bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Grace and Labour
Authors: Mac Carthy Ita
Published: September 2020

This chapter discusses the work and poetic correspondence (1538–1547) of Michelangelo and Colonna. It shows that both eschew the kind of grace espoused by Castiglione and Pietro Bembo and perfected by Raphael and Ariosto. Instead, Michelangelo and Colonna cultivate an image of the artist as hardworking and intense. Their desire to reveal — rather than conceal — the labour behind their art can be compared in the Pietàs through which the artist and the poet articulate an alternative aesthetics of grace: one that resists humanist connotations, criticises courtly abuses of the term, and promotes a more Christian vision of the artist as the receiver rather than the giver of what is essentially God's gift. Restored here to the domain of religious experience, grace acts as a reminder that art and literature should praise God, not the artist, and in so doing reflects an age of Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Italy.
Conclusion
Authors: Mac Carthy Ita
Published: September 2020

This concluding chapter explores some of the further transplantations that grace experiences towards the end of the sixteenth century. Emblematic of these transplantations are the work of the Ferrarese poet and philosopher Torquato Tasso and the Venetian writer Moderata Fonte. The chapter first examines Tasso's philosophical dialogue, Il malpiglio (1585), as a direct response to Castiglione in whom Tasso identifies some timeless principles while also recognising that Italy and life at court have changed. Forming a contrastive diptych with this nostalgic portrait, Moderata Fonte's Merito delle donne (The Worth of Women, 1592) presents grace not as a privilege of the past but as a keyword of her era — as a mode of surviving and thriving in the world. After pointing out the fickleness of men who align grace with beauty for their own ends, she asserts that women should cultivate internal graces — eloquence and intellect — that will provide pleasure for themselves, that will never fade or grow old, and that will endure as long as life, and beyond.
Introduction
Authors: Bian He
Published: September 2020

This introductory chapter explores the career of pharmaceutical objecthood in Chinese culture between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. It also provides a brief overview of how the scientific tradition of bencao came to be entangled with state power in medieval times. The bencao were imperially commissioned pharmacopeias whose history contains broad implications about the development of Chinese modern scientific and medical developments. Indeed, the task of explaining the early modern discontinuity of this state-centered tradition posed great difficulties in the historiography of Chinese science. The chapter reviews that literature, before presenting ways in which an inclusive category of knowledge opens new venues for historical interpretation. Finally, it offers a quick guide to key themes and actors in succeeding chapters.
The Marketplace and the Shop
Authors: Bian He
Published: September 2020

This chapter describes the commodification of the wholesale and retail trades of pharmaceuticals since late Ming times and assesses the contribution of mercantile actors to the overall discourse of pharmacy. In particular, the chapter examines the cultural significance of the medicinal marketplace through two interconnected case studies. First is the rise of a sub-county-level market town named Zhangshu, located in the Jiangxi Province, where wholesale traders of materia medica gathered and traded, and supplies from all over the country were pulled together for redistribution. Second, the chapter revisits the well-documented history of the pharmacy Tongrentang (Hall of Common Humanity), which opened for business in Beijing circa 1702. The argument here is that metropolitan pharmacies like Tongrentang could only exist and function after an integrated wholesale market came into existence in the late Ming.
Making It Count
Authors: Ghosh Arunabh
Published: September 2020

In 1949, at the end of a long period of wars, one of the biggest challenges facing leaders of the new People's Republic of China was how much they did not know. The government of one of the world's largest nations was committed to fundamentally reengineering its society and economy via socialist planning while having almost no reliable statistical data about their own country. This book is the history of efforts to resolve this “crisis in counting.” The book explores the choices made by political leaders, statisticians, academics, statistical workers, and even literary figures in attempts to know the nation through numbers. It shows that early reliance on Soviet-inspired methods of exhaustive enumeration became increasingly untenable in China by the mid-1950s. Unprecedented and unexpected exchanges with Indian statisticians followed, as the Chinese sought to learn about the then-exciting new technology of random sampling. These developments were overtaken by the tumult of the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961), when probabilistic and exhaustive methods were rejected and statistics was refashioned into an ethnographic enterprise. By acknowledging Soviet and Indian influences, the book not only revises existing models of Cold War science but also globalizes wider developments in the history of statistics and data. Anchored in debates about statistics and its relationship to state building, the book offers fresh perspectives on China's transition to socialism.
No “Mean” Solution
Authors: Ghosh Arunabh
Published: September 2020

This chapter explores how this new understanding of statistics became dominant in the 1950s and how it affected the valuation of key concepts and methods. It first unpacks attempts at demarcation by focusing on the nearly decade-long sequence of publications that sought to criticize Anglo-American “bourgeois” statistics and its practitioners. The chapter then shifts to the changes in statistical education and to the debates over the content of statistics. In broad terms, the consequences of this transition are well known: as a social science, statistics dealt with the social world rather than the natural world. As a result, it was bifurcated from what was seen as the abstract and formal theorizing of mathematical statistics, which was, in turn, banished to departments of mathematics.
To “Ardently Love Our Statistical Work”
Authors: Ghosh Arunabh
Published: September 2020

