Prologue

Gilles Deleuze, one of the twentieth century’s greatest philosophers, was born in the 17th arrondissement of the French capital in 1925. Little Gilles was your average Parisian child, with a fondness for collecting stamps in his spare time, as Deleuze was to recall later in life. The Second World War began when he was fifteen; evacuated to Normandy, it was there that lessons on French literature given by a young professor awakened his intellectual curiosity. The encounter with philosophy was to take place not long after, in his final year of lycée. Recognising in his very first philosophy class his calling for the discipline, he took up a life of research as a matter of course. His thesis at the Sorbonne on the British Empiricist David Hume became his first publication. Following a decade of intermittent ‘silence’, in the 1960s he produced study after study in close succession, radically reconstituting every field he deigned to intervene in. But it was his 1972 ...

Mykhailo Drahomanov’s ideas of parliament

Ukrainian parliamentarism and constitutionalism have a long history. Its brightest episode occurred 100 years ago, in 1917–1921, when the Ukrainian activists tried to cope with the breakup of the Romanov Empire by suggesting various projects of its reconstruction. In this article, I argue that the history of these projects began at least half a century earlier, when a young professor of history at Kiev University, Mykhailo Drahomanov, started to reflect upon future reorganization of the Russian Empire into a parliamentary state. Being an ardent advocate of turning the empire into a representative democracy, Drahomanov still felt uneasy about unapologetic support of parliamentarism. Having embraced Proudhonian idea of anarchy or self-government, he realized that the existence of parliament was not a universal cure for all political ills of the Russian Empire, especially for the main one—extreme state centralization. Hence, his views of political reconstruction of the empire did not necessarily mean transforming it into the Russian Republic. It seems that a reasonable and reasoned monarch, who could turn the empire into a federal state with a wide local self-government, would totally fulfill Drahomanov’s ideas of future Russia. His enormous influence upon the pre-war Ukrainian intellectuals explains why only few of them seriously discussed an idea of Ukrainian state independence in 1917.

El "jove" professor Mario Ruiz | Mario Ruiz, the “Young” Professor

Resumen: En este texto, desde una perspectiva personal, se destacan y comentan brevemente algunas de las aportaciones científicas del profesor Mario Ruiz,, catedrático acreditado en filosofía del derecho, en el marco de las jornadas que se celebraron en su recuerdo en las Universidades de Valencia y Rovira i Virgili (18 de octubre de 2018 y 14 de novienbre de 2018, respectivamente). Abstract: In this text, from a personal perspective, shares some of the scientific contributions of Professor Mario Ruiz that were highlighted and briefly commented within the framework of the conferences that were held in his memory at the Universities of Valencia and Rovira i Virgili (October 18, 2018 and November 14, 2018, respectively).

Bolzano’s Life

This volume provides the most complete biography of Bolzano in English to date. After a brief survey of the history of Bohemia, Chapter 1 recounts the main events of Bolzano’s life: his early upbringing and education, his activity as a young professor at the Charles University, his dismissal and trial, and his later life, including his intense relationship with Anna Hoffmann and his wide-ranging work as an independent scholar. (67 Words)

Bioglass at 50 – A look at Larry Hench’s legacy and bioactive materials

In 1969, fifty years ago, a young professor of ceramic engineering created a 4-component glass to be used as a bone replacement material. That material became known as “Bioglass” and more generally as a class of materials known as bioactive glass. Those first experiments conducted by Dr. Larry Hench completely shifted the paradigm of how the biomaterials and medical communities look at the interactions between inorganic materials and tissues in the body. This article will touch on just a few highlights of the development of bioactive glasses and relate those to the concepts of bioactivity and tissue bonding.

Molding Me in Their Image

This chapter examines how the paternalistic nature of academia shaped the author's development as a graduate student and as a young professor. Overcoming the oppression of a paternalistic culture is challenging for any woman, but even more so for women of color who are assumed to need even more steering, shaping, and molding. It is ironic that the discipline in which the author chose to pursue advanced studies, sociology, is a discipline that has a core goal of examining and challenging inequality. This, however, does not make it impervious to perpetuating inequality. This chapter examines how long it took to take control of shaping the author's own image and to learn to navigate a culture that is still heavily influenced by patriarchal standards.