scholarly journals Obituary notices of fellows deceased

It would be impossible in an obituary of ordinary length to convey any idea of the many-sided activity by which Lord Kelvin was continually transforming physical knowledge, through more than two generations, more especially in the earlier period before practical engineering engrossed much of his attention in importunate problems which only he could solve. It is not until one tries to arrange his scattered work into the different years and periods, that the intensity of his creative force is fully realised, and some otion is acquired of what a happy strenuous career his must have been in early days, with new discoveries and new aspects of knowledge crowding in upon him faster than be could express them to the world. The general impression left on one's mind by a connected survey of his work is overwhelming. The instinct of his own country and of the civilised world, in assigning to him a unique place among the intellectual forces of the ast century, was not mistaken. Other men have been as great in some special department of physical science: no one since Newton—hardly even Faraday, whose limitation was in a sense his strength—has exerted such a masterful influence over its whole domain. He might have been a more learned mathematician or an expert chemist; but he would then probably have been less activity, the immediate grasp of connecting principles and relations; each subject that he tackled was transformed by direct hints and analogies brought to bear from profound contemplation of the related domains of knowledge. In the first half of his life, fundamental results arrived in such volume as often to leave behind all chance of effective development. In the nidst of such accumulations he became a bad expositor; it is only by tracing his activity up and down through its fragmentary published records, and thus obtaining a consecutive view of his occupation, that a just idea of the vistas continually opening upon him may be reached. Nowhere is the supremacy of intellect more impressively illustrated. One is at times almost tempted o wish that the electric cabling of the Atlantic, his popularly best known achievement, as it was one of the most strenuous, had never been undertaken by him; nor even, perhaps, the practical settlement of electric units and instruments and methods to which it led on, thus leaving the ground largely prepared for the modern refined electric transformation of general engineering. In the absence of such pressing and absorbing distractions, what might the world not have received during the years of his prime in new discoveries and explorations among the inner processes of nature.

Author(s):  
Dong Wang

The “unequal treaties” and the treaty ports are two intricately linked elements of modern China’s experience with the world from 1843 to 1943 and beyond. The legal framework of treaty ports was rooted and developed in a series of documents signed between China and foreign countries that are considered by the Chinese to be unfair treaties. Although the definition and exact number of the “unequal treaties” are subject to fierce debate, it is generally agreed that a total of at least fourteen countries concluded unequal treaties with China, and that there were forty-eight treaty ports under a binding international treaty, except for three self-opened ports—Sandu Ao (Santuao), Yueyang (Yochow), and Qinhuangdao (Chinwangtao)—that were voluntarily opened by a Qing imperial decree in 1898 under the same trade regulations as the treaty ports. Among the nineteen Chinese provinces, by the early 20th century only Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Henan, and Guizhou had no treaty ports. Not necessarily located on the coast or near navigable water, the treaty ports were the “ports of entry,” but also something more. In historiographical terms, the treaty ports have been variously characterized as sites of paramount importance, as centers of controversy, and as a significant dimension of the encounter between China and the world. During the first half of the 20th century, the foreign presence and establishment served as the “port of entry” to the study of modern China for two generations of Western scholars, epitomized by Hosea Ballou Morse and John King Fairbank. From the 1980s on, social, cultural, and bottom-up approaches took the China history field by storm, in tandem with the master narrative of nation-states and transnationalism through nation-states. In the Chinese-speaking world, scholarly interest in the history of treaty ports is no match, to say the least, for research into issues surrounding the unequal treaties. China’s recent rise, especially the prosperity of former treaty port areas since the late 1970s, has prompted reconsideration of whether the Western presence did indeed matter in modern China. There is still a considerable hiatus to be covered regarding the interplay between bilateral and transnational aspects of the treaties and the ports. This article intends to further the study of the many dimensions of the treaties and treaty ports phenomena as viewed from the development of the main historical paradigms of Anglophone and Chinese research and the major source collections in Chinese, English, and Japanese.


