scholarly journals Beyond the Indicators: Improving Science, Scholarship, Policy and Practice to Meet the Complex Challenges of Sustainability

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 578 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ortwin Renn ◽  
Ilan Chabay ◽  
Sander van der Leeuw ◽  
Solène Droy
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Societal Challenges ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of

Many teams have developed a wide range of numerical or categorical indicators of progress in the implementation of the SDG targets. But these indicators cannot identify why target goals have not been accomplished, whether or how they do or do not do justice to the social and cultural context in which they are applied, and how newly emerging social dynamics affect indicators. Nor do they provide means for resolving conflicting values and making balanced trade-offs. Our starting point in examining why we have not been successful in progressing towards sustainability is that the sustainability conundrum is primarily a societal, rather than an environmental problem. Our present emphasis is to maintain our way of life while minimizing its impact, hoping that such a minimization strategy would make the world more sustainable. Reducing for example the extent of pollution but keeping the same industries alive would not be sufficient for a transformation towards sustainability. Instead we should ask “How did we come to this point and what practices, in our societies and in our science, need to change to make progress towards sustainability?” To answer these questions, one needs to go much further back than usual in the history of western societies to identify the societal, scientific, technological and environmental co-evolutionary dynamics that have brought us to the current conundrum. And the fact that most societal challenges are of the “wicked” kind, as well as the need to decide among many societal options and many future pathways that may lead to positive results require that we seriously engage in using “Complex Systems” approaches. It is up to our scientific community to identify these pathways, and we need to move fast!

Taranis and beyond: inspiring aerodynamic capability

2014 ◽  
Vol 118 (1206) ◽  
pp. 845-859 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Discovery ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Functional Requirements ◽  
Design Development ◽  
International Partnership ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Combat Aircraft ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Uk

Abstract In his 1916 book, Aircraft in Warfare, the Dawn of the Fourth Arm, F.W. Lanchester wrote: “The supremacy of British aircraft can only be maintained by the adoption of a thoroughly progressive constructional policy, guided constantly by the most recent scientific discovery and research, and by utilising to the full information and experience gained in the Services.” The recent successful flight trials of the Taranis low-observable unmanned demonstrator aircraft provide the latest evidence of the UK’s continued capacity for the entire design, development, manufacture, and flight testing of world-leading combat aircraft, particularly with regard to Aerodynamics. Taranis is both the culmination of many years’ research and development in the UK and a starting-point for the next generation of UK combat air systems. In this lecture, Taranis is reviewed, in such detail as current sensitivities will allow, in the wider context of UK combat aircraft aerodynamic capability, exemplified by the leading roles taken by the UK in the Tornado and Typhoon programmes and the important contribution made to the development of the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. The immediate technical challenges associated with the aerodynamic design and qualification of a low-observable air vehicle are considerable. In this instance they have been compounded by the balanced view taken within the project of trade-offs against many parameters. However, the UK aerodynamics community faces equally stringent challenges in terms of the identification and delivery of the most appropriate future systems; increasingly complex and demanding operational and functional requirements; and, perhaps most of all, maintaining an affordable and cost-effective capability in the face of strict budgetary pressures and austere economic conditions. Nevertheless, those challenges are accompanied by a wide range of opportunities, namely for national and international partnership; radically innovative engineering solutions and approaches; new thinking; and the engagement of the best minds and ideas in the UK academic community. Taranis represented a big integration task, requiring a particular set of skills to pull together the total package, resting on a bedrock of mastery of the technical issues. It has been an inspirational experience for those of us who have worked on it. It has demonstrated that the UK is capable of achieving the most demanding current and anticipated military aerodynamic requirements and has signposted the way to an exciting and nationally important future.

scholarly journals On “The dictionary of active Polish and Ukrainian phraseology” [Leksykon aktywnej frazeologii polskiej i ukraińskiej]. Contrastive linguistics and culture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wojciech Paweł Sosnowski ◽  
Roman Tymoshuk
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
New Method ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Contrastive Linguistics ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Definition Of

