On the Applicability of Mathematics to Nature: Roger Bacon and his Predecessors

1982 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Lindberg
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
History Of Mathematics ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Mathematical Physics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Applicability Of Mathematics ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of

Roger Bacon has often been victimized by his friends, who have exaggerated and distorted his place in the history of mathematics. He has too often been viewed as the first, or one of the first, to grasp the possibilities and promote the cause of modern mathematical physics. Even those who have noticed that Bacon was more given to the praise than to the practice of mathematics have seen in his programmatic statements an anticipation of seventeenth-century achievements. But if we judge Bacon by twentieth-century criteria and pronounce him an anticipator of modern science, we will fail totally to understand his true contributions; for Bacon was not looking to the future, but responding to the past; he was grappling with ancient traditions and attempting to apply the truth thus gained to the needs of thirteenth-century Christendom. If we wish to understand Bacon, therefore, we must take a backward, rather than a forward, look; we must view him in relation to his predecessors and contemporaries rather than his successors; we must consider not his influence, but his sources and the use to which he put them.

scholarly journals Fifteenth Century Saints, Nineteenth Century Neurologists, and Twentieth Century Immunotherapy: The Eccentric History of Multiple Sclerosis

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Paul J Maglione
Keyword(s):  
Multiple Sclerosis ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of

Multiple sclerosis has a long, fascinating, serendipi- tous, and well-documented history. The first recorded mention of the disease can be dated back to the fifteenth century, while a truly exhaustive investigation of the disorder began with the nineteenth century’s burgeoning neurologists. These records reveal a fascinating story of meticulous science aimed at comprehending a truly perplexing illness, one that even today is not completely understood. The great nineteenth century French neurologist Jean-Marie Charcot became very interested in studying this disease, and through his celebrity garnered much attention to a previously unknown affliction. Here we review a story of pioneering research that grants brief tribute to some of the more remarkable experiments, wondering if ideas born in the past may help develop solutions in the future. 

Back to the future – a journey from current education reforms to reformations in the past

2020 ◽  
pp. 275-288
Author(s):  
Yvette Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Mathematics Education ◽  
History Of Mathematics ◽  
Education Reforms ◽  
The Past ◽  
Causal Connections ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
19Th And 20Th Century ◽  
The University ◽  
Point Of Departure

Learning from history does not automatically mean that history prevents us from repeating mistakes. We cannot see what happens in the future, even with the most profound knowledge of the past. Although it is not possible to make such causal connections, the study of structural components, which recur and make up patterns, can certainly contribute to sharpening political judgement. How can the teaching of the history of mathematics education then help to support an understanding of possible courses of individual actions without indoctrination through the political or even ideologically influenced production of time references? The paper presents the concept of a lecture course in mathematics education, held at the University of Mainz. We take as a point of departure the everyday experience of our prospective mathematics teacher with various current education reforms and present seemingly similar processes during former reforms. Here we limit ourselves to reforms during the 19th and 20th century.

scholarly journals Bharathi’s Concept of Women Liberation: Legacy and novelty

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kalpana B ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Future Generation ◽  
Language Politics ◽  
Tamil Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
Feminist Ideology ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

Subramania Bharathi is probably the greatest poet in the History of Tamil literature. Many books and articles have been written both in English and Tamil praising his works and criticizing him for the past hundred years. His works have been taken up for research, to analyze Nationalism, language, politics, literature, translation, philosophy, feminism and religion. This book entitled “Bharathi’s concept of women liberation: Legacy and novelty” analyzes his feminist thoughts and the lives of women during his period. The author of this book Dr. B. Kalpana carefully analyzes about Bharathi’s works, his period, tradition, his innovative and modern thoughts that paved the way to the future generation. In this book, Dr. B. Kalpana points out, how Bharathi overcame tradition, and became a revolutionary poet of the twentieth century. Bharathi’s feminist ideology is carefully analyzed in this book from the historical perspective.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Jason Lustig
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Community Based ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Future ◽  
Modern Jewish History ◽  
History Of

