The "cradle of glass": incubators for infants in late nineteenth-century France

This article examines the development of the incubator for premature infants in fin-de-siècle France. During a period of widespread anxiety in France regarding infant mortality and its implications for population growth, physicians in Paris developed and widely promoted the lifesaving technology. This article explores the ways in which the incubator reflected new scientific and symbolic approaches to creating hygienic spaces as well as how it reflected new scientific and symbolic approaches to the traditionally feminine project of infant care. By creating such an isolating and protective milieu around premature infants—an entirely new population of patients—the incubator, I argue, heralded a renegotiation of the boundary between motherhood and medical authority.     

说“雷”及雷神

中国文字是象形文字,文字来自于现实中的事物,用实物解读文字是有效的方法。方辉《说"雷"及雷神》一文可谓以物解字的代表作。甲骨文中的■(申)字,先前的学者大多都认为是闪电的形状,并以此为基础考释相关文字。方辉:《说"雷"及雷神》认为所谓"■"(申),为雷公的侧视形象,由此推论甲骨文、金文中的"雷"字乃像雷公击鼓之形。雷公的原型为猴,而猴与申字相联。作者利用大量考古实物与文献资料相结合进行了缕析,将申、雷(公)、猴之间的联系,从商代卜辞到秦汉典籍、图像,一一罗列出来,做出了可信的分析和推论。在古代文献中,雷神的形象变化较多,鸟、猪、熊、龙等都曾作为雷神形象出现。但雷公为猴形的记载很多,民间流传也很广,《酉阳杂俎》描述雷神"忽骤风雨,有物堕如玃,两目睒睒。"《客中间集》也说"霹雳之中,亦有物焉,其形如猴而小,尖嘴肉翅,雷收声后,亦入蛰。山行之人,往往多于土穴中得之,谓之雷公"所以,将申、雷公与猴联系在一起十分可信。雷神在历史早期的信仰中占有重要地位,虽然随着宗教信仰和神灵系统的发展,雷神地位逐渐下降,但商周时期雷神地位依然十分重要。商周时期大量云雷纹,大家虽然相信其中含有宗教方面的意义,但都提不出具体的解释。如果方氏的结论成立,那么对于认识商周信仰将产生积极的影响。     

Europe in the nineteenth-century American mind: The literary perspectives

This article evaluates Karl Popper's contribution to analytic philosophy, and outlines some of the contradictions in his work which make it difficult to locate in any particular tradition. In particular, the article investigates Popper's own claims to be a member of the rationalist tradition. Although Popper described himself as a member of this tradition, his definition of it diverged quite radically from that offered by other supporters of rationalism, like, for example, Mach, Carnap, and the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle. The reason for this was that Popper believed the rationalist tradition, if it were to remain coherent and relevant, needed to overcome the dilemma posed by Hume's problem of induction. Popper believed that this problem rendered conventional understandings of rationalism, science, and inductive reasoning incoherent. This article suggests that Popper's principal contribution to modern philosophy was to reconfigure the rationalist tradition in such a way as to circumvent the problem of induction while preserving the rationalist commitment to reason, rational debate, and objective knowledge. Popper's reconfiguration of the epistemological bases of the rationalist tradition challenged dominant understandings of rationalist and analytic philosophy, and may be appropriately understood as part of a wider move among philosophers like Quine and Putnam to challenge conventional understandings of analytic philosophy, and of what philosophy itself could and could not achieve. It also informed a vision of social and political life (and of the social and political sciences) as rooted in principles of freedom, equality, and rational debate, but which cannot be fit within the traditional ideological landscape.     

Neo-Latin literature in nineteenth-century Europe: an overview

To date, neo-Latin studies have been hardly concerned with the nineteenth century, let alone the twentieth century. It would seem that literature written in Latin (called ‘neo-Latin literature’ from the Renaissance onwards) had completely lost its significance. However, recent research has shown that Latin verses were still quantitatively and qualitatively important, even if they no longer enjoyed the same popularity as in previous centuries. This article is a synthesis of what we know about neo-Latin literature in nineteenth-century Europe. The first section discusses the question of its quantitative and qualitative significance. Section 2 deals with the specific features of the neo-Latin literature in the nineteenth century. Section 3 presents the situation in Germany in order to give a more precise idea of the phenomenon. The aim of this article is to provide an impetus for further investigation in the field and to cast light on a facet of the nineteenth century that has long been forgotten.