Originally published in 1954, this volume describes and analyses the course of short-period fluctuations in the British economy between 1833 and 1842. Through concentrating on a relatively short space of time, the text is able to provide a rigorous examination of the evidence and also avoids the over-simplification inherent in comparing the history of fluctuations in different periods. A variety of sources are put under scrutiny, both 'literary' and statistical, reflecting a relative lack of surviving economic material from the (...) period. This, in turn, reflects a generally broad approach which is described by the author as 'quantitative-historical'. Concise and highly informative, this book will remain of value to anyone with an interest in nineteenth century and economic history. (shrink)

This article examines what light new developments in the history of books and reading can shed on the sixteenth-century antiquarian William Lambarde and his assessments of the credibility and historicity of the ancient past. It explores what the retracing of a book’s life cycle—i.e., its travels from composition and revision to reception, via both manuscript and print—can teach us about Lambarde’s magnum opus, his Perambulation of Kent. Specifically, it surveys how both Lambarde and his contemporaries approached one of the (...) most hotly contested questions in early modern scholarship: debates over the ostensible Trojan origins of the British. The article begins by examining links between the history of reading and the history of antiquarianism—two fields which have enjoyed a considerable efflorescence in recent decades. It does so via re-examination of Arnaldo Momigliano’s classic essay ‘Ancient History and the Antiquarian’, published nearly seventy years ago in this Journal. It then examines how not only Lambarde himself, but also various other contemporary or near-contemporary scholars and readers approached the historicity of Britain’s ancient past, whether Trojan or otherwise. The following section explores the ways in which scholars and readers, including Lambarde, construed the fides or credibility of claims concerning such pasts, by dissecting their various strategies for assessing and visualising textual authority and authorial probity, ranging from the production of marginalia to index-making. This section includes an extended case study of the way in which one assiduous reader of Lambarde—Adam Winthrop, father of the future Massachusetts governor John Winthrop—applied these strategies in his copiously annotated copy of the Perambulation. The article closes with broader reflections upon new directions in the history of historical scholarship and the history of reading. (shrink)

We invite systematic consideration of the metaphors of cycles and circulation as a long-term theme in the history of the life and environmental sciences and medicine. Ubiquitous in ancient religious and philosophical traditions, especially in representing the seasons and the motions of celestial bodies, circles once symbolized perfection. Over the centuries cyclic images in western medicine, natural philosophy, natural history and eventually biology gained independence from cosmology and theology and came to depend less on strictly circular forms. (...) As potent ‘canonical icons’, cycles also interacted with representations of linear and irreversible change, including arrows, arcs, scales, series and trees, as in theories of the Earth and of evolution. In modern times life cycles and reproductive cycles have often been held to characterize life, in some cases especially female life, while human efforts selectively to foster and disrupt these cycles have harnessed their productivity in medicine and agriculture. But strong cyclic metaphors have continued to link physiology and climatology, medicine and economics, and biology and manufacturing, notably through the relations between land, food and population. From the grand nineteenth-century transformations of matter to systems ecology, the circulation of molecules through organic and inorganic compartments has posed the problem of maintaining identity in the face of flux and highlights the seductive ability of cyclic schemes to imply closure where no original state was in fact restored. More concerted attention to cycles and circulation will enrich analyses of the power of metaphors to naturalize understandings of life and their shaping by practical interests and political imaginations. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of the cyclical nature of socio-historical development. Cyclicity is positioned as a universal feature of social development, making it possible to use the “lessons of history” in forecasting the future. Particular attention is paid to analyzing the causes of chronic disruptions in Russia’s modernization. The specificity of the Russian history cyclical nature is seen in the action of the institutional matrix, which unites authoritarianism and the suppression of private property into a monolithic (...) whole. (shrink)