This chapter analyzes the variety of stratagems—training, supplementary training, self-study, motivation, and rewards—that were employed to professionalize and maintain a cadre of statistical workers that by 1956 numbered as many as 200,000. It argues that by the mid-1950s the state found itself incapable of training adequate numbers of personnel to meet the demands of the periodic reporting system. The chapter the resulting training and motivation work. It first explores the kinds of statistical training offered by the state. For a select few, such training may have been available at the university level, but the vast majority of statistical workers was trained in technical schools through training courses. But these were inadequate. Self-study thus became a suggested method and it, in turn, casts a firm and unwavering spotlight on morale and its maintenance.
Seeking Common Ground Amidst Differences
Authors: Ghosh Arunabh
Published: September 2020

This chapter unearths a series of heretofore largely forgotten exchanges between Chinese and Indian statisticians. It is based on study of key figures, such as the deputy director of China's State Statistics Bureau, Wang Sihua, and the Indian statistician P. C. Mahalanobis. Focusing on Chinese interest in the emerging technology of large-scale random sampling, in which Mahalanobis and the Indian Statistical Institute were global innovators, the exchanges point to alternative frameworks for Cold War scientific exchanges while also placing in stark relief the extent to which Chinese statisticians and leaders clearly understood both the strengths and shortcomings of their own statistical system. The chapter traces these exchanges, explaining their timing and the motivation behind them. Each set of actors in these exchanges had its own agenda. The chapter shows that the Indians were particularly keen on learning more about China's planning methods.
Conclusion
Authors: Ghosh Arunabh
Published: September 2020

This concluding chapter returns to the main themes of the book before ending with a brief overture to developments in 1979. In that year, the statistician Dai Shiguang published two influential articles calling for a complete overhaul of the system of socialist statistics. Dai Shiguang's articles had an electrifying impact in China's statistical world. Within a few years, socialist statistics was cast aside, much like an old cloak, and mathematical statistics was formally reintegrated into the discipline and practice of statistics. An entire way of knowing society came to an end. Facts that the state had both seen and cherished disappeared, along with the periodic reporting systems that supplied them. Other facts, which did not exist before the 1990s, grew to become central.
The Son of Man–Messiah in the Fourth Book of Ezra
Authors: Schäfer Peter
Published: September 2020

This chapter talks about the eschatological connotation of the Son of Man established in Daniel, which came to light with particular clarity in the pseudepigraphic Fourth Book of Ezra. It originated after 70 CE, or more precisely around 100 CE, and is significant in its context because it refers back to the idea of the Son of Man in Daniel 7. It focuses on the line, “like the figure of a man” that is undoubtedly the same as “like a human being” in Daniel 7, although the man mentioned does not come with the clouds of heaven but at first comes up from the depths of the sea and then flies on the clouds of heaven. In contrast to Daniel, the man is not brought to God to receive dominion but instead fights for this dominion and brings final redemption to the people of Israel. With the man's appearance, a multitude gathered from the four corners of the world in order to “make war against the man who came up out of the sea.”
Two Gods
Authors: Schäfer Peter
Published: September 2020

This chapter talks about how Judaism has continuously wrestled with finding a way of expressing its notion of God with ever-greater precision over the course of its long history. The chapter explains how Judaism's expression applies to its founding document, the Hebrew Bible, as well as to all postbiblical literature. It emphasizes that monotheism is nothing more than an ideal that was pursued again and again, yet seldom achieved. Whereas YHWH, the tribal God of Israel, was never able to assert himself unchallenged even in the Hebrew Bible, the sources discussed in the chapter prove that for postbiblical Judaism until far into late antiquity, the idea of one single God is an ideal that does not stand up to an unbiased review. The Jewish heaven was by no means always content with one God, but, despite all trends to the contrary and manifold attempts to keep these trends at bay, was often populated with two gods or a number of divine powers.
Cossacks and Bannermen on the Argun Frontier
Authors: Urbansky Sören
Published: September 2020

This chapter reviews the affairs of frontier people from the first direct but sporadic encounters between Russians and Chinese. Relations between the Russian and Chinese empires on their shared steppe frontier can be divided into three phases. The first phase lasted through the late seventeenth century. During this time, Cossacks entered Transbaikalia and came in contact with Mongol nobles while the Qing established rule over Hulunbeir. The second phase, from roughly 1728 to 1851, was characterized by a balance of power between Beijing and Saint Petersburg, the establishment of permanent yet deficient border surveillance by both polities, and intensifying contacts on the border, in particular routed through Kiakhta, the year-round location for border trade. The third and final phase lasted from 1851 to the end of the nineteenth century. This period was marked by a shift of power in favor of Russia.
Introduction
Authors: DiYanni Robert , Borst Anton
Published: September 2020

