The “Problem of Nature” Revisited: History and AnthropologyThe Problem of Nature: Environment, Culture, and European Expansion. By David Arnold. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. 199 pp.Visions of Empire: Voyages, Botany, and Representations of Nature. Edited by David Philip Miller and Peter Hanns Reill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 370 pp.Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives. Edited by Philippe Descola and Gisli Palsson. London: Routledge, 1996. 310 pp.Environmentalism and Cultural Theory: Exploring the Role of Anthropology in Environmental Discourse. By Kay Milton. London: Routledge, 1996. 266 pp.

1998 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arturo Escobar
Author(s):  
Sandra G. Harding

Are there laws of nature that today’s modern sciences are ill-designed to discover? Does the universal use of these modern sciences require their value-neutrality, or are their social values and interests an important cause of their universality? What resources for scientific knowledge can other cultures’ science projects provide? Such questions are raised by recent postcolonial global histories that focus analyses on the role of European expansion in the advance of modern science and in the decline of other cultures’ science traditions. These accounts challenge philosophers to re-evaluate unsuspected strengths in other scientific traditions and identify modern science’s borrowings from them. They also identify European cultural features that have, for better and worse, constituted modern sciences and their representations of nature and thus seek to develop more realistic and useful accounts of the values, interests, methods, universality, objectivity and rationality of science.


2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (9) ◽  
pp. 2447-2467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Bögels ◽  
Herbert Schriefers ◽  
Wietske Vonk ◽  
Dorothee J. Chwilla

The present study addresses the question whether accentuation and prosodic phrasing can have a similar function, namely, to group words in a sentence together. Participants listened to locally ambiguous sentences containing object- and subject-control verbs while ERPs were measured. In Experiment 1, these sentences contained a prosodic break, which can create a certain syntactic grouping of words, or no prosodic break. At the disambiguation, an N400 effect occurred when the disambiguation was in conflict with the syntactic grouping created by the break. We found a similar N400 effect without the break, indicating that the break did not strengthen an already existing preference. This pattern held for both object- and subject-control items. In Experiment 2, the same sentences contained a break and a pitch accent on the noun following the break. We argue that the pitch accent indicates a broad focus covering two words [see Gussenhoven, C. On the limits of focus projection in English. In P. Bosch & R. van der Sandt (Eds.), Focus: Linguistic, cognitive, and computational perspectives. Cambridge: University Press, 1999], thus grouping these words together. For object-control items, this was semantically possible, which led to a “good-enough” interpretation of the sentence. Therefore, both sentences were interpreted equally well and the N400 effect found in Experiment 1 was absent. In contrast, for subject-control items, a corresponding grouping of the words was impossible, both semantically and syntactically, leading to processing difficulty in the form of an N400 effect and a late positivity. In conclusion, accentuation can group words together on the level of information structure, leading to either a semantically “good-enough” interpretation or a processing problem when such a semantic interpretation is not possible.


2011 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOSEPH L. YANNIELLI

AbstractIn March 1742, British naval officer John Byron witnessed a murder on the western coast of South America. Both Charles Darwin and Robert FitzRoy seized upon Byron's story a century later, and it continues to play an important role in Darwin scholarship today. This essay investigates the veracity of the murder, its appropriation by various authors, and its false association with the Yahgan people encountered during the second voyage of theBeagle(1831–1836). Darwin's use of the story is examined in multiple contexts, focusing on his relationship with the history of European expansion and cross-cultural interaction and related assumptions about slavery and race. The continuing fascination with Byron's story highlights the key role of historical memory in the development and interpretation of evolutionary theory.


2008 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 697-713 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. C. LUBENOW

The question in 1898 of the recognition by Cambridge University of St Edmund's House, a Roman Catholic foundation, might initially seem to involve questions irrelevant in the modern university. It can, however, be seen to raise issues concerning modernity, the place of religion in the university and the role of the university itself. This article therefore sets this incident in university history in wider terms and examines the ways in which the recognition of St Edmund's House was a chapter in the history of liberalism, in the history of Roman Catholicism, in the history of education and in the history of secularism.


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