Great Truth Research Articles

In My Opinion…

There is an old French proverb that roughly translates as follows: "The more it changes, the more it is the same." Fifty years ago when SPE was born, the US was still the world's dominant crude-oil producer—the giant oil fields of the Middle East were in the midst of development, and international oil prices were based on Gulf Coast prices less the cost of transport. But even then, industry and government strategists already were considering alternatives such as oil shale (intensely competitively bidding for acreage in Colorado), tight-gas formations (Project Plowshare promised nuclear stimulation), tar sands (an experimental plant at Bitumont, Alberta, ultimately spawned Suncor), and coal (the legacy of Fischer-Tropsch). …"All great truths begin as blasphemies," George Bernard Shaw. … Then, in the 1970s, OPEC was able to increase oil prices significantly through nationalization, and the US became a net oil importer. As a consequence of the rise in prices, the development of productive capacity in the North Sea, west Africa, and the deeper waters of the Gulf of Mexico was economically justified. Oil shale, tar sands, tight gas, and coal were on life support until the "gasoline shortage" of 1979–80, when they enjoyed a brief resuscitation that lasted about 3 years. … "Experience is the name everyone gives their mistakes," Oscar Wilde. … More recently, world energy demand has risen faster than supply, reaching a state of unstable equilibrium (demand of 84 million BOPD and supply of 87 million BOPD) that can be upset by unrest in any significant exporting country as perceived by the NYMEX traders, and prices have followed upward. As a result, tar-sand production has grown rapidly in Canada and Venezuela (despite being energy-intensive and environmentally suspect), and tight-gas production (including that from fractured shales and coal beds) has boomed. However, oil shale has remained dormant, and coal has been a non-starter. …"Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on," Winston Churchill. … Now, because the US is importing more than 50% of the oil it consumes and imports of refined products also are increasing, the incumbent masters in Washington, DC—while admitting addiction to oil—have belatedly recognized the uncertainty associated with US energy supply [e.g., Putin (Gazprom vs. the European Union and total control of production and transport, Chavez (second round of nationalization in Venezuela, including the Orinoco Tar Belt, and unfettered political power at home and in other parts of South America), and Morales (third round of nationalization in Bolivia without the resources, human and financial, needed to operate)].

Market economy for scientists

Changes in environment and location are a part of all professional careers and particularly suit the international nature of scientific research. Young scientists often undertake their post-doctoral positions at different universities in an attempt to carve out a niche in a competitive arena, and established senior scientists regularly advance their careers and improve their research by moving between institutes. However, in many cases the decision to move is based not on ‘noble' motives, but simply on a bigger pay cheque. This should not come as a surprise. Why should the financial interests of scientists differ from those of any other profession? We live in a society in which bills must be paid, material wealth gives status, frequent holidays are almost a civil right, and the quality of healthcare and education increasingly depend on one's ability to pay for ‘extras'. There are, quite obviously, real advantages to earning more money—a fact that has not escaped the attention of scientists. Yet there still lingers an image of scientists as dedicated individuals interested only in ‘higher' goals and the pursuit of great truths, rather than the more ‘profane' matters of salary and financial gain. Indeed, and perhaps because of this, scientists often deny any interest in material matters. This attitude, despite the sincerity with which it is held, might ultimately be misguided. Science cannot afford to send out the message that the most qualified minds should expect to be the most poorly paid in comparison with their peers. Clearly the status quo does not provide fair remuneration for committed scientists—on whom the future of the world's biggest economies depends. Even scientists who genuinely see research as a vocation might not disagree with their non-scientist spouses on what constitutes a fair salary and how to make adequate provision for their retirement. Along with today's materialistic attitude to status comes the development of a real market for high-flying scientists, driven by universities and research institutes on the prowl for talent. Their reasoning can be quite diverse: some institutes want to spot a potential Nobel prize-winner, such that the honour shines on the institute as well as the individual; some regions or countries want to jump-start research activities by attracting the best minds; and others simply know that a quality performer can boost the ranking of an institute and result in more research funding. However diverse the reasons, the basic motivation is the same: institutes or departments work in a competitive arena and their strategy is to buy the best ‘players'. Indeed, the analogy of the transfer markets in professional sports is particularly appropriate. Wealthy clubs can afford good players and the results are success and greater riches. The same is increasingly true of research institutes. On the surface, this might seem to be a win–win situation. For the scientist, the move to a new job usually means a higher salary, an improved lifestyle and better financial support to tackle more challenging research projects. For the receiving institute, there is a measurable increase in its competitiveness and a new source of income through grants and overheads. In addition, the presence of a ‘star' is sure to attract other skilled researchers, thus raising the overall quality of research throughout the institute. However, what is left out of this win–win calculation is the fact that the gains of one institute are inevitably the losses of another. The researcher who leaves might take with them personnel, grants and prestige, all of which have a knock-on effect on the institute and its remaining staff. For a small institute—or, indeed, country—struggling to strengthen its research, the departure of even one crucial scientist can be devastating. The feeling of unfair competition with rich universities is certainly justified—indeed, in contrast to player transfers in professional sports, no compensation is paid to the ‘team' that loses the crucial researcher. The increasing enthusiasm for portable grants in Europe should therefore be regarded with some caution, if only because they might lead to these types of problem if left unregulated or unchecked. It is conceivable that portable grants will increase the already significant ‘brain drain' by encouraging senior researchers to leave poorer regions. This is certainly not in the long-term interests of Europe. University rectors and managers of research institutes should therefore be forewarned of the increasing trend of a market economy for scientists and take better care of their crucial staff. Those in a position to provide moral, financial and emotional support for their researchers should do so, or they might lose their most valuable assets: their scientists. If the market economy for researchers stimulates such pro-active reactions, its overall effect will certainly improve the image of science as both a noble and financially rewarding profession—which might not be such a bad thing after all.

