Modern Epoch Research Articles

Źródła do historii dominikańskiego studium generale w Krakowie w epoce nowożytnej. Stan badań i perspektywy badawcze

Main objective of the essay under consideration was investigation and characterized most important source materials stocked at the Archive of the Cracow’s Dominican Province to present the history of their studium generale during the Modern period. Also, the current knowledge of a.m. period of studium generale was screened- out and some searching hypothesis were proposed concerning the history of the Cracow’s Dominican studium generale. The searching time frame have been limited to XVI up to XVII century. Taken into consideration, the current status of research works performed so far, one ought to stated that the Modern Epoch has not been searched out with the same consciousness compare to the Medieval one. As the most important printed source materials, one ought to account the documents issued by the general and provincial chapters of the Convent. The documents of the provincial chapters have been listed and screened by Father Fabian Madura, and were stocked as the typescript formats at the Cracow’s Dominican Convent Library.Based on the searched source materials of General Chapter of Dominican Convent at Cracow, it is possible to present the general overview of the convent education system and its changes in due time. Due to the records found it would be possible to identify – position and name – the Dominicans nominated to the Convent stadium generale. The most important manuscript stocked at the Cracow’s Dominican Convent Archive as the education system is concern, is so called Liber Studii Generalis cracoviensis (rkps 20). This manuscript covers the list of friars who have been nominated to work at stadium generale. A.m. document has to verify and compare with other sources.Taken into consideration above mention facts, it seems to be as most important searching activities to describe the convent society of the Cracow’s Dominicans. At the essay some detailed searching hypothesis were presented, such as searching and reviewing the personnel of studium generale, the convent, intellectual culture both teachers and scholar, legal aspects related to the convent’s education system, links and cooperation between the Cracow’s University and studium generale and the Dominicans activities both sacrum and profanum.

Kosmopolitisk Identitet Eller Globalisert Fremmedgjøring

ABSTRACT In this article I argue that Scandinavian literature in the last 25 years is characterized by an exploration of postmodern conditions for identity construction. My point of departure is that the posttraditional society of late modernity can be described as a community experiencing deep unrest in the two ”nests” which provided most people with feelings of belonging and security in the traditional modern epoch, i.e. the nuclear family and the nation. I analyze two Norwegian novels, Jan Kjærstads´ Forføreren (1993) and Dag Solstads´ Armand V. Fotnoter til en uutgravd roman (2006), as examples of how postnational and cosmopolitan constellations influence both our individual lives and our collectively imagined communities. I focus on what I call click and dragnationalism, XL-nationalism, the one-man-nation and postnational war.

Worldviews: A blessing or a curse?

The concept of a worldview resonates with other concepts, such as those of ‘culture’, ‘civilisation’, and ‘way of life’. Arguably, it is a modern phenomenon, the possibility of which was actualised at the dawn of the modern epoch. Nevertheless, in principle, its ‘possibility’ goes back as far as Plato’s Republic. It is Heidegger, however, who is most informative for understanding what a worldview is, as well as why the modern epoch is its time of provenance. Consequently, an analysis of Heidegger’s essay, ‘The time of the world picture’ (or worldview) provided the framework within which it was argued that worldviews are both blessings and curses in the current era: blessings, because, as Harries has argued, we have been disabused of the modern idea of one encompassing worldview or ideology, so that one can no longer believe in only a single ’correct’ view of the world; curses, because they bedevil any wellintended attempts at communicating with understanding on issues of common concern. It was the burden of this article to provide a way of addressing this state of affairs with some hope of transcending the causes of alienation and it is again Heidegger who is the source of such a way, through his notion of the ‘fourfold’.

To the problem of co-evolution of law and information

The integration processes of right and information, problems of their joint functioning in a modern epoch are considered.

Pluralism, Vitality, and Transformability: A Case Study of Jining Religions in the Late Imperial and Republican Periods

This article depicts the dynamic demonstrations of religions in late imperial and republican Jining. It argues with evidences that the open, tolerant and advanced urban circumstances and atmosphere nurtured the diversity and prosperity of formal religions in Jining in much of the Ming and Qing periods. It also argues that the same air and ethos enabled Jining to less difficultly adapt to the West-led modern epoch, with a notable result of welcoming Christianity, quite exceptional in hinterland China.

