bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Summa Theologiae II
Authors: Kenny Anthony
Published: November 2023

The first part of the Summa Theologiae, unlike the first part of the Summa contra Gentiles, treats not only of natural theology but also of specifically Christian doctrines. The dogma of the Trinity, in which there are three divine persons but only a single divine nature, presented Aquinas with a remarkable challenge. The cornerstone of his theory of divine being was that God was essentially simple, that any form of complexity or composition was utterly foreign to the divine nature. How is the simplicity of the divinity to be reconciled with the trinity of divine persons? Question thirty-nine of the First Part addresses this question. God, Aquinas has so often insisted, is the very same thing as his essence. In the first article he explains how this applies once we have been told that there are three persons in one God. The solution he offers to the problem is that each person is really distinct from each other person, but none of the three are really distinct from the essence. This response is insufficiently soothing, since from all we have read hitherto we have been led to believe that essences were individuated by their possessors: N.s essence was distinct from B’s, because one was N.s essence and the other was B’s essence. We need, but do not receive, an explanation why this principle no longer applies when we are considering the divine essence.
The Languages of Jerusalem
Authors: Spolsky Bernard , Cooper Robert L
Published: November 2023

The Old City of Jerusalem, small and densely populated, is a complex microcosm of Israeli society. It is a multilingual community characterized by unequal power relations between the speakers of the two official languages of Israel - Arabs and Jews. The authors begin with a sociolinguistic sketch of the Old City in the present day. They then provide a historical background to their field study, discussing Jewish multilingualism from the period of the Second Temple until modern times, the sociolinguistics of Jerusalem one hundred years ago, and the recent revival and spread of Hebrew. They go on to develop a model of the rules of language choice which arises from their analysis of language use in street signs, and which they then apply to language use in the market place. In the final chapters they examine language learning and language spread in their social context. The authors demonstrate that, because of the close association between language use and social structure, the study of language use in a multilingual society is at the same time both a powerful and a delicate method of studying the dynamics of group interactions.
The Language of Signs
Authors: Spolsky Bernard , Cooper Robert L
Published: November 2023

THE aim of this chapter and the next is to explore the form and nature of a theory of language choice, looking in particular at the suitability of a preference model for this purpose. In developing a tentative model, this chapter will present a set of rules accounting for the choice of language on public signs in the Old City; the next chapter will consider the rules of language choice as demonstrated by the speech of passers-by and shopkeepers in the streets of the market.
Analysis of Headwords
Authors: Wright Laura
Published: November 2023

As the documents studied vary in formality from the carefully written and illuminated Custumals to the many Journals and Letter-Books which pay scant attention to presentation, so the script varies from careful non-cursive bookhand to cursive anglicana. The script of many of the documents studied here has already been discussed by previous scholars; see 2.1. An attempt is made below to sum up some of the orthographical characteristics of the documents taken as a whole, in order to indicate whether or not there were any orthographical conventions operative in the London area over the period. Since more documents were studied from the latter portion of the period there is more evidence for the fifteenth century.
Explanatory projects in physics, 2. 3 and 7
Authors: Schofield Malcolm
Published: November 2023

In one way, then, that out of which a thing comes to be and which persists, is called a cause, e.g. the bronze of the statue, the silver of the bowl, and the genera of which the bronze and the silver are species. In another way, the form of the archetype, i.e. the definition of the essence, and its genera, are called causes (e.g. of the octave the relation of 2: 1, and generally number), and the parts in the definition. Again, the primary source of the change or rest; e.g. the man who deliberated is a cause, the father is cause of the child, and generally what makes of what is made and what changes of what is changed.
Universals And Particular Forms In Aristotle’S Metaphysics
Authors: Woods Michael
Published: November 2023

In Form and Universal in Aristotle1 Antony Lloyd wrote: ‘to attribute particular forms to Aristotle has only recently been a familiar notion for most British and American scholars’. Since then, the number of those who have taken the same view as Lloyd has grown.2 This tendency among recent writers on Aristotle has encouraged me to look again at Metaph. Z 13, which has been thought to require the attribution of a belief in particular forms to Aristotle.
Aristotle In Plotinus: The Continuity And Discontinuity Of Psyche And Nous
Authors: Armstrong Hilary
Published: November 2023

It is of course a very commonplace observation that one of the main differences between the thought of Plato and that of Aristotle concerns the relationship of Psyche and Nous. In Plato nous is (or is ‘in’ and characterizes) psyche at its highest, at the level at which it can contemplate the Forms. All the levels of psychic activity, including the noetic or contemplative, which is not clearly distinguished from the dianoetic or reasoning, are continuous, and there is no break, still less any sense of tension and opposition, between contemplative-rational activity and the external activities which should be directed by it. This applies both to divine and human psyche. The intelligent formation and ruling of the cosmos by divine psyche and the intelligent ethical and political activity proper to well-ordered human psyche are in no way discontinuous with or disjoined from their higher Contemplative rational activity.
Phantasia and Mental images: Neoplatonist interpretations of de an/ma, 3. 3
Authors: Sheppard Anne
Published: November 2023

