Botanical exchanges: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Duchess of Portland

In 1766 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in exile from France and Switzerland, came to England, where he made the acquaintance of Margaret Cavendish Harley Bentinck, Duchess of Portland. The two began to botanise together and to exchange letters about botany. These letters contain salient statements about Rousseau's views on natural theology, gardens, botanical texts and exotic botany. This exchange entailed not only discussions about plant identifications and other botanical matters, but most important, reciprocal gifts of books and specimens in the manner of gentlemanly scientific correspondence of the period. Rousseau volunteered his services as the Duchess's ‘herborist’ or plant collector, and collected specimens and seeds in her behalf; these were destined for her own extensive herbaria and other natural history collections. Rousseau, who elsewhere denied female talent for science, admired the Duchess's knowledge of natural history, acknowledging his own as inferior. Their correspondence ended when the Duchess sent him the Herbarium amboinense of Georg Rumpf (Rumphius), an important work of exotic botany. Rousseau considered exotic botany to be the antithesis of the domination-free nature from which he derived solace and inspiration.     

Confessional disputes in the republic of letters: Susan Du Verger and Margaret Cavendish

The starting point of this article is an understudied piece of critical exegesis from 1657 titled Humble Reflections Upon Some Passages of the Right Honorable the Lady Marchionesse of Newcastles Olio. An obscure Englishwoman named Susan Du Verger composed this 164-page tract to refute a three-page essay on “A Monastical life” by the prolific poet, playwright, and philosopher, Margaret Cavendish. While there is now a substantial body of work on nuns and convents, this research largely overlooks how early modern women engaged with these topics in a scholarly manner. Along with elucidating the gamut of relevant patristic and ecclesiastical histories that were available in the English and French vernaculars, Humble Reflections provides a prompt for investigating Cavendish’s ideas on ecclesiastical order, ceremonies, and toleration. I propose that Cavendish refused to grace Du Verger with a direct response because her polemic disregarded the unofficial codes of conduct — friendship, transnational community, and inter-confessional co-existence — that were supposed to maintain peace within the Republic of Letters. In conclusion, this essay displays that Cavendish was actually a great admirer of monasticism, though not so much for its role in the spread of Christianity as for its place in the development of natural philosophy.     

The Excavations at Stična in Slovenia by the Duchess of Mecklenburg, 1905–1914

Abstract

Museum collections of documented but unpublished archaeological material often constitute excellent sources of primary archaeological data. The Duchess of Mecklenburg excavated extensively at Iron Age cemeteries in Slovenia, in what is now part of Yugoslavia, just before the First World War. Her collection, which is now being published, provides hundreds of well-documented grave groups for study. This article considers her work at the site of Sti?na and is concerned particularly with the graves containing weapons excavated at that site.     

Science With a Difference: Parody and Paradise in Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World (1666)

