Strange Idea Research Articles

Self, World, and God in Michel Henry and Dumitru Stăniloae

Abstract Christianity proposes that God can be accessed both in the subjectivity of the human self and in the World. This admittedly strange idea can be understood by drawing certain insights from Michel Henry and Dumitru Stăniloae. For Henry, the connection between God and the human self in subjectivity is understood as the generation of the human as a living self in the absolute Life which is God. For Stăniloae, the connection between God and the World is understood through the interpretation of the cosmos as an intelligible medium by which the dialog between God and the human being takes place. These two thinkers have certain lacunae, but their proposals can be fruitfully combined through the supposition that the World is the “body” of God, i.e. His inner life as seen from the outside.

Human–Computer Interaction-Oriented African Literature and African Philosophy Appreciation

African literature has played a major role in changing and shaping perceptions about African people and their way of life for the longest time. Unlike western cultures that are associated with advanced forms of writing, African literature is oral in nature, meaning it has to be recited and even performed. Although Africa has an old tribal culture, African philosophy is a new and strange idea among us. Although the problem of “universality” of African philosophy actually refers to the question of whether Africa has heckling of philosophy in the Western sense, obviously, the philosophy bred by Africa’s native culture must be acknowledged. Therefore, the human–computer interaction-oriented (HCI-oriented) method is proposed to appreciate African literature and African philosophy. To begin with, a physical object of tablet-aid is designed, and a depth camera is used to track the user’s hand and tablet-aid and then map them to the virtual scene, respectively. Then, a tactile redirection method is proposed to meet the user’s requirement of tactile consistency in head-mounted display virtual reality environment. Finally, electroencephalogram (EEG) emotion recognition, based on multiscale convolution kernel convolutional neural networks, is proposed to appreciate the reflection of African philosophy in African literature. The experimental results show that the proposed method has a strong immersion and a good interactive experience in navigation, selection, and manipulation. The proposed HCI method is not only easy to use, but also improves the interaction efficiency and accuracy during appreciation. In addition, the simulation of EEG emotion recognition reveals that the accuracy of emotion classification in 33-channel is 90.63%, almost close to the accuracy of the whole channel, and the proposed algorithm outperforms three baselines with respect to classification accuracy.

Chekhov’s Death of a Clerk: A Critical Appreciation

The present paper proposes to undertake a deep study of the Death of a Clerk. This beautiful short story has been written by Anton Chekhov, a prominent story teller of Russia. This story has been translated into English from Russian by Ivy Litvinov. This translation of Ivy Litvinov has been made the basis of the present study. The period of 1880-1885 is a very important period in the career of Anton Chekhov. During this period, he wrote hundreds of humorous tales. They show a keen sense of the social scene and of the incongruities of life. These tales reveal a deep feeling for human injustice and suffering. In these stories Anton Chekhov attempted to see things as they were and to deal with them as he saw them. According to him a reasoned life without a clear-cut point of view is not a life, but a burden and a horror. This was a strange idea for that day but it played a significant role in his works. Chekhov’s Death of a Clerk is one of them. It beautifully presents the picture of the life of a society based on tyranny and servility.

The Qur’ān and the Bible: Text and Commentary

The Qur’ān and the Bible: Text and Commentary

Post-environmentalism: origins and evolution of a strange idea

<p>The publication of the Ecomodernist Manifesto in 2015 marked a high point for post-environmentalism, a set of ideas that reject limits and instead advocate urbanization, industrialization, agricultural intensification, and nuclear power to protect the environment. Where, how, and why did post-environmentalism come about? Might it influence developments in the future? We trace the origins of post-environmentalism to the mid-2000s in the San Francisco Bay Area and show how it emerged as a response to perceived failures of U.S. environmentalism. Through a discourse analysis of key texts produced by the primary actors of post-environmentalism, namely the Oakland, California-based Breakthrough Institute and its cofounders Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, we show how the theory behind post-environmentalism mixes a deconstructionist trope familiar to political ecologists with a modernization core from liberal economics. We discuss the contradictions of post-environmentalist discourse and argue that despite its flaws, post-environmentalism can hold considerable sway because its politics align with powerful interests who benefit from arguing that accelerating capitalist modernization will save the environment. We conclude that political ecology has a much more nuanced take on the contradictions post-environmentalists stumble upon, disagreeing with those political ecologists who are choosing to ally with the agenda of the Manifesto.</p><p><strong>Keywords</strong>: ecomodernism; ecological modernization; discourse analysis; environmental politics</p>