Aristotle’s treatment of phantasia in De anima, 3. 3, is both suggestive and tantalizing: suggestive because Aristotle there seems to be trying to describe a capacity of the mind which cannot be identified either with sense-perception or with rational thought, a capacity which, if it is not the same as what we call ‘imagination’, at least has a good deal in common with it; but tantalizing because the chapter flits from one point to another and is hard to interpret as a consistent whole. There have been a number of recent attempts to make sense of the chapter and relate it to Aristotle’s other remarks about phantasia elsewhere.1 I shall briefly discuss three of these, which all make some use of modern discussions of imagination; in all three cases the way they see Aristotle’s position is affected by the account of imagination which they themselves favour.
From Aristotle to Brentano: the development of the concept Of intentionality
Authors: Sorabji Richard
Published: November 2023

A1ustotle ‘s On the Soul or De anima is probably the most variously interpreted of his works. Modern interpretations have disagreed chiefly on how Aristotle’s psychology stands in relation to Descartes.1 The ancient Neoplatonist commentators, in order to harmonize him with Plato, insisted on his belief in the immortality of the rational soul, and thereby unwittingly made Aristotle safe for Christianity. In this paper I want to take Aristotle’s theory of sense-perception and show how there too the ancient commentators started the process of reinterpretation, and handed it on to the Middle Ages. I hope that Tony Lloyd will consider this a suitable theme with which to honour him, since he has led the way in showing that professional philosophers need not and should not leave all the work to others in studying the philosophy of late antiquity.
Selfsame
Authors: Williams C J F
Published: November 2023

In each of these triads of propositions the first implies both the second and the third. The second and third imply each other (indeed I am prepared to say that they mean the same thing), but neither implies the first. The point is that in each case there is a word or a phrase in the first member of the triad which could be replaced by something else without spoiling the implication of the second and third by the first.
Myself
Authors: Williams C J F
Published: November 2023

If self is the selfsame concept as same, what do we make of all the things that have been said by philosophers, psychiatrists, preachers, theologians, and others about ‘the self? Is ‘samishness’ to be regarded as a synonym of ‘selfishness’? If an understanding of identity is all that is required to make sense of talk about self, where does that leave myself, or what philosophers are wont to refer to as ‘the Ego’? Before attacking ‘myself head on, it is a good plan to examine the way in which other ‘-self words work. Let us start with ‘herself. When Rosie hits her thumb with a hammer, we ask whether she has really hurt herself. For practical purposes this is probably a mere variant on asking whether she is hurt, tout court; but we can make the reflexive pronoun more significant by supposing that she has already done damage to other people. She recently dropped a heavy plank on Bernard’s toe. The hammer incident prompts us to say ‘Look, she’s hurt herself now!’ This time Rosie has hurt Rosie.
Kooky Objects
Authors: Williams C J F
Published: November 2023

What I have been trying in the preceding chapters to persuade the reader of is this: that ‘--- exist’ and ‘--- is true’ are not genuine one-place predicables, and that’--- is the same as ‘is not a genuine two-place predicable. I am now hoping to persuade her of the complementary thesis-that certain expressions which look like logical subjects are not genuine subjects. They seem to stand for things, but if we take this seriously and try to explain what it is that they stand for, we find ourselves committed to some strange objects.
The Philosophical Basis of Psychiatric Ethics
Authors: Hare R M
Published: November 2023

2.1 I have already in the preceding paper outlined the way in which, as I think, the moral philosopher can help with the problems of medical ethics, and I shall not repeat all that I said there. There are some problems, however, which afflict the psychiatrist in particular, and not only illustrate the method well, but deserve a more extended treatment.
Health
Authors: Hare R M
Published: November 2023

3.1 The concept of health is one the understanding of which would help with both theoretical problems in philosophy and practical problems in medicine. The theoretical problems arise because philosophers, at least since Plato and Aristotle, have used what may be called the medical analogy when discussing morality; they have claimed that expressions such as ‘good man’ behave in some ways like the expression ‘healthy man’, and that if we have no difficulty in applying the latter, we should have no more difficulty in applying the former. Thus advocates of descriptivist ethical theories often claim that since ‘healthy’ is a descriptive concept, so may ‘good’ be. The obvious reply, for those who reject descriptivism, is to ask whether ‘healthy’ is purely descriptive either; and that is what I shall be doing in this paper.
In Vitro Fertilization and the Warnock Report
Authors: Hare R M
Published: November 2023

