wealth, and their sectoral and size distribution. (shrink)

This study is devoted to the artistic and stylistic analysis of traditional Chinese New Year's pictures called "puhui nianhua" on the example of historical and documentary material collected in the city of Gaomi in Shandong province. It traces the changes in its form and content, the means of expression used during the five-hundred-year history of its distribution in China. The subject of attention is the development of Chinese splint pictures from the Ming Dynasty to the present. As an (...) object, we see the transformation of technological and visual features of the performance of such works within their individual varieties, which were popular in the creative activities of several generations of masters of the city of Gaomi. The purpose of the study is to get a general idea of how the main varieties of "puhui nianhua" were born and formed in the creative activity of Gaoming artisan artists. By means of artistic-stylistic, iconographic and comparative-historical analysis, the author identifies several stages in the process of formation of the tradition of making such pictures. Moreover, a typological series of Chinese New Year's splints is proposed, consisting of images of Lao and Buddhist saints, visualizations of homophonic metaphors, and a description of Chinese life. Each of the presented types differs not only in the originality of the content, but also in the set of compositional and visual means used by the authors. (shrink)

Gustav von Bergmann (1749–1814) was a Lutheran pastor in Livland, one of the Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire. Being interested in Enlightenment ideas, he published a string of literary, historical and political works in German and Latvian. In these works, the tension between ‘radical’ and ‘moderate’ wings of Baltic Enlightenment becomes visible, and they can serve as an example of intertwined and often conflicting ideas concerning the education of the ‘common people’ and agrarian reforms within the context of (...) Volksaufklärung (Popular Enlightenment). In the article, an overview of the debates on serfdom and political reforms has been provided by sketching different approaches of Baltic intellectuals and also influences on their ideas from German-speaking countries. Bergmann wrote historical works that emphasised the need of social reforms, but at the same time opposed radical political changes; the shift in his views was influenced by French revolution. His publications in Latvian were in line with Volksaufklärung ideas and corresponded to the concept of gradual transformations by preparing peasants for freedom through the means of education. Belletristic fiction in almanacs, sermons, and translation of German bestseller Noth- und Hülfsbüchlein (1788) served this purpose along with the practical work such as smallpox inoculation. (shrink)

Se realizó esta investigación con el objetivo de describir la evolución histórica del Hospital Provincial Docente de Oncología "María Curie" de Camagüey. Surgió con la constitución de la Liga Contra el Cáncer en Camagüey en 1941 hasta su desaparición en 1960, que logró el propósito inicial de construir un dispensario anticanceroso. Debido a la mala atención médica brindada por los gobiernos republicanos se destacó el gesto desinteresado del pueblo camagüeyano con su aporte económico para la construcción de este dispensario. Con (...) el triunfo revolucionario se logró transformar en hospital, que junto al desarrollo de la Oncología en la provincia, es actualmente un centro de alto nivel científico para la atención al pueblo. La información fue obtenida de personalidades que participaron en su creación, fotos y periódicos de la época, además de documentos existentes en el Archivo Histórico de Camagüey. An investigation was carried out with the objective of describing the historical evolution of the Provincial Teaching Oncology Hospital “María Curie” of Camagüey. It was originated with the constitution of the League against Cancer in Camagüey in 1941 until its disappearance in 1960, achieving the initial purpose of building up an anti-cancerous dispensary. Due to the bad medical attention given by the republican governments, it stood out the generous gesture of the people of Camagüey with its economic contribution for the construction of this dispensary. With the triumph of the revolution it was turned into a hospital, which together with the development of the oncology in the province is currently a high scientific level center for the attention of the people. The information was obtained from personalities that took part in its creation, photos and papers of the period, along with documents of the Historical Archive of Camagüey. (shrink)

How different were the claims of Assyrian royal inscriptions from actual Neo-Assyrian practice? This essay explores this question by examining two unusual claims made by Sargon II in relation to his rule of Samaria. The first claim, which appears both in the Khorsabad annals and in a Nimrud prism, should be translated “I again settled Samaria, more than previously.” Based on the historical reconstruction derived from archaeological data, I argue that this phrase refers to the movement of exiles into (...) areas in the western part of the province of Samaria. These areas in the western part of the province, around the sites of Aphek, Hadid, and Gezer, experienced significant population increases in the Assyrian period. The second passage, in Sargon’s Great Display Inscription from Khorsabad, refers to Sargon’s treatment of non-deported Samaritans. It should be translated “I trained the remnant in their crafts.” The historical reality behind this claim is the shift in agricultural techniques and activities in Samaria as a result of the Assyrian conquest. The Assyrian domination of Samaria required the production of grain surpluses, which needed to be made available in the Aphek-Gezer region in the western part of the province of Samaria. In each of the claims from the royal inscriptions examined in this essay, we see that the royal inscriptions credit the king with activities performed by the provincial governor. They change the description of the activity to make it “fit for royalty.”. (shrink)

Reconstruying historically the beginning of development scientific thought in Venezuela, particularly in Physics, allow to account imperative need to preserve academic-scientific formation of Venezuelan society in 21st century. The Venezuelan historians Rafael Balza and Yajaira Freites in their respectively studies "Modern Physics in the Caraqueña Society of the late eighteenth century: between Mathematics and technique and "The problem of knowledge between hacendados and illustrated merchants of the province of Caracas-Venezuela (1793-1810)" allow to account efforts of Agustín de la Torre (...) to insert, in Venezuelan society of 18th century, teaching , research, divulgation and application of modern physical sciences initiated in Europe, marking the beginning of development of eighteenth-century Venezuelan technical and scientific thought. It should be noted that historical study of Agustín de la Torre is a complicated due to scarce documentation and cultural complexity of eighteenth-century Venezuela. The contribution of study is to account for risk of loss of Science in Venezuela in XXI century, through historical reconstruction around of Agustín de la Torre and his countless and tireless efforts to develop the study and application of physics experimental in Venezuela. The scope of this research is framed in the need to show the importance in the preservation of scientific talent. Studying the efforts in eighteenth-century Venezuela allows this. The historical study around Agustín de la Torre gives an account of the origin in the studies of physics and the complex situation within the scientific and social context to develop Science in Venezuela. (shrink)

This paper provides a philosophical critique of professional stereotypes in medicine. In the course of this critique, we also offer a detailed analysis of the concept of care in health care. The paper first considers possible explanations for the traditional stereotype that caring is a province of nurses and women, while curing is an arena suited for physicians and men. It then dispels this stereotype and fine tunes the concept of care. A distinction between ‘caring for’ and ‘caring about’ (...) is made, and concomitant notions of parentalism are elaborated. Finally, the paper illustrates, through the use of cases, diverse models of caring. Our discussion reveals the complexity of care and the alternative modes of caring in health care. (shrink)

This paper traces back the sources of our present legal system and of market economy to Medieval Europe which itself benefited from Hellenistic and Roman legal culture and commercial practices. Roman provinces placed Rome in the wider Greek cultural and commercial world. If Aristotle was already transcending the narrow polis-based conceptions of his predecessors, after him Hellenistic Civilization saw the emergence of a new school of philosophy: Stoicism. The legal thought in the Latin West will hence be characterized by Cicero’s (...) writings and its Stoic sources. The Roman legal system was similar to the later northern European customary law and the English common law; Roman law was evolutionary and customary. The rise of Western individualism, whether it dates back to St. Augustine in the fifth century, or to the two Papal Revolutions of Gregory I (establishing the nuclear family as the core of individualism) and of Gregory VII, also played a crucial role in shaping the western legal tradition. The paper describes the main forces that led to this second (Gregorian) revolution. Monasticism is one of them. Benedictine monasticism plaid a leading role in the Peace of God Movement. Hence collective oath-taking by groups in the name of peace was essential in the founding of cities and in the formation of guilds. Europe’s economic resurgence in the Eleventh Century was on the basis of the creation of the rule of law by the Peace of God movement. This movement also allowed for Europe’s agricultural economy to progress. Indeed, the European Middle Ages is one of the major periods of technological innovation in the history of the world. The Gregorian Revolution itself was supported and financed by the Commercial Revolution: Italian bankers sustained Papal reformers against the Emperors. The independence of the Italian cities and provinces reveals one of the most important consequences of the Gregorian Revolution: the polycentricism of Western Europe. This Revolution also witnessed the first large number of political pamphlets in European history; the Gregorian clergy emphasizing a compact theory of government. Soon after, the order of Cistercians was founded (1098) and underwent spectacular growth during the next two centuries. The Cistercians accepted no rents or labor services from feudal donors but would take only full possession of land to do with it as they wished.These monasteries were the most economically effective units that had ever existed in Europe, and perhaps in the world, before that time. Finally, the Magna Carta (1215) that will be so influential on modern political thought can be seen as a direct consequence of the Gregorian Revolution. (shrink)