Websites of note

Websites of note

Students Remember What They Do

Team Building—Problem Solving by Martin Bartholow, p 599. The Journal enables us to share many innovative ideas. For example, the 2005 Pimentel Award address by James Spencer (p 528) describes the college environment, yet Spencer’s “Great Truths” are nevertheless appropriate in a high school setting. Great Truth #3 (p 532), “Telling is not teaching. I cannot transfer an idea intact from my head to the head of a learner.” is familiar to many teachers. Intuitively we know that we must engage learners—how to engage them is always the big question. There is general agreement that understanding is constructed dynamically and is facilitated by using active modes of learning. Spencer describes POGIL (Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning), which provides a model for structuring active learning in a classroom. There are also many ways to engage students outside the conventional classroom. Silva et al. (p 557) provide an example of using art to engage students—a beautiful exhibition of award-winning periodic tables created by students. Raddo (p 571) gives another example of engaging students through art: using comics to teach laboratory safety in an entertaining way. Gordin (p 561) cites evidence that students gifted in the arts (especially those with musical ability) excel in mathematics and physical sciences. He discusses the contributions of several chemists whose names may be familiar to you, including Borodin, Kekule, and Mendeleev. Borodin’s contributions to chemistry research may be less than has been supposed; however, in addition to his musical accomplishments, he was very active in paving the way for women to enter the sciences. Developing new and better collaborative tools appropriate for classroom teachers and students with multiple teaching and learning styles is a difficult assignment, but these articles demonstrate that the JCE can help.

A. a. markley. Stateliest Measures: Tennyson and the Literature of Greece and Rome. Pp. x+238. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. £35.

A. A. Markley rightly acknowledges the assistance of the late Susan Gates, Rosalind Boyce, and other staff members at the Tennyson Research Centre at Lincoln, for the most useful parts of this book record the information the author found there. From Horace's Ars Poetica, the young Tennyson translated: ‘you gain your point, if by a fine & artful connection you can make a new word out of two already known’; Markley spots a connection between this and the ‘compound words in his early poems, for example … “tendriltwine” and “cedarshadowy” ’. Given the evasions of and yet connections to contemporary politics in The Princess and Idylls of the King, Tennyson's early marginalia in his edition of Horace are illuminating. Of Ode 1.15: ‘some say, perhaps w/no great truth, that this Ode was composed against Antony & Cleopatra: the fact is these commentators have a dextrous knack of twisting whatever H says or does into a compliment to Augustus or an allusion to the civil wars.’ And Tennyson made a charming addition to the 1817 edition of Virgil's Opera, inscribed to him by his father: ‘A. Tennyson, Aetat 9 | ex dono patris ejus | amicissimi’. Opposite this, words the like of which (save for the twist in their tail) have occurred to many another 9-year-old before and since: ‘A. Tennyson | —Somersby | 3 in Lincolnshire | 4 in England | 5 in Europe | 6 in the world’, then ‘7 in the universe’—only this is crossed out and replaced by ‘7 in the air | 8 in space’. Markley does not comment on the second thought, but it is good to see Tennyson, even so young, remembering to do justice to the air as he was later to do again and again in his verse: ‘the languid air did swoon’ (‘The Lotos-Eaters’); ‘a soft air fans the cloud apart’ (‘Tithonus’).

