The tree as evolutionary icon: TREE in the Natural History Museum, London

As part of the Darwin celebrations in 2009, the Natural History Museum in London unveiled TREE, the first contemporary artwork to win a permanent place in the Museum. While the artist claimed that the inspiration for TREE came from Darwin's famous notebook sketch of branching evolution, sometimes referred to as his "tree of life" drawing, this article emphasises the apparent incongruity between Darwin's sketch and the artist's design -- best explained by other, complementary sources of inspiration. In the context of the Museum's active participation in struggles over science and religion, the effect of the new artwork is contradictory. TREE celebrates Darwinian evolutionism, but it resonates with deep-rooted, mythological traditions of tree symbolism to do so. This complicates the status of the Museum space as one of disinterested, secular science, but it also contributes, with or without the intentions of the Museum's management, to consolidate two sometimes conflicting strains within the Museum's history. TREE celebrates human effort, secular science and reason -- but it also evokes long-standing mythological traditions to inspire reverence and remind us of our humble place in the world.     

历史与实践:纽约大都会博物馆的中国艺术收藏

纽约大都会博物馆的中国艺术收藏已有130年的历程。其间收藏的器类始于制作精美、雅俗共赏的明清瓷器,继而扩展到玉器、金银器、珐琅器、牙雕等整个明清时代的装饰艺术,再进一步扩展到中国古代的青铜礼器、玉器、陶塑和佛教造像,并且随着西方对于中国艺术的研究的深入,观众和收藏家逐渐领略到中国书画艺术深邃的文化内涵,最终全面地了解绵延不断的中华五千年文明;其收藏历程则见证了美国,或是说西方对中国文化艺术的认知过程,收藏过程中所形成的收藏家、赞助人和博物馆业务主任成功的合作模式和经验或许可以给中国的博物馆提供有益的借鉴。     

The spring,the seed and the tree: Gregory of Tours on the wonders of nature

In the preface to his liturgical calendar The reckoning of the course of the stars Bishop Gregory of Tours (538–594) — author also of Ten books of histories and Eight books of miracles as well as of a Commentary on the understanding of the Psalter (of which, however, only fragments are preserved) — declares God's “wonders” of the natural world to be superior to the seven ancient wonders of the world. The reason for this is that the latter, being works of men, are subject to decay and destruction, while the former, as miraculous works of God, are divinely sustained and renewed daily or annually, thereby becoming imperishable. An examination of the associative contexts in which two of these wonders — the sea (enlarged to include water in its various forms) and plant life — occur in the rest of Gregory's works reveals several essential themes of his thinking not only about nature, but also about God, man and society. Thought, for him, nature as a (divinely sustained) system of regularities does exist as a kind of backdrop, sudden unpredictable divine — and sometimes diabolic — action in and through phenomena occupies the center of the stage. Gregory tends to see this action in the shape of what he regards as pre-existing images or patterns of invisible spiritual truth, to which the visible, even material, structure of events must necessarily conform. He shows, too, how this action could reflect as well as meet various needs of the individual and of society as a whole. An association which recurs almost constantly in his treatment of divine action in these natural phenomena, which he sometimes describes as analogous to that in man, is precisely that with the cluster of closely related concepts of renewal, rebirth and creation ex nihilo. Together with what appears as an extreme, as it were ‘poetical’, sensitivity to sudden perceptions and intuitions, something like a longing for and surrender to what he describes as “astonished admiration” may have helped to make possible his recognition of that which he designated as divine creative power in the world of visible reality as well as in man's inner experience. His seeing this as an essential dynamic of the holy may mean that he felt it to be a fundamental need and concern not only of the individual personality but also, more obscurely, of the society in which he found himself.     

