Unified Reading Research Articles

Influence of temperature, pressure and connectivity on the dynamics of a glass-forming system investigated by dielectric spectroscopy

A comparative study is reported on the dynamics of a glass-forming system when the glass transition is approached through different paths: cooling, compression, and polymerization. In particular, the influence of temperature, pressure and connectivity on the dynamics has been investigated by dielectric spectroscopy. A phenomenological description of the behavior of the dielectric response shows the existence of both differences and deep similarities between the change of some dielectric parameters during a polymerization reaction and during the temperature or pressure changes. A unified reading of our experimental results can be given in the framework of the Adam-Gibbs theory.

A Fictive People: Antebellum Economic Development and the American Reading Public by Ronald Zboray

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 1049 inaccurate statements have filtered into the text. For example, it is erroneous to picture the Sumerians conquering Mesopotamia in the 6th millennium b.c. and to describe the Uruk royal couple as being worshiped; seals and clay bullae are two different things; the stela of Hammurabi is no longer considered a code; it is unfair to present Mesopotamia as failing to develop abstraction when we owe to that part of the world the invention of abstract numbers and phonetic writing, some of the greatest conceivable abstractions the human brain is capable of. In The History and Power of Writing, erudition prevails over analysis. When and how things happened are diligently recorded rather than why and the consequences. The author views the power of writing as, on the one hand, fusing parts together, and on the other hand, compartmentalizing. These ideas are offered as dogmata but never subjected to the analysis of precise events. In some cases one even wonders if cause and effect are not being confused. This being said, the book holds a library of fascinating information that will be valued by all interested in writing and communication. Denise Schmandt-Besserat Ms. Schmandt-Besserat, author ofBefore Writing (Austin, Texas, 1992), is professor of art and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Texas at Austin. A Fictive People: Antebellum Economic Development and the American Read­ ing Public. By Ronald Zboray. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. xx+ 384; illustrations, notes, index. $45.00. In A Fictive People: Antebellum Economic Development and the American Reading Public, Ronald Zboray builds on a series of previously pub­ lished essays to contribute to the growing literature on the history of reading in 19th-century America. Examining book production and distribution, the institutions that encouraged reading, and finally the motivations and worldviews of readers themselves, Zboray illuminates the connections between economic transformation and the creation of a reading public. If “printed matter became the primary avenue of national enculturation” (p. xvi), he argues, “the chronic disorders of a culture defined by economic development gave readers a good deal of freedom to improvise widely varying uses and readings of texts” (p. 193). Zboray is more sensitive than most to the significance of technology for the expansion of reading. His study is especially valuable for illuminating the ironic relation between technological development and book publishing and marketing. For example, in the Early Re­ public, Zboray finds that book peddlers like Mason Locke Weems made use of improved road and water transportation to carry books into the hinterland, expanding the national book market. But far from creating a unified reading public, Weems’s strategies likely pre­ 1050 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE served and even increased the differences between communities, for Weems took great care to shape his “assortments to the taste of the Religion, Politics, and general reading” of particular communities (p. 50). Zboray demonstrates that even rail lines, which increased book dis­ tribution, modernized the commission system between urban publish­ ing houses and local booksellers, and provided publishers with oppor­ tunities for systematic advertising through the pages of the periodical press, failed to create a coherent reading public. On the contrary, “the uneven development of the national rail system introduced strong geographical biases into the distribution system, cultivating in depth the urban markets of the northeast served by rail while leaving those of the West and South to evolve more slowly” (p. 66). Yet railroads did change the context in which men and women read. Zboray argues that as the rail lines “undermined the centrifuge of localism” in com­ munities already “weakened by intensifying capitalism,” provincial men and women looked to the printed word and to the national community of letters to provide a sense of belonging, however Active (p. 7?)· Zboray is at his most ambitious when he moves beyond the techno­ logical and economic dimensions of book publishing and marketing to consider the ways in which the transformation of reading (re)shaped the imaginative and intellectual worlds of antebellum readers. He argues convincingly that Americans who labored to move beyond rudimentary literacy were motivated less by institutions like common schools, churches, and voluntary associations than by...

