‘Enlightenment takes hold of our lands’: translating and publishing in Volhynia and Podolia in the 1800s–50s

ABSTRACT

This article uncovers the role of self-employed translators in one of the distinctive regions of Eastern Europe – the Volhynian and Podolian provinces. These lands belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until they became governorates of the Russian Empire in the 1790s. By exploring the memoirs of the landed nobility and cultural elite from this geographically and intellectually contested area, this article discusses the importance of translation during the crucial period of search for national and cultural identity, and debates the cultural transfer of ideas in the homes of local petty nobility in the 1800s–50s. The article also analyses the problem of reading, discusses the book’s importance and the variety of ways it could be read in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By tackling these problems, the article attempts to decode the meaning of Enlightenment for the provincial szlachta in the 1800s–50s.     

Crimson,Scarlet, Murrey and Carnation: Red at the Court of Henry VIII

Abstract

Red, in all its various shades, was a colour with many associations at the court of Henry VIII. This article presents a thematic analysis of the key circumstances when red clothing was worn at Henry VIII's court, namely the robes worn at sessions of parliament by the nobility and secular clergy, the livery issued at coronations, as well as livery given to members of the king's household and his army in 1544. In addition, the king wore red for key days in the liturgical year as his medieval predecessors had, while it also formed part of his everyday wardrobe. Red was also significant for others at the Henrician court, including the secular and ecclesiastical élite. As such, it was a colour that was associated with wealth, status and parliamentary authority.     

A rentier class? Milanese nobility and the economy in post-unification Italy

ABSTRACT

The Lombard nobility’s loss of political power after the Napoleonic Wars has led economic historians to overlook the persisting role of traditional elites in social and economic life. The aim of the paper is to reassess the contribution of the Milanese aristocracy to Italian economic development, providing new insights into the business behaviour of the nobility in northern Italian areas. The article presents some new findings on noblemen’s investments and enterprises related to agriculture, manufacturing, trade and banking. The research focuses on the decades following Italian political unification, a period in which noblemen increased their interest in the financial sector and joint-stock companies (transport, banking, new sectors and industries) as a result of the transformations induced by the Industrial Revolution and the agrarian crisis of the 1870s and 1880s. Both quantitative and qualitative data will be used to assess not only the number of individuals involved and the capital they invested in new ventures, but also their role in orienting, stimulating, managing or supporting entrepreneurial activities and their openness to collaboration with the members of the middle class. The analysis combines the deeds produced by four notaries, chosen on the basis of their contiguity to the Milanese aristocracy, the foundation’s deeds of the main companies established in the city, conserved in the House of Trade, and the information provided by other local and national institutions. The cross-referencing of this data suggests that the Milanese nobility maintained a prominent economic role well beyond Italian political unification, contributing to the modernization of the national economy despite the weaknesses and contradictions that marked this process.     

Exotericism and the Untroubled Race for the Future

Abstract

The simple case against the philosophic practice of exoteric writing is that it takes too long. Especially short of time are those who would contribute to or even attempt to keep up with the advance of what used to be called natural philosophy. The assumption of progress in science has been purchased with the relentless specialization of its practitioners. In theory transparent to inquiry, in practice specialized, science may be not just anti-exoteric but esoteric.     

The role of the past in late medieval hidalgo historical writing and memory

ABSTRACT

This essay is structured around two themes: the writing of history and memory. On the one hand, it analyses the use of the past in Lope García de Salazar's Libro de las buenas andanças e fortunas (1471–5). His approach to history is imbued with nostalgia for a legendary past, and more specifically for a political arrangement between the Lord of Biscay and the lesser nobility (hidalgos) which ensured respect for their privileges. This is set in contrast to a second group of material, legal documentation relating to the town of Escalante in Cantabria. Historically under seigniorial control, the inhabitants created a collective memory that framed a past prior to the fourteenth century which was free of lords and feudal obligations.     

