Party,Personality and Institutional Constraint: The French Presidential Election of 2007

The designer of the French presidency intended it as a supra-partisan office. Yet this ambition was thwarted by the institutional requirement for a majority in the National Assembly, in order to pass legislation. Today, parties control the presidential function, acting as gatekeepers and enablers; their role has not been usurped by media-promoted personalities. But the presidency has its own dynamic effects on party structures, beyond the mere obligation to produce a plausible candidate. A presidential campaign is the high point of party activity, and the 2007 exercise showed a wide range of effects, according to whether parties are viable candidates for government or pure protesters, or whether they fit uneasily between these positions. This article explores some of these dynamic effects.     

Anglo-American Interest in Cerebral Physiology

This paper shows the relative influence of Ferrier and Hitzig on American and British interest in cerebral physiology in the early 1870s. Although Hitzig published three years before Ferrier, Ferrier was more influential. Evidence comes from multiple sources: numerical trends in citations to Fritsch and Hitzig in British and American publications showed an increase after Ferrier's work. Hitzig's work was primarily discussed in the context of Ferrier's work. Ferrier's work was more impressive than Hitzig's work to American and British contemporaries. Ferrier's work was applicable to medical issues. The secular press failed to popularize Hitzig's work. Was national pride evident?     

Henry Herbert Donaldson’s (1857–1938) contribution to an organized approach to the experimental study of the mammalian central nervous system

ABSTRACT

This article shows that the academic and research careers of Henry Herbert Donaldson (1857–1938) were directed to provide basic information about the growth of the vertebrate nervous system and to provide standards and the means to make such research efficient. He earned the reputation of making the albino rat a standard laboratory animal. His academic career began when he was an undergraduate at Yale University in 1875 and concluded with his death as Professor and Head of the Department of Neurology at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology of the University of Pennsylvania in 1938. During that period, pivotal experiences occurred, including research in physiological chemistry with Chittenden at the Sheffield School at Yale, graduate study at Johns Hopkins University, postgraduate study in Europe, and professorial positions at Clark University and the University of Chicago. It was at Johns Hopkins University that Donaldson learned about the need for physiological, anatomical, and psychophysical research and about the techniques to allow such research. It was at Clark University that he had first-hand and detailed experience with the anatomy of the brain of a deaf-blind-mute woman, as he attempted to correlate her sensory deficits with her brain development. It was at Clark University that he clearly recognized the need for standardization in neurological research. At the University of Chicago, he developed administrative skills and began a coordinated research effort to delimit the growth of the nervous system. It was at Chicago that he learned that the albino rat could be a reasonable subject for such research. It was also at Chicago that he was able to formulate ideas about the future organizational needs of human neuroanatomy. It was at the Wistar Institute that his research program and his professional career matured. He organized a research effort to elucidate the growth of the nervous system. He contributed to the coordination of neurological research in the United States and Europe. It was while at the Wistar Institute that he became well-known for making the albino rat a standard laboratory mammal—a convenient living material for research.     

Brain Physiology and the Mind in the Nineteenth Century

This article explores the integration of research and theory in nineteenth-century neurophysiology. Four generalities combine to explain their integration. They are the core beliefs of the neurologists, the pervasive habit of perceiving mind when observing behavior, the criteria for the existence of mind, and mind as an efficient cause. These generalities help explain specific choices made by certain researchers to work within the traditional model of the nervous system, to reject materialism, and to find intelligence and voluntary behaviors in physiological systems.     

Philosophy,Theology, and the Humanities

Summary

This paper addresses the relation between the natural sciences and the humanities with reference to the work of Ian Hunter. It discusses the history of, role of philosophy in, and value of the humanities; the question of historicism; the issue of critique; and the role of theology in the humanities, all matters raised by Hunter's work. The paper suggests that a reinvented humanities might pay more attention to philosophy and the sciences, including theology. It asks how far such a perspective is compatible with Ian Hunter's pioneering work on the humanities and intellectual history. The paper concludes that a middle position, one between Hunter's historicising and an emphasis on naturalistic constraints, may be possible.     

Micropalaeontological investigation of late Pliocene marine sediments at Sangiran,Central Java

The Upper Kalibeng Formation and the marine intercalations of the lower part of the Pucangan Formation at Sangiran, Central Java, contain more than 30 taxa of fossil calcareous nannoplankton. These fossils indicate a Late Pliocene age for the Upper Kalibeng and lower Pucangan. The Upper Kalibeng Formation is assigned to calcareous nannoplankton Zone NN 16 (3.25 – 2.3 m.y.). The lower Pucangan Formation is within the NN 16 to NN 18 interval (3.25 – 1.65 m.y.).     

America’s ‘Religion of Civility’ and the Calvinization of the World

This article examines the importance of Calvinism in producing the public/political “mind-set” of the United States, and how, after the Second World War, the export of this mind-set was as significant as the export of democracy, rock-’n’-roll, jeans, and Coca-Cola. It discusses the historical legacy and evolution of Calvinism from a civil religion to a religion of civility, and how the form and manner of Calvinist thinking—more specifically its ethic and aesthetic—has persisted in a secular manner so that much that Calvin would have found damnable is now intrinsic to the “religion of civility.” It then concludes that the central principles and practices of this religion of civility have had success within nations already “Christianized” but, perhaps understandably, not outside of that sphere.     

The Four Corners of Our Brain

Throughout religious, scientific, and humanist literature on ideas one finds categorical subdivisions that are four in number: the four corners of the Earth, the four cardinal directions, the four proteins constituting DNA, Maxwell's four equations, Toynbee's four societies, Pythagoras’ four elements of arithmetic, Pythagoras’ four elements, Hayden White's four aspects of imagination. The list is endless. From where does the “four” come? Why not five, or six, eight, or nine? Andersen tracks back to the beginnings of arithmetic utilized in the architecture of conceptual thinking. He finds the answer not only in the quadration of the human body as having four sides and giving a stabilizing structure to the brain but equally in the architecture of memory. Using the slot-theory of short-term memory processing, he demonstrates how easily the four-count comes to mind and how the brain resists moving on to five.     

BABYLONIAN WISDOM LITERATURE AND THE MARDUK CYCLE:PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS

This paper, first prepared and delivered for a workshop on teaching Biblical Wisdom Literature in China, provides me with the opportunity, so to speak, to kill two birds with one stone. Not only will I comment on the main theme of the