The article devoted to one of the lesser-known monasteries of our country, the Saint-Dormition Cosmas male monastery located in the Alexandrovsky district of Vladimir region. On the basis of archival and published materials, the author considers the founding date of the monastery that varies in different lists of life of St. Cosmas of Yakhromsk. In addition, the author concludes that the miraculous finding of the Yakhromsk icon of the Blessed Virgin by St. Cosmas could happened twenty years earlier than it (...) is considered. That can also change the date of the founding of the monastery. In the article, the author studies the question of the origin of the St. Cosmas of Yakhromsk and concludes that St. Cosmas could be a relative of the Gur’evs-Sekerins, the famous Russian boyar family, which is among the ancestors of A. S. Pushkin. The author of the article also tells about the shrines of the Cosmas monastery and their fate nowadays. It is suggested that the Yakhromsk icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary that is currently kept in the Annunciation Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin could be the icon that was revealed to the St. Cosmas, with which he went to the Kiev-Pechersk monastery, where he was tonsured. If this assumption is true, the Image of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Yakhromsk described by the famous Russian art historian N.P. Kondakov in 1912 is a more recent copy of this icon. The author also gives a brief outline of the history of the monastery in pre-revolutionary and Soviet times and tells about Vladimir restorers, who saved the monastery from destruction in the 1960-1980s. At the end of the article, the author raises the question about the possibility of new archaeological study and scientific-based restoration of the Dormition Cathedral of the monastery including the restoration of its historical five-headed shape, which is typical to such monuments of the 17th century. (shrink)

SummaryThe present analysis compares the distribution of surnames by means of spatial autocorrelation analysis in the Spain–Portugal border region. The Spanish National Institute of Statistics provides a database of surnames of residents in the western Spanish provinces of Zamora, Salamanca, Cáceres, Badajoz and Huelva. The Spanish and Portuguese patterns of surname distribution were established according to various geographic axes. The results obtained show a low diversity of surnames in this region – especially in the centre – which can be explained (...) by the absence of any major geographic barriers, with the exception of the mountain ranges between hydrographic basins, and by the presence of traditional roads that have existed since Roman times. The latter have resulted in a constant migratory flow over short–median distances, which, as can be deduced from the surnames, fits two north/south territorial axes running parallel to the border between Spain and Portugal. The distribution patterns of Portuguese and Spanish surnames differ with regard to their frequencies in the five provinces studied, which can be attributed to their respective historical, economic and social conditions. It is concluded that the border delimiting these two countries has affected the migratory flow, thereby conditioning the demographic and genetic structure of the western Spanish regions. (shrink)

This research paper centers on the folk literary works of Siquijor Island. This study analyzes the Siquijor folk literary works as a reflection of the historical and socio-cultural development of Siquijor Island. Descriptive and exploratory research methodology with triangulation method and interpretive analysis and adapting the historical, sociological and anthropological theories. The study analyzes the nature of the Siquijodnon folklore as a reflection of its historical and socio-cultural development. The results disclose that Siquijodnon folks’ lifestyle are established (...) based on their perceptions and interpretations on things and circumstances happening around them clouded with influences from personal beliefs and colonization. Hence, Siquijodnon folk literary works manifest and explain Siquijodnons’ involvement in the community and the historical and socio-cultural development of their island, Siquijor. Keywords - Literature, Siquijor folk literary works, human experiences and social realities, historical and socio-cultural practices and beliefs, social sciences, descriptive survey, Siquijor Province, Philippines. (shrink)

Leopolis in Latin, Lemberg in German, Lwów in Polish, Lviv in Ukrainian, this city located in the historic province of Eastern Galicia (Galizien, Galicja, Halychyna) has a history marked by the successive conquests of the region by imperial powers. Founded in the 13 th century by Prince Danylo of Galicia as a fortress against the Tatar and Mongol invasions of the period, then bequeathed to his son Lev (Leo) who built it into the city which bears his name, in (...) the 14th century it came under rule of the kings of Poland for the next 400 years or more, emerging as a major centre of the Polish-Lithuanian union. Its multi-ethnic make-up was nevertheless established very early on, like that of most Central-European cities, as a consequence of coming under the ‘Magdeburg rights’ legal system in 1352. Through this development, the city attracted a large number of immigrants of diverse origins (Germans, Czechs, Poles, Jews, Armenians, Tatars, Moldavians and Saracens, both merchants and artisans, who established themselves in their own ethnic quarters in various parts of the city). They had been invited there by King Casimir the Great who was anxious to develop prosperous urban centres in Poland. It was also this ‘German law’ status (jus teutonicum) that set the city apart from its hinterland, populated by Ruthenian peasants and a Polish petty nobility. (shrink)

Historical political entities differ in their understanding of sovereignty. This paper studies how conceptualizations of sovereignty clashed during the peace negotiations between the Spanish Monarchy and the United Provinces of the Low Countries held during the 1640s. It argues that these different understandings of sovereignty posed a significant obstacle to the signing of the peace and, once signedm remained a potential source of instability in the relationship not only between both polities but also for the internal equilibrium of the (...) Dutch Republic. (shrink)

‘In historical composition’, said Samuel Johnson, ‘all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent’. Perhaps so, but even if the historian must appear dull and plodding next to his more profound and shimmering brethren, the philologists and – of course – the literary critics, still he must be granted at least one virtue in plenty and that virtue is scepticism. Especially nowadays. While not quite yet ready to surrender his province to the meta-historians , the historian (...) continues diligently to scrutinize his sources with such wary Pyrrhonism as he can muster. He is especially suspicious of those ancients whose intelligence and whose literary gifts he most admires, hence the unrelenting distrust of authors such as Cicero and Caesar – and recently even such paragons of accuracy as Polybius. Still, a few authors have earned our unconscious credence, it would seem, merely by dint of their artlessness; we simply do not respect them enough to doubt them. A case in point: Varro's De Re Rustica, a remarkable ensemble of three dialogues, a highly literary work, yet one whose obvious inadequacies have distracted readers from its attempts at literariness and consequently have led them to take its veracity for granted – even when it relates to items having little or nothing to do with agriculture. A brief passage in the third book of R.R. informs us, or rather seems to inform us, that what was perhaps republican Rome's most illustrious family, the Claudii Pulchri, was reduced to poverty in the seventies B.C. in the aftermath of the death of the consul of 79 – evidence that has been accepted widely by modern scholars. In this paper I hope to show that there is no good reason for believing Varro's Appius when he claims to have been pauperized by his father's death and, furthermore, that to do so is to fail to appreciate the artistry and wry humour with which Varro has composed Book Three. (shrink)