The present yearbook (which is the fourth in the series) is subtitled Trends & Cycles. It is devoted to cyclical and trend dynamics in society and nature; special attention is paid to economic and demographic aspects, in particular to the mathematical modeling of the Malthusian and post-Malthusian traps' dynamics. An increasingly important role is played by new directions in historical research that study long-term dynamic processes and quantitative changes. This kind of history can hardly develop without the application (...) of mathematical methods. There is a tendency to study history as a system of various processes, within which one can detect waves and cycles of different lengths – from a few years to several centuries, or even millennia. The contributions to this yearbook present a qualitative and quantitative analysis of global historical, political, economic and demographic processes, as well as their mathematical models. This issue of the yearbook consists of three main sections: (I) Long-Term Trends in Nature and Society; (II) Cyclical Processes in Pre-industrial Societies; (III) Contemporary History and Processes. We hope that this issue of the yearbook will be interesting and useful both for historians and mathematicians, as well as for all those dealing with various social and natural sciences. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary research is frequently viewed as an important component of the research landscape through its innovative ability to integrate knowledge from different areas. However, support for interdisciplinary research is often strategic rhetoric, with policy-makers and universities frequently adopting practices that favour disciplinary performance. We argue that disciplinary and interdisciplinary research are complementary, and we develop a simple framework that demonstrates this for a semi-permanent interdisciplinary research field. We argue that the presence of communicating infrastructures fosters communication and integration between disciplines (...) and the interdisciplinary research field to generate innovative knowledge. We apply this to the experience of economic history in Australia in the second half of the twentieth century to demonstrate the life cycle of a semi-permanent interdisciplinary research field. (shrink)

In this rich cultural history, Pamela Robertson Wojcik examines America's ambivalent and shifting attitude toward homelessness through a close study of film cycles from five distinct historical moments that show characters as unhomed and placeless, mobile rather than fixed: failing, resisting, or opting out of the mandate for a home of one's own. From the tramp films of the Silent Era to the Oscar-winning Nomadland in 2021, Wojcik shows how film cycles reveal a tension in the American (...) imaginary between viewing homelessness as, on the one hand, deviant or threatening, and, on the other, emblematic of freedom and independence. Blending social history with insights drawn from a complex array of films, both canonical and fringe, Wojcik effectively 'unhomes' dominant narratives that cast aspirations for success and social mobility as the focus of American cinema, reminding us that genres of precarity have been central to the American cinema (and American story) all along. (shrink)

The present Yearbook (which is the fourth in the series) is subtitled Trends & Cycles. Already ancient historians (see, e.g., the second Chapter of Book VI of Polybius' Histories) described rather well the cyclical component of historical dynamics, whereas new interesting analyses of such dynamics also appeared in the Medieval and Early Modern periods (see, e.g., Ibn Khaldūn 1958 [1377], or Machiavelli 1996 [1531] 1). This is not surprising as the cyclical dynamics was dominant in the agrarian social systems. (...) With modernization, the trend dynamics became much more pronounced and these are trends to which the students of modern societies pay more attention. Note that the term trend – as regards its contents and application – is tightly connected with a formal mathematical analysis. Trends may be described by various equations – linear, exponential, power-law, etc. On the other hand, the cliodynamic research has demonstrated that the cyclical historical dynamics can be also modeled mathematically in a rather effective way (see, e.g., Usher 1989; Chu and Lee 1994; Turchin 2003, 2005a, 2005b; Turchin and Korotayev 2006; Turchin and Nefedov 2009; Nefedov 2004; Korotayev and Komarova 2004; Korotayev, Malkov, and Khaltourina 2006; Korotayev and Khaltourina 2006; Korotayev 2007; Grinin 2007), whereas the trend and cycle components of historical dynamics turn out to be of equal importance. (shrink)

What everything is about -- Why understanding cycles matters and how to recognize a cycle when you're in one -- A new science in the making -- How cycles study became a science that can explain the universe or predict your future -- Follow the money -- Cycles students got profitable early warnings of the 2008/9 financial crisis, did you? -- Nature on the move -- Will it rain on your parade? Will a rising tide flood your (...) basement? : try asking cycles -- Heeding nature's clock -- Do you doze after lunch? : it isn't food, are you bright at dawn? : it's not sun, it's cycles -- Making the most of moods -- For the curse in woman or just the blues in anyone, cycles can be a saving grace -- Cycles as history -- How did China get so rich? Why the war in Afghanistan? -- It could be star-born cycles -- Looking to the heavens -- Is the universe a giant musical instrument? : scientists and poets can hear it singing -- Thinking out of the box -- Independent thinkers are allied with cycles students in learning from nature's rich text. (shrink)

