This article is about the 829/1426 charitable trust deed of the Gawhar Shād Mosque and its social and economic implications. The deed was for a public-private trust : the private aspect advanced Gawhar Shād’s family interests, while the public aspect promoted the commonweal, being income for the Shiʿi shrine-complex of Imām Riżā, the Gawhar Shād Mosque, and the Sunni shrine-complex of Aḥmad-i Jām; funding for the maintenance of hydrological systems; increasing agricultural production and employment; and increasing revenues to the Timurid (...) fisc. The Persian text, an annotated translation, and a map of certain endowed blocks are included. (shrink)

The article argues that a critical encounter with pre-modern literatures from the national past is long overdue under the impact of a globalized discourse of sexuality. Its effects are already felt at the level of both pedagogy and literary reading, one reconstituting the other, in the ‘global classroom’, a self-conscious pedagogical space imagined by the new educational policy to bring about a globally accredited cultural homogeneity. The case study comes from teaching erotic poetry at an Indian university, from the joint (...) literary complex of Hindi and Urdu in South Asia, a theme uncomfortably located in national culture not just because of its sexuality but its association with non-national linguistic elements which the article terms ‘Indo-Islamic’. The overlapping of the sexual modern with the Indo-Islamic resurfaces a tension in the nationalized body of literary writing in Hindi/Urdu, the major ‘national’ languages of South Asia. This encounter of erotic poetry in old Hindi and Urdu with globalized sexuality, the article shows, offers a chance to reflect on how literary studies are being reshaped by the assumptions of a monolingual, monocultural global sexuality in our nationalist times. (shrink)

This article links three rarely considered dimensions related to the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI)-based technologies in the form of predictive policing and discusses them in relation to liberal democratic societies. The three dimensions are the theoretical embedding and the workings of AI within anomic conditions (1), potential normative disorders emerging from them in the form of thinking errors and discriminatory practices (2) as well as the consequences of these disorders on the psychosocial, and emotional level (3). Against this background, (...) AI-induced anomie is conceptualized as a field of tension that refers to a systematic deterioration of democratic norms that are supposed to create ‘normative orders’, but which, when implemented through AI-supported measures, can reproduce existing discriminations, and establish new kinds of discriminatory relations. In future, these AI-based measures have the potential to lead to opposing normative disorders by emerging in the form of false social norms to an equally false Second Nature. They deprive persons involved of the possibility of individual appropriation of social norms and the specific emotional development associated with it. (shrink)

Collected articles on spiritual life based on the life of Bābu Rāṇapurā, mystic-saint poet from Gujarat; previously published in Kacchamitra, a Gujarati daily.

Previous studies on international reconciliation have focused on the security and economic interests of the countries involved, treating reconciliation as an end-goal rather than an ongoing process. This study divides the process of reconciliation into three stages., which refers to the mending of international relations through institutional change, is the most basic. In the phase, the perpetrator provides the victim with economic compensation for inflicting harm. The third stage,, is reached when the perpetrator acknowledges past wrongdoings and when civil and (...) cultural exchanges are carried out smoothly. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno—philosopher, cultural critic, sociologist, and music theorist—was one of the most important German intellectuals of the twentieth century. This concise, readable life is the first attempt to look at his philosophical and literary work in its essential political context. Central to Adorno’s intellectual development were his musical training, his father’s Jewish roots, and the rise of National Socialism in Germany, which forced him to emigrate to the United States. While in exile, he and Max Horkheimer wrote Dialectic of (...) Enlightenment, a bold attempt to illuminate the dark side of modernity, and on his own Adorno wrote a series of connected essays on the “culture industry”—his indictment of mass culture. A co-founder of the famous Frankfurt School, Adorno returned to head it after the war, assuming a key role in the intellectual life of postwar West Germany until his untimely death in 1969. Ja;ger’s biography sheds new light on many aspects of Adorno’s life and writings and on his relationships with such figures as Paul Celan, Bertolt Brecht, and Walter Benjamin. (shrink)

Research on the influence of industry on chemical regulation has mostly been conducted within the framework of the production of ignorance. This special issue extends this research by looking at how industry asserts its interests––not just in the scientific sphere but also at other stages of policy-making and regulatory process––with a specific focus on the types of tools or instruments industry has used. Bringing together sociologists and historians specialized in Science and Technology Studies, the articles of the special issue study (...) the arenas in which instruments and practical guidelines for public policy are negotiated or used. The aim is to observe the devices in the making or in action, from the selection of actors to the production of thresholds, criteria, and other technical regulations. The introduction highlights how industry influence on expertise and regulation is undoubtedly far more pervasive and multifarious than has been conceptualized to date by social scientists. Putting this issue back at the heart of both the STS and social sciences research agendas is increasingly urgent and could lead to new inquiries able to highlight these logics even more widely, using fresh empirical examples. (shrink)

In 427 B.c. the Athenian assembly passed a decree bearing on the recently suppressed revolt on the island of Lesbos. All citizens in Mytilene, the city which had led the revolt, were to be executed and their women and children sold into slavery. A trireme was swiftly dispatched to Paches with instructions to execute the decree. But the Athenians had arrived at their decision in a fit of anger; and when presently their ργ subsided, they experienced grave misgivings over an (...) action which now seemed in their own estimation cruel and excessive. They earnestly sought to reconsider the matter, and so within the space of a day they convened once more to debate Mytilene. (shrink)