On The dictionary of active Polish and Ukrainian phraseology [Leksykon aktywnej frazeologii polskiej i ukraińskiej]. Contrastive linguistics and cultureThe Dictionary of Active Polish and Ukrainian Phraseology [Leksykon aktywnej frazeologii polskiej i ukraińskiej] is the first publication of its kind in the history of Polish and Ukrainian lexicography. It consists of equivalent phrasal units in Polish and Ukrainian. The innovative aspect of the lexicon is that it uses a semantic metalanguage to establish equivalent units. The authors developed a new method of searching for equivalent units which uses the meaning — not the form — as the starting point. This method enables the identification of equivalent units in both languages. Moreover, it enables the identification of units that do not have equivalents. The units which lack equivalents are usually deeply rooted in Poland’s or Ukraine’s historical and cultural context, and are thus defined as culturemes. Even though they lack equivalents, it was decided not to exclude them from the Leksykon’s structure, as they are actively used by the speakers of Polish and Ukrainian. This paper provides an overview of the Leksykon’s methodology and presents the authors’ definition of phraseologism. The most important points in the paper are illustrated with a number of example entries from the dictionary. The primary focus of the paper rests on phrasal units which lack equivalents. O Leksykonie aktywnej frazeologii polskiej i ukraińskiej. Konfrontacja językowa a kulturaOpracowywany przez nas Leksykon aktywnej frazeologii polskiej i ukraińskiej jest pierwszym dziełem tego typu w historii leksykografii polskiej i ukraińskiej. W leksykonie prezentujemy odpowiedniości jednostek frazeologicznych w języku polskim i ukraińskim za pomocą semantycznego języka pośrednika. Wyznaczenie kierunku od znaczenia ku formie pozwoliło dobrać ekwiwalenty jednostek frazeologicznych w obu językach. Zestawienie polskiego i ukraińskiego materiału pozwoliło również wyodrębnić poszczególne jednostki nieposiadające odpowiedników. Jednostki te są ściśle związane z kulturą i historią narodu polskiego i ukraińskiego. W związku z tym zaliczamy je do kulturemów, ale nie pomijamy w strukturze leksykonu ze względu na ich aktywność w mówionym języku współczesnym. W niniejszym artykule prezentujemy metodologię zastosowaną w leksykonie, definicję roboczą frazeologizmu w leksykonie, przykładowe hasła oraz skupiamy się na pokazaniu jednostek frazeologicznych nieposiadających pełnej odpowiedniości.

scholarly journals How Poetry as A Dual Genre Draws its Themes from the Author’s Origin, History and Setting: A Case Study of Two Selected Kiswahili Poetry Books

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-137
Author(s):  
Kibigo Mary Lukamika
Keyword(s):  
Way Of Life ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
Specific Analysis ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Analyse Data ◽  
To Come ◽  
English Students

The study explores how poetry as a dual genre draws its themes from the origin, history and setting or environs of the author in the society. Basically, literature like any other art has its own way of expressing its aesthetic value. This is done through the channel of language. On the other hand, literature has many genres. Despite that, poetry is considered to be the most ancient genre in many communities universally. Poetry, therefore, is a genre that has a dual nature, which implies that it is a genre of both oral and written literature. Kiswahili poetry encompasses itself fully with the society in question, its ideologies, philosophies, traditions, culture, and the general life of the Swahili people without taking into consideration the language in which it was constructed. Therefore, it is not possible to disassociate the Kiswahili poetry from their culture as it is fully drawn from their way of life. Since a people’s culture is enclosed in their language, this study selected two Kiswahili Poetry books through purposive sampling to show how poetry draws its themes from the author’s origin, history, setting, and culture. The selected books were: Sikate Tamaa (Said A. Mohamed) and Dhifa (Euphrase Kezilahabi) The study employed the Hermeneutics theory as interpreted by (Newmark and Michael Forster, 2007) . This theory was very vital to this study as it puts into consideration the words used, the history and culture of the author, context, and specific analysis of the text to come up with the objective of the general text. The study also used textual analysis as well as an observation checklist to analyse data. The study discovered that poetry is rich and has a lot to be desired as far as teaching and depicting the author’s origin, history, and setting in the society is concerned hence drawing the themes from that. This study aimed at highlighting the need for more in-depth research as this can reduce the negative notion that poetry is a hard and complicated genre to some learners and scholars. There is also a need for the poetry learners to identify the history of the author in order to provide a starting point for the analysis in question. Therefore, the study proposes that poems be taught at all levels of learning and their various elements in order to enlighten the Kiswahili and English students, scholars, and researchers.

