scholarly journals Tolstoy’s argument: realism and the history of science

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stathis Psillos
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Leo Tolstoy ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Current Science

In his intervention to the ‘bankruptcy of science debate’, which raged in Paris in the turn of the twentieth century, Leo Tolstoy was one of the first to use the past record of science as a weapon against current science. It is not inductive. It does not conclude that all current scientific theories will be abandoned; nor that most of them will be abandoned; not even that it is more likely than not that all or most of them will be abandoned. Its conclusion is modest: some of presently accepted theories will have the fate of those past theories that once dominated the scene but subsequently were abandoned.

scholarly journals Who cares about the history of science?

2016 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hasok Chang
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
Critical Awareness ◽  
Complementary Function ◽  
History Of ◽  
Current Science ◽  
Do So

The history of science has many functions. Historians should consider how their work contributes to various functions, going beyond a simple desire to understand the past correctly. There are both internal and external functions of the history of science in relation to science itself; I focus here on the internal, as they tend to be neglected these days. The internal functions can be divided into orthodox and complementary. The orthodox function is to assist with the understanding of the content and methods of science as it is now practised. The complementary function is to generate and improve scientific knowledge where current science itself fails to do so. Complementary functions of the history of science include the raising of critical awareness, and the recovery and extension of past scientific knowledge that has become forgotten or neglected. These complementary functions are illustrated with some concrete examples.

A New Image for Science

2021 ◽  
pp. 194-208
Author(s):  
Steven L. Goldman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Theory Change ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theory Acceptance ◽  
Practice Of Science

Thomas Kuhn subverted the image of science that had become entrenched by the mid-twentieth century, that science was a body of knowledge produced by logical reasoning about objective facts. Kuhn argued that a new approach to the history of science revealed that the process of discovery was integral to the practice of science and that nonlogical factors played a role in theory acceptance and theory change. Insofar as they entered into the reasoning leading to the formulation of a theory, facts were not objective but interpreted consistent with contingent assumptions on which the theory rested. Kuhn himself believed that scientific knowledge was about reality. His theory of how scientific knowledge was produced, however, strongly supported the view that scientific theories were contingent interpretations of experience.

Reframing the Sciences of the Long Eighteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-66
Author(s):  
Giuliano Pancaldi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Science Policy ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Past Half

Here I survey a sample of the essays and reviews on the sciences of the long eighteenth century published in this journal since it was founded in 1969. The connecting thread is some historiographic reflections on the role that disciplines—in both the sciences we study and the fields we practice—have played in the development of the history of science over the past half century. I argue that, as far as disciplines are concerned, we now find ourselves a bit closer to a situation described in our studies of the long eighteenth century than we were fifty years ago. This should both favor our understanding of that period and, hopefully, make the historical studies that explore it more relevant to present-day developments and science policy. This essay is part of a special issue entitled “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: HSNS at 50,” edited by Erika Lorraine Milam.

Madhouse

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-363
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Tilley ◽  
Paul Christian ◽  
Susan Ledger ◽  
Jan Walmsley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Learning Disability ◽  
Social History ◽  
Learning Difficulties ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Immersive Theatre ◽  
Disability Research ◽  
History Of Institutions

Until the very end of the twentieth century the history of learning difficulties was subsumed into other histories, of psychiatry, of special education and, indeed, of disability. Initiatives to enable people with learning difficulties and their families to record their own histories and contribute to the historical record are both recent and powerful. Much of this work has been led or supported by The Open University’s Social History of Learning Disability Research (SHLD) group and its commitment to developing “inclusive history.” The article tells the story of the Madhouse Project in which actors with learning difficulties, stimulated by the story of historian activist Mabel Cooper and supported by the SHLD group, learned about and then offered their own interpretations of that history, including its present-day resonances. Through a museum exhibition they curated, and through an immersive theatre performance, the actors used the history of institutions to alert a wider public to the abuses of the past, and the continuing marginalization and exclusion of people with learning difficulties. This is an outstanding example of history’s potential to stimulate activism.

