Between science and religion: The reaction to scientific naturalism in late Victorian England

From its ornamental and often bookish exterior to its use as an exegetical tool for understanding the Book of Nature, the 18th-century microscope was socialized as an instrument of letters as well as of science. This essay proposes a reading of the microscope as a literary artifact by examining its bindings, its texts and its illustrations. While the instrument promised to extend human sense perception and to give its user access to invisible worlds, it simultaneously threatened to alter received views concerning both aesthetics and social hierarchy. Nevertheless, the destabilizing effects of the microscopic message entered polite society cloaked in a veil of familiarity in the binding of a good book. The nostalgia-encrusted instrument absorbed the shock of the new.     

The contested Jacksonian legacy

John Hughlings Jackson has since the early twentieth century occupied the position of the doyen of British neurology. Among those who knew him personally and claimed allegiance to his legacy were the leading neurological practitioners, Henry Head (1861-1940) and Samuel Alexander Kinnier Wilson (1878-1937). In terms of their professional profiles and attitudes Head and Kinnier Wilson had much in common. They however interpreted the Jacksonian legacy in divergent ways that illustrate how the content and import of Jackson's views were subject to interpretation and to contestation among those who claimed to be his disciples.     

The legacy of the Wernicke-Lichtheim model

Wernicke established an integrated model of the relation between higher cognitive functions and neurophysiological structure of the human brain in 1874. The previous Bouillaud/Broca view envisaged a mosiac map of centres for specific functions, each of which had no clear inter-relation with other centres or with input/output pathways, and with no theoretical explanation of how each centre operated in relation to more basic neural elements. Wernicke's model overcame these objections, and, with Lichtheim's systematization in 1885, the "Wernicke-Lichtheim model" became the standard neuropsychological theory. In this model, each normal higher function is explained in terms of an underlying neural pathway that includes the input/output systems, related functions employ portions of the pathways used for other functions, pathological syndromes are explained by reference to where in the pathway damage occurred, and previously unobserved pathological syndromes can be predicted. Development of the model at the hands of Lissauer, Dejerine, Liepmann, Geschwind, Heilman, and Ellis and Young is traced.     

Passing strange: the convergence of evolutionary science with scientific history

In the second half of the twentieth century, a surprising change in the notion of scientific truth gained ground when an evolutionary cosmology made the Newtonian world machine into no more than a passing phase of the cosmos, subject to exceptions in the neighborhood of black holes and other unusual objects. Physical and chemical laws ceased to be eternal and universal and became local and changeable, that is, fundamentally historical instead, and faced an uncertain, changeable future just as they had in the initial phases of the cosmos. The earth sciences along with biology had become historical in the nineteenth century; and the Big Bang cosmology in effect brought physics and chemistry into line, allowing venturesome intellects to concoct a new all‐embracing worldview that recognizes the catalytic role of the observer in defining what is observed, and how different levels of local complexity provoke new and surprising phenomena—including terrestrial life forms, and most notably for us, humanly‐constructed symbolic meanings—of which science is only oneexample. The article then argues that it is time for historians to take note of the imperial role thus thrust upon their discipline by making a sustained effort to enlarge their views and explore the career of humankind on earth as a whole, thus making human history an integral part of the emerging scientific and evolutionary worldview. Tentative suggestions of how this might be addressed, focusing on changes in patterns of communication that expanded the scale of human cooperation, and thus conduced to survival, follow. Dance, then speech, were early breakthroughs expanding the practicable size of wandering human bands; then caravans and shipping allowed civilizations to arise; writing expanded the scale of coordination; warfare and trade harshly imposed best practice across wide areas of Eurasia and Africa and kept the skills of that part of the world ahead of what the peoples of other continents and islands had at their command. Then with the crossing of the oceans after 1492 our One World began to emerge and swiftly assumed its contemporary shape with further improvements in the range and capacity of communication—for example, printing, mechanically‐powered transport, instantaneous data transmission—with consequences for human society and earth's ecosystem yet to be experienced. Much remains to be investigated and, in particular, interactions between the history of human symbolic meanings and the history of other equilibria—ecological, chemical, physical—within which we exist needs further study. But with suitable effort, history can perhaps become scientific and the emerging scientific evolutionary worldview begin to achieve logical completeness by bringing humankind within its scope.     

From Pristina to Tskhinvali: the legacy of Operation Allied Force in Russia's relations with the West

This article reviews the main developments in the Kosovo crisis in the context of relations between Russia and NATO/the West. For Moscow, Operation Allied Force constituted a flagrant breach of international law, a threat to post-Cold War European security governance and a challenge to Russia's status in the international order. Official Russian interpretations, heavily influenced by domestic politics, reflect a perception among Russia's political elite that, rather than upholding liberal democratic values, NATO's intervention constituted a selective defence of the interests of the leading western powers.
Such views have influenced Moscow's position on the thorny question of Kosovo's independence and Russia's more assertive foreign and security policy in the recent period, not least in the conflict over South Ossetia in August 2008. Ultimately, Operation Allied Force resulted in the Russian governing elite reassessing its views on statehood, the international order and the norms underpinning international society.     

