The Founder of Toshiba, Tanaka Hisashige and Buddhist Astronomy: The Modernization of Japan and the Traditional Conception of the Universe

As the proverb has it, ‘tradition is not to preserve the ashes but to pass on the flame’. Taking this image as a starting point, this paper is interested in non-conservative concepts of tradition and (dis)continuity. If the concept of tradition is normally associated with continuity, the concept of tradition poses the question of transmittability. Is there a continuous medium in which narrations, customs, rites or other material practices can be handed down from the past to the present? If the transmittability of tradition is not a given, a commodified object, but subject to historical change, the question of tradition and inheritance is inextricably linked to social and political struggles. The concept of tradition, however, has mostly been theorized by conservative thinkers. In this vein, traditional historical materialism viewed tradition as a counter-progressive retarding force. Walter Benjamin (1940), however, proposed a different concept of historical time and tradition. History is not based on a progressive flow of “homogeneous, empty time” but on disruptive constellations of the present and the past. The past is never fully gone; it can never be fully historicized. The medium in which the present is connected to all lost causes and struggles of those who literally and metaphorically lost their histories is called the “tradition of the oppressed.” Paradoxically, this medium is a discontinuum – its texture is woven out of struggles, empty-spots and disconnected elements which cannot be represented in one transmittable image or inscribed into one multifaceted yet coherent world-history. If the “tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living” (Marx), then the tradition of the oppressed will also haunt all attempts to repress it completely and erase its experience in the linear continuum of “victor’s history.” But how are we to pass on an oppressed tradition? How can the tradition of the oppressed be recalled, actualized and “worked through”?

Conventionally, air mass factors are used to relate so‐called “slant” trace‐gas column densities measured by differential optical absorption spectroscopy (DOAS) using extraterrestrial light sources to desired vertical trace‐gas column densities. We show that two fundamental problems arise when the traditional air mass factor A concept, which was originally developed for direct radiation measurements, is applied to spectroscopy of scattered radiation: (1) the inaccuracy of the traditional formula to determine vertical column densities V from measured slant column densities S, i.e., the equation V = S/A and (2) the inaccuracy of the traditional air mass factor computation method itself. We show that the reason for these inaccuracies is the substitution of absolute by differential slant column densities during a DOAS evaluation. It may be carried out and thus the traditional air mass factor concept is valid if and only if the optical density of a certain absorber is proportional to the product of its absorption cross section and its vertical column density. Since for spectroscopy of scattered radiation we have a nonlinear relationship between these quantities, the traditional concept cannot be, in general, extended to this application. The nonlinearity of this relationship is mathematically shown by a path integral formulation of the radiative transfer, which is developed. Its practical relevance is shown by Monte Carlo model calculations of the radiative transfer. The systematic error in both the air mass factor and the vertical column density associated with applying the traditional concept to spectroscopy of scattered radiation is also determined by Monte Carlo model calculations. Improved air mass factor concepts are developed in this work, which are also valid for absorption spectroscopy of scattered radiation (and not only for spectroscopy of direct radiation as the traditional concept) and include the traditional concept as a linear limit case. By applying one of these improved concepts the two fundamental problems mentioned above as well as the fundamental inconsistency of the method, i.e., the a priori knowledge of the vertical column density, which is required when applying the traditional concept, can be resolved.

The objective of this research is to examine the relationship between teachers’ teaching-learning conceptions and pedagogical competence perceptions and to reveal the related findings. The research was designed in the relational survey model. The study group of the research is composed of teachers who work in elementary and secondary public schools in Karaman district of Turkey (n = 223). In the research, it was found that there are positive or negative relationships between teachers’ teaching-learning conceptions and pedagogical competence perceptions sub-dimensions. In addition, according to regression analysis, it was seen that the model was significant as a whole and teachers’ teaching-learning conceptions and pedagogical competence perceptions were significantly associated. It was understood that the teachers’ teaching-learning conceptions explained 42% of their pedagogical competence perceptions. According to the findings of the research, it was observed that teachers mostly had traditional teaching-learning conceptions and there was no significant relationship between their traditional teaching-learning conceptions and their pedagogical competence perceptions except the first dimension. It was found that there was a significantly positive relationship between their teaching-learning conceptions and their pedagogical competence perceptions among teachers who have constructivist teaching-learning conception. According to these findings, teachers’ pedagogical competence perception levels decrease as their teaching-learning conceptions move towards the traditional conceptions, and pedagogical competence perception levels increases as their teaching-learning conceptions move towards constructivism. When all these results are taken into consideration, teachers should be educated in accordance with the constructivist teaching-learning conception in line with their contemporary educational philosophies, models and conceptions.

