scholarly journals Context of culture: Critique of the primitive mind

2010 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-95
Author(s):  
Nikola Bozilovic

The author of this paper has the intention to reach the new meaning and sense of the primitive mentality by analyzing it in early social communities. He also wants to point out the possible reflections of the spirit and consciousness of our ancestors on us, here and now. The first part of the paper is dedicated to a critical deliberation on anthropological conflicts which have arisen concerning the reasoning power of the so-called primitives. The crucial question lies in the following: Is the difference between the ?primitive? and the ?civilized? mentality fundamental or is it possible only to a certain degree. The author takes the notion of primitive mentality through time and points to the medieval understandings, which are occupied by teratological themes, then to the renaissance comprehension, which relies on the first experiential observations, and, finally, to the enlightenment ideas of exotic peoples out of which the myth of ?the good savage? is born. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries introduce the notions of ?people?s character? and ?national spirit?. The opinions are polarized, on the one hand of ethnocentrism, carried by the prejudice of people and ethnic groups and, on the other hand, of cultural relativism, based on the understanding and appreciation of cultural differences. In the end, the author also recognizes the modern primitive man, one who is not ready to deal with the challenges of his age. The modern primitive recalls the spirits of the past, the surviving and anachronic models of behavior, unaware of the fact that these are the same models that he has ascribed to ?savages?. However, while such thinking and acting was justified by the cultural level at which our ancestors had lived, the mental frame of the contemporary primitives is significantly in contrast with the high level of civilization development.

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 108
Author(s):  
Stella Kyvelou

Once the principle of the inseparability of the material world and cyber territory has been admitted, the question put to the urban planner is being transformed. The transition from the representation of two separate worlds - the physical on the one hand and the digital on the other - to a representation of a “double world” in the sense of the indivisible inter-connection of the physical and the digital, leads to a change of paradigm in abstraction and representation. By accepting the principle of considering the material world and the cyber territory (and not cyberspace) as an indivisible whole, we come up to realize that the urban question changes. If, in the past, our thoughts and studies were aimed at seeking a common world that we should discover and maintain, the modern world is not presumed to belong exclusively in the material reality. The planner’s work, therefore, should certainly take into account this interconnection, the discontinuous, fragmentary involvement, of matter and information. However, this phenomenon is not new since the symbolic dimension of cities, architecture and space in general has always closely interwoven representation and the real world. The difference is that there was then a connection with a particular territory or a national identity. Today, this ancient territorial reference is weakening, although there are signs of reversion to it. Based on these observations, the paper will discuss the evolution of the urban question under the assumption of the indivisible “double world” and the augmented territories.


Author(s):  
Ingrid Artus

The paper discusses causes, contexts and consequences of the exceptional high level of strikes sweeping Germany in the year 2015. It gives a detailed overview of the three biggest strike movements (nursery teachers, postal strike and metal industry warning strikes) and sums up the vast number of smaller strikes. The new intensity of conflict is interpreted in a double way: On the one hand it is the consequence of a long lasting union weakness in the past resulting in erosion and fragmentation of collective bargaining. On the other hand it shows that there is a current fight going on to end union defensive. New conflicts at new economic places are breaking off and they are often led by employees who have no long union and strike experience. The feminization and tertiarization of strikes involve for the unions the necessity to refine ‘old’ fordist strike strategies and to deal with new subjects, maybe in a more democratic way than before.


2010 ◽  
Vol 15 (29) ◽  
pp. 95-117
Author(s):  
Diana Ortiz ◽  
◽  
Miguel Chirinos ◽  
Yvonka Hurtado ◽  
◽  
...  

This article provides a re-estimation of the pension plan funds administrators’ efficient frontier. The goal here is two-fold: on the one hand it measures the effect of investment limits imposed by regulators. Unlike previous studies, here the short positions are not limited; this assumption is based upon the completeness of the financial markets: when the markets are completed, any financial instrument may be replicated. On the other hand, this article measures the performance of the pension plan funds. In earlier works, the performance was measured as the difference between the profitability in the frontier and the one obtained at the level of a given risk; here the return is measured as the relationship of optimal risk profitability and the one obtained. The main conclusion drawn is that regulation supports the high level of risks taken by the administrators.


