scholarly journals POLICING, ‘SCIENCE’, AND THE CURIOUS CASE OF PHOTO-FIT

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 1007-1031
Author(s):  
PAUL LAWRENCE
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Home Office ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The World ◽  
Proven Efficacy ◽  
Criminal Suspects ◽  
Continued Use ◽  
Facial Identification ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis article analyses the curious development and subsequent refinement of the Photo-FIT system for the identification of criminal suspects, used by police forces around the world from the 1970s. Situating Photo-FIT in a succession of other technologies of identification, it demonstrates that, far from representing the onward march of science and technology (and the way in which both were harnessed to the power of the state in the twentieth century), Photo-FIT was the brainchild of an idiosyncratic entrepreneur wedded to increasingly outmoded notions of physiognomy. Its adoption by the Home Office was primarily determined by the particular context of the later 1960s, and its continued use owed more to vested interest and energetic promotion than to scientific underpinnings or proven efficacy. It did, however, in the longer term, provide the impetus for the development of a new sub-field of psychology and pave the way for the development of increasingly sophisticated facial identification technologies still used today. Overall, the article demonstrates the long persistence of physiognomic thinking in twentieth-century Britain, the way in which new technology is socially constructed, and the persuasive power of ‘pseudo-science’.

The Origin of the Judges’ Rules

2020 ◽  
pp. 33-53
Author(s):  
Mike McConville ◽  
Luke Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Critical Issue ◽  
Home Office ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law ◽  
Police Forces

The point at which the liberty of the subject can be subject to interference by force of the law is a critical issue and one reliant on the integrity of judicial oversight. Focusing on the start of the twentieth century, this chapter addresses the discontinuities in the then existing rules relating to the interrogation of suspected persons (embodied by the Judges’ Rules of 1912, whose obscure origins are discussed) and the divergent responses of different police forces to the cautioning and questioning process. From this it explores how the need for closer formal regulation arose and the role of Home Office officials (the very same as those involved in the Adolph Beck case) in drafting the first revision of the Judges’ Rules in 1918 which were to remain in force for almost fifty years. These inapt and inexpertly drafted Rules thereafter laid the foundations for policing regulation in jurisdictions around the world.

Projectivism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Blackburn
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Temporal Order ◽  
The World ◽  
Great Propensity ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
The Way

‘Projectivism’ is used of philosophies that agree with Hume that ‘the mind has a great propensity to spread itself on the world’, that what is in fact an aspect of our own experience or of our own mental organization is treated as a feature of the objective order of things. Such philosophies distinguish between nature as it really is, and nature as we experience it as being. The way we experience it as being is thought of as partly a reflection or projection of our own natures. The projectivist might take as a motto the saying that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, and seeks to develop the idea and explore its implications. The theme is a constant in the arguments of the Greek sceptics, and becomes almost orthodox in the modern era. In Hume it is not only beauty that lies in the eye (or mind) of the beholder, but also virtue, and causation. In Kant the entire spatio-temporal order is not read from nature, but read into it as a reflection of the organization of our minds. In the twentieth century it has been especially non-cognitive and expressivist theories of ethics that have adopted the metaphor, it being fairly easy to see how we might externalize or project various sentiments and attitudes onto their objects. But causation, probability, necessity, the stances we take towards each other as persons, even the temporal order of events and the simplicity of scientific theory have also been candidates for projective treatment.

David Brown's Divine Humanity

2015 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-113
Author(s):  
Kathryn Tanner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mutual Influence ◽  
The Self ◽  
Primary Indication ◽  
The World ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
The Way

The contributions of this fine book are many but I will concentrate on three, before turning to several more critical remarks.First, and most obviously, the book does the invaluable service of surveying developments in kenotic christology in the nineteenth century while situating them nicely in their different contexts of origin and with reference to lines of mutual influence: continental, Scottish and British trends are all canvassed rather masterfully. Some attention, in lesser detail, is also given to the way these christological trends are extended in the twentieth century to accounts of the Trinity and God's relation to the world generally: kenosis, the self-emptying or self-limiting action of God, in the incarnation, is now viewed as a primary indication of who God is and how God works, from creation to salvation.