Temporality

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodore Martin
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Temporal Structure ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
19Th Century Literature ◽  
Postmodern Fiction ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of

Time is not a strictly literary category, yet literature is unthinkable without time. The events of a story unfold over time. The narration of that story imposes a separate order of time (chronological, discontinuous, in medias res). The reading of that narrative may take its own sweet time. Then there is the fact that literature itself exists in time. Transmitted across generations, literary texts cannot help but remind us of how times have changed. In doing so, they also show us how prior historical moments were indelibly shaped by their own specific philosophies and technologies of timekeeping—from the forms of sacred time that informed medieval writing; to the clash between national time and natural history that preoccupied the Romantics; to the technological standardization of time that shaped 19th-century literature; to the theories of psychological time that emerged in tandem with modernism; to the fragmented and foreshortened digital times that underlie postmodern fiction. Time, in short, shapes literature several times over: from reading experience to narrative form to cultural context. In this way, literature can be read as a peculiarly sensitive timepiece of its own, both reflecting and responding to the complex and varied history of shared time. Over the course of the 20th century, literary time has become an increasingly prominent issue for literary critics. Time was first installed at the heart of literary criticism by way of narrative theory and narratology, which sought to explain narrative’s irreducibly temporal structure. Soon, though, formalist and phenomenological approaches to time would give way to more historically and politically attuned methods, which have emphasized modern time’s enmeshment in imperialism, industrial capitalism, and globalization. In today’s critical landscape, time is a crucial and contested topic in a wide range of subfields, offering us indispensable insights into the history and ideology of modernity; the temporal politics of nationalism, colonialism, and racial oppression; the alternate timescales of environmental crisis and geological change; and the transformations of life and work that structure postmodern and postindustrial society.

Martin Heidegger: Middle Works

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Edmund Husserl ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Being And Time ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Dominant Ideologies ◽  
History Of

Martin Heidegger (b. 1889–d. 1976) is a central figure in 20th-century philosophy. Especially in his early works, most notably Being and Time (1927), Heidegger critically continues the tradition of phenomenology inaugurated by Edmund Husserl (b. 1859–d. 1938). Heidegger’s philosophy has been a major influence on a number of important philosophers in their own right, including Hans-Georg Gadamer (b. 1900–d. 2002), Maurice Merleau-Ponty (b. 1908–d. 1961), Hannah Arendt (b. 1906–d. 1975), Paul Ricoeur (b. 1913–d. 2005), Michel Foucault (b. 1926–d. 1984), Jacques Derrida (b. 1930–d. 2004), and Richard Rorty (b. 1931–d. 2007). His work has also impacted other disciplines, such as theology, literary and cultural studies, art theory, and the theory of architecture. Heidegger is primarily known for his work in metaphysics and existential philosophy, but he has also made much-discussed contributions to a wide range of philosophical topics, including the study of numerous authors from the history of philosophy. The German edition of his collected works (Gesamtausgabe, or GA) includes published writings, lecture courses, seminars, and manuscripts. Once completed, it will include 102 volumes. To manage this rich material, Heidegger’s philosophy is often divided into different periods. Although how to demarcate these periods is itself a matter of scholarly debate, Oxford Bibliographies divides his work into an early, middle, and later period. This entry treats the middle period of his thought (roughly 1933–1945). It coincides with the rise to power of the German National Socialist Party, in which Heidegger was involved as rector of the University of Freiburg, the Second World War, and the Holocaust. Although Heidegger rarely addresses these events directly, this period in particular should not be considered without taking into account these events and the dominant ideologies of the time. Heidegger’s major concerns during this period are with the experience of art, the philosophy of history, and the history of Western philosophy in particular. Heidegger gives a few important lectures and lecture series during this time that were later edited. These should be the starting point for any reading. The major body of his writing during this period, however, consists of manuscripts, notes, and course materials, which are more difficult to assess. In using this bibliography, be sure to also check the entries on the early and later period of Heidegger’s works. Although the focus of Heidegger’s philosophical concern shifts, many themes continue to be relevant throughout his works. Often, scholars writing on Heidegger take into account his development as whole, and relevant literature may be treated in another entry. This bibliography aims to be inclusive with regard to schools of thought and interpretations of Heidegger. It is not exhaustive but rather an attempt to identify useful starting points for individual study within the more recent literature on Heidegger.

scholarly journals PROPHETS AND PRIESTS OF THE NATION: NAGUIB MAHFOUZ'SKARNAK CAFÉAND THE 1967 CRISIS IN EGYPT

2009 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 653-669 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Geer
Keyword(s):  
Arab World ◽  
Cognitive Structure ◽  
Nobel Laureate ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
History Of ◽  
Good Starting Point ◽  
The 1960S

