Henry's Work Research Articles

Henry Krum: resisting the pressure

Henry Krum: resisting the pressure

Culture or Barbarism?

CulTure or barbariSM? Benjamin Noys Michel Henry, Barbarism, Scott Davidson (introduction and translation), London, Continuum, 2012, 168ppMichel Henry's Barbarism was originally published in French in 1987, reissued in 2000, and now arrives in English translation. In many ways it arrives as a dead letter. It consists of a jeremiad against the dominance of abstract, Galilean science over the primacy of 'Life'. Such a protest hardly seems original, dating back at least to William Blake's contestation of Newtonian science in the name of 'living proportion', and on to the terrain of the various twentieth-century rebukes of science and technology from Heidegger to the Frankfurt School.The emergence of Henry's work in translation now, however, makes his intervention more timely and perhaps more strange than it might first appear. In 2008 Quentin Meillassoux's After Finitude appeared in English as, in part, a robust and conceptually rigorous restatement of the Galilean worldview - that nature was a book to be read and its language is mathematics. Since then we have witnessed the seemingly unstoppable 'movement' of 'speculative realism', which has, in very different ways, restated the necessity for a consideration of science as a privileged discourse on a reality that is not limited to human access (this limit being what Meillassoux calls 'correlationism'). Various schisms and heresies have resulted from this initial construction of a tentative unity, but this dispersal has merely served to further the emergent hegemony of various forms of 'realism'.This context makes Michel Henry's Barbarism perhaps the most explicit work of an enemy of this configuration. Henry is a phenomenologist, religious (specifically Christian), and unabashedly endorses Husserl's notorious thesis that the earth (as the very ground of experience) does not move. In particular, Henry singles out the Galilean mathematicisation of the world as his target of critique and as the origin of what he calls 'barbarism'. In a manner which I can only describe, from the cliched position of the English, as very French, Henry states that he rejects the Galilean reduction in which: 'The kiss exchanged by lovers is only a collision of microphysical particles' (xiv).Henry's argument is relatively straightforward. He contends that science is only one mode of appearing and Galilean science is a subset of this mode. They are both derivative and secondary to the originary mode of appearing, which is life. Life is the transcendental condition of appearing from which all other forms of appearance derive. This life is an immanent experience of self-relating - life 'feels' life, in the first instance. The 'auto-affection' of life is, according to Henry, dominated by two fundamental affective tonalities: suffering and joy. It is this primary experience of sensibility which shapes any appearing, but also means that we are irreducible to the world. Therefore 'life' is the absolute value, a point that Henry reiterates and explores throughout this work.In the terms of Quentin Meillassoux we could say that Henry offers an absolute correlationism. While Meillassoux insists science gives us access to knowledge of a realm prior to any consciousness, Henry's contention is that science can only be practiced by life and remains dependent on the body of the scientist. The second point of Henry's argument is that Galilean science is a reduction or elimination of this experience of life. The result is an experience of barbarism, because culture, which is the outgrowth of life, is subjected to the 'deadly' effects of science that 'kill' life. We are therefore faced with the choice: culture or barbarism?After setting out this argument in some dense and often repetitive chapters, Henry turns to explaining why science should emerge from this experience of life. Why does life turn against itself? Henry's interesting argument is that the ontological suffering which is one of the tonalities of life leads to a desire to end that suffering by escaping from life. …

Dr. Henry A. Regier C.M.: A tribute and felicitation by AEHMS

The Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Management Society (AEHMS) organized a special tribute symposium at the 53rd Annual International Association for Great Lakes Research (IAGLR) Conference (18 May 20...