Giant bones unearthed throughout the Mesoamerican countryside provoked early modern thinkers to grapple with the earth’s ages, partially syncretizing Nahua histories of human conquest with Spanish colonial medicinal and natural historical knowledge. European naturalists’ willingness to accept the giant remains required them to embrace localized Mesoamerican cosmologies. The fossilized landscape provided evidence that conquest and eradication had happened before at the hands of the peoples whom the Spaniards had conquered in turn. Lost from early modern collections and failing to translate (...) far beyond New Spain during the sixteenth century, the giant remains highlight the possibilities and challenges of integrating Mesoamerican knowledge into the global history of science, with an emphasis on emplaced thinking, medicine and the body, and deeper temporal frameworks. Moving beyond itinerary histories to globalizing cosmologies in the history of science can better explain the compromises Europeans and Mesoamericans were required to make to enter into a syncretic intellectual contract, as well as the non-European concept of time that came with local reckonings with the human and more-than-human natural world. (shrink)

Hitherto reconstructions of Empedocles' cosmic cycle have usually been offered as part of a larger work, a complete history of Presocratic thought, or a complete study of Empedocles. Consequently there has perhaps been a lack of thoroughness in collecting and sifting evidence that relates exclusively to the main features of the cosmic cycle.

The author examines the pedagogical interpretation and contribution of the Dictionary of Technology and critical revolutionary pedagogy of Paulo Freire and his followers, Henry Giroux and Peter McLaren. A comparative ref lection on the Dictionary of Technology and Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire most renowned book, is possible due to the clear effort of both works directed against the dehumanization and conversion of the pedagogical process into technology. Freire educational process sees as a simulacrum of the banking system while (...) the Dictionary of Technology very closely, but more generally sees it as the predominance of illusion, no matter who is oppressed by whom. The illusion would exist even in a world without a relationship of dominance, because the dismissal of oppression will not liberate us from the history. (shrink)

In _Theory of Religious Cycles: Tradition, Modernity and the Bahá’í Faith_ Mikhail Sergeev offers a new interpretation of the Soviet period of Russian history by developing a theory of religious cycles, which he applies to modernity and all major world religions.

