HOWARD R. TURNER, Science in Medieval Islam: An Illustrated Introduction (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997). Pp. 262.

2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 536-538
Author(s):  
G. A. Russell
Keyword(s):  
Original Material ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
University Of Texas ◽  
Dark Ages ◽  
Time Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Islamic Civilization ◽  
Transitional Phase ◽  
Comprehensive History ◽  
Interim Period

Scholars have been reluctant to undertake a comprehensive history of science in Islamic civilization when a great deal of original material still lies unedited, unpublished, unexplored, or partially investigated in spite of prolific research. Even extensive collaborative attempts at a synthesis (see the Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, 3 vols. [1996]) reflect the level of research to date in specific areas rather than present a definitive survey within a cultural perspective. One therefore admires the courage of Howard Turner, who is not a historian of Arabic science, in taking on this ambitious publication, which extends beyond the limits suggested by its title. In fact, Medieval could be omitted from his title, as it does justice neither to the content of his book nor to the historical reality. The term refers, as we know, to some interim period of shifting chronological boundaries between the so-called Dark Ages and the Renaissance in European civilization. The comparable time period in Islamic civilization, however, encompasses the rise, a series of peaks, and the seeds of decline in the sciences. It is not a transitional phase between “dark ages” (the J―ahiliyya) and a “rebirth.” The content of Turner's book is best conveyed simply as “An Illustrated Introduction to Science in Islam or in Islamic Civilization.”

The Long History of “Truth in Lending”

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 236-271
Author(s):  
Anne Fleming
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Price Competition ◽  
State Level ◽  
Mandatory Disclosure ◽  
World War ◽  
Time Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Disclosure Rules ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Comprehensive History

Abstract:This article offers the first comprehensive history of the development of mandatory disclosure rules for the cost of consumer credit. In contrast to prior studies, which begin with the creation of federal disclosure rules in 1968, this story starts with state-level laws that were drafted before World War I. By looking back over a longer time period, it reveals the challenges involved in defining “truth” in lending, and how the perceived purpose of a regulatory technique like mandatory disclosure may change over time. Although the modern APR disclosure metric has come to seem natural and inevitable, history shows that lenders and policymakers once hotly debated the design of disclosure rules, with each faction claiming the mantle of “truth.” Moreover, policymakers did not always view disclosure as a means to increase price competition, obviating the need for direct price controls. Disclosure was once a complement to usury laws, rather than a substitute.

The Tempo and mode(S) of Prebiotic Evolution

1997 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
pp. 419-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Lazcano
Keyword(s):  
Origin Of Life ◽  
Organic Compounds ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Current Evidence ◽  
Early Diversification ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The Galaxy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Widespread Phenomenon ◽  
The Origin Of Life

AbstractDifferent current ideas on the origin of life are critically examined. Comparison of the now fashionable FeS/H2S pyrite-based autotrophic theory of the origin of life with the heterotrophic viewpoint suggest that the later is still the most fertile explanation for the emergence of life. However, the theory of chemical evolution and heterotrophic origins of life requires major updating, which should include the abandonment of the idea that the appearance of life was a slow process involving billions of years. Stability of organic compounds and the genetics of bacteria suggest that the origin and early diversification of life took place in a time period of the order of 10 million years. Current evidence suggest that the abiotic synthesis of organic compounds may be a widespread phenomenon in the Galaxy and may have a deterministic nature. However, the history of the biosphere does not exhibits any obvious trend towards greater complexity or «higher» forms of life. Therefore, the role of contingency in biological evolution should not be understimated in the discussions of the possibilities of life in the Universe.

Voices and Visions: Mind, Body and Affect in Medieval Writing

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corinne Saunders
Keyword(s):  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Family Care ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Disease Treatment ◽  
History Of Disease ◽  
Health And Illness ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Texts

A properly critical medical humanities is also a historically grounded medical humanities. Such historical grounding requires taking a long cultural perspective, going beyond traditional medical history – typically the history of disease, treatment and practice – to trace the origins and development of the ideas that underpin medicine in its broadest sense – ideas concerning the most fundamental aspects of human existence: health and illness, body and mind, gender and family, care and community. Historical sources can only go so far in illuminating such topics; we must also look to other cultural texts, and in particular literary texts, which, through their imaginative worlds, provide crucial insights into cultural and intellectual attitudes, experience and creativity. Reading from a critical medical humanities perspective requires not only cultural archaeology across a range of discourses, but also putting past and present into conversation, to discover continuities and contrasts with later perspectives. Medical humanities research is illuminated by cultural and literary studies, and also brings to them new ways of seeing; the relation is dynamic. This chapter explores the ways mind, body and affect are constructed and intersect in medieval thought and literature, with a particular focus on how voice-hearing and visionary experience are portrayed and understood.