Summary Historical scholars have recently turned their attention to local communities, resulting in a lively debate about the role of regions and provinces in Western Europe. This has quite predictably led many to question this resurgence of local identities in order to discover the cultural roots and the geographical boundaries of these identities and their interaction with the formation of nation-states in the literary, artistic and political practices of the past two centuries. This article provides an introduction to one (...) specific transnational intellectual network, the Guild of Saint Thomas and Saint Luke, which in the latter half of the nineteenth century served as a forum for the different local identities which were influential in the Gothic (and Catholic) Revival of the Low Countries. The interaction among the most influential members during the annual excursions of the Guild and the choice for the locations of these meetings resulted in different ideological discourses about the position and the borders of ‘Christian art’ in the Low Countries. Due to both internal and external influences these discourses very soon integrated into the national frame, making the definition of a potentially common style for the whole area impossible. The analysis is based on existing literature on regionalism and the Neo-Gothic Revival, and on archive material concerning the first meetings of the Guild. The above-mentioned observations offer the opportunity to underline the peculiarity of transnational permanent networks composed by a fluctuating number of participants and to stimulate debate about the applicability of this example to other geo-cultural contexts. (shrink)

The “centre-periphery” relationship historically structured scientific exchanges between metropolis and province, between the fount of empire and its outposts. But the exchange, if regarded merely as a one-way flow of scientific information, ignores both the politics of knowledge and the nature of its appropriation. Arguably, imperial structures do not entirely determine scientific practices and the exchange of knowledge. Several factors neutralise the over-determining influence of politics—and possibly also the normative values of science—on scientific practice.In examining these four examples of (...) Indian scientists in encounters with their peers at the centre, exceptional scientists are seen in a social context where the epistemology of science supposedly describes its practice. Imperialism imposes practices and patronage, which moderate the exchange of scientific knowledge. But, at Level Two, the politics of knowledge and the patterns of patronage within it mediate exchanges between the centre and the periphery.The first step in reconfiguring exchanges between centre and periphery —in this case, between Europe and India during the period 1850 to 1930— is to recognise the relation between the acquisition of resources and the maintenance of legitimacy and identity.67 Political life is not confined to the core of political institutions.68 Second, in examining science as practised in the colonies, it is necessary to see stages of scientific institutions, whose development structures the exchange.From the encounter of Ramchandra and De Morgan, it is evident that the centre-periphery framework should be separated from the models of transmission embedded within it. The notion of “translation” helps to suggest that scientists bring personal motives and meanings to each encounter. Ramchandra, for example, sought a novel method of teaching Indians calculus, while De Morgan's interest lay in finding a place for algebra in a liberal education.The hierarchy inherent in the centre-periphery framework compels the conclusion that, at Level Two, the autodidact outside the institutions of science must have his work presented to scientists at the centre by authoritative figures from the centre. This is not mainly a question of imperialism, but rather of patronage. The peripheral scientist could not be granted direct entry into the collegial circle until his efforts at the periphery could be translated into the language and concerns of the central community. Ramanujan's enigmatic formulas were translated into the language of analysis by Hardy, which enabled the creation of a field to which Hardy was committed. Scientists from the periphery who were already part of the circle by virtue of their training, were not necessarily subject to the same degree of attestation as other scientists from the periphery. P.C. Ray, with his DSc from Edinburgh, and his position at Calcutta University, had less difficulty in winning the trust of colleagues at the centre, even when he returned to India. On the contrary, remaining at the periphery, he moved from a context of patronage to a sphere of competition. In addition, Ray's collegiality, even at Level Two, was more comprehensive, and connected him with Level One.Eventually, the professional Indian science graduate found collegiality within the international community of scientists. Saha's self-imposed progressive nationalism constrained his identification with the centre and made him a potential competitor instead. Once having achieved eminence in the world of science, C.V. Raman and Saha shifted their work to journals of physics published in India in order to further the cause of physics research in their own country.69To go beyond the limitations of the centre-periphery model, it is necessary not merely to examine exchanges between scientists functioning in a “shared epistemological universe”,70 but also to recognise the part played by institutions, the experience of colonialism, and the forms of patronage characterising both colonialism and science. Put another way, although there is relative epistemological autonomy within the disciplinary research communities of science, the interplay between knowledge and power structures this exchange.The scientific links between colonial India and Britain at the turn of the century were mediated by structures which prefigured change. Does structure determine all? If it does, we are left with an Orientalist reconstruction of the docile native, and a passive cultural medium into which science percolates. But this neglects the role of scientists in creating new structures within which they worked. A middle position—one more sensitive to the exigencies of colonial scientific life—would be one where the participants are seen not as the dupes of “structure nor the potentates of action”, but as occupying a ground between the two.71. (shrink)

La fundación de la revista La Ciencia Tomista se debe a los superiores de la Provincia dominicana de España. Con ella pretendían hacerse presentes en el mundo de la cultura española, a semejanza con otras revistas entonces publicadas por las instituciones religiosas renovadas tras el Concordato de 1851. Y también pretendían integrarse en el tomismo renovado bajo los auspicios de León XIII. El primer director de la revista fue el Fr. Alonso-Getino, quien le confirió su carácter de revista de alta (...) divulgación científica, filosófica y teológica y de atalaya de los movimientos culturales en España. El director de la revista fue elegido contando con sus méritos de joven profesor e investigador en el área de la historia de la teología española. Esos méritos se acrecentaron con los años y se convirtió en adalid de la investigación histórica dominicana. Su brillante carrera quedó, sin embargo, truncada por los acontecimientos de la guerra civil española y por la condenación por la S. C. del Santo Oficio de una obra suya en la que había puesto sus mejores sentimientos.La Ciencia Tomista journal was created by the religious superiors of the Province of Spain. They tried with it to be present in the world of the Spanish culture, as other journals published then by religious institutions renewed after the 1851 concordat did. They also tried to integrate into an updated Thomism sponsored by Leo XIII. Fr Alonso-Getino was the Director of the journal and the one who gave it the character of a high popular scientific, philosophical and theological journal, being a watchtower of the cultural movements in Spain. The journal director was chosen taking in account his merits as a young professor and researcher into the history of the Spanish theology. Those merits increased year after year and he became a leader of the Dominican historical investigation. However, his brilliant career was cut short by the Spanish war and the censure by the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office of one of his books in which he had set his best feelings. (shrink)

This paper seeks to explain why mainstream analytic philosophy lost interest in the philosophy of history. It suggests that the reasons why the philosophy of history no longer commands the attention of mainstream analytical philosophy may be explained by the success of an ontological backlash against the linguistic turn and a view of philosophy as a form of conceptual analysis. In brief I argue that in the 1950s and 1960s the philosophy of history attracted the interest of mainstream analytical philosophers (...) because the defence of the autonomy of historical explanation championed by the likes of Collingwood, Dray, Melden, Winch, Von Wright and others was in tune with the predominant conception of philosophy as a conceptual enterprise concerned primarily with clarifying different explanatory practices. As this conception of philosophy as an essentially conceptual enterprise became recessive, the purely methodological non-reductivism advocated by defenders of the autonomy of history was accused of ontological escapism and the discussion concerning the autonomy of psychological explanations became the province of the philosophy of mind and action. (shrink)

This article explores the uses of utopian rhetoric of food plenty in Italian colonial visions before the First World War. It examines the travel writings of three leading Italian journalists, Enrico Corradini, Arnaldo Fraccaroli, and Giuseppe Bevione, who visited the Ottoman provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica and campaigned for their colonization by Liberal Italy. By reconstructing their utopian rhetoric of food plenty, this article seeks to show the relevance of arguments about food and agriculture produce to early twentieth century colonial (...) visions, shedding light on an aspect of Italian political thought that has been hitherto marginalized in existing historical scholarship. (shrink)