This Strange Idea of Art

In dialogue with the recent writings of François Jullien, this essay seeks to develop an alternative to the standard conception of artistic form that animates many different approaches to contemporary Western art theory. It explains how this notion of form follows from what Jullien has described as the "strange idea of beauty" that has been developed by Western philosophy. By analyzing a number of different artistic movements from the 1950s to the present, an attempt is made to demonstrate the viability of conceiving of artistic form in terms of xing 形, that is, as an energetic formation or dynamism of things.

Hagar and Ishmael: The Reception of Expulsion

“Reception” is a strange idea in relation to the story of Hagar and Ishmael. To receive is to welcome, but the story of Hagar and Ishmael is about expulsion, not welcome. This essay examines both the biblical story and the “afterlives” of Hagar and Ishmael as they have been “received” in various contexts, including African-American literature and art, war-torn Europe, and Iraq.

Narrative in Poetry: A Problem of Narrative Theory

Narrative in Poetry:A Problem of Narrative Theory Bruce Heiden (bio) In “Beginning to Think about Narrative in Poetry” Brian McHale has proposed correcting contemporary narrative theory’s near-silence about poetry with a research program aimed at a comprehensive theory of poetic narrative. Accepting narratology’s theoretical understanding of “narrativity” as his starting point, and conceptualizing “narrative in poetry” as a combination of pure narrativity (narrative-without-poetry) and pure “poeticity” (poetry-without-narrative), McHale seeks out a theory of “poeticity” to complement “narrativity,” and finds it in Rachel DuPlessis’s idea that the constitutively dominant feature of poetry is “segmentivity”: “[Poetry] is the kind of writing that is articulated in sequenced, gapped lines and whose meanings are created by occurring in bounded units … operating in relation to … pause or silence” (DuPlessis 51; McHale 14–15). Segmentivity stands in sharp contrast to the progressive sequencing that is supposedly the dominant feature of narrative, and McHale proposes that when poetry and narrative combine in “narrative in poetry,” meaning is generated by the need to bridge the interruptions of narrative continuity imposed by poetic form (McHale 16–18). [End Page 269] McHale’s ambitious paradigm deserves skeptical examination. In proposing “segmentivity” as the dominant feature of poetry, McHale identifies poetry with verse, and like DuPlessis he derives the characteristics of verse from its appearance on the printed page. A valid theory of poetry would have to avoid unwarranted identifications of poetry with either verse or its typographical representation. Of course investigations of poetry must account for the contribution of verse; but the concept of “segmentivity” is unhelpful, because (as can easily be demonstrated) verse-measures are not interruptions and they typically reinforce syntax. The axiom that “narrative” and “poetry” are distinct essences that produce narrative poetry by combination brings deeper problems into view. Narrative poetry is a very old and widespread phenomenon that until recently was never thought to be a compound of alien elements. The strange idea of “narrative-in-poetry” derives from narratology, which defines its own program by identifying “narrative” as a distinct and coherent entity. It is precisely the conceptualization of narrative-without-poetry that marginalizes narrative poetry and invites conceptualization of poetry as a pure form analogous to narrative. But since narrative poetry has existed since time immemorial—i.e., the class of actual narratives has always included narrative poetry—the abstraction of narrative-without-poetry cannot be typical. Narratology’s neglect of narrative poetry is symptomatic of a flaw in its account of narrative, one more likely aggravated than remedied by extending the same theory’s scope. An approach to poetry through the lens of narratology confronts an array of misconceptions that block and distort one’s view of poetry and of narrative as well. The root of these misconceptions is the fundamental premise that narrative is a linguistic object wholly open to empirical analysis and scientific generalization. Linguistics, Narratology, Fiction Narratology originated as an adaptation of structural linguistics, an empirical science that analyzes the phenomenon of language in two dimensions, the phonic material and the structural relationships that putatively account for meaning. Although this paradigm has clarified certain features of the linguistic medium, as a comprehensive explanation of language it is seriously misleading, because it neglects the vast amount and complexity of extemporaneous mental work that human beings perform whenever they actually put language to use (Harris). For this reason a valid understanding of language cannot be based on the linguistic medium, i.e., on the scanty and impersonal system of verbal signifiers. Its primary object would have to be the extemporaneous and personal cognitive work that makes so much out of so little. The axiom of descriptive and structural linguistics that meaning is a function of the language medium itself effectively occludes the vast, indispensable, and decisive role of human agency. In classical narratology the structural analysis of sentence-syntax is extended to the multi-sentence entity of narrative. Narratology adapts the distinction between semantic content and linguistic form by conceptualizing “narrative” as a compound [End Page 270] of two elements: (1) primary material, consisting of incidents, and (2) a verbal message (text) that re-presents the incidents in a meaningfully organized sequence...

