Category Of Things Research Articles

Предмети мілітарного й подвійного призначення на середньовічному поселенні Лісники-Безодня

Weaponry, horseman's, and warhorse's equipment for unfortified settlements were traditionally considered unusual. Only in the last quarter of the XX century, after extensive studies of the villages of southern Rus, a conclusion was made about the parity of relations between cities and their rural environment and about the inherent character of the rural centers of the mentioned category of things. However, recurrences of the old views continue to appear in recent publications, although the essential question seems to be whether the villagers were the subject or object of the use of the found weapons. New data on this category of findings have recently been obtained due to research on the settlement Lisnyky-Bezodnia in the southern suburbs of Kyiv. The site was discovered in 1991 by V. Petrashenko and V. Koziuba and has been repeatedly examined by the Northern Expedition of the Institute of Archeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Furthermore, in 2021, excavations were carried out on the site. As a result, several objects were investigated in the horizons of the Kyivan Rus and primitive / paleometal periods, and a representative collection of material from these eras was formed. Small in volume but quite an interesting group of things presenting militaristic and dual-purpose objects. Five arrowheads belong to the long-range weapons. All of them are petiolate, have analogies among the types common in Kievan Rus, and some – in the adjacent territories, some of them belong to the category of armor-piercing. Another find is identified as an awl. The object resembles an awl-shaped point, which has been repeatedly found in quiver sets, along with other types of arrowheads. Among the discoveries from the village is a knife, the size of which exceeds the indicators for this category of findings. In the literature, if they did not have a true combat purpose, large knives were proposed to be seen not as universal tools but as hunting weapons. The rider's equipment is represented by a whole sharp and a fragment of another. Elements of both items have analogies among the materials of the XII – first half of the XIII century. Products do not characterize peasant life; they mark the stay of the elite. Horse equipment from the settlement – rod of some snaffle and rod with a ring of others. Such finds are not uncommon. Moreover, although they are attributed to the evidence of the presence of war horses, it is logical to consider things as an indicator of the presence of these animals in general without limiting the purpose exclusively to combat clashes, which has already been noted in publications. In contrast to the previous ones, the other two finds were used for expensive horses, primarily combated ones. We are talking about two sets of metal halters equipped with cylindrical locks. The tendency of these products to the fortified points with representatives of the military-trade state and the lack of data on the fixation of these things on the monuments of rural type indicates the originality of the studied village. The cases of the detection of such items at other unfortified sites were considered to assess the role and place of the collection of items of the named purpose from the village in the Bezodnia tract in Lisnyky. The obtained data indicate the presence of few weapons and equestrian equipment in the layers of settlements and, at the same time, lead to the statement of cases of concentration of such things in sometimes separated from the main territory areas where other prestigious products are concentrated. The collection from Lisnyky-Bezodnia was gathered in a relatively limited area, not in the center or on the dominant hill. This leads to the conclusion that the partially studied monument presents a rather bright and extraordinary phenomenon and emphasizes the inexhaustibility of information opportunities of medieval village structures. Key words: Lisnyky-Bezodnia, Kyivan Rus, medieval settlement, arrowheads, spurs, horse. Language: Ukrainian

Characteristics of special objects of demand by the prosecution party

The article highlights problematic issues related to the use of such a method of gathering evidence in criminal proceedings as requisitioning things and documents. For the first time among scientists, the issues regarding the possibility of the prosecution to carry out in accordance with Art. 93 of the CPC, requisitioning of a separate category of things and documents that contain a secret protected by law and the owners (administrators) of which are: subjects of power – state authorities, other state authorities, local self-government bodies, authorities of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, other subjects, which performauthoritative management functions in accordance with legislation and whose decisions are binding; legal entities financed from state, local budgets, the budget of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea; persons who perform the delegated powers of subjects of authority according to the law or contract, including the provision of educational, health, social or other public services. In addition, the category of things and documents containing a secret protected by law, which can be the object of demand from the specified subjects in accordance with Art. 93 of the CCP of Ukraine. Within the framework of the study, a detailed analysis of the specified information was carried out, as well as proposals were formulated for improving the legislation regulating the legal regime and conditions for disclosure of information that constitutes a secret protected by law. Considered questions regarding the admissibility of disclosure of information that constitutes a secret protected by law, which can be disclosed at the written request of the prosecution in accordance with Art. 93 of the CCP. Formulated proposals for improvement of certain provisions of Art. 93 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine in order to eliminate problematic issues in criminal proceedings that arise during the implementation of the powers of the prosecuting party to demand things and documents. In particular, a form for presenting a demand for requisitioning things and documents of the specified category, as well as conditions for its execution by the relevant subjects – owners of things and documents, are proposed.

