bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
What and Why is Art?
Authors: Eaton Marcia Muelder
Published: November 2023

ARTISTIC activity can be understood and appreciated only when we recognize and acknowledge what and why people have engaged in it for as long as we have reason to believe that there were any people doing anything at all. From making things to looking at things, individuals and groups may not always have used terms translatable without loss to ‘art’ or ‘aesthetic’, but when from our own temporal and cultural viewpoint, we describe what people did and do, these terms come forth as readily as ‘harvest’ or ‘parent’, ‘prayer’ or ‘battle’. I am not interested here in arguing that art should be such and such or that when people engage in aesthetic activity they should do it in special ways. Rather, I insist, we must consider what people in fact do and have done when they dress up and dance, climb a hill for a better view, listen to a story, make sounds that blend with sounds others are making, or point to an image in clouds or acrylic. No matter how often or long people are told that aesthetic activity is isolated from science or morality or religion or politics, we keep using aesthetic objects and events for all of these ends. People always and everywhere have and, unless human nature undergoes a radical transformation, will continue to make love, commemorate those we admire, instruct, insult, amuse, and try to make sense of the world by using aesthetic objects and events. Despite some theorists’ insistence that the aesthetic is separate from the rest of our lives and that its importance derives from this separation, human experience contradicts them.
Aesthetics: The Mother of Ethics?
Authors: Eaton Marcia Muelder
Published: November 2023

Both strong and weak formalists who insist on the separation of ethics and aesthetics exhibit, I have suggested, a zeal for establishing a rightful place for the latter. Some theorists express a similar zeal in maintaining not only that the moral does not always come first but also that actually it comes second. I believe that this is also a mistake—another version of the separatist mistake—but it is one that takes us further toward a correct integrationist view1. In his Nobel laureate address in 1988, the poet Joseph Brodsky said, “On the whole, every new aesthetic reality makes man’s ethical reality more precise. For aesthetics is the mother of ethics:’2. Many philosophers of art have struggled to convince others that aesthetics and ethics are connected; some of us have gone so far as to claim that aesthetic and ethical values are, at least sometimes, equally important and serious. That was the topic of the last chapter. But few go so far as Brodsky does in this remark. One might even construe it as hyperbole. Another author, Andre Gide, when asked in an interview what morality is, responded, “A branch of aesthetics.”3 One senses that Gide was trying to be outrageous or cute. I think Brodsky, however, was quite serious. What could it possibly mean to say that aesthetics is the motherof ethics? In his lecture, Brodsky did not spell out in any de tail what he meant, but the phrase enthralls me and I believe that consideration of possible interpretations of it sheds light on the extent to which aesthetics and ethics are integrated.
Preludio: Renaissance
Authors: Clark Walter Aaron
Published: November 2023

In the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City hangs a portrait by Francisco Goya of Don Ignacio O’Mulryany Rourera, and the curatorial commentary along-side it declares with breathtaking self-assurance that between Goya and Picasso, Span-ish art descended into “bourgeois mediocrity.” There is a lot of ideological baggage in such a view. The automatic linking of the bourgeoisie with mediocrity strikes an es-pecially curious note. For, were not the art, literature, and music of the nineteenth century molded by the tastes of the bourgeoisie that patronized them? In particular, are we prepared to dismiss all Spanish paintings between the royally commissioned works of Goya and the modernistic creations of Picasso as tainted by mediocrity? Ob-viously, some of us are.
La Maja de Goya
Authors: Clark Walter Aaron
Published: November 2023

A great debate raged in Spain in the 1890s and early 1900s, centering around the na- tion’s place in the world, its identity and future. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, conservative politicians like Antonio Cánovas promoted xenophobia and fueled distrust of foreign influence, at the same time asserting the view that Spain was a major power and had an important role to play in the world. Spain’s defeat in its war with the United States in 1898 made it more difficult to embrace such a fantasy. Illusions of national grandeur proved unsustainable in the aftermath of such humiliation and the loss of the remnants of a once-vast empire.
Epílogo: The Legacy of Granados
Authors: Clark Walter Aaron
Published: November 2023

Posterity’s assessment of Granados will never place him alongside the composers he admired most: Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, and Wagner. He was not in their class; he knew it, and so do we. There is no doubt, however, that he does enjoy a perma- nent place in the pantheon of European composers, if only as a minor deity. Certain of his works have attained those twin peaks of popularity and critical respect that as- sure some measure of immortality to a creative artist.
The Holistic Health Explosion: Acupuncture
Authors: Whorton James C
Published: November 2023

