On the Pragmatics and Problematics of Defining Beauty and Character: The Greek Poet Lucian (120-200) Engages Exacting Portraitures and Difficult Subjects

Although best known as a satirist of the classical Roman era, Lucian's (c120-200CE) Essays in Portraiture and Essays in Portraiture Defended provide considerable insight into the problematics of people knowing and defining objects (along with the consequential and related matter of people sharing their definitions of reality with others). Engaging notions of admiration, beauty, and character in these two statements, Lucian not only faces the task of establishing viable frames of reference for linguistically defining the essence of a woman deemed to be particularly beautiful and gracious but also assumes the challenge of defending one’s preferred definitions of particular subject matters from others who do not share these views. Whereas Lucian uses the works of prominent sculptors, painters, poets, and philosophers as reference points in articulating beauty and grace, this paper also acknowledges the perils of people who sincerely express their viewpoints on others even when these descriptions of others are cast in clearly positive terms. Lucian may be a lesser-known classical Greek (Syrian) author, but he is an astute observer of human endeavor. Lucian’s work on portraiture also has a striking cross-cultural and transhistorical relevance for a more enduring pragmatist emphasis on human knowing and acting. Not only is Lucian (a) explicitly attentive to the necessity of people establishing frames of reference for describing objects to others in meaningful terms, but he also overtly recognizes (b) the multiple viewpoints that people may invoke with respect to describing particular objects, (c) the resistances that people may encounter from others, and (d) the importance of speakers articulating the foundations for their claims amidst contested notions of reality. Approached from an interactionist perspective (Mead 1934; Blumer 1969; Strauss 1993; Prus 1996, 1997, 1999), wherein attention is given to the more general matters of people acquiring perspectives, defining objects, and sustaining particular notions of reality, this paper uses Lucian’s materials on portraiture as a cross-cultural and transhistorical resource both for assessing (and qualifying) existing interactionist conceptualizations of human group life and for suggesting some more particular areas of inquiry to which contemporary scholars may attend.

Deconstructing the Struggle Against Nuclearism

In such a complex and uncertain world, it may help to think like a Hindu, and accept contradiction as more in keeping with social and political reality than is finding a right answer to complex policy puzzles. What is almost impossible for those trained within Western frames of reference is to grasp that there are diverse perspectives of understanding that may result in seemingly contradictory recommendations despite shared values and goals. Civilizational perspectives and personal experience inevitably color what we feel, think, and do, and so being likeminded when it comes abolishing nuclear weapons is often coupled with somewhat divergent views on what to advocate when it comes to tactics and priorities. In this spirit, this paper tries to depict a set of reasons why the goal of nuclear disarmament will never be reached so long as arms control and nonproliferation of nuclear weaponry are seen as the pillars of global stability in the nuclear age.

Culturally Competent Practices and Implications for Special Education Leaders

The over-identification of minorities in special education in the Unites States continues to exist. Such over-representation separates these students from their general education peers to the degree that they may not have access to challenging academic standards and effective instruction. Factors impacting these students include a systemic lack of understanding of cultural frames of reference and curriculum and leadership issues that influence the referral and placement processes in special education. This chapter will address the five culturally competent practices with regard to inclusion and special education. Implications for educational leaders will be discussed.

Historical Development of Social Pedagogy

Every field of study and/or subject has its history. Not knowing the historical development deprives whoever is studying that subject from knowing its strengths and weaknesses. That includes factors that contribute to its theory, such as the ideological perspectives, frames of reference, social significance, present status, and position in the system of science. That is why it is important that every social pedagogue, educator, social worker, and other experts who engage in education and educational work know the roots, the development, and today's state of social pedagogy as a science; it is important for anyone involved in research and practical work to improve its theory and practice and to enrich and improve it. This chapter discusses the historical development of social pedagogy. In focusing on its development, Natorpo's concept of social pedagogy is discussed, and the path of developing social pedagogy after World War II in other parts of the world, such as Croatia, is highlighted. After this focus, a conclusion is reached.

Meaning of the derivative as a rate of change through a graphic argumentation. A case with Chilean students

From the socio-epistemology perspective, the teaching of the derivative is problematized due to the lack of reference frameworks that give variational meanings to the derivative and allow its construction by means of graphical arguments. The objective of this research was to analyze the construction of meanings of the derivative, as a rate of change, that Chilean students developed through a graphic argumentation in a specific situation of variation. In order to respond to the stated objective, a qualitative methodology was used, consisting of a case study, where a situation of variation was designed with the purpose of promoting the analysis of temperature changes in specific everyday life phenomena. This design was applied to ten Chilean high school students interested in studying engineering. As a result of the research, it was obtained that the participants, through a graphic argumentation, understood the slope of a straight line as a rate of change of temperature regarding time. It was concluded that this research provides elements for the construction of frames of reference that signify the derivative, as a rate of change, in situations of variation, valuing the graphic arguments and functional justifications that emerged from the students.

Revising Postsocialism

This article reflects on the current explanatory value of concepts such as postsocialism and Eastern Europe by exploring how they are represented in contemporary art projects in Estonia. Through an overview of recent exhibitions in which I collaborated with local artists and curators, the research considers generational differences in relation to cultural discourses of the postsocialist experience. Methodologically, artists and curators were not simply my informants in the field, but makers of analytical knowledge themselves in their practice. Exhibitions were also approached as contact zones, whereby new cultural forms are simultaneously reflected and constructed. Critically, this inquiry gathers new ways of representing and conceptualising cultural changes in Estonia and novel perspectives of interpreting the relations to the Soviet past. The focus is put on art practice because of its capacity of bringing together global and local frames of reference simultaneously. The research also draws attention to the inbetweenness of the first post-Soviet generation (those born near the time of the breakup of the USSR); they are revising established cultural forms as well as historical representations through mixing practices, and therefore updating traditional ideas of identity and attachment to places.

The Tellus Calendar: A Metric and Perennial Proposal for Calendar Reform

Though calendar reform has fallen out of fashion in the early 21st century, the Gregorian Calendar is still a problematic timekeeping system that would benefit from adjustment or outright replacement. A number of reforms have been suggested since its implementation. Some of these, I argue, were too radical or not beneficial enough to warrant widespread adoption. I suggest instead a 12-month perennial calendar based on the French Republican Calendar (FRC), with 10-day weeks and three-week months. This, in my view, would bring enough benefit to warrant change, while also not shifting too many frames of reference at once. It would also be devoid of the social-political complexities which prematurely killed the FRC. In essence, it would be the as close to a metric calendar that could realistically be adopted in the near future. I term it the Tellus Calendar.

How the insect central complex could coordinate multimodal navigation

The central complex of the insect midbrain is thought to coordinate insect guidance strategies. Computational models can account for specific behaviours but their applicability across sensory and task domains remains untested. Here we assess the capacity of our previous model (Sun et al., 2020) of visual navigation to generalise to olfactory navigation and its coordination with other guidance in flies and ants. We show that fundamental to this capacity is the use of a biologically-plausible neural copy-and-shift mechanism that ensures sensory information is presented in a format compatible with the insect steering circuit regardless of its source. Moreover, the same mechanism is shown to allow the transfer cues from unstable/egocentric to stable/geocentric frames of reference providing a first account of the mechanism by which foraging insects robustly recover from environmental disturbances. We propose that these circuits can be flexibly repurposed by different insect navigators to address their unique ecological needs.