Intellectual Frontiers Research Articles

World Literature: An Indian Way of Thinking

The idea of the world is a dynamic phenomenon, and the development of world literature is tied to both literary and extra-literary events. Worldwide literary centers can be found in many locations spanning both time and space. The concept of the world, or Visva (Sanskrit), is considerably older even if world literature has been a discursive framework that has affected the literary structures of many languages around the world since the 19th century. “Vasudhaiba Kutumbakam,” or the universal neighborhood, is a term from ancient Indian literature that attests to the age of the concept of Vasudha, or the world. As a result of numerous trade routes, cultural interactions, the expansion of ancient and medieval kingdoms, and the transit of literary writings, cosmopolitan literary spaces were created in various parts of t8he world. Additionally, the absence of modern cartography and the sovereign state system enabled constant changes in the borders of the empires, resulting in spaces with many languages. India has connections to several Asian nations dating back to ancient times, as well as to Europe since the medieval period. The diverse traditions of human thought from various parts of the world are carried in Indian literature. Significant literary contacts and the ongoing formation of new literary legacies were witnessed in the East, Middle East, South East, and South Asia of the present. The Sufi and Bhakti traditions, the reception of Indian epics as oral, written, and performative texts in South-East Asia, and the role of the royal courts as multilingual literary spaces continue to broaden the intellectual traditions of Bharat (India). Thus, the pre-modern development of world literature seemed intriguing and a subject worth exploring for literary professionals. This essay contends that ancient and medieval India and Bengal, particularly their languages, continually bargained to expand their intellectual frontiers.

Productivity Slowdown, Exhausted Opportunities and the Power of Human Ingenuity—Schumpeter Meets Georgescu-Roegen

Western economies nowadays are confronted with a predicted productivity slowdown resulting in diminishing rates of economic growth. While some scholars see these developments as an indication of the approaching end of growth due to fully exploited technological opportunities, this article contends that the possibilities for radical, paradigm changing innovations are far from being exploited. Building on contributions from Schumpeter and Georgescu-Roegen, we argue that the human capacity to expand technological and intellectual frontiers must not be underestimated. In a selective retrospect, our narrative identifies and describes four historical incidents reflecting different perceptions of the power of the human mind. It synthesizes the mentioned economists’ viewpoints with the effects of these incidents to reproduce the intellectual roots of the recently developed concept of Dedicated Innovation Systems (DIS). We conclude that traditional macro-level indicators are not suitable to capture transformation processes, which is why we propose to interpret growth indicators and the alleged productivity slowdown quite differently. We argue that human ingenuity and transformation processes dedicated to sustainability will open up new opportunity spaces, thereby combining an increase in economic welfare and social justice with a reduction of negative environmental impact.

Evidence for Addressing the Unsolved through EdGe-ucating or Can Informing Science Promote Democratic Knowledge Production?

Introduction This article suggests that it is possible to tap the potential intellectual energy of ordinary citizens to work at the frontiers of scientific breakthroughs. It offers evidence that this can be done by applying educational experiences of the present and the past (often not in schools or universities), but it also calls for the design of entirely new curricular strategies to educating citizenry for working at the intellectual frontiers of what is known. This set of new strategies will be called The intent of this article is to challenge researchers, educators, and problem solvers to consider how their work can greatly accelerate the creation of new thought and action by engaging ordinary citizens of all societies to work at our intellectual frontiers. Included in my aim is to interest Informing Science readers in edGe-ucating because I know, as an educator, that educators alone cannot do what is required to get ordinary citizens to the edges of professional understandings. Too few of us educators have enough experience at the edges of knowledge to do the necessary work, as can be seen by the lack of attention to edges in curriculum theory. Furthermore, few educators seem to be interested in breaking through their own intellectual frontiers, which may explain the cyclical movements in educational thought over the past century, regardless of the huge transformations of human understandings over the same time. Researchers and problem solvers from all fields of knowledge production are needed if citizens of the world are to be edGe-ucated. It will also become clear in this article that much work, more investigation and experimentation, must be done before the processes of edGe-ucating are fully understood and capable of being practiced in range of different settings, disciplines, and citizen populations throughout the world. In short, the primary challenge in this article rests upon readers carrying the next steps of edGe-ucating further than this author has. What is EdGe-ucating? EdGe-ucating is the intentional effort to guide neophyte to work at the edges of the unknown and expand the frontiers of expert inquiry. (In The Oxford English Dictionary, neophyte is a beginner, novice, one who is new to subject; thus neophyte captures the sense of someone not yet aware of the knowledge and traditions of field.) The processes of edGe-ucating are what we do to bring neophytes to the intellectual frontiers of expert knowledge and understanding, and to work at those frontiers, in order to extend expert knowledge. Readers may ask, why invent new term for this process? Three reasons: first, to move away from traditional assumptions about teaching and learning; second, to remove edGe-ucating from current educational reforms; third, to appeal to those outside of education, especially researchers and problem solvers. From the brief description above, there are two essential steps to edGe-ucating. The first step of edGe-ucating is to bring neophytes to frontier of an unknown, including what may be required to extend beyond that unknown. The second step of edGe-ucating is to provide guidance and opportunities for the neophyte to extend, or assist in extending, beyond an edge of expert knowledge. The second step must be realized for edGe-ucating to occur successfully. There are three primary features to edGe-ucating. First, is the intent to bring neophytes to particular frontier of field for the purpose of helping to extend that frontier. Second is the application of specific strategy or set of strategies to reach that aim. Third is this process of becoming informed, and then engaging with the frontier is accomplished within comparatively short time frame of few months. Evidence for success in edGe-ucating would include citizens of any age and background entering the frontiers of expert understandings in field of inquiry and intentionally reaching beyond those understandings. …

