Early Adherents Research Articles

The The Significance of the Early Buddhism Behind The Advancement Of the Academics In India

The Indian culture and social structure are like the most exceptional ones that have ever developed in every continent. The uniqueness of this rests in its simultaneous embodiment of both old and contemporary qualities. It is a nation that encompasses adherents of all the prominent global faiths, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Zoroastrianism. Each of these factors exert a variable amount of effect on Indian society. Education and perfection are interconnected. Proper education is an essential prerequisite for the existence of any culture. India possesses a centuries-old system of education that is unique to its society. Throughout history, the concept of education in India has emphasised the development of a person's personality. Traditional Indian education spanned for numerous centuries, resulting in the existence of various schools during distinct time periods. The Buddhist philosophy is regarded to be one of the most esteemed ancient Indian ideologies, encompassing a multitude of beneficial principles such as religious, moral, instructive, electoral, and financial utilities. These principles hold great significance in promoting the well-being of humanity. Within the diverse range of values in Buddhism, there is a strong emphasis on the significance for learning and moral standards. Educational values in Buddhism refer to the principles which are implemented by the Buddhist System of Education in its instructional and learning methods. On the other hand, ethical principles in Buddhism pertain to moral principles advocated by Buddhist philosophy to regulate an individual's thoughts and behavior. The aim of this paper is to explore the ethical and pedagogical tenets embraced by the early adherents of Buddhism, and explore the impact of Buddhist philosophy on the education, monastic communities, and the general populace and society in ancient India.

The Celestial City: “Mormonism” and American Identity in Post-Independence Nigeria

Abstract:This article uses the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in post-independence Nigeria to examine the transition from individuated agents of religious exchange to integration into global corporate religiosity. Early Latter-day Saint adherents saw Mormonism as a mechanism by which they could acquire access to monetary resources from a financially stable Western patronage, despite political animosity due to Mormonism's racist policies and sectional tumult during the Nigeria-Biafra war. Drawing on oral and archival records, this article highlights how Mormonism as an American-based faith was able to be "translated" to meet the exigencies of indigenous adherents.

Heuristics versus norms: On the relativistic responses to the Kaufmann experiments

The aim of this article is to provide a historical response to Michel Janssen’s (2009) claim that the special theory of relativity establishes that relativistic phenomena are purely kinematical in nature, and that the relativistic study of such phenomena is completely independent of dynamical considerations regarding the systems displaying such behavior. This response will be formulated through a historical discussion of one of Janssen's cases, the experiments carried out by Walter Kaufmann on the velocity-dependence of the electron's mass. Through a discussion of the different responses formulated by early adherents of the principle of relativity (Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Hermann Minkowski and Max von Laue) to these experiments, it will be argued that the historical development of the special theory of relativity argues against Janssen's historical presentation of the case, and that this raises questions about his general philosophical claim. It will be shown, more specifically, that Planck and Einstein developed a relativistic response to the Kaufmann experiments on the basis of their study of the dynamics of radiation phenomena, and that this response differed significantly from the response formulated by Minkowski and Laue. In this way, it will be argued that there were, at the time, two different approaches to the theory of relativity, which differed with respect to its relation to theory, experiment, and history: Einstein's and Planck's heuristic approach, and Minkowski's and Laue's normative approach. This indicates that it is difficult to say, historically speaking, that the special theory of relativity establishes the kinematical nature of particular phenomena. Instead, it will be argued that the theory of relativity should not be seen as a theory but rather as outlining an approach, and that the nature of particular scientific phenomena is something that is open to scientific debate and dispute.

Arabic Linguistic Identity and the Tribal Confederacy of the Ghassan on the Eve of the Islamic Conquests

In 528/9 AD, al-Harith, the leader of a tribal confederation known as the Ghassan, was recognized as Rome’s ally on the eastern frontier. This alliance established the Ghassan, despite following a heretical Christian sect, as the principal authority in what is modern-day Syria and Jordan. This alliance also secured the Ghassan’s right to collect taxes independently and to mobilize against the Empire’s enemies. Moreover, Ghassanid leaders received distinguished epithets which had previously been reserved largely for the Roman aristocracy. A recently discovered mosaic in northern Jordan suggests that these titles were being used by the Ghassan not in isolation but as stratified ranks for their ruling class. Furthermore, this mosaic, along with significant epigraphic evidence, suggests that the Ghassan spoke Arabic well before the Islamic conquests, despite many scholars’ belief that the Ghassan spoke Christian Palestinian Aramaic. Although it is difficult to define an Arab identity prior to the Islamic conquests, the Arabs of South Arabia would have shared at least a common language with the Ghassan to the North. Additionally, it cannot be doubted that the Ghassan would have had direct contact with Muhammad’s ancestors through trade routes such as Wadi Sirhan. Early adherents to Islam may have seen this Arab group in the North, which had been able to achieve a semi-autonomous existence on the Roman frontier, despite neither following the orthodox faith nor being native speakers of Greek or Latin, as a potential model for a new Arab polity.

