What can supraspecies richness tell us?

Biogeographers, ecologists, palaeontologists, and conservation managers often deal with checklists in which not all individuals have been identified to a species level, or the accuracy of species identification is questionable. Is it possible and credible to investigate species richness based on such checklists? Studies on macrofauna in the Far Eastern seas, eastern Arctic seas, and adjacent waters of the Pacific and Arctic Oceans suggest that in different habitats and for diverse taxa, species, and higher taxa richness strongly correlate with each other and increase with an expansion in the study area and sample size according to the species–area law. Such an increase is higher in the bottom zone than in the pelagic. Species and higher taxa richness also show a decrease from lower to higher latitudes, which is in line with the Humboldt–Wallace’s law. According to Willis’ law and self-similarity in the organisation of taxonomic levels, species richness can be assessed based on the genus, family, and order richness. In other words, supraspecies richness itself can tell us the same as species richness and therefore certain global patterns revealed at the species level may also be revealed at the supraspecies level. Such a concordance in general trends among richness parameters at different taxonomic levels in practice implies that species richness can be studied based on lists that lack species identifications or lists with doubtful species identification. We suggest bolder use of supraspecies richness in science and practice, discussing the disadvantages and advantages of this approach.     

Crossing the Great Divides: Hans Aarsleff's Lessons for Nineteenth-Century Intellectual Historians

SUMMARY

This essay discusses Hans Aarsleff's long battle to demonstrate the importance of the French and British thinkers of the mid-eighteenth century to the development of modern linguistic thought. Contesting claims that German scholars were the first to develop historicised theories of language, Aarsleff, along with his Princeton colleagues Lionel Gossman and Anthony Grafton, helped pioneer longue durée studies of the history of philology and of historiography that cross national boundaries as well as the so-called Sattelzeit (stretching from about 1780 until 1820). Although the importance of his work was, for a long time, little appreciated by modern intellectual historians, this essay argues that it is time that we fully learned Aarsleff's lessons.     

Confabulations: A Conceptual History

Confabulations are inaccurate or false narratives purporting to convey information about world or self. It is the received view that they are uttered by subjects intent on ‘covering up’ for a putative memory deficit. The epidemiology of confabulations is unknown. Speculated causes include amnesia, embarrassment, ‘frontal lobe’ damage, a subtype of ‘personality’, a dream-like event, and a disturbance of the self. Historical analysis shows that ‘confabulation’ was constructed at the turn of the century as part of a network of concepts (e.g. delusion, fixed idea, etc.) Meant to capture narratives with dubious content. This paper deals with the history of the construction of the word and concept of confabulation and with earlier recognitions of the behaviours that serve as their referent and puts forward a model based on historical data. Two phenomena are included under ‘confabulation’: ‘untrue’ utterances by subjects with memory impairment and ‘fantastic’ utterances marshalled with conviction by subjects suffering from psychoses and no memory deficit. Under different disguises, the ‘covering up’ or ‘gap filling’ hypothesis is still going strong. Although superficially plausible, it poses problems in regards to the issue of ‘awareness of purpose’: if full awareness is presumed, then it is difficult to differentiate confabulations from lying; if no awareness is presumed then the semantics of the concept of ‘purpose’ is severely stretched and confabulations cannot be differentiated from delusions. The received view of confabulations also neglects the clinical observation that confabulations (particularly provoked ones!) Do occur in dialogical situations: i.e., the manner of the asking may increase their probability. It is suggested here that confabulations are a disorder of a putative narrative function which is also found in ‘normal’ subjects. It is also hypothesized that this trait is normally distributed in the population. In the absence of adequate epidemiological information, research efforts should be directed at mapping the distribution of this narrative (or confabulatory) capacity in the community at large. Only then it will be possible to understand the significance of its disorders. In the long term, this approach will prove more heuristic than unwarranted speculation based on few anecdotal cases.     