Planning the Exit - Start with the End in Mind; Buy-Sell Agreements and the Importance of Forethought

It may seem to be a strange idea to consider exit strategies at the formation of a business enterprise, but doing so early in the process can save many problems later. The best reason to address exit strategies up front in the process is that the negotiating parties, the actual or prospective owners, do not know whether they will be a buyer or a seller. Consequently, the result is much more likely to be fair to both sides than the difficulties that may develop when the positions are drawn and one side is a seller because she wants to depart the business and maximize her value, and the other side wants to remain in the business while minimizing the financial impact from the departure.There are a number of ways in which to address a buy-sell arrangement. This could include a separate buy-sell or cross-purchase agreement at the time of organization, or it could include provisions in the entity’s operating agreement, partnership agreement, bylaws, or articles of incorporation. The downside to including these provisions in the articles of incorporation is that in Colorado articles of incorporation are filed with the Secretary of State and are publicly available. Where ever located – in a stand-alone agreement or in the entity’s organizational documents – the considerations are similar and the agreement should be drafted to accomplish the purposes of the business owners.

La autonomía de la voluntad humana en el acto de fe

The article deals with a strange idea in Augustine’s theology which is present in some works written between 394 and 395, namely the idea of the possibility of human free will to start the way that leads to salvation through faith and prayer. These ideas are presented as a consecuence of his meditation about predestination. It also points that the probable sources of these ideas are Ambrosiaster’s commentary to the letter to the Romans, and Hilary’s commentary on the Psalms. It also suggests that the Ambrosiaster’s quote in c. ep. Pel. 4, 7 is wrongly attributed by Augustine to Hilary, because of the coincidence of the ideas about the grace and predestination.

Willingness of Pregnant Women in Benin City Nigeria to Donate Placenta Cord Blood for Stem Cell Transplantation

Stem Cell Transplantation has become an approved curative therapy for malignant and non-malignant disorders. Cord blood is a recommended source of Stem cell for Haematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation (HSCT). However the method of collection, maternal and placenta factors have been shown to influence the quantity and quality of the cord blood. A total of 302 pregnant women, attending the Ante-Natal Clinic from June to August 2010 at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH) were assessed for willingness to donate placenta cord blood for HSCT The results revealed that most of the women were mainly of age group 20-29yrs (53.2%), parity of 1 to 2 (59.6%), have tertiary education (57.6%) and were Christians (95.4%). However 212 (70.2%) of the pregnant women were willing to donate placenta cord blood. Reasons for those not willing to donate placenta cord blood were mainly that of fear of losing their child�s destiny (Placenta)with a figure of 20(22.2%), that it is a strange idea 16(17.8%), religious and traditional beliefs 14(15.6%)/8(8.9%) respectively. As part of the UBTH policy women routinely leave their placenta behind to be discarded by the hospital. Those who would prefer to take their placenta home were 32(10.6%) and 24(75%) of these women would rather bury their placenta in their compounds. The other 8(25%), would discard it in the dust bin. There is need to educate and reassure pregnant women in Nigeria to donate placenta cord blood, which hitherto is a biological waste. Cord blood in the future could be an important source of stem cells for HSCT for the purpose of initiating blood banking in Nigeria. Keywords: Placenta Cord Blood, Willingness to Donate, Stem Cell Transplantation. class