Acrisis of confidence in modern medicine is upon us,” Ivan Illich announced near the beginning of his 1975 Medical Nemesis. Crisis was in fact the medical leitmotif of the decade. On assuming the presidency in 1969, Richard Nixon had warned Americans that “we face a massive crisis” in medical care, and a national poll conducted a year later found that three-fourths of heads of households agreed with the statement “There is a crisis in health care in the United States.” Rising costs and limited accessibility to care were major factors in generating the sense of crisis, but equally important was dissatisfaction with physicians. A wave of books such as Medical Nemesis, Thomas McKeown’s The Role of Medicine, Rick Carlson’s The End of Medicine, and Marcia Millman’s The Unkindest Cut, not to mention numerous articles in lay periodicals, repeatedly took the profession to task for a catalogue of sins both committed and omitted. The unifying theme of allopathic medicine’s antagonists, voiced so effectively by Illich, was that modern medicine was guilty of a “presumptious expertise” that required every form of human suffering to be pressed into its narrow biomechanical construct of disease. And just as hubris had been punished by the ancient Greeks through Nemesis, the goddess of retribution, so medicine would get its comeuppance for so arrogantly ignoring the human facets of illness that did not fit easily into the biomedical box. MDs would have to answer, in short, for not treating the whole patient.
Seizures in the Intensive Care Unit
Authors: Wijdicks Eelco F M
Published: November 2023

The circumstances that surround critical illness make patients more vulnerable to seizures. Aside from acute metabolic alterations, drug toxicity and drug withdrawal are common precipitating factors. However, seizures in critically ill patients may indicate a new catastrophic neurologic event, such as intracerebral hematoma, or herald an emerging central nervous system infection, particularly in the immunocompromised transplant population.
Neurologic Complications of Acute Renal Disease
Authors: Wijdicks Eelco F M
Published: November 2023

Patients can be distinguished by renal involvement during any critical illness, such as sepsis, hypovolemic shock, major endocrine disturbances, and rhabdomyolysis. Renal failure in an intensive care unit (ICU) after surgery has been recognized as a major cause of morbidity, and postoperative hemodynamic instability has an important role in pathogenesis. Temporarily, replacement of renal function may be needed through use of hemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis, but oliguric acute renal failure is a major cause of death in the ICU.
Neurologic Complications of Organ Transplantation
Authors: Wijdicks Eelco F M
Published: November 2023

Despite the worrisome scarcity of organs and the substantial cost to society, transplantation has become firmly established as a viable cure for vital organ failure and not only for the fortunate few. The lives of many people are affected by transplantation, and most patients rate their quality of life as good or excellent. Most academic institutions have meticulously organized transplantation programs, yet several teams share the responsibility for care of the transplant patient. Currently, patients are admitted to surgical units specially equipped for transplant recipients.
Introduction: Conceptual Framework for Studies of the Herbaceous Layer
Authors: Gilliam Frank S , Roberts Mark R
Published: November 2023

Forest ecosystems have always been an integral part of human existence, whether as a source of food, fiber, and habitat, as an essential component in maintaining the atmospheric balance of O2 and CO2, or as a source of musical, artistic, or poetic inspiration. Yet, our image of forests often comes from the broad brush of a landscape perspective, whereby we see only the grandeur of the predominant vegetation—the trees. Such a distortion figuratively and literally masks the vegetation that, though of lesser stature, contains the most diverse and spatially and temporally dynamic assemblage of forest plants.
The Mentalizing Folk
Authors: Goldman Alvin I
Published: November 2023

Ordinary people are mentalizers. The folk not only have mental states, but they represent themselves — both self and others — as having mental states. Many of these mental states (e.g., beliefs and desires) represent how the world is or ought to be. By representing themselves as having such first-order representational states, the folk engage in second-order representation, or metarepresentation. The class of representations is not exhausted, of course, by mental states; linguistic utterances and inscriptions are also representations though not mental ones. The representation of mental representation is a big enough topic for a single chapter, however, and it is all that I shall bite off here.
Climate
Authors: Mayr Ernst , Diamond Jared
Published: November 2023

Theo a casual observer accustomed to the marked and predictable seasonality of the temperate zones —for example, to American soldiers fighting in Melanesian jungles during World War II —it might at first seem that Northern Melanesia’s cli mate could be described as “equatorial, tropical, hot, wet, and a seasonal.” By comparison with the temperate zones, this statement is approximately correct, but the climate is actually more complex, and the complexities are relevant to understanding bird distributions. Our account of climate is derived from Brookfield and Hart (1966), Scott et al. (1967), Whitmore (1974), and McAlpine et al.(1975). All of Northern Melanesia lies between latitudes 1°S and 11°S (fig. 0.2 on p. xiv). Thus, seasonal variation in temperature and in daily hours of sunlight is modest. Monthly means for daily temperature minima or maxima vary seasonally at any given site by only up to 1°C. At all available weather stations, all of which are located in the coastal lowlands, the mean maxima fall between 29 and 31°C, and the mean minima fall between 22 and 24°C. Presumably, temperatures decrease with elevation by about 2°C for every 300 m, as elsewhere in the equatorial tropics.
Absence of Geographic Variation
Authors: Mayr Ernst , Diamond Jared
Published: November 2023