This quote from a character in the 1974 novelAl-Karnak(Karnak Café) by Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006) sums up the reaction of millions of people in Egypt and the Arab world to the June 1967 Arab–Israeli war. Why did this war shatter their worldviews? A military defeat may occur for purely military reasons, in this case the better preparation of Israeli troops. Why should it cast doubt on a whole way of life? The answer to this question lies in the social and cognitive structure of nationalism, which I examine in a moment of crisis, after the 1967 war, when it became necessary for nationalist intellectuals to debate issues that had previously been taken for granted.Al-Karnak, which was made into a highly profitable and controversial film, provides a good starting point for studying these debates. However, it is important to understand them as products of the nationalist project of which Mahfouz was a part. I first analyze the history of that project, explaining its raison d'être and its success by the 1960s.

The Pleasures of Imagination. Aspects of Fictionality in the Poetics of the Age of Enlightenment and in Present-Day Theories of Fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-286
Author(s):  
Frank Zipfel
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Small Contribution ◽  
Major Question ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Age Of Enlightenment

AbstractInvestigations into the history of the modern practice of fiction encounter a wide range of obstacles. One of the major impediments lies in the fact that former centuries have used different concepts and terms to designate or describe phenomena or ideas that we, during the last 50 years, have been dealing with under the label of fiction/ality. Therefore, it is not easy to establish whether scholars and poets of other centuries actually do talk about what we today call fiction or fictionality and, if they do, what they say about it. Moreover, even when we detect discourses or propositions that seem to deal with aspects of fictionality we have to be careful and ask whether these propositions are actually intended to talk about phenomena that belong to the realm of fiction/ality. However, if we want to gain some knowledge about the history of fiction/ality, we have no other choice than to tackle the arduous task of trying to detect similarities (and differences) between the present-day discourse on fictionality and (allegedly) related discourses of other epochs. The goal of this paper is to make a small contribution to this task.The starting point of the paper are two observations, which also determine the approach I have chosen for my investigations. 1) In the 18th century the terms »fiction« or »fictionality« do not seem to play a significant role in the discussion of art and literature. However, some propositions of the discourse on imagination, one of the most prominent discourses of the Age of Enlightenment, seem to suggest that this discourse deals more or less explicitly with questions regarding the fictionality of literary artefacts as we conceive it today. 2) The concepts of imagination and fictionality are also closely linked in present-day theories of fiction. Naturally, the question arises how the entanglement of the concepts of fictionality and imagination can be understood in a historical perspective. Can it function as a common ground between 18th-century and present-day conceptions of fiction/ality? Is imagination still used in the same ways to explain phenomena of fictionality or have the approaches evolved over the last 250 years and if yes, then how? These kinds of questions inevitably lead to one major question: What do 18th-century and present-day conceptions of fiction/ality have in common, how much and in what ways do they differ?For heuristic reasons, the article is subdivided according to what I consider the three salient features of today’s institutional theories of fiction (i. e. theories which try to explain fictionality as an institutional practice that is determined and ruled by specific conventions): fictive utterance (aspects concerning the production of fictional texts), fictional content (aspects concerning the narrated story in fictional texts) and fictive stance (aspects concerning the reader’s response to fictional texts). The article focusses on the English, French and German-speaking debates of the long 18th century and within these discourses on the most central and, therefore, for the development of the concept of fiction/ality most influential figures. These are, most notably, Madame de Staël, Voltaire, Joseph Addison, Georg Friedrich Meier, Christian Wolff, the duo Johann Jakob Bodmer and Johann Jakob Breitinger as well as their adversary Johann Christoph Gottsched.The relevance of the article for a historical approach to the theory of fiction lies in the following aspects. By means of a tentative reconstruction of some carefully chosen propositions of 18th-century discourse on imagination I want to show that these propositions deal in some way or other with literary phenomena and theoretical concepts that in present-day theory are addressed under the label of fiction/ality. By comparing propositions stemming from 18th-century discourse on imagination with some major assertions of present-day theories of fiction I try to lay bare the similarities and the differences of the respective approaches to literary fiction and its conceptualisations. One of the major questions is to what extent these similarities and differences stem from the differing theoretical paradigms that are used to explain literary phenomena in both epochs. I venture some hypotheses about the influence of the respective theoretical backgrounds on the conceptions of fictionality then and today. An even more intriguing question seems to be whether the practice of fictional storytelling as we know and conceive it today had already been established during the 18th century or whether it was only in the process of being established.