Sade and Sollers: Hoax or Ventriloquism?

Sade and Sollers:Hoax or Ventriloquism? Cory Stockwell (bio) What if Sade were to send us a letter? A strange idea, perhaps. For what would Sade have to tell us that he hasn't already told us, an infinite number of times; what would this man, who, as Maurice Blanchot has famously told us, has already said everything, 1 have left to say? Why would he need to speak to us, again, after all this time? A strange idea. But let's stay with it, let's press it a little further. What if there were something left to be said? Or rather, what if Sade deduced, not that he hadn't already told us everything, but that there was something we had not yet understood about his work, some part of his work that we had read but to which we had not yet paid sufficient attention, a kind of message that we had to this point missed despite its urgency—for us? What if Sade—thinking, speaking, writing from beyond the grave—decided that he had to transmit this message to us? What if Sade decided that there remained a secret he had not yet shared with us? And how could we be sure that the letter had indeed been written by him? A letter from a dead man, a letter in which death literally speaks—is this not implausible? How could we be certain of the letter's authenticity? The question of authenticity would indeed be a vexing one, were we to receive such a letter. But the idea that Sade would have a secret to transmit to us is not, in fact, so far-fetched. Secrecy, after all, is one of the main themes of his work. This is one of the lessons Maurice Blanchot taught us, in his constant—uninterrupted, it must be said—engagement with Sade. The violence to which we are constantly witness in Sade, writes Blanchot, this violence that literally brings its victims (but also its perpetrators) to the verge of death—that situates them, to be precise, in a zone between life and death—is in no way haphazard: on the contrary, it belongs to the strictest and most rigorous system. And the first condition of this system is secrecy. Throughout Sade's monumental work, violence only occurs in the most secret and hidden spaces, away from the world, and concealed from the eyes of the law. In his essay "La Raison de Sade," Blanchot calls attention to the following sentence from the 120 Journées de Sodome, spoken by the Duc de Blangis "aux femmes réunies pour le plaisir des quatre libertins": [End Page 22] Examinez votre situation, ce que vous êtes, ce que nous sommes, et que ces réflexions vous fassent frémir, vous voilà hors de France au fond d'une forêt inhabitable, au-delà de montagnes escarpées dont les passages ont été rompus aussitôt après que vous les avez eu franchis, vous êtes enfermées dans une citadelle impénétrable, qui que ce soit ne vous y sait, vous êtes soustraites à vos amis, à vos parents, vous êtes déjà mortes au monde. (Qtd. in Blanchot, "Raison," 242, Blanchot's emphasis) This intersection of secrecy and death, of secrecy and the "déjà mort," is the very foundation, for Blanchot, of Sade's system. And any secret that Sade were to tell us, if he saw fit to send us such a message, such a letter, would likely bear upon this state of living death. In fact, such a letter exists. I am referring to a letter that is a relatively recent addition to the Sadean corpus, published for the first time just over twenty years ago, in 1989. The letter, published as a pamphlet by Quai Voltaire, and given the name Contre l'être suprême by its editor, Philippe Sollers, deals with a well-known but often overlooked aspect of the French Revolution: the Cult of the Supreme Being, the celebration of which was decreed by Robespierre in his famous speech of 18 floréal an II (7 May 1794), at the very height of the Reign of Terror...