Summary Between the 1860s and the 1910s, British acoustics was transformed from an area of empirical research into a mathematically organized field. Musical motives—improving musical scales and temperaments, making better musical instruments, and understanding the nature of musical tones—were among the major driving forces of acoustical researchers in nineteenth-century Britain. The German acoustician, Helmholtz, had a major impact on British acousticians who also had extensive interactions with American and French acousticians. Rayleigh's acoustics, reflecting all these features, bore remarkable fruit in (...) his treatise The Theory of Sound, which successfully subjected empirical acoustics to analytical mathematics. His accomplishments made British acoustics a subfield of physics, thus distinguishing it from the ‘new acoustics’ in early twentieth-century America. (shrink)

Excerpt from Schellings Politische Anschauungen Wirklichkeit, was in Europa in der Verbindung von Sieg im Geisti gen und Niederlage im Politischen kein Beispiel hat. Die geistige Erneuerung aber findet zwar Anerkennung und Beifall, doch keine Nachfolge und stellt uns insofern gerade die deutsche Entwicklung in ihrer ganzen Eigenart und Einzigartigkeit lebendig vor Augen. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. (...) Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Contributed articles on modern philosophy, Saiva Siddhanta and Cō. Kiruṣṇarājā.

The Guan migrated from the old Wagadu Empire at the time of the Mandinka invasions and arrived in present-day Ghana in the 11th century, making settlements in the northern parts and along the confluence of the Volta Lake. The exodus of the Guans pursued three separate directions. The first group, which included the Kyerepon, settled in the northern part and along the confluence of the River Volta. The Guan and Kyerepon kins occupied the territories of Ghana until the first half (...) of the 15th century when the Akan migrants of Bono waged war against them and established themselves. Between the 15th and 18th centuries, the immigrant nation-states consolidated the Guan chiefdoms and kingdoms through consanguinity, conquest, or alliances. These events resulted in the kingdoms of the Bono-Manso, Abron (Gyaman), Fanteland, Dankyira, Akwamu, Ga, Asante, and Akuapem. The research paper demonstrates the origins of the Guan-Kyerepon and their contributions to the Asante nation (1635-1750) through a historical study of primary and secondary materials comprising interviews, archival documents, books, and scholarly articles. The Asante migration exodus began in the 17th century from Asamankese, a town established by Guans and Aduana Akwamu, to Esiakwa, Esumenya, and Kwaaman. The founder of the organised state of Asante was the gift of a Guan god, Tutu (in Berekuso), and it was through the help of a Kyerepon priest, Ɔkɔmfo Anokye, that Kwaaman became an organised and exceptional nation and subsequently an empire. After 1701, when the Domaa, Dankyira, and Guan states (Kwabre, Sekyere, and Tafo) were annexed, Asanteman became an established state, with the institution of the Golden Stool, a symbol of national soul and consciousness. Through the prudent counsel of the Kyerepon priest, Asante became independent from its overlord, Dankyira, and covered more than 400km of territorial block by 1750. The celebration of Adae, Odwira, and all laws governing the Asante nation-state are attributed to the Guan-Kyerepon, who became annexed and naturalised as Asante. (shrink)

In the course of the development of physics until the beginning of the twentieth century there was an evolutionary progress within its ontological frameworks. Its continuity was violated by A. Einstein’s works of 1905 and his so-called „quantum and relativistic revolution.” In its course people gave up a series of results they had achieved, and replaced them by some radical solutions that differed from common sense intuitions. In particular, in the context of the theory of relativity the concept of electromagnetic (...) ether was rejected. Then the concept of absolute time and absolute geometry of space were removed, facts that eliminated the „flow” of time and change of the ontology of physics from the substantialist one into the eventist one. The changes turned out unnecessary, they resulted not from the very theory of relativity, but from some arbitrary solutions within the frameworks of its philosophical interpretation. On the other hand, they clash with clear ontological intuitions and make an explanation of the „flow” of time impossible. What is more, they are also not beneficial for a further progress in the development of physics, especially in the context of seeking a quantum theory of gravitation. It seems right to return to pre-relativistic concepts, starting from ether. For it is the elimination of the latter that had started the „revolution.”. (shrink)

We examined the relationship between political affiliation, perceptual estimates, and subjective judgements of disease prevalence and mortality across three chart types. An online survey exposed separate groups of participants to charts displaying COVID-19 data or COVID-19 data labeled ‘Influenza ’. Block 1 examined responses to cross-sectional mortality data ; results revealed that perceptual estimates comparing mortality in two countries were similar across political affiliations and chart types, while subjective judgements revealed a disease x political party interaction. Although Democrats and Republicans (...) provided similar proportion estimates, Democrats interpreted mortality to be higher than Republicans; Democrats also interpreted mortality to be higher for COVID-19 than Influenza. Block 2 examined responses to time series ; Democrats and Republicans estimated greater slopes for COVID-19 trend lines than Influenza lines ; subjective judgements revealed a disease x political party interaction. Democrats and Republicans indicated similar subjective rates of change for COVID-19 trends, and Democrats indicated lower subjective rates of change for Influenza than in any other condition. Thus, while Democrats and Republicans saw the graphs similarly in terms of percentages and line slopes, their subjective interpretations diverged. While we may see graphs of infectious disease data similarly from a purely mathematical or geometric perspective, our political affiliations may moderate how we subjectively interpret the data. (shrink)