All four of the volumes discussed here integrate erudite historical and textual scholarship in Islamic studies with clearly articulated ethical and theological projects of gender justice, which are in turn rooted in the authors’ engagements in Muslim communities worldwide. This combination is a hallmark of recent work on gender and sexuality in Islamic contexts, where scholars foreground the complex intersection of their own ethical standpoints, their historically and linguistically grounded exegesis of classical sources, and their hopes for gender justice in contemporary Muslim communities. In the process, they offer a range of evocative models for how to combine descriptive and constructive work in religious ethics. Further, this cluster of works contributes to an ongoing conversation in religious ethics about the concept of tradition. This review draws out a focus on the relational intimacy of the hermeneutical project that I argue constitutes an overarching theoretical intervention in the concept of an ethical tradition.

The article is dedicated to one of the most relevant issues in religious thought—the preservation of church tradition. The interest in this issue became particularly acute for Russian religious thinkers of the 20th century, who witnessed radical changes in living conditions and collective consciousness. The article examines the interpretation of the issue in the works by Sergey Fudel (1900–1977), a church writer and carrier of pre-revolutionary Russian culture. He had communication with outstanding spiritual figures spanning the late 19th to the 20th centuries, confessors of faith, and new martyrs. The church and historical context of Fudel’s works is explored, clarifying the connection between the writer’s views on the transmission of church tradition, his own biography, the figures of his mentors, and the existence conditions for the persecuted Church, evidenced in Fudel’s writings. The article sheds light on the writer’s response to changes in the conditions of church life in the mid-20th century and the feeling of a “generation gap” that emerged in him. It reconstructs Fudel’s notion of the “monastery in the world” as an environment where church tradition is preserved. The correlation between Fudel’s concept of church tradition and his ecclesiological views is illuminated. The research findings lead to the conclusion that the phenomenon of the “hidden Church” as an alliance of “two or three” disciples of Christ was not, in Fudel’s view, a temporary solution stemming from the era of persecutions. Instead, the writer regarded such an experience as an exposition of the Church’s original teaching about itself and an enduring model of church relations. Like many others, Fudel acknowledged the providential significance of trials undergone by the Russian Church. However, he insisted that the experience of the “hidden Church” revealed the original teaching of the Church about itself, preserved throughout the ages. The article also considers the relationship between Fudel’s views and other approaches to the “generation gap” problem. Fudel’s evaluation of previous eras, marked by the “external prosperity” of Christianity, allows characterization of his attitude towards various concepts of tradition, both classical, tracing back to the times of the Byzantine Empire, and those contemporary to the writer.

Reviewed by: The Invention of the Oral: Print Commerce and Fugitive Voices in Eighteenth-Century Britain by Paula McDowell Jennifer L. Airey (bio) Paula McDowell. The Invention of the Oral: Print Commerce and Fugitive Voices in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2017. Pp. 353. $45. We are living in a moment of profound cultural change, as the movement from print to online culture has fundamentally shifted the ways in which we access and process information and monetize written content. Set in this context, Paula McDowell’s The Invention of the Oral: Print Commerce and Fugitive Voices in Eighteenth-Century Britain is an especially timely work, one that draws parallels between the developing technologies of the eighteenth century—in this case, the movement from oral to print culture—and our own. It is only in retrospect, McDowell argues, that we can fully understand the implications of such a monstrous cultural shift, but similarities have already emerged between eighteenth-century reactions to technological change and our own: concerns over what is being lost, fears about the democratization of access to content, and uncertainty about how to monetize new modes of information transmission. According to McDowell, the concept of the “oral” came into being in the eighteenth century as an umbrella term for a series of often unrelated concepts. Encapsulating at once beliefs about religious tradition, appropriate gender roles, and social class divides, reactions to the concept of orality in the eighteenth century offer insight into a wide variety of social and cultural attitudes. In drawing connections between the development of [End Page 494] eighteenth-century print culture and the emergence of the digital, McDowell’s book is both important and timely. As a work of scholarship on the eighteenth century, it is a masterful and often enlightening work, offering new interpretations of well-known works by authors such as Defoe, Johnson, and Swift, and engaging with previously understudied voices such as those of the Billingsgate fishwives and John “Orator” Henley. McDowell begins in her first chapter with a nuanced analysis of the concept of oral tradition as it emerged in the eighteenth century. While the word “tradition” is now used in predominantly secular ways, it had important religious resonance in the early modern period. For Catholics, who placed emphasis on the importance of priestly intercession between the individual and God, “the tradition of the church is of equal authority with scripture” (28). For Protestants, by contrast, who privileged Biblical text and the individual’s relationship with God, the concept of tradition was much more fraught. Protestants positioned scripture—and by extension writing—as “the most reliable method of preserving and communicating knowledge” (29). Of particular interest in this chapter is McDowell’s reading of Dryden; prior to his conversion, she argues, Dryden linked orality with the vulgar rabble. As a Catholic, however, he became more supportive of oral tradition, arguing in The Hind and the Panther that the Catholic Church “by Tradition’s force upheld the Truth” (39). The battle between print and oral authority was central to other eighteenth-century debates. English common law, for instance, was composed of many unwritten laws, and thus “seventeenth-century proponents of the Ancient Constitution appealed to the authority of an ancient, unwritten tradition of laws and customs to further their own political goals” (45). Meanwhile antiquarians lamented the loss of oral culture (including lower-class slang, popular ballads, and the oral poetry of the Scottish Highlands) resulting from the growth of print. Not all forms of oral transmission were viewed positively, however; the concept of old wives’ tales, for instance, reflects the disrespect in which women’s speech was consistently held. McDowell turns in chapter 2 to Swift’s treatment of speech in A Tale of a Tub. As a clergyman himself, Swift understood well the importance of dynamic oratory in the pulpit, and he suggested that Dissenters were dangerous precisely because they knew how to perform for largely illiterate audiences. Swift associated the physicality and emotion of the spoken sermon “with popular unrest and gender subversion from below” (67). Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year is the subject of McDowell’s third chapter. As...