Historians of science have attributed the emergence of ecology as a discipline in the late nineteenth century to the synthesis of Humboldtian botanical geography and Darwinian evolution. In this essay, I begin to explore another, largely neglected but very important dimension of this history. Using Sergei Vinogradskii’s career and scientific research trajectory as a point of entry, I illustrate the manner in which microbiologists, chemists, botanists, and plant physiologists inscribed the concept of a “cycle of life” into their investigations. (...) Their research transformed a longstanding notion into the fundamental approaches and concepts that underlay the new ecological disciplines that emerged in the 1920s. Pasteur thus joins Humboldt as a foundational figure in ecological thinking, and the broader picture that emerges of the history of ecology explains some otherwise puzzling features of that discipline – such as its fusion of experimental and natural historical methodologies. Vinogradskii’s personal “cycle of life” is also interesting as an example of the interplay between Russian and Western European scientific networks and intellectual traditions. Trained in Russia to investigate nature as a super-organism comprised of circulating energy, matter, and life; over the course of five decades – in contact with scientists and scientific discourses in France, Germany, and Switzerland – he developed a series of research methods that translated the concept of a “cycle of life” into an ecologically conceived soil science and microbiology in the 1920s and 1930s. These methods, bolstered by his authority as a founding father of microbiology, captured the attention of an international network of scientists. Vinogradskii’s conceptualization of the “cycle of life” as chemosynthesis, autotrophy, and global nutrient cycles attracted the attention of ecosystem ecologists; and his methods appealed to practitioners at agricultural experiment stations and microbiological institutes in the United States, Western Europe, and the Soviet Union. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Cycle of Violence and Feminist Constructions of Selfhood Jennifer L. Rike University ofDetroit Mercy Violence is the heart and secret soul ofthe sacred" (Girard 1977, 31). René Girard reaches this shocking conclusion by tracing the dynamics ofthe generation ofviolence in history, and the ingenious ways in which humanity has learned to funnel violence into ritual sacrifice to avoid apocalypse. His argument pivots upon his understanding ofhumanity as (...) inherently flawed, as fated to conflict in the struggle to survive. Ifthe sacred mechanism of ritual sacrifice is not deployed, violence takes on a power and personality all its own: "If left unappeased, violence will accumulate until it overflows its confines and floods the surrounding area. The role ofsacrifice is to stem this rising tide... and redirect violence into 'proper' channels" (10). Girard's theory about the violent origins ofthe sacred institutions of ritual sacrifice, law, and myth highlights perhaps the chief paradox of religion: it has been used to promote as much as to oppose violence. Today, as feminists explore how women in particular have been the objects ofsuch violence, they too have turned to Girard to understand this paradox, and yet most have ended up criticizing Girard for falsely universalizing typically Eurocentric and androcentric conceptions of humanity, violence, and religion (Shea, Kirk-Duggan, Nowak 24-6).' While they may be right on certain points, it is also possible that the rush offeminist scholars to charge 1 Nancy Jay has also criticized Girard for androcentrism, in particular because "he still grounds all community and culture on male control of male violence" (130). 22Jennifer L. Rike Girard with androcentrism reflects their own refusals to confront how the dark face of violence appears in women as well as in men. Rather than evaluating specific feminist criticisms ofGirard in this regard, I propose a more global approach—to delineate in greater detail how feminist constructions of selfhood need to be informed by Girard's theory of the violent origins ofthe sacred in order for feminism to achieve its own goals. In Girard's view, the ritual ofsacrifice and the law are generated out ofthe socio-psychological mechanisms ofacquisitive mimesis and scapegoating as the sacred's way of controlling violence. In ways he leaves largely implicit, these mechanisms reflect the devastating cyclical effects of violence upon its victims. Girard stops short of reflecting on the roles gender plays in the cyclical processes of violence, and yet, as my subsequent analyses shall demonstrate, there can be little doubt that women participate in these processes in ways both like and unlike men. Women have been scapegoated throughout history, but not all women end up as victims ofviolence and the rituals constructed to appease it. Nor do many women remain simply victims of the tides of violence: many repeat the cycle of victimization and themselves become perpetrators. Moreover, some escape the cycle ofviolence by a variety ofmeans whose patterns are well worth scrutinizing. My point is that women's modes of participation in the processes through which violence makes and remakes itself are far more complex than has been recognized, and merit our full attention. From the perspective of feminist constructions of selfhood, the question then becomes, how does gender affect one's experience of acquisitive mimesis and scapegoating, victimage and perpetration? To claim that only women are victims and only men—and the women they have co-opted—are perpetrators may be politically correct, but that claim ignores some hard but ultimately helpful truths about what women must do to bring about the changes necessary for revolutionizing our society by transforming its violent ways into peaceful ones. My plan, then, is to suggest how Girard might be used to advance the theory and praxis of feminism further by delving into the psychological mechanisms underlying acquisitive mimesis and scapegoating. I shall argue that using object relations theory to understand the ways in which violence splits the human psyche complements Girard's conception of acquisitive mimesis and scapegoating to disclose the complete dynamics ofthe cycle ofviolence. Such understanding is essential to feminist reconstructions of selfhood, because it makes the defeat of sexism and violence possible by exposing them at their roots. Feminist Constructions ofSelfhood23 My project has four steps... (shrink)

Forty years of avid bicycling came to a conclusion for D. Stephen Long in early October, 2020. Fearing his own imminent death required Long to reflect on life, on its beginnings, middle, and endings. This work uses the lessons learned from cycling, and the experience of the rapid onset of illness, to discuss God, friendship, racism, sexuality, justice, virtues, vices, and much more. It offers a moral theology but one more in keeping with how we take it up--not through theories (...) but in the practices that make up everyday life. Attention to everyday life can help us live well and in so doing prepare us to die well. " -- Publisher description. (shrink)

