Clarifying divine discourse in early modern science: divinity,physico-theology,and divine metaphysics in Isaac Newton’s chymistry

Isaac Newton, like many of his contemporaries, appears to have distinguished between the practice of divinity, founded on divine revelation, and philosophical considerations of God derived from the study of nature. This article evaluates these distinct modes of divine discourse through a close reading of the chymical content of Newton’s optical writings and his correspondence with Thomas Burnet regarding Genesis. Newton’s chymical exploration of divine activity in the natural world in Query 31 to the Opticks (1704) seems independent from Scripture in its physico-theological demonstration of God from natural phenomena and its divine metaphysical reliance on a priori concepts of God to establish principles of nature. Nonetheless, the sensorium analogy by which he explored divine agency in nature drew directly from the biblical doctrine of the imago Dei. Moreover, Newton used his chymical understanding of nature to access the natural-philosophical realities behind the accommodated words of the Mosaic creation account.     

Literature’s place in the global public health arena: Graham Greene’s fictional translation of leprosy in A Burnt-Out Case

ABSTRACT

This paper traces the engagement of Graham Greene's novel A Burnt-Out Case with traditional discourses of leprosy (the biblical ‘leper’ as a sinner, missionary care, tropical medicine, Albert Schweitzer's hospital in Lambaréné, germ theory), and shows how it suggests an ethics of care which highlights the psychosocial aspects of disease and healing. The paper argues that the reception of the novel opened a discursive space for the re-negotiation of images of leprosy after empire, making visible the structures and agents of global public health communication and their diverging conceptions of explanatory authority, scientific accuracy and the relation of science and literature. The article incorporates archival sources from press reviews to draft versions of the novel and the author's correspondence with prominent leprosy experts. It draws on media and science communication studies, disability studies and on contributions to the sociology of knowledge by Ludwik Fleck, Thomas Kuhn and Bruno Latour.     

Nativism in Late Medieval Norway

Scholars have long regarded nativism – the concerted marginalization of foreigners in preference for natives – as a major factor in Norway’s national movement in the late Middle Ages. While anti-foreign statements and policy reforms introduced by the country’s aristocracy demonstrate the existence and function of nativism in political discourse, historians have exaggerated or misconstrued its role in cases of popular unrest. This article challenges the theory that peasants frequently and ardently resisted foreign officials in the 15th century. Taking the one known case of popular nativism – Amund Sigurdsson’s uprising of 1436–1437 – as reference, it examines another nine well-known incidents of peasant activism in order to determine a similar degree of antipathy toward foreigners. It is argued that while there is very little empirical evidence to support the nativist theory, there is ample material to inspire more focused examination of socio-economic and structural developments, and the role these played in Norway’s turbulent national awakening.     

‘A Hazardous Task’: Britain and the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations

In 2014, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations celebrated its fiftieth anniversary since its coming into force in 1964. Setting out the privileges and immunities accorded to diplomats and diplomatic missions, the negotiations of this convention were part of the United Nations' plan to strengthen the international rule of law. This article analyses the role of Britain, one of the major actors in the negotiation process. It explores how Britain's negotiation position was shaped by diplomatic realities of the 1950s, and the strategies used to ensure Britain's interests being reflected in the final convention. The focus will be on the overall political pressure that underlined Britain's negotiation position, in order to reveal the general UK position on the codification of diplomatic privileges and immunities. Despite the remarkably friendly atmosphere at the 1961 Vienna conference, Britain could not press through all its amendments which, through the concluding legislation process, protracted Britain's ratification process. The article shows while London was supporting the codification of international law, codification by convention was not its ultimate choice. Therefore, the subsequent legislation process was marked by an inter-departmental dispute between the Foreign Office and Treasury, inter alia, on the exemption of Scotch whisky from excise duties.     

The Training of Secret Police in Conflictual Intelligence Cultures: British Failure in the Middle East during the Cold War

This article explores the nature of security training chiefly associated with MI5. It shows that, akin to the security training implemented throughout the colonies, policy-makers in London hoped to strengthen Middle Eastern security services via British training, which would safeguard British interests in the region. This article argues that an unintended consequence was that strengthening Middle Eastern security services became part of the problem rather than the solution. The policy served mainly to bolster increasingly unpopular, authoritarian regimes against a rising tide of anti-British sentiment. Thus, British foreign, more specifically anti-Communist, policy in the Middle East was short-sighted and a failure.     

