scholarly journals Cycles and circulation: a theme in the history of biology and medicine

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Hopwood ◽  
Staffan Müller-Wille ◽  
Janet Browne ◽  
Christiane Groeben ◽  
Shigehisa Kuriyama ◽  
...  

AbstractWe 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.

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-173
Author(s):  
Andrzej Lorkowski ◽  
Robert Jeszke

The whole world is currently struggling with one of the most disastrous pandemics to hit in modern times – Covid-19. Individual national governments, the WHO and worldwide media organisations are appealing for humanity to universally stay at home, to limit contact and to stay safe in the ongoing fight against this unseen threat. Economists are concerned about the devastating effect this will have on the markets and possible outcomes. One of the countries suffering from potential destruction of this situation is Poland. In this article we will explain how difficult internal energy transformation is, considering the long-term crisis associated with the extraction and usage of coal, the European Green Deal and current discussion on increasing the EU 2030 climate ambitions. In the face of an ongoing pandemic, the situation becomes even more challenging with each passing day.


Histories ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 108-121
Author(s):  
Satoshi Murayama ◽  
Hiroko Nakamura

Jan de Vries revised Akira Hayami’s original theory of the “Industrious Revolution” to make the idea more applicable to early modern commercialization in Europe, showcasing the development of the rural proletariat and especially the consumer revolution and women’s emancipation on the way toward an “Industrial Revolution.” However, Japanese villages followed a different path from the Western trajectory of the “Industrious Revolution,” which is recognized as the first step to industrialization. This article will explore how a different form of “industriousness” developed in Japan, covering medieval, early modern, and modern times. It will first describe why the communal village system was established in Japan and how this unique institution, the self-reliance system of a village, affected commercialization and industrialization and was sustained until modern times. Then, the local history of Kuta Village in Kyô-Otagi, a former county located close to Kyoto, is considered over the long term, from medieval through modern times. Kuta was not directly affected by the siting of new industrial production bases and the changes brought to villages located nearer to Kyoto. A variety of diligent interactions with living spaces is introduced to demonstrate that the industriousness of local women was characterized by conscience-driven perseverance.


1988 ◽  
Vol 15 (8) ◽  
pp. 3-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anghel N. Rugina

The unity of our spirit makes it impossible to work toward a certain end without thinking that this end can and must be achieved, even if only in the distant future and through the work of later generations… Objective examination in the ups and downs in the history of law cannot and must not extinguish our faith in justice as a supreme human ideal. Even in the face of events which represent a setback or a deviation, that ideal remains unshaken as a criterion of value; without it, deviation would be meaningless. Even if contradicted by empirical facts, this ideal does not lose its ethical and deontological truth. These contradictions between “is” and “ought to be” can be neither permanent nor general. Giorgio del Vecchio, Man and Nature


Author(s):  
Elaine Ferreira Machado ◽  
Awdry Feisser Miquelin

ResumoEste artigo tem o objetivo de apresentar a vida e, principalmente, a obra de uma artista-cientista do século XVII, Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), bem como o potencial da sua produção para as relações de ensino-aprendizagem em Ciências. Para isso, foram feitas pesquisas bibliográficas tanto de fontes primárias como fontes secundárias relativas à biografia da autora. Considera-se sua obra e, principalmente, seus estudos sobre os seres vivos, com seus respectivos ciclos de vida, uma produção inédita ao período histórico em que viveu. Nesse período, acreditava-se na geração espontânea e, no entanto, ela conseguiu observar, descrever e pintar em tela os seres vivos e seus ciclos reprodutivos. Assim, as inúmeras telas por ela produzidas e publicadas em seus livros constituem material riquíssimo para a exploração e transposição no ensino. Palavras-chave: História da Ciência; Maria Sibylla Merian; Ensino.AbstractThis article aims to present the life and mainly the work of a seventeenth-century artist-scientist, Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), as well as the potential of its production for teaching-learning relations in Sciences. For this, bibliographical research was done both from primary sources and secondary sources related to the biography of the author. Her work, and especially her studies of living beings with their respective life cycles, is an unprecedented production of the historical period in which she lived, where she believed in spontaneous generation, and yet she was able to observe, describe and paint on canvas the living beings and their reproductive cycles. The innumerable canvases she produces and published in her books are very rich material for exploration and transposition in teaching.Keywords: History of Science; Maria Sibylla Merian; Teaching.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-176
Author(s):  
Cornel Zwierlein