One might expect that each species would be represented by a separate subspecies or allospecies on each island where the species occurs, if all of the following four conditions were met: 1) if the population of each island had been established by a single founding event; 2) if that event had occurred in the distant past, so that there would have been ample time since then for evolution to follow a different trajectory on each island; 3) if the populations of all islands had remained genetically isolated from each other since the founding event, without any subsequent gene flow between islands; and 4) if the phenotype of the species were sufficiently plastic. In addition, the likelihood of a distinct population on each island would be greater if each island differed considerably from all other islands in its physical environment (habitats, elevation, and area) and/or in its biological environment (competing species and predators), so that each population would have been exposed to different pressures.
Geographic Variation: Subspecies
Authors: Mayr Ernst , Diamond Jared
Published: November 2023

Let us consider the frequency of geographic variation among Northern Melanesian species, at first without inquiring into the actual number of distinct populations per variable species. We can evaluate this frequency in two ways. First, take as the unit the zoogeographic species (superspecies, plus full species not belonging to superspecies). As explained in the first two paragraphs of chapter 17, Northern Melanesia has 191 such zoogeographic species that we analyze. How many of these analyzed species exhibit geographic variation within Northern Melanesia, regardless of whether it is at the level of the subspecies or allospecies? Of the 191 analyzed species, 100 do exhibit geographic variation (table 17.1): 65 of them are represented by multiple subspecies but not multiple allospecies within Northern Melanesia; 10 are represented by multiple allospecies, but none of those allospecies is divided further into multiple subspecies; and 25 are divided into multiple allospecies, some of which are further divided into multiple subspecies (appendix 5, columns “allo”
Introduction: The Skeptical Sublime Aesthetic Ideology in Pope and the Tory Satirists
Authors: Noggle James
Published: November 2023

The sublime converges with various types of skepticism in late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth-century British thought to disrupt or trouble the period’s aesthetics, epistemology, and ideology in ways that have not been fully recognized. After Boileau’s French translation of Longinus’s On the Sublime brings the idea into European criticism in 1674, British writers attuned to the sublime’s skeptical implications produce an account of it different not only from that of Longinus but from those of Burke and Kant later in the eighteenth century, as well as from the major theories of sublimity developed in literary studies from the 1970s to today. The convergence of skepticism with the sublime exposes instabilities in the dominant epistemology of the post-Restoration period, which the leading intellectual histories have usually characterized as securely grounded on procedures of probability, sociable collaboration, and “moral certainty”: for a group of important writers, the skeptical sublime notes and dramatizes the occasional instability, alienation, and doubt that attend the age’s cultural projects. It also helps grant the aesthetic ideology of Dryden, Swift, and Pope its peculiar character. The so-called Tory satirists have been seen, in a sometimes muddled way, as both political reactionaries and supporters of new models of taste and civil society associated with the liberal-Whig ascendancy. While these satirists appeal to the protoaesthetic category of the sublime—alongside their Whig associates and enemies—to help stabilize British culture after the traumas of the Civil War and Revolution, they also use it to remark the uncertainties attending such means of stabilization and so to express their ambivalence about the emerging social order.
Knowing Ridicule and Skeptical Reflection in the Moral Essays
Authors: Noggle James
Published: November 2023

Pope’s attitude toward inconsistency is inconsistent. He displays his own in the Horatian poems as a potent, candid pose that establishes his moral and satirical authority, the clearness of his poetic “Medium,” but this seems at odds with the numerous passages of poems of the 1730s that satirically attack the inconsistency of others. In a generalizing, philosophical register, he accepts and often savors the idea that all human lives are bafflingjumbles, but he also views inconsistency as the essence of what is distasteful or even horrifying in human behavior, of immorality or perversion—and so uses it as his main charge against the vicious and ridiculous. Even excellent critics of Pope resolve the issue unconvincingly. David Morris says that Pope distinguishes between inconstancy, a moral fault only wicked or insane people exhibit, and inconsistency, shared by all.1 While this view is commonsensical enough, Pope never clearly articulates it, and nothing suggests he held such a firm distinction in mind from poem to poem. He furthermore seems aware that using inconsistency as a moral index is a fraught problem: since all deviations from the good are disruptive of one’s requus animus or moral center, it is an interesting fact that they are not all morally equal. Indecisiveness about landscape design is not as bad as treason, corruption, or rage: still, Papillia’s cry in the Epistle to a Lady of “odious, odious Trees!” after having them planted in her park links her fault to Atossa’s “warfare upon earth.”
Modernity and the Skeptical Sublime in the Final Dunciad
Authors: Noggle James
Published: November 2023