This paper examines Lesia Ukrainka’s two lyrical cycles about Crimea, Krymski spohady and Krymski vidhuky, as examples of a poetic dialogue with Adam Mickiewicz’s Sonety krymskie. I begin my analysis by highlighting the diff erent sensibilities of Mickiewicz’s Sonety krymskie and Lesia Ukrainka’s Krymski spohady, and underscore their formal and thematic peculiarities. The paper continues with an examination of Lesia Ukrainka’s second cycle, Krymski vidhuky, as an experiment in drama – a genre that is absent from her fi rst (...) cycle – before situating a dramatic scene, “Ifi heniia v Tavridi,” this cycle’s only text about Crimea’s Hellenic history, within the cultural contexts of Lesia Ukrainka’s oeuvre. In doing so, I argue that Iphigenia’s lament echoes the voice of an exiled poet from Mickiewicz’s sonnets and conclude my analysis by probing reasons behind Lesia Ukrainka’s choice of a Greek heroine. (shrink)

This article focuses on how early modern astronomers and historians conceptualised the course of the history of astronomy. The aim is to describe the transition from the idea of closed historical cycles to the theory of infinite progress in astronomy. The cyclical Renaissance concept of the history of astronomy is addressed, highlighting in particular the emphasis placed by Protestant astronomers on the reliance of the history of astronomy on God. This is followed by a discussion of (...) the theory of the origin of astronomy as proposed by 17th century astronomers; and then a clarification of the unusual combination of the cyclical and linear approaches, which emerged in the historiography of astronomy in the 17th century. The article concludes with a brief outline of the transition to the concept of infinite progress that occurred at the end of the 18th century. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Doping im Radsport wird in der Regel als eine Geschichte des moralischen Verfalls gesehen. Zu diesem Bild tragen wesentlich die Medien bei. Ein zivilisationstheoretischer Blick auf die Geschichte des Radsports zeigt dagegen ein anderes Bild: Die öffentliche Sensibilität gegenüber Dopingverstößen im Radsport hat erheblich zugenommen; ebenso die moralische Bewertung der Einnahme von Medikamenten zum Zweck der Leistungssteigerung. Diese These wird auf der Grundlage einer Analyse der Entwicklung der Dopingbestimmungen im Radsport zu belegen versucht. Sie ist zugleich Ausdruck des wachsenden (...) Einflusses internationaler Sportorganisationen, in diesem Fall der UCI. Er wird allerdings durch die jüngsten spektakulären Dopingfälle durch staatliche Eingriffe wieder begrenzt. (shrink)

This 1988 book presents a historical investigation of the theoretical development of contemporary Equilibrium Business Cycle Theory. The author examines the central features of the EBCT by tracing both the history of business cycle theory and the history of econometrics. These historical analyses make clear two central principles of the EBCT: its optimization foundation and its economic strategy. Following along these lines, the author argues that the EBCT succeeds the tradition of the Austrian cycle theory that attempted to (...) incorporate the cycle with classical equilibrium doctrine. He further argues that the EBCT's econometric strategy is only a child of the Cowles commission method. Investigating interwar macroeconomics in very readable style, this book brings the period back into the heart of macroeconomic thinking. (shrink)

Examining the period from the rise of the asylum in the nineteenth century through the current debates about the failures of deinstituionalization, this paper provides a critical perspective on the history of Anglo-American responses to chronic mental disability. It concludes with a pessimistic assessment of the prospects for the future evolution of public policy in this area.

