Central Notion Research Articles

Harmonic curves and the beauty of projective geometry

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to present projective geometry in a synthetic, visual and intuitive style through the central notion of harmonicity which leads to harmonic curves. This presentation includes new results, unpublished proofs of some classic theorems and a slight reformulation of its axiomatics.

Calculated Randomness, Control and Creation: Artistic Agency in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

The recent emergence of generative AI, particularly prompt-based models, and its embedding in many social domains and practices has revived the notion of co-creation and distributed agency already familiar in art practice and theory. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and its central notion of agency, this article explores the extent to which the collaboration between the artist and AI represents a new form of co-creation and distributed agency. It compares AI art with artistic movements such as Dada, Surrealism, Minimalism and Conceptual Art, which also challenged the notion of the autonomous artist and her agency by incorporating randomness on the one hand and rule-based systems on the other. In contrast, artistic practice with AI can be described as an iterative process of creative feedback loops, oscillating between order and disorder, (calculated) randomness and calculation, enabling a very specific kind of self-reflection and entanglement with the alienation of one’s own perspective. Furthermore, this article argues that most artistic projects that explore and work with AI are, in their own specific way, a demonstration of hybridity and entanglement, as well as the distribution of agency between the human and the non-human, and can thus be described as a network phenomenon.

On tame ramification and centers of F$F$‐purity

AbstractWe introduce a notion of tame ramification for general finite covers. When specialized to the separable case, it extends to higher dimensions the classical notion of tame ramification for Dedekind domains and curves and sits nicely in between other notions of tame ramification in arithmetic geometry. However, when applied to the Frobenius map, it naturally yields the notion of center of ‐purity (aka compatibly ‐split subvariety). As an application, we describe the behavior of centers of ‐purity under finite covers — it all comes down to a transitivity property for tame ramification in towers.

Hegel e o caráter

This paper is devoted to a systematic analysis of the notion of “character” within Hegel's thought. So far, this notion has been considered marginal within Hegelian philosophy and has hardly been addressed in the critical literature. This article, however, attempts to argue in favor of the thesis that character plays a prominent role in Hegel's thought. In this paper we therefore aim to provide (i) a systematic reconstruction of the concept of “character” in Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of History and Lectures on the philosophy of Subjective Spirit in order to show that (ii) the notion of character in Hegel has a greater relevance than hitherto acknowledged, a relevance which invests central notions of his philosophy. Our thesis, more specifically, is that the notion of character turns out to be closely related to load-bearing notions in Hegel's thought – namely, the notion of self-consciousness (as distinctive element of human rationality) and the notion of the spirit of a people (as a set of sociocultural and dispositional factors that allow different levels of understanding of the autonomy of human rationality). Precisely on the basis of this relevance and the critical issues it brings, such an operation provides the basis for arguing that iii) the Hegelian concept of character has important repercussions both on the contemporary debate on Hegel and on contemporary hegelianisms.

The Land of the Moderns: The Sense of Latour’s Pragmatism

In his major work, An Inquiry into the Modes of Existence, Bruno Latour sets out to establish an anthropology of the Moderns based on the plurality of the modes of existence that make up their world. What about the beings of science, politics, art, religion, economics and so on? How do these beings relate to one another, and how do they constitute the specific forms of thought of the Moderns? Taking as its starting point one of the central notions of modern thought, namely the notion of matter, this article seeks to identify the way in which Latour shows its importance in the constitution of modern thought. It examines its topicality through the double prism of an ecological and decolonial approach that animates Latour’s work, and which this article proposes to revisit.

Camouflaged prejudice and the affirmation of skin colour differences: assessment of racism among Brazilian undergraduate dental students.

