scholarly journals Hourglass Effect: The Late Seventeenth Encyclopaedic Dictionary and the Dissemination of Knowledge

Linha D Água ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-25
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Clive Williams ◽  
Ionna Galleron

The publication of the Dictionnaire universel of Furetière in 1690 ushered in the age of the encyclopaedic dictionary. This was a relatively short-lived phenomenon of little more than a hundred years, but one which pathed the way to modern encyclopaedias. Furetière having died in 1688, his successor was Basnage de Beauval, a protestant exile based in the United Provinces of the Netherlands. It was Basnage who in the new 1701 edition transformed the dictionary by enlarging it considerably to a more genuine encyclopaedic coverage and calling on specialists to rewrite key sections, notably on the natural sciences. The simile of the hourglass is a means to show how the dictionary mediated knowledge from a vast array of sources and made the data available to contemporary and current day users. This paper demonstrates the hourglass effect through the lexicographical and learned sources that Basnage and his major compiler of scientific data, Regis of Amsterdam, brought into service. It looks at how Regis used numerous botanical sources in writing entries on Brazilian flora. Finally, we examine the influence of the work on the phenomenon of the universal dictionary and the development of the encyclopaedia.

Author(s):  
Linda MEIJER-WASSENAAR ◽  
Diny VAN EST

How can a supreme audit institution (SAI) use design thinking in auditing? SAIs audit the way taxpayers’ money is collected and spent. Adding design thinking to their activities is not to be taken lightly. SAIs independently check whether public organizations have done the right things in the right way, but the organizations might not be willing to act upon a SAI’s recommendations. Can you imagine the role of design in audits? In this paper we share our experiences of some design approaches in the work of one SAI: the Netherlands Court of Audit (NCA). Design thinking needs to be adapted (Dorst, 2015a) before it can be used by SAIs such as the NCA in order to reflect their independent, autonomous status. To dive deeper into design thinking, Buchanan’s design framework (2015) and different ways of reasoning (Dorst, 2015b) are used to explore how design thinking can be adapted for audits.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 126-134
Author(s):  
Agung Perdana Kusuma

In the 18th century, although the Dutch Company controlled most of the archipelago, the Netherlands also experienced a decline in trade. This was due to the large number of corrupt employees and the fall in the price of spices which eventually created the VOC. Under the rule of H.W. Daendels, the colonial government began to change the way of exploitation from the old conservative way which focused on trade through the VOC to exploitation managed by the government and the private sector. Ulama also strengthen their ties with the general public through judicial management, and compensation, and waqaf assets, and by leading congregational prayers and various ceremonies for celebrating birth, marriage and death. Their links with a large number of artisans, workers (workers), and the merchant elite were very influential.


Author(s):  
Anastasia Fedorova

In Linguistics the terms model and modelling have a vast array of meanings, which depends on the purpose and the object, and the type of the scientific research. The article is dedicated to the investigation of a special procedure of semantic processes modelling, deducing and substantiating the notion “evolutional semantic model”, the content and operational opportunities of which differ drastically from the essence and purpose of the known from the scientific literature phenomenon of the same name. In the proposed research this variety of modelling is oriented towards the description of the dynamics of the legal terms content loading, the estimation of possible vectors of the semantic evolution on the way of its terminalization/determinalization. The evolutional model of semantics has here as its basis the succession of sememes or series of sememes, the order of which is determined with accounting of a number of parameters. The typical schemes of the meaning development, illustrated by the succession of sememes, are considered to be the models of semantic laws (evolutional semantic models = EMS). Their function is the explanation of the mechanism and the order of the stages of the semantic evolution of the system of the words which sprung from one root on the way of its legal specialization, and, therefore, the proposed in the paper experience of semantic laws modelling differs from the expertise of the “catalogue of semantic derivations”, proposed by H. A. Zaliznjak, which doesn’t have as its purpose the explanation of meaning displacements, and from the notion of semantic derivation, models of derivation, dynamic models, worked out by O. V. Paducheva, which also only state such a displacement, without proving its reality. Key words: evolutional semantic model (EMS), modelling, semantic law, sememe, pre(law).