The quantum revolution: a historical perspective

Quantum mechanics is one of the great success stories of modern physics, making sense of the very small just as Einstein's theory of relativity made sense of the very large. But, for most students, the ideas that make quantum mechanics powerful can be confusing and counterintuitive. This volume in the Greenwood Guides to Great Ideas in Science series provides a history of quantum mechanics from the early breakthroughs of Planck and Einstein, at the beginning of the 20th century, to the present frontiers of quantum computing and quantum gravity. The approach is entirely non-technical, and is aimed at the general reader who may not have much mathematical background but who has a strong curiosity about some of the most important developments in modern science. Quantum Mechanics: A Historical Perspective traces the history of this powerful theory, including:; The early discoveries by Max Planck and Albert Einstein regarding the quantization of radiation; The early quantum theory, including Neils Bohr's theory of the atom; The birth of modern quantum mechanics through the work of Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Born, Dirac and others; Applications of quantum mechanics in chemistry, nuclear physics, electronics, and many other areas; Recent work in quantum computation and quantum information theory The book emphasizes the fact that despite the great success of quantum mechanics, many exciting intellectual frontiers remain open for further researchers to explore. It includes a glossary, a timeline, and a bibliography of accessible resources for further research.

The Media in the 2006 Israeli Elections: Who's Manufacturing Consent? Framing the Spin-Doctors

The 2006 elections were different from earlier elections in more ways than one. It was an intriguing campaign, full of events and shifts, with a genuine agenda and new heroes. Throughout the campaign—which started with Amir Peretz’s victory over Shimon Peres in the Labour party leadership elections—voters watched the media covering the implosion of the Likud and its ensuing electoral debacle, the shrinking of Labour, Sharon’s descent from stage, the creation of Kadima. Although parties were born, split, shrivelled and withered away, the public did not notice major differences between the main parties’ platforms. In light of their ideological weakness the parties sought to brand themselves by concentrating on their prime ministerial candidate’s image and building a differentiated political agenda. Those tasks were outsourced, handed over to PR specialists. As a result, leadership grooming and platform composing were replaced by the use of vague catchphrases, well-designed sound bites, misleading examples, and the use and abuse of statistics under the spin-doctors’ guidance. The latter had to decide, among other things, whether to emphasize the issue of security, regarded traditionally as the primary focus of Israeli politics, and to discuss the Intifada, the disengagement plan and Hamas’ victory in the Palestinian elections—or to emphasize socioeconomic issues, reflecting the unprecedented number of citizens living below the poverty threshold, massive education, health and welfare budget cuts, state workers fired and salary payment delays, and pensioners condemned to hunger. Socioeconomic issues, denied centre-stage for years on the pretext of a national emergency, received greater attention and had more impact

The selection of external examiners for research degrees

The external examiner (EE) is the most important arbiter of whether a student’s submission earns the research degree for which it is entered. Based largely on personal experience as a research degree examiner and administrator, suggests that there are two main characteristics that should be required of any potential external examiner: they should be sufficiently aware of the intellectual frontiers of their subject that they can judge whether the thesis makes a contribution to knowledge or scholarship sufficient to justify the award; and they should also be mature adults, of enough humanity to ensure that the examination process is a worthwhile and developmental experience for the candidate, irrespective of the outcome. Argues that there are thus two principles that underlie the successful selection of an external examiner (EE): institutions should have carefully constructed regulations defining the qualifications and experience expected of the EE, and a scrutiny framework sufficient to ensure that they are followed; and supervisory teams have a duty to prepare and inform themselves well in advance of the selection of external examiners. Ways in which these principles can be made effective will be discussed and current practice at Nottingham Trent University outlined.