Development of practical activity experience for pupils with moderate and severe retardation of mental development

Modern epoch poses its own demands for special education, because provision of special education needs into inclusive environment is one of the prior courses of education policy in Latvia. The author of the research reveals discrepancy between politically stated progress and school practice in Latvia. Topicality of the research fortifies the necessity to advance pedagogical integrity of pupils with moderate and severe retardation of mental development (RMD). Research includes: analysis of education potential provision in legislation, investigation of theory regarding retardation of mental development, analysis of pedagogic process at special primary boarding school, model of the development of practical activity experience for pupils with moderate and severe RMD at special primary boarding school. As a result of theory analysis – model of the development of practical activity experience for pupils with moderate and severe RMD has been established. Empiric investigation of the development of practical activity experience for pupils with moderate and severe RMD has been done, using the form of quantitative methods investigation in order to examine effectiveness of the established model of the development of practical activity experience.

A new model of cosmogenic production of radiocarbon 14C in the atmosphere

We present the results of full new calculation of radiocarbon 14C production in the Earth atmosphere, using a numerical Monte-Carlo model. We provide, for the first time, a tabulated 14C yield function for the energy of primary cosmic ray particles ranging from 0.1 to 1000GeV/nucleon. We have calculated the global production rate of 14C, which is 1.64 and 1.88atoms/cm2/s for the modern time and for the pre-industrial epoch, respectively. This is close to the values obtained from the carbon cycle reservoir inventory. We argue that earlier models overestimated the global 14C production rate because of outdated spectra of cosmic ray heavier nuclei. The mean contribution of solar energetic particles to the global 14C is calculated as about 0.25% for the modern epoch. Our model provides a new tool to calculate the 14C production in the Earth's atmosphere, which can be applied, e.g., to reconstructions of solar activity in the past.

Broadening the Base of Addiction Mutual-Help Organizations

Peer-led mutual-help organizations addressing substance use disorder (SUD) and related problems have had a long history in the United States. The modern epoch of addiction mutual help began in the postprohibition era of the 1930s with the birth of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Growing from 2 members to 2 million members, AA's reach and influence has drawn much public health attention as well as increasingly rigorous scientific investigation into its benefits and mechanisms. In turn, AA's growth and success have spurred the development of myriad additional mutual-help organizations. These alternatives may confer similar benefits to those found in studies of AA but have received only peripheral attention. Due to the prodigious economic, social, and medical burden attributable to substance-related problems and the diverse experiences and preferences of those attempting to recover from SUD, there is potentially immense value in societies maintaining and supporting the growth of a diverse array of mutual-help options. This article presents a concise overview of the origins, size, and state of the science on several of the largest of these alternative additional mutual-help organizations in an attempt to raise further awareness and help broaden the base of addiction mutual help.

Ideology and deritualization of public communication

In this paper, the authors attempt to elucidate the historical and social conditions in which ideology emerged as a discourse that has participated in the process of deritualization of public communication. Relying on the traditional strongholds of the topic, on Habermas, Foucault and Gouldner, in this paper ideology is not understood in the traditional and dominant Marxist sense of the term as false consciousness or pathological speech. Authors start from the hypothesis that ideology is rational discourse but with limited reflexivity who along with science, technology and politics participated in the process of rationalization of the West and especially in the constitution of the public sphere of civil society. Also, the authors presume that ideology as a form of thought about the modern epoch and possibilities of rational reconstruction of the social world has failed to obtain autonomous field. That is one of the main reason why ideology not provide a clearer identity, nor as clear topical and relevant field of social sciences, with a clearer disciplinary identity. More in the form of a scattered and a diverse speech, ideology is regarded as a new grammar of thought that tends to deritualized old order of speech. However, the pursuit of deritualization of communication went deeper. It gripped the old sociability in the form of community, an ancient order of symbols and the old matrix of producing the social knowledge. It was very important reason for creating realm of public communication that provided the location for reproduction of ideological speech about the historical authenticity of the civil society and its rationality.