The introduction presents the book’s core argument that twentieth-century Jewish archives were not just about the past but also about the future: We can look to a process whereby Jews turned increasingly toward archives as anchors of memory in a rapidly changing world. Jews in Germany, the United States, and Israel/Palestine all sought to gather the files of the past in order to represent their place in Jewish life and articulate a vision of the future. It situates these projects in the history of community-based archiving and archival theory and methodology, as well as Jewish history at large. It also dives into the ways we can see archive making as a metaphor for the broader patterns in modern Jewish history, as Jews sought to gather the sources and resources of their culture both before the Holocaust and especially in its aftermath.

Manifestations of the Flying Dutchman: On Materializing Ghosts and (Not) Remembering the Colonial Past

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-205
Author(s):  
Agnes Andeweg
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Real Object ◽  
Technological Advancement ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Spectral Character ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
History Of ◽  
Wide Dissemination

This article investigates remediations of the Flying Dutchman legend – the story about a ghost ship doomed to sail the oceans forever – in English and Dutch sources from the nineteenth and twentieth century. It explains the popularity and wide dissemination of the Flying Dutchman by interpreting the story, firstly, within the context of Anglo-Dutch colonial competition and, secondly, within the context of new technological developments, paying particular attention to the moments when the Flying Dutchman seems to lose its spectral character and becomes a real object or person. Of the two interpretations of the spectre put forward here – staging colonial history versus staging technological advancement –, the second seems to be the more dominant throughout the history of continuous remediation and adaptation of the Flying Dutchman. When the ghost materializes, temporality is reversed: the focus shifts from the present's fraught relation to the past to the present's imagination of the future. In the dissemination of the figure itself however the colonial dimension is often still present.

Exhibition History and the Institution as a Medium

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Collicelli Cagol
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Art History ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
The Past ◽  
Exhibition History ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Recent Debate ◽  
The Relationship

The recent debate on the relationship between histories of exhibition and art history tends to consider the former as supplementary to the latter. While it is certainly not the case that art history of the second half of the twentieth century should be reduced to a history of exhibitions—given the variety of contexts in which artists have operated—exhibition histories should likewise not be addressed only to enrich art historical narratives, or be selected according to their relationship to an art historical canon. In fact, exhibition histories provide critical tools to approach history in itself: by revealing cultural debates of the past, they help retracing histories of ideas; their expanded field highlights the connections between art and other realms, such as commerce, and they reveal politics and policies of an institution, stressing the latter in order to create a narrative to understand the present and imagine the future.

Post-Soviet economy development: From the past to the future

2017 ◽  
pp. 5-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Yasin
Keyword(s):  
Present Situation ◽  
Soviet Economy ◽  
Market Reforms ◽  
Democratic Development ◽  
The Past ◽  
Current Period ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Working Out ◽  
A Current

The article is devoted to major events in the history of the post-Soviet economy, their influence on forming and development of modern Russia. The author considers stages of restructuring, market reforms, transformational crisis, and recovery growth (1999-2011), as well as a current period which started in2011 and is experiencing serious problems. The present situation is analyzed, four possible scenarios are put forward for Russia: “inertia”, “mobilization”, “decisive leap”, “gradual democratic development”. More than 30 experts were questioned in the process of working out the scenarios.

Collective Memory: Between Values and Historical Knowledge

2020 ◽  
pp. 124-142
Author(s):  
VICTOR BURLACHUK
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
The State ◽  
Main Element ◽  
Rapid Decline ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future

