Frederic Leighton's Flaming June, Thermodynamics, and the Heat Death of the Sun

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-125
Author(s):  
Laura Franchetti
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Second Law Of Thermodynamics ◽  
Second Law ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Dominant Focus ◽  
Cultural Milieu ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Heat Death ◽  
The Impact

At the close of the nineteenth century, amid pervasive fears of decadence and widespread pessimism, Frederic Leighton (1830–96) completed Flaming June (1895). Taking as its starting point Victorian responses to the work that seem incomprehensible to viewers today, this paper examines the possible meaning behind Flaming June's more impenetrable iconography. The following discussion highlights the significance of thermodynamics in the work's cultural context. It examines the impact of an implication of the second law of thermodynamics, known as the Sun's heat death – a fated apocalyptic event – and suggests that this resonated with late Victorian audiences plagued by concerns of degeneration and decadence. Considered within this context, this paper reveals further layers of meaning embedded within the imagery of Flaming June available to a Victorian audience, but which have since been eclipsed by a dominant focus on other aspects of the painting's cultural milieu.

A Scientific Reading of Levinas’ Response to Heidegger: The Redemptive Edge of Time

KronoScope ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-89
Author(s):  
David Grandy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Physical Science ◽  
Second Law Of Thermodynamics ◽  
Second Law ◽  
Arrow Of Time ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Heat Death

AbstractIn responding to Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas characterized time as revelatory and redemptive. For Levinas, Heideggerian being was self-contained and self-identical, and therefore unable to generate the sense of novel possibility which occasions the fleeting present. Something similar to Heideggerian Being may be said to have taken hold in the nineteenth century with the development of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics was portrayed as the “arrow of time” moving inevitably toward universal heat death—cosmic stasis or self-identity. I argue that modern physical science itself does not fully validate this portrayal. There are, at the metaphysical level, explanatory gaps or openings which suggest other, more hopeful possibilities. These openings, I submit, are analogous to the ruptures of otherness which Levinas identified with the generosity of being and time’s redemptive aspect.

Liszt at the Piano: The Impact of Iconography on mid-Nineteenth Century Musicology

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 131-144
Author(s):  
Suzanne Marie Francis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Music History ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Maximum Benefit ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Iconic Status ◽  
The Impact

By the time of his death in 1827, the image of Beethoven as we recognise him today was firmly fixed in the minds of his contemporaries, and the career of Liszt was beginning to flower into that of the virtuosic performer he would be recognised as by the end of the 1830s. By analysing the seminal artwork Liszt at the Piano of 1840 by Josef Danhauser, we can see how a seemingly unremarkable head-and-shoulders bust of Beethoven in fact holds the key to unlocking the layers of commentary on both Liszt and Beethoven beneath the surface of the image. Taking the analysis by Alessandra Comini as a starting point, this paper will look deeper into the subtle connections discernible between the protagonists of the picture. These reveal how the collective identities of the artist and his painted assembly contribute directly to Beethoven’s already iconic status within music history around 1840 and reflect the reception of Liszt at this time. Set against the background of Romanticism predominant in the social and cultural contexts of the mid 1800s, it becomes apparent that it is no longer enough to look at a picture of a composer or performer in isolation to understand its impact on the construction of an overall identity. Each image must be viewed in relation to those that preceded and came after it to gain the maximum benefit from what it can tell us.

Changing places and identity construction: subjective introspection into researcher’s personal destination experiences

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-387 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wided Batat
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Tourist Gaze ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Access To Data ◽  
Comprehensive Framework ◽  
The Impact