Philosophy ◽  
1932 ◽  
Vol 7 (28) ◽  
pp. 404-413
Author(s):  
G. N. M. Tyrrell

If there is one question which stands forth pre-eminently from among the many problems with which physical science bristles, it is that of the ontological status of the world which physics is exploring. What is reality in the eyes of science, and what are we to understand the physicist to mean when he refers to the “real world”? Can we agree with him when he assures us that physical science represents a progress towards pure truth? There seems to be a certain reluctance on the part of twentieth-century physicists to face the ontological question which I think their colleagues of the nineteenth century did not share to the same extent.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-252
Author(s):  
Deborah Solomon

This essay draws attention to the surprising lack of scholarship on the staging of garden scenes in Shakespeare's oeuvre. In particular, it explores how garden scenes promote collaborative acts of audience agency and present new renditions of the familiar early modern contrast between the public and the private. Too often the mention of Shakespeare's gardens calls to mind literal rather than literary interpretations: the work of garden enthusiasts like Henry Ellacombe, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, and Caroline Spurgeon, who present their copious gatherings of plant and flower references as proof that Shakespeare was a garden lover, or the many “Shakespeare Gardens” around the world, bringing to life such lists of plant references. This essay instead seeks to locate Shakespeare's garden imagery within a literary tradition more complex than these literalizations of Shakespeare's “flowers” would suggest. To stage a garden during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries signified much more than a personal affinity for the green world; it served as a way of engaging time-honored literary comparisons between poetic forms, methods of audience interaction, and types of media. Through its metaphoric evocation of the commonplace tradition, in which flowers double as textual cuttings to be picked, revised, judged, and displayed, the staged garden offered a way to dramatize the tensions produced by creative practices involving collaborative composition and audience agency.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alwi Musa Muzaiyin

Trade is a form of business that is run by many people around the world, ranging from trading various kinds of daily necessities or primary needs, to selling the need for luxury goods for human satisfaction. For that, to overcome the many needs of life, they try to outsmart them buy products that are useful, economical and efficient. One of the markets they aim at is the second-hand market or the so-called trashy market. As for a trader at a trashy market, they aim to sell in the used goods market with a variety of reasons. These reasons include; first, because it is indeed to fulfill their needs. Second, the capital needed to trade at trashy markets is much smaller than opening a business where the products come from new goods. Third, used goods are easily available and easily sold to buyer. Here the researcher will discuss the behavior of Muslim traders in a review of Islamic business ethics (the case in the Jagalan Kediri Trashy Market). Kediri Jagalan Trashy Market is central to the sale of used goods in the city of Kediri. Where every day there are more than 300 used merchants who trade in the market. The focus of this research is how the behavior of Muslim traders in the Jagalan Kediri Trashy Market in general. Then, from the large number of traders, of course not all traders have behavior in accordance with Islamic business ethics, as well as traders who are in accordance with the rules of Islamic business ethics. This study aims to determine how the behavior of Muslim traders in the Jagalan Kediri Trashy Market in buying and selling transactions and to find out how the behavior of Muslim traders in the Jagalan Kediri Trashy Market in reviewing Islamic business ethics. Key Words: Trade, loak market, Islamic business


Author(s):  
Benedetta Zavatta

Based on an analysis of the marginal markings and annotations Nietzsche made to the works of Emerson in his personal library, the book offers a philosophical interpretation of the impact on Nietzsche’s thought of his reading of these works, a reading that began when he was a schoolboy and extended to the final years of his conscious life. The many ideas and sources of inspiration that Nietzsche drew from Emerson can be organized in terms of two main lines of thought. The first line leads in the direction of the development of the individual personality, that is, the achievement of critical thinking, moral autonomy, and original self-expression. The second line of thought is the overcoming of individuality: that is to say, the need to transcend one’s own individual—and thus by definition limited—view of the world by continually confronting and engaging with visions different from one’s own and by putting into question and debating one’s own values and certainties. The image of the strong personality that Nietzsche forms thanks to his reading of Emerson ultimately takes on the appearance of a nomadic subject who is continually passing out of themselves—that is to say, abandoning their own positions and convictions—so as to undergo a constant process of evolution. In other words, the formation of the individual personality takes on the form of a regulative ideal: a goal that can never be said to have been definitively and once and for all attained.


Author(s):  
T. M. Rudavsky

Of the many philosophical perplexities facing medieval Jewish thinkers, perhaps none has challenged religious belief as much as God’s creation of the world. No Jewish philosopher denied the importance of creation, that the world had a beginning (bereshit). But like their Christian and Muslim counterparts, Jewish thinkers did not always agree upon what qualifies as an acceptable model of creation. Chapter 6 is devoted to attempts of Jewish philosophers to reconcile the biblical view of creation with Greek and Islamic philosophy. By understanding the notion of creation and how an eternal, timeless creator created a temporal universe, we may begin to understand how the notions of eternity, emanation, and the infinite divisibility of time function within the context of Jewish philosophical theories of creation.