scholarly journals The State of Music Semiology Development

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 2509-2523
Author(s):  
Olga B. Solomonova ◽  
Galyna F. Zavgorodnia ◽  
Olha V. Muravska ◽  
Alla D. Chernoivanenko ◽  
Oksana O. Aleksandrova
Keyword(s):  
Professional Training ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Educational Practice ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Practical Significance ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Thinking ◽  
Development Of Language

The terminology of music semiology, which is an academic discipline with a significant educational resonance and a necessary component of music and educational practice at its higher educational and qualification levels, lies at the intersection of the main aspects of musicology such as the history of music, the theory and analysis of musical forms, music aesthetics and the theory of music interpretation, and others. Music semiology covers the transitional methodological abilities due to its subject reference points and the wide range of the material involved in the cognitive field. Music semiology can be considered a necessary basic discipline for the professional training of musicologists and practicing musicians of any programme. There is no doubt about the importance of mastering the language system, which is fundamental in the chosen field of communication. As an academic discipline, music semiology can be presented according to the way its terminology is built, it includes three main themes among which each of the following continues the meaning of the previous one by deepening and enlarging, detailing in an analytical way. Scientific novelty is determined by the fact that unlike music semiotics and the theory of music semantics, semiology is looking for a way not only to expand culture, but also the metacultural ontological and transcendental premises of human thinking and communication, it refers to the experience that is the "starting point for all beginnings" while explaining the reasons for any human activity related to signs, the needs of the human community in the development of language and in linguistic being. But most of all, it is determined by the need to identify the origins of the musical language as the language of consciousness, which reveals its true reality of creating meaning to a person. Therefore, the study within music semiology focuses on specific ways of organising the sign form and meaning-designated content. The practical significance of the study is determined by the fact that the sociocultural nature of humans, which is integral to the natural and biological conditions of one’s existence, is merged with human speech.

scholarly journals How Style Became Famous and Irrelevant at the Same Time

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-230
Author(s):  
Nataša Lah
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Theoretical Issue ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
19Th Century Art

The article is concerned with the theoretical issue of the status of style in visual arts, aiming to demonstrate that – within art history – stylistics acquired its disciplinary autonomy in the late 18th century when, J. J. Winckelmann was the first to detach stylistics from rhetoric, thus expanding the field of stylistic competence to the history of art. It was also the time when, under the influence of early Romanticism, the entirely opposite tendencies originated, those of the emphasized individuation of art. Therefore, parallel to the birth of theoretical notion of “the styles of the eras”, romanticists not only paved the way for Modernism, but also thwarted the application of a newly risen stylistic methodology concerned with the cultural codification of style. The disagreement between the “classicists”, and “romanticists”, eventually culminated in the schism of the Paris Salon and the emergence of a wide range of new trends, heterogeneous conceptions and avant-garde movement, all in a very short space of time. The concept of “the style of epoch” has been staggered by the challenges of the 20th century. The function of culture within the stylistic characteristics of the 19th century art production was appropriated by artists, whose artwork acquired total objectual autonomy. The cultural and stylistic codification of of historical periods conceived in the 18th century could no longer be applied to the heterogeneous art produced during the Modernist era. By affirming the obviousness of the visual, Modernism eluded all the semantic, functional, utilitarian, narrative and symbolic burdens of earlier periods. This article endeavours to show how, subsequent to the epoch of Modernism, style can be discussed exclusively at a level of the apparent expressed features of an artwork. Codification which follows the principle of temporal “anchoring” in the cultural context of the Modernits era of Modernism remains both risky and ineffective stylistic strategy.  

scholarly journals The rise and/or fall of Baby PISA testing

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-132
Author(s):  
Dragana Purešević
Keyword(s):  
Education Policy ◽  
Standardized Testing ◽  
Global Education ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Educational Value ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
To Come

In the paper, we take the neoliberal approach to education as our starting point and proceed to look at how the test-based approach to assessment affects the shaping of global education policy and practice. The focus of the paper is on the latest global neoliberal trend to come from the OECD network of standardized testing - the IELS study, often referred to as Baby PISA. In view of the fact that the launching of this study has met with a range of reactions by early education experts, we provide an overview of the history of this study, its implementation, and the key critiques of Baby PISA testing. Finally, we examine the question of what neoliberalism has achieved with the standardization of education, and propose a discussion about alternative approaches to education, as well as to assessment. The approaches we highlight are based on an understanding of the complexity of the world we live in, in which we must find a way to live together and participate with purpose. We conclude that education does not need uniformity, but rather diversity, whose educational value lies in the "ethics of meetings".

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