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to draw on a subjective personal introspection (SPI) approach and Breakwell’s identity process theory (IPT) principles to show how elements from different cultures are performed by an individual to form a unique patchwork identity, and how this patchwork identity will contribute to deepen tourist gaze and, thus, achieving and maintaining authentic destination experience. Design/methodology/approach – The use of SPI gives the researcher an easy access to data collection of his personal, daily experiences related to changing destinations and consuming different places in Europe (France, UK and Italy), North America (USA and Canada) and North Africa (Algeria, Morocco and Egypt) for unlimited 24-hour access from an insider’s ongoing lived experiences. Findings – The results show that Breakwell’s IPT four principles are an integral part of patchwork identity construction when living and experiencing several places. Patchwork identity encompasses the individual’s ability to cross different social and symbolic boundaries when experiencing different destination. Each cultural context contributes to the bricolage and the assemblage of individual patchwork identity revealing one or more IPT dimensions. Practical implications – This paper serves to emphasize the importance of SPI-based research to patchwork identity construction in understanding the impact of cultural identity on tourist gaze. This approach can help marketers and tourism professionals to understand how consumers select the cultural elements that fit their identity and how the patchwork identity formed will contribute to deepen tourist gaze and destination experience of authenticity. Originality/value – The use of IPT and SPI-based research to explore tourist gaze offers a comprehensive framework based on a personal introspective approach where the starting point is the meaning individual provides to his hyphenated identity as coping mechanism to respond to social, psychological, ideological, cultural, symbolic, functional, structural, etc., aspirations.

Presbyterians in Africa

2019 ◽  
pp. 139-157
Author(s):  
Benhardt Yemo Quarshie
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Center Of Gravity ◽  
African Culture ◽  
Church Unity ◽  
Global Church ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Rich History ◽  
Local Languages

The Presbyterian presence in Africa goes back mainly to the nineteenth-century Protestant missionary enterprise on the continent. Presbyterianism spread all over the continent through missionary activity, but especially through the work of Africans themselves. African Presbyterians have much in common with Presbyterians worldwide in terms of beliefs, values, and practices, but the African cultural context offers unique dimensions to these commonalities. Presbyterians in Africa continue to face challenges generated by their context in areas such as the engagement between the gospel and African culture, which is intertwined with Africa’s primal religions, worldviews, and many local languages. A major challenge confronting Presbyterians today is how to engage with people of other faiths, especially Muslims, in Africa’s multireligious setting. Other challenges are African multiethnicity and the implications for Presbyterian worship and polity; globalization and its impact on values and ethics; denominationalism and its ramifications for ecumenism and church unity; and the shift in the center of gravity of Christianity to Africa and other southern continents and the impact on mission, theological engagement, and reflection. Presbyterians in Africa have a rich history that should shape their continuing contribution to the development of the continent and the global church.

Ideas in agrarian history: some observations on the British and nineteenth-century Bihar

1990 ◽  
Vol 122 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-43
Author(s):  
Peter Robb
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Indian Policy ◽  
Memorial Lecture ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
South Asian Studies ◽  
Agrarian Society ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Impact

With the death of Professor Eric Stokes we lost above all a delightful man, unassuming and helpful, intellectually vital and original. He helped inspire a new emphasis upon social and economic history among a whole generation of historians of South Asia. There are many people more appropriate than I to reflect this legacy in a memorial lecture. My only claim to speak may seem to be my continuing admiration for and dependence upon Stokes's work. If I have a wider claim, it must be in the emphasis which I place in my own research upon an empirical study of ideas and their impact; there is some justification for identifying members of the School of Oriental and African Studies with this approach, and it may be associated with us even more in future. If so, our starting-point must be Stokes's great pioneering effort, inThe English Utilitarians and India, to identify the intellectual basis of Indian policy-making in the first half of the nineteenth century. Yet in South Asian studies generally Stokes has had relatively few followers along that path. Among Cambridge historians this first love (if ever they felt its charms) has tended to be supplanted by a positive distaste for flirtations with the impact of ideas. If Stokes is their model, it is in his role as an analyst of agrarian society, as may be enjoyed in his contribution to theCambridge Economic Historyor inThe Peasant Armed, and in parts of that arguably transitional collection,The Peasant and the Raj.

A Second-Law Analysis of Thermoelastic Damping

1994 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. K. Kinra ◽  
K. B. Milligan
Keyword(s):  
Stress Field ◽  
Heterogeneous Material ◽  
Second Law Of Thermodynamics ◽  
Second Law ◽  
Homogeneous Material ◽  
Thermoelastic Damping ◽  
Temperature Changes ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Second Law Analysis ◽  
Thermoelastic Solid

In accordance with the Thomson effect (Thomson, 1853), when a thermoelastic solid is subjected to a tensile stress, it cools. Similarly, when a homogeneous material is subjected to an inhomogeneous stress field or when an heterogeneous material is subjected to any stress field (homogeneous or inhomogeneous), different parts of the material undergo different temperature changes. As a result irreversible heat conduction occurs and entropy is produced. In this paper we take the second law of thermodynamics as our starting point and develop a general theory for calculating the thermoelastic damping from the entropy produced.