The article presents a verbal and mathematical model of medium-term business cycles (with a characteristic period of 7–11 years) known as Juglar cycles. The model takes into account a number of approaches to the analysis of such cycles; in the meantime it also takes into account some of the authors' own generalizations and additions that are important for understanding the internal logic of the cycle, its variability and its peculiarities in the present-time conditions. The authors argue that (...) the most important cause of cyclical crises stems from strong structural disproportions that develop during economic booms. These are not only disproportions between different economic sectors, but also disproportions between different societal subsystems; at present these are also disproportions within the World System as a whole. The proposed model of business cycle is based on its subdivision into four phases: – recovery phase (which could be subdivided into the start sub-phase and the acceleration sub-phase); – upswing/prosperity/expansion phase (which could be subdivided into the growth sub-phase and the boom/overheating sub-phase); – recession phase (within which one may single out the crash/bust/acute crisis subphase and the downswing sub-phase); – depression/stagnation phase (which we could subdivide into the stabilization subphase and the breakthrough sub-phase). The article provides a detailed qualitative description of macroeconomic dynamics at all the phases; it specifies driving forces of cyclical dynamics and the causes of transition from one phase to another (including psychological causes); a special attention is paid to the turning point from the peak of overheating to the acute crisis, as well as to the turning point from the downswing to recovery. The proposed mathematical model of Juglar cycle takes into account the following effects that are typical for the market economy: • positive feedbacks between various economic processes; • presence of a certain inertia, time lags in reactions of the economic subsystem to the change in conditions; • amplification by the financial subsystem of positive feedbacks and time lags in the economic subsystem; • excessive reaction to changing conditions during the acute crisis sub-phase. The authors suggest that the current crisis turns out to be rather similar to classical Juglar crises; however, there is also a significant difference, as the current crisis occurs at a truly global scale. Yet, due to this truly global scale of the current crisis, the possibilities of regulation with the national state's measures have turned out to be ineffective,whereas the suprastate regulation of financial processes hardly exists. It is shown that all these have led to the reproduction of the current crisis according to a classical Juglar scenario. (shrink)

During the already long history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, women from both sides of the Green Line have been highly visible participants in the often perilous enterprise of establishing dialogue, of maintaining links with the other side, and of thinking seriously about the conditions that will need to be brought together for the construction of a just and lasting peace. By their words, their often symbolic actions, and their activist strategies, they have durably contributed to the building of a (...) ‘clandestine’ peace often far removed from the calendars and issues of the major international negotiations. In these collective actions, choosing the path of non-violence has often been at the heart of their repertoire of militant activities and their discourses. This article proposes to examine certain examples of such activities and involvement since the first Intifada of 1987 up until the very recent past, showing that the choice of non-violent strategies has been a significantly marked tendency of the activism of women, and that this is always associated with the formulation of renewed forms of discourse around peace and reconciliation. (shrink)

Most models of generational succession in sexually reproducing populations necessarily move back and forth between genic and genotypic spaces. We show that transitions between and within these spaces are usually hidden by unstated assumptions about processes in these spaces. We also examine a widely endorsed claim regarding the mathematical equivalence of kin-, group-, individual-, and allelic-selection models made by Lee Dugatkin and Kern Reeve. We show that the claimed mathematical equivalence of the models does not hold. *Received January 2007; revised (...) April 2008. †To contact the authors, please write to: Elisabeth Lloyd, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, 130 Goodbody Hall, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405; e-mail: [email protected]; Richard Lewontin, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138; Marcus Feldman, Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Some important correlations between medium-term economic cycles (7–11 years) known as Juglar cycles and long (40–60 years) Kondratieff cycles are presented in this paper. The research into the history of this issue shows that this aspect is insufficiently studied. Meanwhile, in our opinion, it can significantly clarify both the reasons of alternation of upswing and downswing phases in K-waves and the reasons of relative stability of the length of these waves. It also can provide the certain (...) means for forecasting. The authors show that adjacent 2–4 medium cycles form the system the important characteristic of which is the dynamics of economic trend. The latter can be upswing (active) or downswing (depressive). The mechanisms of formation of such medium-term trends and changing tendencies are explained. The presence of such clusters of medium cycles (general duration of which is 20–30 years) determines to a large degree the long-wave dynamics and the characteristics of its timing. Thus, not medium-term J-cycles depend on the character of K-wave phase as Kondratieff supposed, but the character of the cluster of J-cycles determines significantly the character of K-wave phases. (shrink)