7.1 The philosophical contribution to discussions like that about in vitro fertilization (IVF) and related problems should be to help sort out the good from the bad arguments that are used. One has only to read the many pronouncements on this subject in the newspapers to realize that what is needed above all is a sound and generally accepted method of argumentation, armed with which those who start with different views can discuss them with one another in the light of the medical facts and possibilities, and in the end, we hope, reach agreement. It is adherence to a sound method of argument that will bring this about; in default of it the discussions can go on inconclusively for ever. Since nearly all the questions involved are moral or ethical, it is the moral philosopher, the specialist in ethics in the narrow philosophical sense, who should, if he is good at his trade, be able to help here. The help consists not in handing down conclusions but in enabling others to reach them by sound arguments.
Palatalization: Derived-Environment Rules
Authors: Rubach Jerzy
Published: November 2023

In this chapter we look at derived-environment rules. Characteristically, these rules apply at morpheme boundaries but not morpheme-internally, a fact that assigns them to the class of cyclic rules. From the descriptive point of view this chapter deals with palatalization and the associated problems. Theoretical interest lies not only in the cyclist of the rules but also in the statement of palatalization, particularly because in most cases palatalization is not phonetic. That is, rules do not produce segments that are [— back] phonetically. Yet, we uphold Clements’s (1988) claim that palatalization is conceived of as spreading. We begin with an overview of the problems that are analysed in detail in subsequent sections of this chapter.
Germanness: Language and Nation
Authors: Coulmas Florian
Published: November 2023

‘It distinguishes the Germans’, Nietzsche (1978: 131) once sighed, ‘that they never get tired of asking who they are.’ Although the Germans are hardly alone in indulging in the pastime of searching for an identity, Nietzsche pinpointed a noteworthy aspect of the spiritual make-up of one of Europe’s belated nations. Before the Napoleonic wars Germany, as well as Italy, had not existed as a nation-state in even rudimentary form. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, Germany had not only joined the ranks of the more traditional nation-states, but become a nation-state superpower. A great deal of intellectual energy during that century was spent accompanying and digesting this process of nation-building. As a result, nation and state, which are usually identified in the Anglo-Saxon world as well as in France, are conceptually very distinct in Germany.
Introduction
Authors: Comrie Bernard , Stone Gerald , Polinsky Maria
Published: November 2023

Our objective in this book is to trace and illustrate the main changes that have taken place in the Russian language since the beginning of the twentieth century, and particularly those between 1917 and the late 1980s, a time which can be identified as the Soviet period, by now a reasonably complete stage in the history of Russia and the former Soviet Union.
Changes and Ends
Authors: Pivčević Edo
Published: November 2023

The collapse of the ‘causal’ model, as we saw, seemed to indicate that there was no possibility of explaining why any two events, or states, should be mutually connected other than in the context of our experience, and this in turn raised the problem of accounting for change as an objective phenomenon. But surely, it might be said, such difficulties were due entirely to the exaggerated emphasis being placed upon efficient or mechanistic causation, exemplified by the proverbial billiard balls bouncing randomly off each other. Small wonder that under such circumstances the task of explaining the structure of the transition from A to B became an insurmountable problem. Any attempt to account for change in terms of mechanistic causation is a forlorn effort, destined to end in failure. Once this became obvious, the tendency, not unnaturally, was to retreat into the ‘ontologically uncommitted’ language of sufficient conditions. Now, within limits this may hc1ve been a. sound practical policy, but from a philosophical point of view it was unsatisfactory, inasmuch as it meant in effect turning one’s back on the problem of change rather than solving it.
What Makes Reality Intelligible? Reflections on Aristotle’s Theory of Aitia
Authors: Moravcsik Julius M
Published: November 2023

To say that some parts of reality are intelligible is to say that we can understand these and can offer explanations for them. Understanding and explaining are what we do; reality provides the objects for these states or activities. This suggests that theories of reality are one thing, while accounts of explanations and understanding constitute something else. The former embraces science and metaphysics, the latter a part of epistemology and the philosophy of mind. From the point of view of a conception adopting this bifurcation Aristotle’s theory of aitia seems puzzling. For on the one hand it is a theory about various configurations of elements of reality, and on the other hand it seems to be a theory about explanations. We can, however, remove the puzzlement if instead of asking, ‘How do we explain various parts of reality?’ we ask, What features of parts of reality make these intelligible?’ In this essay Aristotle’s theory of aitia will be interpreted as an answer to this question. The answer is, roughly, that just as certain configurations of elements of reality make corresponding statements true, so certain configurations of elements of reality make some explanations adequate, true, and insightful. Aristotle’s theory of aitia is a correspondence theory of explanations, thus dealing at once both with the world and with the ways in which we explain the world. Furthermore, for Aristotle the intelligibility of the world depends partly on fundamental changes and processes in the world being the manifestations of powers and potentialities that have an intelligible nature of their own.
Chance and ’Always or For the Most Part’ in Aristotle
Authors: Judson Lindsay
Published: November 2023