In its curving watercourse, the Loire encompasses vast areas of central France—Touraine, Blésois, Sologne, Berry—former provinces, all closely related, where one travelled from one town to another by imperceptible degrees, a whole district which since time immemorial, has been, above all, French. The towns there have remained as they were in olden times: peaceful populous villages which are quiet and slow-moving although their organisation is complex, standing on an unpretentious historic substructure whose only outcrops are familiar remains: Here a still-imposing (...) castle; there a church, frequently of outstanding beauty; and sometimes public monuments dating from the first onset of community awareness—they consist of such things as a wash-house, a fountain, a bridge over a river, a shady square, or covered market…. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Morality in Flux: Medical Ethics Dilemmas in the People's Republic of ChinaRen-Zong Qiu (bio)IntroductionModern China is undergoing a fundamental change from a monolithic society to a rather pluralistic one. It is a long and winding road. Marxism is facing various challenges as the influence of Western culture increases. Confucianism is still deeply entrenched in the Chinese mind but various religions, including Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity are experiencing a revival. (...) Almost fifty minorities coexist in the country in addition to the majority Han people. Tension and conflict are inevitable as diverse—and sometimes incompatible—values come to the fore at this historic juncture. Many fields, including medicine, face new challenges, and in this environment the field of bioethics is flourishing.Like many countries, China is groping with the effects of new medical technology and skyrocketing health care costs. But in the context of the Chinese sociocultural environment, some unique—as well as more familiar—issues arise. None of the classic texts provide ready-made answers to these dilemmas; we must find the answers ourselves. The only reasonable way to resolve the conflicts between opposing values is through dialogue, consultation, and negotiation among the various social and cultural groups.The bioethical dilemmas receiving the most attention in China now relate to the two ends of life: birth and death. On one end are issues relating to reproductive technology, especially birth control and family planning; at the other end is euthanasia.Dilemmas Surrounding Reproductive TechnologyAccording to traditional Chinese belief, not having a child results from not having virtue. In fact, the most serious violation of the Confucian [End Page 16]principle of filial piety is to be without offspring. A Chinese man without a child experiences heavy psychological pressure, and the burden is especially onerous for women because infertility is always blamed on the wife. Wives who do not bear a child are stigmatized and mistreated—even abused—in families that stick to traditional values.In China today, this widely held belief is colliding with another reality: an apparent increase in infertility among newly-married couples. The rate may be about 5 percent. These couples turn to doctors for help.Artificial insemination by donor (AID) and by husband is now widely practiced. Eleven provinces have established sperm banks, and private doctors are performing AID for considerable fees. But procedures to address legal and ethical problems associated with the procedure have lagged behind. With the exception of a few centers in large cities, AID is undertaken without established procedures or policies relating to the selection of donors and recipients, records about those involved, or clarification of the status of the child. The legal status of the child remains unresolved.The status of the child within the community is also unresolved as traditional values clash with the application of modern technology to childbearing. The case of "The Child Who Did Not Belong" (see box), illustrates how an AID child is not accepted by the family that embraces traditional values because he is not the husband's biological child.In vitro fertilization (IVF) is another alternative. Two IVF centers are in operation, one in Beijing and the other in Changsha, and both have succeeded in producing live births. This technology has received considerable media attention and is generally accepted even among those with traditional views.But much of this medical technology is not widely accessible—especially in rural areas—and so some infertile couples resort to surrogate motherhood to ensure an heir. An infertile couple enters into a contract with a woman who has intercourse with the husband in order to bear a child for the couple. This practice is called "borrowing a wife." In some villages, the "borrowed wife" receives as much as 10,000 yuan (five times a professor's monthly salary or about $250) for a girl and double that for a boy.But the more common and thorny problems involved with the beginning of life relate to birth control, family planning, and the "one couple, one child" policy that the Chinese government instituted to curb overpopulation. The goal of that policy is to prevent China's population from exceeding 1.2 billion in the year 2000... (shrink)

In the 1960s republic and republicanism hardly figured in political theory. Today they are prominent, if highly contested, topics in political thought in the English‐speaking world. While there may be many reasons for this, undoubtedly a particularly important factor was one of the periodic convulsions in the American search for identity. From the late 1960s onwards, American scholars launched a sustained criticism of the assumption that America was founded on the institutionalization of a complex of ideas identified broadly as individualistic (...) liberalism and began a long and fertile search for alternative roots, which were soon identified as republican. This endeavour on the part of American historians was quickly supplemented by a magisterial interpretation of the whole of Anglo‐American political culture in the early modern period as predominantly a development of the civic humanist republicanism hammered out in Renaissance Italy, a topic that was undergoing its own rapid development. The result was a rich historical panorama of the development of republican ideas and practices from the Renaissance to our own time: the Italian cities attempting to avoid princely rule by basing republican government on the virtues of an aristocracy; the Dutch provinces shoring up their independence from Iberian monarchy by developing that new and controversial government, republics based on commercial, not landed, wealth; the English Commonwealth which, though short‐lived, helped to secure the continuing influence of republican ideas and enabled people in the eighteenth century to see Britain's mixed constitution as that apparent paradox, a monarchical republic – and one based on representation; the American Revolution which, by renewing the idea of federation, refuted the traditional republican dogma that a republic could not exist in a large country and, in the process, made republicanism decisively anti‐aristocratic; the French Revolution which transformed so much of republican thought into a still continuing debate about democracy. (shrink)

This paper represents the first attempt to apply vertical equity principles to the South African health sector. A vertical equity approach, which recognises that different groups have different starting points and therefore require differential treatment, appears to offer an appropriate basis for considering how best to redress the vast inequities which exist in post-Apartheid South Africa. Vertical equity principles are applied in critically analysing two areas of recent policy action which are particularlyrelevant to health sector equity in South Africa, namely (...) public-private sector cross-subsidies and the allocation of government resources between provinces. Despite a strong political commitment to redressing historical inequities, recent government policy actions in these two areas appear to fall short of desirable goals when viewed through a vertical equity lens. In particular, policies since the first democratic elections in 1994 have done little to reduce the extent of government subsidies to the private health sector, which serves a minority of the population. In addition, recent proposals for a Social Health Insurance will allow minimal cross-subsidies between high- and low-income earners and would not adequately redress the currently inequitable public-private cross-subsidies. With respect to the allocation of government resources between provinces, a vertical equity approach would suggest that the most historically dis-advantaged provinces have an even greater claim on government resources than reflected in the current formula, as developed by the Department of Finance. This paper also considers the potential benefits of engaging with societal views in determining what constitutes dis-advantage in the South African context, in order to identify those who should receive priority in resource allocation decisions. It concludes with a review of a number of practical steps that can be taken to draw vertical equity principles into policy action. (shrink)