George Holmes Howison: "The City of God" and Personal Idealism

American Personalism is sometimes referred to as having East and West Coast varieties: Boston Personalism, founded by Bordan Parker Bowne and carried on by Edgar Sheffield Brightman, Peter Bertocci, and Martin Luther King, Jr. among others, and California Personalism, founded by George Holmes and carried on by Ralph Tyler Flewelling.1 But like so many shorthand notions it doesn't quite work. No one really carried on Howison's multi-personalitarian ism. created a radically democratic notion of personal idealism that extended all the way to God, who was no more the ultimate monarch, no longer the only ruler and creator of the universe, but the ultimate democrat in eternal relation to other eternal persons. It is no wonder found no disciples among the religious, for whom his thought was heretical, or the non-religious, who thought his proposals too religious; only McTaggart's idealist atheism or Thomas Davidson's Apeirionism seem to resemble Howisons personal idealism. By all accounts George Holmes was one of the great philosophical teachers of his age. He helped create the philosophy department at the University of California at Berkeley, started the Library with the gift of his books, and participated in one of the great philosophical debates of his age. But himself believed he had discovered a great truth and preached it. Ralph Tyler Flewelling called him a Prophet of Freedom (1957, 5). His biographers John Wright Buckham and George Malcolm Stratton, who compiled a selection of his articles, described him as an Old Testament prophet. William Ernest Hocking, who had been a younger colleague of at Berkeley, said Howison comes as near to Elijah the prophet, and in some ways to Simon Peter, as any human being I expect to meet in my time (quoted in Buckham and Stratton 1936, 13). This prophet label captures two aspects of Howison's life and character: his absolute belief in the person and, like Abraham, his wanderings from St. Louis to Boston, and to Germany, his one year appointments, and work as a philosophical tutor, until finally settling in California while discovering and securing a place to preach his doctrine. For Howison, personal idealism was more than a philosophical posi tion, it was the Truth. But he created no school and had no disciples. This was a

Reading with understanding: Interpretive method in Chinese philosophy

Let me join Professor Mollgaard in encouraging reading. I favor philosophical reading. Mollgaard seems to reject this, although his argument seems directed more at philosophy as a discipline than at explaining philosophical reading. So let me fill the void by giving the missing account. I start with an ambiguity in the term "read": "1. Interpret written material; 2. Utter written words" (Encarta Diclionaty). Obviously, my approach favors the first definition. I will not respond to Mollgaard's mischaracterizations of my position beyond using them heuristically to illustrate points in my condensed argument about interpretation and meaning. The crux of our difference is this. Mollgaard's approach focuses on how to achieve a special status--authoritative interpreter. Mine eschews status or authority. It asks "what form of argument validly supports conclusions about meaning/interpretation." No single answer to this is the philosophical approach to meaning or interpretation. Philosophers debate about and advocate a range of argument forms. I will focus on one widely shared, core argument form and two important varieties. Quine, followed by Davidson, proposed a method for assessing meaning hypotheses. He called it "radical translation." We test meaning hypotheses indirectly. We look at how assigning different whole theories of meaning (references/denotations to terms and functions of these linked systematically to the structural form of sentences) affects our holistic account of what was written or uttered. The two varieties address different properties of the resultant set of translated sentences that count "in favor" of the meaning hypotheses that generate them. Two rival principles, "charity" and "humanity," give different answers: truth and reason. For the former, the greater truth of one set of resultant sentences identifies the correct interpretation. A correct meaning hypothesis yields more truth in translating the strings in the text. What, for example, would show that Mollgaard's printed tokens of "Hartsen" refer to me? Assuming it does makes more of those sentences turn out to be true than if we take them to refer to some other "Hansen." This creates a

Two Great Truths: A New Synthesis of Scientific Naturalism and Christian Faith

Two Great Truths: A New Synthesis of Scientific Naturalism and Christian Faith

Shelley's Unwriting of "Mont Blanc"