Retoričko-kritička analiza Poslanice Galaćanima (I)

Članak analizira Pavlovu poslanicu Galaćanima po principima retoričkog kriticizma. Ovakav pristup biblijskim tekstovima postao je prominentan u posljednjih četrdesetak godina. Rani zagovornici ove metode djelovali su pod pretpostavkom da je Pavao pisao u skladu s tada poznatim retoričkim priručnicima. U tom smislu, uvod članka propituje odnos Pavlovih poslanica i antičke retorike i literarnog svijeta. Također istražuje mogućnost prihvaćanja šireg koncepta retorike kojega pruža moderno proučavanje te discipline. Uvod članka zaključuju pitanje odnosa retorike i epistolografije, kao i pitanje raspodjele retoričkog čina i njegove primjene na Poslanicu Galaćanima. Zatim započinje analiza glavnih retoričkih elemenata Poslanice Galaćanima, koja će zbog ograničenosti prostora biti nastavljena u sljedećem članku.

Evolution and Exegesis

London artist Ethel Le Rossignol produced a series of forty-two images, symbolic of events that take place between ethereal and material planes of existence, that explicate fundamental philosophical precepts of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century adherents of Theosophical philosophy. Her series of mediumistic images present a complex interweaving of textual, symbolic, and pictorial devices meant to encourage viewers to spend time meditating on possible meanings embedded in her narrative. Although not as well-known today, in the early part of the twentieth century her pictures were appreciated, and she displayed them at various functions before her 1929 exhibition held at London Spiritual Alliance were she provided information in the form of writings and lectures of the significance of her symbolic narrative.

From Monogenesis to Polygenesis in Pentecostal Origins

The idea that William Seymour’s Azusa Street Mission served as the isolated source of Pentecostal origination remains the dominant view among both Pentecostals and academics in the United States. In this article, I compare this well-known narrative of Pentecostal origins with the accounts of two lesser-known early missions that also contributed to the emergence of Pentecostalism: the Hebden Mission in Toronto, Canada and the Mukti Mission in Kedgaon, India. I argue that even a brief evaluation of these historical narratives (1) reveals that there was not anything particularly novel about the religious experiences described by the early participants of the Azusa Street Mission, and, therefore, (2) best supports a polygenetical rather than a monogenetical theory of Pentecostal origins. I conclude by offering some nascent suggestions for why a monogenetical theory of Pentecostal origination was so attractive to both early Pentecostal adherents and historians alike, despite the availability of evidence to the contrary.

Berlin Psychoanalytic: Psychoanalysis and Culture in Weimar Republic Germany and Beyond by Veronika Fuechtner (review)