European merchants in their factories (‘nations’) in the Eastern Mediterranean under Ottoman rule were not really colonizers; in early modern times, they were somehow privileged guests. However, they deserve an important part in a long-term history of types of ‘close distance’ and forms of segregational coexistence. Different from recent studies that stress a strong overall interaction, understanding, sharing, and exchange between Europeans and Ottoman subjects, it is proposed to distinguish three levels: (1) The daily commercial interaction of Western Europeans with their Ottoman counterparts; (2) the stronger involvement in some politico-religious struggles (the 1724 schism in the patriarchate of Antioch serves as example): also here, one has still to distinguish between real interest in the religious cause and other activities as credit lending; (3) the care for and maintenance by the Europeans of their own Western national culture abroad: these cultural activities served more to (eventually unconsciously) perform ‘boundary work’ and to close up the ‘nation’. These early modern forms of close distance and segregation were only isomorphic but not homologous with later highly conscious colonial and modern imperial forms of contact between ‘West’ and ‘East’ as in the nineteenth-century European settlements in Istanbul.


2013 ◽  
Vol 61 (6) ◽  
pp. 462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul M. Oliver ◽  
Rebecca J. Laver ◽  
Katie L. Smith ◽  
Aaron M. Bauer

The Australian Monsoonal Tropics (AMT) are one of the largest unbroken areas of savannah woodland in the world. The history of the biota of this region is poorly understood; however, data from fossil deposits indicate that the climate was more mesic in the past, and that biodiversity has been shaped by attenuation and turnover as arid conditions expanded and intensified through the Miocene and Plio-Pleistocene. The giant cave and tree geckos (Pseudothecadactylus) are distributed across three disjunct regions of relatively high rainfall in the AMT (the north-west Kimberley, the ‘Top End’, and Cape York). We present an analysis of the diversity and biogeography of this genus based on mitochondrial (ND2) and nuclear (RAG-1) loci. These data indicate that the three widely allopatric lineages of Pseudothecadactylus diverged around the mid-Miocene, a novel pattern of relatively long-term persistence that has not previously been documented within the AMT. Two Pseudothecadactylus species endemic to sandstone scarps in the west Kimberley Region and ‘Top End’ also include divergent mitochondrial lineages, indicative of deep intraspecific coalescence times within these regions. Pseudothecadactylus is a highly relictual lineage with an extant distribution that has been shaped by a history of attenuation, isolation and persistence in the face of increasingly arid conditions. The low ecological and morphological diversity of Pseudothecadactylus also contrasts with its diverse sister lineage of geckos in New Caledonia, further underlining the relictual nature of standing diversity in the former.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 194-200
Author(s):  
Ewa Szczepocka ◽  
◽  
Radosław Magierski ◽  
Tomasz Sobów ◽  
Adam Wysokiński ◽  
...  

Tardive dyskinesias are defined as a syndrome of involuntary, irregular, hyperkinetic movement disorders, including mixed movement disorders of the face and the mouth as well as choreoathetoid movements of the trunk and limbs. They are a serious and usually irreversible side effect of chronic neuroleptic treatment and affect approximately 15–20% of patients. Treatment attempts using amantadine, levetiracetam, piracetam, clonazepam, propranolol, vitamin B6, vitamin E, ondansetron, botulinum toxin and Ginkgo biloba were made. However, in many cases the treatment efficacy has not been confirmed in long-term studies in larger groups of patients. Tetrabenazine, registered in Poland for the treatment of hyperkinetic motor disorders in the Huntington’s disease, is one of the available therapeutic options. We present the course and the effects of tetrabenazine therapy in four patients with antipsychotic-induced tardive dyskinesias. Based on the experience gained during the research program using tetrabenazine, we believe that the use of this agent should be limited to patients in a stable mental condition, with no current symptoms of depression or active psychotic symptoms. In our opinion, suicidal tendencies or thoughts and a history of neuroleptic malignant syndrome are absolute contraindications. The off-label use of tetrabenazine requires a written informed consent of the patient and careful monitoring of their mental and neurological condition.