The power of skeptical doubt more than any other factor generates Pope’s ambivalent perspective on the apocalyptic course of British cultural history charted in the final Dunciad (1743). Critics for some time have seen evidence of his mixed feelings in the poem: while obviously attacking the dunces’ literary endeavors, Pope seems fascinated by Dulness’s surreal, disorienting effects; he also takes the dunces seriously as representatives of potent intellectual tendencies, despite his dismissals of them as mere fools and bad stylists.1 The concluding acceptance of Dulness’s triumph makes the poem seem like less an act of satirical resistance than one of surrender—to forces that are somehow superior to his own good sense. Emrys Jones’s classic essay “Pope and Dulness” (1968) reads Pope’s evident delight in the dunces’ activities as an oblique rebellion against the “imaginative depletion”2 of his times: “what Pope as a deliberate satirist rejects as dully lifeless his imagination communicates as obscurely energetic” (637).
Getting the Arithmetic Right 1974-1976
Authors: Prebble John , Weber Bruce
Published: November 2023

The year 1974 marked the recognition of Peter Mitchell as a leading scientist who had made a significant contribution to his field of interest No particular event Sf’ems to have triggered this. Simply, the scientific world had become conscious that, at the very least, Mitchell might be right about the mechanism of oxidative phosphorylation. Even if this were not true, he could still be credite’d both with stimulating the debate on the subject and with promoting a good deal of experimentation. ln addition, he had contributed significantly to the field of active transport across membranes. ft was also true that an increasing number of scientists were convinced of the validity of the chemiosmotic theory. The championing of his chemiosmotic theory, together with the extensive experimental evidence he had gathered with Jennifer Moyle, was now paying dividends.
The Cytochrome Oxidase Controversy 1977-1986
Authors: Prebble John , Weber Bruce
Published: November 2023

Mitchell was involved in many controversies. That concerning the cytochronw oxidase> was certainly a major one and throws light on his personality and on his approach to science. lt also provides a window on the nature of scientific debate. ln the late 197us, a major public argtmwnt with a Finnish biochemist developed ove’f an aspe’ct of the chemiosmotic theory. The question under debate, whether or not protons were pumped by the cytochrome oxidase (the terminal enzyme of the respiratory chain that reduces oxygen to water), was related to the more diffuse argument over the number of protons pumped by the respiratory chain, as discussed here earlier. lt was an issue that was to be debated for eight years and in which many of the leaders in the bioenergetics field became involved. For Mitchell personally the underlying basis of the chemiosmotic theory was at stake.The Origins of Mitchell’s View of the Oxidase When Mitchell developed his original theory in the Grey Books of 1966 and 1968, he specifically considered the question of how the passage of electrons down the respiratory chain would move protons across the mitochondrial membrane.
Theory-Based Categorization in Early Childhood
Authors: Gelman Susan A , Koenig Melissa A
Published: November 2023

In this chapter, we argue that children’s categories as expressed in language are “theory based.” By this we mean that the categories of young children include information about ontology, causation, function, intentions, and other properties that are not directly observable. Moreover, children use their categories to form important inferences and explanations that go beyond the available evidence. In staking these claims, we explicitly build on recent proposals by Carey, Gopnik, and others suggesting that children’s thought is organized into intuitive framework theories that, like scientific theories, help children organize experience, make predictions, and causally interpret their world (Carey, 1985; Gopnik & Wellman, 1994; Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1997) (what Robert Siegler [personal communication] recently termed “core knowledge theories”). The crucial additional claim here is that such theories are reflected in the individual categories that children form (see also Gelman, 1996).
Human Rhythms: Basic Processes
Authors: Palmer John D
Published: November 2023

In a word: difficult. The main reason in two words: hates isolation. Dungeons, “the box;’ “the hole;’ solitary confinement, “Go to your room” et cetra, have been, since we first became civilized, a standard form of punishment. Social animals like to be around their own kind.

And there is the rub: In the study of biological rhythms, because of the important influence of the day/night cycle on rhythms, all subjects—even the human ones—must be isolated in constant conditions for extended periods of time. There aren’t many normal people who, even for a price and a free place to eat and sleep for six weeks, are willing to endure the loneliness. Thus, using those who are willing to volunteer often has its limitations because a good experiment should involve only subjects who are representative of the population as a whole. On top of that, as anyone who has ever kept a lover knows, they are expensive and difficult to maintain: They can be fastidious about what they eat and their creature comforts. Even when willing volunteers are found, if they begin to miss a loved one, become fidgety over whether the stock market is going up or down, or whatever, their psychological state often disrupts their physiological rhythms and spoils the experiment.
Megiddo 15 May 1479 B.C.
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

In the early years of the eighteenth century B.C., the power of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom was waning. That coincided with the immigration of the Hyksos, a Semitic population probably from the region of Palestine, that used superior weaponry to topple the faltering Thirteenth dynasty. The Hyksos dynasty began ruling Egypt in 1786 B.C. and lasted until 1575 B.C. By then the Hyksos had become sufficiendy complacent and content to lose their edge, and the Egyptian population reasserted control over their own nation. The new pharaoh, who began the New Kingdom era, was Ahmose (ruled 1575-1550 B.C.). Ahmosewas not content with merely regaining his country, bur wanted to extend Egypt’s northeastern frontier to establish a strong buffer zone. He also wanted to extend Egypt’s power because exposure to foreign peoples had given the Egyptians a taste for things that could come only from outside their country. Hence, conquest and trade as well as security motivated Ahmose’s war making.
Salamis 23 September 480 B.C.
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