Reviewed by: Berlin Psychoanalytic: Psychoanalysis and Culture in Weimar Republic Germany and Beyond by Veronika Fuechtner Laurie R. Johnson Berlin Psychoanalytic: Psychoanalysis and Culture in Weimar Republic Germany and Beyond. By Veronika Fuechtner. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Pp. xii + 242. Cloth $49.95. ISBN 978-0520258372. At this book’s conclusion, Veronika Fuechtner states that part of her aim “has been to establish the Berlin Psychoanalytic as another point of reference in discussions on psychoanalysis and modernism” (179). This statement is modest, but the book that precedes it reveals the prismatic power of that choice of reference point. Viewing part of the history of psychoanalysis and modernism within the context of Weimar Berlin makes these movements themselves seem to shift and re-form along a spectrum quite different from the one viewed from Vienna or London. By reconstructing the history of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute (BPI) from its opening in March 1920 to the beginning of the Gleichschaltung in early 1933, Fuechtner presents a picture of Weimar Berlin as well as of the seminal psychoanalytic practitioners who inhabited it. By focusing on situating psychoanalysis in these years within the larger movement of cultural modernism, Berlin Psychoanalytic reveals (or reinforces previously known) connections between artists and physicians, authors and scientists. Fuechtner’s study emphasizes psychoanalysis’s multidisciplinary structure, in part by investigating the diverse and not infrequently ambivalent positions of its early Berlin adherents. While part of Fuechtner’s contribution is to illuminate the pervasiveness of psychoanalysis and the ways in which psychoanalytic concepts or a psychoanalytic mindframe can saturate a culture, an equally significant part is her investigation, through the conversation technique, of specific networks between clinicians and other cultural practitioners and artists. Berlin Psychoanalytic’s chapters are organized in terms of conversations, and they take place in various spaces: Alfred Döblin and Ernst Simmel, Georg Groddeck and Count Hermann von Keyserling (et al.) meet in Berlin, while Arnold Zweig and Max Eitingon converse in a chapter on exiled BPI members in Palestine. The continued work of BPI members in New York from the mid-1930s onward is considered in a chapter that positions Richard Huelsenbeck and Charles Hulbeck in conversation with Karen Horney. This format of situating members and associates of the BPI in conversation, in which Fuechtner reads their correspondence as well as references to one another’s work, helps highlight the confluence of science and art within psychoanalysis and within individual careers. Döblin’s psychiatric training and work as a military doctor is well known, but his work with Simmel and the BPI, says Fuechtner, shifted his “late-nineteenth-century psychiatric understanding of mental illness to a psychoanalytic conception of the soul. This development changed his medical practice and simultaneously drove his search for radical new forms of narration in his fiction” (18). The soul in Döblin’s fictional psychology is both knowable and unreliable, and operates in a way compatible with Freud’s thinking about memory as involving “the [End Page 454] flickering-up and passing-away of consciousness in the process of perception” (in “A Note upon the ‘Mystic Writing-Pad,’” 1925). And it was the BPI that, Fuechtner states, “offered Döblin an institutional framework where he could connect his two professions—those of writer and physician” (21). Berlin Psychoanalytic also offers new readings of the literature and film associated with the BPI and with psychoanalysis more generally. Döblin, as Fuechtner puts it, “described psychoanalytic therapy as a necessary relief of the clogged-up sewer system of Berlin’s collective unconscious,” and “Berlin Alexanderplatz can be read as an unsettling descent into the depths of this psychological canalization” (39). Fuechtner’s close readings of Berlin Alexanderplatz and other texts emphasize the reach of psychoanalytic thinking into other areas of life—into film, art, politics, and also into very eclectic realms. The chapter situating Groddeck in conversation with Count von Keyserling is entitled “Wild Psychoanalysis, Religion, and Race” and provides a truly new way of looking at the margins of psychoanalysis and how they were perhaps only traversable during the highpoint of cultural modernism’s avant-garde movements. Some of the work Fuechtner examines in the chapter on “Wild...

Institutional change and information production

Abstract:The organization of information production is undergoing a deep transformation. Alongside corporations, which have been for long time the predominant institutions of information production, new organizational forms have emerged, e.g. free software communities, open-content on-line wikis, and collective blogs. The paper investigates the factors that favoured the emergence of these alternative systems, called peer production. Different from the previous literature, the paper considers technology as an endogenous variable in the process of organizational design. On this basis, the paper argues that the diffusion of digital technology is a necessary but not sufficient condition to explain the emergence of peer production. A similarly important role has been played by the set of ethics that motivated the early adherents to the free software movement. Such an ethics indeed operated as a ‘cultural subsidy’ that helped to overcome the complementarities existing among distinct institutional domains, and let a new organizational species to emerge.

Democratic Elitism Reappraised

AbstractDuring the postwar decades following Joseph Schumpeter's seminal Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, democratic elitism struck many as an apt and insightful description of how representative democracy works – even though convinced democrats detected an "elitist" thrust they found disturbing. But during the last several decades political elites and leaders have wielded more power and influence in Western democracies than Schumpeter and his early adherents acknowledged. If it is to retain relevance and utility, democratic elitism must incorporate the now more evident roles elites and leaders play.