Wissenschaft mit Unterschieden: Parodie und Paradies in Margaret Cavendishs The Blazing World (1666) . Mit ihrer utopischen Erzählung The Blazing World (1666) ist Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, eine der wenigen Autorinnen der Frühen Neuzeit, die sich sowohl im Feld der Literatur als auch der Naturphilosophie betätigten. Auf den ersten Blick scheint die Welt jenseits des Nordpols, in die die Protagonistin nach gewaltsamer Entführung und Schiffbruch gerät, ein weibliches Wissenschaftsparadies: Nach eilig erfolgter Vermählung mit dem Kaiser regiert sie eigenverantwortlich über die wissenschaftlichen Institutionen ihres Reichs und debattiert mit Bären-, Vogel-, Wurmmännern und ähnlichen Hybridwesen über die neuesten wissenschaftlichen Errungenschaften. Bald schon stellt sich jedoch heraus, dass ihre „Wissenschaftler“ denjenigen der englischen Realität sowohl in ihrer blinden Begeisterung für neue Forschungsinstrumente wie in ihrem ermüdenden Austausch von Meinungen und Glaubenssätzen durchaus ähnlich sind. Unterstützung für ihre Kritik und für eigene Forschungs- und Schreibprojekte findet die Protagonistin in der Autorin selbst, der Duchess of Newcastle, in deren Welten sich die beiden gemeinsam begeben. Parodie und Satire, die auf zeitgenössische Modetorheiten im Umfeld der Royal Society abzielen, stehen im Fokus des vorliegenden Aufsatzes ebenso wie utopische Perspektiven, die durch die Eröffnung neuer Denkräume entstehen. Auf dem von ironisch kommentierten Fetischen und Hybriderscheinungen gepflasterten Weg dorthin bewegt sich die Erzählung zwischen Realität und Virtualität, Fakten und Fiktionen, kritisiert epistemologische und institutionelle Vorgaben und testet die Grenzen der Geschlechter im neu entstehenden Feld von Wissenschaft und Literatur. Summary : Science With a Difference: Parody and Paradise in Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World (1666) . Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World (1666) is one of the very few utopian accounts by women in the early modern period. At first sight, the world beyond the North Pole that Cavendish's beautiful heroine enters after surviving abduction and shipwreck seems to offer the utmost in terms of early modern feminine scientific utopias: after the shortest love story in history, the heroine becomes Empress and is given a whole Empire to govern at her pleasure. But soon it turns out that the hybrid creatures of her newly founded scientific communities, bear-men, bird-men, worm-men, and the like are far from utopian truth-seeking, but, like their earthly counterparts, all too often revel in tedious meaning and believing. The paper will focus on such parodic moments as well as on alternative modes of dealing with science more adequate to the term Paradise. Only with the support of her this-worldly friend, the Duchess of Newcastle, who also happens to be the author of the story, the Empress can not only improve her utopian state, but also the state of affairs in the real world. On the way, the boundaries between fact and fiction, real and virtual, masculine and feminine, sense and nonsense are continuously tested – reflecting and commenting on early modern fear and fascination of the unknown and the promises of science and technology.     

‘None but Abigails appeared in white aprons’: The Apron as an Elite Garment in Eighteenth-Century England

In the early eighteenth century, the Duchess of Queensberry arrived at the Bath Assembly wearing a white apron, only to have it torn from her person by a Master of Ceremonies who declared that only a lady’s maid would appear dressed so. This article looks at the apron as a garment worn by elite women in eighteenth-century England in order to consider some of the questions raised by this encounter. Aprons were closely linked with the labouring classes in contemporary representation, and elite women wearing them were therefore accused of imitating the dress and behaviours of their inferiors. While emulation from below has received due attention from scholars, this apparent imitation from above remains underexplored. Elite women certainly did masquerade as country girls at times; however, the apron as an item of elite dress was not as transformative as contemporaries feared. Instead, it became subject to expectations and conventions governed by the rhythms of elite everyday life. Though the Duchess of Queensberry became infamous, elite women wearing aprons were most likely to provoke censure when they defied these conventions.     

Scientific whaling and how philosophy of science can help break the international deadlock

Despite widespread public interest on the topic of whaling, there is at present relatively little work on how philosophy might contribute to analysis of the status of whaling in international law. When philosophers have looked at the topic of whaling, they have confined their attention to a fairly narrow set of ethical questions, such as whether international law should permit certain forms of traditional indigenous whaling or extend legal rights to whales themselves. However, there is another important issue which has so far been largely neglected by philosophy, even though it is at the forefront of current international legal disputes over the status of whaling: the issue of so-called ‘scientific whaling’. This article considers the international legal dispute between Australia, New Zealand and Japan over the latter’s lethal harvesting of whales in the Southern Ocean, and the recent attempt at resolution by the International Court of Justice. On its face, this required that the Court demarcate ‘scientific’ from ‘unscientific’ activity; however, it effectively baulked at this task. The authors argue that this approach of the Court was unfortunate, and that demarcating science from commerce is not only achievable in philosophy, but might also inform international legal practice. Resolving this issue is important for genuine progress to be made in the current international stand-off over Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean.     

What can María Zambrano contribute to mediation and to the philosophy of mediation?