The authority of science and the postmodern reformation

Abstract

Popular reactions against science are as old as science itself. The challenge from postmodernity, however, is more fundamental, because it challenges not only what science does, but what science is. The epistemological authority of science is now challenged in much the same way as the spiritual authority of the Catholic Church was challenged by the Reformation. The experience of disruption and instability, the pluralism, relativism, and loss of absolutes of the earlier period are not unlike what we find in our own postmodern condition. Luther's priesthood of all believers has become a priesthood of all knowers in our postmodern reformation. More particularly, we can see how the advent of printing, the humanist cultivation of individuality, and the Copernican mapping of the heavens all have their (post)modern counterparts, in the development of the internet, the cult of narcissism, and the mapping of the human genome.     

Andreas Kalvos and the Eighteenth-Century Ethos

Abstract

In the space of a few years the small isle of Zante, one of the Ionian group, produced three important poets: Hugo Foscolo, Dionysios Solomos, and the subject of this present study, Andreas Kalvos. Kalvos was born in 1792, fourteen years after Foscolo and six years before Solomos. His father's family may originally have come from Crete. His mother's family was one of the aristocratic families of Zante—the family name had been inscribed ever since the Venetian occupation of the island in the Gold Book of the island nobility. The marriage of the poet's parents does not seem to have been a success, for not many years after the birth of his younger brother in 1794, the father, taking the two children with him, left Zante for Leghorn, where his brother was consul for the Ionian Islands, and where there was a considerable Greek colony. In 1805 Andreas' mother obtained a divorce fron her husband on the grounds of desertion, and shortly afterwards she married for the second time. She died in 1815, never having seen her children again after their departure from Zante.     

Kåre Lunden,Frå svartedauen til 17. mai: 1350–1814 [From the Black Death to the 17th of May 1350–1814], edited by R. Almås. Vol. 2. Norges landbrukshistorie (Oslo: Samlaget, 2002). 456 pp. ISBN 82-521-5584-7.

The French nobility offers the peculiar case of a category that in a very short period of time went from the envied position of unquestioned natural elite of the kingdom to complete political irrelevance, passing through outright detestation during the Revolution. The Revolution destroyed the political power of the nobility but it can hardly be argued that it destroyed the nobility itself. In fact, the French nobility managed to survive as a separate and significant category in French society. Even in the absence of actual political control, elements specific to the nobility remained strongly associated with the notion of elite in every regime that followed the Revolution. This paper reviews the status of the nobility before, during, and after the Revolution. It argues that, paradoxically, the nobility owes its survival in large part to a reconstructed mystique which grew more attractive as the aristocracy was losing its actual political power. Finally, images of profligacy and decadence, very popular in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, preserved the exceptionality of the French nobility which thus presents to the historian the case of a remarkably resilient elite.     

Science and Theology Diverse Resolutions of an Interdisciplinary Gap by the New Priesthood of Science

Abstract

In an age where the trend towards secularization has been slowed down, new religions and ideological movements are competing with the more traditional positions to be found in society. Those who are anxious to justify their own particular position share only one criterion for comparison with those holding other positions: a belief in the epistemological efficacy of science. A new priesthood of scientist has emerged to offer justification in the name of science for a variety of ideological positions and to explain to a bewildered public what the real relationship is between the various disciplines of science and those of theology or moral and political philosophy. This paper describes the variety of positions taken up by the new priesthood, typifying these as Fundamentalism, Orthodoxy; Liberalism, Modernism, Agnosticism and Atheism.     

《二年律令·置后律》中的若干问题

《二年律令》是吕后二年现行法律的摘抄,其中《置后律》中的一些法律概念和律文,许多 学者已经进行了有益的探讨,但对有些问题或浅尝则止,或歧义互见尚待商榷。本文认为《二年律令》 的《置后律》并非惠帝初年新作,也是承袭秦律旧文而来;妇女在置后制度中可以被确定为“爵后”、“户 后”的合法继承人,但在实际代户的过程中只能继承家庭财产,不能继承爵位,证明古书古注中女子“不 沾爵”的说法是正确的。     

Public technology: nuclear energy in Europe

ABSTRACT

The concept of ‘public science’ has been fruitfully used to indicate the intricate interrelatedness of science and society. In studies of knowledge and its publics, however, technology has been routinely subsumed under science and the distinctive nature of technical knowledge neglected. We are aiming in this article at conceptualizing the public nature of technologies. First, we start with surveying the literature on public science. Second, we scrutinize various conceptual approaches to better understand the social and cultural factors embedded in technologies. In so doing, we reflect upon the twentieth-century history of technologies as public things. Third, we focus on nuclear energy in Europe as an exemplary case of a large-scale technology which has been shaped as part of public culture. We suggest that the specificities of the nuclear as a publicly shaped societal entity can be understood as an example of the wider category we propose to call ‘public technologies’.     