Shelley's Unwriting of Mont Blanc Christopher Hitt Today, the critic who would tackle "Mont Blanc" must confront more than one kind of mountain. Along with the eponymous subject of the poem looms an overwhelming mountain of criticism, accumulated over the years like (to mix metaphors only slightly) snowflakes on an alpine glacier. We might say, borrowing another image from Shelley's poem, that the critic who ventures to write on "Mont Blanc" may well have the nagging sense that any new tributary to this "vast river" of ink will amount to little more than a "feeble brook."1 In recent years it has become something like a prerequisite for commentators to allude to this predicament—sometimes explicitly, but more often implicitly, by noting the poem's status as central or pivotal not only within the Shelley oeuvre but also within the discourse of Romantic or nineteenth-century studies. Thus, in a paradox Shelley might have enjoyed, the assertion of a given critical work's importance (by virtue of the poem's importance) is shadowed by the distinct possibility of its relative triviality (since so much has already been written). In opening my essay with these observations, I am, of course,attempting to stake my own claim in the debate. My direct acknowledgement of the vast mountain before me is admittedly a rhetorical gambit, a tacit assurance to the reader that this snowflake is unique—that although it may not, as in the description of the avalanche from Prometheus Unbound, loosen "some great truth" that leaves literary critics "shaken to their roots" (II.iii.37–42), at least it will make a meaningful contribution to the critical discussion. Yet my opening is not merely strategic. My description of "Mont Blanc" as a sort of occasion for the textual sublime is also a convenient analog for the way I believe Shelley himself experienced the landscape about which he wrote. Just as critics must consider the poem in the context of a vast discursive network, so Shelley was cognizant of a comparable network as he viewed, contemplated, and poetically represented Mont Blanc. The speaker of the poem, after all, as he faces the alpine scene, becomes aware of a cacophony of voices: the Ravine of Arve is a "many-voiced vale" (13), a conduitof "ceaseless motion" and "unresting sound" (32–33), its caverns" echoing to the Arve's commotion" (30). One of my main contentions here will be [End Page 139] that the poem must be understood in large part as a record of Shelley's experience with, and response to, these voices. In my view, readers have tended to overlook or greatly underestimate the importance of this aspect of "Mont Blanc." Even those critics who have explicitly focused on the poem's intertextuality,2 or who have rightly recognized the poem's self-reflexivity—its awareness of both its internal workings and, more germane here, its situation within a larger literary and aesthetic context—have fallen short in pursuing the implications of that recognition. Not the least of these implications, I shall argue, is a new perspective on one of the great conundrums in all of English literature, the famously enigmatic question with which the poem concludes: And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, If to the human mind's imaginings Silence and solitude were vacancy? (142–44) My reading will thus be part formalist and part historicist. That is, in addition to reading the text closely, with attention to its thematic concerns and its rhetorical operations, I shall show how the poem demands to be understood in the larger context of literary history. A third concern, moreover, will become explicit toward the end of my essay. For I shall ultimately argue, against those critics who regard the poem as an expression of philosophical idealism, or who see the actual mountain as more or less irrelevant to the text,3 that "Mont Blanc" expresses a radical but redemptive skepticism which accepts, even embraces, the otherness of wilderness. In a sense that I shall explain, my aim is to recover—or, rather, to show that Shelley aims to recover—the mountain, the real mountain, of the poem. I. Letters...

Traditional Religious Practices amongst African-Caribbean Mothers and Community Othermothers

African women in the diaspora have been described as not only the essential bearers of tradition but also the ‘principal exponents’ and protectors of traditional African-derived religion. In their book Lionheart Gal, the Sistren Theatre Collective argues that tales of Nanny of the Maroons bouncing bullets off her bottom might indeed be a description of something that literally took place. It may on the other hand be referring to a greater truth such as the power of the female body to bring forth life and to protect her family and community from destruction. Not only was Nanny an exceptional woman, but her power was also underpinned by material and cultural factors. Culturally she drew on the tradition of the Ashanti Queen-Mother and materially on the control which African women had over agriculture in Maroon society.

‘More mighty than the waves of the sea’: toilers, tariffs, and the income tax movement, 1880–1913

Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments of social progress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant; fail to use them and it is weak. Walter Lippmann In the spring of 18...

Scientific naturalism: a great truth that got distorted

Scientific naturalism in the generic sense is the doctrine that there can be no supernatural interruptions of the world’s causal processes. This idea, which emerged in Greece in the 6th century BCE, was formulated most adequately in Plato’s theistic version. However, in appropriating Greek philosophy, Christian thinkers first modified and then rejected its naturalism. Scientific naturalism emerged again in the 18th and 19th centuries, but because of ideas retained from the supernaturalistic mechanism that became associated with science in the 17th century, naturalism appeared in a distorted version, one that is inadequate for science itself as well as incompatible with Christian faith or any other significantly religious view. The great truth of scientific naturalism needs to be rescued from this distorted version of it.

