The absence of a universally recognized definition of national minority is perceived as problematic by legal scholars on the international level as well as in domestic jurisdictions [Kymlicka, Will. 2015. Solidarity in diverse societies: Beyond neoliberal multiculturalism and welfare chauvinism. _Comparative Migration Studies_. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-015-0017-4, Ringelheim, Julie. 2010. Minority Rights in a Time of Multiculturalism-The Evolving Scope of the Framework Convention on the Protection of National Minorities. _Human rights law review_. https://doi.org/10.1093/hrlr/ngp038, Velázquez, Elisa Ortega. 2017. Minority rights for immigrants: From Multiculturalism (...) to Civic Participation. _Mexican Law Review_, no. 1., Dimitras, Panayote Elias. 2004. _Recognition of minorities in Europe: Protecting rights and dignity_. London: Minority Rights Group International]. National minority under Czech law is defined by the Act on National Minorities, and the definition combines the objective and subjective criteria of Capotorti’s [Capotorti, Francesco. 1977. _Study on the Rights of Persons belonging to Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities_, UN Document E/CN.4/Sub.2/384/Add.1–7. p. 96] and Deschênes’ [Deschênes, Jules. 1985. _Proposal Concerning a Definition of the Term Minority_. UN Document E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/31. paragraph 181] definitions. However, the Czech Minority Act makes a distinction between ‘minorities that have traditionally and for a long time resided in the territory of the Czech Republic’ (§§ 8–12) and other minority groups, while there is no explicit criterion for differentiating among these groups objectively. Such absence of clearcut criteria is often relevant when certain minority groups claim unfavourable treatment due to the authorities’ perception of such national groups as being ‘immigrant’ as opposed to ‘autochthonous’. Additionally, recent case-law has shown that the most ‘traditional’ groups residing in the Czech territory, such as Moravians or Silesians, can equally lack state support, while it is typically argued by Courts that such groups lack ‘distinct features’, be it ethnic, linguistic and cultural, from the majority population and thus do not fall under the legal definition of national minorities (Verdict of the Supreme Administrative Court of the Czech Republic, Ref No 7 As 324/2020-42, of 17 August 2021; Verdict of the Regional Court in Brno, Ref No 62 A 35/2020 − 186, of 8 October 2020). This paper combines doctrinal legal analysis with a socio-legal approach. The language of legislative acts and court verdicts is assessed with the methodology of critical discourse analysis, specifically the discourse-historical approach [Reisigl, Martin, and Ruth Wodak. 2015. The Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA). In _Methods of Critical Discourse Studies_, 3rd edition, eds. Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer, 23–61. London: Sage]. I focus on nomination, predication and argumentation strategies [Wodak, Ruth. 2009. The semiotics of racism: A critical discourse-historical analysis. In _Discourse, of Course: An overview of Research in Discourse studies_, ed. Jan Renkema. 311–326. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company] used by the judges in court verdicts and on the role of perceived ‘tradition’ of certain groups’ residence in the territory of the Czech Republic on their access to state support or, on the contrary, their marginalization. It is concluded that the current state of the Czech law does not allow for the spatial dynamics of minority groups, which are mostly apprehended as fixed categories based on the 19th century idea of nation states and on the 1920s perception of the Czechoslovak nation after the breakdown of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Such approach does not allow for accommodating the rights for more up-to-date categories or for critical revisiting of the catalogue of minority groups as it was defined in the early 20th century. (shrink)

Namen pričujoče raziskave je prikazati do sedaj zanemarjeno vlogo češkoslovaških slavistov pri oblikovanju Parry-Lordove teorije ustnega pesništva. Potek predstavlja v obliki zgodbe o pristnem odkritju, ki izhaja iz določenega znanstvenega okolja (Antoine Meillet, praški lingvistični krožek itd.). Glavne vloge v njej igrajo Matija Murko, ustanovitelj češkoslovaške slavistike Roman Jakobson in nekateri drugi raziskovalci. Največ pozornosti članek posveča Murkovim in Parryjevim znanstveno-raziskovalnim strategijam, ki sta jih uporabljala med potovanji na Balkan leta 1930, in jih primerja. Članek razkriva tudi določene povezave med (...) Murkom in Lordom, ter nekatere njihove dokaze, ki do sedaj še niso bili objavljeni. (shrink)

