Unitary View Research Articles

Grundtvigs bidrag til udvikling af danske nationale symboler

Grundtvigs bidrag til udviklingen a f danske nationale symboler[Grundtvig ’s contribution to the development of Danish national symbols]By Inge AdriansenBroadly speaking, all Danish national symbols, both official and unofficial, are to be found in Grundtvig’s authorship. However, it is difficult to specify in what way and to what degree Grundtvig inspired the dissemination of the various symbols. The most important routes of dissemination were through Den Danske Salmebog [The Danish Hymnal] and Folkehøjskolens Sangbog [The Folk-highschool Songbookl. since the corrmosition of songs weighs heaviest in Grundtvig’s literary production. This is owing to his strong belief in the significance of song in educating the people, and to his talent for bringing to life the message of song in oral form. Since both the Hymnal and the Highschool Songbook continue to be published in revised editions, they have contributed to securing Grundtvig’s significance.Grundtvig’s hymns have often been perceived as the expression of something very Danish. Therefore he was almost entirely excluded from the first hymnal produced for the Danish-speaking congregations in the Duchy of Schleswig after its incorporation into Prussia in 1867. Some of Grundtvig’s hymns were characterised by Bishop Theodor Kaftan of Schleswig-Holstein as politically dubious and having Danish national colouring.After North Slesvig’s reunification with Denmark in 1920, Grundtvig’s hymn Den signede Dag [The blessed day] gained a special status. It was sung both at the meetings in January and February before the plebiscite and at the reunification festivities over the spring and summer. When, after the summer vacation, the schools reopened under Danish leadership, Den signede Dag was everywhere sung as the first moming-hymn. The children of Slesvig were in no doubt that Grundtvig was referring to Denmark in the final verse, which begins: “Nu rejser vi til vort Fadreland” [Now journey we to our fatherland]. In Grundtvigian homes in Slesvig the hymn was often sung at family festivities, and here it was that the tradition developed of standing up during the final verse - out of respect for the homecoming to fatherland and nation.The most significant contribution to the history of folk-education in Denmark is Grundtvig’s unitary view over hymn, historical ballad, and songs of fatherland and of folk-life. This achieves its expression in the Highschool Songbook which was first published in 1894 and has ever since helped set the norms for other Danish songbooks. The latest edition of the Highschool Songbook (from 1989) is the seventeenth, and here there are 119 songs by Grundtvig. This is 21% of the songbook’s 572 songs, and it shows that Grundtvig’s image-world continues to put its stamp upon representations of Danishness. This 17th edition was printed in over 500,000 copies, and thereby the Highschool Songbook became the Danish songbook published in the largest impression.Grundtvig has been the most significant generator of historical consciousness in Denmark, but it is a problem that only a small part of his enormous authorship and complex world of ideas is usually presented to us. At certain periods of his life Grundtvig was what many today would perceive as nationalistic. But it should be emphasised that he always stressed that Danishness has an historical and a geographical delimitation. Unfortunately there is little space within national symbolism for such complexity, and his metaphorical language was so multivalent that it has not been suited to being transposed into easily grasped symbols.Even so, this obscure metaphorical language has had a decisive significance in the development of Danish national symbolism. This is attributable in particular to the fact that Grundtvig managed to create that special interweaving of Christian, national and social identities which many Danes experience as being a matter of course and more or less of natural origin, something which has been here since the dawn of time.[Editors' note: Such terms as folkeopdragelse and folkeliv, here rendered as ‘folk-education’ and ‘folk-life’, confront Gr's translators with a special difficulty. The element folk- has little to do with the English term ‘folk-’, as in ‘folk-song’ and ‘folk-art’ with its implication of rustic or peasant provenance. Nor can it always be satisfactorily translated as ‘national’ or ‘popular’ though these can be aspects of its meaning. It essentially relates, in Grundtvigcontexts, to Gr's concept of folkelighed [‘folkliness’]: a form of social cohesion achieved by way of thinking and of conducting one's life in an enlightened and benevolent awareness of the mutual obligations and shared commitments and aspirations of a people or community identifiable by such cultural markers as a common history and a common language. In principle an inclusive concept, it nevertheless always had a potential to become exclusive in practice.]

