DAVID CURTIS WRIGHT. From War to Diplomatic Parity in Eleventh-Century China: Sung's Foreign Relations with Kitan Liao. (History of Warfare, volume 33.) Boston: Brill. 2005. Pp. xi, 287. $167.00

2006 ◽  
Vol 111 (3) ◽  
pp. 809-810
Author(s):  
J. W. Jay



1999 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Omar Khaleefa

The study is an investigation of the origins of psychophysics and experimentalpsychology. According to historians of psychology. FrancisBacon had the most crucial influence in the history of the experimentalmethod, because he emphasized the importance of induction, skepticism,quantification, and observation. The present study, however,attempts to show that Ibn al-Haytham laid the foundations of the aboveaspects of the experimental method. Furthermore, a number of historiansof psychology believe that Fechner was the founder of psychophysicswith his application “Filements of Psychophysics” in 1860.This study shows that in the eleventh century, Ibn al-Haytham made anoriginal contribution to the study of vision, wherein his psychophysicsborrowed its structure from physics and its spirit from psychology.Several aspects of visual perception were investigated by him, includingsensation (which occupies a central place in psychophysics), variationsin sensitivity, perception of colors. sensation of touch, perceptionof darkness, the psychological explanation of moon illusion, and binocularvision. This study presents five experiments by Ibn al-Haythamregarding the errors of vision, which is called in contemporary psychology“visual illusion.” These experiments have been applied andverified in Bahrain from both the physical and psychological perspectives.Finally, the study concludes that Ibn al-Haytham deserves the title“founder” of psychophysics as wellp the “founder” of experimentalpsychology. In this respect. Kitab ul-Manazir by Ibn al-Haytham.which appeared in the fmt half of the eleventh century, and not the“Elements of Psychophysics” by Fechner. which was published in thenineteenth century, marks the official “founding” of psychology,because it provides not only new concepts and theories but new methodsof measurement in psychology.



Author(s):  
Maurizio Peleggi

Monastery, Monument, Museum examines cultural sites, artifacts, and institutions of Thailand as both products and vehicles of cultural memory. From rock caves to reliquaries, from cultic images to temple murals, from museums and modern monuments to contemporary artworks, cultural sites and artifacts are considered in relation to the transmission of religious beliefs and political ideologies, as well as manual and intellectual knowledge, throughout thelongue durée of Thailand’s cultural history. Sequenced by and large chronologically along a period of time spanning the eleventh century through to the start of the twenty-first, the eight chapters in this book are grouped into three sections that surface distinct themes and analytical concerns: devotional art in Part I, museology and art history in Part II, and political art in Part III. The chapters can even be read as self-contained essays, each supplied with extensive bibliographic references.By examining the interplay between cultural sites and artifacts, their popular and scholarly appreciation, and the institutional configuration of a cultural legacy, Monastery, Monument, Museum makes a contribution to the literature on memory studies. A second area of scholarship this book engages is the art history of Thailand by shifting focus from the chronological and stylistic analysis of artifacts to their social life—and afterlife. Monastery, Monument, Museum brings together in one volume a millennium of art and cultural history of Thailand. Its novel analysis and thought-provoking re-interpretation of a variety of artifacts and source materials will be of interest to both the specialist and the general reader.



Author(s):  
Charles Hartman ◽  
Anthony DeBlasi

This chapter discusses how the full emergence of the centralized, aristocratic state in the seventh century brought about an official historiography that was part of the bureaucracy of that state. Beginning in the Tang, each dynastic court maintained an office of historiography. Over time, a regularized process evolved that, in theory and often in reality, turned the daily production of court bureaucratic documents into an official history of the dynasty. Although this process was ongoing throughout the dynasty, the final, standard ‘dynastic history’ was usually completed after the dynasty's demise by its successor state. Indeed, the very concept of a series of dynastic histories that, taken together, would present an official history of successive, legitimate Chinese states, dates from the eleventh century.



Author(s):  
Yedida Eisenstat

After a brief survey of early rabbinic ambivalence toward this controversial prophetic book and its use in synagogue liturgy, this chapter traces the history of rabbinic interpretation of the repetition of “I said to you, ‘Through your blood, live’” in Ezek 16:6. The midrashic tradition ascribes redemptive power to these “two bloods”—of circumcision and of the paschal lamb. This chapter argues that the “bloods” of the verse become metonyms for all of the commandments through which Jews realize their covenant with God. Both blood and circumcision (or lack thereof) were weighty symbols for Christians, too; so as Jews migrated into Christendom in larger numbers in the eleventh century, they had to address Christianity’s competing claims to the same covenant. The addition of this verse to the Jews’ circumcision liturgy upon their arrival in northern Europe can be explained in light of these shared symbols.



Author(s):  
James Morton

This book is a historical study of these manuscripts, exploring how and why the Greek Christians of medieval southern Italy persisted in using them so long after the end of Byzantine rule. Southern Italy was conquered by the Norman Hauteville dynasty in the late eleventh century after over 500 years of continuous Byzantine rule. At a stroke, the region’s Greek Christian inhabitants were cut off from their Orthodox compatriots in Byzantium and became subject to the spiritual and legal jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic popes. Nonetheless, they continued to follow the religious laws of the Byzantine church; out of thirty-six surviving manuscripts of Byzantine canon law produced between the tenth and fourteenth centuries, the majority date to the centuries after the Norman conquest. Part I provides an overview of the source material and the history of Italo-Greek Christianity. Part II examines the development of Italo-Greek canon law manuscripts from the last century of Byzantine rule to the late twelfth century, arguing that the Normans’ opposition to papal authority created a laissez faire atmosphere in which Greek Christians could continue to follow Byzantine religious law unchallenged. Finally, Part III analyses the papacy’s successful efforts to assert its jurisdiction over southern Italy in the later Middle Ages. While this brought about the end of Byzantine canon law as an effective legal system in the region, the Italo-Greeks still drew on their legal heritage to explain and justify their distinctive religious rites to their Latin neighbours.





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