The Luckiest Generation

The Luckiest Generation

Ziya Gökalp on National Education

l references in this paper are indicated after the following edition: Ziya Gokalp, Tirkfgili his training included Islam (ilm-i kelam) and Sufism (tasavvuf), while the lessons of Arabic and Persian were taught to him by his uncle. Subsequently he continued his studies at the higher veterinary school (Baytar Mekteb-i Alisi), to be arrested upon graduation for illegal political activities. He studied French first from Ismail Hakkl, then by himself. the future, he wrote in the article Babamin Vasiyeti (My Father's Testament) about the story of his self-education. One year prior to his father's death an acquaintance in Diyarbaklr proposed to send him, Ziya, to Europe to study, whereupon father answered: The young men going to Europe to study can only learn the European sciences, while our national knowledge will remain misplaced. medrese entrants, if they find a good teacher, can to some extent master our religious and national knowledge. However, they will remain devoid of the European sciences. Our young men have to learn French on the one hand, and on the other learn Arabic. They will thus master the Western science and the Eastern knowledge to perfection. It is through their combination that revelations are going to be made of the great truths of our nation (see Kifiik Mecmua, birinci cilt, says: 18, 2 Ekim 1922; see also Ziya Gokalp, Terbyenin Sosyal ve Kiiltiirel Temellei, Istambul, 1992: 9). One of the biographers of Ziya Gokalp remembers another detail of the same story. Seeing the young Ziya's zeal to study, friends and relatives advised to send him to Europe, however his father used to say: If he goes to Europe, he will become a gadvur (infidel), but staying will make a donkey out of him. Gokalp used to say: In order not to become a g&vur, I stayed out of Europe, but to avoid becoming a

Julian of Norwich ‐ her relevance to healing today

AbstractIn the 14th century, Julian of Norwich had a series of intense visions which, after many years' contemplation and reflection, she put down on paper in her book ‘Revelations of Divine Love’. Her teaching is based on a very simple formula — God is all wisdom and all power and all love. Therefore, even if things seem very dark, all is going according to plan towards an ultimate fulfilment. Hence, Julian's most famous statement “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well”. It is our spiritual blindness that prevents us from realising this great truth. Sin and suffering appear unavoidable yet they have no abiding substance as they will ultimately be transmuted into a great good. Julian is remarkable for her very modern psychological insights. Thus she sees the wrath of God as being a projection of our own anger on to God who, she states, never shows anger as he is fully satisfied with the integrity of his creation. She has much to say about the ‘super‐ego’, that part of our soul which is incapable of sin and she stresses the need for us to come, through contemplation, to know our true natures. Julian puts great emphasis on joy — indeed she introduced the word ‘enjoyment’ into the English language. She also, like St. Paul, affirms that the joys awaiting us will make our present suffering pale into insignificance. Her theology is of particular relevance to humanity at this troubled stage in our history and offers a foundation for healing in the truly holistic sense. Copyright © 2003 Whurr Publishers Ltd.

All great truths are iconoclastic: selective decontamination of the digestive tract moves from heresy to level 1 truth.

The objective was to compare evidence of the effectiveness, costs and safety of the traditional parenteral antibiotic-only approach against that gathered from 53 randomised trials involving more than 8,500 patients and six meta-analyses on selective decontamination of the digestive tract (SDD) to control infection on the intensive care unit (ICU). PHILOSOPHY: Traditionalists believe that all infections are due to breaches of hygiene except those established in the first 2 days, and that all micro-organisms can cause death. In contrast, newer insights show that transmission via the hands of carers are responsible only for infections occurring after one week, and that only a limited range of 15 potential pathogens contribute to mortality. INTERVENTIONS TO PREVENT ICU INFECTION: The traditional approach is based on hand disinfection aiming at the prevention of transmission of all micro-organisms, to control all infections that occur after 2 days on the ICU. The second feature is the restrictive use of systemic antibiotics, only in cases of microbiologically proven infection. In contrast, SDD aims to control the three types of infection: primary, secondary endogenous and exogenous due to 15 potential pathogens. The classical SDD tetralogy comprises four components: (i) a parenteral antibiotic, cefotaxime, administered for three days to prevent primary endogenous infections typically occurring "early"; (ii) the oropharyngeal and enteral antimicrobials, polymyxin E, tobramycin and amphotericin B administered in throat and gut throughout the treatment on the ICU to prevent secondary endogenous infections tending to develop "late"; (iii) a high standard of hygiene to control transmission of potential pathogens; and (iv) surveillance samples of throat and rectum to monitor the efficacy of the treatment. (i) Infectious morbidity; (ii) mortality; (iii) antimicrobial resistance; and (iv) costs. Properly designed trials on hand disinfection have never demonstrated a reduction in either pneumonia and septicaemia, or mortality. Two randomised trials using restrictive antibiotic policies failed to show a survival benefit at 28 days. In both trials the proportion of resistant isolates obtained from the lower ways was >60% despite significantly less use of antibiotics in the test group. A formal cost effectiveness analysis of the traditional antibiotic policies has not been performed. On the other hand, two meta-analyses have shown that SDD reduces the odds ratio for lower airway infections to 0.35 (0.29-0.41) and mortality to 0.80 (0.69-0.93), with a 6% overall mortality reduction from 30% to 24%. No increase in the rate of super infections due to resistant bacteria could be demonstrated over a period of 20 years of clinical research. Four randomised trials found the cost per survivor to be substantially lower in patients receiving SDD than for those traditionally managed. The traditionalists still rely on level 5 evidence, i.e. expert opinion, with a grade E recommendation, whilst the proponents of SDD are able to cite level 1 evidence allowing a grade A recommendation in their attempts to control infection on the ICU. The main reason for SDD not being widely used is the primacy of opinion over evidence.