I Pargoli di Agatodemone: Frammenti di Mitologie Alchemiche

AbstractAn important source for the study of Hellenistic Alchemy is the Neoplatonic Olympiodorus and his treatise on “Sacred Art”. In this text Olympiodorus gives an unitary view of alchemical praxis, based on the production and transformation of a peculiar element, the so-called “magnet” or “magnesia”. This element is the “substantial body”, sōma hypostatikon, the body which is “giving existence”, the alchemical black lead, the prima materia. The alchemist succeeds, by his creative action, in obtaining a perfect body which is able to transmit perfection to every body with which it is in contact. This is the elixir which gives health and salvation. The processes described put emphasis on color change as a guide to progress from black to white to yellow to violet: the sequence was clearly associated with the change from a chaotic and undefined primal stage to metallic perfection. And although the final phase or iōsis was eventually to be changed from violet to red, the emphasis on color was to remain a basic theme in descriptions of the magnum opus.

The relationship of major depressive disorder to bipolar disorder: Continuous or discontinuous?

Recent studies have questioned current diagnostic systems that split mood disorders into the independent categories of bipolar disorders and depressive disorders. The current classification of mood disorders runs against Kraepelin's unitary view of manic-depressive insanity (illness). The main findings of recent studies supporting a continuity between bipolar disorders (mainly bipolar II disorder) and major depressive disorder are presented. The features supporting a continuity between bipolar II disorder and major depressive disorder currently are 1) depressive mixed states (mixed depression) and dysphoric (mixed) hypomania (opposite polarity symptoms in the same episode do not support a splitting of mood disorders); 2) family history (major depressive disorder is the most common mood disorder in relatives of bipolar probands); 3) lack of points of rarity between the depressive syndromes of bipolar II disorder and major depressive disorder; 4) major depressive disorder with bipolar features such as depressive mixed states, young onset age, atypical features, bipolar family history, irritability, racing thoughts, and psychomotor agitation; 5) a high proportion of major depressive disorders shifting to bipolar disorders during long-term follow-up; 6) a high proportion of major depressive disorders with history of manic and hypomanic symptoms; 7) factors of hypomania present in major depressive disorder episodes; 8) recurrent course of major depressive disorder; and 9) depressive symptoms much more common than manic and hypomanic symptoms in the course of bipolar disorders.

Functional Specialization in the Human Medial Temporal Lobe

Investigations of memory in rats and nonhuman primates have demonstrated functional specialization within the medial temporal lobe (MTL), a set of heavily interconnected structures including the hippocampal formation and underlying entorhinal, perirhinal, and parahippocampal cortices. Most studies in humans, however, especially in patients with brain damage, suggest that the human MTL is a unitary memory system supporting all types of declarative memory, our conscious memory for facts and events. To resolve this discrepancy, amnesic patients with either selective hippocampal damage or more extensive MTL damage were tested on variations of an object discrimination task adapted from the nonhuman primate literature. Although both groups were equally impaired on standard recall-based memory tasks, they exhibited different profiles of performance on the object discrimination test, arguing against a unitary view of MTL function. Cases with selective hippocampal damage performed normally, whereas individuals with broader MTL lesions were impaired. Furthermore, deficits in this latter group were related not to the number of discriminations to be learned and remembered, but to the degree of "feature ambiguity," a property of visual discriminations that can emerge when features are part of both rewarded and unrewarded stimuli. These findings resolve contradictions between published studies in humans and animals and introduce a new way of characterizing the impairments that arise after damage to the MTL.

Effects of stimulus–stimulus compatibility and stimulus–response compatibility on response inhibition

Previous studies demonstrated that interference control in stimulus–stimulus compatibility tasks slowed down stopping in the stop signal task (e.g., Kramer, A. F., Humphrey, D. G., Larish, J. F., Logan, G. D., & Strayer, D. L. (1994). Aging and inhibition: beyond a unitary view of inhibitory processing in attention. psychology and aging, 9, 491–512). In the present study, the impact of stimulus–stimulus compatibility and stimulus–response compatibility on response inhibition is further investigated. In Experiment 1, the stop signal task was combined with a traditional horizontal Simon task and with a vertical variant. For both dimensions, stopping responses was prolonged in incompatible trials, but only when the previous trial was compatible. In Experiment 2, the Simon task was combined with a spatial Stroop task in order to compare the effects of stimulus–stimulus and stimulus–response compatibility. The results demonstrated that both types of compatibility influenced stopping in a similar way. These findings are in favor of the hypothesis that response inhibition in the stop signal task and interference control in conflict tasks rely on similar mechanisms.