All Roads Come from Zen: Busshinji as a Reference to Buddhism

This paper explores the historical role of Busshinji temple as a center of Buddhism in Brazil for non-Japanese. Busshinji was established by Sotoshu as a betsuin (branch temple) in the city of Sao Paulo in 1956. Drawing on interviews with early adherents, I intend to argue that many first attended Busshinji as it was the only Buddhist temple offering meditation in Sao Paulo. For these followers, it was their first point of contact with Buddhism. Many later left to become leading figures of other Buddhist schools in Brazil. It is thus my contention that Busshinji played a significant historical role in the expansion of Buddhism in Brazil. keywords: Sotoshu - Busshinji - non-Japanese Brazilians In September 1955, Rosen Takashina Roshi visited Brazil for three months, travelling extensively to the many towns where Japanese migrants settled in the states of Sao Paulo and Parana, which lie in southern Brazil. At the time, he was the zenji (abbot) in charge of both main monasteries of the Sotoshu School: Eiheiji (located in the Fukui Prefecture) and Sojiji (in Yokohama). Takashina came to Brazil by invitation of those Japanese migrants who adhered to the Sotoshu and wished to have a temple in their new country. Until the Second World War, Japanese migrants still intended to return to Japan once they had acquired enough wealth. However, when Japan lost the war they had to rethink their plans and settled permanently in Brazil. In addition to this, after the war the Brazilian government lifted the ban on the arrival of official Japanese Buddhist missions to Brazil. Given this climate, Takashina was not alone in making the long trip to Brazil with the prospect of establishing a mission in the 1950s. Other traditional Buddhist schools such as Jodoshu, Jodo Shinshu, Shingonshu, and Nichirenshu sent official missions to Brazil at the same time. However, unlike other Japanese religions, Sotoshu would soon have special appeal to an unexpected cohort of followers: non-Japanese Brazilians. In October 1956, Sotoshu sent Shingu Roshi to Brazil to be the first sokan (Superintendent-General) of South America. He was there to establish Busshinji temple as the betsuin (the headquarters of the mission) in Sao Paulo. This paper explores the historical role of Busshinji temple as a center of Buddhism in Brazil for non-Japanese. Drawing on interviews with early adherents, I argue that many of these followers first went to Busshinji as it was the only Buddhist temple that offered meditation in Sao Paulo. For them, Busshinji was their first point of contact with Buddhism. Many later left Busshinji to become leading figures of other Buddhist schools in the country. Thus, it is my contention that Busshinji played a significant historical role in the expansion of Buddhism in Brazil. From the outset, Sotoshu missionaries worked on the expansion of the mission amongst Japanese Brazilians. They travelled to the countryside where many Japanese migrants lived in order to conduct funerals and memorials, and to teach Japanese language and culture.1 At the same time, in the late 1950s and 60s, some non-Japanese Brazilians were reading about Zen in newspaper articles written by the Brazilian foreign correspondent of the daily newspaper Jornal do Brasil, who was writing from New York City. Others were following the development of an important Brazilian poetic movement called Concretista. These poets were influenced by Ernest Fenollosa's (1853-1908) The Chinese Written Character (1968), the writings of the American poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972), and French Symbolism. They argued for a visual poetry where words as they appear on paper would be as important in expressing ideas as their meaning, rhythm, and rhyme. For the Concretistas, such visual poetry was epitomized in the Japanese character. This poetic movement thus brought the Orientalist ideas of Japan and Zen to educated Brazilians. In 1961, D. T. Suzuki's Introduction to Zen Buddhism was published in Portuguese. …

“The New World of Realities in Which We Live”: How Speaking in Tongues Empowered Early Pentecostals

AbstractHistories of Pentecostalism have recounted how early adherents anticipated preaching in their newfound languages until disappointing reports from missionaries trickled home. Yet, in the years from 1901 to 1908, many Pentecostals recognized the value of glossolalic utterances to include languages not only for preaching but also as a means of prayer, with the latter especially denoting their willingness to step beyond the border of rational spirituality into the realm of Christian mysticism. At the same time, they addressed the connection of Spirit baptism to love in the Spirit-filled life and struggled with questions that arose about the meaning of the gift of interpretation. This essay proposes that the early literature reveals a consistently held role for adoration and prayerful intercession that enabled the faithful to withstand the impact of other changes in meaning.