ABSTRACT

From a specific point of view, mediation is the process whereby a third party helps to change their attitude from an adversarial one to a collaborative one which allows them to work together in finding and creating solutions to their conflict. Mediation deals with conflict from its own perspective and it has its own status as a dispute resolution process in the systems of justice, where it is recognized. The Philosophy of Mediation has been developing as a discipline, which analyses the status of mediation as knowledge. It studies its nature, its constituent elements, its ontological foundations and its connection with other disciplines. This article argues that it is possible to include certain basic principles of the philosophy of María Zambrano in the Philosophy of Mediation framework. Those elements are essential for understanding the world of human conflict since they provide a new perspective from which to see dispute resolution methodologies. They can be summed up in the idea of including the hidden as the substrate of the visible, revealing the underlying forces of human existence. Within the context of the mediation, the understanding of these forces could help to resolve conflicts.     

Beyond Ideology: Epistemological Foundations of Vladimir Fock's approach to Quantum Theory

Vladimir Fock was a Soviet theoretical physicist who, from the 1930s, worked to prove that modern physics was compatible with the Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism. In 1957, he went to Copenhagen, and a dispute over the interpretation of quantum mechanics began with Niels Bohr. Fock later claimed that he had found points of convergence with his Danish colleague, most of them concerning issues of wording and recognition of the reality of the world independently of our mind. It led to a specific narrative among historians of physics on Fock and his interpretation of quantum mechanics: The Soviet physicist is often described as a member of the Copenhagen school that contributed to the rapprochement of the Soviet philosophy of physics with the ideas of complementarity in stripping away the positivism in its formulation. Our contribution aims to show that this ideological dimension was only one aspect of reality. Returning to the foundations of Fock's epistemology of physics, we argue that he relied on the principles of antireductionism and scientific realism to develop an interpretation of the theory that sought to overcome Bohr's approach and that the differences between the two men cannot be reduced to mere questions of formulation.     

Von der Naturgeschichte zur Naturwissenschaft Die Naturwissenschaften als eigenes Fachgebiet an der Universität Jena

Since 1790, the term Naturwissenschaften occurs in the lecture lists of the University of Jena published in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung of Jena. Naturwissenschaften is used as a title for lectures previously listed under the headings of Philosophie or Naturgeschichte. The introduction of the concept of Naturwissenschaften is interesting for several reasons: Firstly, at that time it is not the usual label in this context, and one therefore has to ask whether it already implies the connotations that are associated with the modern concept of Naturwissenschaften, i. e. science in the modern sense. Secondly, the lecture lists of the University of Jena give insight into the various changes in the established ordering scheme for academic lectures that lead to the introduction of the term Naturwissenschaften, thus contributing to a better understanding of both the history of this concept and of the development of the university faculties as we know them. A close look at the concept of Naturwissenschaften as it was used around 1800 may, thirdly, help to understand the use made of this concept in philosophy, especially in the philosophy of nature of this period.     

Wissenschaftsgeschichte und Wissenschaftsphilosophie – Einführende Bemerkungen

History of Science and Philosophy of Science. Introductory Remarks. This article introduces two special issues of the journal History of Science Reports (Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte) with contributions on the relationships of history and philosophy of science since the seventeenth century. The introduction begins with a brief reminder of Thomas Kuhn's provocative discussion of the relationship in the 1970s, placing it in the context of the debate of the period over whether the foundation of university departments for History and Philosophy of Science in the United States had led to a mere “marriage of convenience” or something more. Following this the paper briefly outlines the transformative impact of the “practical turn” in both philosophy and history of science since the 1990s, and contends that the relationship of history and philosophy of science has nonetheless become increasingly distant over time. This is due in large part to the professionalisation of history of science and to the recent turn to cultural approaches in that field; both trends have led to the adoption of strictly historicist rather than analytical perspectives on knowledge. General historians, too, are paying more attention to the increasing impact of science and technology, but have at most instrumental use for philosophical perspectives. Thus, the distinct possibility arises that the debate between historical and analytical approaches in philosophy of science is becoming a conversation within one discipline rather than a dialogue between two disciplines: what was once a ?marriage of convenience”? could end in respectful separation or amicable divorce. The article concludes with brief summaries of the articles published in the two special issues, indicating their relations to specific aspects of the broader topic at hand.     

