scholarly journals A visit to Biotopia: genre, genetics and gardening in the early twentieth century

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
JIM ENDERSBY

AbstractThe early decades of the twentieth century were marked by widespread optimism about biology and its ability to improve the world. A major catalyst for this enthusiasm was new theories about inheritance and evolution (particularly Hugo de Vries's mutation theory and Mendel's newly rediscovered ideas). In Britain and the USA particularly, an astonishingly diverse variety of writers (from elite scientists to journalists and writers of fiction) took up the task of interpreting these new biological ideas, using a wide range of genres to help their fellow citizens make sense of biology's promise. From these miscellaneous writings a new and distinctive kind of utopianism emerged – the biotopia. Biotopias offered the dream of a perfect, post-natural world, or the nightmare of violated nature (often in the same text), but above all they conveyed a sense that biology was – for the first time – offering humanity unprecedented control over life. Biotopias often visualized the world as a garden perfected for human use, but this vision was tinged with gendered violence, as it became clear that realizing it entailed dispossessing, or even killing, ‘Mother Nature’. Biotopian themes are apparent in journalism, scientific reports and even textbooks, and these non-fiction sources shared many characteristics with intentionally prophetic or utopian fictions. Biotopian themes can be traced back and forth across the porous boundaries between popular and elite writing, showing how biology came to function as public culture. This analysis reveals not only how the historical significance of science is invariably determined outside the scientific world, but also that the ways in which biology was debated during this period continue to characterize today's debates over new biological breakthroughs.

2020 ◽  

Maxim Gorky was one of the key figures of the twentieth century. In many coun- tries of the world: in the USA and Canada, Italy and Germany, China and Japan — Gorky is not only considered a world-class writer, but is also called one of the intel- lectual leaders of his time, whose voice the whole world listened to. In this work on an unknown archival material disclosed the global value of the writer’s personality and work, the influence of his philosophical and aesthetic views on the literature of other countries, his diverse ties with foreign writers, politicians, philosophers and artists. Gorky’s life and work are presented on a broad historical and philosophical background, which allows a new interpretation of such cardinal problems of the cen- tury as the assessment of wars and revolutions, social movements and literary move- ments. On the 150th anniversary of the birth of M. Gorky. The book is intended for philologists, historians, cultural scientists, as well as for a wide range of readers.


2021 ◽  
pp. 932-950
Author(s):  
Vladislav Vyacheslavovich Emelyanov

Every few decades, the world order changes due to various geopolitical, economic and other circumstances. For example, as a result of globalization, the world order has undergone significant changes in the last forty years. Globalization has led to the destruction of the postwar world order, as well as to world leadership by the United States and the West. However, in recent decades, as a result of globalization, the U.S. and the West began to cede their leadership to developing countries, so there is now a change in the economic structure of relations in the world system. Today the center of economic growth is in the East, namely in Asia. There are no new superpowers in the world at the moment, but the unipolar world will cease to exist due to the weakening of the U. S. leadership, which will lead to a change in the world order. A new leader, which may replace the U. S., will not have as wide range of advantages as the USA has. Most likely, the essence of the new order will be to unite the largest countries and alliances into blocks, for example, the USA together with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the EU, etc. The article outlines forecasts of GDP growth rates as well as the global energy outlook; analyzes the LNG market as well as the impact of the pandemic on the global oil and gas market; and lists the characteristics of U. S. geopolitics.


2018 ◽  
pp. 42-53
Author(s):  
Yuliya Strielkova

The author Strielkova Yuliya A. in the article «Demythologization and existential theology: formation of paradigm» analyzed the conception of the demythologization of Sacred Scripture and Sacred translation as a fundamental setting not only within the dialectical theology of the twentieth century, but also for contemporary searches for the forms of correlation of philosophy and theology in the context of the scientific world pictur. The author outlines the heuristic potential of a reinterpretative approach to the concept of demythologization, considered beyond the conceptual and chronological framework of dialectical theology. Also, attention was focused on clarifying the heuristic content of the concept of "demythologization" for the modern philosophical and theological tradition, as well as the nature of its genetic connection with the existential paradigm of philosophizing and christology. Particular attention is paid to the paradigmatic and formative aspects of the phenomenon of demythologization; the role of language practices and discursive models in the development of the contemporary picture of the world is accentuated 


Author(s):  
E.A. Radaeva ◽  

The purpose of this study is to present a model for the development of the expressionist method in the genre of the novel using the example of the evolution of the novelistic work of the Austrian writer of the early twentieth century L. Perutz. The results obtained: the creative method of the Austrian writer is moving from scientific knowledge to mysticism; in the center of all novels created with a large interval, there is always a confused hero, broken by what is happening (in other words, the absurdity of the world), whose state is often conveyed through gestures; the author finally moves away from linear narration to dividing the plot into almost autonomous stories, thematically gravitating more and more to the distant historical past. Scientific novelty: the novels of L. Perutz are for the first time examined in relative detail through the prism of the aesthetics of expressionism.


Author(s):  
Daniel Juan Gil

In the seventeenth century, the hope for resurrection starts to be undermined by an emerging empirical scientific world view and a rising Cartesian dualist ontology that translates resurrection into more dualist terms. But poets pick up the embattled idea of resurrection of the body and bend it from a future apocalypse into the here and now so that they imagine the body as it exists now to be already infused with the strange, vibrant materiality of the “resurrection body.” This “resurrection body” is imagined as the precondition for the social identities and forms of agency of the social person, and yet the “resurrection body” also remains deeply other to all such identities and forms of agency, an alien within the self that both enables and undercuts life as a social person. Positing a “resurrection body” within the historical person leads seventeenth-century poets to use their poetry to develop an awareness of the unsettling materiality within the heart of the self and allows them to reimagine agency, selfhood, and the natural world in this light. In developing a poetics that seeks a deranging materialism within the self, these poets anticipate twentieth-century “avant-garde” poetics. They do not frame their poems as simple representation nor as beautiful objects but as a form of social praxis that creates new communities of readers and writers that are assembled by a new experience of self-as-body mediated by poetry.