Between Leibniz and Kant: The Political Thought of Wilhelm von Humboldt

Abstract

In his early text, The Limits of State Action, Wilhelm von Humboldt raises the Kantian question of the permissibility and legitimate extent of political and juridical coercion, as his contribution to a debate amongst Kantians launched by the publication in 1785 of Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. In arguing for a minimal state, concerned exclusively with internal and external security of its members but not at all with their felicity, Humboldt inflects Kantian political thought in the direction of a liberal laissez-faire state, in marked contrast to the strong interventionism that his fellow-Kantian Fichte derived from similar Kantian grounds. The article argues that the underlying conception of the individual retained by Humboldt has markedly Leibnizian traits, namely the notion of freedom as the spontaneous unfolding of a highly personal, monadic developmental trajectory toward perfection, which ought not to be impeded or homogenized by unnecessary state intervention. Humboldt thus represents not only a ‘rightist’ libertarian reading of Kant, but a particular appropriation of significant Leibnizian themes. His combination of these sources is compared with that of other contemporary theorists like Hufeland and Fichte.     

Best Practice und Worst Case? Der Umgang mit der Hochschulzeitgeschichte an der Universität Jena und der Humboldt‐Universität: ein exemplarischer Vergleich

Best Practice vs. Worst Case? How East German Universities Deal with their Contemporary History: the Humboldt University of Berlin and the University of Jena. East German universities are often criticized for a lack of efforts to come to terms with their own history in the GDR. Two universities are regularly compared to illustrate the chances and shortcomings in this field: while the University of Jena is considered as very active in dealing with their own contemporary history the Humboldt University of Berlin is claimed to have substantial deficits. As a part of a general survey of the efforts of East German universities concerning their own contemporary history this contrastive picture is examined. It can be shown that the main differences between the two universities are less the intensity of historical self‐reflection but rather the thematic focus and the forms of presentation.     

Transatlantic Correspondence and ‘Mobile Knowledge’ in Alexander von Humboldt's Exploratory Travels to Hispanic America

Summary

This article focuses on the relevance of Alexander von Humboldt's correspondence in the formation of transatlantic scientific networks at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Apart from connecting Humboldt with scientists and scholars worldwide, his correspondence turned out to be a fundamental tool for assuring the material conditions and the social and scientific connections he needed to carry out his research on the Spanish colonies and to simultaneously diffuse his achievements on the European side of the Atlantic. His contact with Hispanic American scientists and with the local elites enabled him to build a broad social network, gaining access to key material, human and intellectual resources. The letters sent to scientists, scientific institutions and noblemen in Europe, for their part, kept Humboldt's European correspondents informed about his activities in Hispanic America, contributing to the validation of his work before the scientific community and the fulfilment of the duties resulting from the political and institutional support he received both before and during his travels. This stresses the importance of strategic social groups and their cooperation in the framework of exploratory travels as a means to gaining access to resources in the peripheries. It also reveals the scientist's dependence on all those who supported his research: kings, barons, botanical gardens, universities, and academies.     

Waterfalls,science and aesthetics

Waterfalls and rapids are a subject of study by scientists and scholars from a variety of academic and professional backgrounds. Unlike cave research, known as speleology, which also involves many different disciplines, the study of waterfalls is not generally regarded as a distinct branch of knowledge. Long neglected as subjects of research, waterfalls have received considerable attention since the 1980s. This paper traces the study of waterfalls from the late eighteenth century, a period when both a scientific and an aesthetic interest in landscape developed in Europe, to the present. The work of geographers, geologists and others who studied landforms and landscapes is examined, with particular attention to those who expressed a special interest in waterfalls, notably Alexander von Humboldt. The study argues that the scientific and aesthetic approaches to landscape research are not incompatible and supports the view that both are necessary for a full understanding and appreciation of the environment in which we live.     

Sentiment,Sensation and Sensibility: Adam Smith,Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis and Wilhelm von Humboldt

Summary

This article focuses on the analysis of sensibility in the works of three major late eighteenth-century philosophers: Smith, Cabanis and the young Wilhelm von Humboldt. It analyses to what extent Smith's concept of sympathy influenced Cabanis in France and Humboldt in Germany. It argues that modern anthropology, based on a specific theory of sensibility, assumes a strong connection between knowledge acquisition and life in society. This article reveals the strong links between the three authors which were made possible precisely because of their common philosophical background. It proves, for the first time, that Humboldt had access to Condillac's ideas before 1798, since in an early work on the state, the former makes numerous borrowings from speeches Cabanis wrote for Mirabeau, which were in turn strongly influenced by Condillac.