Some thoughts on art-historical dendrochronology

Imported timbers pose potential problems for the dendrochronologist. The problem is general and any particular dendrochronologist may run into difficulty when he attempts to correlate an exotic ring pattern against an indigenous chronology. Sufficient evidence exists to suspect that high quality oak boards and planks were extensively imported into England in medieval times. However, chronologies constructed from just such boards, namely the art-historical chronologies, have been treated as indigenous without being proven to be so. Almost identical comments can be made with respect to art-historical chronologies constructed by German workers using supposedly indigenous Flemish oak panels. This article explores how failure to allow for importation may well call into question the dating of these art-historical chronologies and in addition demonstrates how an art-historical dating system has been created wherein erroneous placement of the chronologies could escape detection (this latter aspect may well make the argument of general interest to scientists).     

苏轼词学观的思考

通过对苏轼的词体观念的分析,指出苏轼的词学观是传统的,并没有有意识地革新词体,“以诗为词”不过是其创作实践对词坛造成的冲击,事实上,他的大多数词作仍然走的是传统路线。文章还指出苏轼轻视词体的思想根源在于思想意识上的雅俗观念。总之,苏轼在主观上并没有提出“以诗为词”的尊体思想。     

宋诗词义拾诂（上）

本文从《全宋诗》中选取若干词目,并考释其于宋时的意义。宋诗里的许多词目,表面意义普通而实际意义非常特珠,为阅读构成一定障碍,很有考释必要。这是一项大型研究宋诗语言计划其中一个课题的证验之作。     

宋诗词义拾诂(下)

本文从《全宋诗》中选取若干词目,并考释其干宋时的意义。宋诗里的许多词目,表面意义普通而实际意义非常特珠,为阅读构成一定障碍,很有考释必要。这是一项大型研究宋诗语言计划其中一个课题的证验之作。     

关于旅游业现状的一点思考

<正>目前,全国旅游业有一些新的发展趋势,其中,积极和消极并存。下面,简单地提出一些,并作适当的分析和思考,以期引起大家对于目前旅游业的关注和重视。     

Science, text and space: thoughts on the geography of reading

The idea of a 'geography of reading' provides a potential point of conversation between the cultural and scientific wings of our profession. Here I explore some dimensions of the geography of reading scientific texts. Drawing on a number of theoretical pronouncements – Gadamer's 'fusion of horizons', Said's 'travelling theory', Secord's 'geographies of reading', Beer's 'miscegenation of texts', Fish's 'interpretive communities' and Rupke's 'geographies of reception'– I focus on the spaces where scientific theories are encountered. The argument is that where scientific texts are read has an important bearing on how they are read. This realization points to a fundamental instability in scientific meaning and to the crucial significance of what might be called located hermeneutics. As a case study in the development of a cartographics of scientific meaning, I explore the different ways in which Darwin's fundamentally biogeographical theory of evolution by natural selection was construed in a number of different settings. The sites I have chosen to illustrate this are the scientific communities which congregated around the Charleston Museum of Natural History in South Carolina, the Wellington Philosophical Society and New Zealand Institute, and the St Petersburg Society of Naturalists in Russia during the second half of the nineteenth century. In each case the encounter with evolution theory, and the ways it was interpreted, are shown to have been shaped by local cultural politics, thereby disclosing the critical role that space plays in the production of scientific meaning.     

The tyranny of the definite article: Some thoughts on the art of intellectual history

This essay argues, following an insight of Burckhardt, that the philosophy of history is a ‘centaur’, and that it has a tendency to hinder rather than to encourage the practice of history. It challenges many of the presuppositions of Bevir's study, demonstrating that The Logic of the History of Ideas is not, in any meaningful sense, an historically minded work. The ‘logic’ of the essay looks to the arts, especially literature and music, as providing genuinely illuminating parallels to the discipline involved in the practice of intellectual history. History cannot be understood as a process of philosophical abstraction; pertinent examples are of its essence, and plurality is therefore central to its richly textured nature. It still has much to learn from the reflexive procedures of anthropology. By examining the idea of ‘tradition’ the essay demonstrates that ‘the past’ is never dead, and that the relationship between texts is a living process: the intellectual historian is him/herself an artist, and his/her task is no less demanding than that of the creative artist, and it is always humblingly provisional.     

The tyranny of the definite article: Some thoughts on the art of intellectual history

This essay argues, following an insight of Burckhardt, that the philosophy of history is a ‘centaur’, and that it has a tendency to hinder rather than to encourage the practice of history. It challenges many of the presuppositions of Bevir's study, demonstrating that The Logic of the History of Ideas is not, in any meaningful sense, an historically minded work. The ‘logic’ of the essay looks to the arts, especially literature and music, as providing genuinely illuminating parallels to the discipline involved in the practice of intellectual history. History cannot be understood as a process of philosophical abstraction; pertinent examples are of its essence, and plurality is therefore central to its richly textured nature. It still has much to learn from the reflexive procedures of anthropology. By examining the idea of ‘tradition’ the essay demonstrates that ‘the past’ is never dead, and that the relationship between texts is a living process: the intellectual historian is him/herself an artist, and his/her task is no less demanding than that of the creative artist, and it is always humblingly provisional.     

Some thoughts on ibex on plinths in early South Arabian art

Ibex are an important iconographic element in the art of South Arabia. The origins, geographical distribution, chronology and divine affinities of ibex are considered, drawing on both archaeological and epigraphic sources.