Adeptus ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 18-28
Author(s):  
Iga Łomanowska

Orestes as a resistance fighter, or the myth of the Atreides in Theo Angelopoulos’s film The travelling playersThe paper examines the use of the Atreides myth in Theo Angelopoulos’s film The travelling players (1975) in the context of the director’s interpretation of the phenomenon of myth. Angelopoulos treated myth as a set of archetypical situations and patterns of conduct constantly reproduced in the history of the world. He intertwined elements of classical stories with the history of Greece and the Byzantine tradition, thus showing their universal character. In The travelling players, Angelopoulos used the story of betrayed and murdered Agamemnon, who is avenged by his children: Orestes and Electra, but he moved it into modern times, setting the film in Greece of the 1940s and 1950s. The myth is reproduced with modulations: the most important events take place as a result of interventions of History, not fate or decisions of the gods. Moreover, the characters’ conflicts are enriched with a political dimension, as Angelopolous portrays the discord between their ideological stances. But the members of the acting company are as helpless in the face of events as the family of the king of Argos. Orestes bojownikiem ruchu oporu, czyli mit Atrydów w filmie Podróż komediantów Theo AngelopoulosaArtykuł jest analizą sposobu wykorzystania przez Theo Angelopoulosa mitu Atrydów w filmie Podróż komediantów (1975) w kontekście dokonanej przez niego interpretacji zjawiska mitu. Grecki reżyser traktował mit jako zbiór archetypicznych sytuacji i wzorów postępowania odtwarzanych nieustannie w dziejach świata. Elementy antycznych opowieści splatał w filmach z historią Grecji i tradycją bizantyjską, ujawniając ich uniwersalny charakter. W Podróży komediantów wykorzystał historię zdradzonego i zamordowanego Agamemnona, który zostaje pomszczony przez swoje dzieci: Orestesa i Elektrę, ale przeniósł ją w czasy współczesne, portretując Grecję lat 40. i 50. XX wieku. Mit zostaje zreprodukowany z modulacjami: kluczowe wydarzenia następują w wyniku interwencji historii, nie fatum czy decyzji bogów. Ponadto konflikty między postaciami zostają wzbogacone o wymiar polityczny, ponieważ Angelopoulos ukazuje rozdźwięk między ich postawami ideologicznymi. Jednak członkowie trupy aktorskiej pozostają wobec wydarzeń tak samo bezradni jak rodzina władcy Argolidy.


Author(s):  
Peter Conti-Brown

Until recently, it was widely believed that central banks must protect people from their own worst instincts: the populace demands easy money and low interest rates, and a politically sensitive representative class will give it to them. Central banks have the responsibility of resolving this time inconsistency problem by protecting the long-term value of the currency even against the short term demands of politics. Yet the financial crisis of 2008 and the 2016 election have changed this narrative. This chapter explores how this new political economy of central banking, in the face of long-term low interest rates, changes the posture of central banks against the rest of the polity. It discusses some history of political pressures against central banks in other climates and makes predictions about how the ‘new normal’ of lower interest rates will challenge the Fed’s ability to stay above the political fray, despite its best intentions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-57
Author(s):  
Hieromonk Iriney Pikovskiy ◽  

The works of bishop Theophan (Govorov) the Recluse on Christian ethics are considered fundamental in studying the history of the formation of Christian psychology in Russia. The style, narrative and vocabulary of the works echo his Russian edition of the “Philokalia”. However, contrary to the common perception that Saint Theophan the Recluse thought exclusively in the language of Holy Fathers, the present study provides examples showing that the saint borrowed some ideas from the classical German philosophy of romanticism. Under the influence of his teachers from the Kiev Theological Academy (P.A.Avsenev), he addresses the subject of the “human spirit”. Arguing with representatives of natural philosophy, whose names he does not mention, Theophan asserts that the spirit is the highest faculty of human nature, the breath of life, the image of God, which enables man to communicate with the Creator. For St. Theophan, as for many other academic scholars of the mid-19th century, “moral philosophy”, “anthropology” and “psychology” were interchangeable concepts. As shown in this study, in matters of psychology and pedagogy, the reflections of Theophan the Recluse are based on the same model that was actively developed by the philosophers of modern times (Schelling, Hegel). Despite serious worldview differences in relation to religion, Saint Theophan reads, filters and continues to develop some ideas that originated in German philosophy.


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