Extraterrestrial encounters: UFOs,science and the quest for transcendence, 1947–1972

Beginning in 1947, with the first waves of UFO sightings, and continuing in the subsequent decades, debates on the existence and gestalt of extraterrestrial life gained unprecedented prominence. Initially an American phenomenon, flying saucer reports quickly became global in scope. Contemporaneous with efforts to legitimize the possibility of spaceflight in the years before Sputnik, the UFO phenomenon generated as much sensation in Europe as in the USA. In the public imagination, UFOs were frequently conflated with technoscientific approaches to space exploration. As innumerable reports of sightings led to a transnational movement driven by both proponents and critics, controversial protagonists such as ‘contactee’ George Adamski became prominent media celebrities. Incipient space experts including Willy Ley, Arthur C. Clarke, and Wernher von Braun sought to debunk what they considered a great swindle, or, following C.G. Jung, a modern myth evolving in real-time. Yet they failed to develop a response to the epistemic-ontological challenge posed by one wave of UFO sightings after another. Studying a phenomenon whose very existence has been non-consensual since its genesis presents a particular challenge for historians. Posing complex questions of fact and fiction, knowing and believing, and science and religion, this article analyzes the postwar UFO phenomenon as part of a broader astroculture and identifies transcendental and occult traditions within imagined encounters with extraterrestrial beings.     

The interweaving of sacred and secular: metaphysics,reform and enlightenment in the rivalry between Dom Deschamps and Claude Yvon, 1769–1774

ABSTRACT

The Benedictine Dom Léger-Marie Deschamps and the philosophical Abbé Claude Yvon may indeed be minor eighteenth-century figures, and they both may be considered to have emerged from the Catholic side of something Helena Rosenblatt has dubbed the Christian Enlightenment, but neither of these figures is neatly “conservative” (as Mark Curran defines it), nor are they fully “radical” (in the sense of having contributed to the Radical Enlightenment). Rather, Deschamps and Yvon are among a number of eighteenth-century figures who do not fit neatly into the expected parameters of Catholic, Christian, Religious or Radical Enlightenment. This article argues that the entanglement of both heterodoxy and orthodoxy, and of sociopolitical progressivism and conservatism, is characteristic of Yvon’s and Deschamps’s particular engagement with what Vincenzo Ferrone describes as the cultural revolution of the eighteenth century. This study of these under-examined Catholic scholars further suggests that conventional and tidy scholarly narratives of the history of Enlightenment should be further problematized.     

The third sector and government in Australia: Not-for-profit reform under Labor, 2007–13

The emergence of ‘compacts’ between government and the ‘third’ or ‘not-for-profit’ sector is intimately linked to the comprehensive transformation of the welfare state. The first compacts in the United Kingdom in 1998 spawned similar policy instruments in other jurisdictions, including Australia. In 2006 the Labor opposition led by Kevin Rudd undertook to repair a ‘broken’ relationship between the federal government and the not-for-profit sector. The National Compact, launched in March 2010, was an initial step in a bumpy policy journey. Prime Minister Rudd was replaced in June 2010 by Julia Gillard, who portrayed the National Compact as the ‘foundation stone’ of a broader reform agenda. Although dogged by political instability, Gillard pursued ground-breaking reforms in the not-for-profit policy space. These reforms are now threatened with repeal by the Coalition government elected in 2013. This paper attempts to explain why Labor's reform agenda appears set to unravel.

政府与“第三”即“非盈利”部门之间的协定,与福利国家的综合转型密切相关。自1998年英国出现首个协定以来,类似的政策工具在其他地界像澳大利亚便如雨后春笋。2006年陆克文领导的工党反对派修补了联邦政府与非盈利部门之间破损的关系。2010年启动的国家协定在磕磕绊绊的政策旅行中迈出了第一步。2010年6月陆克文总理卸任,茱莉亚杰拉德接任,她将国家协定描绘成广泛改革议程的“基石”。尽管困于政治动荡,杰拉德还是在非盈利政策空间里进行了开拓性改革。这些改革有可能被2013年当选的联盟党政府所废除。本文探讨了工党的改革计划为什么会开始瓦解。     

Mechanics,thermodynamics and locomotive design: The machine‐ensemble and the development of industrial thermodynamics

The need to treat history of technology as history of ideas is stressed and a definition of philosophy by G.C. Lichtenberg is adapted to serve as a tool for analysing technological change.

A case study of locomotive design is introduced, and the influence of rational mechanics, on the machine‐ensemble or locomotive‐track union, beginning with the work. of L. Carnot, is briefly outlined. The development of industrial thermodynamics from S. Carnot (1824) to H. Riall Sankey (1898) is summarized to serve as a reference for later papers.

The general influence of Mechanical Philosophy, and Thermodynamical Philosophy, on the development of the machine‐ensemble, is traced. It is concluded that the United Kingdom steam‐railway machine‐ensemble was the grand exemplar for technology from 1830 to 1880, after which date American railway practice served as model for railway engineering and business methods, whilst electrotechnology became the exemplary technology.

Mechanical Philosophy shaped the machine‐ensemble throughout the 19th C to a much greater extent than did thermodynamics. First Law Analysis, and the use of improved test methods and concepts as standardized by Sankey, together with the introduction of stationary and controlled road trials improved locomotive performance between 1880 and 1910, but Second Law Analysis was of little significance until the 1920s when attempts were made to reform the classic Stephenson‐Goss archetype which rational method had evolved by 1910.