The negative oral health outcomes of disadvantaged racial groups have been well-documented, as racial disparity in oral health persists over time and in different locations1. However, it is important to note that skin colour has no biological meaning, and the observed differences can be physiological expressions of social injustice such as racism. Aim: The aim of this study was to analyse the association between levels of modern racism (camouflaged prejudice and affirmation of differences) and sociodemographic characteristics of Brazilian dental students. Material and Method: An epidemiological cross-sectional online survey was conducted on 441 Brazilian undergraduate dental students using Google Forms. Participants were recruited via emails and social media, using the snowball technique. The Checklist for Reporting of Survey Studies (CROSS) was followed. The survey used sociodemographic variables, and the Brazilian version of the Modern Racism Scale (B-MRS), which measures the cognitive component of subtle racial attitudes. The scale assesses the central notion of disguised prejudice and has two domains: 'denial of prejudice' and 'affirmation of differences'. Participants' self-declared skin colour was categorized as "white" and "non-white" (black, brown, indigenous, yellow). Univariate analysis and Poisson regression with robust variance were applied. Results: Participants' mean age was 24.1 years (±5.4). Most participants were self-declared as white (54%) and 46% as non-white skin colour. Higher B-MRS overall-scores were observed in male (p=0.008) and non-white (p=0.002) students. B-MRS scores for the domain 'affirmation of differences' (representation of those who believe that whites and non-whites are truly different) were higher among male dental students (PR=1.138; CI 95%: 1.019-1.271) and those from low-income families (PR=1.306; CI 95%: 1.089-1.565). Scores for the domain 'denial of prejudice' (the idea that non-whites use their race to receive legal benefits) were higher among male dental students (PR=1.328; CI 95%: 1.129-1.562). Conclusions: In general, male non-white students had higher modern racism indicators. Male students from low-income families believed that whites and non-whites are truly different, accounting for the affirmation of difference in this sample.

Stability criteria and calculus rules via conic contingent coderivatives in Banach spaces

This paper addresses the study of novel constructions of variational analysis and generalized differentiation that are appropriate for characterizing robust stability properties of constrained set-valued mappings/multifunctions between Banach spaces important in optimization theory and its applications. Our tools of generalized differentiation revolve around the newly introduced concept of ε-regular normal cone to sets and associated coderivative notions for set-valued mappings. Based on these constructions, we establish several characterizations of the central stability notion known as the relative Lipschitz-like property of set-valued mappings in infinite dimensions. Applying a new version of the constrained extremal principle of variational analysis, we develop comprehensive sum and chain rules for our major constructions of conic contingent coderivatives for multifunctions between appropriate classes of Banach spaces.

Symposium 5: How can Networked Learning promote student-directed learning at AUT?

Auckland University of Technology (AUT) is a young university in Aotearoa New Zealand, focusing on the student experience. This paper looks at the learning environment in that context and questions where networked learning principles could contribute to the strategic goal of student-directed learning. The paper explores central notions in networked learning as strengths and weaknesses, and redefines student-directed learning for the context of AUT.

Relational self and farmworker law reform: the case of Indonesia

This article celebrates and explores Keebet Benda-Beckmann’s important work on the centrality of “relationality” in legal pluralism, in Indonesia in particular, and more generally in the non-Western world. We aim to extend Benda-Beckmann’s argument on the centrality of relationality and legal pluralism into our analysis of an urgent project of Indonesian law reform: farmworker protection. We make an interpretive claim on the status of “relational self” as an organizing idea in the Indonesian legal consciousness. To build that interpretive claim, we provide qualitative context drawn from our field research in two farmworker communities in rural West Java, Indonesia. With the situation of Indonesian farmworkers as its case study, this paper presents how relational self-construal can be a starting point for the introduction of a greater access to justice. To build its argument, the paper first identifies relational self as the Indonesian farmworkers’ central notion of self. Ultimately, the paper develops a model of law reform proposal that takes relational self as its overarching supposition.

