This article questions the effectiveness of “engagement teaching” when dealing with controversial subjects by exploring the role of fear in contemporary education about the Holocaust in the United Kingdom. It begins by assessing a governmental report about education and a series of related press reports and chain emails, whose assumption that secondary school teachers are afraid of teaching controversial subjects (in particular the Holocaust) triggered an international scandal about Holocaust education in the UK in April 2007. The author argues that (...) three forms of respectful fear or deference are undermined in Holocaust teaching: epistemological (towards historical knowledge); political (towards curricula); and intergenerational (towards teachers). The article further demonstrates that the object of fear expressed by journalists and the public was not the Holocaust itself, but the reversal of deferential relations between teachers and pupils in the school classroom and the supposition that we may not learn from history. Whereas history education is held up by policy-makers as a safeguard of social stability and of the transmission of values, the application of “engagement teaching” to controversial subjects may in fact undermine the authority of historical education and the enlightenment principles on which it is founded. (shrink)

How should a post-formalist history of modern visual art be written? One unfamiliar but useful way to do that, Butterfield-Rosen argues, is by reference to evol.

T. J. Clark’s two early books, The Absolute Bourgeois: Artists and Politics in France, 1848–1851 and Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolutio.

Over the past decade, Canadian media coverage of street sex work has steadily increased. The majority of this interest pertains to graphic violence against street sex workers, most notably from Vancouver, British Columbia. In this article, the authors analyze newspaper coverage that appeared in western Canadian publications between 2006 and 2009. In theorizing the violence both depicted and perpetrated by newspapers, the authors propose an analytic framework capable of attending to the process of othering in all of its complexity. (...) To this end, the authors supplement a Foucauldian analysis of abjection by considering the work of Judith Butler along with Julia Kristeva's conceptualization of abjection. Using excerpts from western Canadian newspapers, the authors illustrate how the media's discursive practices function as triggers for the process of cultural abjection by inscribing street sex workers with images of defilement. The authors argue that newspaper coverage of street sex workers reinforces the inviolability of normalized life by constantly reiterating the horror reserved for abjected bodies. (shrink)

This work deals with the context of formation of Professor Dr. John Hadji Argyris in Germany during the 1930s and Switzerland during the 1940s. Using primary documentation, we elucidate publications with scientific theories of structural analysis made during his job as a member of a secret Commission in the Royal Aeronautical Society, in England. We explore the content of the serial publication of the Theorems of Energy and Structural Analysis of the Aircraft Engineering Journal, from 1954 and 1955, from (...) Argyris’s lectures at Imperial College, London, where he was a professor and director of the Department of Aeronautical Structures. The goal of this research is to analyze the systematic method of calculation of Argyris, starting from the theory of Computational Simulation. From this point of view, the conceptual mathematical model would be a computational model based on the unification of the concepts of Elasticity Theory and Energy Theorems formulated in matrix mathematics for communication with the computer. (shrink)

The real impetus for the research in underwater acoustics was the German U-boat menace of World War I. Traditional naval methods were of little use against the submarine, and thus British scientists concentrated on underwater detection. This led to the development of the hydrophone , which was extensively used during the war. As this instrument had many drawbacks, a small British team started to investigate an ‘active’ detection device in 1917. This was instigated by the work of the (...) French physicist Paul Langevin, supported by his government, and was based on the reflection of underwater acoustic waves off a submarine's hull. The Royal Navy called this highly secret device ‘asdic’ . It did not become operational during World War I, and the embryo naval scientific service founded during the last year of the war, continued its development during the interwar years. The Admiralty's optimism concerning the potential effectiveness of asdics influenced British naval policy during these years.In this paper, the scientific, political and organisational factors that influenced the development of naval underwater acoustics will be discussed. World War I was the first war in which civilian scientists played an important part. Their involvement in the war had a great impact on the attitude of the Royal Navy towards scientific research, and their work on underwater acoustics was partly responsible in establishing a proper naval scientific service. Scientific development was now organised in the Navy, with the consequence of accelerating the introduction of new devices into the fleet. (shrink)

