scholarly journals Anti-reductionism at the confluence of philosophy and science: Arthur Koestler and the biological periphery

2016 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
James F. Stark
Keyword(s):  
Biological Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
Scientific Authority ◽  
Arthur Koestler ◽  
Scientific Philosophy ◽  
Scientific Disciplines ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Century Science

The Hungarian-born intellectual Arthur Koestler produced a wide-ranging corpus of written work throughout the mid twentieth century. Despite being the subject of two huge biographies in recent years, his long-standing engagement with numerous scientific disciplines remains unexplored. This paper situates Koestler's scientific philosophy within the context of mid-twentieth-century science and explores his relationship with key figures, including Dennis Gábor, C. H. Waddington, Ludwig von Bertalanffy and J. R. Smythies. The argument presented is threefold. First, surprisingly, serious scientists, particularly in the biological sciences, took Koestler's scientific work seriously; second, despite Koestler's best efforts, his allies could not agree on a single articulation of anti-reductionism; and third, the reductionist/anti-reductionist debates of the mid twentieth century constituted a battle for the authority to speak on behalf of ‘science’ that led Koestler into direct conflict with figures including Peter Medawar. By exploring the community associated with Koestler, the paper sheds new light on the status of scientific authority and the relationship between scientists’ metaphysical beliefs and their practices.

Collecting Chinese Objects in Slovenia at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-180
Author(s):  
Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Specific Position ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Cultural Connections ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This article addresses the practices of collecting Chinese objects that were brought to the territory of present-day Slovenia by sailors, missionaries, travellers, and others who travelled to China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At the time, this territory was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; we will, therefore, begin with the brief historical context of the Empire and its contact with China, followed by a discussion on the nature of collecting Chinese objects in Slovenian territories at that time. We will further examine the status of the individuals who travelled to China and the nature and extent of the objects they brought back. The article will also highlight the specific position of the Slovenian territory within the history of Euro-Asian cultural connections, and address the relevant issues—locally and globally—of the relationship between the centres and peripheries with regard to collecting practices.

scholarly journals A British Sky: Imperial Networks and the Symbiotic Relationship Between Imperialism and Astronomy in the Nineteenth-Century British Empire

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Hicks
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Royal Astronomical Society ◽  
Scientific Disciplines ◽  
The Relationship

Despite modern perceptions of science as an apolitical, irreligious, democratizing force, science has historically been a tool used by individuals and organizations for their own purposes. In the case of late European empires, science and scientific “progress” were valuable tools for agendas of Christianization and civilization. Moreover, scientists and scientific methods could be used to further the types of work needed to grow empire – such as a map-making and exploration. However, the relationship between science and empire was not limited to imperial domination. Scientists and scientific bodies could also use the tools of empire to further their scientific work. The Royal Astronomical Society is an excellent example of the “use” of empire – most of its funding came from imperial pundits looking to entrench British superiority. Among the various scientific disciplines practiced in the nineteenth century, astronomy played an interesting role in entrenching the relationship between science and empire – particularly as it was practiced on the fringes of the British empire. Growing empires necessitated the creation and proliferation of new technologies that in turn made practicing science in recently acquired colonies much easier. The interconnected web of new technologies, scientists, and imperial structures of power and politics combined with scientific desires, colonial ideals, race relations, and imperial economies of trade and knowledge to produce an incredibly complicated vision of science. Astronomy, in its looking to the heavens, reflected back upon earthly issues to ultimately reveal the tangled ideologies that permeated British imperial science at this time. This story of British imperial astronomy is meant to complicate modern notions of what science is and has been.

scholarly journals The relationship between bioRxiv preprints, citations and altmetrics

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Fraser ◽  
Fakhri Momeni ◽  
Philipp Mayr ◽  
Isabella Peters
Keyword(s):  
Biological Sciences ◽  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Citation Data ◽  
Explanatory Variables ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Sharing Behavior

A potential motivation for scientists to deposit their scientific work as preprints is to enhance its citation or social impact. In this study we assessed the citation and altmetric advantage of bioRxiv, a preprint server for the biological sciences. We retrieved metadata of all bioRxiv preprints deposited between November 2013 and December 2017, and matched them to articles that were subsequently published in peer-reviewed journals. Citation data from Scopus and altmetric data from Altmetric.com were used to compare citation and online sharing behavior of bioRxiv preprints, their related journal articles, and nondeposited articles published in the same journals. We found that bioRxiv-deposited journal articles had sizably higher citation and altmetric counts compared to nondeposited articles. Regression analysis reveals that this advantage is not explained by multiple explanatory variables related to the articles’ publication venues and authorship. Further research will be required to establish whether such an effect is causal in nature. bioRxiv preprints themselves are being directly cited in journal articles, regardless of whether the preprint has subsequently been published in a journal. bioRxiv preprints are also shared widely on Twitter and in blogs, but remain relatively scarce in mainstream media and Wikipedia articles, in comparison to peer-reviewed journal articles.