‘Picturing the poem’

Working on the assumption that a poem may be regarded as a verbal bridge between its creator and a recipient, the author offers an account of how ‘The Chimes’ came to be written. He realizes that such an account may not accord with a recipient's impressions of the work, but believes that the authorial view may always be of some interest. The poem has been chosen from The Living and the Dead: Selected and New Poems 1976–2005 (Snailpress and Quartz Press, 2005). It concerns an antique wall clock which a son has inherited from his father and which now forms part of the younger man's household. Various aspects of the father/son relationship inscribed in the poem are described and analysed. Possible influences upon ‘The Chimes’ of Emily Dickinson's ‘A clock stopped’ and ‘I heard a fly buzz when I died’ are examined. Links between the poem and ‘The Grandfather's Clock’, a popular 19th century song by Henry Work, are also considered. The author defends his choice of Common Measure as a form for ‘The Chimes’ and makes some remarks on the South African nature of the poem.

Michel Henry et la critique du politique

Does Michel Henry's Phenomenology of life include an ethical and political dimension? It appears that the writings about Marx already include such aspects, especially in reference to the problem of social determinism. More generally, however, our attention must be focused on what Henry calls the transcendental genesis of politics which accounts for the lack of autonomy of the political field, just like in the case of economics. Politics may then be analyzed against that background, for instance in the writings on totalitarianism and democracy. The frame given by transcendental genesis is also tied to the fundamental opposition between barbarism and which pervades the axiological implications of Henry's work. Because is always referring to a culture of life, it allows connecting life and its immanent reality with ethical/political questions.

Henry Kandrup's Ideas About Relaxation of Stellar Systems

Henry Kandrup wrote prolifically on the problem of relaxation of stellar systems. His picture of relaxation was significantly more refined than the standard description in terms of phase mixing and violent relaxation. In this article, I summarize Henry's work in this and related areas.

Architecture in Texas, 1895-1945.

Written in an accessible style, Henry's work places Texas architecture in the wider context of American architectural history by tracing the development of building in the state from late Victorian styles, and the rise of neoclassicism, to the advent of the International Style.... His work provides a welter of new facts, both about the era's buildings and the architects who designed them, and he has catalogued and described most of the important landmarks of the period. -- Southwestern Historical Quarterly ., .a significant contribution to the study of Texas architecture.... -- Drury Blakeley Alexander, author of Texas Homes of the Nineteenth Century Texas architecture of the twentieth century encompasses a wide range of building styles, from an internationally inspired modernism to the Spanish Colonial Revival that recalls Texas' earliest European heritage. This book is the first comprehensive survey of Texas architecture of the first half of the twentieth century. More than just a catalog of buildings and styles, the book is a social history of Texas architecture. Jay C. Henry discusses and illustrates buildings from around the state, drawing a majority of his examples from the ten to twelve largest cities and from the work of major architects and firms, including C. H. Page and Brother, Trost and Trost, Lang and Witchell, Sanguinet and Staats, Atlee B. and Robert M. Ayres, David Williams, and O'Neil Ford. The majority of buildings he considers are public ones, but a separate chapter traces the evolution of private housing from late-Victorian styles through the regional and international modernism of the 1930s. Nearly 400 black-and-white photographs complement thetext. Written to be accessible to general readers interested in architecture, as well as to architectural professionals, this work shows how Texas both participated in and differed from prevailing American architectural traditions.

Cheap Rooms and Restless Hearts: A Study of Formula in the Urban Tales of William Sydney Porter , and: Looking Backward, 1988-1888: Essays on Edward Bellamy (review)