The basic hypothesis of cybernetics is that the chief mechanism of the central nervous system is one of negative feed-back. The field of study is not, however, restricted to feed-backs of the negative kind. Secondly, cybernetics makes the hypothesis that the negative feed-back mechanism explains purposive and adaptive behaviour. Broadly speaking what the cybernetic model does for our outlook is to make us understand how purposive behaviour can be manifested by a machine, for purposive can now be defined in terms (...) of negative feed-back. An anti-aircraft gun is purposive in the sense that it is able by means of radar to follow its target.1 Predictive behaviour is also accounted for by the same mechanism, as illustrated by a gun firing not at a point where an aeroplane is but at a point where it will bejust as a cat chasing a mouse extrapolates the mouse's path. Support for this striking hypothesis, which is of fundamental importance, is to be found both in rather general resemblances between organisms and electronic machines and in resemblances of more special kinds. (shrink)

Eighteenth-century naval ships were impressive infrastructures, but subjected to extraordinary strain. To assist with their “voyage repairs,” the Royal Navy gradually established numerous overseas bases, displaying the power, reach, and ruthless logistical efficiency of the British state. This article, however, is concerned with what happened where no such bases (yet) existed, in parts of the world falling in between areas of direct British administration, control, or influence. The specific restrictions imposed by technology and infrastructures have been studied (...) by historians interested in naval strategy, but they can also help to reframe national narratives of power or observe the transnational interactions surrounding access to knowledge and resources. This paper discusses the material, cultural, and diplomatic constraints that could appear when vessels, and especially “discovery ships,” sailed in strange waters or sought technical assistance in allied ports. I argue that the “mortification” of some commanders at their vessels’ unfitness for service was an important – and often neglected – element on the palette of emotions undergone by voyagers, capturing their strong sense of ultimate material powerlessness. Such frustration even became embedded in imperial cartography, as shown by the case study of Matthew Flinders. This perspective highlights the limits of naval technology, complicating imperialistic “success stories” and better reintegrating the navy into the history of maritime travel and transportation, from which it is often singled out. (shrink)

Two aerodynamic concepts theorized in the early twentieth century – laminar-flow control and flying wings – offer the potential for more efficient aircraft. However, despite compelling advantages on paper and optimistic predictions, the fuel-saving benefits of these technologies have not yet been fully realized. This paper documents British work on these concepts, with a particular focus on laminar-flow control. Faced with an increasingly difficult funding context and a lack of a clear military rationale, these potentially significant advances in (...) aircraft efficiency were stymied by a catch-22: the government was only prepared to provide financial support for the development of an operational prototype if operational performance had already been demonstrated. This case also highlights the challenges faced in the commercial uptake of radical aviation technologies, even when they appear to offer greater efficiency and environmental benefits. (shrink)

In this provocative and timely book, David Kennedy explores what can go awry when we put our humanitarian yearnings into action on a global scale--and what we can do in response. Rooted in Kennedy's own experience in numerous humanitarian efforts, the book examines campaigns for human rights, refugee protection, economic development, and for humanitarian limits to the conduct of war. It takes us from the jails of Uruguay to the corridors of the United Nations, from the founding of a non-governmental (...) organization dedicated to the liberation of East Timor to work aboard an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. Kennedy shares the satisfactions of international humanitarian engagement--but also the disappointments of a faith betrayed. With humanitarianism's new power comes knowledge that even the most well-intentioned projects can create as many problems as they solve. Kennedy develops a checklist of the unforeseen consequences, blind spots, and biases of humanitarian work--from focusing too much on rules and too little on results to the ambiguities of waging war in the name of human rights. He explores the mix of altruism, self-doubt, self-congratulation, and simple disorientation that accompany efforts to bring humanitarian commitments to foreign settings. Writing for all those who wish that "globalization" could be more humane, Kennedy urges us to think and work more pragmatically. A work of unusual verve, honesty, and insight, this insider's account urges us to embrace the freedom and the responsibility that come with a deeper awareness of the dark sides of humanitarian governance. (shrink)

Gascoigne, Robert In October 1962, the world was at imminent risk of nuclear war. In response to the failed CIA backed 'Bay of Pigs' invasion, Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev had authorized the stationing of nuclear missiles in Cuba, only ninety miles from the coast of Florida. In response, President John F. Kennedy had ordered a blockade of Cuba, which the Soviet Union regarded as an act of war. In fact, the world came much closer to a nuclear exchange than has (...) long been realized. On October 27th 1962 the Soviet submarine B59 was tracked by a group of United States warships, made up of eleven destroyers and an aircraft carrier, which were using non-lethal practice depth-charges in an attempt to bring the submarine to the surface. The submarine had lost radio contact with Moscow, which-as we will see-had very shortly beforehand ordered the freighters carrying nuclear missiles to return home. Under the intense pressure of the situation, the captain of the submarine-who thought that war may already have broken out-was determined not to allow Russia to be humiliated by the capture of his submarine, and was prepared to fire a nuclear torpedo at the surrounding American warships. Three officers had to give permission for a nuclear missile to be launched-the captain himself, the political officer, and Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov, who, although second-in-command of submarine B59, was commander of the flotilla of submarines to which it belonged. Arkhipov overruled his brother officers and refused to authorize the launch of the torpedo. The world owes a great debt of gratitude to this Soviet sailor who may have prevented a nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and the United States. My father once told me how an American priest had recounted to him that, during the height of the Cuban missile crisis, the queues for confession at New York's St Patrick's cathedral stretched all the way down the nave and out onto Fifth Avenue. Given the penitential practices and beliefs of the time, and the actual state of events, there was indeed good reason for that! (shrink)