Nineteenth Century

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don S. Lemons
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Second Law Of Thermodynamics ◽  
Magnetic Effect ◽  
Second Law ◽  
Experimental Demonstration ◽  
Electrical Currents ◽  
First Law Of Thermodynamics ◽  
Mechanical Equivalent ◽  
Romantic Movement

The Romantic Movement gave impetus to a process of unifying the forces of nature – an impetus that bore fruit in, especially, Oersted’s demonstraton of the magnetic effect of electrical currents (1820) and Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism (1865). Also, during this period Sadi Carnot articulated the first version of the second law of thermodynamics (1836) while James Joule’s painstaking experimental demonstration of the mechanical equivalent of heat (1847) is an essential foundation of the first law of thermodynamics.

Exergy Analysis of Data Centres-Effect of the Rack Location and Airflow Direction on the Thermal Performance

2016 ◽  
Vol 846 ◽  
pp. 36-41
Author(s):  
Babak Fakhim ◽  
Masud Behnia ◽  
Steven W. Armfield
Keyword(s):  
Temperature Distribution ◽  
Numerical Analysis ◽  
Thermal Performance ◽  
Exergy Analysis ◽  
Second Law Of Thermodynamics ◽  
Second Law ◽  
Temperature Profiles ◽  
Data Centre ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Data Centres

In this paper, a numerical analysis of flow and temperature distribution of a small raised-floor data centre is conducted in order to evaluate the thermal performance of the data centre. The flow patterns and temperature profiles established leads to a detailed exergy analysis of the data centre, which results in better understanding of irreversibilities in room airspace. The impact of the rack location in the data centre room and the airflow direction through perforated tiles on the thermal performance of the data centre is investigated using first-law and second-law of thermodynamics.

The death of Adumissa: a suicide at Cape Coast, Ghana, around 1800

Africa ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 91 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-225
Author(s):  
John Parker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Young Woman ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Cape Coast ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Town

AbstractThis article examines the history of voluntary death on the Gold Coast in present-day Ghana. Its focus is the suicide of a young woman named Adwoa Amissa (or Adumissa), who took her own life in dramatic fashion in the town of Cape Coast in the early nineteenth century. Adumissa killed herself in response to the earlier suicide of a thwarted suitor, who declared his own self-destruction to be ‘on her head’, thereby transferring the responsibility to her. These events, which were recorded by Sarah Bowdich, an English resident of Cape Coast in 1816–18, made Adumissa a legendary figure in the Fante region of the Gold Coast and beyond. Despite the interpretive complexities of Bowdich's text, two aspects of the episode reveal themselves as central to an understanding of its cultural context: the impact of the spoken word and the practice of aggressive ‘revenge suicide’ among the Akan and their neighbours. It is within this culturally meaningful and contingent framework that questions about Adumissa's emotional impulses, motivations and agency must be situated.

Modelling ‘Life’ against ‘heat death’

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-69
Author(s):  
Michail Zak
Keyword(s):  
Dynamical Systems ◽  
Liouville Equation ◽  
Second Law Of Thermodynamics ◽  
Quantum Systems ◽  
Living Systems ◽  
Second Law ◽  
New Class ◽  
Heat Death ◽  
The Universe

AbstractThis work is inspired by the discovery of a new class of dynamical system described by ordinary differential equations coupled with their Liouville equation. These systems called self-controlled since the role of actuators is played by the probability produced by the Liouville equation. Following the Madelung equation that belongs to this class, non-Newtonian properties such as randomness, entanglement and probability interference typical for quantum systems have been described. Special attention was paid to the capability to violate the second law of thermodynamics, which makes these systems neither Newtonian, nor quantum. It has been shown that self-controlled dynamical systems can be linked to mathematical models of living systems. The discovery of isolated dynamical systems that can decrease entropy in violation of the second law of thermodynamics, and resemblances of these systems to livings suggests that ‘Life’ can slow down the ‘heat death’ of the Universe and that can be associated with the Purpose of Life.

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