Author(s):  
Daiva Milinkevičiūtė

The Age of Enlightenment is defined as the period when the universal ideas of progress, deism, humanism, naturalism and others were materialized and became a golden age for freemasons. It is wrong to assume that old and conservative Christian ideas were rejected. Conversely, freemasons put them into new general shapes and expressed them with the help of symbols in their daily routine. Symbols of freemasons had close ties with the past and gave them, on the one hand, a visible instrument, such as rituals and ideas to sense the transcendental, and on the other, intense gnostic aspirations. Freemasons put in a great amount of effort to improve themselves and to create their identity with the help of myths and symbols. It traces its origins to the biblical builders of King Solomon’s Temple, the posterity of the Templar Knights, and associations of the medieval craft guilds, which were also symbolical and became their link not only to each other but also to the secular world. In this work we analysed codified masonic symbols used in their rituals. The subject of our research is the universal Masonic idea and its aspects through the symbols in the daily life of the freemasons in Vilnius. Thanks to freemasons’ signets, we could find continuity, reception, and transformation of universal masonic ideas in the Lithuanian freemasonry and national characteristics of lodges. Taking everything into account, our article shows how the universal idea of freemasonry spread among Lithuanian freemasonry, and which forms and meanings it incorporated in its symbols. The objective of this research is to find a universal Masonic idea throughout their visual and oral symbols and see its impact on the daily life of the masons in Vilnius. Keywords: Freemasonry, Bible, lodge, symbols, rituals, freemasons’ signets.


Worldview ◽  
1960 ◽  
Vol 3 (9) ◽  
pp. 7-8
Author(s):  
Will Herberg

John Courtney Murray's writing cannot fail to be profound and instructive, and I have profited greatly from it in the course of the past decade. But I must confess that his article, "Morality and Foreign Policy" (Worldview, May), leaves me in a strange confusion of mixed feelings. On the one hand, I can sympathize with what I might call the historical intention of the natural law philosophy he espouses, which I take to be the effort to establish enduring structures of meaning and value to serve as fixed points of moral decision in the complexities of the actual situation. On the other hand, I am rather put off by the calm assurance he exhibits when he deals with these matters, as though everything were at bottom unequivocally rational and unequivocally accessible to the rational mind. And I am really distressed at what seems to 3ie to be his woefully inadequate appreciation of the position of the "ambiguists," among whom I cannot deny I count myself.


1979 ◽  
Vol 3 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 242-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Kuklick

Despite differences in coloration Miller and Benson are birds of a feather. Although he is no Pollyanna, Miller believes that there has been a modest and decent series of advances in the social sciences and that the most conscientious, diligent, and intelligent researchers will continue to add to this stock of knowledge. Benson is much more pessimistic about the achievements of yesterday and today but, in turn, offers us the hope of a far brighter tomorrow. Miller explains Benson’s hyperbolic views about the past and future by distinguishing between pure and applied science and by pointing out Benson’s naivete about politics: the itch to understand the world is different from the one to make it better; and, Miller says, because Benson sees that we have not made things better, he should not assume we do not know more about them; Benson ought to realize, Miller adds, that the way politicians translate basic social knowledge into social policy need not bring about rational or desirable results. On the other side, Benson sees more clearly than Miller that the development of science has always been intimately intertwined with the control of the environment and the amelioration of the human estate.


1930 ◽  
Vol 51 (5) ◽  
pp. 769-776 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max B. Lurie

