From Emblems to Diagrams: Kepler's New Pictorial Language of Scientific Representation

2009 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raz Chen-Morris
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Visual Language ◽  
Scientific Representation ◽  
New Science ◽  
Technical Solutions ◽  
The Way

AbstractKepler's treatise on optics of 1604 furnished, along with technical solutions to problems in medieval perspective, a new mathematically-based visual language for the observation of nature. This language, based on Kepler's theory of retinal pictures, ascribed a new role to geometrical diagrams. This paper examines Kepler's pictorial language against the backdrop of alchemical emblems that flourished in and around the court of Rudolf II in Prague. It highlights the cultural context in which Kepler's optics was immersed, and the way in which Kepler attempted to demarcate his new science from other modes of the investigation of nature.

scholarly journals Cultural based preconceptions in aesthetic experience of architecture

Spatium ◽  
2011 ◽  
pp. 20-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Stevanovic
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Visual Language ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
Perceived Reality ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Eastern Traditions

On a broader scale, the aim of this paper is to examine theoretically the effects a cultural context has on the aesthetic experience of images existing in perceived reality. Minimalism in architecture, as direct subject of research, is a field of particularities in which we observe functioning of this correlation. Through the experiment with the similarity phenomenon, the paper follows specific manifestations of general formal principles and variability of meaning of minimalism in architecture in limited areas of cultural backgrounds of Serbia and Japan. The goal of the comparative analysis of the examples presented is to indicate the conditions that may lead to a possibly different aesthetic experience in two different cultural contexts. Attribution of different meanings to similar formal visual language of architecture raises questions concerning the system of values, which produces these meanings in their cultural and historical perspectives. The establishment of values can also be affected by preconceptions resulting from association of perceived similarities. Are the preconceptions in aesthetic reception of architecture conditionally affected by pragmatic needs, symbolic archetypes, cultural metaphors based on tradition or ideologically constructed dogmas? Confronting philosophical postulates of the Western and Eastern traditions with the transculturality theory of Wolfgang Welsch, the answers may become more available.

scholarly journals Learning from health care in other countries: the prospect of comparative research

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin Van Teijlingen ◽  
Cecilia Benoit ◽  
Ivy Bourgeault ◽  
Raymond DeVries ◽  
Jane Sandall ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Health Care Systems ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Reproductive Health Care ◽  
Care Systems ◽  
Cross National ◽  
The Way

It is widely accepted that policy-makers (in Nepal and elsewhere) can learn valuable lessons from the way other countries run their health and social services. We highlight some of the specific contributions the discipline of sociology can make to cross-national comparative research in the public health field. Sociologists call attention to often unnoticed social and cultural factors that influence the way national reproductive health care systems are created and operated. In this paper we address questions such as: ‘Why do these health services appear to be operating successfully in one country, but not another?’; ‘What is it in one country that makes a particular public health intervention successful and how is the cultural context different in a neighbouring country?’ The key examples in this paper focus on maternity care and sex education in the Netherlands and the UK, as examples to highlight the power of cross-national research. Our key messages are: a) Cross-national comparative research can help us to understand the design and running of health services in one country, say Nepal, by learning from a comparison with other countries, for example Sri Lanka or India. b) Cultural factors unique to a country affect the way that reproductive health care systems operate. c) Therefore,we need to understand why and how services work in a certain cultural context before we start trying to implement them in another cultural context.

Between the Politics of Difference and the Poetics of Similarity

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marios Chatziprokopiou ◽  
Panos Hatziprokopiou
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Blood Donation ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Politics Of Difference ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Greek Art ◽  
The Way

Abstract This paper studies the ritual of Ashura as performed by a group of Shia Pakistani migrants in Piraeus, Greece, inscribed in the context of the financial crisis that is currently shaking the country and its socio-political implications, notably the rise of the far-right. Based on participant observation, we start by unfolding the discourses through which our interlocutors attempt to legitimise their religious practices, by connecting the Karbala narrative with the current political oppression of Shiite minorities, but also by articulating a poetics of similarity with equivalent acts of faith from the Greek cultural context, rather than arguments on multiculturalist difference. We then turn our attention to the way Ashura is portrayed by Greek art and media, and we unpack how the poetics of similarity and the politics of difference are presented from different viewpoints. Finally, we study how the interrelations between this migrant Shiite community and ideas regarding the “national self” are manifested in symbolic uses of blood—from murderous threats received by Neo-Nazi groups, to their rejected proposal for a blood-donation campaign parallel to the Ashura.

scholarly journals Hedonism and Culture: Impact on Shopping Behaviour A Research Agenda

2007 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 81-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Subhashini Kaul
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Holistic View ◽  
Hedonic Value ◽  
Indian Context ◽  
Shopping Behaviour ◽  
Shopping Experience ◽  
Key Dimensions ◽  
The Way

Increasingly consumer shopping behaviour is being seen from the holistic perspective of the entire shopping experience. The holistic view requires a retailer to focus on the shopper experience with the store. Thus the retailer focus is not on the store itself but what the store means to the shoppers. This implies that a retailer needs to understand the ‘way in which’ different shoppers perceive the same store. This paper refers to three key dimensions that influence the ‘way in which’ consumers look at a retail store: Shopping environment Socio-cultural context Individual roles, motivations, and behaviour. These dimensions take into account not just the differences between shoppers in terms of their individual motivations, but also try to model the variations caused in shoppers due to cultural influences. One key theme of this paper is the variation caused in the perceived hedonic value of shoppers. Hedonic value refers to the ‘sense of pleasure’ associated with shopping. In the Indian context especially, several retailers have referred to cultural differences and the resultant differences in shopper hedonic orientations. However, there are a few existing frameworks available that enable assessing the association between hedonism and culture in the Indian shopping behavioural context. This paper provides a theoretical framework and a robust research agenda that will help researchers and retailers alike address this need.

