微量元素示踪古代青铜器铜矿料来源的可行性

目前,微量元素示踪法在青铜器矿料来源研究中的应用不尽人意。为此,模拟熔铸青铜器,对它们的微量元素作多元统计分析,旨在探讨利用微量元素探索古代青铜器铜矿料来源的可行性。分析表明：若舍弃冶炼后富集亍炉渣中的亲石亲铁元素,而仅选取富集于铜料中的亲铜元素及一些凡具有亲铜性,又具有亲铁性元素的成分数据,则通过多元统计分析,能较好地区别不同产地的铜矿料。     

青铜器铅同位素指示意义的范铸实验研究

铅同位素比值作为探索青铜器产地和矿料来源的指示剂而被广泛采用,为论证这种方法的可行性,进行了仿古范铸实验。测试分析表明,长江中、下游出土古铜锭含铅量大多在1％以下,样品中添加铅的含量远高于铜、锡料所带入的微量铅。结果证明,青铜器铅同位素的指示意义是不确定的,并且在冶铸过程中可能存在铅同位素的分馏。     

从考古文物实验辨析郑和宝船的吨位

郑和下西洋的大宝船据历史文献记载合今长123米,宽50米。按木帆船的结构规律和造船法式,(型、舱)深应有25米。这样,据阿基米德浮力定律,它的满载排水量高达4万多吨。下西洋的大船队共有208艘船,分超大型、大型、较大型、中型、小型五类。所以,总吨位多达200万吨。但迄今为止并没有出土文物考古发现能证明存在过这么大的巨舶,也没有模拟实验和航海试验的成功例子来证实可以有这么大的木帆船。可见,当我们把研究思路从传统的尺寸转换到相应的吨位,问题就清楚多了。     

东周青铜复合剑制作技术研究

东周时期,吴越出现了一种奇特的青铜复合剑,剑的中脊和两刃是用两种不同成分的青铜铸接而成。为充分了解青铜复合剑的制作,对上海博物馆馆藏的4把青铜复合剑残剑进行了分析,通过X-射线荧光能谱仪分析残剑的剑刃和剑脊的成分,金相显微镜分析剑刃和剑脊的组织,发现中国古代工匠采用低锡青铜制作韧性好的剑脊,高锡青铜制作强度和硬度高的剑从,通过榫卯结构以铸接法将剑脊与剑从结合成一体,得到刚柔兼具的青铜复合剑。在测试分析的基础上进行模拟实验,先以陶范铸造法铸造出两侧带榫头的青铜剑脊,剑脊的成分采用88％铜、10％锡、2％铅的低锡青铜;然后将青铜剑脊置入铸造剑从的陶范内,两侧的榫头伸入陶范型腔中,剑从的成分采用78％铜、20％锡、2％铅的高锡青铜,当剑从凝固时产生的收缩使剑脊和剑从牢固地结合成整体,再分1次或多次以铸接法铸上剑格、剑茎、剑箍和剑首,成功地复制了青铜复合剑,再现了东周时期青铜复合剑的制作工艺。     

Policy attributes shape climate policy support

Understanding how preferences for public policy instruments shape policy support helps policymakers to design policies that begin to tackle large-scale and complex problems, such as climate change. Climate change policies generate both local and global costs and benefits, which affect the public's policy preferences. In this article we investigate the role of perceived conditional cooperation and distributive concerns on climate policy attitude formation. We identify a range of climate policies and test public opinion for adoption of these policies at different scales of government. The important theoretical distinction is the scale-driven distributional nature of policy costs and benefits as well as concerns regarding the cooperation of other actors. We use data from Sweden and a conjoint experimental design where we vary level of government, type of policy, and the targeted group. We find evidence that people support policies when costs are shared broadly. We also find that support for climate policy is conditional on expected policy adoption by other units of government at various scales. This implies that unpopular climate policies might be more popular if the funding structure of the policy allows for binding policy and that the cost-sharing is taking place at higher levels of government.     

Procedures and complications in late-nineteenth-century experimental neuroanatomical research exemplified by articles of Henry Herbert Donaldson (1857–1938)

