À propos du colloque « The Machine as Model and Metaphor » Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte Berlin,novembre 2006

Sans résumé ? Lève la peau, dissèque: ici commencent les machines. Puis, tu te perds dans une substance inexplicable, étrangère à tout ce que tu sais et qui est pourtant l’essentielle. ? Paul Valéry, Tel quel, Cahier B 1910 Ses recherches portent sur l’épistémologie, l’histoire des sciences et l’histoire de la philosophie à l’age classique (xvi ^e-xvii ^e siècles). Elle a notamment dirigé avec Walter Roy Laird, Mechanics and Natural Philosophy before the Scientific Revolution (Dortrecht/Boston/Londres, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2007), puis, en collaboration avec Massimo Bucciantini et Michele Camerota, Mechanics and Cosmology in the Medieval and Early Modern Period (Florence, Olschki, 2007).     

Food for eternity? The analysis of a date offering from a 3rd millennium BC grave at Hili N,Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates)

Ever since the early 3rd millennium BC the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) has played an important role in eastern Arabia where its remains, in the form of seeds, fruits and stem fragments, are preserved on numerous archaeological sites. The recent discovery of a carbonised mass of pitted dates in a collective burial pit from the end of the Umm an-Nar period (ca. 2200–2000 BC) at Hili (United Arab Emirates) constitutes the earliest example of a food preparation involving this species. The present paper describes the discovery and identification of this unique offering before addressing the question of its significance in a funeral context in Bronze Age Arabia.     

« Un chef est un requin qui voyage par terre >> : fonctions et statuts des armatures de projectile en dent de Carcharhinus leucas et aiguillon caudal de raie dans l'Arabie des VIe-IIIe millénaires av. notre ère

During the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, many teeth of large sharks ( Carcharhinus leucas ) and stingray spines were transformed into projectile points in south-eastern Arabia. These points were probably used for fishing. Deriving from dangerous and/or toxic animals, shark teeth and stingray spines were certainly markers of prestige.     

Des coquillages… outillages des Ichtyophages? Mise en évidence d'industries sur Veneridae,du Néolithique à l’âge du Fer (Yémen,Oman, E.A.U.)

From Yemen to the Arabian/Persian Gulf the coastal societies of Arabia developed an industry utilising bivalve shells (Veneridae). From the Neolithic to the Iron Age these shells were transformed into knives or scrapers, the latter sometimes having a characteristic notch. The majority of these tools are manufactured from the left valve, probably selected by right-handed people. The shell tools are very standardised and did not replace stone tools; they were probably intended for specific and complementary uses. In Arabia this industry constitutes a specific element of the material culture of the Ichthyophagi .     

First evidence of shell fish-hook technology in the Gulf

The technology of shell fish-hooks and line fishing is well attested in the coastal areas of the Indian Ocean during the Neolithic period (fifth–fourth millennium BC). Their presence in the coastal area of the Arabian Gulf is now confirmed by new findings from Akab (Umm al-Qaiwain) and Shimal (Ra's al-Khaimah) in the United Arab Emirates.     

Between national sovereignty and international power: what external voice for the euro?

Does the creation of the euro imply that the European Union is now speaking with one voice in international monetary matters? Is the EU therefore likely to challenge the hegemony of the United States on the world stage, at least in the realm of international financial diplomacy? This article analyses the current state of external representation of the common currency and asks why the issue of the euro’s single voice has not yet been resolved. Comparing other areas of common policy–making that have an external dimension, such as trade, the authors explore the specificities of monetary and financial affairs that make the conflict between national sovereignty and international efficiency so difficult to settle. In particular, the authors focus on a set of international institutional arrangements regarding economic policy–making within the EU, and external arrangements within international fora (the IMF and the G7), which have so far impeded the ability of the EU to play a coherent role on the international monetary stage. The authors argue that the fact of the euro means there needs to exist a clear system of political representation in the area of monetary and financial governance in the EU, and they explore various options for who the external voice of the euro could be. Finally, the implications of creating the euro’s external voice for transatlantic relations, for EU enlargements, and for the debate about the ‘democratic deficit’ in Europe are analysed.     

Bursting the Bubble: Spatialising Safety for Privileged Migrant Women in Singapore

This paper develops geographical work that is attentive to, and critical of, how safety is lived and narrated. In contrast to previous work on safety that focuses on fear, the paper looks at safety as something more than aspiration for women. To do so, the paper utilises the metaphor of the “expatriate bubble” to explore how safety is constructed and experienced by privileged migrants in Singapore. Utilising research from two projects, we argue that we need to think about how gender and Othering intersect to construct safety. In doing so, we explore how we can use conceptualisations of privileged migrants to research how safety can be understood and therefore practised more widely.     

Sumatran Rice and ‘Miracle’ Herbs: Local and International Natural Knowledge in Late-Colonial Guatemala

This paper concerns the local and global knowledge networks in which residents of colonial Central America participated. In the last few decades of Spanish rule (c. 1796–1821), members of the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País dedicated themselves to bringing ‘Enlightenment’ and ‘improvement’ to the region through natural history and other ‘useful arts’. Articles published in the Economic Society’s newspaper, the Gazeta de Guatemala, show that a socially and geographically wider network of people than might be expected, and a more varied range of sources, were used to obtain scientific knowledge considered useful to the colony. The Economic Society supported the circulation of natural-historical writings within Central America, but also tapped into surprisingly international networks. The transmission and evaluation of information from these different sources reveal a sometimes uneasy coexistence of local, regional and international knowledge networks within the pursuit of ‘enlightened’ scholarship and reform.     

On Geocomputational Determinants of Entropic Variations for Urban Dynamics Studies

Monitoring population characteristics and their patterns of spatial evolution are fundamental components for urban management and policy decision‐making. Societal issues such as health, transport, or crime are often explored using a range of models describing the urban dynamics of population attributes at specific scales that can be seen as complementary. Using and simulating data at different scales of aggregation asks for the need to analyze and compare spatiotemporal variations in order to better understand the model behaviors and emerging properties of the geosimulation. This article analyzes the uses of the entropy measure in the literature and constraining factors needed for its potential extension to explore the variations in geographic and time scales. In particular, the article discusses the need for a truly spatial entropy that takes into account the spatial contiguities of the observations usually aggregated within a zoning system of areal units. Two generic solutions are exposed for the various geometries and attribute structures used for census‐related analyses; they are based on existing measures for point data using (i) co‐occurrences of observations and (ii) discriminant ratios of distances between groups of observations. Their extensions to areal compositional data are articulated around their conceptual changes and geocomputational challenges. A revisited and new version of the entropy decomposition theorem, encompassing a spatiality concept semantically related to correlation, is also presented as efficiently reusing the constrained hierarchical zoning system of administrative units to enable discovery of emerging spatial pattern features from the geosimulation. A comparison of the results between the classical use of entropy and the spatial entropy framework devised shows the flexibility and added capabilities of the approach for new types of analyses, thus allowing new insight into studies of population dynamics.     

Seeking a New Materialism in Australian History

Labour and economics are traditional strengths of Australian history, though in recent decades cultural history has instead dominated historical practice. This article discusses the relationship between the economic and cultural in Australian history, utilising our own research as case studies that explore reasons to combine the structural and discursive. Inspired by settler colonial studies and other developments internationally, we propose a new historical materialism for Australian history. In particular, we argue for an increased attention to economic questions and data in combination with cultural history sources and analysis; for the greater historicisation of capitalism as itself a specific and contingent phenomenon; and for the application of Marxist tools, without discarding the lessons of the cultural turn and their specific value to Australian history.