Luria: a Unitary View of Human Brain and Mind

Special questions the eminent Russian psychologist and neuropsychologist Aleksandr R. Luria (1902-1977) dealt with in his research regarded the relationship between animal and human brain, child and adult mind, normal and pathological, theory and rehabilitation, clinical and experimental investigation. These issues were integrated in a unitary theory of cerebral and psychological processes, under the influence of both different perspectives active in the first half of the Nineteenth century (psychoanalysis and historical-cultural school, first of all) and the growing contribution of neuropsychological research on brain-injured patients.

The double‐dialectic and lifelong learning

This paper was provoked by Ted Bailey’s article, ‘Analogy, dialectics and lifelong learning’ which appeared in the March–April 2003 edition of this journal. Dr. Bailey argued that students can be enabled to learn the key concepts of the subjects they are studying through the dialectical operation of analogy which makes new knowledge accessible by comparing it to familiar experience. It is the aim of this paper to show that dialectics extend far beyond this particular application, and that indeed they may be said to underpin the very concept of lifelong learning itself. The paper begins by examining the concepts of the dialectic and the double‐dialectic, relating these to the writings of Giambattista Vico. The dialectical interplay of Nature and History is seen to be the foundation of human knowledge. This unitary view is then contrasted with specialism in the categorization of knowledge. The implications for lifelong education are considered, and illustrated through an example of a curriculum project.

Shifting Moral Stances: Morality and Gender in Same-Sex and Cross-Sex Game Interaction

In this study, I explore same-sex and cross-sex game interaction in foursquare, looking in particular at how the production of moral actions is adjusted in relation to the diverse configuration of players. The game was played among preadolescent girls (and boys) with low-income and ethnically mixed backgrounds (Syrian, Kurdish, Chilean) in an elementary school setting in Sweden. In the analysis, I demonstrate that the girls who had acquired physical skills in throwing engaged in extended disputes about game outcomes to justify the status of moves and hold one another accountable. The same girls downplayed their skills and mitigated fouls in interaction with less skilled girls. In cross-sex games, the girls reorganized their participation to playfully challenge the boys' (physical) domination. The girls shifted behaviors as the configuration of players changed across game contexts to realize multiple, contradictory, and shifting (moral) stances (ranging from a "morality of rights," to a "morality of responsibility" and a "morality of play"). Overall, the findings challenge a unitary (and separate) view of feminine morality and suggest that research on gender and morality should be grounded in detailed analyses of interactions across (game) contexts.

Construct‐Irrelevant Variance in High‐Stakes Testing

There are many threats to validity in high‐stakes achievement testing. One major threat is construct‐irrelevant variance (CIV). This article defines CIV in the context of the contemporary, unitary view of validity and presents logical arguments, hypotheses, and documentation for a variety of CIV sources that commonly threaten interpretations of test scores. A more thorough study of CIV is recommended.

How many selves in emotion experience? Reply to Dalgleish and Power (2004).

T. Dalgleish and M. J. Power (see record 2004-15929-012) suggest that J. A. Lambie and A. J. Marcel's (2002) article implicitly presents a unitary view of self in emotion experience and propose that certain clinical phenomena require multiple selves. This reply summarizes Lambie and Marcel's usages of the term self and examines both Dalgleish and Power's gloss of these and their own usages. This indicates that their own central usage of the term misrepresents Lambie and Marcel and is itself an improper usage. More important, examination of the phenomena claimed to require multiple selves suggests that they do not and that Dalgleish and Power may have misread the relevant clinical literature. Finally, Lambie and Marcel's own conception of dissociative phenomena and multiple selves are outlined, and alternative approaches are sketched. In discussing the usages of the term self and interpretation of cognitive and affective disorders, this reply attempts to clarify certain confusions.

Will the unitary view survive the short- and long-term?

In this commentary, we focus on four points. First, we discuss the assertion that the unitary model explains dissociations that implicate multiple systems. Second, the distinct nature of information utilized in immediate- and delayed-recall supports the distinct memory systems view. Third, the variable nature of capacity limits corroborates this view. Finally, we review event-related fMRI results that suggest support for multiple systems.

Translation from neurobiological data to music parameters.