An Interview with Darko Suvin

AL: I would like to locate your ideological position in literary theory. I suppose that you feel close to Terry Eagleton and Fredric Jameson (even Slavoj Zizek). Moreover, I suppose that you disagree with aesthetic purism (Harold Bloom) or certain relativisms (Stanley Fish and his interpretative communities, poststructuralism and deconstruction). I would like to know your reflections on current literary theory - for instance what about the New Historicism of Stephen Greenblatt?DS: I remember a splendid note of Lenin's in his Philosophical Notebooks, where he says that to an intelligent materialist critic an intelligent idealist critic is nearer than a stupid materialist one. So allow me to begin by doubting, not the existence or importance of, but the exclusive nature of ideological kinships. For example, I've followed step by step almost the whole of Jameson's opus, especially since we collaborated in the journal ScienceFiction Studies and other venues, while I have used Eagleton's Theory of Literature as the best introductory survey in my graduate teaching at some point but otherwise not learned too much from him. On the contrary, I've been deeply influenced by and am still writing in the wake of his teacher, my friend Raymond Williams.I loved some of Bloom's early works, say on Romanticism, but when he became an ideologue pure and simple, that stopped. This is the problem with most postmodernists: while declaiming against absolutisms, their supposed relativism is more absolute than that of most modernists. I do make an exception for some so-called deconstructionists such as most Guattari and the later Derrida (after the Marx book). My criterion is simple: what can I learn and build upon from any critic? A little from Greenblatt, almost nothing from Fish, a lot from the materialist feminists, how to charm people by bringing together philosophy and pop culture from Zizek (and of course how to fight against the prohibition against talking about communism).AL: Metamorphoses of Science Fiction is a masterpiece. I think that the first world edition was in 1977. We have lived through a lot of events since then: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Dayton agreement, September 11 attacks, war in Iraq and Afghanistan, financial and economic crises, Wikileaks' revelations, and so on. Also literary theory has changed: the rise of feminism (Nancy Armstrong, Elaine Showalter, etc.), the rise of gay, lesbian and queer theory (Judith Butler), and so forth. What would you change of your book in order to update it? Or perhaps you would prefer not to add or modify anything (I see there is a Croatian version in 2010, maybe that is the answer to my question).DS: It was published in 1979 but written in the preceding ten years. I don't think the book can be updated: it should remain as it is, branded (as Brecht said, like calves on the ranch) by its historical date: the epoch of hopeful High Modernism. What must and therefore can be updated are some of my views - though NOT my values. I dislike renegades. I have done this, as concerns both my epistemological approach and, in particular, some aspects of the Fantasy genre, in numerous articles of the last fifteen years, the longest of which is the Afterword to the Festschrift for me edited by Patrick Parrinder, Learning from Other Worlds (Liverpool University Press 2000). …

Las casas solariegas de la hidalguía gallega. Estudio sobre las casas de los condes de Amarante en el siglo XVIII

The enrichment of the Galician nobility during the Modern epoch would be reflected, among other things, on their settlement in urban areas, leaving their old homesteads, with few exceptions, in the hands of their administrators, of their householders or totally uninhabited. In this article we analize the specific example of the houses accumulated by the counts of Amarante along the modern epoch, in which major works would be carried out at various times of the eighteenth century, although major investments would be concentrated in those buildings where the counts were residing with their families.

CONFLICT OF IMPERSONAL AND PERSONAL SOURCE OF SOCIAL LIFE IN THE ERA OF MODERNISM AND POSTMODERNISM

In the article investigated the epoch of modernism and postmodernism on the basis of conception of four levels of essential powers of person. Proved that the anthropological content of these eras is the conflict personal and impersonal manifestations of social life.

