New experimental evidence on the relation between percussion flaking and flake variation

Controlled experiments in percussion flaking allowed for objective analysis of relationships between variables of flake production and those variables which are attributes of the final result. The independent variables, those controlled by the flintknapper in the production of stone tools, include force and angle of blow, platform thickness and exterior platform angle. The dependent variables are those attributes of the flakes which are often used in current lithic analyses and include interior platform angle, length, thickness and flake termination. The results clearly show that exterior platform angle is highly significant for understanding many aspects of flake production. These and other relationships between the independent and dependent variables are also discussed.     

Intelligence cooperation and new trends in space technology: do the ties still bind?

For the first time since the 1970s, Canberra cannot assume the joint facilities will continue to underpin the Australia–US alliance. Intelligence cooperation via outer space, described as the ‘strategic essence’ of this relationship, is poised for transformation. New technologies are being developed for satellite communication, with laser systems capable of bypassing ground control stations outside US territory. As a result, the one indispensable role for Australia in US national security—hosting infrastructure to relay intelligence about nuclear and missile activity—could become irrelevant in the years ahead. With questions raised about the Trump administration’s commitment to security partners and the risk of US disengagement from Asia, these findings have implications for Australian alliance diplomacy. If intelligence ties bind these countries together at present, Canberra can expect some risk of loosening in the future and will need to think carefully about the development of national intelligence resources over the long term.     

The Progress of Education in the Northern Coalfield Before 1870

Although the literacy of miners lagged behind county and national averages, there was educational progress in the Northern coalfield before 1870. Progress came partly from the private adventure schools and the Sunday schools, which originated in the colliery communities and which have been underestimated by historians. Evidence from parish registers shows that the private adventure schools that proliferated in the collieries, especially from the 1820s, helped to maintain and raise literacy rates in some villages, but were unjustly criticized by educators who favoured state public elementary schools. The colliery Sunday schools, particularly those of the Methodists, were also important in developing the ability to read. The spread of Methodism amongst miners gave an important stimulus to literacy, which resulted in greater support for adult education in the coalfield. The growth of mechanics’ institutes, reading rooms and mutual improvement societies testified to a growing enthusiasm amongst miners for education before 1870. Despite the extraordinary population growth, especially in Durham, and extensive migration of workers in the coal industry, educational progress in the coalfield is evident particularly in the late 1850s and 1860s.     

Pluralism,Perspective, Order and Organization: The Fault-Lines of 21st Century ‘Cultures’ and Epistemologies

The original Two Cultures debate has been told and retold as a struggle for the moral high ground; the entitlement to define ‘culture’ and especially the route to understanding humanity. Later skirmishes and attempts to define a ‘Third culture’ snatched elements of these and the battleground shifted, with the strangely playground-sounding claims that science had ‘won’. However I will argue that more interesting features of the debate were the underlying assumptions about epistemology; how can we, and should we, proceed in understanding our world and experience, and how sixty years of intellectual and cultural developments in many fields illuminate profoundly new and apparently incompatible discourses. This wide-ranging argument will necessarily be superficial but my purpose is to draw attention to what I regard as central concerns of twenty-first century lay and expert epistemologies and why they matter.     

Rational Mechanics in the Eighteenth Century. On Structural Developments of a Mathematical Science

Rational Mechanics in the Eighteenth Century. On Structural Developments of a Mathematical Science. The role of mathematics in eighteenth‐century science and of eighteenth‐century philosophy of science can hardly be overestimated. However, philosophy of science frequently described and analysed this role in an anachronistic manner by projecting modern points of view about (formal) mathematics and (empirical) science to the past: From today's point of view one might be tempted to say that philosophers and scientists in the seventeenth and even more in the eighteenth century became aware of the importance of mathematics as a means of ‘representing’ physical phenomena or as an ‘instrument’ of deductive explanation and prediction. But such modernisms are missing the central point, i.e. the ‘mathematical nature of nature’ according to mechanical philosophy. Moreover, the understanding of this mathematical nature changed dramatically in the course of the eighteenth century for various (i.e. mathematical, philosophical and other) reasons – a fact hardly appreciated by former philosophical analysis. Philosophy of science today should offer a more accurate analysis to history of science without giving up its task – not always appreciated by historians – to uncover the basic concepts and methods which seem relevant for the understanding of science in question. This paper gives a ‘structural account’ on the development of rational mechanics from Newton to Lagrange that tries to give justice to the fact that rational mechanics in the eighteenth century was primarily understood as a mathematical science and that – starting from this understanding – also tries to give good reasons for the fundamental change of the concept of science that took place during this period.