James Harrington's ‘Machiavellian’ anti-Machiavellism

In the last thirty years historians of republicanism have offered us the image of Harrington as the true hero of Machiavellism. This paper suggests instead that Harrington adopted Machiavelli's method in political science, but shared only few of his master's values, often referring to those cherished in anti-Machiavellian circles, as in the case of the agrarian laws. Indebted to the anti-Machiavellian Petrus Cunaeus's analysis of the Jewish Jubilee laws, Harrington transformed Cunaeus's specific observations into a general law of his own political science. This paper emphasizes the originality and modernity of such science, based on the inextricable interconnectedness between politics and economics. Further, it argues that this science entails a new, post-Machiavellian theory of liberty and property.     

Valuing place/placing value: the elusive normativity of landscape in rural Tuscany

Rural Tuscany has become both a paragon of harmonious beauty and a terrain of legal conflict and recrimination. When they do not resort to essentialist notions of taste, many commentators are prone to explain the ‘preservation’ of Tuscany's countryside as the outcome of locally rooted legislative interventions meant to prevent ‘speculation’ and ‘debasement’ (scempio). Tuscany is indeed the site of layers of normative constraints and guidelines, ranging from local zoning regulations to the expectations associated with UNESCO's World Heritage Site status. Far from being self-evident, however, these normative constructs have been debated in Tuscan society over decades of rapid and often chaotic change. The reinvention of rural Tuscany as a paragon of beauty emerged from the search for an elusive form of coherence and meaning, whose features generated both conflict and accommodations. By focusing on a valley in southern Tuscany which obtained the status of World Heritage Site in 2004 (the Orcia valley), the article shows the power of the circumventions, negotiations and reinterpretations in which rural Tuscans have engaged while navigating the alternative temporalities of global validation, national legitimation and local belongings.     

Choices and responsibilities: finding the balance

Rapid population growth means the addition of a billion more people in 11 years. The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), scheduled for September 5-13, 1994, will address the issue of population growth and design strategies for slower growth with economic development and environmental protection. This article summarizes Dr. Nafis Sadik's special preparatory message about the conference. The ICPD will address the issues of reproductive health, affordable family planning (FP), and informed choice. There will be an emphasis on better health care, housing, education, and other poverty alleviation measures. Empowerment of women through educational and economic opportunity and increased foreign aid are also themes. Improvements in the quality of life as well as demographic and social change are required. The key to slowing population growth is to meet the need for FP services to reduce fertility. Reexamination of the life-styles of the more affluent is also required. Needs and resources must be balanced. Sustainable development and resource use will depend upon slower population growth, more rational population distribution, alleviation of poverty, environmentally safer consumption patterns, and other measures. The 1994 draft plan of action has a broad mandate which recognizes the linkages between population and development. Target dates and reproductive rights language are bracketed and will be discussed during the conference. Quantitative goals are set for education, child and maternal mortality reduction, and universal access to FP and reproductive health services. The public should be made aware of the development and population links. Developing countries are asked to devote 20% of their government budget to social development. Countries by their action or inaction will choose a world population size in 2015 ranging from 7.27 to 7.92 billion. The difference of 660 million in 20 years is equal to the current population in Africa. The high projection for 2050 is 12.5 billion people. The ICPD will be the last global opportunity before the turn of the century to address the challenges of shared responsibility for the future of life on earth.     

The elusive role of scientific medicine in mortality decline: diphtheria in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Philadelphia

The designation of the Klebs-Loeffler bacillus as the cause of diphtheria in the early 1890s and the subsequent development of the antitoxin treatment in the years immediately following were at the time and continue to be viewed as triumphs of scientific medicine. I focus on these two developments to illustrate the problems that arise in attempting to answer the questions regarding the role that changes in medical practice--in this case, the use of antitoxin as a cure--played in lowering death rates at the time. Changes in diagnostic techniques, the selection of cases to be included, and ultimately the agendas of the persons constructing them affected the numerators and denominators of these rates. The data suggest that the antitoxin had some effect on already declining diphtheria death rates, but because of changes in understandings of the disease and contemporaries' presentation of the data, the size of that effect and its role in mortality decline more generally elude us. Our analysis of the past depends on numbers that reflect not only changing treatments but also changing understandings of disease at the end of the nineteenth century.     

The spiral that vanished: the application of non-contact recording techniques to an elusive rock art motif at Castlerigg stone circle in Cumbria

This article describes the recording of stone 11 of the Castlerigg stone circle in Cumbria through two different non-contact techniques: laser scanning and ground-based remote sensing. Despite the unproblematic recording of modern graffiti, neither technique was able to document the spiral photographed and rubbed in 1995. It is concluded that the spiral was most probably painted and has since faded away due to natural events. The discovery and loss of the spiral motif in Castlerigg is seen as a cautionary tale. In particular, it seems to suggest that it is time to take advantage of the novel technologies based on the digitisation of 3D surfaces with millimetre and submillimetre accuracy such as laser scanning and ground-based remote sensing. They offer many advantages to the recording of prehistoric carvings. In addition to avoiding direct contact with the rock surface eliminating the preservation concerns raised by other techniques, both produce high quality images (laser scanning offering a greater potential for this, but at higher cost) having a much higher level of objectivity, and precision and accuracy far beyond those of traditional recording methods such as wax rubbings and scale drawings.     

