The Culture of Quantification and the History of Public Reason

2004 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodore M. Porter

It is an unusual and memorable privilege to address so international a gathering here in North Carolina on the Fourth of July. American nationalism in recent times has not been very broad-minded, and I'm envious of a society that can attract so many participants from all over the world. But the issue of cosmopolitanism and parochialism pertains to academic discipline as well as to nationality. Historians and economists do not always understand one another very well, and while economists are able to bring in bigger incomes and to maintain a higher public profile, historians maintain a certain authority in regard to scholarly writing about the past. Practitioners of history of economics have often been upbraided for failing to write “real” history, and I have been known to write in this vein. At least I am among those who have tried to persuade members of this society of the merits of history, history of science, and science studies as models for writing history of economics. At the same time I have been seduced by the fascination of this field to devote much of my own research to it, and in these efforts I have come to admire and to draw inspiration from what is distinctive in historical writing on economics, as well as what seems most familiar from the standpoint of the historical discipline.

2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 255-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimír Bačík ◽  
Michal Klobučník

Abstract The Tour de France, a three week bicycle race has a unique place in the world of sports. The 100th edition of the event took place in 2013. In the past of 110 years of its history, people noticed unique stories and duels in particular periods, celebrities that became legends that the world of sports will never forget. Also many places where the races unfolded made history in the Tour de France. In this article we tried to point out the spatial context of this event using advanced technologies for distribution of historical facts over the Internet. The Introduction briefly displays the attendance of a particular stage based on a regional point of view. The main topic deals with selected historical aspects of difficult ascents which every year decide the winner of Tour de France, and also attract fans from all over the world. In the final stage of the research, the distribution of results on the website available to a wide circle of fans of this sports event played a very significant part (www.tdfrance.eu). Using advanced methods and procedures we have tried to capture the historical and spatial dimensions of Tour de France in its general form and thus offering a new view of this unique sports event not only to the expert community, but for the general public as well.


Author(s):  
Greg Garrett

Hollywood films are perhaps the most powerful storytellers in American history, and their depiction of race and culture has helped to shape the way people around the world respond to race and prejudice. Over the past one hundred years, films have moved from the radically prejudiced views of people of color to the depiction of people of color by writers and filmmakers from within those cultures. In the process, we begin to see how films have depicted negative versions of people outside the white mainstream, and how film might become a vehicle for racial reconciliation. Religious traditions offer powerful correctives to our cultural narratives, and this work incorporates both narrative truth-telling and religious truth-telling as we consider race and film and work toward reconciliation. By exploring the hundred-year period from The Birth of a Nation to Get Out, this work acknowledges the racist history of America and offers the possibility of hope for the future.


Author(s):  
Louçã Francisco ◽  
Ash Michael

Chapter 11 assesses the growth prospects of the world economy. The history of global economic doomsaying is traced briefly, a frequently reasonable position that has not done well with the facts for the past hundred years. Capitalism has been adept at escaping from the pit and pendulum. A set of global imbalances is then reviewed that are seen as posing a severe threat to global economic stability and certainly to the prospects for sustainable and equitable growth. The Great Recession following the Crash of 2007–8 might be “different this time.” Historical and contemporary fears of “secular stagnation” are discussed but the speculative nature of stagnationist assessments is acknowledged.


PMLA ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-27
Author(s):  
Leon F. Seltzer

In recent years, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, a difficult work and for long an unjustly neglected one, has begun to command increasingly greater critical attention and esteem. As more than one contemporary writer has noted, the verdict of the late Richard Chase in 1949, that the novel represents Melville's “second best achievement,” has served to prompt many to undertake a second reading (or at least a first) of the book. Before this time, the novel had traditionally been the one Melville readers have shied away from—as overly discursive, too rambling altogether, on the one hand, or as an unfortunate outgrowth of the author's morbidity on the other. Elizabeth Foster, in the admirably comprehensive introduction to her valuable edition of The Confidence-Man (1954), systematically traces the history of the book's reputation and observes that even with the Melville renaissance of the twenties, the work stands as the last piece of the author's fiction to be redeemed. Only lately, she comments, has it ceased to be regarded as “the ugly duckling” of Melville's creations. But recognition does not imply agreement, and it should not be thought that in the past fifteen years critics have reached any sort of unanimity on the novel's content. Since Mr. Chase's study, which approached the puzzling work as a satire on the American spirit—or, more specifically, as an attack on the liberalism of the day—and which speculated upon the novel's controlling folk and mythic figures, other critics, by now ready to assume that the book repaid careful analysis, have read the work in a variety of ways. It has been treated, among other things, as a religious allegory, as a philosophic satire on optimism, and as a Shandian comedy. One critic has conveniently summarized the prevailing situation by remarking that “the literary, philosophical, and cultural materials in this book are fused in so enigmatic a fashion that its interpreters have differed as to what the book is really about.”