CHANGING THE LEGAL STATUS OF ANIMALS: LEGISLATION AND LITIGATION

This paper addresses the issue of the legal status of non-human animals and the possibility of changing it from the status of things or property, to the status of non-things, or better, sentient beings. Key arguments for the change of their status are discussed, including the argument from marginal cases, and the scientific evidence indicating that many animals are sentient beings. Two ways of initiating such changes seem most promising: legislation, i.e. the modification of civil codes, and litigation, i.e. filing lawsuits on behalf of individual animals. It is argued that legislative changes are necessary for moving animals out of the legal category of things and into the category of sentient beings that can bear rights. On the other hand, litigation could bring about a more radical change of the legal status of some animals.

A Ratiocinative Study and Assessment of W. V. O. Quine’s “Criterion of Ontological Commitment”

Purpose: This work has three main objectives: Firstly, it offers an elucidation of the notion of ontological commitment. Secondly, it assesses the adequacy of the criterion of ontological commitment for different languages. Thirdly, it offers some speculative and evaluative remarks regarding the significance of Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment. Many ontologists, within the analytic tradition, often appeal to Quine's criterion of ontological commitment, when debating whether an assertion or theory implies the existence of a certain entity. Regarding his goal in formulating this criterion, he says that the criterion does not aim to help us discover what it is that there is, but only what a theory says there is: “I look to variables and quantification for evidence as to what a theory says that there is, not for evidence as to what there is” (Quine, 1960: 225). Its most popular formulation, using textual evidence from Quine's oeuvre, is: “To be is to be the value of a bound variable,” (Quine, 1961: 15). However, this formulation is susceptible to gross misunderstanding, especially if one is influenced by the formalities and technical maneuvers of model theory. In mathematical logic, model theory is the study of the relationship between formal theories (a collection of sentences in a formal language expressing statements about a mathematical structure), and their models (those structures in which the statements of the theory hold). Model theory is a branch of mathematical logic where we study mathematical structures by considering the first-order sentences true in those structures and the sets definable by first-order formulas. Model theory studies the relations between sentences of a formal language and the interpretations (or ‘structures’) which make these sentences true or false. It offers precise definitions of truth, logical truth and consequence, meanings and modalities.
 Methodology: This work is expository, analytic, critical and evaluative in its methodology. Of course, there are familiar philosophical problems which are within the discursive framework of ‘ontology,’ often phrased by asking if something or some category of things are “real,” or whether “they exist,” concretely. An outstanding example is provided by the traditional problem of universals, which issues in the nominalist-realist controversy, as to the real existence of universals, or of abstract entities such as classes (in the mathematical sense) or propositions (in the abstract sense, referring to the content of an assertion in abstraction from the particular words used to convey it).
 Results: In as much as one might agree with Quine’s Criterion of Ontological Commitment, one might also opine that it is nonetheless a feature of first-order language (i.e. the language embodied in first-order logic; a symbolized reasoning process comprising relations, functions and constants, in which each sentence or statement is broken down into a subject and a predicate. In this regard, the predicate modifies or defines the properties of the subject) that there should be an exact correspondence between the ontological commitments carried by a sentence and the objects that must be counted among the values of the variables in order for the sentence to be true. However, this in itself is not a reason for thinking that such a feature will generalize beyond first-order languages. It is possible for Quine’s Criterion to degenerate, when the language contains atomic predicates expressing extrinsic properties.
 Unique Contribution to theory, practice and policy: Based on Quine’s analysis, a theory is committed to those and only those entities that in the last analysis serve as the values of its bound variables. Thus, ordinary first-order theory commits one to an ontology only of individuals (particulars), whereas higher order logic commits one to the existence of sets, i.e. of collections of definite and distinct entities (or, alternatively, of properties and relations). Likewise, if bound first-order variables are assumed to range over sets (as they do in set theory), a commitment to the existence of these sets is incurred. Admittedly, the precise import of Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment, however, is not completely clear, nor is it clear in what other sense one is perhaps committed by a theory to those entities that are named or otherwise referred to in it, but not quantified over in it. However, it despite its limitations, it has made is possible for one to measure the ontological cost of theories, an important component in deciding which theories to accept, thus offering a partial foundation for theory choice.

