Schomburgk’s Chook: the entangled South Australian collections of a German naturalist

Focusing on the politics of museums, collections and the untold stories of the scientific ‘specimens’ that travelled between Germany and Australia, this article reconstructs the historical, interpersonal and geopolitical contexts that made it possible for the stuffed skin of an Australian malleefowl to become part of the collections of Berlin’s Museum für Naturkunde. The author enquires into the kinds of contexts that are habitually considered irrelevant when a specimen of natural history is treated as an object of taxonomic information only. In case of this particular specimen human and non-human history become entangled in ways that link the fate of this one small Australian bird to the German revolutionary generation of 1848, to Germany’s nineteenth-century colonial aspirations, to settler–Indigenous relations, to the cruel realities that underpinned the production of scientific knowledge in colonial Australia, and to a present-day interest in reconstructing Indigenous knowledges.     

Die subjektive Objektivität der mittelalterlichen Medizin

The problem of ‘reality’ and ‘realism’ is rarely discussed in medieval medical texts, although medieval medicine is based on objectivity. There are three reasons why medieval physicians were so sure about their image of human nature: the convincing model of humoral pathology, the undoubted truth of tradition, and the suggestive similarities between worldly things and their presumed divine purpose. Thus, individual cases were only examples of the common theory of medicine and were by no means able to change it.     

Defining the community of interest as thematic and cognitive regions

When deciding where to draw the boundaries for electoral districts, officials often strive to ensure that communities of interest are not split up but kept wholly within those boundaries. But what constitutes a community of interest is vague, with legal and academic sources describing either a thematic region with shared demographic and land-use traits, or a cognitive region that is meaningful to people and commonly agreed upon. This study, conducted in the city of Santa Barbara, California, seeks to identify communities of interest at the sub-city level as both thematic regions—by clustering Census tracts and land parcels according to classes of relevant variables—and cognitive regions—by surveying residents about the size and locational extent of their community and finding areas of agreement. We then assess the degree to which the two types of regions overlap as a way to evaluate how well the two meanings correspond. We also examine the amount of overlap between the two sets of regions and the city council electoral districts that were recently created in Santa Barbara. Our study finds that the two types of regions correspond relatively well to each other in this test city, but that the electoral districts correspond more to the thematic regions, understandable given that the district creation made no attempt to survey residents about their beliefs.     

TIN ISOTOPY—A NEW METHOD FOR SOLVING OLD QUESTIONS

Tin was a vital commodity in times past. In central Europe, the earliest finds of tin‐bronze date to about 2200 bc , while in Greece they are c. 400–500 years earlier. While there is evidence for prehistoric copper mining—for example, in the Alps or mainland Greece, among other places—the provenance of the contemporary tin is still an unsolved problem. This work deals with a new approach for tracing the ancient tin via tin isotope signatures. The tin isotope ratios of 50 tin ores from the Erzgebirge region (D) and 30 tin ores from Cornwall (GB) were measured by MC–ICP–MS. Most ore deposits were found to be quite homogeneous regarding their tin isotope composition, but significant differences were observed between several deposits. This fact may be used to distinguish different tin deposits and thus form the basis for the investigation of the provenance of ancient tin that has been sought for more than a century. Furthermore, the tin‐isotope ratio of the ‘Himmelsscheibe von Nebra’ will be presented: the value fits well with the bulk of investigated tin ores from Cornwall.     

毛泽东与人民政协事业

毛泽东在指导人民政协事业的创建和发展方面做出了重要贡献:创立了人民政协,并将人民政协作为民主政治的象征,推动了中国民主政治的发展,对“文化大革命”前特别是建国初期新中国的各项工作发挥了不可替代的重要的推动作用。尽管人民政协事业在“文化大革命”期间遭受挫折,人民政协这种发扬民主的形式遭到破坏,但毛泽东坚持将人民政协保留了下来,开启了我国社会主义政治文明建设的先河。     

北宋官窑形成的文献考察

北宋官窑客观存在,地点在汴京。其性质属政和三年礼制局成立后,由礼制局制造所所辖的烧造陶瓷祭器(包括日用器)的机构,其产品为政和年间“新成礼器”的一部分。     

1978～1984年中国经济体制改革思路的演进--决策与实施

中国的改革不是依据理论预设,而是诉诸实践和试验,从局部开始,"撞击-反射"式地推进.改革初期,从最初的放权让利到确立"有计划的商品经济"的改革方向,经历了重大的观念和理论的突破,包括激烈的争论.这种突破得益于理论界的不懈探索和领导人的正确决断.国际交往的扩大拓展了人们的视野,为反思中国体制弊端、探寻改革之道提供了多样性的参照物和丰富的思想资源.但是,对改革思路突破最有力的推动,还是实践本身.正是在总结中国自己的历史经验,同时吸收国外经验,了解和研究国外各种经济理论,特别是比较系统地汲取东欧国家改革经济学的成果的基础上,逐步形成了中国的改革学派,形成了以建立"社会主义商品经济"体制为核心的整套观点和政策主张.中共十二届三中全会通过关于经济体制改革的决定,标志着中国改革总体思路的一次重大突破.     

乾卦六龙态的天文含义研究--《左传》"龙纪"历法钩沉

《左传》昭公四年的“龙纪”,是上古以苍龙星为历象的太阳历的记载。这个苍龙星星象在《易经》乾卦六爻爻辞中有形象的描述,根据寅月“见龙”、午月“跃龙”等记载,可知其观测年代当在夏代以前。这种借龙“以喻天之阳气”的龙纪历法流传至先秦秦汉,或称“易历”、“气历”;或称“律历”、“甲历”。它以天干记日,十日为旬,六旬为甲,六甲为岁,一岁360日;并通过不记在日序之内的56日的过年日使历年长度略等于回归年长度,从而形成了原始社会晚期一部较实用的历法。