The Wilsons — A Line of Engineers

Abstract

In addition to his enduring engineering works, Thomas Telford was the inspiration of several lines of engineers whose progenitors worked for the great man. This paper describes such a line, continuing for five generations of engineers. Its founder was one of the two John Wilsons who worked as managing overseers for Telford. The John Wilson here considered, worked on the Caledonian Canal, the Göta Canal and the Glencorse dam. Two of his sons became civil engineers, one establishing his own business in London and the other travelling the world. They in turn were succeeded by two nephews, one of whom carried on the London consultancy whilst the other became Chief Engineer to the Great Eastern Railway. They in turn had sons who continued as civil engineers, and grandsons who have diversified into newer branches of engineering.     

A theory of justice—And love; rawls on the family

In A Theory of Justice John Rawls constructs an apparently universal moral theory. However among its most basic assumptions are ones which could justify a differential morality for women.

Rawls assumes love and the family unit to be so natural that he excludes them from the scope of the principles of justice to which all other institutions are subject in the just society. Having done so Rawls can retain a nuclear family structure with a sexual division of labour. Female and male children will have different experiences within this type of family. This institutionalised injustice is likely to prevent both sexes from developing the crucial sense of justice.

Rawls's whole theory is thus flawed from its very inception. An unjust family structure cannot produce just citizens.     

The ‘Copper Age’—A History of the Concept

Journal of World Prehistory - The idea that there was a Copper Age between the Neolithic and Bronze Age was inspired by the discovery of the use of native copper in prehistoric North America. Its...     

The Tangut Xixia Collection of Buddhist Paintings——A preliminary survey of the current status of scholarship

Buddhism is central to understanding the globalized historical processes taking place in the Hexi Corridor,a region running northwest from the bank of the Yellow River up till the nowadays Xinjiang-Gansu border and being flanked by the Tibetan Plateau and the Gobi Desert to the south and north respectively.As part of the trade route networks conventionally designated as the Silk Road,the area has functioned as an important nexus linking China proper,China's Tibet and Central Asia in pre-modern times.Buddhism,as the region's backbone of pan-Asian importance,intermingled with the ups and downs of cultures and historical entities until the Islamic takeover.     

The Fairy Temple-Zhoma Lhakhang—A Series of Archeological Trips in Gyirong County

It has already been eighteen years.I remember my first experience of stepping into this most mysterious land,Gyirong County.This was the beginning of my archeological journey in the Tibet Autonomous Region （TAR）.My memories are,since then,overwhelmed with fascination and imagination because of the most spectacular mountain ranges and the river banks in such a mysterious land.Maybe my fondest memory of this land is the flourishing historical cultural heritage preserved by local people.In September 2008,after several years,I again returned to my dreamland,Gyirong,     

The industrial district: A stage of a diffuse industrialization process—the case of Roanne

The industrial district is an important element of the theoretical debates concerning the appearance of original features of regional development in Europe. Issuing from Marshallion theory, this concept was ‘reinvented’ in the late 1970s in order to interpret a series of ‘regional success stories’ of industrial development that occurred in middle Italy. Thus, for some economists and geographers, the industrial district has become a new ‘standard’ of regional development, appearing as an autonomous integrated system, whose functions are based on the principle of ‘automation’. This system represents an optimal structure in terms of economic efficiency and resource allocation, and owns its proper mechanisms of reproduction related to specific territorial regulations. A crisis for such a system can only be related to exogenous factors. Rejecting this static vision of economic structures, which reintroduces the ‘growth/crisis’ divide in the analysis of economic development, it seems necessary to promote a more dynamic approach in terms of ‘change through continuity’. This approach was initially developed by some Italian authors who tried to analyze the original features of regional development in the Third Italy in terms of ‘industrialization without fracture’. This approach does not deny the existence of industrial districts, but refuses to accept that they are static: districts can evolve, change, develop . . . Thus, they appear as a particular stage of development in a diffuse industrialization process. Their evolution is no longer simply related to exogenous variables but also to endogenous ones; and this evolution does not necessarily lead to an implosion or a complete transformation of space but can also lead, through the continuity of the industrial district's mechanisms, to a post‐district organizational configuration.