Tom Stoppard’s Big Picture: The Chaos that is Our World

Abstract

Issues arising from discussions regarding the ‘two cultures’ of science and art are many and varied. Tom Stoppard’s very active utilization of science in many of his plays has resulted in his work — especially the quantum mechanics-informed Hapgood and the chaotics-informed Arcadia — being held up as paradigmatic of one science/art position or another. Often, critical approaches to these plays involve a checklist of scientific facts, implying that the goal of such art is to serve as a delivery device for scientific breakthroughs. While plays, novels, and movies of various sorts may have such goals in mind, Stoppard’s plays do not comfortably fill that agenda, critical arguments to the contrary notwithstanding. Neither do Stoppard’s plays show particular interest in engaging any debate about the superiority of one ‘culture’ over the other. In his two ‘science plays’ in particular, what Stoppard offers is an enrichment of both science and art through metaphorical intertwinings that suggest experience is best served when both camps collaborate. The bigger picture that results argues an overlap in epistemology, namely revealing the uncanny similarity in which artist and scientist approach the material that is our universe.     

A History of Depressed Skull Fractures from Ancient Times to 1800

The story of managing depressed fractures illustrates how knowledge of proven value does not always get handed down. Celsus was the first to describe sensible management for depressed fractures. As he wrote in Latin this was forgotten. Galen’s Greek writings survived forming the basis of management until the sixteenth century. In 1517, Hans von Gersdorff published a formidable illustrated surgical text. One illustration depicts an instrument for elevating depressed bone fragments. It looked dramatic but could not work and its defects were finally defined in the eighteenth century. Ambroise Paré used a bone punch just as we do today, but no later surgeon mentions this, though the instrument was well known. Elements of chance, fashion, emotionally powerful illustrations, and perhaps stubbornness had a profound effect on management delaying rational treatment for centuries.     

A Transnational Perspective on Psychosurgery: Beyond Portugal and the United States

The history of psychosurgery is most often recounted as a narrative wherein Portuguese and American physicians play the leading role. It is a traditional narrative in which the United States and, at times, Portugal are central in the development and spread of psychosurgery. Here we largely abandon the archetypal narrative and provide one of the first transnational accounts of psychosurgery to demonstrate the existence of a global psychosurgical community in which more than 40 countries participated, bolstered, critiqued, modified and heralded the treatment. From its inception in 1935 until its decline in the mid-1960s, psychosurgery was performed on almost all continents. Rather than being a phenomenon isolated to the United States and Portugal, it became a truly transnational movement.     

Identification of Employment Concentration Areas

This article presents a method to identify “Absolute and Relative Employment Concentration (AREC) areas” for a particular industry. Two novel characteristics of the method are that it simultaneously analyses AREC, and that it combines spatial concentration per area with the spatial concentration in neighbouring areas. The method is easy to understand and apply. It is developed to assist regional policy makers and corporate decision-makers with their investment decisions related to new infrastructure or plants. The identification of concentration areas also allows for analysing the performance of these areas in relation to characteristics such as infrastructure availability and the housing and labour market. This can yield new academic insights that are relevant for regional planners. An application of the newly developed method to five industries in a Dutch province subdivided into 502 areas illustrates the value of the method in comparison to other methods.     

Perspectivismo Narrativo y Enjuiciamiento Social en La familia de Pascual Duarte

The phenomenal ambiguity and irony in Camilo José Cela's La familia de Pascual Duarte has led to many often differing conclusions regarding its social message. While some scholars regard its protagonist as a victim of society and of the new regime that followed the Civil War, others have argued that Pascual is the evil perpetrator of unspeakable crimes who is rightly punished by the new order. This article proposes to reconsider the picaresque nature of this novel, focusing on two features of the picaresque genre, namely its political commitment (or poética comprometida) and the determinism versus free will foil. This analysis will show that Cela replicated the Quevedian vilification of the protagonist and the Alemanian presentation of a false conversion at the end of the story with one purpose: to present Pascual as an unremorseful murderer who lived an irreligious life, killed his mother, and supported the Republican repression in his village killing the local aristocrat, before the new regime makes justice by executing him.     

Building G at Makaynūn: a late pre‐Islamic settlement above the ruins of a South Arabian town

This article presents the results of the excavation of a residence dated between the second and fourth centuries AD, constructed over the ruins of the South Arabian town of Makaynūn, in central Hadramawt (Yemen). The building yielded a large quantity of material including objects proving contacts between the central Hadramawt and regions located to the north‐east, such as central Oman, the Gulf area and India.     

Social Networks and Actual Knowledge Flow in the Irish Biotech Industry

This paper presents an analysis of networks among small and medium-sized enterprises in the Irish biotech sector. The study applies social network analysis to determine the structure of networks of company directors and inventors in the biotech sector. In addition, on the basis of interviews, this article analyses the extent of actual knowledge flow through these industry networks. The paper makes both a theoretical and methodological contribution to innovation network research. In relation to theory, the findings of the social network analysis indicate that the extent and path of knowledge flow are influenced by both the type of knowledge in question and whether the network is of a formal or informal nature. Methodologically, the results of this paper raise questions about the application of social network analysis in innovation studies.     

‘It is where blokes can be blokes’: making places in a New Zealand rugby club

Using the case study of a New Zealand rugby club, in this article, we highlight the role of gender and performance in place attachment. We discuss various performances that contribute to achieving a sense of attachment of club members to the (imagined) community of the rugby club and the different physical spaces of its home ground. Even though performances are played out and read against the backdrop of a popular discourse of New Zealand rugby masculinity, we did not observe characteristics of stereotypical ‘rugby masculinity’ in all rugby places, nor were performances the same throughout one day. Instead, variations were found depending on whether performance was ‘front stage’ or ‘backstage’.     

The Gender,Place and Culture Jan Monk Distinguished Annual Lecture: Gentrification,assassination and forgetting in Mexico: a feminist Marxist tale

In this article, I employ feminist and Marxist tools to expose the struggles over the constant plunder and expansion of global capitalism along Mexico's northern border, specifically in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. In particular, I examine how an official politics – promoted by the Mexican and US governments – for forgetting the economic and social devastation of a transcontinental drug war contributes to the mechanisms for further exploiting the working poor. By combining a feminist focus on the daily struggle of social reproduction with a Marxist emphasis on accumulation by dispossession, I show how this official ‘forgetting’ segues with an international gentrification plan in downtown Ciudad Juárez that seeks to expand the rent gap by denying place, legitimacy and legal status to the working women and their families who have made this border city famous as a hub of global manufacturing. As such, I argue that the social struggles against the official forgetting are struggles against a violent political economy that generates value via a devaluation of the spaces of the working poor, even of the spaces of their literal existence.