Bringing Chaos to Order: Historical Memory and the Manipulation of History

2008 ◽  
Vol 15 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 280-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Ascough

AbstractIn modern approaches to biblical and classical studies enlightenment scientific models have dominated historical investigation. As such, the notion of memories and traditions, even when they are assumed to be invented, are presented as reflecting a linear projection of history, with singular causes of change. Modern science, however, has moved beyond the Newtonian view of mechanics that undergirds such a view and is working with models of chaos and complexity. Social scientists and humanists are lagging behind and are only now beginning to understand the implications for their disciplines. This paper adds another voice to the small but growing cadre of promoters of a non-linear notion of historiography by noting its implications for a project of redescribing Graeco-Roman antiquity.

Author(s):  
Michael MacKinnon

This chapter discusses zooarchaeological exploration that might be less familiar (but no less important) within the discipline's broader contribution to classical archaeology. Scientific investigations and analyses of zooarchaeological materials from classical archaeological sites have grown rapidly since the 1980s. These are broadened further through initiatives taken not simply to understand biological and environmental components of the past (aspects that might, superficially, ally better with natural science), but to engage animals as markers of cultural complexity as well. Investigations today are increasingly conducted by zooarchaeologists who specialize in the scholarship of Greek and Roman antiquity, a tactic consequently helping to blur or dissolve traditional academic boundaries in classical studies that previously emphasized primacy to other categories of material remains, such as texts or art. Scientists now infiltrate classics, and vice versa.


2021 ◽  
pp. 226-242
Author(s):  
Steven L. Goldman

From the 1970s on, the treatment of modern science as simultaneously an induction-based account of experience and a deduction-based account of reality became an increasingly contentious issue in the academic world. A great deal was at stake in how one answered the question of whether scientific knowledge was objective and validated by its correspondence with reality. Respect and privileged social status were accorded to science, not to mention public support for research. At the same time, however, scientists faced the more fundamental question of whether there existed a neutral arbiter of questions relating to truth, or at least truths about the world. Philosophers and social scientists lined up on both sides of this issue, either attacking scientific knowledge as a socially constructed belief system or defending it as objective and correlated with reality.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Seid Halilović

One of the recent currents of thought in the contemporary Islamic world, which is becoming increasingly dominant, is developing on the margins of social and cognitive credibility of modern rationality. The basic methodological orientation that characterizes this cognitive current could reaffirm the historical memory of mu'tazilism, a classical theological school in Islam known for the fact that its representatives strongly promoted the primary importance of rational thinking. It does not matter whether we will accept to call these new Muslim thinkers NEO-mu'tazilites because of that - what will be much more important is to clearly determine their cognitive position in the overall classification of cognitive currents in the contemporary Islamic world. In fact, today we recognize four general currents of Muslim thought: (1) continuity of historical intellectual heritage, (2) mechanical promotion of modern knowledge, (3) critique of modernism from the perspective of Islamic intellectual tradition, (4) reconstruction of Islamic historical heritage from the perspective of exclusive credibility of modern knowledge. In this general cognitive classification in the contemporary conditions of the Islamic world, it will be crucial to distinguish two groups within the last current of thought, namely: (1) early Muslim reformers who were not experts in internal structures and hidden philosophical principles of modern science, (2) newer thinkers who are in no way connected with the historical heritage of Islamic classical knowledge, but under the cloak of popular religious terms reduce the key elements of the Islamic doctrinal and ontological stage in favour of the exclusive authority of the logical structures of modern rationality. These latter thinkers, who usually declare themselves as NEO-mu'tazilites, by essential reconstruction of the cultural and civilizational being of Islam, in fact discredit the social position of contemporary representatives of the classical Islamic intellectual heritage, who in the last few decades have renewed the internal sources of Islamic civilizational power in conditions of general reaffirmation of religious values. In this context, we will understand better the recent changes in the balance of global power and the models by which the modern West is reorganizing comprehensive capacities of its political, media and even academic authorities in order to consolidate in the long run new intellectual and educational structures in the contemporary Islamic world on the margins of modern rationality.


REGIONOLOGY ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-215
Author(s):  
Sergey V. Polutin ◽  
Anton V. Bulavin ◽  
Oleg E. Zubov ◽  
Tatiana V. Nagaeva

Introduction. Memories of past events often become objects of political manipulation, when the interpretation of events that are significant for Russian history turns out to be dependent on the political preferences and attitudes of public actors. Manipulations are aimed primarily at schoolchildren and university students, them being the most active part of society with significant protest potential. The article, based on the study conducted, systematizes the representations of past events in the collective memory of young people in the multiethnic regions of the Volga Federal District (Russia) to evaluate the influence of alternative ethnic and regional narratives on the state and potential development of the ethno-confessional situation in the regions under examination. Materials and Methods. The study was based on the materials of a mass sociological survey conducted among students (n = 1,246, October 2020), in the Republic of Mordovia, Chuvash Republic and the Republic of Tatarstan. First- and second-year students of the largest universities of the republics were interviewed. To identify regional differences, respondents who came from other countries and regions were excluded from the data obtained. Results. The results of the mass survey conducted among young people in the Republic of Mordovia, Republic of Tatarstan and the Chuvash Republic have revealed the fragmented perception of Russian history. In the historical memory of the youth living in the ethnic regions of the Volga Federal District, significant events of the Soviet past have dominated, although in some cases they have been perceived and reconsidered through the prism of ethno-confessional practices. At the same time, alternative ethnic and regional narratives that could negatively affect the socio-political situation in the republics have practically not been captured in the historical consciousness of the youth. Discussion and Conclusion. At the present stage, the regional symbolic memory policies of all three republics do not fundamentally contradict the memory policies of the federal center. The results of the study will be useful to social scientists, as well as public figures engaged in youth policy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-12
Author(s):  
Carolyn M. Laferrière

Abstract This paper serves as a brief introduction to a recent MOISA-sponsored panel at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Classical Studies, held in Washington, D.C. from January 2–5, 2020. Three of these papers will appear in the current and subsequent issues as articles that, together with two additional contributions, are broadly dedicated to the theme of music and dance in Greek and Roman antiquity.


Nuncius ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 411-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Grazia Grazzini

Discorso sopra la Chimica is an early seventeenth-century manuscript on alchemy written by the Florentine priest Antonio Neri, best known as the author of the first published treatise on glassmaking – L’Arte Vetraria (1612) – which was widely read for centuries. The Discorso shows a different face of Neri, that of the alchemist with a profound knowledge of Paraselsian doctrine, dedicated to the transmutation of metals, and an advocate of iatrochemistry. This picture is apparently incompatible with that of the technical glassmaker and the champion of knowledge based on experience. However, even in his Discorso the author affirms the value of experimental practice, and the experimentum has the all-important benefit of legitimizing the validity of alchemical doctrines. Knowledge does not come from reading the books of the sages of antiquity, but from the “practice of many experiences.” This emphasis on experimentation constitutes a unique feature of the Discorso. It was perhaps the ‘modernity’ of Neri’s discussion of alchemy that made the manuscript the object of plagiarism. Careful comparison reveals that an entire chapter of Prodromo, written by the Jesuit Francesco Lana Terzi in 1670, was copied from Neri. In the Discorso old and new are intertwined and validate one other, showing how Neri was a quintessential representative of his time, when scientific models that now appear irreconcilable coexisted, often forming a complex web. In this paper I discuss Antonio Neri and the background to his important work, reflecting on its impact and what it tells us about a fascinating and complex period in the birth of modern science. This is followed by a translation of the complete text of Discorso sopra la Chimica.


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