The introduction of the trireme into Greek navies was an event of great political importance, which may fairly be compared to the introduction of the ‘all-big-gun’ battleship into the British Navy in 1907. Heavier, more powerful, and capable of carrying more πιβται, but making greater demands on timber supplies and manpower, the trireme not only rendered obsolete all existing Greek line-of-battle ships but gave a decisive advantage to those States whose resources in materials and men enabled them to (...) create and maintain adequate fleets of the new type of warship.1 It is a mark of the insufficiency of our sources for early Greek history that we nowhere find an explicit statement of the date at which this revolution occurred, or of the identity of the person responsible. (shrink)

Why do aircraft fly? How do their wings support them? In the early years of aviation, there was an intense dispute between British and German experts over the question of why and how an aircraft wing provides lift. The British, under the leadership of the great Cambridge mathematical physicist Lord Rayleigh, produced highly elaborate investigations of the nature of discontinuous flow, while the Germans, following Ludwig Prandtl in Göttingen, relied on the tradition called “technical mechanics” to (...) explain the flow of air around a wing. Much of the basis of modern aerodynamics emerged from this remarkable episode, yet it has never been subject to a detailed historical and sociological analysis. In The Enigma of the Aerofoil, David Bloor probes a neglected aspect of this important period in the history of aviation. Bloor draws upon papers by the participants—their restricted technical reports, meeting minutes, and personal correspondence, much of which has never before been published—and reveals the impact that the divergent mathematical traditions of Cambridge and Göttingen had on this great debate. Bloor also addresses why the British, even after discovering the failings of their own theory, remained resistant to the German circulation theory for more than a decade. The result is essential reading for anyone studying the history, philosophy, or sociology of science or technology—and for all those intrigued by flight. (shrink)

This article delves into Captain Samuel Alfred Warner’s dogged campaign to sell two inventions – his submersible mine and “long range” missile – to the British government in the 1840s and 1850s. Departing from a historiography that dismisses Warner as a fraudster, it clarifies how he managed to generate widespread interest in his weapons technologies for nearly twenty years. I therefore analyze three key elements of his self-promotion: his personal branding, his pitch, and his simultaneous embrace and rejection of (...) publicity. Neither elite nor highly educated, Warner ran up against a culture of “polite science” that distinguished disinterested practitioners from profit-minded schemers. To establish his credentials, he emphasized his practical maritime experience and represented himself as a martyr willing to bear the scorn of a disbelieving establishment. In pitching his devices, Warner capitalized on alarmism over border security and the integrity of the empire; he declared that they could hobble France’s modernizing navy and quickly end colonial conflicts. When skeptics began to fret over the proliferation of his destructive weapons, Warner flipped the script and lauded the threat of mutual annihilation as a deterrent to needless warfare. The issue of publicity, however, would ultimately be Warner’s professional undoing. Despite successful demonstrations, his clashes with official investigators and his refusal to disclose his chemical secrets led critics to dispute the originality of his discoveries. An examination of Warner’s self-promotional strategies, his fraught interactions with the British state, and the ambivalent public reaction to his contraptions provides insight into how scientific authority was acquired and lost in this period. (shrink)

