Early Debates Research Articles

Anthropology of and from the Ocean

The ocean has a key, though often unremarked, role in shaping everyday life, from impacting weather patterns and food supplies to facilitating, and contesting, systems of capitalism, including contemporary logistics, empires, mobility, and migration. Beginning with early debates on maritime anthropology, this review traces the shift from maritime anthropology to an anthropology of and from the ocean. It notes the ways that the ocean appears and disappears as metaphor or material space of encounter and engagement within the past, present, and possible futures of anthropology. It shows how absence and presence as well as metaphor and materiality are the modes through which oceans are imagined and inhabited. While there is no distinct oceanic turn in anthropology in contrast with a number of other disciplines, the anthropology of and from the ocean holds the possibility to reenergize anthropology's interdisciplinary encounters, including with history and geography, as well as modes of engaging scale and specificity.

‘The Instigation I Aspire To’: Erri De Luca and Contrarian Education

This essay begins with a summary of the trial of Erri De Luca by the Italian state for the alleged crime of instigation, focusing in particular on the discussion during that trial of the definition of the word ‘sabotage’. It then elaborates on the theme of education in De Luca’s self-defense against the Italian state’s charges and connects the Italian writer’s ideas on this subject to the ongoing neoliberal attack in the US against liberal arts education, using the recent history of Hampshire College in Massachusetts as a key example. The essay ends by summarizing an argument that reveals how the US Supreme Court decision from 1957, Sweezy v. New Hampshire – traditionally cited in discussions of free speech on campuses – was in fact borrowed from an earlier debate during the initial phase of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.

A Escola de Aviação Militar (EAM):

The article aims to address the early debates and early movements of the military authorities in the face of the evident development of aviation as a weapon of war, and the steps to begin the training of aviators and expert mechanics. The research followed part of the public debates in the military magazine The National Defense and the evening newspaper A Noite, published in the Federal District, the city of Rio de Janeiro, from 1912 to 1922.

Camouflaging colonialism: a case study of a NeoColonial Museum

Museums are presented as institutions housing a society’s most outstanding artistic collective achievements. They are racialized organisations helping preserve white supremacist normativity in the racialized social system. We argue that museums are colonial projects that often camouflage colonialism. Museums’ hierarchal nature in prioritising Europe is blatantly apparent but rendered unseen unless you study its presence. Then, you discover differences through indifference. We used ethnographic observations and photography to explore how the Boston Museum of Fine Arts conceals colonialism. We find, for example, that the Art of Africa is demoted to two transitionary passageways. The pre-Columbian exhibit is relegated to the basement and camouflaged by other exhibitions. Additionally, Black bodies are subject to out-of-place sexualised portrayals. These findings reinforce our earlier argument that museums are white sanctuaries, safe spaces allowing whites to reaffirm their dominance in society.

Clash of the physicistsQuantum Drama: From the Bohr-Einstein Debate to the Riddle of Entanglement Jim Baggott and John L. Heilbron Oxford University Press, 2024. 352 pp.

Contentious early debates about quantum mechanics come to life in a new history.

Pliny and the Silence of the Spheres

Abstract This article deals with two passages from the second book of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, devoted to the topic of cosmic music. Pliny seems to reject a theory that was widely accepted in most contemporary sources as a commonplace. A close survey of these passages sheds some light on the reasons for Pliny’s scepticism: he looks well informed about the philosophical debate about the problems of acoustics that the theory raised as early as the time of Archytas, and his objections against the theory seem to refer to the early Pythagorean arguments reported by Aristotle in the treatise On the Heavens. Pliny’s position on cosmic harmony is also relevant for the understanding of his own cosmology and of his perspective on human knowledge, leading to a reconsideration of the role of sensory experience in his ‘scientific’ work.

