The Darwinian Rhetoric of Science in Petr Kropotkin's Mutual Aid. A Factor of Evolution (1902)

The paper explores the significance of rhetorical argumentation in Petr Kropotkin's treatise Mutual Aid. A Factor of Evolution (1902). It argues that Kropotkin's work is steeped in the tradition of a rhetoric of science that is profoundly Darwinian and in which various forms of analogic reasoning play a central role. After explaining the epistemic function of the metaphors “struggle for existence” and “mutual aid,” the paper analyses Kropotkin's argumentation strategies and offers an interpretation of them as a further development and reworking of Darwinian rhetoric.     

A ‘DIVINATION STAFF’ FROM VIKING‐AGE NORWAY: AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM

A long iron rod in the British Museum's Viking collection (accession number 1894,1105.5) has been reclassified by curators. Accessioned in the nineteenth century as a fishing tool and later recast as a roasting spit, it can now be added to a group of enigmatic iron rods that are widely interpreted as the special attribute of the völva, or Norse seeress.