Communications Revolutions: A Historiographical Concept

This essay explores the origins and the development of a ‘communicationsrevolution’, which would give rise to a new concept withinhistoriography. It proposes that the Communications Revolutioncan be explained as a macrohistorical process, comparable tothe Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, whichhave both had permanent and irreversible consequences in themodern era. The communications revolution, like the other two,began in the early modern era, and is still ongoing. The conceptof a Communications Revolution encompasses smaller ‘mediarevolutions’, more easily ascribed to a specific historicalperiod, and to a large extent mutually interrelated and dependent.The development of postal services gave rise to a new understandingof space and time, and it is this development that the essayidentifies as the mainspring of change in the communicationsrevolution. Postal services enabled faster movements of people,goods, and information. The new medium of the printed book,newspaper or sheet magnified the effects of this faster disseminationof information and news. So the Communications Revolution canbe argued to have been the motor that enabled the constructionof the infrastructure of the modern world, newspapers, cartography,and the ‘public sphere’ of politics, of warfareand diplomacy. Indeed, there is scope for discussion as to whetherit was in fact the Communications Revolution which may haveopened the way for both the Scientific Revolution and the IndustrialRevolution.     

Development Management versus Third World Bureaucracies: A Brief History of Conflicting Interests

This article investigates the impacts on, and responses of, third world bureaucracies (more specifically those operating in the poorer parts of the third world), in the context of the changing demands of development management. These include efforts at debureaucratization, by calling for a radically different kind of civil service; at localization and training; at circumvention, through relying on semi-autonomous public enterprises; at re-orientation, by altering civil servants' attitudes and incentives; at decentralization; and at privatization and pressure. For these governments, this last mentioned approach proved more demanding and demoralizing than any of the previous notions they had confronted. Today, under the rubric of governance, there appears to be some acknowledgement that the anti-state emphasis of the structural adjustment era may have gone too far, and the call is for the more effective bureaucracies to be accountable. The danger in many poor countries, however, is that the real and relative salaries, the morale and ethics of the bureaucracy, and public trust in the bureaucracy, have all plummeted so far, that it may be too late to turn these trends around. The daunting challenge today is how to break out of this ‘box’ of bureaucratic decline, the four corners of which are formed and connected by lack of resources, incentives, public service and legitimacy.     

Engineering professors as entrepreneurs: the case of Franz Reuleaux (1829–1905) and Alois Riedler (1850–1936)

Abstract

Franz Reuleaux and Alois Riedler were probably the best known professors of mechanical engineering in late nineteenth century Germany. The country was becoming one of the world’s leading industrial countries, and Reuleaux and Riedler tried to contribute to this process. They obtained patents, founded their own companies, invested in both already existing and newly erected firms, and worked as consultants. In doing so, Reuleaux lost nearly all his capital while Riedler became a millionaire. In this paper, I use the story of these two academics as cases for examining the following questions on academic entrepreneurship: What kind of commercial activities did these professors perform? What were the conflicts between the professors and the state bureaucracy on the one hand and industry on the other hand? What were the reasons for their success and failure? The case studies on Reuleaux and Riedler are based on printed and archival sources.     

Die kultreform des ahas (2 kön 16,10–18)

Abstract

In 1 Kön 16,10–18? wird eine Kultreform des Ahas beschrieben. Zum einen hat er den regelmäßigen Brandopferkult in Jerusalem eingeführt und hierfür einen Altar nach Damaszener Vorbild aufstellen lassen (V. 10–16?). Zum anderen ließ er die mit Jahwe verbundenen Bilder des ehernen Meeres und der Kesselwagen beseitigen (V. 17). Außerdem sind auf ihn Baumaßnahmen am Tempelplatz zurückzuführen (V. 18a). Die angebliche Sabbathalle gab es nie; der Text wurde hier versehentlich falsch punktiert.     

Mathematics, experience and laboratories: Herbart's and Brentano's role in the rise of scientific psychology

In this article we present and compare two early attempts to establish psychology as an independent scientific discipline that had considerable influence in central Europe: the theories of Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) and Franz Brentano (1838-1917). While both of them emphasize that psychology ought to be conceived as an empirical science, their conceptions show revealing differences. Herbart starts with metaphysical principles and aims at mathematizing psychology, whereas Brentano rejects all metaphysics and bases his method on a conception of inner perception (as opposed to inner observation) as a secondary consciousness, by means of which one gets to be aware of all of one's own conscious phenomena. Brentano's focus on inner perception brings him to deny the claim that there could be unconscious mental phenomena - a view that stands in sharp contrast to Herbart's emphasis on unconscious, "repressed" presentations as a core element of his mechanics of mind. Herbart, on the other hand, denies any role for psychological experiments, while Brentano encouraged laboratory work, thus paving the road for the more experimental work of his students like Stumpf and Meinong. By briefly tracing the fate of the schools of Herbart and Brentano, respectively, we aim to illustrate their impact on the development of psychological research, mainly in central Europe.