Language nationalism? Kanji on the Internet

1999 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-46
Author(s):  
Nanette Gottlieb
Keyword(s):  
Japanese Language ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Japanese People ◽  
The World ◽  
Continued Use ◽  
The Way

ABSTRACTAs of August 1998, the Japanese language was the second most widely used language other than English on the Internet. It has from time to time been argued that the way in which the Japanese view their language contributes to a kind of language nationalism which functions to emphasise the separateness of the Japanese people from others in the affective as well as linguistic sense. In an extension of this debate, some have suggested that the continued use of the Japanese writing system in the computer age acts to reinforce a barrier between Japan and the rest of the world. This paper examines the issues involved in the language nationalism view of the Japanese script and argues that the use of characters on the Internet should be seen as nothing more than the continuation of an existing infrastructure.

Technology and the Way: Buber, Heidegger, and Lao-Zhuang “Daoism”

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 307-327
Author(s):  
Eric S. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
German Philosophy ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Spiritual World ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Technological Rationality ◽  
The Way

I consider the intertextuality between Chinese and Western thought by exploring how images, metaphors, and ideas from the texts associated with Zhuangzi and Laozi were appropriated in early twentieth-century German philosophy. This interest in “Lao- Zhuang Daoism” encompasses a diverse range of thinkers including Buber and Heidegger. I examine (1) how the problematization of utility, usefulness, and “purposiveness” in Zhuangzi and Laozi becomes a key point for their German philosophical reception; (2) how it is the poetic character of the Zhuangzi that hints at an appropriate response to the crisis and loss of meaning that characterizes technological modernity and its instrumental technological rationality; that is, how the “poetic” and “spiritual” world perceived in Lao-Zhuang thought became part of Buber’s and Heidegger’s critical encounter and confrontation with technological modernity; and (3) how their concern with Zhuangzi does not signify a return to a dogmatic religiosity or otherworldly mysticism; it anticipates a this-worldly spiritual (Buber) or poetic (Heidegger) way of dwelling immanently within the world.

scholarly journals Recreating Men’s Relationship with Nature: Toward a Profeminist Environmentalism

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bob Pease
Keyword(s):  
Parallel Development ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Feminist Environmentalism ◽  
Profeminist Men ◽  
The Way

While feminist and profeminist scholars are increasingly in agreement with the thesis that hegemonic and destructive forms of masculinity are the source of current environmental crises, there is less agreement on how to address this issue or on the way forward for ecologically conscious and profeminist men. Some forms of ecofeminism essentialize women as being closer to nature than men, while arguing that men are closer to culture. There seems little capacity for men to change in this view. In a parallel development, some ecomasculinity theorists argue that the problem is not with the nature of masculinity per se but with the separation of men’s natural maleness from forms of masculinity that suppress their infinite capacity to care. It will be argued that such latter approaches espouse either an ecofeminine or ecomasculinist perspective rather than a social ecofeminist view. This article will explore the implications of the social ecofeminist critique (or what some writers refer to as feminist environmentalism) for understanding socially constructed masculinism, and what men can do about it, in the context of the social divisions between men across the world.

scholarly journals Kazimir Malevich: Approaching The New System

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irina Lyubchenko
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Set Theory ◽  
Fourth Dimension ◽  
Primary Concern ◽  
Scientific Content ◽  
Original Script ◽  
The World ◽  
New System ◽  
The Way