Legal status of human biomaterial

The article is devoted to one of the urgent and topical problems of medical law, the problem of determining the legal status of human biological material. The changes taking place today in medicine and genetics open up a number of new opportunities for the study of man, his body and its use. Man has long been seen by science not so much as a "spiritual" value, but as a value as an "object of study" and an "object of experiment". No one denies the material essence of human organs, tissues, their ability to be the subject of a number of civil law transactions (purchase, sale, mines, storage, transportation, etc.). All this requires the legislator to look at human biological material in a new way. The law must respond to all these changes that are taking place in society, in the form of regulation of these benefits, the absence of which we see today. Public relations are developing much faster than the corresponding changes in legislation. The law can help the development of these relations, properly regulating them, and can slow down this process, which is currently happening in Ukrainian law. However, the law cannot stop the process of using human biomaterial, which has long begun. Thus, the purpose of the article is to consider the legal status of human biological material, to determine its place among the existing objects of civil rights. It is proved that the current level of development of medicine, genetics requires a new approach to the study of human biological material, its legal status and place in the system of modern civil law, which determines the relevance of the chosen research topic. Unfortunately, the legislation of Ukraine and most foreign countries does not recognize biomaterial separated from humans as an object of civil rights. However, the author concluded that the subject of a number of transactions, separated from human biomaterial, is no longer an "integral" part of the body, which only confirms the need to consider it as an independent object of civil law, which by its characteristics (material (physical) separation and the ability to act as a commodity in civil circulation) "tends" to the category of things, which is the novelty of this work.

Trans Chaplin

Trans Chaplin Rox Samer (bio) A body in process, in transformation, an incomplete body able to merge with other bodies—or other things—and create new bodies … this new body, for all its composite weirdness, strikes us as immediately recognizable rather than entirely alien: an insight into our own bodily experience, whether remembered from childhood or glimpsed in dreams. —Tom Gunning1 The lift of an eyebrow, however faint, may convey more than a hundred words. —Charles Chaplin2 In the weeks following my top surgery in December 2019, I enjoyed many a movie and television series with my care web.3 As my body healed and I turned my attention to preparing for the spring 2020 semester, including a course on US film history, I was taken with the most iconic and popular of historical media figures: Charlie Chaplin. The filmmaker's short films and silent features supported the recalibration of my body-mind as I prepared to re-enter the social world. They would also become films that I'd return to, that my own body would recall over the coming year, as I started taking testosterone and continued to transition with the minimal surveillance from cis society, quarantined at home with my cats and partner as my only witnesses. Chaplin's films, surprisingly, gave image to both the changes I yearned for and those I joyfully experienced. Until quite recently, transgender media studies has centered the study of transgender representation, meaning the analysis of film and television's few canonical trans characters. But the last five years have seen a renaissance in the field with a number of studies devoted to trans aesthetics, genre studies, [End Page 175] and industry studies revealing what is trans about the most mainstream, most popular, and oldest film and television fare.4 Among these, Cáel M. Keegan's Lana and Lilly Wachowski: Sensing Transgender (2018) demonstrates how the Wachowskis established a cinematic language for sensing beyond gender's dictated forms, and Quinlan Miller's Camp TV: Trans Gender Queer Sitcom History (2019) reveals the camp humor of 1950s and 1960s sitcoms to be brimming with gender nonconformity or queer gender. Their archives and methods are welcome in contemporary trans political discourse where trans activists, journalists, and scholars' paranoid readings routinely cite anti-trans violence—particularly the murders of trans women of color. Time and again, this discourse reduces trans women of color to a signifier for white supremacist and transphobic violence.5 As Jules Gill-Peterson argues, it's high time we shed "the predictive control that is the hallmark of paranoia for the much messier and potentially more pleasurable terrain of perverse laughter."6 Trans life is teeming with awkwardness and joy. Thus, while it may sound antithetical to much popular trans discourse, we find ourselves addressed by much film and television, past and present, including the futures of science fiction and humor of comedy (and not only when the butt of jokes). Here I demonstrate how the silent film comedian Charlie Chaplin, through a pantomime of agile, embodied shifts across not only gender but also species and kingdom, gave early moving image to trans phenomenology. Cinema and media studies has long acknowledged how "queer positions, queer readings, and queer pleasures are part of a reception space that stands simultaneously beside and within that created by heterosexuals and straight positions."7 Here I show how trans positions, readings, and pleasures likewise exist beside and within those of cisgender scholars and spectators. In what Tom Gunning once called Chaplin's "cinematic body" and "plastic ontology" and what André Bazin called the character Charlie's "unlimited imagination in the face of danger" and "total indifference to the category of things held sacred," one can perceive a trans way of life in all its awkward sensational and somatic glory.8 This trans retrospectatorship, which not only decodes but also encodes meaning, invites further reencounters and models a media studies methodology that affirms the very possibility of gleeful transition in the present.9 [End Page 176] Chaplin's oeuvre is replete with fluctuating forms of queer gender. In several short films, Chaplin evokes the early-twentieth-century figure of...