McDowell’s overlooked argument for disjunctivism - realism, self-consciousness, and knowledge

McDowell’s defence of disjunctivism is often portrayed as starting from a controversial epistemological access-internalism, which he fails to support in his writings. This paper critiques such interpretations and presents an alternative reading of McDowell’s argument in favour of disjunctivism. Taking outset in McDowell’s early debate with Michael Dummett, it is shown why disjunctivism is a consequence of McDowell’s realism combined with his acceptance of the Fregean claim that Sense determines reference. It is argued that even within the modest approach to meaning theories which McDowell favour, disjunctivism is a necessary requirement for a defence of realism. This approach means that, rather than starting from controversial epistemological convictions, McDowell’s disjunctivism motivates the adoption of access-internalism, as it enables truth-ensuring experiential support for our thoughts. Hence, while I deny that disjunctivism follows from premises about the nature of knowledge, I agree with McDowell that the landscape of our debate about knowledge may be irrevocably altered once we accept disjunctivism.

Emer de Vattel in context: the moral philosophical foundations of a natural law for states

ABSTRACT In line with its influence, Emer de Vattel’s Le droit des gens (1757) is most often conceptualised in terms of far-reaching political intentions and epochal intellectual developments. However, the core axioms of the work constitute a surprisingly exact application of Vattel’s philosophical premises, developed within the highly specific traditions of Swiss Calvinism and the école romande of natural law, integrating Leibnizian influences. The present article provides basic context for this claim by excavating two early debates that Vattel intervenes upon as an apologist for Leibniz: first, Vattel demonstrates an adherence to non-fatalist Leibnizian metaphysics when countering Swiss anti-Leibnizians in 1737–1741 and, second, in 1747 Vattel develops Leibnizian-Wolffian moral philosophy in response to Barbeyrac’s vindication of Pufendorfian voluntarism. These interventions point toward an evolving but systematic philosophical substratum, which I claim can also be found, mutatis mutandis, in Vattel’s account of the law of nations. Thus, whether applying natural law to people or states, Vattel considers both to be (moral) persons who naturally prioritise duties to themselves, this principle of self-interested utility conceived of as coterminous with altruistic virtue, and, by consequence, belonging to a universal society of moral actors.

Navigating the Pitfalls of Counterfactuality: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Legal Fictions

The introductory essay on legal fictionality engages with the practice of legal fictions from Roman Law to the twenty-first century, and with the attempts of legal scholarship to conceptualize this particular form of legal imagination. It will discuss the major questions established in the past, with a particular emphasis on the classical understanding of legal fictions as “untrue” or “counterfactual” assumptions—a dichotomy that has pervaded legal thinking for centuries. It will argue that the classical approach is outdated and in urgent need of revision, also demonstrating that theories of other disciplines are better equipped to adequately deal with the issue, from the early debates on truth to more recent positions, such as possible world theory and institutional theories of fictionality. The essay will mainly draw on analytic philosophy and literary theory, but will also invoke more recent legal scholarship that engages with inter- or transdisciplinary approaches. Authors include James, Bradley, Kelsen, Vaihinger, Cohen, Lewis, Meinong, Fuller, Neurath, Rescher, Habermas, Rorty, Glasersfeld, Goodman, Routley, Searle, Genette, Beardsley, Wolterstorff, Currie, Walton, Eco, Anderegg, Doležel and Pavel.

THE SOUTH DOES ALSO EXIST: THE CONTINENTAL DRIFT DEBATE IN THE ACCOUNT OF THE SOUTH-AFRICAN PALEOBOTANIST EDNA PLUMSTEAD

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes a letter sent by the South African paleobotanist Edna Plumstead in 1982 to the US philosopher of science Henry Frankel, in answer to his questions about her involvement in the early debates on the concept of continental drift. Her response gave a biographical account of her life and explained in what context she first became acquainted with the themes that would become her life's work, and the scientific network of people who influenced her along the way. Beginning with her undergraduate years in the 1920s, Plumstead was aware that continental drift was being discussed in scientific circles in South Africa, earlier than in the northern hemisphere. This was followed by her more direct involvement in paleontological studies on fossils of the seed-plant Glossopteris, her important description of Glossopteris reproductive organs in direct attachment to the leaves, and how the distribution of these fossils contributed to the concept of Gondwanaland and the continental drift theory. These contributions, although extremely relevant to science, were mostly ignored in the Global North.