This introductory chapter takes a look at the current state of college teaching in the United States. It first embarks on a review of the literature dedicated to exploring the serious challenges faced by higher education in the United States. From there, the chapter links scholarship to teaching and discusses further significant research about teaching practices that can lead to deeper and more enduring student learning. Next, the chapter addresses the current student demographics in colleges and universities today, tackling challenges related to a growing diversity of students on campus. Finally, the chapter describes the workshops, research, and advocacy which has shaped the ideas formed in this book. It briefly explores the extent of teaching recommendations and reflections on the art and science of teaching and learning.
Making Learning Last
Authors: DiYanni Robert , Borst Anton , DiYanni Robert , Borst Anton
Published: September 2020

This chapter confronts one of the biggest challenges facing college teachers and their students—making learning last beyond the immediate present. Learning is an acquired skill; it is not something people are naturally good at, especially the kinds of learning that school requires. Students thus have to learn how to learn. And as their learning becomes more complex, they need help in managing the acquisition of knowledge and skills. This chapter considers how to help students become meta-cognitive—more conscious of their learning and better able to learn how to learn. The chapter thus takes up some key questions about long-lasting learning. It explains why some study strategies work and others do not. It also identifies the conditions necessary for successful learning, along with principles and practices that guide and sustain effective, long-lasting learning. Finally, the chapter considers how to make learning itself an object of inquiry, exploring it from the perspective of strategic practice.
Teaching as Creative Problem-Solving
Authors: DiYanni Robert , Borst Anton
Published: September 2020

This concluding chapter argues that teaching requires and exemplifies creative problem-solving. Designing a course and syllabus, aligning exams and assignments with course goals and objectives, planning lectures and class discussions, motivating students, developing grading rubrics and assessment tools, using technology—these and other aspects of teaching require problem definition and problem-solving. The chapter considers how one might implement problem-solving approaches not just in the design and construction of courses but also in how they are being taught. Furthermore, the chapter explores ways in which teachers can cultivate students' ability to experiment, imagine, and reflect. Helping students identify problems worth solving and how the problem-solving process can be molded for them is also discussed. Finally, the chapter considers how teachers can support their critical and creative thinking as they engage in problem-solving activities and projects.
Religion as Peoplehood
Authors: McNally Michael D.
Published: September 2020

This chapter concerns claims to the religious in federal Indian law as part of broader claims made in the register of sovereignty. It follows a number of crucial cases that concerned the shape of treaty-protected rights to fishing, hunting, and gathering off-reservation, notably those in the Great Lakes region and the salmon cases in the Pacific Northwest, rulings that cleared the way for the Makah whale hunt. The chapter argues these cases are not simply about political sovereignty or about the economic value of the treaty rights. They are also about the religious and cultural importance of those sacred practices and how the practices themselves constitute peoplehood. It also signals where protecting religion as peoplehood, under international law and especially under federal Indian law, can have its limits, particularly in the short term.
Divided Armies
Authors: Lyall Jason
Published: September 2020

This chapter argues for a causal connection between (rising) military inequality and (declining) battlefield performance. It does so by first exploring the nature and severity of ethnic inequalities within political communities before detailing how exposure to state policies can affect soldier beliefs and actions. Next, the chapter considers how military commanders, aware of possible issues arising from inequality, adopt a mixture of four strategies to manage soldiers from suspect populations. The chapter then examines how these strategies induce trade-offs between combat power and cohesion that actually undermine battlefield performance. Finally, the chapter considers how enemy actions can intensify these internal contradictions and trade-offs before concluding with a discussion of how several of the arguments' core assumptions can be relaxed.
Incompetence, Chaos, and Extremism
Authors: Chirot Daniel
Published: September 2020

This chapter examines the trajectories of revolutionary activities in 1789 France, 1917 Russia, 1979 Iran, and 1932–1933 Germany. It reveals that the first act of major revolutions typically saw more moderate forces in the ascendant. In France, Russia, and Iran these were liberal reformers. A quite different example was Germany, when most thought that a right-wing, nationalist army was about to take control with the aim of restoring something close to the pre-1918 conservative imperial regime. Instead, a much more radical, genuinely revolutionary Nazi Party took power. However distinct this was from other revolutions, it was similar in this respect: it took an unanticipated extreme form that very few had foreseen. Adolf Hitler changed Germany in ways unsought by either the left, the moderate center, or the incompetent conservatives who had lost control.
Roman Sacrifice and the Ritus Militaris
Authors: Koortbojian Michael
Published: September 2020

This chapter concerns Roman sacrifice. Sacrifice was only one of many attested Roman rituals, but it is arguably the one whose imagery was most ubiquitous throughout the Roman world. This imagery is known in virtually all of the artistic media—at every possible scale, from the minuscule to the monumental, in many varied contexts, both public and private—and its use extended from the center of the urbs to every corner of Rome's imperium. Most, if not all, of the familiar examples that survive are of imperial date, though a greater repertory of extant mid-Republican monuments would have given a clearer sense of how honors had traditionally been afforded to the gods and a better impression of the shape of the tradition in which the surviving monuments must be set. It would give a better idea of just how early an imagery was established for a distinctly Roman ritus, and when what appear to be its constitutive elements were codified in practice.
Calling Philosophers Names
Authors: Moore Christopher
Published: September 2020