Micro-generalized Pre-minimal closed sets in Micro-topological spaces

A desired outcome in this notepaper is to describe exactly the definitions and devotion study in a new category of things having some property of sets named micro-generalized pre-closed and micro-generalized pre-minimal closed in micro-topological spaces. Some fundamental properties of Micro-generalized pre-closed sets and micro-generalized pre-minimal closed are also researched.

Critique of the Theory of Nature (xing) and Principle (li) in the Philosophy of Zhu Xi: Matteo Ricci and Chŏng Yagyong

Taking recourse to the Aristotelian theory of four causes and the distinction between substance and accidents, as well as to the concept of intellectual consciousness (lingjue 靈覺), Matteo Ricci (Li Madou 利瑪竇, 1552–1610) argued that the notions of taiji 太極 and li 理 as expounded by Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) cannot serve as the origin of existence, as their metaphysical equivalent God, does in Catholic Christianity. Taiji and li do not have consciousness and are moreover merely “accidents.” Unlike “substance,” an “accident” is something that is not essential for something to be what it is. Tasan Chŏng Yagyong 茶山 丁若鏞 (1762– 1836) follows Ricci in claiming that li is but an accident, and no more than the “formal cause” of each individual object. A “formal cause” is what something is or should be, as distinct from the “material cause” (that of which it is made), the “efficient cause” (that which gives it shape or motion), or the “final cause” (the goal for which it is intended). Ricci and Tasan did not acknowledge the role of li as the “principle, ground, cause or the reason for the existence and operation of qi 氣” (suoyi 所以) as held by Zhu Xi’s school of nature and principle. Like Ricci, Tasan also dismissed the concept of taiji as “the undifferentiated state before heaven and earth came to be divided.” However, Tasan diverged markedly from Ricci with respect to the critique of the tenet “Nature is in fact principle (Xing ji li 性卽理)”. Although Tasan and Ricci both separated xing 性 from li and deconstructed the meaning of xing from its connotation of original moral human nature, Tasan’s reconstructed xing is quite different from Ricci’s understanding “nothing other than the fundamental (ben 本) essence (ti 體) of each category of things.” Tasan’s unique contribution is his new definition of xing (K. sŏng) as the appetite or preference/proclivity [for the moral good] (K. kiho, C. shihao 嗜好), which is quite Mencian in its affirmation of the presence of an incipient tendency toward the good in human beings. That he mentions that this xing (K. sŏng), although divested of its a priori metaphysical connotations, is still mandated and bestowed by heaven as stated in the Zhongyong 中庸 [Doctrine of the Mean] further testifies to Tasan’s continued engagement with the classics.