This article deals with political socialization and political participation, in the context of visiting phenomenon, in Turkey. We took the Ali Baba Tomb in central Sivas and Celtek Baba Tomb in Celtek village as the sample of our study. In the study, political socialization and participation was seen as a dialectical process between individual and society. Visiting phenomenon embodying a rich historical, religious and cultural accumulation is important in that it defines the religious tendency of huge masses. As a (...) matter of fact, they have realized their potitical socialization in a pretty much authentic culture with different interests, duties, roles and positions. At the same time, they have shown their political participation with reference to the religious world of meaning. -/- SUMMARY In the contrast to the secular paradigm, religion continues to keep its reciprocal relations with the whole social system without giving an opportunity to any speculation. Religion and politics are two important fields in which this living relationship is stood for institutional structures. This article focuses on political socialization and political participation in Turkey by taking into consideration the phenomenon of visiting. The question of how the visiting phenomenon provided an input to the political system in terms of political socialization and political participation constitutes the problem of the research. Ali Baba Tomb in the center of Sivas province and Celtek Baba Tomb situated in central Celtek Village were selected as samples for the study. The political socialization and participation were talked with 33 visitors who had been selected randomly from different days between September and December 2015 and were tried to understand the data obtained by semi-standardized interview form. It has been examined in terms of its historical development and orientation of relationship between the visiting phenomenon in the research and the political system. For this reason, the basic methodological acceptance of the research has been to understand and interpret political socialization and participation in its specific environment. In this framework, firstly, the socialization of the sample in the context of family, school, mass communication and social environment was evaluated. Later, it has been tried to understand the religiousness in the context of the visiting through the same group. Their political participation has also been resolved according to the classification of Milbrath and Goel’s hierarchical political participation level through the field of political socialization and religiousness. Finally, this research, which is considered as a singular case study, has been subjected to a systematic and phenomenological analysis according to gender, age, education and belief variables on the basis of data obtained through problem-centered interviewing and participatory observation. The visiting in a phenomenological sense involves a trip and travel made with certain requests to the people who are believed to have been buried in places such as tombs, attributed to certain spiritual powers and virtues. The visiting phenomenon in the field of research had brought a rich historical and cultural content, exceeding a simple grave visit. Today, in the religious and traditional meaning world the traumas caused by the modernization and other socio-psychological thrillers have brought a different interest in Turkish society than ever before. The visiting phenomenon has created a continuity with a perception of sanctity and understanding which were shaped by an interaction with many different cultures, pre-Islamic beliefs and eventually mystical and charismatic personalities. However, the visiting phenomenon according to the severity of the individual and social crises experienced in the modern period has also revealed some variations that included popular patterns in both structural and practical contexts. Thus, the visiting phenomenon today is seen in a change by creating new universes appropriate to tradition in different social categories. In the modern era the influence of this change on the political culture is evident. This effect is generally related to the social structure of Turkish society and manifests itself as a closing within the sense of protection of the world of meaning. The visiting phenomenon, which has a special place in the religious life of very large masses in Turkey, has created a peculiar structure of political socialization and political participation around a profound historical accumulation. The participants have realized their political socialization in a unique cultural environment. This culture was formed in the context of family, school, mass communication and social environment. The dramatic situations that have taken place in the process have brought the important socialization problems in this environment. The community associations, the system of obsolete values, the distorted hierarchical relationships and the insecure environments created no longer lead to the searching for meaning by them. These people, who express themselves not like politics (27 people) at last, instead of expressing politics themselves with ideological concepts like ideological rightist, leftist, Islamist, communities people (ʾumma), Kemalist (5 people), but rather Turkish, Muslim, homeland, nation, human and righteousness as the concepts and words to prefer to identify. This should be a socialization that they carry out by transferring the objective world they created outwardly around a set of meanings to their subjective consciousness again. It should be a socialization again that they carry out by transferring the objective world they created outwardly around a set of meanings to their subjective consciousness. The visitors have carried out a political participation with the accumulation created by this field of political socialization. They saw themselves as often religious and the visiting activity as a sign of religiosity. As a result, the visiting a tomb could have been a simple manifestation of inner happiness and ease in a happy moment or an entertainment as much as it was in distress in this environment. The mystical attitude which is far from the world that many poor people built around the visit has caused them to put reserves in the political institution that represents a secular field. As a matter of fact, the visitors often characterize the world with the terms like empty, lie, trial, and so on. Politics, on the other hand, had been seen as a relationship of interest, cheating and lying. It has been understood that it provides a political input in the framework that Milbrath and Goel conceptualize as audience actions when we look at the political participation of the visiting phenomenon in the Sivas universe. According to this visit, in the sample of the phenomenon 29 people of the participants said that they are not open to the politics while 4 of them said that they are open to the politics. However, given that voting attitudes in the elections, only 2 of the participants did not see this very important; others (31 people) regard voting as a responsibility in the name of country, nation, country or even religion. From time to time, those who say either that they have started to the political discussions or that they have participated in political debates (11 people of them) are less than those who have never attended this kind of debates (22 people). In this sample, the number of people trying to persuade a person to vote for a particular party is 6; the number of people carrying a rosette of a party or hanging the symbols of the party to the house, to the car, was only 4 among those participants. Visiting people usually provide the political socializations in a fatalistic and restrictive environment. Their political participation is also in accord with the symbolic world of this hierarchical structure in which life is defined by certain rules. Therefore, they had produced an unquestionability of the authority as it is in family as well as political institutions. The politics is frightening for them; it is not interested in them and they should be away from it. (shrink)

Trade cards were a means of advertising products or services and thereby attracting customers to the owner's shop. They often included a variety of details about the proprietor and his business, and illustrated his wares. Cards for the scientific instrument industry depicted all classes of instrument and the products from which they were made. A careful study of the cards can reveal much supplementary information about the way the industry worked, so their use, and limitations, as a source of (...) class='Hi'>historical evidence is discussed in detail. Over sixty English trade cards from London and the provinces, covering the period 1670 to 1900, are illustrated . By careful analysis, it is shown that aesthetic style and type-face design, combined with written and pictorial content, may be used to deduce dates and business practices. Many small pieces of information gradually build a complex picture of an important and fascinating industry. (shrink)

The “fallacy of negative evidence” in historical scholarship is well exemplified by the assumption that In agro dominico, John XXII's bull condemning the errors of Meister Eckhart, was published only in the ecclesiastical province of Cologne. Scholarship on the subject has taken the limited publication of In agro dominico for granted on the grounds that nothing has been known to show that the bull was sent elsewhere. Seeing “nobody on the road,” some experts have even been able to (...) see wording in papal legislation that normal eyesight cannot find, namely, an explicit statement limiting the publication of the bull against Eckhart to the city, diocese, and province of Cologne. Were it true that John XXII restricted the publication of In agro dominico, then it might follow, as some recent scholars have maintained, that John wished to minimize the significance of Eckhart's trial and its outcome. But is it true? (shrink)

In this article it is argued that the apparent vagueness and broadness of the concept ‘spirituality’ and the difficulty in finding an agreeable definition for it are related to the different meanings of the concept within different intellectual and religious contexts and, subsequently, to different valuations of spirituality in relation to religion and lived religiosity. This article also examines the concept spirituality in the context of the psychology of religion’s historical entanglement with theology. On the one hand, the psychology (...) of religion has emancipated itself from theological discourse and theological institutions. On the other hand, the psychology of religion is still closely connected to a modernist theological project of founding religiousness in a province of the mind that resists religious critique of traditional contents and institutional structures in a secular era. The author pleas for more differentiation between theistic and non-theistic dimensions of the concept spirituality. (shrink)