Although Darius’s attempt to invade Greece in 490 B.C. failed, he was not about to allow the Greeks to go unpunished for their earlier aid to rebellious provinces in Ionia. He would have immediately mounted another invasion, but first had to deal with a rebellion in Egypt. Before subduing that revolt, Darius died in 486 B.C., to be succeeded by his son Xerxes. Xerxes finished the job in Egypt and then set about mounting the punitive expedition to Greece. It is impossible to know for sure just how large an expedition it was because contemporary writers are notorious for exaggerating numbers, whether to make their own victory look better or because the Persian juggernaut seemed so immense it had to be the 2.6 million people Herodotus claimed. Then again, if one assumes that this number includes not only soldiers but also all the various support personnel (cooks, clerks, launderers, etc.), then perhaps it is not too outrageous. Herodotus, however, claims that with the support personnel the total number on campaign with Xerxes was more than 5 million. More modern writers (Maurice, journal of Hellenic Studies, and Munro, The Cambridge Ancient History) place the fighting forces at between 150,000 and 180,000, drawn from all the Persian Empire.

Since their stunning victory in 490 over the Persians at Marathon, the Greeks had not been as focused as the Persians on the upcoming war. Athens, Sparta, and most other poleis (city-states) had returned to their contentious ways and fallen out among themselves. When hearing the news of Xerxes’s oncoming forces in the winter of 481, they finally sublimated their differences by meeting in a panHellenic conference under Spartan leadership at the Isthmus of Corinth. Many of the northern poleis did not send representatives, however. The major point of discussion was where to make their defensive stand. Sparta argued that, because the Peloponnese, the peninsula upon which they lived, was the heart of Greek independence, the stand should be made at the Corinthian isthmus. This, however, would abandon all of northern and central Greece to Persia without a fight, and such a decision might lead to the poleis north of the isthmus defecting to Xerxes in order to save their lands from destruction.
Pydna 22 June 168 B.C.
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

Rome first got involved in Greece in 215 B.C., when the Carthaginian leader Hannibal concluded an alliance with Philip V of Macedon. This proved a serious diversion from Rome’s focus on its on going war with Carthage, but enough Greek states joined with Rome to keep Philip from overrunning the peninsula. The 10 year war was inconclusive, but Philip remained dedicated to establishing Macedonian control over Greece. In 200 B.C., Philip entered into an alliance with Antiochus III, king of the Seleucid Empire based in Syria, one of the divisions of Alexander the Great’s empire. When Philip again made aggressive moves toward Greece, Rome declared war.
Pavia 773-774
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

The relationship between the pope and the kingdom of the Franks started in 756. Pepin III, known variously as “the Short” and “the Great,” responded to a call from Pope Stephen II to save Rome from depredations by the Lombards, the population that dominated the northern Italian peninsula. The amity upon which this response was based rested on Stephen’s support of Pepin’s deposition of the last king of the Merovingian dynasty, Childeric III, in 751, and the blessing for that action that Stephen bestowed upon Pepin in 754. This began close ties between politics and religion in the Frankish lands, for Pepin and his heirs were to hold the title of patricius Romanus and protect the Catholic Church from spiritual and temporal threats. Thus, in 755, Pepin marched his army into Italy to capture the city of Pavia and stop the aggressive actions of the Lombard King Aistulf. As soon as he returned to France, however, Aistulf was again threatening Rome. Pepin was back in 756, defeated Aistulf again, and is reported to have promised the pope possession of a large amount of the Italian peninsula. When Aistulf died shortly thereafter, he was replaced by Desiderius, who promised to respect papal authority and possessions. That he did not do.
Hattin 4July 1187
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

At the end of the eleventh century, the First Crusade had won for European Christians the strip of coast along the eastern Mediterranean. From Antioch in the north to Gaza in the south the Holy Land was under European command, but not necessarily under its control. The imposition of feudalism in the region had alienated even the Christian inhabitants, while persecution of lslam and Judaism had angered the remainder. Living in a land populated by enemies, the only way the crusaders could have maintained their position was through close cooperation. However, the rivalries that had existed in Europe between aristocrats were merely transplanted to the Middle East, and fighting among the Europeans was as common as Christian-Moslem clashes.
Ain Jalut 3 September 1260
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