This book provides a fresh account of the origins of the term philosophos or “philosopher” in ancient Greece. Tracing the evolution of the word's meaning over its first two centuries, the book shows how it first referred to aspiring political sages and advice-givers, then to avid conversationalists about virtue, and finally to investigators who focused on the scope and conditions of those conversations. Questioning the familiar view that philosophers from the beginning “loved wisdom” or merely “cultivated their intellect,” the book shows that they were instead mocked as laughably unrealistic for thinking that their incessant talking and study would earn them social status or political and moral authority. Taking a new approach to the history of early Greek philosophy, the book seeks to understand who were called philosophoi or “philosophers” and why, and how the use of and reflections on the word contributed to the rise of a discipline. The book demonstrates that a word that began in part as a wry reference to a far-flung political bloc came, hardly a century later, to mean a life of determined self-improvement based on research, reflection, and deliberation. Early philosophy dedicated itself to justifying its own dubious-seeming enterprise. And this original impulse to seek legitimacy holds novel implications for understanding the history of the discipline and its influence.
What Philosophos Could Have Meant: A Lexical Account
Authors: Moore Christopher
Published: September 2020

This chapter shows what the term philosophos could have meant at the time for which it is attested, and thus what meaning Pythagoras or his followers would have sought to spin in accepting the term for themselves, had they done so. It pays close attention to the peculiar archaic use of phil-prefixed names, their normative valence, their application, or the contribution of their second element to the overall meaning. The chapter also considers the meaning of that particular second element, soph-, at the end of the sixth century BCE. This chapter thus begins by turning again to Cicero's version of the Pythagoras story. It looks in more detail to a non-Heraclidean but probably still fourth-century BCE version, found in Diodorus Siculus, which in effect dramatizes the thesis of this book: that the word philosophos was formed in reference to sophoi considered as “sages.”
Evolution
Authors: Mitra Durba
Published: September 2020

This chapter accounts for the foundational place of deviant female sexuality in social evolutionary thought over the period between the 1860s and the 1950s. It begins by analyzing concepts of sexuality and patriarchal monogamy in European and American ethnology. The chapter then explores the widespread impact of the field of ethnology on the ideas of a set of social analysts in eastern India who produced original theories of Indian social development in the first decades of the twentieth century. Their theories united the science of female sexuality with philology, biology, ethnology, psychology, and sociology to create original models for the evolution of Indian society. The unification of diverse sexual practices through classifications of deviant female sex constituted the social as a discrete domain of inquiry. These publications in critical social theory emerged in India at a moment when social scientific disciplines had not yet undergone disciplinary differentiation. A distinguishing feature of these publications was a claim to expertise about female sexuality through the blending of different fields of knowledge. To conclude, the chapter briefly touches on how these multidisciplinary understandings of primitivity and evolutionary development continue to shape social thought in postcolonial India.
From Hypothesis Testing to Estimating Functionals
Authors: Stillwell John
Published: September 2020

This chapter prepares the reader's mind for reverse mathematics. As its name suggests, reverse mathematics seeks not theorems but the right axioms to prove theorems already known. Reverse mathematics began as a technical field of mathematical logic, but its main ideas have precedents in the ancient field of geometry and the early twentieth-century field of set theory. In geometry, the parallel axiom is the right axiom to prove many theorems of Euclidean geometry, such as the Pythagorean theorem. Set theory offers a more modern example: base theory called ZF, a theorem that ZF cannot prove (the well-ordering theorem) and the “right axiom” for proving it—the axiom of choice. From these and similar examples one can guess at a base theory for analysis, and the “right axioms” for proving some of its well-known theorems.
Signal Recovery by Linear Estimation
Authors: Stillwell John
Published: September 2020

This chapter develops the basic results of computability theory, many of which are about noncomputable sequences and sets, with the goal of revealing the limits of computable analysis. Two of the key examples are a bounded computable sequence of rational numbers whose limit is not computable, and a computable tree with no computable infinite path. Computability is an unusual mathematical concept, because it is most easily used in an informal way. One often talks about it in terms of human activities, such as making lists, rather than by applying a precise definition. Nevertheless, there is a precise definition of computability, so this informal description of computations can be formalized.
Introduction: Patchwork Leviathans
Authors: McDonnell Erin Metz
Published: September 2020

This introductory chapter goes beyond the stereotypical image of dysfunctional public service to argue that many seemingly weak state “leviathans” are instead patchworked. What this means is that they are cobbled together from scarce available resources. They have a wide range of internal variation in organizational capacities sewn loosely together into the semblance of unity. The chapter thus reveals a striking empirical observation with theoretical implications for how to conceptualize states and state capacity: amid general organizational weakness and neopatrimonial politics, there are a few spectacularly effective state agencies dedicating their full working capacity to the routine satisfaction of organizational goals in the public interest. These are the subcultural niches of the bureaucratic ethos that manage to thrive against impressive odds.
Introduction
Authors: Harder Günter , Raghuram A.
Published: September 2020