An Attempt at a “Compositionist Manifesto”

An Attempt at a “Compositionist Manifesto” Bruno Latour (bio) For D.H. A prologue in the form of an avatar If i had an agent, i am sure he would advise me to sue James Cameron over his latest blockbuster since Avatar should really be called Pandora’s Hope!1 Yes, Pandora is the name of the mythical humanoid figure whose box holds all the ills of humanity, but it is also the name of the heavenly body that humans from planet Earth (all members of the typically American military-industrial complex) are exploiting to death without any worry for the fate of its local inhabitants, the Navis, and their ecosystem, a superorganism and goddess called Eywa. I am under the impression that this film is the first popular description of what happens when modernist humans meet Gaia. And it’s not pretty. The Revenge of Gaia, to draw on the title of a book by James Lovelock, results in a terrifying replay of Dunkirk 1940 or Saigon 1973: a retreat and a defeat.2 This time, the Cowboys lose to the Indians: they have to flee from their frontier and withdraw back home abandoning all their riches behind them. In trying to pry open the mysterious planet Pandora in search of a mineral—known as unobtanium, no less!—the Earthlings, just as in the classical myth, let loose all the ills of humanity: not only do they ravage the planet, destroy the great tree of life, and kill the quasi-Amazonian Indians who had lived in edenic harmony with it, but they also become infected with their own macho ideology. Outward destruction breeds inward destruction. And again, as in the classical myth, hope is left at the bottom of Pandora’s box—I mean planet—because it lies deep in the forest, thoroughly hidden in the complex web of connections that the Navis nurture with their own Gaia, a biological and cultural network which only a small team of naturalists and anthropologists are beginning to explore.3 It is left to Jake, an outcast, a marine with neither legs nor academic credentials, to finally “get it,” yet at a price: the betrayal of his fellow mercenaries, a rather [End Page 471] conventional love affair with a native, and a magnificent transmigration of his original crippled body into his avatar, thereby inverting the relationship between the original and the copy and giving a whole new dimension to what it means to “go native.” I take this film to be the first Hollywood script about the modernist clash with nature that doesn’t take ultimate catastrophe and destruction for granted—as so many have before—but opts for a much more interesting outcome: a new search for hope on condition that what it means to have a body, a mind, and a world is completely redefined. The lesson of the film, in my reading of it, is that modernized and modernizing humans are not physically, psychologically, scientifically, and emotionally equipped to survive on their planet. As in Michel Tournier’s inverted story of Robinson Crusoe, Friday, or, The Other Island, they have to relearn from beginning to end what it is to live on their island—and just like Tournier’s fable, Crusoe ultimately decides to stay in the now civilized and civilizing jungle instead of going back home to what for him has become just another wilderness.4 But what fifty years ago in Tournier’s romance was a fully individual experience has become today in Cameron’s film a collective adventure: there is no sustainable life for Earth-bound species on their planet island. Why write a manifesto? It is in the dramatic atmosphere induced by Cameron’s opera that I want to write a draft of my manifesto. I know full well that, just like the time of avant-gardes or that of the Great Frontier, the time of manifestos has long passed. Actually, it is the time of time that has passed: this strange idea of a vast army moving forward, preceded by the most daring innovators and thinkers, followed by a mass of slower and heavier crowds, while the rearguard of the most archaic, the most...