古陶瓷科学技术研究在科技考古中的三例应用

利用多元统计分析方法研究了从杭州古中河南段采集的月白釉瓷片,浙江临安天目山地区发现的黑釉瓷片和景德镇历代青花瓷片的胎、釉化学组成和青花色料的变化规律。从而讨论了杭州古中河南段采集的瓷片可能就是凤凰山下万松林附近的修内司官窑制品;指山临安天目山地区新发现的窑群和黑釉瓷才是名副其实的天目窑和天目瓷;发现了元代以及明初洪武和永乐朝青花瓷所用的料可能是来自西域的进口料,而宣德青花瓷所用的色料多数可能是国产的粘土矿。     

Judging appearances: The continuing legacy of Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt and the Meaning of Politics. Edited by Craig Calhoun and John McGowan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), viii + 362 pp. $54.95 cloth $21.95 paper.

Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss: German Emigrés and American Political Thought after World War II. Edited by Peter Graf Kielmansegg, Horst Mewes, and Elisabeth Glaser‐Schmidt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), x + 208 pp. $49.95/£35.00 cloth, $16.95 paper.

Hannah Arendt: Twenty Years Later. Edited by Larry May and Jerome Kohn (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), viii + 384 pp. $40.00 cloth, $17.50 paper.     

The legacy of communism: difficult histories,emotions and contested narratives

Abstract

This paper considers contested and traumatic narratives, using a case study of the planned National Museum of Romanian Communism and the site of Jilava Penitentiary, a former communist prison, near Bucharest in Romania. It discusses what happened when representatives from different groups of former victims and perpetrators met together with facilitators and worked towards a shared understanding of the past to reach some consensus about how to deal with different and apparently conflicting narratives within a new museum of communism. It draws on notions of emotional communities in order to understand the role heritage plays in contested situations. It also considers the nature of transitional justice (‘Transitional justice is an approach to systematic or massive violations of human rights that both provides redress to victims and creates or enhances opportunities for the transformation of the political systems, conflicts, and other conditions that may have been at the root of the abuses’.) in this context.     

The legacy of Atatürk: Turkish political structures and policy-making

Turkey occupies a peculiar position in both international relations and economic policy-making. On the international front, the country is still in many senses a frontier state defining a major part of its policy outlook in terms of a political metaphor that has as much to do with the Cold War of the past as the east/west divide of the present. In the economic arena, Turkey is still one of the increasingly rare emerging markets which has never really broken free from the high growth/high inflation spiral. This article seeks to explain these apparent anomalies in terms of political structures within Turkey. The problems facing Turkish policy-makers and their inability to triumph over them is related to the weakness of political institutions within Turkey itself. Turkish political parties lack the legitimacy, policy coherence or firm base of public support easily to embrace programmes which might be perceived to threaten either the historic international position of the state or the well-being of the clients of the large state-controlled part of the economy. This weakness derives from the manner in which modern Turkey was created in the first half of the last century, a process that produced flaws in political structures which the following fifty years of democratic experience has not entirely erased.     

The disciplining of scientific communities

Abstract

Amidst ongoing concern with training students in the skills and knowledge necessary to contribute towards a knowledge-intensive economy, we explore how particular ‘epistemic subjects’ are produced within specific epistemic communities. We examine how social studies of science have probed the ‘disciplining’ practices that constitute scientific knowledge production, but have tended to overlook how students participate in, and become members of, epistemic communities. We propose that training contexts provide a window onto the disciplining processes through which scientific fields and their practitioners are co-produced. We offer an empirical example of an emerging scientific field that is working to establish community boundaries through the recruitment and training of university students. We explore how newcomers’ practices, values and identities are disciplined through participation in this nascent community whilst remaining open to negotiation and resistance. The conclusion calls for more scholarly attention to educational trajectories as processes through which disciplines and their disciples are produced.     

The legacy of past urban waste disposal on local soils

Many attributes of present day soils can only be explained by reference to land management in the historic past. This is particularly well expressed in the plaggen soils which occur extensively on the north European plain. These deepened soils owe their dominant characteristics to the application from the 12th century of turf materials, often impregnated with dung. Similar deepening of soils can result from the disposal of urban waste. This paper discusses the results of soil research focused on a small Scottish town (Nairn). A soil survey revealed topsoils of over 1 m overlying fluvioglacial sands and gravels; such deepening is explained by the use of town waste on the burgh's arable lands from at least the 17th century up until the mid-19th century when an integrated sewerage system was installed. Micromorphological study of this deepened topsoil revealed the presence of many small black carbonaceous particles. Oxygen:carbon ratios were calculated from microprobe results as a means of confirming the carbonaceous nature of these particles. Soil phosphorus was primarily concentrated on the perimeter of these particles. The high quality of present day soils on the edge of the town is explained by the disposal of waste material, which included much carbonised material. This paper is the first to highlight the importance and potential of examining the gradation in soils from urban to rural contexts.