At the end of the twentieth century, questions of a secondary nature suddenly became topical: what do we remember and who owns the memory? Memory as one of the mental characteristics of an individual’s activity is complemented by the concept of collective memory, which requires a different method of analysis than the activity of a separate individual. In the 1970s, a situation arose that gave rise to the so-called "historical politics" or "memory politics." If philosophical studies of memory problems of the 30’s and 40’s of the twentieth century were focused mainly on the peculiarities of perception of the past in the individual and collective consciousness and did not go beyond scientific discussions, then half a century later the situation has changed dramatically. The problem of memory has found its political sound: historians and sociologists, politicians and representatives of the media have entered the discourse on memory. Modern society, including all social, ethnic and family groups, has undergone a profound change in the traditional attitude towards the past, which has been associated with changes in the structure of government. In connection with the discrediting of the Soviet Union, the rapid decline of the Communist Party and its ideology, there was a collapse of Marxism, which provided for a certain model of time and history. The end of the revolutionary idea, a powerful vector that indicated the direction of historical time into the future, inevitably led to a rapid change in perception of the past. Three models of the future, which, according to Pierre Nora, defined the face of the past (the future as a restoration of the past, the future as progress and the future as a revolution) that existed until recently, have now lost their relevance. Today, absolute uncertainty hangs over the future. The inability to predict the future poses certain challenges to the present. The end of any teleology of history imposes on the present a debt of memory. Features of the life of memory, the specifics of its state and functioning directly affect the state of identity, both personal and collective. Distortion of memory, its incorrect work, and its ideological manipulation can give rise to an identity crisis. The memorial phenomenon is a certain political resource in a situation of severe socio-political breaks and changes. In the conditions of the economic crisis and in the absence of a real and clear program for future development, the state often seeks to turn memory into the main element of national consolidation.

Acta Fluens – Generatives Handeln und Improvisation im Jazz

2014 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-60
Author(s):  
Davide Sparti
Keyword(s):  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of

Obwohl jede menschliche Handlung mit einem gewissen Grad an Improvisation erfolgt, gibt es kulturelle Praktiken, bei denen Improvisation eine überwiegende Rolle spielt. Um das Risiko zu vermeiden, einen zu breiten Begriff von Improvisation zu übernehmen, konzentriere ich mich im vorliegenden Beitrag auf den Jazz. Meine zentrale Frage lautet, wie Improvisation verstanden werden muss. Mein Vorgehen ist folgendes: Ich beginne mit einem Vergleich von Improvisation und Komposition, damit die Spezifizität der Improvisation erklärt werden kann. Danach wende ich mich dem Thema der Originalität als Merkmal der Improvisation zu. Zum Schluss führe ich den Begriff affordance ein, um die kollektive und zirkuläre Logik eines Solos zu analysieren. Paradigmatisch wird der Jazzmusiker mit dem Engel der Geschichte verglichen, der nur auf das Vergangene blickt, während er der Zukunft den Rücken zugekehrt hat, und lediglich ihr zugetrieben wird. Weder kann der Improvisierende das Material der Vergangenheit vernachlässigen noch seine genuine Tätigkeit, das Improvisieren in der Gegenwart und für die Zukunft, aufgeben: Er visiert die Zukunft trotz ihrer Unvorhersehbarkeit über die Vermittlung der Vergangenheit an.<br><br>While improvised behavior is so much a part of human existence as to be one of its fundamental realities, in order to avoid the risk of defining the act of improvising too broadly, my focus here will be upon one of the activities most explicitly centered around improvisation – that is, upon jazz. My contribution, as Wittgenstein would say, has a »grammatical« design to it: it proposes to clarify the significance of the term »improvisation.« The task of clarifying the cases in which one may legitimately speak of improvisation consists first of all in reflecting upon the conditions that make the practice possible. This does not consist of calling forth mysterious, esoteric processes that take place in the unconscious, or in the minds of musicians, but rather in paying attention to the criteria that are satisfied when one ascribes to an act the concept of improvisation. In the second part of my contribution, I reflect upon the logic that governs the construction of an improvised performance. As I argue, in playing upon that which has already emerged in the music, in discovering the future as they go on (as a consequence of what they do), jazz players call to mind the angel in the famous painting by Klee that Walter Benjamin analyzed in his Theses on the History of Philosophy: while pulled towards the future, its eyes are turned back towards the past.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document