This introductory chapter presents the general principle that the cohomology of arithmetic groups and the L-functions L(s, π‎, r) attached to irreducible “pieces” π‎ have a strong symbiotic relationship with each other. The symbiosis goes in both directions. The first is that expressions in the special values L(k, π‎, r) enter in the transcendental description of the cohomology. Since the cohomology is defined over ℚ one can deduce rationality (algebraicity) results for these expressions in special values. Next, these special values in turn influence the structure of the cohomology as a Hecke module; prime numbers dividing these values occur in the denominators of Eisenstein classes.
Boundary Cohomology
Authors: Harder Günter , Raghuram A.
Published: September 2020

This chapter discusses some relevant details of the cohomology of the boundary of the Borel–Serre compactification of the locally symmetric space SGKf. It first illustrates a spectral sequence converging to boundary cohomology. The chapter then turns to the cohomology of ∂PSG to better understand the cohomology of the boundary. Finally, the chapter describes the contribution of the discrete but noncuspidal spectrum to cohomology. It formulates the consequences of the description of the discrete spectrum in Mœglin–Waldspurger for the square integrable cohomology. In a sense, the chapter makes their results more explicit. It works at a transcendental level: the coefficient systems are ℂ-vector spaces.
The Archimedean Intertwining Operator for GLN
Authors: Weselmann Uwe
Published: September 2020

This chapter generalizes an identity conjectured by G. Harder and proved by D. Zagier from the case of GL3(ℝ)-representations to the case of general GLN(ℝ)-representations. These are useful in applying the results of Harder and Anantharam Raghuram on quotients of special values of L-functions. To begin, the chapter provides the general setting for this analysis—the group theoretic data and the induced representations. It then discusses the intertwining operators as well as the J-admissible permutations. The chapter goes on to discuss representations and L-functions before turning to the main theorem on Archimedean intertwining operator. Finally, the chapter discusses some applications to cohomology.
Why Was Greek
Authors: Fournet Jean-Luc
Published: September 2020

This chapter examines the absence of Coptic in legal texts. One explanation for the absence of legal acts could be the fact that there was no court operating in Egyptian and therefore capable of settling the disputes related to these acts. The use of Coptic in legal acts must have appeared to be perfectly useless—especially since these acts were written by professionals who were accomplished in Greek and who had mastered the intricacies of Roman law, in a state context confined to the exclusive use of Greek. The chapter then assesses the obstacles related to multidialecticism and the diglossic situation of Egypt, which were reinforced by the authoritative role of Greek. Egyptian was not only hindered by the competition of Greek, the language of the conquerors, but it was also the victim of a genuine policy implemented by Greek-speaking authorities (whether Ptolemaic or Roman) to restrict the field of action of Egyptian and to exclude it from the sphere of regulated writing. Completely absent from the government, which was strictly Greek-speaking, and increasingly limited to unregulated private communication, written Demotic ended up dying out in the company of the decline of the temples that ensured its teaching.
Prologue
Authors: Tomlins Christopher
Published: September 2020

This introductory chapter considers what called William Styron's fictive realities into being, and how they were crafted. Styron had written The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), which represented itself as the autobiographical narrative of the African American slave-turned-rebel leader, Nat Turner. The chapter asks what made his work a “meditation on history”—and why it failed. It also takes a look at whether it might be possible to redeem Nat Turner from endless deferral—the effect of multiple attempts to “understand” him as a figment of text without listening to (or for) him as a person. African American popular culture has tried, with some success, to retrieve Nat Turner, to recognize and assimilate him to itself, without deferral. However, this chapter considers whether or not he will ever be able to achieve a historical presence of his own that is other than past, and how.
Confessions: Of Text and Paratext
Authors: Tomlins Christopher
Published: September 2020

This chapter analyzes the pamphlet, The Confessions of Nat Turner (1831), written by a white attorney named Thomas Ruffin Gray. The pamphlet “immediately became the standard account” of the event that became known as the Turner Rebellion. The event has spawned many commentaries, both historical and literary. Without exception all grant considerable prominence to Gray's pamphlet. But like all documents generated in the course of master-class investigations of slave revolts, alleged or actual, The Confessions raises obvious evidentiary quandaries: credibility, reliability, authenticity. The chapter considers precisely what kind of historical source this document entails, how it should be interrogated, and what it can tell us. In doing so, this chapter investigates the pamphlet's paratextual aspects.
Reading Luke in Southampton County
Authors: Tomlins Christopher
Published: September 2020