Legal Nature of the Embryo in Vitro

The paper is an attempt of scientific understanding of the legal nature of the embryo in vitro, undertaken on the basis of the regulations governing their legal regime, as well as the practice of their application and doctrinal research. Embryos in vitro, being human embryos conceived and developing outside the mother’s body, because of their autonomous existence have raised questions about their legal nature. Without such determination, it is impossible to decide the fate of embryos in the event of the divorce of the persons who expressed the will to create them, in the event of the death of one or both of them (the so-called «orphan» embryos), in the event of the refusal of one or both of them to continue the reproductive assistance program. The paper examines the main points of view on the nature of the embryo in vitro, established in the doctrine, namely whether it is a subject of law, the object of law or is a special legal phenomenon, sui generis. The author comes to the conclusion that the embryo can not be attributed to the category of things, as well as to a broader category of property due to the lack of value equivalent and the inadmissibility of attempts to determine it, as otherwise contrary to the principles of morality. The embryo does not have legal capacity under the provisions of the current civil law, and granting it such a capacity may entail certain problems and conflicts of interest outlined in the paper. The most optimal is the consideration of the embryo as a special legal phenomenon (sui generis) with the definition of its place in the system of elements of legal relationship or an independent object of civil rights with a special legal regime, as the basis of which the author proposes to lay the principle of respect for human life at any stage of its development and the principle of preservation of human life.

Robotization of the human under the law

The robotization of the human implies a more or less intimate hybridization with the machine. When it participates in the repair of the human being, it generates a modification of the legal status of the robot that passes from the category of things to that of personn, which has remarkable effects in terms of civil liability. However, as the therapeutic aspect of hybridization disapears, not only does the robot move away from the category of personn, but the hybrid body raises many questions about fundamental rights.

The Facts in Logical Space

Suppose you are a factalist. That is, suppose you believe that the world ultimately consists of (atomic) facts. Perhaps this is because you are attracted to some version of truthmaker theory, in which case, facts might well be the sought-for entities that necessitate any truth that there is. Or perhaps you are a factalist because you think that modality is ultimately a matter of recombination and that possibilities are generated by reshuffling atomic predications, so that taking modality to be a recombination of facts will give you all and only the possibilities that there are. Or perhaps your factalism is due to your having been convinced that there is only one category of things and that facts – under which individuals, qualities and many other things can be subsumed – are the best candidates for the required unifying category. No matter what your reasons are, you will have to explain why the world appears to ultimately consist not of facts – or perhaps not only of facts – but also of tables, books, pens and so on. In this rich and detailed book, Jason Turner sets out to provide the required explanation. And although he does not take the project to be a linguistic one, he thinks that it is convenient to carry it out by giving a grounding story, that is, by showing how the language we ordinarily use to talk about the world – the language of appearances – is related to the fundamental language, which only talks about facts. Thus, at the most general level, a grounding story will match sentences in the language of appearances with sentences in the fundamental language and, in so doing, will explain how appearances emerge from the facts. This is compatible with a number of views on the relationship between facts and appearances. On one view, there are no objects and qualities, only facts. In this case, the grounding story will in particular explain how we can talk as if there are objects and qualities. On another view, there are objects and qualities, but they are ultimately reducible to facts: there really are only facts. In this case, the grounding story will in particular explain how we can talk as if there really are objects and qualities. On yet another view, there really are objects and qualities, but they are metaphysically dependent upon the facts. In this case, the grounding story will in particular explain how we can talk as if objects and qualities exist unconstrained from the facts even though they metaphysically depend on them.

Arturo, Sandra, Poli y Cecilia: cuatro casos paradigmáticos de la jurisprudencia argentina

The present essay aims to demonstrate in four paradigmatic cases, how the Argentine jurisprudential law, through the judgments of different courts of diverse hierarchy, have marked a dividing line from which to support the animals within the legal category of things is, at least, contradictory and fallacious. Arturo the bear, the orangutan Sandra, the dog Poli and the chimpanzee Cecilia are already a milestone from which the juridical thought on the legal nature of the animal begins to move a clearer, more just and equitable way. In these cases, it has been the judges who have taken the lead over the legal doctrine and have taken the step forward that for years, centuries, and law thinkers had only been able to theorize.