Conservatism and Intellectual Class Challenge

The authors of the article view the intellectual class as one of the key sources of social dynamics in the epoch of Modern. This class is the social medium of the aim at novelty and progress, the ability to “create future”, and at the same time of the maximalist and social intolerance tendency fraught with social revolutions. The authors tend to share the conservative understanding of revolution as the social development disruption, but at the same time consider the conservative ideological tradition to be not just antirevolutionary thinking, but also the experience of the revolution sublimation/overcoming. In particular, conservatism in the article is viewed as the formula of the intellectual class self-restraint and the platform for its compromise/symbiosis with military-aristocratic estate (which was relevant for early Modern epoch) and with the bureaucracy (in the period of the mature and late Modern). The authors consider British conservatism to be one of the most successful manifestations of such symbiosis, based on national loyalty and adapted aristocraticism (aristocratic personality type open for assimilation by the representatives of other social strata) and manifested in the political culture of the Victorian epoch. Those principles still remain relevant as the basis for the present-day type of conservative ideology. At the same time axiological agenda of conservatism alters depending on the actual configuration of historical challenges. According to the authors, the relevant conservative value model for modern Russia should be the combination of the sovereignty complex understanding, united society formation, conservative democracy model, principles of public spirit, political and intellectual freedom.

L'image de la mégalopole : comprendre la complexité visuelle de Mexico

The image of the city has always been an important source and tool for defining cultural communities that dwell within. Distinctive street patterns as well as the building scenographies in different cultures and periods document the technological, economic, and cultural capacities of the cities’ inhabitants. From Aristotle’s practical philosophy up to the current tourist view of the city, where the relics of the past –cathedrals, castles, or town halls– serve as symbolic attractors, the heterogeneous image of the city reveals interesting insights into the history of civilization. Beyond the abstract data used in economic or social sciences research –numbers of inhabitants, income, productivity, and other statistical information–, the image (and also the imaginaries) of the city with its high cultural complexity is a topic of research for critical art history which offers unexpected and refreshing material for a transdisciplinary dialogue on the city as the most essential form of human culture.Since the beginning of the 21st century, the city form and image have changed considerably, in quantitative and qualitative terms. The increasing number and size of the world’s megalopolises (cities with more than 10 millions inhabitants), mainly in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, marks a new epoch of city culture with different structural and aesthetic parameters than those of traditional Old European cities.This article reviews, first, the new visual constructions of the megalopolis, second, its transformation into artistic and documentary images (photograph, film, digital art, etc.), and third, how they are catalysed into collective mental imaginaries. As an example, I examine Mexico City, a megalopolis of about 20 million inhabitants where cultural fragments of the prehispanic past, the colonial period, and the modern epoch have left their visual traces, to constitute a vital collage; one that has many contrasts as well as the occasional clash in cross-cultural processes. Supported by the recent tendencies of Bildwissenschaft (visual studies), this article tries to develop new perspectives of research on the critical phenomena at the beginning 21st century from within the current polycentric and hyperurbanized world.

CHARLES TAYLOR'SA SECULAR AGEAND SECULARIZATION IN EARLY MODERN GERMANY

In this essay I discuss the historical adequacy of Charles Taylor's philosophical history of secularization, as presented in hisA Secular Age. I do so by situating it in relation to the contextual historiography of secularization in early modern Europe, with a particular focus on developments in the German Empire. Considering how profoundly conceptions of secularization have been bound to competing religious and political programmes, we must begin our discussion by entertaining the possibility that modern philosophical and historiographic conceptions of secularization might themselves be outcrops of this unfinished competition. Peter Gordon has rightly observed that Taylor's philosophical history of secularization is a Catholic one, and that this is bound up with a specific (neo-Thomist) view of secularization as a theological and ecclesiological “disembedding” of rational subjectivity from its prior embodiment in a sacral body, community (church), and cosmos. Taylor delivers this history in his “reform master narrative”: that certain fundamental religious and cultural reforms or changes in early modern Europe wrought the secularization responsible for a modern epoch of “unbelief”.