It is a commonplace in the history of science that reputations of scientists play important roles in the stories of scientific knowledge. I argue that to fully understand these roles we should see reputations as produced by communicative acts, consider how reputations become known about, and study the factors influencing such processes. I reapply James Secord's ‘knowledge-in-transit’ approach; in addition to scientific knowledge, I also examine how ‘biographical knowledge’ of individuals is constructed through communications and shaped by communicative contexts. (...) My case study is Carl Sagan, widely discussed – amongst scientists, media professionals and publics – for his skill as a charismatic popularizer, his perceived arrogance, his political activism, and his debated merit as a researcher. By examining how aspects of Sagan's reputation circulated alongside his scientific work – rather than existing as a static context for his scientific work – I show how different forms of knowledge (biographical and scientific) influence each other as they circulate. (shrink)

Complex life cycles are common in the eukaryotic world, and they complicate the question of how to define individuality. Using a bottom-up, gene-centric approach, I consider the concept of fitness in the context of complex life cycles. I analyze the fitness effects of an allele on different biological units within a complex life history and how these effects drive evolutionary change within populations. Based on these effects, I attempt to construct a concept of fitness that accurately predicts (...) evolutionary change in the context of complex life cycles. (shrink)

History was a continuous cycle driven by the gods. Societies began by being small, impoverished, and insignificant, then became great, then proud and decadent, and finally were overthrown by a different small, impoverished people, with the cycle beginning anew. Herbert's historical universe in Dune is bound within a series of ever repeating cycle. Herbert's themes about human action, fatalism versus free will, and the repetition of religious motifs across vast distances of space and time. Greek mythology and tragedy appear (...) on the very first page of Dune with the use of a single word: Atreides. Much like in the Dune series, History emerged in the ancient Greek world by combining mythology, epic narrative, and tragedy. The Golden Path is the death of the constant cycles of imperialism and the freeing of humanity from constantly repeating old mistakes. (shrink)

The pervasiveness of domestic employment in the South African context gives rise to the question as to why women not only enter into, but remain in, such an undervalued work situation, and whether they are ultimately able to exit this sector. Contextualising the sectoral engagement of domestic workers as a transitional work-life cycle characterised by impoverishment, limited alternatives, acceptance of the work context, and future directedness, with individual transition through these phases determined by a unique set of circumstances, female domestic (...) workers’ lived experience of their work-life cycle was explored within the framework of an interpretivist research design. Non-probability respondent-driven self-sampling was employed to select 20 participants, most of whom were representative of families with a long history of sectoral involvement, particularly along the female line. Dense, non-numerical data was generated through in-depth interviewing. Inductive data explication was conducted with the aid of MAXQDA. The findings confirmed the existence of an institutionalised culture of engagement within the sector perpetuated from one generation to the next. Hardship and an urgent need for survival leave many with little option but to enter and remain within the sector. Despite negative societal perceptions of the sector, those within it take pride in their work and view their engagement as an enabling tool to better their future prospects and those of their families. Attempts to exit the sector are unsuccessful due, in part, to a limited formal education and skills repertoire. Domestic workers are thus entrapped within a never-ending cycle of sectoral engagement, with the possibility of exiting the sector remaining merely a dream for many. (shrink)

This essay is a reading of Aristotle’s account in Meteorology I.14 of changes in local environmental conditions and its significance for Aristotle’s understanding of nature and change more generally. That account shows how local environments are complex bodies, and so change through habituation: the sedimentation of patterns of activity through repeated activity/change. In turn, this shows how the regularity of what is by nature is a matter of the relative stability of habits in the face of unceasing generation and destruction. (...) Strikingly, Aristotle then turns to the consequences of that account for human beings’ ability to comprehend changes in the environmental conditions of their activities. (shrink)