The Role of Non-Human Creatures in the Book of Jonah: The Implications for Eco-Justice

Previous studies on the Book of Jonah often concentrated on God, Jonah, and the people of Nineveh. This article takes a different approach by focusing on the roles of all “non-human creatures” in the Book of Jonah—the great Storm, the great fish, the animals of Nineveh, the worm, the land and the kikayon plant. This approach reveals something new about the role of non-human creatures in the book and the implications thereof for the amelioration of today’s ecological crisis. It highlights the beauty of all elements of nature working together with humanity for the good of all: a clear indication of the ecological vision implicitly proposed by the Book of Jonah. In this regard, YHWH’s attitude to every creature in the book is exemplary, to him every creature is in itself valuable and fulfills a particular important role in nature and existence.     

Reexamining transport poverty,job access,and gender issues in Central and Eastern Europe

Tirana, the Balkan capital examined in this study, displays patterns of gendered job search behavior and access, which are unique within contemporary Europe and even within post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. Here, it is a rather spatially constricted job search range rather than transport poverty that prevents women living in first-ring suburbs from attaining satisfactory employment. Female commutes are extraordinarily short and most often on foot. While the city now has nearly one million inhabitants and a high car ownership rate, and is located in Europe, the employment and mobility choices and behaviors of its female residents resemble those in developing rather than developed countries, and in small rather than large cities. The reasons underpinning this situation have more to do with socio-cultural gender barriers and less with transport poverty or labor market weaknesses. This finding might apply to other Balkan capitals or cities outside Europe, which have recently experienced large waves of internal migration and where both existing residents and newcomers have not yet adjusted to ‘big city’ life.     

Urban homesteading and intensive mothering: (re) gendering care and environmental responsibility in Boston and Chicago

In this article, we explore how normative ideologies of good mothering are being reproduced and contested through urban homesteading, a sustainable lifestyle that emphasizes household self-provisioning. Urban homesteading practices may include gardening and urban agriculture, canning, and pickling, and a variety of do-it-yourself and craft projects. Based on qualitative research with 19 urban homesteading households with children in the Boston and Chicago Metropolitan areas, we argue that urban homesteading discourses and practices reflect and align with intensive mothering ideologies in the United States. Intensive mothering ideologies encourage a selfless devotion of physical, emotional, and mental energy to childrearing, and are often associated with individualized, privileged, and gendered subjectivities. We find these intensive mothering ideologies especially visible in the ways that mothers perceive and respond to environmental risk by adopting and enacting urban homesteading labors. We also note that the choice to respond to risk by homesteading is often, but not always, mediated and animated by economic, temporal, and social privilege. In this way, urban homesteading and surrounding discourses may inadvertently raise the bar of ‘good’ motherhood in ways that demand more of women and marginalize or burden mothers with less resources and privilege. However, rather than dismiss homesteading entirely on these grounds, we suggest that it may be possible to harvest impulses of care, connection, and collectivity associated with homesteading in ways that benefit rather than burden all mothers.     

Farmer-fishermen: interior lake fishing and inter-cultural and intra-cultural relations among coastal and interior Sámi communities in northern Sweden AD 1200–1600

Although the productive fishing grounds had long attracted the Crown and the Church to northern Sweden, it was not until the sixteenth century that the judicial and fiscal powers of the Swedish Crown were exercised in full. Records show that the regular fishing in interior lakes formed a prominent enterprise among coastal farmer communities. This paper examines the social and economic context of farmers engaged in interior fishing with respect to the internal organization of village communities, principles of private and collective ownership, land-use strategies and inter-community relations. There are no a-priori assumptions about the coastal population being “Swedish”. Instead of applying ethnonyms, the terms “farmer” and “coastal” are used throughout the paper. The main area of investigation includes the coastal area of northernmost Sweden and the western parts of Finnish Lapland. The study shows that interior lakes fitted into village resource areas, long sanctioned by usage, and that usufruct belonged to village members collectively. A large part of the fishing lakes are situated in interior Sámi territory. Fishermen were internalizing Sámi place names, implying close relations between the groups. Archeological investigations point to subsistence strategies including systemic interior lake fishing being established before AD 1200. The authors propose that coastal and interior communities should be perceived as two economic strategies representing indigenous and pre-colonial land-use schemes.     

The Chinese developmental state during the Cold War: the making of the 1956 twelve-year science and technology plan

Abstract

In 1956, the government of the People’s Republic of China made a 12-year plan for scientific and technological developments (‘The Long-term Plan for the Development of Science and Technology for 1956–1967’), often credited as a visionary blueprint for its nuclear weapons programs and industrialization. Yet, this study suggests that the plan was not the logical manifestation of a unified national leadership, but rather the result of political contestations and compromises among the Communist party-state leaders, especially between Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, and between the state and the scientific–technological elite. It further indicates that the making of Chinese science and technology policy was shaped by the cold war geopolitics, national developmental aspirations and transnational influences, especially from the Soviet Union and the USA.