Under the Banner of Heaven (review)

escape. Predictably, Lily uses sex as her way out. Again predictably, she becomes pregnant, has an abortion, an additional illicit love affair, and then meets the man whom she will marry, whose children she wUl bear. If this were a fiction narrative, the unremarkable plot would be a serious flaw. What makes this book a success is how Kirschner teUs LUy's story; the poems are powerful and moving, with the plot not so much narrated as evoked. Even weaker, seemingly plot-driven poems such as "Ordained to Mar with the Erotic" are redeemed by the poems that out of structural necessity must follow them, such as the amazing "At the Stone Zoo." The real treasure is the wonderful last section, where LUy must come to terms with both her past and her present. The playful eroticism of "The Red Door," the moving denouement of "Slow Risen Among the Smoke Trees," the tension (sexual and otherwise ) that infuses yet never overwhelms the almost dreamlike "Faux Doe" and "The Old Bear"—aU work together to create a LUy whobecomes real in our eyes and then transcends that reality, becoming, in the victory over her past, a moving symbol of human possibility in the face of any odds. (BM) Under the Banner ofHeaven by Jon Krakauer Doubleday, 2003, 372 pp., $26 In 1984 Ron and Dan Lafferty murdered their sister-in-law and her baby daughter. They were not motivated by sex, money or drugs; they killed their kin because they had received a direct order from God to do so. Yet the brothers were not judged crazy. As fundamentalist Mormons, they often received direct orders from God. Having grabbed our attention with this story, Krakauer returns to the murder at intervals throughout the book. Most of his fascinating nonfiction book, however, is about the history of Mormonism,especiallythebreakaway polygamist, fundamentalist Mormons. As Wallace Stegner said, Mormons are so peculiar that it's almost impossible to write fiction about them. In this era of political correctness, it's also difficult to write nonfiction about them, but Krakauer succeeds, partly by using the same plain, candid style of his two previous books, Into the Wild and Into Thin Air. Given the worldwide size and rate of increase of the Mormon Church, Mormonism may fairly claim to be the first major religion established since Islam—a faith with which it shares simUarities. Mormonism is also a peculiarly American religion. There are an inordinate number of failed pioneer farmers among its founders; its early adherents kept moving west until they reached territory that they believed no one else wanted. The first governor of Utah was a Mormon patriarch. The Book of Mormon identifies American Indians as Lamanites, a disfavored tribe of Israelites who slaughtered aU the legendary, lighter-skinned aboriginal Mormons. Krakauer pays special attention to fundamentalist Mormons, a surprising number of whom still exist in isolated parts of North America and who are distinguished by their loyalty to God's original intentions as revealed to Joseph Smith—most 200 · The Missouri Review famously, the institution of polygamy . Fundamentalists foUow a strict sexual code; polygamy seems to be a socialization of male adulterous impulses at the cost of female autonomy . They tend to ignore secular laws, disregarding taxes and licenses, except (many people charge) insofar as they can work the social welfare system to their advantage. They are the frequent recipients ofdivine revelations, a disconcerting number of which are apocalyptic in nature. Clearly, Krakauer is still intrigued by extremism. Into Thin Air was about extreme mountaineering; the overlooked Into the Wild was about the tragic attempt of a young man to live off the land alone in Alaska. He writes elegantly, and this latest volume is nearly as good as Into Thin Air. Many outdoorspeople and Westerners will have spent some time in Mormon country without reaUy knowing, until they read this book, where they were; and many other readers will be alternately appalled and astonished by this account. (JS) Disappearing Ingenue: The Misadventures ofEleanor Stoddard by Melissa Pritchard Doubleday, 2002, 239 pp., $23.95 Disappearing Ingenue is Melissa Pritchard's fifth book of fiction and her third collection of award-winning stories, foUowing The...

Moon phase at the dates of birth and decease of anthroposophic pioneers

Early adherents of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the anthroposophical movement, tend to be born and to die during the dark half of the lunar month. There is significant correlation (P = 0.03) between the distributions of the lunar elongation at birth and at decease. However, this correlation does not operate at the level of individuals, suggesting that the effects of birth date and death date are statistically independent.