The existing scholarship has developed six main explanations to account for the success of the Chinese Revolution, which has been anomalous for major paradigms derived from cross-national comparisons. Methodologically, we use a social geographical approach to test these existing explanations systematically by constructing and analyzing a unique dataset of Communist growth in 93 counties in the three most contested provinces during its most pivotal period of ascendence. Theoretically, we advance and test an alternative perspective, based on the groundwork of Tocqueville (...) and Fei Xiaotong, that integrates the state-centric theory, elite theory, and cultural analysis. Our perspective emphasizes the interplay between state centralization and local elite structure, which leads to intensified state extraction and local elite fracturing, thus creating favorable conditions for revolution. The quantitative analysis strongly supports the importance of the Japanese invasion but provides limited support for many other conventional explanations. The analysis largely confirms the Tocqueville-Fei perspective on state centralization, elite fracturing, cultural change, and revolution. The findings are buttressed by a detailed case study of Lianshui County. The study unveils a common structural challenge that a modernizing state faces in an agrarian status society, to recreate its political legitimacy while disrupting local elite structure. It also sheds historical light on the evolution of state-society relationship through the Chinese Revolution. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Hermeneutical Turn in American Critical Theory, 1830–1860M. D. WalhoutLong considered an obscure province of biblical studies, hermeneutics is now familiar territory to American literary critics, along with phenomenology, structuralism, post-structuralism, and the other European theories that have redrawn the map of American criticism in the past twenty-five years. The gradual transformation of hermeneutics into a theory of criticism, and ultimately into a comprehensive theory of the human (...) sciences, was the work of a series of great German thinkers, including Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer. These figures were introduced (or reintroduced) to American critics by E. D. Hirsch, whose Validity in Interpretation (1967) “shattered,” in the words of Richard E. Palmer, “the splendid isolation of American literary criticism from hermeneutics.” Hailing Schleiermacher and Dilthey as the forefathers of “objective interpretation,” Hirsch dismissed Heidegger and Gadamer as prophets of subjectivism. For his part, Palmer strove to vindicate Heidegger and Gadamer as the true heirs of the hermeneutical tradition. Noting the difference between Hirsch’s understanding of hermeneutics and theirs, Palmer concluded,So the hermeneutical debate goes on. On the one side are the defenders of objectivity and validation, who look to hermeneutics as the theoretical source for norms of validation; on the other side are the phenomenologists of the event of understanding, who stress the historical character of this “event,” and consequently the limitations of all claims to “objective knowledge” and “validity.” 1Twenty-five years later this hermeneutical debate is still going on. [End Page 683]What Hirsch and Palmer did not realize is that they were reviving a debate over the nature of interpretation that dated from the late nineteenth century, when American literary criticism was undergoing professionalization. 2 As early as 1885, in the programmatic introduction to his book on Shakespeare as a dramatic artist, Richard G. Moulton had declared, “In the treatment of literature the proposition which seems to stand most in need of assertion at the present moment is, that there is an inductive science of literary criticism.” Moulton proceeded to lay down “a foundation axiom of inductive literary criticism: Interpretation in literature is of the nature of a scientific hypothesis, the truth of which is tested by the degree of completeness with which it explains the details of the literary work as they actually stand.” 3 Thirty years later Moulton repeated this axiom, insisting that “such inductive treatment constitutes the very alphabet of science.” 4 But Moulton’s determination to apply the logic of the natural sciences to the interpretation of literature was not without its critics. In 1900 the German-born philologist Julius Goebel began a valiant, if futile, effort to introduce the hermeneutics of Schleiermacher and Dilthey to his American colleagues. 5 Years later, in an article published in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Goebel drew on Schleiermacher’s Hermeneutik und Kritik (1838) to show “the possibility of attaining exact knowledge in the mental sciences without the aid of the scientific or laboratory methods.” 6 Later still, in an article on Dilthey published in the same journal, Goebel recalled how he had argued in an address to the Modern Language Association that criticism “had lost touch with the contemporary movements emphasizing the independence and importance of the mental sciences. What seemed to me needed above all was a reform of the method of interpretation for which Dilthey had set the example both in principle and practice.” 7 It was not until the late 1960s that Goebel’s project was finally revived.While Goebel may have been the first American literary scholar to use the word “hermeneutics,” the concept of interpretation had long been a part of American critical theory. In fact, what might be called the “hermeneutical turn” in American critical theory occurred well before the era of professionalization. [End Page 684] In order to trace this turn, we must recover the work of the amateur critical theorists of the antebellum era, including such forgotten figures as George Allen and Edwin Percy Whipple. Disciples of the Schlegels and Coleridge, these amateur theorists established the basic premises of the hermeneutical turn: that criticism is a science; that the critic must “reproduce” the author’s creative process; that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:An Interdisciplinary Proposal for Employing Film to Release the Imaginations of Preservice TeachersHaroldo Abraam Fontaine (bio)IntroductionQuestions regarding the proper role of the arts in education have occupied many thinkers throughout the ages, no less than the likes of Plato and Rousseau. Like them, several have argued that paintings, for example, are mere re-presentations of and certainly not, to borrow a term from Kant, the "thing-in-itself." From a Platonic and (...) Rousseauian perspective, those who behold images and conclude that the "thing-in-itself" (on all occasions) and its rendition on canvas in sundry lines and colors are indistinguishable—indeed, they cannot be—would be led astray from the truth in pursuit of shadows, or worse still, would contribute to the moral collapse of the polis. Yet, that's what I propose in this essay. More precisely, I want to reject Plato's claim that art is imitation of what is. Like Parmenides before me, I argue that his heroic pursuit of the form of the Good depends on a set of unproven assumptions concealed in the cloak of an infinite regress. In the absence of such an unhypothetical first principle—and the cornerstone of the Republic—Plato's lofty fortress collapses, and we are left to our Sisyphean tasks, yet hopeful in the power of our imaginations to set us free to pursue our self-appointed ends. Indeed, imagination's province is the arts, now emancipated from mere imitation and free to lay claim to what is. To their company the twentieth century added the cinema, which soars from the Republic's rubble and steads the identity-constructing enterprise in a manner without historical precedent, thus becoming a legitimate object of rational analysis regarding the "reminiscences of the suffering and … complaints" of the downtrodden.1 For reasons I will discuss below, professors [End Page 58] of education should help preservice teachers to develop their skills and capacities to support such analysis, lest the latter's future students assimilate images uncritically at their peril.The Arts, UnleashedPlato's theory of Forms is arguably the lynchpin of his metaphysical vision. As I understand it, the Good is the fundamental (ethical) principle toward which all social activity points, including education. Given the ethical nature of the Good, education is necessarily character education, in which the student's rational moral personality, and hence his felicity, is fashioned accordingly. As such, a student's (and a city's) success depends on his or her rational insight into the true nature and scale of the Good—that is, s/he must be able to distinguish between the apparent and the real. At these extremes lie national dissolution on the one hand, and the nation's integrity on the other.At the pinnacle of Plato's city sit the philosopher-kings, who administer justice in conformity with the Good. Having transcended the supposed illusions of the physical world, they are said to commune with the Forms directly. The Good, Plato might say, is the Form in, of, and by which all other forms participate. Socrates's (or rather Plato's, or is it Socrates's, or is it Plato's …) method is "to set down some one particular form for each of the particular 'manys' to which we apply the same name,"2 for example, "tree." The form, or rather the universal, precedes and is the metaphysical pattern after which the "manys"—that is, the particulars—are fashioned. What, then, is it that the philosopher-kings commune with? What treeness, if you will, is it that the many trees participate in? Enter Parmenides' twofold objection.In his article on Plato in the 2004 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Jonathan Barnes noted:(Plato's) doctrine of participation … does not really reconcile unity with plurality since it leads to a perpetual regress. It says that the many things that have a common predicate, or characteristic, participate in, or imitate, a single Form. But the Form itself also admits of a common predicate, and therefore a second Form must exist, participated in alike by the sensible things and the first Form, and so on, endlessly. Second, a graver difficulty is that the relations between... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary EntertainmentTheodore GracykNeo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment, by Angela Ndalianis. Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 2004, 323 pp., $34.95 cloth.Like the cliché about not judging a book by its cover, the prominence of the term "aesthetics" in a book's title is no indication of what one will find inside. Has the term become so elastic that it will now cover everything cultural? Or is (...) it the case, as in Angela Ndalianis's discussions of theme park rides and computer games, that the term applies to anything that has a parallel in earlier practices covered by this rubric? Ndalianis may be stretching it too far, for the book in question emphasizes parallels with baroque practices that predate Alexander Baumgarten's 1735 proposal to use "aesthetics" as the name of an emerging discipline concerned [End Page 115] with perception. We are alternately informed that the book explores the poetics, semiotics, and the "logic of contemporary media." But because Ndalianis holds that recent visual media involve a "specific system of perception" that arises from a "radical cultural transformation" (22-23), the term "aesthetics" may be as good as any other in conveying her purposes. For she is not concerned with artistic style—presumably the province of art historians. She is theorizing broadly about visual media by examining an assortment of media strategies found in the two eras and aims to identify their common "morphology" (19). Her sources are Fredric Jameson, Walter Benjamin, and Gilles Deleuze rather than, say, Kendall Walton, Noël Carroll, or Gregory Currie.Ndalianis's main idea is that there is a strong but not exact parallel between our own times and the visual forms favored in the seventeenth century. (For Ndalianis, the baroque period stretches from 1492 to the 1680s.) The two epochs involve similar cultural sensibilities and artistic practices, so if we understand baroque art and visual media, we will better understand what is going on in contemporary media. In short, the framing assumption is Shelley's dictum that art is the expression of the spirit of its time. More specifically, the design of modern entertainment media is argued to be very similar to a wide range of baroque entertainment and representational practice. But the similarity is not due to either awareness or imitation of baroque style. Each "logically emerged as a result of systemic and cultural transformations" peculiar to its own time (17). The similar "logic" of each period is thus seen as evidence that there are parallels in the "general tendencies" and consequent "dominant cultural sensibilities" of the two periods (17-21). Because hindsight is more reliable than precognition, a backward glance at the baroque may help us to better grasp our own historical and cultural context.Having outlined these proposals in a lengthy introduction, Ndalianis offers five chapters, each devoted to a specific parallel. All five chapters share a similar strategy. A different aspect of neo-baroque communication is highlighted, and one type of baroque art or entertainment is compared and contrasted with its neo-baroque counterpart, with at least one neo-baroque example explored in considerable detail.The introduction focuses on Jurassic Park (both the film and the theme park ride). Chapter 1 focuses on neo-baroque "narrative strategies," as first Don Quixote and its sequel and then the palace at Versailles are compared to the various Alien films and comic books. The main focus is "serial" art as an outgrowth of capitalism, generating "an aesthetics of repetition" enriched by its "rampant self-reflexivity" (69). Chapter 2 shifts to the baroque love of labyrinthine structure, with its "enforced circuitousness, planned chaos, choice among paths, intricacy, complexity, and an invitation to the audience to engage reflexively" in exploring the labyrinth (84). Ndalianis's baroque case is Pietro de Cortona's elaborate painted ceiling for the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. The neo-baroque counterpart is the Doom video game and its sequel, Doom II. Inexplicably, for a book with numerous illustrations, there are no visuals to display Doom for those unfamiliar with such games. Chapter 3 examines baroque cartography as a background for discussing geographic discovery and colonization, leading to the neo-baroque... (shrink)