In the mid-1990s, a group of UN officials and nongovernmental organizations gathered to formulate a strategy to promote a controversial international social policy agenda by reinterpreting existing human rights treaties to give them new meanings. At the heart of this strategy was a four-step process to use the six UN human rights treaty monitoring bodies and an interlocking network of UN agencies, UN officials, and NGOs to create an international right to abortion. In the decade that has followed, UN member (...) nations have allowed the strategy to develop to an extensive degree, despite the fact that it undermines their own laws. This study examines the reasons why the process has been able to advance, and analyzes the way the strategy has undermined the treaty monitoring system andchallenged the credibility of the international human rights regime. (shrink)

Résumé Le présent article décortique, avec une approche sémiotique, l’index que l’on retrouve à la fin d’un livre. L’objectif est double : faire ressortir les processus de signification en jeu dans l’index et reconnaître la création sémiotique réalisée par l’analyste documentaire. L’index est un assemblage de signes, soit les vedettes, les localisateurs ainsi que diverses caractéristiques de la représentation spatiale ; leur signifiant renvoie à leur signifié respectif. L’index dans sa totalité représente un texte sémiotique, d’un genre spécifique, et dont (...) l’interprétation repose non seulement sur les expressions linguistiques elles-mêmes, mais aussi sur la structure des entrées et sur les liens tissés avec les passages de l’ouvrage indexé. L’index peut paraître une structure objective, proposant une version épurée et stable du contenu d’un document. Or, l’analyse sémiotique proposée ici révélera d’une part la structure malléable de l’index et d’autre part l’interprétation flexible et la subjectivité injectées dans sa construction. Après une description plus approfondie du contexte et de la problématique, nous décrivons d’abord l’aspect formel de l’index, soit les signes impliqués et la manière dont ils sont agencés. Nous abordons ensuite l’aspect interprétatif de l’index, notamment les facteurs qui influencent son interprétation. Ceci nous amène à décrire en détail la structure logique de l’index. Cet exercice un peu scolaire d’un outil qui peut sembler familier permettra de mettre en lumière des jeux de signification normalement passés sous silence. (shrink)

The adaptive benefits of individual specialization and how learning abilities correlate with task performance are still far from being well-understood. Red wood ants are characterised by their huge colonies and deep professional specialization. We hypothesized that red wood ants Formica aquilonia form aversive learning after having negative encounters with hoverfly larvae differently, depending on their task specialization. We tested this hypothesis, first, by examining whether hunters and aphid milkers learn differently to avoid the nuisance of contacts with syrphid larvae, and, (...) second, by analysing the difference between learning in ‘field’ and laboratory-reared (naïve) foragers. During the first interaction with the syrphid larva in their lives the naïve foragers showed a significantly higher level of aggressiveness than the members of a natural colony. Naïve foragers applied the ‘mortal grip’, ‘prolonged bites’, and ‘nibbling’ towards the enemy with a significantly higher frequency, whereas members of both ‘field’ groups behaved more carefully and tried to avoid encounters with the larva. The aphid milkers, who had a negative experience of interaction with the larva, being ‘glued’ with its viscous secretion, behaved much less aggressively in the follow-up experiments after ten minutes and even three days, thus exhibiting the shaping of both short- and long-term memories. However, both ‘field’ hunters and naïve foragers demonstrated no signs of aversive learning. These data provide some new insights into the relationship between task specialization and learning performance in ants. Given our previous results, we speculate that scouts and aphid milkers are the most cognitively gifted specialists in red wood ants, whereas hunters and guards are rather brave than smart. (shrink)

The study of vegetables represents one of the main topics in Bacon’s Sylva sylvarum. Not only in quantitative terms, because plants occupy about a third of the entire book, but the centuries on plants are among the most structured, and this reveals Bacon’s particular interest for the topic. The key to understanding Bacon’s interest can be found in both his Sylva sylvarum and the Historia vitae et mortis, where Bacon explains how the results of studying certain processes in (...) plants can be later transferred and applied to animals and humans. In the context of his discussion of nourishing foods and drinks, Bacon addresses the question of how nourishment gets assimilated in the body. One of the ways in which the... (shrink)