Thinking like a lawyer: a new introduction to legal reasoning

* Preface * Is There Legal Reasoning? * Rules--in Law and Elsewhere 2.1 Of Rules in General 2.2 The Core and the Fringe 2.3 The Generality of Rules 2.4 The Formality of Law * The Practice and Problems of Precedent 3.1 Precedent in Two Directions 3.2 Precedent--The Basic Idea 3.3 A Strange Idea 3.4 On Identifying a Precedent 3.5 On the Force of Precedent--Overruling, Distinguishing, and Other Types of Avoidance * Authority and Authorities 4.1 The Idea of Authority 4.2 On and So-Called Persuasive Authority 4.3 Why Real Authority Need Not be Binding 4.4 Can There Be Prohibited Authorities? 4.5 How Authorities Become Authoritative * The Use and Abuse of Analogies 5.1 On Distinguishing Precedent from Analogy 5.2 On the Determination of Similarity 5.3 The Skeptical Challenge 5.4 Analogy and the Speed of Legal Change * The Idea of the Common Law 6.1 Some History and a Comparison 6.2 On the Nature of the Common Law 6.3 How Does the Common Law Change? 6.4 Is the Common Law Law? 6.5 A Short Tour of the Realm of Equity * The Challenge of Legal Realism 7.1 Do Rules and Precedents Decide cases? 7.2 Does Doctrine Constrain Even if It Does Not Direct? 7.3 An Empirical Claim 7.4 Realism and the Role of the Lawyer 7.5 Critical Legal Studies and Realism in Modern Dress * The Interpretation of Statutes 8.1 Statutory Interpretation in the Regulatory State 8.2 The Role of the Text 8.3 When the Text Provides No Answer 8.4 When the Text Provides a Bad Answer 8.5 The Canons of Statutory Construction * The Judicial Opinion 9.1 The Causes and Consequences of Judicial Opinions 9.2 Giving Reasons 9.3 On Holding and Dicta 9.4 The Declining Frequency of Opinions * Making Law with Rules and Standards 10.1 The Basic Distinction 10.2 Rules, Standards, and the Question of Discretion 10.3 Stability and Flexibility 10.4 Rules and Standards in Judicial Opinions * Law and Fact 11.1 On the Idea of a Fact 11.2 Determining Facts at Trial--The Law of Evidence and Its Critics 11.3 Facts and the Appellate Process * The Burden of Proof and Its Cousins 12.1 The Burden of Proof 12.2 Presumptions 12.3 Deference and the Allocation of Decision-Making Responsibility * Index

The Adventure in the Kitchen

Well, it's very late now, little elf. What are you doing here? Im looking for a place to sleep, answered the little elf. You can come with me, said Mr. Potato zealously. There is a pot of dough that is rising. It is soft and resilient. There, I imagine, you'll have a sound sleep. Following Mr. Potato, the little elf entered the kitchen. The idea of sleeping in the dough was such a strange idea, but one as perfect as he had ever heard. As Mr. Potato had described it, the kitchen and all in it were at sixes and sevens:

My Love Affair with Insulin: JBC Centennial 1905-2005 100 Years of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

My Love Affair with Insulin: JBC Centennial 1905-2005 100 Years of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

2K waterborne clearcoat—a competition between crosslinking and side reactions

The combination of OH-functional polymers with di- or trifunctional polyisocyanates is widely used as crosslinking chemistry in high-performance two component clearcoats. This curing chemistry had always been limited by strong side reactions. Thus use of solvents in formulation was limited to non-OH-/NH-functional components. Some years ago Bayer came up with the strange idea to formulate 2K isocyanate waterborne paints. They carried out a lot of investigations to establish the proportion of crosslinking and side reactions. Nevertheless the formulation of two-component waterborne PUR paint remains a highly sophisticated task. This presentation shows the basic evaluation carried out and communicated by Bayer [Aqueous two-component polyurethane systems for coatings, in: Proceedings of the IUPAC Symposium, Warsaw, July 2000; Aqueous 2-Pack Polyurethane Coatings for Automotive Refinish and Transportation, Bayer Publication; Prog. Org. Coat. 40 (2000) 99] and additional experiences we have gathered in DuPont Performance Coatings [DE 19 607 672, EP 654 051, EP 654 053, EP 654 055, EP 358 979, EP 542 105, EP 578 940, EP 669 352, EP 751 179, EP 469 389, EP 456 210, etc.]. The focus of DuPont experiments is on a high-performance waterborne clearcoat system for car refinish. Especially, the demands of refinish customers have led us to focus on miscibility, sprayability and pot life issues. Kinetic as well as thermodynamic effects are discussed. Finally, a formulation is described which fulfils most of our customer needs.