Reviewed by: Cheap Rooms and Restless Hearts: A Study of Formula in the Urban Tales of William Sydney Porter, and: Looking Backward, 1988-1888: Essays on Edward Bellamy Michael T. Marsden Karen Charmaine Blansfield . Cheap Rooms and Restless Hearts: A Study of Formula in the Urban Tales of William Sydney Porter. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State U Popular P, 1988. 143 pp. $25.95. Daphne Patai , ed. Looking Backward, 1988-1888: Essays on Edward Bellamy. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1989. 240 pp. $35.00 cloth; pb. $12.95. As Karen Blansfield notes in her informative study of the fiction of William Sydney Porter, his pen name became an American institution. Known as simply O. Henry, this "Homer of the Tenderloin" or "the Apostle of the Picaresque" loved the city and set almost one-third of his stories in New York City. The first chapter of this study provides useful information about Porter' s early years that in no way foreshadowed his later literary successes. Although it will probably never be determined if he in fact did abscond with bank funds as charged, there is no doubt that his considerable literary career got its start behind prison walls. According to Blansfield, Porter's stories seemed perfectly attuned to the new century and the heavy human demands placed on people by changing social and cultural trends, especially technological trends. The late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century readers embraced the short story as a vehicle for entertainment and information because it could be experienced in a single sitting after a wearying day of work. [End Page 231] In the second chapter the author places O. Henry's work within the popular literary tradition and the theoretical construct of formula stories. The third chapter focuses on his six basic character types. O. Henry's success as the master of the urban short story comes from his fusing of appropriate character types with the correct plot patterns to establish the desired unified effect. As Blansfield notes, the real key to O. Henry's success rested with his emphasis on the human condition and the precedence love takes above all other values, especially monetary ones. O. Henry favors the aristocratic hero who takes the difficult, principled road in the face of uncertainty and deprivation, thereby upholding the values of common humanity. That ability, combined with what Blansfield refers to as his ability to "elevate the commonplace to the realm of importance," better explains his success than does any careful matching of character and plot. O. Henry made the short story speak to the everyday needs of his audience in a unique way. Known for his "effect," O. Henry should be more appreciated for his expression of love for humanity that binds his fiction to his audience. He personally knew failure, embarrassment, and deprivation and seemed dedicated to making sure others would not feel isolated from humanity if they found themselves inside the "walls" of an urban area that seemed hostile to basic human values. Therein lies his proper claims for a place in literary history. Gifted craftsman that he was, he was also true to the needs of the human spirit. Few books in American literary history have been as popular or as influential as Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward. Daphne Patai's excellent collection of critical perspectives on the fiction and social thought of an important American Utopian thinker is a welcome publication upon the hundredth anniversary of the appearance of his most famous work. In an introduction to an edition of Looking Backward, Bellamy's son, Paul, wrote of his father that, "He spoke of social gospel like a seer and a saint." Edward Bellamy was able to synthesize and focus the social thoughts and feelings of his period and translate them into a fictional story that reached out in powerful ways to large audiences over time. His work, in turn, encouraged a host of utopian imitators as well as discussion clubs and political parties. In this backward look at looking backward, Daphne Patai has assembled a group of critical analysts who take apart and piece together the story of his social gospel and popular success. As the editor rightly points out...

A new phenomenological Marxism

Every generation of modern philosophy sets for itself the task of reinvent? ing the master thinkers of its tradition. In this century, this phenomenon has been borne out by repeated substantial reinterpretations of Marx, par? ticularly so in France where since 1945 emergent philosophical movements have infused new philosophical concepts into Marxism. As hermeneutics informs us, such infusion is a condition for the possibility of the continued vitality of any tradition, whether political, philosophical or otherwise. This interplay with other philosophical movements and their new vocabularies has been a particular strength of Western European, non-orthodox Marxism. "Existential" Marxism in France is perhaps the greatest expression of the lack of orthodoxy in Western Marxism.1 Its most influential works came after World War II, written by Merleau-Ponty and Sartre in the face of the situation of post-War Europe. The various versions of Existential Marxism influenced the interpretation of Marx in the entire post-war generation and introduced a rich phenomenological vocabulary into historical materialism, replacing its abstract, large-scale sociological descriptions with ones more adequate to phenomena of subjectivity, intersubjectivity and everyday life. However, with the rise of Althusser and now post-structuralism, the influence of existentialism has waned considerably. Against the trend toward anti-humanism in reaction to phenomenology and existentialism, Henry's work represents a revitalization of this important Western Marxist philosophical tradition, informing it with the criticism of Western metaphysics that has been developed by Levinas and Heidegger. While in some ways it is a return to this older movement, Henry's book is more importantly a new phenomenological Marxism appropriate to the contem? porary philosophical situation in France. Existential Marxism fell out of favor primarily because of its humanism.