استخدام العناصر الواقعية في هنرك ابسن بيت الدمى

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is considered Norway's most distinguished playwrights, besides being the father of modern drama. He started handling realistic themes around the last quarter of the nineteenth century after he had given up writing romantic plays. He turned to the problem play with The Pillars of Society (1877) and kept tackling realistic subject-matters especially in A Doll's House (1879), Ghosts (1881), An Enemy of the People (1882), and The Wild Duck (1884). In these particular plays, he relentlessly attacked the false values of society which made many people suffer. He used the prose dialogue in his realistic plays to replace the unrealistic elements of the previous romantic plays. In the realistic plays, Ibsen also subordinated action to thought since ideas are more important than action in this kind of drama. Thus, the action is more psychological than physical in A Doll's House, which is the central notion in this article. At the same time Ibsen's realistic plays came as a surprise to the people who were influenced by the existing conventions. It is no wonder that such plays were not appreciated by the censors and banned in some European countries, especially at the first time of their appearance. Ibsen surprised Europe when he volunteered to speak of subjects no other playwright dared to speak so openly and fearlessly. Thus Ibsen's Ghosts could not be staged in England until 1891, ten years after its introduction in Norway. It was J. T. Grein who helped to stage the English version of Ghosts in The Independent Theatre, a private theatre, in order to escape the censorship imposed on the public theatres. The play was already translated into English by William Archer. The subject-matter of Ghosts revolves on a hereditary issue when a son inherits a venereal disease from his father, and also on a conventional situation when a wife is forced to remain with an immoral husband whom she hates.

Plotting the Geopolitics of Twentieth-Century Modern and Avant-Garde Illustrated Periodicals

Illustrated journals are available digitally in unprecedented quantities, and on a global scale. As such, they provide the ideal foundation to examine globalization logics in the history of art and literature through the prism of ‘distant reading and viewing’. When articulated and completed by more traditional close reading of the sources, a computational approach can raise new questions about the international circulation of images in illustrated periodicals. It may help to reinterpret, and even better understand, the variety of flows and imbalances in the international circulation of images, that are often taken too quickly as evidence of centrality or peripherality. This paper presents the perspectives opened by the Visual Contagions project (SNSF, University of Geneva, CH), which analyses images from thousands of illustrated periodicals published worldwide from the 1890s to the 1990s. Images do not magically circulate, nor do styles ‘diffuse’ and provide evidence of ‘influences’, as it is often assumed. The computational approach is used to analyse avant-garde periodicals, and it allowed us to highlight networks of image exchange, affinities between magazines, countries, and cultural or social milieus. Such methodologies emphasize the social logics that promoted the circulation of images and styles, and unveil the authorial or distributive role of some key publications in the avant-garde; but they also reveal and help understand image diffusions that were previously difficult to explain other than by a Zeitgeist, by the notion of centres and peripheries, or by a formalist approach that consolidated the non-questioned domination of European canons.

Delineating the field of language evolution research

Abstract Research on language evolution is an established subject area yet permeated by terminological controversies about which topics should be considered pertinent to the field and which not. By consequence, scholars focusing on language evolution struggle in providing precise demarcations of the discipline, where even the very central notions of evolution and language are elusive. We aimed at providing a data-driven characterisation of language evolution as a field of research by relying on quantitative analysis of data drawn from 697 reviews on 255 submissions from the Joint Conference on Language Evolution 2022 (Kanazawa, Japan). Our results delineate a field characterized by a core of main research topics such as iconicity, sign language, multimodality. Despite being explored within the framework of language evolution research, only very recently these topics became popular in linguistics. As a result, language evolution has the potential to emerge as a forefront of linguistic research, bringing innovation to the study of language. We also see the emergence of more recent topics like rhythm, music, and vocal learning. Furthermore, the community identifies cognitive science, primatology, archaeology, palaeoanthropology, and genetics as key areas, encouraging empirical rather than theoretical work. With new themes, models, and methodologies emerging, our results depict an intrinsically multidisciplinary and evolving research field, likely adapting as language itself.