Under conditions closely simulating the natural modes of tuberculous infection in man normal guinea pigs have acquired tuberculosis by being exposed under two degrees of crowding to tuberculous cage mates in ordinary cages, where the food became soiled with excreta, bearing tubercle bacilli, and in special cages, with wire-mesh floors, where this source of infection was almost entirely eliminated. Guinea pigs were also exposed in the same room but not in the same cage with tuberculous animals. It was found that the relative tuberculous involvement of the mesenteric and tracheobronchial nodes showed a gradation of change from an almost completely alimentary infection to a completely respiratory infection. The disease involved the mesenteric nodes predominantly in the crowded ordinary cages, with much less or no affection of the tracheobronchial nodes. It was similarly, but less markedly, enteric in origin in the less crowded ordinary cages, the mesenteric nodes again being larger than the tracheobronchial nodes, but the difference in size was not so great. In the more crowded special cages the relative affection of these two groups of nodes alternated, so that in some the mesenteric, in some the tracheobronchial nodes were more extensively tuberculous. A disease characterized by less or no affection of the mesenteric nodes and by extensive lesions of the tracheobronchial nodes was seen in the less crowded special cages. Finally there was a massive tuberculosis of the tracheobronchial nodes with usually no affection of the mesenteric nodes in the frankly air-borne tuberculosis acquired by guinea pigs exposed in the same room but not to tuberculous cage mates. This gradation in the rô1e played by the enteric and respiratory routes of infection, as first the one and then the other becomes the more frequent channel of entrance for tuberculosis, would indicate that the penetration of tubercle bacilli by the one portal of entry inhibits the engrafting of tuberculosis in the tissues by way of the other portal of entry. It is apparent that in the special cages the opportunities for inhaling tubercle bacilli are at most equal to if not much less than in the ordinary cages; for in the latter dust from the bedding, laden with tubercle bacilli, is stirred up almost constantly by the animals, whereas in the special cages there is no bedding at all, and therefore, presumably, no more tubercle bacilli in the air than may occur in any part of the room. Nevertheless the route of infection was predominantly the respiratory tract in the special cages, especially in the less crowded, apparently because the enteric route had been largely eliminated. The greater predominance of the respiratory route amongst guinea pigs that acquired tuberculosis in the less crowded ordinary cages as compared to the lesser significance of this route in the more crowded ordinary cages would point in the same direction. These observations are in harmony with our knowledge that tuberculosis once implanted in an organism confers a certain degree of immunity to the disease. It is noteworthy that in a study of human autopsy material Opie (3) has found that when healed lesions are present in the mesentery focal tuberculosis in the lungs is seldom found, and that when first infection occurs by way of the lungs it tends to prevent the engrafting of the disease by way of the intestinal tract.


1969 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 368-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Payne

In recent discussions of the origins and process of animal domestication (Reed, 1961, Zeuner, 1963), both authors rely on two kinds of evidence: on the one hand, the present distributions and characteristics of the different breeds of whatever animal is being discussed, together with its feral and wild relatives, and, on the other hand, the past record, given by literary and pictorial sources and the bones from archaeological and geological sites. Increased recognition of the limitations of the past record, whether in the accuracy of the information it appears to give (as in the case of pictorial sources), or in the certainty of the deductions we are at present capable of drawing from it (this applies especially to the osteological record), has led these authors to argue mainly from the present situation, using the past record to confirm or amplify the existing picture.Arguing from the present, many hypotheses about the origins and process of domestication are available. The only test we have, when attempting to choose between these, lies in the direct evidence of the past record. The past record, it is freely admitted, is very fragmentary: the information provided by the present situation is more exact, ranges over a much wider field, and is more open to test and control. Nevertheless, the past record, however imperfect it is, is the only direct evidence we have about the process of domestication.


1998 ◽  
Vol 30 (04) ◽  
pp. 1027-1057 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Picard

Modelling malaria with consistency necessitates the introduction of at least two families of interconnected processes. Even in a Markovian context the simplest fully stochastic model is intractable and is usually transformed into a hybrid model, by supposing that these two families are stochastically independent and linked only through two deterministic connections. A model closer to the fully stochastic model is presented here, where one of the two families is subordinated to the other and just a unique deterministic connection is required. For this model a threshold theorem can be proved but the threshold level is not the one obtained in a hybrid model. The difference disappears only when the human population size approaches infinity.


2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manoj K. Kesharwani ◽  
Amir Karton ◽  
Nitai Sylvetsky ◽  
Jan M. L. Martin

The S66 benchmark for non-covalent interactions has been re-evaluated using explicitly correlated methods with basis sets near the one-particle basis set limit. It is found that post-MP2 ‘high-level corrections’ are treated adequately well using a combination of CCSD(F12*) with (aug-)cc-pVTZ-F12 basis sets on the one hand, and (T) extrapolated from conventional CCSD(T)/heavy-aug-cc-pV{D,T}Z on the other hand. Implications for earlier benchmarks on the larger S66×8 problem set in particular, and for accurate calculations on non-covalent interactions in general, are discussed. At a slight cost in accuracy, (T) can be considerably accelerated by using sano-V{D,T}Z+ basis sets, whereas half-counterpoise CCSD(F12*)(T)/cc-pVDZ-F12 offers the best compromise between accuracy and computational cost.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document