The history of Western foreign policy in the Middle East has long assimilated Arab culture to sickness. Specifically, the biological episteme of “contamination” has shaped American foreign policy in the Gulf for decades. In so doing, the US Government continually borrowed references from the natural sciences to frame its foreign policy, leading some commentators to claim that biology supplanted philosophy and religion as the primary political category. The article analyses the semantics of Iraqnophobic metaphors, from the British experience of (...) “nursing” Arabs at the close of the First World War to the recent “shock doctrine” of American therapists. First, the paper will concentrate its attention on the metaphors of disinfection and surgical resection. Second, it will address the metaphors of lustration, State-rearing and scientific recovery. Finally, it will explore Iraqis’ rebellion against their self-appointed tutors and doctors. Elaborating on the belligerents’ nursing and biomedical metaphors, the following pages address the life cycle of foreign “legal transplantation”, “antibody” resistance and “immunosuppressant” counterinsurgency in Iraq. (shrink)

Asarja Polikarov ist die führende Gestalt in der Wissenschaftsmethodologie Bulgariens und einer der bedeutendsten Vertreter dieses Faches innerhalb des marxistischen Denkens. Der vorliegende Artikel ist der Analyse seiner Leitideen gewidmet: Dem Charakter des Verhältnisses zwischen Wissenschaft und Methodologie, der Konzeption des Multimethodologismus, der Untersuchung der Wertigkeit methodologischer Systeme, der Proliferation physikalischer Theorien usw. Das Ziel der Analyse besteht darin, die Stellung der Ansichten Polikarovs in Beziehung auf die weltweiten Tendenzen gegenwärtiger Wissenschaftsmethodologie aufzuweisen.

This article offers the first critical edition of a cycle of epigrams found in the margins of six manuscripts of Niketas Choniates’ History. This paper also proposes the attribution of the poems to Ephraim of Ainos, an author mainly known for his verse chronicle, which has Niketas Choniates as a source. Our poems occur in a group of manuscripts which we already knew Ephraim had used for his chronicle. Many formal parallels between the epigrams and the chronicle point to (...) the same author and a book epigram connects one important manuscript with the city of Ainos. This paper reassesses the manuscript tradition of the epigrams with special emphasis on the marginalia of Niketas Choniates. The critical text of the poems is accompanied by two apparatuses and an English translation. The edition is preceded by some methodological considerations and followed by two appendices and three indices. (shrink)

Within the framework of this article, the authors analyze the cycle of engravings "Apocalypse" by Albrecht Durer in the context of the categories of space and time that have developed in the history and philosophy of culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The metaphysical essence of time, defined by Christian eschatology, found its vivid embodiment in the activities of many figures of artistic culture of that era. Apocalyptic moods, which largely determine the consciousness of people of the Reformation (...) era, were also inherent in A. Durer. The cycle of engravings "Apocalypse" in many ways should be considered as the quintessence of these moods and a reflection of the image of death that develops in this era. Space also acquires metaphysical characteristics, becomes heterogeneous, emotionally colored. The authors conclude that in the "Apocalypse" there is a mixed (and therefore very peculiar) interpretation of the category of time and space. It clearly shows the transition of the space-time representations of the Middle Ages to the ideas of time and space inherent in the New Time. It is also possible that we have before us one of the variants of the Renaissance mastery of the categories of time and space in the art of Europe. Attention is drawn to its openness and conscious demonstrativeness, because two artistic systems interact with each other on an equal footing; their stylistic potential and expressive means are used entirely, with full dedication and as a result, with maximum impressive force. (shrink)

Can human history as a whole be interpreted in any meaningful way? Has there been real progress between stone age and space age? Does history repeat itself? Is there evidence of divine providence? Questions such as these have fascinated thinkers, and some of the greatest philosophers, notably Kant and Hegel, have turned their minds to philosophical history. As a branch of philosophy, however, it has received little attention in the analytical tradition. This pioneering work aims to bring (...) the methods of analytical philosophy to the critical examination of some of these questions. The ideas of historical progress, cultural cycles, historical rupture, and God in history are all subjected to careful analysis. Gordon Graham argues that, although unfashionable, the claim that history is the story of progress under the guidance of providence is one of the most plausible accounts of the shape of the past. (shrink)