This chapter examines Turner's affinity for biblical scripture. It first surveys Turner's account of himself and of what inspired him, with particular attention to his account's pattern of scriptural citation, in order to substantiate the claim that Turner indeed blended invocation of Revelation with a fondness for Luke. The chapter argues that, in fact, Turner based much of his understanding of himself and of the significance of his actions on Luke's account of the life and ministry of Christ. It also examines other possible influences on Turner's narrative of what inspired him. The chapter concludes by indicating how this examination of Turner's biblical exegesis might influence our perception of his narrative of the events leading up to August 1831.
The Shudder of the Thought
Authors: Tomlins Christopher
Published: September 2020

This chapter attempts to understand how Turner had arrived in his decision to rebel—and thus, to kill—and what gave him the conviction to see the enterprise through. The Confessions contains little information regarding that aspect of Turner's thought, though it does provide a few clues. The chapter shows that the Turner whose invisible decision exists in the text's cleft is not a tragic hero. Everything that Turner has revealed of himself in the first part of The Confessions underlines not tragic heroism, but faith. But Turner was no gloomy fanatic, according to this chapter, which goes on to describe Turner as the “knight of faith” embodied in the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard.
On the Guilt of Fragile Sovereigns
Authors: Tomlins Christopher
Published: September 2020

This chapter explores the guilt of the “fragile sovereigns” who were threatened by Turner's actions and how he had highlighted the problems of slavery. It shows how these vulnerable, fragile sovereigns against whom Turner was rebelling were also guilty sovereigns. Slaves could not be emancipated unless the emancipists were removed from Virginia. But the cost of removing them was too great, and nobody knew what to do. Turner's brusque intervention in white Virginia's affairs caused a panic that only heightened public anxiety. Thus the chapter reveals a tyrannical regime that does not change, that resists the politics of change, that ends up decrying the messages of politics altogether and embracing political economy to explain and justify its stasis.
Epilogue
Authors: Tomlins Christopher
Published: September 2020

This concluding chapter conjoins, in one constellation, the three texts from which certain observations have been drawn, and ourselves as readers of texts, and thereby attempt to provide this story with meaning and purpose. The first text is The Confessions of Nat Turner. The second is Max Weber's famous lecture “Science as a Vocation,” delivered in 1917 in Munich, on the eve of the Russian revolution. The third is Walter Benjamin's abbreviated fragment “Capitalism as Religion,” written in 1921, unpublished in his lifetime. In this chapter the second and third texts become prisms from the future, as we are ourselves. They, and we, refract and enliven the first, and so reveal its image. They are as unlike each other as each is unlike The Confessions, except in one regard—the glance each casts at the demonic. Though brief, these glances are of significance if we are to assess the final meaning of the “full faith and credit” held due the decision of the Southampton County Court to convict Nat Turner of fomenting “insurrection,” and order that he hang.
The Art of Chinese Philosophy
Authors: Goldin Paul
Published: September 2020

This book provides an unmatched introduction to eight of the most important works of classical Chinese philosophy—the Analects of Confucius, Mozi, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Sunzi, Xunzi, and Han Feizi. The book places these works in rich context that explains the origin and meaning of their compelling ideas. Because none of these classics was written in its current form by the author to whom it is attributed, the book begins by asking, “What are we reading?” and showing that understanding the textual history of the works enriches our appreciation of them. A chapter is devoted to each of the eight works, and the chapters are organized into three sections: “Philosophy of Heaven,” which looks at how the Analects, Mozi, and Mencius discuss, often skeptically, Heaven (tian) as a source of philosophical values; “Philosophy of the Way,” which addresses how Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Sunzi introduce the new concept of the Way (dao) to transcend the older paradigms; and “Two Titans at the End of an Age,” which examines how Xunzi and Han Feizi adapt the best ideas of the earlier thinkers for a coming imperial age. In addition, the book presents explanations of the protean and frequently misunderstood concept of qi—and of a crucial characteristic of Chinese philosophy, nondeductive reasoning. The result is an invaluable account of an endlessly fascinating and influential philosophical tradition.
Nondeductive Argumentation and the Art of Chinese Philosophy
Authors: Goldin Paul R.
Published: September 2020

This chapter discusses nondeductive argumentation in classical Chinese philosophy. There are three kinds: paradox, analogy, and appeal to example. Many of the paradoxes of the so-called disputers can be made to seem veridical, or at least veridical in spirit, if interpreted sympathetically. In addition, reasoning by analogy was a crucial mode of deliberation in traditional China. It was one of the hallmarks of Chinese jurisprudence and also figures prominently in early Chinese poetics. Finally, appeals to example are nearly ubiquitous in ancient Chinese philosophy (the most prominent text not to resort to them is Laozi), and this chapter divides the technique into a number of subtypes.
The Analects of Confucius
Authors: Goldin Paul R.
Published: September 2020