This paper has two aims. One is to examine Aristotle’s analysis of chance in Phys. 11. 4-6; the other is to try to elucidate a concept which has been very much neglected by commentators despite its central importance to a number of Aristotle’s doctrines and theories–his concept of happening always or for the most part’. These two aims go hand in hand, because the analysis of chance invokes the concept of happening always or for the most part, and also provides important evidence as to what this concept is. I shall begin with the analysis of chance (sections I-II), then turn to ‘happening always or for the most part’ (sections III-VI), considering along the way what light the former sheds on the latter. In pursuit of these broad questions a number of points of detail raised by the analysis in 11. 4-6 will have to be ignored.
Aristotle on the Reality of Time
Authors: Inwood Michael
Published: November 2023

At Phys. 1v. 21b632 ff. Aristotle asks whether time is ‘among the things that are or among the things that are not’ (21b631). He presents three ‘exoteric’ arguments which suggest that time either ‘is not at all or scarcely and dimly’ (21b632-3):
Aristotle on Continuity in Physics VI
Authors: Bostock David
Published: November 2023

Aristotle’s favourite model of the continuum is the same as ours, namely a geometrical line, or line-segment. He does not also have, as we do, the numerical model of the real numbers, but that is scarcely a handicap. After all, one of our main ways of understanding the structure of the real numbers (namely via the notion of a ‘Dedekind cut’) is very naturally viewed as drawing upon our prior grasp of the structure of a geometrical line, with the real numbers understood as corresponding to the points on that line. There are some features of this structure which Aristotle grasps very clearly, notably that no two points on a line are ever next to one another, for between any two points there is always a whole line-segment, which in turn will always contain further points within it. Undoubtedly, this is a major achievement on his part, but its importance should not be over-exaggerated, as it appears to be (for example) in Ross’s classic edition of the Physics. (Looking at the issue from our contemporary point of view, we may observe that the fact that between any two points there are always others does not yet distinguish the structure of the real numbers from that of the rational numbers.)
Can God Be the Cause of His Own Nature?
Authors: Rowe William L
Published: November 2023

On the assumption that God (the supremely perfect being) exists and that there is a best, creatable world, we’ve reached the conclusion that God is neither free not to create a world nor free to create a world less than the best creatable world. Indeed, God would of necessity create the best of the creatable worlds, leaving us with no basis for thanking him, or praising him for creating the world he does. For given that God exists and that there is a best creatable world, God’s nature as an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good being would require him to create that best world. Doing less than the best he can do—create the best world— would be inconsistent with his being the perfect being he is. But what if, strange as it may seem, God is causally responsible for having the perfect nature that he has? What if God creates his nature, and, by virtue of having created it, is thereby causally responsible for his own nature? Such a view, if it were correct, might provide a way out of our problem. For we have been assuming all along that no being is, or can be, responsible for having the nature it has. And, given that this assumption is correct, what logically follows from God’s possessing the nature (being supremely perfect) he does—i.e, his creating the best possible world— can no more be up to God, something he is responsible for, than is his nature as a supremely perfect being something that is up to him, something he is responsible for. But against our assumption, Thomas Morris has argued that God does create his nature and, therefore, is causally responsible for his nature.
Does Conceivability Entail Possibility?
Authors: Chalmers David J
Published: November 2023

There is a long tradition in philosophy of using a priori methods to draw conclusions about what is possible and what is necessary, and often in turn to draw conclusions about matters of substantive metaphysics. Arguments like this typically have three steps: first an epistemic claim (about what can be known or conceived), from there to a modal claim (about what is possible or necessary), and from there to a metaphysical claim (about the nature of things in the world).
Essentialism versus Essentialism
Authors: Rocca Michael Della
Published: November 2023

A great deal seems to be at stake in the debate over whether conceivability is a guide to possibility. Depending on the connection that obtains between the two, one may be in a position to deploy certain arguments for robust and startling claims of nonidentity. Perhaps most prominently, such arguments have been advanced in the philosophy of mind in order to establish various dualist, anti-physicalist views. But such conceivability arguments abound elsewhere as well, in order to reach conclusions about the individuation of events and of material objects, and so on.
A Study in Modal Deviance
Authors: Rosen Gideon
Published: November 2023

These notes are prompted by a report in a recent number of the Journalof Metaphysical Anthropology (von Feld et al., ‘Modal Deviance among the Q’ ,J Met. Ant. (Brest Litovsk), IT 1253). The observation concerns a small population concentrated in the gloomy forests of our northern district. The Q, as they are called, are remarkably sophisticated in many ways.
On the Metaphysical Contingency of Laws of Nature
Authors: Sidelle Alan
Published: November 2023

