The Philosophical History of Philosophy

This chapter investigates the philosophical history of philosophy. It begins with a short account of its history before considering it systematically. The philosophical history of philosophy is best understood as a viable enterprise if one looks at it as a certain kind of retrospective history. Thus understood, the philosophical historian adopts a certain contemporary philosophical position as philosophically the correct position to take. They then proceed to look back at the history of philosophy to see how philosophers, step by step, advanced in the direction of the favoured position. This kind of retrospective history has certain inherent dangers and considerable limitations. There is the inherent danger that one takes the picture of the history of philosophy, which one thus gets, to be a representative picture of the history of philosophy. The enterprise thus interpreted seems to suffer mainly from the limitation that it yields a highly selective, rather anachronistic, and somewhat distorted picture of the history of philosophy.

A Personal Account on Industrial Collaborations in the Field of C–H Activation

In recent years, transition-metal-catalyzed C–H functionalization has emerged as a potentially greener alternative to classic cross-couplings and as a powerful tool to access complex functional molecules with improved step-economy. This short account relates our experience of industrial collaborations in C(sp3)–H bond activation, which were key to the development of this topic in our group. The synthesis of the antianginal drug Ivabradine led us to develop a general approach to benzocyclobutenes, which were further employed in peri cyclic reactions. A follow-up study led us to discover a new method to construct arylcyclopropanes via double C–H activation and the coupling of two alkyl groups. Finally, targeting the herbicide Indaziflam contributed to develop C(sp3)–H activation as a powerful tool to access a variety of relevant indane motifs. We hope that these successful stories will help to stimulate further fruitful Industry-Academia collaborations in the field of synthetic chemistry.

An Iron Age Scabbard Chape from Liss, Hampshire: A Northern Artefact from a Southern Find-spot

In 2018 an Iron Age scabbard chape was reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, having been discovered during metal-detecting on cultivated land in the parish of Liss, east Hampshire. Although the object is an isolated find, and no other components of the scabbard were discovered, it is a significant discovery. This is because it represents the most southerly evidence for a group of scabbards which are overwhelmingly distributed between the rivers Forth and Humber. This short account provides details of the object and comments on its regional and national significance.

Catalysts for Oxygen Reduction Reaction in the Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells: A Brief Review

This mini-review presents a short account of materials with exceptional activity towards oxygen reduction reaction. Two main classes of catalytic materials are described, namely platinum group metal (PGM) catalyst and Non-precious metal catalyst. The classes are discussed in terms of possible application in low-temperature hydrogen fuel cells with proton exchange membrane and further commercialization of these devices. A short description of perspective approaches is provided and challenging issues associated with developed catalytic materials are discussed.

Ways to write an academic life: Queering the academic curriculum vitae

The curriculum vitae (CV) is a short account of one’s career and qualifications typically prepared for a position or promotion. In academia, the CV chronicles a representation of the academic self in terms of scholarly activities such as publications, research grants and projects, conference participation and teaching awards. Far from being a neutral record, the CV (re)produces gendered norms and highlights continued gender inequalities in academic careers. This article explores how the CV is made possible (and consequently measured and valued) through material practices as well as via discourses of productivity, employability and success. It does this by embracing Jack Halberstam’s concept of ‘queer failure’ and Karen Barad’s theory of ‘intra-action’ in an experimental auto-ethico-ethnography of the academic CV. Using a diffractive approach, this article also calls into question the separation of the body and the materiality of the CV, our emotional relationship with the CV, as well as gendered academic labour. In theorising the CV through the lens of performativity, attention is reoriented towards the assemblage of relations and intra-actions between academic, writing, the career, the body and representation and reveals them to be complexly located within and through each other.

East-West

Expansion of contemporary trade and information exchange relations does not seem to alter significantly the multi-layered requirements of inter-cultural communication. In a very important sense of this term, many of individual decisions related to communication in a multi-cultural environment are inevitably narrowed to single-context world. Only to some extent, this unavoidable limitation of communication on the verge of heterogeneous cultures may be overridden by omnipresent stereotypes and ad hoc generalizations. On a more advanced level of communication, it is the stereotypes that may foster the instances of miscommunication and lead to serious misunderstandings. In the paper, a short account on stereotypes in inter-cultural communication is going to be presented, with some examples of actual instances of miscommunication in Japanese-Polish corporate environment. A proposition of a systematized approach towards the issues and intricacies of Japanese-Polish communication will follow.