“Testimonies from the Field”: The Coming of Christian Science to Australia, c. 1890–1910*

The account of the coming of Christian Science to Australia given in this article is based on testimony contributed by early adherents to the two main church publications, The Christian Science Journal and the Christian Science Sentinel, supplemented by Church records and other sources. The first two decades are covered, from the earliest known intimations of interest to the death of Mary Baker Eddy in 1910, when a Christian Science presence in Australia was assured. Interest shown by writer Miles Franklin, and her association with Melbourne adherents such as leading feminist Vida Goldstein, provides the starting point. The focus is on positive responses. It is postulated that in addition to the documentary and expressive value of the testimonies, they point to problems of class and health in turn‐of‐the‐century Australia. A preponderance of women in both the testimonies and the practice is evidenced, and the openness of progressive women to new approaches is noted. With reference to male testimony, it is suggested that further research into responses to American ways in religion by the urban midle class would be very valuable.

The Feminist Uses of Psychoanalysis: Beatrice M. Hinkle and the Foreshadowing of Modern Feminism in the United States

This article uses the career and writings of feminist psychoanalyst Beatrice M. Hinkle (1874-1953) to explore the impact of psychological thinking on American feminism in the immediate presuffrage and postsuffrage era. Feminism (as distinct from suffragism) first emerged in the United States prior to World War I. Its early adherents, many of whom such as Hinkle belonged to New York City's feminist network, the Heterodoxy Club, used psychoanalytic insights to broaden the definition of the political to include inner personal emancipation and to further women's gains in the postsuffrage period. Hinkle's psychoanalytically informed feminism questioned the significance of formal legal equality alone and prefigured the notion of the personal as political, usually associated primarily with the rebirth of feminism in the 1960s. Her writings constitute an important, if little known, chapter in the intellectual history of modern American feminism.

Physician to the Gene Pool By James V. Neel (review)

not even with stuffed-up nostrils" (601). Finally, he told Ferenczi, "It seems to me that you are now using your analysis as a means of confusing your affairs, as you earlier used it to delay" (631). Overall Freud comes across in this correspondence as a worldly, settled, and sensible man with a deep and humane concern for his younger friend despite his clear awareness of the latter's foibles. In reply to Ferenczi 's idealization of him as Goethe-like, Freud confessed, "I have found in myself only one quality of the first rank, a kind of courage, which is unshaken by convention " (542). Ferenczi underwent three brief periods of analysis with Freud, and much of the correspondence underscores the very different boundary between analytic communication and personal relationships that existed in the early days of psychoanalysis and that exist now. When Ferenczi begged Freud to arrange analytic hours for him during a vacation which Ferenczi planned to spend in Vienna visiting Freud, the latter agreed to reserve two analytic hours daily. He went on, "I also hope to see much of you otherwise, and you should at least have one meal with us daily. Technique at least will require that nothing personal will be discussed outside the sessions " (611). The point is especially important because Ferenczi was to go on to interest himself in experiments with mutual analysis between patient and analyst and in the role of traumatic experience, notably childhood sexual abuse, in the formation of neurosis. In current psychoanalytic thinking, childhood trauma in the analysand isjudged an important factor in bringing about violations of proper therapeutic boundaries. From today's vantage, Ferenczi's analytic arrangement with Freud, his affair with Elma Palos, Freud's analysis of his own daughter Anna, and other such matters alluded to in the letters seem to range from errors of technique to reprehensible ethical lapses. Reading the correspondence provides a perspective on our current views and standards in statu nascendi. Ferenczi's importance to Freud is shown clearly in these letters: "I am swimming in satisfaction, I am lighthearted, knowing that my problem child, my life's work, is protected and preserved for the future by your participation and that of others" (759). For the specialist reader, the correspondence provides essential glimpses of the development of psychoanalysis and of the personalities of its founder and one of his most important early adherents. Fred Ovsiew Chief, Clinical Neuropsychiatry Medical Director, Adult Inpatient Psychiatry Department ofPsychiatry MC 3077 University of Chicago Hospitals 5841 S. Maryland Chicago, IL 60637 Physician to the GenePool. ByJames V. Neel. New York: John Wiley, 1994. Pp. 457. $24.95. I have long believed that almost all of the experiments in the biological sciences have already been done by Nature. Scientists find or stumble their way to these experiments. Just as we believe that we have answers, Nature presents more ques456 Book Reviews tions. James Neel unknowingly prepared for an event that was not supposed to happen: atomic bombs exploding over two major cities. The possible effects oflongterm radiation on a large human population in or near Chernobyl's fallout will draw on his team's contributions to the effect of radiation on future generations. Voles occupying the same area have shown an obvious increase in mitochondrial (and presumably nuclear) DNA damage. Neel had a charmed career. From the coincidence of moving to Wooster, Ohio, where he could walk to Wooster College and an independent research project mentored by an outstanding Drosophila geneticist, Warren Spencer, Neel went to the University of Rochester for a doctoral degree in genetics with Curt Stern. After a postdoctoral experience at Columbia University and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory , he decided a doctor would be more useful than a geneticist in an anticipated war. After thorough training in genetics and a medical degree, Neel was probably the most qualified geneticist to evaluate the effects of A-bomb radiation on the progeny of the exposed inhabitants of the two cities. Although the expected surge ofmutants has not yet appeared, the procedures and record keeping by the commission will have value in the future and certainly in monitoring the population exposed to Chernobyl's radiation. After...