Ethnic and State History as Determinant of Ethnic Fractionalization

This paper presents a new dataset which codes for the approximate founding date of the largest ethnic group in the world's states as well as the wave of state creation in which the particular country emerged. All contemporary questions of nationalism and ethnic conflict begin with the imperfect overlap between ethnic/national communities and political units. Ethnic fractionalization indices provide a quantitative measure of one manifestation of this: the degree of ethnic pluralism in a state. Ethnic fractionalization is produced by the overlay of political fragmentation atop ethnic fragmentation. There are currently close to 200 states overlaid on top of some 6000 ethnic groups producing a variegated ethnic grid that varies from state to state. Fractionalization will tend to decrease as ethnicity and politics move toward congruence. This can occur for three major reasons: a) the number of political units increases; b) the number of ethnic groups decreases or certain large ethnic nuclei attract members away from smaller groups; and/or c) the fit between ethnicity and politics improves. Unfortunately, with the partial exception of Philip Roeder's 1961 and 1985 dataset (Roeder 2001), only cross-sectional ethnic fractionalization data is available. This means that we cannot adequately test proposition a). However, we can derive indicators for the arguably more important processes b) and c). (Bockstette et al. 2002) have already demonstrated a significant negative association between the date of state formation (and degree of indigenous control of the state at the time) and the ethnolinguistic fractionalization index (ELF). Older indigenous political histories tend to be associated with less fractionalized states today. However this was not the primary purpose of their work, so the association was simply noted as an interesting univariate relationship. This paper attempts to build on this state history finding, but goes beyond it by parsing out ethnic and state formation variables. The foundation date of the largest ethnic group in a state serves as a measure of b) above, because we assume that older state-dominant ethnic groups have had more time to assimilate subaltern groups than newer state-dominant groups. According to ethnosymbolist theory, modern nations typically form around premodern ethnic 'core' groups which often engaged in social and ethnic assimilation prior to the modern epoch (Smith 1986). For modernists, modern state creation begins the process of nation-building and diversity reduction. Regardless of which approach one favours, it is worth noting that ethnic groups and states serve as assimilationist actors - large fractionalization-reducing ethnic nuclei - within multi-ethnic states. One question this paper seeks to adjudicate is whether ethnic pluralities or states are more important actors in this process. At one time, dominant minorities were common. With the decline of empire, dominant minorities give way to dominant pluralities or majorities as popular sovereignty and democratization spread (Kaufmann 2004). (Connor 1994a: 39) notes that while fewer than 10 percent of states are ethnically homogeneous, a substantial majority of them have an ethnic majority. All but a handful of states have a significant plurality group. How to measure the founding date of the largest ethnic group? This date is defined as the first imagining of the group by a putative member of the group and is determined through consultation with historians and social scientists who possess expertise on the appropriate country. To tap c) above, the paper distinguishes five waves of state formation: a) pre-1815; b) 1815-1917; c) 1918-45; d) 1946-89; e) 1990-present. Here we posit a connection between the date of state formation and the degree of ethnic-nationalist self-determination. This is not a continuous or ordinal variable as there have been discrete waves of state formation punctuating long periods of relative calm. The relative balance between ethnic self-determination, desire for territorial aggrandizement and other-determination of boundaries governs the congruence of borders. We assume that states which largely emerge through secession from a modern state (1990-present) are most homogeneous. Those springing from the transformation of an early modern state (pre-1815) would be predicted to be next in ethno-national congruence. These should be followed by those which emerged in the wake of Versailles (1918-45) and which were animated at least in part by Wilsonian principles of ethno-national congruence, though largely by Great Power motives and the domestic desire for territory. Early secessions from land empires (many of 1815-1917) should follow, and, finally, decolonizations, where ethnic self-determination is least evident (most of 1946-89 state creations). We also test other popular determinants of ELF such as climate, terrain, colonizer, state size and various indicators of modernization and economic development from several leading datasets.