In the old days—good or bad, depending on your views—it would have been very hard to propose that the laws of nature are necessary’in the strongest sense’ and be taken seriously.1 After all, what the laws of nature are is a matter for empirical investigation, and however they turn out, we can imagine them having been otherwise. When scientists look for laws, there are various hypotheses as to what the laws might be, and so long as there is no hidden contradiction, any of these is conceivable, and so represents what the laws are in some (set of) possible world(s). Certainly, the laws of nature may represent, or underlie, weaker sorts of necessity-physical, biological, psychological, or economic necessity-but such necessity would be understood as being compatible with contingency in a wider sense. Maybe, as things are, this unsupported cup has to fall-but surely the laws could have differed so that under the very same conditions, it would not fall. We can surely imagine it, and in the old days, this would have been enough.
Reliability and the A Priori
Authors: Sosa Ernest
Published: November 2023

Numbers, properties, and propositions are said by Platonists to constitute a realm of abstracta beyond space-time. How, then, could denizens of space time ever discern the lay of that land? According to Hartry Field, ‘we should view with suspicion any claim to know facts about a certain domain if we believe it impossible to explain the reliability of our beliefs about that domain’ (1989: 232-3).
Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda
Authors: Ablo Stephen Y
Published: November 2023

A main theme of Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity (1980) is that metaphysical necessity is one thing; apriority, analyticity, and epistemic/semantic/ conceptual necessity are another. Or rather, they are others, for although the relations among these latter notions are not fully analyzed, it does emerge that they are not the same notion. ‘Apriority’ and ‘analyticity’ are for Kripke nontechnical terms. They stand in the usual rough way for knowability without appeal to experience, and truth in virtue of meaning. Examples of apriority are given that it is hoped the reader will find plausible.
The Political Problem of Religion: Hobbes’s Reading of the Bible
Authors: Dumouchel Paul
Published: November 2023

In this essay, I argue that Hobbes’s reading of the Bible, contained in the second half of Leviathan, is a fundamental part of his philosophy.’fhe goal of Parts III and IV is not merely, as has sometimes been suggested, to sustain with the prestige of religion the political legitimation of the sovereign expounded in Part u; nor is it, as has also been claimed, to discredit religion while seeming to recognize its authority .To the contrary, the second half of Leviathan seeks to liberate the sovereign’s authority from the necessity of religious legitimation, which is perceived by Hobbes as a danger to the stability of the commonwealth. The way in which religion threatens civil authority is described in Part I and may be called the political problem of religion. Part II, like most modern political philosophy, simply assumes that the problem does not exist, and maintains that the power of the sovereign rests solely on the consent of the subjects.
Locke’s Theology, 1694-1704
Authors: Nuovo Victor
Published: November 2023

There is indeed one Science (as they are now distinguish’d) incomparably above all the rest, where it is not by Corruption narrow’d into a Trade or Faction, for mean or ill Ends, and secular Interests; I mean Theology, which containing the Knowledge of God and his Creatures, our Duty to him and our fellow Creatures, and a view of our present and future State, is the Comprehension of all other Knowledge directed to its true end; i. e. the Honour and Veneration of the Creator, and the Happiness of Mankind. This is that noble Study which is every Man’s Duty, and every one that can be call’d a rational Creature is capable of. The Works of Nature, and the Words of Revelation, display it to Manldnd in Characters so large and visible, that those who are not quite blind may in them read, and see the first Principles and most necessary Parts of it; and from thence, as they have Time and Industry, may be inabled to go on to the more abstruse parts of it, and penetrate into those infinite depths fill’d with the Treasures of Wisdom and Knowledge.
The Trinity and Human Personal Identity
Authors: Thiel Udo
Published: November 2023

It is generally recognized by philosophers that present-day debates about personal identity originate in Locke’s famous chapter’Of identity and diversity’, which he added to the second edition of his Essay concerning human understanding in 1694-Yet issues to do with the question of identity had been discussed long before Locke. Indeed, he himself obviously refers to earlier accounts of the issue when he notes the “great deal of that Confusion, which often occurs about this Matter, with no small seeming Difficulties; especially concerning Personal Identity”. There are few attempts, however, to relate Locke’s immensely influential theory to earlier discussions of the topic.
Stilling fleet and the Way of Ideas
Authors: Stewart M A
Published: November 2023

“But the first Question in a Fray is, how fell they out?”r This question, which puzzled Edward Stilling fleet in his estrangement from the Dissenters in I 679, undoubtedly puzzled Locke in his own controversy with Stilling fleet in the I 690s,:. and has not yet been adequately answered by the few commentators who have gone back to look at that debate.