Molecules ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 997
Author(s):  
Nicolas Vogt ◽  
Vasily Sivchik ◽  
Aaron Sandleben ◽  
Gerald Hörner ◽  
Axel Klein

The organonickel complexes [Ni(Phbpy)X] (X = Br, OAc, CN) were obtained for the first time in a direct base-assisted arene C(sp2)–H cyclometalation reaction from the rather unreactive precursor materials NiX2 and HPhbpy (6-phenyl-2,2′-bipyridine) or from the versatile precursor [Ni(HPhbpy)Br2]2. Different from previously necessary C‒Br oxidative addition at Ni(0), an extended scan of reaction conditions allowed quantitative access to the title compound from Ni(II) on synthetically useful timescales through base-assisted C‒H activation in nonpolar media at elevated temperature. Optimisation of the reaction conditions (various bases, solvents, methods) identified 1:2 mixtures of acetate and carbonate as unrivalled synergetic base pairs in the optimum protocol that holds promise as a readily usable and easily tuneable access to a wide range of direct nickelation products. While for the base-assisted C‒H metalation of the noble metals Ru, Ir, Rh, or Pd, this acetate/carbonate method has been established for a few years, our study represents the leap into the world of the base metals of the 3d series.


Author(s):  
Сергей Гарагуля ◽  
Sergey Garagulya

The dictionary is built on the principles of cultural linguistics, is a collection of culturally significant place names of great Britain and the USA included in the background knowledge of native speakers of British and American linguistic cultures, and are part of their linguistic picture of the world. It aims to reveal the contents of this toponymic vocabulary. It is addressed to students and postgraduates of philological specialties, teachers of universities and colleges, as well as a wide range of readers interested in English and onomastics


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 103-109
Author(s):  
V A Jilkin

This article presents issues of the fight against corruption and analysis of anti-corruption processes in Russia, Finland, Israel, Great Britain and the USA. Issues of international cooperation in the anti-corruption sphere have already been considered by the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation, the Organisation of American States, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and the European Union. The fight against corruption in the Russian Federation is one of the key areas of consolidation of the statehood and it is being performed step by step through improvement of the legislation, activities of law enforcement, regulatory and public authorities of all levels as well as cultivation of civil intolerance to any manifestation of this social blemish. Russia is actively engaged in international dialogue on a wide range of issues for preventing corruption within the scope of coordination activities and international cooperation in different areas, including issues of anti-corruption in the sphere of sports, ecology and education. Cooperation with relevant international authorities and international organizations is one of the priorities of the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation. Given that the Russian anti-corruption system is based on the national legal culture in the context of historical, social and economic development and specific social needs and interests, the author emphasizes that anti-corruption cooperation shall be based on respect for national legal systems and compliance with the international law under coordination of the UN. Legislative proposals on the need for introducing grounds for application on recovery of property, owned by corrupt officials and registered under a third party’s name, to the public revenue and increasing the terms of imprisonment for bribery, which shall be prepared for further improvement of the anti-corruption law.


2011 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 164-185
Author(s):  
Vincent Blok ◽  

In the twentieth century, the concept of the will appears in bad daylight. Martin Heideg-ger for instance criticizes the will as a movement of reducing otherness to sameness, dif-ference to identity. Since his diagnosis of the will, the releasement from a wilful manner of thinking and the exploration of the possibility of non-willing has become a prevalent issue in contemporary philosophy. This article questions whether this quietism is still possible in our times, were we are confronted with climate change and the future of mankind is fundamentally threatened. On the one hand, the human will to 'master‘ and 'exploit‘ the natural world can be seen as the root of the ecological crisis, as Heidegger observed. On the other hand, its current urgency forces us to evaluate the releasement of the will in contemporary philosophy. Because also Heidegger himself attempted to develop a proper concept of the will in the onset of the thirties, we start our inquiry with Heidegger‘s phenomenology of the will in the thirties. Although Heidegger was very critical about the concept of the will later on, we are not inclined to reject the concept of the will as he did eventually. In this article we show that Heidegger's criticism of the will is not phenomenologically motivated, and we will develop a proper post-Heideggerian concept of willing. Finally the question will be answerd whether this proper concept of willing can help us to find a solution for the ecological crisis.


Author(s):  
David Clark

Cicely Saunders founded St Christopher’s Hospice in London in 1967 as a centre for teaching, research, and care. Its influence quickly spread around the world. Cicely Saunders — A Life and Legacy shows how she played a crucial role in shaping a new discourse of care at the end of life. From the nihilism of ‘there is nothing more we can do’, medicine and healthcare gradually adopted a more purposeful approach to care in the face of advanced disease and at the end of life. This came to be known as palliative care. This biography links for the first time the ideas and practice of Cicely Saunders to the spreading global interest in hospice and palliative care. It explores her deep reflection on the nature of suffering at the end of life, the possibilities of a more informed approach to the medical management of pain and other symptoms, and above all the importance of remaining focussed on the personal and spiritual concerns of the individual patient as death approaches. It is a story of a remarkable personal and professional life and of a seismic shift in twentieth-century medical history.


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