Heritage vs. History: Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy as a “Physician of Memory”

In a paper presented to the American Historical Association annual meeting in 1934, entitled “The Predicament of History,” Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (1888–1973) argued that professional (or “scientific”) historians had lost touch with collective memory and were engaged in a free-floating enterprise connected to the vital past only arbitrarily or randomly. Historians should be the physicians of memory, he said. His admonitions relate closely to the stress, often discussed today, between popular heritage, or tradition and memory, on the one side, and critical history, on the other, each vying for influence and authority. Beyond his 1934 paper, Rosenstock-Huessy’s grammatical method opens the way for complementarity and balance, rather than antagonism, between the popular voice and critical history.     

On the Spacing of Time: On “The Tide of History”

The author discusses aspects of how time appears and is used by the individual and by society. In focus is what the author calls the ideological time scale as it appears in Western society. The concept of the ideological time scale implies systems of strong, ideological signals transferred through time in the human mind from one generation to another. One such signal is the age-old concept of the hero and the symbolism projected around this concept. The paper ends with an admonition to scholars to be aware of and study the kinds of messages transferred through time by this signal system. These messages carry important information about the ways in which society directs itself in the time continuum.     

The Role of the Societas Meteorologica Palatina (1781–1792) in the History of Auroral Research

Abstract

The Societas Meteorologica Palatina, or Meteorological Society of Mannheim, was set up in 1781 to coordinate observations of the weather on an international scale. In addition to temperature, pressure and humidity, observers connected to the network were instructed to record various atmospheric phenomena, among these the aurora borealis. The 39 stations of the network reported about 1400 individual sightings of auroras during the Society's dozen years of existence. The reported sightings are subjected to a statistical analysis that brings out striking discrepancies between the number of auroras that one would expect and the number that was reported. The statistical analysis is supplemented by an analysis of the theoretical and phenomenological comments in the Society's annual reports. The study suggests that observers on the Continent considered themselves just as advantageously situated as observers further north when trying to solve the riddle of the northern lights. It also illustrates the variety of conflicting ideas about the aurora borealis that existed during the late Enlightenment, and how these might have influenced the number of reported auroras. This lack of consensus contributed to many anomalies in the data presented in the Society's reports. By combining linguistic and scientific competence it is possible to shed light on these anomalies and on the historical context that shaped them.     

A Review of “Political Foundations of Judicial Supremacy: The Presidency,the Supreme Court,and Constitutional Leadership in U.S. History”

In 1974 David Mayhew proposed that incumbency was increasingly important in deciding elections to the House of Representatives. One cause of this increase, he speculated, might be more effective use of the resources of office by incumbents bent on improving their electoral position. These suggestions heavily influenced subsequent research on congressional elections, and helped shape the design of the 1978 national election survey by Michigan's Center for Political Studies. This essay surveys that line of research, except for the recent articles making use of the 1978 data or dealing specifically with campaigning, which will be treated in a sequel. Full length books, articles before Mayhew's, and unpublished papers are excluded, except for certain works of particular relevance.     

The Use of the Middle: Mitteleuropa vs. Strední Evropa

Since its introduction, Central Europe has been a contested term, subject to rival efforts to lay daim to the continent's middle. This article traces how a German and then a Czech ‘idea’ of Central Europe has taken shape since the nineteenth Century, based on broader discourses on Europe, including ‘Eastern Europe’, and on ‘the middle’ as a virtuous place and attribute. It is argued that the new debates on Central Europe of the 1980s were heavily indebted to these older discourses, and that the seemingly competing and conflicting Czech and German ideas of Central Europe shared many basic assumptions, using much the same parameters for defining the région and its Others.     

The Role of Decision Support in the Implementation of “Sustainable Transport” Plans

Improved decision support is deemed essential for the planning and implementation of sustainable transport solutions, but limited evidence exists that decision-relevant information is effectively used for these purposes. This paper applies a framework inspired by research in “knowledge utilization” to examine to what extent various kinds of decision support are used and have become influential in three different planning situations—a local cycle plan in Copenhagen, the Stockholm congestion charging trial and the UK national transport strategy. The results reveal the extensive use of decision support but also the difficulty of unpicking its exact role in each case. Stockholm presented the most successful case, with a mix of academic and experience-based knowledge inputs facilitating understanding and acceptance. The cycle plan example revealed very limited influence of cycling design guidance. The UK national transport strategy fell somewhere in between with evidence of assessment and monitoring of the plans being well bedded in the culture of the organizations involved, but less supportive of sustainability objectives. While decision support and monitoring are clearly relevant, they provide no guarantee for the implementation of sustainable transport solutions.