History and/as Science: Rereading Paul Lacombe

Forgotten during several years and rediscovered by historians of the Annales in the 1930s, Paul Lacombe’s De l’histoire considérée comme science (1894) is now quoted in such books as Antoine Prost’s Douze leçons sur l’histoire and the Sage Handbook of Historical Theory. Lacombe’s work is important from an historical standpoint. Against the focus on single events that prevailed in the late nineteenth century, Lacombe defined scientific history as the identifications of regularities for the purpose of articulating laws. Against the empirical approach practiced during that same period, he also stressed the importance of the hypothesis – of the assumptions that made the selection of the facts possible. Finally, connected to several militant women of the time, Lacombe, sought to do what we would now call “gender history,” that is, to study the distribution of gender roles during specific periods. While anticipating several developments in the theory of history, Lacombe was yet a man of his time. He thus did not foresee that his (and his contemporaries’) contrast between observation-based and document-based science would later be challenged, some philosophers now arguing that chemists and physicists are not more able than historians to “observe” the phenomena that they describe.

Joachim Lelewel’s methodological ideas

The main aim of this paper is to capture the essence of a Polish historian Joachim Lelewel’s methodological ideas and their philosophical underpinning. For this purpose, I analyse his publication entitled History: Its Branching and What It Is Based On, which has thus far been overlooked in research. I propose a new perspective on Lelewel’s work, taking into account his European inspirations in the field of historical theory and his tendency to combine the contradictory research approaches of the Enlightenment and Romanticism. I address topics related mainly to the theory of historical cognition, the subject of historical study, source criticism, the concept of truth, historical interpretation, methods of historical analysis and selected rhetorical principles.

City Literature in Abdu al-Aziz al-Makkali’s Poetry

World literature teems with the portrayal of famous cities throughout the world. This kind of literature is unanimously known as city literature. It does not merely describe and portray places, objects, and landscapes for their own sake, it, however, gives readers a revisionist perspective to look afresh and introspectively into self, history, and culture. This paper aims to shed light on a city that witnessed great changes throughout its history. It is called Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, and it is one of such world-famous and ancient cities about which interesting and rich literature has been written. Sana’a has been immortalized in the prose and poetry of local and international prolific and intelligent writers such as Abdu al-Aziz al-Makkali, a famous contemporary Yemeni poet. Sana’a is magnificently portrayed in different exotic images in al-Makkali’s collection of poetry entitled Book of Sana’a. The poet engages in a kind of dialogue with the city in a personal experience and unique particularity, but in the process, this particularity becomes cosmopolitan. Each poem is located in a particular space which gives the poet and reader alike a sense of the place, history, and culture, and an intense feeling of wider identification and empathy. Sana’a is anthropomorphically portrayed as a beautiful woman, sad woman, beloved lady, spirit, and city of heaven. It is fantastically depicted as a unique piece of artifact molded and designed by the hands of God. So, this piece of research attempts to analyze social and political imports and the different images of the city employed by al-Makkali in his poetic work: Book of Sana’a. As a theoretical framework, the paper adopts both historical theory of criticism as well as the formalist theory, so the analysis is focused on both context and text of the selected poems.

L. S. Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory: globalisation, post-non-classical paradigm and digitalisation

L. S. Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory postulates the underlying unity of psychological and social factors contributing to the formation of man. It explains both internal factors determining the evolution of consciousness and social trends in social development. The paper highlights the role of L. S. Vygotsky’s theory in the interpretation of the changes in the modern human consciousness. These changes are caused by new culture tools of knowledge building currently created in the information space. The author emphasises the following ideas proposed by L. S. Vygotsky: 1) signs are functionally analogous to tools; 2) culture intentionally creates objects to realise its communicative-significative function; 3) sign utilization leads to the formation of fundamentally new associative bonds in the brain. Such bonds create a novel regulatory mechanism of human behaviour; 4) social determination of man is achieved with the help of signs; 5) the formation and functioning of mind depend on the means of thought and individual sociocultural experience; 6) ‘socialised speech’ influences the evolution of inner speech as a specific type of thinking-in-words and the logic of thinking; 7) the historical evolution of human culture plays the key role in the formation and functioning of individual psyches; 8) due to sign usage the nature of human evolution changed from biological to sociohistorical; consequently, mankind’s evolution significantly depends on the signs used by individuals. Modern digital technologies actively generate signs whose nature is contrary to verbal ones. The process of globalisation and the values of the post-non-classical mindset sustain generation of such signs. Globalisation creates a standardised and maximally regimented reality, which contributes to the reinforcement of reduplication as the socially approved way of knowledge use. What is more, globalisation requires revision of the traditional humanistic values and customs. Post-non-classical thinking enhances individuals’ feelings of insecurity and uncertainty, thus nearly making them act within the framework of conventional behavioural and mental models.

Aesthetic Literacy in Young People’s and Adults’ Awareness From a Developmental Learning Perspective

In Brazilian schools, many teachers do not organize their teaching and students’ tasks and actions in a way that facilitates theoretical thinking based on the abstraction and generalization of the work content. Because many students struggle to accomplish the tasks and actions themselves, teachers guide them. Over time, the students begin to have more autonomy in executing the proposed activities, as they completed mental operations while learning. This article aims to investigate how young people’s and adults’ awareness of the countryside is formed based on visual elements and writing, facilitating an understanding of their reality. A didactic–formative experiment was performed based on the cultural–historical theory. The comic books produced by the participants allowed them to develop their overall thinking, moving from the abstract to the concrete. They also formed an awareness of reality, which allowed them to have greater autonomy in the production of these stories as a means of representation and transformation of reality.

A Mathematical Analysis of Historical Papers After the Reissue of Journal of Silk

After the reissue of Journal of Silk, the historical papers published can reflect the academic history of Chinese Textile and Apparel History research. The mathematical analysis of these papers is helpful to clarify the territory and important towns of the research on Chinese Textile and Apparel History. Through literature collation and mathematical analysis, the paper believes that: ① The changes in the types of historical papers in Journal of Silk, especially the decline in the amount of papers published by corporate personnel, indicate that the Journal has transformed from a journal that integrates education, academia, and training into an academic publication. ② For a long time, authors from Zhejiang and Jiangsu have published more than half of the papers. This phenomenon is related to the earliest research on historical theory in the two places, especially the Zhejiang Silk Institute of Technology, which was the first organization to engage in professional research on historical theory in China. ③ Authors in Zhejiang Province had the largest number of papers before 2003. But after 2004, authors in Jiangsu had the largest number of papers. And after 2004, authors in Shanghai had more papers published, which is related to the strengthening of relevant majors by Suzhou University, Jiangnan University and Donghua University. At the same time, the experience of Jiangnan University shows that restricting the graduation conditions for master's students is conducive to research in the field of Historical Theory.