Growing in Motion: The Circulation of Used Things on Second-hand Markets

From having been associated with poverty and low status, the commerce with second-hand goods in retro shops, flea markets, vintage boutiques and trade via Internet is expanding in Sweden as in many countries in the Global North. This article argues that a significant aspect of the recent interest in second-hand and reuse concerns the meaning fulness of circulation in social life. Using classic anthropological theory on how the circulation of material culture generates sociality, it focuses on how second-hand things are transformed by their circulation. Rather than merely having cultural biographies, second-hand things are reconfigured through their shifts between different social contexts in a process that here is understood as a form of growing. Similar to that of an organism, this growth is continuous, irreversible and dependent on forces both internal and external to it. What emerges is a category of things that combine elements of both commodities and gifts, as these have been theorized within anthropology. While first cycle commodities are purified of their sociality, the hybrid second-hand thing derives its ontological status as well as social and commercial value precisely from retaining ‘gift qualities’, produced by its circulation.

10.5937/zrpfns48-6123 = Res sanctae in Roman pre-Christian period

10.5937/zrpfns48-6123 = Res sanctae in Roman pre-Christian period

What is ambiguous about ambiguous goods?

ABSTRACTAmbiguous goods are not a category of things. No goods are ambiguous by default, not even digital virtual ones. Ambiguity may arise in many ways, but this article examines one specific process: ambiguity that occurs when entities appear as objects that blur category boundaries. Ambiguity is created around pre‐existing categories through socio‐material entanglements. This article explores how a central category in consumer capitalist societies—property—takes on ambiguous forms in distributions and recirculations of prestige items in the massively multi‐player online role‐playing game Final Fantasy XI. Prestige objects are powerful, sought‐after armour and weapons acquired in the game world by completing difficult battlefields or tasks, often in large groups. When discussing these items, respondents are not confused actors trying to make sense of slippery things. Instead, they produce ambiguities around property by blurring distinctions between gifts and commodities. Blurred boundaries help resolve tensions arising from different orderings of people, relations and things. Hybridised property forms allow selective alienation of goods, allowing participants to privilege some relations and connections over others.With this article, I hope to spark further debate on building a conceptual toolkit to explore ambiguities, and contribute to increasing interest in non‐dyadic gift relations in consumer culture research. ‘Ambiguous goods’ is not a viable category for thinking about things, people and relations or digital virtual objects. But ambiguity can be a useful way to think about how people and things—whether they are digital, virtual or neither—are related. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Everybody Loves Imparfait: Academic Cultures of Imperfection

WHEN TWENTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD JENNIFER LAWRENCE fell On her way up the steps of the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles in February 2013 to accept the Best Actress Oscar, it must have seemed to many of the program's viewers as it did to those in my house that the moment, while it may not have been not absolutely ruined, was certainly compromised. The fall itself was such a little thing, and Lawrence was charming in her gracious and honest reaction. Nonetheless, the fall became forever a part of the moment, a little interruption, a small event in the category of things we never want to happen to us (falling down in front of millions of viewers on live television) mixed in with the big event in the category of things that seem as if they would be pretty nice (winning an Academy Award--or, for that matter, any award). It was, or seemed to be, an imperfection, a bad thing adversely affecting a good thing, a flaw, a blot. But Lawrence's fall also made for a curiously productive and interesting moment. In the hyperproduced and somewhat banal Academy Awards ceremony, it seemed oddly and importantly real. It was so evidently unscripted and so ordinary that it threw into relief the extraordinary weirdness that is the Oscars. It probably made lots of people feel sympathetic things. It made Lawrence kind of loveable, not least as she brought about a kind of symbolic tear in the screen, on whose refracted surface most of us who watch the Academy Awards watch them. Popular culture makes much of such moments of imperfection in celebrity culture. Tabloids celebrate them or, at any rate, delight in finding opportunities to expose what are touted as the imperfections behind the seeming perfection of celebrities' (and especially actresses') skin, hair, bodies, relationships, lives. Perhaps, given the culture of tabloid exposure of flaws, it is not surprising that imperfection is central to so much Hollywood cinema: Lawrence won her Oscar, after all, for her role in a film, Silver Linings Playbook, that is focused on what is typically represented as imperfection across a number of registers--mental health, economic self-sufficiency, adulthood, families, marriages, houses. The film's happy ending is itself arguably imperfect: only a moment between the realities of unemployment, institutionalization, debilitating meds, and scabby ceilings. The short papers in this forum were presented at ACCUTE'S conference at the University of Victoria, 1-4 June 2013. Speakers in the panel were asked to think about imperfection with reference to the following questions: * What constitutes imperfection? How relative is its assessment? How do we recognize it? Define it? Measure it? * What are the politics of perfection? What does it mean to aspire to perfection? Or, for that matter, to aspire to imperfection? * How can perfection operate as a standard--in the arts? in everyday life? How much do aesthetics come into play in our assessment and valuing of perfection? * How do we engage with ideas of perfection in cultural representations such as reality television? To what impulses are such representations--of perfect homes, dates, bodies, wedding dresses--addressed? What does a critique of these ideas of perfection look like? * How do academics engage with, resist, or embrace imperfection? Is academic work in fact characterized by perfectionism, in writing, editing, presenting? How much too much do we do toward perfection? How do we deal with imperfection? * How much do we revert to and inhabit the imperfect tense, an index of what is never finished, always in process? * How do we represent the things that militate against perfection: illness, grief, travel, family responsibilities, power failures, lost files, missed texts, books we can't get, archives we can't visit, funding shortfalls, competition, filling out forms, applying for everything, trying to get the computer to work, making mistakes? …