The Art of Love Poetry

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Gray
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Love Poetry ◽  
Erotic Love ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Function ◽  
Meaning And Function ◽  
Comprehensive History

Love begets poetry; poetry begets love. These two propositions have seemed evident to thinkers and poets across the Western literary tradition. Plato writes that “anyone that love touches instantly becomes a poet.” And even today, when poetry has largely disappeared from the mainstream of popular culture, it retains its romantic associations. But why should this be so—what are the connections between poetry and erotic love that lead us to associate them so strongly with one another? An examination of different theories of both love and poetry across the centuries reveals that the connection between them is not merely an accident of cultural history—the result of our having grown up hearing, or hearing about, love poetry—but something more intrinsic. Even as definitions of them have changed, the two phenomena have consistently been described in parallel terms. Love is characterized by paradox. Above all, it is both necessarily public, because interpersonal, and intensely private; hence it both requires expression and resists it. In poetry, especially lyric poetry, which features its own characteristic paradoxes and silences, love finds a natural outlet. This study considers both the theories and the love poems themselves, bringing together a wide range of examples from different eras in order to examine the major structures that love and poetry share. It does not aim to be a comprehensive history of Western love poetry, but an investigation into the meaning and function of recurrent tropes, forms, and images employed by poets to express and describe erotic love.

A Very Brief History of Internet Jurisdiction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Jerker B. Svantesson
Keyword(s):  
Academic Community ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
History Of

This chapter provides a brief history of Internet jurisdiction taking account of key court decisions, legislation as well as developments in the academic thinking on the topic. In doing so, it divides the history of Internet jurisdiction into four relatively distinct phases. The discussion in the chapter highlights facts such as that: (1) law has largely been reactive, responding to technological developments; (2) the level of creativity applied in the search for workable solutions was seemingly higher in the earlier stages than in more recent times; and (3) unsurprisingly, the attitudes of courts, legislators, and the academic community have varied considerably over the time period examined.

Detection of Pavement Maintenance Treatments using Deep-Learning Network

2021 ◽  
pp. 036119812110078
Author(s):  
Lu Gao ◽  
Yao Yu ◽  
Yi Hao Ren ◽  
Pan Lu
Keyword(s):  
Deep Learning ◽  
Measurement Errors ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Learning Networks ◽  
Pavement Maintenance ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Learning Techniques ◽  
Maintenance And Rehabilitation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Deep Learning Network

Pavement maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) records are important as they provide documentation that M&R treatment is being performed and completed appropriately. Moreover, the development of pavement performance models relies heavily on the quality of the condition data collected and on the M&R records. However, the history of pavement M&R activities is often missing or unavailable to highway agencies for many reasons. Without accurate M&R records, it is difficult to determine if a condition change between two consecutive inspections is the result of M&R intervention, deterioration, or measurement errors. In this paper, we employed deep-learning networks of a convolutional neural network (CNN) model, a long short-term memory (LSTM) model, and a CNN-LSTM combination model to automatically detect if an M&R treatment was applied to a pavement section during a given time period. Unlike conventional analysis methods so far followed, deep-learning techniques do not require any feature extraction. The maximum accuracy obtained for test data is 87.5% using CNN-LSTM.

A Cultural History of Sport in the Age of Industry

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Leisure Time ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Real Wages ◽  
Sports Clubs ◽  
Team Games ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
History Of ◽  
Comprehensive History

A Cultural History of Sport in the Age of Industry covers the period 1800 to 1920. Over this period, sport become increasingly global, some sports were radically altered, sports clubs proliferated, and new team games - such as baseball, basketball, and the various forms of football - were created, codified, commercialized, and professionalized. Yet this was also an age of cultural and political tensions, when issues around the role of women, social class, ethnicity and race, imperial relationships, nation-building, and amateur and professional approaches were all shaping sport. At the same time, increasing urbanization, population, real wages, and leisure time drove demand for sport ever higher, and the institutionalization and regulation of sport accelerated. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Sport presents the first comprehensive history from classical antiquity to today, covering all forms and aspects of sport and its ever-changing social, cultural, political, and economic context and impact. The themes covered in each volume are the purpose of sport; sporting time and sporting space; products, training, and technology; rules and order; conflict and accommodation; inclusion, exclusion, and segregation; minds, bodies, and identities; representation.

Naval Service Cohort Study of Occupational Stress: Background to the research and a review of the latest findings

2008 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-30
Author(s):  
R S Bridger
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Stress ◽  
Psychological Health ◽  
Prevalence Rate ◽  
Pathological Process ◽  
Work Demands ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Time Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Made In ◽  
Naval Service

AbstractThe Naval Service has been actively involved in research on occupational stress for almost 10 years. Three cross-sectional studies have been completed during this time period. It has been shown that the prevalence rate of psychological strain amongst personnel is relatively constant at 31-34%. Several smaller studies, of personnel at sea and of the availability of support services have also been completed. In general, the research has shown that the prevalence rate of strain is higher in the NS than in the general population and is comparable to that found in similar uniformed service organisations, such as the Police.Recognising the limitations of crosssectional research methods, the decision was made, in 2006, to follow a cohort of personnel over a 6-year period in order to gain better understanding of the processes by which work demands impact on psychological health and to determine whether psychological ill-health has an adverse impact on factors such as premature voluntary retirement and medical downgrading.The paper presents the history of the research and some of the work in progress.‘Disease is a pathological process that, at least in theory, is amenable to objective, external verification. Illness, on the other hand, is by definition, a subjective state’. D. Coggan 2006(1).

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