By 1219, the Mongols under Genghis Khan had spread their influence as far as the Caspian Sea. There, the Shah of Khwarizm offended the Great Khan by declining to extradite one of his governors for the death of two Mongol merchants. This provoked an invasion and the destruction of Khwarizm and led to the Mongol onslaught into the Middle East. Four Mongol armies engaged in the punishment: Genghis led one army that burned Bokhara, Samarkand, and Balkh; his son Juchi defeated the Shah’s forces at Jand, reportedly killing 160,000 men in the victory; another son, Jagatai, captured and sacked Otrar; yet another son, Tule, led 70,000 men through Khorasan and pillaged everywhere he went. All the armies proceeded undefeated, capturing and despoiling Merv, Nishapur, Rayy, and Herat.
Vienna 27 September-14 October 1529
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

Europe in the 1520s presented to a potential outside aggressor a wonderful opportunity, just as the weakened condition caused by ByzantinePersian hostility had opened the door for Islam to break out of Arabia in the seventh century. More than weakness, however, it was political rivalry in Europe that made the continent vulnerable. Politically, King Francis I of France and Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, argued and fought over land that today is the FrancoGerman frontier, as well as control over northern Italy. France had a powerful military based on artillery and heavy cavalry, with which it won a number of victories. Charles, as head of the Hapsburg family, controlled not only the Holy Roman Empire (which consisted of Austria and parts of whatever countries bordered it) but also Spain, whose military power was based on the tercio, a phalanx of pikemen supported by smaller contingents of soldiers, each armed with the harquebus, a matchlock musket. Against these formations, cavalry made no impression, and, when the rwo armies met at Pavia in northern Italy in 1525, France came up the loser. Ferdinand not only was defeated, he was taken prisoner. During and after his captivity, he plotted revenge and pondered on possible allies.
Sekigahara 21 October 1600
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

During the Heian Era (794-1192) of Japanese history, the emperor ruled from the newly established capital at the city of Kyoto. In the late twelfth century, the power of the emperor was challenged by the rise of the samurai, a class of warriors. For more than a century, the emperors had depended on the samurai to fight their wars and maintain regional order, but a struggle between two strong samurai clans resulted in war in the 1180s. The battle of Dannoura in 1185 ended in a victory for the Minamoto clan, whose leader saw an opportunity to challenge the emperor for supreme authority. To forestall such a move, the emperor appointed Minamoto-no-Yoritomi to be commander of all the imperial armies, with the authority to call them out at his own discretion. Thus was created the position of shogun. Although the shogun was officially subservient to the emperor, control of the armies made the shogun the real power behind the throne.

Minamoto established an alternate administration at the town of Kamakura, that town giving its name to the shogunate for the next century and a half. Through the middle of the sixteenth century, the respective powers of the emperor and the shogun waxed and waned.
Trenton 26 December 1776
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

The colonial military forces of the American Revolution got off to a fairly successful start. A surprise attack on the isolated Fort Ticonderoga at Lake Champlain on 10 May 1775 netted about a hundred heavy guns for an army that had none. Using those weapons, American commander General George Washington was able to force the British to evacuate their primary base at Boston in March 1776. With that withdrawal, the vast majority of British forces in the American colonies was removed, eliminating the immediate threat of British action against the Revolution and depriving the British of a port of entry for men and materiel. If they were to continue the struggle to suppress the rebellion and reestablish control, the British had to have a harbor. The next best facility was New York City; in some ways, it was superior to Boston, in that it was more centrally located along the colonial coastline. Further, it threatened the Hudson River, an artery vital to the revolutionary cause for the free flow of American men and materiel between Philadelphia (the site of the Continental Congress) and the primary center of revolutionary ferment in Massachusetts. Washington realized that New York was the most likely location for the British to return, so he shifted forces there as soon as Boston was secured.
Rivoli 14 January 1797
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

In the wake of the execution of Louis XVI, his wife, and several thousand of their supporters, the monarchs of Europe felt distinctly uneasy after January 1793. Having seen the Americans successfully throw off royal rule in 1783, most European kings were afraid that the French Revolution was too close to home. Fearing that their own populations might be encouraged by American and French actions, a coalition of European kings decided to invade France, restore the monarchy, and crush the notion of revolution before it spread any farther. They failed. Thanks to a massive conscription policy and new tactics on the battlefield, France remained whole in the face of invasion. By 1796, only Great Britain and Austria remained officially at war with France. With France having spent most of the previous few years on the defensive, the Directory, the French governing body, decided to change tactics and operate on the offensive. They sent Napoleon Bonaparte, a rising star in the new French army, to take command against Austrian forces fighting in northern Italy.
Aboukirbay (Battle Of The Nile) 1 August 1198
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

By 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte was the most successful French general of his day, having recently gained much of Italy for his country. It was therefore not surprising that he was the one chosen by the French governing body, the Directory, to lead a daring mission to the east. Since the British East India Company’s victory over a French-supported prince of India at Plassey in 1757, French fortunes in the subcontinent had rapidly ebbed. The French were evicted from their last remaining trading post at Pondicherry in 1796, and it seemed as if Britain would remain supreme in India. If, however, Napoleon could seize Egypt, the French could control the eastern Mediterranean and the Red Sea, giving them a starting point for a possible return to India and a base from which to harass British shipping in the Indian Ocean. This was Napoleons secret mission in 1798.
Mexico City 19 August-14 September 1847
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