Optimal stability results and nonlinear duality for L∞ entropy and L1 viscosity solutions

We give a new and rigorous duality relation between two central notions of weak solutions of nonlinear PDEs: entropy and viscosity solutions. It takes the form of the nonlinear dual inequality:(⋆)∫|Stu0−Stv0|φ0dx≤∫|u0−v0|Gtφ0dx,∀φ0≥0,∀u0,∀v0, where St is the entropy solution semigroup of the anisotropic degenerate parabolic equation∂tu+divF(u)=div(A(u)Du), and where we look for the smallest semigroup Gt satisfying (⋆). This amounts to finding an optimal weighted L1 contraction estimate for St. Our main result is that Gt is the viscosity solution semigroup of the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation∂tφ=supξ⁡{F′(ξ)⋅Dφ+tr(A(ξ)D2φ)}. Since weighted L1 contraction results are mainly used for possibly nonintegrable L∞ solutions u, the natural spaces behind this duality are L∞ for St and L1 for Gt. We therefore develop a corresponding L1 theory for viscosity solutions φ. But L1 itself is too large for well-posedness, and we rigorously identify the weakest L1 type Banach setting where we can have it – a subspace of L1 called Lint∞. A consequence of our results is a new domain of dependence like estimate for second order anisotropic degenerate parabolic PDEs. It is given in terms of a stochastic target problem and extends in a natural way recent results for first order hyperbolic PDEs by [N. Pogodaev, J. Differ. Equ., 2018].

Διαγλωσσικότητα και ταυτότητα: friend or gharīb?

This paper, titled “Translanguaging and identity: friend or gharīb”, is based on the experiences and challenges of some of the participants in my 2017 research, which led to the book SiDaYes: beyond bilingualism to translanguaging. Here I will attempt to highlight some aspects of being translingual, which I believe can be of interest and will most likely continue to concern us in the future, within the wider field of language and culture contact. Identity issues seem to be core issues within the area of translanguaging, both at an individual and a social level. One of the central notions that is discussed is that of being a ‘gharīb’, or an outsider, which seems to have negative and possible positive aspects, according to the individual experience and the overall context in which languages form a linguistic universe of translanguaging experience. 换句话说，多语言实践不断挑战我们对自我、身份的认知。我们研究这一领域的人需要不断寻求理解身份认同问题的新方法[i]。

Integration of Artificial Intelligence in Science Teaching in Primary Education: Applications for Teachers

The purpose of this study is to serve as the central notion that the whole research endeavour revolves around. It provides a framework for examining the potential applications of artificial intelligence (AI) for teachers operating in the field of scientific education. A clear framework for an in-depth analysis that tries to shed light on the opportunities and challenges associated with the use of AI technology in primary scientific education is provided by this thesis statement, which specifies the purpose of the research as well as the scope of the investigation. The project's objective is to broaden the existing body of knowledge and provide insights into the ways in which educators might make use of technologies that are powered by AI to enhance the instructional techniques they use and the outcomes of student learning. In order to do this, a well-prepared thesis statement will ideally be used.

Etica reprezentației teatrale și limitele libertății creatoare

Theatre represents an ingenuous form of dialogue of the self with another, a space of contradiction between freedom and alienating forms of power. By opening paths of ethics, the performing arts impose or are imposed on themselves limits that the stage performance itself continues to interrogate. Are there ways or means to sign an “agreement” between the stage creators and the audience, between the creation and the spectators, in such a way that, without infringing the right to freedom of the artists, the feelings, convictions, or beliefs of the receivers are not adversely affected? The answer comes from the very relationship that the theatre has with itself, from the way the creators understand how to manage sensitive subjects, approaching and not ignoring them, but passing them through the filter of a responsibility regarding the mission of art and the significant role which the encounter has. In contemporary theatre, there are taboo or controversial topics (for example, the representation of violence and trauma) that attract more attention than ever and continue to be perceived as sensitive depending on the cultural, social or political context in which they are presented. Thus, the limit becomes a central notion that we cannot avoid in the discussions related to the role that the theatre plays in relation to the spectators and their sufferings or sensitivities.

Che cos'è la paura?