Defining 'Biotechnology'

Abstract

Scientists and politicians have different attitudes and different outlooks and can only work together successfully if both invest a considerable effort in mutual understanding and appreciation. The scientist has no deadline in his research work; a politician is always in a hurry and needs immediate answers to his problems. The greatest contribution a scientist can make in policy is his imagination and creativity, but he must be good in communicating his advice as most politicians have no background in science. The value of teamwork for the allocation of national resources for science, as well as the importance of science in education are all discussed.     

The signory and its supporters: the Este of Ferrara

The signory of the Este, like that of other contemporary signori, was officially inaugurated with a public election. The ‘people’ (popolo) of Ferrara thereby instated an hereditary ruler who had absolute powers over the city. This election, together with the fact that there were no successful rebellions against the Este, has led some historians to argue that these signori achieved an implicit understanding with the ‘people’ of Ferrara.The evidence of contemporary chronicles, though often ambigous, does not support this view. Likewise, the legislation of the first Este signore demonstrates a desire to suppress the ‘people’ rather than to co-operate with them. The group whose support was essential to the Este was the nobility; chronicle and archival evidence indicates that the Este considered this group to be the very basis of their signory. The interests of the nobility, as well as the need to maintain good relations with Venice, made far more impact on Estense policy than did the wishes of the ‘people’.     

Creating the world: the origins of all things in ancient Greek myth and medicine

Abstract

In the sixth and fifth centuries BC, a series of dramatic shifts in science and the arts took place in the Greek world, and history, medicine, philosophy, and science came into being. This paper examines 'the Greek miracle', looking at how new ideas about 'the origin of all things' were rooted in traditional mythic patterns of thought. In particular, it examines how medical writers thought about the origins of the cosmos, and of disease. The multiple creations of the world present in Greek myth, where the origin of all things was seen as a process of differentiation out of original similarity, may have predisposed the Greeks to be open to the new theories of early scientific thinkers.     

Seeds: Contracting the Audience in a Play about Science

Abstract

In pursuing the question ‘what can scientists learn from theatre?’ Particularly, ‘what can scientists, as scientists, learn from theatre?’ this paper argues that science lacks a normative framework that theatre is capable of providing. Despite science’s well-earned epistemic reputation, there is adequate reason to question its ethical reputation, particularly at the point where cutting edge scientific technology impacts society. I consider science as operating in four categories: the scientific method; the scientific hypothesis; the scientific experiment; and the scientist’s personal character. The realms of the scientist’s hypothesis and personal character are those where social pressures are reciprocally exerted, where imaginative play mentality and epistemic values are most in evidence. Theatre can examine these realms effectively because it is able to use narratives that appeal not only to logical and social moral judgements but to emotional and visceral responses, so as to situate science in the social context in which the pressures of law, funding, experimentation, society, and personal ambition converge in ‘the game of life’.

This can be seen in the theatrical process known as ‘contracting with the audience’. I point out a spectrum of traditional narrative tropes by which science makes “contracts with” audiences. The paper draws on theories of entrainment and theatrical game-play from Peter Stromberg and Philippe Gaulier, as well as my own practice and research into the process of contracting with the audience, to propose how to reach beyond tradition and to shift normalising contracts “outside the box”. To illustrate my proposition, I examine the play Seeds by Annabel Soutar as directed by Chris Abraham for Crow’s Theatre and Theatre Porte Parole. Seeds follows the controversial court battles of Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser against agricultural-biotech corporation Monsanto, which sued him for patent infringement of its Genetically Modified Organism Roundup Ready Canola. Seeds helps its audience define a public arena for discourse even as it brings to our attention the factors that make this difficult to do, while making an excellent contribution to the genre of ‘Documentary Theatre’. It is a successful contract with the audience that creates a public forum for discussion about contemporary ethical debates in science, thereby merging artistic ambiguity and scientific theory.     