When Texans defeated the Mexican army of President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna at San Jacinto on 21 April 1836, the surrender document that Santa Anna signed designated the border of the newly independent country, the Republic of Texas, to be the Rio Grande. Although the Mexican government never ratified the agreement that Santa Anna signed, the Texans continued to regard the Rio Grande from mouth to source as the southern and western borders of their country. For the following 9 years, Mexico never seriously tried to regain the lost province, launching only the occasional raid that accomplished nothing.
Atlanta/March To The Sea22 July-22 December 1864
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

After the city of Vicksburg surrendered to Union General Ulysses Grant on 4 July 1863, the same day that Confederate General Robert E. Lee was retreating from his defeat at Gettysburg, any chance that the Confederacy had to win the Civil War was fading. Vicksburg’s fall meant that the Union controlled the Mississippi River, severing Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas from the remainder of the Confederate States of America. In the eastern theater, although Lee had repeatedly beaten back Union invasions of Virginia, his lack of supplies meant that his army could not fight in top form. When Grant was transferred from the west to Virginia, Lincoln directed him to do what a half dozen previous commanders had failed to do: defeat Lee and capture Richmond. In early May 1864, Grant led about 100,000 men into northern Virginia to attempt just that.
Battle Of Britain Summer 1940
Authors: Davis Paul K
Published: November 2023

Having easily overrun Poland in September 1939, German forces remained quiet through the winter. In April 1940, however, they roared back into action with surprise offensives into Denmark and Norway. Denmark surrendered in a matter of hours; Norway lasted several weeks. In early May, German forces violated Belgian and Dutch neutrality on their way into France. This maneuver bypassed the strong French defenses of the Maginot line, and rapidly moving armored columns drove deep into France heading for Paris. The British army, stunned by the speed of the offensive, found themselves separated from French forces and driven back to the coastline. There at Dunkirk, they stood isolated as German panzers bore down on them. Only the shift from a ground to an air attack saved the British, as a massive flotilla arrived to spirit the British away from under the noses of the German tanks.
Sociobiology and Science
Authors: Alcock John
Published: November 2023

Having devoted a chapter to demonstrate that sociobiologists are not unreasoning genetic determinists, I’d like to explain what sociobiologists really are. Here’s the bottom line: sociobiologists are scientists who employ standard scientilfic logic in trying to reach publishable conclusions about the evolutionary or ultimate purpose of a behavior of interest. To illustrate this point, we shall return to the question, Why do some female red-winged blackbirds mate with more than one male?

As already noted, female songbirds mating with more than one male create a Darwinian puzzle because a female’s primary partner typically provides her with a resource-rich nesting area, all the sperm she is likely to need, and assistance in rearing her young. Therefore, it is hard to imagine why in ultimate terms a female would take the time to leave her home territory on occasion to visit other males who may not provide her with anything other than sperm. To heighten the puzzle, male songbirds that have been cuckolded may withhold assistance from their unfaithful mates [252].
The Problem with Culturtil Determinism
Authors: Alcock John
Published: November 2023

Many people have no particular objection to (nor, sadly, any great interest in) an evolutionary analysis of helping at the nest in Seychelles warblers or sperm competition in damselflies. But as soon as the conversation turns to evolution and human beings, voices are raised and strong opinions fly through the air with the greatest of ease. As mentioned earlier, E. 0. Wilson almost surely would have avoided the brickbats that came his way had he simply omitted the last chapter of Sociobiology. But since he had analyzed human social behavior from an evolutionary perspective, he stimulated an opposition eager to argue with him and the discipline he represented. Although Wilson was surprised at how uncivil his critics proved to be, perhaps he should not have been because an evolutionary approach to human behavior really does threaten a great many religious, political, and academic positions, a point made by Daniel Dennett in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea [102].

The sociobiological study of humans does not appeal to those people, academics and no academics alike, who believe that to understand human behavior, one can ignore evolutionary biology, and focus only on the process of cultural indoctrination, which they believe is shaped by the accidents of human history and the power of the human imagination.
The Triumph of Sociobiology
Authors: Alcock John
Published: November 2023

As we have seen in previous chapters, sociobiologists have faced a whole range of charges, including claims that they are reductionist determinists intent on finding a gene for every human action, ultra-Darwinians incapable of grasping that evolution is influenced by more than natural selection, purveyors of just-so stories ready to accept the wildest speculation at the drop of a hat, or socially irresponsible pseudoscientists at best, reactionary neo-Nazis at worst, whose views in either case could contaminate the body politic, a risk that makes all manner of opposition morally appropriate, indeed imperative.

