卫三畏的汉学观

卫三畏是近代中关关系史上的重要人物,是美国的第一位汉学教授。他从观念形态、精神产品、生活方式等方面对中国进行了研究,认为中国是一个具有高度文明的国家,但在科学上是保守的,在生活上是落后的。     

江苏徐州市徐州卫遗址水井发掘简报

徐州卫遗址位于徐州市中心彭城广场东侧,西距彭城路100米,北到大同街(图一),为明代徐州卫官署所在地。徐州市博物馆于2004年11月6日至2005年9月对该遗址进行了抢救性考古发掘。该遗址文化层深约3米,厚约5米。从上至下依次为明代     

Europe and the American mind∗†

Wells's The New Machiavelli (1911) offers an excellent case study of the use of anti-Machiavellian Machiavellism as both a philosophical and a rhetorical strategy. In Remington, Wells creates a protagonist who follows Machiavellian rules of behaviour and denounces those who do likewise. The novel is structured to show Remington's progress from an idealist refutation of Machiavellism, through a recognition of its necessity, to the formulation of a private and political method for the necessary pursuit of Machiavellian principles under the disguise of anti-Machiavellism, including trenchant criticisms of Fabians as anti-Machiavellian Machiavellians. These stages, culminating in complete personal and public failure, are reflected in Remington's party allegiances, and broadened by Wells into an account of British party ideologies around the turn of the twentieth century. Wells's rhetorical design for mapping and assessing anti-Machiavellian Machiavellism is paralleled by an exploration of that technique in himself, attested by the predominance of autobiographical elements in The New Machiavelli, and by similarities between Remington's and Wells's own deception of others and themselves. Far from incidental, anti-Machiavellian Machiavellism is the motif that unites the shifting party allegiances, political conceits and moral hypocrisies, and private and public failures of Wells, Remington, and of the period of British politics that they intend to encapsulate.     

Spiders,Horror, and Animal Others in Late Victorian Empire Fiction

By the 1850s, the representation of the spider in Victorian natural history was beginning to change. No longer associated solely with ingenuity and industry, the spider took on more disturbing connotations in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Unable to pin down the creature's precise rhetorical and metaphorical function, naturalists could not decide whether the spider ought to be loved or feared and at the same time the spider began to emerge as a ubiquitous, protean and unstable Gothic trope in popular fiction. While natural history books warned of the hazards of the foreign spider's bite, in adventure fiction the alien arachnid lurks in liminal spaces far from the safety of British shores. Much maligned as the unfamiliar Other, the spider caused – and mitigated – anxieties about the limits of the human. In the Gothic empire fiction of Bertram Mitford and H.G. Wells, the spider takes on the role of the harbinger of death on both sides of the colonial encounter.     

Archaeological wells in southern France: Late Neolithic to Roman plant remains from Mas de Vignoles IX (Gard) and their implications for the study of settlement,economy and environment

Abstract

A study of plant remains from seven archaeological wells at Mas de Vignoles IX, near Nîmes, southern France, was used to shed light on a current gap in the archaeological record caused by erosion and modern agriculture. The analysis also explored the reliability of these sources for palaeoenvironmental and palaeoeconomical information. Significant results on the spatial organization of human habitation, economic activities, and on the environment and its exploitation were obtained for the Middle Neolithic to Roman periods. Furthermore, the Neolithic wells also provided the first early finds of fig seeds in France. The abundance of weed and ruderal plants up to the Iron Age is consistent with data from other studies and their dramatic decrease during the Roman period may have resulted from radical changes in land management. The study marks the first time, in southern France, that a group of wells from a single site have provided a complete record throughout the later prehistoric and Roman periods.     