How do we measure happiness? Focusing on subjective measures as a proxy for welfare and well-being, this book finds ways to do that. Subjective measures have been used by psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, and, more recently, economists to answer a variety of scientifically and politically relevant questions. Van Praag, a pioneer in this field since 1971, and Ferrer-i-Carbonell present in this book a generally applicable methodology for the analysis of subjective satisfaction. Drawing on a range of surveys on people's satisfaction (...) with their jobs, income, housing, marriages, and government policy, among other areas of life, this book shows how satisfaction with life "as a whole" is an aggregate of these domain satisfactions. Using German, British, Dutch, and Russian data, the authors cover a wide range of topics, even some not usually considered part of economic study.The book makes a distinction between actual satisfaction levels and individual norms, and in this way complements Van Praag's earlier work within the Leyden School with his later work in "happiness research". Among the many topics covered, the authors discuss: individuals' memory and anticipation processes and the estimation of adaptation phenomena ; the effect of reference groups on income norms and satisfaction with income; the importance of climate for well-being, including the development of a climate-equivalence index; the trade-offs between chronic diseases and income when well-being is kept constant; the damage of aircraft noise on well-being; the construction of a new talent tax tariff; and inequality from a satisfaction perspective, including the definition of "satisfaction inequalities", a natural extension of income inequality and poverty.This groundbreaking book presents new and fruitful methodology that consitutes a welcome addition to the social sciences. (shrink)

RationaleThere are growing concerns over the occurrence of adverse physiologic events occurring in pilots during operation of United States Air Force and Navy high-performance aircraft. We hypothesize that a heightened inspiratory work of breathing experienced by jet pilots by virtue of the on-board life support system may constitute a “distraction stimulus” consequent to an increased sensation of respiratory muscle effort. As such, the purpose of this study was to determine whether increasing inspiratory muscle effort adversely impacts on attentional (...) performance.MethodsTwelve, healthy participants were recruited for this study. Participants completed six repetitions of a modified Masked Conjunctive Continuous Performance Task protocol while breathing against four different inspiratory threshold loads to assess median reaction times. A computer-controlled threshold loading device was used to set the inspiratory threshold loads. Repeated measures analysis of variances were performed to examine: the efficacy of the threshold loading device to impose significantly higher loading at each loading condition; the effects of loading condition on respiratory muscle effort sensation; and the influence of hypercapnia on MCCPT scores during inspiratory threshold loading. Generalized additive mixed effects models were used to examine the potential non-linear effects of respiratory muscular effort sensation, device loading, and hypercapnia, on MCCPT scores during inspiratory threshold loading.ResultsInspiratory threshold loading significantly augmented inspiratory effort sensation and the inspiratory pressure-time product. Our analyses also revealed that median hit RT was positively associated with inspiratory effort sensation during inspiratory loading trials.ConclusionThe findings of this work suggest that it was not increasing inspiratory muscle effort per se, but rather participant’s subjective perception of inspiratory “load” that impacts negatively on attentional performance; i.e., as the degree of inspiratory effort sensation increased, sotoo did median hit RT. As such, it is reasonable to suggest that minimizing inspiratory effort sensation during high-performance flight operations may prove useful in reducing pilot RTs during complex behavioral tasks. (shrink)