Modernist Dante

2021 ◽  
pp. 633-650
Author(s):  
Daniela Caselli
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
James Joyce ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Ezra Pound ◽  
First Century ◽  
Djuna Barnes ◽  
Dorothy Richardson ◽  
Anglophone Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

This chapter traces a history of Dante’s reception in anglophone literature between the 1870s and the 1950s. It acknowledges his importance in Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and James Joyce, but engages more closely with Samuel Beckett, Djuna Barnes, and Virginia Woolf. It shows that the modernist Dante that emerges from these authors’ work is both a formal and political one: recruited as an anti-authoritarian voice from the past and seen anew from feminist and queer perspectives, this is not a twenty-first century Dante forced against his will to virtue-signal, however; on the contrary, this is a Dante anachronistically familiar with key ‘vices’ of twentieth-century authors, readers and commentators. Focusing on sullenness, resistance, and fatigue, the chapter argues for a new understanding of modernist experiments with Dante’s political and formal complexity that refuse to use him as a ‘code or a weapon […] to crush someone’, as Dorothy Richardson put it.

A short history of Polish formations protecting the governing bodies of the state

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (38) ◽  
pp. 75-84
Author(s):  
Aneta Drożdż
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Short History ◽  
Control Subsystem ◽  
State Security ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rules And Principles ◽  
History Of ◽  
Important People ◽  
The Moment

This paper presents a short history of Polish formations protecting the governing bodies of the state, starting from the moment Poland regained independence at the end of the twentieth century. The considerations are presented against the rules and principles of the functioning of the state security system, with particular emphasis on the control subsystem. This paper demonstrates the need to research attitudes to safety in the past, in order to develop and apply effective contemporary solutions. The considerations contained in it also concern the existing threats to the management of state organs. They may contribute to further discussions on the purpose and rules of operation of the formation which is supposed to protect the most important people in the state.

Redefining Censorship

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-142
Author(s):  
Esther B. Schupak
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
The United States ◽  
Educational Choice ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Film Images ◽  
History Of

Abstract Because of its potential for fostering antisemitic stereotypes, in the twentieth century The Merchant of Venice has a history of being subject to censorship in secondary schools in the United States. While in the past it has often been argued that the play can be used to teach tolerance and to fight societal evils such as xenophobia, racism and antisemitism, I argue that this is no longer the case due to the proliferation of performance methods in the classroom, and the resultant emphasis on watching film and stage productions. Because images – particularly film images – carry such strong emotional valence, they have the capacity to subsume other pedagogical aspects of this drama in their emotional power and memorability. I therefore question whether the debate over teaching this play is truly a question of ‘censorship’, or simply educational choice.

Sino-Vietnamese sources for the Nguyễn Period: an Introduction

1967 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 600-621 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. B. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Viet Nam ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Methods ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Remains

‘Les livres historiques sont rares en pays annamite: le climat et les guerres ont concouru a les de truire.’ When he wrote those words in 1904 Pelliot no doubt hoped that they would be true only of the past; but the troubled history of Việt-Nam in the middle decades of the twentieth century has made them also prophetic. Before modern methods for combating the climate could be brought to bear on the problem of archive preservation further wars occurred to destroy even more of the country's historical remains, as well as to disperse many of those which survived.

Science and Medicine in Imperial China—The State of the Field

1988 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Sivin
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Systems Analysis ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Professional Societies ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
New Directions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Imperial China ◽  
Past Half

Sinology and the history of science have changed practically beyond recognition in the past half-century. Both have become academic specialisms, with their own departments, journals, and professional societies. Both have moved off in new directions, drawing on the tools and insights of several disciplines. Although some sinologists still honor no ambition beyond explicating primary texts, on many of the field's frontiers philology is no more than a tool. Similarly, many technical historians now explore issues for which anthropology or systems analysis is as indispensable as traditional historiography.

scholarly journals Lviv as the cradle of Polish independence organizations

2021 ◽  
Vol 201 (3) ◽  
pp. 534-545
Author(s):  
Janusz Zuziak
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Social Activists ◽  
The Past ◽  
Independence Movement ◽  
Political Orientations ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

Lviv occupies a special place in the history of Poland. With its heroic history, it has earned the exceptionally honorable name of a city that has always been faithful to the homeland. SEMPER FIDELIS – always faithful. Marshal Józef Piłsudski sealed that title while decorating the city with the Order of Virtuti Militari in 1920. The past of Lviv, the always smoldering and uncompromising Polish revolutionist spirit, the climate, and the atmosphere that prevailed in it created the right conditions for making it the center of thought and independence movement in the early 20th century. In the early twentieth century, Polish independence organizations of various political orientations were established, from the ranks of which came legions of prominent Polish politicians and military and social activists.

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