The implementation of the kawin tangkap tradition, which in the process contains elements of violence, harassment and the presence of one-party tendencies on the part of the perpetrators of this act, makes the concept of this tradition interesting to study in understanding tradition (‘urf) and the TPKS Law. This study discusses, first, the concept of tradition in the custom of kawin tangkap in perspective tradition (‘urf), secondly, the conception of the kawin tangkap tradition in the review of the TPKS Law. This research study is normative research, with descriptive discussion. The discussion of this research reveals the tradition that is the motive for the legal act of kawin tangkap, as long as it still does not respect the principle of women's consent in the process of carrying out marriage and violates the concept of protecting the soul and honor of women, then this legal act is 'urf fasidah. Likewise, the traditional motive for the act of kawin tangkap which results in harassment, violence and does not heed the principle of women's consent in the traditional process can be punished in accordance with Article 10 paragraph (1) of the TPKS Law

How can different parties to a dispute in aesthetics, history, politics or religion, either individuals or groups, each claim, apparently with at least some justification, that it, but not its rival(s), is the true or authentic successor or later representative for some earlier group or individual, or that it, but not its rival(s), stands in the same authentic tradition as the earlier one? Such social disputes seem essentially endless and interminable. Is this so? Can the disputes receive a rational resolution? I try and illustrate these disputes with numerous specific examples. I focus on the two concepts of tradition and true succession for my analysis. The idea of qualitative similarity of beliefs and practices can illuminate social disputes over true succession or membership of a tradition. (Causal connexion has a necessary role to play.) Other analyses frequently identify the vagueness or ambiguity in the concepts of the specific traditions as the source of dispute. On the contrary, I argue that the vagueness inherent in the question of how similar beliefs and practices need to be is what explains these apparently endless disputes that social groups have with one another over these questions.

The aim of this essay is to outline an inquiry into the meaning of Walter Benjamin’s concept of authentic tradition , starting from its relationship to the concept of modern beauty as described by Charles Baudelaire, an author of utmost importance to Benjamin. The modern revolution of time is a common fascination for these two authors, and each investigates it under a certain ‘secret identity’ and in a specific space they believe desirable or necessary –Baudelaire becoming the art critic in the context of showrooms, while Benjamin adopts the appearance of the ragman of history–, but always under the common image of a man who’s part of the crowd in the big city. From this common endeavor, we’ll try to understand why the German philosopher qualifies his concept of tradition as “authentic”.

The article presents a description of the peculiar experience of earth based on letters written by poet Janina Degutytė in 1972–1989. The city-born poet happens to find herself at a homestead, the original center of agriculture, and recognizes this place as an especially suitable one for her to live – she feels comfortable and peaceful there. Besides, her sick and physically fragile body confirms suitability of this place, feeling revived even in medical terms. Life in the countryside means both living on the ground and in the air. The article describes the integral feeling of earth and sky. The earth is experienced in several ways: by walking on it, by planting and growing, and by eating food received from it. All these ways shape and reshape the human body, senses and knowledge. All these ways also reveal support of the ground, and depict subjective trust in it.This closely surveyed case of the ground’s attraction experienced by Degutytė leads to another view of the boom in collective gardening of the 1960s and 1970s in the Soviet Lithuania. As well as mass purchasing of summerhouses in the countryside several decades later, the collective gardening could have been supported by the latent longing for the ground and farming activities. The author of the article examines such spontaneous experience of the ground as continuation of the agricultural tradition.The concept of tradition is reviewed in several aspects. The author raises a question whether or not direct inheritance is the only way of continuing the tradition. It is supposed that tradition, at least partly, survives in the environment and can manifest itself as an attraction of suitable places and activities. Stepping back from the concept of tradition represented by collections of things, the author of the article proposes the concept of lived tradition based on corporal perception and sensual experience.