The Argument of the Natural History

The Argument ofthe Natural History Mark Webb In the NaturalHistoryofReligion Hume claims there are two principal questions concerning religion: one "concerning its foundation in reason," and the other "concerning its origin in human nature." He forthrightly states that his concern here is to determine "[w]hat those principles are, which give rise to the original belief, and what those accidents and causes are, which direct its operation."1 That is to say, his express intentis, via an empirically based study, to determine and elucidate the causal or natural origin of religion—its beliefs and practices. These are among his first remarks. Consider now his very last remarks: The whole is a riddle, an aenigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result ofour most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species ofsuperstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape, into the calm, though obscure, regions ofphilosophy. (NHR 4:363) These last remarks should strike one as enigmatic: for, given that his purported aim is to offer a naturalistic account ofwhy humans hold religious beliefs, it is strange that he should be content to end in mystery—particularly sosince theworkitselfonersaplausible account ofsuch origins. Still, even ifHume should have felt the project to have failed, what does that have to do with "suspense of judgment," "quarrelling superstitions," and especially his "happy escape"? But of course he is up to much more in the Natural History than he lets on. Indeed,he offersnotonly acausal accountofreligiousbeliefbutamoral critique ofitas well. Why shouldhe doboth in the same work? I suggest that the causal account and the moral critique are intimately connected; and that the work is first and foremost a moral critique intended to sever allegiance to "traditional religion"—traditional theism in general, and Christianityin particular. One aim ofthis paper Volume XVII Number 2 141 MARKWEBB is to offer a unified reading of the Natural History, while the other is to assess the cogency ofHume's project on this reading. To this end we should first situate the Natural History among Hume's other works. It follows the firstEnquiry which addresses inter alia the credibility of "revealed" religion (particularly section 10, "Of Miracles"), and the second Enquiry which advances a naturalistically based morality. It was completed about the time he began the Dialogues, the main contention ofwhich is that natural theology offers minimal if any support for most traditional religious claims. In the Natural History, then, it is reasonable to suppose he is assuming the cogency of his claims against revealed religion, the viability of a naturalistically based morality, and the utter inability of natural theology to ground either traditional religious tenets or morality. The Dialogues in particular illuminate Hume's thought: after concluding that a posteriori arguments offer absolutely no grounds for ascribing the traditional moral attributes to the Deity, Philo goes on to counter Cleanthes' claim—that "[r]eligion, however corrupted, is still better than noreligion atall"2—bycontendingthattraditional religion simply is unessential andeven harmful to the needs ofsociety. Hume advances his causal account because he believes both that traditional religion lacks any basis in reason, and that recourse to a supernatural origin is untenable. And it will become evident in the course of this paper that the Natural History is most accurately understood against the backdrop of his moral theory as expounded in the second Enquiry—indeed the former is an exercise in applied ethics. The Strategy ofthe Natural History The sceptical tone ofmany ofits passages should strike one as out of place. For the scepticism is directed not towards providing a causal account of the origin ofreligious beliefs and practices (the purported aim), but rather towards their plausibility. Yet one might well expect such passages if Hume is assuming that religion has no tenable basis in reason nor for its revelational claims, and that he intends the work to be more than merely a natural history—as indeed he does. Speaking of polytheism and the...

Inner Landscapes: The Theater of Sam Shepard by Ron Mottram

Reviews 163 ick’s book leaves one wondering why she undertook this study. Desert Passages is a fairly good introduction to its subject, but an individual wanting some­ thing more in-depth will have to look elsewhere. JIM ATON Southern Utah State College Inner Landscapes: The Theater of Sam Shepard. By Ron Mottram. (Colum­ bia: University of Missouri, 1984. 172 pages, $7.95.) “Within limits, all art is a kind of creative biography in which the author and his relation to the world are revealed,” writes Ron Mottram as he con­ cludes his eminently usable chronological study of the stage plays of Sam Shepard. Beginning with the earliest works and examining in turn the relative obscurity of the Off Off Broadway years, the growing influence of music upon Shepard, his departure to England in 1971, his return to America in 1974 and his subsequent development, Mottram argues for a more cohesive and unified reading than has been offered previously for the most perplexing voice in con­ temporary American theater. Rejecting the commonly held critical notion that Shepard appeals to the senses rather than to the mind, Mottram demon­ strates the complex language of culturally and theatrically coded signs which Shepard has evolved through the course of his career. This language has become the means, at once subtle and shocking, to explore an inner landscape which mirrors the simultaneous alienation and integration of the individual in American society. Mottram catches Shepard on the wing: “In Shepard, discontents and the desire to do something about them are approached more from a personal than a social perspective and are treated as psychological rather than political questions. Like a mythical cowboy hero, Shepard seems to opt for individual action and a willingness, if not a necessity, to go it alone.” Whether Shepard, through his antisocial cowboys, icons of popular culture, loners and misfits, will continue to go it alone or to confront their inherent contradictions may be answered by his future directions; meanwhile Mottram brings remarkable coherence to the tortuous complexities of Shepard’s inner landscape to date. MARY CLEARMAN BLEW Northern Montana College Museum Pieces. By Elizabeth Tallent. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985. 233 pages, $14.95.) Set in Santa Fe, Museum Pieces details the relationship of Peter and Clarissa, parents of Tara, during the post-separation period. She is a painter ...

Artifice and Artistry in Sir Orfeo

In half-century since Kenneth Sisam characterized Middle English Sir Orfeo as a Greek myth almost lost in a tale of scholars have struggled to synthesize these two apparently disparate elements into a unified reading of poem.1 The narrator has seemingly transformed ancient legend of Orpheus and Eurydice into a contemporary romance of a king Orfeo and his queen Heurodis. The Greek harper becomes an English minstrel, and some readers have explored meaning of this transformation through traditions of medieval mythography and music theory of Boethius.2 In Orfeo's loss of his wife and kingdom, his wandering in wilderness, and his final successful return, other readers have seen outlines of a specifically Christian allegory. Many of these scholars have explored exegetical resonances between Orpheus and David and Orpheus and Christ, and, in spite of differences in emphasis and technique, they share a view of Orfeo's journey as a kind of penance or pilgrimage of soul.3 Unlike his classical counterpart, however, Orfeo finds his wife not in Hell but in fairyland, and in defining precise nature of this other world, suggestions range from a version of Celtic world of the dead and taken to associations between fairyland and architecture of Revelation.4