Henry Herbert Donaldson (1857–1938) was a leader in neurological research in the United States for several decades, beginning about 1890. A detailed account of three of his earliest publications shows the neuroanatomical procedures involved in the study of the relation of brain and intelligence during the late-nineteenth-century in America. Two of the articles, published in September 1890 and December 1891, were titled, “Anatomical Observations on the Brain and Several Sense-Organs of the Blind Deaf-Mute, Laura Dewy Bridgman (1829–1889)”; the third, published in August 1892, used the information from the first two to delimit the extent of the visual processing area of the human cortex. Donaldson’s procedures included brain cuttings and measures of macroscopic brain structures, histology of cellular structures, attempts to relate macroscopic brain structures with brain functions, data corrections, estimations, comparisons, and statistics. These procedures provide a view of the relative thoroughness, accuracy, and comparability of the various neuroanatomical techniques in use at that time and of Donaldson’s implementation of the techniques. Donaldson’s brain cutting techniques were much more comparable than his measurement techniques. The latter could be quite precise, but they were fraught with lack of standardized procedures that made corrections and estimations necessary when making data comparisons across studies. Donaldson emphasized these incompatibilities, implying a need for standardization. Statistical procedures were the least thorough and effective. His, and the field’s, total complement of statistical techniques consisted of mean and range, which severely limited his ability to make complicated assessments. This limitation was not necessarily supplemented by stringent control group comparisons.     

Im Blickwinkel der Technik: Neue Verhältnisse von Wissenschaftstheorie und Wissenschaftsgeschichte

Changing Perspectives – From the Experimental to the Technological Turn in History and Philosophy of Science. In the 1960s the philosophy of science was transformed through the encounter with the history of science, resulting in a collaborative venture by the name of “History and Philosophy of Science” (HPS). Philosophy of science adopted ever more regularly the format of the case study to reconstruct certain episodes from the history of science, and historians were mostly interested in the production of scientific knowledge. The so‐called “experimental turn” of the 1980s owed to this interaction between philosophy and history. Its guiding question remained quite traditional, however, namely “How do the sciences achieve an agreement between representation and reality?” Only the answers to this question broke with tradition by focusing not on theory but on the role of instruments and experiments. – Roughly 30 years after the experimental turn, another transformative encounter appears to be taking place. HPS is being transformed in the encounter with philosophy of technology. From the point of view of philosophy of technology, the question does not arise whether and how the agreement of mind and world, representation and reality can be achieved. When things are constructed, built or made, human thinking and physical materiality are inseparably intertwined. Instead of seeking to describe a mind‐independent reality, technoscientific researchers are working to acquire and demonstrate capabilities of experimental or predictive control. When science is regarded as a kind of technology, a program of study opens up for epistemology and so do avenues for the historiography of science. History of science might now show how the problems and procedures of the sciences arise from and impinge back upon a world that is itself a product of science and technology. It thereby abandons its traditional HPS niche existence and joins forces with environmental history, history of technology, social, labor, and consumer history.     

殷墟出土灰陶器的制作与烧制实验研究

本文结合考古实证、史料记载、民族学调查资料、陶器岩相学分析以及复原实验等方法,最大可能地去复原殷墟出土灰陶器的制作与烧制技术。复原实验分两大步:一是灰陶器的制作,大致可分为取土、洗土、制作、阴干、修整等几道工序;二是灰陶器的烧制,大致可分为建窑、装窑、烧窑、还原(加牛粪或水)、出窑等几道程序。复原实验历时2年,比较成功地制作和烧制了200余件灰陶器。经过本次复原实验,我们切实了解了殷墟灰陶器的制作工艺和烧制技术。     

Cardboard,Conjuring and ‘A Very Curious Experiment’

Abstract

This article argues that overtly theatrical techniques and problems have played a vital part in the design and execution of scientific experiments. Taking as its case-study Michael Faraday’s famed experiment debunking the spiritualist phenomenon of table-turning in 1853, attention is focused on the crucial role played by sleight of hand, patter, misdirection and other theatrical tricks in it. Saturated in the wider culture of stage and parlour magic familiar to Victorians, Faraday’s experiment into ideomotor activity highlights the many connections running back and forth between the worlds of science and theatre in the mid-nineteenth century, in which performativity and theatricality were not only part of flamboyant scientific demonstrations, but at the heart of experiments themselves.     

Writing the region: Jonathan Couch and the Cornish fauna

Abstract

The county of Cornwall was the subject of an early nineteenth century attempt to compile an exhaustive regional fauna, Jonathan Couch's three volume A Cornish Fauna (1838–44). Although the Fauna was part of a much broader contemporary impulse to document the natural history of Britain, it was a very early example of a zoological study organised by geography rather than faunal group. It therefore required the author to make an explicit defence of its geographical approach and focus. According to Couch the region was the best place from which to build a better understanding of nature and, ultimately, of nature's creator. In particular, careful observations of a naturalist's local fauna could contribute to mid-nineteenth century debates over the distribution and migration of animals, their extinction, and their value to human industry. According to Couch, the county of Cornwall was especially suited to this sort of investigation. Indeed, although little had been done on the Cornish fauna before Couch's own study, his work was the catalyst for a number of other Cornish naturalists over the latter half of the century.