When one considers the thought of the late Fazlur Rahman, it can be seenthat his main endeavors are confined to “a true understanding of the Qur’an andthe Sunnah” - in other words, a “recourse to the Qur’an and the Sunnah in orderto get from there an understanding of and a guidance for solving our newproblems.”l This point cannot be ignored by contemporary Muslims strivingto overcome their social, political, legal, and religiomoral problems. However,it is not a simple and easy task to return to the Qur’an in order to have a trueunderstanding of it, for there are many obstacles which ensue from history ortraditional Islam itself.I will therefore elucidate and discuss what Rahman means by the conceptof tradition and, more specifically, the Islamic tradition or, as he sometimesprefers to call it, the Muslim tradition. We cannot appreciate his views on hisQur‘anic methodology and on contemporary issues unless we sufficiently acquaintourselves with what he means by Islamic tradition and the problems hund withinIslamic civilization, by which he means the influence that Islamic tradition thathad on Islamic civilization and its ultimate consequences on that civilization’soutcome.When we confront the Islamic heritage as a whole, it is important to elicitand bring into the open what “Islamic” and ”un-Islamic” meant at that particularpoint in the past, for this would appear to be crucial for a better understandingof the problem at hand. Once we identify those un-Islamic elements and theneliminate them from our way to development and modernization, we can confineour attention to solving our current problems in light of the Qur‘an and the Sunnah.We cannot find adequate answers to our current problems if we are incarceratedin a tradition which is, according to Rahman, contrary to the Qur’an’s dynamicand ongoing spirit. On the other hand, there is the naive view which claims that ...

The concept of discourse tradition (DT) is a core component of the system of language competence developed by Eugenio Coseriu and unfolds its analytical sharpness embedded in the differentiations of that model. The idea of DT is based on the concepts of historicity, individuality and tradition. A central topic of the debates and controversies that have arisen in Romance linguistics is the question of how historicity and individuality enter into the idea of DT. In comparison, the concept of tradition has been studied in far less depth and is therefore given additional consideration in this contribution. As a concept, DTs include very different patterns of text design. This wide scope enables them to function as a dynamic, transdisciplinary concept but also calls for categories that allow a refined description of the different types of DT. Therefore the development of criteria for a categorization of DTs is a further central aspect of this chapter. The application of these criteria is illustrated using the example of the topos of unspeakability in various discourse types and genres.


 
 
 The Cohesion Policy aims at creating a transformative value to societies in addition to tra- ditional public values. The implementation of Cohesion Policy has been organized by tem- porary organizations, such as projects, to promote innovations, knowledge and learning. The problem is that the performance concept used for managing the policy is founded on traditional technical and economic values, theoretically neglecting the benefits of innova- tion projects, and potentially opening up for profound steering problems. To what extent can the transformative added value of innovation projects be evaluated by the traditional performance concept? And are the traditional and the new transformative performance con- cepts consistent for managing purposes? In this study the performance framework is revised with regard to the benefits of projects as policy tools. The revised concept for assessing performance of projects is then statistically compared to the traditional performance con- cept by operationalizing them on regional development projects in Finland during the Co- hesion Policy program 2007-2013. The study shows that the new performance concept is consistent in evaluating development projects’ performance in a complex administrative system. The new and traditional concepts are, however, inconsistent in providing steering signals. This raises concerns for the effects of performance management of project driven policy implementation.
 
 

Relational analysis of personal epistemology and conceptions about teaching and learning

Based on the digital twin technology, a digital twin platform can be built to connect the real teaching space with the virtual teaching space and become the mainstream of online teaching space. All this has determined that the social demand for designers' education is undergoing fundamental changes. The so-called “scientific and technological progress, education first” bilingual education is undergoing comprehensive and profound changes in the digital age, which has a strong impact on the traditional bilingual teaching mode and concept. Traditional concepts, aging theoretical knowledge, and backward teaching methods will inevitably be eliminated and updated gradually in the contest with digitalization, which makes it necessary to transform traditional bilingual education into digital bilingual education. Through the comparative experimental analysis of the teaching effect, the independent sample t-test shows that the t-statistic is 3.634, and the corresponding significance level is 0.013, which is less than 0.05. It shows that there are significant differences between boys and girls in bilingual teaching in this class of digital twin technology experimental teaching. However, compared with the control class, the results of both boys and girls are higher, so to some extent, it shows that the application of digital twin technology experimental teaching in bilingual teaching will indeed produce certain results.