The first pandemic texts, published in the book Where Have We Gone? Epidemic as Politics (“A che punto siamo? L'epidemia come politica”, Quodlibet, 2020), link Agamben's central notion of ”bare life” to fear, placing it at the center of his predictions for the sunset of bourgeois democracies and the rise of despotism based on the notion of ”biosecurity”. The theme culminates in the essay ”What is Fear?” presented here. Unlike the previous ones, it originally appeared on the website of the Italian Institute for Philosophical Research. Being the most philosophically saturated text of the series, it rethinks the key categories of Heideggerian existential analytics, fear and fearing, in the horizon of the pandemic situation, problematizing the ontological priority given by Heidegger to anxiety over fearing, in order to derive fearing as the mood through which power is established and justified.

Autonomous Weapons in the Light of Care Ethics

The development of autonomous weapons systems is ongoing, and in the future, there may be a serious risk of deployment of these weapons without human control. The world is facing a possible new way of warfare separated from human intervention. This raises the urgency for conceptual, moral thinking on this matter. In this essay, care ethics provides constitutional elements to this moral reflection. According to care ethics, humans are intertwined, dependent on each other, and always related. In these relations, care is the central notion. The overarching goal of providing care is promoting and sustaining human dignity. The violation of this human dignity is the main argument to oppose the deployment of fully autonomous weapons.

Spatial attention in mental arithmetic: A literature review and meta-analysis.

We review the evidence for the conceptual association between arithmetic and space and quantify the effect size in meta-analyses. We focus on three effects: (a) the operational momentum effect (OME), which has been defined as participants' tendency to overestimate results of addition problems and underestimate results of subtraction problems; (b) the arithmetic cueing effect, in which arithmetic problems serve as spatial cues in target detection or temporal order judgment tasks; and (c) the associations between arithmetic and space observed with eye- and hand-tracking studies. The OME was consistently found in paradigms that provided the participants with numerical response alternatives. The OME shows a large effect size, driven by an underestimation during subtraction while addition was unbiased. In contrast, paradigms in which participants indicated their estimate by transcoding their final estimate to a spatial reference frame revealed no consistent OME. Arithmetic cueing studies show a reliable small to medium effect size, driven by a rightward bias for addition. Finally, eye- and hand-tracking studies point to replicable associations between arithmetic and eye or hand movements. To account for the complexity of the observed pattern, we introduce the Adaptive Pathways in Mental Arithmetic (APiMA) framework. The model accommodates central notions of numerical and arithmetic processing and helps identifying which pathway a given paradigm operates on. It proposes that the divergence between OME and arithmetic cueing studies comes from the predominant use of non-symbolic versus symbolic stimuli, respectively. Overall, our review and findings clearly support an association between arithmetic and spatial processing.

Aristov, V. (2023). Idem-forma: The search of ‘identity in the dissimilar’ in literature and other arts. Moscow, St. Petersburg: Tsent gumanitarnykh initsiativ. (In Russ.)

The central notion in Vladimir Aristov’s book is Idem-forma, advanced by the author for the analysis of literary similarities that are not covered by the traditional comparative terms, e. g., contacts or typology. A physicist and a poet, Aristov undertakes the task of scholarly investigation in the style of an essay. The first three of twelve chapters in his book treat the problem theoretically in a broad context of the modern mind. Nine chapters deal with the cases of the ‘identity in the dissimilar,’ suggesting hypotheses of similarity in poetry, prose, and interdisciplinary affinities. The major cases are those where the similarity, no matter how much open to comparative argumentation, allows for viewing two works in a new light, or establishing a plausible typological parallel between them, as it is done for the novels by A. Platonov and W. Faulkner, M. Bulgakov and T. Mann. Idem-forma is an attempt to attract attention to those literary and artistic events that demand an attentive eye towards similar syntactic and rhythmic patterns in poetry, or plots and characters in prose which do not lie on the surface to be related or explained but are supposed to interact in the domain of world literature.