El pintor Blasco de Grañén, uno de los principales exponentes de la pintura gótica aragonesa del segundo tercio del siglo XV, fue el autor de las pinturas de varios retablos realizados para las tres provincias aragonesas en las que se representaban escenas de la Virgen María con el Niño y la Coronación de la Virgen junto con ángeles músicos. En el presente artículo, además de describir estos temas y tipos iconográficos, se realiza un breve recorrido histórico-artístico de cada pintura, se (...) describen las escenas musicales y se identifican sus elementos. Finalmente, se obtienen ciertas conclusiones acerca del contenido musical de las pinturas de Blasco de Grañén, que se caracterizan por su rica iconografía musical. Painter Blasco de Grañén, one of the main exponents of Aragonese Gothic painting of the second third of the 15th century, was the author of the paintings of several altarpieces made for the three Aragonese provinces, on which scenes of the Virgin and Child and the Coronation of the Virgin were represented with angels musicians. This article, as well as summarizing these iconographic subjects and types, makes a brief historic-artistic outline of each painting, describes the musical scenes and identifies their elements. Finally, some conclusions are drawn about the musical content of the paintings by Blasco de Grañén, which are characterized by their rich musical iconography. (shrink)

The Glyde mural in the University of Alberta’s Rutherford Library is a testament to the history of Alberta as it was understood by white society in the 1950s. A contemporary viewer described the painting as depicting “the civilizing influences in the early life of the Province.” The prominent historical heroes in the mural represent the main institutions that were involved in this process of ‘civilizing the savages'. An artefact of modern colonial racism, it has overshadowed the threshold of (...) the library’s South reading room since 1951. This article brings the ideas of several historical theorists to bear on the impact and implications of the historical memory invoked by the mural. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:An Undeleter for CriticismSimon Jarvis (bio)Is there experience of beauty, or is it only that we sometimes choose to sort and name certain experiences by using a set of terms, originating often in ancient and medieval philosophy and theology and by a long process of mutation and manipulation arriving under the disciplinary heading of "aesthetics"? This question asks for at least two kinds of information. It does not only (...) ask for information about the history of the formation of the concepts of aesthetics; it also asks for information about experiences. But information about experiences is hard to come by. This is not only, perhaps, for the large reason that "information is concerned with alien objects," rather than with experiences,1 but also for the more local one that "aesthetics" does not often attempt to describe any experiences with determined fidelity.2I can illustrate this with reference to a branch of aesthetics in which I have a particular interest, the aesthetics of prosody. A good deal of subtle and sometimes brilliant work exists in this field. It is rare, however, to find writing which describes in any detail the particular experiences which a particular living individual has had in relation to a line of poetry.3 One is much more likely to find such descriptions in works of fiction (or, rarely, in brief reviews) than in professional writing on the topic of prosody. There seem at first to be some obvious and good reasons for this. Professional writing demands not that we merely report our own subjective experiences, but that we produce knowledge. Critics are not paid to be artists but to be a kind of scientists of art. But what if there is no such science? What if "there is no science of the beautiful" [Kant, CJ 172]? Would that mean that the whole subject area should simply be—deleted?That this is a possibility is confirmed by the fact that in one area of thinking about aesthetic experience, it has almost happened already. While there are still a number of paid professionals who understand part of their vocation to be bound up with investigating the experience of the beauty or other value of works of art, there are few paid aestheticians of nature.4 There have been historical periods in which numbers of printed nonfiction [End Page 3] texts were devoted both to experiences of natural beauty and also to the relative propensity of natural appearances to occasion such experiences. Such descriptions are now thought to be, insofar as they are of interest at all, the province of artists.5 This is indeed a consequence of something like an acceptance that, in the sphere of experiences of nature, at least, "there is no science of the beautiful." Most agree that "an ideal of a beautiful view is unthinkable" [CJ 80]. Yet few, perhaps, would now argue that an ideal of a beautiful poem is quite thinkable either.We are thus returned to the question posed above. If there is no science of the beautiful, must claims to experiences of beauty be treated as fictional—in the specific sense that they are matters for fiction, and not for science? Why should the concept not be altogether eliminated?Perhaps for this reason. Let us imagine that I think I have had an experience. I have been walking along a street at night, say, head down as though scrutinizing the quite complex surface of tarmacadam, kerbstone, painted parking and motoring instructions, drain covers and grilles, although perhaps in distraction I may have been allowing my eyes simply to pass lightly over all this while I think about a mortifying remark addressed to me at a recent committee meeting, or attempt to identify the catalogue number relevant to a fragment of piano music which has come into my head; may, for example, as if startled by a call or a cry of pain have raised my look from the wet pavement—which I now possibly "see" for the first time (since it is the soul which sees, and not the eye [Descartes 1: 172])—and now indeed see at a great distance ahead of me, almost at the horizon of... (shrink)

The distinction between ancient and modern modes of historical thought is characterized by the growing complexity of the discipline of history in modernity. Consequently, the epistemological and methodological standard of ancient historiography is typically held as inferior against the modern ideal. This book serves to address this apparent deficit. Its scope is three-fold. Firstly, it aims at encountering ancient modes of historical and historiographical thought within the province of their own horizon. Secondly, this book considers the possibility (...) of a dialogue between ancient and modern philosophies of history concerning the influence of ancient historical thought on the development of modern philosophy of history and the utility of modern philosophy of history in the interpretation of ancient historiography. Thirdly, this book explores the continuities and discontinuities in historical method and thought from antiquity to modernity. Ultimately, this volume demonstrates the necessity of re-evaluating our assumptions about the relation of ancient and modern historical thought and lays the groundwork for a more fruitful dialogue in the future. (shrink)

This analysis, reverting to the question of how ethical paragons emerge from situations encountered in war, concentrates on one historical example, the case Boy-Scout Soldiers, their system of values and moral opinions. Szare Szeregi was an educational organization active from September 27, 1939 to January 17, l945 in the General Government and the provinces annexed to the Reich. Its activity was conceived as continuation of the Boy-Scout program. Under military supervision by the Home Army groups of older boys, from (...) Szare Szeregi made part of Raid Formations of the Home Army during the Warsaw Uprising and in battalions Zośka and Parasol constituted their main force. (shrink)