Bacon’s projects of natural history were extremely popular in the mid-seventeenth century, especially for a group of people devoted to experimental activities, namely the Hartlib Circle. Ralph Austen, one member of the Hartlib Circle, tried to construct his own project of natural history using Bacon’s Sylva sylvarum as a pattern and following the Baconian scheme with particular interest for the methodological aspects entailed by such an endeavor. This paper provides an account of Austen’s at­tempts at writing a natural history (...) as found in his Observations upon some part of Sr Francis Bacon’s Naturall History. It discusses the methodology and aims served by such an enterprise, both practical and theoretical: the role of experimentation in the process of compiling a natural history as the most reliable activity able to provide accurate knowledge of the natural world and the determination to provide general rules and axioms about nature. (shrink)

Bacon?s Sylva Sylvarum and his New Atlantis both appeared soon after his death, edited by his chaplain, Rawley. The works are, on the face of it, dissimilar, and have been treated as unrelated, on the assumption that Rawley was merely attempting to rush out (in the wake of his employer?s death) two works that had occupied his last years. In order to establish just what their relation is, we need to establish, first, whether New Atlantis was simply a last?minute (...) addition to the Sylva volume; second, what Rawley says about their association and how he effects it; and third, whether the two works have other concerns in common that would have led Bacon himself to consider them as companion pieces. Such an examination shows that there were intrinsically connected pieces, and can be used to throw light on the aims of both works. (shrink)

La démarche de la Sylva Sylvarum semble s’écarter de la voie inductive proposée par le Novum Organum. Pourtant, l’exemple de la fabrication de l’or indique que les deux textes n’offrent pas forcément des perspectives si différentes. Cette œuvre est davantage détaillée dans la Sylva, avec un accent pratique plus prononcé. Mais, comme dans le Novum Organum, la dimension opérationnelle y est articulée à la recherche des causes générales du processus et, si la « forme » n’est pas présente (...) comme terme, l’idée apparaît bien en arrière-fond. Cet article propose ainsi, sur la base de cet exemple, de nuancer la divergence entre l’ experientia literata des histoires naturelles et l’induction vraie du Novum Organum. (shrink)

The manuscript notes described and trascribed below are unique: they show Bacon in the very act of originating, selecting and developing materials for the natural-philosophical projects of the crucial last years of his life. Many of the notes are drafts of material later incorporated in published texts—notably the Sylva Sylvarum . Examination of the drafts indicates that the Sylva is not a hotch-potch of plagiarized scraps. Bacon took great pains, acknowledged borrowings and drew heavily on his own extensive (...) experimental and observational work. The drafts also show that much of the material was used to display the explanatory power of his ambitious speculative philosophy. Preoccupation with the speculative philosophy is also evidenced in the notes which have no counterpart in the published works. Among these notes is a passage on the size of the universe, the motion of the fixed stars and the hypothesis of the earth's diurnal rotation. In that passage Bacon struggled with threats to his unswervingly geostatic conception of the universe. (shrink)

SummaryEdmund Chilmead (1610–54), a little-known scholar and musician, was the author of a possibly unique testimony to the interest among English natural philosophers in the nature of sound and philosophical music theory during the years following the publication of Francis Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum (1626). Chilmead's ‘An Examination … of the Naturall History’ is a manuscript treatise which takes the form of twenty ‘Quaeres’ on the second and third centuries of experiments of the Sylva which are concerned with the (...) nature of sound. In the treatise, Chilmead reveals his familiarity with the developments in the field of musical acoustics made by the French natural philosopher Marin Mersenne (1588–1648) and his circle.The paper falls into two complementary sections. In the first, Feingold gives an account of Chilmead's life and career (which has hitherto never been fully documented) in order to place him in the context of the intellectual and social milieu of Oxford and London during this period. In the second, Gouk discusses the contents of the ‘Examination’ and Chilmead's debt to both Bacon and Mersenne. (shrink)

Early modern study of plants blossomed in a network of observation, exchanges, collaborations, and epistolary discussions. Following Baconian methodology, Dutch scholars combined the labor of listing and describing plants with botanical experimentation. This empirical approach was a suitable context for Descartes, who exchanged information and performed observations on plants in collaboration with Dutch experimenters. In this article, I focus on (1) the reception of a few botanical experiments of Bacon’s Sylva Sylvarum in Huygens and Reneri, with whom Descartes was (...) in contact, and (2) Descartes’ collaboration with Reneri. While performing observations on plants together, Reneri acquired Descartes’ theoretical framework (as it arises in his disputations) and influenced the latter with a Baconian approach to the study of living nature. This combination of experimental knowledge and a theoretical framework shaped a Cartesian study of plants, as it later surfaced in Regius and ultimately paved the way to a modern science of plants. (shrink)