TOWARD A GENERAL THEORY OF BIODIVERSITY1

E. O. Wilson (2000) writes that ‘‘Community ecology in particular is about to emerge as one of the most significant intellectual frontiers of the 21st century.’’ If Wilson is correct, and I suspect that he is, Hubbell’s book will be viewed as the first milestone. It is a big, ambitious, creative, important book. Hubbell has set out to formulate a general synthetic theory of biological diversity. Even though his theory may ultimately be found to be partially incorrect or fatally flawed, it is a major achievement. Hubbell borrows liberally from the neutralist theory of evolutionary genetics developed by Kimura, Crow, Ewens, and others, and from the equilibrium theory of island biogeography developed by MacArthur and Wilson, to develop an unabashedly neutral theory of evolutionary ecology. Like MacArthur and Wilson (1967), he assumes that all species are, if not exactly identical in all respects, at least equivalent, so that any small differences among them do not influence the processes that determine species diversity. In Hubbell’s theory, diversity is the outcome of stochastic processes of both ecology and evolution operating on both local and regional scales. Ecological processes operate at the scale of a local community. Competition for shared, limited resources within and between species regulates the number of individuals, but deaths and births are random with respect to species. The result is a ‘‘zero sum game’’ in which the relative abundance of species is the outcome of stochastic events. Differences in diversity between local communities are attributed to random colonization and extinction processes. The local communities within a region are envisaged as forming a ‘‘metacommunity’’ whose diversity is generated and maintained by speciation. Random dispersal of propagules among the communities of a metacommunity leads to a balanced number of species. When a species goes extinct in a local community (because the last individual has died) it is on average replaced by a species that has colonized from the metacommunity. Hubbell develops mathematical models that specify the quantitative relationships among the above variables, processes, and assumptions. The theoretical development is very similar to the neutralist theory of evolutionary genetics. Indeed, Hubbell’s central model is mathematically identical to the infinite allele model of Ewens (1972), with species in a metacommunity being treated as analogous to alleles in a population. I have heard some colleagues mutter that all Hub-

Maxwell McCombs, Donald L. Shaw, and David Weaver, eds., Communication and Democracy: Exploring the Intellectual Frontiers in Agenda-Setting Theory

Journal Article Maxwell McCombs, Donald L. Shaw, and David Weaver, eds., Communication and Democracy: Exploring the Intellectual Frontiers in Agenda-Setting Theory Get access JAMES W. DEARING JAMES W. DEARING Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Public Opinion Quarterly, Volume 62, Issue 1, May 1998, Pages 125–128, https://doi.org/10.1086/297836 Published: 01 May 1998

The Royal Society and post-Galilean Science in Italy

When the Royal Society was established in London in 1660, one of the objectives of its founders was to set up a scientific communications network. During its first years of existence the Society tried to initiate a complex system of diffusion of information and ideas. Oldenburg's prolific international correspondence, the publication of Philosophical Transactions and repeated petitions for scientific correspondence from all over Europe are just a few examples of the latitudinarian spirit of the Royal Society's founders. However, this attempt to open intellectual frontiers was destined to be continuously hampered by the various political, religious and cultural situations that characterized European history at the time.

Heresy about the social work clinical doctorate?

First I want to congratulate Dr. Lipusch and Dr. Shelby for their achievement. Everyone who helped make their accomplishment possible; family, faculty and those who support the Institute has reason to be proud of their contribution to this day. Your celebration marks an important advance for social work practice in our community because it adds to our profession's ability to serve those who turn to social work for help. Such a happy occasion probably would be better celebrated with song, and wine, but academic tradition requires that you hear something serious, perhaps uplifting, but hopefully brief. So please be patient while I talk about the role of advanced clinical social work education outside of the usual university setting. I do this not because the Institute needs to justify its role in society but because many social work educators are adamantly opposed to such a development. I would prefer they accepted my somewhat heretical approach to advanced clinical education. Heresy is my theme because a friend told me that a program similar to the Institute's was planned for Washington and asked my opinion about it. My friend asked a question. Many educators would react with downright hostility to such an idea. They have a right to be concerned about standards, especially in the light of NASW's abortive excursion into doctoral education with the Union Graduate School. However, we ought not arbitrarily dismiss the idea of free standing programs that are dedicated to promoting clinical education. Like its university counterparts the Institute seeks to expand the intellectual frontiers of the profession. Unlike many of them, even those that purport to be clinically oriented, the Institute seeks to expand the practice frontier by emphasizing the clinical preparation that is at the