Iulius Casserius (1552-1616): the self-made anatomist of Padua's golden age.

Giulio Cesare Casseri (1552– 1616), whose name was Latinized into Iulius Casserius, was born in Piacenza; therefore, the nickname Piacentino (Placentinus) was often used. According to Sterzi (1910), who based his claim on a statement contained in Casserius’s will, his date of birth was around 1552. It should be noted, however, that although most modern authors accept this date (Roberts and Tomlinson, 1992; Premuda, 1993), some (Singer, 1957) still report 1561 as his birth date on the basis of the inscription (Fig. 1) appearing on the portrait published in Casserius’s work De Vocis Auditusque organis that ascribes to the author the age of 39 years. According to most of his early biographers (Tomasini, 1630; Ghilini, 1647; Papadopoli, 1726), Casserius’s family was very poor and the young Iulius, perhaps as the servant of some student (Sterzi, 1910), moved to Padua, the city that shared with Bologna the reputation of being the seat of Italy’s most illustrious university. He soon assumed the job of servant in the house of the famed Gerolamo Fabrici d’Acquapendente (Fabricius, 1533– 1619) (Fig. 2), Public Lecturer of Anatomy and Surgery (Tomasini, 1630; Ghilini, 1647). As Tomasini (1630) reports, “from a servant he became first Fabricius’s auditor, then instructor and brilliant disciple.” We do not know when Casserius matriculated in the School of Medicine of the Universita Artista. As mentioned several times in his works, Casserius, in addition to Fabricius, had the well-known physician Gerolamo Mercuriale (Mercurialis) as a teacher and mentor, who held the chair of Clinical Medicine of Padua in the years 1569–1587. The precise date he obtained his degree in medicine and philosophy is unknown, because the official records are missing from 1580 to 1587; a likely date is ca.1580 (Sterzi, 1910; De Ferrari, 1978; Premuda, 1993). After the award of his degree, Casserius, in addition to giving private lectures on anatomy to the students of the Universita Artista and working as Fabricius’s preparator, started a practice as physician and surgeon in Padua that was very successful (Tomasini, 1630). In 1584, Casserius’s reputation was already so great that he took Fabricius’s place as member of the board of examiners for the finals in surgery. These examinations, held in private houses in the presence of the Rector of the University, conferred the license to practice surgery. The profession of surgery was considered in those days as a minor branch of Medicine and the surgeon had to take an oath that he would not involve himself in the treatment of serious diseases, but would call a licensed physician whenever the patient was in real danger.

Max Weber's Methodology in Its Place*

When Henry Thomas Buckle, in the opening pages of his History of Civilization in England, declared "that for all the higher purposes of human thought history is still miserably deficient, and presents that confused and anarchical appearance natural to a subject of which the laws are unknown, and even the foundation unsettled" (vol. I, p. 4), he did no less than call into question the scientific legitimacy of historiography as predominantly practiced. Connecting the discipline's insufficiency to its failure "to rise from particular facts in order to discover the laws by which those facts are governed," his diagnosis concerning the source of the shortcoming was straightforward: The root of the problem appeared to him to be "a strange idea" prevailing among historians, "that their business is merely to relate events" (op. cit., p. 3), occasionally enlivening their presentations with moral and political reflections as they saw fit. It was German historians who felt particularly stung by this dismissal, and the development of the theory of historiography in Germany in the generation of Max Weber's im mediate predecessors received its main impetus from the desire to articu late a cogent defense against claims such as Buckle's. To obtain a proper idea of this theory's overriding concern, therefore, it is crucial to make no mistake about the central thrust of the argument it attempted to rebut. Fortunately Buckle is quite unambiguous. Espousing the programmatic po sition that the totality of actions which constitute the history of mankind "form one vast scheme of universal order" (op. cit., p. 24) articulable in terms of the "fixed and universal laws" (op. cit., p. 5) determining the pro gress of civilization, he maintains that the aim of any science must be to grasp its subject matter "in the whole of its natural relations" (op. cit., p. 3).