Composers have explored different ways to use biological information for the realization of music. Throughout the decades, biological findings have been repeatedly indicated as a source of inspiration or a reservoir of extramusical material for musical composition. More radical and fertile are attempts to produce music systematically using biological data in processes called data sonification or biofeedback techniques. Presented here is a novel strategy of translation where populations of neurobiological data are converted into relational structures from which sound objects are generated by flexible and homogeneous control of the sound parameters. All brain data originate from experiments performed with standard anatomical and physiological techniques, and results of studies based on these experimental materials have already been published. During the translation processes, the information for every sound parameter (such as pitch, duration, envelope, and dynamics) is never derived from fixed transcriptions of data properties. Rather, the space and/or the time interrelations of data populations are used to obtain indexes for sound construction. In this way, equivalent sets of information are exploited to model, or sculpt, the different parameters of sound objects. Three examples from the last decade's personal productions are given. The first refers to the microformal aspects of sound aggregation and is based on data from a microstimulation experiment in the motor cortex. The second describes the earliest translation process developed for live performance with conventional instruments and is based on experiments using a conventional tract tracing technique to compare selected spinal-projecting cell populations in two differently organized brains. The third outlines a recent music production for three pianos based on data from experiments using the multiple fluorescent tract-tracing technique to simultaneously label different populations of thalamocortical neurons. The approach here described can potentially contribute to a unitary view of the different sound parameters and of the micro- and macroformal aspects of the compositional process.

Idiodynamic profiles of cardiovascular activity: A P-technique approach

A study was conducted to expand the conventional view of cardiovascular (CV) reactivity by using the idiodynamic paradigm for investigation of individuals. Patterns of autonomic CV regulation were assessed in six subjects across diverse laboratory tasks on three separate occasions. Individual CV profiles were derived from these data with P-technique factor analysis, and then group aggregated with chain P-technique. The composite pattern suggested a three-component solution consisting of cardiac rate, cardiac contractility, and peripheral resistance factors. Individual profiles were compared to the composite pattern; these profiles differed in the number of components derived, percentage variance explained by these components, and relative dominance of specific CV components. A hypothesis that emerged is that the subjects differed in the complexity of CV control. It appears that the idiodynamic framework, combined with novel research designs and statistical methods, may help expand the view of CV reactivity beyond the traditional unitary view as response magnitude.

A Modernization of "Peerless Homogeneity": The Creation of Russian Smokeless Gunpowder

Past studies of technical choice in military modernization have tended to assume both a unitary view of "technological determinism" and a concept of "modernization" in the singular. Using the case of chemist D. I. Mendeleev's development of a Russian variant of smokeless gunpowder in the 1890s, this article argues for a vision of late-imperial Russia as a site where several different modernizations confronted each other, a debate that was framed in Russian military circles in terms of the value of technical change in the first place. The eventual rejection of Mendeleev's pyrocollodion thus serves as an episode in the history of technological determinism as a category.

Anxiety and depression change together during treatment

Anxiety and depression frequently co-occur and are viewed by many theorists as aspects of a unitary disorder. In contrast, the diagnostic nomenclature views anxiety and depression as discrete disorders, and current protocols for anxiety and depression treat the disorders separately. To test the hypothesis (based on the unitary view) that anxiety and depression are tightly related and change together over the course of treatment, we monitored week-by-week changes in symptoms of anxiety and depression in 58 outpatients treated naturalistically in private practice with cognitive-behavior therapy. Results were more supportive of a unitary than a discrete view, and showed that anxiety and depression were highly predictive of one another over the course of treatment. These findings lend support to a view of anxiety and depression as more unitary than discrete, and suggest the need to consider changes in the diagnostic nomenclature and in treatment strategies for anxious depressed patients.

Caring science and the science of unitary human beings: a trans-theoretical discourse for nursing knowledge development.