In the late 1930s networks of amateur observers across Britain were collecting data on birds , aircraft and society itself . This paper concentrates on birdwatching practice in the period 1930–1955. Through an examination of the construction of birdwatching's subjects, the Observers, and their objects, birds, it is argued that amateur strategies of scientific observation and record reflected, and were part-constitutive of, particular versions of ecological, national and social identity in this period. The paper examines how conflicts between a (...) rural, organicist Britishness and a modern, planner-preservationist Britishness were elaborated and contained within the figure of the birdwatcher and within the institutional epistemologies of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the British Trust for Ornithology. Such conflicts are shown to be embedded in the structuring of visual perception in different strategies of bird and aircraft identification, particularly between analytic and gestalt methods; the paper examines, using the related ‘field-science’ of aircraft recognition, the importance of identificatory processes in the construction of the Observer, and concludes by examining whether tensions between organicist and scientific discourses were in any sense resolved by the end of this period. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Benedict XVI, A Life: Volume 1, Youth in Nazi Germany to the Second Vatican Council 1927–1965 by Peter SeewaldEmil AntonBenedict XVI, A Life: Volume 1, Youth in Nazi Germany to the Second Vatican Council 1927–1965 by Peter Seewald, translated by Dinah Livingstone (London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2020), xi + 500 pp.What better way to spend Pope Benedict XVI's ninety-fourth birthday than by reviewing a Ratzinger biography while having Apfelstrudel (...) and some traditional Bavarian beer?German journalist and author Peter Seewald, who in his many interviews has asked Joseph Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI a total of two thousand or more questions (ix), has written a splendid biography that surprises even someone who has already read dozens of books by and about Benedict XVI. Written in an extremely enjoyable style and divided into chapters of just the perfect length, this page-turner deserves the highest praise. It will likely take its place alongside George Weigel's famous (and equally massive) biography of Pope John Paul II, Witness to Hope.The German biography has been divided into two volumes in English (vol. 2 was just published in November of 2021). Volume 1 deals with the years 1927–1965, dominated by two historic "Twos": World War II and Vatican II. Theologically, this is the period of the progressive Ratzinger (regardless of whether he "converted" to a more conservative stance later on), or as Seewald puts it, a man formed by "liberal Bavarian Catholicism" (124).Seewald provides lots of new and interesting information about Joseph Ratzinger, both bitter and sweet. One example from the early chapters concerns the origins of Ratzinger's mother. It turns out that she was an illegitimate child and not actually from South Tyrol, contrary to what her children had thought. A local historian has discovered that Ratzinger's mother Maria was actually born in Mühlbach "in the district of Rosenheim,... in a house that specialized in helping unmarried pregnant women to give birth" (15).For the romantic, the sweetest story of the book comes when Seewald [End Page 963] pushes the reserved Pope Emeritus to reveal more about the "painful decisions" that the young Munich seminarian had to make in relation to his vocation as a celibate priest. "'Were you in love with a girl?' 'Perhaps.' 'So, yes?' 'It could be interpreted like that.' 'How long did this passionate time last? A few weeks? A few months?' 'Longer'" (219). Ratzinger was in love! Or at least it could be interpreted like that! Other heart-warming details include the revelation that Ratzinger's childhood teddy from Marktl followed him all the way to the Apostolic Palace, as well as the fact that, when his blind brother Georg (now deceased) needed a housekeeper, Benedict XVI personally organized the job interview in the Vatican gardens.A darker episode, minimized in Ratzinger's autobiographical memoirs, concerns his role in the radar crew of the German anti-aircraft forces in World War II. The future Pope was entrusted with the task of targeting British bombers. Seewald fills in the narrative: "Ratzinger delivered readings for three guns,.... The more precisely Joseph measured, the higher the hit rate. As the war demanded" (101). Years later, Ratzinger confessed that these experiences still occasionally gave him sweaty nightmares.Seewald goes on to describe the exceptional postwar context in which Ratzinger prepared for the priesthood. The future priests knew that they would soon have to hear confessions of ex-Nazis who had shot people in the war (153). Indeed, after the war, many old Nazis turned to the Church and attempted to get de-Nazification certificates. Ratzinger's parish priest even joked that one day "they will say the only Nazis were the priests" (131).As did everyone, Ratzinger also felt the effects of poverty in postwar Germany. Whenever a festive dinner had to be given for a visitor at the seminary, "we went hungry on the most meagre rations for four long weeks in order to gather the ingredients" (189). After a short period of pastoral ministry subsequent to his ordination, the stellar theologian went back to the seminary as a teacher. Barely twenty-five-years-old, he was younger... (shrink)