The debate with Stilling fleet is the most extensive and, through the replies published in his lifetime, the most public of the controversies in which Locke became embroiled as a result of the publication of his Essay concerning human understanding in I 689-90. It is like the skirmishes with Thomas Burnet and John Norris, and the unanswered attacks of Henry Lee and others, in that Locke’s principal critics were almost all in the ranks of the established clergy. He was irritated by their criticism, and may have underestimated the extent to which he might provoke it. But he was also deeply interested in and at least privately involved with the theological debates of the day, and cannot have been wholly unaware of the signals he was sending. Independently,
Of Mixed Blood
Authors: Gow Peter
Published: November 2023

Of Mixed Blood is an ethnography of the native people of the Bajo Urubamba river in Peruvian Amazonia. The people of this region appear very acculturated when compared to better-known indigenous Amazonian peoples. Peter Gow's analysis focuses on features of social organization which would seem to demonstrate this most clearly: the role of schools and recent land reform laws in the definition of the community, and native people's claim to be ‘of mixed blood’. By stressing that these claims are made by native people themselves, he challenges the dominant vision of them as passive victims of history. Dr Gow argues that when native people's claims are viewed from the perspective of their own values, and in the context of their creation of life through the productive transformation of the forest and the commodity economy, they can be seen to form a coherent part of kinship. Historical change is thus revealed as interior to the ongoing creation of kinship for native people, rather than alien to it. This study offers a new approach to the issue of historical and ethnographic analysis of Amazonian cultures.
Patterns of Reproduction
Authors: Hastrup Kirsten
Published: November 2023

THIS chapter is concerned with the reproduction of human life in Iceland within the context of the social experience of the Icelanders. ‘Social reproduction’ does not necessarily imply repetition. The reproduction of culture may contain its own transformation (Sahlins 1982; 1985), and ‘events’ are never exact replicas of previous ones, even though they may be realizations of the same structure (Ardener 1972).

Reproduction occurs at several levels, and there is a sense in which all studies of culture in time are studies of reproduction for the simple reason that things go on. We can begin our investigation of reproduction at the level of biology and study the patterns of sexuality and procreation. This will give important clues to the human condition, including an understanding of how humans perceive themselves as agents in and of life. Subsequently I shall deal with reproduction at another level, and explore how the morals of sexuality and procreation were matched by a particular pattern of literacy.
Analytical Results
Authors: Hastrup Kirsten
Published: November 2023

IN the preceding chapters I have drawn a picture of Icelandic history over four hundred years. The analysis concerned both a society and a period. Neither in theory nor in practice can time and space be separated, for it is in the course of history that a society reveals itself (Dumont 1957: 21). In that sense, I have provided only a rather straightforward analysis of an empirical reality, unfolding in both time and space. My account differs from most anthropological analyses only in its long-term perspective, a perspective which in turn allows me to draw more substantial conclusions about Icelandic culture than might otherwise have been possible. History provides us with a privileged experimental situation (cf. Evans-Pritchard 1950; 1964: 147).

My conclusions are both analytical and theoretical, and I have chosen to deal with them under the general heading of ‘implications’. The choice of term indicates that the results are implied by the empirical evidence, which remains the fundamental source of anthropological thinking.
The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology
Authors: Gell Alfred
Published: November 2023

The complaint is commonly heard that art is a neglected topic in present-day social anthropology, especially in Britain. The marginalization of studies of primitive art, by contrast to the immense volume of studies of politics, ritual, exchange, and so forth, is too obvious a phenomenon to miss, especially if one draws a contrast with the situation prevailing before the advent of Kalinowski and Radcliffe-Brown. But why should this be so? I believe that it is more than a matter of changing fashions in the matter of selecting topics for study; as if by some collective whim, anthropologists had decided to devote more time to cross-cousin marriage and less to mats, pots, and carvings.
Art, Architecture, and Collective Representations in a New Guinea Society
Authors: Bowden Ross
Published: November 2023

The assertion that art ‘communicates’ is one that is very commonly made about painting, sculpture, and other visual art-forms in both Western and tribal societies. But establishing with any degree of certainty what a particular painting or sculpture might ‘say’ about the society which produces it is no easy matter. And teasing the ‘meaning’ out of art objects is made all the more difficult by the fact that artists generally (including writers and composers) typically show little interest in, or even aptitude for, translating into ordinary discourse what their creations are ‘about’-something that has been noted since at least the time of Plato (Plato, 1984: 51; see also Blocker, 1979: 57-9, 67, 324). This lack of concern, or even ability, on the part of the artist to interpret what he has created for the benefit of an observer means that when the anthropologist sets out to enquire into the ‘meaning’ of a particular visual art-form, more often than not he or she is confronted by a seemingly in surmountable wall of silence. It is largely for this reason, I believe, that so much of the anthropological literature on art is distinguished more by what it does not say than by what it does. As Anthony Forge (1979: 280) has remarked: ‘It is a truism that art communicates, but what does it communicate? Here the philosophers and historians, and indeed all students of art, seem to become evasive, trivial or unintelligible ‘
Making Skins: Malangan and the Idiom of Kinship in Northern New Ireland
Authors: Kochler Susanne
Published: November 2023