Who We Are, A History of Popular Nationalism by Robert H. Wiebe (review)

674 Рецензии/Reviews fell along with other great movements , democracy and socialism. A history of nationalism does not make sense without them...” (p. xv). Thus wherever he discusses nationalism , it is usually in the company of these two other elements. He discusses all three simultaneously in the larger context of the growth of state power. It is this last entity that has so frequently co-opted the benign and admirable element of popular nationalism and perverted it for its own ends. In Wiebe’s view, it is the state that is the real villain. In his preface, Wiebe states that he wants us to see nationalism as something that is “so thoroughly human that no simple judgment does it justice” (xvii). In other words, nationalism is so complex that, by itself, it cannot be blamed for the ills of the past century. He spends a great deal of effort in presenting evidence attesting to its variability and complexity while attempting to show that other elements are to blame. Chapter 1, “Thinking About Nationalism ”, opens with the question Wiebe uses as the background to his discussion: “How did educatedWesterners come to make enemies of an inspiration that has changed the lives of billions?” (p.1). He also gives his own optimistic and benign definition of nationalism: “Nationalism is the desire among people who believe they share a common ancestry and a common destiny to live under their people is told as the one of an ancient civilization that survived many troubles yet was almost destroyed during the Holocaust. What happened after the horrific events of the Holocaust are, therefore, shown as a happy ending. This catalogue, however , addresses present concerns by raising the specter of anti-Semitism in Lithuania with the great truth and accuracy. Robert STACY Robert H. Wiebe, Who We Are, A History of Popular Nationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). 268 pp. Bibliography, Index. ISBN: 0-691-09023-8. Who We Are is the late Robert Wiebe’s history and assessment of popular nationalism, its development , and influence in the 19th and 20th centuries. Wiebe’s book is very general in its coverage and highly selective in the elements chosen to present this story.The author’s stated purpose is to trace “nationalism’s rise and decline as a popular movement , first in Europe, then elsewhere in the world. Nationalism rose and 675 Ab Imperio, 4/2003 just as well include the strength and elasticity of family-kin relations or the perceived meaning of the homeland among the people in the group. In discussing migration’s importance and effects, he tells how some groups emigrated toAmerica and formed enclaves . Some had relatively weak ties back to their homeland (for example, the Germans); others formed groups that substantially sustained the nationalist movements in their point of origin (for example, the Irish). Chapter 3, “Changing Contexts,” explains how nationalism developed and evolved within two major contexts, particularly during the 40 years preceding the First World War. The first context, already mentioned, was the combination of democracy and socialism and their uneasy relationship with state control. The second context was nationalism developing in company and competition with the increasing awareness and importance of language, race, and religion. Again, he illustrates his broad narrative with specific examples . He concludes with the observation that by 1914 nationalism had been largely co-opted by the states. This appropriation of popular movements was accomplished by several means. Foremost among these were anti-populist trends, success in eliminating socialism and democracy, increased state-sponsored militarism, and the selective inclusion of linguistic , racial, and religious movements. own government on land sacred to their history” (p. 5). Wiebe sees nationalism as a 19th century solution to the problem of identity that emerged when previously existing institutions that had provided identity began to collapse. He makes an important distinction in stating that he is talking about an idea of national identity based on broad popular appeal (thus, Popular Nationalism). Wiebe warns us to not assume that popular nationalism is necessarily spontaneous or democratic. He also, for the first of many times, cautions us not to mistake state patriotism for a genuinely popular nationalism. Chapter 2, “European Origins”, is a...

