THE PUZZLE OF THE BANQUET HALL OF THE DUKES: THE PROFESSIONALIZATION OF SWEDISH HISTORICAL RESEARCH STUDIED THROUGH LUDWIK FLECK'S “THOUGHT COLLECTIVE” AND “THOUGHT STYLE”

In 1312, the Swedish dukes Erik and Valdemar Magnusson married the Norwegian princesses Ingeborg Haakonsdaughter and Ingeborg Eriksdaughter at a ceremony in Oslo, Norway. In 1313, the two couples were reunited at a purpose-built banquet hall, believed to have been located in the medieval Swedish town of Lödöse. The main source of information concerning these events is the Swedish medieval rhyme chronicle The Chronicle of Duke Erik. However, a closer reading of the chronicle reveals that Lödöse is never mentioned in relation to the banquet hall. The article discusses the passing down of knowledge through generations of the same professional collective, in this case the professional collective of Swedish historians during the twentieth century, and demonstrates how the validity of once-established prescientific knowledge persists. To achieve its goal, the article applies Ludwik Fleck's terms “thought collective,” “thought style,” and “tenacity in science,” as well as Thomas Kuhn's concept of the “paradigm,” to a historiographical case study of how the proto-idea of the banquet hall being located at Lödöse has survived to become an established scientific fact. The location of the banquet hall concerns but a minor detail in the turbulent political situation of the Swedish kingdom during the first decades of the fourteenth century. However, the continuing reiteration of this minor detail is evidence of a larger phenomenon, namely how contemporary historical research is influenced by scholars in the prescientific past.     

Exploratory Models in a time of Big Data

This paper aims to trigger discourse about the emergence of a new type of social scientific model — Exploratory Models — which draw on Big Data, computer modeling and interdisciplinary research to tackle complex social scientific processes. First, we define Exploratory Models referring to Batty and Morgan and Morrison. We then present changes to the traditional modeling paradigm. We show how Exploratory Models circumvent challenges related to the idiosyncracy, self-reflexivity and acceleration of social phenomena, which limit predictive effectiveness of traditional models. We show that Exploratory Models are better equipped to tackle complex problems due to their capacity to process heterogeneous datasets. Having established that Exploratory Models are predominantly problem- and data-driven, we emphasize that scientific theory is indispensable to their progress. Finally, the development of an integrative platform is suggested as a way of maximizing the benefits of this approach. Discussion concludes by flagging areas for further research.     

National identity and the limits of constructivism in international relations theory: a case study of the Suez Canal

Constructivism in most of its variants emphasises the creation of circumstances and the social construction of reality. In international relations theory (IR), it also emphasises the establishment of international regimes. The Suez Canal and its governing regime, established at a high point of European nationalism and imperialism in the nineteenth century, are explored as a test case. I argue that, while the early history of the Canal is illuminated by a constructivist approach, maintenance of the regime to govern it involved military intervention and debt restructuring. Military force, balance of power considerations and economic interests all have to be invoked to explain the later history of the Canal, that is, factors usually stressed by the realist school. A combination of realist and constructivist approaches is recommended. The paper is also critical of certain constructivist concepts of national identity.     

科学观的歧义与中国近代科学史学的多重意蕴

近代中国史学科学化进程中,因国人对“科学”含义理解上的不同,对史学是否属于“科学”有不同的认识;也因对“科学”含义广、狭不同的理解,形成了不同的“科学史学”观;由此造成史学“科学化”进程中观念分歧与实践路向上的差异。     

恩格斯对马克思主义的科学理解探析

恩格斯作为马克思主义的创立者之一,对马克思主义的科学理解主要体现在三个方面,即马克思主义是"完整的科学的世界观"、马克思主义"不是教义,而是方法"、马克思主义是"发展着的理论"。     

中国马克思主义史学发展道路的思考

从五四运动到新中国成立前,自李大钊开始传播唯物史观,此后经郭沫若、吕振羽、范文澜、翦伯赞、侯外庐等的努力,马克思主义史学家坚持革命性与科学性结合,显示出自己建构研究中国历史体系的规模和力量,因而20世纪把中国史学推向了新阶段。建国后17年,马克思主义史学虽然经历过严重的曲折,但成绩仍是主要的,主要表现在:以唯物史观原理与中国实际相结合的方向得到坚持,形成百家争鸣的局面,在通史、断代史和专史领域以及大规模整理历史文献等方面都有重要成果;1958年以后教条化严重泛滥时,郭沫若、范文澜、翦伯赞等挺身而出进行抵制,一批熟悉历史考证的学者在唯物史观指导下,使史学达到新的境界。在改革开放的新时期,经过批判和反思极“左”路线危害,解放思想,史学出现了开拓进取、欣欣向荣的新局面。     

Views and Commentaries: Composed Versus Simple Pasts: About Archaeologists and Their Partners

Partnership is an equitable exchange of knowledge. In fact, the very nature and indisputability of imported and taught knowledge—the scientific one and here archaeological—question the nature of the traditional and ordinary knowledge of peoples concerned. These two kinds of knowledge differ in the nature of the facts recognized by each of them: scientific facts or tacit common knowledge facts built differently, and in the number and strength of the external allies they succeed in mobilizing. Even if they remain translatable one into the other at a certain cost, they are engaged in a race. The result seems lethal for traditional knowledge unless powerful nonscientific allies, opposed to this leveling standardization, get involved with researchers aware of the stake for the South but also for the North, committed for some centuries to a rationalization supported by science, its technics, and the socioeconomic powers able to fund them.Le partenariat est un échange équitable de savoirs. En réalité, la nature et l'indiscutabilité du savoir importé et inculqué—le savoir scientifique et ici archéologique—met en cause la nature du savoir ordinaire et traditionnel des peuples concernés. Ces deux formes de savoirs diffèrent par la nature des faits reconnus par chacun d'eux: faits scientifiques ou faits du savoir observationnel ordinaire, construits différemment, et par le nombre et la force des alliés extérieurs qu'ils réussissent à se donner. S'ils sont traduisibles l'un dans l'autre à un certaincoût, une course est néanmoins engagée entre eux. L'issue en semble fatale aux savoirs traditionnels à moins que des alliés puissants non-scientifiques, opposés à ce nivellement uniformisateur, s'engagent à leurs côtés avec l'appui des chercheurs conscients d'un enjeu qui concerne certes le Sud, mais aussi le Nord engagé depuis quelques siècles dans une rationalisation appuyée sur la science, ses techniques et les puissances socio-économiques capables de les financer.     

The Science of Empire: Darwinism,Human Diversity,and Russian Physical Anthropology

Summary : The article explores deployment of the Darwinian narrative of the “natural history of humanity” in Russian physical anthropology in the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. It traces two narratives developed by the leading Russian school of physical anthropology: one narrative advanced a universalist vision of collective scholarly enterprise working toward clarifying the missing links in the a priori accepted developmental evolutionary model. The other constructed a new language that undermined the idea of species/subspecies/races/nations/ as stable, externally bounded, and internally homogeneous units and attempted to rationalize imperial hybridity. The article's main focus is on the latter classificatory narrative, its relational methodology, and the protostructuralist units of comparison that it produced.