Two dominant discourses in contemporary nursing theory and knowledge development have evolved over the past few decades, in part by unitary science views and caring theories. Rogers' science of unitary human beings (SUHB) represents the unitary directions in nursing. Caring theories and related caring science (CS) scholarship represent the other. These two contemporary initiatives have generated two parallel, often controversial, seemingly separate and unrelated, trees of knowledge for nursing science. This paper explores the evolution of CS and its intersection with SUHB that have emerged in contemporary nursing literature. We present a case for integration, convergence, and creative synthesis of CS with SUHB. A trans-theoretical, trans-disciplinary context emerges, allowing nursing to sustain its caring ethic and ontology, within a unitary science. The authors critique and review the seminal, critical issues that have separated contemporary knowledge developments in CS and SUHB. Foundational issues of CS, and Watson's theory of transpersonal caring science (TCS), as a specific exemplar, are analysed, alongside parallel themes in SUHB. By examining hidden ethical-ontological and paradigmatic commonalities, trans-theoretical themes and connections are explored and revealed between TCS and SUHB. Through a creative synthesis of TCS and SUHB we explicate a distinct unitary view of human with a relational caring ontology and ethic that informs nursing as well as other sciences. The result: is a trans-theoretical, trans-disciplinary view for nursing knowledge development. Nursing's history has been to examine theoretical differences rather than commonalities. This trans-theoretical position moves nursing toward theoretical integration and creative synthesis, vs. separation, away from the 'Balkanization' of different theories. This initiative still maintains the integrity of different theories, while facilitating and inviting a new discourse for nursing science. The result: Unitary Caring Science that evokes both science and spirit.

Transforming Healthcare With a Unitary View of the Human

Transforming Healthcare With a Unitary View of the Human

Transforming healthcare with a unitary view of the human.

The purpose of this article is to explicate the meaning of unitary from a historical perspective. The term was first used in ancient Greece, and its meaning has been transformed over time. The article explicates the similarities and differences among the nurse theorists who use the term unitary. It also specifies a different approach to healthcare when a unitary perspective of the human guides practice.

Towards a systemic research methodology in agriculture: Rethinking the role of values in science

The recent drastic developmentof agriculture, together with the growingsocietal interest in agricultural practices andtheir consequences, pose a challenge toagricultural science. There is a need forrethinking the general methodology ofagricultural research. This paper takes somesteps towards developing a systemic researchmethodology that can meet this challenge – ageneral self-reflexive methodology that forms abasis for doing holistic or (with a betterterm) wholeness-oriented research and providesappropriate criteria of scientific quality.From a philosophy of research perspective,science is seen as an interactive learningprocess with both a cognitive and a socialcommunicative aspect. This means, first of all,that science plays a role in the world that itstudies. A science that influences its ownsubject area, such as agricultural science, isnamed a systemic science. From thisperspective, there is a need to reconsider therole of values in science. Science is notobjective in the sense of being value-free.Values play, and ought to play, an importantrole in science – not only in form ofconstitutive values such as the norms of goodscience, but also in the form of contextualvalues that enter into the very process ofscience. This goes against the traditionalcriterion of objectivity. Therefore, reflexive objectivity is suggested as a newcriterion for doing good science, along withthe criterion of relevance. Reflexiveobjectivity implies that the communication ofscience must include the cognitivecontext, which comprises the societal,intentional, and observational context. Inaccordance with this, the learning process ofsystemic research is shown as a self-reflexivecycle that incorporates both an involved actorstance and a detached observer stance. Theobserver stance forms the basis for scientificcommunication.To this point, a unitary view of science asa learning process is employed. A secondimportant perspective for a systemic researchmethodology is the relation between the actual,different, and often quite separate kinds ofscience. Cross-disciplinary research ishampered by the idea that reductive science ismore objective, and hence more scientific, thanthe less reductive sciences of complex subjectareas – and by the opposite idea thatreductive science is necessarilyreductionistic. Taking reflexive objectivity asa demarcator of good science, an inclusiveframework of science can be established. Theframework does not take the establisheddivision between natural, social, and humanscience as a primary distinction of science.The major distinction is made between theempirical and normative aspects of science,corresponding to two key cognitive interests.Two general methodological dimensions, thedegree of reduction of the research world andthe degree of involvement in the researchworld, are shown to span this framework. Theframework can form a basis fortransdisciplinary work by way of showing therelation between more and less reductive kindsof science and between more detached and moreinvolved kinds of science and exposing theabilities and limitations attendant on thesemethodological differences.

Comprehension skills and reading tasks

This article reports data from a study into the separability of reading skills. Based on a study conducted by Alderson (1990), teachers of English as a foreign language were presented a list of reading skills and were asked to identify what three reading tasks were measuring in terms of the list. A comparison between the teachers' responses and the objectives established by the author of the tasks has been interpreted as evidence of the unitary view of reading, as opposed to the multidivisible view of the process. DOI: 10.28998/0103-6858.2001n28-29p15-28