Staatlichkeit und nationale Identitätsbildung: Dalmatien in Vormärz und Revolution by Konrad Clewing (review)

REVIEWS 143 socially;but the analysistends towards building up an 'average'view within the parameters of Romanian affirmation rather than breaking down cases individually. The social and political contexts offered are too hasty and allusive, a problem exacerbated when the work is addressed at a foreign audience:thereis no attempt, for instance, to give the readerelementarydata about the lives of the authorsanalysed,or even referencesthereto.This means thatthe socialexplanationsMitu offersforthe appearanceof argumentsabout Romanianness are reduced to secondary generalizations, for instance on competition forpositionswithinthe Habsburgbureaucracy(p. 22); elsewhere, key tenets are dismissed as 'the outcome of a rudimentary process of stereotype-formation'(p. 202). This may indeed be the case, but it tells us perhaps less than we need to know about how these stereotypes actually function. So, for all the fine observations about the ideological implications and undertonesof a given statement,thereis a shortageof social contextualization and demonstrable explanation. Stress is laid on the social particularity of the Transylvanian situation; but after all, similar motifs such as nationalistposturingas response to foreign slander crop up in the writings of Romanians in the Principalities,not to mention those of other nations of the region. This suggeststhat the identity strategiesof the nineteenth century had a rather more oblique relationship with social finalities than the one suggestedby Mitu here. But these disagreements about the organization of the argument do not render Mitu's fundamentalresearch invalid. He has produced an excellently organized piece of work with a thorough bibliography(and an index, which the Romanian edition lacked).The translator,a non-native speaker,has done a valiantjob with a difficulttext, although the Romanian titles in the critical apparatusshouldhave been left in the original. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies A. DRACE-FRANCIS University College London Clewing, Konrad. Staatlichkeit undnationale Identitdtsbildung: Dalmatien in Vormdrz und Revolution.Sudosteuropaische Arbeiten, I09. R. Oldenbourg, Mtinchen, 200I. 464 pp. Maps. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography. Indexes. C49.70. VENICE could not be unbuiltin a day. The revolutionaryeffectsof Napoleon's first great military campaign of I796 and the consequent I797 Treaty of Campo Formiowere dissolvedin the course of a year by the Vienna I8I4-15 settlement. Wiping a state like Venice off the map appeared easy enough. Militarilyit was, and the award to Austriaof so much of it certainlygave the French a more secure left flank in the eastern Mediterranean. Once the Egyptian adventure was over, however, matters of closer import led to no fewerthan fivemajorchanges involvingthe formerVenetianterritoriesbefore the post-Napoleonic peace got underway. Apart from the Ionian Islands, which were held not so snuglyunder Britishcontrol, the Venetian lands were reassembledunderAustriansovereignty,togetherwithwhathad, before I797, been the separate Lombardlands. The whole Vienna systemwas permeated I44 SEER, 8 ,I, I 2003 with what may be termed 'Opportunity with Albatross' zones. Austria had several such, involving leadership of the German Confederation, her Polish holdings,and, of course,herenlargedItalo-SlavicspheresincludingDalmatia. While being the 'Constable'of the GreatPowersforItalyand the Adriaticwas an enormousopportunity,itwas simultaneously,however,a potentialliability, the more so as Croatiawas not only a sub-kingdomof Hungary, but formed a substantialchunk of the Austrian 'MilitaryFrontier'with Turkey. Dalmatia was, moreover, a place of true cross-currents,with Italian, Croatian, and Magyarelements combining with Austrianand Germaninfluences. Wars and insurrectionsbefore and after Campo Formio had led to grave consequences for the overall Dalmatian and neighbouring economies. So much of the commercialandindustrialactivityconcomitantwiththeremaking of the Austriansystemof government constituteda 'catching-up',markedby an imperative need for infrastructuralharbour and road building. Yet the great truth was that the sailing ship, a scarcityof genuinely good roads, and an inadequate school system were perhaps three hugely vital features of the Dalmatian scene.Witha gargantuanbiographicalapparatusandan enormous and seemingly never-ending flow of detail making up this impressive and highly commendable volume, there is a distinct danger, not that we should missthe wood forthe trees,but thatwe shouldnot see the woods forthe forest, or maybe even fail to appreciate anything beyond it. Dalmatia's borders to the east are high and abrupt. For the period covered by this work, the lands beyond the north were often more readily reached by water than by land. Undeveloped Italian shores lay to the west, and wild Montenegrin and Albanian tracts beggared the south. While the maps provided are of a high order...