Accounting for Invention: Guido Pancirolli’s Lost and Found Things and the Development of Desiderata

In the late sixteenth century, the Paduan legal humanist Guido Pancirolli wrote what would become a best-selling comparison of ancient and modern worlds. Pancirolli framed lost ancient things as “debits” and new-found things as “credits” within the inventory of human advantages. Soon after, Francis Bacon and Jakob Bornitz deployed Pancirolli’s temporal accounting for invention to develop a third category of things desired for the future. This story of the development of the research agenda places the seventeenth-century advancement of learning between the recovery of ancient culture and the instrumentalist reckoning of political advantage found in the new reason of state.

Digital Mediation and Museum Space

ABSTRACTThis article discusses the addition of digital exhibition platforms to the interior environment of museums, considering their implications for notions of interior space and for the museum visitor. To begin to unravel their electronically charged spatial orders, the article explores the complex technological features of some platforms (referred to here as “digital containers”), linking their characteristics to associated dimension of visitors' experience and response. Digital containers offer new modes of engagement for audiences, curators, designers, and content developers. They appear to satisfy many pressures facing contemporary cultural and knowledge institutions, but their effect–including their interplay with the physical space of the museum interior–is not well understood. This article argues that they cannot be addressed as an abstract, technological category of things, no matter how much the museum sector might like to idealize their nature and purpose. Institutions need to address the complexity of each platform as it really is in itself, in time and in the space of the museum, especially by understanding what visitors' experience in them.

Can Legal Theory Be Objective?

It is obvious that much that can be said about the law of a particular jurisdiction. The question may therefore be raised whether there remains something to be said in general about the law or about particular aspects of it. By means of examples about whales and planets is is illustrated that the possibility to say something in general about a category of things, it may be necessary to mark of this category by means of a convention which has in part a stipulative nature. Given this convention, some things become ‘true by convention’, but the explication of what has become true by convention may nevertheless lead to new knowledge. That such new knowledge by convention is illustrated by means of case studies about rules which seemingly lead to unattractive consequences in some cases, and about juridical acts and the role of competences and powers in that connection. Legal theory can lead there to objective knowledge by dividing the subjects in a part which is relative to a particular jurisdiction (how the law deals with hard cases; what the role of competence is with regard to juridical acts) and a part which is objective in the sense of system independent (the distinction between four ways of dealing with hard cases, the logic of rules that allow for exceptions, the notion of a legal power and its relation to the notion of competence). Moreover, the objective part can be described in an objective way, and by combining this objective description by the conventional choices made by a particular jurisdiction, legal theory can also describe objectively whereto the choices of such a system lead.

God, divinities and spirits in African traditional religious ontology

The concept of God, divinities and spirits in African traditional religious ontology has been so misunderstood by many scholars to the point of seeing Africans as people who did not know the Supreme Being nor worship Him. This paper seeks to examine how Africans conceive of the Supreme Being, divinities and spirits. The paper shows that the concept of God is not strange to Africans but in traditional Africa there is no atheist. It sees the divinities as beings who receive authority from the Supreme Being to serve in the unitary theocratic system of government. The paper sees the spirits as strangers, foreigners and outsiders in the category of things that should be defeated using spiritual powers.