I, You, and We: Beyond Individualism and Collectivism

ABSTRACT The contemporary debate on collective intentionality in analytic philosophy has lasted several decades, but questions concerning the nature of ‘we’ and the relation between the individual and the community are obviously far older. We can find a particularly rich discussion in early phenomenology. Indeed, while starting out with an interest in the individual mind, phenomenologists began their exploration of dyadic forms of interpersonal relations shortly before the start of World War I and were already deeply engaged in extensive analyses of collective forms of intentionality a few years later. A distinctive feature of the phenomenological contribution was its exploration of the relation between the first- and second-person singular and the first-person plural perspectives. How are I, you, and we intertwined? The aim of this paper is to present some core insights from this early debate.

The influence of seam orientation on the lift and drag of a rotating baseball in flight

The effect of seam orientation relative to the spin axis on the forces of a rotating baseball has been studied, and debated, for as long as baseball has existed. Early debates centered on whether a spinning baseball could even curve and eventually changed to whether the orientation of seams had any impact on the forces acting on the ball during flight. This study uses Computational Fluid Dynamics to show that the seam orientation can have a significant influence on the lift force experienced by a baseball in flight, but that influence diminishes as the rate of spin approaches the natural shedding frequency of a sphere of the same size. Oscillations in the wake caused by the passing of seams across the upper and lower surface eventually give way to larger scale instabilities and the impact of seam orientation on the forces acting on the ball is significantly reduced.

The origins of film, psychology and the neurosciences.

The invention of film technologies in France at the end of the 19th century inspired neurologists and associated professionals to engage with this new medium to demonstrate their theories of the brain, the nervous system, and the mind. Beginning with the origins of cinema in Paris, this article explores how film technologies were used at La Salpêtrière, and beyond, to visualise internal mental processes, and to support the burgeoning sciences of the mind. This film-making became increasingly sophisticated by the late 1910s and early 1920s, creating innovative ways to present psychological experiences on film. This article focuses on films produced by Albert Londe, Vincenzo Neri, Gheorghe Marinescu, and Jean Comandon. It argues that these polymaths created new filming techniques that built complexity into the visual articulation of psychological concepts. Their films were essential to shaping early debates in neurology, psychology, and the observational sciences during this critical period in the establishment of the modern sciences of the self.

Settlement, Climate Crisis and Lordship in Early Medieval Scandinavia

This article examines and describes the nature of lordship in Scandinavia during the Early Medieval period (c.400–1000 CE). It counters the assertions of earlier research, which claim that lordship with estates had already developed at the beginning of the period. Earlier arguments have built on assumptions that the development of estates was propelled by the ‘Dust Veil’ and the subsequent climate crisis of the mid-sixth century. Scholars have argued that a more hierarchical society followed, reflected through the emergence of more lavish burial customs. Through a broad comparison with other north-western European regions and peoples, this article demonstrates that these burial customs can be understood differently, and further, that a more hierarchal society was not necessarily the outcome of the crises of the sixth century. The resulting analysis of Scandinavian lordship is then anchored in a detailed case study of the well-preserved settlements, houses, farms and field-systems on the Baltic Island of Öland. It concludes that incentives to create estates in Scandinavia were not present before the Christianization process.

