Reason,ridicule and religion: The age of enlightenment in England 1660–1750

Abstract

Montesquieu and Adam Smith undertook deep analyses of the structural laws of agrarian civilizations and described the traps and tendencies which would prevent any final escape from constant toil and inequality. David Hume's work in certain of his ‘Essays’ complements their work. He shows the social, political, religious and economic conditions which had made England the most free and wealthy nation in the world by his time. Simultaneously he shows the strong forces which would ultimately lead to stasis even in the English case. © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.     

Design and Analysis of Cross Vaults Along History

The history of cross vaults began almost 2,000 years ago with a widespread use during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, becoming nowadays one of the most diffused and fascinating structural typologies of the European building cultural heritage. However, conversely to the undeniable excellence achieved by the ancient masons, the structural behavior of these elements is still at the center of the scientific debate. In this regard, with the aim of reviewing the knowledge on this subject as a concise and valuable support for researchers involved in conservation of historical buildings, with a focus on design rules and structural analysis, the present study firstly introduces the cross vaults from a historical perspective, by describing the evolution of the main geometrical shapes together with basic practical rules used to size them. Then, the article deals with the subsequent advancements in structural analysis methods of vaults, until the development of modern limit analysis.     

The christian polity of John Calvin

J.A. Hobson is known for his views on economy and imperialism. He was also concerned with social psychology and especially with the phenomenon of crowds, which was much discussed at the beginning of the twentieth century. As crowd behaviour was both collective and apparently irrational, it could undermine liberalism. However, Hobson uses crowd phenomena to bolster his own brand of social-democratic liberalism. He perceives mass behaviour as a constituent of the social dialogue favoured by liberals since J. S. Mill, and argues that alterity and festivity are themselves human traits that merit political and legal recognition. This expanded view of human nature grounds a perception of rights which includes entitlements to leisure and structureless sociability: the welfare measures which guarantee such entitlements are thus made constituents of a revised liberalism. His interpretation of the crowd also serves Hobson as a warning to social theory itself, which, he argues, should acknowledge its distance from the world it attempts to analyse. This perception of theory further acts to strengthen liberalism, as it points to the contingent, open-ended character of any view of society and hence favours dialogue and open expression of varying opinions.     

Unglazed pottery from the masjed-i jom’e of Isfahan (Iran): technology and provenance

The masjed-i jom’e of Isfahan is one of the earliest mosques of Iran. Since 1970, Italian researchers performed an extensive archaeological investigation uncovering huge amounts of finds. This study aims at investigating the technological features and provenance of the unglazed pottery finds by using a minero-petrographic approach. Twenty-three samples of storage, table and cooking wares were selected based on the recurrence of typologically identifiable fragments and fabrics. Two bricks, seven production indicators (spacers, kiln furniture, slags) and a local clay were analysed for comparison. The production indicators and most of the pottery show high-CaO concentration. Thick-walled wares contain coarse sedimentary/metamorphic inclusions. Samples with thinner walls contain similar but fine/well-sorted inclusions. The mineralogy and microstructure indicate firing temperatures mainly ranging from 850 to 1000 °C. Low-CaO samples contain coarse sedimentary inclusions; in one sample, volcanic lithics are present. Firing temperatures range from about 800 to 950 °C, and the low-CaO character can be related to their specific function for cooking foods. One sample, found in older stratigraphic levels, differs for its peculiar calcitic temper and lower firing temperature. Local production of most samples was constrained by the composition of the inclusions compatible with the sediments of the Isfahan area. High-CaO pottery shows compositional affinity with production indicators, local clay and tiles produced in Isfahan during the Safavid period. Cooking ware usually contains local temper, with the exception of a sample with volcanic inclusions, for which a non-local provenance is supposed. No appropriate information is, however, available regarding the low-CaO clays used in the area.     

The rise of the new model army

In this paper the contribution of Robert R. Palmer to the now booming Atlantic history is put into perspective. It describes the main features of the political and historiographical context that inspired the writing of his book, The Age of the Democratic Revolution in the early 1950s (first volume published in 1959, second volume in 1964). It also argues that the war experience Palmer had in the historical section of the Army Ground Forces has been important in reviving the interest for the transatlantic dimension in modern history that was central in his PhD dissertation. This paper shows how the liberal-tocquevillian approach that Palmer adopted to explain the multiple revolutions that shook North America and Europe in the last quarter of the 18th century earned him the attacks of the Marxist historians. In its last part this paper makes use of private letters to claim that in the 1970s and 1980s the Italian historian Franco Venturi revived the scholarly interest in Palmer's perspective despite methodological differences between his Settecento riformatore and Palmer's analysis. Settecento riformatore and The Age of the Democratic Revolution have contributed to the interest in a transatlantic approach to 18th-century history that is now pursued under the heading of “entangled histories”.