This essay discusses the art objects produced as gifts for final mortuary exchanges in the northern part of New Ireland. Northern New Ireland art is known under the generic name malangan and comprises carved and painted sculptures, as well as others woven from fibre or moulded from clay, of astonishing visual and conceptual complexity and variety of design. Malangan sculptures exemplify one of the few flourishing art traditions in contemporary Papua New Guinea. Not only are sculptures still carved from wood for the society’s mortuary ceremonies, but, collected over a period of a hundred years, they also form one of the largest collections of a single art tradition held in Western ethnographic museums. From the indigenous perspective, however, it is not the sculptures as seemingly unique and identifiable objects which are of importance, but the engraved images which serve as renewable, relocatable and memorable entities in their own right.
Representing the Spirits: The Masks of the Alaskan Inuit
Authors: Oosten Jarich
Published: November 2023

The word ‘person’ is derived from the Latin persona, ‘mask’. In modem English the word ‘person’ usually refers to an individual being. ‘Mask’ and ‘person’ have become opposed. The mask is thought to hide a person, not to reveal him. Yet the relation between a mask and the person who wears it is usually more complex. A mask may hide someone by providing him with a new identity, but it may also represent someone’s true identity. Thus the mask can reveal what the face hides, and it can hide what the face reveals. The use of masks in play and ritual usually provides an insight into the relations between different perspectives on human identity.
Predicates of Aesthetic Judgement: Ontology and Value in Huichol Material Representations
Authors: Shelton Anthony
Published: November 2023

All discourse is institutionalized and historically specific. It is intimately related to particular social and economic relations at determinate phases of its existence which create and legitimate peculiar practices or techniques that reproduce both its intellectual and material conditions (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977; Foucault, 1974). These practices and relationships confer respect and authority on the fields of knowledge which they institutionalize.
‘Marvels of Everyday Vision’: The Anthropology of Aesthetics and the Cattle-Keeping Nilotes
Authors: Coote Jeremy
Published: November 2023

This essay is written out of a conviction that progress in the anthropological study of visual aesthetics has been hampered by an undue concentration on art and art objects. The cattle-keeping Nilotes of the Southern Sudan make no art objects and have no traditions of visual art, yet it would be absurd to claim that they have no visual aesthetic. In such a case as this, the analyst is forced to attend to areas of life to which everyday concepts of art do not apply, to attend, indeed, to ‘the marvels of everyday vision’ (Gombrich, 1977: 275) which we all, not just the artists and art critics amongst us, experience and delight in. It is my contention. that such wide-ranging analyses will produce more satisfactory accounts of the aesthetics of different societies-even of those with art traditions and art objects. With this in mind, then, I present the cattle-keeping Nilotes of the Southern Sudan as a sort of test-case for the anthropology of aesthetics.
Social Groups and Their Chiefs
Authors: Thomas Nicholas
Published: November 2023

Marquesan perceptions of the on gms of people and things in general, and of particular social groups, were linked with genealogical traditions or mythic histories. These were structured by a binary logic of sexual procreation: certain static states or agents were brought into opposition with new conditions, leading to some novel situation or process. Traditions about the creation (te pepena), for example, indicate that initially everything was semi-darkness, over which the deity Tanaoa reigned. From him emerged Atea (daylight), who created vigorous and powerful light, which he shed over Tanaoa’s darkness and cold. From Atea emerged sound; subsequently he coupled with Atanua, and other elements and ‘children’ had their origin.
Property and Hierarchy
Authors: Thomas Nicholas
Published: November 2023

Some European observers of Marquesan society, who perhaps knew something of other Pacific chiefdoms, assumed that in some sense chiefs owned all the land. Although chiefly titular ownership was widespread in Polynesia, it is clear from both general and specific statements in the early literature that in the Marquesas parcels of land were individually held and that there was no privileged chiefly ownership. This is not surprising, since the Tikopia evidence suggested that the chief’s generalized ownership was indissociable from his ritual situation. In the Marquesas, the absence of the former was no doubt connected with the absence of the latter. As Robarts noted, ‘No chieftain can force a tribute from anyone excepting those on his own private estate.’
Exchange In Oceania
Authors: Hage Per , Harary Frank
Published: November 2023

In their previous book, Structural Models in Anthropology, anthropologist Per Hage and mathematician Frank Harary used graph theory, a branch of pure mathematics, to develop a family of models for the study of social, symbolic, and cognitive relations. In this book the authors extend these models and apply them to the analysis of exchange structures in Oceania, presenting graph theory in a form accessible to the non-mathematical reader. Using ethnographic data from Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, they demonstrate that the language, techniques, and theorems of graph theory provide the essential basis for the description, quantification, simulation, enumeration, and notation of the great variety of exchange forms actually found in Oceanic societies.
Paths, Cycles, and Partitions
Authors: Hage Per , Harary Frank
Published: November 2023