The Limits of Science and Trans-Science

Abstract

Many different limits to science have been identified, the most common being those between science and religion, or more generally between fact and value; between science and art; as well as the sociological limits imposed on science because it is becoming too large and unwieldy to be encompassed by a single mind. Here another realm is explored, lying beyond science: we call trans-science those questions which epistemologically are matters of fact, yet are beyond the proficiency of science. Trans-scientific questions consist of very rare occurrences and 'catastrophes' in the Thomian sense. It has been pointed out that unanswerable, trans-scientific questions are usually asked of science by policy makers. Consequently the scientist must concede that his proficiency is limited by this trans-scientific limit to science.     

Fatherland Rhetoric and the “threat of absolutism”: Hesse-Cassel and the Reichskammergericht (1646–1655)

In 1646, Landgravine Amelie Elisabeth wanted to regain the principality of her late husband, on behalf of her son, the minor Wilhelm VI. A conflict (re)ignited as she took 4000 Malter of Corn without the nobility’s consent, consequently violating ancient privileges. Subsequently, the nobles assembled to discuss the affair. This meeting meant an attempt to undermine the government, at least, that was the interpretation of Amelie Elisabeth, and all meetings were consequently forbidden. Since friendly requests – such as the 1647 Remonstratio – did not work, the knights changed their strategy. In 1652 a Replicae was sent to the Reichskammergericht in Speyer, the first of a series of legal suits which eventually led to a Vergleich (Agreement, 2 October 1655). The nobility as well as the landgrave used fatherland rhetoric to stress the legality of their argument and their claims to protect Hesse-Cassel, their fatherland.     

Information Retrieval in Cultural Heritage

Abstract

This article discusses the opportunities and challenges of applying modern information retrieval techniques to the cultural heritage domain. Although the field of information retrieval is closely associated with computer science, it originally emerged from library science — also one of the main disciplines concerned with access to cultural heritage material. Hence we are, in a sense, exploring what happens if we bring these strands of research back together again. The article consists of three parts. In the first part, we explain the field of information retrieval and its multidisciplinary nature. In the second part, we discuss how and why the problem of providing access to cultural heritage can be cast naturally as an information retrieval problem. In the third and main part, we present a detailed case study of applying the modern information retrieval approach in practice within a museum.     

FAMILY,KINSHIP AND REVOLUTION: THE RUSSIAN NOBILITY, 1917-23

Abstract

This article examines the importance of family and kin to the Russian nobility during the Russian Revolution. It focuses on the experiences of four interrelated families to show how nobles used family connections for a variety of purposes prior to I9I7. This helped them to maintain their predominant position within tsarist society. The article argues that these links continued after the revolution, helping nobles survive everyday hardship and official persecution under the new regime; in some cases, surprisingly large family ‘communities’ of nobles emerged. These communities persisted into the I920S and even when they disbanded the wider family maintained its central position in noble life.     

Electronic Information Management in the Social Sciences

Abstract

The use of the computer and its capabilities in the social sciences – psychology, sociology, economics, political science and history – are here discussed. It is suggested that the computer is essential to research in these disciplines and examples are given where certain research projects could not be undertaken without the capabilities of the computer. Three uses which are common to all the social science are described. First, there is a discussion of several computer-based statistical packages which have been specifically developed for the social sciences. Next, there is a presentation of the development of models and particularly casual modeling. Finally, computer-based bibliographic methods and capabilitie are described. More specific applications are: on-line control psychological experiments stimulus presentation, data acquisition, the simulation of psychological functions and the computer a a surrogate clinician; also the application of information-processing model in cognitive psychology. In sociology, the computer is used in social science surveys and particularly in the recent development of computer-based telephone survey techniques. In economics, there is a discussion of econometric modeling and particularly of Project LINK, a worldwide economic model. Finally, a number of examples are given of the use of computers in political science and historical research. It is concluded that the computer is a basic tool in social science research.