Component stability in low-space massively parallel computation

AbstractIn this paper, we study the power and limitations of component-stable algorithms in the low-space model of massively parallel computation (). Recently Ghaffari, Kuhn and Uitto (FOCS 2019) introduced the class of component-stable low-space algorithms, which are, informally, those algorithms for which the outputs reported by the nodes in different connected components are required to be independent. This very natural notion was introduced to capture most (if not all) of the known efficient algorithms to date, and it was the first general class of algorithms for which one can show non-trivial conditional lower bounds. In this paper we enhance the framework of component-stable algorithms and investigate its effect on the complexity of randomized and deterministic low-space . Our key contributions include: 1. We revise and formalize the lifting approach of Ghaffari, Kuhn and Uitto. This requires a very delicate amendment of the notion of component stability, which allows us to fill in gaps in the earlier arguments. 2. We also extend the framework to obtain conditional lower bounds for deterministic algorithms and fine-grained lower bounds that depend on the maximum degree $$\Delta $$ Δ . 3. We demonstrate a collection of natural graph problems for which deterministic component-unstable algorithms break the conditional lower bound obtained for component-stable algorithms. This implies that, in the context of deterministic algorithms, component-stable algorithms are conditionally weaker than the component-unstable ones. 4. We also show that the restriction to component-stable algorithms has an impact in the randomized setting. We present a natural problem which can be solved in O(1) rounds by a component-unstable algorithm, but requires $$\Omega (\log \log ^* n)$$ Ω ( log log ∗ n ) rounds for any component-stable algorithm, conditioned on the connectivity conjecture. Altogether our results imply that component-stability might limit the computational power of the low-space model, at least in certain contexts, paving the way for improved upper bounds that escape the conditional lower bound setting of Ghaffari, Kuhn, and Uitto.

BETWEEN ETERNITY AND DIVINE DUALISM: HUGH OF SAINT-CHER’S OPUS II, PARS I

The paper contains the first Latin transcription and an English translation of the first part of the second book of Hugh of Saint-Cher's Opus, his commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences accomplished between 1231 and 1234. The transcription is based on the codex Vat. lat. 1098 collated with five auxiliary manuscripts. In line with William of Auxerre and Alexander of Hales Hugh critically disavows pagan and heretical stances represented by Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and Manichean regarding the creation of the world. My foreword sheds light on the philosophical value of presented arguments plus the historical background of the issue and Hugh's relation with contemporary theologians whose ideas Hugh rearranges and modifies in one concise text. I argue that Hugh blends together these four authorities to challenge and reject the concepts of eternity and dualism. The theologian imputes dualism — contrary to the run-of-the-mill attribution of three beginnings — to the Stagyrite while putting the concept of opposite principles from Aristotle referenced before by William in Cathar's mouth. Even Plato and Epicurus become proponents of the heretical repudiation of creation from nothing in favor of divine production from adjacent matter which aligns the Greeks with Cathars' metaphysics. Hugh's Opus, if not original in the modern sense, anticipated a surge of refutations aimed at heretics and “Averroists”. The proposed isomorphism between Aristotle-Heretic and Cathar-Peripatetic partially molded early arguments in the theological Sentences as well as inquisitorial Summa. Whereas the focus on Сathars' dualism diminished when they were brutally wiped off the map, William, Alexander, and Hugh's reasons against the Peripatetic view on eternity continued to draw attention among theologians fighting back “Averroism”.

Troubling the spatial politics of Green New Deals: Towards a Youngian approach to global justice

As a whole, the Green New Deal (GND) is discussed as one of the most promising political projects to address social justice targets together with climate goals. Yet, as most individual GNDs focus on the national level, concerns about global justice have largely remained absent from early debates, leading some to conclude that the GND reproduces neocolonial and extractivist schemes. To analyse programs for a GND in relation to issues of global justice requires an analytical framework able to evaluate justice claims in extended geographies. Drawing on the later work of political theorist Iris Marion Young, we develop a framework that foregrounds three principles: shared responsibilities for environmental harm of global reach, self-determination for those effected by these harms, and a forward-looking political responsibility to address the structures producing and sustaining injustice. We employ this framework to conduct a qualitative content analysis of four selected GND proposals from the UK, the EU and the US. This analysis indicates that all selected GNDs acknowledge in principle the global reach of responsibilities and formulate (limited) proposals to address these in different fields. However, they do not think of global justice in terms of a forward-looking notion of political responsibility that acknowledges the need of structural reforms and the self-determination of those experiencing harm. Instead, when addressing justice beyond the level of the nation state, these GNDs fall back on a notion of distributive justice. Based on the work of Young, we conclude with a set of propositions for global democratic structures that would support the outlined principles of global justice.