Graphical models of exchange systems enable us to discover structural commonality beneath empirical diversity, and they provide for the coherent classification of structural forms. We begin with two analyses. First, we give a unitary definition of dual organization, a widely distributed and, it has been conjectured, archaic type of social structure in Melanesia. Rather than giving an ethnographic survey, we consider three radically different surface forms, all of which have the underlying structure of a bipartite graph. Then, using digraphs and networks, we clarify the application of models of restricted and generalized marriage exchange to the analysis of ceremonial exchange in New Guinea. We start with a set of mathematical definitions that are the foundation of all that follows.
Centres, Neighbourhoods, and Roots
Authors: Hage Per , Harary Frank
Published: November 2023

Recent work on Oceanic exchange systems suggests that network position may outweigh environmental and demographic variables in determining the economic status and political organization of island communities. Irwin (1978), in an archaeological reconstruction of the Mailu system off the south coast of New Guinea, concludes that increasing network centrality, as defined by distance in a graph, was the major factor in the rise of Mailu Island as a pottery manufacturing centre and middleman in regional trade. Brunton (1975) in a reinterpretation of kula ring ethnography argues that limited access to the flow of valuables, as inferred from the degrees of points in a graph, rather than high economic productivity or population density, led to the rise of chieftainship in the northern Trobriand Islands. Hage, Harary, and James (1986), using a Markovian simulation of network flow, propose that either of the extreme conditions of restricted or general access to valuables could lead to political hierarchy in a kula community, depending on associated environmental conditions and local definitions of exchange practices. This is a promising area of research, of interest to economic and political anthropologists, archaeologists, and network specialists alike. It can be advanced in two ways: empirically, by expanding the range of network structures studied, in particular by including the hierarchical systems found outside of Melanesia, and theoretically, by applying suitable models for the analysis of locational advantage.
Markov Chains
Authors: Hage Per , Harary Frank
Published: November 2023

In the classification of ceremonial exchange in Highland New Guinea we proposed the model of a non-numerical network to accommodate structures with multiple exchange relations. We now introduce a special case of a numerical network known as a Markov chain to simulate the flow of wealth through an exchange system. We use a chain to estimate the distribution of valuables in different communities of the kula ring for the purpose of showing the relation between access to wealth and the development of political hierarchy. In the Carolines the closeness of one island to all other islands and its position between all pairs of islands are structural determinants of economic and political dominance. In the kula ring we conjecture that the position of a community in the circulation of wealth is a structural determinant of internal stratification.
Combination and Enumeration
Authors: Hage Per , Harary Frank
Published: November 2023

In a review of the state of kinship studies, occasioned by the publication of Scheffier’s (1978) book on Australian systems, W. Shapiro (1982) dismisses Levi-Strauss’s theory of marriage alliance as ‘philosophic posturing’, citing in particular what he believes to be the analytical superficiality and empirical disconfirmation of the configuration of relations known as the ‘atom of kinship’:

The analysis is glib in the extreme: a ‘plus’ sign represents dyads which are ‘free and familiar’, a ‘minus’ sign dyads ‘characterized by hostility, antagonism, or reserve .. .’ (Levi-Strauss 1963: 44). This all-too-simple notational system, lifted from Radcliffe-Brown’s student Warner (1931: 180), is used to assert the proposition MB/ZS : B/Z:: F/S : H/W (ibid.: 42).
Nuer Prophets
Authors: Johnson Douglas H
Published: November 2023

This is the first major study of the Nuer based on primary research since Evans-Pritchard's classic Nuer Religion. It is also the first full-length historical study of indigenous African prophets operating outside the context of the world's main religions, and as such builds on Evans-Prichard's pioneering work in promoting collaboration and dialogue between the disciplines of anthropology and history. Prophets first emerged as significant figures among the Nuer in the nineteenth century. They fashioned the religious idiom of prophecy from a range of spiritual ideas, and enunciated the social principles which broadened and sustained a moral community across political and ethnic boundaries. Douglas Johnson argues that, contrary to the standard anthropological interpretation, the major prophets' lasting contribution was their vision of peace, not their role in war. This vision is particularly relevant today, and the book concludes with a detailed discussion of events in the Sudan since independence in 1956, describing how modern Nuer, and many other southern Sudanese, still find the message of the nineteenth-century prophets relevant to their experiences in the current civil war.
Prophetic Rivalries in the Western Homeland
Authors: Johnson Douglas H
Published: November 2023

The most dramatic and best-known murder of a British officer in the Sudan, after that of Gordon in Khartoum, is the assassination of Captain V. H. Fergusson by two Nyuong Nuer on 14 December 1927. The events surrounding Fergusson’s death were immortalized in a memorial volume about his life, commissioned by his mother and introduced by no less a personage than the former governor-general Sir Reginald Wingate.