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (2b) ◽  
pp. 35-40
Author(s):  
I. Stambler ◽  

Celebrating the 30th anniversary of Ukraine's independence, it is important to remember the historical achievements of Ukrainian science, to honor the heroes of the science of the past and to draw inspiration from their achievements for the development of science of the future. In this regard, the history of medicine, as a special academic discipline, plays a vital role an important academic and civic role, as it helps to trace the medical scientific achievements of the past and draw conclusions about their strengths and priorities for future national and international growth and development. Analyzing the scientific strengths and priorities of science and medicine in Ukraine, it is safe to say that biomedical gerontology is one of the most important scientific and historical values and priorities of Ukraine on a global scale. There are good reasons to continue and develop this tradition, building on the strengths that exist, drawing inspiration from the past and looking to the future. Currently, the development of biomedical gerontology is becoming increasingly important for Ukraine, given the rapid aging of the country's population. The resulting economic and social problems are related to the aging population, which puts biomedical gerontology as a discipline that seeks solutions to achieve healthy and productive longevity, at the forefront of social significance, demanding further development and support of this field for the sake of internal national stability, and to preserve the country's international contribution. It is hoped that the outstanding history of biomedical gerontology in Ukraine, its honorable historical place in national development and international cooperation, will inspire further growing support and development of this field in Ukraine and abroad.


1962 ◽  
Vol 25 (7) ◽  
pp. 216-218
Author(s):  
Frank V. Kosikowski

The situation regarding chemical residues in our country's milk supply is perhaps the most favorable for a number of years. Good control has been achieved over the incidence and concentration of antibiotic residues, levels of pesticides in milk have been reduced, and although radionuclides in food are related partly to bomb testing, nevertheless, our expanding monitoring system, which is keeping us well informed, indicates no cause for alarm. Despite all the past clamor, the milk supplies of the U. S. A. are among the purest and safest in the world now or at any period of time in the history of mankind.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (33) ◽  
pp. 197-227
Author(s):  
Dominique Santos

Despite modern writers noticing the importance of Premodern historiographical phenomena for a deeper comprehension of both Theory of History and History of Historiography, the Irish contribution to the subject is often left aside. Topics such as the Seanchas Tradition and Medieval Irish Classicism are not well integrated into such historiographical narrative. The Seanchaidh, the Irish Artifex of the Past, for example, is broadly mentioned as not a historian, but a chronicler, antiquary, genealogist, hagiographer or pedigree systematizer. This article addresses these issues and, more specifically, we focus on two Irish narratives produced in 7th century by Muirchú and Tírechán. Since they belong to the world of orality and bilingual literacy of Early Christian Ireland, perhaps their works could be understood as bounded by the Seanchas Tradition and Medieval Irish Classicism, hence, both could be considered as great examples of the producers of History and Historiography at the time.


In trying to show you the character of social anthropology as an academic discipline, I might try to sketch some substantive and perhaps intriguing findings in the field, or the history of its development, or some of its major intellectual problems today. I have chosen the last of these alternatives, because by showing the general problems we are grappling with I hope to reveal to you, in part no doubt inadvertently, the ways that anthropologists think, and also how our difficulties in part arise from the character of the social reality itself, which we confront and try to understand. The fundamental questions which social anthropology asks are about the forms, the nature, and the extent of order in human social life, as it can be observed in the different parts of the world. There is no need to prejudge the extent of this order; as members of one society we know how unpredictable social life can be. But concretely, human life varies greatly around the world, and it seems possible to characterize its forms to some extent. We seek means systematically to discover, record and understand these forms.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina Sherwell

The last twenty-five years have witnessed significant transformation in the geopolitics of Palestinian art.[2] From the outset, we need to consider a definition of Palestinian art by recognizing that it is not art that is specifically created in one place, but that, owing to the history of dispossession and diaspora, Palestinian artists can be found all over the world. Therefore, Palestinian art necessarily starts from multiple sites of enunciation and is inevitably influenced by site and location. As Stuart Hall suggests, “identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, position ourselves within, the narratives of the past.”[3] For the purposes of this paper, I will mainly be focusing on the art of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories, while touching on the production of artists based in various other locations around the globe. I will first provide some context to the development of art practices, before specifically going on to speak about curatorial practices in relation to how the work of Palestinian artists is curated by international curators.


2019 ◽  
pp. 152-184
Author(s):  
Karen Bray

“Unreasoned Care” returns us to God through a sojourn with Foucault’s archives. This chapter queerly attends to how the Process God as Eros of the Universe might open us to a non-redemptive or counter-salvific and yet ethically attentive theology that sticks with the mad we’ve condemned, confined, and left unredeemed. Reading with Lynne Huffer’s re-engagement with Foucault’s History of Madness, this chapter argues for an ethics of care for the ghosts of those an emphasis on reason, straightness, saneness, health, and wealth have ransomed for the rise of the productive model citizen. Placing Foucault and Whitehead into conversation offers us a theo-ethic of grave attending to those ransomed for our redemption. Such an encounter helps us to acknowledge the past that has caused the world to be thus, and to salvage dreams of a world that can be otherwise.


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