This essay takes issue with an Allegory of Vision from the beginning of the 17th century. It is part of a cycle of five paintings on the five senses jointly produced by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens around 1617, and it belongs now to the permanent collection of the Museo del Prado. The description deliberately concentrates on the botanical elements of the painting. In the first and the last part of the paper, I offer an interpretation of (...) some of the construction principles of this allegory of the visual sense. Emphasis is thereby laid on the multiple facets ofrepresentation with which Brueghel played in rendering the diverse objects of this cabinet. In the middle part, a condensed view of the historical context of Jan I Brueghel’s flower painting is given. Baroque flower painting in Flanders and the Dutch provinces was nourished by the development of the science of Botany in the sixteenth century, by the establishment of an exquisite garden culture, and by a growing commerce with exotic plants. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.2 (2003) 119-134 [Access article in PDF] The Constitution of Rhetoric's Tradition Maurice Charland Rhetoric is not a discipline. That is to say, as a domain of theoretical and practical knowledge, rhetoric is weakly institutionalized, lacking a centralized arbiter and standardized set of procedures for establishing truth claims. It also lacks the basic characteristics that Michel Foucault defines as disciplinary, for while we can identify "groups (...) of objects, methods, their corpus of properties considered to be true, the interplay of rules and definitions, of techniques and tools," these are neither universally admitted, nor do they "constitute a sort of anonymous system, freely available to whoever wishes, or whoever is able to make use of them, without their being any question of their meaning" (1972, 222). On the contrary, despite the fact that rhetoric is usually figured as offering practical and, indeed, positive knowledge, the meaning of its terms is always being questioned and at stake. While we might, by considering terms loosely, seek to identify rhetoric in terms of objects such as "persuasion," or "discourse," these are not exclusively its province. Furthermore, the ends of rhetoric are themselves unclear. Is rhetoric really the art of discovering the available means of persuasion? Or is it an art of citizenship? Or a method of enquiry? It has at times been defined as each. Consequently, none of these methods can fix its identity. At most, we can say that "rhetoric," as a domain of knowledge, signals a commitment to the idea of agency in discourse.Rhetoric, while not disciplinary, nevertheless "hangs together" as a domain of knowledge even though it does not cohere conceptually. It is, or comes close to being, a "discursive formation." That is to say, we can identify a field that produces statements concerning discourse and its operations, which is characterized by certain regularities that articulate with the term rhetoric itself. The first such regularity is the gesture of negation. Rhetoric refuses philosophy (or acts out having been refused by philosophy). [End Page 119] Rhetoric further is defined against other intellectual genres: rhetoric is not poetics, is not political science, is not ethics, though it may "speak" to them. Ultimately, though, this tells us very little about the nature of rhetoric's difference, for while refusal is effective in positing the existence of a boundary between rhetoric and other domains, the location of that boundary and what it contains remains unspecified. Rhetoric must also be attributed an at least provisional sense. This is accomplished by rhetoric's second gesture, which initially appears more substantial. Rhetoric is framed in terms of the positivity of a foundational "tradition." Indeed, the gesture toward tradition is ubiquitous. Consider, for example, both the title and principles of organization of Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg's (1990) anthology, George Kennedy's (1998) recursion to the idea of "tradition" even as he attempts to present rhetoric as a natural and cross-cultural phenomenon, recent feminist works that explicitly address "the tradition," 1 the routine citation of Classical authorities and examples, the recurrence of "new" rhetorics, including Burke's dramatism, Perelman's theory of argumentation, as well as Barthes' semiotics, which are offered as supplements to tradition's lacks, and, finally, the energy devoted to the study of the history of rhetoric. The rhetorical tradition, as something bequeathed or put in play by ancient teachers, appears to offer rhetoric a substance, a literature, and a set of problems, particularly through variants of two other principles of discursive formation identified by Foucault, commentary and the author-function. Even so, the gesture toward tradition does not imply the existence of a historically rooted and fixed corpus or model: "Tradition" is a vague term, there is no unproblematic canon of texts to be commented upon, and tradition itself, rather than Aristotle, Plato, or Cicero, stands as "author." What we debate is the meaning of the "tradition," the uneasy relationship between Socrates and Sophists, Plato and Aristotle, but as positions rather than personae. Furthermore, in the name of rhetoric, ancient and modern texts are often read against the grain, and what is... (shrink)

This article deals with two types of Christian faith in the light of the challenges posed by the ethics of belief. It is proposed that the difficulties with Clifford’s formulation of that ethic can best be handled if the ethic is interpreted in terms of role-specific intellectual integrity. But the ethic still poses issues for the traditional interpretation of Christian faith when it is conceived as a series of discrete but related propositions, especially historical propositions. For as so conceived, (...) the believer makes claims that fall within the province of an intellectual discipline, history, that requires evidence and rules of procedure for the adjudication of such claims. It is noteworthy how few Christian theologians and philosophers of religion deal with the issue in these terms. Alvin Plantinga is a noteworthy exception and his views are examined and criticized because, among other things, his conclusion is that any believer without having any training in biblical languages or historical studies can know that the New Testament narratives are true. The article then considers a second conception of Christian faith in which this conflict does not arise. One finds it in the works of Schleiermacher, Wittgenstein, and, surprisingly, in the conception of faith found in the early writings of Karl Barth. (shrink)

During the second half of the 18th-century Belgian historiography developed from the discipline of ?writing? history and collecting historical information towards the discipline of ?studying? history. The ?old? historian wrote a ?history? in which (by definition) as many data as possible concerning (the past of) a subject (a province, a city, a diocese, an institution) were gathered. The ?new? historian on the other hand wrote a ?dissertation?, the topic of which was not so much the past of a (...) certain entity (geographical or historical), but rather a historical and/or historiographical issue. This transformation of historiography concerned a lot of different aspects of this particular intellectual activity, including the position of the reader, who now was supposed to be interested in historical research as such. These shifts coincide and are partly determined by the ?invention? of a Belgian national history (the general history of the Austrian Netherlands), which gradually replaced the particular historiography of the old principalities (such as the country of Flanders and the duchy of Brabant). Henceforth Belgian historians did not have to write a multitude of histories anymore, they now all worked on one larger project, on just one history. Therefore their work consisted of mere contributions, they solved problems and allowed the Belgian history to be written, somewhere in the future. (shrink)

Between 1905 and 1945, 31 states in the Untied States and 2 provinces in Canada enacted sterilization legislation. Over 70 statutes and amendments were enacted to guide, oversee and regulate sterilization practice, while over 24 distinct conditions were offered as grounds for sterilization. Although excellent legal, historical, and philosophical scholarship has investigated the motivations, causes and consequences of this legislation, little work has been done to explicitly systematic analyse the language used in sterilization legislation. This brief study attempts to (...) fill some of the gap by attending to a number of questions that arise in the context of sterilization legislation. Five questions are addressed: Are there any patterns to the eugenic language in sterilization legislation? Does the eugenic sterilization language reflect what is found on other eugenic lists? What can sterilization language tell us about the mechanics of eugenics? What can sterilization legislation reveal about the role of feeble-mindedness or mental deficiency in eugenic history? And finally, what might sterilization language tell us about eugenic thought more generally? In answering these questions, we look to add one more piece to the puzzle that is eugenic history in North America. (shrink)

A long history of extractive industries and activities have shaped the societies of northern Mozambique, and the Cabo Delgado province in particular. For centuries, the growing international demand on local resources had a great impact on the northern micro-societies. The demand for cheap labour and natural resources, ranging from ivory and cotton, to timber, rubies, land, gas and more, involved thousands of local actors in its extraction, reproducing systems of local power. The persistence of poverty, inequality and conflicts, as (...) well as simmering and sometimes grand-scale violence, fits into a long-term trend of extractivism. Through a historical approach and field observations, we focus on the political economy of extracting natural resources. We point out the persisting basic patterns of extractivism that accompanied Mozambique's integration into global markets, and continued or even deepened, in the post-independence period. These activities are oriented towards foreign markets. They are instigated by foreign investment, but invariably carried out in collaboration with a chain of national gatekeepers. In a clientelist system, local elites resort to their proximity to the state to reproduce their power, often at the expense of state expropriation. Weak state institutions have the functional effect of reproducing the elites, also serving the interests of extractivist capital. It is, however, a system with many and profound contradictions, producing conflict and violence, which also recurrently put those interests at risk. (shrink)