Contemporary Qur'anic Studies in Iran and its Relationship with Qur'anic Studies in the West

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-72
Author(s):  
Morteza Karimi-Nia
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Law ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
The West ◽  
Communications Technologies ◽  
Religious Learning ◽  
The Status ◽  
Islamic Republic Of Iran ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

The status of tafsīr and Qur'anic studies in the Islamic Republic of Iran has changed significantly during recent decades. The essay provides an overview of the state of Qur'anic studies in Iran today, aiming to examine the extent of the impact of studies by Western scholars on Iranian academic circles during the last three decades and the relationship between them. As in most Islamic countries, the major bulk of academic activity in Iran in this field used to be undertaken by the traditional ʿulamāʾ; however, since the beginning of the twentieth century and the establishment of universities and other academic institutions in the Islamic world, there has been increasing diversity and development. After the Islamic Revolution, many gradual changes in the structure and approach of centres of religious learning and universities have occurred. Contemporary advancements in modern sciences and communications technologies have gradually brought the institutions engaged in the study of human sciences to confront the new context. As a result, the traditional Shīʿī centres of learning, which until 50 years ago devoted themselves exclusively to the study of Islamic law and jurisprudence, today pay attention to the teaching of foreign languages, Qur'anic sciences and exegesis, including Western studies about the Qur'an, to a certain extent, and recognise the importance of almost all of the human sciences of the West.

On Metaphysics and the Political: A Polemics of Reading Baudelaire in the 1930s

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.

Moderating Role of Gender in the Relationship between Cognitive Errors and Anxiety among Adolescents

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-102
Author(s):  
Tasnim Rehna ◽  
Rubina Hanif ◽  
Muhammad Aqeel
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Adolescent Psychopathology ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Cognitive Errors ◽  
Adolescent Anxiety ◽  
Study Results ◽  
The Status ◽  
Manifest Anxiety ◽  
The Relationship

Background: Widespread social paradigms on which the status variances are grounded in any society, gender plays pivotal role in manifestation of mental health problems (Rutter, 2007). A hefty volume of research has addressed the issue in adults nonetheless, little is vividly known about the role of gender in adolescent psychopathology. Sample: A sample of 240 adolescents (125 boys, 115 girls) aging 12-18 years was amassed from various secondary schools of Islamabad with the approval of the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE), relevant authorities of the schools and the adolescents themselves. Instruments: Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (Taylor & Spence, 1953) and Children’s Negative Cognitive Errors Questionnaire (CNCEQ) by Leitenberg et al., (1986) were applied in present study. Results: Multiple regression analysis revealed that cognitive errors jointly accounted for 78% of variance in predicting anxiety among adolescents. Findings also exhibited that gender significantly moderated the relationship between cognitive errors and adolescent anxiety. Implications of the findings are discoursed for future research and clinical practice.

A New Denominational Historiography?

1995 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-263
Author(s):  
John F. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Recent Analysis ◽  
General Factor ◽  
Religious Organization ◽  
Religious Institution ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Status ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
American Society ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Over the last decade, a noteworthy number of published studies have, in one fashion or another, been defined with reference to religious denominations. This is an arresting fact, for, coincidentally, the status of religious denominations in the society has been called into question. Some formerly powerful bodies have lost membership (at least relatively speaking) and now experience reduced influence, while newer forms of religious organization(s)—e.g., parachurch groups and loosely structured movements—have flourished. The most compelling recent analysis of religion in modern American society gives relatively little attention to them. Why, then, have publications in large numbers appeared, in scale almost seeming to be correlated inversely to this trend?No single answer to this question is adequate. Surely one general factor is that historians often “work out of phase” with contemporary social change. If denominations have been displaced as a form of religious institution in society in the late twentieth century, then their prominence in earlier eras is all the more intriguing.