A century of “Hate and Coarse Thinking”: anti-Machiavellian Machiavellism in H.G. Wells’ The New Machiavelli (1911)

Wells's The New Machiavelli (1911) offers an excellent case study of the use of anti-Machiavellian Machiavellism as both a philosophical and a rhetorical strategy. In Remington, Wells creates a protagonist who follows Machiavellian rules of behaviour and denounces those who do likewise. The novel is structured to show Remington's progress from an idealist refutation of Machiavellism, through a recognition of its necessity, to the formulation of a private and political method for the necessary pursuit of Machiavellian principles under the disguise of anti-Machiavellism, including trenchant criticisms of Fabians as anti-Machiavellian Machiavellians. These stages, culminating in complete personal and public failure, are reflected in Remington's party allegiances, and broadened by Wells into an account of British party ideologies around the turn of the twentieth century. Wells's rhetorical design for mapping and assessing anti-Machiavellian Machiavellism is paralleled by an exploration of that technique in himself, attested by the predominance of autobiographical elements in The New Machiavelli, and by similarities between Remington's and Wells's own deception of others and themselves. Far from incidental, anti-Machiavellian Machiavellism is the motif that unites the shifting party allegiances, political conceits and moral hypocrisies, and private and public failures of Wells, Remington, and of the period of British politics that they intend to encapsulate.     

Late Archaic wells on the Gila River Indian Community,Arizona

Eight prehistoric wells dug to a depth of ∼2 m below the modern ground surface were found in the alluvial sediments of McClellan Wash on Gila River Indian Community in southern Arizona. Charcoal from the sediments filling the wells yielded radiocarbon ages of ∼1000 B.C. The time in which wells were dug coincides with a period of general regional aridity and high ENSO activity in the American Southwest. Digging to access water may have occurred in response to period(s) of resource uncertainty, or as a logistical activity that engaged increasingly resource-tethered Late Archaic/Early Agricultural populations. These activities laid the foundation for agricultural practices that eventually became the dominant mode of subsistence in the low-lying areas of the Sonoran Desert.     

Darwin’s missing links

The historical process underlying Darwin’s Origin of Species (Origin) did not play a significant role in the early editions of the book, in spite of the particular inductivist scientific methodology it espoused. Darwin’s masterpiece did not adequately provide his sources or the historical perspective many contemporary critics expected. Later editions yielded the ‘Historical Sketch’ lacking in the earlier editions, but only under critical pressure. Notwithstanding the sources he provided, Darwin presented the Origin as an ‘abstract’ in order to avoid giving sources; a compromise he acknowledged and undertook to set right in later editions, yet failed to provide throughout the six editions under his supervision. Darwin’s reluctance to publish the historical context of his theory and his sources, particularly sources which were also ‘precursors’, may be attributed as much to the matter of intellectual ownership as science, or even good literary practice. Of special concern to Darwin were issues of priority or originality over ‘descent with modification’ and especially over Natural Selection. Many later historians have argued that Darwin was unaware of the work of his precursors on Natural Selection. Darwin’s theory was an example of independent discovery, albeit along with such obscure precursors as Matthew or Wells, who were unknown to Darwin until after the publication of the Origin. Both Matthew and Wells had a medical education, like James Hutton or Erasmus Darwin earlier in the eighteenth century, or even (in part) Charles Darwin. Evolutionary theory, at least in Britain was a product largely of the medical evolutionists rather than the natural historians which ‘history’ has chosen to select for the focus of attention; and among the medical evolutionists the figure of John Hunter stands out as theorist, experimentalist and teacher: the medical evolutionists were predominantly the product of Hunter’s legacy or of the medical profession and particularly the Scottish Universities. Much recent Darwin scholarship has focused on the private Notebooks, to establish Darwin’s discovery of Natural Selection around 1837–1838 and demonstrate Darwin’s ignorance of his precursors; requiring an explicit acknowledgement by Darwin as the legitimate substantiation of any claim to prior influence. The precursors have been categorized as uniformly obscure or irrelevant to the science of evolution which may be defined exclusively as ‘Darwinian’. The inclination to acknowledge influences, however was not something Darwin was gratuitously given to doing, especially on matters of priority. The Notebooks are not Darwin’s private thoughts; from an early stage he considered them incipient public documents and later sought to protect them as proof of his originality. William C. Wells was not an obscure thinker, but a celebrated scientist whom Herschel, Darwin’s guide to scientific methodology, had recommended as providing a model of scientific method. Darwin discovered Wells through Herschel, and quickly acquired a copy of Wells’ recommended work, no later than 1831, and held it thereafter in his library at Down House. This book, the 1818 edition of Wells’ Two Essays contains a third essay, Wells’ account of Natural Selection. Later, in the Descent of Man (1871) Darwin acknowledged his separate discovery of the correlation of colour and disease immunity in man, also earlier recounted by Wells.