In the 1830s and 1840s, the Hydrographic Office of the British Admiralty developed and oversaw one of the major state-run surveying projects of the nineteenth century. This involved a range of instruments whose circulation was increasingly regulated. Using extant museum collections and the correspondence of those involved, this article explores how such objects can be used to discuss both bureaucratic organization at a time of expanding government and the complex issues of sociability involved in hydrographic surveying. Surveying officers worked (...) in a context in which the propriety of property on public service was a pervasive question. Instruments might be given as gifts between officers, appropriated as recompense, absorbed as state property, and disputed between friends. The ownership, provision, and treatment of instruments in particular could be used to demonstrate an officer’s peculiar zeal or institutional neglect. To those outside the ship, what was understood as over-instrumentation became amusing spectacle. On board, their use was part of a deeply hierarchical order of work in regions of colonial and mercantile importance. In examining the relationships around these instruments of survey, the paper proposes a richer understanding of the material culture of hydrography in the early nineteenth century. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kingship and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Sri Lanka: Portuguese Imperialism in a Buddhist LandTerry C. MuckKingship and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Sri Lanka: Portuguese Imperialism in a Buddhist Land. By Alan Strathern. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 304 pp.Buddhist-Christian relationships in Southeast Asian countries have a history that goes back to colonizations of the Portuguese, Dutch, British, and French beginning in the sixteenth century. By studying the story (...) of those early occupations, one can predict with some accuracy the nature of the relationships between Buddhists and Christians today.In Kingship and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Sri Lanka, Alan Strathern, research fellow in history at Clare Hall, Cambridge, unearths a piece of the story that helps us understand the antipathy that exists today between Buddhists and Christians in Sri Lanka. As the title indicates, it is a book with a small thesis, limited geographical scope, and of short temporal duration. That is, it is a scholarly book that examines why a Christian monarchy was never established in sixteenth century coastal Sri Lanka during the one hundred years of colonial presence and rule of the maritime regions (ca. 1600–1658) by Roman Catholic Portugal.Strathern breaks new ground by delving into letters written by Portuguese churchmen, which have not previously been used in histories of this period. He ignores neither traditional Buddhist sources (the vaṃsa tradition in Sri Lanka) nor traditional Christian sources (principally Portuguese Jesuit Fernao de Queiros’s The Temporal and [End Page 221] Spiritual Conquest of Ceylon). And he is candid about his debt to the “presiding scholar” of the Portuguese period in Sri Lanka, C.R. de Silva, and also the “other expert in the field,” Jorge Manuel Flores. But the heretofore unused Portuguese letters provide the other side of the conversation that helps explain much.Strathern’s broader periodization begins with the Portuguese’s first incursions into Sri Lanka in 1505 and ends with the collapse of the Portuguese rule in the coastal regions to the Dutch in 1658. But his real focus is on the reign of the most important Sri Lankan monarch during this period, King Bhuvanekabāhu VII, who reigned from 1521 to 1551. It was King Bhuvanekabāhu’s policies regarding the Portuguese and particularly his welcoming of Christian missionaries that have created such controversy among historians of this period, both Sinhalese and Portuguese (and other Western historians). For some, Bhuvanekabāhu was weak and vacillating, for others strong and consistent. For some Bhuvanekabāhu was a captive, powerless vassal, for others a ruler of agency and foresight, making decisions that were the very best he could do given the overwhelming might of the Portuguese navy.Strathern’s conclusion, finely argued and carefully nuanced, is that Bhuvanekabāhu should be given more credit that he is usually given for wise kingship. But the pointed question that Strathern decides is key to the role Bhuvanekabāhu plays is his decision not to convert to Christianity, at an important period in Southeast Asian history when “conversion” to Christianity had become more than a religious decision—it had become a political and economic strategy of some weight, a decision that many other rulers of this period in south India and elsewhere were making as a matter of expedience. Why, asks Strathern, did Bhuvanekabāhu not make the same decision?The answer comes in three explorations that form the three parts of the book. The first is an exploration of the question of kingship in South and Southeast Asia during this period, specifically the role that kings conquered by colonial powers played. Strathern calls this the Temporal Question. The second is an exploration of what happened to these political dynamics when Christian missionaries are thrown in the mix. Strathern calls this the Spiritual Question. Third is an exploration of the overall effect on these two factors on the colonial powers, indigenous nationhoods, and the two religious institutions, Buddhism and Christianity.The TemporalThe sixteenth century in Sri Lanka was a time of unavoidable political alliances. The irresistible power of the colonizing power in Sri Lanka, beginning with Portuguese in 1505, meant that one could either fight to the death... (shrink)

Alan M. Turing, pioneer of computing and WWII codebreaker, is one of the most important and influential thinkers of the twentieth century. In this volume for the first time his key writings are made available to a broad, non-specialist readership. They make fascinating reading both in their own right and for their historic significance: contemporary computational theory, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and artificial life all spring from this ground-breaking work, which is also rich in philosophical and logical insight. An introduction (...) by leading Turing expert Jack Copeland provides the background and guides the reader through the selection. About Alan Turing Alan Turing FRS OBE, (1912-1954) studied mathematics at King's College, Cambridge. He was elected a Fellow of King's in March 1935, at the age of only 22. In the same year he invented the abstract computing machines - now known simply as Turing machines - on which all subsequent stored-program digital computers are modelled. During 1936-1938 Turing continued his studies, now at Princeton University. He completed a PhD in mathematical logic, analysing the notion of 'intuition' in mathematics and introducing the idea of oracular computation, now fundamental in mathematical recursion theory. An 'oracle' is an abstract device able to solve mathematical problems too difficult for the universal Turing machine. In the summer of 1938 Turing returned to his Fellowship at King's. When WWII started in 1939 he joined the wartime headquarters of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire. Building on earlier work by Polish cryptanalysts, Turing contributed crucially to the design of electro-mechanical machines ('bombes') used to decipher Enigma, the code by means of which the German armed forces sought to protect their radio communications. Turing's work on the version of Enigma used by the German navy was vital to the battle for supremacy in the North Atlantic. He also contributed to the attack on the cyphers known as 'Fish'. Based on binary teleprinter code, Fish was used during the latter part of the war in preference to morse-based Enigma for the encryption of high-level signals, for example messages from Hitler and other members of the German High Command. It is estimated that the work of GC&CS shortened the war in Europe by at least two years. Turing received the Order of the British Empire for the part he played. In 1945, the war over, Turing was recruited to the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in London, his brief to design and develop an electronic computer - a concrete form of the universal Turing machine. Turing's report setting out his design for the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) was the first relatively complete specification of an electronic stored-program general-purpose digital computer. Delays beyond Turing's control resulted in NPL's losing the race to build the world's first working electronic stored-program digital computer - an honour that went to the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory at Manchester University, in June 1948. Discouraged by the delays at NPL, Turing took up the Deputy Directorship of the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory in that year. Turing was a founding father of modern cognitive science and a leading early exponent of the hypothesis that the human brain is in large part a digital computing machine, theorising that the cortex at birth is an 'unorganised machine' which through 'training' becomes organised 'into a universal machine or something like it'. He also pioneered Artificial Intelligence. Turing spent the rest of his short career at Manchester University, being appointed to a specially created Readership in the Theory of Computing in May 1953. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in March 1951 (a high honour). (shrink)