scholarly journals Widening the Antimafia Net: Child Protection and the Socio-Cultural Transmission of Mafia Behaviours in Calabria

Youth Justice ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Sergi
Keyword(s):  
Child Protection ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Southern Italy ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Protection Measures ◽  
The Way

This article explores proceedings by the Youth Tribunal of Reggio Calabria, Southern Italy, aimed at the protection of children in families where one or both parents are investigated for mafia offences. The findings show that preventing the transmission of mafia (‘ ndrangheta) culture in the local context has become an essential part of child protection measures. This article will argue that when discussing child protection in criminal families, it is necessary (a) to question the nature of the bonds of these families with the socio-cultural context, and (b) to concretely assess the way this context wishes to affect the family’s criminality.

scholarly journals Virtuous Persons and Virtuous Actions in Business Ethics and Organizational Research

2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Alzola
Keyword(s):  
Business Ethics ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Organizational Research ◽  
New Science ◽  
Virtuous Agent ◽  
Philosophical Account ◽  
Empirical Approaches ◽  
The Way

ABSTRACT:The language of virtue is gaining wider appreciation in the philosophical, psychological, and management literatures. Ethicists and social scientists aim to integrate normative and empirical approaches into a new “science of virtue.” But, I submit, they are talking past each other; they hold radically different notions of what a virtue is. In this paper, I shall examine two conflicting conceptions of virtue, what I call the reductive and the non-reductive accounts of virtue. I shall critically study them and argue that the non-reductive view is the best philosophical account of virtue and the only one that can account for the way we talk about virtue in business and in everyday life. We can only understand what it means to act virtuously through the examination of the attitudes, beliefs, desires, and inclinations of the virtuous agent. I shall illustrate the differences between the reductive and non-reductive accounts by considering the virtue of gratitude.

Complex Theatre: Science and Myth in Three Contemporary Performances

1998 ◽  
Vol 14 (54) ◽  
pp. 151-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cara Gargano
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
World View ◽  
Modern Drama ◽  
New Science ◽  
Profound Influence ◽  
Quantum Universe ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Way

Today, argues Cara Gargano, we are at the cusp of a scientific paradigm shift which is having a profound influence on the way we construct our art and our identity. Like the shift from an oral to a literary mode of communication, or from a geocentric to a heliocentric world view, the movement from a Newtonian to a quantum world view has altered not only the way we understand our universe but the way we write and perform it. In recent years, critics David R. George, Natalie Crohn Schmitt, David Porush, and William Demastes have used terminology and concepts from the ‘new science’ to theorize about theatre. In this article Cara Gargano explores three new works that premiered in the 1995–96 New York City season – Rent, Interfacing Joan, and The Universe (ie, How It Works) – and discusses the way these performances rely, consciously or unconsciously, on this paradigm shift. She proposes that all three plays, while different in style, venue, and narrative, have at their base an assumption of a quantum universe – that is, they create a holistic mythology that gestures toward the theatre's origins as a ritual interaction with our world, and moves from a postmodern to a pre-millennial stance. Cara Gargano is Chair of the Department of Theatre, Film, and Dance at the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University. She has published in Modern Drama, L'Annuaire Théâtrale, New Theatre Quarterly, and Dance and Research. Her recent article in Reliologiques deals with the myth of Orpheus as a model for the quantum world.

“A very big thank you to…”

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-279
Author(s):  
Isolda Rojas-Lizana
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Letters To The Editor ◽  
Contrastive Study ◽  
Communicative Intention ◽  
Politeness Strategies ◽  
Written Form ◽  
The Way

Letters to the Editor (LTEs) in the local press are a relatively formalised everyday genre in which readers’ opinions appear in a publication. In this article 20 Chilean and 20 Australian LTEs which contained the macro communicative intention of ‘thanking’ were analysed and compared with regard to the structural moves and Politeness Strategies (PS) they presented. The results show that addressers in both cultures follow a highly schematic way of constructing their Letters of Gratitude. This is evident not only in the sharing of most of their obligatory moves but also in that some of these moves present similar lexico-syntactic compositions to establish their limits. With regard to PS, the Chilean group showed the exclusive presence of strategies that acknowledged the role of the editor as a letter mediator directly. This suggests that the similarities found are genre-defining aspects. Conversely, the differences are connected to the cultural context of publication. The results also suggest that expressing gratitude in the written form may functionally differ from the way it is expressed orally. This type of contrastive study helps to identify both the genre- and culture specific aspects of discourse, which deepen our understanding of cultural, everyday manifestations and their realization in different settings.

Translations, Paratextual Mediation, and Ideological Closure

Target ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Urpo Kovala
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Dominant Ideology ◽  
Conservative Ideology ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Way

Abstract This article deals with the way so-called paratexts were used, in Finland in 1890-1939, in publishing translations of Anglo-American literature, and especially with the tendencies towards ideological closure that those paratexts manifest. The dominant ideology in the material is what could be called religious-conservative ideology, emphasizing the thought content of the works and their (educative, civilizing, sometimes also entertaining) impact on readers. This is due to the ideological unification process that penetrated the cultural institutions, which were still relatively undifferentiated and non-autonomous during the period in Finland. The article emphasizes that in studying paratext, it is necessary to take heed of the wider cultural context; looking at the paratexts alone is not enough.

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