2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 243-253
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Stefanowicz

This article undertakes to show the way that has led to the statutory decriminalization of euthanasia-related murder and assisted suicide in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It presents the evolution of the views held by Dutch society on the euthanasia related practice, in the consequence of which death on demand has become legal after less than thirty years. Due attention is paid to the role of organs of public authority in these changes, with a particular emphasis put on the role of the Dutch Parliament – the States General. Because of scarcity of space and limited length of the article, the change in the attitudes toward euthanasia, which has taken place in the Netherlands, is presented in a synthetic way – from the first discussions on admissibility of a euthanasia-related murder carried out in the 1970s, through the practice of killing patients at their request, which was against the law at that time, but with years began more and more acceptable, up to the statutory decriminalization of euthanasia by the Dutch Parliament, made with the support of the majority of society.


1993 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-177
Author(s):  
Karen Harding

Ate appearances deceiving? Do objects behave the way they do becauseGod wills it? Ate objects impetmanent and do they only exist becausethey ate continuously created by God? According to a1 Ghazlli, theanswers to all of these questions ate yes. Objects that appear to bepermanent are not. Those relationships commonly tefemed to as causalare a result of God’s habits rather than because one event inevitably leadsto another. God creates everything in the universe continuously; if Heceased to create it, it would no longer exist.These ideas seem oddly naive and unscientific to people living in thetwentieth century. They seem at odds with the common conception of thephysical world. Common sense says that the universe is made of tealobjects that persist in time. Furthermore, the behavior of these objects isreasonable, logical, and predictable. The belief that the univetse is understandablevia logic and reason harkens back to Newton’s mechanical viewof the universe and has provided one of the basic underpinnings ofscience for centuries. Although most people believe that the world is accutatelydescribed by this sort of mechanical model, the appropriatenessof such a model has been called into question by recent scientificadvances, and in particular, by quantum theory. This theory implies thatthe physical world is actually very different from what a mechanicalmodel would predit.Quantum theory seeks to explain the nature of physical entities andthe way that they interact. It atose in the early part of the twentieth centuryin response to new scientific data that could not be incorporated successfullyinto the ptevailing mechanical view of the universe. Due largely ...


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 330-334
Author(s):  
Octavio A. Chon Torres

AbstractThere is a record of the positive effects of astrobiological research for the natural sciences and eventually for their technological use on Earth. However, on the philosophical effects, this is not as visible as the other sciences, which is why it can be assumed that it is a waste of time speculating on astrobioethics or also on the philosophy of astrobiology. This is the reason why this work seeks to identify and sustain the philosophical utility of astrobioethics. To achieve this, this article focuses on three essential aspects: teloempathy, education and astrotheology. Russell's argument about the value of philosophy will be used as a fundamental basis for the usefulness of astrobioethics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Martijn Abrahamse

Summary This article deals with the reception of Billy Graham and modern evangelicalism in the fragmented society of the Netherlands in 1954. It takes its departure from the stream of newspaper articles published between February and June in response to the Greater London Crusade and Graham’s first large scale rally in Amsterdam’s Olympic Stadium. The analysis of the reports in different newspapers, which represent the different social groups (catholic, protestant, socialist and liberal) in Dutch society, reveals a significant shift in the way Billy Graham was perceived: from initial scepticism to mild appreciation. This change in press coverage, it is concluded, is mainly due to the different way in which Billy Graham presented himself compared with the large-scale publicity which surrounded his campaign.


Grotiana ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Johannes Magliano-Tromp

In 1617, Hugo Grotius had his treatise On satisfaction published. Explicitly directed against Faustus Socinus’s 1594 book On Jesus Christ as our Saviour, it purports to contribute to the confutation of the Italian scholar’s teachings, which in the Netherlands were widely regarded as utterly heretical. The way in which he perceived Socinus, however, was mainly determined by the image of Socinianism as disseminated by its detractors, foremost Sibrandus Lubbertus of Franeker. Grotius did read Socinus’s work, but not with much care, and at least unaccommodatingly. The reason for Grotius to intervene in this theological debate is often assumed to have been to vindicate his and his ecclesiastical party’s views on religion as orthodox, or at least far removed from Socinianism and other heresies. In contrast, it is proposed here to take the explicit motivation in the preface at face value, and assume that Grotius wrote it to refute Socinus on the basis of his juridical, philological, and historical errors, simply because he could, and genuinely abhorred Socinianism as he had learned to understand it.


Author(s):  
M. Esquirou de Parieu

The history of the United Provinces, and of Holland especially, from the close of the Spanish rule down to the establishment of the modern monarchy of the Netherlands, is distinguished for its manifestation of a permanent struggle between different opposite principles. Liberty and authority, municipal principle and state principle, republic and monarchy, the spirit of federal isolation and that of centralization, appear to give battle to each other upon a territory itself with difficulty defended from the waves of the ocean by the watchful industry of its inhabitants.


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