Magnetic observations were essential for polar navigation, and were carried out systematically on both sea and land-based expeditions to the Canadian Arctic throughout the nineteenth century. John Franklin took a particular interest in magnetic studies and encouraged the Admiralty to adopt Robert Were Fox's dip circle. The establishment of the Toronto magnetic observatory provided a base for John Henry Lefroy's survey of the North West Territories. The Royal Navy's programme of magnetic research, commenced in the aftermath of the Napoleonic (...) Wars, was maintained until the British Arctic Expedition of 1875–76, commanded by Nares. In all these expeditions, the nature and limits of the observations were determined by the available instruments. (shrink)

In April, 2007, 15 Royal Navy sailors and marines were taken prisoner and held hostage for nearly two weeks by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Their crime? Allegedly crossing over into Iranian waters. Within 48 hours a British sailor was plastered all over Iranian TV publicly confessing that the Britons were entirely at fault in the matter. Another sailor wrote a letter—no doubt under some duress— calling for the UK to withdraw all of its troops from Iraq. Then to cap (...) things off, the British soldiers were paraded in front of the Iranian President, where they gave him a big “thumbs up” before being allowed to go home. If you were one of the captives, what would you have done? Would you have cooperated with your captors? Or would you have resisted them, possibly putting your own life at risk? Not surprisingly, the British people recoiled in shame. As one commentator put it, “The honorable thing would have been to renounce their coerced behavior, denounce the Iranians’ use of them for propaganda, and acknowledge that anything they endured was nothing.. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of the existence and transmission of Buddhism in British culture in the 1930s. It argues that Buddhism found channels of transmission through popular culture, such as James Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Horizon. Lost Horizon can be understood historically in relation to current Western ideas about Buddhism, and in response to the sense of historical crisis of Western modernity. This paper also shows that elements of a more genuine Buddhism are extracted from orientalist materials and (...) deployed by Hilton in ways that make the novel a carrier of quasi-Buddhist ideas. (shrink)

In 2006, David Carrier (Carrier, 2006, Museum Skepticism: A History of the Display of Art in Public Galleries. Durham: Duke University Press.) coined the term ‘museum skepticism’ to describe the idea that moving artworks into museum settings strips them of essential facets of their meaning; among art historians, this is better known as ‘decontextualization’, ‘denaturing’, or ‘museumization’. Although they do not usually name it directly, many contemporary debates in the philosophy of art are informed by an inclination towards museum skepticism, (...) from work on aesthetic cognitivism (Feagin, Susan, 1995, “Paintings and their places” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 73.2: 260-8.) and contextualism (Danto, Arthur C., 1988, “Artifact and Art”, in ART/ARTIFACT: African Art in Anthropological Collections. Exhibition Catalogue. New York: Center for African Art and Prestel Verlag, 18-32.) to cultural appropriation (Eaton, A. W. and Gaskell, Ivan, 2009, “Do subaltern artifacts belong in art museums?,” The Ethics of Cultural Appropriation, ed. James O. Young and Conrad Brunk, Oxford and Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 235-67), street art (Baldini, Andrea, 2016, “Street Art: A Reply to Riggle” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 74.2: 187-91), and the value of authenticity (Korsmeyer, Carolyn, 2016, “Real Old Things” British Journal of Aesthetics, 56.3: 219-31). The very first museum skeptic, however, was Antoine Chrysostôme Quatremère de Quincy (1755-1849). (shrink)