This chapter turns to the challenges of reading the Analects of Confucius. Of his life and heritage there are only the barest of details, which eager hands eventually embellished incredibly. However, Confucius' importance lies not in the details of his life, but in the philosophy that he left behind. A modern reader of Confucius, then, is faced with this task: using the Analects and perhaps a handful of other early texts, none of which was written by Confucius himself, to reconstruct the philosophy of a master who would have preferred to teach you personally. Fortunately, as this chapter shows, a careful reading of the Analects reveals a unique and consistent philosophical attitude. Confucius himself insists twice that although his teachings may appear disparate, there is “one thing with which to string [everything] together.”
Mozi
Authors: Goldin Paul R.
Published: September 2020

This chapter turns to the writings of Confucius' first great philosophical rival, Mozi, or Mo Di. From its obscure beginnings, Mohism quickly burgeoned into an influential philosophical school with a firm hierarchy and organization. Whatever their origins, Mohists soon came to be known first and foremost as thinkers. Mozi, the sole surviving repository of Mohist teachings, is extensive and is best understood as a school text. The core of the book is a sequence of what were originally thirty chapters advancing ten basic credos: “Exalting Worthies,” “Upward Conformity,” “Impartial Love,” “Objecting to [Military] Aggression,” “Moderating Expenditure,” “Moderating Funerals,” “The Will of Heaven,” “Clarifying Ghosts,” “Objecting to Music,” and “Objecting to Fatalism.”
Mencius
Authors: Goldin Paul R.
Published: September 2020

This chapter discusses Mencius. The philosopher Mencius is probably the one to have furthered the Confucian mission the most out of any other Chinese philosopher of the fourth century BC and thereby inherited the mantle of Confucius himself. In later centuries, Neo-Confucians regarded him as the last sage. Mencius, however, poses many of the same interpretive problems as Confucius. Mencius did not write the surviving repository of his teachings, the eponymous Mencius, which was compiled after his death and edited in its present form by Zhao Qi. Zhao reported that he took a text in eleven sections and eliminated four that he considered inferior, leaving the Mencius in seven books that we know today.
Laozi
Authors: Goldin Paul R.
Published: September 2020

This chapter lay out a centrist interpretation of the Laozi on the basis of the Wang Bi recension, and then asks how much of this account needs to be adjusted in view of evidence from the Guodian manuscripts. Laozi is one of the few classical Chinese texts for which a theory of accretion might fit the facts. Currently, there is only one set of undisputedly pre-imperial Laozi texts: the so-called Laozi A, B, and C manuscripts from Guodian, each of which contains a small number of passages that are found, with some variation, in the Wang Bi recension. Laozi is also discussed in this chapter because its philosophy marks a major turning point: the conceptualization of “the Way” (dao) as a cosmic principle. Although it is not certain that Laozi was the very first text to use the word dao in its radically new sense, the text is representative of intellectual trends that emerged around the fourth century BC.
Neutropenia – there are always two sides to a story
Authors: Rupa-Matysek Joanna , Gil Lidia , Mozer-Lisewska Iwona , Brzeźniakiewicz-Janus Katarzyna
Published: September 2020

Neutropenia is uncommon but a very challenging problem in medicine. It remains a well-known risk factor for the development of infection while conversely neutropenia can be caused by infection or its treatment. The issue is discussed in the paper with respect to different patient populations, medical intervention, and life situations.
Microbiological analysis of primary infected root canals with symptomatic and asymptomatic apical periodontitis of young permanent teeth
Authors: Marinković Jelena , Marković Tatjana , Brkić Snežana , Radunović Milena , Soldatović Ivan , Ćirić Ana , Marković Dejan
Published: September 2020

Background/Aim: Understanding the composition of bacteria in infected root canals is important for ameliorating the treatment strategies that lead to the elimination of pathogens and infection control, but also prevent reinfection. Aim of this study was to investigate microbial composition of primary infected root canals with apical periodontitis of young permanent teeth, originating form school children in Serbia, and its association with clinical symptoms. Material and Methods: To determine the bacterial composition of infected root canals in children, 35 endodontic samples were obtained. The identification of cultured bacteria was performed by MALDI-TOF MS analysis. The presence or absence of clinical symptoms were recorded. Results: Facultative anaerobes were 2,2 times more frequent than obligate anaerobes. The most common facultative anaerobes belonged to following genera, Streptococcus (58 isolates), Actinomyces (10) and Enterococcus (8), while predominant obligate anaerobes, belonged to genera Veillonella (15), Prevotella (9) and Fusobacterium (8). The most common clinical isolates recovered from infected root canals with symptomatic apical periodontitis were Veillonella parvula (10) and Fusobacterium nucleatum (7), while from the asymptomatic ones, they were Streptococcus mitis/Streptococcus oralis (5). Prevalence of Parvimonas micra, Prevotella buccae and Streptococcus constellatus within the root canals might be associated to clinical symptoms. Conclusions: Species of genera Streptococcus and Veillonella were the most common isolates from primary infected root canals with apical periodontitis in Serbian school children. Facultative anaerobes were predominant over obligate anaerobes. The prevalence of obligate anaerobes was much higher in symptomatic compared to asymptomatic root canal infections. No specific bacterial strain might be associated to a single examined clinical symptom (pain, tenderness to percussion or swelling), but majority of the strains are associated to all of the examined three symptoms.
Tomato bacterial endophytes in controlling Verticillium wilt and their advantage on biostimulation
Authors: Zendehdel N. , Hasanzadeh N. , Firouzjahi F.B. , Naeimi S.
Published: September 2020