MOVING BEYOND BIOPOWER: HARDT AND NEGRI'S POST-FOUCAULDIAN SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

I argue in this paper that the attempt by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in Empire and Multitude to “theorize empire” should be read both against the backdrop of speculative philosophy of history and as a development of the conception of a “principle of intelligibility” as this is discussed in Michel Foucault's recently published courses at the Collège de France. I also argue that Foucault's work in these courses (and elsewhere) can be read as implicitly providing what I call “prolegomena to any future speculative philosophy of history.” I define the latter as concerned with the intelligibility of the historical process considered as a whole. I further suggest, through a brief discussion of the classical figures of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, that the basic features of speculative philosophy of history concern the articulation of both the telos and dynamics of history. My claim is that Hardt and Negri provide an account of the telos and dynamics of history that respects the strictures imposed on speculative philosophy of history by Foucault's work, and thus can be considered as providing a post‐Foucauldian speculative philosophy of history. In doing so, they provide a challenge to other “theoretical” attempts to account for our changing world.     

Jews with Knives: Toronto’s Depression-Era Kosher-Slaughter Infrastructure and the Kehilla Enquiry of 1932

ABSTRACT

In the 1930s, a legal dispute upset Toronto’s kosher-slaughter and kosher-retail industry. The Kehilla, the governing body responsible for regulating the city’s kosher system, was accused of charging exorbitant prices for kosher slaughter. Moreover, several community butchers alleged that they had been ostracized from the Municipal Abattoir and coerced into signing binding agreements with a butchers’ association. The conflict escalated to such adegree that the city’s court mediated the dispute at the request of the Board of Control and City Council. Using foodways as a lens into social and cultural dynamics, this article narrates and examines this kosher controversy to illuminate divisions within the city’s Depression-era Jewish community and the larger metropolis. This examination reveals a stratified yet resilient community—one that fostered severe class conflict, but also one that drew on killing-floor activism and an entrepreneurial spirit to secure an economic base in the face of a worsening depression.     

The Irish Parliamentary Diary (1776–89) of Sir Henry Cavendish

This article clarifies the history of the ‘parliamentary diary’ compiled by Sir Henry Cavendish while a member of the Irish parliament between 1776 and 1789, correcting misapprehensions in previous accounts, in particular the assertion by A.P.W. Malcomson and D.J. Jackson that Cavendish paid less attention to recording debates in the 1780s.     

《活法》的经营之道

稻盛和夫的著述非常多,其中,比较有代表性的是《活法》。该书早已翻译成中文,分两卷在东方出版社出版。该书篇幅简短、案例生动、说理透彻,深受中国读者的喜爱,主要内容包括三个方面：企业需要哲学;人生与经营都重在态度;具体的经营方法。作者结合《活法》一书,阐述了对稻盛和夫经营哲学的最新认识。     

Sir Henry Cavendish (1732–1804), Parliamentarian in Two Countries

Sir Henry Cavendish, who sat in the Irish parliament from 1766 to 1768 and from 1776 to 1800, and in the Westminster parliament from 1768 to 1774, was a parliamentarian par excellence. His chief claim to fame is as a parliamentary diarist, in both houses of commons, noting down in shorthand some five million words. But this article is on Cavendish as a politician. He was a prolific speaker in both parliaments. But finding himself only a second‐rate debater, he cultivated two fields of expertise: finance, and, above all, parliamentary procedure. Here his knowledge soon became unequalled, and virtually unchallenged by the last two decades of the Irish parliament, where he became notorious as a master of obstruction. His political career was erratic, often in opposition, increasingly in government, a permanent officeholder by the end.     

SOME CRITICAL QUESTIONS FOR ANTI-ESSENTIALISM

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