Devotional Transformation

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 237-257
Author(s):  
Ravi Vasudevan
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Film Genre ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
The Status ◽  
Film Spectatorship ◽  
The Relationship

This article focuses on the specific Indian cinematic form of the Hindu devotional film genre to explore the relationship between cinema and religion. Using three important early films from the devotional oeuvre—Gopal Krishna, Sant Dnyaneshwar, and Sant Tukaram—as the primary referent, it tries to understand certain characteristic patterns in the narrative structures of these films, and the cultures of visuality and address, miraculous manifestation, and witnessing and self-transformation that they generate. These three films produced by Prabhat Studios between the years 1936 and 1940 and all directed by Vishnupant Damle and Syed Fattelal, drew upon the powerful anti-hierarchical traditions of Bhakti, devotional worship that circumvented Brahmanical forms. This article will argue that the devotional film crucially undertakes a work of transformation in the perspectives on property, and that in this engagement it particularly reviews the status of the household in its bid to generate a utopian model of unbounded community. The article will also consider the status of technologies of the miraculous that are among the central attractions of the genre, and afford a reflection on the relation between cinema technology, popular religious belief and desire, and film spectatorship.

Poetic Trespass

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lital Levy
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Prose Poetry ◽  
Old World ◽  
History And Literature ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
Emile Habiby ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

A Palestinian-Israeli poet declares a new state whose language, “Homelandic,” is a combination of Arabic and Hebrew. A Jewish-Israeli author imagines a “language plague” that infects young Hebrew speakers with old world accents, and sends the narrator in search of his Arabic heritage. This book brings together such startling visions to offer the first in-depth study of the relationship between Hebrew and Arabic in the literature and culture of Israel/Palestine. More than that, the book presents a captivating portrait of the literary imagination's power to transgress political boundaries and transform ideas about language and belonging. Blending history and literature, the book traces the interwoven life of Arabic and Hebrew in Israel/Palestine from the turn of the twentieth century to the present, exposing the two languages' intimate entanglements in contemporary works of prose, poetry, film, and visual art by both Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel. In a context where intense political and social pressures work to identify Jews with Hebrew and Palestinians with Arabic, the book finds writers who have boldly crossed over this divide to create literature in the language of their “other,” as well as writers who bring the two languages into dialogue to rewrite them from within. Exploring such acts of poetic trespass, the book introduces new readings of canonical and lesser-known authors, including Emile Habiby, Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Anton Shammas, Saul Tchernichowsky, Samir Naqqash, Ronit Matalon, Salman Masalha, A. B. Yehoshua, and Almog Behar. By revealing uncommon visions of what it means to write in Arabic and Hebrew, the book will change the way we understand literature and culture in the shadow of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Some Imperatives of the Russian Economic Leadership: The Development of Science

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 25-36
Author(s):  
O. S. Sukharev
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Work ◽  
Compensation System ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Scientific Development ◽  
Institutional Changes ◽  
Russian Science ◽  
Science Field ◽  
Labor Compensation ◽  
The Status ◽  
Practical Standpoint

The paper outlines system capabilities of Russia to join the scientific and technological leaders through changes in the staff policy in the science field, which was the purpose of the research.The subject of the research is institutional changes occurring in science and, particularly, staff training. The status of the Russian science is assessed in terms of changes in the basic rules and their adjustment with an emphasis on material and non-material incentives, staff rotation and training of young scientists. The paper proves that the frequency and content of institutional changes affect the quality of the scientific development and the training of scientific staff; moreover, copying the rules already in use reduces the competitive potential of science. From the scientific and practical standpoint, the research is novel in that it formulates proposals for establishing a labor compensation system and introduction of basic institutions (rules) to ensure the functioning of the scientific sphere and the efficiency of functions immanent to the latter. The paper proposes a “scientific product” doctrine that can be used for assessment of a scientist’s labor, according to which the scientist creates a product that is assessed not by the citation frequency or the number of published articles and books but by the importance of discoveries in theory and practice, the significance of new formulas and methods developed. It is suggested that the scientist’s labor compensation system be presented by two levels: the current salary and the estimated value of the total scientific product created. The problem of scientific work incentives can be solved by introducing a special tariffqualification grid tied to the system of the scientist’s promotion.

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