Darwin to Einstein: Primary sources on science and belief

R.G. Collingwood defined historical knowledge as essentially ‘scientific’, and saw the historian's task as the ‘re-enactment of past thoughts’. The author argues the need to go beyond Collingwood, first by demonstrating the authenticity of available evidence, and secondly, using Namier as an example, by considering methodology as well as epistemology, and the need to relate past thoughts to their present context. The ‘law of the consumption of time’ encourages historians to focus on landmark events, theories and generalisations, thus breaking from Collingwood's emphasis on fidelity to past ideas and interpreting the past from the concepts of the present. This conflict can only be reconciled by the study of historiography.     

Trans youth,science and art: creating (trans) gendered space

This article is based on empirical research which was undertaken as part of the Sci:dentity project funded by the Wellcome Trust. Sci:dentity was a year-long participatory arts project which ran between March 2006 and March 2007. The project offered 18 young transgendered and transsexual people, aged between 14 and 22, an opportunity to come together to explore the science of sex and gender through art. This article focuses on four creative workshops which ran over two months, being the ‘creative engagement’ phase of the project. It offers an analysis of the transgendered space created which was constituted through the logics of recognition, creativity and pedagogy. Following this, the article explores the ways in which these transgendered and transsexual young people navigate gendered practices, and the gendered spaces these practices constitute, in their everyday lives shaped by gendered and sexual normativities. It goes on to consider the significance of trans virtual and physical cultural spaces for the development of trans young peoples' ontological security and their navigations and negotiations of a gendered social world.     

论大足石刻艺术与科技的完美结合

大足石刻超凡的艺术性始终与崇高的科学性紧紧地融会在一起,表现出强烈的民族色彩。大足石刻艺术的科学技术性主要体现在五个方面:一、地形选择;二、峡谷排水;三、龛窟结构;四、力学的运用;五、光学的应用。     

Diaspora, kinship and loyalty: the renewal of Jewish national security

This article assesses the new thinking on Jewish security, both inside and outside the state of Israel, since the collapse of the Oslo peace process and in the aftermath of 11 September 2001. To what extent are Jewish diaspora voices and concerns being heeded in Israel, and how are new manifestations of anti‐Semitism being addressed in this context? What is the new role that Israel ascribes to the diaspora in its redefinition of itself and its security environment? In addition, how is the diaspora responding to these new challenges and how is it defining its own role? All of these elements are examined by the authors in the different contexts of Israel, western Europe and the United States.     

Experimental and Conceptual Innovators in the Sciences: The Cases of Darwin and Einstein

Abstract

During the past decade, analyses of artistic creativity have demonstrated the contrast in creative life cycles between experimental old masters and conceptual young geniuses. This article extends the analysis to scientists. Charles Darwin was a great experimental innovator, who spent decades accumulating evidence on evolution and its mechanisms, and made his greatest contributions late in his career. In contrast, Albert Einstein was a great conceptual innovator, who made discoveries through highly abstract reasoning, and made his greatest contributions early in his career. The careers of these two great scientists are thus consistent with the thesis that, as in the arts, conceptual creativity is associated with youth, but experimental creativity increases with age.     

Bug splat: the art of the drone

This review article considers a variety of artworks, including stories, poems, plays, photographs and films, to explore what ‘drone art’ or ‘drone aesthetics’ can tell us about the politics and ethics of drone operations or drone warfare. The article finds that the politics and the ethics are troublesome and troubling; and that the art illuminates some important issues, through the focus on the drone pilot or operator, and, more fundamentally, through the exposure of what has been called an ‘empathy gap’. The attention paid to the drone operator is admirable, as far as it goes. It has unquestionably served to demystify drone operations, and in a certain sense to humanize drone warfare. Democracy is founded upon visibility. To see the drone, it will be necessary to capture it, and contemplate it, from different points of view.     

The transformation of kinship and the family in late Anglo-Saxon England

The development of the family into a small unit in which descent was traced almost exclusively through the male line is regarded as a major turning point in medieval European history. The early stages of the formation of agnatic kinship have usually been connected to strategies designed to preserve and retain control of patrimonies and castles, arising from the breakdown of public order. In this article it is suggested that the emergence of new kinship values was connected to the investment of aristocratic energy and resources in monastic programmes, and to subtle changes in lay involvement with the rituals associated with death and the salvation of souls.     

Composing our careers: Susan Hanson's contributions to geography and geographers

Susan Hanson's career exemplifies the notion that our lives are compositions rather than predictable, linear trajectories. In this essay I argue that Susan's career is an empowering example of a collage of woven-together life experiences, substantive research interests, feminist values and progressive professional practices. I illustrate these ideas through three compositions that I trace throughout Susan's career: networking gender; caring geography; and reproducing geography. Susan's work connects and validates the diverse elements of our lives through her scholarship, her commitment to feminist values and her disciplinary leadership.     

Buried together,buried alone: Christian commemoration and kinship in the early Middle Ages

This essay explores the ways in which strategies of commemoration elaborated by kin groups changed after the end of the western Roman empire and what role Christianity played in these transformations. In order to shed some light on the situation, a broad sample of cemeteries dating from late antiquity and the early Middle Ages was analysed, focusing on the spatial organization of the individuals within the cemeteries and around cult places. For this purpose archaeological, physical anthropological and epigraphic data were studied and juxtaposed with the theoretical debates expressed by Christian writers. The data at hand seem to suggest that rather than radically transforming kinship commemoration strategies, Christianity added new ideological layers, making its use and display multidimensional.     

Laissez-faire governance and the archetype laissez-faire city in the USA: exploring Houston

This article explores the governance of Houston, the archetype laissez-faire city in the USA. The research examines the complexity of Houston's minimal government intervention rhetoric, which in practice involves extensive federal, state and local government involvement in economic development in combination with a disinterest in social service and income maintenance programmes. This governance strategy is outlined through an examination both of regional public policy and local public finances. The analysis illustrates that Houston's local governance has historically been based on a management approach that attempts actively to minimize costs for potential investors to locate in the City, through public intervention, while at the same time generating an unattractive urban environment for the socially marginalized — hence the disinterest in social services. Thus, despite the local laissez-faire rhetoric, government intervention in Houston's growth has been vital and has produced the extraordinary impacts usually expected from public involvement in local economic development. The foundations of this local governance strategy are both predicted and advocated by the public choice approach, a theoretical framework whose emphasis on inter-municipal competition advances management tactics based on maintaining low taxes and low expenditures on public welfare. The research also shows, however, that Houston is unique, when compared to other economically successful US cities, in following such an extreme approach of this management strategy.