That Damned Cowboy: Theodore Roosevelt and the American West, 1883-1898

Of the many forces that shaped Theodore Roosevelt the warrior, the hunter, the statesman, the historian, none was more important, none more enduring than the frontier experience. As an impressionable youth, Roosevelt followed his fertile and far-reaching interests from the confines of New York politics to the open range of stock raising, then on to the intellectual frontiers of history. In the process, this son of the East became one of the nation's foremost exponents of the values, ideals, and culture of the American West.

Generic and Generative Dimensions of Interactionism

The emergent conceptual orientation of interactionism is conducive to an exploration of more critical intellectual frontiers. Informed by Simmel and Blumer, this paper argues for the development of generic forms and processes in an effort to appreciate the nature of group life. Such sensitizing concepts as the self and consciousness, grounded in on-site processes, enable the investigation of cultural reproduction. Moreover, the reflective epistemology of interactionism and its concomitant flexible methodologies encourage the pursuit of critical directions. The primacy of subjectivity does not foreclose the exploration of culture or ideology as interactionally mediated. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to stimulate further theoretical and empirical research in linking situated struggles to the phenomenon of cultural reproduction. Methodologically, this paper is part of an ongoing longitudinal project designed to investigate the variety of relations male street prostitutes develop with socializing agencies. Data were collected in five American and three Canadian cities. A multi-method or triangulated approach was utilized incorporating observations, interviews, and case histories.

Progress

HomeRadiologyVol. 15, No. 6 PreviousNext EditorialProgressPublished Online:Dec 1 1930https://doi.org/10.1148/15.6.698MoreSectionsPDF ToolsImage ViewerAdd to favoritesCiteTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked In AbstractFrom Galileo and Copernicus to Darwin and Helmholtz may seem like a long interval; these pioneers in science have left their footprints on the sands of time, faintly but indelibly. However, in the past score of years the sciences have developed so furiously and extensively as to influence every human activity, creating new intellectual frontiers whose bounds seem limitless and urge towards new goals and achievements.The basic sciences have firmly established themselves in medicine, displacing sophistries with sound reasoning. Instruments of precision such as the thermometer, stethoscope, electrocardiograph, microscope, and spectroscope are necessary adjuncts.When Roentgen made his wonderful discovery, another boon to humanity was born. Its cyclonic development was astounding. To-day its field of usefulness is not limited to medical diagnosis and the treatment of disease, but the chemist, the physicist, the biologist, and the industrialist have combined. Another milestone was reached by the patient efforts of the Curies, paralleling the importance of the X-rays. To harness these agents is the task of the present-day scientist, thereby making this a happier world in which to live.Men with a common purpose of high ideals and a sense of responsibilities united themselves and organized the Radiological Society of North America. From a stripling to a fair sized adult in a decade and a half is not a bad growth record; however, not content with past attainments, but vigorous and restless, it is searching for further expansion and fields of usefulness. The allegiance of its members and the vision of its officers have created a substantial organization—not a nebulous body gradually losing momentum, eventually becoming impotent, with final disappearance. Radiology, the official Journal, symbolized the virility of its members; a consistent expansion occurred, and it is with justifiable pride that we think of the steadfast support of the members making this possible.The present period of tumultuous research and unity of purpose was sensed by certain analytical minds and it became quite evident that some means of co-ordinating and disseminating knowledge concerned with the investigation and application of radiant energy would become necessary. Up to the present no such outlet has existed, no means of making known immediately the natural steps in experimental progress and practical use.It was at this point that the Chemical Foundation was approached by these analytical minds and the needs explained. After thorough investigation and consideration Radiology was selected as the means of spreading the gospel of radiant energy. Just one year ago the officers of the Radiological Society of North America accepted the wonderful opportunity of making Radiology even more important than heretofore.Article HistoryPublished in print: Dec 1930 FiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsRecommended Articles RSNA Education Exhibits RSNA Case Collection Vol. 15, No. 6 Metrics Altmetric Score PDF download