A total of 688 bacterial endophytes were isolated from both greenhouse and field-grown tomatoes in the Tehran and Alborz provinces, Iran in order to obtain effective bacterial endophytes against the fungus Verticillium dahliae. 128 bacterial isolates, with respect to their different phenotypic characteristics were further analysed. All bacteria with positive hypersensitivity reaction on tobacco and geranium leaves and potato soft rot were eliminated, and totally 39 isolates were selected for in vitro antagonism and greenhouse tests. The potential biocontrol isolates were evaluated using seed treatment and soil drench methods on two tomato cultivars. The results indicated that seven bacterial isolates had a high potential for the control of the fungus and reduced the severity disease to 95-98%. This reduction was coincided with an increase in some growth factors like plant dry weight, root dry weight, plant height, root length, root fresh weight and plant fresh weight ranged between 92-98%. The seven antagonists’ preliminary identification was confirmed using 16SrRNA gene sequencing analysis. The BLAST analysis was performed, and the bacteria were also identified as Bacillus pumilus (two isolates), Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus safensis, Enterobacter ludwigi, Serratia marcesens and Pseudomonas beatica. Biocontrol mechanisms examination indicated that protease production was positive for all isolates and differentiated isolates E. ludwigii and P. beatica as higher producers with protease levels up to 65%. The three bacteriocins producing isolates inhibited the phytopathogenic mycelium up to 70% in dual culture assay. Also, five of the isolates produced siderophores and P. baetica, S. marcesens and E. ludwigii produced remarkable amount of auxin hormone.
Molecular characterisation and genetic diversity of canine parvovirus type 2 prevalent in Central China
Authors: Hu Wen , Xu Xin , Liu Qiang , Ji Jun , Kan Yunchao , Yao Lunguang , Bi Yingzuo , Xie Qingmei
Published: September 2020

Introduction

Canine parvovirus (CPV) disease is one of the most threatening to domestic and wild dogs.

Material and Methods

A total of 132 clinical samples were isolated from domestic dogs with diarrhoea from Henan, Hubei, Jiangsu, and Anhui provinces from 2016 to 2017, and 56 were positive for CPV-2 by PCR. A phylogenetic tree was constructed for the isolate sequences incorporating 53 non-Chinese reference strains.

Results

VP2 sequences showed the strains mainly to be new CPV-2a/2b and CPV-2c genotypes. The Ala5Gly, Phe267Tyr, Ser297Ala, Tyr324Ile, Gln370Arg, Asn426Asp or Asn426Glu, and Thr440Ala sites in the VP2 protein antigenic region were found to have high mutation rates. The VP2 tertiary structural model shows that the change at these mutation points is a factor for the changes in the protein structure. Significant differences between the Central Chinese strains and others were found, indicating that evolution is geographically related and extended in major regions. The homology between the identified strains confirmed their relationship. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that the common genotypes in the same clusters differ slightly in homology and evolutionary history.

Conclusion

This epidemiological study enriches the available data and serves as an important reference for studies on the evolution of CPV and selection of vaccines in China.
Prevalence and characterisation of class 1 and 2 integrons in multi-drug resistant Staphylococcus aureus isolates from pig farms in Chongqing, China
Authors: Ye Chao , Hou Fengqing , Xu Dongyi , Huang Qingyuan , Chen Xia , Zeng Zheng , Peng Yuanyi , Fang Rendong
Published: September 2020

Introduction

Integrons are mobile DNA elements that allow for acquisition and dissemination of antibiotic-resistance genes among pig farm-derived bacteria. Limited information is available on integrons of Staphylococcus aureus from pig farms. The aim of this study was to characterise and investigate the prevalence of class 1 and 2 integrons in multi-drug resistant (MDR) S. aureus isolates from pig farms.

Material and Methods

A total of 724 swabs were collected from 12 pig farms in Chongqing, China, and examined by conventional microbial and molecular methods.

Results

In total, 68 isolates were S. aureus, 57 of which were methicillin resistant (MRSA). All 68 isolates were MDR strains and carried integrons, of which 88.2% (60/68) harboured both class 1 and 2. In addition, 85.3% (58/68) of the class 2 integron-positive isolates carried the β-lactam resistance gene (blaTEM-1
), and 66.7% (40/60) of the class 1 integron–positive isolates carried the aadA1c, aadA1 or dfrA1 gene for respective streptomycin and spectinomycin or trimethoprim resistance.

Conclusions

Class 1 and 2 integrons are common among the pig farm-derived S. aureus isolates. On account of their significance for public health, the prevalence of the integrons and their associated resistance genes in pig farm-derived S. aureus isolates should be paid special attention.