This dissertation examines Kazimir Malevich’s art and writing with a view to establishing that they combine a strain of strict methodological reductionism with an equally well-marked esotericism. It strives to prove that although this feature of Malevich’s work was common among vanguard artists and thinkers, there are also highly idiosyncratic qualities in the way Malevich reconciled these two threads. An ensuing goal of this work is to propose how to complete an unfinished 1927 film script by Kazimir Malevich titled “Artistic and Scientific Film—Painting and Architectural Concerns—Approaching the New Plastic Architectural System.” <div>The question regarding the confluence of science and mysticism in Malevich’s work— the primary concern of this dissertation—requires tracing in the artist’s art and writings the presence of ideas belonging to these worldviews traditionally considered to be antithetical to each other. This dissertation establishes Malevich’s relationship with mysticism and strains of thought that resemble scientific content and approach. Among the latter, this work investigates Malevich’s interest in the geometry of the fourth dimension, draws parallels between the artist’s concern for visualizing infinity and the problems of set theory, and examines the role of imaginary numbers in Malevich’s worldview. To complete the analysis of Malevich’s exploration of the concept of space prominent in the aforementioned mathematical themes, this dissertation examines the artist’s interest in investigating the space of the cosmos. It also establishes that Malevich’s ideas were not only influenced by the scientific advancements in electromagnetism but also by the theories of thermodynamics, which together with the former relay a view of the world where all processes, organic and inorganic, are understood as the product of the transformation of energy. In Cubism and Futurism: Spiritual Machines and the Cinematic Effect, R. Bruce Elder draws attention to the early twentieth-century thinkers’ view of cinema as an electromagnetic machine. This dissertation examines Malevich’s relationship with the cinematic art and its reception in Russia during Malevich’s most productive years. This work concludes with having satisfied its larger objective: to envision a possible scenario of how Malevich’s unfinished script could unfold. It contains the copy of the original script, its proposed finale, and an essay that outlines how my investigation of Malevich’s intellectual landscape informed the decisions involved in inferring the concluding shot sequences of the artist’s only cinematic work.<br></div>

scholarly journals The Emergence of Onto-Gnoseology among Russian Intuitivists as Criticism of Neo-Kantianism

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 95-123
Author(s):  
P. R. Bonadyseva
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cognitive Significance ◽  
Organic Part ◽  
Common Trend ◽  
Ontological Proof ◽  
The World ◽  
Kantian Theory ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Object Of Knowledge ◽  
The Way

At the beginning of the twentieth century in the Russian-speaking philosophical space philosophical projects emerged which brought ontology and gnoseology closer together. One can observe this process, for example, in the philosophical doctrines of the Russian intuitivists Nikolay Lossky and Semyon Frank. I demonstrate that the emergence of these doctrines and the development of their onto-gnoseological categorial apparatus were mainly connected with the criticism of the Neo-Kantian theory of cognition and the possibility of transcendent knowledge as such. The main sources of my study are The Intuitive Basis of Knowledge and The World as an Organic Whole by N. O. Lossky and The Object of Knowledge and The Unknowable by S. L. Frank. My investigation makes it possible to treat Lossky’s categorial framework as the representation of a system of levels of the universe each of which is characterised by two aspects: the ontological, i.e. it is part of the unity of the world, and the gnoseological, i.e. it has an independent cognitive significance. Frank considers categories to be an organic part of the ontological proof of intuitivism. A common trend in the construction of categorial schemes by Lossky and Frank is their striving to combine gnoseological and ontological descriptions of categories. The key difference is the way an onto-gnoseological system as a whole is justified. In revealing the contradictions in Lossky’s conception, I proceed from the critical remarks of S. A. Askoldov (Alexeyev), pointing out that these contradictions stem from an absolutisation of intuition in cognition, the renunciation of the idea of gnoseological transcendence, incompleteness of the theory of immanence and discordance between onto-gnoseological categories. Askoldov’s critical comments clarify the substantive features of Lossky’s theory and the essence of the transformations carried out in Frank’s absolute ideal-realism.

scholarly journals Johannes Semper hobusega. Avangard, takerduja tehnika ja looduse vahel / Johannes Semper with a horse: Avant-garde between technology and nature

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (23) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiit Hennoste
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Fast Food ◽  
New World ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Modern Technology ◽  
Italian Futurism ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The World ◽  
Russian Futurism