The beginnings of a troubled friendship: Freud and ferenczi 1908-1914

Abstract On the basis of their correspondence (vol. I), the emergence of some relational patterns between Freud and Ferenczi is examined with regard to the institutional, scientific and personal levels. Ferenczi's concern for analytic technique was connected with the fact that he took to Freud as a private neurological practitioner. While he promoted psychoanalysis with missionary zeal, he delayed his founding the official Budapest Society. As a member of the “secret” Committee, he played a major part on the literary side of the group's battle against Jung, but he was less successful on the organizational side. The main subjects of the scientific dialogue between Freud and Ferenczi were telepathy and paranoia. As to the former, Freud both encouraged his pupil and warned him against a propensity towards wishful carelessness in testing his ideas. As to the latter, Ferenczi elaborated the thesis of homosexual etiology given to him by Freud. Their collaboration shows that the scientific community of early psychoanalysis functioned considerably in symbiotic terms that were convenient to Freud, but overtaxed his younger friend who was prone to dependency. Personally, Ferenczi was closer to Freud than any other non-Viennese analyst. After their joint voyage to America in 1909, he started a kind of analysis with his master by self-analytic letters. His professed aims were to gain maturity, according to Freud's model, and to achieve complete openness in their relationship. In fact, the endeavour seems to have served his regressive striving for an all-out communion. Freud rejected this purpose which was finally transformed into the wish for formal treatment. In Ferenczi's view, analysis also implied submission to a harsh authority. All this provides some background for his later technical innovations. - Ferenczi testifies a marked overestimation of psychoanalysis, as a road to mental perfection, among its early adherents. It needed a collective process of learning for analysts to restrict their new art to the analytic setting and to detach their private selves from their professional task (witness the Elma episode).

Archives for developmental mechanics W. Roux, editor (1894-1924).

This year, 1994, marks the centennial anniversary of Roux’s Archives for Developmental Biology. On 16 October, 1894, Number 1, Volume 1 of the Archiv for Entwicklungsmechanik, the first journal devoted to experimental studies of development, was issued. For the next 30 years, its founder, Wilhelm Roux, was its sole editor. During this period, this “new branch” of biology (Roux 1905), the causal analysis of development, would grow into a vigorous science, and the influential Archives (Gascoigne 1985) would prosper as well. Roux’s philosophy as editor was defined in the first paper in the journal (Roux 1894a). [A translation by W.M. Wheeler is reprinted in Maienschein 19861. I will examine how this philosophy was practiced during the ensuing three decades. Areas of research that attracted the interest of early adherents of analytical embryology as reflected in the articles published in the Archives will be briefly explored. I will consider some seminal papers and ideas that first appeared in the Archives, as well as some of its contributors who are familiar figures to present day developmental biologists.

Shaking a concept: Hans Driesch and the varied fates of sea urchin blastomeres.

Among the early adherents of Entwickelungsmechanik Hans Driesch (1867–1941) was certainly the most colourful personality. Born at Kreuznach, a well-known spa on the Nahe river, as the only child of a wealthy Hamburg merchant, he grew up in the liberal atmosphere of that hanseatic city (Driesch 1951). Gifted with the self-confidence that results from a strong mind backed by seemingly unlimited financial means, and driven by a brillant intellect formally trained at the best institutions within reach, he had by his mid-twenties published nearly two dozen descriptive and experimental papers on animal development, and three small books in the border-fields between theoretical biology and philosophy of science. Many of these have fallen justly (and some unjustly) into oblivion, while two or three proved seminal. These last dealt with the shaking and compressing of cleavage stage sea urchin eggs, and served more than any others to shake confidence in the then widely accepted concept of mosaic development (see the previous essays in this series).