The need for closure

2019 ◽  
Vol 103 (557) ◽  
pp. 248-256
Author(s):  
Christopher D. Hollings
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Group Theory ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Binary Operation ◽  
Need For Closure ◽  
Inherent Property

When defining a group, do we need to include closure? This is a detail that is often touched upon when the notion of a group is introduced to undergraduates. Should closure be listed as an axiom in its own right, or should it be regarded as an inherent property of the binary operation? There is no clear answer to this question, although there are firm opinions on both sides. Indeed, a very brief survey of group theory textbooks found in [1, pp. 458-459] suggests that there is a rough 50 : 50 split between authors who include closure explicitly and those who do not. In this Article, we go back to the beginning of the twentieth century to provide some historical perspective on this problem.

Historical perspective

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Lorino
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Small Group ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Common Language ◽  
The Common ◽  
Relative Decline

The pragmatist intellectual trend started as an anti-Cartesian revolt by amateur philosophers and became a major inspiration for anti-Taylorian managerial thought. In the early days of the pragmatist movement, a small group of friends fought idealist and Cartesian ideas. The influence of classical pragmatists Peirce, James, Dewey, and Mead, and some of their closest fellow travellers (Royce, Addams, Follett, and Lewis), grew in the first decades of the twentieth century. Some misunderstandings of the central tenets of pragmatism later led to its distortion into the common language acceptance of the word “pragmatism” and contributed to a relative decline in the 1930s, precisely when pragmatism began to inspire an anti-Taylorian managerial movement. Finally the chapter narrates how “the pragmatist turn,” a revival of pragmatist ideas, took place in the last quarter of the twentieth century.

Gender and Social Exclusion in European Migration Crisis

2018 ◽  
pp. 658-676
Author(s):  
Marlou Schrover
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
The Other ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Refugee Women ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Migration Crisis ◽  
The One ◽  
European Migration

This chapter discusses social exclusion in European migration from a gendered and historical perspective. It discusses how from this perspective the idea of a crisis in migration was repeatedly constructed. Gender is used in this chapter in a dual way: attention is paid to differences between men and women in (refugee) migration, and to differences between men and women as advocates and claim makers for migrant rights. There is a dilemma—recognized mostly for recent decades—that on the one hand refugee women can be used to generate empathy, and thus support. On the other hand, emphasis on women as victims forces them into a victimhood role and leaves them without agency. This dilemma played itself out throughout the twentieth century. It led to saving the victims, but not to solving the problem. It fortified rather than weakened the idea of a crisis.

Cut and paste

2018 ◽  
pp. 25-65
Author(s):  
Anna Dahlgren
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Close Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
Illustrated Press

Chapter 1 considers the mechanisms of breaks and continuities in the history of photocollage with regard to gender, genre and locations of display. Collage is commonly celebrated as a twentieth-century art form invented by Dada artists in the 1910s. Yet there was already a vibrant culture of making photocollages in Victorian Britain. From an art historical perspective this can be interpreted as an expression of typical modernist amnesia. The default stance of the early twentieth century’s avant-garde was to be radically, ground-breakingly new and different from any historical precursors. However, there is, when turning to the illustrated press, also a trajectory of continuity and withholding of traditions in the history of photocollage. This chapter has two parts. The first includes a critical investigation of the writings on the history of photocollage between the 1970s and 2010s, focusing on the arguments and rationales of forgetting and retrieving those nineteenth-century forerunners. It includes examples of amnesia and recognition and revaluation. The second is a close study of a number of images that appear in Victorian albums produced between 1870 and 1900 and their contemporary counterparts in the visual culture of illustrated journals and books.

‘Even If You Don’t Want to Drink, You Still Have to Drink’

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Invented Tradition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter considers the history of alcohol in Nuosu Yi society in relation to the formal codification of a Yi heritage of alcohol-related culture, and the question of alcohol in Yi health. The relationship of newly invented tradition to older practice and thought is often obscure in studies that lack historical perspective. Examining the historical narratives associated with the exposition of a Yi heritage of alcohol, this study reveals that those narratives are woven from a tapestry of threads with histories of their own, and they therefore shape present-day heritage work. After a brief overview of ideas about alcohol in contemporary discourses on Yi heritage, the chapter then analyses historical texts to argue that many of these ideas are remarkably similar to ones that emerged in the context of nineteenth and early twentieth century contact between Yi and Han communities.

The Meanings Embedded within Childcare Regulations: A Historical Analysis

2005 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Medical Supervision ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Childcare Programs

In response to current discussions about a universal Canadian childcare system (affordable childcare for all families), this article deconstructs the position that childcare occupies in the province of Ontario through the examination, from a historical perspective, of a document that outlines regulations for childcare programs: the Day Nurseries Act. Three discourses are analyzed by tracing them to social and demographic conditions during the early twentieth century: discourses related to the need for medical supervision of children attending childcare centres; discourses that emphasize the relationship between childcare centres and ‘families in need’; and discourses that refer to the need to follow strict programming and behavioural guidelines.

The End of Midterm Decline?

2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-164
Author(s):  
Lex Renda
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
District Level ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Midterm Elections ◽  
Average Loss ◽  
Open Seat ◽  
The U.S

Variations in the loss of seats in the House of Representatives by the president's party in midterm elections between 1854 and 1998 are analyzed from a historical perspective. Whereas in the latter three-fourths of the nineteenth century the president's party lost, on average, 22% of its share of House seats, in the twentieth century the average loss was 13%. Using district-level data, the author attributes the problematization of “midterm decline” to the growing power of incumbency (a consequence of the development of the Australian ballot), the decline in the number of partisanly competitive districts in open-seat elections, and the limitation, since 1912, of the size of the U.S. House of Representatives.

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