Artikkel annab ülevaate 20. sajandi alguse kirjandusliku avangardi suhetest tehnikaga. Avangardi (eriti futurismi) jaoks pidi tehnika saama loomise eeskujuks ja masinate seadused esteetilise loovuse seadusteks. Artikkel väidab, et paljud avangardi tekstiuuenduslikud ideaalid on vastuolus tehnika ideaalidega ja iseloomustavad ennekõike loodust. Tehnika väärtustas tulemust, avangard protsessi. Tehnika väärtustas süsteemsust, ennustatavust, koopialisust, avangard vabarütme, ennustamatust ja originaalsust. Tehnika nõudis ratsionaalsust ja eesmärgipärast tegutsemist, avangard kuulutas intuitsiooni ja prohvetlikku kujutlust. Tehnika tõi odavad masstooted, avangard hindas haruldust. Tehnika väärtustas funktsionaalsust, avangard ebafunktsionaalsust. Tehnika väärtustas puhtust ja hügieeni, avangard järgis inetuse esteetikat. Tehnika nõudis tootmises vigade ja häirete vältimist, avangard tõstis vea loovaks ideeks.   The article examines the relationship between the early twentieth century international and Estonian literary avant-garde and new technology, which radically changed life and interpersonal relationships in Europe and America (trains, airplanes, metro, telephone, telegraph, skyscrapers, fast food, etc.). At first, I highlight general features connecting the new technology and its products, which emerged in distinct opposition to nature. The central activity in the world of technology appeared to be efficient, planned, and purposeful production, in which the main agents were engineer, designer, and worker. The new technology emphasized the value of the product, which rapidly became standardized and cheaply made mass-produced perfect copies of each other. The beauty of the new era was to be a technological, functionalist beauty. Production as a process had to operate without failures and the ideal product had to be without any defects. Therefore, the technological process had to be clean, even hygienic. The new technology established its own rhythm in modern cities, characterized by repeatability and predictability. At the same time, the technology covered cities by the voices that made up the noise of technology. It could be said, even, that the new technology exceeded the limits of time and space. The result was a world of simultaneity. At the same time, relationships and links between people became increasingly loose and the world and man’s worldview was characterized by increasing fragmentation. The early European avant-garde at the beginning of the twentieth century greeted the new world of technology and speed with great enthusiasm (Italian futurism, constructivism, etc.). Perhaps only early expressionism and Russian futurism had even more ambivalent attitude to the technology. The First World War significantly decreased the pre-war fascination with technology. The war destroyed the faith in the machines; the machine now became a destroyer, and the new mechanical man (a fusion of man and machine) came into view as a killer with killed soul. At the same time, modern technology became more and more common in the everyday life, and, hence, the attitude towards technology changed. The technology became a harrowing phenomenon. For early European avant-garde, the new technology was supposed to become a model for the creation and laws of machines laws of aesthetic creativity (Marinetti). We can find several features in the texts of avant-garde (especially in poetry), which are in accordance with the new world of speed and technology. Simultaneous and fragmented text represented simultaneity and fragmentarity of the world. The speed was intermediated by the telegram style, parataxis, glossolalia, onomatopoeia, mathematical symbols, etc. The artist’s ideal was engineer and machine had to become a model for making the text. I present examples of such new texts in Estonian avant-garde poetry and prose. However, much of the avant-garde ideas and ideals for textual innovation contradicted the ideals of technology. Whilst technology predominantly esteemed the result, the avant-garde valued the process of making the text. In addition, the world of technology expected systematics, predictability, repetitive rhythms, and copies while avant-garde proclaimed free rhythms, free verse, unpredictability, and originality. Technology insisted on rational and purposeful acting; avant-garde proclaimed intuition and prophetic imagination. Technology brought cheap mass products; avant-garde appreciated the rarity and expensiveness. Technology promoted utilitarianism and functionality; avant-garde non-functionality. Technology put stress on the cleanliness and hygiene of the products; avant-garde often followed the aesthetics of ugliness. Technology required efficiency and economy of production, avoiding mistakes and disturbances; avant-garde regarded error as a creative idea. I argue that many of these avant-garde ideas are very similar to nature. For example, chaos, illogicality, glossolalia, words-in-freedom, and zaum truly characterize nature. Originality, variability, unpredictable rhythms, non-systematicity are also the qualities of nature. Lack of purpose, irrationality, and lack of thought are features of nature. An error or a shift as the basis of creation and inefficiency characterizes nature, too. The aesthetics of ugliness parallels the ugliness of nature. Thus, the observance of the avant-garde ideals results in a text that, on the one hand, craves the world of technology and machines, but on the other hand goes back to the ideas and ideals of nature and seeks solutions largely in the same way as nature.

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