From Magic City

from Magic City* Jewell Parker Rhodes (bio) Chapter 22 Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Jewell Parker Rhodes. Photo by Susan Rae Lakin. The kitchen was in mourning. Sunlight poked through the screen door and a honeysuckle breeze stirred the curtains. Linoleum sparkled and the metal rim on the cold stove reflected rainbows. There weren’t cooking smells: no sweet yeast and rising biscuits, no berries, pungent, ripening to syrup, no smoked bacon frying. The pantry door was closed. Despite the sun, there was a wounded pall to the day. If Mary held her breath, she could hear muffled voices, footsteps tiptoeing, shuffling through the Samuels’ house. Undertaker, preacher, doctor. Solemn men at work since dawn—the undertaker transforming the study into a viewing room for Tyler’s casket; the preacher ministering to a weeping Mrs. Samuels and Emmaline; and the doctor, trying to convince Mr. Samuels—arm broken, blind in one eye—his bank didn’t need him for one day. Hildy was slumped over the kitchen table, her head cradled on crisscrossed arms, her lids fluttering with dreams. Mary peeked out the screen door. A hearse was parked at the curb; behind it was another car with a white cross painted on its hood. The preacher had walked, his long-tailed coat flapping like blackbirds’ wings. Mary had watched him stop and bless the house—eyes closed, his mouth muttering prayers, then he’d strode forward and blessed the grass stained with Jody’s blood; the steps littered with shotgun casings; and the porch, its yellow light still on, insects flattened and dried on the glass. Mary could go to Jody but, somehow, just before sunrise, she’d sensed he’d died—bitter, doubled over his wound, reaching for his missing leg. Mary exhaled, digging her nails into wire mesh. She needed to help Hildy. Like a sentry, Mary watched the street, hoping she’d serve Hildy better than she’d served her mother. Everyone needed some time not to be strong. Some time to be safe. Mary knew better than anyone that folks forgot the strong ones. If a woman didn’t cry, folks didn’t think you needed. If you kept your mouth shut and endured, folks forgot about helping. Forgot all about you, if you tried too hard to keep your dignity. Since the evening’s terror, she’d watched Hildy moving gracefully among father, mother, sister. Kissing dead Tyler. Calling the doctor, the preacher. It was Hildy who soothed her mother, tucked her in bed. Hildy who calmed her sister by telling her how strong and helpful she’d been. Hildy who cleaned her father’s wounds while he cursed, complained just like Pa. [End Page 417] Feeling useless, Mary had shadowed Hildy, then left to do what she could—restore Hildy’s kitchen. She’d gathered the broken porcelain, mopped tea, swept dried beans and shattered jars of peaches, wiped the counters, placed the Bible on the table, and waited. When Hildy stole away to the kitchen, Mary had seen the struggle she’d endured—hooded eyes, rigid mouth, knees locked to hold her upright, nails digging deeply into her own skin. Hildy had looked across at Mary and whispered, “Joe?” Mary’d wanted to cry. Joe was still on the run. Had to be. If he wasn’t. . . . She’d imagined Joe hanging from a tree, his tongue thick, his chin on his chest. Mary’d said, “Rest. Rest, Hildy.” She’d helped her to the chair. Hildy laid her head down on the table and sighed. Mary understood the comfort of cool wood and warm arms. Before she drifted to sleep, Hildy had murmured, “Let me know when the women come. Wake me when the women come.” Such a strange idea. Wake me when the women come. Mary remembered the years she’d been waiting for women, a woman to come. Always just Pa and Jody came. Later Dell. Mary turned and saw her mother sprawled on the floor. The linoleum spotted red. “Oh, Ma.” Tears welled. Dying without any women. Just a terrified daughter who hadn’t any power in her hands. Ma’s body was bathed...