A Review of Isaac Oluwole Delano’s Pioneering Works on Yoruba Grammar, Orthography, Lexicography and Cultural Education.

Tis is a reproduction and an improved version of our opening chapter on Selected Works of Chief Isaac O. Delano on Yoruba Language. In it, we reintroduce the seminal works of the legendary writer and language educator, I. O. Delano. Many of these works have become obscure to the reading public due to an apparent lack of intentional publication. Delano, known for his prolific writings, wrote a few books relating to Yoruba language and grammar. Tis segment looks at four major non-fiction works of Chief Isaac O. Delano. For the most part, the segment deals with his efforts on Yoruba language, but to some extent, too, it looks at some additional non-language related writings often embedded in his works on language. For example, in Appendix I of his 1965 book, A Modern Yoruba Grammar, the author provides an array of proverbs and sayings in the language with their English equivalents. In Appendix II, Delano infused two old texts into the book, which comprise of a sermon and an essay on schooling. Clearly, Delano seems to have a penchant for dissemination of relevant cultural education in all his works. Indeed, one could say Yoruba Cultural education has always been apparently one of Delano’s passions as well as hidden agenda in writing his books, and he does so relentlessly. In what follows, we 216 Toyin Falola and Michael Oladejo Afolayan examine the four works in no particular order, although the Modern Grammar is given a relatively more detailed review and summarization. The four books are: A Modern Yoruba Grammar; Àgbékà Ọr̀ ọ̀ Yorùbá: Appropriate Words and Expressions in Yoruba; Conversation in Yoruba and English; and Atúmọ̀Èdè Yorùbá.

Felix Jiri Weinberg. 2 April 1928 — 5 December 2012

Felix Weinberg's teenage years coincided with World War II. He spent much of the war in Nazi concentration camps, starting with Terezin in December 1942, followed by Auschwitz in December 1943, and finally Buchenwald, from which he was liberated on 11 April 1945. He joined Imperial College, London as a research assistant in 1951 and completed his PhD by 1954. He was appointed to a personal chair as professor of combustion physics in 1967, and he stayed at Imperial for his entire career. Weinberg was distinguished for his optical and electrical studies of flames and his pioneering development of innovative combustion methods. He invented a family of powerful optical tools in combustion, using both broad spectrum and laser light sources. His work on electrical diagnostics led to applications of electric fields to control combustion and to improved understanding of ionization and soot formation. He developed novel combustion devices that incorporated distinctive heat exchangers, thereby permitting the ignition and burning of very low calorific fuel–air mixtures. All of these works had a propelling influence on the global evolution of environmentally benign combustion furnaces. His wide-ranging service to academia, industry and scientific societies included visiting scholar appointments at universities around the world, consultancies for petroleum, chemical, aerospace and defence organizations, and active membership on committees and boards of governance for many scientific and professional bodies. He was author, co-author or editor of four books and well over 200 papers in the scientific literature.

The Four Books of Shiʿi Hadith: From Inception to Consolidation

Since their compilations in the tenth and eleventh centuries ce, the four hadith books, al-Kāfī, al-Faqīh, al-Tahdhīb, and al-Istibṣār, have left an indelible mark on Shiʿi religiosity. The present study takes as its starting point the earliest instance in which these four compilations were collectively referred to as the Four Books (al-kutub al-arbaʿa). I investigate the major developments in the period between the inception of this phrase in the fifteenth century and its consolidation as the demarcator of a unique Imami hadith corpus in the seventeenth century. Following the introduction, each section of the article focuses on a figure whose ideas contributed to this consolidation process. In the conclusion I summarize the findings of the previous sections and reflect on the notion of hadith canonicity within the context of Imami jurisprudence during the period under study.

Exporting Socialism or Searching for the “Third Way”?

The article explores the perception of India in socialist-era Polish travel reportage, focusing in particular on the political debates inscribed in the Cold War divisions. Four books of reportage from India, by Jerzy Ros, Wiesław Górnicki, Janusz Gołębiowski, and Jerzy Putrament, serve as primary material for this research. The reporters, visiting India on official assignments, discuss the relations between the so-called Second and Third World and India’s take on socialism. While the analyzed texts do not present a uniform vision, the reporters’ narratives reveal an interesting relation of ambivalence: Indians are seen at times as socialist brothers, but at other times a rather patronizing attitude prevails.