Liberalism is often criticized for its emphasis on order and system. The liberal phraseology is hallmarked by such concepts as individual rights and impartial justice. Relying on law and reason and using tight legal definitions, the polity advocated by liberals views itself as applying equally to all citizens within it. Though ostensibly concerned with protecting liberties, the mechanisms liberalism deploys to carry out this task betray an oppressive streak. Individuals are addressed as modular and homogenous legal personalities that carry identical (...) packages of rights. Personal identities are hence prescribed by a system that recognizes no difference. The law book encompasses all and is impartial to all, admitting no incongruity and no irony. It is blind to insights that are local and particular, intuitive, or non-verbal. It therefore suppresses agents that are seen as the carriers of such insights and significantly limits the depth of the liberty it offers. Liberalism, however, is not a monolithic abstraction. Several historical liberalisms are known, each spelling out its particular variation on the shared terminology. Problems raised by the notions of universal applicability and comprehensive knowledge are addressed differently by different liberals. This essay examines the effort made by one school of liberal thinkers to relate to questions of incongruity and difference. It focuses on the early-twentieth century British new liberal group. The essay begins by outlining some of the critiques that concern liberalism's systematizing attribute. This is followed by an attempt to show where new liberalism matches the critical description of liberalism as preoccupied with system. The text then goes on to examine the new liberals' attitudes to notions of disorder, and points out that these Edwardian theorists were aware of the problems implicit in integrating knowledge and society. The text ends with a look at the possible significance of the concepts of excess over system as developed by new liberalism. (shrink)

Feminist Auto/biography as a Means of Empowering Women: A Case Study of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Janet Frame's Faces in the Water Feminism, as a political, social and cultural movement, pays much attention to the importance of text. Text is the carrier of important thoughts, truths, ideas. It becomes a means of empowering women, a support in their fight for free expression, equality, intellectual emancipation. By "text" one should understand not only official documents, manifestos or articles. The term (...) also refers to a wide range of literary products—poetry, novels, diaries. The language of literature enables female authors to omit obstacles and constraints imposed by the phallogocentric world, a world dominated by masculine propaganda. Through writing, female authors have an opportunity to liberate their creative potential and regain the territory for unlimited expression. In order to produce a truly powerful text, they resort to a variety of writing styles and techniques. Here the notions of a situated knowledge and context sensitivity prove useful. There are three methodologies working within situated knowledge, namely, the politics of location, self-reflexivity and feminist auto/biography. All of them regard text as a fundamental tool to signify one's authority, yet feminist auto/biography, a concept widely discussed by the British theorist Liz Stanley, appears to be the most empowering mode of writing. It challenges the overused genre of auto/biography and reconstructs its role within feminist epistemologies, thus creating a favourable environment for text production. The works by Sylvia Plath and Janet Frame can be analyzed from the point of view of auto/biographical empowerment, even though their auto/biographical potential is mainly instinctive. Nevertheless, they help to comprehend the strength of the auto/biographical.The aim of this article is to "investigate" two novels by these authors, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and Faces in the Water by Janet Frame, and their compatibility with Stanley's concept. The paper attempts to answer several questions. Are these novels actual feminist auto/biographies or rather fictional auto/biographies with feminist undertones? What kind of narrative strategy is used to achieve the effect of authority over the text? Last but not least, what is the function of auto/biographical narration in the case of these two novels? The article also explores the idea of writing as a means of regaining control over one's life. (shrink)

The fundamental question whether, or in which sense, science informs us about the real world has pervaded the history of thought since antiquity. Is what science tells us about the world determined unambiguously by facts or does the content of any scientific theory in some way depend on the human condition? "Sokal`s hoax" added a new dimension to this controversial debate, which very quickly came to been known as "Science Wars". "Knowledge and the World" examines and reviews the broad range (...) of philosophical positions on this issue, stretching from realism to relativism, to expound the epistemic merits of science, and to address the central question: in which sense can science justifiably claim to provide a truthful portrait of reality? This book addresses everyone interested in the philosophy and history of science, and in particular in the interplay between the social and natural sciences. (shrink)

Study on the commentary of neo-Nyaya school in Indic philosophy; portion of Tattvacintāmaṇi dealing with the definition of fallacious middle term (hetvābhāsa) and Siddhāntakaumudī by Bhaṭṭojī Dīkṣita, classical commentary on Aṣṭādhyāyī, basic work of Sanskrit grammar by Pāṇinī.