What Is Natural Fertility? The Modelling of a Concept

The value and importance of the concept of natural fertility have been widely debated since Henry's work in the late 1950s. Whereas Henry regarded natural fertility largely as a useful concept for model building, Coale-Trussell demonstrated that this concept could also be used to analyze patterns of age-specific fertility. The set of age-specific marital fertility schedules assembled by Henry and then used by Coale and Trussell involved largely small populations drawn from disparate sources. Nonetheless, from this diverse and fragmentary data, Henry was able to construct a standard of natural fertility which, in the operational form developed by Coale-Trussell, has proved remarkably general in its application and utility. This in turn suggests that the physiological forces shaping fertility are exceedingly strong, especially the incidence of physiological sterility. There appears to be no single universal pattern of natural fertility. Rather, there is a set of closely related age profiles, the exact shape of which is determined by specific behavioral and social factors that influence childbearing. The increase in physiological sterility with age serves to give an upper limit to fertility at each age, while other factors determine how close a given population comes to that maximum. Although no society has ever demonstrated Henry's ideal notion of a purely physiological fertility pattern, the effect of the intervening factors is often weak. In terms of the Coale-Trussell model, maximum likelihood estimation offers the most informative method of implementation and a time series for 1 population is more readily interpretable than a cross-section comparing several populations.

Henry VIII, Thomas More, and the Bishop of Rome

Henry VIII's Assertio septem sacramentorum of 1521 was only one of many handbooks that pounded the heresies of Martin Luther. Hardly anyone looks at any of these harsh little books today, yet Henry's work is like Ben Franklin's Autobiography; we have heard so much about it that we imagine that we have read it even if we have not. For students of Thomas More, Henry's work is critical: willynilly, it provided a linchpin for More's own assaults on the heretics. He quoted the book again and again. And the events that unfolded from Henry's efforts helped lead More to a polemical career that in turn, led him to his death. Two issues concern us here. What part did More have in doing the work? And what does the book say, especially about the papacy? More has often been suspected of having a hand in the composition of the Assertio. Luther believed that Henry had only been a stooge, putting his royal name on a book done by others.' (He might have been provoked by Henry's insinuation that Luther had not really written the Babylonian Captivity!)2 More himself said that he had only been a redactor.3 And in his Responsio ad Lutheruni, he stoutly defended Henry's authorship.4 But More would have had reason to conceal any part he may have had in shaping the thought of the Assertio. In those days, when royalty meant more than we can possibly imagine now, a book done by a king was a mighty weapon in polemics. Strange as it may seem to us, for More to have claimed much responsibility for the Assertio would have detracted from the work's reputation. Besides, Henry

The Right Hon. Lord Rutherford of Nelson, O.M., F.R.S

ERNEST RUTHERFORD was born in New Zealand on August 30, 1871, and he was well educated at schools in Brightwater and Nelson, where his headmaster was the famous cricketer W. J. Ford, formerly a classical master at Marl-borough. Rutherford went with a scholarship to Canterbury College, Christchurch, where he quickly made his mark by carrying out an interesting and important research with a magnetic detector of wireless waves. There is a striking similarity between Rutherford's work and that of the famous American physicist, Henry. Both used an aerial, a coil of many turns round a bundle of fine sewing needles and a small magnet which was deflected by the changed magnetism of the needles due to the current in the aerial produced by the wireless waves. Henry, however, detected lightning flashes up to ten miles' distance ; Rutherford the sparks from an induction coil, two miles away. I once asked Rutherford if he had then already heard of Henry's work, and he replied, "No"! The two minds converged independently. The genius of Marconi afterwards developed an important magnetic detector which, before the age of valves, was in common use for wireless detection in ships.

Mr. Henry Work Dodd

Mr. Henry Work Dodd