Albert Fatkhi (1937–1992) – Scientist, Expert in Tatar Manuscripts

The publication examines the scientific activities of the famous archeographer, specialist in the field of oriental manuscripts and Tatar literature Fatkhiev, Albert Saitovich. A. Fatkhi is was born in the Aktanysh region of Tatarstan. His name is listed among the outstanding Tatar archaeographers of the last third of the twentieth century, such as M. Usmanov, M. Nugman, A. Karimullin, M. Akhmetzyanov and others. Albert Fatkhi is the author of four books. They contain descriptions of the manuscripts of Tatar writers and scholars. He wrote scientific articles on the problems of collecting and scientific processing of oriental manuscripts. He has works that discuss the problems of the Tatar literature, the contacts of the Tatars with other Turkic peoples in the field of literature and culture. The purpose of this study is to reveal A. Fatkhi’s contribution to the Tatar archaeography and philology.

The Origin of Objects

<p>This thesis forms a series of texts inquiring into the integration of semiological studies in product design. Semiology is often illustrated in systems; it is these systems that govern the practice of product design in the contemporary studio environment. The designer today can struggle to cope with the arbitrary nature of this system, and frequently does not fully understand the implications of working with semiological systems. By understanding their construction the designer can benefit by actively participating in the system's configuration, this may occur by directly imposing oneself into the system or by carefully observing a defective system in order promptly amend it. The thesis is configured in our 'books', each book examining the semiological system from a different perspective. Particular attention is given to the origin within the semiological system; this is mirrored differently in each of the four books...</p>

The Origin of Objects

<p>This thesis forms a series of texts inquiring into the integration of semiological studies in product design. Semiology is often illustrated in systems; it is these systems that govern the practice of product design in the contemporary studio environment. The designer today can struggle to cope with the arbitrary nature of this system, and frequently does not fully understand the implications of working with semiological systems. By understanding their construction the designer can benefit by actively participating in the system's configuration, this may occur by directly imposing oneself into the system or by carefully observing a defective system in order promptly amend it. The thesis is configured in our 'books', each book examining the semiological system from a different perspective. Particular attention is given to the origin within the semiological system; this is mirrored differently in each of the four books...</p>

Miscellaneous Mastery: Reading Clement of Alexandria

The aim of this learned and enterprising book is to elucidate the structure and intention of Clement's Stromateis by comparing it with pagan texts from the first and second centuries of our era which belong, as we might now say, to the same genre. This term, which is chaperoned by quotation marks on p. 15, has proved itself heuristically indispensable, but has no closer equivalent in ancient Greek than genos, which is as likely to denote the style or metre of a work as its place in a critical taxonomy. Strict conventions governed versification and the composition of speeches for given occasions, but it is we who have all but invented the epyllion and coined our own names for the novel, the autobiography and the didactic poem. While Heath proposes on p. 138 to render Stromateis as ‘layout’, ‘miscellany’ is the term that is now most commonly applied to this and other ancient texts whose amorphous character seems to resist taxonomy. As Heath observes, however (p. 24), there are all too many specimens of Greek and Latin writing which are in some sense miscellaneous: she might have quoted the thesis of her namesake, Malcolm Heath, that abrupt transitions, divagations and surprises were not aberrations from the classical norm, but calculated devices to heighten the pleasure or whet the interest of the reader, both in poetry and in prose. The culture of ubiquitous imitation was also a culture of unceasing improvisation, and both practices are amply illustrated in Heath's comparison of the Stromateis with four books from the second century to which it bears an obvious resemblance: the Natural history of Pliny the Elder, the Convivial questions of Plutarch, the Attic nights of Aulus Gellius and the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus.

Debates About Russia, America, and New World Order: Four Books from the 1850s

Introduction. The first major crisis of the international relations system founded in Vienna after Napoleonic wars emerged with the series of European revolutions of 1848–1849 and Crimean War of 1853–1856. Not only diplomatic alliances required to be re-evaluated, but also politicians and thinkers challenged the philosophical foundations of the world order. As Russia was the guarantor of the old system, and the United States appeared as an attractive model for the European revolutionaries, the debate on the new world order involved re-assessment of the two countries respective roles and of their future relations. Methods and materials. The article examines books on the subject written during 1850s by four prominent thinkers: American aspiring politician Henry Winter Davis, Russian diplomat Alexei Evstafiev, Polish émigré and American journalist Adam Gurowski and Russian political émigré Ivan Golovin. Analysis. They provided four different visions of the future of the world, and, while never mentioning each other, produced a polyphonic sound of the important debate on the eve of the American Civil War. Results. Bipolarity of the international system predicted by Davis became a fact only a century later, while criticism and praise to American role as a model and an intervening power in European affairs became a constant feature of any subsequent debate.