The image of the megalopolis – understanding the complex visual construction of Mexico City

AbstractThe image of the city has always been an important source and tool for defining cultural communities that dwell within. Distinctive street patterns as well as the building scenographies in different cultures and periods document the technological, economic, and cultural capacities of the cities’ inhabitants. From Aristotle’s practical philosophy up to the current tourist view of the city, where the relics of the past – cathedrals, castles, or town halls – serve as symbolic attractors, the heterogeneous image of the city reveals interesting insights into the history of civilization. Beyond the abstract data used in economic or social sciences research – numbers of inhabitants, income, productivity, and other statistical information – the image (and also the imaginaries) of the city with its high cultural complexity is a topic of research for critical art history which offers unexpected and refreshing material for a transdisciplinary dialogue on the city as the most essential form of human culture. Since the beginning of the 21 st century, the city form and image have changed considerably, in quantitative and qualitative terms. The increasing number and size of the world’s megalopolises (cities with more than 10 millions inhabitants), mainly in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, marks a new epoch of city culture with different structural and aesthetic parameters than those of traditional Old European cities.This article reviews, first, the new visual constructions of the megalopolis, second, its transformation into artistic and documentary images (photograph, film, digital art, etc.), and third, how they are catalysed into collective mental imaginaries. As an example, I examine Mexico City, a megalopolis of about 20 million inhabitants where cultural fragments of the prehispanic past, the colonial period, and the modern epoch have left their visual traces, to constitute a vital collage; one that has many contrasts as well as the occasional clash in cross-cultural processes. Supported by the recent tendencies of Bildwissenschaft (visual studies), this article tries to develop new perspectives of research on the critical phenomena at the beginning 21 st century from within the current polycentric and hyperurbanized world.

Hegelian Dialectics

This article is an attempt to trace the development of modern dialectics. George W.F. Hegel brought the method of dialectics to fruition through an analysis of the history of philosophy beginning with the ancient Greeks and ‘Oriental’ thought, before traversing the various stages which would eventually culminate in the philosophy of Hegel himself. The author of this article concentrates on the modern epoch in particular, whereby the rationalism of Descartes and the empiricism of Hume are opposed by Kant. Subsequently Kant is fiercely critiqued, by Fichte and Schelling among others, and the Hegelian philosophy emerges, to some extent, as the critique of this critique. Dialectics is the method of Marxism but it is the contention of the author that dialectical materialism (Marxism) cannot be appreciated without reference to Hegel, who was the first thinker to consciously apprehend the movement and interconnection of both thought and being – as totality. Marx made reference to Hegel as ‘that mighty thinker’ in the preface to his Magnus opus while Lenin was later to comment that it is impossible to understand Das Capital without ‘having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel's logic’. There is certainly a great deal of difference between Hegel and Marx but dialectics is the method, the thread, which runs through both.

Трансформация Мира: История xix Века. Главы из Книги

Трансформация Мира: История xix Века. Главы из Книги

Comparison of tertiary-center aneurysm location frequencies in 400 consecutive cases: Decreasing incidence of posterior communicating artery region aneurysms

Background:The growing number of community hospitals with neurointerventional services over the past decade has changed the type and complexity of cerebral aneurysms referred to tertiary centers. The authors hypothesized that this would be reflected in changes in the location frequencies of aneurysms treated now compared to before the widespread institution of endovascular coiling.Methods:Using a prospectively collected aneurysm database, aneurysm location frequencies were retrospectively reviewed for the last 200 consecutively treated aneurysms (2009–2010) and 200 consecutive aneurysms treated starting from May 1999 to December 2000. International Subarachnoid Aneurysm Trial (ISAT) aneurysm location nomenclature was utilized. Two-tailed Student's t-tests were used to compare means and Fisher exact tests were used to compare proportions.Results:The location frequencies of all aneurysms (ruptured and unruptured) treated in the 2000 epoch as compared to the modern epoch showed significant changes for middle cerebral aneurysms (12.0% vs. 21.0%, P = 0.014), posterior communicating (21.0% vs. 13.0%, P = 0.0001), and para-ophthalmic aneurysms (10.0% vs. 25.5%, P = 0.0002). For unruptured/elective aneurysms, the change in posterior communicating aneurysms was even more pronounced (27.8% vs 3.6%, P = 0.0001). The rate of aneurysm coiling at the center rose from 26% to 37% (P = 0.02).Conclusions:The significant reduction in the referrals to our tertiary center of less technically complex aneurysms (posterior communicating segment) and increased referrals of aneurysms not as amenable to coil embolization (middle cerebral artery) is likely attributable to the growth of neurointerventional services at community hospitals over the past 10 years.