The population of East Sicily during the second and first millennium BC: the problem of the Greek colonies

Knowledge of Sicilian biology during the past is very important in understanding the complex processes that characterized the population of the Mediterranean Basin. The problem of the first Greek settlement in Sicily is essential in understanding and reconstructing the indigenous biological tissue of an island that was and still is a fundamental crossroads for migratory strategies. In this research we studied ten Sicilian series chronologically attributed to the second and first millennium BC , using discrete cranial traits. The results show that the first biologically significant Greek presence in eastern Sicily could go back to the Bronze Age, while the cosmopolitan Hellenistic city of Syracuse showed the nature of the biological pattern during the first millennium BC . Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

历史、文化与民族:20世纪前期中国文化史的兴起

20世纪初,西方“文化”概念成为整理传统中国历史遗产的重要概念工具。国人编纂文化史有意展现传统中国的文化成就,反映出中西文化竞争下,国人隐秘的文化争胜意识。“文化”与“历史”结合,逐渐成为历史叙事的核心概念。文化史在史学研究的对象、价值判断、时代分期、研究方法等方面发展出自身特征,亦反映出西方文明史、文化史在理论和实践方面对中国“新史学”的影响。文化史在实践中注重对民族历史生活的呈现,表现出民族史的特征,其叙述特定群体或民族社会生活的方方面面,揭示群体的精神内核。历史、文化与民族融会一体,在西学东渐、传统文化权威失坠的情况下,文化史构建了一种彰显社会凝聚力的叙事。     

Seaborne Ethnography and the Natural History of Man*

This paper examines intellectual interchanges between European theorists in the science of man and sailors, naturalists and artists on scientific voyages in Oceania during the century after 1750. I argue that travellers' narratives and ethnographic representations were not mere reflexes of dominant metropolitan discourses, but were also personal productions generated in the tensions and ambiguities of cross-cultural encounters. I identify countersigns of indigenous agency embedded in such materials and evaluate their trajectory from the interactions which provoked them, through varied genres and media of voyagers' representations, to their contorted appropriation by European savants. My examples are drawn from British and French accounts of visits to New Holland and Van Diemen's Land between 1770 and 1802. In this paper, Aboriginal Australians, especially Tasmanians, serve as synecdoche for the indigenous inhabitants of Oceania generally, using the regional term in its extended early 19th-century sense which encompassed the present Indonesia and Australia along with Papua New Guinea, Aotearoa/New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.     

Modern Greek in the European Union: Language,Economy and Culture

Abstract

For those teaching and researching in Modern Greek Studies outside Greece, discussion of the eighties and nineties is characterised by reference to changes in Greek political life, as well as in the Greek educational system and policy making directly connected with Greece's entry into the European Union. Greece became a member of the EU as recently as 1981. PASOK, viewed membership as temporary but these claims were dropped after 1985. In the same period changes introduced into the linguistic system of the Greek language led to discussions of educational and cultural interest. More recently, however, certain developments concerning the role of strong languages in the European Union have brought to the fore issues concerning weak languages, those spoken by less people in the European Union, and their related cultures. This has once again opened the forum of discussion regarding matters of linguistic survival and cultural variety.     

Theology,Idolatry and Science: John Williams’ Missionary Ethnography and Natural History of the South Pacific

This article contributes to the recent scholarly efforts toward a more sophisticated understanding of the relationship between Protestant missionaries and the practice of natural history and ethnography in the early nineteenth century. Exploring John Williams’ work in the South Pacific, I argue that not only was Williams practicing science in the form of ethnography and natural history, but that his theology was, in fact, central to his scientific work. Through a careful exploration of Williams’ account of his missionary activities in the South Pacific, I contend that Williams’ conception of idolatry served as an explanatory tool that shaped the practice of his ethnography. In the minds of missionaries like Williams, whereas Christianity’s truth was universal, idolatry was the worship of a false god: false because it was just a deification of a particular desire rather than worship of the universal God. This conception of idolatry shaped Williams’ contention, central to his ethnography, that the islanders’ religion was a product of their particular cultural needs. In this way, I argue, Williams used a theological concept to perform explanatory scientific work, contributing to the idea that religion is a product of culture, a notion that became central to nineteenth century studies of religion.