Not one of these claims is correct. In reality, sociobiologists do not commit the sin of genetic or biological determinism because they explore the ultimate, not proximate, causes of behavior. In fact, they could not study “genetically determined” behavior even if they wanted to because it does not exist, nor do they seek out genes “for” particular behaviors. Instead, they make use of a particular evolutionary perspective, the adaptationist approach, to examine the possible contribution of interesting traits to the genetic success of individuals (not the survival of the species).
Toni Morrison The Art of Fiction
Authors: Schappell Elissa
Published: November 2023

She seems to think that the attention that has been paid to the lyricism of her work marginalizes her talent and denies her stories their power and resonance. As one of the few novelists whose work is both popular and critically acclaimed, she can afford the luxury of choosing what praise to accept. But she does not reject all classifications and embraces the title “black woman writer.” Her ability to transform individuals into forces and idiosyncrasies into inevitabilities has led some critics to call her the “D. H. Lawrence of the black psyche.” She is also a master of the public novel, examining the relationships between the races and genders and the struggle between civilization and nature, while at the same time combining myth and the fantastic with a deep political sensitivity.
Without Reverence
Authors: Woodruff Paul
Published: November 2023

The signs say, “God voted against Proposition Two.” They are everywhere in this city of many churches—painted on bill- boards, scrawled on wooden signs, assembled from movable letters on rented panels that are wheeled out from churches to the sidewalks. No one in the city could miss the message. The issue is benefits. Should the city offer the same package to same-sex partners as it did to the husbands and wives of its employees? The council has approved a plan to do so, but opponents have brought on this referendum—in which, if the signs are true,
Music and a Funeral Finding Reverence
Authors: Woodruff Paul
Published: November 2023

Bonds and gestures pushed to one side”—this is the paradise that the poet says he knows will come when people are able to abandon marriage as empty ceremony. It is paradise in imagination only, as the third and fourth stanzas bring home to us, and we expect the poem to end in bitterness. But then, suddenly, in place of the expected irony, the poet sends us “the thought of high windows”—a moment of inarticulate awe.
Reverence Across Religions
Authors: Woodruff Paul
Published: November 2023

Religions come and go, but ritual survives. Often a practice continues with new meanings long after old meanings have been forgotten. Ritual is more robust than belief and has more staying power, but wherever there is ritual, there must be the reverence to take that ritual seriously. In these fast-changing times, many people feel the ground of religion shifting underneath them. They should be comforted to learn that religious ground has shifted before. Faith changes over history, but reverence remains. We should, therefore, be able to trace reverence back to cultures that have religions very different from modern ones. That’s what I plan to do in this chapter, with special attention to religions that seem most repugnant to modern Christian taste. One very hard case is religion that is agnostic, or that places no emphasis on belief, such as classic Confucianism or Jainism.
Relativism
Authors: Woodruff Paul
Published: November 2023

Complete relativist—like a die-hard traditionalist—would tie reverence to tradition so strongly as to make it to break with tradition and not violate reverence. But sometimes it is right to break with a tradition, and in those cases, if reverence is a virtue, breaking with tradition cannot be irreverent. A good relativist is hard to find. A well-tuned mind cannot overlook the differences in faith and morals between one religion and another. It is not reverent to say that all religions are the same deep down. Well-meaning people who say that they are the same may be setting the issue of belief aside (as would be fair enough for those whose religions do not involve belief). But if they are speaking of belief-based religions, then they are betray- ing either their own beliefs or the truth. If they don’t really care whether their beliefs are true, they betray their beliefs; if they think that every religious belief is true, they betray the truth. The same goes for morals: if you think that every religious system gives equal place to justice, you betray justice.
Bacteriophage T5
Authors: Sayers Jon R
Published: November 2023

Several features of phage type 5 make this a very interesting and rather unusual lytic bacteriophage. Phage T5 does not encode an RNA polymerase, unlike the T7 phage, nor does it contain unusual DNA modifications such as the 5-hydroxymethyl deoxycytidine present in phage T4. T5 DNA carries some of the strongest known prokaryotic promoters but they are regulated in a strictly controlled temporal sequence. Perhaps the most unusual feature is that the phage’s DNA enters the host in a two-step transfer mechanism. Transfer of the viral genome from the virion to host pauses after injection of the first 10 kb of the 120 kbp linear genome, until the pre-early phage-encoded proteins have been produced. The DNA itself is unusual in that it contains a number of cryptic nicks in one strand of its double-stranded genome. The phage is able to destroy host cell DNA rapidly, yet can quickly inactivate the nuclease responsible for this degradation. The T5 group includes phages BF23, 29a, BG3, and PB (52). Of these only T5 and BF23 have been studied in any detail. However, in comparison with phages l, T4, and T7, relatively little work has been published on these fascinating phages. This chapter will present a general overview of what is known about their life cycles and will concentrate particularly on advances made since the last major review of the group was published (56).