Geoheritage ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Crofts ◽  
Dan Tormey ◽  
John E. Gordon

AbstractThis paper introduces newly published guidelines on geoheritage conservation in protected and conserved areas within the “IUCN WCPA Best Practice Guidelines” series. It explains the need for the guidelines and outlines the ethical basis of geoheritage values and geoconservation principles as the fundamental framework within which to advance geoheritage conservation. Best practice in establishing and managing protected and conserved areas for geoconservation is described with examples from around the world. Particular emphasis is given to the methodology and practice for dealing with the many threats to geoheritage, highlighting in particular how to improve practice for areas with caves and karst, glacial and periglacial, and volcanic features and processes, and for palaeontology and mineral sites. Guidance to improve education and communication to the public through modern and conventional means is also highlighted as a key stage in delivering effective geoconservation. A request is made to geoconservation experts to continue to share best practice examples of developing methodologies and best practice in management to guide non-experts in their work. Finally, a number of suggestions are made on how geoconservation can be further promoted.


2010 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-345
Author(s):  
Hubert Markl

The reason why I wavered a bit with this topic is that, after all, it has to do with Darwin, after a great Darwin year, as seen by a German scientist. Not that Darwin was very adept in German: Gregor Mendel’s ‘Versuche über Pflanzenhybriden’ (Experiments on Plant Hybrids) was said to have stayed uncut and probably unread on his shelf, which is why he never got it right with heredity in his life – only Gregory Bateson, Ronald A. Fisher, and JBS Haldane, together with Sewall Wright merged evolution with genetics. But Darwin taught us, nevertheless, in essence why the single human species shows such tremendous ethnic diversity, which impresses us above all through a diversity of languages – up to 7000 altogether – and among them, as a consequence, also German, my mother tongue, and English. It would thus have been a truly Darwinian message, if I had written this article in German. I would have called that the discommunication function of the many different languages in humans, which would have been a most significant message of cultural evolution, indeed. I finally decided to overcome the desire to demonstrate so bluntly what cultural evolution is all about, or rather to show that nowadays, with global cultural progress, ‘the world is flat’ indeed – even linguistically. The real sign of its ‘flatness’ is that English is used everywhere, even if Thomas L. Friedman may not have noticed this sign. But I will also come back to that later, when I hope to show how Darwinian principles connect both natural and cultural evolution, and how they first have been widely misunderstood as to their true meaning, and then have been terribly misused – although more so by culturalists, or some self-proclaimed ‘humanists’, rather than by biologists – or at least most of them. Let me, however, quickly add a remark on human languages. That languages even influence our brains and our thinking, that is: how we see the world, has first been remarked upon by Wilhelm von Humboldt and later, more extensively so, by Benjamin Whorf. It has recently been shown by neural imaging – for instance by Angela Friederici – that one’s native language, first as learned from one’s mother and from those around us when we are babies, later from one’s community of speakers, can deeply impinge on a baby’s brain development and stay imprinted in it throughout life, even if language is, of course, learned and not fully genetically preformed. This shows once more how deep the biological roots are that ground our cultures, according to truly Darwinian principles, even if these cultures are completely learned.


2013 ◽  
Vol 83 ◽  
pp. 170-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Verity Burgmann

AbstractThe autonomist Marxist critique of determinist Marxism offers even more valuable insights for labor historians than that mounted by earlier antideterminists, such as Sartre and Thompson, who emphasized proletarian agency to counter determinist orthodoxy in which the accumulative logic of capital unilaterally shapes the world. Autonomist Marxism is more far-reaching. It places labor at the very beginning of the labor-capital dialectic: Labor can exist independently of capital, but capital needs to command labor to ensure profit; therefore, capitalist development does not occur due to internal momentum but in reaction to labor's tendency to unloose itself from capital. Linebaugh and Rediker offer a similar hypothesis in exploring the myth of the many-headed hydra—and demonstrate the fruitfulness of such an approach. By contrast, the notion of the multitude in Hardt and Negri'sEmpirehas not been well received by labor historians due to its inexplicable abstraction when read in isolation from other autonomist texts. This article attempts to rescue the ideas of autonomist Marxist philosophers, especially Toni Negri, from the enormous condescension of labor history.


2006 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 351-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Noonan

Thousands of languages are currently in danger of extinction without having been adequately documented by linguists. This fact represents a tragedy for communities in which endangered languages are spoken, for linguistics as a discipline and for all of humanity. One major role of the field of linguistics is to describe languages accurately and thoroughly for the benefit of all concerned. This paper presents the results of an informal survey of major users of grammatical descriptions and gives lists of dos and don’ts for those contemplating a descriptive study of one of the many endangered languages of the world. Concrete suggestions are provided that will help grammar writers produce user-friendly, thorough and useful grammatical descriptions.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document