HORACE, ODES 3.13: INTERTEXTS AND INTERPRETATION

AbstractThis article argues that the literary contexts of Horace's Odes 3.13, especially archaic Greek poetry, have been relatively neglected by scholars, who have focussed on identifying the location of the fons Bandusiae and on understanding the significance of the sustained description of the kid sacrifice. This study presents a more holistic interpretation of the ode by exploring Horace's interactions with previously unnoticed (Alcaeus, frr. 45 and 347) and underappreciated (Hes. Op. 582–96) archaic Greek poetic intertexts, which also offer a fresh perspective on earlier debates. Horace's use of Alcaeus’ fr. 45, a key intertext, firmly places the fons Bandusiae within the literary landscape of Horace's Sabine estate, and offers a structural and argumentative model for Odes 3.13; further, Alcaean and Hesiodic allusions also suggest that the kid is sacrificed as a surrogate for Horace for keeping him safe. These conclusions are used to offer a new interpretation of the ode on metapoetic, political and philosophical levels, and to explore how these different aspects of the ode interact with Horace's other odes.

The Failed Idea of Judicial Restraint: A Brief Intellectual History

This essay examines the intellectual history of the idea of judicial restraint, starting with the early debates among the US Constitution’s founding generation. In the late nineteenth century, law professor James Bradley Thayer championed the concept and passed it on to his students and others, including Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Learned Hand, Louis Brandeis, and Felix Frankfurter, who modified and applied it based on the jurisprudential preoccupations of a different era. In a masterful account, Brad Snyder examines Justice Frankfurter’s attempt to put the idea into practice. Although Frankfurter arguably made a mess of it, he passed the idea of judicial restraint on to Alexander Bickel and others. Today it remains a topic of much academic debate, while Supreme Court Justices occasionally give the idea lip service when it advances outcomes they desire. I propose that the intellectual history of judicial restraint reflects the all-too-human inability to refrain from exercising power. The founders, focused on the need to mitigate the flaws of human nature in designing the executive and legislative branches, failed to sufficiently foresee how the same flaws would affect members of the judiciary. The failed idea of judicial restraint stands as the legacy of the founders’ mistake.

Appearance and reality: Einstein and the early debate on the reality of length contraction

In 1909, Ehrenfest published a note in the Physikalische Zeitschrift showing that a Born rigid cylinder could not be set into rotation without stresses, as elements of the circumference would be contracted but not the radius. Ignatowski and Varićak challenged Ehrenfest’s result in the same journal, arguing that the stresses would emerge if length contraction were a real dynamical effect, as in Lorentz’s theory. However, no stresses are expected to arise, according to Einstein’s theory, where length contraction is only an apparent effect due to an arbitrary choice of clock synchronization. Ehrenfest and Einstein considered this line of reasoning dangerously misleading and took a public stance in the Physikalische Zeitschrift, countering that relativistic length contraction is both apparent and real. It is apparent since it disappears for the comoving observer, but it is also real since it can be experimentally verified. By drawing on his lesser-known private correspondence with Varićak, this paper shows how Einstein used the Ehrenfest paradox as a tool for an ‘Einsteinian pedagogy’. Einstein’s argumentative stance is contrasted with Bell’s use of the Dewan-Beran thread-between-spaceships paradox to advocate for a ‘Lorentzian pedagogy’. The paper concludes that the disagreement between the two ways of ‘teaching special relativity’ stems from divergent interpretations of philosophical categories such as ‘reality’ and ‘appearance’.