Anton Raederscheidt's distorted self-portraits and their significance for understanding balance in art

Following a right cerebral stroke, the German artist Anton Raederscheidt produced a remarkable series of self-portraits that depicted his severe visual neglect and gradual recovery. These distorted images, like those drawn by others with this disorder, inform us about lateral balance in art and why it is common in the art of cultures separated in time and space. After describing how artists in various cultures have employed lateral balance, I present Arnheim's view that this aspect of art is the result of visual forces generated by the brain. Following a brief history of visual neglect, I present evidence that this disorder provides us with clues to the origin of the visual forces responsible for lateral balance in art. The relevant brain mechanisms control exploration of visual space by integrating orienting movements with visual spatial information. The prevalence of lateral balance in art becomes understandable when we consider that these brain mechanisms evolved to promote survival in our vertebrate ancestors. I end with a speculative neurological account of the aesthetics of lateral balance--why it is pleasing and its absence is displeasing.     

佛家的禅定般若与现代精神生态平衡

佛家通过禅定训练获得般若智慧,借此反观自身清净本性与本来面目,在空间的去蔽中成全一种审美适意的本真生存状态;佛家通过禅定训练获得瞬间顿悟,借此恢复自身心理的完整性,在时间的凝聚中体悟物我合一的永恒生存境界。佛家禅定般若的训练方式为现代人提供了去除精神与物质对立关系、恢复心灵本真状态、保持精神生态平衡的全新途径,值得现代社会进一步探索与反思。     

Streptomycin, Schatz v. Waksman, and the balance of credit for discovery

A recent article in Nature, arguing that "the misallocation of credit is endemic in science," used Selman Waksman as an illustration, claiming that the true discoverer of streptomycin was one of his graduate students. The article received wide publicity and seriously damaged Waksman's great reputation. What actually happened was that the success of penicillin stimulated Merck to fund research by Waksman, a soil scientist, into the collection of actinomycetes that he had assembled over thirty years. He applied the systematic, uncreative testing techniques that had made the German pharmaceutical industry so successful to these, and streptomycin was discovered within a matter of months. Work in the Mayo Institute then showed that it was marvelously effective against tuberculosis, and Waksman received the Nobel Prize for it in 1952. The test that turned out to be the crucial one could have been carried out by any of several students, but the lucky one was Albert Schatz. He then sued the university for a share of the royalties payable by Merck and also petitioned the Nobel committee to include him in the award. Although he obtained a very substantial out-of-court settlement, this probably damaged his subsequent academic career, and he has never ceased to argue his case for recognition, of which the Nature article is a reflection. To claim that Waksman took credit properly due to Schatz is to fail to understand that once pharmaceutical research had become primarily a matter of large-scale, routine testing, little individual creativity was left in this work. Credit for any successful results must therefore be given to whoever is the originator or director of a particular program. Nature refused to publish evidence that this case could not be used as an example of misallocation of credit for discovery. This in itself illustrates that editors of scientific journals should be every bit as mindful of scientists' reputations as they are of scientific facts.     

A trade balance: litigation and negotiation in the World Trade Organization's dispute settlement system

The establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been widely accepted as representing the legalisation of world trading rules. However, it is important to reflect on the limits of this legalisation thesis in terms of the interface between international and domestic policy processes. By locating trading disputes in a political analysis of policy implementation, it is argued that it is difficult to establish conceptually how the WTO dispute settlement system could have authority separate from and above the conventional international politics of trade policy relations. Instead, the article argues that case outcomes should be expected to be largely the product of domestic political institutions and policy processes, and how these intersect with developments in the WTO dispute settlement system. Brief studies of the Australian government's dispute settlement strategy and two high-profile WTO disputes—the US upland cotton and European Union sugar cases—serve to suggest that the authority of international trade law is not as significant as assumed by the legalisation thesis. Rather, domestic politics and institutions have an important impact on the outcome of trade disputes.     

艾森豪威尔政府后期的国际收支困境与对策

艾森豪威尔政府后期,美国的国际收支陷入困境,黄金大量外流.为了改善国际收支,维护美元垄断地位,巩固美国的全球霸权,艾森豪威尔政府提出了一系列增加国际收入、降低国际支出的措施,其中最关键的是艾森豪威尔总统于1960年11月16日颁布的总统指令,该指令提出了撤回驻外军事人员家属等改善美国国际收支的措施.但是,由于现实的国际政治经济因素的束缚,艾森豪威尔政府调节国际收支的努力效果不佳.     

廉颇与蔺相如对今人的启示--心理平衡浅析

当人们面对现实时,或许很满足,或许很失意;满足而骄傲使人自信亦易使人落伍,失意而愤世,使人激奋亦易使人犯错。心理常态趋近甚或保持平衡,是成功的重要素质之一。     

A community out of balance: nationality law and migration politics in the history of post-unification Italy

Italian government policies concerning foreign immigration have to be understood in the context of laws on nationality. Since the time of unification, Italian laws on nationality have been closely determined by policies on emigration and immigration. As a result, the laws regarding the nationality status of Italian emigrants returning from abroad, and for foreign immigrants in Italy, have on the whole been determined by the procedures adopted for the acquisition or deprivation of Italian nationality. This is a subject that has not been studied and this article reconstructs the principal stages in the development of Italian nationality laws from the early twentieth century to the present. This reveals that Italian nationality law treats Italian emigrants and foreign immigrants in very different ways. Both the legal system and government policy has in the past been extremely generous towards the former and has made both the preservation and the reacquisition of nationality relatively easy for Italian nationals, even before there were practical motives for this (e.g. the right for Italians living overseas to vote). When it comes to foreign immigrants, however, Italian law is amongst the most restrictive in western Europe. The article concludes by arguing that this underlying imbalance is a major but largely ignored weakness in Italian democracy.