The relationship between Francis Bacon's Sylva sylvarum and Giovan Battista Della Porta's Magia naturalis has previously been discussed in terms of sources and borrowings in the literature. More recently, it has been suggested that one can read these two works as belonging to a common genre: as collections of recipes or books of secrets. Taking this as a framework, in this paper I address another type of similarity between these two works, one that can be detected by looking at (...) the methods of reading, research, and enacting and recording recipes one can find in Bacon and Della Porta. I show that essential to the two approaches was the complex interplay of practices associated with enacting recipes, and that these influenced the ways in which Della Porta and Bacon recorded their experiments. Creative manipulation of the recipes transformed them into something new. In the case of Della Porta's second edition of the Magia naturalis, this new format is something I call “technologies,” that is, ways of recording the enacting of recipes with the intention to ensure repeatability and predictability of results. In the case of Bacon, the enactment aims at something different: to display and “bring to light” the hidden motions and processes of nature. (shrink)

This special issue brings to the attention of the scholarly community some of the common features and some of the subtle, but important, differences between Francis Bacon's and Giovan Battista Della Porta's ways of dealing with the reading, selecting, enacting, and recording of recipes. Focusing on questions of genre, intellectual and material context, strategies of research, and strategies of performing recipes, the four papers of this special issue address two major issues. First, they shed new light on the relationship between (...) Della Porta's Magia naturalis and Francis Bacon's Sylva sylvarum. Second, they show that in the recording of their experimental practices, Bacon and Della Porta depart from the traditional “recipe format” and discover new avenues of experimental research. (shrink)

Centuries II and III of Francis Bacon’s posthumous natural history Sylva Sylvarum are largely dedicated to sound. This paper claims that Bacon’s investigation on this topic is fruitfully read against the background of the Aristotelian theory of sound, as presented in De anima commentaries. I argue that Bacon agreed with the general lines of this tradition in a crucial aspect: he rejected the reduction of sound to local motion. Many of the experimental instances and more theoretical remarks from his (...) natural history of sound can be elucidated against this wider concern of distinguishing sound from motion, a theme that had been a staple of Aristotelian discussions of sound and hearing since the Middle Ages. Bacon admits that local motion is part of the efficient cause of sound, but he denies that it is its form, which means that sound cannot be reduced to a type of local motion. This position places him outside subsequent developments in natural philosophy in the seventeenth century. (shrink)

John Evelyn (1620-1706) is best remembered for Sylva - his magnum opus - and his Diary . Alongside Pepys' diary, Evelyn's is as well known now as anything else written in their time. A connoisseur of architecture, painting, music, coins, and sermons, Evelyn was renowned for his practical knowledge on horticulture and arboriculture, and he was one of the original Fellows of the Royal Society. His Diary begins with an account of his early life and travels in Europe. In (...) addition to his own jottings of events, Evelyn drew on contemporary newspapers and pamphlets. (shrink)

Francis Bacon on Motion and Power gathers twelve contributions by the best specialists of Baconian thought in Europe, the United States, and South America in a very unified manner. Since Graham Rees founded The Oxford Francis Bacon Project in 1995, research on Francis Bacon's work has made significant progress. Romanian researchers have offered translations of major works, such as Novum Organum and Sylva Sylvarum. An important project of translation of Bacon's works into French is also underway. A new generation (...) of researchers has emerged, editors of this volume included, offering new insights into Bacon's thought, and fighting against "idols of Baconian scholarship" and "blind spots" in... (shrink)

1. Il significato del Parmenide nella filosofia di Platone -- 3. Tempo e verità nella fenomenologia di Husserl -- 4. Kierkegaard e Thomas Mann -- 5. Ingens sylva.

1. Il significato del Parmenide nella filosofia di Platone -- 3. Tempo e verità nella fenomenologia di Husserl -- 4. Kierkegaard e Thomas Mann -- 5. Ingens sylva.