The Shaping of Chance: Actuarial Models and Criminal Profiling at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

The turn of the twentieth century marked a new era of individualization in the field of criminal law. Drawing on the new science of positivist criminology, legal scholars called for diagnosis of the causes of delinquence and for imposition of individualized courses of remedial treatment specifically adapted to these individual diagnoses. [M]odern science recognizes that penal or remedial treatment cannot possibly be indiscriminate and machine-like, but must be adapted to the and to the man as affected by those causes, leading criminal law scholars declared. Thus the great truth of the present and the future, for criminal science, is the individualization of penal treatment, -for that man, and for the cause of that man's crime.' The turn to individualized punishment gave rise to the rehabilitative project of the first three-quarters of the twentieth century -to discretionary juvenile courts, indeterminate sentencing, probation and parole, rehabilitative treatment, and the overarching concept of corrections. At the close of the century, the contrast could hardly have been greater. The rehabilitative project had been largely displaced by a model of criminal law enforcement that emphasized mandatory sentences, fixed guidelines, and sentencing enhancements for designated classes of crimes. The focus of criminal sentencing had become the category of crime, rather than the individual characteristics and history of the convicted person, with one major exception for prior criminal conduct. Incapacitation

Do Universals have a Reference? On the Critical Theory of Herbert Marcuse

great truth wants to be criticized, not idolized. Nietzsche Do Universals have any reference? If so, is it that they refer to? These are philosophical questions. It be argued that they are the philosophical questions. A particular, and admittedly strong, reading of the philosophical tradition, suggest that there have been two major generative moments of its history. These were the Socratic-Platonic birth of philosophy, and secondly, German idealism, born from Kant's critical philosophy. But both these moments were intimately tied to the question of the possibility and nature of universals. Socrates' whole project turned around how, when one asks, what is x? (e.g.: courage, temperance, virtue, etc.), it is unsatisfactory as an answer to list particular examples of x-- ness. He set his method and meaning up in avowed opposition to the sophists, who defended different variants of we would now call moral and epistemic relativism. Likewise, Kant was awoken from his dogmatic slumbers by Humean skepticism concerning the possibility of universals. Through his critical project, Kant defends the wonder of the starry skies above, and the moral law within, and both of these on grounds of a philosophical reclaiming of a universal dimension to knowing and doing. Against Hume, Kant suggests that we not have the awareness of the natural world that we do, were we not always already in possession of categories whose scope is universal and a priori, and that condition the possibility equally of the natural world and our knowledge of it. In the practical philosophy, an irremovable part of we mean when we speak of morality, Kant argued, is that its dictums have a universal validity, vouched for by reason alone. This essay means to broach the question: are there universals?-or, given the difficulty of opening one's mouth without invoking universal predicates and names, to might these contentious terms refer? Are especially sortals (identifying names of types) and especially the more grandiose universals (such as mind, person, nation, or people) perhaps only the misleading semblances of names? Can their reference, such that it is, not be broken down, without remainder, into particular simples, so they be properly discarded by a rigorous philosophical language? Or is there something to them, some referent, perhaps? Can we not hear in them, properly, some surplus of meaning over the given particulars they name, that is irreducible? Two things about the birth of philosophy in Plato, and its modern apotheosis in German idealism, are relevant for this essay. I want and need to stress these, before turning to the exposition. The first is that, in both classical Greek philosophy, and German idealism, the question concerning the possibility and nature of referents for universals resounds in two registers. The first is a veridical, or ontological register. When one asks what is the referent of the universals? one wants to know about the way the world is, and/or how we can know about what there is. In Plato, the answer one gets is that a universal is an eidos, or form. Aristotle shares Plato's ontological realism, while being skeptical of its metaphysical, Pythagorean figuring in a story about birth and rebirth, and some wholly extrasensible realm. Universals have reference to traits and even identifying essences, but these inhere in the things themselves. But my point is that this is not the only way that one asks the question. The second register of the question could there perhaps be some universal referents? in both Kant and classical philosophy, was a moral one. Socrates was primarily concerned with the human things, and asked repeatedly about the nature of the virtues. In Plato, if the forms provide the ontological answer to the question of universals, the form of the Good was in some way for him the highest form (cf. The Republic, 509b). …